Alfred strolled back down the two-step to the kitchen area. He still needed the carrots and lettuce. When he got to the refrigerator- nothing fancy, just a moderate-sized object with two doors and an ice maker- he reached in and pulled out the bags that he needed. He shut the door, letting the cooling stay inside.
He shouldn't have left it open. Ms. Winters hated it when he wasted, and he had wasted there by leaving the fridge open. He felt ashamed, but maybe he could make up for it with dinner.
After leaving the unopened package from Lucius in the Batcave, Alfred had gone straight to the kitchen to make as best a meal as he could make. If he could convince her to give him a second chance, maybe he could convince her to forgive him. All that depended on how well he pleased her tonight. She had told him she had had something big prepared. He had high hopes.
A loud buzzing entered his left ear. He managed to put the bag down on the dining table quickly before answering the earpiece. "Sir?" he asked.
"Alfred," came a gruff voice from the other end. Master Wayne. Not Bruce anymore. Now, he was "Master Wayne," the person who could not be disappointed at the moment. His job depended on it.
"Yes, sir?" Alfred asked again.
"Poison Ivy's attacked the city. She's taken out the G.C.P.D. and Stephanie."
"Good Lord!" Alfred gasped. "Miss Brown has been killed?"
"I don't know, Alfred," Master Wayne said. "I hope not, but even if she's still alive, it's just us."
"Oh, but sir," the loyal butler said, "you'll be up against her without the police to contain the situation. I'll get Master Tim back here this instant to help-"
"Tim's down too," the gruff voice returned. "He's under Ivy's control. I can't take any chances; I'll do what I can for him, but I need to save the city. Gotham Square cannot fall under plant occupation."
Gotham Square? Alfred thought. He prayed that Ms. Winters had not gone there. She was such a special girl. "We can call in Master Dick or-"
"There's no time, Alfred," Master Wayne interrupted. "I have to do this now. Ivy's going down."
----
"Oh, well... I wish you luck sir," Alfred said over the comm link. "Please try to stay safe; Gotham depends on it."
"Lockdown the manor, Alfred," Batman said. "She might make a play for the manor if she decides to get out of the city."
"On it, sir." The link shut off as Alfred left the other side of the signal.
He stood up from his crouch, observing the scene down below from the three-story building he stood atop. Gotham Square once held shining lights of color and crossroads that traffic would always slow at. Tall buildings of glass would shoot for the sky on all sides, bouncing the light off of the surface to dazzle pedestrians. Now, the two block area was a floral war zone.
Plants- large plants, to say the least- sprung out of the ground constantly, all meeting together at the middle of the plaza, converging to make one large plant that had to be wider than Wayne Tower. The sheer size of it was astounding, but this wasn't the first time Ivy had constructed a lair similar to this. Entering that tree would put him in her domain, letting her know where he was.
The last time she had made a tree the size of a building, though, it had simply been a diversionary tactic that she had used to lure him in and try to crush him by collapsing it from the outside. Instead of focusing on the tree itself, he activated his scanners and searched through nearby buildings for any signs of activity. He found a bunch of people cowering in the buildings at the perimeter of Gotham Square- a few of them even had postures as if they were filming this with their cameras- and scattered and dismembered bodies surrounding the large tree. The corpses were not just at ground level; some were propped up on top of vines and other minor plants.
The curious thing was that he could see a large group of people seemingly standing unconcerned near the tree, and he even recognized one of the figures. Pamela Winters stood at the very center of the men, wearing her ring, no doubt. He didn't know why Ivy was wearing the ring after her declaration that she wanted the world to bear witness to the end of the Batman. She even had her plants out, so it didn't make sense for her to try and hide her identity.
He shut off his detective vision, but in doing so, he caught a glimpse of the woman at the center of the group of people, and she had green skin. It was Ivy, but it wasn't her. Wearing the ring so long must have had an effect on her natural form, as her body was perfected. Breasts tried hiding behind the blue cloth, but failed to actually hide, becoming a major focus point of any man's eyes. Her body then curved down behind the blue and opened up at her knees to add fixture to Pamela's green skin.
Her red hair flowed further than her single sleeve on one arm, untucked and unbraided. With hair like that, it was almost like colors around her would bend for her. Batman imagined being surrounded by red- not crimson, but a soft shade- and being able to see nothing but the face of the woman who owned the red. Part of that was what made him so turned on by redheads.
He got a... thing in his... clothes. What were the words for... why was he sweating already?
His thumb reached down for his belt unconsciously to take it off. Just as it reached the central knob, an alarm in his head went off, screaming at him that he would not be able to keep from falling off of the roof if he started jerking off now.
