54. Gotham: Meow
62.
The fortress had fallen into disrepair, its withered branches like an old man's hand gripping the entire castle. The farmer looked at the desolate land and sighed at this huge waste of resources.
"What?" The structure of the castle determined that there must be a skylight on the top. Red Hood took out a grappling hook and prepared to attack from there. Unexpectedly, Aria sighed and shook her head, as if she was quite dissatisfied with this arrangement.
"If you have any opinions, go your separate ways. If you don't, just follow my lead." Having said that, Red Hood still threw the five-point safety harness for ordinary people from his belt to her: "Hang high and use low. You know this, right?"
The farmer didn't answer, but his overly lively black eyes flickered, giving Red Hood an immediate bad feeling.
The ability to walk on water after using a bug gave the farmer great confidence. Reflecting on her previous actions, she felt she had been too lacking in imagination. Since she didn't know how many mods were installed in the new file, she should give full play to her imagination and try them all!
So she said confidently: "I have an idea..."
This sounded like a bad idea, but since they were still temporary teammates, he reluctantly decided to listen to the other party's opinion.
"What if we manage to get in through the skylight but he escapes?" It's like uncovering an anthill; you can't pinpoint the exact ant you're looking for amidst such a large and chaotic multitude. "Maybe we can attack from both sides, forming a double-team."
Aria pressed her palms together like the top and bottom buns of a hamburger, trapping the remaining air like an insect. "You attack from above, and I'll attack from the front. Even if he grows wings, he won't be able to escape."
It was a good idea, but Red Hood obviously wanted to add something: "How do you plan to attack head-on?" The heavy door looked very difficult to push and pull on a normal day, so it would be quite difficult to attack directly from the outside.
But...what if she has some other tricks up her sleeve?
As Red Hood waited, Aria pulled out her secret weapon - a pickaxe.
If this were a game, Jason Todd wouldn't be surprised to see a description like "A very ordinary pickaxe, nothing fancy" pop up when he touched it - it was so ordinary that he wouldn't even frown if it appeared in a toolbox in Alfred's garden.
"Are you planning to dig a hole through this castle?" Imagining Aria sweating profusely as she swung her pickaxe and dug a hole in the corner of the wall, Red Hood felt that the rescue mission was doomed before it even began.
The farmer shook her head. Her pickaxe hadn't been upgraded, so it took quite a while to mine ore, let alone such a large castle. "I'm thinking about something..."
“Can someone else’s door be considered furniture?”
If the game previously allowed the use of a pickaxe to move and recycle furniture, perhaps there is a mod that can expand the recognition range and allow her to change NPC furniture settings.
A door like this is lying here all alone, isn't it just waiting for a farmer to adopt it?
Having yet to fully grasp the limits of Aria's abilities, Red Hood couldn't find any fault with this fantastical plan. Without further ado, he wordlessly gave the OK sign and quickly ascended using the grappling hook, leaving Aria with a rather unassuming bottom.
It seems they haven't discussed the signal yet... The farmer thought. But it wasn't a big deal. She started knocking as soon as she heard Red Hood smash the skylight, with a margin of error of about ten seconds.
Crash——
No matter how strong the glass was, it would not be able to withstand the powerful blow from Red Hood with his entire body weight. From the sound of the falling fragments, Aria guessed that the quality of the other party's skylight must be quite poor. At the same time, she swung the pickaxe in her hand and jumped towards the heavy stone door of the fortress without hesitation!
Just like breaking crystal with a sword while mining, the door and the pickaxe came into contact with each other and were compressed by an invisible force the next second. It turned into a small icon and drilled into the farmer's inventory.
!
For the first few levels where doors were just decorative, getting a usable door is a small step for Ariya, but a giant leap for the mod community. The only downside for the farmer is that the door's aesthetics are so poor that she wouldn't even want it if she put it on her farm.
...I'll find a place to throw it away after the mission is over.
