In eyes that had witnessed centuries of hardship, Ra's al Ghul clearly saw the ungainly outline of the mountain of steel before him. He admitted that this hunk of metal possessed enough strength to split mountains and shatter stone, but to him, such a slow, enormous target was merely a harder-hitting punching bag.
"A useless brute with nothing but strength!"
He snapped the words out, and his figure abruptly blurred into a streak of black lightning circling the steel giant. The Riot Armor's enormous fist, trailing a vicious gust, missed again and pulverized another innocent stretch of asphalt. Before the dust settled, a sharp whistle cut toward the back of its right knee joint-a vulnerable pivot in both the human body and most mechanical structures.
Clang!
Metal rang against metal. The short sword in Ra's al Ghul's hand, forged from meteoric iron, threw off a long shower of dazzling sparks as it struck the armor's gray-black leg plating.
That strike combined assassination skills honed over centuries with the extraordinary strength bestowed by the Lazarus Pit, enough to slice through the side armor of a modern main battle tank. Yet all it left on the knee joint was a vicious gouge a little over an inch deep and roughly a foot long, exposing a composite layer beneath that gleamed with a darker metallic sheen.
The hydraulic lines did not burst, nor were the joint bearings severed as he had expected. The armor did not even lose its balance. Its battered right leg continued to support its massive body steadily, as though it had merely suffered a mosquito bite.
Using the impact to flip himself over, he tapped a toe against the armor's thick arm and slipped like a specter around to its left shoulder connection, thrusting his short sword with unerring