Chapter 3
The integration of the Batman Beyond template had reached its zenith, but the transition wasn't a static end point—it was a foundation. As Alex glided through the crisp night air, the 100% synchronization felt like a sudden clarity, as if he had been looking at the world through a smudge on a lens that had finally been wiped clean.
[...Integration: 100% (Batman Beyond)...]
[...Secondary Template: Silver Surfer (Norrin Radd) - Initializing...]
[...Current Energy Output: 0.1% of Power Cosmic...]
The system's new interface flickered at the edge of his vision. It wasn't the mechanical, red-and-black HUD of the suit; it was a shimmering, translucent violet that seemed to vibrate with the frequency of the stars. He felt a new sensation—not just the physical strength of Terry McGinnis, but a strange, light-headed buoyancy, as if the gravity of the Earth was no longer a law, but a suggestion.
He landed on a gargoyle overlooking the Oscorp chemical plant. The air here was heavy with the ozone scent of high-voltage electricity and something more acrid—a chemical cocktail that burned the back of his throat even through the suit's filters.
Below, a chaotic scene was unfolding. A figure on a high-tech, bat-winged glider was hovering near the upper floor of the lab, lobbing pumpkin-shaped grenades into the windows. The Green Goblin had arrived, and he was every bit as terrifying as the movies had depicted—a cackling, manic force of nature dressed in emerald armor.
"Out out, brief candle!" the Goblin shrieked, his voice amplified by the suit's speakers. "Stark thinks he owns the sky, but the night belongs to the Goblin!"
Alex's scanners picked up a heat signature approaching from the South. A familiar, erratic swinging pattern.
"Peter," Alex muttered.
Peter Parker, now in a suit that looked much more professional than his previous hoodie—a red and blue spandex ensemble with hand-stitched webbing—swung into the fray. He landed on the side of the building, looking small against the backdrop of the exploding laboratory.
"Hey! Gobby!" Peter yelled, his voice cracking slightly with the leftover grief of the past month. "You're going to have to pay for those windows! My aunt says property damage is a sin!"
The Goblin turned, a malicious grin visible through the gaps in his mask. "The spider! I was wondering when you'd crawl out of your hole!"
Alex didn't move yet. He watched. He was a tactician now. The Batman template was analyzing the Goblin's glider—identifying the fuel lines, the weight distribution, and the flight path. But his new, budding Silver Surfer template was doing something else entirely. It was sensing the energy of the pumpkin bombs.
He felt a tingle in his fingertips, beneath the gauntlets. It wasn't electricity. It was a hunger.
[...Skill Detected: Energy Absorption (Passive)...]
"System," Alex thought. "Can I use the Surfer's power while in the Batman suit?"
[...Confirmed. Templates are additive. The Host is the core. The powers are the tools...]
The Goblin launched a volley of three bombs toward Peter. Peter, caught in the middle of a swing, was a sitting duck. He tried to fire a web to pull himself away, but the Goblin had predicted the move, firing a stream of flame from the glider's nose to incinerate the webbing.
"Gotcha!" the Goblin laughed.
Alex leaped.
He didn't use his wings. He didn't use his thrusters. He willed himself to move through the air, and the 0.1% of the Power Cosmic responded. He became a blur of black and violet light, intercepting the bombs mid-air.
Instead of catching them, he simply reached out his hand. The violet energy swirled around his palm, and the three bombs didn't explode. They melted. The chemical energy inside them was drained in an instant, converted into a raw, shimmering aura that coated Alex's gauntlets.
He landed on the roof directly in front of Peter.
"Whoa," Peter breathed, his eyes wide behind his lenses. "You're back. And you... you just ate those bombs? Is that a new gadget?"
Alex didn't turn around. He kept his white, pupilless eyes locked on the Goblin. "Focus, Spider-Man. He's coming back for a second pass."
The Goblin circled around, his expression shifting from amusement to pure, unadulterated fury. "Who are you?! What are you?!"
"I'm the one who's ending your night," Alex growled, the vocal modulator making him sound like a storm on the horizon.
Alex felt the power in his veins. The Batman template provided the plan: Disable the glider's guidance system. The Surfer template provided the means.
He pointed his finger at the glider. A thin, needle-like beam of violet energy shot out—not a laser, but a focused stream of molecular deconstruction. It didn't destroy the glider; it simply changed the molecular structure of the fuel line, turning the titanium-alloy pipe into brittle glass.
CRACK.
