Chapter 5 - Evening Snack

In a particular street of Tokyo, if one listened closely, they could hear a slightly audible zipping sound from above.

Jason stashed the grappling gun in the ring and grabbed onto the building's edge, his fingers slipping against the rough brick surface, and with a powerful yank, he launched himself into the air before landing on the roof of the three stories tall building with a muffled thud. Two plastic bags filled with food and water bottles hung from his other hand.

The crescent moon hung low in the sky, casting a gentle glow on the roof of the building, and a whisper of wind caressed his hair. The roof was mostly empty, having around one meter tall walls covering the edges. A door to his right lead to the lower floor, and plant pots were scattered in groups of three along the outer edges of the roof.

He set his bags down on one side of the roof, taking out a couple of granola bars and unwrapping one of them. Sitting down with his back on the wall, he bit half of it off in one bite.

[Ahh, the moon…] Wheatley sighed in content. [You know… that was where Joe picked me up from.]

'That's an interesting piece of information,' Jason thought

"Oh? How'd you end up on the surface of the moon? Were you a part of a space station or a moon base?" asked Jason as he stared at the moon. He found its soft light calming.

[Ooh…] Wheatley let out a shuddering hiss, as if he was struggling to contain a painful memory. [Um, I don't really want to delve into how I got there, but I'll give you the summarised version. Basically, an old *friend* of mine accidentally opened a portal on the moon, and *coincidentally*, that portal was also connected to a portal on Earth. And because of that, I got sucked into the portal because of the vacuum on the moon. And after that, I just… floated in space. Aimlessly. With some other robot companions. One of them was quite annoying because he kept saying the same thing over and over again, but I digress.]

"And what about when Joe picked you up?" Jason asked. Maybe Wheatley's experience could give him more insight on what Joe was capable of.

[When Joe picked me up? Well… it's quite the story.] Wheatley said. [There I was, stranded in space for who knows how long. Pieces of metal floated around me with a robot that kept saying "space" every five seconds, and suddenly, I see a bright flash of blue light — it was the brightest thing I had ever seen — and when the light disappeared, Joe stood there in all his bald glory. As I wondered how a human can talk and survive in outer space, he introduced himself as this god-like being and asked me if I would like to work for him forever in exchange of a bunch of stuff, and most of them benefitted me. The best one, in my opinion, was the fact that I'd have something else to do aside from just floating in space with only my own thoughts to accompany me. So, at that point, it didn't really take that much thought for me to make a decision.]

'That's it?' He expected more.

[W-well, yeah. That's pretty much it. And now here we are! With me inside your head, or body, or is it your mind? I'm not too sure which one is correct, but one thing I *am* sure about is that I'm glad to be working with you.]

'Right…' Jason replied with uncertainty. 'We're in the same boat now, Wheatley. At least we have someone to talk to.'

[I completely agree with you. All I had for a conversation partner in that void was that robot I mentioned before. Trust me, you do *not* want to be stuck in space with him.]

'I'll take your word for it. So can you tell me what functions you have?'

[Of course. My functions include language analysis and translation, material fabrication and assembly, holo — you know what? Why don't I just download it into your mind? That'll be a lot quicker than me listing it off one by one.]

Jason's eyes glazed over as a barrage of information entered his mind in a sudden rush, clouding it for a moment. Seconds later, Jason shook his head as his mind started to clear up.

'Damn. Okay, you have some pretty useful functions.' Jason held his chin in thought. 'Wheatley, activate External Deployment.'

[Ooh, I like that one. Okay, activating now.]

According to the information Wheatley downloaded into his mind, External Deployment was a function that allowed Wheatley to take shape outside of his soul, and in front of his eyes, Wheatley came into existence. At first glance, Wheatley seemed unremarkable. He floated above the ground and was a small, round, metal sphere about the size of a bowling ball, with a pale blue and white color scheme, and two handles, one above and below his eye.

[Hello! Wow, it's great to be out in the world again] Wheatley said, his single eye looking around the roof before locking onto the moon. But it baffled Jason how Wheatley's one eye could convey more emotions than Jason thought possible for a robot. [Ah, there it is. The moon. The cause of my downfa — I mean, the home of my friend. It really is quite lovely though. Up there in space, all I could see were the moon's craters. But down here, the moon is quite the sight to behold. Absolutely marvelous.]