Clarity returned, allowing him to recognize the danger. A woman he found attractive was stuck in his head and he had absolutely no desire to remove her from it. He had no desire to take this woman to prison.
It didn't matter, though. He had done things he hadn't wanted to do before. That burden came with his chosen lifestyle.
Somber, Batman activated his detective vision again. Best if he could not see Ivy's body from the outside with all of her perfection. His fingers itched as he prepared to jump.
----
An inky blackness dropped to the ground on her right. Startled, Ivy flinched away from the blackness, preparing for an attack. He was early. Why did he always get there early?
All of her mind-controlled men closed in on the Batman slowly, circling him. He didn't move from his spot, neither turning his head to inspect the threat or speaking to communicate threats. In fact, the crouch that he resided in seemed to be totally motionless.
That was when she noticed that the inkiness of the Batman's form was not a result of him moving, but a reflection of the light at the edges that shimmered in the air. It was a hologram!
Just as Ivy opened her mouth to cry out in warning that this was not the Bat, one of the drones lunged at the hologram in some sort of unpracticed tackle attempt. The thing blurred and phased away as her hapless drone hit the floor face-first. The hologram recreated itself briefly before it buzzed with a sound of static. It flashed and disappeared a moment after reappearing.
An explosion of smoke erupted from the man who had tried attacking the hologram.
The ground beneath them seemed to lurch entirely in the next few moments as the range of the smoke expanded to a range of the whole block. In those few moments, the lights of Gotham Square dimmed with the billowing smoke. Fumes filled the air, making several of her men cough. Ivy ignored the smoke though, since she was too frozen to even breathe.
Grunts and sounds of striking impact unsettled the smoke, combining with shifting forms from the shifting flow of the air. It was happening again. Just like last time.
Ivy shook her head quickly as a few of her minions rushed past her to join the fight. Just like last time. It was a good thing. This would be just like last time. However, it would not end with anyone running in to save the Batman.
Clearly, her men were no match for the Dark Knight, but they weren't supposed to be. All they were meant to do were keep him occupied while Ivy assaulted him with the pheromones she had keyed to his specific neurons.
And that they did. While there really weren't any points during the shadowed fight behind the obfuscation where it looked like her men had the upper hand or perhaps the Batman was being beaten, her men proved their unilateral loyalty to her. Despite none of them being as a capable a fighter as their opponent, each time they got knocked down, they would get right back into the fight to defend their mistress. It took a good three minutes before Batman had all thirty of them unconscious.
Unfortunately for him, the smoke had long since cleared by that time.
He turned to face her, and she could immediately see the effects of her body on his. Whereas once he would immediately rush to take her down and cart her off, now he looked like he was trying to decide which way to take her down and how fast he could get her out of the blue dress.
Ivy didn't let him make a decision. She summoned plants from all directions to make a floral utopia around the two of them. A few plants dragged away the unconscious bodies of the drones the Bat had defeated. Others bloomed in vibrant colors; gifts from nature to arouse curiosity. A few vines creeped in toward her and began to remove her human made clothes, revealing the normal outfit of leaves she wore beneath, albeit larger to account for her changed body.
As she shed from her human garments, she raised the output of her pheromones to he maximum. While it would be wise to gradually do it so that Batman would associate the good feelings from a lower setting, she knew that this wouldn't even be the best she had without the voodoo potion, which was currently being carried by one of the larger flowers of the paradise she had created.
Batman growled slightly. Was that lust or hate?
Ivy made sure to leave an opening in her garden to allow the cowering meat-sacks with their recording devices to see. She needed witnesses for this so that she could break their spirits.
Wordlessly, Ivy shrugged off the "straps" of the leaf bra she wore. One by one, she plucked off each of the leaves that covered her more than bountiful bosom, teasing him by doing that slowly rather than willing them all off. Batman raised an arm toward her hesitantly, but he put it back down after she gave him a sly shake of her head. She didn't know whether he was trying to stop her from undressing, going to help her take it off, or do something to shield his eyes, but the fact that he would do as she ordered in putting his hand down meant something.
Poison Ivy stopped plucking the leaves when the only ones left were those that covered her nipples. They were already hard underneath the leaves, making it a puzzle to determine from the outside what was part of the breast or what was simply a stem of a oak leaf.
"Take a deep breath, Batman," she ordered huskily. Without his artificial countermeasures against her biological weapons, he would be powerless to resist her commands.
He complied quickly, drawing in breath through his mouth. The pheromones wouldn't filter out of system without the core specific antidote. That was why her minions remained loyal to her forever without treatment from the Batman.
She gestured with a finger in a manner that displayed "Come to me" without preamble or any room for disobedience. Batman approached her quietly, a black swath through her garden. Each plant he stepped on immediately sprang back up with Ivy's mental support.