The fuel line shattered under the pressure. The glider sputtered, coughing out a cloud of black smoke as it began to list to the left.
"My glider! No!" the Goblin screamed, struggling to maintain control.
"Peter! The webbing! Now!" Alex commanded.
Peter didn't hesitate. He fired a double-strand of webbing, pinning the Goblin to the side of the building as the glider died completely. The villain hung there, struggling against the high-tensile strength of the webs, his cackling replaced by incoherent rages.
Alex stood on the edge of the roof, his cape billowing in the wind. He felt the violet energy receding, leaving him feeling slightly drained but incredibly centered.
[...Power Cosmic Usage: 0.05%...]
[...Physical Strain: Nominal...]
[...Batman Beyond Integration: Stable...]
Peter walked up beside him, looking at the captured villain and then back at Alex. "You... you saved me. Again. And that... that energy stuff. That's not Stark tech, is it?"
Alex turned his head slightly. "The world is bigger than Stark, Peter. And it's bigger than you or me. Get out of here before the police arrive. You've done enough for one night."
"Wait!" Peter called out as Alex tensed his legs to jump. "What do I call you? The papers are saying Batman, but... that doesn't feel right. You're different."
Alex looked at the red bat on his chest, then at the faint, lingering violet glow on his fingers.
"Call me whatever you want, Peter," Alex said. "Just make sure you're ready for what's coming next. This was just the beginning."
He fired his thrusters, a silent blue flame propelling him into the night sky. He didn't go home immediately. He flew high, past the clouds, until the air was thin and the stars were bright.
He looked at his hands. For seventeen years, he had been a student. For one month, he had been a ghost. Now, he was a god in training.
"Leveling up my reality," he whispered to the vacuum of the upper atmosphere. "I think I'm starting to get the hang of this."
The sun rose over Queens with a crisp, indifferent clarity that masked the chaos of the night before. Alex was back in his bed by 4:00 AM, the suit tucked away in its sub-spatial pocket, leaving no trace of the "Batman" in his room.
However, the Silver Surfer template wasn't as discreet as the high-tech armor. As he sat up, he noticed a faint, pearlescent sheen on his skin that only vanished when he focused his will on suppressing it. His body felt lighter, as if the very atoms composing him were vibrating at a higher frequency.
[...Integration: 1.2% (Silver Surfer)...]
[...Attribute Unlocked: Cosmic Awareness (Low Level)...]
He walked downstairs to the smell of burning toast and the sound of the morning news. The footage from Oscorp was playing on a loop—a grainy, high-altitude shot of a black figure intercepting explosions with a violet shield.
"Alex, look at this," David Miller said, pointing at the TV with a butter knife. "This... this person. They're saying he didn't just fight that green monster; they're saying he absorbed the explosions. It's not just a suit anymore, is it? We're looking at another 'enhanced' individual."
"Maybe he's just got better tech, Dad," Alex said, sliding into his chair.
Elena looked up from her tablet, her eyebrows furrowed. "I don't know, David. I saw the energy readings on the hospital's news feed. That wasn't electrical. It was... something else. Something clean. Like background radiation but focused." She turned her gaze to Alex, her doctor's eyes scanning his face. "Alex, you're not eating. And you're... glowing? Is the light in here weird?"
Alex froze, his fork halfway to a piece of toast. He realized his hair was slightly shimmering in the morning light. "Just the sun, Mom. I think Sarah used some glitter spray in the hallway yesterday. It gets everywhere."
Sarah, who was sitting across from him, didn't back up his lie. She just stared at him, her eyes tracing the lines of his jaw and the strange, calm intensity in his gaze. She knew. She had seen the black material, but she hadn't seen the violet light until the news this morning. To her, Alex wasn't just becoming a hero; he was becoming something alien.
"Maya, come eat your cereal," Sarah said, breaking the tension, though she didn't take her eyes off Alex.
After breakfast, Alex retreated to the garage. He needed to talk to the System without his family's inquisitive eyes on him.
"System," he thought, leaning against a stack of winter tires. "The Surfer template. Why is it so much harder to hide than the Batman one?"
[...The Power Cosmic is not a tool; it is a fundamental force...]
[...Batman Beyond was a physical and technological upgrade. Silver Surfer is a molecular and spiritual rewrite...]
[...To stabilize the 'Human Mask,' Host must achieve 5% Integration...]
"And how do I do that?"
[...Required Actions:...]
* [...Meditation in High-Altitude environments (3 hours)...]
