Plans often meant spending an exorbitant amount of money.
To rescue the Green Goblin, Batman had spent roughly 120 million dollars on the New Mexico trip.
But the cost of that plan was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the one Batman was currently executing.
If nothing else, the vial of Pym Particles in Batman's hand—prepared specifically for the Hulk—would likely fetch no less than ten billion, or perhaps even a hundred billion, on the international black market.
The United States... no, any capable nation, including the U.S., would not hesitate to spend a fortune to acquire those Pym Particles.
Of course, that was purely hypothetical. Batman had no intention of selling them; instead, he planned to use them as a consumable resource in his new strategy for dealing with the Hulk.
In addition to consuming this vial of Pym Particles, Batman was also preparing to acquire over dozens of laboratories of various sizes, along with related workshops and factories, in an attempt to reverse-engineer and replicate the Pym Particles.
"Rocket launch base, satellites, submarines, the Alfred AI..."
Batman looked over his various agendas. These were all necessary prerequisites for his plans to be carried out, yet he currently possessed none of them.
Even for the hardware components of the Alfred AI alone, Batman had been unable to purchase everything he needed in one go.
He could only wait for the Parker Group to generate massive profits—driven by Dr. Otto Octavius's nuclear fusion energy and his own memory fiber technology—and then use a portion of those funds to buy the hardware in batches.
It was another long night. Batman remained as busy as he had been every single night since he had arrived in this world, working until dawn.
"Robin, come with me to South Brother Island." Batman finished his work and stood up, addressing Venom-Robin.
Batman utilized every possible opportunity for fragmented sleep, but Venom-Robin hadn't learned that skill yet. Even a symbiote couldn't remain at peak energy twenty-four hours a day.
At that moment, Venom-Robin was slumped in a chair next to Batman, his head lolling to the side.
However, the moment he heard Batman speak, Venom-Robin snapped awake and bounded up.
"Old Bats, did you figure out the Pym Particles? Let me try them out!"
Batman shook his head.
"The conditions here are not suitable for studying them."
"Oh, so we're going to South Brother Island to study them?" Venom-Robin urged, "What are we waiting for? Let's go!"
"South Brother Island isn't equipped for it either," Batman said.
Venom-Robin's face immediately fell. Yesterday, he had seen Ant-Man and the Wasp grow and shrink with his own eyes, and he had assumed that once the Pym Particles were in Batman's hands, they could be used the same way.
He had even prepared himself to grow hundreds of times larger, becoming a thirty or forty-meter-tall Venom giant.
"Then why did we go through all the trouble of rummaging through Pym's place last night to steal them?" Venom-Robin grumbled with a long face. "Just for something we can't even use yet?"
A sign of a guilty conscience, Batman noted internally, observing Venom-Robin's reaction.
If he had only been suspicious last night, then after Venom-Robin's latest comment, Batman was now ninety percent certain that Robin had done something outside of the mission parameters the previous night.
The little guy was definitely stimulated again. Perhaps he spawned an offspring or something similar.
Batman kept his deduction to himself and countered Venom-Robin's question with one of his own:
"Do you remember the night I took you out to fight crime and spread the word that I was looking for Black Widow?"
"I remember."
"If you were Black Widow—holding dual identities as a Hydra spy and a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent—where would you go in New York? Who would you contact?" Batman asked.
Venom-Robin felt a bit of a headache coming on. Every time Batman asked a rhetorical question like this, it meant that even though Robin had experienced the events firsthand, he had managed to overlook a series of details or intelligence.
"For Iron Man? For the Hulk and the others? Or for you?" Venom-Robin counted them off on his fingers.
Batman nodded and pulled Venom-Robin down to sit.
"Correct. But as soon as Hawkeye told me Black Widow's real name was Natasha Romanoff and showed me what she looked like, I immediately conducted a comprehensive search of Stark Industries, Oscorp, and the Parker Group."
"No one fit Black Widow's description—excluding, of course, the temporary staff every company has."
Venom-Robin realized where Batman was going with this.
"So, you only chose to take me out to leak the info that you were looking for her after you knew she wasn't at those companies? Hoping she, or someone else, would take the initiative to find you?"
Batman gave a slight nod, encouraging Venom-Robin to continue.
"Go on."
Under Batman's guidance, Venom-Robin finally caught up to his train of thought.
"In all of New York, based on our intel, the target of a double agent like that couldn't possibly be a nobody. If neither Oscorp nor Stark Industries had any record of her..."
"Then she either didn't use the 'employment' method, her target was someone else entirely, or she left New York for some reason."
Batman handed Venom-Robin a piece of chocolate.
"In my estimation, there was over a ninety percent chance she would use employment as a cover. If she hadn't appeared at the aforementioned companies, she had two other options."
Venom-Robin chewed the chocolate, feeling his brain become a bit more active.
"Reed's Baxter Building and Ant-Man's Pym Technologies."
Batman confirmed his deduction and added:
"After I returned from the prehistoric world, that young girl named Lunella deactivated the Omni-Wave Projector. I took that opportunity to hack into the Baxter Building's systems thoroughly."
"There was no data regarding Black Widow there either. That left only one choice."
Venom-Robin curled his lip.
"I thought bumping into Ant-Man and Black Widow talking last night was a complete accident. You're telling me it was all planned?"
"It was part of the plan. Even if that conversation hadn't been happening when we arrived, I would have gone there with the specific intent of finding her," Batman said.
Venom-Robin countered:
"But we didn't know for sure if she was there. And even if we were there, we wouldn't have noticed a tiny house being pinned down by an ant."
Batman responded with nothing but a stony chin and an unwavering gaze.
The intensity of that serious look made Venom-Robin's skin crawl, and he quickly changed the subject.
"Fine, even if you could notice it, I have another question from last night. Why was it that even though we were moving around in Ant-Man's building for so long, those ants didn't react to us at all?"
Batman reached for his utility belt and pulled out a storage pouch containing several metal test tubes.
Venom-Robin took it, looked at the labels, and froze.
"Insect repellent, ant pheromones, shark repellent, female lizard pheromones, snake repellent, jellyfish bait..."
"Old Bats, next time we run into an enemy, we don't even need to fight. Just throw your belt at them and they'll surrender."
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