What Bad Thoughts Can Batman Have 106

## Chapter 106: Black Zero Incident: Prelude

**2024-03-15**

Chapter 106: Black Zero Incident: Prelude

The Arctic.

Mountains danced with silver serpents, the cold wind biting to the bone.

Lois Lane stepped off the helicopter, bundled in a thick coat and hat. Her nose was red from the chill.

Through the roaring of the propellers, she saw a soldier approaching, shouting: “Ms. Lane, are you alright? The camp is just up ahead, I’ll walk you there—”

“Fine.” Lois replied. She turned her head and saw Clark Kent awkwardly trying to get all their luggage off the plane.

“Be careful, those are heavy!”

Clark paused, stumbling a little. “I can handle it!”

“Do you need help?”

“Of course not!”

“Alright…” Lois shrugged, watching as Clark managed to pull both suitcases off the plane on his own. “Competitive spirit, huh?”

“I’m not exactly a loyal reader of the Planet,” the soldier said as they walked towards the base, “but your columns were quite impressive…”

They climbed a short winding path, rounded a peak, and soon, a camp nestled at the foot of a snowy mountain appeared before them.

Clark walked up beside her.

“What did I tell you?”

Lois addressed Clark: “A scientific research, a national excavation of an unknown mysterious object. That’s what journalists should report, not that silly Bruce Wayne!”

Standing on the cliff, she extended her hand towards the base below, her voice brimming with confidence.

“No more foolish Gotham billionaires, no more trivial third-rate news, Lois Lane will report the real discovery!”

Lois said: “I’ve had enough of repeatedly reporting on Bruce Wayne!”

Seven minutes later.

As Lois Lane entered the temporary command room set up in the camp, she was met with the annoying smile of Bruce Wayne.

Lois fell silent.

She stood there, suddenly transforming into a statue, her aura even more profound than the famous Thinker sculpture.

“Oh my god—”

“What the ***?”

She said.

“Hello, nice to see you, uh, again.” The big, dumb Clark beside him said, “What a coincidence.”

Lois just wanted to give Clark a punch.

So she offered a Lois Lane-style smirk.

“I’m really *delighted* to see you, Mr. Wayne.”

“Yes, yes, what a coincidence!” Bruce Wayne chuckled, sitting in a chair, with Alfred standing behind him.

He was clad in pink fur, sporting gaudy snow-mountain limited-edition sunglasses. Lois’s gaze lingered on his lower body… Were those skunk-skin pants? And those indoor skates?

In short, he dressed unlike a sane human. Lois always felt like he wasn’t on the same level as the people around him, like a character pulled straight from a comic book and thrust into reality.

Lois folded her arms: “So, Mr. Wayne? Why are you here?”

He looked at the officer and the bespectacled, professorial man standing beside him: “Are you just letting this irrelevant gentleman waltz in here?”

They exchanged glances, and the officer-like man coughed softly before saying: “Mr. Bruce Wayne donated 10 million dollars to our camp.”

The professorial man chimed in: “He’s participating in this project as a special technical consultant. He’s also signed a confidentiality agreement. Everything is perfectly legal.”

“Consultant?” Lois almost laughed out loud.

Just seeing Bruce’s face made Lois feel a wave of despair.

Though she didn’t exactly dislike Bruce, Editor White had repeatedly asked her to report over 12 news features about Bruce Wayne, 12!

It was imaginable that once Bruce Wayne appeared here, her alien report would be scrapped. Editor White would force her to turn the whole story into “The Great Mr. Bruce Wayne Arrives at the Arctic Research Station!”

Unless… they actually found something under the ice.

“Anyway, Ms. Lane, I’m Colonel Hardy of the US Northern Command.” The officer-like man introduced himself: “And this is Dr. Emil Hamilton of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

The professorial man nodded slightly towards Lois.

“You’re early.” Colonel Hardy said: “We thought you wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.”

His tone was a little aggressive.

“That’s why I came today.” Lois answered him: “We have to get something straight, okay? The only reason I’m here is because the court in Canada rejected your eviction order.”

“So if you’re finished playing around, can you show me what you’ve found?”

