The big-headed old man whom Abomination had called "Gargoyle" instantly lost the smile on his face, his expression turning ice-cold.
"General Ross put me in charge here, not you. Strictly speaking, Blonsky, I'm your superior."
Abomination's upturned lips flattened. He bared a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and looked at Gargoyle with open contempt.
"General Ross can go fuck himself."
Without the slightest warning, Abomination spun, lunged, and slammed Gargoyle to the floor. One massive hand clamped around the old man's skull and squeezed.
BANG!
A few minutes earlier the same Gargoyle had been lounging on the sofa, happily munching snacks while watching Dora the Explorer. Now his head exploded like an overripe melon, gore splattering in every direction.
A monster that supposedly required a twenty-ton reinforced cage to contain didn't even last a single exchange against Abomination. Instant kill. Total elapsed time: less than two seconds.
Abomination flicked the slime off his hand and turned toward Batman.
"You're Batman, right? The boss knew you'd show up. He stationed me here specifically to wait for you."
Batman's brow furrowed slightly as he watched the creature who'd just cursed out General Ross now acting like the perfect obedient soldier.
"Boss?" "Besides General Ross, there's someone else in charge of this base?"
"The boss said," Abomination clenched his fists until the knuckles cracked, "no matter what questions you ask, I just have to answer with these."
"You took down both the Lizard and the Hulk at Oscorp Tower, two-on-one. Let's see if you're really as good as they say!"
BOOM!!
The sound of Abomination stomping the ground was less like a footfall and more like someone detonating a missile directly inside your eardrums.
The entire base shook as if a small earthquake had erupted. Huge chunks of concrete ripped free from the floor, shrapnel flying everywhere. The shockwave and tremor alone became weapons; the ground beneath Batman's feet bucked and rolled like the deck of a ship in a hurricane.
Amidst the earth-shattering chaos, Abomination's mountain-like body displayed speed utterly incompatible with its size, cannonball velocity without a shred of technique. Just the purest, most straightforward linear charge.
If not for the lack of a screaming whistle, he might as well have been a runaway locomotive.
Batman remained unnaturally calm. He flashed sideways, easily dodging the straight-line charge, watching Abomination plow through wall after wall after wall until he seemed to lose his bearings and looped in a wide circle around the left-center of the base.
Batman did not take the opening to slip into the passage leading deeper underground. He had to neutralize Abomination first; only then could he extract Norman Osborn to the surface without unexpected complications.
It was time to initiate the contingency he had originally prepared for the Hulk, but had brought to New Mexico specifically for gamma-spawned monsters.
"Barbara, activate the Battering Ram Protocol. Deploy the composite-spectrum emitter. Arm the EMP warheads."
High above, the Batwing cruising in a steady holding pattern suddenly opened its belly. One of three Bat-pods, sleek oval sarcophagus-like drop capsules identical to the one Bruce Banner had once lain in, detached and fell.
Its surface bristled with concealed thrusters and stabilizing fins; the moment it was released it could adjust trajectory and velocity mid-air.
Every thruster fired at full burn, leaving white contrails as it screamed downward under gravity and acceleration toward Batman's position.
At the same time, Batman rapidly scanned the shattered environment, mentally mapping every foothold and handhold. One hand dipped to his utility belt and came up with a collapsed injector. A flick of his fingers snapped it into ready mode. He tossed it behind him without looking and barked a single sharp command:
"Robin!"
"Got it!"
A black tendril shot from Batman's torso, Venom's symbiote snatching the injector out of the air.
Inside was Batman's upgraded tranquilizer cocktail. The needle was diamond-tipped; once it pierced flesh, the syringe would generate enormous pressure and force-inject the entire dose.
But he wasn't finished. The moment Venom secured the tranquilizer, Batman produced another vial, this one thick, viscous green liquid, the gamma suppressor originally prepared for Norman Osborn.
Dr. Banner had only synthesized one dose, but Batman had reverse-engineered several backups from the sample.
He tossed that one behind him to Venom as well, then reached to his belt a third time.
This time it wasn't medicine. It was a cascade of different specialized batarangs: high-frequency oscillating batarangs, explosive gel batarangs, and more.
Meanwhile, the Batcycle he'd left outside the base roared to life on its own, not the engine, but the composite-spectrum emitter and EMP bombs mounted on it.
Batman trusted his electronic virus to blind most of the base's surveillance, but to be absolutely certain Venom's presence stayed hidden, he would open with an EMP barrage to knock out every electronic system inside.
Of course, that meant the people in the secret lab far below would definitely know he was here.
But Abomination's rampage had already made enough noise to wake the dead. Hiding his arrival any longer was pointless. So he would simply cripple their electronics and keep Venom itself off their screens.
Dozens of batarangs streaked away in every direction.
Finally, Batman stopped reaching for his belt. He clenched both fists and stared straight at Abomination.
"Oh? You actually waited for me?"
Abomination came crashing back through another series of walls, returning to the left-center zone. He seemed mildly surprised to see Batman still standing there, ready.
Batman hadn't dropped a smoke bomb to vanish down the passage. He hadn't fled at the sight of the destruction.
Abomination's excitement visibly spiked. His jaws split wide again as he snorted twin jets of scorching air through his nostrils, as if everything until now had just been the warm-up.
"I smashed every wall around this place. You didn't run when you had the chance. Now… you have nowhere left to run."
With that, he took a earth-shaking step forward, raised one massive foot, and brought it down like a pile-driver toward Batman's head. When it missed, he immediately swung the other leg in a brutal follow-up kick.
Both attacks missed. Abomination realized stomping was too slow and telegraphed too obviously. He instantly switched tactics.
He slammed both fists into the ground. A colossal shockwave erupted, rippling straight toward Batman.
And he didn't stop there. Still gripping those hammer-like fists, he charged right behind his own shockwave, swinging left and right in a relentless barrage.
Batman never once counterattacked. He simply evaded, again and again. Not even Venom surfaced to cover him.
He kept his movement range tight, never letting the distance between them exceed three meters, silently counting the seconds in his head.