Shane Freak
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Chapter 409: I Won't Say Who's Having a Bad Time 2
🕑 Added 2023-07-14 06:43:08 +0000 UTCIn DC World With Marvel Chat Group : Table of Content/Chapter List
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It's impossible to say that Batman isn't curious about magic. Being the kind of person who naturally wants to investigate and understand everything, he always comes up with multiple solutions to deal with possible situations.
Since he met Constantine, he has labeled this guy as an irredeemable scumbag and a source of information on magic.
To investigate someone, it's natural to first understand their daily routine and movements, and the best way to do that is to track them.
When Batman dealt with these kinds of situations before, he encountered cases where certain people would go to places that were difficult to describe, or in Gotham's case, industries that weren't surprising to anyone but were involved in some less than legal activities.
The only exception was his psychology professor, who lived a very routine life, making Batman even come up with a contingency plan in case the professor was a robot. However, everyone else had their own hobbies, including Bruce's friends.
Harvey Dent liked playing pool and would go to the game room with his colleagues after work. Gordon would go out for drinks with his colleagues and go hunting in his spare time. Catwoman, despite being a thief, would also go to dances or amusement parks when not stealing. Since all the places they went to were industries of the underworld, there were some shady deals going on.
When investigating these people, Batman would usually choose to knock them out if they were involved in these trades. If it was too severe, he would talk to the owner of the industry, but these places only played a small role in their lives.
However, Constantine was different. These industries played a major role in his life.
Bars, dance halls, game rooms, casinos, pharmacies, red-light districts - Constantine would shuttle through these places every day without taking a break.
During the time Batman was tracking him, stopping him from participating in these evil deals in these places took much more effort than tracking him.
Moreover, these places often had some unpleasant smells, such as the smell of alcohol in bars, the smell of smoke in casinos, and the strong odor of opium in the gathering places of addicts. Even though Batman prepared some odor-eliminating agents, Aisha's nose still couldn't be fooled.
Aisha wasn't an ordinary person. Her senses were exceptionally sensitive. Not only did she have night vision, but her sense of smell was also far beyond that of an average person.
One night, Batman followed Constantine to an underground den where drug addicts gathered. Since it was underground, he couldn't observe the situation from other buildings and had to blend in.
There, he found out Constantine's usual dosage and discovered that he was indeed a complete and utter drug addict. However, he also ended up with some of that smell on him. At that time, Batman didn't realize what would happen if he brought that smell back home.
That day, as usual, he came and went through the courtyard like the wind, came to the balcony with a grappling hook, and was just about to change his clothes when he heard some movement outside the door...
Batman immediately assumed a defensive posture as the door suddenly flew open with a loud bang just as he was about to move towards it. Aisha appeared outside the door, sniffing hard, before bursting into tears.
Coincidentally, Catwoman, Selina Kyle, was also staying at Wayne Manor that night and her bedroom was next to Batman's. Aisha had run out of her room and Catwoman rushed out upon hearing her cries.
At first, Catwoman didn't know why Aisha was crying, but when she approached Batman, she scowled fiercely, wrinkled her nose in disgust, took a couple of steps back and said, "Did you go to the most infamous drug dens in the North District? Do you know how bad you smell now?"
"My God! The stench is disgusting!" Catwoman covered her nose, holding onto Aisha as they walked to the hallway. She continued, "I know it's hard to avoid dealing with this kind of smell in Gotham, but do you ever think about your two children at home?"
Catwoman's tone was very dissatisfied. Although she was a thief, she couldn't stand drug addicts who caused trouble while high, and she was also a bit of a germaphobe who abhorred the smell of drugs.
Furthermore, just three or four hours earlier, Catwoman had struggled to put Aisha to sleep, but now she was awakened and crying so loudly.
It's like a mother who has been taking care of her child all day, finally putting the troublesome child to sleep with great effort, only to have her soundly sleeping child suddenly woken up by the father who reeks of alcohol, causing the child to cry loudly. As a result, the father is sure to get into trouble.
In addition, the noise also woke up Dick, who attended a boarding school quite far from Wayne Manor and had to wake up early the next day to get to school on time. Based on the situation, he was definitely going to oversleep.
After waking up everyone in Wayne Manor, Batman had to go to the living room to face their criticism. While he could explain to Selina that he went to those places for investigation purposes, he had no excuse for Alfred.
In Alfred's eyes, even if the sky fell, one could not go to such a place.
As expected, Batman was scolded. Although Alfred did not use the tone of an elder to reprimand him, he gently advised him. Nevertheless, Batman knew he had to listen and do as he was told.
Since then, it is unclear what agreement Alfred and Aisha reached, but Aisha became a human detector. Whenever she noticed that Batman was not coming home at night and only returned to the mansion in the middle of the night, she would immediately check to see if he had any strange odors and guess where he had been.
If she detected any bad smells, Aisha would immediately cry out and wake everyone up, leading to another midnight session of criticism for Batman.
After developing a fear of Aisha, Batman felt uneasy even when he saw a little girl around Aisha's age on the street, and he wanted to avoid them.
At some point, Batman found it difficult to refuse the people at Wayne Manor with the same coldness he had before. He could have continued his solitary actions without caring about anyone's objections, but whenever he saw the dim light in his lair, he felt that his detachment and stubbornness were gradually being washed away.
Therefore, he participated in childish activities like an adult participating in a children's play, pretending to be childish in a somewhat awkward way. Perhaps he was the only child in this play.
Green Lantern Hal, who came to Gotham due to the appearance of the yellow power ring, also noticed Aisha's special situation. He had participated in the dream battle and knew how Aisha was born. Now he faced two questions.
Firstly, whether Aisha, who was created by the fear entity Parallax, would pose a threat to space security like other yellow lanterns. The second was who released Sinestro, the leader of the Yellow Lantern Corps.
When Hal reported the incident to the Green Lantern Corps, they gave him two investigation tasks. However, Hal was somewhat disdainful of the first question. Perhaps because the little girl transformed by the fear entity looked cute and harmless, and she seemed more interested in grinding her teeth than threatening space security, Hal didn't think she posed a threat.
But Hal was still a rookie Green Lantern who followed orders from the Corps, so he had to secretly keep an eye on Aisha. Fortunately, the Green Lantern ring had many tracking functions, such as teleportation and invisibility, which allowed him to track the little girl without being caught.
While investigating the second question, Hal eventually traced it to Constantine. Since Constantine was the only strange outsider who had come to Gotham recently, Hal began to track him while following Aisha.
However, Batman was also following Constantine, so it was difficult to determine whether Hal's actions were to track Constantine or Batman.
At first, Hal was able to move around Gotham freely without anyone noticing him, since he was a new face in the city and no one knew the specific functions of the Green Lantern ring. Batman, who was immersed in investigating magic, didn't pay much attention to him either. Hal's priority was lower than Constantine, who was a stranger with unknown intentions but had knowledge of magic.
Hal was pleased with his progress in the investigation. He suddenly realized that the horrific rumors about Gotham he had seen on TV and in newspapers were not entirely true. Although there were many gangs and bad guys, they were mostly ordinary people without superpowers, and as a Green Lantern with various abilities, he encountered no obstacles.
He could move around freely in the most chaotic areas, such as the east docks, the northern areas with many gang family estates, the southern area of the new wealthy district, and the western old town, without being targeted by anyone.
One day, the Green Lantern, surrounded by green light, arrived at the center of the central roundabout, on top of the tall red and green traffic light.
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Next Chapter>>Chapter 410: I Won't Say Who's Having Bad Luck (Part 3)
