Poison Ivy Was a Plant Too

"Is that all you've got? What a disappointment."

A few minutes later, Jack surveyed the wreckage strewn all around him and shrugged in boredom.

At first, after seeing the extraordinary powers Poison Ivy unleashed, he had held high expectations, eager for a blood-pumping, brutally bloody fight against a different species.

But once they actually fought, he discovered that aside from releasing a few vines to bind him, she apparently couldn't do anything else.

Even the vines she produced were pathetically weak. All they accomplished was dirtying his clothes.

What a disappointment. And here I thought she had something up her sleeve, so I'd been holding back this whole time.

"You've got to be kidding me, you bastard..."

Unlike Jack, whose disappointed expression made him look like he'd been duped by misleading cover art, Poison Ivy was practically exploding with anxiety.

She had assumed he was just an ordinary hulking idiot, so she hadn't even bothered putting on an act, figuring a direct attack would do the trick.

The moment they started fighting, however, she discovered that he was a monster. Even a casually thrown punch was more terrifying than a cannonball, while her own moves had absolutely no effect on him.

Upon realizing the enormous gap in their strength, Poison Ivy had immediately wanted to flee. But God only knew how someone so huge could be so agile. He hadn't given her even the slightest chance to escape.

If this went on, in a few minutes she'd probably be beaten into a meat... uh, vegetable patty!

"Wait! Stop fighting! I surrender! I surrender, okay? Whatever you want to know, I'll tell you!"

With no options left, Poison Ivy could only grit her teeth and surrender. The Maroni Family's payment was generous, but if she didn't give up now, she might lose her life right here!

Upon hearing Poison Ivy's declaration of surrender, Jack immediately... threw another punch without paying her the slightest attention.

The strong had always decided when a fight ended. She thought she could surrender just because she said so? Nothing in this world was that easy.

BOOM!!!

His enormous fist swept forward with a gale behind it, easily punching through the concrete wall behind Poison Ivy. Had she not reacted quickly enough to dodge it by a hair, the consequences would have been unimaginable.

"Damn it, you asked for this!"

Seeing that he had effectively ripped out her surrender button, Poison Ivy turned vicious, driven into a corner.

"Hah!"

In an instant, she mustered what little strength she had left and summoned a mass of vines to bind Jack.

The interfering vines actually managed to stop Jack's movements for the briefest moment.

Seizing that opening, she immediately adjusted the hormones inside her body, rushed to Jack's side at unprecedented speed, and drove a poison thorn into his calf.

"I did it!"

Poison Ivy smiled triumphantly at the tiny wound, which had taken on a faint bluish tinge.

Ever since transforming from a shy, ignorant schoolgirl into Poison Ivy, she had gained not only the power to control plants, but also immunity to every poison and the ability to regulate hormones. It was that ability that had allowed her to create an exceptionally terrifying psychotoxin.

Upon discovering that brute force alone couldn't handle Jack, she had actually tried using a neurotoxin against him right away.

The problem was that this monster was too powerful. Before the toxins she released from a distance could reach him, the air currents stirred up by his movements blew them away.

With no other options, she could only risk everything to get close. Fortunately, she had succeeded.

"Hmph. To deal with you, I secreted several times my usual amount of toxin. You..."

Bam!

Before she could finish, Jack slammed a downward punch into her chin, sending her spinning a full thirty-six hundred degrees through the air. After spending a while impersonating a human Ferris wheel, she crashed heavily to the ground and lost consciousness completely.

"What was she mumbling about?"

Seeing Poison Ivy's expression change, Jack had thought she was about to unleash some ultimate move. He had even deliberately stopped to wait, only for her to poke him with a needle?

Was there something wrong with her head?

That said, Jack glanced down at his calf and felt the faint sting coming from it.

She seemed to have coated the thorn with something. Poison? Or some kind of anesthetic?

Whatever. A laughably small dose like that wouldn't do anything to me anyway.

He casually tore off the remaining vines and looked at Poison Ivy, who lay on the ground breathing out more than she breathed in, wondering what to do with her.

"Maybe... take her back to the shop?"

"So that's why you came over to mooch dinner off me tonight?"

Zuo Ci looked at the heap of Poison Ivy on the floor, then at Jack standing off to one side slurping noodles from a pot. Suddenly, he had no idea what to say.

He didn't mind Jack mooching a meal. Even if Jack ate his fill, it wouldn't cost much. What really tested his composure was the fact that Jack had run into Poison Ivy less than a day after arriving.

He had encountered Joker causing trouble as soon as he arrived in Gotham, and Jack had been targeted by Poison Ivy as soon as he arrived. What kind of luck was that?

Was collective bad luck their company culture or something?

"So what are you going to do with her?"

After gulping down several kilograms of instant noodles from the pot as though drinking water, Jack asked with some curiosity.

Although he had already taken the job, Zuo Ci still struck him as mysterious. He wanted to use this opportunity to learn more about his boss.

"What am I going to do? What else can I do? Send her to the police station, of course. It's not like I can stick her in the ground like a potted plant.

"Sure, that would technically work, but it'd be a little too weird."

Jack couldn't help feeling disappointed by that answer. He had thought Zuo Ci might have some other way of handling her, but he was just handing her over to the cops.

Then again, she could actually be used as a potted plant?

This other world was just too weird.

"But before I send her to the police station, I need to ask her a few things. Find out why she targeted you. It can't be because you're so big you interfere with the plants' photosynthesis."

As he spoke, Zuo Ci lowered his gaze to Poison Ivy.

Judging by her current appearance, the bones in her face were probably shattered beyond recognition, and her spine had suffered considerable damage too. The once-pretty villainess could now practically be described as a puddle.

Only Poison Ivy's far stronger constitution had kept her alive. An ordinary person would already have been done for after a hit like that.

"She's not going to be easy to treat in this state. Let me see..."

After searching the Shop, Zuo Ci bought two bags of Dave's fertilizer.

Everyone knew Poison Ivy could photosynthesize. Didn't that mean she was, in a sense, a vegetable?

With that thought, Zuo Ci tore open a bag of fertilizer and sprinkled it straight onto her head.

Feeling that might not be potent enough, Zuo Ci even pried open her mouth and poured it directly inside.

Fertilizer could save people?

Watching Zuo Ci's excessively rough methods, Jack's expression shifted slightly.

Having grown up on the streets, he knew quite a few doctors who flouted convention. Yet even Gao Hongye didn't use such outrageous methods to save people.

He now seriously suspected that his boss wasn't trying to save her at all, but was simply using treatment as an excuse to abuse her.

Yet after Zuo Ci emptied a bag of fertilizer onto her, the previously dying Poison Ivy's body instantly sprang to life. Her twisted body and shattered bones began rapidly repairing themselves, and her condition visibly improved.

Even her skin turned noticeably greener.

It actually worked?

For a moment, Jack even considered stocking up on a couple of bags of fertilizer.