Neither Ivan nor Maddie, nor the crowd of people in suits scurrying like refugees, could have imagined that the boy they thought was mentally unstable—the one who seemed useless except for his handsome face—was an existence more terrifying than the dinosaurs themselves.
After tearing open the upper and lower jaws of a Mapusaurus with his bare hands, the maws of several other dinosaurs snapped toward him simultaneously.
Venom Robin released the Mapusaurus, which was now as dead as could be, and swung his cape back. From the small of his back, he drew two short batons that looked laughably small.
But no one dared to laugh. The crowd that had been fleeing for their lives just moments ago forgot to keep running; they stood rooted to the spot, dazed.
They watched as Venom Robin jammed a baton into a dinosaur's eye and flipped its entire skull off.
They watched as Venom Robin was stomped under the foot of a dinosaur, only to quickly stand back up, supporting the seven-or-eight-ton beast with a single hand. He climbed onto the creature's back by repeatedly stabbing his batons into its flesh like climbing picks, then reached out and ripped out its spine.
They watched as Venom Robin's feet transformed into pitch-black tentacles, coiling tightly around a dinosaur's neck. He then grabbed the creature's upper jaw with both hands and snapped its head back until it folded against its own body.
"What kind of monster is this...?" someone stammered, their teeth chattering and their tongue refusing to cooperate.
Little Maddie lowered the hands that had been covering her eyes. Her mouth fell open as she watched Venom Robin effortlessly slaughter dozens of massive dinosaurs alone, looking like Astro Boy descending from the heavens.
"Batman...?" Ivan was equally terrified by Venom Robin's appearance, but after the boy had finished killing all the Mapusauruses, he managed to find his voice.
Ivan couldn't think of anyone else capable of such a feat besides the legendary Batman.
Venom Robin stood atop a pile of dinosaur carcasses. The legs of his Shroud suit and the hem of his cape were stained crimson.
Just as he was about to leave, Venom Robin heard Ivan's words. He turned his head and said in a low, gravelly voice:
"Maybe in the future, I will be Batman. But for now, I am Robin."
With that, Venom Robin raised his hand, firing a slender tentacle that latched onto a high wall by the street. With a single leap, he swung away into the distance.
The moment Robin left, the people around Ivan grew excited.
"He said he's Batman!"
"Batman is real! And he's just a kid!"
"Does anyone know his name?"
Ivan watched Venom Robin's retreating figure disappear around the corner of a high-rise. He shook his head, took Maddie back from his wife's arms, and turned to continue searching for a place to hide from the dinosaurs.
"That... that idiot Batman! Has his Robin shown up yet or what?!"
In Hell's Kitchen, Tony Stark was punching out Gallimimus. Though they were only four or five meters tall, they were incredibly fast.
Electro, Max Dillon, couldn't show his face publicly; he had been rescuing people while staying out of sight of the military gunships in the sky. Consequently, the burden of the visible rescue efforts and dinosaur hunting fell entirely on Tony Stark.
Because the Mark IV lacked heavy weaponry, Tony was currently limited to his palm thrusters, physical combat, and the Uni-Beam in his chest.
Dealing with relatively small dinosaurs like the Gallimimus was fine, but against the massive predators like the Carnotaurus, which could easily exceed ten meters, Tony had no choice but to use his chest piece.
The Mark IV's palm thrusters had three power settings—non-lethal, lethal, and anti-materiel—as well as three firing modes: single shot, continuous fire, and charged shot.
The problem wasn't the energy; the reactor in Tony's chest provided more than enough power. However, the Mark IV armor itself could not withstand the heat and stress of too many high-power shots.
This left Tony feeling overwhelmed by the hundreds of dinosaurs scattered throughout the streets of Manhattan.
"Thank God the Hulk is dealing with the big ones, otherwise..." Tony Stark sighed.
He had just finished rounding up a group of Gallimimus and hadn't even had a chance to catch his breath when Jarvis spoke up:
"Mr. Stark, there is an unusual sound at your ten o'clock position. I suggest investigating."
Tony didn't dare delay. He knew that even ten seconds of slacking off could mean someone losing their life to a dinosaur.
Whoosh!
The leg thrusters ignited, and Tony flew rapidly toward the direction Jarvis indicated.
"Jarvis, is this the source of the sound you mentioned?" Tony hovered in the air, looking down into a small alley in Hell's Kitchen. A man in a dark red skintight suit was engaged in a fierce battle with a Pachycephalosaurus, wielding a long staff.
"Jarvis, please tell me this isn't the 'helper' Batman arranged for me," Tony said.
"Mr. Stark, I have no data on this individual in my database," Jarvis replied.
Tony Stark sighed again. He fired a charged palm blast, and the yellow beam of energy punched through the Pachycephalosaurus's chest from above.
Thump!
Before the Pachycephalosaurus even hit the ground, Tony Stark had already descended, landing in front of the man who, like Batman, wore a mask that only exposed his jaw.
"Robin?"
"Who's Robin?" Daredevil asked, facing Tony's direction.
"Who are you?" Tony asked. "Never mind, we'll get to know each other later."
Without giving Daredevil a chance to answer, he hurriedly took to the skies again, heading for the next location that needed him.
"Jarvis, get me the NYPD. Tell them to hover their gunships in a grid formation. The moment they spot a dinosaur, they report it to me. Electro and I will handle the attacks and rescues."
"Understood, sir. However, I must remind you that we have not earned the trust of the NYPD. This cooperation may not be pleasant," Jarvis noted.
"I'll earn their trust through action," Tony said.
Just as he finished speaking, he noticed that he wasn't the only one in the sky anymore. At some point, a knight riding a pitch-black horse with twin wings had appeared.
The knight was maneuvering through the air against several Pterosaurs, occasionally firing beams of light from a scepter in his hand.
"Robin!" Tony shouted toward the Black Knight, Nathan Garrett, as he tangled with the winged reptiles.
Inside the Baxter Building, several vortex portals were still active, and dinosaurs would occasionally pop out of them.
Batman spent most of his time killing the dinosaurs to prevent them from interfering with Lunella.
The rest of his time was spent monitoring Lunella's progress in shutting down the Omni-Wave Projector, ensuring the young girl didn't do something as foolish as Reed Richards had.
"How much longer?" Batman asked Lunella while kicking a Triceratops that had poked its head out of a vortex back through the portal.
"Wait, wait... Okay, it's off! Successfully shut down!" Lunella let out a sigh of relief.
With Batman there, she had managed to shut down the Omni-Wave Projector without any major incidents. They had finally stopped the portals from spreading across all of Manhattan.
As soon as she finished, Reed Richards—who had been forced to stand at attention inside the Rescue 1 armor—shouted:
"Let me out! The Omni-Wave Projector is closed. I promise I won't turn it on again!"
Lunella looked at the Rescue 1 armor. "Reed, I'm making sure you never touch the Omni-Wave Projector again."
Batman ignored Reed Richards. After confirming the vortex portals were beginning to close one by one, he walked up to Lunella.
"Give it to me."
"In exchange, I will help you rescue that red Tyrannosaurus."
The red Tyrannosaurus had become separated from Batman and Lunella after they returned from the Primitive World. It was currently roaming somewhere in Manhattan.
"Deal," Lunella said.
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