It Doesn't Matter If We Die

Su Ming looked at Poison Ivy. She too seemed distracted by her own male identity, apparently lost in thought. So he passed Poison Ivy and walked straight to the sofa, where he sat down.

The sofa was filthy, covered in dark red clots and dried liquor stains. Under the colored lights, the place looked even more like a club. Sitting on it, his black-and-yellow armor clashed badly with its surroundings.

"Let's exchange information. How did Jester tell you about finding Batman? Then I'll tell you about my situation."

He looked at Harley, hoping to get some specific details.

Harley looked back at him. No man had ever dared get this close to her, which made her curious. But as soon as he asked that question, her expression changed, as though she were about to cry.

"Sigh, that's a long story..."

Harley agreed to his suggestion. Then, whether Su Ming wanted to hear it or not, she began pouring out a resentful account of her relationship with Jester, as well as how Jester had been obsessed with Batman ever since first seeing her years ago.

In short, in her stories, pure, kind little Harley had wanted to play with them too, but she was always bullied by the nasty Batman. As Harley's good friend, Lady Jester did absolutely nothing about it. She even wanted to play with Batman alone and abandon Harley.

That left Harley confused and wronged. But she was a strong woman, so she gritted her teeth and endured it time after time.

Su Ming saw through it. Sure enough, Harley had her own agenda. If he had not read so many DC comics and watched so many movies, and understood that Harley Quinn was not only a famous patient but also an interrogation expert and a master psychologist, he might have thought he was speaking to some fairy-tale princess.

Pure, beautiful, and kind. Strong, optimistic, and clever. Anyway, according to her, she and Jester were the two most perfect women in the world, while Batwoman was "that stalker girl hanging upside down from the eaves"—not only devious, but always getting handsy with Jester, her eyes perpetually lecherous.

There was almost no useful information in her account. Other than letting Su Ming learn how Harley and Jester of Earth -11 had met, everything else was just Harley's memories and opinions.

She was not merely telling a story. She was also constantly probing for shared feelings in their conversation—places where Su Ming had the same views or understanding as her—in an attempt to piece together a personality profile of him.

Beneath Harley's crazed exterior, she had never lacked intelligence. The combination of being both a psychologist and a lunatic gave her twice the fun.

"Alright, let me interrupt you for a moment. You can stop trying. I'm Deathstroke from a Parallel Universe, so my brain works much faster than a normal person's too. Save yourself the trouble of profiling me."

Seeing that Harley was about to tell him about the time she and Jester had messed with Penguin, Su Ming immediately cut her off. Too much time had already passed, and those stories seemed to have no end.

He rolled his stiff neck and looked back, only to find that Cindy and Poison Ivy had somehow moved to another sofa. They were drinking and listening with great interest.

Fine. Even in this world, women still loved gossip.

"Oh, so you're from a Parallel World." Harley smoothly changed the subject and abandoned her earlier psychological game. "That's kind of boring. I thought you and her were wearing matching outfits because you were that kind of couple."

As she spoke, Harley gave an ambiguous look and hooked her pinky in the air, making it clear what she meant.

"You don't seem very surprised to hear about a Parallel Universe. Was Cindy's last invasion a huge event?"

Su Ming did not take her bait at all. Whether he admitted it or denied it, Harley would steer the conversation away. If he let her lead him around, he would never get the answers he wanted.

"Yep, she put on quite a show for us. Hee hee." Harley sprang lightly into the air, spun once, and struck a ballet dancer's final pose. "The main battlefield was Metropolis, but those explosions... tsk, tsk. You could see the firelight perfectly from Gotham. So beautiful. I think I could even hear the desperate screams of the people there."

Cindy spread her hands, as if to say, See? She's a complete psycho.

Su Ming remained impassive and suddenly said, "So even if you knew the world was about to be destroyed, you'd be happy about it?"

"Mhm, that's right." Harley smiled and nodded repeatedly, like an elementary school student praised by her teacher. "Why else do you think we're celebrating here?"

Su Ming smiled inwardly. The plan worked. As expected, he had gotten it out of Harley—she knew Earth was about to be destroyed.

