The next two-hour journey opened Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy's eyes, and to understand what they saw, we must start with the chaotic state of the mob in Gotham.
After the initial widespread war, the gangster families reached a strange balance. After a major shake-up, about thirteen families managed to stand firm, becoming the most powerful gangster families in Gotham, including the Wayne and the Kane families.
Because these two families led the gangs, the situation began running in another direction, spiraling out of control.
It's always the same story, Batman and the Joker would confront each other in any field that humans could be involved in, and the first confrontation was an arms race.
Technological competition is not just a simple comparison of military industry resources. Everyone knows that a technologically strong country relies on key technologies as its ace in the arms race.
Weapons like bombs with flamethrower enchantments may seem cool but are not very useful and do not count as key technologies. They need more decisive technology.
But to acquire technology, you must face a problem, that is, creating technology requires talent.
Most Gothamites' education starts from prenatal care and ends at driving schools, and the occasional super-geniuses are often too young and lack systematic education.
In half a month, Thomas and Martha have become like frustrated fishermen who have prepared their pots but can't catch a single fish. They are not without money or resources, and have prepared the experimental materials and spaces, but all of these are in vain without scientists.
If hiring talents from elsewhere was a possibility before, with the current situation in Gotham, those with brains won't come, and those who come definitely do not have brains.
Again, you never know how much Batman and Joker would be willing to sacrifice to defeat each other. Each desperate fisherman's final resort is to cast a net or use a harpoon, with clenched teeth and stomped feet, the eight major sects attack Arkham Asylum!
Both of them are locals, especially Thomas. He certainly knows where to find the most highly educated scientists. What could be a better think tank than Arkham Asylum?
At that time, all sorts of monsters in Arkham Asylum were preparing to break out. They had anticipated the possibility of being blocked by gangs or being picked up by Batman, dropping from the sky, and they certainly prepared for this.
Again, what could be more terrifying than opening your eyes to see Batman or the Joker? It's opening your eyes to see Batman and Joker scrapping together.
When these two fight, they always do so in a way that disregards the lives of others. In order to seize more scientists, Thomas and Martha let go of all scruples and deployed the most manpower and ample force to blockade Arkham Asylum tightly.
The villains had never seen such a grand scene. Batman would prefer each of his toes to make no sound, for fear that others would know that he had caught the criminals, but now, that life sentence changed into a divine punishment.
Truth be told, the lunatics still in Arkham Asylum were not the militant type. Even Killer Croc's set physical strength wasn't very high. The most physical supervillains, like Bane, were not trapped, and Mr. Freeze had already left.
These academic types had no way to deal with real guns and ammunition. The most trouble they could cause Batman was mental torment. When they realized that they couldn't reason with rocket launchers, missile launchers, and machine guns, they fully understood the great significance of contributing to the development of Gotham's gangster families.
So, the gangster families almost greedily divided these supervillains with brains and strength.
These people originally joined the gangs as a temporary measure. If their eloquence could deceive Batman, couldn't it deceive ordinary people?
Their plan was to use this opportunity to sneak out of the asylum. Once they were out, who could stop them from running?
What did stop them were their rigorous scientific spirits.
To be fair, these super-villains of Gotham may not do practical things every day, but judging from their various outrageous academic qualifications, they are academically ambitious and competent, and most of them are not complete outsiders, many of them have an academic background.
A scientist's greatest enemy is pseudoscience.
Once these villains arrived at the laboratories prepared by the gangs, they became dumbfounded. The place was spacious, the equipment was expensive, and the raw materials were abundant, but they were useless. The thing scientists can't stand the most is wasted funding.
This couldn't be blamed entirely on the gangs. Apart from the heads of several families who had knowledge in this area, most had no conception about scientific research. They basically bought whatever equipment was expensive and hoarded whatever raw materials were scarce, with no systematic structure.
The laboratories were built in utter disarray. A state-of-the-art disinfection room was installed outside a physics lab, a medical lab was two miles away from the storage room, and what's more ridiculous was that a high-energy lab was next to a dangerous chemical warehouse, and a cryogenic lab was placed over a smelting furnace.
One could say that if Gotham's gangs had a chance to continue, their technology would solely depend on luck. The main aspect was the audacity, nothing but audacity.