Joker's End

In the darkest corners of Gotham City, among the countless abandoned industrial facilities owned by Wayne Enterprises, there was a secret laboratory never recorded on any map. This was the final destination Bruce had prepared for Joker.

Like a beast in the night, the Batmobile silently drove into the underground facility codenamed "Void." When the doors opened, Bruce and Jason dragged Joker out from either side. Both his legs were broken, and powerful sedatives had reduced him to something like a dead dog. The signature smile on his face had long since frozen, replaced by an unprecedented emptiness mixed with confusion and fear.

At the center of the laboratory stood a completely sealed cubic room made of ultra-high-strength bulletproof glass. Inside, there was nothing. The walls, ceiling, and floor were covered with dense laser-emitter ports almost invisible to the naked eye.

Bruce showed no mercy as he threw Joker into the glass cage, then activated the sealing sequence. A heavy alloy door slowly descended with a dull boom, completely cutting off the inside from the outside.

Within the cage, the cold air and absolute silence finally seemed to bring Joker slightly back to his senses after the dual shock of drugs and trauma. He shook his head, took in his surroundings, and saw the two figures standing beyond the glass like grim reapers.

"Oh... heh heh..." A dry laugh came from Joker's throat. Dragging his broken legs, he painfully crawled to the glass wall and pressed his blood-smeared palm against it. "Batboy... what new game are you playing now? What is this? A brand-new... escape room? I love it! I absolutely love it!"

He kept rambling, trying to use his usual mad nonsense to provoke Bruce and find a way to break this "game." He still believed this was merely another one of Batman's new tricks to "reform" or imprison him.

Bruce watched him expressionlessly, as though he were looking at an experimental specimen about to be disposed of. He raised his hand and pressed the activation button on the control panel.

"Execution protocol initiated. Target: Joker. Method of execution: High-Energy Laser Matrix, 360-degree Cutting with no blind spots." A cold synthesized voice rang through the control room.

The smile on Joker's face finally showed its first crack upon hearing the words "execution protocol."

"Wait... execution?" His expression turned strange. "Hey, Batboy, that joke isn't funny! We... shouldn't be like this! You should arrest me, send me back to Arkham, then wait for me to get out again and give you an even bigger surprise! That's our... destiny!"

Jason stood to one side with his arms crossed, coldly staring through his red helmet at the ugly figure in the glass cage. The satisfaction of long-awaited vengeance surged within him.

Bruce ignored Joker's shouting and merely watched him in silence.

The next second, countless blazing red laser beams as fine as hairs lit up inside the cage! They fired from every direction, weaving an impenetrable net of death through the air!

"Aah—!"

Before Joker's scream could fully leave his throat, one of his arms swept through the laser net and was instantly cut into countless tiny chunks of flesh. Bone and all, it exploded into a spray of blood mist!

The sudden, extreme pain and unimaginably bloody sight finally made Joker realize—Bruce was serious!

He wasn't playing a game! He was going to kill him! Completely erase him from this world without leaving the slightest room for escape!

"No! No—!!!" Unprecedented terror swallowed Joker's chaotic mind like a tsunami. He lunged at the glass wall like a madman, his entire face warping from the pressure as his wide, terrified eyes stared fixedly at Bruce outside.

"Bruce! You can't do this! If you kill me, you'll become me! You'll fall! You'll enjoy all of this!!" he shrieked himself hoarse, his voice turning shrill and piercing with fear.

The laser matrix began to move slowly, like a precision industrial instrument carrying out programmed processing on the "material" inside the cage. Joker's remaining arm, his legs, his torso... were sliced apart, broken down, and vaporized piece by piece before his very eyes!

Blood, shredded flesh, and bone fragments splattered and drifted through the sealed space before instantly vaporizing under the intense heat. The entire scene was as bloody as the most deranged slaughterhouse, yet carried an industrialized cruelty cold beyond measure.

