LOOTING DC #5. Everything Goes South
Whistling Enemy by Imagine Dragons, Jake rolled his shoulders, fingers flying over the control panel. Behind him was the fabricator - a rich guy's closet-sized piece of Bat-tech embedded into the cave's rock face with reinforced plating and thick cables snaking out from its base.
He was in the final stretch - just a few more tweaks, and the machine would spit out his custom-built Spider Suit. Honestly? Engineering this thing wasn't nearly as hard as he expected.
Well, breaking into the system had been a nightmare. Batman's security was layered like a paranoid onion. Jake had spent most of his precious time bypassing encrypted subsystems, rerouting security protocols, and shorting out biometric locks with delicate bursts of static from his fingertips. The cryptography was oddly personal, almost memory-based, and for a second, he'd been worried he'd have to mentally reenact every tragic backstory Bruce Wayne ever had just to get past it.
But once he was in, it was just tech. Just engineering.
The machine was built to manufacture Batman's suits, which meant layers of Kevlar-Titanium weave, servo-assisted strength enhancements, and built-in shock gauntlets - none of which fit Jake's needs. The Bat needed to tank hits. Jake needed to move.
So, he stripped it down.
Kevlar was too heavy, so... gone. Instead, he swapped in graphene-infused polymer composites, interwoven with carbon nanotube filaments - flexible, strong as hell, and light enough to move like a second skin. The servo motors in Batman's suit added strength, but also bulk, so Jake replaced them with electroactive polymers - muscles that flexed with a charge, giving him enhanced movement without slowing him down.
The Power Source had been a problem.
Batman's suits ran on high-density microfusion cells, which Jake would have stolen if he had more than a few minutes. Instead, he rigged up a kinetic redistribution system, pulling energy from his own movement. Every punch, every sprint, every web swing would charge the suit. Supposedly. Ideally.
Theoretically, it should work. In practice? Well… guess I'll find out mid-air.
By the time he was preparing to press the proverbial big green button, Jake was smiling wildly. The fabricator's inner chamber breathed to life, lasers and mechanical arms beginning their delicate ballet, assembling the suit atom by atom. His heart thumped, adrenaline begging him to add one more feature - like retracting mechanical spider legs for his back...
But no. This was it. At least for now.
Sleek. Fast. Efficient.
Jake let out a slow breath, admiring his work. I'm good. Really good.
"And now, we wait."
He grinned, resting his finger over the execute button. "And here I thought I had jinxed it."
Then-
His Spider-Sense screamed. Strong vibrations coming from a distance outside the cave like a giant army of mutated rats was approaching.
"Ah, shit."
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Just a cave wall away, Kid Flash was getting restless.
"Dude, this is taking forever," Wally groaned, pacing back and forth. "Can't you hack any faster? That Spider guy could already be on his way out!"
Miss Martian, hovering just behind him, frowned. "Is it even possible to break the Bat's security?"
Robin didn't look up from the holographic display flickering in front of him. "When you know the guy as well as I do? You have a chance."
"Then why is it taking so long?"
Robin sighed, resisting the urge to throw a Batarang at his best friend's face. "Because Batman's security isn't just firewalls and encryption, Wally - he builds in redundancies. The Cave's security is in lockdown. Even I'm locked out, which means-"
"You have to bypass it manually," Miss Martian finished, catching on.
"Exactly," Robin confirmed. "And this time, I'm dealing with something weird - Batman's personal cryptography design. It's patterned off his own life, like a giant mind palace. Problem is…" He hesitated, then admitted, "I haven't finished reading the Bat-Files yet."
Wally blinked. "What does that have to do with this?"
Robin ignored him, focused on the cryptographic sequence pulsing on his display. The system was tied to Batman's personal memories - puzzles and passwords that only Bruce would associate with them.
Puzzles were easy for Robin. But the passwords?
So far, Robin had guessed correctly twice. The first was a dry cleaner's name - an actual business Bruce used as a front for evidence storage. The second? The title of Bruce's unpublished memoirs, something Dick once joked about selling.
But this last one. It was the hardest yet.
Robin stared at the empty password field, muttering, "Okay… think like the Bat."
What's something obscure enough that even his enemies wouldn't guess, but just personal enough to use as a cryptographic key?
He typed in several sequences.
