[Comprehensive British and American] Family Matters

"This is it." Strange stood next to the golden-red fire circle with a vicissitudes of life, and signaled the people on the other side of the fire circle to come out, "Track the remaining energy of the Infinity Stone on your son, and the final location is here."

Bruce, Artemis, and Bizarro came out of the red circle of fire one by one, each holding a bulging luggage bag, and Bizarro was carrying a particularly large mountaineering bag on his back. Even wearing ordinary clothes, such a group of people walking on the road is enough to greatly increase the rate of turning heads. Strange praised his decision to cast spells in the backyard of the church during non-worship hours.

But Strange didn't want to care about these trivial matters. He just wanted to return to the Holy of Holies to enjoy a smooth and leisurely afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee and reading an ancient book after throwing away the group of people.

"Okay, then I wish you a safe journey, and I hope we won't meet again in the future." Strange has already stepped into the light circle with one foot, and has already begun to think in his mind whether to drink Darjeeling or Earl Gray tea for today's afternoon tea , suddenly felt a tug on his back, causing him to stagger out of the aperture, "What's wrong!"

"Something is not quite right." Bruce grabbed Strange's cloak with one hand, raised his head and frowned at the neon sign of "Wayne Casino", "This is not our world, you teleported wrongly."

It was clearly written on Bruce's face: "You guy, are you half a bucket of water?"

Artemis next to her had one hand on her hip, and she also had a disgusted expression: "Is it going to work, it's completely unreliable."

The big man Bizarro looked a bit depressed, and Strange attributed this behavior to the effect of the big man who had just been knocked unconscious by magic not long ago.

"What are you talking about? There's absolutely no chance of mistakes." Strange has always been full of confidence in his professional field, not to mention that in order to deal with these violent elements, he only started to perform this difficult task after repeated checks. The secret technique, not all mages can open a stable space channel like this to connect two completely different worlds, these people don't understand the complexity and profoundness of the secret technique at all, just here to point fingers, Strange made up his mind to Slap them in the face with evidence - the way he used to repeatedly slap his colleagues in the face in the hospital.

"You must know that the infinite gem is the most powerful substance in the universe. If it is not deliberately hidden, the existence of the gem is like the sun hanging high in the sky. It is difficult to ignore it. The soul is the core of human beings. In part, as you said, your son once directly touched the Infinity Gems in the state of a soul. The remaining energy in his body is like a person who has just crawled out of a paint pool. He has traces everywhere he goes. It really takes a little non-human skill to lose track."

Strange drew complex gestures in the air, explaining the basis for his tracking of Jason, and confidently presented the final result in front of Bruce and the others in the form of a map.

"This is your Gotham City, that's right. Your son is here." Strange even quickly used the space portal to steal a copy of the Gotham Daily from the newsstand, "Oh, I didn't know your Gotham City Earth is at war."

"War? What war?" Bruce took the newspaper. The headline on the front page was "Their War, Our World". The bodies of Atlanteans and Amazons, and human soldiers in military uniforms hanged from lampposts, "Impossible, why did Diana and Arthur fight? What is the rest of the Justice League doing?"

Artemis took the other pages of the newspaper from Bruce and threw away the useless entertainment news. The first page of the local news was about Judge Dent's children being kidnapped by clowns.

"Isn't this Dante... the real name of Two-Face?" After spending some time with Jason, Artemis is quite familiar with the names of mentally ill criminals in Gotham, but the difference between a disfigured mental patient and a judge It made her suspect for a moment that this was just a coincidence of the same name and surname.

Hearing the familiar name, Bruce leaned over to quickly read the report, and confirmed that Judge Dent in the photo was Harvey Dent before he was disfigured and became Double-Face.

"That's not right. When I left Gotham, Harvey Dent was still a double-faced man. It is impossible for him to repair his face and become a judge in such a short period of time, let alone those two children." Bruce Ignoring Artemis' stare, he snatched the newspaper back and began to quickly browse the local news. Some familiar names appeared in various pages, but they were more or less different from his memory.

People who are dead in Bruce's memory are still alive, and some who are still alive have been buried for many years.

If this is really his universe, his Gotham, then the only possible explanation is that someone changed the timeline, causing a cascading butterfly effect, but what would such a change do to people like them...

"Female red..." Bizarro's voice interrupted Bruce's thinking, the Clone's originally pale face now looked more like a layer of ashes that would soon die, "Wo felt ...not Sufu...wo..."

Before Bizarro finished his nonsense, his huge body suddenly disappeared in front of the other three people, leaving only the mountaineering bag lying on the ground to prove that there was another person here before.

Artemis looked like he was going to stare at the land where Bizarro was before, Strange looked equally surprised, and Bruce completely confirmed his reasoning.

"Someone messed up the timeline." Bruce clenched the newspaper in his hands, and Harvey Dent's undisfigured photo was distorted in his hands, "For some reason, Bizzaro was not restrained in this timeline｜ Come out."

"It doesn't make sense!" Artemis pointed at himself, with a nasty and nasty tone, "What about us? Why haven't we been affected?"

"If it's a matter of time, I think..." Strange was rubbing his chin with one hand, and was about to express his opinion when the back door of the church was flung open. Three people arguing in their own backyard.

The priest looked quite familiar. If it weren't for the wrong skin color and eye color, he would be another Jason Wayne.

"Uh..." The priest first looked down at the backpack on the ground, and then looked up at the expressions on the faces of Bruce, Strange, and Artemis in turn. They could also see that the priest was exerting all his strength. Thinking about it, it didn't even take a minute, but it felt like several hours had passed before the priest finally said, "I didn't break into any spoils scene, did I? You guys...don't happen to rob someone poor mountaineer, and intends to divide up the spoils in the land of the gods?"

