Joker puckered his lips, imitated his expression, made a strange face, and said: "you know you can't, otherwise why are we still sitting here?"
The interrogator gave a hard shake, and Joker's head hit the edge of the chair. His blood flowed, but the interrogator cautiously took a step back, coldly watching Joker get up and walk out the door.
"Lord Tivorens, Lord Desaad is calling."
The communication device handed over by a soldier was received by the interrogator named Tivorens, who spoke into it.
"Yes, the interrogation is still ongoing, and I believe we will have a result by tonight... I am very sorry, Sir, it was negligence on my part. But if he had been handed over earlier... alright, understood."
After hanging up the phone, his face darkened even more. He was about to say something when an ear-splitting alarm echoed from outside.
"Enemy Attack! Enemy Attack!! Those grotesque killers are back!!"
Guards ran out in rows, Tivorens grabbed his long spear and walked briskly through the corridor. As a yellow figure whizzed past him, he quickly threw his spear to pin his opponent on the wall.
But despite that, the opponent seemed to feel no pain or fear, still struggling to attack him with his talons. Tivorens mercilessly severed his head.
Looking at the severed limbs on the ground, Tivorens frowned. He walked over to the decapitated head, crouched down, and took off the face mask.
Sure enough, he recognized the assassin from the previous attack. If they weren't twins, it meant they could be resurrected, and seemingly endless.
Tivorens couldn't understand why they created so many weak assassins. These Talon assassins had attacked their stronghold more than a dozen times, but had never posed any threat. Their greatest achievement was having wounded a few robot guards, robots that were equally endless.
These assassins were incredibly annoying, each time setting off the alarm. Meanwhile, the rules of the Apocalypse Star Army were strict: as soon as an alarm is triggered, it must be attended to, including by the highest commander.
Within a mere hour, Tivorens had been in and out several times. Joker was not laughing for no reason -- compared to an interrogator, Tivorens appeared more like a security guard assigned to a community gate.
He sighed, pulled out his communicator to dial the combat team's number, and said: "You know this can't go on. If you can't bring down their stronghold, I'll report it to Lord Desaad."
The voice on the other end sounded vehement, apparently arguing about something. But Tivorens didn't have time to listen, he needed to deal with the difficult Joker and extract the clue about Batman from him.
"You wouldn't want to experience my methods." Tivorens returned to the interrogation room again. He said: "I know you have remarkable healing abilities, but I've seen more beings skilled at self-healing. They all ended up mad without exception."
"If you want the information inside my head, come and get it." Joker laughed hysterically, looked at him, and said: "Use all your methods. Let me see if it hurts more than Batman's punch."
Tivorens took a deep breath. He didn't look at Joker again, but moved through the interrogation room to another room where a huge piece of equipment was located.
Clearly, ever since they captured this lunatic, they had tried various forms of torture. But this guy's brain seemed off, he didn't seem intelligent in the way other sentient beings were, so such external methods were futile.
But Tivorens was the most frightening interrogator on the entire Apocalypse Star, and he excelled not in physical punishment, but in mental torture. He knew time was running out, and he had to extract the secret from the Joker's mind.
"Sir, his mental state is extremely unstable. It's hard to predict what's inside his psychic battlefield. Should we do some more checks?"
"There's no time left." Tivorens leaned both hands on the table, gazing at the machine's readings, and said in a serious tone: "We need Batman."
"We need Batman!!"
In a damp, dark, long table conference room, a man wearing an Owl mask roared: "We are absolutely incapable of resisting the next attack by these aliens, the repeatedly resurrected Talons have weakened to the extreme. We can't even mount a solid defence, let alone attack. We need greater power!"
"If we had prepared earlier, how could we have ended up in our current situation?" a sharp female voice rang out: "That cursed organization called Hydra won't stop chasing us, their heavy firepower is shockingly dense. We only have sparse assassins, if not for the Talon's endless resurrection, this city would already have been taken over by them."
"And what about the superheroes?!! Where the hell have all the superheroes gone?!". A man's voice filled with resentment and anger chimed in, "Why aren't they fighting against those Nazi remnants?! How can they sit and watch these Germans invade our land?!"
"Quit with the nonsense, come up with a solution!! We need Batman to open the channel, so the Lord can grant us more power!"
"But we need more power to break the alien's defence, to capture Joker and discover the Batman's clue!"
"But we need Batman to ...."
Bang—
The dull sound echoed in the conference room, instantly silencing everyone. The Pelican Priest standing in the center spoke in a tone that did not resemble human language.
"I will reach out to the Lord, a single grace of His is enough to eradicate all enemies..."
"Long live Barbados..."
"Long live Barbados..."
Inside a conference room at the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, Grant Ward addressed the action team in front of him: "We're just inches away from breaking through the defense line on the east side. It's a crucial position. Once seized, we'll be one step closer to success. Remember... Hail Hydra."
"Hail Hydra!"
"Hail Hydra!"
The sunset glow grew more intense, Gothic windows in the dining room of Wayne Manor cut the sunset into tiny fragments and speckled them across the dining table.
When Batman came down with his Robins, he not only saw Thomas and Martha, but also another person sitting at the side—Bruce Wayne.
Younger, livelier, with the sunset on him burning his vitality even more brightly. As he looked over, the afterglow ignited a fierce flame in his deep, blue eyes.
Another outstanding graduate, thought Batman.