"Peter! Peter!"
Outside the Osborn Building, Harry Osborn shouted at the top of his lungs toward the structure.
Inside the building, the lights flickered erratically, and occasional booming explosions rang out, making it impossible to tell what was happening.
Harry Osborn was blocked by soldiers on the ground floor and couldn't get inside. His face was etched with worry, but he couldn't force his way past troops who were each several times stronger than him.
"After I gave Peter that 'Clark' ID, he went into the Osborn Building—but I haven't heard from him since—"
As he listened to the loud noises coming from inside the building, Harry Osborn grew more and more anxious.
But just then, with a deafening bang,
On the tenth floor of the Osborn Building, the Batmobile launched miniature missiles to blast through the wall, then leaped out, firing several Dewar flasks into the sky before crashing back down to the ground.
The Batmobile activated its self-destruct mode, but its tough armor and large Bat symbol remained intact amid the explosion.
Harry Osborn looked up at the sky, only to see a dark figure catch the Dewar flasks, then dart back into the Osborn Building.
"That figure looks kind of familiar."
The soldiers on the ground floor were startled and hesitant, slowly approaching the Batmobile with their guns raised. Harry also stepped forward, staring at the Bat symbol on the vehicle's hood for a long moment.
"Batman? That vampire everyone's been talking about lately?"
A flicker of doubt crossed Harry Osborn's mind, but he quickly pushed aside the idea of "Batman" and instead tried to slip into the Osborn Building while the soldiers' attention was fixed on the Batmobile.
Thump!
With a loud crash, dust rained down from the stairwell with the impact. Harry, who had secretly sneaked into the building's stairwell alone, ducked his head, covered his mouth and nose, and slowly advanced, clinging to the wall.
"Peter!"
Harry called out.
His voice echoed through the stairwell, but no one responded. Instead, a beastly roar suddenly erupted, clearly audible even through multiple floors.
"Peter?"
Harry was startled. He waited a few minutes, and only after the commotion inside the building died down did he continue climbing the stairs.
"Professor Connors, calm down."
Clang!
Batman spoke as he yanked on a spider web. At the end of the web, a Dewar flask filled with liquid nitrogen was swung hard and smashed onto Professor Lizard's head.
Hiss!
The flask shattered instantly, and a large amount of liquid nitrogen poured out, flowing down Professor Lizard's body from his head, along his keratinized skin. Thin white smoke rose along with it.
"Roar!"
Professor Lizard bellowed in fury, twisting his massive body with tremendous force.
His body quickly froze after being doused in liquid nitrogen. Scales flaked off as Professor Lizard contorted his form. Blood seeped from the wounds immediately but healed just as rapidly.
The pain and rage turned Professor Lizard's golden vertical pupils nearly blood-red. He stared intently at Batman, still not attacking, but instead clawing desperately toward the twentieth floor with all his might.
Even after becoming a monster, Professor Lizard still wanted to get the "perfect" regenerative serum and deliver it to Metropolitan Hospital.
"Professor, even if you've turned into a lizard, I hope you'll listen to what I have to say."
Batman said in a deep voice, bending down to retrieve his modified Bat signal transmitter. As he activated it, he flicked his wrist, and the transmitter and a Batarang flew out one after the other, the former securely pinned to the broken hole in the ceiling by the latter.
Then, one by one, modified pumpkin bombs rolled onto the ground, seemingly discarded.
"Your regenerative serum is still imperfect. Insisting on using it to save a child will only cause that child to suffer later on."
Professor Lizard had shown no strong urge to attack since the rooftop; instead, he was fixated solely on returning to the twentieth floor to retrieve the regenerative serum.
Even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand chance, Batman had to try communicating with him verbally.
He spoke in a deep voice while firing another spider web to latch onto a Dewar flask and smash it fiercely against Professor Lizard.
Then came the third, the fourth—
Until all the Dewar flasks were smashed squarely onto Professor Lizard's body, the liquid nitrogen inside almost completely enveloping him.
The extremely low temperature of the liquid nitrogen instantly sapped immense heat, causing Professor Lizard's scales and muscles to stiffen and lose their elasticity.