Bang, bang, bang—
The Red Hood fired his gun, and the bullet left a trail on the concrete wall. The gorilla-like man pushed the red-haired man away and pounced on him!
"Is this some kind of private zoo?" Jason Todd faced him and noticed something unusual about his opponent before Aria did. Instead of calling him a gorilla-looking man, it would be better to just call him a gorilla-man. Apart from standing on his lower limbs and being able to use tools flexibly, the enemy in front of him looked almost the same as a gorilla.
"I thought we were in some kind of arena. This kind of private performance has to be charged." While complaining, he paid attention to Aria.
Seeing that the red-haired man, who was obviously the boss behind the scenes, was about to escape, the farmer threw the pickaxe in his hand. The farm tool with a gleaming metallic luster spun faster and faster under the force, and in the blink of an eye, it brushed against the man's feet and nailed into the ground, blocking his way.
Clang—the metal collided with the concrete wall, making a buzzing sound, and his feet were almost nailed to the ground.
This throw was a strong warning. The man raised his hands with a smile, indicating that he had no ability to resist and was not going to run away anymore.
"Okay, Garth, let that gentleman go."
Even though they were still fighting, he acted like he had the upper hand. Red Hood snorted and ignored him, targeting his opponent's upper body, which was too heavy for his lower limbs to keep up, and with a sweeping kick, he successfully knocked Garth to the ground.
The ape man was pointed at by Mu Cang and heard the red-haired man's order. He climbed up from the ground cowardly and dared not move under the supervision of Red Hood.
"Excuse me, what can I do for you?" the man continued smiling, showing no sign of being a prisoner. "Miss, could you please hand me my cane? A gentleman should never be without his cane."
Aria ignored him and walked over to pick up her pickaxe - she threw it accurately, but the pickaxe inevitably brought down a piece of cement-like floor when it collided with the ground, and as soon as it approached the floor, it rushed into the inventory.
Because it was so ugly, the farmer refilled the floorboards tightly. Jason Todd believed that this was a psychological pressure tactic used by Aria, and when the time was right, he asked, "Where did you take Selina Kyle?"
"Maybe it was Selina Kyle before." The red-haired man spoke the name tenderly, "but now it is itself - I gave her a new and more beautiful life."
Red Hood felt a chill in his heart. Based on his understanding of these perverted criminals, he would show off his "masterpiece" to them next.
As expected, the red-haired man, under the two men's caution, slowly walked towards the wall, flipped open a panel, and pressed a button. With a soft sound, the other wall slowly rose, revealing a hidden space occupying most of the space—a giant vivarium, with several tropical crops recently transplanted inside. But the most eye-catching feature was the massive dead tree lying across the center of the vivarium.
The twisted branches became a cat climbing frame, and if the red-haired man hadn't said he wanted to show them the results, Aria would hardly believe that it was Selina Kyle she was looking at—
A cat the size of an adult but covered in orange fur was sleeping soundly on one of the branches of the "cat climbing frame". She seemed to be awakened by the noise outside. She opened her eyes, stood up, and jumped lightly from the two-meter-high branch. She looked at the world outside the ecological tank with confusion from a distance.
"This is a being higher than humans," the red-haired man admired sincerely, his tone like reciting a hymn. "I have given her more outstanding reaction speed and jumping ability. She should live here, among the jungle and trees, not trapped in a steel and concrete cage."
"Catwoman," Emil Dorian chewed on the nickname of the famous jewel thief, feeling secretly happy about it. "Don't you think she deserves the name more now?"
Aria didn't care about Catwoman anymore. She rushed to the glass curtain wall. Because she could see more clearly, she pressed her face against the glass wall of the ecological tank, squeezing her facial features to a ridiculous degree. "Selena!"
Selina had no idea why the human in front of her was so anxious. She seemed simply captivated by the other person's strange expression. She walked over to Aria with a cat-like gait and spoke in authentic cat language: "Meow?"
