There is no Batman in Gotham City comics.

Chapter 65 Straight Hook and Salty Bait

This was destined to be a restless night.

The night wind slipped in through the chipped glass window, shaking the chandelier with its exposed wires hanging from the ceiling; mice scurried through the gaps between the three-tiered wooden shelves of bottles and jars, their bristles rubbing against the rough ceramic surface, leaving behind a series of soft rustling sounds.

Jason closed the book on his lap and rubbed his temples with his free hand.

Summer exams are just around the corner, but he can't concentrate on studying at all.

After two failed operations, his control over the Red Hood was waning, and more and more of his men were beginning to question whether he could lead them to drive the Romans out of the Lower City.

Jason couldn't prove it.

He even knew it was an impossible task, but if the Red Hood gang were disbanded or its members were to leave, those unruly and restless teenagers would immediately become a greater threat than the Romans.

Feeling upset, Jason wanted to go for a walk.

The moon is a generous monarch, showering its light equally upon every subject beneath it.

This reward is a sweet dream for some, but the only solace for others during long nights.

Walking on the empty streets, Jason thought of the children in the West End who had asked him for help, children who had just been abandoned by their parents, and wondered if they, like he had once, were falling asleep under the moonlight, sucking their fingers.

As they rounded the corner, a gleaming dagger suddenly shot out from the side, and Jason swiftly caught the other man's thin wrist.

The boy wearing the red hood hadn't expected to be caught, and for a moment he couldn't process what was happening.

"Hand over the money!"

Jason reached down and pulled off the hood, revealing a gaunt face in his eyes.

He recognized the boy; he was the neighbor's child who often came to play with him before he started school.

"Brother Jason...I...I was wrong!"

The boy recognized Jason by the moonlight.

But his stammering pleas for mercy were met with a vicious slap.

One of his teeth was knocked out, and the boy's cheek swelled up like a bloated loaf of bread, but he deserved it.

The dagger was aimed at Jason's waist. The boy had no intention of holding back when he made the move. If Jason hadn't been passing by tonight, people might have found a highly decomposed corpse, gnawed by rats, in the alley a few days later.

"Remember this slap; never rob again, even if you're broke!"

Jason rummaged through his pockets and gave the boy the last few coins.

He knew that even doing so wouldn't stop death from coming, whether it was the boy or the next victim. But what should he choose? Should he strangle this little bastard who kept calling him "brother," or let him continue killing?

The people in the lower districts never had a choice.

……

As if by some strange twist of fate, Jason wandered into the vicinity of Qin Wei's factory again.

The factory, its lights off, swayed in the night wind. The behemoth in the darkness slumbered, the clanging of the corrugated iron sheets a heavy sigh.

Jason was about to leave when he glanced around and noticed a strange car parked at the factory gate.

He almost didn't recognize it as a car until he saw the four large tires.

"My God, this is so cool!!!!"

Jason rubbed his face and stepped forward, examining every crevice of the armored vehicle from top to bottom by the dim light of his phone screen.

Indeed, no man can resist the powerful allure of the Batmobile.

But soon, he hung his head dejectedly and turned to leave.

If he's lucky enough, he'll graduate from Gotham University, find a relatively stable job, rent a small basement room of about ten square meters in a corner of the Diamond District, and he won't get married or have children, but he won't have to go hungry anymore.

He had exhausted all his efforts to escape the quagmire of the lower district and had no energy left to own a car like this.

But what right did the Romans have?

Jason paused, realizing this.

How about stealing a car? If it were Jason two years ago, he would have done it without hesitation. After all, this was his old profession. After his mother left, he learned how to pick car locks from the Irish gang that occupied the Lower City. It was precisely because of this skill that Jason's size was able to stand out among the Lower City residents who generally didn't have enough to eat.

Now, as a student at Gotham University, he cannot allow himself to do such a thing.

But their target was the Romans; did their money come from a legitimate source?

Encouraged by a flexible moral bottom line, Jason turned back to the car, jumped onto the hood, and climbed out of the cockpit to examine it.

He kept touching the seams and tapping on the car window, his cautious yet comical demeanor almost making Qin Wei on the other end of the monitor laugh himself to death.

In order to monitor every move outside the Batmobile and accurately capture Jason, he had already activated the night vision goggles on multiple angles of the vehicle. His two actions of climbing onto the roof, his expression from envy to helplessness to resentment, every move Jason made, every black photo of him, were all captured by the recorder in Qin Wei's hand.

"This kid is hilarious, he's acting like he's putting on a stage play!"

Despite the mockery, Jason's series of expressions just now gave him a rough idea of ​​what the other person was struggling with.

Qin Wei could clearly sense that Jason was different from most of the people he had met in the lower district. His savage and rebellious demeanor looked frightening, but upon closer inspection, it was clear that it was all an act.

Recalling Oswald's earlier recounting of the Red Hood incident, Qin Wei guessed that something must have completely changed Jason during the two years he was missing.

……

Things were much more complicated than Jason had imagined. There wasn't even a screw on the outside of the cockpit, so it couldn't be opened at all, and stealing the car was out of the question.

Finally, he focused his attention on the car tires.

If you can't steal cars, you could probably make a good amount of money by stealing a few car tires and selling them.

He thought of those poor children in the West District again; if he didn't give them some financial assistance, this winter would be tough for them.

Jason climbed under the car to examine the front wheel connection structure: steering shaft, brake drum, front wheel axle, bearing, brake backing plate, trapezoidal arm... It wasn't much different from the structure of Volkswagen vehicles. The only difficulty was the lug nuts on the outside of the tires. The groove in the middle was a T-shaped structure that he had never seen before, and he guessed that a special wrench would be needed.

Oh well! It just didn't work out!

Jason sighed, lay down on the ground, and tilted his head to the side.

Under the glow of his cell phone, a black iron box lay quietly to his left, with two jacks beside it.

"What Fucking Is This...Are You Kidding Me?"