Batman: Arkham City Chronicles Ch. 10

Batman sees the laser-focus of the Arkham Knight on him, and never before has such a villain shook him down to his very core.

With the Arkham Knight retreating, Batman's focus is on Talia, who Bruce picks up in his arms and carries her back to the Batmobile. Christina and Ivy approach, but Batman turns prepare to fight, but Ivy voices, "I am not going to fight you, Batman."

"Then why're you here?" asks Batman, wondering how many Ivy he's going to have to deal with? Batman realized the Ivy that him and Harley had a threesome with the other day isn't his Ivy.

"Any enemy of the Arkham Knight is my friend," answers Ivy, "I fought with my reality's Batman, Catwoman, the Tigress, Copperhead and many others against the Arkham Knight but eventually my Batman, my Bruce, who I had known since his childhood, died to save, not only myself but the few remaining of us that are left."

"What about you?" asks Batman, turning to Christina, wondering where she came from and how she knew to be aboard Talia's yacht.

"We are yin and yang. Two halves of the same coin,' replies Christina, who inherited the Joker's obsession with Batman, but Christina's obsession is similar in some ways but very different...

Botanical Gardens,

Bristol Distinct,

Miagani Island

It had been several hours since the confrontation with the Arkham Knight. Talia is resting at Wayne Manor, and Bruce had thrown himself back into the crime fighting lifestyle instead of focusing on his feelings. Batman, his Harley Quinn, and his Catwoman, had traveled to the Botanical Gardens on Miagani Island, searching for their version of Ivy, which is where Batman had concluded Pamela is hiding. Sneaking into the Botanical Gardens, they hear Poison Ivy talking, "...look at her. She's been here since before man walked the Earth. She still holds great power..."

Batman is curious to whomever she is talking to, as she continues speaking, "...but she's weak...poisoned by decades of pollution...she won't be able to fight the Scarecrow's toxin on her own..." Batman can't make out whom Ivy is talking to, "...There aren't any left like her. Not anymore..."

Batman still can't make out she is talking with, as Ivy angrily replies, "...what do you think? Man. You cut them back, built over them, stopped them from reaching the sun..." as both Harley and Catwoman can't figure out whom Ivy is speaking to either, she continues, "They're lost, buried beneath this concrete monstrosity. How will you..." before she suddenly yells, "Harley!"

Ivy races over to her friend and lover, hugging her like she hadn't seen her in years, when she asks, "Red, who are you talking to?" as Batman and Catwoman jump down from their hiding spots, but they don't see anybody else in the room, just plants.

"You got my message finally!" voices Ivy, seemly happy that Batman, Catwoman, and Harley had found her, "There's so much to..."

"What message?" asks Batman, finding himself pulled to Ivy's body.

"You didn't get my message?" asks Ivy, seemingly stunned, "I sent it multiple times. Again, after I escaped the other Poison Ivy."

"You mean the Ivy we and B-man had the threesome with?" asks Harley, referring to the mind-blowing sex they had eight days ago.

"That would be the one," replies Ivy, as it would seem that Catwoman was unaware of that threesome, but Batman asks, "What was the message and why was the other Ivy pretending to be you?"

"She wanted you or more actually your seed," answers Ivy, "Sometimes the truth is more effective in getting you what you want than a lie. My message was in regarded to the Arkham Knight."

"What do you know about him?" asks Batman, as him and Catwoman inch closer to Poison Ivy, since Batman still isn't sure whose side Ivy is on. Pamela explains, "It started with the meeting..."

"What meeting?" asks Batman, but Ivy just continues, "...everyone was there: Penguin, Two-Face, Riddler, Scarecrow, but not poor Harley. The Arkham Knight said he had a plan. He had assembled us, so that together we could take you out and Gotham would be ours..." as Batman voices, "Over my dead body," but Ivy continues, "...I believe that was the idea. I told him that I wasn't interested in his pathetic human games and when I came to...I was locked up by some other looking Ivy. She rescued me from the Knight, telling me stories about him. He isn't what he appears, and she needs you to stop him or more precisely your human seed..."

Batman continues to listen, while wondering what else the Arkham Knight is planning for him, "...it's such a shame that the Arkham Knight's vile toxin has no effect on me, but nature always wins!"

"Red!" yells Harley, snapping to bring her friend back on topic.

