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**Chapter 114: Tony's Schemes (Third Update)**
Wayne Enterprises' Chief Executive Officer, Fox, slowly pushed open the secret chamber door. Batman was waiting there.
At the end of the hall was a giant device, hundreds of screens displayed upon it, countless blurred and constantly changing images flashing by. Fox, as the head of Wayne Enterprises' high-tech department, understood the device's function at first glance, and was utterly stunned.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Batman walked out from the darkness, his voice hoarse.
"Beautiful? It's clearly immoral," Fox said, his face serious and his eyes sharp.
Ever since Batman's emergence, all of his weaponry and equipment had been built by Fox. He was very familiar with Batman — even though it was always Bruce who came to negotiate with him, Fox wasn't a fool. How could it be such a coincidence that every piece of custom high-tech equipment he built would appear on the Dark Knight immediately?
This was also the unspoken understanding between them; they kept things separate. For Fox, Batman was Batman, and Bruce was Bruce—two completely different people, even though Bruce would always come to him, asking for equipment under ridiculous pretexts like "high-altitude skydiving."
But this time, Batman had truly gone too far, exceeding his psychological bottom line.
"You've turned all of Gotham City's phones into speakerphones, treating them as high-frequency signal transceivers! You've used my sonar concept on the citizens' phones! You're using the sonar transmitted to you by half the city to monitor all of Gotham City! This is a terrible act!" Fox fumed.
"This database has been specially encrypted by me; only one person can use it," Batman said.
Fox shook his head. "The power given to this person is too great!"
"That's why I came to you. I want you to be that person."
"I'm sorry, monitoring Gotham City is not within my job scope." Fox was a little surprised but firmly shook his head in refusal.
"You can use this device to locate everyone. To catch the Joker, I need your help. After it's done, you can enter your name into this device, and it will be destroyed." Batman stepped forward, trying to persuade him.
Fox pondered for a moment, then slowly took off his jacket. "I'll only help you this one time, never again. If this machine isn't destroyed in front of me, then I'll resign. I cannot coexist with this machine."
...
The Authorities throughout the city were secretly searching for the missing Harvey. If the Joker wanted to hide, no one could find him, so finding Knight of Justice Harvey was the top priority.
The chaos in Gotham City did not affect Maroni. Mr. Maroni was currently in high spirits because he had chosen to befriend the Joker from the very beginning. Up until now, the other leaders of the Falcone Crime Family had successively been killed by the Joker.
Although the money they had with Mr. Liu had also been completely incinerated by the Joker in a massive fire, Maroni didn't care too much. He was very satisfied that Batman would fight the Joker to the death, and it had nothing to do with him anymore. From today onwards, he was the sole king of Gotham City's underworld, supreme. In the eyes of important figures, he was insignificant; in the eyes of ordinary people, he was high above.
Nothing was more intoxicating than this; no one would come to bother him, and he had welcomed precious freedom.
Maroni pompously carried his walking stick, elegantly checked his watch, pulled open the car door, and got in, without noticing his subordinates were sweating profusely.
"Drive. Don't stop for red lights or the Police..." Maroni's voice grew quieter as he spoke, for he saw Harvey sitting in another seat in the back.
His bodyguards had been eliminated, replaced by Harvey sitting in the car.
"Are you rushing off to a date with your wife? You love her? Have you ever thought about what it feels like to watch her die one day?" Harvey raised his head, revealing his ghastly face, half human, half monstrous.
"Listen, Mr. Harvey," Maroni tried hard to stay calm, "it's true I'm a villain, but I swear I never interfered in your affairs! It was the Joker, he killed your woman, he made you... become like this." Although Harvey's arrival boded ill, making him nervous and uneasy, Maroni could be sure that he had not participated in Harvey and the Joker's confrontation at all.
Maroni believed all this had nothing to do with him; he was just a gang boss.
