Gotham had begun to rain again. The rain washed the metal armor until it gleamed even brighter. Dark clouds reflected in the puddles, and the puddles reflected on the leg armor. That blood-red patch flowed along the reflection, like a figure collapsed on the ground, telling its own story in a low voice. Those tragic scenes flowed into Arkham Batman's ears.
It had all begun with a mistaken debate.
Lex Luthor had let all ordinary people decide whether he or Superman lived or died. He had given them a strange kind of energy that could activate the devices beneath the two men's feet according to their inner choice. If people believed in Lex Luthor more, the device would kill Superman; if they believed in Superman more, it would kill Lex Luthor.
Superman had come, and Superman had died.
Those had been the two gravest mistaken decisions Superman had made.
Batman had chosen to trust the people and explain things to them. He had opened the doors of Justice Hall. It had been the most mistaken decision he had ever made, because the frenzied crowd had torn him directly to pieces.
Batman had not died. He had spent a long time getting back on his feet, defeating Darkseid to obtain the Omega Effect, then using the Anti-Life Equation to rule the entire Earth, plunging the people who had betrayed him into chaos and war, as though they deserved it.
But one day, a Batman who never stopped laughing had come to find him and told him this: the evil and madness in those people's hearts had not appeared out of nowhere. They had been steeped in a dark jar and had rotted from the roots. The same tragedy had played out again and again across different universes.
"This simply isn't fair..."