After the formation of the Justice League, Batman did not immediately dispatch the group on South Brother Island to Manhattan to join the battle.
The Lizard and the Hulk were flexing their muscles and raring to go, while Professor Morbius sat quietly on the ground with his eyes shut, seemingly resting.
Batman's gaze swept over Venom Robin, who was practically bursting with excitement, and then pointed a finger toward Doctor Otto. Surrounded by a crowd of monsters, the doctor looked somewhat pitiful with only two of his four mechanical tentacles remaining.
"Robin, go to the Bat-Island and retrieve the cases labeled No. 34 and No. 54 from the equipment manufacturing sector."
"Inside is something prepared specifically for Doctor Otto."
Venom Robin's eyes instantly lit up, and he dashed off without another word.
Doctor Otto nodded to Batman, remaining silent.
Long before North Brother Island had even been remodeled—back during Batman's battle with Anti-Venom—he had already vaguely guessed that the man beneath the cowl was Peter Parker.
As time passed, this suspicion had gradually grown into a certainty, so Doctor Otto felt no need to say anything at a moment like this.
A few minutes later, the four-foot-tall Venom Robin returned to South Brother Island. He held his hands high, balancing two silver cases that were twice the size of his own body on top of his head.
"Doctor, open them quickly and see what's inside!" Robin threw the cases onto the ground excitedly.
At this moment, Robin had completely cast aside his usual fear of Doctor Otto, craning his neck forward in anticipation.
Doctor Otto looked toward Batman, and upon seeing the Dark Knight give a slight nod, he hesitated no longer.
Click!
The two cases were opened one after the other, immediately revealing their contents to the Justice League.
One was a full-body suit primarily in green with silver accents, and the other was a set of four coiled, purplish-black mechanical tentacles with a metallic sheen.
The moment Venom Robin saw that familiar purplish-black color, his eyes widened in disbelief as he looked at Batman.
"It's Vibranium, but not entirely. In theory, it belongs to the Adamantium family," Batman explained.
After passing the hair tissue sample obtained from Wolverine over to Doctor Otto, Batman had already made his own preliminary attempts, even though the true formula for Adamantium had not yet been fully analyzed.
While the Adamantium used to forge these octopus tentacles certainly could not match the sheer durability of Wolverine's claws, it still far surpassed any ordinary metal.
Since the laboratory had already been smashed into a chaotic mess by the Hulk, Doctor Otto did not bother to hide from the others. He took off his white lab coat, changed into the new suit, and equipped the mechanical tentacles.
"Old Bat, can we finally start moving?" Venom Robin urged.
"No," Batman replied as he opened the portable computer built into his Gargoyle Batsuit.
No matter the battle, intelligence was always the most crucial step.
The Avengers, led by Tony Stark, had already taken action ahead of them. However, through a wiretapping system he had planted within Stark Industries, Batman knew perfectly well that this group lacked any real command structure, and their cooperation was entirely superficial.
Although it appeared for the moment that specific individuals were moving to handle the Hydra soldiers and their various leaders, Batman knew this was merely on the surface.
Per Batman's instructions, the five members of the Justice League held their positions and stood ground.
Red Hulk, The Leader, and the Little Green Goblin had yet to show themselves after their escape, and Batman had temporarily lost track of their trails.
But without a doubt, those individuals were definitely lying in wait somewhere.
They might have some intersection with Hydra, but if Batman had to guess, their ultimate targets would only be himself, the Hulk, and the others.
By holding their positions now, they were effectively keeping Red Hulk and his cohort in check.
Batman suspected that the moment the Justice League deployed, those villains would immediately show themselves. If that happened, it would only throw Manhattan—already suffering from the Hydra invasion—into deeper chaos.
At Times Square, Sandman had transformed into a massive vortex of dust and sand, wreaking havoc with reckless abandon.
The space here was large enough that no buildings could impede the destructive power of his sandstorm, and it was sufficiently high-profile.
This was bound to draw the attention of the vast majority of New York police officers and superheroes.
Sure enough, before Sandman had even been entrenched there for two minutes, a streak of golden electricity flashed into view upon the roof of a distant building.
Following a few brief flickers, Electro, Max Dillon, stood at the edge of Times Square.
"If you don't want me to hurt you, I suggest you stop this destruction immediately," Electro said, looking up at the massive vortex of swirling sand.
"Shut—up!" inside the vortex, a colossal human face materialized. It roared at Electro before quickly dissolving back into the sea of sand grains.
Directly after, a dense torrent of sand swept frantically toward Electro.
The sand was exceptionally coarse and moving at an incredible velocity. An ordinary person caught in it would immediately have their flesh, blood, and internal organs scraped entirely clean; even their bones might not hold up.
Yet Max Dillon did not care in the slightest. Seeing that his verbal warning had failed to stop Sandman, he simply unleashed a sudden surge of expansion.
Crackle!
Golden electricity flooded the heavens and earth. Although Times Square was being destroyed, underground power cables and building circuits that still carried current instantly erupted with electrical sparks.
These currents quickly converged together, causing Electro's body to grow progressively vaster inch by inch until he transformed into a towering giant of pure lightning.
With a sudden twist of his form, Electro similarly turned into a tempest of lightning, charging directly into the storm of sand.
For a time, golden electricity crackled and leaped as the two storms practically fused into one. Under the intense heat generated by the electrical currents, countless grains of sand were crystallized, melted down into glass.
Snap! Crackle! Pop!
The sand that had been melted into glass rained down upon the ground, and Sandman's physical proportions shrank rapidly at a pace visible to the naked eye.
Sandman had no intention of staying to fight a losing battle. Realizing his attacks were ineffective against Electro and that the other man's electricity could easily neutralize his sand vortex, he decisively turned and fled.
However, he had overlooked one critical factor: the speed of lightning far outmatched the velocity of his sweeping sandstorm.
Virtually wherever Sandman flew, Electro followed right behind like a shadow, a relentless plague that could not be shaken off no matter what.
In a matter of mere four or five minutes, the one-sided battle finally concluded in Electro's victory as Sandman's very last grain of sand fell to the earth, entirely spent and broken.
At the same time, Iron Man finally located Grim Reaper.
Without a second word, Iron Man flew high in the sky and began raining down heavy ordnance upon Grim Reaper, continuously firing his repulsor blasts in precise semi-automatic bursts.
This was, yet again, a completely one-sided battle.
Hawkeye, on the other hand, had failed to locate Baron Zemo; instead, he found himself surrounded by an entire platoon of Hydra forces.
Unlike the time he was surrounded by the thugs of the Anfeng Group in the red-light district of Yokohama, Japan—where those thugs relied primarily on fists, kicks, and cold weapons—these Hydra soldiers held strangely designed silver firearms in their hands.
Back on South Brother Island, Batman still had not deployed.
Based on the series of clues gathered up to this point, he had already deduced the exact motive behind this Hydra invasion of Manhattan.
Two years ago, shortly before Nick Fury dispatched a covert strike team to Latveria for a secret mission, a polar expedition crew from Japan's Anfeng Group had discovered a hibernating Captain America.
That Japanese polar expedition had been covertly supported by Nathan Garrett, who was a Level 8 Agent back when he was still alive. Standing behind Garrett, of course, was SHIELD Director Nick Fury.
Without a doubt, the sleeping Captain America had been secretly brought back by Nick Fury, who immediately deployed him to Latveria.
Judging from information gleaned from historical news reports, the superheroes had very likely participated in a massacre, and Hydra's motive for invading New York was...
Defeat the superheroes, expose SHIELD's secret mission in Latveria from two years ago, vindicate Hydra's name, occupy the city... and then conquer the world!
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