[Integrated/Crossover DC/Marvel] Why Did the World End Again? - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Ignite, Gotham

The land once hailed as the City of Tomorrow had completely devolved into a dead zone. Everything was eerily silent. Clark looked at the newspaper headline before him without a hint of panic; he had already deduced the most tragic conclusion possible for this world.

But the most urgent and important matter was to find the others. He refused to believe that all his partners had unfortunately perished in this world. He firmly believed someone must be holding on, carrying the weight of this world on their shoulders.

“This… Superman, what should we do?”

Alice looked at him. In the dim night, those pure blue eyes were exceptionally striking. No wonder he’s an alien, Alice thought. Perhaps no one else in this world could have a pair of blue eyes this beautiful. But at this moment, those moving blue eyes held a sharp edge.

The usually gentle Son of God was now covered in thorns.

“Superman… are you okay?”

Deep in his own emotions, Clark was jolted back by Alice’s call. He realized his physical strength had not recovered at all; it was as if the very soil of this place had an overwhelming influence on him.

“There must still be Kryptonite here.”

Alice let out a sigh. Carrying the ultimate “cheat code” but being unable to use even a shred of power was truly pathetic.

Clark scanned the surroundings, feeling the physical malaise settle in.

“I might have died somewhere near here.”

“Huh?”

Hearing him speak so calmly about his potential burial site made Alice’s skin crawl. This game was a total bait-and-switch—it claimed to be a romance game, but every time she clicked, it was pure horror. It was bad enough that people were dying everywhere, but now it was even corrupting the superheroes!

Clark crouched down to observe the traces around them, trying to reconstruct what had happened. First, Gotham fell, Batman died, the Robins were all offline, and the Joker ruled Gotham.

Then, unknown persons attacked the Daily Planet, followed by his own death. Combined with Lisol Wayne’s claim that the entire Justice League was finished, Clark truly felt a headache coming on.

It was too grim. Clark didn’t even know what to say or who to look for to continue the exploration. More lethally, in a situation like this, the fact that Lex Luthor hadn’t even stepped in to “lend a hand” proved the absolute severity of the matter.

Clark turned back to look at Alice. She was spacing out, and when she looked up to find him watching her, her heart tightened. It was so cursed—she just wanted to be a happy game streamer, but she was stuck in a game where everything moved like a walking Riddler. Could they blame her? Even when the superhero arrived, he was just as baffled!

“Let’s find the entrance to the Batcave first.”

Clark began to search everywhere. To be honest, the idea of a Batcave beneath the Daily Planet sounded terrifying. Furthermore, Clark hadn’t realized his good partner was so “all-seeing” that he had hollowed out the ground beneath Clark’s own workplace.

Since he no longer had X-ray vision, the task of finding the base entrance was arduous. The two searched through the ruins of the Daily Planet. For some reason, Alice felt a throbbing headache, as if something from a distant end was calling to her.

“Alice… come home.”

Suddenly, Alice felt the world before her begin to distort. A massive black figure stood in front of her, beckoning. For some reason, she couldn’t control her body and started walking toward it.

On the other side, Clark successfully found the familiar entrance among the rubble.

“Alice, I found it!”

Superman’s shout rescued Alice from her dazed hallucination. She shook her head and hurried over. The two cleared the dust off the keypad and began to decrypt it.

No one knew the Batcave’s passwords better than Superman. He cracked the code with ease. With a ding, a bat projection slowly appeared, and the ground split in two, revealing an underground tunnel. Alice looked at it all with novelty; this was much cooler than Wayne Manor. That was just a secret door and a spiral staircase, but this was pure high-tech with a rotating bat symbol!

This was too cool!

Steps rose one by one as the two walked down. As they entered, the voice recognition system activated automatically.

“Welcome back to Bat-Base No. 7.”

Clark’s expression grew increasingly grim. Everything he had witnessed along the way proved that this wasn’t just a “game” he preferred to call it a projection of a parallel world. Perhaps the stories collected here represented things that had actually happened in another reality.

