Daniel considered his wording for a moment, then pointed at the Joker. "From a soul-signature analysis, they're essentially one and the same. Souls aren't really my area of expertise—that's Death's domain. I can only see a portion through The Dreaming. The one you'll be dealing with isn't as rational or cooperative as you. From what I can tell, he's completely insane. Quite similar to him, actually."
Batman and the Joker both froze. The Joker might look unhinged on the surface, but he was actually the quickest to react. "A filthy Bat with the Joker's playbook? Haha—hahaha—"
He laughed with unbridled joy. The more he thought about it, the happier he got, slamming both fists against the wall. Eventually he laughed so hard he lost his breath, dropping to the floor and rolling around.
"I have to see this! You absolutely must bring me along! Hahaha—a crazy Batman!!"
"So that's my nightmare..." Batman understood Thea's purpose in an instant. He'd assumed he was being sent to fight some high-tech variant, or maybe a Kryptonian version. But the moment Thea told him to bring the Joker, he'd figured out most of it. Now, hearing the truth from Daniel's own mouth, everything clicked.
The version of him in that world had gone mad—more insane than the Joker, or perhaps equally so. It didn't matter. Batman knew this nightmare was his to face. Whether measured against the rules Thea had mentioned or his own personal convictions, he had to take down this deranged Batman.
He hauled the Joker up off the floor and turned to Daniel. "I'm ready. Send me through."
Daniel eyed the Joker—who looked anything but ready—though he didn't comment. He extended a hand and parted The Dreaming, tracing some underlying pattern as he searched. He quickly found the thread with the strongest, deepest connection—a single black line.
Using his power, Daniel split two branch lines from it and handed them to Batman. "Grab hold. It will carry you into the Dark Multiverse, a place of absolute darkness. No hope, no redemption. Luck doesn't exist there. Everything you do will yield the worst possible outcome. Prepare yourself."
Batman seized one black line without hesitation. The Joker grabbed the other amid peals of manic laughter.
The pull was instant and violent. The moment they took hold, a massive force hooked them by the collar and wrenched them into the darkness on the other side.
Hurtling through a pitch-black corridor at tremendous speed, Batman stayed silent while the Joker was having the time of his life. His deranged laughter battered Batman's eardrums, and more than once Batman had to fight the urge to kill the man beside him.
Telling him to shut up would be a waste of breath. Nobody could silence the Joker. Batman could only endure.
Mercifully, the corridor was short. After counting exactly forty-five heartbeats, they squeezed through an impossibly narrow opening.
Or rather, they were hurled out of it.
Batman stood on solid ground and assessed his surroundings, scanning the ruined buildings, gathering intel as fast as he could.
The Joker, meanwhile, bobbed his head back and forth, gawking at everything.
Batman had no intention of arming the Joker. The man didn't carry proper weapons anyway. The Joker quickly scavenged something crowbar-shaped from the ground, gave it two experimental swings. A bit heavy, but it would do.
They locked eyes. Batman's head throbbed—this lunatic wasn't Robin. He wouldn't follow orders. Their best mode of cooperation was no cooperation at all. Each on their own. He could only hope Thea really was as prescient as that toady had claimed...
They both scoffed, one heading east, the other west. One crouched low and moved with silent precision. The other strutted along as if begging to be noticed.
Batman advanced alone. Without even needing to look closely, he recognized the city.
Gotham.
Unlike the evil version on Earth-3, which had developed along a fundamentally different trajectory from the start, everything here was intimately familiar. Every alley, every skyscraper, every residential block.
The alleys were now choked with rubble. Half the high-rises had collapsed. The homes held nothing but rotting corpses. But he still recognized every inch.
A city of ten million now had very few survivors. Ordinary people couldn't live here. Normal routines—work, school, daily life—had ceased entirely. All that remained was killing. Random, purposeless slaughter without logic or aim.
Batman moved swiftly through the city. During a gang shootout, he snatched a low-ranking lookout from the periphery.
No preamble—he beat the gang member bloody before asking a single question.
The answers made his blood run cold. This world had a Batman, a Superman, and a Justice League. Up until a certain point, its trajectory had been identical to their own. The only difference was the absence of a certain all-knowing, all-powerful figure.
In every other respect, this world was a mirror image of the main one. Under normal circumstances, it should have been a good world.
But one day, everything changed. This world's Batman snapped. He killed the Joker. Joker Venom released in the Joker's dying breath infected Batman, transforming him into a lunatic who had completely lost his mind. After that, he killed Nightwing, Batgirl, and Red Robin, then annihilated the Justice League. In the end, he called himself the Batman Who Laughs and vowed to "liberate" this world with laughter.
Every good thing that once existed had been destroyed by a single impulse, sending the entire world spiraling into the abyss.
Batman knocked the gang member unconscious and ran deeper into the city.
For three consecutive days, he tracked the Batman Who Laughs' whereabouts. His quarry was elusive—almost no one had actually seen him—though his reign of terror was a constant fixture in the local news broadcasts.
Chewing compressed rations, Batman spread a map and analyzed his target's movement patterns.
This was a freak born from his own life experience fused with the Joker's personality. Conventional reasoning wouldn't apply.
Just yesterday, his movements had nearly been detected. The Batman Who Laughs hadn't lost any intelligence from inhaling Joker Venom—if anything, the madness woven through his rationality made him all the more unpredictable.
Batman wolfed down the last of his food, cleaned up all traces, and headed for the next suspicious location.
As for how well the Joker had been eating or sleeping over these three days, he couldn't have cared less. That maniac was right at home in a world like this. No need to worry.
On the fifteenth day inside this dark world, Batman finally caught word of his "dear friend" the Joker. The clown had rallied a massive gang force and marched on Wayne Manor. After a spree of looting and destruction, they burned the manor to the ground, then turned toward the ruins of the GCPD—rumored to be the Batman Who Laughs' favorite haunt.
Batman hid inside a high-rise, watching the precinct through binoculars.
The Joker hadn't joined the assault himself. He'd whipped all the gang members into a frenzy, then slipped away to observe from the shadows.