On the second level of the City Hall Batcave, the moment the red-eyed young Green Goblin returned, Batman knew instantly that he was under the influence of the Fear Toxin.
At this moment, Abomination and Red Hulk were still twitching and convulsing under the Leader's mind control. Even though they had lost consciousness, their bodies were instinctively attempting to resist.
Batman was fully prepared to face a flurry of punches and kicks, or even lethal strikes, from the young Green Goblin, Harry Osborn.
But the young Green Goblin didn't attack. He merely stared at Batman with bloodshot eyes, as if committing his appearance permanently to memory.
To the young Green Goblin, everything in the Batcave carried a strange hint of familiarity. Ignoring Batman entirely, he carefully scanned the cave before a sinister grin spread across his face.
He could tell that this Batcave had been constructed out of the abandoned City Hall subway station.
And he, Harry Osborn, just so happened to have toured this long-defunct station years ago with his father, Norman Osborn.
After quickly scanning his surroundings, the young Green Goblin leaped without hesitation toward a specific spot. It was the weakest point in the entire Batcave—the location of the old subway station's amethyst glass skylight.
Batman had reinforced it, but to maintain the cave's disguise from the outside, the amethyst skylight had been left intact.
With a powerful swing of the young Green Goblin's fist, the skylight shattered with a loud crash. The freezing November wind immediately surged into the Batcave, sweeping up toward the second level.
Instantly, the struggles of the unconscious Abomination and Red Hulk grew more violent, and the Leader's mind control tightened its grip completely.
Finally, upon reaching a critical breaking point, blood began to seep from the Leader's eyes, nostrils, and ears, and Red Hulk and Abomination snapped fully awake.
This time, the Leader didn't order them to attack Batman together. Instead, he commanded Abomination to hold Batman back with everything he had, while Red Hulk carried him out of the Batcave.
At the same time, the young Green Goblin—having completely disrupted the internal atmosphere of Fear Toxin and Gamma inhibitors—spun around and lunged at Batman.
Chaos erupted instantly within the Batcave. Abomination fought frantically with Batman, their brawl spilling from the second level down to the first, deliberately smashing workbenches, mechanical arms, and various equipment along the way.
Red Hulk grabbed the Leader with one hand and balled his other into a massive fist.
No matter who stood in his path—whether it was Batman, Abomination, or the young Green Goblin—he threw punches without a shred of hesitation, brute-forcing his way directly beneath the shattered skylight before leaping upward.
The young Green Goblin wasn't idle either. As he lunged toward Batman, he ducked low to rip a thick power cable apart, thrusting the wire—crackling with blue electrical sparks—straight toward Batman's body.
Even in the midst of this complete chaos, Batman remained utterly calm.
Most of the assets inside the City Hall Batcave had already been relocated beneath Bat Island, including the dull, lusterless clump of symbiote matter left behind by Anti-Venom.
Therefore, without a moment's hesitation, Batman flexed his arm muscles at a specific angle and force, triggering a button hidden inside his Gargoyle Batsuit.
Silently, the City Hall Batcave's self-destruct mechanism was activated, set to detonate and obliterate everything in ten seconds.
Batman hadn't even equipped the mechanism with a ticking countdown sound. At that moment, his Spider-Sense was screaming in alarm, urging him to get out.
But before the self-destruct sequence could detonate, the cable in the young Green Goblin's grip struck first.
However, as the cable was slammed down, Batman, clad in his Gargoyle Batsuit, remained entirely unaffected. Instead, it was Abomination who ended up convulsing wildly from the shock.
Sensing that things had gone south, the young Green Goblin immediately took a step back, staring at Batman as if looking at a monster. He then spun on his heel, dashed toward the skylight, and leaped out, vanishing without a trace.
In a one-on-four fight, given enough preparation, Batman was confident he could subdue them all. But if one was desperately holding him back while the others were hell-bent on escaping, even Batman lacked the means to stop every single one of them.
Ever since he had lost Spider-Man's various abilities, Batman's strength had reverted to the thirty-ton level he possessed when he first crossed over into this world.
Even though it had increased slightly through recent retraining, it still couldn't compare to the massive eighty-plus tons of raw strength wielded by Abomination and Red Hulk.
Escaping was different from fighting. In combat, Batman could rely on his diverse tactical arsenal to deal with threats dynamically. But for Red Hulk and the young Green Goblin, escaping required nothing more than brute force—and brute force happened to be Batman's relative weakness.
As a result, less than three minutes after Batman's return, everyone except Abomination had already fled.
His Spider-Sense flared with increasing intensity. Even without a countdown timer, Batman knew with absolute certainty that only three seconds remained until detonation.
Without hesitation, Batman instantly released Abomination, leapt far back, and threw himself out through the skylight.
In the next split second, the ground above the City Hall subway station bulged upward before flames erupted into the sky. An earth-shattering explosion roared, causing the sound-activated lights inside the nearby Parker Building to snap on all at once, while the windows groaned and rattled.
Several cars parked next to the City Hall subway station were flipped into the air on the spot, crashing back down a distance away seconds later and bursting into massive fireballs.
A nearby fire hydrant was blasted clean off its mountings. Instead of rocketing into the sky atop a high-pressure geyser of water as it should have, it merely clattered to the side; there was surprisingly no water inside.
Like a miniature earthquake, the alarms of vehicles parked in a distant alley began to wail in a discordant chorus.
At the site of the City Hall subway station, a pillar of fire shot over ten meters straight up into the sky. Then, the column of fire vanished, replaced by billowing plumes of thick black smoke.
The City Hall Batcave was completely gone, leaving nothing behind but a jagged, pitch-black crater.
It wasn't that the self-destruct device possessed the power of a bunker buster, but rather that it had blown through the barriers separating the former Batcave from the surface, completely collapsing the floors of both the first and second levels.
Down in the crater, Abomination was embedded into the pit wall, his entire body charred black. Having taken the full brunt of the explosion head-on, he was clearly in rough shape.
Fortunately, Abomination wasn't dead. Upon leaping from the skylight, Batman had immediately searched for any sign of Red Hulk, the Leader, and the young Green Goblin, but found nothing.
They had already used their speed and strength to put a massive distance between themselves and the site.
Batman didn't wait for the embers of the explosion to die down. The moment the heavy smoke billowed out, he jumped back down into the ruined Batcave, pried Abomination out of the crater wall, and hauled him over his shoulder, heading straight into a nearby sewer line.
Simultaneously, Batman sent a message to Venom Robin, who was currently embedded deep within the Wilson Corporation, instructing him to return to South Brother Island.
Ten minutes later, Batman arrived back at South Brother Island. Surveying the South Brother Island laboratory—which looked in no better shape than the obliterated City Hall Batcave—Batman dropped Abomination onto the floor without a word.
A few minutes later, Venom Robin returned as well.
Counting Batman himself, six people stood in a circle around the charred Abomination. Batman spoke, his voice low and grim:
"Guys..."
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