Give a madman a few minutes to be on TV, what happens?

The answer is: total chaos.

Just an hour after the clown's hateful face disappeared from the television, the first call to the police rang.

Then, for the next 24 hours, all the phone lines of the Gotham Police Department were busy all the time. The whole city is like crazy, and the people who were already thinking about the darkness get a gentle push from the clown, and they also follow the flow to put white oil paint and red lipstick on their faces, and turn all kinds of new tricks to cause trouble.

Fear spread quickly, like a thick haze. The clown has never done it himself, but it seems to be everywhere. The restless elements who hoped for the chaos would seize this opportunity to take advantage of the situation to spread more fear. More people with dark thoughts also take advantage of the perfect opportunity for the whole city to go crazy, fish in troubled waters, do some dirty things, and then let their filth be hidden in this tidal wave of madness.

At first, fans of just clowns took to the streets under the banner of clowns, shouting the slogan "Engrave a smile". Then, the hero-seeking fanatics see what they're looking for, believing that the Joker can be the idol they've been looking for. And every ordinary person who is depressed and can't find a way out, and people who find excuses for their darkness**, and many people who just need some inspiration.

All the Joker did was dig it all out and let the darkness develop on its own.

Tonight, Batman is also almost all over the city. The police have poured out of the nest and done everything they can to suppress the madness. Even several groups of underage children joined in the excitement and twittered the gathering place. They wore oil paint on their faces, wore fiery red fake noses, painted clown lips, and ran out into the streets shouting their own slogans. But these people are not real threats, they are just joining in the fun, and they are only adding fuel to the fire of the city's crisis in the process of joining in the fun. However, the moment they saw Batman appear in front of them, they were so frightened that they ran home.

The real danger is someone else.

A pastry shop aunt who suddenly painted herself as a clown while at work shot and killed four customers who were in her shop at the time and fled. A middle-aged man in his fifties, while receiving an intravenous drip in a small clinic, suddenly broke out and stabbed all the doctors and patients in the clinic with a knife. In another clinic of the local Community Dental Foundation called Painless Dentistry, the attending dentist brutally murdered his patient after torturing him for half an hour.

In these three cases, as in many others, the corners of the mouths of all the deceased were cut with sharp knives, and the two corners were cut into the shape of a smile.

The Joker's followers are faithfully carrying out the command to "carve a smile into everyone's face".

"Everything is messed up, aren't you going to do something about it?" Barbara asked with some eagerness.

Roy looked at the latest news that had just reached him from the Gotham Police Department: "What to do?" ”

"Of course it's in control!" Barbara said, "The Gotham Police Department and Batman are already busy, but this madness is spreading so widely!" Gotham City needs you now, Winged Knights right now, but why are you still indifferent here? ”

"Because it's useless." Roy said dryly, "It's like a very, very big ship leaking, and it's useless to have one or two more people to fill it, and you fill it up here, and it will leak again." I'm not a god, neither is Batman, and it's impossible to change the big picture on my own. ”

After a pause, he avoided Barbara's gaze, intentionally or unconsciously, and said, "And because of boredom." ”

"What?"

Roy sighed, "I don't want to lie to you. You know, I like to solve difficult problems instead of running out on the streets and beating up thugs all over the place. It's tiring, it's boring, it's not challenging, and it's pointless, because if you beat back one wave, there's bound to be another wave running into the streets. ”

Barbara's face began to look a little ugly.

"Okay, okay, I know a kind girl like you wouldn't like me like that, but I just don't want to lie to you, okay? That's what I think. Plus," Roy shrugged, "it's not like I haven't done nothing. ”

He stood up and walked over to Barbara and handed her the materials he had just studied.

Barbara flipped through it, and it was the information on the three cases of the dessert shop, the clinic, and the dentist.

"What's wrong with these?" Barbara asked.

"At first, when I saw these three cases, I didn't think there was anything that interested me," Roy said. Lo and behold, everything is clear at a glance, although crazy, but it is also very simple, there are no twists and turns, and there are no noteworthy points. The murderers in the three cases are also very clear, and the owner of the dessert house is known to many neighbors, and has now been identified; The middle-aged man who broke out in the clinic left his medical records at the clinic, so his identity was also very easy to determine; Not to mention the dentist, almost everyone in the dental office knew who he was. At present, the three murderers are all on the run, and the rest is only a matter of arresting, so I didn't think these cases were interesting at first. ”

"But, now I feel that I have reason to believe that these three men have formed one of the most dangerous groups of rioters to date. They call themselves the 'Smile Alliance'. ”

"Oh, I see." "The inmates in the second case left a card at the scene with a laughing mouth and a message 'We are the Smile League.'" But how do you know that the 'we' he says includes the suspects in these other two unrelated cases? ”

"It's not relevant because it's not written in the case report. However, I noticed that the prisoners in all three cases had a history of mental illness, which is why I investigated the files of these three people and found "

With that, Roy bent down and flipped the file in Barbara's hand to the last page.

Barbara glanced at it and said with some surprise, "They were all patients of Arkham Asylum once!" ”

"Not bad, and more than that." Roy nodded, "All three of them were later released as mentally reliant, but I guess the Joker's instigation probably caused them to relapse from their old illness." I also found out that they had all undergone follow-up psychological rehabilitation after they were discharged from the hospital, and that the attending physician was the same person, Dr. O'Brien Ivan. The doctor also worked as a psychologist for Arkham Asylum, but then he went to the Gotham slums to open a low-cost clinic for low-income Gotham citizens. Dr. O'Brien specializes in psychiatric disorders and obsessive-compulsive symptoms associated with clowns. So I thought that if I visited this doctor, maybe I would get more out of it than fighting fires everywhere. ”

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