I have to admit, Cindy’s cooking is awful. It looks exactly like she said—just a bunch of vegetables thrown into a pot, with no real rhyme or reason.

  Su Ming swore, this was the worst stew he'd ever had, and to make it worse, it was a weird, Western-style sweet soup.

  The turkey left by Briss, though? That had to be made by the old butler. There was a faint smell of fridge, but it was still edible.

  The three of them ate in silence, not saying much.

  Vickie, in the end, didn’t find any decent protective gear, but she did manage to scrounge up a few bat-themed masks.

  Su Ming had no idea what Briss had pnned with them, but after inspecting them, he found they had some anti-toxic properties, so he made sure everyone wore one.

  There wasn’t much in the Batcave worth mentioning weapon-wise. Su Ming didn’t care for throwing knives and added a few smoke grenades to the pile, calling that preparation complete.

  The group piled into the car, leaving behind the wreckage of the cave without bothering to clean up or hide anything.

  Su Ming blindfolded them again and let Cindy drive them out of the cave.

  Outside the cave, the wind had calmed a little, but the rain had grown even heavier, a curtain of water now cloaking the car, adding an even more intense feeling to the atmosphere.

  Su Ming leaned against the passenger seat, resting his head on his arms, quietly thinking to himself.

  If Falcone and Ra’s al Ghul were bad, then the Laughing Bat and Barbatos—still lurking in the shadows—were far more unpredictable. Su Ming knew their pns, but that was based on their comic book versions. Reality? Anything could happen.

  Like his own arrival. His very presence had already disrupted the original story, triggering a butterfly effect that he couldn’t even begin to calcute.

  His old comic memories weren’t much help anymore. Sure, he could figure out the enemy’s strength and tactics, but in a real fight? That knowledge only went so far.

  The Laughing Bat, in a straight-up fight, was beatable, especially with Cindy at his side. But Barbatos? That was a whole different story.

  He was known as the Dragon of the Dark Multiverse, the God of Bats. That’s a level of power that wasn’t something two people could just handle.

  In the comics, defeating Barbatos required something very special... metal.

  The metal was the key to the gateway between light and darkness, the door between two multiverses—and Barbatos pnned to use it to reach the main world.

  Over there, certain metals were being slowly injected into Batman’s body.

  First was the amber-gold from the Court of Owls. It looked like clear spring water, and Batman had unknowingly drunk it during his battle with them.

  Then there was the Dionysian factor, found in the Joker’s blood. During their constant battle, some of it had entered Batman’s bloodstream.

  Next was N-metal. Batman had been exposed to its glow while helping Hawkman and Hawkwoman, and its energy seeped into him.

  And then there was Prometheum, the metal that made up Deathstroke’s armor. Batman had used some to create his “final machine,” a high-tech auto-surgical table that could heal wounds quickly—he’d used it a few times.

  The only metal left was Bat-metal, hidden in the ancient Bat Tribe tomb in Earth-0’s Egypt.

  Once all these metals came together, Batman of the main world would become the gateway to the Dark Multiverse. He would swap pces with another Bruce, the Laughing Bat of Earth-22.

  Laughing Bat would summon Barbatos to Earth-0, preparing dark rituals that would eventually give Barbatos the power to drag every universe into darkness, making it his eternal domain.

  N-metal was the only thing that could convert dark energy into something tangible, something that could hurt Barbatos and his dark creations.

  But to truly defeat Barbatos, Su Ming needed the tenth cosmic metal—X-metal. That one was hidden in the World Forge, a pce Su Ming only knew was somewhere in the Dark Multiverse.

  Where exactly? No idea. How to get there? No clue.

  In other words, even saving Earth-11 would only buy him a little more time. Once the Light Multiverse fell to the Dark, the entire DC world would be thrown out of bance, and everyone would die.

  Yes, Barbatos wasn’t even pnning on destroying the multiverse. He just wanted to drag it into the darkness, leaving only him as the ruler, and snuffing out all light forever.

  The issue was that he didn’t understand the bance of the universe, how 52 Light Universes and 52 Dark Universes coexisted. They were like eggs on either side of a scale—both could exist together.

  If you took a few from the other side, the bance would shift, and terrible consequences would follow—like the Fshpoint Paradox or Infinite Crisis.

  If Barbatos succeeded in his pn, the scale would tip, and everything would be lost.

  If Su Ming wanted to keep living, he had to go to the Light Multiverse and fix things.

  Because the story had changed. His arrival had already impacted Earth-11’s fate, and now everything was different from the comics. If the Justice League acted like they did in the original story, the outcome would be anyone’s guess.

  He wasn’t about to let his fate fall into someone else’s hands.

  But Deathstroke was a mercenary, not a magician. How could he break through the barrier between dimensions?

  Su Ming didn’t have an answer yet. For now, he could only take things one step at a time.

  Cindy didn’t know what Su Ming was thinking, but she could tell he had grown silent.

  The water on the road was getting deep now, and the car seemed to be sailing through it, like a boat. The waves spshed on either side, sending ripples into the night.

  Inside the car, apart from the five of them, was the corpse of a Shadow Dancer, wrapped in bck trash bags and tossed in the corner—maybe a bargaining chip for dealing with the Shadow Dancer Alliance.

  Everyone was silent, an eerie tension hanging in the air, though no two people looked quite the same.

  Barbara was lost in thought, her face shifting from a flush to a pale pallor, gncing at Su Ming’s back from time to time.

  Vickie, on the other hand, was more excited. She was touching up her makeup, adjusting her gas mask to see how it looked. She was convinced she was about to witness history tonight.

  As for Peter... well, he seemed to have passed out.

  The storm had knocked out Gotham’s power, leaving half the city in darkness, except for a few districts in the center.

  But the Bat-Signal on top of the police station? It was always on.