Martha unhesitatingly declared war on the Wayne Family, and not ten minutes after the declaration of war was issued, the Wayne Family's fleet, which was enjoying hotpot and singing songs, was abruptly intercepted by the Kane family.
In essence, given the assets of the Wayne Family, they should have had no rivals in Gotham City long ago, but Bruce Wayne couldn't afford to appear too far ahead. To maintain his guise, he intentionally delayed the start of the war, and he didn't bother to secure his territory.
This resulted in Thomas taking over a base that had pretty good defenses, but a half-finished logistics and transportation system. Due to sanctions on raw materials, the economic lifeline, the chemical factory, was also in semi-shutdown status.
Thomas was really pissed off, he could understand why Bruce had to hide his talents. Without even thinking, he knew Bruce in this world must be Batman. The slow growth to avoid blowing his cover was understandable.
But being attacked by his own wife affected a man's ego, so in anger, Thomas stepped forward and directly took over the business of Wayne Enterprises, becoming the direct leader of the Wayne Family.
He wouldn't back down either. He sent people to surround the small territory where the Kane family was stationed, betting that the Kane family didn't have enough resources to hold out against him. But Martha contacted her old bosom friend, now Hush, Thomas Elliot's aunt, Phanesa Elliot, and stabbed the Wayne family from behind.
Then, Thomas repeated his old trick and contacted the Sullivan family who ran a casino in Gotham, blocking the Kane family's connection between their two stationed areas, weakening their connection and preventing their Internal Circulation System from being successfully established.
The two were having a great deal of fun with their back-and-forth battles. Most importantly, having been born in the gangster era, this was a familiar road for them. It left the younger leaders of other families in Gotham dumbfounded. In the end, your dad is always your dad.
Batman found himself in an awkward position, with this thinking summed up as: Can anyone get me out of this mess?
What do you do when your middle-aged parents not only want to divorce but are also fighting? I am waiting online and am quite anxious.
Soon, Batman found himself busy with more pressing matters, as Thomas and Martha finally remembered him, making him wish they hadn't.
Every child faces a dilemma when their parents ask whom they want to live with following a quarrel. Batman never dreamt that he would have to face this problem in his middle age.
"Bruce, listen to me. Your mother is not thinking clearly. I've explained it to her that I only want Wayne Enterprises to have a competent heir. That's why I've been paying more attention to Damian, but I haven't neglected the other kids. Dick and Jason both like me."
"As for the smoking and drinking issue, it's a process to quit. I was too busy in that cosmos to pay attention to it. I had a lot of pressure and didn't really have time to worry about these things, but she just didn't listen to my explanations."
"You need to stand by me and help her calm down. Can't a family sit together and discuss whatever issues they're facing? You agree with me, right, Bruce?"
Batman barely put the phone down when it rang again, Martha's hurried voice on the other end.
"Little Bruce, you need to come here quickly. Your dad is risking everything for business. If this continues, the kids will definitely be heartbroken because of his actions."
"And about his smoking and drinking, forgetting everything else, Aisha just started kindergarten. Is it appropriate for him to go home smelling like smoke? What if it affects the children?"
"Bruce's girlfriend from that cosmos often comes to Wayne Manor. If he comes home drunk and she sees him, what would that look like? If word gets out, what would happen to the reputations of the Wayne and Kane families?"
"We need to unequivocally stop his disregard for this family. More importantly, we need to get him to step away from his precious business long enough to listen to us. Can't a family sit together and talk things over? You agree with me, right, Bruce?"
Batman had a feeling something wasn't quite right.
They kept saying, "Can't a family talk things over?" while they were almost hurling missiles at each other's heads. What in the world was going on???
Well, this was simply a matter of a generational gap. During the era of Batman's parents, mob wars of this degree were quite normal. This city had never been lawful to begin with: every crime was amplified, so wasn't it reasonable that gangster families, dominating several blocks, were waging mini wars against each other?
Therefore, in Thomas and Martha's eyes, even though they might have been venting their anger from an argument, this extent of retaliation amounted to little more than mutual testing and warning.
But when Batman was born, the mob was on the verge of extinction, with socio-economic classes completely solidified. There was nothing left to fight for. Gotham was dead all over. He had never witnessed a spectacle like this before.
And, stepping back, he'd need time to cope with the return of his long-dead parents, wouldn't he?
In the brief moment that he was taken aback, Thomas and Martha, with their wisdom and knowledge, gave Batman a firsthand experience of the alliances and face-offs during the heyday of the mob.
Finding that their warnings and probes went fruitless, and their son chose not to take a position, the two were surprisingly enraged. Consequently, they began to reveal their true colors.
Though the old Gotham aristocratic Kane family had declined, they still had connections. After Martha privately contacted them, they rallied almost all of Gotham's old-money elite. Leveraging their advantage in the number of bases and personnel, they broke through the Wayne family logistics blockade in one fell swoop and even established a complete logistics system on this foundation, directly taking over Gotham's largest pier to date.
Being old money themselves, they knew best how governmental and commercial entities collude. Martha donated a large sum of money as a political contribution to Mayor Oswald Cobblepot, also strongly supporting his deepwater port project. Cobblepot's popularity soared, and the old aristocrats too took the moral high ground by association.
Thomas, on the other hand, cashed in on his substantial mobile capital, engaging heavily in the military, gambling, and smuggling industries. Then, using economic warfare tactics, he forced the enemy to reduce its total shareholding in the city's industrial construction, gradually nibbling away at its industrial scale.
So what was Batman doing amidst all this?
He was stirring the pot from both ends.
Begrudgingly so, because if he didn't intercede, the two might actually start fighting. If their quarrel escalated to the point of no return, the only benefit would be that the Joker currently locked in the Batcave would die laughing.
Therefore, Batman had to run around hither and thither. When Wayne picked up the dishes, he turned the table; when Kane drank water, he drove the car. He self-picked his dad's card listening and drank first when his mom toasted. As long as neither party succeeded in their endeavors, the crisis would resolve itself naturally.
But in reality, it was a bit like kids blowing up the stove to halt their parents' argument at home. The quarrel would indeed cease, only to be succeeded by a whipping with belts.
Thomas and Martha, on realizing that after all their hustle and bustle, a confrontation just wouldn't ignite, found something amiss. Why couldn't they provoke a fight despite racking their brains all day?
Hence, on a dark windy night, the moment Batman got home, he saw Thomas and Martha sitting on the sofa, one on each side, with Alfred beside them desperately trying to communicate with his eyes.
If Batman knows Alfred well enough, his eyes should be screaming, "Run!"