Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

In the late-night hospital ward, a pale, emaciated man leaned against the headboard of the hospital bed. Listening to the steady beeps of the heart monitor, he fell into a deep sleep, but was quickly startled awake.

He picked up the vibrating phone, walked out of the ward, and answered the call. The pale knight's deep voice echoed in the corridor.

"I know the situation is bad. Right now, people urgently need reassurance. I'll hold a press conference at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. I will find a way to restore their confidence and find a solution to the crisis."

"Thank you, Ms. Weiss. Thank you for still being willing to help me."

The pale knight ended the call. Through the faint light spilling out from the hospital room door, he gazed at the figure lying in the hospital bed.

"Harley..." The pale knight couldn't remember how many times he had uttered this name. Sadly, she was unable to respond to him now. She's been in a coma.

The pale knight walked to the end of the hospital corridor and pushed open the window. As expected, Gotham was in for another sleepless night. Explosions and screams echoed everywhere.

It took him hours to compose himself, to set aside the visible shaking and sorrow, and to regain his resolve.

As he headed toward the hospital entrance, a familiar figure approached him.

"Good morning, Mr. Mayor. We've come to pick you up," Nightwing said.

The pale knight nodded at him, then got into the car and headed to the press conference.

When he stepped onto the podium, countless eyes were focused on him, aside from those of the reporters. In the eyes of the public, there was both despair and hope.

Once, Gotham had only one beacon of light, and that was James Gordon. But now, he's fallen. The people could only depend on the pale knight.

They were desperately hoping that the mayor, who once led them out of the darkness, could once again perform a miracle and rescue them from this hell.

The pale knight saw all this and knew that he must succeed. There was no other choice.

The pale knight reached out to adjust the microphone in front of him. Just as he lowered his gaze for a moment, he felt a flash of light across his eyelids.

With no experience in such matters, he didn't understand what it meant. But the battle-hardened Nightwing suddenly realized.

"Mr. Mayor! Get down!!!"

"Bang!!!!!"

A bullet pierced through his chest and, amidst a spray of blood, the pale knight fell.

Everyone was stunned.

Security rushed to cover the mayor, shielding him with their bodies. Another shot was fired, but this time it didn't hit anything. However, it allowed Nightwing to locate the sniper's position.

The pale knight, now wounded, was quickly taken away. Nightwing mounted his motorcycle and chased angrily in the direction of the sniper.

The sniper point was on the rooftop of the nearest building. Nightwing discarded his motorcycle and rushed to the top. Once there, he saw a flash of bright red at the edge of the roof.

Nightwing saw a man wearing a red hood holding a sniper rifle, surveying the chaos below in the direction where the pale knight had been shot.

Hearing the rooftop door open, he turned his head. Nightwing glared at him angrily, clenching his baton tightly.

"Who are you?!"

The man, his fingers clad in leather gloves, fiddled with the scope of the sniper rifle. He looked at Nightwing and said, "You don't know me, but I've heard a lot about you."

Nightwing still stared intently at him. The man's voice was too hoarse and rough for him to recognize.

"I've heard you joined GTO," said the man with the red hood. "You've begun to notice something is not right, haven't you?"

Nightwing's fist clenched suddenly.

"You realized that Batman is not the hero you imagined. What he did was not to save this city. Quite the contrary, he became a fig leaf for the upper class, and you were his accomplice."

"Who on earth are you?!" Nightwing seemed to think of an impossible possibility, his expression starting to show panic.

He took a step forward in an attacking stance, as if to cover up his own panic, but the other party took a step back.

"You can go on," the mysterious man said, "but they are quickly running out of patience."

With that, the mysterious person backed up to the edge of the rooftop, spread his arms, and fell.

Nightwing rushed forward, seeing him swing to another side of the building with a grappling hook, then disappear into the crowd.

But the name in his heart only made it to his throat; he neither spoke it out nor swallowed it down.

"Jason Todd..."

Nightwing returned to Wayne Manor somewhat dispirited. He felt he had too many questions for Batman but didn't know where to begin. He didn't expect Batman would answer.

However, Batman was surprised by his arrival.

Nightwing couldn't help it in the end. He looked at Batman and said, "What exactly happened back then? What happened to your first Robin? Where is he now?"

Batman's reaction also caught Nightwing by surprise. Batman became very alert, and looking into Nightwing's eyes, he said, "What have you done? Who have you met?"

Nightwing felt utterly devastated. He said, "Why do you always do this?! Why do you never answer my questions directly?!"

Leaning weakly on the table, he continued, "You make it increasingly difficult for me to believe that you know nothing about what those people have done. If that's not the case, then why are you always evading?! Tell me why! Batman!"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about!" Nightwing roared at him, "I'm asking you whether you know you're a lapdog for the upper class?! Whether you killed everyone around you to keep this secret hidden, including Alfred and Jason?!"

Batman took the blow as if struck hard. He stood frozen for several seconds without responding. Nightwing, with eyes reddened, looked at him and said, "I want to believe that's not true. But you never explain, and I can't convince myself."

