The moment he entered the base, he headed straight for the monitoring center, where he had intercepted a signal during his last infiltration of this place.
Ordinarily, there should have been Hydra soldiers guarding this area, but by the time Batman arrived, they were all lying flat on the ground.
With a quick scan from the Gargoyle suit's medical diagnostics system, Batman immediately knew that these men had all lost their lives.
Clearly, someone had arrived here ahead of him.
Without hesitation, Batman stepped over the sprawled corpses and entered the monitoring center, finding—as expected—that the base's internal surveillance network had already been destroyed.
After a brief attempt to restore the network, he confirmed that the surveillance grid had been thoroughly sabotaged and had completely lost its utility. Not wasting any more time, Batman followed the trail of Hydra corpses and slipped back out.
The individuals who had entered ahead of him seemed to have absolutely no intention of hiding their tracks. Bloody footprints stretched clearly along the floor, pointing Batman directly in the proper direction.
Initially, Batman suspected this might be a decoy, but he quickly realized he was overthinking things.
Following the footprints deep into the base, Batman soon heard the sounds of an incredibly fierce battle echoing from the corner ahead.
His Spider-Sense alerted him that the two opposing forces in combat were by no means ordinary soldiers, but rather two factions possessing distinct and bizarre abilities.
"The Spider-Sense confirms that both sides pose a certain level of threat. I need to find a way to observe them," Batman calculated silently.
The corridor here was brightly lit, offering Batman no dark corners to observe from. His Spider-Sense warned him that if he poked his head out, he would inevitably be spotted by the combatants.
In moments like this, Batman chose to trust his Spider-Sense's judgment. He swiftly reached toward his utility belt, retrieved a folding pen, and unfolded it.
It was actually a narrow, elongated mirror. Rather than glass, it was made of highly polished metal.
Extending this mirror around the corner and adjusting the angle, Batman soon got a clear view of who exactly was clashing.
On one side were Hydra soldiers led by a man draped in a emerald-green cape and deep-green armor. He wore a golden gauntlet on his right hand, and one of his eyes was a prosthetic.
However, unlike the prosthetics engineered by Dr. Connors, this man in the dark-green armor seemed to have his cybernetic eye connected directly to his brain, to the point where winding, web-like fractures extended from his eye socket all the way up his bald scalp.
Those winding cracks glowed with a sickening emerald light that felt repulsive to look at.
Through the shouts and gasps of the combatants and Hydra soldiers, Batman learned that this man was Baron Strucker.
The remaining combatants were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. These agents had all undergone cybernetic enhancement without exception; some were so heavily augmented that only their heads remained human, while the rest of their bodies were entirely mechanical.
Yet, according to Batman's observations, the ones acting as the primary force in besieging Baron Strucker were not these cybernetically enhanced agents.
There was a woman with long, loose hair wearing a black-and-gray S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform. Every time she swung her fists, ripples of shockwaves would accumulate, and when she unleashed them, the gathered vibrations would detonate outward, leaving the surrounding air in a constant state of violent oscillation.
Beside her was a short-haired man in a yellow T-shirt and a denim jacket. His body floated in midair, and blue electrical currents crackled across his fingertips and the tips of his hair.
The last person was a woman wearing short sleeves and shorts. Despite being female, she had a completely shaved head. She continuously charged at Baron Strucker from various directions, colliding heavily against him before instantly retracing her steps along the exact path she came.
It was as if an invisible thread anchored her to her starting point, snapping her back the moment her sprint was complete.
"Quake, electricity... and Yo-Yo," Batman noted the combat styles of these three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in his mind. [Translator's Note: These characters refer to Daisy Johnson/Quake, Lincoln Campbell, and Yo-Yo Rodriguez from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.]
He had no intention of helping them deal with Baron Strucker. Instead, he continuously adjusted his pen-mirror, searching for the true target of his journey to this Adirondack Mountains base.
Before long, a briefcase roughly the size of a canned fruit container caught Batman's attention.
That case was currently in the hands of a Hydra soldier standing right behind Baron Strucker, and it was being passed backward from soldier to soldier.
While the three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents seemed to be focusing their attacks on Baron Strucker, they were also constantly seeking an opening to bypass his defenses and pursue that briefcase.
"Aside from the Tesseract, there is likely nothing else in this Adirondack Mountains base that would warrant such intense focus from both Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D."
After a brief calculation, Batman swiftly folded the pen-mirror, tucked it back into his utility belt, and kicked off the ground to roll forward.
Almost the very next second after Batman rolled away, a circular shield slammed with a loud whoosh into the spot where he had just been standing. With a few dull thuds, it ricocheted off the wall and floor before finally flying back into the hand of a figure sprinting toward them from the distance.
"Captain America?" Having completed his roll, Batman immediately pressed his palm against the ground to spring to his feet, looking toward the rapidly approaching figure.
Coated entirely in a layer of black grime with only his eyes shining intensely, Captain America caught the shield with one hand and held it vertically in front of his chest, charging straight at Batman.
The clanging sounds of the shield's ricochets had already drawn the attention of the clashing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Baron Strucker. The female agent whose combat style resembled a yo-yo immediately pivoted, charging straight toward Batman as well.
Caught in a pincer attack from both sides, Batman silently took a step back.
The vibranium shield, painted completely black, collided heavily with the female agent. Captain America was instantly sent flying backward, while the female agent was forced to run uncontrollably backward to her starting point.
Batman did not give either of them a second glance. Since his presence had already been exposed, he prepared to seize the Tesseract directly.
Whoosh!
Only the howling of the wind could be heard as Batman's figure vanished from sight. His broad, heavy cape left a blurred silhouette in the air as he plunged straight into the Hydra ranks.
Clack-clack-clack!
A series of smoke pellets dropped to the ground along his path, instantly blanketing the entire area in a dense, white fog.
Immediately after, countless white spider-webs shot outward, blanketing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Hydra soldiers alike without distinction.
At the exact same moment, Batman tore through the Hydra ranks like a spear piercing through tofu, scattering their formation.
Quake reacted with extreme speed, shaking the air to disperse the smoke almost the instant it rose, but she was still a step too late.
They only managed to catch a glimpse of Batman's figure vanishing from his original spot, accompanied by the sight of Hydra soldiers being sent flying outward in unison.
Batman had also chosen a direct, brute-force charge—a simplistic and aggressive combat style the old Batman would have never employed. But now that he possessed Peter Parker's physical durability and wore a vibranium suit, this straightforward method proved exceptionally effective.
However, because Batman was controlling his output to avoid killing the Hydra soldiers, his physical impact did not reach ton-level force.
This kept his charging speed from being excessively fast, at least after he ploughed deep into the Hydra ranks.
In the next second, Baron Strucker, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cybernetic agents, the three superpowered agents, and Captain America all watched in unison as the briefcase landed firmly in Batman's grasp.
With a quick scan from his Gargoyle suit, Batman saw the contents inside the briefcase and knew that the Tesseract was finally in his hands.
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