American comic book: My Father is Superman, am I just an NPC?

Chapter 254 Who exactly changed time?
The view of Gotham City was clearly transmitted to the Justice League Hall via surveillance screens.

It is like an absurd yet tragic uprising depicted in the utopian world.

“These guys…” Barry Allen, the Flash, wearing a tan kangaroo suit, looked at the villains in the scene who were missing limbs or even grafted with animal parts. These villains were not carrying out traditional looting and arson, but were conducting a protest full of grief and indignation.

They smashed shop windows, knocked down streetlights, and rammed police cars with their strong bodies. But strangely, instead of robbing people, they distributed food and medicine from some shops to more panicked ordinary citizens. Perhaps, when worse people appear, the bad guys seem like good guys in comparison.

Of course, there was a reason for distributing these things. The villains forcibly dragged those who had received food and medicine into their own parade.

More and more people are vehemently denouncing Batman's "tyranny."

"I support the Joker taking over! At least he's got a price tag!"

"Down with the tyranny of Batman! We don't need Batman!"

"We must live, even if we live a distorted life!"

……

The chants, the clanging of metal prosthetics striking the ground, and the strange hissing of oddly shaped animal organs created a chaotic symphony unlike anything Gotham had ever seen.

Creepy.

What alarmed Barry even more was that he saw several people dressed in cheap, homemade uniforms, who seemed to be newcomers to Gotham, or rather, unknown street heroes, trying to stop them.

There was a guy who could spray sticky foam, a big guy who seemed to be able to temporarily harden his skin, and a girl with a sonic horn.

However, their resistance appeared pale and powerless in the face of those seemingly broken and battered villains.

Although these villains are physically disabled, their combat experience, ruthlessness, and utilization of their physical modifications far surpass those of these novices and most villains.

Gotham doesn't tolerate idlers.

Sticky foam is cut open by crab claws for bisexuals.

The man with hardened skin was cracked by the villain's mechanical prosthetic arm.

The Soundwave Girl's attack was dodged in advance by Catwoman who had infiltrated the group... In just a few exchanges, these young heroes were knocked to the ground and symbolically "tied up" by the villains with bandages and IV stands, then left on the roadside, as if to say, "We only target Batman, we don't kill nobody."

of course.

Although these people didn't cause too much destruction or kill anyone, they were indeed burning things, and the whole of Gotham looked like it was about to be set on fire.

"Where's Robin?! Where's Batgirl?! Where's Nightwing?!"

Barry the Flash paced anxiously in front of the control panel, his mangy, yellowish-brown kangaroo-like figure appearing particularly agitated. "Shouldn't they step up at a time like this?!"

At this moment, the steel skeleton, which was slumped in the corner and whose Tianqixing technology components kept peeling off, revealing more of Pinduoduo's flesh and blood, and whose internal organs even seemed to be the same as Pinduoduo's, weakly raised its hand.

His electronic eyes flickered: "Barry, use your brain... what if, what if Batman died... or disappeared completely at some earlier point in time?"

"Then, those Robins he adopted and trained... perhaps... no longer exist in this timeline. Their existence is closely dependent on Bruce Wayne."

A very reasonable analysis.

However, this speculation plunged Barry into despair.

Meanwhile, Wonder Woman Diana finally couldn't resist her inexplicably strong appetite. She somehow found a large tub of family-sized ice cream and a whole roasted turkey, and was devouring them without any regard for her image. As she chewed, her cheeks puffed out, she even agreed with Cyborg's point of view, expressing her opinion in a garbled manner.

“Cyborg…you’re right. Bruce is the core…if the core is gone, the branches and leaves will naturally wither.” After she finished speaking, she turned to look at Aquaman Arthur, seemingly seeking his approval.

The new version of the chubby female warrior seems to lack a sense of identity.

However, Aquaman Arthur completely ignored this.

He was rapidly swiping across a holographic shopping platform with his hand covered in iridescent scales. The screen was filled with pictures of all kinds of octopuses—live, dead, big, small, ordinary, and glowing from the deep sea. They were all octopuses, and each one looked perfectly still.

"Hmm... the suckers on this tentacle aren't strong enough... this color isn't vibrant enough, it doesn't match my scales... Oh? This fluorescent blue is nice, but it's a bit small..." Aquaman seemed to have a special fondness for these octopuses, muttering to himself as he focused intently, as if he were choosing a concubine.