"No.", "Of course not!", "No such thing!" The three of them replied in unison, their reactions were a bit suspicious, at least the priest's face clearly said "Go to the devil", but he still hesitated. Slowly nodded, and motioned for them to enter the church.

"The distribution of relief goods to homeless people will start soon. If you haven't decided how to distribute it... why don't you discuss it first?" The priest thoughtfully muted the word "stolen goods", but Bruce and others knew that this man who looked exactly like Jay Sen's priest didn't believe them at all, and maybe he was thinking of calling the police.

Bruce was about to refuse—he couldn't take the risk of being arrested by the police without knowing the extent of the timeline confusion—but Strange took the lead in accepting the priest's kindness on behalf of others: "That's really helpful, this……"

"Todd." The priest smiled and nodded to Strange, "Please come in, the church is about to start setting up."

"Thank you, Father Todd." Strange also smiled back, led Bruce, who had a complicated expression, and silently picked up the mountain bag left by Bizarro, and followed Artemis at the end with a frown. church.

***

Jason went through all of Thomas' case investigation reports. Although Thomas no longer practiced medicine, he still retained the habits accumulated over the years, such as handwriting medical records-handwriting case reports.

The inability to use computers to assist in the search has inevitably delayed Jason's investigation progress, and so far he can only confirm that the "clown" Thomas is investigating is very different from the clown he knows.

Thomas' "Joker" specifically targeted children, and according to Thomas' notes and news reports, "Joker" would abduct children who appeared to be no older than 10 years old, no matter what he (or was she?) did to the child during the abduction , it doesn't look like physical abuse. When the bodies of these children were found, there were no traces of abuse or violation other than fatal injuries. What's more ironic is that most of these children died because of The adults who went to rescue these children.

After breaking into the "clown" stronghold, he shot because he saw a suspected clown's shadow, but it turned out to be a cleverly designed reflection. After the bullet rebounded, he killed the child who was tied up and gagged and couldn't escape.Or it was hard to find a child who was scared to death, and touched the clown's mechanism when untying the complicated ropes and chains on them, and the child died directly...

For Jason, he is [-]% sure that this is definitely not the clown he knows - the clown will not let go of any opportunity to "play games" after kidnapping a child, and Jason has experienced it himself, the clown Every "game" played must leave traces.After kidnapping the child, this "clown" seems to have spent most of his time designing traps, different traps and baits, turning the originally hopeful rescue into a scene of hell.

Therefore, the saying "If you don't go to the rescue, maybe the child will live longer" came into being.

The area circled with a red pen on the map is where Jason judged that the "clown" might be lurking. "The clown" needs to spend time setting up the final stage, so what he has to do is to rescue the child before the stage is complete.

Only in this way can Thomas fully assist him and Barry in finding a way to put the timeline in order.

"I can only find them one by one." Jason put away the map and sighed, took Thomas' spare weapon and hid it under his jacket. He was thankful that Thomas still had a few unlisted motorcycles hidden in the Batcave.At least he doesn't need to go all the way through these locations, "Maybe I'm lucky, and I won the first one?"

As it turned out, Jason was out of luck.

It was getting late, and he was standing in front of the last destination on the map, and if he missed this place, it would mean that he had been working for nothing all day.

"Hey, I can only cheer up and have a last look!" Jason tapped on the shoulder, put away his joking attitude, and set foot on the stairs of this deserted villa.

Just like the standard equipment that a broken house should have, spider webs fluttering in the wind, creaking door panels, and stairs that are about to collapse under the feet, and a strange and non-human voice: "Ooooooooooh! Hurry up! Look, there is a bad boy running in! Hahahahaha!"

Jason clenched his pistol｜gun, and didn't take the time to track down the source of the sound. He investigated all the rooms one by one at his own pace.

—so the "clown" is a woman.This would explain why she always preyed on children, perhaps mothers who had lost their children and had a nervous breakdown. This kind of woman is not easy to deal with. Once they enter the role of mother, they can behave violently.

"The amusement park's business hours haven't arrived yet! The invitations haven't been sent yet!" The clown's nervous voice came from another direction. Jason finished his investigation of the room in front of him and moved on to the next goal. At this moment, he saw a figure flashing past in a hurry.

"How to deal with intruders! What to do, what to do!" The clown somehow rushed out of the room that Jason had already checked, holding high in his hands - thank God it wasn't a stick, but a hammer —was about to hit Jason hard.

Of course, Jason couldn't be a meat target obediently, dodging the clown's first attack, Jason stood by the almost broken window, and was about to lure the clown to continue attacking him, and then he could make the clown fall Get out the window, subdue this crazy woman outside and search the house thoroughly to remove any possible traps.

Until the clown laughed loudly and raised his hammer again to rush towards him, allowing him to see the strange smile that was artificially cut and rough stitched on his face in the dim light of dusk, as well as other inexplicable things that made him feel familiar. facial features.The clown also saw Jason's face, but to his surprise, the lunatic froze in place as if he had stepped on a landmine, staring straight at his face, and stopped laughing.

"B...Bruce?" The clown's voice returned to the tone of a normal person, and in a flash, Jason put together all the pieces that confused him.

Dead Bruce, missing Martha.

The locked master bedroom, which was not taken away, belonged to the mistress.

Blood on the bedroom floor.

Female clowns who specialize in kidnapping children.

The woman who was driven mad by the loss of her child was Martha Wayne.

His grandpa was Batman and his grandma was her mother's Joker.

Accompanied by such a clear realization, a sharp pain came from the top of the sky, and Jason lost consciousness.