Chapter 1960: U: Beyond the Great Event (86)

The whole affair started with that barbecue.

By the time Red Hood and Red Robin arrived, Bruce and Jack had already finished eating; they hadn't managed to snag a bite.

Still, the sight of Batman and the Joker eating barbecue together was a bit too shocking to ignore. Later, Red Robin and Red Hood discussed it and decided they should investigate what was going on.

Asking Batman directly was out of the question, but asking the Joker wouldn't be any different. Red Robin proposed a fairly decent investigative method: find Gordon.

They believed that in any universe, Commissioner Gordon was a trustworthy good man. Although he had been at the barbecue that day, there must have been some hidden story, and they felt it was best to start there.

As it happened, Barbara was living with Gordon at the time. They contacted her and went to Gordon's office to ask what on earth was going on between Batman and the Joker.

Gordon got angry just thinking about it, because it reminded him of his once-in-a-millennium Royal Flush. It was perhaps the greatest hand he'd ever encountered—he hadn't seen one before, and he wouldn't see one again—only for the Joker to break it.

While explaining everything to the two Robins, the relatively younger Gordon couldn't help but complain a few times.

Red Hood was fine, but Red Robin's detective instincts kicked in. He instinctively asked Gordon for details, and since Gordon was just as baffled, the group sat down to study the situation.

At the time, the hand Jack held could form four-of-a-kind, while Gordon's hand was one card away from a Royal Flush. We don't need to get into the specific cards, but the key was that both needed a Spade Jack, and Jack had stolen the one Gordon needed.

Gordon had been so furious he handcuffed the Joker on the spot and even hauled him back to the station, but he eventually let him go. The biggest reason he did so was that he hadn't found the stolen Spade Jack on Jack's person.

Even if he had found it, he couldn't have done much to Jack. Forget Cat Getan; stealing a playing card wasn't a crime anywhere. Even if Gordon had found some other excuse to take Jack to court, there was no room left in the prisons.

As a detective, Red Robin immediately declared that impossible. You saw him steal the card, you saw him hide the playing cards on his person, and you handcuffed him immediately after—how could you not find the stolen goods on the way to the station?

Gordon, Barbara, Red Hood, and Red Robin spent the whole night researching it. They reconstructed the crime scene and mimicked the process, even asking Bruce for the surveillance footage from that street, but they never saw where Jack had hidden the card.

Red Robin was a patient person who liked to get to the bottom of things, but Red Hood was not. He preferred to beat up criminals to force a confession, so he went to find the Joker.

Red Hood was forever young and never learned his lesson. He walked up and beat Jack up, but did he think Jack would tell him after that?

Not only did Jack not tell him, but he also spun a Joker-style reversal, claiming their initial deductions were meaningless because the hand hadn't been right from the start.

Gordon's hand couldn't have formed a Royal Flush at all; that Spade Jack had been his to begin with, and it was someone else who had tried to steal his card, so he had hidden it on purpose.

Could Red Hood let him get away with such flowery lies? He immediately called the others over, and they started replaying the hand from the beginning.

But as they replayed it, something felt off. Red Hood and Red Robin realized that the winner of that hand wasn't Gordon or Jack—it was Bruce.

There were many problems with that hand, but the biggest one wasn't with Gordon or Jack; it was with Bruce.

Red Hood insisted that Jack the Joker must have lied about the information, causing the replay to be wrong. Red Robin reserved judgment.

But they still faced the biggest problem: where exactly did that Spade Jack go? Unfortunately, before they could figure it out, they were pulled back to their own universes.

They say all reunions are long-awaited, but some reunions just make your blood pressure spike. Red Hood, who had been soaked in the Lazarus Pit, was already quite irritable, and this Jack was exceptionally slippery. Thinking about that piece of evidence they could never find just made him angrier.

"You keep insisting that the card Gordon dealt in the third round was a Heart King; it's obvious you remembered it wrong, yet you refuse to admit it."

"What do you mean I remembered it wrong?!" Jack raised his voice. "That's why I said he couldn't have formed a Royal Flush! But my four-of-a-kind was plain as day. He framed me for stealing his Spade Jack just because he was afraid he'd lose if I completed my hand—how do you still not understand?!"

"But your hole cards were clearly a Heart 3 and a Diamond 2! Why would you bet big on such small cards if you weren't planning to steal the card?!"

"Have you ever even played Texas Hold'em?! I didn't know what my hole cards were! If I wanted to steal the card, why didn't I call instead of folding when the small blind was placed?!"

Jack shouted, stretching his neck, then pointed at Red Robin. "Ask him! How low are the odds of a Royal Flush?! How could Gordon dare to raise big in the first two rounds? That proves he was the one trying to steal the card!"

