[Related information about this business trip has been automatically released]
The notification appeared in Jude's vision, polite and matter-of-fact, like a corporate HR department informing an employee of their next assignment.
And then—just like the Christmas side quest months ago—a scene burst into his mind without warning.
Not his memory.
Someone else's.
"Hahahaha! Hehehehe—!"
Sharp laughter echoed. High-pitched. Manic. The kind of sound that made your teeth ache and your spine crawl.
Whose laughter was that?
It sounded familiar. Yet strange.
The man struggled to open his eyes. His head was dizzy, vision blurry, thoughts sluggish and thick like syrup. Like someone had punched him directly in the skull with a hammer.
It must have been a very hard punch, he thought distantly. His head wouldn't hurt this much otherwise.
Through dark red goggles—cracked now, one lens spiderwebbed with fractures—he saw himself wearing a costume. Dark green tights. A light green diamond-shaped logo on the chest.
Like a small kite.
Oh.
I remember now.
That laughter belonged to the Joker.
So maybe—maybe he was a superhero? Maybe he had incredible strength, could knock out a bunch of bad guys with one punch? Or super speed? Could he save everyone in the instant before an explosion?
Was he invulnerable? Super rich?
No.
None of them were right.
His head gradually cleared, fog lifting to reveal the harsh truth underneath.
He looked down at the crudely made uniform covering his body. The stitches at the joints were broken—torn by impact, by violence, by the sheer inadequacy of homemade costume design. His helmet was beaten loose, wobbling on his head, about to fall apart completely.
He wasn't a superhero.
He didn't have super powers.
He was just a man in a stupid costume who'd gotten his ass kicked.
Finally—painfully—he raised his head and saw everything in front of him.
It was noon. High sun. The kind of bright daylight that made tragedy look even worse by refusing to provide shadows to hide in.
Cold wind blew in through the shattered floor-to-ceiling windows of the high-rise office. Somewhere near the top of a Gotham skyscraper—fifty, sixty stories up, high enough that the city below looked like a miniature model.
Glass littered the floor. Thousands of pieces. Catching the light. Reflecting it back like scattered diamonds.
An ordinary man lay in a pool of blood.
Jeans. White shirt. No costume. No mask. Just a civilian caught in crossfire between forces he couldn't understand or control.
His groans and wails were completely drowned out by the wild laughter. The sounds of his pain made small and powerless by the sheer volume of madness surrounding him.
Not far from where he lay: his severed arm. Still bleeding. The hand clenched in a fist like it was trying to hold onto something even after separation.
The Joker stood with arms spread wide, laughing into the sunlight and the strong wind that whipped through the broken windows. His laughter was happy. Joyful. Genuine in a way that made it even more horrifying.
There was a knife stuck through his raised left hand. Completely impaled. Blood running down his wrist.
He didn't seem to notice. Or care.
Next to the Joker, the Riddler stood in his dark green suit. Head lowered slightly. Distraught. Silent. The posture of absolute defeat.
Half an hour ago, he'd almost become the king of criminals in Gotham City.
Now?
Now he was just another loser.
And at the farthest point in the room—silhouetted against the sun streaming through shattered windows—a black figure knelt on the ground.
Batman.
He'd stumbled to his knees. Body almost completely drained of strength. His large black cape dragged on the floor like broken bat wings. There were no visible external injuries—his muscles were still strong, his suit intact—but his eyes.
His eyes.
They'd lost their spirit. Their fire. That terrible determination that made him Batman instead of just a man in a costume.
He'd lost his will to fight.
Batman had lost his will to fight.
Looking at the tableau before him—at the Joker's triumph, the Riddler's defeat, Batman's broken spirit—the man in the kite costume finally remembered everything.
Who he was.
What he'd tried to do.
Why he was here.
I am Charles "Chuck" Brown.
An unemployed aerodynamicist. A failed husband. An incompetent father.
An ordinary person without super powers.
A third-rate villain.
A joke.
I couldn't keep my job. Couldn't keep my wife. Couldn't save my son.
I didn't have a wonderful life. Couldn't even be a good villain when I tried. I gave everything to come here for revenge—staked all my remaining dignity, all my desperate fury, all my pathetic hope on one final attempt to matter—
—and then I was knocked down like a joke.
I'm the Kite Man.
A funny joke.
The vision ended.
Jude blinked, back in his own body, his own mind, his own significantly less tragic present.
The system notification continued scrolling.
[BUSINESS TRIP MISSION RELEASED]
[SISYPHUS WHO CANNOT CRY]
Mission Introduction:
Charles "Chuck" Brown once told his son an old story.
A long time ago, there was a guy who was pushing a huge rock to the top of the mountain. But he was cursed, so every time he pushed the rock to the top of the mountain, the rock would roll down again—that was the curse, and he could never push the rock to the top of the mountain.
