Batman 4 - Batman & Robin (21 page)

As Ivy watched, Bane kicked Batman off the end of their catwalk. But before her gigantic servant could revel in his victory—even if he were capable of such a thing—Robin leaped onto his massive back.

Robin wasn’t Batman, but he seemed to know what he was doing. And he was nothing if not game. For a little while, at least, it seemed Bane would have his hands full with him.

In the meantime, Batman himself landed on his back on a slow-moving conveyor belt—one that was feeding ancient tubs of ice cream into a clown-shaped flash freezer. Ivy jumped on top of the crime fighter and lowered her face close to his.

“You bring out the animal in me,” she told him.

“I should have brought my leash,” he replied.

Ivy grunted. “Enough sweet talk.”

With that, she blew another handful of dust into his face—and licked her lips. She would enjoy this, she thought. Oh, how she would enjoy this. Slowly, she leaned in for a kiss.

But at the last possible moment, just before her lips brushed against Batman’s, he averted his face and wrenched her to the conveyor belt—just ahead of the clown’s freezing maw.

“You’re going to jail,” he declared.

Ivy marveled at his resolve. After all, her powder was powerful stuff. It must have taken a superhuman effort to resist it.

“I’m a lover,” she said, “not a fighter. That’s why every Poison Ivy action figure comes complete with . . .
him.
”

She pointed to Bane, who was standing atop a giant storage vat, a dazed Robin hanging like a rag doll in his hands. As Ivy and Batman watched, Bane tossed Robin aside and slid feetfirst down another conveyor belt—right
at
them.

Batman didn’t move as quickly as Ivy had seen him move before. Before he could react, Bane crashed into him. Then, carried by the giant’s momentum, the two of them smashed into the wall with bone-crushing force.

Ivy waved good-bye to Batman as she swung down off the belt “I’m off to find Bachelor Number Two,” she announced. “Try not to make too much of a mess when you die.”

Freeze could feel the room he was in getting hotter by the second. He staggered in the direction of his vault, his vitality ebbing fast, his flesh already beginning to turn gray.

With his last ounce of strength, Freeze ripped open his safe and filled his sleeve compartments with diamonds. Immediately, he could feel himself revitalized, feel his color returning.

“Ahh,” he said. “Chilled to perfection.”

Then he hit his watch. Suddenly, he was encased in ice.
Perfection indeed,
he thought.

Down below, the cops appeared to have recovered. They drew their guns and fired at him. But their bullets bounced off his icy armor, ricocheting into the walls.

He grinned savagely. “Superman, eat your heart out.”

Then he headed for his weapons locker.

Dazed by his sudden introduction to the wall, Batman got his feet under him and tried to shake off the effects of Bane’s attack. But the giant was on him again before he knew it.

A second time, he smashed Batman into the wall. As the Dark Knight slumped to the floor, Bane advanced on him for the coup de grâce. But Batman wasn’t about to call it quits.

Reaching into his Utility Belt, he whipped out a Batclub and sent it whirling in Bane’s direction. The club hit the giant in the head, stunning him, forcing him to take a couple of steps back into a rail.

Batman had earned himself a respite, though he had a feeling it would be all too brief. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ivy closing in on his protégé.

As the police rushed him, Freeze opened his locker and took out a small icing jewel. Using it on the floor, he watched the surface glow a brilliant blue and then cover over with ice.

The cops couldn’t control their headlong progress over that kind of surface. Slipping on the icy floor in classic Keystone style, arms pinwheeling, they ended up sprawled on their backs.

Freeze stood, pulsing with power again. Removing a spare cryo-rifle from a pedestal nearby, he tucked it into the crook of his shoulder and pointed it at the helpless police.

“All right, coppers.” He smiled humorlessly.
“Freeze.”

Then he fired, just in case.

Rising to his feet and keeping one eye on Bane, Batman watched Ivy back Robin up against a giant vat.

“Stop living in the shadow of the big, bad Bat,” she told him. “You don’t need him.” She blew more of her dust in his face. “You deserve your own legend, don’t you?”

“My own . . . ?” he muttered.

“Your own bright, shining signal in the cloud-streaked sky. Let me guide you, brave heart. Let me . . .” She touched his face with her fingertips. “. . . touch you. Kiss you . . .”

It didn’t seem Robin could resist her anymore. He was at her mercy—until Batman hurled a tiny Batarang with pinpoint accuracy, hitting his protégé in the cheek.

Fortunately, Bane was still woozy. He was hanging back, gathering his prodigious strength.

“Remember the victim at the airport,” the Dark Knight shouted, his voice echoing in the confines of the factory’s basement. “Toxins introduced through the mouth.”

Robin looked up at him. “What are you talking about?”

As Bane lunged at him, Batman ducked and swung down to Robin’s level. “Why is she so desperate to kiss us?” he wondered out loud. “I’m betting her lips carry some kind of poison.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed with skepticism. “A poison kiss? You have some real issues with women, you know that?”

Robin advanced on his mentor, clearly still under Ivy’s influence. “You just couldn’t stand that she was about to kiss me.”

He shoved Batman.

“Couldn’t stand that something might be mine and not yours. Could you?”

Robin shoved him harder still.

Suddenly, Batman was overcome with fury. After all, he’d been pounded enough. Without thinking, he delivered a roundhouse blow, sending Robin smashing into a wall.

Instantly, he was sorry for what he’d done. Heartachingly sorry. Going to Robin’s side, he tried to help him up. But the younger man shrugged him off and stood up on his own.

“Ivy’s right,” he snapped. “I don’t need you. I should go solo. I should have my own signal in the sky.”

Batman shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. You’re not ready for something like that.”

Robin glared at him. “I’m ready when I
say
I’m ready. And if you don’t like it, you can—”

Suddenly, Batman remembered the reason they’d come there in the first place. To get a lead on the villains. He looked around.

But Ivy and Bane were already gone.

Robin regarded him accusingly, as if it were Batman’s fault. And maybe it was, the Dark Knight reflected.

Maybe it was.

That’s when Commissioner Gordon rushed into the room. “What happened?” he asked. “How’d they get away?”

Unfortunately, Batman didn’t have an answer for him. At least, not a good one.

Ivy entered Freeze’s vault through the snaking passage he had described to her. And just as he had said she would, she discovered the sarcophagus containing Freeze’s wife.

The woman was beautiful, no doubt about it. And her beauty wasn’t tarnished by her frozen state. If anything, it was enhanced.

For a moment, Ivy considered what to do with the woman. Clearly, she was important to Freeze. But that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Looking around, Ivy located the main power switch. Then she turned back to the frozen specimen that had once been a living, breathing person.

“So sorry, Ms. Frigidaire. I’m just not very good with competition,” she explained reasonably.

Then she pulled the switch. All over the chamber, status lights flashed red for danger.

Too bad for Freeze’s wife there was no one there to see them. No one there to lift a finger to help as her high-tech chrysalis stopped working . . . as she died the death she had been meant to die.

A
t the Turkish bathhouse on Blossom Street, which Ivy had converted into her personal headquarters, dawn’s light streamed through the broken ceiling. The ground, once a floor, was now a rich, thick garden.

Tomato plants and exotic grapevines grew beside and over and through a jungle of cedar saplings and broad-leafed hostas and Japanese maples. There were hundreds of varieties of tree and shrub and ground cover, all coexisting in harmony, all content to be a part of the great intermingling.