Chapter 2406: The Bat Squad Struggle (Twenty-Five)

After Superman left, there was again some bandwidth available for accommodating Spider-Man, but only two more came in, fortunately there were many Batman present at the scene.

After Charles finally sent Shiler's suggestion back to the Batman team, as Shiler had expected, the Batmen agreed.

Batman has always been good at persuading others, especially since there is more than one Batman here, they explained the pros and cons to David and Moira at length, and in the end they still persuaded them.

The Batman of the main universe trusts Spider-Man's moral底线, so he assigned the two more difficult Batmen in the team to the two Spider-Men: one is the Green Lantern Batman who has been restless from beginning to end, constantly making small moves, and the other is the Mechanical Batman whose condition is still uncontrollable.

The other Batmen each formed a team, and after returning to Paris they began to capture other personalities; Moira guarded the machine, and whenever a batch of personalities was delivered, she would explain her plan to them—of course, the original plan, namely to throw them into the machine to smash and restore them into energy for mending the heavens.

Naturally, the first personalities captured by the Batmen were some not-so-strong ones; put bluntly, aside from the pillars of the two major gangs in this city, most personalities could only arm-wrestle with a somewhat prepared Batman, but could not suppress them.

In the comic setting, David's mental world contains several thousand personalities, but Omega personalities are only about 200~300, and so far there haven't been that many; those occupying Paris are just over a hundred, and besides those who went to the prairie to fight, there are still over 2000 personalities in the entire city.

This means that although the energy level of those over a hundred Omega personalities is very high, it still cannot match the total quantity of so many personalities combined; in other words, as long as the Batmen capture enough other personalities, they can just as well awaken David's consciousness, without needing to seek out those exceptionally strong ones for single combat.

However, the vast majority of personalities belong to the two gangs; after the Batmen captured some personalities, the stronger ones realized something was wrong and also began to surround and intercept the Batmen.

These personalities are comparatively difficult to deal with, especially those possessing rule-based power, such as the sumo wrestler who has absolute power and can also traverse space; when facing the Doomsday Batman, who also has tremendous power but lacks spatial traversal ability, the sumo wrestler gains the upper hand.

Moreover, these personalities often take the initiative to find the Batmen, meaning every battle the Batmen fight is an encounter battle, which led to the initially isolated Batmen being beaten back repeatedly.

Especially the sumo wrestler that provoked the Doomsday Batman, the large spider in the cave that the Flash Batman accidentally stumbled into, and a man whose entire body burns with Xiong Xiong flames—all of them have rule-based abilities.

Furthermore, their rule-based abilities have no weaknesses: they require no cost, no cooldown, and can be used whenever desired without hesitation.

The Batmen on this side are not so fortunate: the Doomsday Batman and the Flash Batman have not had their abilities for long; one could say they still haven't figured them out themselves, having just left the novice village only to be beaten by the Sunset Overlord Shrimp, ending up with bumps all over their heads.

Although the Green Lantern Batman has had his abilities for a long time, he now simply has no power, making it strenuous to fight even ordinary personalities, and against these powerful Omega-level mutants he can only flee with his head in his hands.

Although the Mechanical Batman was also just completed in his reconstruction, he is somewhat better off, because the body he possesses was built by two Batmen and one Iron Man, and the aspect most suited for combat is that he can complete self-iteration during battle, just like a true robot.

That is to say, whatever ability he needs, he can evolve it on the spot, and the required time is also short; however, due to the opponent being too powerful, he basically only evolves survival and escape skills.

Little Bruce is comparatively advantaged among the Batmen, but his only problem is that he has ample defense but insufficient offense; the evil god power within him has been largely depleted, causing pure energy attacks to fail to break the opponent's defense, and fearing to pollute David, he dares not use the whisper skill, so he ends up in a state where the opponent cannot hit him, but he also cannot hit the opponent.

The Batmobile is similarly fast and heavily armored; even if controlled, it hardly sustains damage, but its impact is useless against those powerful Omega-level mutants, and its cannon also struggles to pierce their defenses.

The only ones who achieved real combat results were the Batman and Batwoman combination; they did not act alone, because Batwoman alone cannot control the Water God's Spear, but they successfully used tactical coordination to shoot off a leg of the spider with this gun; however, this giant spider possesses reality-altering ability, so this minor injury means nothing to it.

The Bat-dragon, accompanied by the defected Kelnoton to his side, successfully restrained the man engulfed in flames, but unfortunately could not hit him, as the opponent is like an unextinguishable flame—no matter how much one tries to extinguish it, it will reignite again.

The probing battles at various locations lasted a day and a night, leaving everyone exhausted, yet upon returning to base they discovered that not only had their side made no progress, but everywhere was the same.

The essence is not that they are too weak, but that the opponent is too strong.

Faced with such a strong enemy, although Batman has always been more accustomed to solo combat and prefers to play a behind-the-scenes role in a team, they had no choice but to find ways to unite, assign combat tasks, and respond to different opponents according to individual abilities.

