Drip!
Gotham City's sewers were dark and gloomy, concealing all kinds of unknown monsters.
Killer Croc had once been one of them.
But he wasn't anymore. He was now a man with two hundred million dollars, although all of it was dirty money. He hadn't paid taxes on it, none of it was legal income, and he couldn't openly spend a single cent of it.
But he had money now. Money... meant hope.
Killer Croc opened his eyes.
His nictitating membranes flicked across them in that instant. Under the dim light of the handheld lantern, they sent ripples spreading across the water.
"That big guy's coming again." He said to the Ventriloquist beside him, "I mean [big] guy. I never thought I'd call someone else that. I always thought I was Gotham's most famous dumb brute."
Despite saying that, Waylon felt like he had gotten much smarter.
He had accepted that his brain wasn't particularly sharp, but he hadn't always been like this.
During his teenage years, his intelligence had been no different from an ordinary person's.
But after growing into adulthood and becoming a full-fledged reptilian beast, he discovered that the farther he distanced himself from people, the more his animal instincts flourished, and the more severe his physical transformation became.
Yet he had spent the past few days around other humans, and his animal instincts had immediately receded a great deal, leaving his mind considerably clearer.
"Focus on the job, Waylon." The Ventriloquist sat on the walkway beside the sewer. Gotham's old underground drainage systems had always included walkways for workers to use.
Bat-Baby, perched on his hand, replied, "Don't worry. You might not be the most famous dumb brute, but you're definitely the richest one now."
He said, "You've seen those two money-filled box trucks in the Swiss bank vault, right? If you want your employer to launder all that money until it's clean enough to spend, you'd better move faster. Besides, this isn't your first job today."
"I know that without you telling me."
The humanoid alligator swished his tail, rose from the underground river, and lifted a small cart from beside the Ventriloquist.
A whole roasted cow, baked to a golden crisp, had been placed inside. It should have appeared in Gotham's finest seven-star restaurant, where a group of outwardly elegant but fat-gutted idiots could ruin it—not in this filthy place.
Killer Croc sighed.
Roasted pigs, roasted cows, the rich aromas filling the sewers—everything was so familiar. Everything was the same old trick, but the person carrying it out had become him. There was something inexplicably ironic about that.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Roar—hoo—
The sound of an extremely heavy iron ball striking the ground echoed through the vast underground waterways, layer upon layer. Accompanied by that hoarse, gloomy voice, it composed a bizarre duet.
Listen closely—the voice was saying:
"Solomon Grundy—born on a Monday!"
Third Generation Robin Tim Drake sat on the edge of a building, observing a distant apartment building through binoculars.
Batman and Harley Quinn were inside.
If this had been the Batman of old, Tim wouldn't have been worried in the slightest, because he knew how powerful Batman was—but things were different now.
Could Bruce Wayne really handle a dangerous criminal like Harley Quinn?
Tim carefully swung across the entire street on his grappling hook, landed silently on the rooftop, and then climbed through a corridor window.
The sky was growing dark, and the sound-activated hallway was pitch-black.
A sliver of light spilled through the half-open door, like the gaping maw of a giant beast.
Tim quietly hid in the shadows behind the door. Then he heard Harley Quinn say:
"Fuck, Bat, you *****"
"******!"
!!!
With a resounding crash, Tim kicked the door open!
"Batman, what are you—"
Then he saw Batman holding a skeleton in one hand and idly playing with a skull in the other, apparently trying to stuff the scattered bone pieces back into the mouth of a giant man-eating plant.
"Waaah, ugh! Are you making me eat my own vomit?!"
Frank, the man-eating plant, struggled loudly, but he had no way to resist Batman. Chen Tao pulled out a lighter and waved it in front of him, and Frank immediately behaved.
"Aha!"
When she saw Robin enter, Harley immediately jumped down from the windowsill and adopted the air of a military inspector with her nose held high. "Private Robin, fall in and stand at attention!"
Tim turned to Batman with an expression that clearly asked, What the hell is this?
Chen Tao explained:
"These people weren't killed by Harley."
Harley enthusiastically acted crazy in sync beside him.
"Waaah, Mr. Skeleton! Waaah, Mr. Skeleton! You died so tragically!"
"You went from a living person to a corpse. That absolutely wasn't your fault. Rest in peace, rest in..."
"Uh... that's just Harley's version of the Great Compassion Mantra or a requiem." Chen Tao added.
"Heh heh heh heh~"
A few minutes later, Harley Quinn stood in front of the Batmobile, which was parked at the entrance to an alley.
She leaned her rear against the hood, then slid into the passenger seat of the Batmobile as bonelessly as a rag doll.
"So what do we do next, dynamic duo?"
Third Generation Robin stood to the side, huffing angrily. The Batmobile's passenger seat was supposed to be his!
"Nobody knows Poison Ivy as well as I do. I'll help you find her now, but you have to let me reason with her before you rush in."
"Then, once this is over, you have to put in a good word for me with those parole board people. Tell them what a righteous and kindhearted citizen I am, and so on and so forth."
It was a perfectly reasonable request, and for Batman, it would have been effortless.
If he agreed to Harley Quinn's terms, he could seemingly get her help at once, find Poison Ivy, take down Plant Master, and solve everything.
But Batman wasn't going to do that.
This was Harley's test—a test of whether he was really Batman.
The moment Chen Tao agreed, it would become Batman begging Harley for help, and the initiative would immediately fall into Harley's hands. Even though she hadn't worked as a psychiatrist for many years, Harley Quinn still instinctively used techniques that influenced the power dynamic between them through language.
So Chen Tao said:
"No."
"What? I mean...? You don't want to...? You don't need to..."
Harley Quinn kept trying, while Chen Tao simply watched her put on an expression of utter disbelief.
Those conditions weren't important. Ivy was.
Chen Tao had always been good at grasping the point. Right now, he needed to crush Harley Quinn's delusion that she could seize the initiative.
"I don't want to negotiate with a mental patient."
"Ahhhhh! It's sociopath!" Harley clawed frantically at her hair.
"Sociopath!"
"My God, why does everyone keep getting my identity wrong?!"
She folded her arms and jumped down from the Batmobile.
"If you won't agree to my terms, why should I help you?"
Before you continue