King Robin was at a loss for words, he did indeed intend to invade Batman's psychic battlefield, but first, it wasn't this Batman he aimed to invade, and second, he had no idea how he ended up here.
He saw the young Batman opposite him size him up, as if trying to perceive something from his appearance, but soon he had a realization and said, "Oh, I know, you're here for the job interview, right? To increase your chances of success, you purposely avoided the main entrance to surprise me? Well done, you succeeded."
"I'm not... Job interview? What job interview? Are you also the president?" King Robin responded in confusion to Bruce.
"Other than that, I can't think of any reason you would come looking for me."
"It's not that I want to come looking for you!"
Bruce bent down and started rummaging through the enormous pile of junk papers, and successfully handed a piece of paper to King Robin.
King Robin blinked, took the paper and glanced at it, only to see it was a haphazardly drawn poster, with various bright graffiti fonts saying, "Multiverse Bat-Team Recruitment Plan Commences!" and "Join us! Embark on a thrilling adventure through the multiverse!"
"Multiverse Bat-Team..." King Robin muttered the name softly, his eyes glinting as he quickly changed his attitude and said, "Ah, I am indeed interested in this plan, could you elaborate for me?"
"It's literally what it says," Bruce stepped over the clutter on the floor and advanced, saying, "We are now inviting those with the ambition to join Barbados' grand dark scheme, to assist the Dark God in ruling the entire Multiverse and share in the glory of his Dark Kingdom."
King Robin wanted to say that it sounded like a boring and old-fashioned plan, but the name Barbados struck him as familiar; the man with the fangs had mentioned it, and considering his attitude, it seemed Barbados might have a bone to pick with him.
King Robin saw this as potentially valuable intelligence, but he didn't act rashly since he remembered he was tricked into coming here, with his body still back in the original place. If his body were destroyed by the mastermind behind this, he'd never return to the real world, so he had to figure out a way to go back first.
"Not to hide it from you, I am indeed a bit interested." King Robin shook the promotional flyer he held and said, "But I did end up here by mistake, and I'm having some trouble on my other side, so you need to find a way to send me back, and then I can come and find you."
Bruce looked skeptical, his gaze upon King Robin clearly questioning "Really, you?"
That's when the drawbacks of psychological abuse became apparent. King Robin's psychic form seemed somewhat weak, with a chaotic frequency. He found a mirror in a room and looked into it. His image could hardly be considered impressive anymore but rather pitiful.
King Robin immediately wanted to roar with frustration, but he remembered he was under someone else's roof and had to bow his head, knowing if he revealed anything amiss, this eccentric Batman wouldn't send him back.
"As you can see, I've run into some trouble," King Robin immediately adopted a different strategy, acting was his forte. After all, when he had shot his own parents, he had acted the part of a pitiful victim, garnering sympathy from the police and smoothly inheriting his fortune without even an investigation.
This is an innate ability among many patients with antisocial personality disorder and one of the evidences of congenital brain abnormalities contributing to their disorder.
Studies show that many patients with antisocial personality disorder have a far greater understanding and ability to mimic facial expressions and body language than their peers from a very young age.
For example, many children can understand that adults' crying and laughing convey certain emotions, but when it comes to finer distinctions, such as a furrowed brow conveying difficulty or a slight smile showing pride, children lack the life experience to categorize these subtle expressions, resulting in an inability to read social cues.
Of course, some children are forced to learn to recognize and understand such expressions due to family and social environments, giving them more experience and better social perception, what many parents might call being understanding and mature for their age.
However, patients with antisocial personality disorder usually do not need to accumulate such experience; they innately understand these microexpressions and, incredibly, can mimic them perfectly after just one observation.
Some children may also mimic adults by frowning and sighing deeply or distorting their face to look fierce, but these attempts are usually exaggerated or unbalanced due to their limited experience, making it easy for adults to see through the pretense.
On the other hand, the microexpressions mimicked by children with antisocial personality disorder are almost flawless, fooling not just ordinary adults but even professionals with experience in criminal investigation and the ability to analyze microexpressions using technical methods.
When criminal psychology was in its infancy, people noticed an unusual phenomenon: the only surviving child of many grisly family annihilations would often end up in jail for other serious crimes in adulthood.
Initially, it was thought that the childhood tragedy had caused them great psychological trauma, leading them to develop antisocial personality disorder and lose control over their behavior, thus harming others when they grew up.
