Gunfire erupted!
With Iron Man coordinating, Gotham's police force joined forces with the National Guard, who had previously been forced by Bane to help lock down the city. Together, they formed a powerful steel wave, charging towards all the key areas of Gotham controlled by Bane's forces.
Leading the way with LAV-25 armored vehicles, Gotham's police—who had been locked up for so long—used their AR-15 rifles to show Bane's men what "5.56mm Justice" looked like!
With superior numbers and equipment, they easily tore through the first wave of thugs attempting to fight back.
Bane's forces were no small group, though. Over a thousand heavily armed, bulletproof-vest-wearing criminals were under his command, and combined with the thugs and street gangs that had joined after the occupation of Gotham, the total number reached nearly ten thousand.
If Bane had more time to recruit Gotham's major gangs and properly train his men, he might have stood a real chance.
Unfortunately for Bane, he was too eager. Preoccupied with taking control of government buildings and TV stations, he hadn't gotten around to consolidating the gangs.
The Joker's gang, along with other old crime families, stayed in their own territories, pretending to be neutral.
Now, with the police and National Guard in action, these criminals didn't even try to resist, pretending to be law-abiding citizens instead.
Bane's core forces aside, the rest of his crew were poorly trained and equipped.
Many lacked bulletproof vests, carried worn-out weapons, and had no discipline—no match for the federal military.
Even so, the battle was intense.
Many of Bane's men, in desperation, resorted to burning buildings or detonating explosives, leaving about a tenth of Gotham engulfed in flames.
But none of this would make the news.
The focus was on Iron Man and Batman, who had just stormed a convoy carrying the nuclear fusion reactor. They discovered that the timer on the bomb attached to the reactor had already started, and it couldn't be disarmed.
With a quick move, Iron Man took the reactor into the stratosphere.
Yeah, today was a good day.
Nearly half of America's East Coast witnessed a massive flash in the sky, followed by a huge mushroom cloud.
That should have been the end of it.
But the real trouble started when Batman confronted Bane.
In the square in front of City Hall, Bane stood with his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed as he waited for Batman.
"Bane! You're finished!" Batman's raspy voice, tinged with anger, sounded as he jumped from his hovering Batwing.
He wasn't angry about his past injury, but furious that Gotham, the city he protected, had been turned into this mess.
Bane didn't respond immediately. The massive figure, clad in a bulletproof vest and wearing a strange black trapezoidal mask, gazed off into the distance. "What a beautiful sight. Too bad it didn't happen in Gotham or New York City."
Batman: "..."
Bane finally turned to face his old nemesis. "I'm finished? No. The real show is just beginning."
Bane then pulled out a remote, and Batman immediately sensed danger.
"Whoosh!"
Batman raised his arm and threw three Batarangs in a straight line towards Bane's right hand.
Batman didn't expect to hit Bane. All he wanted was to stop him, even for a split second.
As Batman shot forward like a shadow, Bane didn't dodge. The Batarangs embedded themselves in his unprotected arm, blood splattering.
But Bane still pressed the button on the remote.
"Boom!"
A massive chain of explosions rocked the area.
Dozens of bombs positioned around the square exploded in a circle, followed by another ring of explosions closer to the center.
Clearly, all the explosions had been precisely calculated and designed by experts.
Even with Batman's quick reflexes, all he could do was spread his cape wide, suspending himself in midair like a real bat, unable to stop the ground from collapsing.
"Rumble!"
The earth gave way, sending dust clouds dozens of meters into the air, rendering the National Guard's perimeter useless.
Using his glider cape, Batman glided through the air like a giant bat, stirring the dust clouds at the collapse's center.
It was then that Batman realized, to his shock, that despite the ground beneath them sinking by over 20 meters, Bane still stood firmly on the same brick platform at the center of the square.
Even more unbelievable was the sight behind Bane—a terrifying, blood-soaked portal had appeared.
What?
Batman's eyes widened. He hadn't expected to end up back here.
A realization hit Batman.
"Hey! You still alive?" Bruce Wayne, under the Batman mask, suddenly felt a bit nervous.
"Crash!"
The sound of crumbling rocks came from behind Batman. A huge stone was pushed aside by an inhuman strength, revealing a bald head emerging from the dust.
"Pfft! Don't curse me! I don't want to be Batman!" Atreus spat out some dust, his face covered in grime. The explosion had really rattled him.
"..." Even Bruce, as clever as he was, couldn't figure out what that statement meant.
Maybe it was some kind of father-son bonding moment...?
The only thing that shook Bruce slightly was the group of female heroes standing behind Kratos. Among them, there was even Catwoman.
This made Batman's usually stoic face under the cowl even more stiff.
At that moment, Bane began to laugh maniacally. He raised his arms high and waved them dramatically.
There were no followers around him—at least, there shouldn't have been.
But then, the unthinkable happened.
One by one, the zombie heroes Atreus had killed earlier started to rise again.
Most of them had lost their heads, and some were missing more than half their bodies. As the blood-soaked air from the portal spread, their decayed, shriveled corpses began to bloat and twist.
At the same time, thick bone spikes and muscular tendrils whipped out from Bane's massive frame.
These tendrils flew through the air, piercing the bodies of the zombie Suicide Squad heroes. Their mutilated bodies were torn apart and rebuilt, merging with Bane's form like oversized, grotesque attachments.
Not just them—many of Bane's crazed followers, faces twisted with bizarre joy, crawled out of the tunnels. They cheered, they screamed, and they rushed toward Bane.
In the blink of an eye, under the stunned gazes of Batman and the other heroes, Bane transformed into a terrifying giant, over three stories tall.
(End of Chapter)