Night of the Return of the Joker (Part 1)

"Father, you’re here."

Schiller rose from his seat and went to greet him, shaking the Old Priest’s hand. The Old Priest looked up and surveyed the theater, then said wistfully, "It has been a long time since I came here. I never expected anyone would invite me back."

As he spoke, he followed Schiller to the front-row seats closest to the stage. Another person had arrived even earlier: Falcone, the Godfather, seated at the innermost end.

He merely turned to glance at the priest and said, "Do you remember? In our day, this place was brilliantly lit. My favorite opera back then was The Lady of the Camellias."

"My favorite was still Saint Louis. Both shows were wildly popular then. This place was packed, and sometimes you simply couldn’t get tickets."

The three sat in the empty old theater. On the ruined stage, thick dust had turned the curtains a dark crimson-black. The gold thread woven into them had lost its shine, and most of the bulbs around the edge of the stage no longer worked.

"But I still prefer today’s performance. What should we call it?" Schiller turned toward the other two. Falcone held a cigar, and amid the flickering ember, he exhaled a plume of smoke. "Easter, perhaps?"

"I think Return of the Joker would be more fitting."

"Why? Joker? You mean the kind in a circus? Gotham Grand Theater did have circus performances, but that was a very long time ago."

Schiller shook his head without answering.

"I invited you two here because I wanted to hear your stories."

Falcone sighed. The Old Godfather said, "Let Daniel explain it to you."

Falcone and Schiller both looked toward the Old Priest seated between them.

The Old Priest smiled. "I was once a member of the Court of Owls, though that was a very long time ago."

Old Priest Daniel’s voice carried a trace of nostalgia. He said, "I told you before that when I first came to this land, it was full of life. I treated people well, so I had some standing among the gangs. Quite a few people were willing to do me a favor."

"Then those little birds came looking for me. They were nowhere near as powerful as they are today. They told me they were willing to share the secret of immortality with me. I acted very interested, and then I joined them."

The Old Priest leaned back in his chair and raised his head slightly, looking above the stage. Moonlight poured brightly through the windows there, and his voice passed through the falling light, carrying far into the distance.

"At that time, they did not yet have these Assassins. They were merely a gathering of influential people. But later, they discovered something very special in Gotham."

"Fine Wine, right?"

"That’s right. They discovered that beneath Gotham lay a mysterious water source. It smelled like Fine Wine, intoxicating anyone who caught its scent. And the wounds of those who smelled it healed; they even became younger."

"Immortality and invulnerability—what wonderful words. No one could refuse such temptation. So the Court of Owls launched a plan to excavate and unravel the secret of this water source, then use it to gain true immortality."

"It was called the Water Source Plan."

"But at the time, the plan did not proceed smoothly. Those who dared drink the liquid all went mad. In the end, they had no choice but to approach it from a theological angle, so they came to me."

"I knew from the start that they only wanted to use me, but that was fine. I wanted to use them too."

The Old Priest made the sign of the cross over his chest. "At the time, I believed I was carrying out the Lord’s will, that I had to let His glory save this land. If ordinary methods could not accomplish it, then I could use another method. The Lord would forgive me."

"They used those European nobles to build a church for me, directly above the water source. Afterward, the Court of Owls killed them."

"The manor you live in now was what they left behind."

"So they didn’t move away. They were killed?"

"That’s right. The Court of Owls claimed they had left, but in truth, no one involved in building the church was allowed to leave alive. The Court of Owls would not risk exposing the secret of immortality."

"So I stayed in the church, guarding it, watching the people of Gotham come and go, generation after generation dying away."

"You never get to the point," Falcone said, flicking ash from his cigar. "This isn’t a sermon at church."

"Don’t say that, Godfather. Today is Easter. Let us have a little patience." Schiller gestured for him to continue, and the Old Priest smiled and nodded to him.

"Later, I deciphered part of the secret of Fine Wine and used it to gain special abilities."

"So when I first went to the church, you noticed that I was different?"

The Old Priest shook his head. "My abilities are not actually as powerful as you think. Perhaps they once were, but now I am old. If I am not inside the church, standing above the Fine Wine pool, then I am merely a frail old man."

"But that was indeed what happened. When you first came to the church, I was in a mildly intoxicated state and saw something unusual. That was why I suggested to Falcone that he ask you to solve his son’s problem."

Schiller narrowed his eyes and looked toward the stage. In his vision, the old curtains slowly parted. The Old Priest stood at center stage, with Jesus crucified in the cathedral behind him and a rippling pool of Fine Wine beneath his feet.

He stood in the center of the church, slightly drunk from the Fine Wine drifting through the air. Through the haze of the Old Godfather’s vision, when Schiller entered, he happened to merge with the setting sun.

The golden sunlight seared his eyes. After the light vanished, the shadow of a sun remained behind Schiller—except it was the deepest black left after sunset.

