DC:The Darkest Knight

[3RD POV]

Alfred stood at the edge of the training area, holding a tray, while watching Bruce in a bustling street scene filled with people chatting and moving about. It was all just a projection, of course.

Bruce was seated in the center of the training area, completely naked and in a lotus position; his eyes shut tight as sweat poured off him, it was as if he were standing under a waterfall.

What was most unusual was his heartbeat. It fluctuated wildly; at times, it raced as if it might burst from his chest, and then it would slow to a point where Alfred feared it had stopped altogether, only to return to a normal rhythm moments later.

"What is Master Bruce doing, Eden?" Alfred inquired, his senses heightened by the serum, allowing him to hear Bruce's heartbeat amid the chaos.

{Master Bruce is training to regulate his heartbeat by syncing it with the frequency of real people projected into the training area by drones around Gotham, my eternal nemesis.}

Eden's reply made Alfred chuckle. One day, this AI whimsically declared herself his enemy, claiming to be the perfect assistant for Master Bruce.

'How absurd,' Alfred thought, not even entertaining the thought that someone else in this world, no, in this universe, could be more helpful to Bruce than him.

"This boy will be the death of me," Alfred muttered as he carefully set the tray down, making sure not to disturb Bruce, and prepared for any emergencies.

After some time, Bruce finally opened his bloodshot eyes, then fell back and took deep breaths.

"Master Bruce," Alfred called, standing next to him, looking a decade older despite his halted aging.

"Yo," Bruce greeted Alfred with a toothy grin.

"Please, sir, have mercy on this old man; at least until you have kids," Alfred said, handing Bruce a towel that he took from the drone that was on standby.

"Don't be such a drama queen, Alfred; I'm just training," Bruce replied as he took the towel with shaky hands.

"Train with your hearth is a metaphor, sir, not something you must take literally."

"The person you are trying to reach is unavailable right now; please try again later." Dropping the towel on his face, Bruce acted like they were on a call instead of talking face-to-face.

"We're not on the phone, Master Bruce, and for heaven's sake, please put on some pants."

"*ugh*stupid old goat," Bruce muttered as he stood up.

"I'm in my sanctuary, Alfred; this is the place I'm most comfortable, so I can wear or not wear whatever I want," Bruce said, heading toward the elevator.

"That's true, Master Bruce, but you're not the only one who uses this place. Miss Selina or Miss Zatanna could arrive at any time; it might be quite a shock for them to see you like this." Alfred said as they started to go down to the fourth level.

"Thanks, Alfred, for making it seem like my body is the most disgusting thing on earth," Bruce said as he pressed a button on the elevator. Mechanical arms appeared, holding shorts.

"You know I didn't mean it like that, master Bruce." Alfred said as Bruce put the shorts on.

As they exited the elevator, Bruce walked further into the lab with Alfred close behind, but something caught his attention along the way.

"Master Bruce, what is this?" Alfred asked, pointing to a round object that resembled a tiny sun, held by eight mechanical arms.

"It's a fusion reactor, Alfred. Just another renewable energy source I created in my spare time," Bruce replied casually, waving his hand.

"May I ask why you made this, sir? As far as I know, you already have the arc reactor."

"The arc reactor powers my suit, while this fusion reactor is for the teleporter I'm building," Bruce explained as they arrived at a room filled with cables and parts, with a platform in the middle of it.

"I might have misheard you, sir, but did you just say teleporter?" Alfred asked with hope that it was his ears that were playing tricks on him.

"Yes, teleporter," Bruce confirmed, stepping aside to point at a machine.

"What...how?" Alfred stammered, staring at the machine. He didn't doubt Bruce's words because he had full faith in Bruce that he was capable of making something like this, but knowing and seeing were different things.

"Well, by manipulating atoms-" Bruce began to explain, but Alfred raised his hand.

"I would very much like to keep my sanity, sir, but how long have you been working on this machine? It shouldn't be long since it's my first time seeing it."

"Just a few months. It's actually quite simple to make," Bruce replied, and it was indeed easy to make since Batman already made one for the Justice League; all he had to do was rebuild it and make some adjustments.

After hearing Bruce's response, Alfred smiled and shook his head. Only someone like Bruce would think that creating something as impossible as a teleporter would be easy to make.

"Do you need anything, Alfred?" Bruce asked, noticing Alfred followed him without asking.