"Sigh~"

The person who gasped in shock was Hal Jordan, who had gone from Green Lantern to Green Hat Man. He leaned over to look at Aquaman's screen and was immediately horrified.

Green Lantern was trembling. He raised his hand, pointed at one of the pictures, and said in horror, "Arthur! You...you didn't even choose a live octopus! You chose a frozen one?!"

"You've not only started liking the strange, you've also... you've even started refining corpses???" He touched the green hat on his head in horror, worried that something even more horrifying might happen to him.

"Guys! Get your act together!" Barry looked at his teammates in their weird state and let out a helpless wail, feeling that the league was doomed.

Cyborg struggled to adjust his system, uttering a broken, synthesized voice: "Barry... the data shows... the influence from past time points... is accelerating its impact on our 'present'. Not just our bodies... our personalities, memories, behavioral patterns... are all being irreversibly rewritten."

"You must... run! Make the effects of the timeline shifts... unable to keep up with your speed! Perhaps... this is the only way... to delay the impact on you..."

Speedsters do indeed possess this characteristic.

Steelbone is right.

however.

Barry glanced hesitantly at the still chaotic Gotham on the screen: "Then... what about Gotham?"

Wonder Woman, who was gnawing on a turkey leg, looked up, her face smeared with oil, her eyes somewhat blank: "Gotham? Isn't Batman ruling over there?"

He will handle it.

Her memory was clearly beginning to become confused and fragmented.

"Batman's long gone!!" Barry was nearly going crazy. He clutched his head, watching his completely unreliable teammates and the ever-worsening situation on the screen, torn between his inner turmoil. Finally, he stomped his foot, his powerful frog leg creating a shallow crater in the floor, and vanished from the spot.

"Damn it! We can't just watch Gotham really go down!"

"Furthermore, Batman has been missing for who knows how long, yet those people are still protesting and demonstrating. This is definitely a contradiction caused by the timeline being messed up!"

"If this continues, the entire timeline could easily collapse!"

next moment.

A bolt of yellowish-brown lightning, carrying a blue kangaroo phantom, burst out of the Justice League Hall and sped toward the city that was sliding deeper into madness.

Using his Speed ​​Force, Barry arrived in Gotham almost instantly. He didn't try to persuade or negotiate—judging from the villains' demeanor, he knew words were clearly ineffective. And so...

The Flash showed his ruthless and taciturn side, focusing mainly on efficiency. He didn't know why his efficiency in capturing these villains and sending them to detention centers was so ridiculously high.

In an instant, his brain calculated how to capture and imprison everyone in the shortest amount of time.

I saw.

The Flash transforms into a high-speed whirlwind, and wherever he goes, whether it's a man with a prosthetic arm or a fox tail, or a woman with bandages or holding an IV stand, he is a force to be reckoned with.

All the villains participating in the march felt a gust of wind sweep by, their bodies lightened, and the next second they found themselves locked in a place that they might or might not be familiar with.

That place was home to most of Gotham's criminals—Arkham Asylum.

"Fortunately, there are enough cells, no, enough hospital wards." Barry felt that this place was different from what he remembered, as if it had undergone large-scale expansion and renovation.

Throw the last henchman into a private room.

Barry finally had a chance to stop, panting, and carefully observe this legendary "crime hotspot." However, the sight before him left him speechless once again.

Where is this mental hospital anymore?
This is clearly a palace that blends Gothic castles with futuristic styles...
Or rather, it used to be a royal palace.

The towering dome is painted with murals of bat totems, but the bats are distorted and gorgeous. On both sides of the corridor stand Batman statues wearing armor of different styles, some classical, some sci-fi, and some even with a religious solemnity. The display cases contain all kinds of extremely imaginative Bat equipment design drawings or models.

It can launch Olige, a virus-carrying weapon; a batarang, a mental attack more powerful than a physical attack; and a foldable bat chair that can instantly transform into a tickling interrogation chair.

Each one more abstract than the last, filled with a certain...uncontrolled imagination.

In addition, because the timeline is fluctuating in a chaotic manner and the upheavals are still ongoing, the entire Arkham Palace seems to have come to life. The materials of the walls and floors are slowly twisting and changing, and some areas are beginning to take on the form of display cases and explanatory plaques commonly seen in museums.

