"No, you are absolutely not," Harleen said immediately.
Harleen walked straight up to Daniel's desk afterward and slapped a folded newspaper advertisement down directly in front of his face.
"What the hell is this supposed to be?"
Daniel calmly picked up the paper and looked at the advertisement like he was admiring professional artwork.
Miracle Doctor Daniel Haken
Not a fraud.
Come and get your problems solved with 100% guaranteed results.
No charges required.
Daniel nodded proudly afterward.
"My advertisement," he explained. "I was bored and decided to do some public service. Modern society is emotionally cursed, so naturally I became a doctor to heal the world."
Harleen stared at him with complete disbelief.
The problem was she had already spent enough time around Daniel to know one important thing.
This man never did anything purely out of kindness.
If Daniel was opening a medical office, then somewhere inside his brain there was definitely an entertainment factor involved.
"You sound exactly like the kind of person who loses their license before even getting one," Harleen muttered while rubbing her forehead.
Across from them, Catwoman quietly watched the interaction with growing suspicion.
"Hmm," Selina said thoughtfully while leaning back in her chair. "You two seem strangely close."
Daniel answered first.
"Sort of."
Harleen immediately looked offended. "What do you mean sort of?"
"We're somewhere between emotional support and psychological damage."
"That is disturbingly accurate."
Selina slowly looked between both of them afterward.
Honestly, she didn't understand it.
Daniel was arrogant, dangerous, weirdly manipulative, and treated common sense like a personal enemy. There were already multiple women inside his mansion apparently willing to tolerate him somehow.
And now there was this psychiatrist too.
Weren't doctors supposed to make rational decisions?
"You know this guy is completely insane, right?" Selina asked Harleen directly. "Like genuinely strange."
Harleen stayed quiet for a second before nodding calmly.
"Umm… yeah," she admitted. "I know."
Selina stared at her afterward.
Then slowly leaned back in the chair with the expression of someone realizing another person was already beyond saving.
Yep. Lost cause, she thought silently.
Before anyone could continue the conversation, the television mounted on the office wall suddenly shifted to an emergency news broadcast.
The reporter's panicked voice immediately filled the room.
"—currently unfolding in downtown Metropolis where an unidentified mechanized humanoid has appeared near the financial district. Authorities are requesting immediate evacuation of nearby civilians—"
The screen showed live footage of a massive humanoid machine tearing through the streets while police vehicles scattered around it helplessly.
The thing stood nearly twenty meters tall, covered in black armored plating with glowing blue energy running through parts of its body. Every step cracked the roads beneath it while military-grade weapons unfolded from its arms mechanically.
Police gunfire bounced harmlessly off the armor.
One helicopter tried approaching before the machine fired a beam through it, forcing the pilot to crash-land onto a nearby rooftop.
Harleen's expression immediately changed. "That thing looks military."
Selina narrowed her eyes while studying the design more carefully. "No," she said slowly. "That looks expensive."
Daniel sighed the moment he saw the machine properly.
"Hmm," he muttered while rubbing his forehead. "Does that bald guy seriously not have anything better to do?"
Neither woman understood the comment immediately.
The truth was simple though.
In Metropolis, whenever absurdly advanced technology suddenly appeared and started destroying parts of the city, there was an extremely high probability it somehow traced back to Lex Luthor eventually.
***
Across downtown Metropolis, smoke and dust covered entire streets while the giant mechanized robot continued tearing through the city. Cars burned across collapsed roads and emergency sirens echoed everywhere as civilians desperately tried escaping the destruction.
The machine grabbed an entire city bus with one arm and lifted it overhead before preparing to throw it directly into a nearby office building.
Then a blue blur crashed through the sky.
Superman appeared instantly and caught the bus midair before it could hit the building. The force still pushed him backward several meters through the street, boots carving cracks into the asphalt beneath him.
Clark carefully lowered the bus back onto the road while terrified civilians inside stared at him in shock and relief.
"Get everyone away from this area!" Superman shouted toward the police nearby before turning toward the robot again.
The machine immediately fired missiles toward him.
Clark accelerated forward instead of dodging, tearing through the explosions before flying directly into the robot's face with enough force to send the entire twenty-meter machine crashing backward.
Concrete exploded across the street while alarms and sparks burst from the damaged armor.
Superman landed nearby preparing to destroy the machine completely—
Then he heard it.
A rapid beeping sound coming from inside the robot's chest cavity.
Clark's expression changed immediately.
He ripped open the damaged armor plating and saw a large bomb hidden inside the machine with a countdown timer rapidly decreasing.
00:58
Superman didn't hesitate.
He tore the explosive core free from the robot and shot upward into the sky at incredible speed, creating a sonic boom over Metropolis as he carried the bomb higher and higher above the clouds.
Below, civilians and police officers watched the blue streak disappear into the atmosphere while the countdown continued ticking toward zero.
*****
A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of the Webnovel release schedule, you can join my Patreon!
The Patreon version is 30 chapters ahead.
👉 patreon.com/Universal_Peace