To force Ant-Man to restore her to her original size so she could remove the shards—rather than having him shrink down and crawl into the wounds on her sole—Black Widow ground her injured foot into the floor with a vicious twist.
She succeeded; the ceramic fragments were now embedded deep within her flesh.
Just as she had hoped, faced with sharp, irregular, and fragile ceramic shards buried deep in muscle, Ant-Man did not opt for microsurgery. He chose not to shrink himself down and crawl into her foot to pick them out one by one.
Instead, he restored Black Widow to her natural height of five-foot-seven. For Ant-Man, this was a matter of efficiency and cost; a routine sterile surgery at her normal size would be much easier to manage.
"Hey, could you two loosen up a bit?" Black Widow said to the two giant ants flanking her. "You're about to snap my arms!"
Black Widow wasn't equipped with a device to translate speech into biological signals the ants could understand. In response to her demand, the giant insects merely twitched their antennae.
"If I have to keep dealing with ants, I'm going to lose my mind," Black Widow sighed.
She was just beginning to weigh her next move—whether to lie there and wait for Batman or implement another plan—when the glass of the Pym Technologies building's skylight suddenly shattered with a deafening crash.
After the glass over the lightwell had been smashed by the brute force of Venom Robin the previous night, Ant-Man had installed a brand-new pane just that morning.
But now, with that sharp, crystalline spray, the new glass had failed to hold.
"Batman!"
Almost the exact moment the glass shattered, Ant-Man, who had been in another lab, came charging out. He roared toward the skylight in a fury:
"Give me back my Pym Particles!"
Before his voice had even faded, Ant-Man had already vaulted onto the back of Anthony VIII, racing toward the shattered skylight at high speed.
"Hank!" The Wasp also heard the commotion and flew over, her membranous wings fluttering as she looked upward with a frown.
Outside, it was pitch black. Dark clouds obscured the moonlight, making it impossible to see anything from the inside looking out.
Ant-Man and Wasp's first instinct was to activate the night-vision modes on their respective suits to track Batman's silhouette.
But Batman didn't appear. Instead, a round object came spinning through the air, whistling into the Pym Technologies building with the sound of wind being torn apart.
Whiz!
It moved with the speed of a cannonball fresh from the muzzle.
"Stop it!" Ant-Man shouted to the Wasp.
Wasp was about to move, but then came a rapid succession of similar sounds.
One, two... more than thirty spinning "cannonballs" flew into the building. Even though Ant-Man and Wasp managed to intercept one or two and hurl them back out the skylight at high speed, the rest of the projectiles began to detonate one after another!
Puff, puff, puff—
The expected explosions weren't deafening; instead, they sounded soft and muffled, like duds.
Ant-Man and Wasp didn't let their guard down. If anything, their hearts leaped into their throats. They didn't believe for a second that the intruder—whoever they were—had thrown thirty duds into the building.
If it wasn't a conventional explosion, then it was something far more insidious: poison gas, bacteria, or anything else that could cause catastrophic damage to Pym Technologies!
Both Ant-Man and Wasp simultaneously shrank to the size of a pinhead, standing ready as they watched the objects on the floor.
As the muffled popping sounds continued, thick white smoke billowed out from the projectiles in unison.
"...Smoke grenades?" Ant-Man looked at the scene in bewilderment.
Breaking the skylight and firing these things in with such momentum... only for them to be smoke grenades?
"Oh no! My Pym Particles!"
The bewilderment lasted only a split second. Hank Pym let out a sudden, agonized wail and dove toward the cafeteria like a madman.
"I'll protect the Pym Particles! Hank! You deal with that guy!" The Wasp reacted instantly, making a snap decision. "No, wait—go protect Black Widow!"
She was much closer to the cafeteria than Ant-Man was. Furthermore, Ant-Man had been flying upward on Anthony VIII ever since he left the lab; he was currently quite far from the second-floor dining area.
"Black Widow?" Ant-Man instinctively steered Anthony VIII toward the lab where she was being held, though his brain was still catching up. "Black Widow?"
The dense white smoke from the thirty-plus grenades had completely filled the lightwell and the surrounding spiral staircases. In his moment of hesitation, Ant-Man nearly lost his sense of direction, let alone sight of Black Widow.
"Good idea—using smoke to block line of sight..." Ant-Man smiled as he looked at the white void before him. "But it seems our intruder didn't study basic biology."
He patted Anthony VIII's thorax. "I can't see, but ants don't rely on vision!"
Buzz, buzz, buzz...
The flying ant flapped its wings, its antennae twitching constantly in the white smoke. It carried Ant-Man forward, cutting a ripple through the haze as they flew toward Black Widow's lab.
Thud! Thud!
The muffled sound of fists striking chitin echoed from the laboratory.
As Ant-Man leaped off Anthony VIII's back, he saw a winged figure clad in yellow and black. The intruder was systematically punching the two giant ants that held Black Widow, knocking them aside.
"Janet was right, you are here!" Ant-Man returned to his normal size, staring at the figure just two steps away.
At this proximity, and since the smoke hadn't fully saturated the lab yet, Ant-Man could clearly see the yellow and black stripes inside the bat emblem on the figure's chest.
Is this how Batman dresses? Then who was that last night? A flash of doubt crossed Ant-Man's mind.
But now was not the time for questions. Seeing that "Batman" remained silent, he stepped forward and clapped a hand onto the figure's shoulder.
"Hey, pal, what do you think you're doing?"
Batman glanced at Ant-Man.
The next second, the situation turned chaotic!
A series of explosions erupted right between Ant-Man and Batman. Blinding white light and high-frequency noise flooded the laboratory!
"Damn it!" Ant-Man cursed through gritted teeth. Because of the smoke, he hadn't noticed when several flashbangs had been dropped onto the lab floor.
Fortunately for him, Batman seemed to have underestimated the protection the Ant-Man suit provided.
After only a slight stumble, Ant-Man recovered. He quickly shrank down, his hands gripping onto Batman's armor.
Shrink! Smaller!
Clinging to the suit, Ant-Man repeatedly pressed his controls until he was small enough to slip through the microscopic gaps in the armor's outer casing.
He slipped inside, intending to sabotage the suit from the interior and stop the intruder from taking Black Widow.
The first layer of Batman's Vulcan Armor defenses: failed.
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