When Batman woke up again, he found himself lying safely on the same couch where old Thomas had been resting earlier.
Beside the shattered coffee table, the Penguin was pacing back and forth, muttering to himself nonstop:
"What to do, what to do… why isn't he up yet…"
Batman sprang up from the couch almost instantly. "How long has it been, Penguin?!"
Startled by the sudden movement, the Penguin jumped, then immediately let out a sigh of relief.
"About four to five hours? I'm sorry—I gave you a bit more naloxone… but the situation is urgent now."
"Thank God you're finally awake. Listen to me, you have to stop—"
"I know!"
Batman already understood what the Penguin was thinking. He was certain their conclusions were the same:
"That old bastard doesn't just want to kill the Joker—he wants to kill himself too!"
"Give me the phone!"
Bruce snatched the phone from the Penguin and dialed into Cyborg's communication channel:
"Cyborg—teleport!"
Before the glow of the Watchtower's teleportation system had even faded, Batman—still in his suit—burst out of the arrival point and sprinted toward the armory.
Unlike Joey and Starfire, who had nearly embarrassed themselves over an open channel, Batman had removed even his communicator when he took off his gear earlier.
But now it seemed that might not have been the best idea—because that communicator also functioned as a basic life-sign monitor.
Without it, Cyborg and the Watchtower hadn't noticed his unconsciousness in time.
That mistake had cost him over four hours.
"Cyborg, where's Superman? I need his help finding someone."
"I doubt Superman's available right now."
Standing at the central console, Cyborg tapped lazily on the keyboard. Ever since recovering half his body, he had oddly grown fond of this inefficient way of working again.
"He's currently busy with—"
BANG!
A loud metallic crash echoed throughout the Watchtower, interrupting Cyborg, followed by a faint tremor.
Cyborg shrugged helplessly and pointed toward the storage section.
"He's been hammering away over there for hours. Can someone go tell him to stop? At this rate, Gotham's foundation might start sinking!"
In the distance, Joey was in a corner of the Watchtower's storage area, swinging a massive hammer. Beside him, Wonder Woman worked the bellows, feeding flames into a blazing forge.
This was the forging hammer of Hephaestus—along with his full set of smithing equipment, including the furnace.
No one knew how the Olympian gods' artifacts had ended up in the previous Justice League's possession.
Even Wonder Woman couldn't help but marvel at how powerful that other universe's League must have been, leaving behind such incredible resources in the Watchtower.
But what shocked her more was Joey's recklessness:
"That's the Helmet of Nabu, containing immense divine power—and you just crushed it like that?!"
Joey slammed the hammer down again, then wiped nonexistent sweat from his forehead and leaned in to inspect the golden fragments on the anvil.
"Did it soften at all?"
"I don't think so."
Completely out of breath, Wonder Woman stopped working the bellows. Sweat had soaked nearly every part of her clothing.
The flames she had been stoking were the fires of Tartarus itself. Even as queen of the Amazons, a creation tied to the Greek gods, she couldn't remain unfazed by such infernal heat.
"Yeah… I don't think so either."
Joey bent down, bringing his face inches from the fragment for a closer look, then reached the same conclusion:
"This fucking lump of metal hasn't even changed at the atomic level!"
No wonder he was swearing—he'd been hammering at it for six or seven hours and gotten nowhere.
The fragments of Doctor Fate's helmet were still in his possession. He had only wanted to recycle them into a small piece of armor—something that could provide him with a steady source of yellow solar radiation, like the arc reactor he once used or the suit Kara wore.
But that plan now seemed difficult to realize.
Maybe it was a problem with the material. Or magic. Or the user himself.
Even Hephaestus's hammer and the fires of Tartarus couldn't affect the Nth metal fragments in the slightest.
At this point, Joey was clearly trapped in sunk-cost fallacy, stubbornly refusing to give up:
"Diana, let's up the temp—I'm hitting it a few more times!"
