Chapter 2124

The fusion of the two Earths was not a simple matter of stacking them on top of each other, as that would have led to many logical inconsistencies.

For instance, even with all its wealth, the U. S. East Coast could not possibly support three megacities; having Cat Getan and Metropolis was already incredible enough, and there was simply no room for another.

At the same time, there was no question of one replacing the other; all the differences between the two Earths were preserved, and the people, buildings, and various social relationships were all moved over exactly as they were.

This led to a problem: Cat Getan and Metropolis could not accommodate the nearly ten million additional people from the extra megacity. However, this was the easiest part to solve—they simply enlarged the Earth a bit.

In reality, Lucifer, as the administrator of Battleworld, had experience in this regard, as the new Earth of Battleworld was an enlarged version of Earth. To a certain extent, this new Earth-1 could be considered a beta version of the Battleworld Earth.

After being enlarged, the original buildings of New York could be fitted into Metropolis and Cat Getan after a slight replanning, and the population could be accommodated as well.

In other words, New York was now interwoven between Metropolis and Cat Getan. It didn't actually look strange, because Metropolis and Cat Getan themselves had been designed based on the day and night of New York. Although the details of every building were different, the style was perfectly unified.

The biggest change from this fusion was primarily to Cat Getan, because the most prosperous Manhattan area only accounted for a small part of New York, which was equivalent to Metropolis gaining a new commercial center. The other three boroughs all fell into Cat Getan, and the remaining island also drifted closer to Cat Getan; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it a fusion of New York and Cat Getan.

So, after experiencing such a shocking change, what actions did the citizens of both sides take?

It must be said that the ordinary people of these two cities truly possessed a remarkably stable mental state.

Upon seeing their cities spring up like bamboo shoots after a rain, expanding by more than double, and suddenly having twice as many people on the streets, their first reaction was to open Google Maps and mock it for not updating in time.

Of course, that was just a small group of pranksters. The first thing the vast majority of ordinary people did was start checking bus and subway routes; after all, they still had to go to work that morning.

So what if the cities fused? It didn't stop them from going to work even when alien spaceships were clashing overhead. Never mind whose scheme this was; if they didn't clock in, they'd lose dozens of dollars, and how would they pay next month's exorbitant rent?

That was how the office workers of a big city were. For the long-suffering people of these two cities, let alone having more people, even if ten million monkeys had appeared, the time they would have spent watching and sighing would have been limited to the few dozen seconds they spent waiting for the subway.

The ones who reacted the most were the elites sitting at the top of the pyramid, because there was an obvious problem: the cities had fused, so who was in charge?

A city could only have one set of government officials. If they had been looking at each other across a river, it would have been fine, but in this current situation of interlocking territories, the Mayor of New York couldn't even point out which building in the city originally fell under his administrative jurisdiction; in fact, he didn't even know.

They couldn't exactly ask New Yorkers to stand up and claim them, or else not a single building would belong to New York.

Thus, the moment the two cities fused, the group of people who always sat at the top of the pyramid fell into chaos.

A man in a tan jacket walked through the corridor at top speed and pushed open the door to a slightly dilapidated office.

"Ring-ring! Ring-ring!"

The phone was ringing again; it had been ringing the whole time.

The man in the jacket let out a deep sigh, his face showing visible exhaustion. As soon as he picked up the phone, he heard a deafening roar.

"James Gordon! What the hell are you doing?! It's been almost an hour since the disaster, and you haven't given me anything!!!"

Gordon sneered, squinting his eyes as he leaned against the wall with the receiver in his hand. "What do you want me to give you? Oswald, my esteemed Mr. Mayor, everything has happened exactly as you see it. What else do you want?"

"Legitimacy, legality, and your police cars and guns!"

"Against whom? Sir."

Gordon took a sip of water, looking slightly surprised as Barbara walked into the office and handed him a water cup. He waved her off, signaling he didn't need help, and then said to the other end, "Have you forgotten what you said when you took office? The Constitution gives you legitimacy and legality, and your heart for the people gives you responsibility and ability."

"And now that something has happened, you're asking me to provide police cars and weapons. If I had any, you wouldn't be in the Mayor's office right now!"

After saying this, Gordon hung up the phone. After taking a sip of water, he sighed at his daughter and said, "If I could, I really wouldn't want to waste another half-sentence with him. God bless, I hope the mayor of this mysterious city across the way can get his so-called legitimacy and legality quickly. Even if he's rotten, he'd still be better than the Penguin."

Barbara opened her mouth, hesitated, and finally said tactfully, "Actually, it was Vina who asked me to come."

"What's wrong? Did something happen on her end?"

"Just a moment ago, the power went out on Geller Avenue. After the technical team went to check, they found that someone had used a current far exceeding the safety threshold to strike the circuit system there. I'm here to check the surveillance footage."

