Chapter 427: The Fantastic Four Enter the Fight
With the Justice League assignments distributed, Batman opened the encrypted channel to Tony Stark.
"Tony. Can you hear me?"
"Almost every time you contact me I can respond immediately." Tony's voice had a specific texture to it -- not quite irritation, but adjacent. "When will you be able to say the same?"
"I apologize." There was no apology in Batman's voice. "Check within a five-kilometer radius of the Baxter Building. Anything that strikes you as anomalous."
"What did you find?"
"The intelligence I received confirms this HYDRA attack connects to the Latveria operation from two years ago. I'll explain fully when the timing is right. For now you only need to know one thing: HYDRA's targets tonight are superheroes. Not civilians, not government officials. And the additional actors from Latveria, when they arrive, will share the same targeting criteria."
A short pause. "Supervillains. Interesting word for them."
Batman watched the flight trajectory on the display adjust sharply toward the Baxter Building and said nothing.
"I put together a team tonight," Tony continued, still talking through the turn. "Daredevil, a few others. People you'd recognize. I've named it the Avengers."
"Good."
"Not just good. You should say, 'Tony, I'm deeply sorry for not responding to your communications promptly, please accept my sincere request to join the Avengers.'"
Silence on the line.
"So the Baxter Building." Tony moved on without visible difficulty. "Am I protecting them?"
"No. Contact them if you can, on the condition that you keep yourself safe. When ordinary people gain significant power their psychology often shifts in unpredictable ways. For people who are also top-tier scientists, the shift may be more severe."
"You can say it directly," Tony said. "You're keeping an eye on Reed Richards."
"Correct." Batman's response this time was immediate.
"The building has SEAL presence. Do I need to go through them?"
"No. By my assessment, they'll come out on their own."
"Understood." Tony closed the line. No additional commentary.
The Manhattan Police had initially assumed the organized armed response on their streets was a covert presidential deployment -- the kind of special operation that shows up unannounced and doesn't explain itself. That interpretation lasted until the silver weapons turned toward their patrol cars. Three vehicles were destroyed in quick succession. By the fourth impact, the nature of what they were dealing with was no longer ambiguous.
This was not a government-authorized military unit. These were armed hostiles of unknown origin operating in full force across Manhattan at four in the morning.
The information moved up the chain. Patrol officers to precinct captains to Chief George Stacy.
Within thirty minutes, Manhattan's police were in the fight alongside whoever the Avengers were -- not enough to match the HYDRA force numerically, but enough to make the ground more contested.
At police headquarters, Stacy stood with a stack of reports in his hand and a deepening frown. Photographs, incident summaries, casualty counts from the first hour.
"A group of superheroes led by Iron Man Tony Stark are engaged with the hostile force. Most are unidentified. They call themselves the Avengers, but operationally they look more like independent vigilantes."
The word vigilante conjured the usual mental image -- the silhouette on the rooftop, the pointed ears, the specific register of authority that required no official backing. Stacy had used the Bat-Signal exactly twice before and both times the situation had warranted it. He looked at the reports in his hand and made the decision.
Before full daylight could eliminate the necessary contrast, he was moving.
The rooftop access was clear. The signal equipment sat under its rain tarp, waiting. He pulled the covering off, found the switch, and threw it. The beam went up and spread into a diffuse bat shape against the remaining cloud cover.
"Batman." He said it internally, to the shape in the sky. "Manhattan Police alone cannot stop what's on these streets. This is the moment we need you."
He reconsidered. "No -- they're not a military force. I know what that symbol is." The photograph came back to him: a dark red field with black markings, skull and octopus tentacles intertwined. The HYDRA insignia. "That's HYDRA."
Wind moved across the rooftop from behind him.
George turned. He had expected the response to take time. He had not expected it to be instant. He turned with relief already on his face.
Then he saw the face.
Grey-black skin with almost no subcutaneous muscle visible. Pointed ears. Canine teeth extending below the lip line. Eyes that were entirely red, no whites, no distinction between iris and sclera.
His hand moved to his hip before he could consciously direct it, fingers finding the grip of the service weapon.
"Batman?"
Professor Morbius nodded. "I am Batman."
He turned and was gone -- a gliding descent that took him to the far end of the block and then past it, disappearing into the pre-dawn darkness before Stacy had assembled his next sentence.
Stacy stood on the rooftop alone for a moment.
"No wonder he always wore the mask." He shook his head slowly. He'd spent months wondering whether the lower portion of Batman's face -- the chin, the jaw -- was itself a prosthetic element, part of the full-cowl design. The face he'd just seen answered that question definitively.
He raised his radio. "All units, all frequencies. When engaging HYDRA, watch for a figure in a black coat who appears -- notably unusual in appearance. Do not fire. Repeat, do not fire. That is Batman operating without his combat equipment."
Inside the Baxter Building, four people stood at the windows.
HYDRA soldiers were moving through the streets below them in visible columns, and the civilian evacuation that had been underway since the Hell's Kitchen explosion had not reached anything like completion. What was happening on the streets was real, it was large, and the Manhattan Police response was visibly insufficient.
Johnny was the first to say it. "Manhattan can't hold against this with what it has."
Susan turned from the window. "These past days, with Reed's help, we've mapped what each of us can actually do. We've tested the parameters. The situation outside is exactly what those tests were preparation for." She looked at Reed, then at Ben. "We can't stay locked in this building. The right moment to announce ourselves is happening right now, below us."
Ben's body had completed its shift over the past days into what it now permanently was -- the entire surface of him replaced by dense, layered yellow-brown stone. He raised a hand with three wide fingers and pressed it against the bulletproof glass panel.
"Reed. What do you think?"
Reed had already withdrawn his gaze from the street. He was looking at his teammates with the expression of someone who has made a calculation and is communicating the result rather than debating it.
"My personal interest in this type of situation is limited, as you know. But the disruption to my work is not something I can simply accommodate indefinitely." He considered for a moment. "And Susan is correct. A public debut in this context accomplishes two things simultaneously: it creates a record of independent action that preempts the administration's ability to reframe us as classified assets."
Ben nodded. He looked at Susan. She shook her head.
He put his fist through the glass.
The bulletproof panel came out in a single fracture. The opening it left was wide enough.
Ben walked to the edge of the thirty-fifth floor, looked down, and stepped off.
Johnny was a half-second behind him. Ben's descent was direct and uncomplicated -- he hit the street with the full weight of his transformed body and the pavement accepted it. Johnny's descent was different. The fire emerged from him before he was halfway down, the combustion producing enough thrust that by the time he reached street level he was no longer falling but flying, a bright line against the dark sky above the intersection.
Susan extended both hands and shaped the field outward -- a circular transparent barrier large enough for two. She and Reed settled inside it together and descended at a pace that was almost leisurely toward the street below.