hotmtlnovel Chapter 2449: Battle for the Cloak (5)
Chapter 2449: Battle for the Cloak (5)
Chapter 2449: Battle for the Cloak (V)
Schiller and Poison Ivy stared at each other.
"Don't look at me, Mr. Madman. If I say no, then it means no. Even if Batman takes my blood for testing now, he won't find any poisonous components. Otherwise, would I still be standing here and not taking any measures to stop that crazy little bastard from destroying the city?"
Schiller realized that Poison Ivy had not told him the complete truth. The neurotoxin might indeed be gone, but it was not because it had been used up. Poison Ivy was obviously hiding something.
"What do you want Batman to do?"
"Whatever you come to me for, he comes to me for." Poison Ivy said in a roundabout way, "The whole Gotham City knows that the vines represent my sight. I know everything that has happened there. Batman comes to me because he obviously needs the information I have."
"And you gave it to him."
"Yes, because now he's obviously the only one I can rely on."
"You are even more powerless than you are." Schiller looked up and looked around and said, "These vines are just bluffing. You are very weak now. Maybe you think the situation is very critical. Whether it is Batman or the Bat Family, the best help for you is to do their best to resist King Robin. You don't think they have the time and ability to help you."
Schiller paused for a moment and continued to speculate: "But this is not actually the main reason. You think they don't want to help you."
"Yeah." Poison Ivy followed his words and said, "In their eyes, I'm a criminal. Why should they help me solve my problems?"
"No, that's not it." Schiller looked Poison Ivy up and down and said, "When I came over just now, I noticed that you were very nervous. You kept looking outside and tapping the ground with your toes. This was a sign that you were eager to get away."
"I didn't expect there's a great detective here." Poison Ivy said sarcastically.
"Don't worry." Schiller continued, "You feel trapped and very anxious. The source of this anxiety is not only the tension of trying to fool a great detective like Batman, but there must be deeper reasons."
"You're afraid of Batman, but not as a criminal... at least not because of your past crimes."
"I didn't commit any crime before, and even if I did, Batman should have given me a security guard award after I watched over that little lunatic named Peter Parker for a night."
"Have you noticed?" Schiller approached Poison Ivy, paced behind her and said, "You keep showing that you and Batman are on the same side. You emphasize the help you provided to him and the contributions you have made to this city."
"Because it's true."
"Yes, but you were not proud of it before. You were indifferent to it. But now you keep emphasizing it. Who do you want to believe? Me? Or yourself?"
Schiller thought for a moment and said, "There is no significant benefit in emphasizing to me that you and Batman are on the same side, because even if you can see that I am Batman's friend rather than his enemy, since you don't need anything from Batman, you also don't need anything from me. What's the point of expressing your side's position?"
"Unless your position has changed, you think you are on the opposite side of Batman, but you are afraid that he might find out, so you subconsciously emphasize how much you have contributed to this city and Batman, so as to put yourself on the side of the good guys and eliminate Batman's hostility."
Poison Ivy opened her mouth to say something, but quickly closed it because she realized she had exposed too much.
"You think I betrayed Batman?"
"When have you ever cared about Batman?"
"When committing a crime." Poison Ivy answered almost instinctively, but after hesitating for a moment, she said, "Except for that lunatic Joker, no one is not afraid of Batman."
Schiller clearly saw the fleeting but extremely clear fear that flashed across Poison Ivy's face. At least in the universe of Arkham Knight, Batman, as the Dark Knight, was quite dedicated and responsible. He almost perfectly realized his original intention of becoming Batman. Every criminal would have that terrifying figure flash through his mind when committing a crime.
Perhaps it is because the setting of Arkham Batman itself is relatively violent. He does not kill people, but he does everything except killing people, such as directly breaking people's spines, breaking all limbs, and driving the Batmobile over people's heads. It would be strange if the criminals were not afraid.
"What did you do?" Schiller asked.
Poison Ivy shook her head and didn't want to say anything, but Schiller wouldn't let her go. Schiller continued, "After you did something, you knew Batman would never let you go. Before he found you, you were ready to confess, but you fooled Batman and let you have hope again."
"You may think he's gentle, but he may not care," Schiller said. "He will do his best to dig out all the secrets of others, but he can also prioritize. If he interrogates you now, he won't gain anything, and the city may go further and further down the road of destruction."
"He thinks you are someone he can win over. Even if you are hiding a secret from him, at least one thing remains unchanged. You both don't want King Robin to come. He wants to protect Gotham, and you want to protect the plants in Gotham. On this point, you both agree."