"Oh, well some other villains also rejected the Arkham Knight's proposal and afterward they were all dead. He's not merely using us to defeat you but he's also planning to eliminate us afterward."

"You're not telling me nothing I don't already know," replies Batman, getting frustrated, but Ivy reveal, "What if I can tell you where the Arkham Knight's main base of operations is located?"

"Why didn't you lead with that Pamela?" asks Catwoman, but Ivy had a mischievous grin, "I don't know where the main base of operation is located, but I do know where the main hub is, and you can find the location of his main base of operations, there."

"So, what do you actually want, Pamela?" asks Catwoman, out of patience with her friend and lover. Ivy, still with the same mischievous grin on her face, "I want the same thing that I have always wanted, to protect the Earth and her endangered species."

But Bruce isn't sure. He isn't sure he can trust Pamela. Ivy, while a criminal, is becoming more of an anti-hero than a true villain. Normally, Batman, Catwoman and Harley would have to fight their way through Ivy's usual group of hypnotized lackeys, enraptured and under her control effortlessly as the result of her natural pheromones, but it seems this time Ivy had no such lackeys. Batman, Catwoman, and Bat Quinn had snuck their way into Ivy's lair, without encountering a single lackey.

"What changed, Red?" asks Harley, who has become Ivy's lover, after leaving the Joker, but she always seems to go back to him, at least before the Joker's death during the Arkham City Incident.

"Because, Batman will need my help and that of my plants in fighting the Arkham Knight, who has the Scarecrow's toxin, along with other weapons that will not only kill humanity but my babies and the Earth too," answers Ivy, "And what I want in return is the Bat's helps in fighting for the natural environment!"

"Pamela...you're in no position to make demands..." Bruce spoke, his usual calm demeanor definitely was laced with a bit of impatience towards the green skinned woman though, the events of the day weighing on his mind. Bruce had decided it was time to get a little payback on Poison Ivy for all the times she caused trouble for him. By adding her to his ever-growing harem.

But in typical Ivy fashion, she did her best to act not interested in a human male. She sat in her flower throne, made up of what looked like an opened up, pink Venus flytrap. Her light green skin on display as the woman never wore anything more than just a flimsy top, barely buttoned up at all the skimpiest pair of green panties the world had ever seen. They were matched so well with their color, it almost looked like she wasn't wearing any at all, and just the ivy like protrusions on her skin covered up her private parts.

She had her legs crossed, and reclined in her throne, hand up by her face as she toyed with some of the dangling vines of her lair.

"Hmmm...actually I'm in the perfect position to make demands, you need me and my plants..." she swirled her finger in the air above them, making the vine twirl along with her hand's movement. Her long red, slightly wavy locks of hair cascading around her shoulders as she flipped it casually, as Batman says, "I don't need you or your damn plants, but you do want me to fuck you!"

"I haven't felt the desire for a human man ever since I was reborn. And that includes you, Batman," she spoke slowly, blinking her matching forest green orbs over at the Bat uncaring, but both she and Batman knows she wants him to fuck her like a real human woman and not like the plant-human hybrid she was transformed into. Her hatred of men comes from a lifetime of mistreatment at the hand of her male lovers and then the mistreatment of the Earth by man.

"Oh, really Red?" Harley put her hands on her hips, "I feel like I can recall one or two times after you finished railing me with your handy dandy bludgeon you call a strap-on, that you mentioned wanting to have the big bad Bat bound to your bed before!" she ranted a little, pointing out the history between the two. Back in the days of the Joker, Harley definitely had her fair share of run ins with other villainous women. Ivy included multiple times even. The two were actually quite close in their friendship and Harley often confided in Poison Ivy when she had it out with Mister J.

However, the relationship grew a bit more distant after Harley switched sides and took Batman up on his offer, becoming Bat Quinn and regularly participating in Batman's quest to satisfy his never-ending boner. Ivy however, seemed unconcerned with Harley's mention of the past, casting the girl a brief amused glance before explaining, "Harley dear, you simply misunderstood. I wanted the Bat in my bed so I could finally give him the punishment he deserved, for all his cruel treatment of my babies."

"The punishment of your babies?" Catwoman asked on the other side of Batman, the two girls flanking either side of Bruce.