This was just one of Batman's contingency plans, prepared in advance to deal with any monsters General Ross might create.
Although Professor Lizard's mutation had little to do with General Ross, he had become a cold-blooded creature like a lizard, which made him particularly vulnerable to liquid nitrogen.
With liquid nitrogen covering most of his body surface, Professor Lizard's metabolism plummeted, instinctively forcing him into a state of rigidity and sluggishness.
Batman didn't stop his assault but kept pressing the attack.
"Professor Connors, I believe that no matter what you've become, you're still that strong-willed, kind-hearted scientist."
"I need you to calm down."
As he spoke, Batman used his body to smash through one load-bearing column after another, one load-bearing wall after another.
With each impact, a faint sound of bones cracking echoed from Batman's body, and his armor shattered piece by piece. The inside of his suit had long since become warm and sticky, with blood covering nearly his entire form.
But Batman didn't stop; he had to seize this opportunity.
The entire architectural layout of the Osborn Building had been etched into Batman's mind since the City Hall Subway Station incident. He knew exactly that breaking these load-bearing walls would trigger a collapse.
It was only a partial collapse; the floor slabs and walls would come down in the order he had broken them, forming an artificial gravity cage.
Similar "cages" were set up on every floor of the Osborn Building, ensuring that Batman would have a plan no matter how the battle unfolded.
"Who are you—"
A beast-like voice emerged from Professor Lizard's mouth. The blood-red hue in his golden vertical pupils faded slightly, and his scaly face looked somewhat pained.
"Why do you know these things—" Professor Lizard's voice came in fits and starts.
Batman was silent for less than half a second, then removed his Bat helmet, revealing a face with an unshaven beard,
and blood slowly trickling from his forehead.
Between concealing his identity at all costs and revealing it to prevent a tragic scientist from making further mistakes, Batman chose the latter.
"Peter?" There was a hint of unconcealed surprise in Professor Lizard's voice.
"It's me, Professor."
Batman looked at Professor Lizard, his voice no longer deep:
"Before you make an irreversible mistake, trust me!"
"I will fund your continued research into limb regeneration experiments, and I'll work with you to save the lives you couldn't—"
"Roar!"
Another roar echoed.
This time, it wasn't from Professor Lizard, who was pinned down by Batman using floor slabs and walls and covered in liquid nitrogen, but from the Hulk, who was several floors away and had been stabilized for less than ten seconds by Batman's Gamma device neural sedative and the Batarang's tranquilizer gas.
Rumble!
Starting from the fifty-eighth floor where the Hulk was located, the newly enraged Hulk raised his fists and hammered the floor beneath him repeatedly, his body plummeting downward at an incredible speed.
Crash!
This time, the Hulk seemed to hold nothing back. His furious double-fisted strikes shook the entire Osborn Building slightly with each blow.
Dust billowed, circuits sparked and exploded, water pipes burst, and even some glass windows and instruments shattered as he passed.
However, Batman ignored the rampaging Hulk and focused on Professor Lizard, hoping to see a trace of human emotion on his lizard-like face, rather than the coldness of a cold-blooded animal.
"Smash!"
The Hulk finally broke through the last floor and landed beside Batman, just as he was about to attack both Professor Lizard and Batman at the same time.
"Drip."
The Bat signal transmitter, which Batman had modified in advance and nailed to the wall, suddenly emitted a nauseating low-frequency noise.
At the same time, the pumpkin bombs discarded on the ground exploded one after another. Intense flashes and impacts, combined with the high-frequency noise from the pumpkin bombs, filled the entire floor.
Exploding along with them was solidifying gel, which had been poured into another batch of modified pumpkin bombs and rapidly sprayed toward the Hulk with the blasts.
The solidifying gel expanded and hardened quickly upon contact with air, almost completely encasing the Hulk.
"Calm down, both of you."
After the flashes, noise, and solidifying gel subsided, Batman put his helmet back on, and his deep voice echoed in the ears of the two monsters:
"Otherwise, I will activate Project Alpha."
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