Sinestro in Danger

Dick sat at the breakfast stand with Aisha in his arms while Jason stuffed a sandwich into his mouth. The other older kids had gathered around the food cart to order. Jason looked at Dick and said, "So that rich guy’s really sending you to boarding school? That’s no good place!"

"It’s a normal boarding school, the kind rich kids go to. Not one of those kid prisons."

"That’s more like it. If he sends you to one of those prisons, you’d better run while you can. The kids there have it rough." Tire walked over with a cup of iced juice.

"I heard they sell kids sent to boarding school to the nastiest little bosses, or cripple them and send them to other cities to beg." Red Truck came over as well.

They all carried their food over and gathered around the little table again.

Just then, Jason sighed, looking worried. The others asked him, "What’s wrong?"

"I still don’t know what to do about the thing that weirdo dressed as Batman told me to do."

"He made it sound easy. He wants me to investigate those ‘moms and dads’ controlling the kids, but I can’t exactly go up to the kids’ bosses and ask, ‘What exactly is going on with you?’"

Cobblepot came over from behind Red Truck carrying a tray. He set it down, sat in a chair, and straightened his collar. Rocket Launcher laughed at him. "You always make yourself look like some old aristocrat. Does food taste better that way?"

Cobblepot ignored her and merely said to Jason, "You’re still young. You could find another street, blend in with the kids there, and get a job like this. Wouldn’t that give you a legitimate way to meet those bosses?"

Tire thought for a moment and said, "That’s true. The rest of us definitely can’t do it. We’re too old and too big; those little bosses wouldn’t take us. But you… oh, and you too, Dick. The two of you are the right age and have the right look to blend in…"

Dick shrugged. "I might be starting school in a few days."

When he turned around and saw Jason staring at him, Dick sighed. "Fine. I guess I can hang out with you guys for the next couple of days."

After discussing it, Jason and Dick decided to look for work as cigarette vendors on Green Street at the edge of the East District, to see whether they could pry some intelligence out of those little bosses.

After breakfast, Dick took Aisha back to Wayne Manor. Alfred told him, "Master just returned. He’s looking for you."

Dick nodded and took Aisha to Bruce’s study on the third floor. After he went in, Bruce said to him, "Pack your things. You’ll be starting school next week."

Dick moved his lips, clearly reluctant. As Bruce looked at him, he suddenly felt deeply reflective.

When someone faced the same matter from a different identity, they discovered how rash and impulsive their younger self had been. Looking at Dick standing in the doorway, Bruce felt as though he were looking at himself standing in the Psychological Counseling Room all those years ago.

He had always felt that the professor had some hidden secret, that he must have possessed some kind of superpower. He had desperately wanted to learn mind-reading from that Psychology Professor, hoping to skip all the theoretical study and directly master psychology’s ultimate secrets.

What had the professor done back then? Bruce found that his memories had become a little blurred. At the time, he had not understood why Schiller had refused to teach him. He had thought himself talented at psychology, the sort of student every teacher liked—the kind who understood everything at the slightest prompt.

But later, Bruce realized that psychology was not merely about the question of "what is the other person thinking right now?" Or rather, that question was actually one of the shallower, more superficial areas of psychology.

The essence of the discipline lay in its exploration of people’s inner worlds, the structure of personality, and the root causes of human behavior. And that essence could only be learned from dense, profound tomes, then mastered through years of application and analysis.

And clearly, Dick now wanted to skip school, training, practice, and all the rest, and directly learn Bruce’s superpowers. Standing in the role of an elder trying to dissuade him, Bruce keenly felt the helplessness Schiller had experienced back then.

Did Bruce have superpowers? From an ordinary person’s perspective, he certainly did. He was not merely incredibly rich; he had been born with extraordinary intelligence, learned everything quickly, and possessed exceptional athletic ability, coordination, and flexibility. In a sense, that already counted as a superpower.

But Bruce knew very well that his current abilities did not come from talent alone. The process of learning and training could not be skipped.

"Listen, Dick. Of course I can let you skip school, run around the streets every day, and be no different from the other children in Gotham. Or you can keep practicing the acrobatics you like and avoid those foreign languages, mathematics, and dance classes you dislike…"

"But precisely because I think you have talent, and shouldn’t stop at being an acrobat, you need a more systematic and extensive education to find the path you truly want to take…"

Perhaps because Bruce had once played Dick’s role in front of Schiller, he was more patient with Dick. He even, very unusually, explained why he had made these arrangements. In the past, Bruce would never have explained the reasons behind his actions to anyone.

