What was summer in Gotham like?
In the past, people would have said that Gotham's summer was a rainstorm on the verge of falling. Heavy clouds always hung low, thunder rumbled like some colossal beast moving through the cloud cover, and countless unknown dangers lurked in the gloomy, damp alleys.
But now, this city that had rediscovered sunlight had long, scorching summers. Heat waves rolled through the days. The cicadas were too exhausted by the heat to chirp properly, their cries drawn out into long notes. Seagulls could barely fly and squatted on café doorsteps, letting out hoarse calls. Leather shoes crossed asphalt roads, pulling threads of gleaming melted tar behind them. Hurrying pedestrians held newspapers over their heads, not daring to linger in the sunlight for even a moment.
After May, Gotham grew hotter and hotter. When temperatures were only a little above thirty degrees Celsius, people could still barely survive with cooling equipment. But with the temperature closing in on forty, hardly anyone dared to go outside.
Logically, a coastal city should never have become this hot. Gotham was surrounded by the sea on three sides, so its climate should have been even better than Metropolis's.
But this city had gone to another extreme on the road to modernization. Since there had been no sunlight anyway, they built skyscrapers as high as they could, made reflective glass as bright as possible, piled on rebar concrete structures, and laid down asphalt roads with abandon.
As everyone knew, the Heat Island Effect arose under precisely these conditions. When there was no sunlight, none of it had been a problem.
But now, the clouds had scattered and sunlight had returned. The entire city was like a sheet of metal left out to bake beneath the sun.
Back when Gotham had been