The instant they saw that enormous broccoli, all three of them froze. Zatanna was the one least able to comprehend the situation before them. In disbelief, she even ran toward the broccoli.
The gigantic broccoli was like the World Tree from countless works of fiction, blotting out the sky with its luxuriant branches and leaves. Up close, its massive stalk was so thick that even several hundred people linking arms could not encircle it.
Zatanna truly could not think of any way to determine whether it was real broccoli. She could only lean in and smell it. Then she made a disgusted face, coughed twice, and backed away two steps. "That's right, it's broccoli. Ever since I was little, whenever this stuff appeared on the dinner table, my dad would pull out every trick he had to make me eat it..."
Constantine, the most seriously injured of them, staggered over as well. "How should I put this? It makes sense, but it's still unexpected. I once heard Schiller's friend Victor say that when they went out to eat together, Schiller burst into the kitchen and shot a broccoli..."
Zatanna raised an eyebrow in confusion. "That's a bit much, isn't it? Broccoli tastes awful, and I've hated it ever since I was a kid, but surely it doesn't warrant shooting a vegetable?"
Constantine shrugged. "You've been away from Gotham for too long."
Batman stood where he was for a while to recover his strength, then walked over and looked up at the broccoli's branches.
He did not actually dislike broccoli. Batman was never a picky eater. But he knew that, in theory, some people disliked certain vegetables for reasons beyond simple fussiness. Human genes were strange things; they could even determine that people experienced different tastes when eating a particular vegetable.