"what's the situation……"

Barry's unease grew stronger. As if guided by some unseen force, he arrived at the deepest part of the palace, a hall designed like a mausoleum.

In the center of the hall, there was a huge coffin made of pure crystal.

Batman's remains were not in the coffin.

There was only one exquisitely crafted and lifelike wax figure of Bruce Wayne. The wax figure wore a well-fitting black suit, had a serene expression, and clasped his hands across his chest, as if he were simply asleep. And in his hands, which he was pressing down, there seemed to be a black-covered notebook that looked quite old.

"A cenotaph?"

Barry was driven by intense curiosity.

He took a deep breath, concentrated, and mobilized his speed force, causing his right hand to vibrate at an extremely high frequency, maximizing the penetrability of molecules.

So, the Flash easily used the move that Ian couldn't. He carefully reached into the crystal coffin, and his arm passed through the hard crystal wall without any resistance, as if flowing through water. Then, with very gentle and precise movements, he took the notebook out of the crystal coffin.

The notebook looked quite ordinary, with no text on the cover except for a slightly scrawled bat logo. Barry swallowed hard and turned to the first page.

This was not the diary he had envisioned, but rather... a research log.

"How could this be!" The further Barry read, the paler his face became, and cold sweat beaded on his forehead. His eyes widened, and his breathing became rapid.

The log entries were not about criminal psychology or tactical analysis, but were filled with extremely profound, even insane, theoretical deductions about "time structure," "reality plasticity," "the influence of will on the material world," and "the essence of the speed force is not energy but information."

A significant portion of the text describes a hypothesis: when a sufficiently powerful will deeply integrates with a fundamental force of the universe and creates a "cognitive distortion" of its nature, this distortion becomes contagious, like a virus, and can infect others through this fundamental force.

write here.

Many pages were torn off and are no longer visible.

In the latter part of the log, the handwriting becomes increasingly chaotic, interspersed with numerous design sketches—the prototypes of the abstract equipment Barry had seen outside. There are also fragments that seem to describe a plan to "purify" or "correct" Gotham, the methods of which are so extreme that they send chills down Barry's spine.

One page was scrawled in red ink: "If chaos is Gotham's cancer, then excise it with an even more absolute 'order'! Even if it means reshaping every single cell! If they resist my 'treatment,' then they themselves are the lesions that need to be removed!"

Barry's hands began to tremble; he could barely hold the thin journal. He finally understood why the villains outside were so "miserable" and filled with resentment, and he vaguely guessed why the Robins had disappeared... This wasn't the Batman they knew! This was a... Bat-tyrant whose thinking had gone awry!

Realizing this, the Flash suddenly seemed to understand something. He frantically raised his arm and activated the League's emergency encrypted communication.

"can you hear me?"

The Flash directly called Superman, who was in outer space trying to reverse the Earth.

"Clark...Clark! Respond if you hear me!"

Barry's voice trembled with fear, and even sounded like he was crying.

The call connected quickly, and Clark's clearly tired and anxious voice came through: "Barry? What's wrong? Is the situation in Gotham under control? Things aren't going well on my end..."

He was clearly keeping a close eye on the situation on Earth.

"Clark..."

Barry took a deep breath, trying to calm his voice, but the panic in his voice was unmistakable. "I think we...we may have all made a cognitive error."

Superman sensed something extremely off about Barry's tone.

This fear even surpasses the emotions one feels when facing a cosmic crisis.

"Don't tell me any more bad news!" Superman exclaimed helplessly, quickly pressing over the communicator, "Error? What error? Barry, what did you find? Explain!"

Upon hearing this, The Flash lowered his head.

His gaze fell once again on the bat research logbook in his hand, which seemed to weigh a ton.

Looking at the frantic handwriting and shocking content, his voice became hoarse and dry as he said, word by word, "The world has become strange and bizarre, and countless cities are heading towards absurdity."

“At first, we all thought Ian changed history, but what if the cause of all this... wasn't Ian at all, and we just... wronged Ian?”

"The person who changed history may be someone else, and that is probably why he disappeared... and also the cause of his death." The Flash had already considered a terrible possibility.

……

(End of this chapter)