“Good! Spirited, well said, reward!”

Then Lois found a stack of money in her hand. Alfred reappeared behind the Gotham tycoon.

Lois gritted her teeth. The atmosphere was ruined in an instant, damn it.

Though she had some extra money.

She ran into Bruce Wayne again, annoying.

Though she had some extra money.

Then she saw Alfred handing Hardy and Hamilton a stack of money each, just like he did for her.

Lois saw the expressions on their faces. They were completely transformed into the shape of money, with no military vigilance or scientific rationality left.

“What are you actually here for, Mr. Wayne?” Lois pulled Bruce to the side, her voice laced with a barely perceptible frustration. “Why would a tycoon like you abandon the glamorous world of Metropolis and come to this godforsaken place in the Arctic?”

“I’m planning to go into the alien spaceship under the ice and see if I can find some extraterrestrial technology.”

Bruce told her truthfully: “And familiarize myself with the structure of alien spaceships, see if there’s anything that could help prevent an alien invasion, then take it all.”

It was obvious that Lois didn’t believe a single word.

“Okay, okay, I just heard you guys came here so I wanted to come and see how you usually report news. To be honest, I have a lot of creative inspiration here.” Lois heard the other side say: “I want to create my own movie series here…”

This was still a plausible reason.

Clark slowly withdrew his eavesdropping attention, rubbing his fingers together.

Then he used his X-ray vision to scan Bruce Wayne from head to toe. No matter how he looked, he was just a stronger-than-average human, nothing peculiar.

He shook his head.

Clark, Clark, what are you thinking?

“…NASA’s emergency rescue satellite first detected the anomaly—”

A few minutes later, a group of people gathered around a computer.

“The ice shelf’s echo sounding is very chaotic, but there’s definitely something there.”

“Maybe it’s a Soviet-era submarine?” Lois suggested.

“Wrong, it’s an alien spaceship!” Then she heard Bruce Wayne’s voice like an idiot: “I’m sure there’s a bunch of aliens living in there, maybe they look just like us!”

Lois forced herself to ignore Bruce Wayne’s nonsense. Clark looked thoughtfully at him.

“That thing is over 300 meters long.” Colonel Hardy said: “Much bigger than anything the Soviets could have built.”

“But the weirdest part is here.” The clerk soldier sitting at the computer said, tapping on the computer. The screen switched to another page: “The ice covering that thing has been there for about 20,000 years.”

“Ha, I knew it!”

Lois heard Bruce say confidently.

“It’s an alien spaceship.”

Evening.

“Don’t wander around, the temperature will drop to -40 degrees at night. You won’t find your body until spring.” Colonel Hardy led Lois and Clark through the camp, finding a temporary house for them.

“You guys can stay here, there are two rooms.”

“What if I need to use the bathroom?”

“There’s a bucket in the corner.”

Colonel Hardy closed the door: “Have a good day!”

Bang!

Only they, a man and a woman, were left in the room.

They laid out two beds from different rooms.

“Hey, Clark.”

“Hmm?”

Lois said: “Do you think aliens really exist?”

Lois’s mind flashed back to the Gotham tycoon’s confident expression earlier that day, and the look on his face when he gave another reason.

A puzzle continued to linger in her mind.

Why would Bruce Wayne say those things with such certainty, did he really know something?

A rich tycoon like him, maybe he really knew something ordinary people didn’t…

“Aliens, huh?”

She heard Clark say:

“If you’re asking my opinion, Lois. I think all questions about whether aliens exist stem from loneliness, that inherent loneliness of all intelligent life.

This loneliness may never completely disappear from our lives, these self-contradictions may never be reconciled, but the process of fighting against them is the true meaning of growth, life, and love.

Therefore, we’ve always believed in aliens. When we look up at the vastness of the stars, asking if we believe there is other life like us in the universe, we always romantically deceive ourselves: The universe is so vast, we are not alone.”

In the dim light, Clark’s expression was surprisingly reverent.

Lois paused: “Who are you?”

“Uh, what do you mean, Lois?”

“I’m serious, who are you?”

Lois put down the mattress, narrowing her eyes.