The console flashed red.
SECURITY ESCALATION ENGAGED.
A timer appeared.
"Shit," Robin swore, typing faster.
"Uh… is that supposed to do that?" Wally pointed at a mechanical device unfolding from the ceiling - a thick, segmented metal amalgam lowering ominously.
Superboy, meanwhile, redoubled his efforts on the cave wall, his fists striking against the reinforced stone with seismic force. Cracks formed - but it still held.
"Why is this so hard?" Superboy growled, shaking out his hand as the impact stung.
Seeing the countdown ticking lower, the Team moved to assist - Miss Martian applying telekinetic pressure, Aqualad channeling water constructs to weaken the structural integrity - while Robin worked in overdrive, fingers flying over the holographic display.
Miss Martian hesitated. The creeping mechanism overhead was setting off every survival instinct she had.
"Guys, we might need to leave before-"
SHUT!
A reinforced steel door slammed down behind them, sealing their only way out.
Then came the vibrations.
Deep, rumbling tremors beneath their feet.
Aqualad knelt, pressing his palm against the floor. His expression darkened. "...Is magma supposed to be this close to the surface?"
"Robin…" Wally's voice edged toward actual concern.
Robin ignored him. Focused. Thought fast.
Then-
"Got it!" Robin snapped his display shut. He rushed toward Superboy, shoving him slightly to the left. "Hit there - now!"
Superboy didn't hesitate.
He drew back his fist - Miss Martian reinforced his strike with her mind - Aqualad's water constructs surged - Kid Flash accelerated the pressure-
SMASH!
The wall caved in, swallowing everyone into the BatCave, stone obliterated, and-
BOOM.
Something massive slammed down behind them, sealing the destroyed wall with an impact that shook the entire cave.
Silence.
Everyone took a moment to reorient themselves. Dust settled.
Kid Flash, panting, shot Robin an unimpressed look. "Why do you always wait until the last possible second?"
Robin, catching his breath, scoffed. "Tt. I should've expected it. He used his son's birthday as a security measure." He exhaled sharply, irritation flickering in his tone. "Predictable. Sentimental. Almost disappointing."
Kid Flash froze. "Batman has a- wait. What do you mean his son?"
Robin didn't bother looking at him. "Exactly what I said."
Wally opened his mouth, then thought better of it, shaking his head. "You know what? Never mind."
Then-
Total darkness.
The entire cave blacked out.
A soft beep came from Robin's wrist computer.
He sighed. "I did mention the EMP defenses, right?"
A beat of silence.
Wally groaned. "...You are kidding me."
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"Shit! Shit! Fuuuuck!" Jake's curses were already flying before the explosion tore through the cave, the EMP blast plunging everything into darkness. He could feel the sting of it - the moment the systems shut down, like a punch to the gut.
A horde of mutated rats? Yeah, he could deal with that - if they ever bothered to show up. But an EMP? Right when he was on the brink of finishing his spider-suit? That was a different level of screwed.
Even if the lights came back, it wouldn't matter. The system would've reset. No way he'd be hacking his way back in time to salvage anything now.
His senses sharpened, zeroing in on the movement nearby.
Four? Maybe five?
Not the Justice League - Batman didn't do full-on raids like that. So, who was it?
Troublemakers. Probably Robin leading the charge. No doubt.
Teen Titans or Young Justice? That was the real question.
If it was the Teen Titans... Beast Boy's transformations, Raven's wild magic, Cyborg's tech. Not a walk in the park, but doable.
Young Justice, though? That was another animal entirely. Conner's strength, Miss Martian's telepathy and shapeshifting, Kid Flash's speed - anything could happen.
Robin... Yeah, Robin was always a wildcard. Whether it was the boy wonder or the other one, it didn't matter. He'd be a pain either way.
There were upsides though. Maybe?
Starfire. Yeah, she was out of his league, but who wouldn't want to see a literal star in person?
And Artemis... Damn. She was everything he was trying to avoid, but the thought of her made his blood run hot.
Jake shoved the distractions out of his head. Focus.
He moved, fast. First stop - retrieving his suit from the fabricator. With the power offline, brute force was his only option. The suit wasn't perfect - tech was dead in the water - but the material would still cover most of him. For now, it would have to do.
Just as his webs latched onto the device, a batarang flew his way.