The farmer was eager to communicate, so he started talking in the cat's language: "Meow meow meow meow—"
Faced with this sentence that made no sense in both grammar and meaning, the humanoid cat twisted the end of its tail and finally realized the thick barrier between the two people's language systems: "Meow——" It was completely over now.
"Selena, step back. I'll rescue you right away!" Eager to rescue Selena, Aria swung her pickaxe and smashed it against the glass wall.
Just as the farmer was about to push hard towards the center of the glass, Red Hood warned him, "This is bulletproof glass. The edges are its most vulnerable point. Try there—"
As soon as she finished speaking, she saw that the sharpest tip of the pickaxe was embedded into the bulletproof glass layer by Aria.
Okay... Red Hood raised the muzzle of his gun slightly. The person who taught him martial arts also taught him the saying "force can defeat skill". Apparently, he saw the live version of this today.
The farmer pressed the handle and continued to go deeper. After the entire metal area was submerged, he pulled it out as a whole. The bulletproof glass curtain wall was instantly covered with dense spider webs, like a rotten wooden door, falling towards Aria!
"Be careful!" Red Hood subconsciously wanted to rescue the person, but Aria stopped him: "Don't come over!"
The red-haired man hadn't expected his carefully designed ecological tank to be destroyed so easily. Seeing that he was also within the affected area, he scrambled to get out of the way, shouting, "Tigoras! Tigoras!"
A hand from hell pulled him back.
Like bathing a disobedient animal, the woman pulled him back to where she had been standing, letting him face the knife-like rain of broken glass.
A whole wall of glass overturned towards her, and after colliding with the two of them, the glass fragments broke into smaller parts. These fragments, reflecting tiny rays of light, scattered around the two of them, like the splashes of waves hitting the shore.
"Selena!" After being caught in the rain, the farmer did not forget to remind the cat near the cat climbing frame: "Don't come out yet. Wait until the fight is over before you come with us!" She shouted loudly, and she didn't know if the cat could understand.
A stream of heat streamed down the red-haired man's face, his health bar only dropping by a quarter. The woman's hands were like the claws of a wild animal, lifting him as easily as a chick. After shouting, she turned around, her expression suddenly changing, tinged with a hint of anger. She leaned close to the man's ear and whispered devilishly, "Not only are your infrastructure and aesthetic standards appallingly low, no one would want them even if they were made into a furniture catalog. Your moral standards are also perpetually saline, so low that you can't even grow a blade of grass."
Aria bared her sharp fangs as she spoke, looking more like a predator than the man before her. "If you truly believe in the law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, I can show you what that feels like."
You have to follow the rules of each place. If she doesn't take the rules of the game in human society seriously, she can also use the same code of conduct for killing monsters in the mine.
"Are you crazy?" Red Hood knocked down the ape-man with a tranquilizer bullet and rushed to her side: "Unless you tell me you have a body of steel comparable to Superman--" But they saw several small cuts on the farmer's face caused by fragments, so this statement was obviously not true.
"——Otherwise why don't you hide?"
"I want to vent Selina's anger..." Think about it, she was living a good life, but was suddenly kidnapped to a desolate place - although this place is suitable for farming, but Selina Kyle is obviously not interested in farming - and turned into something that is neither human nor cat. In other words, Selina is now a cat and can't kick this dog herself, otherwise the farmer would have dragged her to bring justice to the bad guys.
But a qualified farmer will not let his friends worry.
"Don't worry!" The farmer held Red Hair in one hand and raised his thumb with the other: "It won't hurt me at all." Only fighting is fun! Fighting for real women is as easy as going into the mines!
If it was the newly debuted Red Hood, he might not be able to understand it, but the one standing in front of Aria now is Jason Todd, who has experienced the training of his teammates and is already quite capable of dealing with various emergencies caused by his teammates.
Realizing he'd been a bit too aggressive, Jason took a deep breath and slowed down his tone. "Next time you beat someone up, don't get yourself involved. It's not worth it."