Clark knew all too well how varied parallel worlds could be; sometimes a single wrong choice could lead to a completely different second ending. He decided that once he got out, he would definitely ask Batman if he had secretly built a Batcave under the Daily Planet. If it were true, the overlap between this parallel world and theirs would increase, and the file in Batman’s archives would move up a few letters.

Superman ignored the sophisticated weaponry and marched straight ahead. At the end, they saw a safe, still protected by a familiar combination lock.

“Is this the ‘Plan B’ Lisol talked about?”

Alice raised her doubt. Clark wasn’t sure what to say. According to her, the safe contained Batman’s final plan and weapon. They needed to open it and bring the weapon back. Looking at the lock, both fell silent.

If Superman still had his powers, he could have used super-speed to try every possible combination, but he didn’t. And even if he did, Clark knew Batman wouldn’t give that many opportunities for trial and error.

As the World’s Finest, they shared a rare tacit understanding. Clark began to recall every possible significant number, finally inputting the digits that made him fall silent: the anniversary of Martha and Thomas’s deaths. He knew doing this might be wrong, but based on the traces left along the way, Clark understood: this world was incredibly cruel, and its greatest talent was stabbing at people’s old wounds.

Alice watched as Superman quickly typed in a code. She leaned in to look. As the code was entered, the safe door popped open. But simultaneously, the two heard a muffled blast. Alice looked around, terrified that the wrong code had triggered a self-destruct sequence.

After observing for a moment and finding no abnormalities in the base, they looked into the safe. Inside was a small, button-like controller and a note.

Perplexed, Superman took out the note. On it, a line of large text was written in bright crimson.

As Clark read those words in the brightly lit base, he felt his blood run cold. The smell of blood filling his nostrils proved the source of the “paint.” A distorted smiley face printed in the corner revealed the sender of the note.

“Surprise, Batsy!”

“Run!”

Alice didn’t understand what was happening but followed closely behind Superman as they sprinted out of the Batcave and up the stairs. They escaped the Daily Planet ruins. Clark looked toward the other end of the bridge the city that was eternally bathed in night. Perhaps because of the rain, everything seemed somewhat muted.

But as he looked, there was only an empty void, as if the city that once stood there had been a massive hallucination.

“Where did Gotham go?”

Alice looked up at Superman, her face full of confusion. She hadn’t realized what had happened. Clark’s hand gripped the note tightly. How had he not seen it? Such a familiar technique of playing with people’s hearts he should have known.

“Alice, there is no more Gotham.”

Alice was about to ask something when a scorched smell slowly drifted through the air. It was the ashes of Gotham. Flames rose in the explosion only to be slowly extinguished by the cold rain; the cycle continued until it seemed as if nothing had happened.

Gotham, in a raging inferno, had been completely destroyed.

Alice looked at the button-like object in Superman’s hand.

“That wasn’t Batman’s ‘contingency.’ That was a bomb buried in Gotham, and now it’s been activated…”

The two looked at each other, and then the world spun. They were completely ejected from the plot. At 6:30 AM, Alice crawled out of bed in a daze. Thinking of last night’s story, she scrambled to her computer.

On the other side, Superman woke up in Kansas and flew toward the Watchtower.

Alice clicked on last night’s game.

“Clearance failed. Lisol Wayne’s plot is locked. Player, please do as you wish…” “Clearance failed. Lisol Wayne’s plot is locked. Player, please…”

Alice grabbed her hair. Dammit!!!

At Wayne Manor, Bruce was in the middle of a pleasant dream. Last night’s crime-fighting had left him physically and mentally exhausted, and Jason’s cryptic words had left him with much to think about. Suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed his shoulders and lifted him up entirely. Bruce, still half-asleep, was about to say his usual line “Alfred, five more minutes” when he opened his eyes to see a massive S right in front of him.

“Superman, what are you doing?”

Clark was in a state of extreme anxiety. Last night’s content was explosive. He was going to take Bruce to the Justice League immediately to find Alice and check the game’s progress.

“Bruce, listen to me first. I know this sounds unbelievable, but you’re dead, everyone is dead, Alfred is dead, the Joker ruled Gotham, I’m dead, and Gotham was blown up blown up by me.”

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