"Tomorrow is the anniversary of Master Thomas and Lady Martha's passing, sir," Alfred said, sadness evident in his voice.

"Okay," was all Bruce said before returning to his work on the teleporter.

Getting no reaction from Bruce, Alfred turned around to leave, feeling distressed and a little sad. But he comforted himself by thinking that Bruce was in puberty, so he was probably going through a rebellious phase.

As Alfred was about to leave, he noticed a door that had escaped his attention before, despite his regular cleaning of the cave. Curious, he attempted to open it.

{Access denied, unauthorized personnel}

Upon hearing that he was denied access, Alfred was quite taken aback, especially since he had the highest access level of all the people who had access to the Batcave, of course with the exception of Bruce and Teleute.

"Master Bruce, what does this door lead to?" Alfred asked as he pointed to the door.

"Hmm," lifting his head up, Bruce looked at the door before he stood and approached the door. Standing in front of the door, he placed his hand on the handle, which lit up brightly as it opened to reveal an elevator.

"I think it's better if I show you," Bruce said, stepping into the elevator with Alfred following closely behind.

Once inside, Bruce entered an encrypted code into the console, performed a retinal scan, and confirmed his voice and DNA before the elevator began its descent.

"It seems like something you want to keep secret, Master Bruce. You really don't have to show me," Alfred said, feeling a bit guilty for prying. If he wasn't meant to see it, he shouldn't have pushed.

"Nah, it's cool. What's down there is kinda my ultimate goal," Bruce said as the elevator finally stopped after going about 10 kilometers underground.

They stepped out into a dim corridor where Bruce repeated the safety protocol, entering a different code and voice command. The lights turned on, revealing three doors. They went through the right door and entered another corridor. Bruce performed the safety protocol again, and the lights illuminated, showing another three doors. They chose the left door, and Bruce continued with the safety checks. After passing through 20 doors, they finally stood before a metal door.

Bruce grabbed the handle, opened the door, and walked in. The room was pitch black, except for some platforms with glass boxes on top of them.

Most of them were empty, except for two. One of them contained a vial with a red liquid and yellow particles in it.

[IMAGE]

Moving closer to the glass box, Bruce pressed his hand on it, and it opened. Taking the vial, he showed it to Alfred.

"This vial contains a virus that can rewrite DNA and alter cellular structure, making it perfect. It also has the ability to possibly evolve the user to infinitely, that is, if they can survive. And let me tell you, it wasn't easy to make this perfectly match my DNA, not to mention it can gain consciousness," Bruce explained, placing the vial back. He then picked up the second vial, which glowed bright yellow.

"This one is the most fascinating and perhaps the most absurd thing I've created so far. It holds the power of a thousand exploding suns, and let me tell you, it's nowhere near done. Once it's done, it will give me power beyond what a mortal could possibly imagine," Bruce said as he looked closely at the vial. Inside the vial looked like a beautiful golden starry sky that was constantly moving, but in reality, it was the power of the thousand exploding suns. However, it was still not as powerful as he desired. He aimed for this small vial to contain the force of billions of exploding suns, seeking a power that would make even gods tremble in fear, all to stand beside his wife as an equal, not just a mere mortal.

[IMAGE]

"But why do you need those things, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked, since Bruce already pretty much had everything. Not to mention, more power means more trouble and responsibility.

"To stand beside my wife, Alfred, I need much more than just a simple serum that allows me to bench press a car. And with this project, I can achieve it. Those are just the ingredients, Alfred. What I'm cooking will be far worse. I still need the blood of a dark lord, the essence of a four-eyed demon, the DNA of a failed Kryptonian experiment, the feather of the devil's wing..." Bruce continued to list ingredients while Alfred was already making his retirement plan in his head.

***

[2 years later]

The past two years were pretty dull. I launched nine more satellites, bringing the total to twelve, and finished building the teleporter. I also created some robots with nano armor from Crysis. They had all the features that nano armor had and some more. I built another Batcave in ruins under Arkham Asylum and some places around Gotham and started building my Batstation, which is basically a Batcave but in space. I also made some adjustments to my suit, mainly for protection against magic, using the data I gathered from my sparring sessions with Zatanna. Of course, she didn't know that. I like to keep it that way.

"taolF," Zatanna, her eyes shining with a bright light, pointed at me and cast a spell, causing my armor to lift off the ground.