* [...Transmutation of 50kg of Base Metal into Noble Metal...]
* [...Observation of a Galactic Energy Signature...]
Alex rubbed his temples. "Transmutation? You want me to turn lead into gold? I'm in a high school chemistry lab, not a medieval forge."
[...The Power Cosmic allows for the manipulation of the four fundamental forces. Molecular restructuring is the first step toward the Surfer's true potential...]
A map appeared in his mind—a series of pins across New York City. They weren't crime scenes; they were sources of raw material. Old shipyards, abandoned foundries, and specialized research facilities.
"Alex?"
He turned to see Peter standing in the driveway. Peter looked like he hadn't slept in a week. He was wearing his school jacket, but his backpack was bulging with what Alex knew was the new Spider-Man suit.
"We need to talk," Peter said, his voice hushed.
Alex walked out to meet him. "About the 'Glider Guy'?"
"About him. And about you," Peter said, leading him toward the backyard, away from the windows. "I checked the web-fluid I used on him. It was singed, Alex. Not by fire, but by something that felt like... like the vacuum of space. It was cold and hot at the same time."
Peter grabbed Alex's arm, and for a second, a spark of violet energy jumped between them. Peter flinched, his spider-sense buzzing audibly.
"You're not just a guy in a suit, are you?" Peter whispered, his eyes wide. "What happened to you in that month, Alex? When you said you were 'training,' what did you actually do?"
Alex looked at his friend. He saw the fear, the curiosity, and the burgeoning respect. He couldn't tell him everything—not about the reincarnation, not about the system. But he could give him a piece of the truth.
"I found something, Peter. Or it found me. It's a responsibility, just like yours. But mine... mine doesn't just stop at the neighborhood. It's bigger."
"How much bigger?"
"Big enough that I might not be able to stay 'just Alex' for much longer," Alex admitted.
Peter looked at the ground, then back at Alex, a determined look on his face. "Then we do it together. I'm building a lab in the crawlspace under my house. May doesn't go down there. We can use it to track these guys. The Goblin wasn't the only one. My scanners—well, the ones I hacked from Oscorp—are picking up more signals. Something is happening in the city, Alex. People are changing."
"The Lizard," Alex thought. "Dr. Connors is next."
"I'll help you, Pete," Alex said. "But I need some materials. High-density metals. Lead, tungsten, maybe some depleted uranium if we can find it."
Peter blinked. "What do you need uranium for?"
"I'm working on a new power source," Alex lied smoothly. "For the suit."
The rest of the day was a blur of school and secret planning. In Chemistry class, Alex found himself staring at the Periodic Table of Elements. To everyone else, it was a chart of symbols and numbers. To him, it was a menu. He could feel the protons and neutrons of the beaker in his hand, the way they wanted to shift and re-align under his touch.
He had to resist the urge to turn his lead pencil into a diamond right there in the middle of Mr. Harrington's lecture.
That evening, the Miller household was supposed to have a quiet dinner, but the "Slice of Life" was interrupted by a knock at the door.
It was a man in a sharp, gray suit. He didn't look like a cop. He looked like a bureaucrat with the soul of a predator.
"David Miller?" the man asked when Alex's father opened the door. "My name is Agent Phil Coulson. I'm with a specialized division of the government. We'd like to talk to you about some... unusual energy readings coming from this neighborhood."
Alex, listening from the top of the stairs, felt his heart sink.
The Batman Beyond suit had stealth tech. The Silver Surfer's energy did not. SHIELD had arrived.
"Energy readings?" David asked, confused. "We're a suburban family, Mr. Coulson. The most energy we use is for the toaster and my daughter's art lamps."
Coulson smiled—that polite, terrifyingly neutral smile. "Of course. But we've noticed a spike that coincides with the appearance of the new vigilante in Queens. We're just doing a door-to-door check. May we come in?"
Alex stepped back into the shadows of the hallway. He needed to hide the briefcase. He needed to mask his own signature.
"System," he whispered. "How do I hide from SHIELD?"
[...Initiating 'Dark Matter' Cloak...]
[...Warning: This will consume 90% of current Power Cosmic reserves...]
"Do it," Alex commanded.
A wave of absolute blackness, invisible to the naked eye, washed over him and the house. To Coulson's sensors outside, the Miller house suddenly became a "dead zone"—a place of zero thermal or electronic output.
Downstairs, Coulson frowned at the device in his hand. "That's... odd."
"Is there a problem?" Elena asked, coming to the door.
