[Betterman] The Little Mermaid

Tiny waves scattered on the beach, and the dark knight shuddered. His face under the mask was flushed, and the air he exhaled was scalding hot.He's running a fever, Gotham realizes, and He's controlling the cold steam over Batman's forehead in a futile attempt to cool him down.

Someone else is needed, he thought vaguely.Bruce had texted Alfred on the plane when he thought he was dying; Gotham rolled over the sleeping Batman and found the button on his belt.He increased the water pressure and pressed it down.

There is no specific pattern—at least Gotham can’t see regular electromagnetic waves spreading to the universe at the speed of light. A device in Wayne Manor received these signals. After a moment of decoding, the data was uploaded, and an icon appeared on the largest monitor in the underground cave superior.

Alfred Pennyworth, who was covering his face with a white handkerchief next to the mainframe, was startled by the notification sound and looked at the screen in disbelief: surprise then turned into uncontrollable joy. He threw himself on the computer and quickly positioned , and then drove all the way to Bruce's location at high speed.

On the shore, the old man stumbled up to Bruce and made a simple bandage for him with the equipment he was carrying. His tears splashed on the bandage: "My God, thank God for leaving you to me... ..."

Gotham looked up with a hint of sadness.He saw that most of the people on the rescued plane were sleeping soundly in the hotel rooms provided by the airport, and a few were kneeling before the cross to pray.Their Gotham mate and kids cuddle up on the couch in front of the TV.Police Officer James Gordon smelled like coffee, and was flipping through a certain case file with bloodshot eyes. Harvey Bullock had fallen asleep lying on his desk.

Futures related to tourism, insurance and aviation fell to the limit, and North American flights were adjusted and reduced by 20%. It was a pleasant enough night, and the skyline of Gotham City was slowly stained with moonlight.

Gotham retracted its tentacles that stretched across the world. He touched the wet bandage, and felt the water, salt, antibody, lysozyme, corticotropin and leucine enkephalin inside, a strange, perhaps It was what humans call "saltiness" that swept His body.

He has a guardian.The fact that Gotham was on the plane came back to mind at this point, taking up most of the spare threads.He didn't know what he was thinking, but all the memories of Bruce Wayne resurfaced, alternately occupying Gotham's thoughts.Bruce's sense of presence lasted for many days. During this period, when other cities came to ask what happened to him, Gotham just responded casually and put them off.

Almost every night after that, Batman would come to the gargoyle sooner or later, quietly watching his city, fighting every crime in sight.His image slowly became a horror legend in the East End, and after he broke into Falcone's house, the legend spread throughout the city.The tacit rules between the gang and the community were broken, and Batman's preferences became a problem that Gotham people had to consider every night.

Gotham gradually felt the presence of Batman. He pierced into Gotham's body like a sharp knife, gouging out the rotten flesh and separating the intact bone marrow.When Batman sits on the gargoyle, Gotham sometimes has the illusion that he is sheltered. The cloak is like the wings of a bird, covering the nest underneath; The chains grow, twine, bind, the gloomy cold of the land seeps into Gotham's consciousness, and the warm blood is pumped into his body.

He's falling; every time Gotham looks into Batman's eyes and finds small, almost tender Gotham City within, the thought arises.He felt that his body was like a flower petal, which had been dancing lightly with the wind, but after the soil came out of the chain, gravity would bring everything back to the embrace of the world.

The appearance of the Guardian has not been concealed; the consciousness of the city does not like secrets, and Gotham is always the special one, but when he finally couldn't stand the secret, he still told the news to Central City—and then At the next tea party, all consciousnesses will know.

They kindly urged him to give further information, as they had told him.Of course...they are brothers and sisters, and together they look down on the human society, just like four-dimensional beings spying on the three-dimensional space, everything in the city has nothing to hide.And the city exchanges the secrets of human beings, just like telling an irrelevant story, just like people's gossip after dinner... It is true, because these things are not secrets, to the city consciousness.

Gotham then told them what happened that night, but concealed everything he had done.When the plane he remembers lands safely, Gotham subconsciously turns its attention to Metropolis.

"Batman saved an airplane, too!" exclaimed Metropolis in pure admiration, "Superman saved one, you know, the day he first showed up in that uniform." Gotham can taste to the joy of his remembrance.

"But Batman is just an ordinary person." Gotham emphasized with a little displeasure, and he immediately realized that this emotion "shouldn't be". Emotions.

"I mean," Gotham changed the subject before asking questions from Beach City or Paradise Island, "that Batman has a normal identity as well."

