The members of the Court of Owls aren't total pushovers. They're among Gotham City's top oligarchs, having official identities, which gives them many legitimate means to take down their rivals.
But that was the past. Now, the status of their official identities faces a great challenge. Not to mention the disappearance of Bruce Wayne, where the hell did Stark Group and Osborn Group come from?
The two Starks are busy squabbling with each other, not free to bother with them. Old Osborn, however, is launching an unmerciful onslaught.
This old fox, in fact, could be considered as a predecessor to the Court of Owls. He is the true nouveau riche, realizing during the moment of Earth's merge that the zero-sum game has begun again.
The merging of two cities, which are not the cities where he normally resides, is like a huge cake. While biting into their opponent's cake, they're also eating their own city's cake.
Whoever eats faster, finishing off the opponent's piece first, can turn around and land a powerful punch, making them vomit out what they have eaten.
Osborn opened his big mouth and starting eating voraciously. Just five minutes after the city merger was complete, all the shareholders of the Osborn Group had assembled with every forceful acquisition accomplished. Any left unable to be purchased were sold short, and every listed company on the stock market was tripped up with sly underhand tricks.
For those still unresolved, white gloves were used for whistleblowing, black gloves for kidnapping directors, and when all else failed, they'd charge to the opponent's doorstep to grab the company's seal. If they couldn't bully Stark, the genius, could they not bully you?
The Court of Owls was already half a beat slow. Osborn's heavy-handed approach left them stupefied for a moment. Just as poison teeth were sinking into a chicken thigh, Hydra chewed off a chunk of their butt hair.
The Court of Owls was furious. Where was our law enforcement? What did our law enforcement eat?!
Batman's here for a slaughter, check the state of Mayor Penguin Man. Gordon, where's Gordon, have Gordon come and save us!
On closer inspection, the Court of Owls realized that all five kings had gathered on the enemy side. Our jungler invaded the wild area and didn't return, top lane was soloing, mid lane was AFK, the two in the bot lane were typing more than farming. They initially thought they were summoner's crystals, but now discovered they were dragons being team-kicked.
But the Court of Owls could only pick the tallest among the dwarfs. They quickly got in touch with the Penguin Man, asking the mayor to take the pressure off first, then find Police Chief James Gordon to cut the back row, and at the same time contact Wayne's butler Alfred to bring back Bruce Wayne as a live target.
However, the experience proved never to have the illusion of relying on a teammate who had once ditched you.
Upon hearing that Gordon's daughter was abducted, Penguin Man knew the police chief was no use for the time being. It was then that the shortcomings of Penguin Man, the super-criminal, were exposed.
In a way, Penguin Man is a normal person. Even in crazy Gotham, he is relatively normal. He just wants to make money. He doesn't have any artistic pursuits, so he doesn't think as broadly as other villains with mental health conditions.
His usual modus operandi involves running mob businesses to save money, and when enough is saved, he bribes. After achieving a certain status, he begins to assassinate political enemies. That's his three-pronged approach.
The Birthday Boy is a killer trained by the Penguin Man from Earth No.1, a strange big guy wearing a mask who, at the Penguin Man's command, kidnapped and killed many relatives of politicians.
When he committed his crimes, he would tie his victims in a room filled with birthday party decorations, serve them birthday cake, then brutally dismember them.
Penguin Man wanted to resort to his old trick again by sending the Birthday Boy to assassinate Kingpin. Gordon took advantage of his pursuit of Barbara to inform Penguin Man about Kingpin's intelligence. Although Penguin Man knew that Gordon wanted to instigate dog-eating-dog, he had no other choice.
The downside of being in the mob is that the mob boss absolutely cannot be defeated. Once the deterrent is gone, everything's over.
So even though intelligence was insufficient, Penguin Man still had to make a move. And as expected, that move got him into trouble.
The Birthday Boy is an immensely strong serial killer, but Kingpin is heavyweight. Not to mention his personal combat capabilities, but the Bullseye and Hobgoblin who are currently accompanying him are not so easy for ordinary people without superpowers to handle.
Although these two are basically Spider Man's training objects during his novice period, Spider Man's novice period is also characterized by immense strength and spider-sense. Even if they can exchange blows with novice Spider Man, they are not so easy to deal with.
At first, the Birthday Boy only found some cannon fodder, which he easily took care of. But with insufficient information from Penguin Man, he could not find Kingpin's lair.
At this juncture, S.H.I.E.L.D., who had been closely monitoring Kingpin's employment of super-powered criminals, found that Penguin Man was up against Kingpin. Natasha directly approached Penguin Man and gave him the location of Kingpin's palace.
This was effectively setting Penguin Man up. Now that you know where the enemy's lair is, do you dare not meet him?
Penguin Man sent the Birthday Boy, but unsurprisingly, the Birthday Boy did not return.
With things progressing to this point, Penguin Man had no choice but to have a showdown with Kingpin, even if he didn't want to. If he lost face in this matter, he could never stand firm in the future.
