Chapter 60: Money Makes the World Go Round

“So...” Nightwing glanced between Ivy and Mattheus. “When can I arrest her? I have stuff to do.”

Instead of sitting like a normal person, Nightwing had one foot planted on the seat while balancing on the other leg, looking very comfortable in a position that would send most people crashing to the floor.

Earlier, Nightwing had played along and entertained the kids at the party for half an hour, doing pirouettes and tricks, before following Mattheus and Ivy back to Crossroads. Junior had been delighted, but the rest of the party had stayed painfully tense until Ivy, Mattheus and Nightwing finally left.

“Does he have to be here?” Ivy asked.

“Hey,” Nightwing protested. “You’re the one who nearly turned Robinson Park into Sequoia National Park 2.0.”

“It was one ash tree, not a forest,” Ivy shot back. “I restored it to its original size, repaired the damage, and no one died.” 

“There was lots of public property damage, three people were injured, and I’m pretty sure the city will have to replace every pipe beneath that section of the park.”

Ivy gave him a flat look.

Mattheus finished the drinks before the argument could get any further. He placed a cocktail in front of Nightwing (one without alcohol), another before Ivy, and kept the third for himself.

“I have an important question before we start.”

Ivy looked down at the green drink, then at him.

“What?”

“Do you want to save nature, or do you want to punish humanity?”

She went still.

“Save nature,” Nightwing answered for her.

Ivy’s head snapped towards him.

Nightwing shrugged and reached for his drink without leaving his strange perch. 

He took a cautious sip. “Oh. That’s pretty good.”

“Thanks,” Mattheus said. “But I was not asking you.” 

“She was taking too long.”

Ivy glared at Nightwing, and he took another drink, unbothered by it. 

“Back in the day, the answer would’ve been punishing humanity. These days, she’s mellowed out.”

Ivy bristled. “I have not mellowed out.” 

“A few years ago, when I was still Robin, sitting in a pub and having a drink with you would’ve sounded like a fever dream.” Nightwing raised his glass. “And yet, here we are.”

“I could still kill you.”

“But you won’t.”

Nightwing smiled at her over the rim of his glass.

Mattheus took a slow drink from his own cocktail, he could already tell this was going to take a while.

“Anyway,” he said. “My first idea was politics.”

“No,” Ivy said without hesitation. 

“Absolutely not,” Nightwing agreed.

Mattheus looked between them.

“That was fast.”

“Ives hates politicians,” Nightwing said. “And she doesn’t have the patience for politics.”

“I have more than enough patience,” Ivy replied coldly. “But I would rather choke on my own vines than become another bought-and-paid-for parasite.”

Her attention returned to Mattheus.

“If that was your brilliant plan for saving nature, this conversation will be very short.”

The dangerous look in her eyes made Mattheus raise both hands.

“I have better ideas.”

She clicked her tongue. “You better.” 

Politics had been the weakest idea, more of an icebreaker. At the end of the day, one politician could not transform the system. Even if Ivy became president and miraculously forced every environmental policy she wanted through Congress, the United States was only one country among hundreds.

Pollution and environmental destruction did not stop at national borders: rivers flowed between countries, smoke crossed continents, and plastic dumped into the sea could wash ashore on the other side of the world.

Ivy needed something that would allow her to influence multiple countries without depending on elections, political parties or voters.

“My second idea is a corporation.”

Ivy’s stare became colder.

“Your second idea is for me to become one of the people destroying the planet?”

“Hear me out.”

“No corporation has ever said that before presenting something horrifying,” Nightwing commented.

Mattheus gave him a flat look.

Your dad owns a corp, dude.

Nightwing raised his glass and drank.

“Before you became Poison Ivy, you were Doctor Pamela Isley. A renowned botanist and biochemist.”

“I remain both of those things.”

“Exactly.” Mattheus nodded. “You’re one of the smartest people in the world when it comes to plants, and now you can control them. Combine your scientific knowledge with your powers, and you could do things that would take other researchers decades.”

Ivy’s expression lost some of its hostility.

Mattheus continued.

“Crops that require less water, plants resistant to disease without needing pesticides, food that grows in damaged or depleted soil, crops adapted to extreme heat, floods or sudden changes in weather.”

He counted the possibilities on his fingers.

“You could increase food production, reduce water use and make farming less destructive. You could revolutionise agriculture.”

“And make a fortune,” Nightwing added.

“That too.”

Ivy’s expression soured again.

“Why would I want money?”

A grin began to creep across Mattheus’s face. 

“Because the scariest superhero in the world has one power that makes him more dangerous than Superman or Wonder Woman.”

Nightwing leaned forward, and Ivy did the same without seeming to realise it. Mattheus let the silence stretch for a second.

“Money.”

Nightwing nearly slipped off the stool, and Ivy’s expectant expression went flat. 

“That is your answer?”

“I’m serious.”

“Batman’s intelligence, training and paranoia might have something to do with it,” Nightwing said.

“He is smart, yes, but so are plenty of other people. What makes Batman truly dangerous is that he has almost unlimited resources.”

Mattheus gestured towards Nightwing.

“Armour, vehicles, computers, safe houses, medical equipment, laboratories and whatever else he needs. If there’s a problem he cannot solve, he can hire people, fund research or build something that can.”

Nightwing opened his mouth.

Mattheus pointed at him.

“And before you tell me Batman builds everything himself, I refuse to believe he spends his nights punching criminals and his days personally manufacturing every grappling hook you people leave stuck on rooftops.”

Nightwing closed his mouth.

“Money makes the world go round,” Mattheus continued. “It pays for research, equipment, workers and access. If you want to change the entire planet, you’ll need a lot of it.”

“I could simply take what I require.”

“And spend the rest of your life fighting superheroes, governments and every corporation you robbed.”

