Chapter 333: Assault
To ensure Ant-Man would return himself to normal size to remove the fragments rather than shrinking down to enter the wound himself, Black Widow had deliberately twisted her embedded foot against the floor—driving the ceramic shards deep into her flesh.
As she'd hoped, faced with deep-seated, sharp, irregular, fragile ceramic fragments, Ant-Man chose not to perform microscopic surgery by shrinking himself down and entering Black Widow's foot to extract them piece by piece. Instead, he'd restored Black Widow to her proper five-foot-seven height. For Ant-Man, this saved time and resources—just a standard sterile surgery.
"Hey, you two, can you loosen up a bit?" Black Widow said to the two giant ants flanking her. "You're about to break my arms!"
Black Widow wasn't equipped with any device to translate her speech into biological signals the ants could understand. In response to her request, the giant ants simply waved their antennae.
"If I keep dealing with ants like this, I'm going to lose my mind," Black Widow sighed.
She was just preparing to consider her next move—whether to continue lying here waiting for Batman's arrival or implement another plan—when the atrium skylight of Pym Technologies Tower suddenly shattered with a crash.
After Venom Robin had smashed through the atrium glass with brute force last night, Ant-Man had installed a new pane this morning. But now, with another crisp shattering sound, the new glass hadn't lasted any longer.
"Batman!"
Almost the instant the glass broke, Ant-Man burst from another laboratory, roaring furiously toward the atrium. "Return my Pym Particles!"
Before he'd even finished speaking, Ant-Man had already mounted the back of Antony VIII, charging rapidly toward the broken skylight.
"Hank!" The Wasp also heard the commotion and flew over quickly, her membrane wings beating as she frowned up at the opening.
Outside was pitch black. Clouds obscured the moonlight. Looking out from inside, nothing was visible.
Ant-Man and the Wasp's first instinct was to activate their suits' night vision modes to search for Batman's shadow. But Batman didn't appear. Instead, a spherical object came spinning through the air from outside into Pym Technologies Tower, cutting through the wind with a whistling sound.
WHIZZ!
Its speed was like a cannonball just fired from a barrel.
"Stop it!" Ant-Man shouted to the Wasp.
The Wasp moved to intercept, but another series of whistling sounds followed. One, two... over thirty spinning "cannonballs" flew into Pym Technologies Tower. Even though Ant-Man and the Wasp managed to catch one or two and throw them back out through the atrium at high speed, the other "cannonballs" still detonated in sequence!
POOF POOF POOF—
The expected ear-splitting explosions didn't materialize. Instead, the sound was soft and muffled—like duds.
Duds.
But Ant-Man and the Wasp didn't relax. Their hearts jumped to their throats. They didn't believe that whoever had thrown these thirty-plus spherical objects—whoever it was—had filled them with nothing but air.
If they weren't conventional explosives, then they must be something even more insidious—poison, bacteria, or anything else that could cause catastrophic damage to Pym Technologies Tower!
Ant-Man and the Wasp simultaneously shrank themselves to pinpoint size, watching the grounded objects with battle-ready tension.
As the poofing sounds rang out, thick white smoke began billowing from those cannonballs.
"...Smoke grenades?" Ant-Man stared in disbelief.
Breaking through the atrium glass, launching them in with such momentum—and they were just smoke grenades?
"Oh no! My Pym Particles!"
The bewilderment lasted only an instant. Ant-Man Hank Pym let out a wail and lunged desperately toward the cafeteria. "I'll protect the Pym Particles! Hank, you deal with that guy!" The Wasp reacted instantly with a decisive call. "No, wait—go protect Black Widow!"
She was much closer to the cafeteria than Ant-Man. And Ant-Man had come out of the laboratory mounted on Antony VIII, flying upward—putting him extremely far from the second-floor cafeteria.
"Black Widow?" Ant-Man reflexively directed Antony VIII toward the laboratory holding Black Widow, but his mind hadn't caught up yet. "Black Widow?"
The thirty-plus smoke grenades detonating simultaneously filled Pym Technologies Tower's atrium and surrounding spiral staircases with dense white smoke. Ant-Man's momentary hesitation made it nearly impossible to distinguish up from down, let alone locate Black Widow.
"Clever idea, using smoke grenades to block vision... but the intruder clearly didn't study basic biology very well."
Ant-Man looked at the vast whiteness before him, a smile crossing his face. "I can't see, but ants don't rely on vision!"
With that, Ant-Man Hank Pym patted Antony VIII beneath him. "Antony, it's up to you!"
BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ...
The flying ant beat its wings, antennae waving constantly through the white smoke, carving ripples through the haze as it carried Ant-Man toward the laboratory holding Black Widow.
BANG! BANG!
The sound of fists striking chitin echoed from the laboratory.
When Ant-Man leaped off Antony VIII's back, he saw a winged figure marked with yellow and black stripes punching the two giant ants restraining Black Widow's arms, sending them flying.
"Janet was right—you're here!" Ant-Man returned to normal size, looking at the figure barely two steps away from him.
At such close range, with the smoke grenade haze not yet fully engulfing the laboratory, Ant-Man could even see the yellow-and-black stripes within the bat symbol on the figure's chest.
"Batman wears this getup? Then who was that last night?" A flicker of confusion crossed Ant-Man's mind.
But this wasn't the time to investigate. Seeing that Batman remained silent, Ant-Man simply stepped forward those two paces, coming right up to Batman and placing a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, buddy. What do you think you're doing?"
Batman glanced at Ant-Man.
The next second, chaos erupted!
A series of explosions detonated practically on top of Ant-Man and Batman—blinding white light and high-frequency noise filled the entire laboratory!
"Damn it!" Ant-Man bit out a curse through clenched teeth. The smoke grenades had prevented him from noticing when several flashbangs had been placed on the laboratory floor.
But fortunately for him, Batman seemed to have underestimated the Ant-Man suit's protective capabilities for Hank Pym. Ant-Man only wobbled briefly before recovering. Simultaneously, his body rapidly shrank as his hands gripped Batman's armor.
Shrink! Shrink more!
Facing Batman's suit, Ant-Man kept pressing the button, reducing himself until he was small enough to penetrate the armor's outer shell. Then he dove directly inside, planning to sabotage Batman's armor from within and prevent him from taking Black Widow.
The Vulcan Armor's first layer of defense—compromised!
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