The very next instant after Batman turned the entirety of Manhattan into a massive Faraday cage, the beeping of countless bombs about to explode immediately rang out from every corner of the borough.
Some sounds were near, others far; the closest were within the Empire State Building right beneath their feet, while the distant ones were completely inaudible.
Electro, Max Dillon, had a sudden change of expression. In the blink of an eye, he transformed into a bolt of golden electricity, vanishing from his spot and surging into the Empire State Building.
On the rooftop, Tony Stark, Iron Man, looked at the lean, muscular Spider-Man with a livid expression.
"What did you do?"
"I'm executing Batman's plan, Mr. Stark," Spider-man said. "Of course, I can't tell you exactly what that plan is. He said that if you knew, you'd definitely find a way to stop him, and since I'd have to do my best to stop you, Batman would have to deal with *¥@& at the same time..."
"So, creating a massive Faraday cage to directly short out the bombs' detonators and force them to explode—that is Batman's plan?!" Tony interrupted.
"Yes," Spider-Man replied.
"Dammit!" Tony cursed.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a series of breathless, boisterous laughs echoed from the distance:
"Hahahaha! Hahahaha!"
Spider-Man immediately dropped into a low crouch, one hand pressed flat against the ground with fingers spread, the picture of high alert.
Tony Stark shot a glance at Spider-Man before turning his gaze toward the source of the laughter.
Through the continuous curtain of rain connecting heaven and earth, a black speck rapidly grew larger. Nathan Garrett, the Black Knight, clad in medieval armor and clutching an energy lance while riding a winged horse, clutched his stomach, laughing as he approached the Empire State Building.
"This is killing me! I'm dying!" Garrett shouted, looking as overjoyed as a man who had been childless for a decade only to learn his wife was finally pregnant. He looked ready to leap off his steed in delight. "I thought Batman was supposed to be some genius, but it turns out he's just a brainless idiot who acts without thinking!"
Tony Stark's face paled further. He still didn't understand why Batman had stopped him, especially since his and Electro's plan was perfectly sound.
Most crucially, after sabotaging Tony's plan, Batman hadn't offered anything more efficient; instead, he had directly accelerated the detonation process for every bomb in Manhattan.
Seeing Garrett's hysterical laughter, Tony Stark couldn't resist firing a repulsor blast. Garrett yanked the reins of his winged horse and easily dodged the shot.
"Anyone who thought electromagnetic pulses would neutralize these bombs is a fool, but turning the whole city into a massive Faraday cage is beyond moronic," Garrett wheezed, breathless from laughter. "I overestimated you, Iron Man, and Bat—... huh?"
Garrett only now noticed that Batman was nowhere to be found on the rooftop. The figure crouching beside Tony Stark was a "Spider-Man" he had never seen before.
"Where's Batman?" Garrett demanded.
"Before I answer that, I'm going to make sure you never laugh again." With a metallic clack, Tony Stark's faceplate slammed shut, and he lunged into the air toward Garrett.
"Wait, wait, wait, Tony Stark! I didn't come here to fight you. My target is Batman!" Garrett cried out, hurriedly pulling his reins to bank to the side.
But his mockery of Batman had extended to Tony by association, leaving the billionaire fuming with humiliation. Ignoring Garrett's words, Tony unleashed a barrage of repulsor blasts.
Facing the onslaught, Garrett's frustration turned to rage after dodging a few more hits. His energy lance erupted, firing hundreds of laser beams that swept toward Iron Man like a tidal wave.
They completely ignored the third person on the roof—Spider-Man—as if he were nothing more than an insignificant bit player.
Consequently, Spider-Man rose from his offensive crouch. He scratched the back of his head and walked over to the Batmobile, which had been reconfigured into a radio signal detector. He reached out and tapped a specific spot.
Click.
With a soft sound, the Omni-wave Projector popped out. It featured a central sphere with spokes radiating outward, all enclosed within a large outer ring, resembling a car's steering wheel in shape.
Three hours ago.
Clad in his Arkham tactical suit, Batman sat expressionless in the Batcave as he opened an encrypted email.
It contained the complete trade records that Ronin—Clint Barton—had retrieved from the servers of the Dark Wind Group in Yokohama, Japan.
Scanning through the index, Batman quickly located the transaction record of a mysterious individual hiring the Dark Wind Group to steal stone fragments from the Metropolitan Museum.
It was a massive deposit paid through a shell company in Luxembourg. Without much effort, Batman unraveled the layers of transferred payment channels, confirming that the funds had originally been disbursed by S.H.I.E.L.D.
Aside from this payment, there was another logistics record from roughly the same time.
This one seemed unrelated to S.H.I.E.L.D. at first glance, but the manifest consisted entirely of military-grade tools—ranging from basic glass-cutters to high-end research equipment, precision instruments, and weaponry.
The moment Batman saw the list, he recalled the night of the Metropolitan Museum heist. While tracking the thieves in black, he had noticed that their tools weren't models available on the open market.
To an ordinary person, those models wouldn't have served as a clue since they had never appeared in the commercial market. But for Batman, who had once infiltrated the base in the Adirondack Mountains, these items were all too familiar—like the funding, they were products of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Through his previous investigations, Batman had confirmed that the stone fragments stolen by the thieves were connected to the Whitman family.
Within the Whitman family, the only person with the ability, motive, and means to orchestrate such a theft was Nathan Garrett.
This was clear both from information intercepted from the Manhattan PD and Batman's own deep-dive into the Whitman family: Nathan Garrett was indeed a member.
As for the funds, equipment, and tools leaked from S.H.I.E.L.D., while the access level wasn't the highest, mobilizing them required at least a Level 8 security clearance or higher—meaning only high-ranking agents had the authority to touch them.
Globally, there was only one person who was both a member of the Whitman family and possessed Level 8 S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance, capable of accessing and covertly redirecting these resources: Nathan Garrett.
Three hours later—the present moment.
Batman watched the Black Knight, Nathan Garrett, as he rode his winged horse across the sky, battling Iron Man from the East Side of Manhattan all the way to the West.
Without hesitation, Batman fed all the bomb data collected by the Batmobile's signal detector into the Omni-wave Projector.
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