Ivy fell silent.

“A successful company would give you money, laboratories, employees and influence,” Mattheus said. “Which leads to the second part of the idea: an environmental foundation.”

Nightwing glanced at Ivy.

This time, she did not interrupt.

“With your money and your powers, you could build the largest environmental organisation in the world,” Mattheus said. “And with your powers and your smarts, you could create fungi that remove pollutants from soil, plants that absorb industrial chemicals, restore wetlands, regrow forests and build living barriers against desertification.”

The more he thought about it, the more possibilities came to mind.

Ivy could restore in months or less what would normally take decades. A forest destroyed by a wildfire could rise again before the ash settled. Wetlands drained for construction could be rebuilt. Rivers poisoned by factories could be cleaned by plants designed specifically to absorb whatever chemicals had contaminated them.

“And because the foundation would be legal,” Mattheus added, “you could work openly. Governments would invite you into their countries instead of sending soldiers and superheroes after you.”

Ivy ran one finger around the rim of her glass.

“And when those governments refuse?”

“Some will.”

“Most will,” she corrected.

“Then you start with the ones that don’t.”

Her mouth tightened.

“Right now, every time you try to protect a forest, people focus on the bodies and destruction. Nobody talks about the forest afterwards. If you save one legally, restore the land around it and employ thousands of people while doing it, they’ll have a much harder time making you the villain.”

“They will still try.”

“Probably.” He admitted. 

Nightwing nodded. “Definitely.”

Mattheus ignored him.

“But results are difficult to argue with.”

Ivy’s skepticism remained, but something in her expression told him to keep going. 

“And now we return to politics.”

“No.”

She pushed her drink aside.

Mattheus raised one hand before she could stand.

“You wouldn’t become a politician.”

Ivy stopped.

“That part was admittedly the weakest idea,” he said. “More of an opener, really.”

Nightwing snorted.

“The point is that you wouldn’t need to become one. You would be the person standing behind them.”

That got her interest. 

“Political campaigns need money,” Mattheus continued. “Corporations already spend fortunes supporting candidates and pushing laws that benefit them. They pay lobbyists, fund campaigns and make sure politicians remember exactly who helped put them in office.”

“Legal bribery,” Ivy said.

“Pretty much.”

“And you want me to become one of them.”

“I want you to become the reason environmental interests can fight back.”

Mattheus leaned against the counter.

“A major corporation developing new agricultural technology would already have influence. Add the largest environmental foundation in the world, thousands of employees, millions of supporters and enough money to fund political campaigns across several countries…”

Nightwing’s expression became more thoughtful.

“She could put pressure on governments without holding office,” he said.

“Exactly.”

Ivy could support politicians willing to protect the environment and work against those in the pockets of polluting industries. She could fund studies, challenge corporations in court and make environmental protection profitable enough that governments wanted to cooperate.

It wouldn't give her complete control, nothing could, but it would give her far more influence than all the destruction she normally caused in Mother Nature’s name 

“There would still be problems,” Mattheus admitted. “A lot of the modern world depends on industries that damage the environment. You cannot shut all of them down overnight without destroying everything connected to them.”

“Then humanity should learn to live without them.”

“Eventually, maybe. But people need electricity, transport, food and millions of other things. Telling them to give up modern life won’t work.”

Ivy’s eyes hardened.

“So humanity should continue poisoning the planet because change is inconvenient?”

“No,” he shook his head. “The harmful industries need to be replaced.”

Mattheus finished his drink and set the empty glass down.

“That’s part four.”

“There are four parts?” Nightwing asked. “You really thought this through.” 

Ivy ignored him.

“Explain.”

“People don’t really care whether their car runs on petrol or electricity. They care that they can afford it and that it takes them from one place to another. Most people won’t care whether their power comes from coal, sunlight, wind or some plant you invented, as long as the lights turn on when they press the switch.”

“That is an oversimplification,” Ivy said.

“Of course it is. The point is that people resist change when the replacement is worse, harder to obtain or too expensive. Give them something better, and most will switch without caring where it came from.”

He gestured towards her.

“So create the replacements.”

New fuels, new construction materials, cleaner methods of producing food, plants that could replace plastics, repair damaged soil or make manufacturing less dependent on toxic chemicals.

Ivy had the scientific knowledge to develop them and the power to turn years of experimentation into weeks.

Once those alternatives became cheaper and more useful than the industries they replaced, the old ones would begin to die on their own.

Not immediately, of course; some corporations would fight, governments would interfere, and plenty of people would try to steal Ivy’s work or control it.

Still, it could work.

“It would take years,” Ivy said.

“Probably decades.”

“Governments would oppose me. Corporations would sabotage the research before allowing me to threaten their profits.”

“Almost certainly.”

“And you believe I should trust humanity to cooperate?”

“No.” Mattheus shook his head. “I think you should expect people to behave exactly as they always have and build your plan around that.”

Ivy’s gaze lingered on him. 

“It would take a ridiculous amount of money, resources and people working together,” Mattheus continued. “There would be setbacks. Some parts might fail completely. But if you can create industries that protect the environment and make more money than the ones destroying it…”

He shrugged.

“Money makes the world go round.”

Nightwing lifted his half-empty cocktail.

“I hate that he might have a point.”

Ivy did not respond.

She sat before the untouched drink, staring into the green liquid as she considered everything he had said.

For once, Nightwing allowed the silence to remain.

Mattheus waited.

It wasn't a perfect plan. He had come up with most of it over the last few hours, digging through years of half-remembered information from all the time he'd wasted on DC forums, and he had no idea how they would deal with the thousand different problems that would inevitably come up.

But it was a beginning.

And unlike another giant tree in the middle of Gotham, it might actually change something.

NOTE: These two past chapters have been the hardest to write thus far.