After finishing, he took off his mask. Leaving his weapons on the table, he then said, "I'm sorry. But until you answer my question directly, I won't help you anymore. Batman."

After saying this, he left Wayne Manor without pausing for half a second. Batman remained immersed in shock, unable to recover.

As Nightwing, soul-shattered, opened the car door and sat down, he discovered someone sitting in the passenger seat.

"Mr. Shiller? What are you doing here?"

"Definitely not here to comfort you because you had a fight with Batman," Shiller said. "Don't explain to me what you two argued about. I just wanted to ask you about some things."

"What things?"

"Details about your interactions with Batman. In everyday life, have you felt that something's off about him? Anything at all, emotional aspects preferred."

The question was so sudden that Nightwing didn't know how to respond immediately. But as he had just had a row with Batman, his head was already filled with past incidents, so he spoke off the cuff.

Shiller took out a medical record book and noted things down seriously. Then he asked another question, "This question is very important, and I hope you'll answer me truthfully. Do you think Batman has violent tendencies?"

Nightwing opened his mouth and said, "After Alfred's death, he indeed became a bit... It could be that he was just too grief-stricken."

"What about before that? Wasn't there any sign at all before? And his temper? Does he get irate easily?"

This time Nightwing thought very carefully for a long time, then said, "Sometimes he does have bursts of rage, more like an excitation. But it doesn't take long before he becomes deeply dejected and isolates himself, refusing to communicate with anyone."

Shiller wrote swiftly, continuously jotting down notes. Nightwing spoke intermittently about many things, all of which Shiller recorded.

"Why do you ask this?" Nightwing inquired.

"I'm a psychiatrist. I told you before, Batman's mental state is not optimistic. Initially, I thought maybe Alfred's death had affected him, but now it seems it's not that simple."

Mr. Shiller paused before saying, "I suspect it may be a hereditary mental issue, and some people are using certain things to continuously aggravate Batman's mental problems, making his mental state even worse."

Although Nightwing had just quarreled with Batman, he said, "Who could it be? Who would do such a thing?"

Mr. Shiller shook his head and said, "I'm still investigating, and I appreciate your response very much. If there's nothing else, you should return to the police station."

Mr. Shiller got out of the car, returned to his own vehicle, stared at the notes he had taken for a long while, and then put away the medical records and drove to Catwoman's home in the Lower city area.

Fiona was now staying with Catwoman. They were rescuing people in the Lower city area, mainly by mobilizing community forces to guard against explosions and homicides and then transporting the injured to hospitals.

In just a few days, this girl had almost entirely shed her childishness. Her red hair shone like flames, and she stood at the street corner, ceaselessly directing the busy crowd.

Upon learning that the mayor had also been critically injured in an assassination, ordinary people seemed to finally give up on expecting others to save them and decided to start self-help measures.

Their means of self-help were simple: acquainted members of a community would form an organization, gather all available defensive materials and weapons, and hand them to the stronger adults who would then patrol continuously. Any suspicious individuals would be immediately apprehended.

All the elderly, children, and pregnant women would be gathered together in the safest center of the community, with others responsible for logistics, providing survival support to everyone.

Fiona was one of the earliest to act. She proposed such a system, and taking advantage of her father's influence, successfully organized manpower. As a result, their community avoided many violent crimes.

Nearby communities, seeing the effectiveness of their actions, began to gather as well, blocking community gates with various scrap materials and sandbags, assigning individuals to guard and patrol, and organizing teams to scavenge for supplies. It was a scene befitting the end of the world.

Despite everything, it was rather effective. Those who were bribed to infiltrate were unfamiliar faces, who were driven out before they could enter the community. Some who tried to rush in with bombs were taken out by distant snipers. They quickly reduced casualties to a minimum.

By sealing off the community, although casualties were reduced, it also led to poor communication with the outside world and a gradual scarcity of various supplies.

However, the lack of success in disrupting society only increased the dissatisfaction of the upper echelons. They began to announce that hospitals would no longer accept new patients, major supermarkets closed their doors and stopped providing supplies, and the warehouses of factories were guarded strictly, resolutely keeping people at bay.

The power of a single community was indeed too weak to contend with the bodyguards that the wealthy could hire for a high price. Even if they tried to steal supplies, they couldn't get much.

Having no other choice, they had to unite on a larger scale, gathering the best individuals from several streets or communities, and then dividing and cooperating on tasks.

Some carried guns, some prepared bombs, some created diversions, and some kept watch. Hospitals, factories, or supermarkets—whatever place they went to, they looted, and after looting, they fled, changing spots with each shot.

Due to the extreme shortage of survival supplies, if they didn't loot today, they might have nothing to eat tomorrow. They couldn't care less, emptying their magazines as soon as they encountered others. Even a teenager like Fiona had several lives on her hands in just a few days.

Even then, they were considered conservatives. In regions with more intense resistance, they directly began to seize operations, blowing open the doors of major storage centers, and killing anyone who didn't surrender their arms immediately, without mercy.

For a time, the city ran with blood.

As another day's morning news began, the host announced that this would be their last broadcast, as the TV station closed for good, and Gotham declared a complete descent into anarchy.