Countless shadowy afterimages of the Gamma Green Demon lunged at Batman from every direction at once.
At the same time, the Red Hulk took heavy steps forward, hurling chunks of concrete along the way, some as large as three to five square meters, others the size of iron woks, straight at Batman.
After smashing his way down the path, the Red Hulk finally reached Batman's side and swung his massive fist down like a hammer.
The scorching heat radiating from the Red Hulk's body caused the surrounding air to rise and distort visibly.
The punch didn't even graze Batman, yet the intense heat clinging to that fist forced the pitch-black symbiote substance covering him to writhe and recoil in self-preservation.
Venom feared more than just fire; extreme heat alone was enough to make it shudder with dread.
In an instant, Batman abandoned his two-handed grip on the sword to parry the Gamma Green Demon's onslaught. One hand now brandished the cruciform longsword while the other darted to his Bat-belt, eyes rapidly scanning the surroundings.
Before heading to New Mexico, Batman had prepared an entire arsenal for this operation.
EMP grenades, composite-spectrum emitters, spider-bots, Bat-drones, three Bat-pods, and a wide array of sedatives and anesthetics…
Some had already been expended. The reusable ones, like the composite-spectrum device mounted on the Batmotorcycle, had remained active the entire time, but they were nearly ten meters underground now, and the device's signal couldn't penetrate this deep.
That particular tool had been prepared specifically for a possible mutation of Norman Osborn; for the moment, it was useless here.
As for the EMP grenades, the Leader's long-range bombardment posed almost no threat to Batman, and the Leader's own psychic domination had no effect on him either.
So there had been no rush to deploy them.
What Batman now pulled from his belt was a piece of equipment he had never used since arriving at the Gamma Base: a dazzler grenade.
Batman suspected that the instant he threw it, the ultra-fast Gamma Green Demon would snatch it mid-air and hurl it back up through the breach the Leader had blasted open to the surface.
So without a second's hesitation, he detonated the dazzler grenade right in his own hand.
The moment it went off, Venom abandoned Batman's body in a flash, vanishing completely, even the cruciform longsword formed from symbiote matter disappeared without a trace.
Venom could not withstand the dazzler's shockwave and high-frequency noise; Batman would have to endure it all himself.
BZZZZZZ—
The grenade exploded. Multi-spectrum blinding light flooded the entire underground plaza as if a second sun had suddenly ignited in the depths of the earth.
Even the Hydra soldiers cowering in the corners instinctively squeezed their eyes shut and raised their arms, but the light was merciless, burning through their eyelids like molten metal, flash-blinding them whether they liked it or not.
The Red Hulk and the Gamma Green Demon were affected too, especially the Gamma Green Demon.
He had been relying on his blinding speed to hammer Batman with relentless attacks, but the instant the light flared, he froze mid-assault. A split second later, a thunderous BOOM echoed from a nearby wall in the underground plaza.
The Gamma Green Demon had slammed face-first into solid concrete.
But this tiny shift in momentum was hardly enough to make Batman celebrate.
To protect himself, he had detonated the dazzler almost point-blank. As the epicenter of the blast, his own eyes were assaulted by the intense light, rendering him temporarily blind as well.
His eyeballs felt no pain, but the skin around his eye sockets and face burned with excruciating, drilling agony from the explosive heat.
He didn't dare breathe; one lungful of that superheated air would sear his entire respiratory tract.
Eyes clamped shut, brows creasing faintly under the onslaught of pain, Batman's movements never slowed. Relying on the mental snapshot he had taken of the environment just before detonation, he adjusted his position with lightning precision.
The dazzler grenade wasn't deployed solely to blind everyone present.
It retained all the concussive force and high-frequency noise of a standard flashbang, only Batman had amplified both.
Thus, the instant the blinding light engulfed the plaza, Batman, now perfectly positioned, allowed the shockwave to hurl him skyward, straight toward the elevator shaft.
Using the grenade's own blast to propel himself back to the surface had been part of Batman's careful calculations all along.
His upgraded grapple-spiderline combo was fast, yes, but while airborne he would still be vulnerable to the Gamma Green Demon's attacks, not to mention the Leader and the Red Hulk waiting to pounce.
ZING!
Immediately after the light and shockwave came the high-frequency screech and infrasound.
The indiscriminate assault made Hydra soldiers spit blood one after another. Even the Red Hulk couldn't hold back a furious roar. A thin trickle of blood escaped the corner of Batman's own mouth, impossible to suppress.
But as long as he could ride that blast back to the surface, every injury was worth it.
Still blind, Batman still refused to fire his grapple line. Instead, he bent his knees and launched himself upward, rocketing out of the elevator shaft and back into the Gamma Base proper on the surface.
"ARRGHH!"
"ROOAARR!"
From the underground plaza below came the Red Hulk's enraged bellows and the Hydra soldiers' overlapping screams of agony.
Batman ignored them all. The moment his boots touched surface-level ground, he pivoted on one foot in a tight circle.
As he spun, his other leg swept low, kicking a spray of broken stone and debris outward in a wide arc.
Clink!
One piece of rubble struck the cage formed from the Batwing's deformed cockpit after its crash.
Though his vision had not yet returned, the sharp metallic ring instantly told Batman exactly where the cage was.
KRRRR-BOOM!
A series of earth-shaking crashes erupted from below. The Red Hulk, using nothing but brute strength, punched and tore his way straight through the ground and erupted back into the Gamma Base.
His eyes blazed solid crimson, yet they snapped immediately to Batman's position. Clearly the Red Hulk had already shaken off the temporary blindness.
The Red Hulk roared again and clapped both massive palms together toward Batman.
WHOOOOSH!
A violent gust of wind instantly swept the ground clean of debris between them and sent Batman's body tumbling through the air.
Batman didn't fight the wind; he rode it. Mid-flight, he twisted his body, knees bent and coiled like springs.
The instant the wind hurled him past the cage, Batman kicked off empty air with explosive force, launching himself at the Red Hulk far faster than the gust had carried him.
Whether it was the Red Hulk or the Gamma Green Demon, Batman had to cage one of them, fast.
Otherwise, if this dragged on, even with Venom's help, the numbers were overwhelmingly against him.
This time, airborne once more, Batman deliberately kept Venom from rematerializing. The little guy could still trade blows with the Gamma Green Demon, but against the walking furnace that was the Red Hulk, Venom was reduced to a helpless chick.
Yet Batman charged straight in anyway. Knees raised like a shield, arms tucked tight, he curled his entire body into a compact black cannonball and rocketed toward the Red Hulk.
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