"Just a technical glitch," Coulson said, though his eyes remained sharp. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Miller. If you see anything... 'unusual,' please give us a call."
He handed David a card with a simple, circular logo.
As the black SUV drove away, Alex slumped against the wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was drained. The "Dark Matter" cloak had felt like pulling a heavy curtain over his very soul.
[...Power Cosmic: 0.01%...]
[...Integration Paused until recovery...]
He walked downstairs, trying to look normal. His father was staring at the card.
"S.H.I.E.L.D.?" David muttered. "What kind of name is that?"
"Sounds like a comic book, Dad," Alex said, his voice steady despite the exhaustion.
Sarah looked at him, her eyes wide with a question she didn't dare ask in front of their parents. Alex just gave a tiny, imperceptible shake of his head.
The walls were closing in. Between the Green Goblin, the impending birth of the Lizard, and SHIELD knocking on his door, the quiet life of Alex Miller was officially a fantasy.
He looked at Maya, who was happily coloring a picture of a cat with a red bat on its chest.
"I have to move faster," Alex thought. "I need the board. I need the Surfer's speed."
He looked at the moon through the window. Tonight, he wouldn't be patrolling. Tonight, he would be a scientist of the stars. He had 50kg of lead in the garage, and by morning, it would be the key to his next evolution.
The garage was cold, smelling of motor oil and the damp concrete of a Queens winter. Alex sat on a low stool, staring at a pile of lead fishing weights and old plumbing pipes he'd scavenged over the last forty-eight hours. Fifty kilograms of base metal. To a normal person, it was junk. To him, it was a test of his divinity.
[...Power Cosmic Recovery: 15%...]
[...Molecular Scanning: Active...]
"System," Alex whispered. "Guide the restructuring. I don't want an explosion."
[...Instruction: Focus on the atomic number. Lead (Pb) is 82. Gold (Au) is 79. You must strip three protons and the corresponding neutrons and electrons from each atom. The Power Cosmic will provide the binding energy to prevent nuclear fission...]
Alex reached out, his fingers hovering inches above the dull gray metal. He closed his eyes, and the "Detective Vision" of the Batman template merged with the "Cosmic Awareness" of the Surfer. He didn't see pipes; he saw a lattice of atoms, vibrating with a sluggish, heavy energy.
He pushed.
A faint violet glow began to bleed from his fingertips, seeping into the lead. The garage lights flickered, then dimmed. He felt a searing heat in his palms, but it wasn't a burn—it was the friction of reality being rewritten.
The lead didn't melt; it shifted. The dull gray started to flake away like old skin, revealing a brilliant, liquid-like luster beneath. It was a silent, agonizing process. Alex's brow was beaded with sweat, his muscles locking up as he held the subatomic structure together with nothing but his will.
Three protons, he thought. Just three.
With a sudden, crystalline ping that echoed in his skull, the glow vanished. Alex slumped forward, catching himself on the workbench. He gasped for air, his lungs feeling like they were filled with static.
In front of him, the pile of junk was gone. In its place sat several irregular, heavy ingots of 24-karat gold, glowing softly in the dim light.
[...Integration: 3.8% (Silver Surfer)...]
[...Achievement Unlocked: The Alchemist...]
"That... was way harder than the movies made it look," Alex wheezed. He quickly threw an old tarp over the gold. He couldn't sell it—not yet. A seventeen-year-old walking into a pawn shop with fifty kilos of pure gold would trigger every red flag from the IRS to SHIELD. But he didn't want the money; he wanted the experience. His body felt denser, his mind sharper.
The next morning, Alex headed to the Parker house. Peter was waiting in the backyard, looking jittery.
"I found a way in," Peter whispered, pulling Alex toward the narrow crawlspace beneath the porch. "I cleared out the old trunks. I even managed to 'borrow' a high-speed router from the school's IT closet."
They crawled into the cramped, dirt-floored space. It was surprisingly well-lit with LED strips Peter had wired to the house's main line. Three computer monitors—salvaged from a local dump and repaired with Alex's tech-knowledge—glowed in the dark.
"Welcome to the workshop," Peter said, a grin finally breaking through his grief.
"Not bad, Pete," Alex said, looking at the screens. One was running a police scanner, another was a map of Queens, and the third was displaying a complex chemical formula. "What's this?"
Peter's face fell. "It's Dr. Connors. From the Oscorp trip, remember? He's been working on a cross-species limb regeneration serum. I've been hacking into his lab notes. Alex, he's testing it on himself tonight. The math is... it's wrong. It's unstable."
