Plan

"We’d learned some things about the Multiverse before. There were many worlds with superheroes, but to me, there were only two kinds of heroic worlds: worlds with Kryptonians and worlds without them. An event that crossed parallel universes like this should be pretty rare, shouldn’t it?"

Kara spoke with a grim expression. Her genes were imprinted with a curiosity for uncovering the truth. She was a born scientist, which made her think more deeply about this matter than Pietro did.

"You’re right. This is an extremely difficult thing to happen. Take Barry Allen, for example. He controlled the powerful and difficult-to-observe force known as the Speed Force, which allowed him to run through the flow of time and even accomplish things ordinary people couldn’t imagine, like traveling through time or parallel universes.

"But…" Zhang Ye stroked his chin and spoke in a low voice.

"But no matter how he ‘travels,’ he is still operating within established reality. It’s like a warehouse filled with sandboxes. Barry Allen is a hamster inside one of those sandboxes. Even if he runs out of the sandbox he lives in, he is still inside the warehouse. Do you understand? He can’t leave the ‘warehouse.’"

"I get it. He merely has a way to open the door of his sandbox or cage. In other sandboxes, there may be versions of ‘him’ who can do the same thing, but to them, they’re still only hamsters. No matter what, they can’t leave the warehouse."

Pietro immediately spoke up, then looked toward Kara. Sensing his gaze, she nodded thoughtfully and took over.

"To leave the warehouse, they need help from a life-form in a higher dimension. For example, a ‘person’ accidentally opens the warehouse door but forgets to close it, leaving behind a crack. For the hamsters, that is the only way they can leave the warehouse."

"That’s how it is. But The Flash is an exception, and Barry Allen is an exception even among Flashes. He can leave the sandbox, but that doesn’t mean he can take other hamsters with him. And this Batarang…"

It didn’t look like a weapon The Flash commonly used, unless…

An image of a speedster with a bat emblem on his chest flashed through Zhang Ye’s mind.

But Zhang Ye quickly dismissed the possibility.

That guy didn’t have that kind of ability. Even if he did, he definitely wouldn’t have died at the hands of the beast. After all, if it were that guy, he wouldn’t have lost his speed just because he came to Marvel. In a sense, he had brought the Speed Force along with him.

"So this is already quite clear. If, in some reality we haven’t seen, something took those hamsters out of their sandboxes and threw them out of the warehouse, that wouldn’t be a good thing for any world." Pietro summed up.

Kara nodded as well. "The most critical issue is that we not only don’t know how they got here, we also don’t know when they arrived. We can’t even determine their numbers."

"Yes, they may have been scattered. For outsiders like them, danger is everywhere here." Pietro agreed. "Anything can happen in this wasteland. I’ve been through it. I understand."

Pietro and Kara went back and forth, quickly sorting through the matter and laying it out clearly.

Meanwhile, Zhang Ye stood beside them with his brows tightly furrowed, uncertainty flickering in his eyes.

"What I’m most worried about now is…

"Their damned kindness will get them killed!"

If the person who came here was Bruce Wayne, Zhang Ye believed he would most likely survive. Even if he suffered a setback, that would only mean he was unlucky. After all, he was only an ordinary person—at least he would have fought back.

But what if it was Barbara Gordon?

Kate. Dick Grayson.

The story of the farmer and the snake was more than just a "story."

Could they imagine it? When these kindhearted people did everything they could to save someone from a gang, what awaited them would not be the gratitude of the people, but butcher knives raised while they were injured, poison mixed into their water, or even…

Zhang Ye could no longer think about it. He had long grown accustomed to this kind of hopeless world.

But if it was only the Bat-Family, that would be one thing. What if it wasn’t just them?

What if, just as Pietro had guessed, those heroes from the DC Universe had come here because of some unknown secret and then become separated? What then?

Perhaps they possessed formidable combat ability, but just as The Flash could be struck by a bullet, their kindness and reluctance to kill would become shackles in this world—blades hanging over their own heads that could kill them at any moment.

Besides, the sun of this world’s Earth was not a "proper" Yellow Sun. Even Kara couldn’t display her full strength here, let alone other Kryptonians.

Newly arrived in another world, with no family or friends in sight, when morality, values, and common sense had completely broken apart, everything these outsiders encountered would threaten their very lives.

Fighting outside one’s home turf was inherently extremely dangerous.

"Zhang, what should we do?" Kara asked.

Clearly, she had begun taking the matter seriously too. Perhaps because she had known Batman and The Flash before, Kara and Pietro had some goodwill toward people from those other worlds. They didn’t want to be collecting their corpses.

"If we didn’t know about it, then so be it. But now that we do… Though turning a blind eye isn’t impossible." Pietro forced a smile, then continued. "Still, people from that universe coming to this world is itself worth investigating, isn’t it?"

At those words, Kara also turned her gaze toward Zhang Ye, waiting for his final answer.

After remaining silent for a while, Zhang Ye finally slowly smiled. However, what that smile implied was far too thought-provoking.

"I don’t care how they got here, and I don’t care whether they’re dead or alive. For me, ensuring our own safety is the top priority. Besides, we have no way of determining their exact locations. Even if we wanted to find them, we couldn’t. So the plan remains unchanged."

"Mm." Pietro and Kara both nodded, raising no objections.

His gaze returned to the Batarang, and Zhang Ye’s expression became incredibly complicated.

A few people who shouldn’t have been here had appeared in Old Man Logan’s wasteland world. It seemed life was not going to be boring from here on out. After all, if they were from DC, then no matter who had come here…

They were all the sort who couldn’t sit still!