PFC Chapter 2485: Battle for the Cloak (41)
Chapter 2485: Battle for the Cloak (41)
Chapter 2485: Battle for the Cloak (Forty-One)
This story is long, but it has a familiar beginning. One night, after a day's work, Jason saw a super cool car parked on the street. The car had four super cool tires. Batman also saw a super cool car parked on the street, but the car only had three super cool tires left.
This story is so well-known to all members of the Bat Family, but Batman and Jason themselves never told it. Batman just mentioned it when he introduced Jason to Dick one day. However, since it was too absurd even if it was summarized in one sentence, it became widely known through Dick's mouth.
To be honest, there was nothing special about that night. Batman picked up Jason and let him adapt to life in Wayne Manor for a few days. Then he took him to the Batcave and taught him more professional fighting skills, firearms technology, driving vehicles and operating machinery, as well as mechanical engineering, which he was already good at.
The days of study were busy and time passed quickly. Batman became the main theme in Jason's life, so much so that he soon forgot those past days.
But Batman was always busy, and after Batman left on his own, using the excuse that he was too young to go out and fight criminals, Jason would occasionally read by the fireplace, sleep in his room, go to the shade of a big tree in the garden, or just sit in the bathtub.
Then he grew up quickly and became an incredibly strong bird, until he was so big that Batman wanted to kick him out of the nest.
The time he had spent in this luxurious manor became the background music when Jason's mood was up and down, and the wallpaper in his chat box with himself. He never thought about it, but those things were always there.
Jason didn't remember having any emotions before Batman picked him up and took him home. Even if he thought about it carefully, he only remembered that his mind was blank, with only two big words circling in his mind - "alive".
The noises that always bothered him were none other than the emotions that would always play a distorted tune, and the source of these noises was that after his life had finally returned to peace, he recognized the true face of the world from those books and principles, and found the string that he could play.
When he was a child, Jason never felt that he had done anything wrong. Stealing, cheating, robbing, doing dirty work, running errands for criminals, and watching his fellow men die were common things in his life.
In Wayne Manor, he learned from Batman, Alfred, Dick and the books that doing this was wrong and unjust, and everyone wanted him to be a just person.
Jason didn't like those rules and disciplines, but he was subtly influenced by them, or it was because his always full stomach provided his body with enough hot blood, allowing him to produce enough courage and surge to his brain, thus making him hate evil.
Jason is the last person who should become like this, because he came from the criminals he hated the most, and the first rules he came into contact with in his life were the dark rules of Gotham. This should have had an unimaginable impact on him and should have shaped his personality in this way.
Jason became the complete opposite of himself, even more extreme than the others. It wasn't because he was unstable, but because he was too hungry before and too full later. He could survive when he was hungry, so the extra energy after being full created such an amazing and great turning point.
Jason thought that this was the case, Batman had fed him too much, otherwise his first emotion after surviving the Joker should not have been anger and resentment, but relief.
He was as grateful as he had been countless times when he had spent the nights alone in Gotham, and thought to himself that it didn't matter what happened yesterday, as at least he survived.
Jason felt nauseous just imagining himself being so fragile, not knowing anything from the disaster and only pinning his hopes on God. But he also understood that it was a great blessing for ordinary people to die in the flames of anger rather than in cold numbness.
Jason thought of Spider-Man again. He looked very cowardly and timid. Even after gaining powerful strength, he did not bravely declare war on the evil forces at the first time. He did not behave like a superhero.
But the topic of heroes may not occupy much weight in his life, because his family lives in poverty. No matter how strong Spider-Man is, he is not old enough to get a formal job, and this ability is difficult to convert into a reliable source of income.
Spider-Man is indeed not an ordinary person now, but he has never escaped the situation of an ordinary person, because he still has too many concerns, and it is too difficult for him to put them aside and become a lone hero.
Then there is Bruce. If there really is a Bruce in a certain universe who experiences the same thing as he did in this dream, and things have changed completely, and he has also become impoverished and struggling to make ends meet, will he just accept his fate?
Jason suddenly realized that he would, and he suddenly understood why Batman was escaping from his own image in his dreams, because he became an ordinary person, an ordinary person like Peter Parker.
They may have some strengths in certain aspects, but this is not enough to pull them out of the ranks of ordinary people. They still live among the masses and are as busy as them.
