“Have you ever died, Jason?”
The question came at exactly the moment the uninvited guest’s heavy combat boots landed on the edge of the parapet with a dull thud.
The icy wind sweeping across the thirtieth floor immediately caught the hem of his leather jacket.
My first, perfectly logical thought was that this world’s Red Hood was the canonical version.
In other words, the classic resurrected Jason Todd who had been through the Lazarus Pit.
But considering that Batman in this world was Thomas Wayne, while the Joker was apparently a deranged Bruce, I wouldn’t have been surprised by yet another deviation from canon.
Still, my personal intelligence operation continued.
And since this guy in the solid red helmet had come to me himself, I intended to squeeze at least some information out of him.
Red Hood froze.
I could physically feel the muscles beneath his tactical harness tense.
“What kind of strange question is that?” he asked dryly, his voice slightly distorted by his vocoder.
“And how do you know my name?”
Good.
I’d hit the bullseye with his name.
He didn’t deny it, try to play dumb, or throw smoke bombs, which was something I’d half expected from any member of the Bat-clan.
“I know a lot of names, Jason.” I allowed myself a faint, condescending smile without making any attempt to approach him.
“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?
Am I right?”
For several long seconds, a thick silence settled over the rooftop, broken only by the howling wind and the young man’s heavy, rapid breathing, which my enhanced hearing picked up easily.
He must have been in one hell of a hurry to get here.
He’s actually out of breath.
“That’s true, to a certain extent,” he finally said, lowering his shoulders slightly.
“Are you aware that he knows where you are?
And that he’s monitoring this conversation right now?”
“The important thing is that the old man can’t hear what we’re actually talking about.” I shrugged indifferently.
“He can’t hear us, right?”
Obviously, he meant Batman.
“I don’t carry anything that could potentially hack Alfred,” Jason replied with a short nod, confirming my suspicions about just how paranoid this family was.
Luckily, I had the good sense to smash my smartphone.
I glanced at the shattered pieces lying nearby.
“Alfred?
What about your helmet?
It looks like a pretty sophisticated toy.”
“Alfred is an AI created by Cyborg.
He was named after the Wayne family’s late butler.
In theory, he can control everything in the city.” Jason’s tone remained tense, but he continued answering.
“My helmet is completely autonomous.
Closed circuit.”
An Alfred AI?
Is this definitely DC and not Marvel with their JARVIS?
Whatever.
Minor details.
There was something much more important here.
“Why are you being so open with a dangerous psychopath, Jason?” I stared at him, looking through the helmet’s expressionless white lenses.
“You came alone.
You’re answering my questions.
What do you want?”
Silence again.
The young man shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“The Joker,” he finally forced out.
The name left his mouth like a curse.
“On the broadcast…
you said Bruce Wayne was Batman.
Except…”
“Except he’s the Joker.
Yeah, I admit it.” I lazily waved a hand as if acknowledging an error in a crossword puzzle.
“I’ve already figured out I screwed up the lore.
I assume he was Batman before that unfortunate fall into the acid vat?”
“Correct,” Jason confirmed.
Judging by his voice, he wasn’t particularly surprised by how quickly I’d figured it out.
“From that moment on…
everything went to hell.
Absolutely everything.”
“Tell me more.” I crossed my arms.
“And what exactly are you getting at?”
“More details…” Jason let out a sound resembling a bitter, broken laugh.
“Imagine a big, close-knit family.
People who trust each other with their lives.
Then one shitty day comes along and leaves nothing behind except blood, wheelchairs, hospital beds, and pain.”
“Dick Grayson.
Damian Wayne.
Tim Drake.
Barbara Gordon,” I listed in an emotionless voice.
I watched him carefully.
His entire posture changed instantly.
He jerked as if he’d been shot at point-blank range.
His hand instinctively slid toward the holster on his thigh.
“You don’t have to be shy about calling things by their names,” I added, ignoring the gesture.
Shame I can’t see his face.
Judging by his body language, one of those names, maybe all of them, hit a very open wound.
“Where did you…
Who the hell are you?!” Jason took a step backward, his voice cracking.
“No…
This isn’t normal.”
He grabbed his helmet as if he could somehow shield himself from my words.
“Thomas isn’t going to let this go!
You know too much about us!”
“Thanks for the compliment, but I’m actually in a hurry.
The air is damp, and I’ve had a long day.” I tilted my head slightly.
“Can we get to the point of your visit?
What was worth risking your neck to come here?”
“Y-yeah.” Jason shook his head, forcing himself to calm down.
“Bruce…
I mean, the Joker.
You didn’t hesitate at the arena today.
I want you to finish what you started.”
“I want you to kill him.”