Jason wiped his hands off and threw the last protein bar into the bag before gulping down the water from the remaining water bottle. As he stood up from the ground, the bag filled with garbage disappeared from his hands and into the ring.

"Do you mind getting back on track? I still want to see some of the other functions you have."

Wheatley looked back at Jason with slight embarrassment. [Right, right. Sorry about that. I was just taking it all in for a moment. Which function do you wanna try?]

"Display a hologram of Gotham City along with all the underground tunnels and passageways."

Jason wanted to see how accurate Wheatley's hologram function would be. He assumed Wheatley would already have his memories in order to better assist him.

[3-dimensional hologram of Gotham City, coming right up.] Wheatley's blue eye glowed and emitted a cone of blue light that immediately formed a flat plane. Structures in the shape of buildings, roads, stores, and more emerged from the plane which acted as the barrier that separated what was above and below ground.

It was a hologram the size of a small table, and it was seemingly perfectly accurate in every aspect. Jason circled the hologram, checking every detail he could, and he could find no errors. It was a model of the city based on his memory and knowledge, and he had lived in Gotham for most of his life. He was confident in the knowledge of Gotham City he had attained after all this time. Of course, there might be secret areas he wasn't aware of, but he's completely assured of himself that aside from maybe the Court of Owls, League of Shadows, and some others who worked with or under Batman, no one knew the city better than him.

"Thank you. You can turn it off now."

Wheatley nodded, and the light retracted back into his eye.

"This time, let's try out your audio recording feature. Record this and play it back. 91939."

[Got it.] Wheatley nodded. ["91939."] Wheatley echoed his recording with perfect clarity.

Jason crossed his arms in thought.

"Huh… I can think of situations this could be useful in, but the function itself is very circumstantial. Alright, that's enough testing for now, Wheatley. We'll continue next time, so return to your normal state. We're going back to the store."

[Aww. Can I stay out just a bit longer? Pretty please? I wanna see what human civilization is like. Where I used to operate, only one human was alive. Everyone else was killed by the maniacal robot that lorded over everyone.]

"… Fine." Jason leaned over the wall. "Activate Stealth Mode and follow me."

[Roger that!] Wheatley activated Stealth Mode and turned invisible.

Seeing that Wheatley complied immediately, Jason crouched and launched himself off of the roof.

-===-

A few minutes later, Jason stood on top of a building next to the closed convenience store building with his WayneTech tablet in hand. He could sense Wheatley floating around the area, sight-seeing. His fingers danced across the screen with extraordinary dexterity as he deleted the footage stored inside the cameras and the tablet the old man used as the main storage device and to view the girls in the store. Simultaneously, Jason reprogrammed the main storage device's software so that any recorded footage was deleted seconds later.

The sick bastard already had weeks' worth of footage saved. There were multiple cameras set up in the "employee only" rooms, including the locker room, where the cameras recorded footage of the girls in their underwear as they were changing. The evidence here was more than enough to put him in jail and then some.

His mind went back to what Wheatley said about Anomalies in this world. **** was bad enough, but Stockholm Syndrome on steroids? It made Jason wonder if he should focus on finding more Anomalies similar to this one before eliminating them in order to at least keep track of the things he should look out for.

But his question was, what would cause such an Anomaly?

[That's why we're going to investigate it. Joe told me that there are a lot of similar Earth's to this one in that they have Anomalies as well. Although most of them aren't as bad. Some of the worst are the ones that give birth to Demons, Monsters, Zombies, Malevolent Gods… It's really quite a lot.]

"Malevolent Gods? Those are way above my pay grade," Jason muttered. "Alright, this is almost done. I'll go to where that old man lives and take him out after this. I've already pinged his phone's signal. He won't be able to hide anywhere unless he turns his phone off or if it's dead, but even if that happens, I can just track his phone's current or last known location based on its GPS data and search the area."

Moments later, the reprogramming finished and Jason stored the tablet in the ring. He front flipped onto the next building's roof with extraordinary finesse and grace, landing without a sound. Was it just him or did he always have this habit of using acrobatics unnecessarily? He was definitely far better at it and enjoyed doing it more than before as well.

Jason realized the implications of that and slightly frowned as he realized the soul merging might have affected him more than Joe thought.

Jason shook his head clear. "Enough distractions. Let's go."

[Wait! Don't leave me behind!]

Slowing down to let Wheatley catch up, Jason brought out the WayneTech phone and sprinted off, jumping from roof to roof with little to no sound from his movements.