When Catwoman first became Batman's lover, she wasn't exactly one hundred percent on board with the idea of him luring in every other super, and non-super woman in freaking Gotham into a sexual relationship with him. Some may call it jealousy, Selina liked to call it anything but, trying to not give Bruce the satisfaction of knowing how jealous she actually got when he was with other girls.

However, after a couple of rounds with Bruce and Harley, and some others, Catwoman starting to very quickly, understand the appeal. Bruce's stamina was unending, and he really didn't change much in his feelings towards her. Nothing really seemed to be any different at all between them, they just got to bang a little bit more and with a few more people than they used to. So eventually she stopped bugging him about it and kept the jealousy bit to herself. Whatever his plan was for curing the Joker blood in him, she hoped it worked, but she didn't necessarily hope that he fucked her any less afterwards.

Ivy's head snapped over to Selina with a look of annoyance, "You may have surrendered your human maidenhood to him, but he shall never have mine. No man will..." She said defiantly, uncrossing her legs and sitting up straight in her throne.

Batman's ability to judge liars though was very on point even with supernatural creatures like herself. She may like to call everyone else human, and herself something more, but she was still very human herself. The subtle twitch of her lips as she spoke her words of denial, the subtle change in her heartbeat, picked up through the bat-eared sonar in his cowl. Pamela was lying through her teeth, and Bruce knew it.

"Who were you talking to when the three of us came into your lair, Ivy?" asks Batman, as he hears the voice in his head, screaming, "Just fuck her already!"

"A friend Batman," answers Ivy, as Batman shakes his head trying to shake the cobwebs loose and shut up the voice in his head. On some level Bruce is beginning to realize he had less control over his body than ever before, but just maybe if he can bend Ivy to his will, she can help him regain control.

"What type of friend, Ivy? A possible ally against the Arkham Knight or another enemy for me to face?" Batman demands in an aggressive tone, the stress and events of the day weighting Bruce always overburdening shoulders down even more. Poison Ivy had several 'friends' who she could be referring into, including Floronic Man, Swamp Thing, Eva and Holly Green, or even Ferak.

"I will tell you more whenever you agreed to my terms, Batman. First, who are you under that mask?" asks Ivy, realizing that she unlike Harley or Selina doesn't know the man in the Bat's mask's real identity or name, though she had some guesses and theories. Honeysuckle, Ivy's young 'sidekick' always thought Batman was multiple persons, while Hazel, another one of Ivy's lackeys, thought Batman was Thomas Elliot but that was disproven when he was revealed to be the villain, Husk, "Second, I will need your help in freeing..."

"Ivy...I told you, this is not a negotiation, and it's for the better. You will need protection for the days to come," he offered, trying to keep his cool despite the nearly unbearable hardness in his britches. Just looking at those long supple legs, bare feet with the marks of deep green running along her flesh. Embedded like roots in her veins only adding to the allure of her sensuality, Batman always resisted her with his iron will. And even when she made advances on him in the past, which she claimed were to defeat him, or claim him as one of her brainwashed thugs.

He could always feel the skip in her heartbeat when she looked up to him, asking the dark knight for a kiss. When she lifted up onto her tip toes due to his much greater height, the human part of her desires could be seen plainly. Her breath hitching in her lungs, the goosebumps rising up on the surface of her skin. She could fool others into thinking she was desireless, but she could not fool the world's greatest detective...

Ivy of course scoffed at Bruce again, "Simple, stupid man..." she stopped toying with the vines above her and irritated threw her arms down onto the armrests of her flowery throne, "...you just think all women are these frail little flowers that need to be handled so delicately. You don't even bother to check to see how many thorns are going to stab you should you try and lay a hand on us."

Bruce shook his head, "Trust me Ivy, the last way I'd handle you, is delicately..." His voice held his low calm demeanor as usual, but there was something else within it that caused Ivy to almost stiffen her back a little more. Both Harley and Selina heard it as well, not only was the context of what he said a rather obvious come on, but it also had a tone of...threat to it. Not threatening in a bad way, they all knew Bruce would always do his best to never actually hurt them. But threatening in a form that it felt like he was warning her, warning her to be a good girl like he had with both Quinn and Cat previously.

And it was usually best for them to heed that warning lest they wanted to get the absolute living shit fucked out of them, leaving them in a sloppy mess of drool, cum, and sweat on the floor when he was finished.

