James sat in his apartment at three in the morning, surrounded by chaos.
Notebooks covered every surface. His laptop displayed a dozen open browser tabs. Printed research papers lay scattered across the floor in rough piles.
The wall above his desk had transformed into something that looked like a detective's murder board, except instead of crime scene photos, it held his flowchart of power sources.
He stared at the chart with bloodshot eyes.
Every known enhancement method in the DC Universe mapped out in front of him. Lazarus Pits. Super soldier serums. Venom. Miraclo. Genetic modification.
Kryptonian biology. Speed Force access. Magic artifacts. Each one connected by lines showing relationships, dependencies, and consequences.
Below each option, he'd written five ratings. Accessibility from one to ten. Risk level from one to ten. Power ceiling from one to ten. Side effects from one to ten. Time to acquire in months.
The Lazarus Pit scored high on power but catastrophic on side effects. Madness. Rage. Yellow eyes that would mark him as different.
And for what? Peak human capability at best or somewhat higher?
Not even truly superhuman.
He'd been thinking about it wrong this whole time.
James stood up and walked to the window. Gotham sprawled below him, dark and threatening even with the sunrise starting to light the eastern sky.
Somewhere out there, Batman was probably returning to wherever he hid during the day. The man had stopped a mugging three blocks from here just last night.
James had watched from this same window.
Batman was human. Completely human. No powers. No enhancements. Just training and intelligence and an inhuman level of dedication.
And Batman was terrifying.
'I've been thinking like a desperate fanboy,' James realized. 'Looking for the quick power-up. The cheat code. That's how people die.'
He remembered reading somewhere that Bruce Wayne spent twelve years training before becoming Batman.
Twelve years traveling the world, learning from masters, pushing his body to absolute limits. Only after reaching peak human capability did he add the technology and gadgets.
James had been trying to skip that step. Rush straight to enhanced. Get powers first, figure out how to use them later.
That was stupid. That was how you ended up dead or worse.
New strategy crystallized in his mind.
Become Batman first. Reach absolute peak human capability. Master combat.
Master stealth. Master detective work. Build the foundation properly. Then enhance that foundation to superhuman levels.
The problem was obvious though. Batman had twelve years. James had maybe eighteen months before the world became too dangerous for someone underpowered.
Doomsday would show up eventually. Bane would break people. The Joker would escalate. Darkseid might invade.
Eighteen months to do what took Batman over a decade.
Impossible.
Unless he could accelerate the learning process itself.
James turned back to his laptop and opened a new document. Started typing furiously.
"If I can't slow down time, I need to speed up learning. I need to hack the human learning process. I need to build a machine that compresses years of training into months."
The question was how.
---
The Gotham Public Library became James's second home over the next two weeks.
He arrived when it opened at nine and stayed until it closed at eight. The head librarian, Ms. Cherry, a woman in her fifties with kind eyes and graying hair, started bringing him coffee around day three.
"You live here now?" she asked, setting a paper cup on his table.
James looked up from a neuroscience textbook. "Feels like it. Thanks for the coffee."
"What's the research for? Thesis?"
"Something like that. Trying to understand how people learn skills."
Ms. Cherry glanced at the stack of books around him. Neuroplasticity and Motor Learning.
The Neuroscience of Expertise. Accelerated Skill Acquisition in Athletes. Soviet Training Methodologies 1960-1980.
"Heavy reading for someone your age."
James smiled. "I'm motivated."
After she left, he went back to his notes.
The human brain wasn't the bottleneck. Not for him anyway.
His enhanced intellect could process information faster than normal. Could make connections others missed. Could understand complex systems after single readings.
But that didn't matter for physical skills.
Martial arts weren't just knowledge. You couldn't read a book about punching and suddenly know how to punch. The body needed repetition.
Muscle memory required thousands of reps. Ten thousand hours to master a skill, according to conventional wisdom.
That was the bottleneck. Not processing speed. Physical repetition.
James found a study from 1995 about visualization techniques in athletes.
Basketball players who spent time mentally rehearsing free throws improved almost as much as players who physically practiced. The brain couldn't fully distinguish between real and imagined practice.
Another study discussed transcranial direct current stimulation, tDCS. Mild electrical current applied to the motor cortex could enhance learning rates by up to forty percent. The military was testing it for pilot training.
A third paper covered virtual reality training effectiveness. Pilots trained in VR flight simulators transferred skills to real aircraft at high rates. The immersion tricked the brain into encoding memories as if they were real experiences.
James leaned back in his chair, thinking.
What if you combined all three?
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