Chapter 83 Batsuit Codename: Arkham
City Hall subway station had various medications Batman had prepared in advance, but he used none of them now.
Even bandaging was only quite rough—tearing several strips of cloth from his clothes for casual wrapping.
Batman still needed to return to Oscorp. He couldn't let Harry Osborn discover medicinal smells on his body or traces of professional bandaging techniques. Otherwise he couldn't explain the series of problems that would arise.
Batman and Peter Parker's two identities contacted two different worlds. Batman didn't plan to involve Harry Osborn.
The Batmobile had already crashed and self-destructed. Fortunately, Batman still had another new car purchased the day before yesterday when registering shell companies on Wall Street and establishing trusts.
Limping out of the subway station, Batman rapidly adjusted his walking posture, making himself appear only disheveled with minor external injuries.
Driving straight toward Oscorp, after abandoning the car on the roadside over two hundred meters from the tower, Batman used the bat-claw to leap upward.
When the Hulk charged downward from the fifty-eighth floor, he'd held back almost no strength. The tower's glass windows had almost all been shattered.
This now conveniently provided Batman with access.
However, he temporarily didn't enter the tower. Instead, he rapidly climbed along Oscorp Tower's exterior wall, dismantled the helicopter propeller parked there, bent it, and tossed it aside, preventing those soldiers and General Ross from escaping by helicopter after awakening.
The helicopter's propeller blades were exceptionally hard, but before Peter's twenty-five-ton monstrous strength, they still couldn't remain firm.
After completing this, Batman employed the same trick again, directly jumping from the rooftop, using free fall speed and bat-claw acceleration to rapidly plummet, entering the twentieth floor where window glass had been shattered.
Professor Connors's laboratory was located on the twentieth floor. Batman navigated familiarly into the laboratory, taking the temporary regenerative stabilizers Professor Connors had prepared.
These things essentially delayed organ failure processes rather than regenerating organs—fundamentally different from the regenerative serum Connors had used on himself.
Moreover, the stabilizers had been in therapeutic use for some time. Batman had just hacked the hospital system on his way here, confirming these things had no adverse effects.
Additionally, the stabilizers had been placed by Professor Connors in a small refrigerated case, undamaged by the earlier battle.
This reassured Batman. Taking the stabilizers, he advanced at normal human speed bit by bit toward lower floors.
"Peter!"
On Oscorp Tower's ninth floor, Harry Osborn bypassed heaps of concrete rubble piled together, shouting while groping forward.
He carefully searched every corner of each floor he reached. Physical exhaustion combined with his already weak body meant he'd only managed to search up to the ninth floor.
But Harry didn't stop searching for Peter's traces. Even stumbling repeatedly, tripped countless times by various fallen experimental equipment and wires, knees scraped bloody and raw, he still persisted through gritted teeth.
The reason driving Harry to do this was simple. In his eyes, Peter had strategized for him—filing lawsuits in federal court, having Wall Street pressure the White House and Congress.
Moreover, Peter had personally taken that "Clark" identity documentation, personally infiltrating Oscorp Tower.
He couldn't lie comfortably on Osborn Manor's sofa waiting for good news to arrive.
Peter had risked himself for Harry, whereabouts still unknown. Harry had to find this friend, or he couldn't pass his own conscience.
CLATTER-CLATTER.
A series of soldiers passed beside him—footsteps of soldiers originally outside Oscorp Tower now rushing upstairs as the commotion above finally ceased.
Harry Osborn paid no attention, as though Oscorp Tower—first subjected to military supervision, then erupting with tremendous sounds, suspected of birthing monsters—had nothing to do with him.
"Peter!"
Harry's voice echoed in the empty stairwell, filled with fear and worry.
Just as he gritted his teeth, preparing to leave the already-searched ninth floor and continue toward the tenth, a weak voice suddenly sounded nearby:
"Harry—"
"Peter?"
Harry Osborn suddenly looked toward the sound source, stumbling over. He finally saw his friend Peter —body bloodied, face exhausted, supporting himself against the wall standing there, still holding a briefcase.
"Harry, why did you come?"
Batman—half acting, half genuinely—spoke in a slightly weary voice.
"Hey," seeing his friend hadn't lost limbs and didn't have too many wounds, Harry's heart relaxed halfway. "When you were bullied at school, which time wasn't it me sticking up for you?"
He patted Batman's right shoulder while speaking, then draped Batman's arm over himself, supporting Batman toward the descending stairs:
"I told you, no matter what happens, I'll always and unwaveringly stand with you."
Batman's right shoulder was injured. The dislocated joint problem had been reset by himself, but the glenoid labrum damage hadn't yet self-healed.
Now patted by Harry, intense pain immediately transmitted throughout his body.
Powerful willpower kept Batman's facial expression unchanged. He could even spare energy to answer Harry Osborn's various questions.
Batman didn't mention his battle with the Hulk and Lizard Professor. He only said he'd come to Oscorp Tower entrusted by Professor Miles Warren and Harry, found ways to transfer scientists inside the building, then was trapped by floor collapses and other circumstances until now.
"This briefcase contains the stabilizers Professor Connors made, right?"
After hearing Batman's fabricated lies, Harry looked at the briefcase in his hand.
"Correct." Batman nodded.
From the first to ninth floor, Harry Osborn had used nearly two hours. But now descending took only minutes.
"Leave it to me, Peter." Harry took the briefcase from Batman's hand. "You need to go to the hospital for examination too."
Most of the blood covering Batman's suited body had been wiped away. His injured leg maintained normal walking.
But Harry Osborn still felt his friend was too seriously injured.
Harry almost forcibly stuffed Batman into his car, all the way to Metropolitan Hospital. Only after personally watching Batman lie on a hospital bed, guarding until dawn to buy breakfast, did he leave.
Over the next three days, Harry Osborn barely left Batman's bedside. Batman could only obediently lie for three days until the hospital repeatedly examined and confirmed Batman had completely recovered before leaving.
During these three days, Daily Bugle reporter Eddie Brock's one-time exposure of all evidence Batman had anonymously given him completely stripped General Ross of all resistance capability.
What awaited General Ross next was military tribunal, unavoidable imprisonment, and even sky-high compensation to Oscorp.
All of this was within Batman's expectations. Batman even used this opportunity to guide Harry in doing another thing:
Using the opportunity when General Ross's supervision of Oscorp caused stock prices to plummet drastically, forcefully acquiring over eighty percent of Oscorp shares, regaining absolute control of Oscorp.
Harry's repayment to Batman was an entire industrial park several times larger than Parker Industries, merging it into Parker Industries, causing memory fiber production and orders to explosively grow.
This made Batman's assets increase crazily almost daily, simply because the memory fiber demand market was too large. Even expanded Parker Industries could barely meet demand.
Three days later at night, in old Parker Industries' warehouse.
Here was filled with various equipment Batman had ordered according to his needs—lathes, various components, armor—
He would immediately begin creating a new suit, codename—Arkham!