Chapter 396: I've Identified Your Weakness
The first light broke the horizon as the fight moved into its most destructive phase.
From the moment Batman had entered the Villain mech, the fight had been at maximum intensity. That was the honest description of it. Two forces of comparable destructive scale exchanging attacks in an open valley, and everything caught between them becoming rubble.
Batman drove the Villain into the exchanges directly, using its sonic emitters to meet the Noise's discharges head-on. The mech's return fire punched into the Noise's body and pushed it backward in increments. The Noise's counterattacks stripped away the Villain's armor plating one layer at a time, the panels shearing off in sections and embedding themselves in the hillsides. Mountains that had stood for geological ages were being hammered into unrecognizable terrain, their upper sections blasted loose and falling in cascading avalanches.
Occasionally the Noise tried to grip the mech. Its sound-constructed hands would fasten on the hull and attempt to simply tear the vehicle apart. The Villain's sonic emitters would discharge at contact range and the grip would break -- but each engagement cost more plating.
The mech's status readouts were not encouraging.
The Noise, meanwhile, did not appear to be meaningfully damaged.
"That shell of yours is impressive. But not impressive enough." The Noise had one hand on the mech's upper section, its grip deep into the compromised armor. "At some point it runs out of layers."
Batman's sonic barrage hit at maximum output. The Noise peeled back, releasing the hull.
"You know, I've been considering your situation." The entity drifted back to the far side of the valley, its form spreading and contracting. "You can't defeat me. The best case available to you is keeping me contained in this location. Indefinitely."
The voice paused, enjoying the framing.
"If you want to actually win, here's my suggestion: find the precise frequency that matches me. Synchronize your emitters. Overwhelm me with perfect resonance."
Batman had already tried that.
The Noise was not composed of a single frequency or even a limited set of frequencies. Its structure had been built outward from Klaue's original sonic weapon in layers -- each sound it had ever absorbed adding another ring. To achieve perfect synchronization, Batman would need to simultaneously replicate thousands of distinct frequencies at exact phase alignment, in real time, while those frequencies kept changing as the Noise absorbed new sound.
The attempt had also made the problem worse. The synchronized-frequency emissions Batman had sent to try to establish control had been absorbed by the Noise, feeding it. The entity standing across the valley from him now was measurably larger than the one he had started fighting.
Even at twelve meters of enlarged mech, Batman was looking up.
The Wakandan pursuit force had reached the valley's edge. One of their number had moved too close during an exchange and been caught by the ripple effect of a secondary discharge. The man had been thrown fifty meters through the air and landed on rock. He was alive. He would not be getting up soon.
The remaining Wakandans stayed well back. Their own analysis of the situation had reached the same conclusion Batman's had thirty minutes ago: nothing in their arsenal was going to affect this thing.
M'Baku, their current king, had received T'Challa's broadcast and was in the palace dealing with the political and existential implications of that. He was not dispatching forces to deal with a sound entity in a valley.
"I want you to understand something," the Noise said, in the conversational tone it had been developing since becoming capable of speech. "Every sound your machine produces feeds me. The cannon discharges. The hydraulics. The armor vibrating under impact. Everything you do is making me larger. You're fighting me by making me stronger. Have you considered that?"
Batman didn't respond.
The Noise didn't require a response.
"Fine. I'll give you the actual answer, since you're clearly not going to find it yourself. Create a vacuum. Remove all the air from Earth's atmosphere. Put this planet in the same condition as open space." The pause was theatrical. "That will defeat me."
A beat of silence.
"I'm serious. That's the method. I'm telling you because I know you can't do it, and watching you try to think of something else is becoming tedious."
The Noise crossed the valley and knocked on the top of the Villain mech's hull. Twice. A casual knock, the kind used to ask if someone is home.
"Are you listening to me in there? Vacuum. Whole planet. That's all it would take."
Inside the cockpit, Batman watched the frequency distribution display on the secondary screen.
Then the Villain mech raised its cannon platforms.
It began firing into the surrounding mountains.
Not at the Noise. At the terrain. Systematically, methodically, the mech's weapons discharged into the rock faces, the valley walls, the hillsides. The canyon filled with sound -- gunfire, each distinct discharge, the bass-frequency detonation of stone under impact, the grinding and crumbling of fractured rock, mechanical resonance from the mech's own hydraulics firing in close proximity to hard surfaces, the ricocheting echoes that turned the valley into an acoustic chamber.
The Wakandans watching from the ridge exchanged looks.
"Has he snapped?" One of them said what most of them were thinking. "He's giving the thing more to eat. He's just -- he's just making noise at it."
The captain with the beast-teeth necklace watched without speaking.
The Noise opened its arms. Its face, such as it was, produced delight.
The sounds poured into it like water finding a low point. Every frequency generated by the mech's firing went straight to the source. The Noise's body expanded, its upper reaches climbing higher, its indistinct outline becoming even less defined as the new intake overwhelmed its capacity to maintain a consistent form.
"Yes! More! Give me more, Batman, keep going! This is barely enough -- keep shooting!"
It absorbed. And absorbed. And its outline climbed and spread.
Inside the cockpit, Batman's face was still.
The secondary screen was showing him something specific. The frequency distribution inside the Noise's body had been consistent for the past twenty minutes -- layered, organized, a structure built from the core sonic weapon outward. When new frequencies arrived in small quantities, they integrated smoothly. The structure absorbed them, organized them, settled them into the appropriate layer.
What the screen was showing him now was different.
The new sound was arriving faster than the structure could process it. The incoming frequencies were creating interference patterns in the outer layers. The integration mechanism was falling behind. The boundary between the latest absorption layer and the layer beneath it was showing resonance interference rather than smooth transition.
The outer layers were destabilizing.
Klaue had told him the answer, intending it as a statement of invulnerability.
Batman had simply understood it differently.
The Noise expanded in proportion to the sound it absorbed. That was true. But a structure that grows by absorption has a natural limit -- a point at which the intake rate exceeds the rate at which the structure can reorganize itself to accommodate what it's receiving. Beyond that point, the growth stops being reinforcement.
It becomes stress.
"Noise." Batman's voice came through the cockpit audio. "I've identified your weakness."
He looked at the frequency distribution screen.
The Noise's outer boundary was rippling now, not pulsing. The difference was meaningful. The Noise was still laughing, still expanding, still demanding more.
It was also, according to everything the screen was showing, approaching the point that a balloon approaches when the next breath of air won't make it larger.
It would make it smaller.
Rapidly. Permanently. In every direction at once.
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