Miaomiao stood there in a daze. One on the ship, one in the sea, the two pairs of eyes silently met.
Only when the handsome man aboard the ship looked at her and spoke, his rose-colored lips parting, did the strange atmosphere break.
"Who are you?"
Unfortunately, Miaomiao, the clever, well-behaved good kid of the deep sea...
Hadn't understood...
This absolutely wasn't because she hadn't studied hard!
She had studied human languages too. Although she had never spoken to an actual human before, she swore that what came out of this man's mouth wasn't any human language she had learned!
Oh, now she remembered. The elders had told her that there were many, many kinds of humans. Miaomiao and the others had learned the language of the local humans with black hair, black eyes, and yellow skin. Although the man before her also had black hair, his eyes were steel blue, and his skin was paler.
So was this the language of humans from somewhere else?
"Hello. Do you need help?"
Bruce's eyes flickered. Concealing the shock within him, he lowered his head and softly questioned the girl who absolutely should not have been here, his tone as casual as ordinary conversation.
Batman never overlooked any detail, however insignificant it seemed.
So after leaving, he had silently returned from another direction, blending into the shadows along the ship's hull.
He had successfully confirmed his suspicion-he hadn't been mistaken. There really was a "person" in the sea.
The girl's entire body was hidden beneath the water, with only the upper half of her face showing. In that faint moonlight, Bruce's keen eyesight was more than enough to make out her appearance.
Her long, jet-black hair drifted in the seawater, and her eyes were black or dark brown. Her features were distinctly East Asian, delicate and finely formed. Her large eyes held the clear innocence of a child who knew nothing of the world. Her skin was very pale; framed by moonlight and seawater, it even seemed almost translucent.
She was unexpectedly young-young enough to be called a child. Even allowing for her East Asian features, she looked no older than fourteen or fifteen.
And she was unexpectedly beautiful.
Such a beautiful, fragile girl, all alone in the icy seawater, tilted up a little face like the finest oriental porcelain and gazed at you pitifully.
Anyone with a heart would have felt it tremble.
Unfortunately, she had encountered Gotham's Dark Knight, Batman.
As everyone knew, Batman wasn't human. (Just kidding.)
Bruce merely frowned. However fragile and pitiable the girl appeared, her surroundings constantly reminded him: Careful! Stay alert!
The more beautiful and delicate a flower looked, the more likely it was to conceal a deadly poison.
Despite those thoughts, Bruce's face still wore a tenderness deep enough to drown in.
ヾ(Ő∀Ő)ﾉ
What was going on?! His expression looked even gentler than before, so why did she sense danger?!
As though abruptly waking from her fascination with his good looks, Miaomiao darted away from the cruise ship. She took another look at the man who inexplicably drew her to him, gave an aggrieved flick of her tail, and turned to dive into the depths.
Bruce watched the girl dart away like a fawn startled by a gunshot, his gaze growing darker.
He definitely hadn't been mistaken-
When the girl had leaped out of the sea just now, the part of her body below her waist had revealed no legs. In their place was a huge, fantastical fish tail straight out of a fairy tale!
Bruce heard the creak of his own grinding teeth.
[Master Bruce?]
"Alfred," Bruce said, his voice barely audible. "We can't wait any longer. We need to finish this fast!"
This was unusual. Batman always planned before he acted.
[What happened?]
"I just saw a little girl... an... East Asian girl with a fish tail..."
[...]
At dawn, the fiery red sun had only just risen above the horizon, but Bruce Wayne already had his fishing rod set up and was reclining in a comfortable lounge chair, looking listless. On the small round table beside him sat expensive black tea and cakes and desserts lovingly prepared by a five-star chef.
Passing guests exchanged glances and knowing smiles at the sight.
Word had it that this "beauty collector" had hooked up with a fiery, gorgeous rose of a woman as soon as he boarded yesterday. Before last night's banquet had even ended, the two had vanished, not reappearing until dawn.
As adults, everyone naturally understood what had happened. Seeing the man lying there drowsily with a hat over his face, they tacitly softened their footsteps and moved away to let him catch up on sleep.
This fool of the Wayne family might not have had much ability, but he certainly had luck. Not only did he have a loyal, capable old butler safeguarding the family fortune, he also had an astute, dependable group CEO. No matter how much of a bastard he was, the Wayne family's wealth continued to grow rapidly.
Offending someone like that offered nothing to gain and everything to lose. Only an idiot would do it.
At that moment, the lucky fool in their eyes, Bruce Wayne, lay there languidly while his mind kept sorting through the information he had uncovered the night before.
And the image of that girl with the fish tail refused to leave him.
A little mermaid?
Heh. He was long past the age of believing in fairy tales. Rather than believing that what he had seen last night was a fairy-tale creature from the deep sea, Bruce found another, chilling possibility far more plausible-
The product of an illegal experiment.
In fact, as a Gotham vigilante, Batman patrolled his city at night almost every day of the year. This "business trip" had come about because they had discovered an organization conducting illegal human experiments.
The organization claimed to be engaged in "god-making," splicing various animals and humans together or editing their genes in an attempt to recreate the "gods" of myth and legend in reality.
Gotham City, chaotic and rife with crime, produced homeless people and orphans every day for all manner of reasons, making it one of the organization's chosen "breeding grounds." To satisfy their twisted desires, they had reached their wicked hands toward innocent people.
In the records Batman had seized, they had sewn a man's upper body onto a horse's body in an attempt to create a "centaur"; introduced genes from cats, dogs, pigs, cattle, and even tigers and leopards into human embryos, hoping to obtain "beast-men" with animal abilities; and forcibly fused bird genes into beautiful, innocent youths, deluding themselves that they could create biblical "angels"...
Especially after mutants appeared, the emergence of mutants whose abilities and physical traits corresponded to those legends had driven them into an even greater frenzy. Weak mutant children who could not protect themselves became the ideal test subjects in these demons' eyes.
Had their mutant experiments not previously been exposed, provoking the fury of the two mutant leaders, who led their followers in a devastating retaliation that destroyed several underground laboratories, these people might have been even more brazen than they were now.
Batman and his assistant, Robin, had already destroyed the underground laboratory in Gotham, but they had not found the most crucial data or the mastermind behind it. The organization could rise from the ashes at any moment.
After many twists and turns, Batman had finally determined that these things were hidden aboard a luxury cruise ship in Gotham Bay. The ship operated on a membership basis, and everyone who boarded had to undergo strict identity and asset verification.
And so Bruce Wayne had come aboard this cruise ship for a "vacation."
And just last night, he had seen an East Asian girl with a fish tail with his own eyes.
Beautiful, dreamlike, pure, fragile...
She perfectly matched the deep-sea fairies described in fairy tales.
Those inhuman bastards!
Before you continue