At the time, Soren had thought about it and actually found it to be a good idea, so he impulsively agreed.
But back then, he clearly hadn't realized what it would cost to dress up as the Mad Hatter's ideal "Alice."
By the time he was putting on the little leather shoes and dress, transforming into a little girl, he was so embarrassed that he couldn't even lift his head.
He couldn't bear to look at himself in the mirror.
What's even worse, this little imp also brought in a girl roughly his age to help Soren with his hairstyle.
She used a curling iron to turn his already smooth, slightly wavy blonde hair into bouncy curls, and carefully pinned a light blue bow-shaped hairpin into his hair, neatly arranging the unruly strands at his crown into a duckbill clip.
...Soren, trembling beneath the large bow hairpin, couldn't help but be moved to tears.
Under the skillful hands of the girl, a fresh and delicate "girl" from the illustrations of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland seemed to step into the deserted alleys of Gotham.
—Soren struggled to suppress the overwhelming shame and embarrassment, following their plan, and slowly tapped his way through the dim and gloomy night of Gotham with the soles of his shoes.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The white little shoes startled a row of sparrows perched on the rusted building's handrails.
Deep in the damp, misty alley, a thick fog rolled and churned as if it were the womb of a monster in labor.
A half—well, half a gray rabbit—hopped out of the fog.
This rabbit was only half covered in fur; the other half had decayed into dark red flesh and exposed white bones.
The rabbit's eyes were a murky gray-blue, lacking the life that should have been there. Clearly, it had been dead for some time, and what moved it now was some kind of implanted chip.
The gray rabbit hopped up to Soren's white shoes, its three-part mouth slightly opening and closing as it pecked at his shoes.
Soren bent down, as if enchanted, and touched the rabbit.
The decayed blood and flesh stuck to his fingertips; he didn't wipe it away but instead followed the rabbit as it turned and led him forward.
The rabbit hopped along, guiding him deeper into the alley.
The thick fog seemed alive, spreading wildly around him, as if he were embraced by it, his whole body sinking into the mist…
As he walked further and further, he noticed that the gray rabbit ahead was growing larger in his field of vision.
The elongated, oval-shaped rabbit ears were almost brushing his eyebrows, and the rabbit's paws could easily tap his knees—
He quickly realized that it wasn't the rabbit growing larger, but rather, he was shrinking rapidly.
The surrounding buildings and the narrow, towering walls were becoming distant and out of reach, while he continued to shrink.
He soon became only as tall as one of the rabbit's legs, and the gray rabbit now appeared as a towering giant in his eyes.
The rabbit began to walk and stop intermittently, glancing back at him from time to time, waiting for him to catch up.
Soren jogged on, calmly continuing to chase the rabbit until the rabbit was lifted by a deformed, monstrous hand grasping its ears, and he was covered by a large top hat descending from above, plunging him into utter darkness.
He heard a horrifying laugh echoing outside the hat.
Since the inside of the top hat was a cylindrical space, the laughter resonated endlessly in the dark hat, like it was recorded on a phonograph.
The voice, tinged with a hint of madness and fascination, spoke to Soren inside the hat with obsession, "Alice... Oh... Little Alice, you are such a beautiful creation... I've finally found you, my Alice..."
Soren sat calmly inside the hat, his face expressionless as he used his communicator to send a message to his team.
"I've been shrunk. Have you spotted the Mad Hatter?"
"The thermal imaging has located him. How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine, keep tracking him. He'll lead me to his secret hideout, and the hostages he's taken should all be there."
"OK, stay in communication."
Soren felt the hat he was in being placed into a black box. As the hat flipped over, he was forced to roll around a few times inside it. The skirt he was wearing flared up, revealing two legs clad in pumpkin-shaped pants. His knees were bruised from the bumps.
Soren sat up, bending his legs in the darkness, and quietly waited for the journey to end.
Many years ago, he had helped Batman capture the Mad Hatter.
Back then, the Mad Hatter had just appeared on Gotham's crime scene, using a mind-control device to take control of hundreds of innocent civilians, creating significant obstacles for Batman's efforts to apprehend him.
In his angel-beast form, Soren had teamed up with the old Bat to track down the Mad Hatter's secret base, where they rescued dozens of hostages who had been turned into slaves by the Hatter's mind control. They had sent the Mad Hatter to Arkham.
Now, after all these years, it was clear the Mad Hatter had developed more advanced technology—he could silently and completely shrink a person.
Soren wasn't sure if the Mad Hatter had other new methods of crime, so to avoid alerting him, he could only wait until he reached the Hatter's hideout before making a detailed plan.
After a bout of jostling and turbulence, everything around him grew quiet, and all he could hear was the Mad Hatter's raspy breathing.
The black box was opened.
The Mad Hatter's hand reached into the box, feeling around the bottom of the hat, and grabbed Soren by the waist, lifting him out.
Soren, like a small white mouse, was held up before the Mad Hatter's eyes.
He faced the Mad Hatter's grotesque and deformed face: a massive nose like an eagle's beak, a set of buck teeth protruding from thin lips, and two murky eyes reflecting an eerie yellow light.