Clang! Clang!
"If Superman's busy, then it's up to you, Cyborg."
With the situation so urgent, Batman no longer had time to slowly piece things together.
The World's Greatest Detective chose to skip the deduction process entirely and go straight to surveillance:
"Cyborg, help me locate that old bastard—or the Joker."
"Got it."
Without even asking who Batman meant by 'that old bastard,' Cyborg stopped typing and immersed his consciousness into cyberspace.
Within moments, he had the answer:
"Location confirmed. Old Bat and the Joker are very close to each other. Based on my calculations, their distance will shrink to within one kilometer in less than two minutes..."
"Wherever they're meeting, send me there—now!"
A column of light flashed, and the fully equipped Batman vanished from the spot.
The light flared again, and Bruce appeared on a grassy field on the outskirts of Gotham.
The first thing he heard was laughter and cheerful chatter. He quickly realized he had arrived at something like an amusement park.
Looking around at the numerous stalls and the bustling crowd, he frowned:
"There are too many people!"
There were so many people that even his sudden appearance went completely unnoticed.
If the Joker and old Batman clashed here, Bruce didn't dare imagine how many innocent people would be caught in the crossfire.
While he was still considering whether to call for backup, a child came running toward him, holding a bucket of popcorn.
Bruce instinctively dodged—but his cape tripped the boy, sending the popcorn bucket flying into the air.
It was about to spill everywhere.
After less than a second of thought, Bruce chose to save the popcorn, catching the bucket midair and letting the reckless boy fall flat on his face.
"Wow!"
The boy hit the ground hard, but like most kids, he shrugged it off and quickly got back up. His attention immediately went to the popcorn bucket safely in Batman's hand:
"You're amazing! Thanks for saving my popcorn, mister cosplayer!"
Batman had dealt with too many troublesome kids in his life. He already knew—saving the popcorn first had been the right call.
"Next time, be caref—"
As Bruce handed the popcorn back, he caught a clear look at the boy's dusty face—and froze mid-sentence:
"T-Tim?!"
"You know me? But I don't know you!"
Still no older than ten, Tim Drake quickly grabbed the popcorn and took a cautious step back:
"You're wearing a Batman mask—I don't know who you are. Are you a friend of my parents? They're over there. Maybe you should talk to them."
Every Robin had been more than just Batman's partner—they were his children.
And the third Robin, Tim Drake, had always been the sharpest of them all.
"No… that's not necessary. Just make sure you have fun, Tim!"
Bruce waved him off, watching as the cheerful boy skipped away.
Maybe this world wasn't entirely hopeless after all, Batman thought.
At least one of his children was still living a happy life.
He was about to contact Cyborg and request backup to secure the area—
when a loudspeaker from a massive tent in the distance began broadcasting across the entire field:
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Haly's Circus! Tonight's performance will once again be a breathtaking spectacle—!"
"God..."
Even Batman, who rarely lost composure, could no longer process everything that had happened today.
These familiar yet distorted people and events stirred emotions he had never experienced before.
The power was switched on, and the giant tent lit up with dazzling lights, illuminating the circus sign and the bold words at the very top:
[ The Flying Graysons ]
Grayson—the family name of Dick Grayson, the first Robin, also known as Nightwing.
Batman knew all the stories of his proteges. Aside from Tim, the other Robins had all come from tragic pasts.
The Flying Graysons were a well-known acrobatic troupe across Europe and North America, consisting of Dick and his entire family before he became Robin.
Their signature act was the flying trapeze—an incredibly dangerous performance requiring courage and flawless precision. One mistake meant certain death.
And it was during one such performance that Dick's parents died—a tragedy that led him to become Robin.
That night, young Tim Drake had also been in the audience.
The Flying Graysons, a young Tim Drake, and Haly's Circus...
As these elements aligned in Batman's mind, they led to only one conclusion:
If nothing changed, tonight in this universe… would be the night Dick Grayson's parents die.