Had the Batwing not been upgraded, had it not utilized the Vibranium presented by Prince T'Challa as well as the Adamantium formula cracked by Doctor Otto Octavius;
Had Alfred not been in position, having become an artificial intelligence capable of independent thought and absolute control over the Batwing;
Had Silver Sable not led a team to Antarctica to uncover minute traces left behind from harvested Antarctic Vibranium—thereby enabling Batman to engineer Antarctic Vibranium bombs;
Had the suit not been the Gargoyle Suit, but rather the Arkham Suit of the past...
There were far too many "ifs," and had a single one failed to materialize, Batman would have met but one end today: trapped inside the engine room alongside Venom Robin, pounded into meat paste by monsters possessing a wide array of powers.
Across this vast, open sea, even if Batman were to initiate Program Alpha—prepared ever since his transmigrative arrival—he could hardly return to the Batcave intact.
In fact, there was a high probability Batman would have been forced to forfeit this physical vessel of Peter Parker, transferring his memories to the cloned body created by Warren Miles, the Jackal, on North Brother Island.
Yet all of that became ancient history the moment the Reflection Batwing eliminated the aerial threats and, under Alfred's piloting, arrived to rescue Batman.
Batman extended a single hand upward, and the Batwing reached down with a mechanical claw to scoop him inside.
As Batman's wide, heavy cape billowed noisily through the air, he was already inside the cockpit of the Batwing.
At this moment, the Reflection Batwing was still maintaining the "Fear Mode" initiated by Alfred.
In Alfred's hands, this single Batwing had independently annihilated over a hundred weaponized drones, resembling a demon of the skies.
Now in Batman's hands, the Reflection Batwing seemed to come truly alive.
In the eyes of Bi-Beast and the others, they could even sense the icy aura of rage emanating from the Reflection Batwing directly from Batman, alongside an unyielding will that refused to submit—fighting back even when ambushed by fourteen opponents on par with a base-level Hulk.
Batman resealed and welded shut the wall segment the Batwing had previously torn away, then turned back to face Amora the Enchantress.
The pair of narrow, crimson eyes on the Batwing mirrored Batman's own—cold to the point of lacking a shred of human warmth.
Although Batman remained motionless inside the cockpit of the Reflection Batwing after welding the metal wall shut, neither the Enchantress, Bi-Beast, nor Absorbing Man dared to make a rash move.
Even the four members of the Wrecking Crew halted their pursuit of Venom Robin, standing on the spot in suspicious uncertainty.
Reason told them that Batman had merely crawled inside an oddly shaped aircraft.
Yet instinct warned every single one of them of an intense threat radiating from the Batwing, locking onto each of them individually.
Even the Enchantress—who had remained composed and in total control of the battlefield until now—was no exception.
She felt as if she had been targeted by Fenris the Great Wolf—the terrifying beast that had once swallowed Odin the All-Father and the very sun of Asgard.
The Enchantress took a subtle breath, quietly tucking one hand behind her back as green magical light swirled around her slender fingertips.
The atmosphere in the engine room grew increasingly suffocating; perhaps the only one who didn't feel the pressure was Venom Robin.
At that moment, he opened his massive maw, his long crimson tongue hanging over his chest as he roared with reckless abandon.
He had fought an immensely frustrating battle today; save for the Executioner, the Wrecking Crew had mostly focused on containing Robin, refusing to engage him in a direct, head-on brawl.
Wielding crowbars and wrecking balls, they were nothing more than a gang of street thugs endowed with super strength and super resilience, leaving Robin with immense power but nowhere to direct it.
Now, however, with the Reflection Batwing in position, their counterattack had officially begun.
The first objects to launch from the Reflection Batwing were seven or eight canisters the size of fruit cans. Bouncing and rolling across the alloy floor of the engine room, they released dense, impenetrable white smoke that instantly blanketed the area completely.
Making a split-second decision, the Enchantress flicked her wrist as a flash of green light vanished her and the Executioner from the spot into thin air.
Until she found someone capable of truly crushing Batman in every aspect, she would never again mobilize such a grand display, assembling a ragtag assembly of brute combatants who were merely comparable to a base-level Hulk.
Save for Batman—who noticed immediately—no one else realized the Enchantress and the Executioner had vanished.
The dense white smoke not only blocked their vision, but even muffled their sense of hearing and smell significantly.
Absorbing Man lowered his head, discovering the white smoke was so thick he couldn't even see his own hands unless he brought them directly in front of his eyes.
Any further away, and only blurry outlines were visible.
"Vapor!"
X-Ray bellowed, his voice drifting uselessly through the white smoke, unclear where it carried.
Focusing his eyes, thick red energy beams erupted from his pupils, converging into a pillar of light as wide as a water bucket, firing straight toward the direction where Batman had been standing.
He would either hit Batman or blast through the wall, creating a draft to disperse the white smoke.
Yet as the red beam streaked outward, no sound or pressure wave was produced whatsoever—it was as if it had vanished into sheer void.
"Vector!" X-Ray yelled once more, hoping his teammate could hear him.
Before he could hear Vector's response, a sudden, excruciating pain struck the back of his head. Losing his center of gravity entirely, he hit the deck after a dizzying spin.
Bang!
The sound of X-Ray hitting the ground failed to travel through the dense white smoke as well.
Less than five meters away from him, Vector's breathing grew rapid; gradually, he couldn't even tell whether he was breathing or not.
His sense of smell had failed, and physical sensation was slowly drifting away, like a patient injected with anesthesia.
Only by the rising and falling of his chest did he know he was still breathing.
The dense, impenetrable white smoke surrounding him gave Vector an illusion... that he had arrived in heaven.
Soon, a massive bat silhouette manifested through the white smoke, appearing right behind Vector. A claw silently clamped around his throat before discarding him to the side like a rag doll, moving on to seek its next target.
Surrounded entirely by white smoke, vision had lost all meaning.
Unable to see, hear, smell, or feel.
This omnipresent whiteness made the hearts of the four Wrecking Crew members race. Standing close together, they huddled tightly, as if this were the only way to find a semblance of security.
It wasn't until Wrecker, Dirk Garthwaite, reached out to feel around that he realized one of his companions had disappeared without a trace.
Thunderball, Eliot Franklin, was gone—swallowed whole by the white smoke like a predatory beast.
Before panic could even set in, Wrecker's heart skipped a beat as he saw his teammate, Piledriver, hanging suspended in the air with open, unblinking eyes, his nose less than a palm's distance from Wrecker's own face.
Had gravity not remained intact, Wrecker would have questioned whether his teammate was hanging suspended, or if he himself was the one hanging upside down.
Terrified, he took a step back, only to step into empty air; in the very next second, he lost consciousness entirely.
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