All across the streets.
All across Gotham.
Paper was drifting everywhere like rain, and according to reliable information, another batch of pages was already being sent to other cities. That hellish story was on the verge of spreading through all of America.
How could Bruce not crack a little?
When Bruce went out at night to play vigilante, most of the time he only ran into villains who hated him and victims who hated him a little less.
However,
once that damned manuscript was somehow stolen, everything changed. It wasn't just the victims asking him about it. Even the criminals he beat half to death and sent to prison or Arkham were asking him too.
Every single one.
Yes.
Every bad guy and very bad guy he ran into tonight had exactly the same final wish. They all begged Batman to let them see those solid twenty-four abs.
And that wasn't even the end of it.
"The man who lost to twenty-four abs! Me! I have no regrets! We've fought this many times, you've caught me this many times, and now I finally understand. It all makes sense."
"Batman! I know your secret! You're a trans-dimensional bat monster who reincarnated as a man for love! I heard that back when you weren't human, you used to pick fights with Godzilla whenever you got bored!"
"Batman, do you really have a bed that's two thousand meters long? Did you really build a farm on Mars and eat alien chickens and alien beef and alien lamb?"
"I texted Joker to ask. He said it's true. All of it is true. Historically documented."
...
This was what it meant to feel like one night lasted a whole year.
Batman now understood that on a deep level.
It wasn't as if Bruce had never considered that something like this might happen. But he had still overestimated his own ability to deal with it.
There was no helping it.
Nothing like this had ever happened before. It was a whole new kind of first-encounter kill, enough to make even a man as composed as Bruce take two extra anti-anxiety pills.
"While I still don't want to hit a child, give me that hellbound manuscript!"
Seeing Ian still deep in thought, Batman raised his voice again.
He was really rushing now.
Ian did not dare drag things out further.
"The manuscripts for both books are here. I haven't even written that much more, honestly. I've been busy drawing comics these past two days."
In the face of that, Ian did not dare openly test the waters anymore.
Of course,
he still couldn't suppress his curiosity.
"Have my works started selling already?"
What the boy really wanted to hear was praise from the editors for his talent.
However,
Bruce only looked at him sideways and gave a very honest answer.
"Yes. They were released in the broadest-distribution format possible."
That sounded like top-level promotion.
At least that was how Ian understood it.
"Good, good, good! I knew they'd be a hit!"
Ian hurriedly handed all the manuscripts over to Bruce.
However, after a brief hesitation, Bruce returned half of them.
"Tomorrow, mail this. No, better yet, have your father personally fly this portion to Gotham and hand it to me."
Bruce didn't dare open them and read on the spot. He only stared at Ian very seriously.
"I get it. I get it."
Ian had once heard that Coca-Cola's formula was escorted under heavy protection whenever it was moved. If his manuscript now required the strongest force on Earth to escort it, then its value needed no further explanation.
Clearly, his manuscript was worth far more than Coca-Cola's formula.
"What exactly do you get?"
Bruce sounded slightly puzzled.
"That I'm about to get very rich?"
Ian asked carefully.
...
Bruce said nothing.
Ian took that as silent confirmation.
"This is amazing! Once I become a billionaire too, I'm going to found an entire football team for Jonathan, and buy Jordan the best possible nerd pleasure cup."
"And Mom, I'll buy her ten wineries so she'll have enough alcohol to drink for the rest of her life. Dad doesn't really need much, so I'll just buy the newspaper he works for and send him on interplanetary assignments every day."
"The universe is full of strange stories. He'll definitely become an even better top reporter than Mom."
Ian's heart was full of family.
He also knew that old Master Wayne wasn't exactly rich in emotional warmth, so he wisely stopped there instead of saying too much. That was the true display of both high EQ and high IQ.
After all, the other man definitely couldn't relate to any of that.
"You just don't want your father keeping an eye on you every day, do you?"
Bruce mercilessly exposed Ian's little scheme.
