"You couldn't even take a hit."
Ivy sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress in her cell, mulling over those words over and over in her head. It was all she could do; the guards had taken away her precious flowerpot as punishment for her last breakout, and with Clock King scheming on a city-wide level, Arkham had been locked down tighter then a tourniquet. And so, she stewed, unable to take her mind off of the throbbing pain in her cheekbone, a punctuation mark to a rather terrible month. Harley left to run off with the damned clown again, a gang war forced her out of some of her favorite safehouses, she had to burn a bridge with Penguin after he squealed to the Bat about her plan to sabotage a new factory complex, and to top it all off, a job she spent years...YEARS...planning out in meticulous detail, a chance to take for herself one of the rarest and most ancient flowers in the world, went entirely out the window. All because the neighboring exhibit just happened to be themed around twin rulers of the world, and that two-faced moron showed up the exact same night she did. With her plant minions tied up trying to fight Dent's goons, she didn't stand a chance when one of the Bat Girls (Orphan or Black Bat or whatever she called herself these days) swooped in to stop her.
All that planning, all that effort, all those precious plants wasted, and all it took was one measly blow. One powerful haymaker from the Batgirl, and she went sprawling, tumbling across the ground like a broken puppet. And as she stepped over her, those ridiculous bat-shaped handcuffs in hand, she said the words that had been haunting her thoughts.
"This is the great and powerful Poison Ivy, defender of Mother Nature?" she taunted. "You couldn't even take a hit."
It cut deep, digging into the soil and taking root like a virulent fungus. Because it was true. Pamela Isley was never trained to be a fistfighter. She had her plants and her powers, and that was just about it. And time after time again, she saw her precious plants destroyed, her powers neutralized, and she stood as much of a chance as any common goon. Oftentimes less.
Ivy's brow furled as the idea she was toying with came to a boil. This just would not do, she decided. If she wished to save this world from the plague of mankind, she needed to be powerful enough to stand and fight on her own. Nothing less would do for a guardian of the Green.
As if on cue, a guard stumbled up to Ivy's cell, numbly punching in the numbers on the keypad. She smiled, noticing the tip of a vine crawling along the side of his neck as the door swung open.
"Took you long enough," she said casually to the guard.
"Shhorry ma'am, had to give the othersh the shlip," he slurred, tipping his peaked cap.
"Well come along, we're not the only ones breaking out," she said, strolling past the other mostly empty high-security cells, the enthralled guard traipsing along behind her. Passing Jervis Tetch talking to himself about Alice again, a dark shape curled up under the bedsheets that was probably Jonathan Crane, and Garfield Lynns kindly giving her the bird as she walked past, she came to a very different cell, reinforced with special materials not to keep its prisoner contained, but to keep it alive.
"Victor? Are you awake in there?" she called out, rapping her knuckles on the door. Peering through the small barred window, she could see nothing but an ice-coated wall.
"What do you want Isley?" came a deadpan voice from inside, cold and lifeless.
"A consultation, Doctor," Pam said brightly. "I'm thinking of having a little procedure done, and I'd need the help of a medical professional." There was a long pause before a pair of cold blue eyes appeared at the narrow window.
"My expertise is with human patients," Victor Fries said. "I'm not entirely certain you fit that description anymore, when it is chlorophyll in your veins as opposed to blood."
"I can make it worth your while," Ivy suggested. "Your freedom, and free access to my gardens."
"Your gardens?"
"Yes. You should see the Hungarian blackthorn blossoms, they're especially beautiful."
Ivy smiled as the flinch in Victor's eyes told her she had him. He knew he had been arrested trying to break into the Gotham botanical garden for that exact flower, and knowing Victor, he was going to use it to trying and cure his wife. If there was anything anyone knew about Victor, it was that Nora was always the best bargaining chip to use with him.
"What did you have in mind?" Victor asked at last.
"Something involving...Venom," she said, giving it a few moment's thought. "I want to break the bat."
"Intriguing. Do you mind fetching my suit for me?"
---
With the Clock King's rampage grabbing headlines, the escape of Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze barely made a blip on the radar. All the better for the two, as it bought them the time and the cover to enact Pamela's boldest scheme yet. Finding the Venom was easy; with his boss locked up in Blackgate, it was easy to track down one of his men and "persuade" him to reveal where Bane had stashed his Venom supply. The tricky part was getting it to work; Pamela's unique physiology made pure Venom unreliable and dangerous to use, and on top of that, she didn't want to use it like Bane did, for the brief bouts of super strength needed in his duels with the Bat.
She wanted to go, for lack of a better word, bigger.
"How much longer will this take?" Ivy complained, shivering slightly from the cold steel table she was lying on.
"Patience, a complete transfusion is a delicate procedure," Victor reminded her, the servos in his heavy freeze suit whirring as he turned to face his patient. "And a dangerous one. I'm surprised you didn't choose to merely adapt the Venom to your body and utilize an injector."
"Injectors can be tampered with and removed," Ivy said, wincing as Fries inserted IV tubes into her arms with his heavy gloves. "I do not want a weakness that can be exploited. And would you be careful?"
"Your veins are not in the usual place," Victor pointed out flatly, finishing up and tuning back to the machine set up. "Are you prepared, then? I warn you, with your physiology, it's hard to say for certain what the effects of even this adapted Venom may be, especially when applied with such...permanence."
Ivy didn't care. She saw herself towering over a frightening Black Bat, laughing as she kicked her clear across the room.
"Now look who can't take a hit," Ivy said to herself gleefully. "I am certain Victor...begin the transfusion."
With a flick of the switch, the machine started to pump, beginning the process of replacing the bloodlike substance in her veins with the adapter Venom. She gasped in pain as a burning sensation flowing down from her arms and up and down her spine, straining against the straps restraining her to the operating table. Whatever was going on...it had to be working...right?
Oh how wrong she was.
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