Needless to say, Harley liked to occasionally be playful and ignore the warning, but she knew what was coming. Ivy certainly did not, and it showed by how she continued to defy his wishes.

"Batman...do I look afraid of you? You think you inspire fear into this tiny female body?" She gestured to herself, Ivy was decently tall, at 5'8 an inch taller than Harley or Selina. But she was the least muscled out of the three of them. Since she had her toxin, and her control and influence over plant life and her victims, she had no need to ever train her body for combat. Meaning her body was the womanliest in terms of less muscle, more curves, slender limbs, and soft, delicate spots all over that Bruce knew how to aim for. "You're wrong, why my babies could snap you like a twig if I told them to..."

She gestured with her hand at her side, signaling for one of her plants to send forth a vine like tendril out from behind Bruce. It quickly slithered along the floor and darted up to try and loop around his neck.

But Batman noticed this the moment she began, and as soon as the tendril got within arm's reach, he lifted his arm and snatched it out of the air. Grabbing the now wildly thrashing and panicking vine in his gauntlet.

Pamela gasped as he did this, her expression going from confident and careless over the Bat, to suddenly very worried.

"Eeek...not the best move Red," Harley grimaced, squinting one eye shut as she prepared to witness the vine get crushed and Ivy to probably freak out.

However, much to everyone's surprise, rather than rip the vine away, or break it, or otherwise do anything damaging to the plant. Bruce simply let it go, not harming the tendril in any way and allowing it to quickly escape back into its little section of the lair in the corner.

"If you're going to continue being difficult, then I'll have to ensure you play nice and don't try that again," as he lifted his arm to his face, tilting it so the holographic keypad lit up before him and he began entering in a certain numeric code.

"What?" Ivy stammered, filled with relief after Batman didn't harm her precious plant, but then started tapping away at his arm.

Within a few moments, the three girls heard a strange whirring sound coming from Bruce's wrist, Catwoman peeked over and managed to catch a glimpse of some kind of sliding selector on the underside of his forearm. It whirred and clicked a few times until settling on a small orb and ejecting the item out directly into Bruce's hand. It looked no bigger than a ball bearing and had a little glowing blue line horizontally along the center.

"Oh, a new toy B-man?" Harley cooed seeing him produce whatever this little pellet was.

After watching this though, Pamela seemed to regain herself, and stood to her feet, coming down off of her flower throne, "Play nice? You think you can talk to me like that Batman? You have no idea what I can do to you..." she stepped closer, "...so you grabbed one of my vines, I have many more, and you only have two arms. Let's see how intimidating you feel when I..."

Before she could finish, Bruce's fist clenched up and crushed the small orb in his hand, and before she could say anything else, he opened his palm and blew it toward her.

A sudden burst of blue dust wafted from Bruce's hand and straight into Pamela's face, she gasped in surprise which in turn quickly inhaled the substance. Delivered in almost a twisted parody of how she used to deliver her own toxin.

"Oh! What's that Bats?" Harley jumped and leaned in curiously closer while Pamela shut her eyes and furiously started swinging her arms to try and clear the dust cloud around her.

She gagged on the odd-tasting substance, she had very little need for food anymore, but she could recall a strange minty cold flavor that quickly went down her throat and into her lungs.

"Ack! Ah, what is this?" She blinked several times, the remaining particles finally dissipating away from her and allowing her vision to clear. She took a moment to look around at the three in front of her...she didn't feel any different?

Normally Batman's smoke pellets or other gaseous based weaponry would've had taken effect by now, but Ivy felt normal. What did he do to her?

And as if he gained telepathy, Batman answered her question, "It's a new biological formula, created after a long time of studying your condition Pamela..." he stepped forward, "...it locates the cells in your body that communicates directly with the plant life around you and blocks it temporarily."

Poison Ivy's eyes went wide, "W...w...what...?"

"For the next twelve hours, your plants won't be able to hear your commands. In other words, you're just as human as the rest of us," he threatened her indirectly.

She shook her head, "That's impossible! You can't take away the control over my babies!" she fired back at him, "Get him! I'm sick of his presence, attack him children!" she commanded around her, her hair whipping back and forth as she directed the countless plants available to begin ensnaring the dark knight. But her orders all seemed to just fall upon deaf ears, "...that's...that's not possible! Attack him! Now!" Stillness in the green area around them, "...babies?"