Afterwards, Penguin Man continued to send quite a few people, whether cultivated killers, mob hitman squads, or even mercenary groups from Mexico, but they all broke their weapons in Kingpin's hand.
Penguin Man knew that he had to shed some blood for a sure kill.
A hand covered with black gauntlet was holding the steering wheel, while the other hand was resting on the window. A black Aston Martin was whizzing across Brooklyn Bridge.
A Porsche was pressing the horn behind him. The driver holding a sizzling blonde in the car made a face and poked his head out of the window, whistling at the car ahead.
"I bet the wuss in front can't even hit 120 miles, babe. He even painted such a beautiful car this ugly color. Let me show him what's what."
After saying that, he put his foot on the gas, directly driving alongside the black Aston and extended a middle finger from the window.
The other party also slowly rolled down the window. The owner of the Porsche looked over with interest, only to see the black hole of a gun barrel stretch out from inside the car.
Bang!
The out-of-control Porsche spun around on the highway, knocking flying several cars behind it like a bowling ball. The smoking gun barrel was pulled back, and the driver turned his head, revealing a mask of alternating black and red.
"You're a bit too hotheaded, cousin. Killing passersby at random is going to make your popularity drop, you know what popularity is, right?"
"Quit the nonsense, Wade." An even huskier, deeper voice came from the passenger seat.
A burly man wearing black and yellow armor was fiddling with the trigger of a pistol, aiming straight between the driver's legs.
Known as Wade, he leaned his back against the driver's seat in dismissal, straightened his neck in a serious driving position, while clamping his legs together, trembling.
"You're not really going to shoot, are you? Bro, this isn't cool, I was going to take you to see the hottest chicks in Brooklyn."
"Finish this job and you're out." The deep voice and the click of the gun breech echoed together: "The other party has offered a high price, I'll give you thirty percent."
"Do you think I'm the kind of guy who does things for money?" Wade hit the car's stereo button and a blasting tune boomed out. He moved to the beat saying, "It's an honor to show my dear cousin around this great new city, can I add ten percent if I introduce you to a hot Russian?"
A bright dart was spinning on the black and yellow gauntlet, seemingly about to fly out any moment.
Wade swallowed and said, "She may be a former Soviet agent, but she's damn hot. Unfortunately, she's not into my type. You could give it a try, she even went with Tony Stark, you surely can't be worse than Stark, right?"
As the dart got closer and closer, Wade desperately dodged to the side and said, "Alright, let's talk business. Who hired you for this? I think we can share some industry insight."
After saying that, Wade covered his mouth with the back of one hand and spoke to the open air, "I'm not expecting him to agree, you all know my cousin's a closed book. By the way, his codename is Deathstroke, cool huh?"
Then he tugged at his mask, fingered the edge seam, and said, "With such a great opportunity to gain popularity, I have got to seize it. I'll go take a picture with Batman later, maybe I can get on the cover, it will definitely be the best comic of the year."
"Oswald Cobblepot." Deathstroke actually dropped his full name and said, "The mayor of Gotham City."
"Whoa!" Wade gasped in awe and said, "That's quite the scoop. Just a side note, can you openly discuss matters of the mayor hiring assassins where you're from?"
"There's not much difference."
"That's too dark."
"Tell me who Kingpin is." Deathstroke looked at Wade and said, "Otherwise you'll go from being Deadpool to being a dead man."
"There he goes again with his dry humor." Deadpool once again puckered his lips to the air, "But I'm used to it. In the interest of gaining popularity, I should tell him, right? This battle will be exciting, I have to upstage everyone!"
"Kingpin resides in a palace." Deadpool shrugged and said, "You might find it strange that New York has a palace. Gotham probably doesn't either, but that's just what the big fat guy calls it."
"As far as I know, I've never introduced you to the situation in my hometown, so you may have some misunderstandings. You might think that all we have to do is drive directly to the target's building, wait for him to come out and shoot him."
"So isn't that the case?"
"No, No, No!" Deadpool wagged his finger and pouted, "It's common knowledge in the industry, in New York, finding and dealing with the target isn't hard, the real challenge is getting to their location."
"So, how are you planning to find Kingpin's lair?"
"Anyone can find it." Wade took out his phone, opened Google Maps, showed it to Deathstroke after flipping through it and said, "See, the palace is right here on Google Maps. We just need to follow the navigation."
Deathstroke's hand paused, his inner thoughts could basically be summed up with, how the hell is this your idea of us being too dark?! Can the headquarters of a mob boss really be indexed by Google Maps?
"Like I said, it's not hard to find his lair, the challenge is how to get there."
Deathstroke was just about to speak.
Zing——
With a sharp braking sound, the sharp dart lodged into the dashboard in front of them, narrowly missing Deathstroke's glove. He glared at Wade, but the next second, he saw a demon, standing several meters tall, appear in front of their car.
Then a group of mages rushed out from both sides of the road, waving red ribbons and golden circles, shouting as they charged towards the demon.
Wade immediately dragged Deathstroke out of the car and yelled, "What are you waiting for! Run!"