"But the Joker is just a mad dog," Harvey said, looking coldly at Maroni. "I want to settle accounts with whoever unleashed this mad dog. A few minutes ago, Officer Waltz said the same thing. He swore he didn't make it in time to save Rachel that night, but he tried his best... So I killed him. In the entire Gotham City Police Department, who else is with you? That night, there must have been others who slipped through the net."
Maroni took a deep breath, staring grimly at Harvey. "If I tell you, will you let me go?"
"At least I'll give you a chance."
Maroni's expression flickered, and he slowly spoke a few names.
Harvey once again pulled out the coin. He had used the coin toss method, and when it landed on tails, he had killed his former colleague, Officer Waltz, with one shot.
"Heads, you live; tails, you die."
Harvey slowly tossed the coin into the air, then caught it. Every second was torment for Maroni. He removed his hand; it was heads.
Maroni let out a huge sigh of relief, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and smiled. Just as he was about to speak, Harvey tossed it again. This time it was tails.
"It's a shame your Driver isn't as lucky as you," Harvey said, quickly opening the car door, then shooting the Driver.
The Driver's death caused the car to overturn, and with a thunderous roar, the last remaining leader of the Falcone Family, along with the car, was buried in a violent explosion.
The once-influential Falcone Family officially perished. No one would have thought that it wasn't the righteous Police who eliminated the Falcones, but the Joker and Two-Face.
Gotham City had another Malignancy removed. Now, only Batman, Harvey, the Joker, and Tony, secretly observing from the shadows, remained.
Tony casually tossed the binoculars aside, lost in thought. Although the process had been full of twists and turns, it had still reached this point. The revolution in the Old City had officially begun; large numbers of small and medium-sized gangs were massacred by armed civilians, and the Falcone Family was also finished. The Court of Owls, as the source of Sin, had been so terrified by Tony's killings that they no longer dared to act rashly.
The entire Gotham City had already welcomed the dawn of hope.
"Are we just going to stand by and watch?" Crane, standing nearby, was a little confused. He truly didn't understand the meaning behind Tony's recent actions. Dealing with the Court of Owls was one thing, but what was the meaning behind seemingly helping Batman?
"There's no grand objective," Tony said, narrowing his eyes, "just trying to find a way to force Batman to kill..." He recalled memories from his past life.
Tony remembered that when Batman fought Superman, a more extreme Batman had killed countless people along the way, with heads rolling, merely to snatch a piece of Kryptonite.
He just hoped everything would go smoothly. A Batman who could kill was a good Batman; otherwise, when the great war broke out later, if Batman merely captured Extraterrestrial Visitors alive, what then?
Killing enemies was being responsible for one's own people.
PS: Many channels don't display "Author's Notes," so I'll include them here.
Many people still view Batman's image as strictly adhering to a "no-kill" Character Persona, but in reality, this Character Persona has long since collapsed.
In the most popular Justice League film series, many people might not have noticed that Batman kills without hesitation. If you don't believe it, you can rewatch the movies; even the director specifically came out to state that their approach to "not killing" was "not directly filming the killing scenes." That is to say, when Batman shoots and blows up a car, the people inside were killed by the car explosion, not by Batman. Many netizens also joked afterwards that when Mr. Wayne stabs someone to death with a knife, it's the knife that kills, not Mr. Wayne. Some people have even calculated that in the classic Nolan trilogy films, Batman potentially killed 42 people, and the earlier Tim Burton versions were the same.
This "no-kill" rule is sometimes hard to define. If you say he doesn't kill people, then are the living members of the Court of Owls considered people? Almost all the assassins of the entire Court of Owls were killed by Batman. In the movies, the Parademons of Apokolips were also alive, and Batman killed plenty of them.
In the DC Universe, there are 52 identified Multiverses, and Batman in most Universes kills. Even in the comic "Batman: Endgame," where he took the No-Kill Oath, Batman ultimately broke the No-Kill Oath, and to kill the Joker, he didn't hesitate to die with him.
The film series showed it even more explicitly.
Because films have the greatest influence, and more readers have watched the films than read the comics, this book primarily adopts the film version of Batman's Character Persona, gradually transitioning.