"I'll come back! Bruce! I'll always come back!!" In the instant before his body was completely broken down, Joker used the last of his strength to unleash his final curse. "I'm your other side! You can't get rid of me! I'll haunt you forever! Forever!!"

Bruce watched the face pressed against the glass, grotesquely twisted by fear. Beneath his mask, the corner of his mouth curled into a cold arc.

"Don't worry," he said. His voice was not loud, but it clearly passed through the glass and reached Joker's fading consciousness. "However many times you come back, I'll kill you. And I guarantee that every time, there'll be something new."

As his words fell, the laser matrix completed its final scan.

Joker, the nightmare that had plagued Gotham for decades, along with his mad curse, was completely cut into molecular-level pulp. Not even a single intact drop of blood remained.

Inside the glass cage, only a faint, lingering crimson mist remained.

"So this... is over?" Jason's voice drifted slightly. He had watched with his own eyes as the enemy who had killed him was destroyed in the most complete and brutal manner possible, yet an indescribable emptiness rose within him.

"Wasn't that... a little too cautious?" he asked in confusion, looking at the still-running Cutting protocol on the control panel. At this point, the laser beams within the cage had repeatedly cut the pulp hundreds of times, nearly breaking it down to the atomic level.

Bruce did not answer. His sharp gaze remained fixed on the inside of the cage.

Then, a sudden change occurred!

Within the chaos of minced flesh and blood mist, an extremely faint yellow-green gas with an ominous aura slowly emerged! As if alive, it swirled and gathered within the cage, attempting to form a vague humanoid outline!

It was the most fundamental Laughing Gas toxin in Joker's heart, capable of warping reality! The source of Batman Who Laughs's birth!

"Fuck!" Jason instantly understood Bruce's intention, and cold sweat broke out across his back. If Bruce had not been so cautious and this thing had escaped, the consequences would have been unimaginable!

But Bruce had anticipated this long ago.

"Activate the Purification protocol," he calmly issued his second command.

In an instant, the temperature inside the cage surged to several thousand degrees. At the same time, dozens of nozzles extended from the walls, spraying a specially formulated nano-disinfectant designed to break down biochemical viruses and memetic contamination!

"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—"

Under the combined assault of extreme heat and the nano-disinfectant, the yellow-green toxic gas let out a shrill scream, as if a soul were being burned! It frantically crashed from side to side, trying to break through the inescapable net, but everything was futile.

After a full five minutes of indiscriminate, thorough sterilization, the cloud of toxic gas was finally completely broken down, neutralized, and erased without a trace.

Only after confirming that all traces of life and energy readings had dropped to zero did Bruce shut down every system.

[Ding! Detected that the host has killed the important plot character 'Joker'...]

[Warning! The target 'Joker' has not completely died! His concept of existence has been locked in by the world's origin and will be reborn in some form at some point in the future!]

[System judgment: This kill is invalid. No reward can be issued.]

[System recommendation: Completely erasing the concept of 'Joker's' existence requires world-level, or even multiversal-level power.]

The system's notification sounded in Bruce's mind, then quickly fell silent again.

As expected... the idea of exploiting a bug to farm rewards won't work. Bruce understood. He had long anticipated that a villain on Joker's level was a "phenomenon" in himself, not merely a living being. Completely erasing him through simple physical means was nearly impossible. The system had likely made this ruling precisely to prevent him from exploiting this loophole to farm rewards endlessly.

But that did not matter.

What mattered was that he had proven one thing to Jason, and to himself—he was no longer bound by any rules.

"Let's go, Jason." Bruce patted the shoulder of the young man beside him, who was still somewhat shaken.

"That's it?" Jason asked.

"Not yet."

Bruce led Jason out of the laboratory and stopped before the heavy alloy doors. He took a small remote control from his belt.

"To make absolutely sure."

He pressed the red button.

"BOOM—!!!!"

A world-shaking explosion erupted behind them! The entire underground facility, along with the glass cage that had held Joker's final madness, was completely leveled in a chain of explosions, then deeply buried beneath tens of thousands of tons of rock and soil.