Chapter 309: Exchange
Whether Ivan, Maddie, or that group in suits fleeing like refugees—none could have imagined the boy they thought brain-damaged and useless except for his pretty face was actually more terrifying than the dinosaurs themselves.
After ripping one dinosaur's jaws apart, several other dinosaur mouths arrived simultaneously.
Venom Robin released the thoroughly dead creature. His hands swept back, billowing his cape as he drew from his lower back two short sticks—so comically short they invited laughter.
But nobody laughed. The desperately fleeing crowd had forgotten to keep running. They stood frozen in place.
They watched Venom Robin plunge a short stick into a dinosaur's eye socket, then flip off its skull cap.
They watched a dinosaur stomp Venom Robin underfoot, only for him to immediately stand back up with one hand supporting seven or eight tons of weight. He climbed the creature's back by stabbing the sticks alternately into its body like climbing picks, then reached down and yanked out its spine.
They watched Robin's feet transform into pitch-black tentacles that coiled tightly around a dinosaur's neck while his hands grabbed its upper jaw and bent its head backward until it folded against its own body.
"What kind of mon—" Someone's teeth chattered. Their tongue wouldn't cooperate, words stuttering out in fragments.
Little Maddie lowered her hands from her eyes. Her mouth hung open watching Venom Robin effortlessly slaughter dozens of massive dinosaurs—like Astro Boy descending from the sky in cartoons.
"Batman...?" Ivan was equally terrified by Venom Robin's appearance. But after Robin finished killing all the dinosaurs, he gathered courage and asked.
Who else but the legendary Batman could accomplish such things?
Venom Robin stood atop dinosaur corpses. His shroud-cloth battle suit's legs and cape's lower hem had been dyed crimson.
Just as he prepared to leave, Robin heard Ivan's question. He turned back, lowering his voice.
"Maybe someday I'll be Batman. But right now I'm Robin."
Venom Robin raised one hand, fired an extremely thin tentacle that grabbed a high wall along the street, then launched himself swinging toward the distance.
Robin's front foot had barely left when people around Ivan erupted with excitement.
"He said he's Batman!"
"Batman's actually alive! And he's a kid!"
"Does anyone know what he's called?"
Ivan watched Venom Robin's retreating figure disappear around a skyscraper corner. He shook his head, took Maddie back from his wife's arms, then turned to continue searching for somewhere to escape the dinosaurs.
---
"Bat— That stupid Batman! Did his Robin actually show up or not?!"
Hell's Kitchen. Tony Stark punched out several small four-to-five-meter dinosaurs that ran at extreme speeds—Gallimimus, apparently.
Electro Max Dillon couldn't risk public exposure. He kept avoiding the armed helicopters overhead while rescuing people. That left all the visible rescue operations and dinosaur hunting falling on Tony's shoulders.
Due to Mark IV's limited attack options, Tony currently had nothing beyond palm repulsors, physical strikes, and his chest-mounted unibeam.
Against relatively small dinosaurs like Gallimimus, it was manageable. But those larger creatures—the dozen-meter Carnotaurus and similar giants—Tony had no method except deploying his chest beam.
His Mark IV palm repulsors had three output power settings: non-lethal, lethal, and anti-materiel. Plus three firing modes: single shot, sustained fire, and charged shot.
The problem: Tony's arc reactor could provide sufficient energy. But Mark IV couldn't handle too many high-power discharges.
This left Tony feeling helpless against hundreds of dinosaurs scattered across Manhattan's streets.
"At least Hulk's handling the large predators, otherwise..."
Just after finishing off the Gallimimus pack, before Tony could catch his breath, Jarvis spoke immediately.
"Mr. Stark, anomalous sounds at ten o'clock. Recommend investigation."
Tony didn't dare delay. He knew even ten seconds of laziness might mean someone died in a dinosaur's jaws without timely help.
FWOOSH!
Leg thrusters flared. Tony flew rapidly toward Jarvis's indicated direction.
"Jarvis, this is your sound source?" Tony hovered mid-air, looking at Hell's Kitchen alley where a man in dark red skintight suit wielded a long staff, battling fiercely with a Pachycephalosaurus.
"Jarvis, please tell me this guy isn't the backup Batman arranged for me."
"Mr. Stark, my database contains no information on this individual." Jarvis reported.
Tony sighed again. One charged palm repulsor shot out. Yellow beam impact pierced downward through the Pachycephalosaurus's chest cavity.
THUD!
Before the dinosaur hit the ground, Tony had already descended, landing before the masked man who—like Batman—only exposed his chin.
"Robin?"
"Who's Robin?" Daredevil faced Tony's direction.
"Who are you?" Tony asked. "Whatever. We'll meet properly another time."
Without giving Daredevil a chance to respond, Tony departed as hastily as he'd arrived, flying skyward toward the next location requiring his presence.
"Jarvis, contact NYPD. Have their armed helicopters hover in grid formation. Report any dinosaur sightings to me immediately. Electro and I will handle assault and rescue."
"Understood, sir. But I must remind you—we haven't earned NYPD's trust. Cooperation may prove difficult." Jarvis said.
"I'll earn their trust through action." Tony stated.
His words had barely finished when he spotted something else in the sky besides himself. A knight riding a pitch-black war horse with twin wings.
The knight was engaging several pterosaurs in aerial combat, periodically firing beams from a staff in his hand.
"Robin!" Tony immediately called toward Black Knight Nathan Garrett tangling with the pterosaurs.
---
Inside Baxter Building, since several vortex channels still existed here with dinosaurs occasionally emerging—
Batman spent most of his time killing dinosaurs to prevent them from interfering with Lunella.
The remaining time he monitored Lunella's progress closing the full-wave projector, preventing this little girl from doing anything as stupid as Reed Richards had done.
"How much longer?" Batman kicked a Triceratops head poking through a vortex back inside, simultaneously asking Lunella.
"Wait, wait... Done! Successfully closed!" Lunella spoke and exhaled with relief.
With Batman present, she'd shut down the full-wave projector with more fear than danger. Now finally completed before the portals spread across all Manhattan.
Her words had barely finished when Reed Richards—confined the entire time standing at attention in Rescue One—immediately called out:
"Let me out! The projector's closed! I promise I won't open it again!"
Lunella looked toward Rescue One.
"Reed, I promise I won't let you touch the full-wave projector again."
Batman ignored Reed Richards. Only after confirming the vortex channels began closing one after another did he approach Lunella.
"Give it to me."
"In exchange, I'll help rescue that red T-Rex."
After returning from the primitive world, the red T-Rex had separated from Batman and Lunella. Its current location in Manhattan remained unknown.
"No problem." Lunella agreed.
***
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