"I also noticed something rather interesting, Doctor Banner."
"Ever since you started operating in New York, 'Spider-Man'… vanished."
"That only confirms my theory."
At the Leader's words, Batman's brow lifted ever so slightly.
It took Batman only a few seconds to fully reconstruct the twisted path by which the Leader had arrived at this unrecognizable conclusion.
Since crossing over into this world, Batman had worn the Spider-Man suit in public exactly once, and only to deliberately lure out the Spider-Slayer, Spencer Smythe.
After that, the red-and-blue spider suit had been retired to the shadows, replaced by the pitch-black mantle of the bat.
To an ordinary person, the simple fact that "Spider-Man disappeared the moment Batman appeared" might be enough to suspect that Batman was the former Spider-Man.
But ordinary people had no way to dig deeper into Batman's true identity. Every scrap of footage that might have revealed "Spider-Man's" movements, voice, or physique had long since been scrubbed from the internet by Batman himself.
To someone like the Leader, however, "Spider-Man disappears, Batman appears" sent an entirely different message.
Spider-Man had been loud, flamboyant, constantly in the public eye. His behavioral patterns were relatively predictable; even Norman Osborn had once exploited Spider-Man's habit of saving civilians and fighting street-level crime to design the Spider-Slayers.
Batman, by contrast, was low-profile, silent, his movements covert and his tactics precise and ruthless. Though he still targeted criminals, he had never once performed the kind of small-scale good deeds—like helping little old ladies cross the street—that Spider-Man had been famous for.
The Leader had two working theories.
The first: something catastrophic had happened in Spider-Man's life. Realizing the limitations of a friendly neighborhood hero, he had decided to become a far more effective, far more terrifying symbol. Thus he discarded the Spider-Man identity and continued operating in New York as Batman.
The Leader quickly dismissed that possibility himself. He had investigated both Osborn and the Parker family. Peter Parker's Uncle Ben had died a full month before "Batman" first appeared—an timeline that completely contradicted the idea of "Peter loses a loved one and transforms from Spider-Man into Batman." The dates simply didn't line up.
Moreover, it would be nearly impossible for the same individual to undergo such an extreme personality shift in so short a time—unless everything about the previous "Spider-Man" persona had been an act from the beginning.
That dramatically increased the probability of the second hypothesis: "Spider-Man" was nothing more than a discarded codename or field agent, and behind him stood an organization.
To deal with the Osborn Corporation and the cascading crises in New York, that organization had sent a higher-tier operative—"Batman"—to take over the mission.
Add to that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s covert operations in places like Dharavi, plus Batman's obsessive focus on Norman Osborn's gamma experiments, and the Leader reached his conclusion:
Batman was Bruce Banner, a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
As for how Nick Fury, thousands of miles away at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, actually interpreted the disappearance of Spider-Man and the emergence of Batman… well, that was an entirely different perspective.
Batman was breathing hard, chest heaving. The physical exhaustion from the fight had already faded within seconds of the battle's end; the continued heavy breathing now served only to increase his blood-oxygen levels—and, more importantly, to mislead the Leader.
In those few seconds of labored breath, Batman reverse-engineered the Leader's entire chain of reasoning at lightning speed.
Like every enemy he faced, Batman never fought a battle he wasn't confident he could win—or at the very least, only fought when he had gathered sufficient intelligence or when stopping something was non-negotiable.
He didn't know the Leader personally, but from the instant he had leaped out of the elevator shaft, Batman had been probing the man relentlessly from every angle.
Deducing what the Leader was thinking was just another form of probing; he was using his own mind to simulate the Leader's thought processes and gauge the extent of the man's intellectually mutated intellect.
If I were the Leader, sitting calmly in front of a Batman who just demolished a gamma monster, I wouldn't be here because of arrogance—I'd be here because of certainty.
Multitasking effortlessly, Batman simulated the Leader's thoughts while simultaneously analyzing both the Leader and General Ross.
The moment I burst out of the shaft, there was no surprise on General Ross's face, but when the Leader mentioned Abomination, a flicker of confusion crossed it.
That confirms my earlier suspicion: the Leader has already seized power. General Ross has effectively been sidelined—he's nothing but the Leader's puppet now…
If I were the Leader and had heard about the incident at Oscorp from Ross, knowing Batman existed, I would have prepared five countermeasures.
Abomination on the surface, the gamma beasts in the underground plaza, General Ross himself—cured by gamma equipment, Norman Osborn floating in that glass tank, and finally an escape route prepared solely for myself.
If my analysis is correct, the Leader's next play is General Ross.
The moment the thought finished forming, the Leader spoke.
"Doctor Banner, I'd like you to take off that suit and put that brain with its seven PhDs to work. Join me. Let us evolve humanity together."
"Or you can choose the only other option: lose to General Ross, and let your corpse become my second experimental subject."
Batman gave an almost imperceptible nod. He had perfectly predicted the Leader's exact words, which proved that the Leader's intellectual mutation, while formidable, had not yet surpassed the realm of super-genius.
Yet even so, the voice that suddenly rang out across the underground plaza still caught Batman off guard.
It was General Ross.
The general had lowered the hand that had been resting on his hip, and now stared at the Leader in open shock, pointing at himself with one finger.
"Me?"
Batman had previously assumed Ross was aware of the changes to his own body. Seeing the man's reaction now, he instantly updated his intel.
Ross only knows his legs were healed. He has no idea what else has been done to him—he doesn't even know Abomination exists. That's why he looked confused when the name came up.
Ross very likely possesses the ability to transform into some kind of monster himself, and the Leader almost certainly has a way to control him.
That would explain why both Blonsky and Ross have been able to retain human form. Mental domination? Illusions? Telepathy? It has to be one of the three.
Though the Leader had yet to display any powers directly, Batman now had a fairly complete picture of the cards his opponent held.
But knowing what cards the enemy held wasn't enough. Batman knew the real fight was still ahead.
Because the instant Ross finished speaking, his body visibly began to swell. His uniform tore apart as flames erupted across his skin, reducing the fabric to ash in seconds.
Scalding white steam poured from his now crimson skin. Papers on nearby gamma equipment spontaneously combusted. The temperature in the entire underground plaza spiked several degrees in an instant.
The transformed General Ross looked almost identical to the Hulk—except his eyes were unfocused and clouded.
Beside him, the Leader pressed a hand to the restraining band around his enormous skull and took several steps back.
Oh.
Before the Red Hulk had even thrown a punch, an invisible wave of pressure slammed into Batman's mind.
This was no longer one-on-one.
Now Batman had to face two enemies at once—the Red Hulk, and the Leader.