She made him stop with another light gesture of her hand when he reached an arm's length from her. Batman looked at down at her with an obvious expression of distress. He started shaking.
"Shhhh," Ivy soothed, stepping forward and rubbing his arms. He stilled at the touch, but was still clearly conflicted. "Don't be afraid, Batman." She pushed her hips forward slowly, pressing her thighs against his and almost straddling him. "Don't be afraid."
He whimpered. Ivy nearly laughed at him.
She leaned up and gripped his shoulders for stability. "I'll take care of you," she breathed. "Just one kiss."
As she leaned in, the Batman suddenly bolted and jutted his forehead into hers. Ivy screamed, feeling sharp pain from the hard surface of his mask. When she removed her hands from his arms to reflexively place them over the area of her pain, he grabbed one of her arms by the wrist and yanked it up high above her, throwing her off balance when he threw a shoulder into her chest to floor her. He moved quietly again, stepping back as she fell down. It was a trick!
It all happened in an instant, but exactly like the last time they had encountered, she found herself in handcuffs. He had cuffed her hands on top of her chest and exploded a small charge next to her. It must have contained whatever he had used last time to paralyze her, because she found herself unable to move or call for assistance from her plants.
After that, Batman, against all of the sense she had learned to associate with him over the years, slumped and sat down on the grass. He wasn't looking at her, instead staring off into the distance. He sighed, letting out his breath. He even smelled tired, if that was even possible.
"I don't know what to do with you," Batman said, lacking the usual darkness and gruffness to his tone. "I can't put you back in Arkham; not only would you probably take control of the guards with your pheromones, but you clearly know my identity." He sighed again.
Ivy strained to speak back to him, but she didn't have the energy. All she wanted to do was remain lying down in that field and drift off. Don't... give.... That voice in her head was nowhere near as loud as the buzzing that encouraged her to sleep.
"You also have Robin. I'll need to do something about that. I don't know what, though." He looked at her still form. "Make you release him. Can you do that? I think you know how." Scoffing, Batman shook his head and looked down again.
His eyes, her mind picked out. Those aren't his eyes. The Batman's eyes were white slits without pupils or irises. No wonder that he had been able to resist her; he hadn't been able to fully appreciate her beauty. She needed him to take a look at her with his eyes, and he would surely fall victim long enough for her to kiss him.
There was a problem with that, though: she had absolutely no idea how to remove those white slits. She needed him to remove them himself, but he wouldn't do that while resisting the after-effects of the pheromones.
Perhaps... perhaps he hadn't specifically trained himself to resist removing those lenses at another person's request. Maybe if she could spray him with the voodoo potion, she could get him to remove them.
Keep him talking... A whisper from her mind. Using all of her energy, she scratched her palms with her nails. The pain roused her and she felt more alert. "I can..." Ivy coughed. "I can help Tim."
Batman turned to her sharply. "Help?" he demanded. "You ruined him, turning him into your puppet. All you're going to do is release him from your control."
She could feel her plants calling out to her. Almost got it. "You don't understand. I'm saving him."
"Saving him?" the Dark Knight echoed. "How?"
"From mankind's disease. He isn't like the others. He's special."
"I don't care what you think," Batman- the real Batman- retorted. "You're letting him go either way. Batgirl too."
"You know she took you, right?" Ivy asked, changing the subject to buy time. "It was her who fucked you last time we met."
He frowned. "Someone fucked me that night?"
"Not just anyone. One of your friends took advantage of you and raped you!" Ivy reached out for her plants in her mind.
Batman sighed, losing his gruffness again. "I believe you, actually. I bet that experience programmed my subconscious to be extremely sensitive to my friends and fuck them when they get emotional. I can't believe I never noticed it before, though. She-"
Ivy tuned out his sodden voice; he truly was broken, and she was proud to have done it, but Ivy needed her full concentration on the plants.
Like a quivering finger against biting cold, Ivy found the end of a vine near the edge of the garden. Smiling internally, she used the vine to slither across the grass to one of the large flowers. Expanding her control, Ivy concentrated on the flower and had it open just in time for the vine's arrival. The vine grabbed the spray bottle inside, then began to slither back across the grass to her.
Batman had stood up but he had not stopped talking; he was actually begging her for an answer as to why she had done all of this. That suited her purposes just fine, as long as he distracted himself.
The vine stopped just behind Batman. Ivy summoned another vine from nearby- she was getting stronger and more able to control her plants- to unscrew the bottle and expose its contents to the air. At the same time, Ivy sprouted a small flower just beneath the bottle, placing the bottom of the bottle on its strengthened petals.
