Every step Ursa took across the water seemed to bring an invisible sledgehammer crashing into the sea, blasting out strange concentric ripples.
Batman stood on the sloping shell of the World Engine, his armor's sensors shrilling warnings.
"Target speed: three hundred meters per second and accelerating." "Impact prediction: armor defense effectiveness below seventeen percent." "Recommendation: evade."
As the electronic voice mechanically reported the data, he watched through his lenses as that black lightning bolt carved a deadly path across the sea, his fingertips sliding over the control panel.
Batman did not evade. The launcher on his armor's left arm snapped open, firing over a hundred kryptonite rounds in a fan-shaped barrage. The faint green glow of their casings traced fine lines through the night sky, like a net woven by death.
Ursa did not even slow down.
He threaded through the barrage. One bullet skimmed his helmet; he slapped another away with the back of his hand. It struck the World Engine's shell and burst into a cloud of green smoke.
The cryogenic sprayer in Batman's right hand activated, forming a barrier of white mist between them. The seawater froze instantly, and ice crystals condensed in the air into a bristling formation of spears.
Ursa crashed straight into it.
The ice spears shattered against his body. The freezing gas coated his armor in white frost, causing an almost imperceptible hesitation, but a moment later, he was already in front of Batman.
"You have nowhere left to run."
Ursa raised his fist, muscles bulging beneath his armor. His bio-electric field compressed the air into visibly distorted ripples. That punch could flatten a main battle tank into a metal pancake or pulverize a reinforced concrete building.
In the instant before his fist came down, the yellow bat emblem on the