“Well, isn’t that an incredible coincidence?”
My lips stretched into a wide, horrifying grin, revealing my corpse-white teeth.
“Because I want to do the same thing.”
“You don’t feel that sick pity and compassion for him that Thomas does,” Jason continued, his words coming faster now, as though he was afraid I’d disappear.
“You have enough power.
You wiped the floor with ARGUS.
Your hand won’t hesitate when the moment comes.”
“Just please…”
“No more games and no more talking before he dies.” I grimaced, remembering my mistake.
“Yeah, yeah.
I understand.
I’ve got it.
I’ll rip his head off.”
“Now it’s my turn to set the terms.”
“What.
Do.
I.
Get?”
“Wouldn’t you kill him anyway?” Jason genuinely didn’t understand.
“Who knows?” I shrugged vaguely.
“Father probably won’t leave his insane little boy unguarded a second time.
There’ll be plenty of security.
I’ll have to put in the effort, get my hands dirty, and spend resources.
Hard work deserves compensation, doesn’t it?”
“We live in a capitalist world, after all.”
“In that case, what do you want?
Money?
Access to databases?” the young man asked with a sigh.
“For starters, take off the helmet.”
Jason froze.
His fingers curled into fists.
But he had no choice.
He needed someone to do the job.
A quiet hiss came from the broken vacuum seal, followed by the click of the collar locks.
The young man pulled off the heavy red helmet.
Very young.
He can’t be much older than twenty.
A disheveled brunette with brown eyes stared back at me.
Deep shadows sat beneath them from chronic lack of sleep.
Sharp, pronounced cheekbones.
A straight nose that had apparently never been broken.
No white streak in his hair.
No horrific scars across his face.
His posture, uncertainty, and the excessive emotion that had slipped through during our conversation gave him away completely.
When Bruce died and transformed into the Joker, this kid had still been a teenager.
Which meant he simply hadn’t had time to undergo years of training with the League of Assassins or master everything Batman had taught him.
“Good.
Now let’s go back to our list.” I looked directly into his eyes.
“Dick Grayson.
Damian Wayne.
Tim Drake.
Barbara Gordon.”
“Which of them do you know?”
“Tell me what happened here.”
“Consider the information payment for my services.”
A sharp gust of wind tousled Jason’s dark hair.
He pressed his lips together and looked away, but eventually spat out the words that had clearly been burning his tongue.
“All of them.”
“I know all those names.”
He exhaled heavily, and that sigh carried the exhaustion of an old man.
“Barbara is disabled.
She’s confined to a wheelchair.”
“Tim has been in a coma for two years.
The doctors say there’s almost no hope.”
“Damian…
he just left Gotham.
Ran away.
I don’t know where he is now.”
“And Dick…
we’re trying to work as a team.
That’s the short version.”
Interesting.
The pieces are falling into place.
So Barbara is already Oracle here, paralyzed just like in the main canon.
Damian probably ran off to his grandfather Ra’s al Ghul and joined the League after getting sick of this circus.
Tim is basically a vegetable.
And Dick…
Considering Nightwing hasn’t appeared in the news yet, he’s probably still trying to figure himself out or carrying the burden alongside this inexperienced Red Hood.
He might even be younger than Jason.
“And?” I raised an eyebrow.
“How did the Bat-family end up like this?”
“Actually, don’t bother answering.
It’s obvious who did it.”
I waved a hand dismissively.
“The Joker.”
“The Joker who used to be Bruce,” Jason spat, his hatred unmistakable.
His fists clenched again.
“That much is obvious.
Otherwise you wouldn’t have come looking for me.”
I snorted.
“Are your moral principles getting in the way?”
“That bastard!”
Jason growled, his eyes shining with barely contained rage.
“He knew!”
“He knew everything about us!”
“Our real names.
Our backup bases.
Every access code to the Batcave.
Our fears and weaknesses!”
“He systematically tore us apart from the inside because he was the one who trained us!”
“And Thomas…”
Jason ground his teeth.
“That bastard!
Thomas!”
“Even after everything, after what Bruce did to Tim and Barbara, he kept him alive!”
“He locked him up in Arkham and treats him like some priceless treasure because he’s ‘his son’!”
And rightly so, old man Thomas!
Otherwise, where else would I get such wonderfully concentrated drama?
This was pure storytelling insanity.
Just think about it.
The supposedly indestructible Bat-family, the group that had terrorized Gotham’s criminal underworld for years, hadn’t been destroyed by an external enemy or an alien invasion.
They’d been gutted from the inside by their own former Batman after he transformed into a clown.
I wondered whether killing Thomas Wayne would mean that Damian, wherever he’d run off to, would be next in line for the bat mask and the accompanying psychological damage.
