Batman had never doubted whether Gotham needed him. Gotham needed everyone with justice in their hearts. Even if they could not save it, they could at least make it a little better.
Batman's way of saving Gotham was to fight criminals, but now a problem had arisen: who was the criminal?
Or rather, who wasn't?
It was like this: in a group of ten people, if one person took a knife and slashed at the other nine, Batman would certainly go after that one person. But if all ten held knives and hacked at each other, things became a little difficult.
If those ten people robbed while they hacked, got robbed while they robbed, and enjoyed every moment of it without even trying to run away, then most people would choose to respect their blessings and just hope nobody died on their doorstep.
Now, Uptown and Midtown had been reduced to a complete mess. Residents of the densely populated Lower City had eagerly joined the fight. Seventy percent of the city's population was at war, and they were having a wonderful time doing it, with none of the dejection or grief one would expect from people ravaged by war.
It could even be said that this had been Gotham's most prosperous period in ten years.
First, fighting over territory required expanding the population. The various families' strongholds had taken in huge numbers of Lower City residents, neatly resolving the wave of unemployment caused by economic decline under sanctions. After all, Mafia families were a product of hard times and joblessness.
Second, reinforcing the security measures around family strongholds required enormous quantities of supplies. Transporting those supplies required logistics, and building logistics networks required even more supplies. This greatly stimulated the city's domestic consumption. Everything in those strongholds was genuinely being