Conspiracy (II)

Oliver Queen waited outside to board his plane, frowning as he asked, "Hey, Wayne, how did you meet Zod?"

"...An unpleasant character showed up and caused a great deal of chaos in Gotham City."

Batman's low voice came through the earpiece. One of them was outside Lackland Air Force Base, while the other had infiltrated the heavily guarded Federation air force base, thanks to his higher Stealth skill.

After persuading Green Arrow to join the team, Bruce and Oliver immediately began investigating the circumstances behind the boy's attack. In particular, with Skynet's powerful capabilities to help them, they hacked into the military reports again. To their surprise, Bruce and Oliver discovered that one of the two F-22 pilots involved in the attack had mysteriously died of sudden cardiac arrest, while the other, a white pilot, was being held at Lackland Air Force Base. This made Bruce and Oliver frown. Clearly, the people behind it were beginning to cover their tracks.

Although Aeo knew Hydra was behind it all, he couldn't just inexplicably tell Batman and Green Arrow, "I know who the big boss is. Let's go take him down."

Batman and Green Arrow would definitely ask how he knew. Aeo couldn't find any evidence to prove the existence of this massive organization that had been hiding within S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades. After all, Hydra had always been exceptionally good at hiding. Even S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't tell its own people from Hydra agents, much less a boy who'd only learned about the organization through a few movies in his previous life.

So Aeo could only hint to Batman and Green Arrow that there was a mole inside S.H.I.E.L.D., then let them investigate for themselves. It might be slower, but once they uncovered the truth, these strong-willed superheroes would be all the more determined to take on the terrorist organization. Aeo wouldn't have to waste his breath explaining how dangerous they were.

Taking out Pierce alone wouldn't help. Hydra's motto was "Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place!" Unless they uprooted the organization, this terrorist group would keep hounding them. At its most unhinged, it had even planned to use Dr. Zola's algorithm to kill potential adversaries en masse. Aeo wasn't afraid of their airstrikes, but even he'd get annoyed if flies kept buzzing in his ear.

So, since Hydra had chosen to make an enemy of him, Aeo was happy to steer Bruce and the others toward dealing with it. He had more important things to do.

Uh, I've gotten off track.

When Bruce learned that the white pilot who'd attacked him, Major Paul Mack, was being held temporarily by the Federation Military Police at Lackland Air Force Base, he decided to keep an eye on the last surviving witness.

He knew Hydra wouldn't let the final witness get away. They would definitely send an assassin to eliminate the poor white pilot, just as they had the poor Black fellow.

Cardiac arrest—a perfect excuse. That way, everyone involved in the incident would be dead, and there'd be no one left to investigate.

Sure enough, after a few days of waiting, an unfamiliar officer appeared before Bruce and Oliver. With Skynet's help, the two of them had silently infiltrated the base's surveillance system.

The suspicious-looking man headed toward his target's cell, carefully avoiding the cameras so that his face couldn't be seen.

"He's finally here." Bruce and Oliver, sitting in an inconspicuous, battered vehicle several hundred meters outside Lackland Air Force Base, both tensed.

"Are you going, or am I?" Green Arrow asked coldly.

"I'll go." Batman left him with those low, somber words.

"..."

Relying on the stealth techniques he'd learned from the Ninja Master, Bruce made his way through Lackland Air Force Base, managing to avoid alerting the guards as much as possible.

Meanwhile, Oliver stayed behind and used Skynet to help erase Bruce's traces.

"So Aeo showed up and resolved the crisis in Gotham City..." Bruce briefly explained how he'd met the boy as he infiltrated the base.

"So you 'took him in'?" Oliver said with a grin. Suddenly, he raised his eyebrows. "Hurry, Bruce. He's almost at the pilot's cell."

"I'm running," Batman replied, none too pleased.

Green Arrow shrugged.

At last, after several minutes of hurrying, Batman reached his destination: a solitary prison cell. He happened to overhear the assassin's declaration before he struck, and couldn't resist speaking up. "Is that so? Then tell me, do you fear the Knight of Darkness?"

That's the end of the introduction.

... ...

"Who's there?" A white man in an ordinary military uniform quickly turned around.

Paul Mack stared in shock at the two strangers who had appeared in his cell without a sound. He was so stunned that he forgot to even take cover.

"Batman?" Both men exclaimed in surprise.

"You two talk too much." The Caped Crusader frowned and launched straight into the fight.

"Damn it." Even the Hydra assassin, despite his special training, was caught off guard by the Caped Crusader's underhanded, unpredictable tactics. On top of that, the Caped Crusader was extraordinarily strong. After a few exchanges, the assassin took a vicious elbow to the face when the Caped Crusader caught him by surprise.

Thud.

The assassin promptly collapsed unconscious.

"Don't kill me!" Mack cried in alarm.

Batman didn't even look at him. "I'm not here to kill you. I'm here to save you!" Bruce pulled a syringe filled with an unknown liquid from the assassin's clothes and tossed it at the white pilot's feet.

"If I'd been a moment later, you'd probably have died just as mysteriously as your colleague—from sudden cardiac arrest!"

"What?" Mack was stunned. "You mean Fili is dead?"

"Yes." Bruce hoisted the unconscious assassin over his shoulder. "You can check with your people about that later..." He paused and pointed to the syringe on the ground. "Keep this as evidence that someone tried to kill you. And he..."

Batman spread his black cape and vanished.

"Wait."

Outside, Green Arrow's eyes narrowed. "Okay, we've got him. Now we just need to get him out safely. Take the left!"

After a difficult escape, Batman and the Hydra assassin made it out of the Federation air force base without incident.

"Move!" With a thump, Bruce tossed the assassin into the car.

Oliver immediately hit the gas, and the two of them sped away.

Only then did Lackland Air Force Base realize it had been infiltrated. Alarms blared throughout the base.

"Woo-oo! Woo-oo!"

... ...

On the way, Green Arrow, who was working with someone for the first time, couldn't help asking, "Where did Zod go? Wouldn't he have been more useful for a rescue mission like this? He could've just whooshed right in. Why go through all this trouble...?"

Batman bound the assassin, making sure he couldn't escape, then said darkly, "He said he had something more important to do. He went to New Mexico yesterday..."

"Besides..." The Caped Crusader glanced at his new partner, baffled by the question. "This is a Federation air force base. Do you want him to fight an entire base full of soldiers, or do you want him to tear the military base apart? Take your pick."

The young billionaire shrugged. "What's the difference?"

"Then why ask?"

"..."