'Increase the suit density by 100 times.' I commanded my newly designed suit, which was made from liquid nanobots, and quickly began to plummet toward the floor.

My new suit has a more organic and menacing appearance, like a demon that has crawled out of the depths of hell to punish criminals, compared to the mechanical design of my last one.

[IMAGE]

'Safe landing.' Giving yet another command, I turned my cape into a soft, cotton-like fabric to cushion my fall.

"ekips ecI."

Without pausing, I rolled aside as an ice spike shot up from my previous position.

'Smoke screen.' After dodging the spike, I activated another feature of my suit, and smoke burst out from my entire suit, filling the training ground and concealing me.

Seizing the moment, I activated my stealth suit and flew up as Zatanna used a wind spell to clear the smoke.

When the smoke cleared and I was nowhere to be seen, Zatanna began to search the area, lowering her body cautiously.

"nedrag eniV," she whispered, touching the ground as vines erupted from her hand, spreading across the training ground to trap me if I tried to sneak up on her.

'Clever girl,' I thought, watching everything from the ceiling of the cave.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Zatanna said with a mischievous grin, her eyes and hands glowing with magic.

"I thought you wanted to spar, Brucy, not play hide and seek," she teased while looking for him.

"With the suit on, it's Batman, not Bruce," I said, revealing my location.

Zatanna sent a magical shockwave toward the ceiling where she thought I was, destroying everything in that area as debris fell on her. She quickly created a magic shield around herself to protect herself, and when she looked at where the spell had hit, she only found a hologram instead of me.

"Looks like you missed, Miss Zatanna," I mocked, my voice coming from behind her. Zatanna spun around and cast another spell at the sound, only to discover it was another hologram, this one making a peace sign in a playful manner, clearly mocking her.

"I thought we would be fighting one-on-one, Brucy, but you are using the whole cave, trying to be sneaky," Zatanna said with furrowed brow. She was getting a little irritated from all of this cat and mouse game.

"I am the cave," my voice echoed from every corner of the cave.

Just as Zatanna was about to respond...

*Bonk*

Something struck her head.

"Ouch," rubbing her head, she bent down and picked up the object that hit her.

It looked like a black coin with a blue ring on it.

"And I'm using this, not the cave," I said, appearing as a chibi hologram from the coin.

"*Tsk*," Zatanna clicked her tongue, ready to toss the coin, but it suddenly turned into liquid, wrapping around her upper body and mouth, forming a straitjacket before solidifying.

I floated above the training area, sprinkling green dust from my belt onto the vines, causing them to wither so I could land safely.

"Never let your guard down, Sabrina, the little witch," I said, flicking her forehead and then touching her shoulder. The straitjacket turned to liquid again and merged into my suit.

With a pout, Zatanna crossed her arms and looked away from me. "We were just sparring, you know, for fun. No need to be so serious."

Seeing her act like this, I found her reaction adorable and opened my arms to embrace her, while my suit liquefied and flowed back into my body through my sweat glands.

"Come on, Z, don't be upset. I'm just worried, you know? I just want you to be ready for anything," I said, embracing her from behind.

"Whatever, you're just a sore loser because you know that without petty tricks, you can't beat me," Zatanna said, still pouting, while a blush adorned her cheeks.

Says the girl with the ability to alter reality.

"Okay, okay, stop pouting. You look so adorable that I just want to eat you," I said playfully as I gently bit Zatanna's cheek.

"Ewww," Zatanna said with a sweet smile, pretending to be grossed out while pushing me away.

"Oh, now you're gonna get it, Missy," I said with a playful grin as I jumped on Zatanna, showering her with big, wet kisses.

"Hahahaha, stop it, hahaha," Zatanna laughed heartily, trying to push me away as I continued my relentless attack.

We continue to fool around a bit before I suggested, "How about we watch a movie?" while Zatanna was on my back with her arms wrapped around me.

"Sure, but I get to pick the movie, and we're getting ice cream afterward," Zatanna said, leading as she pointed forward. "Onward, my loyal horse."

As they left the cave, they didn't notice a shadowy figure watching them. Selina, who had been napping on top of the Batcomputer with a bed made from the diamond she had stolen, observed everything from beginning to end with a pitiful look on her face. She looked like an abandoned kitten, tears in her eyes, longing and wishing for the day that Bruce would also show her a smile like that, hold her close, and love her. She waited with tears streaming down her face, hoping that day would come soon.