"Don't talk nonsense, my good girl." Gordon sat down at his desk and began to process emails. "That place is our Mayor's cash cow. He opened six nightclubs and bars there in one year."

"If you haven't seen an insurance company car passing by nearby, then it's just another one of his schemes to defraud insurance. Don't worry about it; I need to look at the files of my new partner first."

Barbara shrugged and walked over to the desk next to him, fiddling with the computer on her own.

"Ring-ring! Ring-ring!"

The phone rang again, like an annoying cicada on a summer evening. Gordon didn't even need to think to know who was calling, so he just glanced at it sideways and didn't intend to answer.

"Buzz—buzz—"

His private phone rang. Gordon looked down and saw a text message appear on his screen.

"James Gordon, if you don't answer the phone again, think about your daughter."

Gordon's face darkened immediately. He picked up the phone and said to the other end, "Mr. Cobblepot, the text message you just sent me is enough to serve as evidence of your personal threats."

"You don't understand anything!!!" The irritable roar came again. "That bunch of lunatics who fell from the sky blew up a whole street of my power lines. That cost me a fortune!!!"

"Yeah, for the poppy farm you hid under those bars and nightclubs. Without enough ultraviolet light, they'll be dead in three days at most. That's the best news I've heard all year."

Gordon heard the Penguin panting heavily on the other end. Finally, he said in a low voice, "Listen, James, we're in agreement on this matter. You can't let those self-proclaimed New Yorkers run wild on our turf. Cat Getan doesn't accept such provocations!"

Gordon put one leg over the other and said while flipping through a calendar, "You know what? I've never marked an election date on my calendar before, but I'm planning to do so now."

"Let me see, there are only two months left until the election. Life is really looking up."

The Penguin sneered, "Do you really think replacing me with the Mayor of New York would be a good thing? You'd better go check who attacked my street of shops."

"Do you think a mayor who tolerates such criminals running around the city would do better than me? At the very least, I'd give my thugs enough guns to blow those troublemakers to smithereens!"

The Penguin hung up first. Gordon looked at the calendar again. The Penguin had announced his candidacy for the next Mayor of Cat Getan about two months ago. There were only two people from his party running, and the other was one of the Penguin's subordinates.

As for the opposition party, they had sent over a dozen people to run, but 11 of them had died within three weeks. The rest were either on vacation or on sick leave. Originally, this matter had been a foregone conclusion.

The sudden city fusion event was good news for Gordon, because obviously, this city that had sprung up like bamboo shoots from Cat Getan's soil was also a megacity like Cat Getan, and the party strife there must be just as intense.

If the other side was also an American city, then their parties would first reach a consensus, but regardless of whether they were in the same party or not, they were in a life-or-death competitive relationship.

Then, in the two months before the next election, assassination attempts would surely emerge one after another. Gordon knew the Penguin too well. This attack might just be a pretext the Penguin had found for an assassination.

Although that was the case, Gordon still had to go take a look. The thugs the Penguin had gathered were not worth pitying, but there was a community school and a welfare home not far from there. The power outage was likely to affect the children's classes. Since the technical team had encountered trouble, Gordon was duty-bound.

Gordon led a squad of officers to the scene of the incident. Unsurprisingly, they were met with eye-rolls from the thugs, but he didn't care at all. He lifted the police tape with his hand and ducked under it.

A black-haired middle-aged woman in a technical uniform and another big guy walked over. Gordon walked up and patted her on the shoulder, saying, "What's wrong? Vina, what trouble did you run into?"

"You're here early this time. Did that hooked-nose guy not give you any trouble?" Vina's voice was very low. She sneezed and rubbed her nose. "I didn't expect you to come. I know you're in trouble now."

"What trouble?" Gordon shook his head indifferently. "What could be more troublesome than Bruce Wayne going missing? What could be more troublesome than two megacities fusing together?"

"You know those are distant disasters." Vina led Gordon toward the scene of the accident. "And you have imminent, urgent trouble to solve."

"Look at this." Vina walked to the side of the power distribution room and tapped the already charred door with two fingers stacked together.

Gordon leaned over, only to see a patch of darkness.

"What is this?"

"The scene of an explosion."

"There was an explosion here?"

"Worse than that." Vina sighed. "A local short circuit could cause a small-scale explosion, but our Mayor spent a fortune on the electrical circuits here. The safety protection measures are very perfect, and the wiring is very scientific."

"So the small-scale explosion here shouldn't have been enough to destroy the power facilities of the whole street, but it happened anyway, which makes me start to doubt the electrical engineering knowledge I've learned over the years."

"Go, James, find a more brilliant electrical engineer. This isn't something I can handle. I even doubt whether this falls under the jurisdiction of an electrical engineer."

"Why do you say that?"

Vina tilted her chin. Gordon followed her gaze and saw a pair of rubber shoe prints on the edge of the darkness.