Schiller smiled, lowering his head. "I had always found it a little strange. Why would you, Lord Falcone, invite a dangerous person like me to be your son’s tutor? After all, anyone who saw my record would not want me near their descendants."

"You mean your pursuit of that serial killer? Even without Daniel’s recommendation, I would not have cared about that. Such things are common in Gotham. This place has every kind of lunatic. I would rather have a lunatic than a fool."

"Let’s talk about Evans. To be honest, when he came to me, I was already worried about him, because I could clearly sense that something was wrong with him."

Falcone sighed. "I think you must have noticed that he has two personalities."

"To be honest." Schiller looked at Father Daniel. "Before this—before Evans came to see me this time—I had never noticed a second personality within him. How exactly did you do it?"

"Because Alberto really was dead then. There was only Evans, so naturally you would not have sensed anything. The personality you sensed later was Alberto after his resurrection."

"Do you think Alberto was the original personality?" As soon as the Godfather asked the question, he answered it himself. "No. Evans truly was the original personality. He was my son."

The Godfather sighed again. He felt that he had been sighing too often lately, but he continued, "When Evans was six, his mother died. I was immersed in the grief of losing the woman I loved and neglected him."

"One night, he secretly went out to play by himself. When he returned, he was no longer himself."

"…The Court of Owls did it?"

"How do you think the Court of Owls grew into what it is today?" Falcone asked in return. "Through their cult theories alone? Not everyone buys that."

"This was how they lured in the descendants of certain upper-class families. They wiped away their personalities, erased their memories, and then created a more extreme personality, one that would eventually pledge itself to them."

"That was Alberto?"

"That’s right. My child disappeared and became a pawn of the owls. But unlike those numb, ignorant fools, I would never mistake such a change for a child’s rebellious phase."

"This is one of their usual methods. No parent would suspect that their child had been replaced. They would only think the child’s changes came with growing older."

The Court of Owls had one enormous flaw. Falcone took another puff from his cigar before saying, "They created a perfect personality, a perfect candidate to become the Godfather."

"I can understand what they wanted. They prepared a perfect heir for me. As long as he took over as Godfather, Falcone and the Twelve Families would both be theirs for the taking. They were confident Alberto would satisfy me."

"But that was precisely what made me deeply suspicious, because before that, Evans had been more like his mother than me."

"It sounds absurd, doesn’t it?" The Godfather flexed his fingers. "Back then, I also thought I had gone mad, suspecting that my own son had been replaced…"

"When he raised a knife against me, I finally fell into despair."

"I was in unbearable pain, yet I could find no evidence. From a scientific perspective, I could not explain it. So I could only turn to faith."

Then Father Daniel’s voice sounded. "When Carmine came to the church, I saw a father who had lost his soul. When he told me of this pain, I did not think it was a joke."

Daniel sighed, guilt in his tone. "The method of wiping memories and replacing personalities came from the water source beneath the church. It was a method I discovered. To achieve my goals, I gave it to the Court."

"But after seeing Carmine, I knew that what I had done was terribly wrong."

"All those claims that I had joined the Court to spread the Lord’s glory were merely excuses born of my temptation by immortality."

"When a desperate father stood before me…" Daniel’s voice began to tremble. "The Father watched His son nailed to the cross, blood covering the ground, and I became an accomplice—I became Judas with the bag of silver…"

"I knew this could not continue. I had to stop it all."

"So you used the same method to erase Alberto’s personality and bring back Evans’s?"

"Fine Wine has another use: resurrection. I did not bring back Evans’s personality. I resurrected him."

"So…"

"Alberto was resurrected as well."

"Do you remember the Water Source Plan I mentioned earlier?" Father Daniel turned to Schiller. "There is more to that plan."

"Over the years, the Court of Owls contaminated drinking water and rainwater, allowing extremely diluted Fine Wine to flow through many people’s blood."

"The heavy rains from several days ago awakened it."

"Why did they choose this time to activate the Water Source Plan? Though some people did go mad in that rainstorm, the number was far too small to shake this city."

"They must have another plan."

"There is another question. What was that funeral about? If it was only to replace a personality, there was no need to make such a spectacle of it."

"That was my idea. I know the Court of Owls very well. I know how they control this city. They possess a special metal that can resist the effects of Fine Wine," Father Daniel said.

"I suggested that Carmine tamper with the transport of their production materials, ensuring that the Batch of Goods could not arrive on time. That meant many people did not receive umbrellas that worked."

"Were you trying to deceive the Court?"

"No. We knew that faking the identity of brothers could only fool ordinary people, not the Court of Owls."

"I was merely warning them." Carmine gripped his cigar. "I know their little tricks, and I am not afraid to kill. If they insist on pressing us step by step, then we will perish together."

"If they dare touch my son again, I will turn Gotham into an empty city."

In the Godfather’s voice, Schiller heard the ferocity of Gotham’s King of the Underworld from that glorious era, along with the resolve of a father.