The Batwing was, without question, one of Earth's most advanced flying machines — fast, maneuverable, and devastatingly armed.
In the future Dawn of Justice battle, even Doomsday at full speed hadn't been able to outrun it — that said everything.
Now, facing the corpse-white, muscle-bound giant known as Solomon Grundy, the Batwing was an apex predator.
Its acceleration alone was a blur; even Thea, with reflexes far beyond human limits, could only make out a streak cutting through the night — followed by the roar of its cannons.
A storm of bullets rained down.
High-caliber rounds hammered Grundy's skull, eyes, and chest in a relentless barrage.
Caught off guard, the undead giant howled as hundreds of shells tore into his body.
For a full thirty seconds the sky thundered — metal rounds, incendiary bursts, armor-piercers — pouring down like a metallic monsoon.
Every hit sparked against pale flesh; explosions flared and died.
From a distance, Thea winced.
"And people call me rich… that's at least a few million dollars in ammo, gone in half a minute. Pure big-dick energy, Bruce."
When the smoke cleared, everyone backed off a little, watching closely for results.
Grundy staggered out of the haze.
The damage was real — one eye blown out, half an arm torn open, his chest cratered with bullet marks.
But none of the wounds had pierced through; the bullets had stopped inside his muscle.
No blood, only twitching, writhing flesh that pulsed and healed right before their eyes.
"He's regenerating," Thea muttered, zooming in through her visor. The view made her stomach churn — layer upon layer of gray tissue knitting back together.
"And fast."
Batman's voice came through her comm.
"Can your freezing arrows slow it down?"
He didn't sound hopeful.
"A little. But not for long — he breaks out in seconds."
To demonstrate, she swooped in low, fired an ice arrow that struck the monster's shoulder, and watched a thin frost layer spread… only to shatter a moment later as Grundy flexed.
Batman examined the feed, voice grim.
"It does inhibit his regeneration."
"No kidding," Thea muttered under her breath. "Everything's slower when it's frozen."
He ignored her sarcasm.
"You have any better ideas?"
She sighed.
"If I did, I'd be selling them to the Justice League."
Realistically, there were only two options:
Call in several powerhouses to smash him to paste — which Bruce would never agree to — or find a way to immobilize him permanently.
"Laser weapons won't do much. Nukes are out of the question," Thea said. "Maybe… freeze him solid and bury him deep. Permanently."
It wasn't a bad plan — and, as it turned out, exactly what Batman had been thinking.
His own version involved luring Grundy into a canyon and flooding it with quick-drying concrete.
Neither idea was elegant, but both exploited the same weakness: Grundy couldn't fly.
The problem was logistics.
Thea didn't have enough frost arrows to encase something that size, and Gotham wasn't exactly surrounded by handy, villain-sized valleys.
While the two debated, Catwoman's voice broke through the channel:
"The Talons escaped, but we caught Mr. Freeze. Think his ice gun could help?"
Her voice trembled slightly — clearly, capturing the cryogenic villain had taken everything they had.
Batman's eyes narrowed. "That could work."
It was the best lead they'd had.
Thea's magic arrows couldn't last; her spells were still too new, and open magic use was… risky.
True large-scale sorcery had been gone from the world for ages — and even when it had existed, fireballs had never matched the punch of a missile.
Magic was mystery, not firepower.
"Then we go with the freezing plan," Batman decided.
Scouring the countryside for a canyon big enough to trap Grundy would take too long — and he wasn't about to trespass on another hero's territory. The League already thought he was territorial enough.
Together, the two of them ran through the practical issues — and found plenty.
For one, Freeze's gun wasn't designed for long-range combat.
Even under duress (and with Catwoman holding a knife to his throat), Victor Fries admitted the effective range was only fifty meters.
Fifty.
That was suicidal.
At that distance, Grundy could rip a lamppost out of the ground and skewer you before you pulled the trigger.
Even Thea, with her enhanced reflexes, wouldn't dare get that close — and Freeze, with his slow, cryo-mutated body, definitely wouldn't survive.
"We need to restrict its movement," Batman said flatly.
That was the key.
Thea thought fast.
Her frost and flame arrows, when used together, could create devastating temperature shifts — thermal shock.
Even carbon-based monsters had limits.
Heat expansion followed by sudden freezing could crack anything.
Theoretically, if she alternated ice and fire, she could damage Grundy's tissues at the atomic level.
Batman could do the same with sustained firepower — but neither of them wanted to waste the sheer amount of resources that would require.
Two billionaires, two tightwads; neither willing to burn money unless it was the last resort.
Then Gordon's voice chimed in over the comm:
"We've captured Hugo Strange. According to him, the monster came from the river — their team fished it out when the water level rose. It wasn't awake. They… forced it to move by implanting a false personality."
Thea's stomach turned.
So that was why Grundy seemed dumber than legend — it wasn't truly alive. It was running on a glitching AI.
Gordon kept reading from the files he'd seized.
The Court of Owls had fused radiation-based enhancement tech with brainwashing, hoping to control Grundy through a virtual persona.
But the mind was too weak, and the body too strong.
Within hours, the program had crashed — leaving a berserk corpse rampaging on pure instinct.
They'd abandoned Arkham in a panic, dumping their creation on the heroes' doorstep to clean up.
"Typical," Thea muttered darkly. "Kill it and run — let the heroes do the burying."
And as Grundy's roar shook the hills again, the "burying" part was starting to sound less like a metaphor and more like an urgent necessity.