"3… 2… 1…"
On a rooftop at the edge of the firefight, Joker spread his arms wide, closed his eyes, and counted down with reverent anticipation.
When the countdown ended, he raised his right hand to his ear, waiting for that sweet, familiar boom—
…nothing.
"...Huh? Why no sound?"
He frowned and leaned over the ledge.
The bomb he'd thrown was gone.
As he puzzled it out, he sensed movement behind him. He turned—
and saw a blue, raptor-shaped freak standing there on two wheel-like feet, casually holding Joker's bomb like a toy.
"Looking for this?"
Ben weighed the device in his hand, smiling calmly.
From Arkham to the Theater District had taken him less than half a second. The moment he arrived, he'd seen something fall from above. Up close, it was obvious: a bomb.
He'd snuffed the fuse—then traced the thrower straight back to Joker.
Joker's eyes narrowed.
"And what are you supposed to be?"
New monsters in Gotham didn't surprise him. Gotham practically grew them in the gutters.
But even by Gotham standards…
this one was weird.
Joker's face twisted into irritation. Someone interrupting his fun was bad enough—someone interrupting his fun who wasn't Batman was intolerable.
His hand slid into his pocket.
His fingers found a button.
And he pressed it.
Joker's bombs never had just one trigger.
If the fuse method was dead, fine—he'd use the other.
If this idiot wanted to hold Joker's bomb…
then he could die with it.
"Whew—dangerous!"
Ben's expression didn't change, but his body moved before the thought even finished.
In a blink, the bomb vanished from his hand—
and reappeared far out over the ocean.
A second later, a bloom of fire lit the sea surface.
Ben returned to the rooftop and patted his chest like someone who'd just dodged a car.
"Good thing I'm fast enough now."
He'd barely finished speaking when a surge of red-black electricity snapped across the rooftop.
A voice hit his ear from nowhere and everywhere at once:
"Is that so? You miserable thief—give my power back!"
Ben's senses slammed into overdrive.
He entered full speedster perception—time dilating, air freezing, the world turning syrup-slow.
Reverse-Flash was already charging him, right hand vibrating into a high-frequency blade aimed straight for Ben's chest—right for the Omnitrix emblem crackling with stolen lightning.
Ben slipped away by inches, grinning.
"It connected to me on its own! I didn't choose to take anything!"
That was the infuriating part: even Ben didn't fully understand what the Omnitrix was doing.
Since it latched onto the Negative Speed Force, "XLR8" now had output approaching a true speedster like Reverse-Flash or Flash—
but it also meant the Omnitrix was malfunctioning, refusing to let him revert.
Reverse-Flash was still faster in technique and control, and even with everything Ben had, all he could do was barely keep dodging.
The rooftop turned into a streaked blur.
Then the street.
Then the battlefield.
A speedster chase exploded across the front line—two lightning trails weaving through gunfire and panicked mobs, turning the warzone into a racetrack.
"Seriously? You're that obsessed?!"
Ben couldn't wrap his head around it. Reverse-Flash had bigger plans, bigger chaos—
and yet the moment he spotted Ben, he dropped everything and tunneled into singular fixation.
"Give my power back!"
Reverse-Flash's voice was losing that smug, theatrical calm. He was getting sharper. More frantic.
And Ben noticed something else.
Reverse-Flash… was slowing.
Just a little.
But it was real.
"If he wasn't so good at controlling it," Ben thought, "I could almost catch him."
"What's wrong with him…?"
Ben didn't have Flash beside him to diagnose it.
But Reverse-Flash knew exactly what was happening.
Every step he ran, he could feel the Negative Speed Force bleeding out of him—draining, siphoning, leaking into that chest emblem.
Worse—
the "signature" of the energy was shifting.
Changing.
Becoming something else.
If he didn't get it back now—
he might lose it permanently.
Back on the rooftop, Joker watched the two streaks of lightning vanish into the night.
He scratched his head, genuinely confused.
He didn't understand speedsters. Didn't care to.
All that mattered was this:
the annoyances were gone again.
He could get back to having fun.
"Where are you, knockoff…? Let me see who you are—why you've got the nerve to pretend to be my Batman."
And then—
a heavy engine roar cut through the gunfire.
A black armored vehicle punched into the gang war like a battering ram, rolling straight into the kill-zone.
Inside the vehicle, Thomas Wayne wore a hard, uncompromising expression.
Tonight, he was ending this war.
This armored "Batmobile" was something he'd been building since day one in this world—an ugly, brutal conversion.
And the guns?
The machine-gun belts and grenades?
Those were freshly loaded—after he'd raided Penguin's weapons stash.
With hardened plating and heavy firepower, the vehicle moved like a predator.
It didn't dodge the battlefield.
It devoured it.
Joker stared, blinking.
"…Is that the knockoff's Batmobile?"
His entire life's work had been trying to drag Batman downward—prove the moral line was a lie, prove Batman was only one bad day away from becoming the same kind of monster.
And now this "Batman"—
didn't even pretend to have a line.
He didn't fight.
He mowed.
Gunfire chewed through bodies. Smoke rolled. The chaos collapsed into silence.
When the haze thinned, no gangster was standing.
Joker's mouth slowly curled upward.
Not in disgust.
Not in fear.
In delighted fascination.
"That's not one of those idiots who puts on a bat suit and waves a pistol around."
He leaned forward, eyes shining.
"That's a man in a bat suit who's already snapped."
He chuckled—soft at first, then brighter.
"If Batman lost his bottom line…"
Joker's grin widened like a wound.
"…would he look like that?"
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( Ending )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter108)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 99
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 95
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 99
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 92
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 47
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 44
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 43
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