A mocking voice came from above.
Bullseye up.
The Joker, like a large bat, perched on the second-floor railing, holding a vase in his hand.
"Get out of here!"
Without any warning, an antique worth hundreds of thousands of dollars came crashing down on him.
Bullseye rolled to the side.
"Smack!"
Antiques smashed.
Even though Bullseye dodged the main body, his cheek was still scratched by a few small pieces of porcelain.
Blood beads seeped out.
Bullseye reached up and wiped his face, looking at the crimson stain on his fingertips.
"You've made me angry, Joker."
He grabbed the pile of freshly shattered blue-and-white porcelain shards from the ground, and his calloused hands, calloused from years of throwing, transformed into a highly precise launch pad.
These irregular shards of porcelain became the deadliest bullets in his hands.
A dense series of whooshing sounds filled the entire second-floor space.
This time, the Joker wasn't able to dodge completely.
Several shards of porcelain sliced through his purple tailcoat, and blood stained the green vest underneath.
But he was still smiling.
His laughter grew louder and louder, more and more manic.
The Joker reached down and pulled a shard of porcelain from his shoulder, causing blood to spurt out.
He even stuck out his tongue and licked the bloodstains on the porcelain shard, his expression as if he had tasted some unparalleled delicacy.
"Hahaha! It hurts! It hurts so much! That's right! This is what it feels like to be alive!"
The Joker pulled a handful of brightly colored candies from his pocket; they were " Yasuo Popping Candy " produced by the Vought International for children.
He stuffed a handful of candy into his mouth and chewed it loudly.
Then scatter the rest into the air.
"Surprise!"
The colorful candies scattered in the air.
Bullseye didn't even notice the kids' snacks.
He locked onto the purple figure, the stub of a pencil in his hand poised to strike.
The moment that guy hits the ground, this pencil will pierce his brainstem.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Those unassuming candies exploded like miniature hand grenades upon contact with the ground.
Intense white light filled the entire gallery.
The noise caused Bullseye's brain to go blank.
Damn it!
His sense of balance was lost, and he staggered.
"Is this what they mean by 'hit every time'?"
The mocking voices were right next to me.
Bullseye instinctively threw a punch.
But he missed.
A crowbar slammed down hard on the back of his knee.
"Click."
Bullseye knelt on one knee, but he didn't scream. Using the kneeling position, he swept his other leg behind him.
The Joker flew backward, smashing a display case and getting buried in a pile of expensive sculpture fragments.
If it were an ordinary person, their internal organs would have been shattered by that kick.
But the Joker just writhed around in the rubble a couple of times, coughed a few times, and then got up as if nothing had happened.
He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and casually picked up half of the Venus de Milo's head.
"Your kicking style is really ugly, like a gorilla in a leotard dancing ballet."
Bullseye swayed as he stood up.
His left leg could no longer bear weight, but he remained steady.
He grabbed a letter opener from beside him; it was the one the receptionist used to issue receipts.
I'm going to cut your tongue out.
"Don't be so serious! Life needs a little humor!"
The Joker lifted the Venus head and made a shooting motion.
"For example... if that fat guy came and saw that this place had turned into a giant oven, wouldn't his expression look like a roasted pig's head?"
Bullseye's movements stopped.
The nostrils twitched.
As the air moved, a pungent smell entered my nasal cavity.
That smell was from a high concentration of aviation fuel mixed with some kind of chemical combustion accelerant.
It's coming out of the ventilation ducts.
"I remember now!"
The Joker slapped his forehead. "I accidentally replaced the refrigerant in the air conditioning system with this stuff. Oops, did I forget something?"
He took a lighter out of his pocket.
The lid of that old-fashioned Zippo lighter opened, closed, and then opened again.
"You want to die together with me?"
Bullseye stared at the flame.
In this confined space filled with oil and gas, even a tiny spark could turn it into hell.
"Total destruction? No, no, no, that's too unoriginal."
The Joker grinned, his slashed smile appearing particularly sinister in the firelight.
"This is called... the final performance."
The silver Zippo lighter traced an arc in the air.
Gravity took over everything.
The flame touched the aviation fuel mist that filled the air.
There was no sense of expansion like in slow motion in a movie; the gallery felt like a pressure cooker.
The orange-red flames greedily devoured the oxygen, then expanded wildly in all directions, sweeping all the expensive artworks, Persian carpets, and the priceless painting " Rabbit in a Blizzard " into a vortex of destruction.
The Bullseye reacted just before the flame touched the fuel.
The instinct for survival prevailed over the desire to kill.
He kicked over a desk, curled up behind it, and grabbed the body of a security guard to shield himself.
The impact slammed hard onto the table, sending Bullseye and the table flying, crashing through the gallery's glass and into the back alley.
"Cough... cough cough..."
a long time.
Bullseye pushed away the charred corpse on his body.
The black and white battle suit was covered in burn marks and ash, and the bullseye mark on his forehead was covered in blood, making him look disheveled.
He staggered to his feet and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
A wave of Heat Wave hit you at the alley entrance; the Van Gogh Gallery had become a torch, illuminating the gloomy, rainy night in Hell's Kitchen.
"Damn it..."
Bullseye squeezed out those two words through clenched teeth.
He lost.
It wasn't a technical defeat, but rather a defeat due to the madman's reckless self-destructive tendencies.
A card drifted down with the hot air and landed right next to his boots.
The edges were charred, but the pattern was still visible.
That was a "King" card.
The sign depicts a roasted rabbit holding a carrot, with a line of crooked, small writing on the carrot:
[To my dear Kingpin: This rabbit is too cold, I'm warming it up. Don't worry, your fan J]
Bullseye didn't pursue it any further.
Since that madman dared to start the fire, he must have already prepared an escape route for himself.
Bullseye pulled a phone from his waist; the screen was cracked, but it still worked.
He dialed that number.
That was a private line known to only a very few people.
"Boss."
Where's the painting?
Bullseye at the burning ruins before him.
It turned to ash.
There was a three-second silence on the other end of the phone.
"Return."
There was no yelling, no scolding.
But Bullseye's fingers, gripping the phone, turned white from excessive force.
This calmness made him feel more dangerous than anger.
Bullseye hung up the phone and stuffed the charred playing card into his pocket.