章 3357: Chapter 2498: Battle for the Cloak (17)
Dick wasn't quite sure what consequences might follow if he ran to the car now, saw another version of himself from a different space-time, and woke them up, but he believed that his appearance here wasn't without reason.
While in the car, Dick vaguely remembered that there was indeed a high-rise building nearby, and the angle might allow a view of where their car was parked, but with so many buildings around, its appearance here must certainly be a trick of the thick Fog.
Dick chose the safest and most conservative approach, which was to stay put because he didn't know if breaking the window and jumping down would trigger any new abnormal reaction; thus, the best strategy was to stay still.
However, after standing still for about a minute, he noticed that the Fog on the office's floor-to-ceiling window began to stir, gradually forming some patterns.
Dick leaned in for a closer look and found the Fog coalescing into images of eyes, fitting previous reports of a supernatural phenomenon where giant eyes appeared in the sky amidst the mysterious Fog.
Dick took a few steps back, wanting to see if the eyes differed from one another, but as he took a step, all the pupils turned to follow him.
Dick leapt back in fright, crashing into the sofa behind him, the pain in his arms and waist telling him this wasn't an illusion.
Then, in that instant, all the eyes squinted, turning into cold, malevolent, sneering eyes, sending a chill down Dick's spine.
Believing he should get away from the glass, he crossed the entire office and stood next to the door; he swore he didn't touch the door, but it opened on its own.
On the other side of the door was another office, laid out exactly like the one he was in, but mirrored in position. Through the door, he could see another floor-to-ceiling window in the opposite office, with a car outside it as well.
Only this time, there were two people sitting in the car, and Dick was nowhere to be seen.
Compelled, Dick walked over and noticed his side of the car door was now open, with a footprint left on the ground in front of him, indicating that this moment should have been when he himself got out of the car.
Suddenly, he also saw heaps of eyes on the car door, but the two Nightwings inside seemed completely oblivious, yet the eyes began to laugh.
Dick took a deep breath, rushed to the window, and started pounding on it, yelling, "Get away from there! Get away from there quick!"
Those eyes would definitely bring danger; that was Dick's gut feeling. Furthermore, the more intently they were looked at, the more dangerous it was, and they had to leave quickly, or something would surely go wrong.
But the two men couldn't hear a thing, not until the eyes covered all the reflective surfaces and they realized something was wrong.
As they turned to look at the car window at that very moment, a huge eye made of dense Fog floated outside the window.
Both of them let out a scream as the Prime Universe Dick, seated in the driver's seat, slammed on the gas pedal hard.
Bang!!!
The Batmobile's engine roared to life as it surged forward hastily. Desperate, Dick could do nothing to stop them; the Prime Universe Dick, for some reason, began driving the Batmobile up the side of the high-rise.
The Batmobile could wall-crawl and moved as smoothly over the glass curtain wall as it would on solid ground; Dick watched helplessly as the undercarriage of the Batmobile zoomed past him.
The Batmobile had nowhere to go after reaching the top, and the Prime Universe Dick didn't make a turn, letting it lose speed and plummet to the ground in front of the building, shattering into pieces upon impact.
Dick, in disbelief, watched the rising dust cloud, then suddenly stepped back, turned, twisted his head, and ran as fast as he could back to the initial room.
He gasped for breath, holding his knees after reaching the window; the eyes on it were gone, and the Batmobile still sat quietly in its place, all three people with their eyes tightly closed.
He had to find a way to wake them, Dick thought; if he could get them to wake up earlier, perhaps the future wouldn't turn out like that.
Dick started searching the office for a tool he could use. Clearly, the tables and chairs were not strong enough to break through the outer wall, but he found a fire extinguisher in a corner of the office.
He pulled the emergency pin and took the fire extinguisher out, smashing it against the glass. The glass didn't break completely, but it made a noise; Dick picked up the fire extinguisher and smashed it again.
Crash! Smash!
Finally, the glass broke, yet the floor he was on was too high to jump down; his only option was to throw something heavy out the window.
The Batmobile was highly durable, and even a drop from several stories high wouldn't damage its outer shell, but it could create enough noise to wake the people inside the car.
Dick sized up the situation, but honestly, he wasn't confident about landing a direct hit due to the great distance and the influence of various factors that prevented him from throwing exactly where he intended.
Well, it seems he needed to calculate the wind direction first...wait, is there wind in the dense Fog?
Dick put his head out of the shattered window to feel for any wind and didn't feel any; without wind resistance, hitting the target became much easier.
Picking the right angle, Dick smoothly threw the fire extinguisher out the window; regrettably, at that moment, the Fog thickened, visibility dropped below three meters again, and Dick couldn't see whether the fire extinguisher hit its mark or where it landed.
It wasn't until a few seconds later when he heard a "thud" that Dick confirmed his thrown object had hit the ground.
But the sound was somewhat muffled, leaving him uncertain whether it had hit the car or the ground; all he could do was pray that it had struck the car.
Dick decided to check out the next room for a glimpse into the future, but as soon as he stepped out of the door, he came face to face with the Nightwing from the Prime Universe.