"And you're a complete idiot! How many times do I have to say that Gordon said he wanted to form a Heart flush because he had a Heart King? So what are the odds of him forming a Spade Royal Flush? If you're uneducated, go read a book!"

"You're a truck driver—how do you have the nerve to mock me for being uneducated?!"

"At least I finished middle school!"

Red Hood was fuming.

He didn't waste any more words. He rolled up his sleeves, rushed forward, and grabbed Jack by the collar. Jack was dragged out of the spectator area in an instant.

Red Robin and Nightwing rushed forward to break up the fight, and Peter shouted, "Don't fight! Don't fight! What are you doing! Let him go!"

Jason was quite strong even by Batman family standards. Although Jack wasn't short, he was lean; Jason grabbed him like a chick, and once he pinned him down, Jack couldn't break free.

Red Hood pinned Jack to the ground and was about to hit him when Red Robin rushed over to grab his hand, Nightwing braced Red Hood's arms to drag him back, and Peter took advantage of the chaos to pull Jack away by his ankle.

They were like two dogs separated by a glass door—they couldn't actually fight, but their mouths didn't stop. One side cursed the other for being an uneducated brat, while the other retorted that the first was a cheater who couldn't even play cards.

Since Jason and Jack were both from the bottom rungs of Cat Getan, their old-school Cat Getan-style cursing was incredibly varied and rhythmic. Many insults that no one had ever heard or even imagined were being squeezed into everyone's ears. If you brought a recorder, you'd have a platinum album in the making.

"Stop."

Batman's low, gravelly voice usually carried a lot of intimidation, but that was usually in an empty castle or a dark, gloomy alley, not in the middle of a rap battle reaching its climax.

The voice, neither high-pitched nor long enough, dissipated helplessly into the ocean of profanity. Batman had to step out of the spectator area.

He prepared to knock the Joker unconscious directly, which would put an end to this fight once and for all. He was long past the age of debating right and wrong with criminals; making them shut up was the best choice.

But the problem was that Spider-Man was guarding Jack.

"Hey, sir, don't come any closer," Peter said, staring at Batman. "You're on their side, right? But fighting is wrong. We should all calm down..."

Peter dodged a Batarang crackling with electricity. He sighed, shook his head, and said, "You just want to fight, don't you? Well, I haven't stretched my limbs in a long time either."

"Wait a minute, you guys..."

Before Owen could run down from the stage to stop them, Peter threw Batman over his shoulder.

Batman landed with a twist, his eyes turning grave as he looked at Peter. Peter stuck a web to the ceiling beam and swung in for a Spider-Man-style flying kick; Batman barely dodged by rolling aside.

Batman stabilized his center of gravity and threw two more Batarangs, but Peter seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, performing a fluid side-flip and landing steadily on the back of a chair, narrowly avoiding the Batarangs.

Batman narrowed his eyes. He realized this youth was not to be trifled with.

But the Batman from *Arkham Knight* was among the most capable of all Batmen, second only to the Batman in the Hellbat armor.

Within a second of Spider-Man landing, a grapple line flew out like a ghost claw. Peter followed his instincts and dodged to the right, but the rope followed him, binding him tight.

Just as Batman prepared to press the button on his taser, he saw Peter exert a little force with his arms, shattering the rope. A red glow flashed over Peter, and he soared into the air, hovering.

"Is your name Clark Kent?" Batman couldn't help but crack a cold joke.

"I'm Peter Parker."

*Whoosh! * Another grapple line flew toward Peter, accompanied by three Batarangs blocking his path. Peter glided through the air in a fluid arc, passing through the ceiling steel frame.

Batman didn't show weakness. When the grapple missed, he reached out and pulled, the claw hooking onto a beam. Batman flew up, Batarangs flying with sparks and lightning.

*Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack! *

*Bang! * The spotlight in front of the stage fell, shattering into pieces. *Crack! * The steel frame next to it snapped from the side, then *smash! * it slammed into the seats below, sending dozens of chairs flying.

Owen stared blankly at the battle overhead. Just as he reached out to pull them down, Red Hood, still wrestling with Jack, threw an elbow, and Owen dove under the seats.

"STOP!!!"

With Owen's roar, time froze. Owen pulled everyone apart one by one, threw them into different spots, and looked at his theater, which had been smashed to pieces again, on the verge of tears.

Time resumed. The others were still panting, but Jack suddenly burst into hysterical laughter.

"Hahahaha! Hahahahahahahaha! You've been tricked again!"

As everyone's focus shifted to him, Jack took a deep breath and looked around.

"Think about it. Where did Schiller go?"