"Wait, you called me here to celebrate that?" Ivy suddenly stood up, staring at Harley in disbelief. She looked like she wanted to spank Harley's ass raw.

"Hm? Didn't I tell you? Little Pudding told me the world is about to be destroyed. We're all going to die."

Harley tilted her head and looked at Ivy in confusion. Had she really forgotten to mention it?

"You only said no one was home and told me to come party with you. So it was because the world is ending? If Earth is gone, how are my plants supposed to survive?"

Ivy shouted in dissatisfaction. She did not care whether she lived or died, but her plants had to survive. Harley hurried over, smiling apologetically as she stroked Ivy's smooth back to soothe her like a cat.

"Oh, come on. We're all going to kick the bucket anyway. After that, we won't see the plants die, so there's no need to be sad, right?"

That nonsense clearly did nothing to comfort her. Ivy simply narrowed her eyes and stared at Harley.

Su Ming asked, "Don't you have spaceships or something? Living in outer space wouldn't be bad."

In many DC worlds, there were not only spaceships but Aliens too. The Justice League's space station was also called the Watchtower, and it orbited Earth in geosynchronous orbit.

Instead, his question drew the same response from all three women.

"What's a spaceship?" x3

Their tones and pitches differed, but it was obvious that none of them had any concept of such a thing.

"Umm... it's a ship that can carry people through the atmosphere and let them live beyond Earth," Su Ming forcibly explained.

Cindy and Ivy looked at him strangely. Harley, on the other hand, seemed to have found a kindred spirit. Her eyes lit up as she looked at him with relief.

"I knew it! Ships can fly! Hee hee hee, I'm not crazy!"

What did it mean when someone who was obviously insane considered him a like-minded person?

So, in this Amazon-ruled world, everything still followed Paradise Island's old ways. They placed greater faith in the power of the gods, while science was nothing more than a lie used to fool commoners.

Earth was the center of the universe, so why leave it? Besides, if you trained hard enough, you could fly using your own abilities.

Could science make you immortal? Could science preserve your youth forever? Everything science could not accomplish, divine power could.

So this world did not even have airplanes. If you really wanted to fly, how about a magic carpet?

For Su Ming, this news was painful enough to make his teeth ache. No wonder Earth -11 had ultimately perished in a massive tsunami. It was all part of Barbatos's calculations. He must have noticed that there were no flying vehicles here. To draw Bliss into darkness, he had turned this world into a catalyst.

Su Ming and the others were now trying to cut the fuse on this powder keg, but they had no leads at all. Bliss, the key figure, had vanished somewhere, making every plan pointless.

"No. I can't just sit here and wait to die. If Earth is destroyed, the plants won't survive either. I have to do something."

Ivy did not lose herself in Harley's sweet words and wait with her for a "beautiful, warm death." She decided to struggle.

"Right, you said you came from a Parallel World. Can you go back? It would be fine if you could take me and my plants there to hide."

"Nice idea, but I can't even get back myself."

Su Ming readily admitted his predicament. If he could leave, he would have persuaded Cindy to run away with him long ago. What did Earth -11 have to do with him? The problem was that he had boarded this ship that was certain to sink and could not get off.

Poison Ivy's hopes were dashed, and she fell into deep thought again. She turned toward Harley, who was idly playing with her own hair as though the matter everyone was discussing had nothing to do with her.

"Right. Did Jester tell you how this destruction would happen?"

"No. Anyway, she sounded very serious, so it must be true."

No one knew how Harley had managed to find seriousness in Jester's incoherent letter. In any case, she knew Earth was doomed, but she had no idea how it would end.

"Probably because of the war? Those people under the sea have been fighting the Amazon Council for a long time." Ivy leaned against Harley. As the world's most famous environmentalist, she seemed unable to muster any energy and spoke weakly. "This kind of war isn't something we can stop. Using weapons of mass destruction would ruin this world. Jester must have foreseen that."

Harley contentedly stroked Ivy's head. She picked a leaf from Poison Ivy's hair and played with it, trying to put it on her own head. But no matter how she arranged it, it did not look right. It had none of nature's beauty and instead looked like a fallen leaf had simply landed on her head.

"Maybe. Who cares? I'm actually curious what dying feels like. I want to experience it."