But later, with the advancement of technological means and continuous progress in various disciplines, people realized they might have gotten the cause and effect wrong. The sole surviving child of the family annihilation could very well be the murderer, born that way, which meant he was capable of such brutality both as a child and as an adult.
The disclosure of this finding immediately sparked widespread public discussion, with many people deeming it impossible. How could such a young child kill his entire family? Even if he harbored such thoughts, how could he accomplish it?
Yet, countless bloody facts stood before the public, and then it became apparent that such personality disorder sufferers were born with perfect camouflaging abilities. They could deceive their entire families with their acting and, with their families completely off guard, they could strike with a much higher probability of success than people imagined.
Because, like many others, families also believed that a child so young couldn't possibly do anything too wicked, at most break dishes or spoil toys. But in reality, with premeditation and careful planning, any item in daily life that could pose a danger accidentally could become their perfect instrument of crime.
King Robin was such a personality disorder sufferer; therefore, he possessed all of their natural talents. And because he was also Bruce Wayne, with all the genius intellect of Bruce Wayne, his ability to disguise himself was flawless.
Since he was already in this state, he had to play to his strengths. No matter how you looked at it, Batman was a superhero, and morality demanded that he support the weak against the strong. With his childlike appearance and haggard state, how could he not be considered among the weak?
But simply playing the part of the pitiful was far too easy to see through because the other person was also Bruce Wayne. He knew Bruce Wayne could never be a helpless little soul incapable of fighting back, so he had to find the right balance, to appear to be capable and scheming yet unexpectedly in trouble and in need of help.
"I think we can talk about terms," King Robin went on. "I'm interested in your team and would love to join, but not in my current state. You've got to let me get my body back, otherwise, how can I be of any help to you?"
Little did he know, Bruce sat down right there, rested his head on his hands and said with a hint of distress, "It's really rare that you're interested in my team. I asked several Batmen, and all of them said they weren't interested."
"That's because your posters are terribly done," King Robin thought to himself. "No Batman would be interested in that doodle-style poster. A plain notice written in black and white would be better than that."
"I think they're pretty good," King Robin managed to say with a grimace, spreading his hands. "Maybe you could tell me more about your team. I might get even more interested."
King Robin was also plotting to get some intelligence. He knew Mad Laugh would definitely be interested in anything to do with Barbados or related information.
Bruce, sitting on the ground, heaved a long sigh, "I won't lie to you, ever since I took on the task of recruiting, I've been all over the multiverse, but haven't found a single decent team member. A huge budget was approved, but no people—I mean, what can I do, huh?"
"Uh, you mean Barbados has tasked you with recruiting team members?"
"Of course, Barbados is the Dark God. Is he going to send just me to invade the Light Universe?"
King Robin felt like he had stumbled upon some earth-shattering plan, but his focus was on, "...the Dark God?"
Bruce sprung up as if a switch had been flipped, miraculously pulling out a stack of books and stuffing them into King Robin's arms as he said, "Yes, the Dark God, this is the glorious history of our company. This here is the personal records of the company's boss, and this, this is our current corporate culture. I think you'll find it very interesting."
King Robin, holding the stack of books, wanted to say he wasn't that interested, but what other ways could he gain the trust of this odd Batman? He had to first flatter him to be sent back, right?
While pretending to read, King Robin subtly asked Bruce questions, trying to extract more information from him, so that his trip wouldn't be in vain.
No matter how much he inquired, though, Bruce was like a disgruntled worker with deep-seated grievances, his topics always veering back to how inhumane the boss was, how conscienceless the company was, how exhaustingly he worked, and how much his colleagues slacked off.
It seemed as if Bruce had finally found someone to vent his dissatisfaction to, and once he started, he couldn't stop.
"...can you blame me for any of this? I told him a long time ago, he had to show miracles sooner, or else how would others believe purely from the Court of Owls' propaganda? But he insisted on delaying. After dragging it out for two months, look what happened—the whole thing got blown over, didn't it?"
"And then there's Universe 162. I don't even want to talk about it. When we initiated the project, I mentioned how this universe was at war, highly unstable, and our usual schemes of urban architectural pollution wouldn't work. The radiation in the groundwater there is far stronger than our pollution, but he just wouldn't listen. And what was the end result? Isn't it that his homeland was blown to bits?"
"Let's not forget the Light Universe intelligence initiative that was stuck until it finally showed some progress in my hands, and then he just had to micromanage. I'm not trying to be rude, but if he was capable of generating results himself, would he have had to bring me in to take over?"