Without bothering to wait for Batman's response, Shiller cut straight to the chase and said to Stark, "Nick told me a while ago that he wanted me to be a S.H.I.E.L.D Agent instructor. He told me this before you guys insisted I get medical treatment at the hospital."
"Don't expect us to care about who said what first!" Stark cut off all of Shiller's explanations as soon as he opened his mouth. "There's no door, no door at all! Just like Connors said, you need to make sure that your brainwave abnormalities have been eliminated..."
"Alright, but I don't want to stay in the hospital."
"Where do you want to go then?"
"What about the Stark Building?" Shiller met Stark's gaze as he proposed.
Stark was taken aback, and suddenly his guarded, unaffected demeanor was gone. He stammered, "What do you want to do at the Stark Building? Didn't you hate it when I made you change light bulbs?"
"I heard that your latest experimental battle armor has made some breakthroughs. I'd like to see it, what do you think?"
Shiller noted the hesitation on Stark's face, then decided to stoke the fire a bit more. "I just turned down an offer to recover at Karmatiji, you know."
"Fine, I'll go organize the discharge."
"Tony Stark!!" Strange glared at Stark as though he was a traitor. As Stark headed for the door, he made a silly face at Strange. His brisk footsteps betrayed his equally buoyant mood.
"Easy to please, like a dog, right?" Shiller watched Stark's departing figure and mused to himself.
"Are you talking about yourself?"
With his knack for using rhetorical questions to state the obvious, Batman didn't wait for Shiller to reply, saying, "You're not just playing along—you're genuinely pleased to get your way."
"Shut up," Shiller retorted, clearly not in the mood to banter.
Stark soon returned and had summoned a specialized Stark Group shuttle. Shiller wasted no time and climbed aboard the private air transport after opening the window.
The shuttle swiftly cut through the New York sky, and Batman surveyed the city below through Shiller's eyes. Just as Shiller was about to ask Batman if he was curious about it, Batman stated:
"It looks a bit like a blend of Gotham and Metropolis, chaotic yet orderly, dark yet radiating with light, modern yet classic, advanced yet behind. It's a contradictory kind of beauty."
"Batman, do you know?" Shiller felt Greed's presence in the theater again, and as he rested in his shuttle seat with his eyes closed, he turned to Batman. "Perhaps in the future, whenever I tell people about your prophetic abilities...do you really not have them?"
"It's not intuition," Batman shook his head. "I'm lacking in sudden flashes of inspiration, or better yet, I've traded that ability for superior foresight."
"Before I came here, I had already asked Arrogant what I would be seeing. He gave me a brief rundown of your achievements."
"So you're saying, he turned an exciting journey into a boring sightseeing tour?" Greed's lips curled into an exaggerated disparaging sneer. "That's so like him, the old-timer."
"No, what he conveyed is far less than what I've seen with my own eyes. This journey still has many more surprises to offer."
"Beep, beep, beep!"
The shuttle's arrival notification startled Shiller awake from his nap. He took a deep breath, stood up, and made his way to the window overlooking the Stark Building.
He then realized that Batman might indeed have a prophetic sense. The moment Shiller set foot on the ground, "swish", a piece of battle armor whirred past his scalp. Right after that, there was a "thud": Stark, at the other end of the room, was knocked flat on the ground.
Iron Man, with only one arm armor on, got up dizzy from the floor. He sucked in a breath, swearing: "You fucking rebel! When will you ever listen to me?"
Speechless, Shiller stood by the window, watching Stark wipe blood off his nose and limp toward his armor display stand, putting up the piece that flew by.
"A major breakthrough in materials science?" Shiller mocked.
"Partially." Stark answered: "What I want is not just an advancement in materials science. I'm studying a real intelligent armor, not the kind controlled by Jarvis, but one that becomes a part of me, directly controlled by my thoughts, kind of like a neurological connection without physical contact."
Stark took off the arm armor and carefully placed it back on the display stand, and then walked over to the experimental table, picking up the design blueprint and began working on it in front of the armor display stand.
He seemed completely unfazed by Shiller not understanding these technological creations, and just continued murmuring while scribbling on his design blueprint:
"I know it sounds incredible, how could nerves be connected from a distance? But I found that the bioelectricity emitted by the human brain when it controls nerves is actually extremely regular."
"If I add a 'nerve' to my battle armor - not a human's nerve, but something stronger and more reliable - and then use the regular frequency of the emission to control the 'nerves' within the metal, I can have a suit of armor that truly understands my intentions..."
"This will solve the conundrum of transferring commands still needing inputs from other intelligent beings no matter how much I develop my A. I. I know Jarvis calculates very fast, but he's no longer with me, he's become a real life form, not my slave. I have to learn to be independent, and so should my battle armor."
"So, this time, did you crash into a truck?" Shiller intentionally stirred the pot again, seeing that Stark's armor on the display stand had some collision marks, even though they didn't appear to come from a truck crash.
"It's not important, the key to this technology is not strength." Stark stubbornly denied.
As Batman observed these peculiar-looking pieces of metal through Shiller's vision, suddenly, a furor arose from the window.
A man with black hair wearing a black robe, golden cape, and a horned crown strutted in from the shuttle exit. As he walked, he orated:
"Tony Stark, we really need to have a talk! Nick called me to say that you've stolen Shiller away. Don't you know? S.H.I.E.L.D. is desperately short of agents now, you can't hinder Shiller from teaching the agents..."
Stark sized up the beaming Loki, wore a sardonic, insincere smile, and then suddenly swivelled his gaze behind Loki, "What's that?"
"Don't play these childish tricks with me!" Loki huffed indignantly.
"Bang!"
The piece of armor that hit Loki in the back of his head made a smooth arc in the air before returning to Stark's arm.
Stark walked over to Loki who was now prone on the floor, "So, who's being immature now?"
Loki on the ground slowly clenched his fists while Batman and Shiller stood together.
"Who's this guy?"
"Such a weak god."