Watching the two of them start fooling around again, Su Ming shook his head.

"You two have fun. We're leaving. Oh, and one more thing—the thing that destroys the world will be the Great Flood."

With that, he grabbed Cindy, casually took a bag of chips from the table, and left at an unhurried pace. Once they sobered up tomorrow, perhaps they would take things more seriously while dealing with the severed limbs downstairs.

Cindy held onto her helmet as he pulled her along. After taking a few steps, she could still hear Harley and Ivy whispering behind them.

"The Great Flood... is that Revelation?" Ivy asked.

"Mhm, the one where Noah rowed a boat," Harley answered vaguely.

"It's an ark, you silly thing," Ivy said.

"Hmph, I'm not stupid. I'll bite you," Harley said.

The two of them soon dissolved into giggles and roughhousing on the sofa again. Harley simply did not care whether she lived or died, while Ivy relaxed after learning it would be a Great Flood. Strictly speaking, seaweed and kelp counted as plants too. As long as plants remained, she did not care if she herself died.

Cindy sighed and returned to the corridor with Su Ming. The music behind them was still deafening, and she sounded helpless.

"What do we do now? There really aren't any clues left."

Su Ming took out a rope and tied it to a pipe beside them, testing its strength before climbing out through the window with it. The icy rain once again chilled his blood.

That flashy, decadent environment had only been Harley's way of hypnotizing herself. The threat of death still hung over them.

Their car had been destroyed, so they could only talk while walking.

"You said you went to the Batcave. Did you go to Wayne Manor?" Su Ming asked Cindy as he scanned their surroundings, trying to find some Means of Transport.

"Of course. Not only was she gone, but her old butler was missing too."

"Could they have been kidnapped?"

"No. The security measures were still intact. Every room was neat, and there were no signs of a struggle. She left willingly, and she took the butler with her."

"In her Batcave, there should be a system used to monitor all of Gotham. Did you try it?"

"We need both of her eyeballs and one of her palms to activate that system."

They walked a long way and were gradually nearing the edge of Circus territory, but they still had no good ideas. Then Su Ming spotted some Means of Transport.

It was a pile of unicycles, carelessly stacked against a wall in the rain. Their cold metal gleamed.

They should have belonged to the Circus. Their owners were probably the people Su Ming and Cindy had killed on the way here. This was not far from where they had encountered them.

No matter which world they came from, Joker Gang members loved pulling tricks while killing people—riding unicycles, for example, or balancing apples on their heads while spraying bullets into a crowd.

"Can you ride one of these?" Su Ming pulled two unicycles from the metal heap, one in each hand.

Cindy took one and gave it a try. She wobbled at first, but she quickly got the hang of it. With Deathstroke's physical abilities and mental balance, learning to ride a unicycle only took a dozen seconds or so.

Su Ming soon realized the same was true for himself. Not only could he move smoothly, but if someone gave him a few little balls or apples right now, he could juggle while riding.

Driven by their extraordinary strength, the unicycles moved not much slower than cars. Their only drawback was the lack of windshields, leaving the torrential rain to pour directly over them.

He could feel the armor's coldness against his skin. The heavy promethium metal was as dependable as ever, but the black-and-yellow armor was also constantly draining away his warmth, as though it intended to turn him into a cold person from the inside out.

"Now you can tell me where we're going, right? If I'm not mistaken, you don't know the roads here," Cindy reminded him as she rode beside him.

"Uh, you're right." Of course Su Ming did not know Gotham's streets. He could not even say where Batwoman's home or company was. "We now know that Bliss ran off with Alfred. That means he intends to take away his family and friends, but among those people, there's one person who definitely won't leave with him."

"You mean..." Cindy nodded slightly, the red monocular eye on her mask glinting under the streetlights.

Su Ming confirmed her guess. He glanced at the cowering black figures in an alley by the road, then pulled out his gun to scare them a little. "We're going to find him now, then make a big scene and force Batman to come save people."

"Heh. I like this plan. Everything we did before was too small-time. This way. Follow me."

This is a new book, so please add it to your collection or toss in some recommendation votes. Feel free to leave a comment and chat too.