Or maybe one of the Dick-and-Jason duo would try to pull the pointy-eared cowl over his head.
The sheer variability of this universe was incredible.
And every new turn in the spiral guaranteed me generous rewards.
Bad Charles.
Bad.
It’s too early to think about killing Thomas.
He can still cause me plenty of trouble.
A sharp slap echoed across the empty rooftop.
I had slapped myself across the pale cheek, abruptly interrupting my own internal monologue.
The System’s Middle Schooler Syndrome, combined with my particular sense of humor, occasionally got the better of me.
Jason, who had just been preparing to launch into another angry tirade about his former mentor, stopped and stared at me like I was insane.
“Sorry.
I got distracted.”
I lowered my hand.
“I was thinking about killing Thomas.”
Jason froze.
His brown eyes narrowed dangerously and his jaw tightened.
But instead of the expected defense of the Bat, he hissed through his teeth:
“I…
honestly, I wouldn’t fucking mind!”
There was so much bitterness and old resentment packed into those few words that I actually felt sorry for him for a second.
The Bat-family in this world was basically a club for broken toys.
“All right.
Now that we’ve settled your feelings toward the older generation, one last question.”
I made a thoughtful expression, remembering the recently activated Happy Romantic Trait.
“Is Barbara pretty?”
“…”
Jason froze for a second.
His brain, calibrated for grim speeches, revenge, and tactical planning, simply refused to process the abrupt change in subject.
“All right, relax.
I’m kidding.”
I gave him a short laugh.
Then I stepped forward.
The five meters separating us disappeared.
Physics obediently bent beneath the attributes of a higher-order undead.
I didn’t run.
I simply appeared beside him, a blurred shadow ripping the distance out of the equation.
Jason didn’t even have time to react.
The Red Hood’s reflexes, hammered into him through years of training, activated too late.
By the time his hand reached for his pistol, my heavy, icy palm had already settled casually on his shoulder.
The young man flinched as though he’d been electrocuted.
Of course she’s beautiful.
She’s fucking Batgirl.
The canonical image of the green-eyed redhead appeared in my mind automatically.
Of course, right now that attraction was purely mental and academic.
Physiologically, I was still a fucking undead creature whose body temperature was comparable to the asphalt beneath our feet.
Still, I could deactivate the Nightmare Knight transformation whenever I wanted.
The important thing was to do it only after finding a way to surgically or magically extract the Joker’s acid from my stomach.
In a living human body, I was still…
Well, far too fragile for the realities of this world.
“Anything else you want to say before you go?”
I looked down at Jason.
“N-no.”
“Actually…
yes.”
“You’re going to Arkham now, right?”
“Something like that.”
I slowly withdrew my hand, mentally calculating the shortest route to the island.
“Can I come with you?”
The words came out suddenly.
There was desperate, almost childlike pleading in his voice, mixed with something much darker.
“I…
I want to see it.”
“With my own eyes, I want to see him die.”
“And besides, what do you think about working with me and Dick?”
“We have resources.
Information…”
“I think you’re too weak for me, Jason.”
I smiled only with my lips, destroying the last of his illusions.
“Your level is dealing with street thugs and playing cat and mouse with the mob.”
“Where I’m going, you can’t follow.”
“They’d crush you.”
Without waiting for an answer, I turned on my heel and calmly stepped off the rooftop parapet into the black abyss of Gotham’s night.
The wind screamed past my ears.
Thirty floors of free fall.
My boots hit the sidewalk.
The impact that should have turned my bones into bloody mush was completely absorbed by my Epic ability.
The kinetic energy obediently flowed into my body, filling my muscles with a humming, expanding power.
Damn.
The asphalt didn’t even crack.
Perfect shock absorption.
I looked down, enjoying the sensation of my internal battery being completely charged.
Then I raised my head.
Jason’s pale face was visible far above me, hanging over the parapet.
I saluted him with my remaining fingers.
Then I turned toward the bay, activated Breathing at maximum, and dumped all the stored energy from the fall into my legs.
Burst!
I was literally launched down the nearly empty main street.
The world around me blurred into a continuous stream of neon lights and gray concrete.
Nowhere near the Flash, obviously, but I’m definitely hitting around two hundred kilometers per hour at the peak of this burst.
I easily maneuvered around the few late-night cars.
The air roared around me, trying to knock me off balance.
The stored kinetic energy lasted for roughly a kilometer of this supercharged sprint before the momentum began to fade.
The unpleasant side effect was my clothing.
The stolen jeans and hoodie began ripping at the seams under the monstrous aerodynamic resistance.
Unlike Barry Allen, I didn’t have the protective aura of the Speed Force.