"Dick, how come you're here?"
Dick wanted to ask him the same question, but a look of fear immediately crossed Nightwing's face. Dick waved his hands and said, "No, I'm not a monster, nor am I something disguised. I really am Dick, remember? On our way here, I kept talking about the time my Dad went fishing."
"My God." Nightwing's confused and blank expression betrayed him, and Dick hurriedly asked, "What's wrong?"
"I came here because of you. You just said you wanted to go outside and check, but as soon as you pushed the car door open and stepped out, a fire extinguisher from nowhere knocked you down."
"Your arm is broken. There's a bandage in the Batmobile, but no splint, so we were planning to look for a proper fixation device in the nearest office building."
Dick was also baffled. If he was hit as soon as he walked out the door, then who was now here in this place?
He immediately realized this might be another past, but how could the fire extinguisher he threw in this timeline hit another past version of himself?
But then he thought, in the midst of fog, time-space was naturally chaotic; any bizarre occurrence wouldn't be out of the ordinary. Their primary goal now was to escape the trap.
Dick briefly explained to the Nightwing from the Prime Universe what had just happened. Listening to this, the Prime Universe's Nightwing was also utterly bewildered. Dick spoke up, saying, "I think we need to come up with a plan."
"Can't we just stay here?" Nightwing said, "Eventually, the fog is bound to lift."
"That's what I thought too, but after staying a while, I noticed eyes starting to appear on the glass. Those eyes gave me a bad feeling. If we stay any longer, something might go wrong."
"Does that mean we can't stay in one place for too long in the fog?" the Nightwing from the Prime Universe said. "So we should be fine just walking around in the vicinity, right?"
Dick wanted to say that it was just such a casual walk around that led to the accident you were talking about.
But after giving it more thought, he realized he might have been too impulsive earlier. He knew that what he saw at the other window could have been an illusion, but he still rushed to react.
What would happen if he had done nothing upon seeing it? Just walking around here, keeping active to prevent the eyes from appearing, wouldn't that allow him to safely wait for the fog to lift?
Thinking this, Dick decided to follow the advice of the Nightwing from the Prime Universe. They returned to the room where the glass had been smashed, resolved to stay there until eyes appeared, and then move to the adjacent room where the car crash happened, moving back and forth between the two.
But when the eyes appeared, and they were about to move to the other room, they found that going through the door didn't lead back to the previous room.
Another identical office appeared with an intact floor-to-ceiling window. Outside the window stood a car, now with only one person left inside – the Nightwing from the Arkham Universe.
"Is this the point in time after I left?" the Prime Universe's Nightwing couldn't quite grasp what was happening. He took a closer look, then shook his head and said, "No, that's not right. There was blood on the ground when you were hit, but there's nothing there now."
"This could be something that happened after my timeline." Dick speculated, "I left the car unscathed and headed to the building, then you from that time left as well, leaving only this Nightwing."
"So, no matter what happens to him, we can't interfere? Are you sure that won't put him in danger?" said the Nightwing from the Prime Universe.
"I guess not," Dick replied. "We'll do nothing, and the timeline should flow normally until the fog lifts, and everything will return to its original state."
But at that moment, they suddenly saw a figure appear in the depths of the fog, directly in front of the car.
He stood there motionless, yet seemed to possess an endless power that lured people to observe him, to approach him, to chase after him.
It was as if, by merely touching the figure, one could uncover all the truths of the mysterious world within the fog.
Dick wanted to shout out and stop him, but the remaining Nightwing pressed down on the accelerator, and the car drove into the depths of the fog.
The engine's roar gradually faded into the distance. Dick opened his mouth to say something, but the roar sounded again from afar. The Batmobile reappeared, its driver driving off as if oblivious to everything, then coming back to the original spot, without any pause.
"Is this some kind of space loop?" Dick speculated. "It looks like it's getting closer, but the location has never actually changed."
"I think we need to make him stop," said the Prime Universe's Nightwing. "Although the car's power is infinite, if he keeps driving like this, when the fog lifts, he might be in a place we don't know. How will we find him then?"
"But we can't break another window." Dick said, "If there has to be a bad outcome, it's better to be separated than injured. After all, the fog will eventually lift, and then we can contact each other with our communicators."
The Nightwing from the Prime Universe agreed with him. In such dangerous fog, there were bound to be incidents, and attempting to explore the chaotic space-time would hardly bring about good results. It was better to choose the least worst option, like Dick said, the fog would eventually lift.
Unfortunately, as the fog lifted, the two of them were still standing in front of the office building's floor-to-ceiling window. But in the few seconds before the fog completely disappeared, they watched powerless as the remaining Nightwing drove off into the fog and vanished.
And when they descended the building and reached the front door, Dick was just about to step forward when Nightwing, as if he heard something, jerked him back violently.
With a loud bang, a fire extinguisher came crashing down, creating a big gash at the edge of the asphalt road and stone-paved street, and fragments of stone cut through the skin on Dick's arm he raised in front of him.
The car that was supposed to be on the street, and its driver, had vanished without a trace. The last wisp of fog dissipated.
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