Aftermath

Gordon stood at the interrogation room door with his hands on his hips. "You’re saying someone reported seeing two monsters dozens of meters tall chasing each other through the Living Hell district???"

Then, pressing a hand onto the new officer’s shoulder, he said, "You only need to ask the person who filed the report one question—how much exactly did he take?"

The new officer looked troubled. "But several people are all saying the same thing…"

"Then they were doing drugs together."

After the new officer left, Gordon leaned against the doorframe and thought that the rookies really were getting worse with every generation.

Two monsters more than ten meters tall fighting in the Slums? This was Gotham, not Hollywood. Besides, even if something like that really happened, the local gangs would have fired a Rocket Launcher at them the moment they saw it.

Given the number of gangs in Gotham, if it had really happened, Gordon ought to have been busy collecting the two monsters’ corpses by now.

So aside from sending the police to search the East End once more for places where people gathered to do drugs, the incident did not have much impact.

But Bruce and Venom’s troubles were far from over.

First of all, Bruce was a skeptic. Second, he was a human supremacist.

Over the next few days, Venom suffered utterly inhumane interrogation. Bruce compiled every doubt he had about Venom into a chart, and the table of contents alone was as thick as a fist.

Bruce successfully made Venom start missing Stark. Venom now realized with absolute certainty that his host was definitely, utterly, one hundred percent insane.

There was absolutely no other possibility.

Venom now wanted to unilaterally withdraw his former doubts about whether Stark was human. Compared to Bruce, Stark was practically the standard human template.

Finally, one day, Venom truly could not endure Batman’s insanity any longer. He said to Bruce, "For the sake of the help I gave you before, let’s part on good terms. Get a high-power sonic generator, and then we’ll separate. Never see each other again!"

Bruce might have been the first person to make a Symbiote voluntarily request separation from its host.

But without a second thought, Bruce rejected this acknowledgment from the Symbiote. "No. You’re the first extraterrestrial life-form I’ve encountered. Of my 897 research projects on extraterrestrial life, I’ve only completed 2% of the first project. There are still 98% of 896 projects left. You must cooperate until I complete all the research, and then I’ll consider whether to let you leave…"

Venom was truly despairing.

Originally, a Symbiote could voluntarily leave its host, but only if it could immediately find another host afterward. Otherwise, once he fled Bruce’s body, Bruce could immediately catch that lump of sludge.

It was not as though he had not considered jumping onto someone else while Bruce was in contact with them. But ever since Bruce’s dark side erupted, not only could Venom read Bruce’s emotions, Bruce could also read some of Venom’s.

The moment Venom had any thought of escaping, Bruce would frantically perform calculations to increase his brain’s processing load, keeping Venom trapped in a raging storm so he could not concentrate on running away.

Venom suddenly realized that he had been tricked.

Especially when he saw Schiller’s gloating smile, he realized he had moved from a less sturdy jar into an incomparably solid and exceptionally torturous prison.

Even more tragically, one day Bruce mercifully let Venom out for some fresh air. Venom was practically suffocating. He desperately wanted to find one of his own kind to complain to, so he went to Schiller.

Then Schiller told him a fact that drove him into utter despair. "What? Bruce told you he had 897 plans, and you believed him?"

Dream on! The real number is probably ten times that!

"If you count contingency plans, it might need to be multiplied by a hundred."

Venom discovered that, for no reason at all, he had been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Going by Bruce’s personality, he would never have allowed a creature with independent consciousness to exist inside his body, especially one that could peer into his thoughts. But Symbiotes were simply too fascinating. Stark could not resist his curiosity about them, and of course Bruce could not either.

After experiencing that eruption of his dark side, Bruce was quite confident in his ability to control this alien life-form. He intended to study it for a while, then return it to the professor.

As for certain matters concerning Schiller, Bruce very much wanted to ask about them, but had not succeeded so far. Every time he brought up related questions to Schiller, Schiller would casually say, "Nattaru."

Then Bruce would nearly lose control of Venom, who would rage wildly inside him. What had originally been a confrontation between Bruce and Schiller would once again turn into a violent brawl between Bruce and Venom.

As for Catwoman’s theft, Schiller did not intend to recover the Diamond Bottle. He was merely curious about how Catwoman had broken into his manor.

He had installed specially designed locks from Stark Laboratories on every door in the manor. Such technology was not something of this era, and no thief should have been able to pick them.

When Batman grabbed Catwoman by the neck and brought her to identify the scene, Schiller and Batman were both stunned by Catwoman’s alleged entry point—the drainage passage.

It did not look like a place a person could enter.

That was precisely why, even though Schiller knew there was an exit there, he had not paid any attention to it. Aside from rats, even a stray cat would probably have trouble getting through.

Catwoman had to know some kind of bone-shrinking technique, right?

With skills like that, couldn’t she do anything else? Why insist on being a thief?

Batman actually had quite a headache too. When he caught Catwoman, she had basically confessed honestly. When he learned that she had also offended the Falcone family, Batman’s head began pounding.

He had no choice but to appear as Bruce and offer compensation. Then, in exchange for the substantial sum, he asked whether the Godfather could spare Catwoman. Falcone did not care much. He had seen plenty of bold thieves; since she was Batman’s lover, letting her go was no great matter.

But this could not go on forever. As Gotham reformed, thieves and burglars who did not do proper work were finding it harder and harder to survive.

"What do you think I should have Selene do? Last time, I suggested she become a teacher, but she absolutely refused. She said the workplace was too far from the apartment where she lived, and she couldn’t take care of Maggie…"

Schiller sat across from him and said, "Have you considered that she has a rather significant advantage?"

"What?"

"She’s charming."

Seeing Bruce’s somewhat confused expression, Schiller said, "Maybe that doesn’t count as much of an advantage in Gotham, and may even bring her some trouble. But elsewhere, it would be different."

"Such as?"

"Hollywood."

Schiller took a sip of water. "She has the famous Batman so completely smitten. Have you never considered letting her become some sort of Hollywood leading actress?"

Bruce froze for a moment. He truly had never considered that possibility.

And Schiller was serious. Catwoman was beautiful, but that was not the key. Her acrobatic skills were merely icing on the cake. She had only one trait that could be called the strongest in DC: charm.

Catwoman could leave Batman utterly smitten. Note that it was Batman, not Bruce.

In some comics, even the Dark Knight, so obsessed with hatred, could be moved by Catwoman into marrying her, having children, and living an ordinary life. What level of personal charm did that take?

Bruce, Venom, and Schiller had struggled somewhat even when working together from inside and out against the black tide born from Batman’s dark side, yet Catwoman had effortlessly resolved all of it by herself.

In some comics, Batman gave up his hatred for her, gave up his obsession, gave up every painful memory of the past, and simply turned back from the brink.

With charm on the level of a law of nature, why not hurry to Hollywood and become a rising star? What was she waiting for?

"…And you need to consider that Gotham’s industries will eventually need to transform as well. If we want to develop entertainment and tourism, a signature face for the city is indispensable," Schiller said.

Bruce also felt that Schiller made a great deal of sense. Being a star or a leading actress was not only a legitimate profession, but also highly profitable. It brought both fame and fortune, and benefited Gotham City’s development as well. Why not?

Besides, Catwoman herself had the potential to be a career woman. Though theft was not a respectable job, at least she worked hard to support herself. Otherwise, with her looks, she could have easily become any gang boss’s mistress and lived comfortably. She would not still be living in that rundown apartment on the edge of the East End.

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