They also found this experience very novel, because usually not everyone has the opportunity to cooperate with another group of themselves.

At this time, the base of the Radiant Alliance set up in Paris came into use; this airborne base hovers roughly a few hundred meters above the city and can fly away at any time, thus relying on this ability to evade several super mutants who came looking for trouble.

However, due to bandwidth limitations, the Radiant Alliance personnel cannot enter personally, but they can still observe the situation inside the city through the cameras and drones scattered within the base.

After discovering that the Batmen's expedition was unfavorable, they dispatched drones to guide the Batmen to the airborne base, where there is more professional equipment and survival supplies, and at the same time, Earth can provide them with professional tactical support.

After discussing, the Batmen decided that compliance is better than respect; after all, truly being unable to win is truly being unable to win, and at this point insisting on these trivialities is useless; it's better to hurry up and think of a solution.

Thus, the Batmen boarded the airborne base together, and to communicate and cooperate they must first state what abilities they have, and cannot hold back, otherwise misinformation could lead to the exhaustion of thousands of troops.

For the Batmen, this can even be said to be a ridiculous experience; compared to revealing their information to another self, they would rather tell their information to the Joker.

Moreover, the psychological pressure is greatest for the main universe's Batman, because he is a normal Batman, while before him lies this heap of bizarre and abnormal figures, among whom there are still several uncontrolled ones.

To reveal information to them like this—what if they one day turn dark, become again the wandering disasters of the universe, what then?

Other Batmen also have their own worries, but now the situation is stronger than people, that behind-the-scenes black hand that polluted them has not yet shown a trace, and they are still entangled by the troubles here, unable to return to their own universe.

If they cannot defeat these super mutants, they will never be able to go back, while their universe is now a tangled mess, littered with broken pieces, how could they not be anxious to return?

Under these circumstances, not speaking must still be spoken, not uniting must still be united; so many Batmen driven like ducks to the shelves gathered together, although they themselves feel a heavy atmosphere, it gives onlookers a kind of strange joy.

"I really don't know what they're wrangling over." Stark in front of the screen shook his head and said: "Look at another me's expression—he wishes he could rush up and pry open their mouths."

"I fully understand their doubts." Professor X said: "After all, one cannot be without vigilance against people; for Batman, there is too much to guard against, so vigilance has already become a habit."

"Then let's simply not gather together." Stark said: "Each doing their own thing can still find solutions, better than them twisting and turning here, playing that game where whoever speaks first loses."

"They seem particularly unwilling to team up with themselves." Loki stroked his chin and said: "What's wrong with that? I enjoy cooperating with my other selves."

"That's because your other selves aren't strange enough yet." Strange said with a grin: "Can you imagine in other universes there's a you who is a car? Well, for you Asgardians, it would be a starship."

"That's perfect." Loki laughed: "Thor will have a perfect mount; a few days ago he was still complaining to me that the previous Allfather's mount suffered too many battle damages, now stepping on the accelerator, everything honks except the horn."

The others all shook their heads, clearly not understanding nor wanting to understand their brotherly bond; Stark, still more concerned with practical matters, said: "We also investigated these personalities earlier—has anyone now deduced their weakness?"

Hearing this, they all sighed in unison; Strange looked at Professor X and said: "You must absolutely not let Nick know you can use the Desperation Virus to return to youth, otherwise he will at least make you go on ten blind dates a day, and better yet have you father a football team, so that humanity ruling the universe would have hope."

Charles sighed heavily and said: "David is an accident; even if I still have other descendants, they will not have such abilities."

"That's also true." Stark said, arms crossed: "If every mutant's child could inherit their abilities, even be stronger than them, then humanity would truly be laughing out loud."

"By the way, what about Shiler?" Strange asked.

"He's busy." Stark glanced at his communicator and said: "Probably something in that universe; he seems to be chasing someone to beat up."

Several people exchanged glances, all feeling puzzled: who could be chased and beaten by Shiler? Shiler is always squeezing oil from stones, plucking feathers from geese—anything that lets him make money is far from being an enemy, yet in this world there actually exists someone who lets him not earn a penny, yet he must chase and beat?

Stark felt some suspicion, so he sent a message to Shiler, wanting to ask whether there was any misunderstanding in this.

When Shiler saw this message, he felt helpless; these people forever cannot empathize with how much he detests maniacal laughter, so he must let them taste his own past suffering.

Shiler then sent a message to Ultron; Ultron stared at that message for a long time, this world's most advanced artificial intelligence still couldn't figure out what it meant after half a day.

However, although he didn't understand, he still faithfully executed Shiler's order.

Ultron is now the main administrator of the forward base in David's mental world, and also the supervisor of the signal channel relay; he made a slight adjustment and tuned the mode accordingly.

The few people sitting in the Radiant Alliance base suddenly discovered the video had no sound; Stark was about to walk over to check the machine, only to see that the dialogue originally meant to be conveyed by sound had turned into one bubble after another—black background, red text, capital letters.