Shane Freak
patreon
Chapter 1156 Professor (Twenty-Eight)
🕑 Added 2024-04-12 06:39:24 +0000 UTCIn DC World With Marvel Chat Group : Table of Content/Chapter List
XXX-----XXX-----XXX-----XXX
In a space filled with white mist, a tall tower stood silently, like a rock that had been washed by the sea for thousands of years, steadfast, tall, and silent.
Looking through the cracks of the door, the interior of the tall tower was bustling with activity, with many people coming and going.
Walking up the winding staircase, I stopped at the door of an ordinary-looking office. With a creak, the door opened, and Greed Schiller, wearing a white coat, leaned against the doorframe, looking at Pride sitting at the desk in the room, and said:
"If it weren't for something important, I really can't stand working with you. When are you going to get rid of your perfectionism? Please, Rome wasn't built in a day!"
Pride, who was writing at the desk, said without looking up, "But Rome had to be built eventually. You're Greed, not Sloth. How long do you want to drag this out?"
"Anyway, all these years have passed, and you're not in a hurry for these few days, are you? Honestly, I haven't even taken a vacation yet," Greed Schiller shook his head and said, looking at Pride's eye contact. Greed stretched out his hands and waved them, saying, "Okay, I know you're eager to be an ordinary person. I'll go upstairs and see how Sloth is doing."
After saying that, he turned and walked out. As soon as he turned around, he bumped into a figure in a trenchcoat. Greed looked up and said in surprise, "Sloth? How did you get back?"
Sloth gave a forced smile, glanced at Pride, who was buried in his work at the desk, and then turned his head back to look at Greed and said, "You should ask the person who suggested I experience life in Gotham."
Greed raised an eyebrow and said, "I know Gotham is chaotic, but not to the point of making you find your anger so quickly."
Pride looked up and asked, "What trouble have you encountered?" He put down his pen and stood up from the desk, but before Sloth could answer, he continued on his own, "Never mind, it's probably just Batman not writing papers, causing trouble for no reason, gang shootouts disturbing the peace, or Merkel handling fertilizers too frequently. I'm already used to it."
Pride walked to the door, took his coat from the coat rack, and put it on. As he was about to leave, Sloth silently stepped back to make way for him, and gave him a smile.
Pride felt puzzled. He looked Sloth up and down and shook his head slightly before leaving the room.
As his figure disappeared at the end of the corridor, Sloth quickly tried to leave, but was captured by Greed. Looking at Sloth's expression, Greed slowly narrowed his eyes and said, "The trouble you've encountered is probably not ordinary, is it?"
Sloth gave him another forced smile and said, "Does Gotham have ordinary trouble? Hurry up and let me go, I need to go into seclusion."
Greed had a puzzled expression, but as he was distracted, Sloth quickly pulled his hand away and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Greed shook his head and said, "Forget it, Pride has already completed his integration and become much stronger. Even if there's any trouble, he should be able to handle it."
As Pride was walking towards the elevator, his mood was actually quite good. He had finally dealt with a long-standing major problem, merging the two fragments into one. More importantly, the fusion process went more smoothly than he had expected.
Merging with Joker was not that simple. His soul was the epitome of madness. Fortunately, the fragment that was polluted was originally Pride, and the two Pride fragments had a natural attractive force between them. The crazy factors did not pollute the entire fragment.
In fact, Schiller is still Joker, but the fusion with Pride has allowed him to extract the essence of Joker's traits and discard the dregs.
Previously, because Schiller was chosen by Batman to become Joker, Joker had many characteristics, but the two most important ones were: first, the Batman-Joker aggregation law, which is self-explanatory - where there is Batman, there will be Joker, and where there is Joker, there will be Batman; second, the relatively less obvious but very stable "immortality". As an important villain character in the original work, Joker can fake his death, disappear, but can never truly die.
Schiller suspects that even the Deaths in the Marvel and DC worlds cannot take him away, perhaps because of this reason.
If he were just an ordinary traveler, even in the DC world, since he is not in the Fate, and is not controlled by Death, the Death in the Marvel Space would have no reason to avoid him.
Originally, the Death Goddess of Marvel clearly expressed to him that the Realm of Death did not welcome him. This means that the Death Goddess was unwilling to take his soul, and Schiller has thought about the reasons. The most plausible explanation is that his soul contains a Joker fragment, and Marvel's Death has taken his soul, but where did it put the Joker?
More importantly, the absence of an important popular character next door. If one day Joker's resurrection is needed, will the Realm of Death be directly punched out by Joker? Or one day, in the Realm of Death, will a cement truck with a bat symbol suddenly appear?
Schiller suspects that Marvel's Death Goddess did not accept him, and it is very likely that she had the instructions of the OAA, after all, the death of a popular character next door in her own home would probably cause a lot of trouble.
The reason why Schiller chose to fuse with the soul trait fragment of Joker, rather than trying to directly destroy this half of the fragment, is that he sees the immortality of this identity. No matter where he is, no matter what situation he faces, Joker always has his way out.