But he was determined to get the stone up, so he ran back to the bottom of the mountain and tried again. He pushed the stone to the top of the mountain and watched it roll down, over and over again, forever.
"It's a joke, isn't it? It's funny—he gets to the top of the mountain, he's so happy, and then oops! The rocks fall back down! Hahaha, hahaha."
"And that's me, little Charles. That's all of us, pushing a rock like this. Try as we might, we'll see it roll. And then we'll hear the gods and heroes and demigods and fate laughing at us, at our shallowness, at our mediocrity, at our mortal form, at our destiny."
"We can only stand on the mountaintop and listen to them laugh, but the key is, you have to laugh too—you have to, you have to."
"Because I am a joke, I am ridiculous, and there is nothing I can do but laugh with them—but at least this time, I am still laughing."
Note: If someone is always laughing, then he has never been happy.
Note 2: If someone is laughing while crying, he must be a tenacious and brave person.
Status: Unfinished
Rewards:
Advanced Mechanical Mastery
Master Aerodynamics Mastery
Master Kite Skill Mastery
Special Mission Reward: Kite Man's Friendship
Jude sat in his apartment for a long moment, staring at the glowing text.
It took quite some time to digest this huge amount of information. To process what he'd just seen. What he'd just experienced through someone else's memories.
He roughly understood the destination of this business trip now: Gotham City in another parallel universe. A different version of the same nightmare, with different players acting out the same tragedies.
The goal was relatively simple on the surface: help a third-tier villain he'd never heard of. Kite Man. Charles "Chuck" Brown. An unemployed aerodynamicist who'd lost everything and tried to become a supervillain out of sheer desperate fury, only to fail at that too.
Despite never having heard of him before, Jude was able to learn quite a bit about this unknown little person from the information provided by the system.
And what he learned made his chest feel tight.
Because he understood.
Not the specifics. Not the exact circumstances.
But the feeling of being powerless. Of trying your hardest and watching it mean nothing. Of standing in rooms with actual heroes and gods and monsters while you're just... a guy. An ordinary person who thought maybe, if you pushed hard enough, you could matter.
And then learning you couldn't.
A notification appeared.
[Do you reject this business trip? The system will automatically search for the next one—]
"Just take this one," Jude said quietly.
He sighed. Ran a hand through his hair. Looked out his window at Gotham—this version of Gotham, his Gotham—and thought about kites and rocks and men who laughed while crying.
"A loser helping a loser," he muttered. "That's quite a good match."
Then, because humor was still a coping mechanism even when it hurt: "But it seems like Batman in this universe is also on the decline. I wonder if he's going to turn up the intensity on this business trip?"
The system didn't respond to his sarcasm. It never did.
[The business trip has been confirmed. You will start your trip in 48 hours. Please prepare during this time.]
Forty-eight hours. Two days to get ready. To prepare for jumping dimensions to help a man who'd turned his grief into a kite-themed costume and still lost.
"But since we have all this time," Jude said aloud, standing up with new purpose, "it would be a shame to waste it. How about we go get someone else?"
After all, the "Gather and Start a Group" skill wasn't going to use itself.
"Travel far? No, Jude. I don't have time right now."
Harvey Dent sat in his office looking like death warmed over. Exhaustion carved into every line of his face. Dark circles under his eyes suggesting he hadn't slept properly in days.
On his desk: coffee (gone cold), strong tea (half-finished), and one of Jude's floral tea blends (untouched, probably because Harvey had forgotten it was there).
The desk itself was buried under case files and litigation documents. Stacks of them. Mountains. An avalanche of legal paperwork that threatened to consume the entire office.
Actually, scratch that—the office was almost filled with these things. There was barely space to walk. Files stacked on chairs. Documents piled on the floor. Legal briefs covering every available surface.
"As you can see," Harvey gestured vaguely at the chaos, "the lawsuits that have been piling up lately are almost filling up the District Attorney's office. I can't get away at this time. Let alone travel far—I can't even leave this building right now."
He picked up a file. Flipped it open. Stared at it with the hollow-eyed focus of a man who'd been reading legal documents for twelve hours straight.
"Falcone's cooperating. Maroni's fighting. Both families are hemorrhaging members into the legal system. Every arrest generates paperwork. Every deal requires documentation. Every testimony needs preparation."
Harvey rubbed his eyes. "Gordon's doing his part. Batman's handling the street level. I'm drowning in the aftermath."
Jude reached out and patted his shoulder sympathetically. Understanding without needing more explanation.
It seemed Harvey couldn't be taken away from his war against Gotham's crime families. Too essential. Too buried. Too critical to the machinery currently dismantling the mafia's grip on the city.
So he could only go and ask the remaining three people.