6 Business prospects
[give me some comments, I am having mixed feelings about this chapter and need some reader's view as to if I am delivering and portraying Bruce perfectly or not]
Bruce was been having an easy time for the first time in his life.
Or it felt easy to him, gyming four hours a day, sleeping 6 hours, and working to earn money for the rest of his waking hours.
The first thing he did was get insurance money out of the Stark insurance company, getting him 11 thousand dollars in fire and accident damages, which the shop deserved being in one of the more popular places in the infamous Gotham of New York.
Once the money was received, Bruce had 9 hundred thousand dollars worth of land to his name, passed down from his adoptee parents, probably less after the place burnt down, but still along those numbers. (I lamented what the price of land should be, according to times square standards was a minimum of 20 million dollars for 250 square feet, and even diluting the money to the 2008 crisis and vicinity of Hell's Kitchen and all, this is a dirt cheap price for it.)
He bought competent parts for various brands, making a custom, yet temporary PC, fitting the Batman name.
Major companies such as Facebook, google, and youtube had already been launched, and while he was not an expert in the ways of the computer and by extension the internet, he was quite competent.
He downloaded what remains he had of the data in his utility belt, containing a small Kryptonite shard, some blackmail information about all major public figures, and things that would never be disclosed among the living.
Plugging the card into a card reader and then the computer, Bruce accessed the folder named -[In case sent permanently to the past or otherwise]-/.
He then filled out the password to the folder, which even the author did not know about.
Inside it was several files, and he selected the one named Instagram.
Inside the folder were the 12 initial, major updates to the famous social media platform Instagram, along with the 12 latest ones, way better than what the current, 2008 world hosted over the internet.
Bruce copied its contents to another encrypted drive, along with the folder titled Subway Surfers and Candy Crush, which could be easily estimated to contain the said major game updates of the same name, all of them being way better than any competitors they may have in the current time period.
Bruce had moved from the rented apartment Ben had been living with his parents, living in another, smaller room while the shop was renovated into an office instead of the original Pizza Hut.
The next few months were to go without any hitch, as Bruce's taskbar mainly hosted exercise, information collection, server hosting, and building up the new Wayne Enterprises in this new world.
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In the New York Shield headquarters, Nick Fury divided his attention between the two world-shaking events the previous three months had hosted.
Tony Stak had been kidnapped, with no sign of his location for a whole three months, which happened to be on the same day when the portal, which had been peacefully staying still in the skies of New York chooses to puke out two aliens, actually one alien and one human onto them.
Good for them that the alien was ejected out, as from what they had found from their study of the metal piece accompanying them, the metal was a shed-off part of the exoskeleton of the being, and someone having indestructible exoskeleton was never a good thing.
"Anything that concerns our current investigation?"
"Negative sir. Instead, Tony Stark has been found in Afghanistan. He is on his way to the US now. ETA two hours."
"One good news, after all, send Coulson to fetch him en route. What about the caped crusader from 3 months ago?"
"No leads were found after all this time. Given the time period, it is positive to say the subject has blended into society quite easily. We had posted our sources all over the US, from all the fake ID makers to the smallest of hospitals. Nothing to identify the man. have our agents at every major and minor transportation hub, all airports, ships, and cars are checked by the local police for their IDs."
"Pull back from this approach, it would be not worth its while."
"Are we giving up on this investigation, sir?"
"No, we will be taking a different approach."
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On Bruce's side, he was ready.
Ready to let the Batman out.
Initially, he did not have a reason, or a motivation to drive, unlike Gotham which was Wayne's city.
In Gotham, he was the Dark Knight because he had his own motivations, vengeance on his side, call it the tragedy that befell him and his parents or otherwise, but there was a hidden driving force that fueled Batman into becoming what he was, to stand up after no matter how low he fell.
Here, on this earth, no matter how much Bruce may self-justify, he did not have such a thing.
It was a daily self-hypnotizing session of why Batman should be what he was, but it was always met with resistance of why should?
Bruce looked outside the window from the third floor of his newly refurbished office. The app and game project had earned him some decent money. While nothing out of the world was achieved in just 2 months of their launch, the money was decent enough to get him liabilities such as suits and a Lambo.
Outside it were the usual activities of Hell's kitchen. While the criminals were being subtle about it, the highly trained gaze of Batman could easily discern what activities were going on outside Wayne Enterprises.
'Years after years I have been told Gotham cannot be redeemed, it is a city gone to war in the ways of anarchy and crime, and years after years I have shrugged off the notion of rebuilding it from the scratch, thinking the notion of a symbol, a symbol of fear in the eye of evildoers, would be enough to silence those who are against the humanities' welfare, the rotten part of society, but the results were never substantial.
'The most Batman achieved was curbing the city's crime rate, lowering it a tenth from what it was without the caped crusader's presence in the city, but never enough to uncrown it from the most criminally active city of the world.'
'Now I want answers, were my ways truly correct? would they have worked out just fine as I had hoped they would since I first picked up the mantle?'
'This city is no Gotham...'
That was not an old, 40-year-old, tired Bruce Wayne looking into early retirement with all the money he made.
'And I would not let it become a second one, not while I am here, not while I breathe.'
That was the same Bruce who stepped into Gotham as a teen, witnessing all the negatives of the city.
His city.
Outside the glass wall, in a valley came a shriek. A woman was being mugged just before Wayne Enterprises, the three-story building Bruce had used as an anchor in this world, and by the looks of it, the two before the lady were not going to leave the lady even after she was to leave penniless.
On the roof, Bruce was lost in the darkness of the night...
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And Batman had come to Hell's Kitchen.
