"Status report," Batman commanded, his voice remaining perfectly calm despite receiving Tony Stark's urgent distress call.
"I don't have time for a report! You need to get here in two minutes, or you'll be picking up my corpse!" Iron Man barked, completely throwing Batman's protocol out the window as he spoke at a frantic pace.
Whether Tony's words carried a petty hint of retaliation for the strict two-minute deadline Batman had given him during a previous crisis was unknown, but Batman didn't bother to argue.
Instead, he scrambled into the Batwing at top speed, tearing through the night sky and leaving a rolling shockwave behind as he rocketed straight toward the Adirondack Mountains.
The moment Batman reached the coordinates provided by Tony, he slammed the joystick forward without a second thought, sending the Batwing into a roaring, full-throttle dive.
This area was incredibly close to the Adirondack Mountain base. A fighter jet—iron-gray with noticeably swept-down wings and a S.H.I.E.L.D. eagle emblem emblazoned on its fuselage—was crashed awkwardly on a nearby hillside.
A massive, jagged hole near the cockpit had nearly snapped the entire jet in half. Thick black smoke billowed from the rupture, accompanied by a violent, non-stop crackle of electrical sparks.
To make matters worse, the jet's main fuel tank had been ripped wide open. Jet fuel was pouring out continuously, threatening to detonate at any second from the stray sparks.
Right beside the burning S.H.I.E.L.D. quinjet, Batman spotted three figures standing back-to-back. They were Iron Man (Tony Stark), Hawkeye (Clint Barton, clad in his purple sleeveless tactical suit), and Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff, with her distinct wavy red hair).
Iron Man could easily survive a jet explosion, but Hawkeye and Black Widow certainly couldn't. Yet, despite the danger, the three of them remained tightly clustered next to the burning wreckage, making no attempt to move away.
They had no choice. Surrounding them were hundreds of Hydra soldiers pouring out from the Adirondack base, completely cutting off their retreat. Every single soldier was armed with an oddly shaped silver firearm.
There was only one gap in the perimeter, where four individuals of varying ages and genders stood waiting.
Batman had no time for a closer look. In the blink of an eye, the Batwing, diving at supersonic speeds, roared into the airspace directly above Tony and the others.
Dropping its cloaking mode, the Batwing's roaring, supersonic descent had already caught the attention of the Hydra soldiers and their four leaders below.
While the Batwing was still a hundred meters in the air, one of the leaders suddenly raised a hand. Earth and stone violently spiraled upward from the ground, shaping into a massive spike that lunged straight toward the aircraft.
Batman easily maneuvered the Batwing to evade the initial spike. However, countless smaller shards of rock and sand instantly split off from the main pillar, coalescing into a dense storm of earthen spears that rained down upon the jet.
It was immediately clear that this barrage of sand and stone spears was exactly what had brought down Tony, Hawkeye, and Black Widow's S.H.I.E.L.D. jet in the first place.
Furthermore, as Batman dodged the earthen projectiles and pressed his descent closer to the ground, the situation escalated.
The hundreds of Hydra soldiers ringing the Avengers raised their weapons in unison, unleashing thousands of dashed purple energy beams into the sky toward the Batwing.
"Hold on," Batman said over the encrypted comms channel.
Tony had been tracking the plunging Batwing, but Batman's sudden warning left him slightly bewildered.
"I think you're the one who needs to hold on!" Tony retorted.
Despite his snark, Tony immediately threw his arms around Hawkeye and Black Widow, forcing all three of them flat against the ground.
Barely a second after they hit the dirt, the Batwing roared directly over their heads. The immense wake and wind pressure pinned them forcefully against the earth.
Had Tony not shielded them with his armored chassis, the sheer force of the atmospheric displacement would have caused severe internal hemorrhaging for Hawkeye and Black Widow.
Batman didn't let up. He still didn't know the full story of what had happened, or how Tony had managed to get shot out of the sky while flying at thirty thousand feet.
But he did know that the Adirondack Mountain base had long been confirmed as a Hydra stronghold, and the hostiles firing at him were unequivocally Hydra foot soldiers.
Executing a brutal, sharp-angled maneuver without losing an ounce of momentum, the Batwing veered directly toward the firing squad of Hydra soldiers.
This time, the Batwing skimmed the terrain at an altitude of less than ten meters—dangerously low for any aircraft.
At that height, the violent downdraft slammed into the mountainside, violently plowing a shallow trench through the dirt and rock.
Creak... groan...
The faint, ominous sound of groaning metal fatigue echoed in Batman's ears.
This particular Batwing was constructed from standard aerospace-grade alloys, not Vibranium. Forcing it through extreme high-G maneuvers while pushing near-constant supersonic speeds was a punishment that even the hardened metal could not endure for long.
But Batman didn't care. He swept the Batwing directly over the heads of the Hydra soldiers, using the massive wake to scatter them like bowling pins.
Simultaneously, the jet's riot-control guns unleashed a torrent of rubber bullets, completely neutralizing and incapacitating the disoriented soldiers on the ground.
At such close range, the impact of the Batwing's riot-control machine guns was devastating, easily fracturing bones and rupturing internal organs.
Wary of the individual who had summoned the massive earth spikes earlier, Batman deliberately kept the Batwing clear of the four leaders' position.
Once the bulk of the Hydra forces were dealt with, the Batwing—having been subjected to a series of violent, high-stress maneuvers in a matter of minutes—finally gave out with an ear-splitting screech of tearing metal.
Shattering the cockpit canopy with a single, armored punch, Batman leaped directly out of the aircraft without even deploying the ejection seat. With that, the venerable Batwing, which had carried him everywhere from the New Mexico base to the heart of Wakanda, was officially decommissioned.
BOOM!
The Batwing slammed heavily into the terrain just outside the perimeter. As Batman remotely triggered the self-destruct sequence, the aircraft instantly erupted into a massive, roaring fireball.
The blaze painted the pitch-black sky of the Adirondack Mountains a brilliant crimson. Meanwhile, Batman touched down seamlessly right beside Tony Stark.
"Have you engaged the four across from you?" Batman asked.
As seasoned espionage agents, Hawkeye and Black Widow understood the critical value of battlefield intelligence far better than Iron Man. Before Tony could answer, they stepped forward, their expressions grim.
"They identified themselves before you arrived," Natasha said. "The masked one is Baron Zemo. The woman in green is Madame Hydra. The cloaked figure is the Grim Reaper, and the man in the green-and-white striped shirt is Sandman."
"They've been hiding out here in the Adirondack base for years," Clint added. "S.H.I.E.L.D. records classified the first three as missing or KIA a long time ago. We have zero intel on Sandman."
"Watch your back."
Batman gave a tight nod. Side by side, he and Iron Man took a synchronized step forward, bracing themselves to face the four Hydra leaders.
--
Support me & read more advance & fast update chapter on my pa-treon:
pat reon .c-om/windkaze