Alex looked at the formula. His "Cosmic Awareness" pinged. He saw the gaps in the equations—the way the reptilian DNA would interact with human neurons. It wouldn't just regrow an arm; it would overwrite the frontal lobe.
"He's trying to play god without a permit," Alex said. "Where is he?"
"The lab at the university. If we don't stop him, he's going to turn into... well, something big and green, and not the fun kind like the Hulk."
"We can't just bust in as Batman and Spider-Man, Peter," Alex said, thinking fast. "Not with SHIELD crawling around. We go as students. We're 'concerned' for our mentor. If things go south..."
"Then we suit up," Peter finished.
The university lab was quiet, the air smelling of formaldehyde and sterile plastic. Alex and Peter moved through the hallways, their enhanced senses picking up the frantic heartbeat of a man in the room at the end of the hall.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
It was too fast. Too predatory.
They reached the door just as a pained scream tore through the silence. Alex kicked the door open, not caring about the "student" act anymore.
Inside, Dr. Curt Connors was collapsed on the floor. His stump of a right arm was twitching violently. To Alex's "Detective Vision," the man's thermal signature was spiking to 104 degrees. Green scales were already beginning to erupt along his spine, tearing through his lab coat.
"Dr. Connors!" Peter yelled, rushing forward.
"Stay... back!" Connors growled, his voice already losing its human lilt. His eyes, once kind, were turning into yellow slits. "It works... I can feel it... the strength..."
"It's not working, Doc! It's changing you!" Peter cried.
Connors let out a roar as a fully formed, clawed hand burst from his stump. The transformation was accelerating. His tail slammed into a lab table, sending glass beakers flying.
[...Threat Detected: The Lizard...]
[...Combat Analysis: High Physical Strength, Regenerative Factor, Primal Aggression...]
"Peter, get the security cameras!" Alex barked. "I'll handle him!"
Alex didn't wait. He didn't have his suit on—it was still in the sub-spatial pocket—but his 100% Batman integration meant his base physical form was already peak-human. He moved with a speed that left a blur in the air, sliding under a swinging tail and delivering a precision strike to Connors' pressure points.
It was like hitting a brick wall.
The Lizard roared, backhanding Alex across the room. Alex hit a storage cabinet, the metal denting under the impact. He felt a rib crack, but the Power Cosmic immediately surged to the site, knitting the bone back together in seconds.
"Okay," Alex spat, wiping blood from his lip. "No more playing nice."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic sphere—a sonic distractor he'd built in the garage. He clicked it.
A high-frequency pulse filled the room. The Lizard shrieked, clutching his head. Reptilian ears were far more sensitive to certain frequencies than human ones.
"Now, Peter!"
Peter leaped from the ceiling, wrapping the Lizard in a thick cocoon of webbing. "Sorry, Dr. Connors! This is for your own good!"
But the Lizard was too strong. He tore through the webbing like it was wet paper. With a final, guttural hiss, he leaped through the reinforced glass window, vanishing into the darkness of the university campus.
"He's heading for the sewers," Alex said, standing up and dusting off his shirt. He felt the violet energy humming under his skin, begging to be released.
"We lost him," Peter said, looking at his torn gloves.
"No," Alex said, his eyes glowing with a faint, cosmic light. "I can taste his energy signature. He's not going far. But we can't do this as Alex and Peter anymore."
He looked at his hand, and for a split second, the air around it shimmered into the black-and-red gauntlet of the Beyond suit before flickering back.
"Go home, get your gear. Meet me at the 5th Street manhole in twenty minutes."
"Alex," Peter said, stopping at the door. "Your eyes. They're... they're purple."
"Just the light, Pete," Alex lied, though they both knew the lies were getting thinner. "Now move!"
As Peter ran off, Alex stood alone in the wrecked lab. He felt the system pulse in his mind.
[...Integration: 5.0% (Silver Surfer)...]
[...Milestone Reached: Molecular Stability...]
[...You may now manifest the 'Silver' skin over the Batman suit...]
Alex grinned, a dark, predatory expression. "A Bat with a silver lining. I like the sound of that."
He stepped out onto the balcony, the nanotech of the Beyond suit flowing over him in a heartbeat. But this time, as the mask snapped shut, a layer of liquid silver followed, coating the black armor in a shimmering, indestructible chrome.
He wasn't just the Batman anymore. He was something the Marvel Universe had never seen.