"Go check out what exactly happened then," Shiller told Constantine. "Go back to the past and see what happened when Barbara was born."
Constantine did not ask any further. He left for a while and came back without any visual materials, simply saying, "It's pretty much as she said, a sneaky nurse took away a girl and brought another one, the Gordon couple noticed nothing unusual."
Shiller was not surprised at all. Whoever dared to play this trick wouldn't expose a flaw at such an obvious place.
"Can you go to an earlier time point to see where that little girl came from?" asked Shiller.
Constantine said, "The cause and effect are reversed, you must give me the time and place, then I can travel back to investigate. If there is only time, the destination is random, and without clues, I can't find out anything."
Shiller's fingers gently tapped on the table as he began to sort out the relationships involved.
Among the true and fake Barbara, only one was the biological daughter of Gordon. The later true Barbara claimed it was her, and as expected, the paternity test result would also show it was her.
The captured fake Barbara indeed was the real perpetrator behind the attack on three people including Dick.
Then suppose this was the result of the vampire's desperation after traveling back to the past, what was the original situation?
Combining the previous actions of the King of Vampires, Shiller had a bold guess—I was reborn, reborn on the night before choosing my identity. This time, I was no longer the King of Vampires whose plot was exposed and captured, but rather the beloved Batgirl of the Batman Family...
Shiller wasn't speculating wildly; he understood these people too well. After all, fools always think that if they are given a chance to start over, they could turn the tide.
Essentially, it's because they believe their failure is definitely due to external reasons. If a person fails, they blame the uneven ground—give me another block of land, I can definitely build a high-rise from scratch.
It might have happened like this.
Originally in the timeline, the King of Vampires devised a plan, replaced the original Barbara, infiltrated the Batman Family, and bit three people, causing great trouble for Batman.
But unfortunately, she was eventually caught by Batman and the Justice League.
She felt extremely unwilling to accept this, and thought it wasn't a problem with her plan. Where she fell, she had to stand up again. So, she devised a plan she considered more meticulous.
First, she traveled back to the past and snatched the infant Barbara, replacing her with a vampire baby.
Yes, Shiller guessed, the vampire baby given back to the Gordon couple was probably not the King of Vampires, but a vampire baby that the King of Vampires had found from somewhere else.
Shiller did not know whether initial embrace of an infant was possible, but it might also possibly be a child born by one of her subordinates.
Shiller also suspected that the real Barbara born to Mrs. Gordon might have already died. If not, she was probably being held by the King of Vampires somewhere as a hostage.
And when the vampire case was nearing its end, Barbara would surely be caught. At that time, the one caught would actually be the irrelevant vampire baby, and then the real King of Vampires would appear as the victim, the true Barbara, completing the switcheroo.
Some might ask, why go through such a roundabout way? This series of plans seems to be of little use for vampire's cause, and quite laborious, but these people's thinking is not like that.
Their thought process is, didn't you Batman catch me last time? Then this time I will make you completely catch the wrong person, leading to "Oh, so you Batman can also make a mistake in catching people!"
It indeed sounds bizarre, but these people essentially can't get any sense of superiority on their own ability. Once they have the advantage of information, they won't use this advantage to do something productive but will use it immediately to retaliate against those who prevent them from gaining a sense of superiority.
This retaliation has a higher priority than all their affairs. I took advantage of foreknowledge to replace the most important part of your plan, and when you continue with the original plan and make a mistake, I can mock you for a lifetime.
However, due to low intelligence and limited vision, they fail to understand what it means to adapt to circumstances, thinking that the person they imagined would surely continue with the original plan.
For example, she thinks the final outcome is Barbara getting caught, so she replaces a Barbara, making it possible for the other side to catch the wrong person.
But she doesn't think about how Batman is the best detective in the world, and he won't easily convict someone.
Alright, even if there is absolutely convincing video evidence proving the video hasn't been edited or post-processed, how can you prove Barbara wasn't being controlled? Even if Barbara herself admitted, how can you prove she wasn't being controlled to admit it?
If it were in the past criminal investigation world, this could be considered making trouble out of nothing. But even vampires exist, so why can't there be puppet magic controlling people to do bad things?
Moreover, Shiller felt that her level of psychoanalysis might be on par with Bruce's. She never realized that Batman is actually quite an emotional person.
After Constantine left, Shiller took a walk in the garden. Although he did not flip through the memory bank often, he had his own understanding of Batman.
In most people's stereotyped image, Batman is that extremely cold and ruthless person, basically a law enforcement machine, no one can expect him to bend the law for personal reasons.