This means they have to endure the pain that ordinary people endure, the trivialities and frictions, but it also means they don't have to bear the responsibilities of superheroes.
Who on earth would ask a person who lost both parents when he was young, lives in poverty, has no skills, and has a family to support to be responsible for the current state of society?
It would be better to say that they are victims of the current social situation. Society should bear more responsibility for them and society owes them.
In addition to the death of his parents, all of Batman's suffering comes from his twisted sense of responsibility. To some extent, most Spider-Men are also trapped by the saying "with great power comes great responsibility."
The worries of rich people are always less than the pain of ordinary people, but the pain of ordinary people can hardly outweigh the gap between the sense of responsibility and efforts made by those superheroes to help the world and the tragic results of reality.
The life of an ordinary person is not all painful, because they don’t ask for much and can easily please themselves. But the life of a superhero who is driven by a sense of responsibility is filled with an urgency to be driven, efforts to take action, the motivation to go further after success, and the regret of wanting to try again after failure.
Is this really okay? Jason thought, if he hadn't been picked up by Batman, he might still be unaware of it, and consider himself unlucky to be kidnapped by criminals. He would go home to rest for a day and then go out to work again, without blaming anyone.
After enjoying the breeze by the river, Jason found a motel to stay in. Just after midnight, he started feeling unwell. His body was hot, his mouth was dry, but he was also very cold. He must have a fever.
Normally he was not so fragile that he would sit up and go buy medicine, but now Jason lay in bed and didn't want to move. He just half-closed his eyes and looked at the ceiling, listening to the roars, scolding, trembling music and drunkards' mumbling coming from the completely non-soundproof hotel next door.
The TV in the next room was playing a program that seemed to be a midnight news channel, but soon a hurried female voice came: "The little girl Willy, the only survivor of a number of child attacks in recent days, described to the police that she had seen a clawed monster in her dream. Let's listen to the analysis of a professional psychiatrist..."
Jason was delirious with fever, and the information flowed through his cerebral cortex, staying for less than a second before disappearing.
His clenched arms gradually relaxed and Jason fell into a sleepy state.
In an ordinary apartment building, Bruce was sitting on the floor of the living room repairing a wheelchair. He did not watch TV, but just listened to the news on TV.
Gordon's voice came from inside the house. Bruce walked in quickly. He helped Gordon turn over, but Gordon did not fall asleep as usual. He just looked at Bruce and said, "Did you hear the news? There is a killer killing children."
"Yes, Uncle Gordon, I heard that, that's a pity."
Gordon showed a painful expression. His only movable arm curled up slightly. He grabbed the bed sheet with his fingers and said, "Perhaps, Officer Ge Yin..."
Bruce lowered his eyes and said nothing. Gordon quickly restrained his expression and said, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you this. You have to go to work tomorrow. Go to bed."
"If you want to make a phone call, Uncle Gordon, I can bring you the phone, but..."
"But I know it won't work." Gordon showed a numb expression on his face. He said, "I'm no longer a policeman. There are only a few people in the Gotham Police Department who know me."
"I believe they will handle the case well." Bruce lowered his head and said, "We can only trust them."
Gordon said nothing, staring at the ceiling with empty eyes. Bruce turned around and closed the door gently, sighing with a puzzled look.
In the Arkham Knight universe, Batman and Poison Ivy overcame numerous difficulties, especially the strange fog and various strange natural phenomena in the fog, and finally touched the edge of the portal.
"Oh my God, I don't even dare to think about what I've been through along the way." Poison Ivy covered her forehead and muttered as if she was stimulated: "Fish with metal legs, killers wearing smiley masks, weird dolls, nuns who look like corpses, weird people with nails all over their heads..."
"Repeating this will do nothing for your mental health," Batman said calmly.
"Whatever is happening right now is good for my mental health?!" Poison Ivy roared.
"If we succeed, maybe." Batman's tone remained flat until he saw the current state of the portal.
Batman had been here before, but because he didn't know much about magic, after the portal was closed, he couldn't find any mechanism to restart it or completely destroy it, so he ignored it for the time being.
But now, what appeared in front of Batman was not a portal, but a hole, a hole that appeared in the ground.
(End of this chapter)