“One minute, Clark Kent is wearing oversized glasses, an ugly suit, and milk stains on his mouth, stumbling through the day. And the next minute, he’s transformed into the most confident, insightful man I’ve ever met.”

“My suit isn’t ugly.” Clark mumbled.

“You’re a walking embodiment of contradictions, Clark.” Lois said.

She sent Clark back to his room and sat there for a while in a daze.

Lois, Lois, what are you thinking?

She began assembling her camera and spotlight.

Just stay put?

That’s not Lois Lane’s style.

Night fell.

Bruce Wayne, draped in black gauze, stood on the ice plains, gazing into the distance. He saw the aurora borealis wafting across the snow-capped peaks, reflecting a refreshing white light that smelled like incense.

Superman.

He thought silently.

You’re going to the Fortress of Solitude. You’re going to discover your origins, to confirm Krypton’s history.

But besides all that, do you know, last son of Krypton, you…

Will also have your first meeting with me.

His gaze lingered on the ice below, where Lois Lane had found the ice cave melted by Clark’s heat vision.

That night, at 1:43 AM.

The Fortress of Solitude crashed through the ice and disappeared from the US military’s surveillance.

…

…

…

Jason Todd let out a sigh, half his body frozen stiff, but otherwise unharmed.

He let his emotions get the better of him. When the Riddler tried to put on the Robin suit, he attacked first, instead of taking out the most dangerous Mr. Freeze first.

But thankfully, the fight was over now.

“Jason～ Can you hear me?”

Jason lightly pressed his earpiece.

He walked out of the Batcave, this outpost was outside a derelict junkyard. In Gotham, there were a lot of these empty wastelands.

But now, the wasteland was littered with those soldiers, dubbed “Talons” by the Arkham villains.

Jason had fought these Talons. They were numerous and powerful, and some even had a strange immortality, able to survive even with their heads blown off.

But now they were all sprawled on the ground, like a bunch of armless, legless rag dolls, only their heads were missing.

The Talon corpses piled up like mountains. Although Jason was aware of their immortality, this blatant display was still enough to be awe-inspiring.

Then he saw that man standing in the midst of the carnage.

“Hee hee hee… why?”

Jason heard the Talon who was being choked by the throat – or rather, the leader of these Talons – say: “How can you be so strong?”

He was clad in silver-white owl armor, his muscles bulging. Jason guessed he must have the same immortality as the other Talons, but in the face of that man, he was as frail as an infant.

“A common question among those who meet me for the first time.”

Jason heard the man say: “A martial arts master weighing only 141 pounds (64kg) and standing only 5 feet 8 inches (173cm)? I know what you’re thinking – how could such a slender man be so strong?”

The man threw Lincoln March to the ground like a dead dog.

“I just like the look of astonishment on your faces.”

“Lady Shiva.”

Jason Todd walked up to her, bowing slightly. “Good day.”

“Jason Todd.” Then Jason heard her arrogant voice: “Where’s that Batman you promised me, the fighter you said was comparable to Richard Dragon?”

Jason remained silent for a moment. “He’s not here, Lady Shiva, I’m sorry.”

“Not here?” Shiva sighed, then said: “You know, Jason. The reason I came to Gotham with you is because you said Batman was strong enough.”

In the night, Lady Shiva’s eyes gleamed with a strange red light. “But it’s been so many days, I haven’t even seen Batman’s shadow. Are you going to break your promise?”

No matter how many times he faced this woman, Jason only felt suffocated.

Just as he was about to say something to stall her, he heard Lady Shiva say: “I heard that guy called Bane, he was neck and neck with Batman for a while, and he’s a martial arts expert, right?”

Jason immediately guessed what she was planning to do.

“Lady Shiva, Bane is an extremely dangerous inmate, we can’t just because we’re our own…”

But his words didn’t have a chance to be finished, they were interrupted by Lady Shiva: “You know where Bane is being held, right?”

Jason immediately shut up.

He didn’t dare lie in front of Shiva.

“Take me there.” Lady Shiva commanded.

I fell asleep last night while writing…

(End of Chapter)

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