He had no intention of telling Ian that he was planning to use the manuscript as bait for Joker.
Mainly because he wasn't one hundred percent sure it would work yet, and he didn't want to lose face.
As for the payment Ian kept dreaming about, money was just money. In Bruce's eyes, liking money was actually a good thing.
Of course,
having the right values around money mattered too.
"Yesterday during the day, six or seven rich people in Gotham died all at once. Their safes were cleaned out, and the total value was around fifteen million."
"I'd guess somebody was in urgent need of cash?"
Bruce fixed his gaze on the boy in front of him.
He of course knew Ian wasn't the one who did it.
But he also knew where the money had ended up.
Ian felt very guilty about that.
Still, his eyes didn't shift away.
"Something like that happened? Clearly somebody hates the rich. What exactly did America's rich people ever do wrong?"
Ian put on an expression of heartfelt grief and launched into a performance.
The Mc-style acting method, once again, had entered practical application.
It definitely didn't work.
But that didn't mean it wasn't worth using.
"They did a lot wrong. The ones who died were all genuinely rotten rich bastards."
Bruce might have been insulting himself too with that line.
But the odds of Bruce insulting himself were pretty low.
Anyway,
he dodged Ian's instinctive urge to pound his chest in grief.
Bruce remained the king of prediction.
"Oh? So the dead ones were all truly rotten rich bastards? Not just the usual kind Gotham has lying around everywhere? That's actually got a certain poetic irony to it."
Ian failed to hit Bruce's chest muscles, and didn't feel like punching his own either, especially since his fists were now basically hammers.
He was honestly stunned.
Sure, everybody knew Gotham's rich weren't good people. If ten of them died, eleven of them probably deserved it. But he'd really never expected the great Joker himself to be this meticulous.
There had clearly been curation involved.
All pure merit money.
All morally clean cash.
Joker really...
Ian was moved.
He decided that, in return, he should forgive Joker for deducting the remaining five million from his promised reward.
"What kind of person do you think would do something like this?"
Bruce asked a question designed to trap Ian no matter what he said.
In response,
Ian didn't hesitate for even a second.
"That's easy. Obviously it was Two-Face! Penguin! Riddler! Scarecrow! Poison Ivy! Mr. Freeze! Clayface! Mad Hatter! Professor Pyg... one of them!"
He rattled off the names of every supervillain active in Gotham over the years, but pointedly refused to sell out his wealthiest fan.
And wasn't that another perfect answer?
Ian always found a way to turn a win-win into a triple win.
"Good. Very honest."
Bruce gave Ian a deep look, as if he truly was satisfied by the answer.
Then he turned toward Ian's desk.
"Don't let me find out you're writing more absurd stories about superheroes."
Clearly, Wayne had no intention of digging any deeper into the money issue. He was more interested in defending against Ian's pen.
"I've undergone the ultimate evolution. I'm now an even more qualified writer. I'm not the same man I was yesterday. Think of it as an epic stat boost, but without a single sign of going bald."
Ian confidently displayed his manuscript and spoke with absolute conviction, casually reaching up to touch his own hair for confirmation.
"What's this?"
Bruce's attention, which had just started to move toward the manuscript, was caught by something else on the desk.
He picked up the metal ring that was giving off a faint glow, and his expression froze.
"A nuclear reactor?"
Ian answered honestly.
He knew there was no way he could fool a technology boss about something like that.
"I thought so too."
Bruce stayed eerily calm.
He lifted the arc reactor toward the light for a closer look, while casually pulling out his phone with the other hand and dialing a rapid string of numbers.
"Clark."
He shifted away from Ian's attempted pounce.
"We agreed your son wasn't allowed to blow up the Earth. I assume that includes Metropolis..."
He paused, did some quick calculations in his head, and seemed to reach a conclusion.
"And probably all of America too?"
His mood sounded much steadier than before.
His voice was still just as low and rough.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[+500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter]
[Thank You For Your Support!]