Miaomiao

Miaomiao still couldn't resist. She rose from the seabed again and quietly approached the large ship.

It wasn't that she was particularly brave. She just wanted to see that blue-eyed human one more time. There was something different about him, something that drew her in deeply.

This was the first time she had felt anything like it since coming to this world.

Miaomiao's innate gift was "Perception." She believed that man must have some connection to her.

Even if it wasn't a connection they shared yet.

So she had come again.

It was daytime now, without the cover of darkness. Miaomiao brought a thin mist with her. It looked faint and hazy, but concealed her figure well.

Just one little peek. Just one. He won't notice me.

With that thought, Miaomiao surfaced.

And then...

꒰๑0⌓︎0๑꒱ᵎᵎᵎ

Why was this man waiting here again?! Didn't he ever need to sleep?!

After a brief moment of stunned silence, her long-standing instinct to keep away from humans took over. Miaomiao's first reaction was to flee.

"Wait! I mean you no harm!"

Fluent Chinese came from the handsome, blue-eyed man's mouth, and Miaomiao's tail unconsciously stopped beating against the water.

Seeing the "little mermaid" respond made Bruce even more certain of his guess. As long as they could communicate, there was still hope. His voice grew gentler.

"Hello?" Bruce ventured. "You understand Chinese, don't you? Or Japanese? Korean?"

Bruce patiently switched between several East Asian languages, watching the girl's expression closely, before finally settling on Chinese.

"I'm Bruce. Bruce Wayne. I mean you no harm. I only want to help you."

This was the first time Miaomiao had heard her familiar language since coming to this world. And he really didn't harbor any ill intent.

Miaomiao kept most of her body hidden beneath the surface, leaving only her little head exposed as she silently looked into his eyes. Only after a long while did she say softly, "My name is Miaomiao."

"All right, Miaomiao." As if by magic, Bruce produced a small cake decorated with cherries and strawberries. "Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat? Don't worry. It's fresh and clean."

Miaomiao looked at the pretty dessert and involuntarily swallowed.

Ahhh, how did he know she liked food from the land?! She had been here so long and hadn't had a single bite of anything delicious!

Seeing the unmistakable longing in the girl's eyes, Bruce said considerately, "You can have it. Oh, the side of the ship is a little high. If you don't mind, shall I lower it with my fishing rod?"

With a fishing rod?

Miaomiao didn't much like that idea. Instead, she gave a powerful flick of her tail and shot high into the air, reaching out to take the cake before returning to the sea in the blink of an eye.

She was fast.

Bruce looked at his now-empty hand and mentally added a note to the girl's file.

Miaomiao sniffed the little cake in her hands, glanced at Bruce, and took a tiny lick of the cream on top. Instantly won over by its soft sweetness, she narrowed her eyes in bliss.

Just like a kitten drinking goat's milk.

The thought made Bruce unable to resist cautioning her. "Miaomiao, not everyone is friendly. You need to be careful. Don't just eat food other people give you."

"Of course I know that."

The cake wasn't large, and Miaomiao finished it in a few bites. She licked the cream from the corner of her mouth, feeling a little more fond of this blue-eyed human named Bruce.

"Are you fishing?"

Miaomiao glanced at the fishing rod beside Bruce, then rolled over and dove underwater. Moments later, a bluefin tuna more than a meter long flew out of the water and landed on the deck, thrashing hard at Bruce's feet.

"This is a gift in return."

When Miaomiao surfaced again, she looked a little embarrassed. Fresh cake was rare, after all, while fish were everywhere in the ocean, just waiting to be caught.

"Or, if you don't like how this one tastes, I can catch something else... Hmm, there's a kind of shrimp with a blue shell that tastes pretty good too. Do you like those? You might have to wait a little longer, though. I'd need to find some."

"No, thank you. This is already wonderful."

Bruce looked at the large fish still struggling before him, his voice coming out a little stiff.

Bluefin tuna, also known as Pacific bluefin tuna, was an expensive, premium ingredient from the ocean.

More importantly, its normal cruising speed was sixty to seventy kilometers per hour, and its burst speed could reach a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour or higher. Tuna relied on constant swimming to maintain their oxygen supply. Once they stopped swimming, they would quickly suffocate and die.

The fish before him was still struggling. Clearly, Miaomiao had only just caught it.

A bluefin tuna roughly fifty-five inches long weighed about two hundred and forty to two hundred and sixty kilograms. Judging by the height and speed at which it had been thrown, Miaomiao's strength was probably...

Bruce decided to retract his assessment of the girl as "delicate" and reevaluate her.

With Bruce's approval of her return gift, a sweet smile appeared on Miaomiao's face. It was light out now, and she wasn't ready to encounter other people yet, so she could only wave to her new friend.

"Well, Bruce, I'll come play with you tonight."

"All right."

Bruce watched the girl happily dive into the sea and disappear after receiving his answer, then looked at the tuna on the deck and sighed.

And so, at lunch that day, the cruise ship's menu gained several dishes made with fresh bluefin tuna. Everyone aboard knew that Bruce Wayne, that insufferably smug fellow, had caught it through sheer dumb luck.

"Hey, did you try today's tuna sashimi? I caught that myself! Tastes pretty good, doesn't it? What really annoys me is that they claimed the deck's security cameras were damaged and didn't capture my heroic struggle with the tuna! Absolutely irresponsible! I'm filing a complaint when I get back!"

Those who heard him offered smiling words of consolation, then turned away and rolled their eyes.

"Hah. Who knows how that footage really got damaged?"

"Exactly. Maybe that empty-headed rich guy who loves showing off did it himself to hide who actually caught the tuna."

"Believe him? With those marshmallow muscles he built at the gym on injections and pills? Ha..."

Bruce Wayne had caught a bluefin tuna more than a meter long and weighing over two hundred kilograms, all by himself, with nothing but a little fishing rod.

Please. Who would believe something that ridiculous?

Of course, Bruce heard these doubts too, but he didn't care at all. Instead, he went around boasting even more about his "great achievement" in catching such a huge fish, while remaining vague about certain details to muddy the waters further.

Meanwhile, the various gadgets Batman had made were dutifully doing their jobs, gathering and transmitting all kinds of information.

Far away in Gotham, in the Underground Cavern on Wayne Island.

Batman's assistant, the young hero Red Robin, was racing against time to process that information, filtering out vast amounts of irrelevant material, storing anything potentially useful, then selecting what pertained to this mission.

Well aware of the mission's urgency, Alfred the butler quietly set coffee and cookies within his reach and began helping with the work.

Everyone shared the same pent-up determination-

They had to dismantle this organization as quickly as possible and prevent any more tragedies like the "little mermaid"...