With her direct attention on that flower, Ivy manipulated the plant's voluntary photosynthesis process. She forced it to forgo the need for sunlight and increased its intake for oxygen. The result was a failure to support itself with necessary nutrients, leading to raise its own core temperature to sustain its own life force.
The heat made the voodoo potion inside the open spray bottle boil silently. Ivy shifted the flower forward underneath the Batman's body so that the gas would flow directly up into his face. The gas was colorless, but there wasn't any wind in Gotham Square to move the gas in any direction but up.
Ivy knew that the bottle was empty when it fell from the flower. She had her vines catch it before it could hit the ground and had all of her plants retract to where they had been prior to her being attack.
She smiled.
"I don't know what you think is so funny, but I can guarantee you that wherever you end up, sunlight will be totally out of the question," Batman threatened. Oh. He had recovered from his bout of despair before. "You'll be buried so deep that you won't so much as feel the roots of any tree ever again."
"Oh, that's fine, Batman," Ivy said weakly. She wasn't as weak as she feigned- in fact, she had already recovered- but letting him know that would be a mistake. "You should tell me why it is that you can't see me with your eyes."
"My detective vision," he answered, "capable of reading heat signatures, heart rates and bone structure, detecting oddities in a being or area, locating prints that are not primarily visible, determining possible causes of-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Ivy interrupted. "I'm sure it's cool." She prayed that Batman hadn't specifically trained himself to resist commands from his foes regarding his detective vision. "Turn if off."
He didn't even hesitate to reach up to his cowl and press against it. The white slits of his eyes flipped up and revealed his glassy blue eyes.
They widened instantly, showing true fear. She loved it.
His hand immediately shot back up to reactivate his detective vision. "Don't turn it back on."
His arm wavered, almost touching his cowl again but instead opting to flop back to his side. Good. She needed another command that he wouldn't have specifically trained against.
Smiling even wider, she moved her handcuffed arms off of her chest and put them over her head. "Look at my breasts, Batman."
His head turned to take in the sight of Ivy's breasts with wide eyes.
"Take the leaves off of my breasts," she ordered, wiggling to the side to look more enticing.
The Dark Knight bent over and picked the leaves off of her breasts with shaking hands. When they were all gone, she ordered him to take her tits and separate them. He grabbed two lumps of breast flesh from mounds larger than his fists, opening up her cleavage and finding a miniature tube hidden there. His hands were much firmer now, perhaps meaning he was coming to accept his desire for her.
"Take my lipstick and paint my lips with them." She remembered from their last encounter that he wouldn't be able to fully resist that simple command. She hadn't planned for this to happen, but she had put the lipstick there in case of the blue dress not being enough to woo him.
He grabbed the lipstick and his hands immediately began shaking again. Ivy clicked her tongue; so much for this being easy. She repeated her order, and he finally complied, applying the red lipstick generously. When he completed, he immediately moved to stand and attempt to escape.
"Freeze," Ivy hastily said. He did, ceasing motion in a crouch. Pursing her lips, Ivy sat up and inspected his lower body. There was already an erection down there, but she didn't dare make a move for it. She wanted him to give up willingly.
She stood up and rounded around him to his front. "Kiss me," she said, testing his reaction.
"No," Batman denied, standing up straight. "I'll never-"
"Freeze," Ivy said again. He did, and she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, imprinting the lipstick on his skin. He didn't react as she began to kiss him repeatedly on the cheek, still under orders to remain motionless. When all of her lipstick was on his skin, she pulled back. "Kiss me."
"No," he replied in a shuddering voice. "I... I can't."
"Put more lipstick on me, Batman." He could not resist the voodoo potion, moving quickly to paint her lips again with the red tube.
When he was done, she leaned up again and kissed his other cheek, peppering the rest of his face with red marks. He was moving, as she hadn't told him to freeze this time, but his movements were shivering moans and his back arching in ecstasy. During the kissing, Ivy summoned a few of her vines in the garden and had them break her handcuffs.
She pulled back. "Kiss me."
"Please..." Batman begged.
"More lipstick." He opened the tube and added more red to her lips. His face was a mess.
She leaned up once more and began placing more kisses on his chin, cheeks, and every other part of his face not covered by his mask without touching his lips. He reacted even further here, placing his hands on her hips and stroking her body. She let him do it until she was done with the lipstick.
She leaned back and looked at his face.
Batman's eyes were glazed over. Shaking one last time before his will broke, Batman dropped to his knees. Ivy wiped the redness from his face as best as she could; the lipstick would not be visible anymore, but its mind-altering effect would remain. She grabbed the sides of his head and exhaled a hot, sultry breath onto him. "Kiss me."
Batman mumbled "Vengeance" before leaning forward and planting his lips on hers, giving himself over to her.