He showed them Wayne Manor perfunctorily, the old and magnificent castle and Victorian style interior design. Large blocks of color were applied to fancy shutters, curtains and wallpapers. The combination of dark blue, forest green and ruby ​​colors created a Create an atmosphere that is comfortable enough without looking plain.Part of the painted floor tiles and colored etched glass in the manor amazed those West Coast cities filled with upstarts in the Internet age in Seaside City, but this not-so-uncommon style did not attract the attention of most urban ideologues.

During a lengthy meeting of the Wayne Group, Bruce Wayne dozed off, and Central City was the first to divert attention.For most cities where money-heavy luxury is the norm, Gotham isn’t interested in Lakshmi Mittal’s Bishop’s Avenue mansion, or in the lobbying battles of Michael Bloomberg and Charles Koch.

But Bruce Wayne is back in Gotham with eyes like "Paradise falls into misery and dawn crashes into day."After the innocence like gold is broken, it does not become sharp and piercing fragments, but is forged and pieced together in the furnace again and again, and it is completed into his cracked enamel-like Brussi baby.

He buys, restructures, expands, like any other large corporation does, but the other end of the chain that locks up Gotham runs through his mind, and the bright Bruce Wayne can only inescapably wallow in it. In the dark swamp called "Gotham".

Gotham knew that Bruce was in Gotham City in various costumes at other times.He has seen Bruce dance to heavy metal rock music in a disco, his smooth muscle lines leaping like a dragon under his excellent control, and his strength close to the limit of the human body is displayed in a posture as light and soft as silk.The people watching gave praises with not-so-elegant words. Gotham, in the VIP seats watching, besides the twitching of every muscle and the rush of blood visible from the perspective of the conscious body, worked together with other audiences for the magnificent and magnificent human body. Dazzlingly beautiful.

Gotham also lined up with Bruce and a group of homeless people, and began to wait in front of the church to receive welfare meals early in the morning.There are always earlier homeless people in front of them, and they can only watch the people in front of them take away a few or a dozen bags of food at a time.Gotham boos behind those guys, just like Bruce, and the others waiting.

When Bruce told a crude joke in the ghetto filled with blocked words like "f*cking", Gotham was the first to roll with laughter where he couldn't see; At the same time, Gotham was reciting the original text in that person's ear.

Some unimaginable feelings before him, fascination, happiness, dissatisfaction... Gradually filled his life, and his way of perceiving the world was getting closer and closer to that of human beings.

The one time I felt pain was when Gotham watched Bruce Wayne half kneeling on the cement-sprinkled ground and was beaten by gangsters. He didn't fight back in order to protect the 60-year-old man behind him.He landed beside him, embracing his broken ribs and bruised skin, cooling his body with icy vapors.

Bruce Wayne broke his leg rock climbing in Iceland when the drug chain was taken off.When Gotham hears people's praise for GCPD, he will be happy; and when at a certain banquet, the upper class satirizes Bruce Wayne's indulgence with tacit words, he will feel sad and even want to The urge to frighten these people.He still clearly remembers every bruise and scar on his body. He was awake all night because of the pain on that old wooden bed, and the moonlight and Gotham kept him awake.

He remembered that once, when the suspect was sent to Arkham and then returned home in the Batmobile, Bruce had fallen into a coma.That night, Gotham half knelt in front of Bruce's bed, just like when he was a child, kissing his radiant facial features, in order to share the joy of that moment with him, for his hero born in darkness.

A long time ago, in a certain bookstore, Gotham heard someone read Oscar Wilde's poems, and he finally understood the meaning:

Oh, happy are those who live at ease,

The vast lands are filled with gold,

Don't worry about the splash of rain,

There is no need to worry about the collapse of the forest.

Oh, happy is the carefree man,

Knowing not the toil of years of famine,

The mother cried all day to guard the empty room,

Father's temples were stained with misfortune and tears.

But such a person is happier, with his feet all over

The bumpy road in the world,

but with a lifetime of sorrow

Build a ladder to get closer to God.

The author has something to say:

1. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found 27 emotions: admiration, admiration, aesthetic appreciation, entertainment, anger, anxiety, awe, embarrassment, boredom, calmness, confusion, contempt, longing, disappointment, empathy, empathy, Pain, Aggression, Excitement, Jealousy, Thrill, Fear, Horror, Guilt, Joy, Nostalgia, Victory, Pride, Relief, Romance, Sadness, Satisfaction, Sex, Surprise.

2. The poem comes from Robert Frost's "How can gold last forever", the full text is as follows:

"Nature's first green shoot is gold,

But this color is the hardest for her to keep.

Her leaves were at first as beautiful as a flower;

But only for an hour.

The leaves degenerate into leafy branches,

And Paradise falls to the world of misery,

And dawn crashes into day,

How can anything that is gold last forever. "