Laughing American comics, I am becoming more and more like a clown

"You won't die after being blown up. What I want you to do is recover and get the sniper rifle out of here."

……

Arthur pushed open a door and found an extremely narrow room, located in the corner of the stairs, which could be described as Harry Potter's storage room.

He pulled out a long box and opened it, revealing neatly arranged parts.

Arthur assembled, debugged, and set up in silence.

……

"Then through this hole... you will see the scene in my room. If the curtains are drawn or have been blown up, it means I win."

"And if you can see me sitting in the chair through the window—then move the muzzle of the gun, where the curtain is, so you can't see the other person in the room, but it doesn't matter, he must be in that direction."

……

Arthur moved the gun's position with his hands, which had blood on their joints, and looked through the sniper scope - he indeed could not see that there was another person in the room besides Lucian.

……

"Why?" he asked.

"Because Damian is an assassin, he would hide himself in darkness when he sneaks around. That room can be observed from almost all directions, and conversely, it can be observed from almost all directions."

"Except for that blind spot."

……

Arthur saw Lucien talking with great enthusiasm and gesticulation - he was clapping his hands on the armrests with great excitement and his saliva was flying.

The gun was also aimed at him.

……

"Aren't you afraid that I might take the opportunity to kill you?"

"I'm looking forward to it. Besides, you don't—the clown is bad luck. You can't find anyone else to take it on except me. It's like that story—the person standing in the center of the crowd should be named Arthur."

……

Arthur had to admit that Lucian had him hooked.

The gun was aimed at that corner.

……

"Why do you have to kill him?" Arthur couldn't help but ask - he usually just did it and didn't ask.

"What explanation do you want to hear?"

"Real, or you can make up any excuse to deceive me."

"I'll tell you the real reason, just as a—advance payment? But there are a lot of real reasons." Arthur saw him ponder for a moment, not to deceive himself, but to transform some known things into understandable words:

"Logically, I killed Damian to avenge the Resistance, and the revenge on the Resistance was because they caused my 'worst day'... Of course, I don't hate that. What I hate is that they were so useless that they couldn't even succeed on their 'worst day'."

"From an emotional perspective, I was trying to save Batman. I also wanted to see how Batman would look when he heard the news. Or maybe it was just pure psychopathology."

"From a story perspective, I mean, from the perspective of the Joker and Batman's story, I'm just re-enacting Death in the Family (Joker kills Bruce's son Jason)."

"So what do you really think?"

"What's the real idea? I don't know. Maybe it's one of them, or maybe it's just a flash of inspiration... That's for you to guess." Lucian tapped his finger on Arthur's shoulder. "Anyway, this is the result. I need you to kill him."

The burnt and bloody scabs on Arthur's index finger were rubbed off, and he pulled the trigger.

……

"Actually, the reason I want to kill you isn't just Bruce."

Lucian looked at Damian and blinked slowly. His eyes really were like the nictitating membrane of a frog in slow motion – closing and opening at a strange frequency when eating and preventing other things from entering.

One difference between frog eyes and human eyes is their ability to capture motion.

Lucian saw clearly where the bullet came from, how it entered Damian's brain, and how he fell.

……

He untied the bomb from his body, threw it aside, picked up a bottle of foam fire extinguisher, and sprayed it around like a police officer drawing white lines around the body of a dead person.

Then he took out a lighter from his pocket - a silver-gray roller lighter, made in Russia.

Use it to set the corpse in front of you on fire.

……

It was impossible for Lucian to allow anyone who died in front of him to be resurrected in the future.

……

He took out another cigarette, lit it with the fire on it, and put it in his mouth.

"You're Batman in a way, and Arthur is the Joker in a way—I don't necessarily want to kill you, I want Arthur to kill you...otherwise why go through all this trouble?"

"Three generations of Jokers have killed three generations of Batmans. I want to see what happens if he kills you."

……

There was nothing wrong. When Arthur walked over and stood in front of him, Lucian didn't smell anything wrong from him.

"Thank you," he said.

The burning corpse has a sweet and fishy smell like roasted meat, which is not unpleasant, but unfortunately it is mixed with the pungent and spicy smell of other burning things, as well as the uneasiness engraved deep in the genes when facing the corpse of the same kind.

This made Arthur frown uncomfortably, but he endured it and said, "You're welcome. I'm just trying to save myself."

Now that the matter has been made clear, there is nothing to hide.

Lucian said nothing more. He just watched the grease sizzle as it fell to the ground, his mind wandering a bit.

Chapter 147 Jenny's Death

The flames burned on Lucian's cigarette and body.

Black smoke began to gather in the room, and poor ventilation led to a lack of oxygen, making the air choking.

He dropped the cigarette into the fire and waved to Arthur.

"Let's go."

……

It became quiet outside. Both the League of Assassins and the people of Gotham were nowhere to be seen. There were only occasional explosions and sparks of fire lingering in the rain.

None of them held umbrellas.

Arthur didn't even have a hat. His brown-black hair was wet by the rain, sticking to his scalp in strands and hanging down on his shoulders. Water flowed down his hair into his collar, and the chill made him shiver, but it also took away the smell of gunpowder from his body.

……

"I have some more people to kill—but it's a lot, so I need your help."

"my pleasure."

……

Oswald began to understand what Lucian wanted to do - use drugs to control the remaining people in Gotham and make them loyal through physical addiction.

This has nothing to do with him. He locked himself in the study and wrote a plan for such cooperation to see how it would benefit him more.

"Tuk-tuk-"

There was a knock on the door, and after Oswald answered, his men came in with documents.

"Clown? What are you doing here?" There was no such thing as not being able to recognize someone behind a disguise. Oswald recognized him the moment he raised his eyes, leaned back, and looked at Lucian through his monocle.

He guessed what he came to do.

It's just a drug issue, but sometimes businessmen have to ask questions even though they know the answer.

"Let me ask you a question, Cobblepot." Lucian closed the door, then took out a gun and pointed it at him: "If you lick my shoes now, I will let you go... Are you willing?"

"What are you talking about?" Oswald squinted at him, but surprisingly didn't see any joke in that unrecognizable face. He narrowed his eyes even more, almost to a slit, and asked:

"Okay, what do you want? Drugs? I can give you some."

……

"boom--"

Lucien fired.

The fat and short penguin had a bloody hole between its eyebrows and fell down.

……

"I don't want to kill you, I just want you to lick my shoes." He snorted.

----

Jenny had prepared herself mentally, she knew what she was going to do - the gentle smile she had shown many times in the mirror, a strand of hair hanging on her cheek, and her ordinary oriental face really made her look particularly gentle.

Wearing plain clothes, with lowered eyebrows and a pleasant look.

She needs to arouse the sympathy of the man who once served as her husband, and then use this relationship to exchange for benefits or life and death.

Jenny is a clone whose memory is stored in a chip. Maybe she was really touched by that ordinary life, but now she is prepared for all of this.

……

But preparation definitely didn't include seeing someone sitting at the table when she finished cooking and brought out the meal.

Just like before, he looked out the window indifferently and absent-mindedly, but his appearance had changed, and his body exuded an indescribable smell of tar - it was the smell of tar that adhered to the skin after the burning of a corpse, and even rain could not wash it off.

Jenny paused for a moment, then quickly returned to normal and placed the food in front of him.

Mashed potatoes, tomatoes, pork, and mushroom soup.

Ordinary and ordinary cuisine.

Lucien looked at it, then raised his hand to pick up the knife and fork... and enjoyed the dish just like any other day in the past two years.

Jenny sat opposite and also started eating.

The two of them didn't speak, and the air was quiet, with only the sound of metal colliding with porcelain plates.