"Really? You really think… my talent is pretty good?" Dick asked Bruce.

Bruce tried hard to recall the times he had spent with Schiller, then said to Dick, "Yes, it seems that way for now. But what kind of achievements you can make will still depend on your performance at school…"

"Of course, don’t forget that although your parents have returned to Bludhaven, I can still call and speak with them. If your grades are poor, I think I can invite them to Gotham…"

"I’m going to pack!" Dick put Aisha down, turned, and ran off. Bruce stood where he was and let out a reflective breath. He found that having a teacher call one’s parents was awful when it happened to oneself, but it was indeed useful—and satisfying—when used to threaten someone else.

That morning, Bruce, newly promoted to the role of elder for the first time, suddenly understood his college professor Schiller in a subtle way. Sure enough, one’s position determined one’s attitude.

After lunch, Dick took Aisha out to play on the manor lawn again. Dick swung lightly around the horizontal bar, stretched out his arms, and landed steadily on top of it. Then he grabbed the bar with both hands, flipped over, and landed on the ground in a graceful pose. Aisha kept laughing and clapping.

Dick walked beneath the bar, intending to swing around it a couple more times. Just then, he noticed that a small patch of grass not far from Aisha looked as though it had been flattened by the wind.

He was just about to go over and inspect it when a violent whirlwind rose around him. He shielded his face with his arms and stepped back a few paces. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that Aisha had also been blown onto the lawn.

He was about to go pick Aisha up when he saw a flash of yellow light descend from the sky. A man in a yellow bodysuit floated within the yellow glow, suspended in midair.

Dick’s eyes widened as he looked at him. "Who are you? Why are you here?"

Meanwhile, Sinestro, who had descended from the sky, was also extremely frustrated.

The lantern’s navigation only reached somewhere near Earth’s atmosphere. He still had to find out for himself which city Parallax had landed in. But the moment he arrived near Earth, a Green Lantern named Hal intercepted him.

The instant that Green Lantern saw Sinestro was yellow, he threw a punch. The two of them fought fiercely in Earth’s orbit.

What Sinestro had not expected was that Hal, a newly debuted and unknown Green Lantern, was absurdly powerful. Sinestro had nearly exhausted all the fear energy in his ring before he managed to pound Hal into the ocean.

Taking advantage of that opening, Sinestro hurriedly circled Earth. In the end, he discovered that the target resonating with fear energy was located in Gotham on the East Coast.

When he landed, he had expected to see the person possessed by Parallax turn the city into ruins. Yet unexpectedly, the city was remarkably quiet. The buildings were undamaged, the residents had not fled, and it was as if nothing had happened.

In Sinestro’s memories, that was practically impossible. Parallax was a creature of chaos and should have had no understanding of how an orderly world functioned, so it would naturally destroy without restraint. When Parallax had possessed Sinestro before, it had destroyed cities on several planets. Earth should not have escaped disaster either.

What puzzled him even more was that, after searching for a long time, he found Parallax’s aura coming from a human house. Yet after arriving here, he discovered that before him was not some enormous, grotesque monster with a mouth full of fangs, but a… human little girl?

Sinestro looked down at the yellow ring on his hand, then looked up at the little girl, then looked down at the yellow ring again. Only after repeating this several times did he confirm that she really was Parallax, the Entity of their Yellow Lantern Corps.

Sinestro landed on the ground and said to the little girl, "Why have you become like this? What are you doing here? Come back with me."

Aisha stared at him with her large eyes, clearly resisting. When Dick saw Sinestro walking toward Aisha, he ran over without a second thought, blocked Sinestro’s path, and said, "What are you doing? This is Wayne Manor!"

Sinestro had no desire to waste words on a human. With a wave of his hand, a beam of yellow light sent Dick flying. Aisha watched him fly away, her eyes widening, then turned back to Sinestro.

Aisha opened her mouth, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth. Only then did Sinestro confirm that Parallax had disguised herself as a human.

Sinestro had just reached out when, in the next instant, he saw the little girl take two steps back, draw in a deep breath, open her mouth wide, and throw back her head…

In an instant, an incomparably loud scream tore through the skies over Gotham—

"DAD!!!!!!!!!!!"

This was the one for the 17th.

Let me explain the chapter-title pattern: titles without upper, middle, or lower parts are generally setup chapters; titles with upper, middle, and lower parts are normal plot chapters; titles with numbers are generally major events.