(end of chapter)
Wayne Enterprises' Chief Executive Officer, Fox, slowly pushed open the secret chamber door. Batman was waiting there.
At the end of the hall was a giant device, hundreds of screens displayed upon it, countless blurred and constantly changing images flashing by. Fox, as the head of Wayne Enterprises' high-tech department, understood the device's function at first glance, and was utterly stunned.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Batman walked out from the darkness, his voice hoarse.
"Beautiful? It's clearly immoral," Fox said, his face serious and his eyes sharp.
Ever since Batman's emergence, all of his weaponry and equipment had been built by Fox. He was very familiar with Batman — even though it was always Bruce who came to negotiate with him, Fox wasn't a fool. How could it be such a coincidence that every piece of custom high-tech equipment he built would appear on the Dark Knight immediately?
This was also the unspoken understanding between them; they kept things separate. For Fox, Batman was Batman, and Bruce was Bruce—two completely different people, even though Bruce would always come to him, asking for equipment under ridiculous pretexts like "high-altitude skydiving."
But this time, Batman had truly gone too far, exceeding his psychological bottom line.
"You've turned all of Gotham City's phones into speakerphones, treating them as high-frequency signal transceivers! You've used my sonar concept on the citizens' phones! You're using the sonar transmitted to you by half the city to monitor all of Gotham City! This is a terrible act!" Fox fumed.
"This database has been specially encrypted by me; only one person can use it," Batman said.
Fox shook his head. "The power given to this person is too great!"
"That's why I came to you. I want you to be that person."
"I'm sorry, monitoring Gotham City is not within my job scope." Fox was a little surprised but firmly shook his head in refusal.
"You can use this device to locate everyone. To catch the Joker, I need your help. After it's done, you can enter your name into this device, and it will be destroyed." Batman stepped forward, trying to persuade him.
Fox pondered for a moment, then slowly took off his jacket. "I'll only help you this one time, never again. If this machine isn't destroyed in front of me, then I'll resign. I cannot coexist with this machine."
...
The Authorities throughout the city were secretly searching for the missing Harvey. If the Joker wanted to hide, no one could find him, so finding Knight of Justice Harvey was the top priority.
The chaos in Gotham City did not affect Maroni. Mr. Maroni was currently in high spirits because he had chosen to befriend the Joker from the very beginning. Up until now, the other leaders of the Falcone Crime Family had successively been killed by the Joker.
Although the money they had with Mr. Liu had also been completely incinerated by the Joker in a massive fire, Maroni didn't care too much. He was very satisfied that Batman would fight the Joker to the death, and it had nothing to do with him anymore. From today onwards, he was the sole king of Gotham City's underworld, supreme. In the eyes of important figures, he was insignificant; in the eyes of ordinary people, he was high above.
Nothing was more intoxicating than this; no one would come to bother him, and he had welcomed precious freedom.
Maroni pompously carried his walking stick, elegantly checked his watch, pulled open the car door, and got in, without noticing his subordinates were sweating profusely.
"Drive. Don't stop for red lights or the Police..." Maroni's voice grew quieter as he spoke, for he saw Harvey sitting in another seat in the back.
His bodyguards had been eliminated, replaced by Harvey sitting in the car.
"Are you rushing off to a date with your wife? You love her? Have you ever thought about what it feels like to watch her die one day?" Harvey raised his head, revealing his ghastly face, half human, half monstrous.
"Listen, Mr. Harvey," Maroni tried hard to stay calm, "it's true I'm a villain, but I swear I never interfered in your affairs! It was the Joker, he killed your woman, he made you... become like this." Although Harvey's arrival boded ill, making him nervous and uneasy, Maroni could be sure that he had not participated in Harvey and the Joker's confrontation at all.
Maroni believed all this had nothing to do with him; he was just a gang boss.
"But the Joker is just a mad dog," Harvey said, looking coldly at Maroni. "I want to settle accounts with whoever unleashed this mad dog. A few minutes ago, Officer Waltz said the same thing. He swore he didn't make it in time to save Rachel that night, but he tried his best... So I killed him. In the entire Gotham City Police Department, who else is with you? That night, there must have been others who slipped through the net."