But in fact, it's not like that. Everything Batman does is based on emotions. Don't forget what he once said—"I am the night, I am vengeance, I am Batman."
What is vengeance based on?
Is it rational thinking?
Is it meticulous logic?
Bruce Wayne, who could have become the ultimate product of Earth with ease, chose instead to be a vigilante in a city. Was it because he was a merciless logical machine?
Such a description might be somewhat acceptable for Luther, but if used to describe Batman, their level of psychological analysis would be about as good as Bruce's.
The foundation of Batman's punishment of criminals is emotion, and it is also emotion that underlies his adoption of Robin, his training them, bringing together the Batman Family, and leading the Justice League.
If Batman could be a merciless leadership machine, viewing the Batman Family and the Justice League solely as his subdivisions, neither organization might have been infiltrated by vampires.
With Batman's leadership skills, to have led these two organizations to their current states, even Aquaman couldn't have been so lenient.
Thus, Batman is actually a lot more emotional than many people imagine, especially towards those he cares about. He is extremely biased to the point where many matters are no longer up for discussion; it's all about what you like, and in case something goes wrong, I'll cover for you.
Looking through the history of the members of the Batman Family and Justice League, can we not find such moments? Was it really unthinkable that the prescient Batman had no foreknowledge before they made their blunders? Probably not, he was more likely fully aware of the consequences; he simply chose not to intervene.
Hence, Shiller foresaw the storm that would occur at Wayne Manor once Batman returned.
He had put Dick through such an ordeal, and the worst harm he caused was pulling out two of his teeth, under the guise of doing it for Dick's own good.
But this behind-the-scenes manipulator wanted Barbara dead.
Those two recordings, like nooses around Barbara's neck, being shown to so many people in public, even if Barbara was rescued and regained consciousness by Batman, she likely could not face the crimes she had committed.
Shiller returned to the manor just in time.
On one side, a row of sofas was occupied by the Robins, and on the other, by experienced individuals like Gordon Constantine, with Batman sitting in the middle, and vampire Barbara facing him.
"Did you deal with Mary?" Shiller walked unhurriedly to his own seat and sat down, crossing one leg over the other, his ankle touching his calf as he spoke.
Batman shook his head in silence.
All the Robins could see how angry Batman was; every single one of them hung their heads, not daring to breathe too loudly.
It was only Starfire, the true Barbara, who was speaking fluently.
She was likely narrating how she had discovered the whole conspiracy years ago and escaped the vampires' clutches, codenamed Starfire, and had been secretly lurking around the Batman Family, silently protecting its members.
But Batman's first question stopped her cold.
"Are you a superpower user?"
"What?"
"I'm asking, are you a normal person, or a superpower user?"
"My parents are the Gordon couple, so of course I'm a normal person. I know you can't believe that I managed all this as a normal person, but I…"
"Then why is Starfire in other universes a superpower user?"
Shiller couldn't hold back a laugh, so he had to use his cup to cover his mouth. He didn't really know who Starfire was, only faintly hearing that she may have been a young superhero.
But the Batman in front of him had visited Battleworld, though he was sent back by a system email to maintain the cosmos, but still, he could have managed to put in a couple of quests during that time.
Usually, Batman wouldn't do that; they preferred to stay at their bases and exchange comprehensive intelligence about their respective universes.
Though Starfire wasn't very famous, Shiller felt she might have had something to do with Dick, all who related to Robin were on Batman's close watch list, so Batman exchanging information about Starfire from other universes wasn't odd.
It's only that the King of Vampires was still that King of Vampires, but Batman was no longer the naive Batman of before; the time to complete two quests was enough for him to have researched everyone around him and their counterparts in alternate universes.
Note, if the King of Vampires had replaced Starfire from the start, then in the cognitive understanding of this universe's locals, Starfire was always superpower-less, just a normal person superhero who was particularly strong physically.
If Batman hadn't opened his eyes to the cosmos through Battleworld, he might not have noticed anything wrong. Who says normal people can't be superheroes?
But according to Batman's knowledge, Starfires in all other universes are superpowered aliens, and they don't look like this one at all; they are quite different.
When Batman disclosed the information about Starfire that he had obtained from other Batmans, everyone looked at the Starfire in the reports and then at the one standing in the hall, and they couldn't deny that the two were completely dissimilar.
The Starfire in the documentation was not delicately beautiful but wildly so, always with an angry expression between her brows, her flowing red hair like flames of revenge, and even in photos, you could see the fierce, undying blaze of her soul.
The one standing before them, how to put it—if Shiller were to describe it, he would use a particularly impolite term: a painted tiger that rather resembles a dog.