Chapter 13: The Bat-list

Chapter 13: The Bat-list

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The past is the past. We cannot indulge ourselves in memories and destroy the present.

-MURATA KEN, (KYOU KARA MAOU!)

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(A/N: Before you read this chapter, I just want to say that this one might be a little inconsistent with one of the previous chapters and some stuff might have been repeated from one of the chapters before. It was not because of lazy writing or because I was trying to fill up words but simply because I wrote this chapter the day my semester exams ended about a month after writing the last chapter. So I was not in the flow at that time... Don't judge me. )

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It took Cortana about 3 days to analyze almost all essential data to train itself, like the meaning of different platonic concepts, emotions, their importance, and everything else. It even chose its own gender after learning about its concept. It chose to identify itself as a 'she' simply because Cortana seemed to her to be a feminine name.

She wasn't at her full potential yet due to the lack of data on the internet but the amount of information and data available was still enough to make her a hundred times better than any other artificial intelligence ever developed on Bruce's previous world.

It could be said that Cortana right now was at the childhood stage of what she could truly be one day. She had even simulated an image of herself of what she currently perceived herself to be as a young girl on the computer screen to make it easy and more comfortable for Bruce and the others to communicate with her.

Bruce had programmed her to be a very polite, honest, and caring person with a good sense of humor and she was exactly that although the last trait would probably need time to develop since her current humor only included bad dad jokes which only Alfred found funny.

Selina was also extremely happy with Cortana as she regarded the AI as her new best girlfriend since both of them liked the same flavor of ice cream which was chocolate. Of course, Bruce didn't remind Selina that Cortana had never even eaten ice cream and her answer was just a way for the AI to appear more polite and humane to her.

Bruce was quite happy with his new creation right now. Truthfully, even he didn't completely understand how exactly he had created Cortana. He had just concentrated on his 'ability' to show him how to make an AI that was as good if not better than most AIs he had seen in fiction including Ultron and Jarvis from Marvel, Cortana from Halo, Red Queen from Resident Evil, and even the AI from that movie Eagle Eye.

His Cortana was the combination of all of them, although much much different from them as he was sure that she would never betray him or go against him later because that was the core of what he had wanted in his AI and what he had willed his ability to base Cortana on. Her entire existence and purpose was to serve, help and protect Bruce. Everything else came later.

Bruce's life was going pretty well after his transmigration. But just when he thought that almost everything was going his way, Murphy's law hit him like a speeding bullet train.

The one thing that he dreaded, the one place that he had sworn never to visit again in his life was calling him back and he had no way to defend himself. His easy life was on the verge of being ruined.

"Alfred, I am not going back there. You might as well send me there in a body bag than expect me to go there on my own. I am never going to go back to that hell." Bruce said gulping as he remembered his last experience in that place.

"Young master Bruce, please stop referring to your school as hell. And as I said before, you have to go to school to receive your education. You can't just sit at home all day like some spoiled child. You and Selina are both going there and I want no more arguments." Alfred said strictly.

It seemed like Selina would become a cat-woman with a flexible body no matter what Bruce did to change her fate. It almost seemed like it was her destiny.

'Although I can eventually enjoy that flexible body one day.' Bruce smirked to himself as he went back to working on the drone he was working on leaving Selina to wonder about the reason for that happy smirk on Bruce's face.

He was currently working on different types of drones for information gathering from all over the city. He was too young to be Batman and fight crime on the streets, so right now he was going to build his power. He knew about the term, 'Knowledge is power' and he agreed with it. He wanted to collect as much information and knowledge about everyone and everything in the city as he could.

Cortana could easily observe and control any technology connected to the internet out there as she had almost unrestricted access to it but what about the places without any gadgets connected to the web, what about the more sensitive information? Bruce was going to collect those types of intel through the drones he was making.

Originally he wanted to make bat-shaped drones to go with the entire theme as he had already fallen prey to the obsession with keeping everything bat themed after he first named his muti-proto-tool as bat-tool. But he quickly figured out that bat-shaped drones while pretty good for dark areas or night-time surveillance wasn't as good during the daytime or for areas with too much light.

So he was also designing drones shaped like spiders, pigeons, and even mosquitoes along with bats. He was going all out with perfecting his surveillance drone technology to make sure that every corner of the city could be viewed by him whenever he wanted by the time criminals like Joker, Riddler or Penguin rose in power.

Right now, most of those identities didn't even exist or were just starting their criminal career somewhere and Bruce wasn't that big of a fan of DC to know about all their secret identities or histories or even remember about most villains of Batman. He only knew about the most famous ones from the movies and some animated shows that he had watched back when he was young. So he could not send an exploding package to their homes to kill them before they even become criminals although he would like to do that very much.

He wasn't a psycho to kill every bad guy he came across. He could just send some of the criminals who could be redeemed to a coma or just break their spine forever but he wasn't gonna kill every one of them. He would only kill those psychotic and truly evil ones that really deserved it like Joker or maybe Two-face or Bane or Savage or Luthor or...

'Okay, that's a long list. Wait, maybe I should actually keep a list and maybe even plan how to kill them. 'Natural deaths' would be the perfect way since that way I would not only get to keep Batman's non-killing image and not get in conflict with the cops or the other heroes but also the criminals would underestimate me. Wow, I am a genius.' Bruce thought as he quickly began to devise the best ways to kill criminals in a non-suspecting manner while crackling madly in his cave.

"He knows that I am still here, and I can hear him laughing like a maniac, right?... But he still sounds really cute for some reason." Selina muttered while standing at the entrance of the cave wondering just how and why she finds someone this geeky and crazy cute.

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/God_Doom

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