But Schiller is also fed up with this inexplicable Batman-Joker aggregation law. Without getting rid of this law, he can't go anywhere, can't do anything, and can only stay with Batman every day, tormenting each other.
So he chose to fuse one half of the fragment with the other, and let Pride's traits take the lead. This way, he can retain Joker's identity while gaining a certain degree of autonomy to do what he wants.
The contrast between DC and Marvel makes it clear that Marvel's Schiller is often the one taking the initiative, fighting for human interests, and coordinating various forces, placing the positive characters and opposite characters in appropriate positions, which is why the Marvel world appears much more vibrant.
However, DC's Schiller is always entangled in the mess of Gotham due to the aggregation law with Batman, unable to get away even if he wants to.
Not to mention taking the initiative to do something, the furthest he has gone is the West Coast, and the whole world has not changed much, still lifeless. In the past four years, Schiller has not even had a title promotion, essentially just spinning his wheels.
The only good news is that Batman's condition has improved a bit, but this world does not revolve around Batman. Schiller actually had many things he wanted to do, but due to the troubles brought by Batman, he had no way to take the initiative, causing his progress to lag far behind Greed.
This is something Pride cannot tolerate. So when he was able to fuse with Joker's trait fragments, he immediately did so and teamed up with Greed to upgrade Sloth's trait fragments, letting him take charge to stabilize his mental state as quickly as possible.
The current Pride can be said to be full of ambition. He has prepared a lot of plans and is ready to expand the map, coordinate various forces, and stir up the space situation.
Arriving at the Elevator manager's office, he didn't even knock on the door, just pushed it open and stuck his head in, saying, "Top floor."
After that, he closed the door with a "bang" and quickly walked towards the Elevator, as his soul energy was abundant, and all sorts of complex plans like a tangled ball of yarn were constantly swirling in his mind. By the time the Elevator reached the top floor and his consciousness gradually recovered, he was still deep in thought.
The bright white light gradually dissipated from his eyes, and Schiller was like a just-woken person. Although he had already seen the scene, his brain was temporarily not receiving the information, and when he regained consciousness, the images he had seen in the previous few seconds and the information he was currently receiving rushed into his brain, taking him a while to react.
After Schiller's brain processed all this information, his first reaction... was no reaction at all. He just stood there dumbfounded.
He didn't understand why he wasn't in the office of Gotham University or the bedroom of Rodriguez Manor, but instead appeared in what seemed to be the ruins of a battlefield ravaged by some kind of monster.
After realizing this fact, Schiller's nerves immediately tightened. He thought, could it be that some dangerous person has invaded Gotham University? The recently upgraded Sloth couldn't handle it, so he retreated back to the tower?
But then he reconsidered, thinking that it couldn't be right. None of the personality fragments in the Thought Tower would choose to switch personalities in a dangerous situation, as that would be irresponsible to Schiller's personal safety.
Schiller's personality traits were like canned luncheon meat. If the can's outer shell was destroyed, all the fillings inside would not last long. The so-called "when the lips are gone, the teeth will feel the cold," is exactly like this. Even the crazy Joker would not disregard the safety of his physical body and forcibly retreat back to the tower.
Since Sloth chose to switch at this time, it means the situation must be safe. Schiller looked around, and indeed, all he saw were ruins, which could hardly be considered safe.
In order to figure out what was going on, Schiller had no choice but to review his recent memories.
He originally just wanted to take a quick look to confirm the reason for his current environment, but the first scene he saw was Victor telling him that Bruce had switched to the physics department and submitted a paper in just two days.
Unavoidably, he had to acknowledge that after so much time together, Batman understood his professor too well.
He was very clear that when Schiller digs up the past, he is accustomed to flipping from front to back, and the order of revenge and the order of digging up the past are the same. Batman's abrupt departure from the scene was precisely because, in chronological order, Schiller would definitely find him first.
It turned out that Batman's choice was very wise. Schiller was furious when he saw the part about Victor's evaluation of Bruce, but unfortunately, Batman was not on the scene at the moment, so if he wanted to settle the score, he could only wait.
Flipping further, Schiller saw the part about someone constantly harassing him with phone calls, and of course, he almost didn't need to infer that the caller was Zsasz, Thomas Elliott.
Schiller's gaze had just landed on the bandaged face of Elliott when a police car stopped at the intersection, and Gordon, accompanied by officers, handcuffed Zsasz and put him in the car.
Next was the hospital murder case, with Black Mask Roman as the perpetrator. Roman was also not at the scene, and if nothing unexpected happened, he should have been brought to justice as well.
Schiller continued flipping through, and then saw a youthful face - Harley Quinn.
Standing in place, Schiller took a deep breath and looked down at his dusty clothes, gently brushing off his trenchcoat.
And Harley, who was peeking in from outside, let out a startling scream the moment she made eye contact with him.
"Professor??"
[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, and thanks for the invaluable support!]
XXX-----XXX-----XXX-----XXX
Next Chapter>>Chapter 1157 Professor (Twenty-nine)