Great.
I’d have to find another wardrobe later.
I gradually slowed down and turned into a dark alley that smelled of dampness and garbage.
I exhaled, returning my Breathing rhythm to normal, and finally paid attention to the System notifications hanging at the edge of my vision.
I’d completely forgotten about them while test-driving my newly acquired powers.
Feat Completed: Obtain more information about the world’s structure and lore.
Subject: The Tragedy of the Bat-Family.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
Feat Completed: Arrogantly refuse cooperation with a named character, Jason Todd.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
Two more Bronzes.
That brought my inventory total to seven worthless Tickets.
Only three more to go, and I’d finally be able to test the burning mechanic.
Considering everything I’d learned, a visit to Arkham would definitely earn me another Bronze.
And if any named characters were currently locked up in the madhouse, which they definitely were, I’d collect the required ten without any trouble.
Maybe I should spend some time taking the Gotham sightseeing tour?
The pragmatic thought crossed my mind.
I adjusted my breathing again, switching to a stable running rhythm that didn’t consume kinetic energy.
This time my speed was considerably more modest, around fifty kilometers per hour.
At that pace, I’d reach the docks, where the island would be visible, in roughly five minutes.
Perfect timing.
Exactly enough time for Batman to analyze my route through the city’s cameras, but not enough for him to organize a proper defensive line there with ARGUS.
Unless he decides to come personally.
But…
oh, right.
I broke his rib cage an hour ago.
I grinned broadly as I ducked through another alley to cut the corner.
How wonderfully convenient.
Or rather, this isn’t a coincidence.
It’s the result of my subtle tactical calculations.
Obviously.
“All right, what checkpoints do we have on the map?”
Wayne Tower.
The Police Department, where Commissioner Gordon was probably sitting around doing whatever the hell commissioners did.
They’d definitely give me a Bronze Ticket just for making eye contact with his mustache.
Blackgate Prison…
Actually, this had always seemed like the absolute peak of comic-book stupidity to me.
The city had a massive federal prison operating right in the middle of it.
But the mass murderer, sadist, and chemical terrorist known as the Joker?
Of course we’d repeatedly send him to a gothic psychiatric hospital.
Because he’s “sick.”
Yeah.
Sure.
Although, thinking about it, Arkham’s technology and security were probably more serious than anything Alcatraz had ever had.
If only Riddler and Penguin weren’t escaping every weekend.
Then the place might actually be worth something.
A revolving door with padded walls.
Speaking of Penguin…
He was supposed to own his own nightclub, the Iceberg Lounge.
Another potential point of interest where I could locate a named character, piss him off, and then cash him in for Tickets.
Adding that to the list.
What about Wayne Manor and the Batcave?
Did they still function in their classic form considering the circumstances of this timeline?
And if so, why hadn’t Bruce-Joker leveled them to the ground already?
Had Thomas increased their defenses to paranoid levels?
Or did the Joker attack periodically, turning it into some twisted family routine that simply wasn’t as entertaining for him anymore?
Who the hell cares?
I shook my head, pushing the unnecessary theories aside.
I’m thinking about this like I’m going to a dinner party with a clown.
No.
I’m going there to kill him.
Quickly and brutally.
Gotham’s scenery changed.
The dense buildings of the business district gave way to industrial zones, and then to the grim dockyards.
The sharp smell of rotting fish, salt, and diesel fuel hit my nose.
I came to a stop at the edge of an old pier.
From here, I had a direct view of Arkham Island.
A massive Gothic bridge led toward it, guarded by a frankly absurd number of patrols and checkpoints.
The water surrounding the island was patrolled by Coast Guard boats.
The entire perimeter was surrounded by a colossal wall topped with barbed wire, watchtowers, and searchlights whose beams continuously swept across the lead-gray waters of the bay.
Whatever was hidden inside those walls was impossible to see from here.
It looks like the most heavily guarded place on the planet.
I assessed the sheer scale of Batman’s paranoia, both the old Batman and the new one.
So how the hell does anyone ever escape from there?
Do they dig tunnels with spoons?
Or bribe the guards?
All right.
Rhetorical questions later.
The practical problem was much more important.
How was I going to break through this militarized perimeter without wasting hours fighting?
Sneaking across the bridge was impossible.
Swimming was even worse.
Sonar would detect me immediately.
Apparently…
It was time to put the bigger guns on the table.
There was no time for ninja games.
I mentally reached into my inventory, feeling for the cold outline of my Elite-tier item.
I grinned.
“Archangel, I choose you!”
Not that I had much of a choice.
It was time to show Gotham what humanity’s military firepower looked like after establishing a foothold in hostile space.