It was early October, and the nighttime temperature hovered at only five or six degrees.
The temperature swing between day and night caused a layer of thin mist to rise over the Adirondack Mountains.
When the distance was great enough and the sky dark enough, the mist took on a black hue.
The Lizard looked back. Within the black mist, Batman's figure was nothing more than a blurred silhouette, while Ant-Man and the Wasp had become ghosts within the haze.
Relying on the moisture in the air, the two ghosts flickered in and out of the black fog, their sizes fluctuating as they lunged at the dark silhouette from every conceivable angle.
The mist swirled into one vortex after another following their strikes. For a moment, the Lizard even had the hallucination that he was watching an ink-wash animation.
"He might not be able to hold out for long." The Lizard furrowed his brow.
Ant-Man and the Wasp's attack frequency was too high, and their angles were far too bizarre.
By leveraging their reduced weight after shrinking and the minimal air resistance they encountered while flying, they were able to leap and fly between the water droplets at speeds faster than a flea.
Batman spent most of his time being passively beaten or struggling to parry attacks coming from all directions.
"Let's go." The Lizard didn't linger. He retracted his gaze and spoke to Lunella, then fully unleashed his strength—which exceeded eighty tons—and began to bolt.
The momentum was so great that the thunderous booming of his footsteps on the ground even reached Batman's ears.
"Distance: 1,200 meters..."
Listening to the rapidly receding rumbling, Batman quickly calculated the distance between himself and the Lizard in his mind.
When the distance stretched to 3,000 meters and Batman deemed them completely safe, he finally threw both hands behind him with a sudden jerk.
Snap!
As Batman yanked the cape, it didn't make the expected fluttering sound. Instead, there were two sharp cracks, like the tip of a whip breaking the sound barrier.
Amidst the sharp reports, Batman gripped both sides of the cape firmly. With a sudden burst of strength from his left arm, he pulled the cape in front of him, covering every angle of his front, including his chin.
Within the thin mist, Batman's white-glowing eyes shone against the water vapor, two beams of light faintly diffusing outward.
His Spider-Sense screamed warnings about the locations where Ant-Man and the Wasp were about to strike, but Batman ignored them entirely.
Since his crossover into this world, Batman rarely found his cape tactics useful, aside from when he needed it to help against the Green Goblin's frantic slashing with an extremely sharp green blade. Most of the time, the cape's primary function was for gliding.
This was an unavoidable reality. Kingpin was too weak, while opponents like the Lizard and the Hulk were too strong.
But Batman had never given up on his cape just because of the various superpowers he had acquired after the crossover.
In Gotham, Batman is not just Batman. He is the Dark Knight, and he is also—the Caped Crusader!
The cape behind him was never a decoration; it was a tool to intimidate criminals, a weapon to combat powerful enemies, and a means for Batman to snatch victory through surprise!
Woven through complex processes involving memory fibers, metallic wiring, and an alloy skeleton, the Bat-cape weighed over ten kilograms—far heavier than the weapons most criminals carried on them.
Even during the time Jason was Robin, he believed Batman's cape was so heavy that moving in it felt like carrying a refrigerator on one's back.
Whoosh!
In Batman's hands, the cape was like a living dark cloud, continuously lashing out at Ant-Man and the Wasp, who had shrunk until they were nearly invisible to the naked eye.
The mist churned, and the sound of impacts was as dense as a rainstorm.
From a distance, one could only see a black silhouette with a cape dancing around him. Every time it swung, a patch of mist was smashed apart, followed by a muffled groan.
When the cape rose, it pulled the mist with it; when it fell, it crushed the mist. Often, a large swathe of fog would be swept away by the wind generated by the cape, creating a void. Before the surrounding mist could even rush back in to fill the gap, Batman's cape would strike toward the other side again.
If an uninformed civilian were standing nearby watching this scene, they would only think this Bat-maniac was shadowboxing with the air.
But only Ant-man and the Wasp knew how perilous their situation was.
That seemingly soft cape felt like a brick wall when it slammed into them. Janet, the Wasp, fared slightly better, relying on the translucent wings on her back to dodge the attacks more nimbly.
Ant-Man couldn't fly. He relied entirely on the water vapor suspended in the air to move. As Batman made his cape snap and crackle, he repeatedly slapped Ant-Man's shrunken body into the concentrated moisture.
The Ant-Man suit was not waterproof—at least not the faceplate.
Consequently, after being slapped into the water vapor, Ant-Man nearly drowned due to his violent movements and rapid breathing.
This forced him to enlarge to break free from the vapor. However, once he was large, he was no match for Batman. Even growing to a height of thirty meters wouldn't pose much more of a threat to Batman.
...After all, Ant-Man had personally experienced what it was like to grow giant only to watch helplessly as Batman vanished right from under his nose.
The Wasp was agile enough to dodge most of the Bat-cape's attacks and could use the flapping of her wings to resist the strong winds it generated.
But then another problem arose: the cape was wired. Batman could stiffen the cape by running an electric current through it.
Furthermore, while the Arkham suit didn't have an internal microwave defense layer like the specially-made Vulcan Armor, Batman had also added an electrified defensive layer to the Arkham suit out of concern for Ant-Man and the Wasp's presence.
This left the Wasp with nowhere to start for a moment. She could only seize the opportunity to grab Ant-Man to prevent him from drowning in the suspended water vapor that formed the mist.
"Cough, cough, cough!"
Ant-Man coughed several times. Having been dragged through the air by the Wasp for quite a while, he finally regained his senses:
"Janet! Let me down! I still have tricks up my sleeve!"
"Shut up!" Janet snapped at Ant-Man. "It's dark. I want to go back to sleep."
"What do you mean, sleep?" Ant-Man's mouth hung open as he looked down.
Below them was a field of mist, but where was Batman's figure? He had already left... or rather, he had escaped far away.
"Ant-Man and the Wasp didn't retreat because I repelled them; they withdrew of their own accord."
In the Adirondack Mountains, Batman stood in place, his face showing none of the relaxation one might expect after winning a skirmish.
"The Wasp's desire to attack wasn't strong. She didn't even use the 'Wasp Sting' that Robin once mentioned. Similarly, Ant-Man didn't use any offensive weapons."
"And in a sudden encounter with them, I had to rely on my cape just to fight them to a standstill."
"The Arkham suit must undergo further upgrades... No, the new suit must be put on the schedule as soon as possible."
Batman took a breath of the nighttime mist and pressed a button on his gauntlet.
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