Chapter 384: The Prophet
A letter mailed two months ago from the far side of the Pacific, traveling the long route through ordinary postal channels to Parker Industries, and it had landed in Batman's hands carrying a warning about something happening today.
Batman did not believe in coincidence. He had told Venom Robin they were going to Wakanda. One second later, a letter told him not to.
What he believed was that whoever sent this letter had seen it before it happened. Some form of precognition -- a genuine ability to perceive events before they occurred. He turned the paper over twice, running his fingers along every surface. It was ordinary stationery. No embedded materials, no chemical treatments, nothing that functioned as anything other than a note.
"Robin."
He turned and threw the sheet in a single motion. It flew across the room.
Robin's head snapped around the moment he heard his name. His jaw dropped open.
Crunch.
The paper disappeared between his teeth. A sound like steel meeting copper, brief and final. Seconds later, there was nothing left but dust.
Batman gave him a slight nod, then turned back to work.
Constructing the Vibranium suit was nothing like building the Arkham armor. There was no complex metallurgical process, no layered fabrication. It was a matter of applying the right sonic frequencies to make the Vibranium unstable enough to be worked, and then shaping it -- something not unlike three-dimensional printing, guided by precise sound rather than heat. For Batman it presented no real difficulty, only time.
By that afternoon he had Robin with him at the hotel where T'Challa was staying.
"T'Challa." Batman stood across from him in the small room. "Before we leave, I need to confirm something. Does Wakanda have magic? Sorcery? Any phenomenon that can't be explained by natural forces?"
T'Challa pulled his attention away from Venom Robin -- his expression giving nothing away, because a man of his bearing didn't ask a guest why they'd brought a child that appeared to be made of living shadow -- and gave Robin a single polite nod before he answered.
"No. Not as far as I know." A pause. "Why do you ask?"
Batman explained briefly and without embellishment. A letter. Sent two months ago from a place listed only as XZ. Containing a warning about what Batman was planning to do tonight.
T'Challa considered that for a moment.
"Wakanda is a nation built on science and technology. But at its deepest foundation, we are built on something else -- generations of devotion to the Black Panther God." He met Batman's eyes steadily. "That would probably qualify as what you're calling a non-natural force."
Batman frowned. "You told me before that becoming Wakanda's guardian -- the Black Panther -- requires consuming the Heart-Shaped Herb. That the herb grants strength. Now you're saying it also involves a deity?"
"Neither works without the other," T'Challa said carefully. "It was Vibranium that caused the Heart-Shaped Herb to grow in Wakanda in the first place. But it is our devotion to the Black Panther God -- absolute and generational -- that allows the chosen Black Panther to actually receive that power. Remove either piece and it fails."
Venom Robin had wedged himself between the two of them at some point and was looking back and forth between their faces with the open interest of someone watching a story unfold.
"What if I don't believe in the Black Panther God but eat the herb anyway?" he asked, phrasing it as if he were doing Batman a favor by asking first.
"The toxins would kill you," T'Challa said. "Within moments."
Robin tilted his head. "Then why not just use it as a poison? Anyone who eats it without being chosen dies. Seems efficient."
T'Challa studied Robin's expression -- the entirely genuine curiosity behind the question, no malice in it at all -- and looked briefly to Batman, who said nothing. T'Challa shook his head.
"The yield of the Heart-Shaped Herb is very small. And to use it that way would be a desecration of the Black Panther God."
"I don't really understand that," Robin said seriously, "but I respect it."
He looked very sincere when he said it. He was wearing his blond, blue-eyed mask, which made the whole exchange read to T'Challa like watching a small child earnestly practicing adult conversation. He did not comment on it.
Instead, he turned back to Batman.
"If this prophet truly saw something in advance -- if there's a real warning here -- perhaps you should listen to it." His voice was level, without pressure. "I don't want you putting yourself in danger over Wakanda's troubles."
"I've already decided," Batman said. His tone didn't waver. He gestured briefly toward Robin. "This is Robin. He's coming with us."
T'Challa crossed both fists over his chest and inclined his head.
"It's an honor, Robin."
He said nothing further about it. Batman had his reasons, and in any case, anyone willing to walk into Wakanda on his behalf had already earned more than courtesy. But somewhere behind his composed expression, T'Challa made a quiet resolution: if anything went wrong -- anything unforeseen and uncontrollable -- he would get Robin and Batman out first, whatever it cost him.
"How long until the suit is finished?" he asked.
"Before nine tonight."
T'Challa nodded and returned to the map of Wakanda spread across the table, studying it in silence.
At twenty minutes to nine, the television on the far wall was running news.
"Tonight at ten, Reed Richards -- widely considered among the world's most brilliant minds -- has announced another space voyage launching from his private aerospace facility in California. The mission is a scientific expedition to study cosmic radiation. A Daily Bugle reporter will be on-site at the California launch facility for live coverage..."
Venom Robin was watching with genuine interest. He'd long since outgrown the educational programs he used to favor, and had recently found himself drawn to things like deep space, underground geology, and the deep ocean. The prospect of living material that didn't need a spacesuit was not lost on him.
He'd already declared internally that the Wakanda operation required no preparation on his part. T'Challa was doing final preparation at the hotel. Batman was running plans in his head. Robin was content to sit in his chair and watch four people smile at a camera -- Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm, all looking pleased with themselves in that particularly Fantastic Four way.
"Hey, Old Bat," Robin said, not looking away from the screen. "If you ever stop needing me -- hypothetically -- do you think I could become an astronaut? Based on my biological characteristics alone? I wouldn't even need a spacesuit to function in open space."
Batman didn't answer. He was thinking about what contingency plans he had in place for genuine sorcery in Wakanda, and whether they were adequate. He decided they were not. He added three more.
Nine o'clock. The observation deck of the Empire State Building.
T'Challa crouched at the roof's edge in the Vibranium suit, the wind coming hard off the city, the thousand points of light below him stretching to the horizon in every direction. He was still and patient, waiting.
At ten past nine, a strangely shaped aircraft dove out of the clouds and leveled off overhead. Batman sat at the controls, expression unreadable. Venom Robin stood at the porthole window and waved with both hands.
T'Challa stepped off the edge and caught the boarding hatch.
The Batwing lifted without a sound anyone on the street below could hear -- a low hum barely above the threshold of perception -- and slipped up into the cloud layer. For a moment it was framed directly against the face of the moon, a dark shape swallowed into silver.
Then the engines pushed to full, and the aircraft cut through the sky like the edge of a blade, turning south, turning east, burning hard for Africa.
At ten o'clock, in a private aerospace facility on the California coast, a blue-and-white rocket plane lit its exhaust and climbed. It accelerated steadily, pushing through the upper atmosphere with everything it had, and punched through into the dark above.
At five past ten, on the roof of Parker Tower, a figure stood alone looking out over the city.
It was wearing an Arkham-style suit. Its build and silhouette bore a passing resemblance to something that hadn't yet fully existed -- angular, purposeful, nothing wasted in its design. It stood motionless for a moment, the sounds of New York washing up around it from far below.
Then it heard something. A sound too faint for human ears to catch -- somewhere in the city, someone calling for help.
It stepped off the roof.
It spread its arms and glided, dropping fast, already steering toward the source.
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