Chapter 207: The Beast That Does Not Eat People

In Wren Jones's memory, the terms "parentless little bastard" and "crawling freak" probably permeated his entire childhood.

Although many around him used these words to address him, they did not wound him too deeply. He had long grown accustomed to the green scales that occasionally sprouted on his body, as well as his increasingly sharp nails and teeth.

These non-human traits led to isolation from neighborhood children, bullying from classmates at school, and cold remarks from teachers during lessons. The indifferent attitude of others made him lonely, withdrawn, and lacking in friendship from a young age, but he had not yet displayed criminal tendencies at that time.

His first step toward becoming a true criminal originated with his alcoholic aunt.

The terms "parentless little bastard" and "crawling freak" permeated his entire childhood, but the one who used these words most frequently was precisely his aunt Flowers. From the moment he was adopted by his own aunt, Wren's memory of "home" consisted probably only of her liquor bottles and endless abuse; since he spent the most time at home, he was also addressed by his aunt with those two words the most.

"If you still want to survive until you leave Gotham, scrape it off for me now!"

His aunt would often storm out, slamming the door, leaving Wren with an uneven shell or stone. According to her, if Wren wanted to survive in Gotham City until adulthood, he had to scrape off the green scales on his body and make himself look human.

But the sensation was truly too painful. Whenever the cold, hard edges of the stone rubbed forcefully against his skin, scraping away patches of green scales, Wren could feel a pain that pierced his heart and gouged his bones. He felt like a fish on a cutting board, at the mercy of a chef wielding a cleaver, to be manipulated and butchered.

Even when blood the color of deep red flowed from the places where scales had been scraped off, and even when Wren screamed in agony, his aunt did not care. Only when Wren's physical struggle showed obvious resistance would she angrily throw the stone at Wren and then leave directly.

So, if asked whether he had any family at all, perhaps this aunt who raised him counted as his only family, but she never properly considered one question: what kind of ending would result from long-term abuse of a teenager who was despised and abandoned by society, lonely, and possessing innate wildness?

In a word, she reaped what she sowed.

"You may not know, the first life under his hand was his own aunt."

"Harvey Dent, don't seek death."

"Why such resistance? Does accidentally killing her cause you pain? But according to the files in the police station, that was merely an accidental fall. No one knows that your slight shove in a fit of rage was enough to make her fall directly out of the window ledge."

Killer Croc's golden vertical pupils turned, looking at Two-Face with eyes as cold as ice, like a cold-blooded beast gazing at its prey.

"Is that strange? I am Gotham's former District Attorney. Not only your files, but the Joker's, the Riddler's, the Ventriloquist's, the files of all of you, I have seen them all. The police in the Gotham City Police Department may not be smart, but I am not stupid."

Harvey tossed the coin in his hand lightly: "I did not expose you, but I also failed to save you. If you wish to hate me, that is at least fair."

"." After a few seconds of silence, Killer Croc suddenly pointed a claw at Harvey, the claw tip nearly pressing against his forehead: "If you are truly as smart as you say, why did you fail to save the others who should have been saved?"

"That circus owner? Although your punishment of him certainly far exceeded what he deserved, he was not a good man."

"Not him."

"Wait, wait, you killed the circus owner?" Ma Ma Zhaodi interjected again: "Wasn't the circus the place where you fought to make a living?"

Killer Croc, interrupted by this, smoothly retracted his claws: "He didn't die. I bit off one of his arms—just as I told you, I have tasted human blood before."

"I guess you didn't eat that arm."

"." "No."

"So why did you bite off his hand?"

"Why do you have so many questions?"

Ma Ma Zhaodi pulled another leg of lamb from under his black robe.

"How exactly do you hide so many strange and bizarre things inside your robe?"

"Don't ask. Keep eating."

So Killer Croc picked up the leg of lamb and continued to gnaw on it.

"That was also before I reached adulthood." He chewed on the bones with a crunching sound, replying to Ma Ma Zhaodi: "After my aunt died, I became an unmanaged wild child."

"No one would be willing to adopt a child with scales on his body, and the school long ago did not want to keep a monster like me with sharp teeth and claws. I had no choice; I had to find a way to survive for myself."

"And then you encountered that circus?"

"And then I encountered that circus."

After a pause, Killer Croc continued: "Have you ever considered a question: if I had truly gone to participate in a boxing match, who could have lasted a single round with me in the ring?"

Ma Ma Zhaodi looked at his massive figure, the terrifying muscles bulging beneath the scales, and the thick, powerful tail behind him, and instinctively shook his head: "I feel that according to your strength, you could probably knock someone out with a single punch."

"Obviously, at that time, all boxing venues in Gotham, whether above ground or underground, reached the same consensus with you; even within the circus, no one was willing to fight against me."

"So, in the beginning, the circus only treated me as a rare exhibit, a living crocodile-man, a freak, but definitely not as a human."

"And then?"

"And then, I did those most hated things again."

Killer Croc's tone sounded very calm, as if recounting an experience unrelated to himself.

"To make myself live like a human, I made myself bloody. I tore off my skin bit by bit, pulled out my scales, cut off my tail, ground down my sharp teeth, and clipped my claws. I did to myself everything Flowers had done to me, only more ruthlessly and more thoroughly."

"I have forgotten the feeling of that day. Perhaps it was painful, perhaps it was not; I do not know. Then I fell asleep with hope, waiting for the next day to return to being a normal person, with round pupils, flesh-colored skin, no scales, and no tail."

Speaking of this, he actually laughed.

"Truly foolish. Before doing this, I should have known the outcome."

"My healing ability grew along with my scaly skin and sharp claws. Since the scales I pulled out in childhood could grow back, how could I possibly get rid of them after growing up?"

(End of this chapter)