Maroni took a deep breath, staring grimly at Harvey. "If I tell you, will you let me go?"
"At least I'll give you a chance."
Maroni's expression flickered, and he slowly spoke a few names.
Harvey once again pulled out the coin. He had used the coin toss method, and when it landed on tails, he had killed his former colleague, Officer Waltz, with one shot.
"Heads, you live; tails, you die."
Harvey slowly tossed the coin into the air, then caught it. Every second was torment for Maroni. He removed his hand; it was heads.
Maroni let out a huge sigh of relief, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and smiled. Just as he was about to speak, Harvey tossed it again. This time it was tails.
"It's a shame your Driver isn't as lucky as you," Harvey said, quickly opening the car door, then shooting the Driver.
The Driver's death caused the car to overturn, and with a thunderous roar, the last remaining leader of the Falcone Family, along with the car, was buried in a violent explosion.
The once-influential Falcone Family officially perished. No one would have thought that it wasn't the righteous Police who eliminated the Falcones, but the Joker and Two-Face.
Gotham City had another Malignancy removed. Now, only Batman, Harvey, the Joker, and Tony, secretly observing from the shadows, remained.
Tony casually tossed the binoculars aside, lost in thought. Although the process had been full of twists and turns, it had still reached this point. The revolution in the Old City had officially begun; large numbers of small and medium-sized gangs were massacred by armed civilians, and the Falcone Family was also finished. The Court of Owls, as the source of Sin, had been so terrified by Tony's killings that they no longer dared to act rashly.
The entire Gotham City had already welcomed the dawn of hope.
"Are we just going to stand by and watch?" Crane, standing nearby, was a little confused. He truly didn't understand the meaning behind Tony's recent actions. Dealing with the Court of Owls was one thing, but what was the meaning behind seemingly helping Batman?
"There's no grand objective," Tony said, narrowing his eyes, "just trying to find a way to force Batman to kill..." He recalled memories from his past life.
Tony remembered that when Batman fought Superman, a more extreme Batman had killed countless people along the way, with heads rolling, merely to snatch a piece of Kryptonite.
He just hoped everything would go smoothly. A Batman who could kill was a good Batman; otherwise, when the great war broke out later, if Batman merely captured Extraterrestrial Visitors alive, what then?
Killing enemies was being responsible for one's own people.
PS: Many channels don't display "Author's Notes," so I'll include them here.
Many people still view Batman's image as strictly adhering to a "no-kill" Character Persona, but in reality, this Character Persona has long since collapsed.
In the most popular Justice League film series, many people might not have noticed that Batman kills without hesitation. If you don't believe it, you can rewatch the movies; even the director specifically came out to state that their approach to "not killing" was "not directly filming the killing scenes." That is to say, when Batman shoots and blows up a car, the people inside were killed by the car explosion, not by Batman. Many netizens also joked afterwards that when Mr. Wayne stabs someone to death with a knife, it's the knife that kills, not Mr. Wayne. Some people have even calculated that in the classic Nolan trilogy films, Batman potentially killed 42 people, and the earlier Tim Burton versions were the same.
This "no-kill" rule is sometimes hard to define. If you say he doesn't kill people, then are the living members of the Court of Owls considered people? Almost all the assassins of the entire Court of Owls were killed by Batman. In the movies, the Parademons of Apokolips were also alive, and Batman killed plenty of them.
In the DC Universe, there are 52 identified Multiverses, and Batman in most Universes kills. Even in the comic "Batman: Endgame," where he took the No-Kill Oath, Batman ultimately broke the No-Kill Oath, and to kill the Joker, he didn't hesitate to die with him.
The film series showed it even more explicitly.
Because films have the greatest influence, and more readers have watched the films than read the comics, this book primarily adopts the film version of Batman's Character Persona, gradually transitioning.
(end of chapter)