"So even if you might have done something in the past, when it comes to life or death, you're going to lean towards him, so whatever secrets you're keeping, you can talk about them later."
Schiller stared at Poison Ivy's face and said, "You act surprised because in your mind Batman isn't like this?"
"Of course not." Poison Ivy said: "In this city, he is a cruel tyrant, no one can disobey him. We all know how much of the Joker's death was his own fault and how much was Batman venting his anger."
"You're right about that," Schiller said. "Batman has a lot of anger to vent, but if I made a list, would you be at the top of the list? Even now, when you may have done something to betray him."
"Of course not." Poison Ivy was very confident about this. She said, "I almost never commit crimes. I am an excellent patient of Arkham. But last time I got drunk and vomited, and poisoned more than half of the plants in his garden. I guess this will make me move up at least two places on the list."
"I guess he doesn't like plants as much as you do, and he's rich, so he's a shill." Schiller paused and said, "In that case, adding another chip to your crime won't immediately tip the scales. No matter which Batman is, he won't come after you right away."
"You could have used this time to make up for your mistake, or to fool Batman in a more fundamental way, rather than just talking about it and deceiving yourself that Batman didn't notice it."
"A more radical approach?"
"You need to tell me what you did first."
Poison Ivy took another deep breath and became hesitant again, which made Schiller realize that she must have done something bad beyond imagination, otherwise she wouldn't be so hesitant about whether to say it or not.
Schiller did not try to persuade her further, but waited for Poison Ivy to calm down. Obviously, although Poison Ivy felt guilty, she was still smart and she knew that being passive and slacking was not a solution.
"I was the one who opened the portal." Poison Ivy, who was sitting on the sofa, covered one eye and said, "I didn't expect there would be such serious consequences."
"What happened? Tell me in detail."
"About two months ago, I noticed that the roots of underground plants began to wither, which seriously affected the growth of plants on the ground. They began to shrink gradually, stopped growing upwards, and finally died in a strange posture."
"I started investigating this matter, and then I found that some dark energy began to gather in one direction. I found the source of the energy gathering, and I thought I had to solve it, but I didn't think of it as a big problem at the time."
"I have gathered the power of plants and intend to absorb and decompose it. Perhaps you don't know that plants have a very strong decomposition ability. Almost any energy can be decomposed into nutrients by them."
"It went smoothly at the beginning. The large number of vines, trees, and flowers I sent out perfectly absorbed the energy and supported the power of the outer layer. But after the things on the inner layer were exposed, I knew I had done something wrong."
"It was a bait, but also a time bomb. The energy flowing in the inner layer was completely different from that in the outer layer. It was not pure, but more like a pollutant. The plants I sent over were all polluted. They spontaneously formed the shape of a portal, and the energy that they had decomposed and converted into nutrients became the flame that ignited the portal."
"And then King Robin rushed out of it?"
"It's worse than that. The first thing that came out was a powerful pollution. Now the roots of most of the plants in Gotham are polluted and are no longer under my control. So I can only hide here because those crazy plants are looking for me."
Poison Ivy showed a painful expression. She said, "I am now using uncontaminated energy to manipulate the remaining plants to fight against them, but there are too many of them. I cannot completely eliminate them. Now I can only protect myself."
Poison Ivy also looked up at the plants in the room and said, "These things are not meant to threaten you. They are the protective net I set up. Once those polluted plants rush in, they will be my last line of defense."
"But Batman was able to come in easily."
"Batman can get into any place easily." Poison Ivy sighed and said, "Okay, but this pollution seems to be directed at me. They don't pay attention to others. Crazy plants won't attack others, otherwise you would have seen it on the news a long time ago."
"But if they completely contaminate and control it, that wouldn't be the case for you, right?" Schiller suggested a possibility.
"I don't know, they are too weird." Poison Ivy shook her head and said, "I even suspect that they are not targeting me, but the existence behind me. All I can do now is to delay as much time as possible."
"So far, I can still hold my own against them, but if Batman comes back, I don't think he will listen to my explanation. After all, it was me who opened the portal. In essence, I am the murderer who almost killed him."
"The murderer is King Robin and the person who released the polluted energy." Schiller made a judgment and said: "If someone carefully set a trap for you thousands of miles away and you were completely unaware of it, then it is understandable that you failed to respond in time and got into trouble. It is not a big deal to make mistakes under pressure."
"But how am I going to explain all this to Batman?" Poison Ivy said, spreading her hands.
"Of course you don't need to explain all this to Batman." Schiller also walked to the sofa and sat down, looking at Poison Ivy and said firmly: "It is Batman who needs to give you an explanation."
Poison Ivy's eyes widened.
(End of this chapter)