The farmer blinked twice. Although her health was also deducted, it was nothing compared to the pain felt by the villain who turned Selina into an animal. However, since her companion said so, she would accept the kindness.
"I'll pay attention next time." I will definitely pay attention next time, but the next time will be a different matter.
The white suit was dangled undignifiedly in the farmer's hands. Being ignored seemed more unbearable to him than being beaten: "Rude, uneducated young man!"
He cursed in a low voice: "You have no respect for a scientist, and no awe for my great achievements. You will soon pay a heavy price for this..."
"Excuse me," Red Hood nodded his tightly wrapped hood, as if reconnecting with the signal. "Did you just say you were a scientist?"
The two guns quickly rotated in his hands and returned to their original position. Red Hood raised the muzzle of the gun. He was undoubtedly relieved to get this answer: "It turns out that it is not from the magic side." The Blade of the Great Caste can deal with enemies with supernatural powers and magic, but it is not very effective against already formed spells.
Red Hood's laughter emanated from his hood, a laugh even more terrifying than the farmer's. "Take out the recovery potion now. There's still hope."
He glanced at Aria. Although the Red Hood's name was more frequently used to intimidate people in Gotham, she was definitely more terrifying to someone who had just suffered at the hands of the farmer. "You know—"
Red Hood said meaningfully, "My teammates don't usually like to wait too long."
It's unclear whether being ignored was more traumatic or the shadow cast by Aria in the rain. Emil Dorian seemed to be frantic: "I'd rather Batman arrest me! At least he'd check my background before arresting me, and he'd call out my name and threaten me when we meet. Unlike you, you know nothing about me!"
Emil gritted his teeth, "What kind of vigilantes are you?"
"Uh—is it possible that we weren't originally that?" Jason Todd was surprised by his blindness. "A criminal, a farmer. If you hadn't kidnapped her friend, you wouldn't have seen us together."
"I am fulfilling her dream!"
"I thought she could understand me, otherwise why would she use Catwoman as her code name?!"
"Liking cats and wanting to be a cat are two different things." The farmer shook him hard, trying to clear his mind. "And if you like cats so much, why don't you experiment on yourself instead of capturing innocent passersby?"
If the experiment was conducted on herself, Aria could still admire the attitude of the scientific madman who devoted himself to his ideals, but using innocent people as experimental subjects was a clear mistake made by the farmer.
"Hand over the antidote now, immediately, right now," Aria declared mercilessly, "or I'll plant you in the ground. At least you'll be of some use as fertilizer."
Faced with this naked threat, Emil Dorian gritted his teeth and refused to give in.
He was trying his best to delay time, because the real masterpiece, the crystallization of all his wisdom, had not returned from hunting. Once it realized that its father had been killed, the angry monster would tear the two young men to pieces...
He will wait.
…
Batman jumps out of the speedboat.
The island's ownership was sold over a decade ago to a Swiss businessman, rumored to have purchased it for vacation. However, Batman later discovered that while the island's ownership was still officially in the hands of the businessman, actual control had shifted several times, ultimately ending up in the hands of Emile Dorian.
Emil was a scientist dedicated to human genetic engineering. He was expelled from the association for violating human ethics and disappeared. If it weren't for the clues leading to this place, no one would have thought that he was in Gotham and had set up his own laboratory on this remote island to continue his experiments.
In order to obtain sufficient research funds, Emil sold some semi-finished reagents to the Gotham market. When Batman found out about this, he immediately went to the island to prevent Emil from conducting the next human experiment.
The grass and trees were cut, and there were footprints on the beach. Judging from the size and depth, a man and a woman had landed on the island before him.
Just as Batman knelt on one knee to analyze the traces, a pair of orange-yellow animal eyes lit up in the jungle and rushed towards him with a gust of wind!
————————
Irresponsible Little Theater:
Aria: Such an ugly floor, I don’t want it
Villain: ...
Tong: Sorry, I don’t usually investigate small people. I usually just do it.
Villain: ...
Villain: Batman, they all bullied me!
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