Chapter 2: The Actor

“Ahhhhh—”

Clark?!

Bruce heard a familiar scream echoing in his mind. Momentarily forgetting the unfamiliar native before him, his expression changed drastically.

He had already accepted the reality of being kidnapped and transported across worlds. At first, he thought he wouldn’t see his friend for quite some time, but unexpectedly, within minutes, he heard Clark’s voice—and it sounded like he was in danger!

Where was Clark? Had he come to this world as well?

Damn it, this was the DC parallel universe! Was he now chosen as some lucky pawn by a supervillain here?

Within those few seconds, Bruce tried to figure out how to communicate with Clark while anxiously listing ways to quickly ascertain Clark’s situation.

Fortunately, before his mind spun into a Plan Z, it seemed that Clark’s situation had stabilized.

“Bruce! Oh my God!”

Clark, who had just learned to fly steadily within seconds using his super brain to release biological fields, was now cautiously descending onto the snow-covered ground. Feeling an unprecedented surge of power within his body, he momentarily overcame his fear of the unknown.

He exhaled gently onto his palm, and a thin layer of ice immediately formed, shattering into powder as he clenched his fists.

“God… no, Rao! Bruce, can you believe it? I think I really have become Superman!”

As for the earlier ridiculous scene of him bouncing back and forth through the clouds like a rubber ball… Clark decided to forget it for now.

After all, Bruce didn’t know about it anyway (*?︶?*)

“…”

Regardless, once he confirmed Clark was safe, Bruce finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Raising his head, he suddenly realized another person stood before him, and his relief immediately choked back.

Great, pressure was now on him.

The elderly man holding a tray raised an eyebrow and casually placed it on a nearby table.

“Master?”

He stepped closer to Bruce, who saw him as a hunter closing in on prey—and he was damn well the prey!

Bruce fought the urge to run, trying to analyze the situation in his mind.

This old man called him “Master,” and from Bruce’s limited impression of Batman—Bruce Wayne—he seemed to be a wealthy man.

So, was this his butler? How should he address him? Could he just say “Butler”?

Of course not! This was the butler close enough to know Batman’s identity. If he couldn’t even say his name, he’d surely break character!

While his mind raced, the old man’s voice suddenly rang in his head.

“Are you the director? What’s the script? Why haven’t you sent it to me yet? I’m losing track of how to continue acting!”

Bruce froze.

The voice that suddenly invaded his mind was identical to the man before him, but compared to the composed and elegant English butler, this voice was noticeably more irritable.

He silently looked up, observing the dignified butler’s every move while listening to the near-relentless barrage of internal prompts—and for the first time, he felt on the verge of a mental breakdown.

…

“So, Alfred is also an actor hired by the World Consciousness?”

Amid the icy wilderness, Clark finally found the Fortress of Solitude designed for Superman.

Though aware that his current body was impervious to the blizzard, entering the fortress gave him psychological relief and time to carefully study the situation he and Bruce were in.

He had to admit, learning that the person he would be under the same roof with for a long time was not a native of this world finally eased his worries about his childhood friend being instantly exposed.

Come on, they grew up together—who didn’t know who they really were?

Bruce had never cared for acting, not even participating in school plays. How good could his acting be?

Meanwhile, in the Batcave, Bruce sneezed.

He thought his Batman constitution wouldn’t allow a cold from mere fright, so he didn’t dwell on it. Now seated before the Batcomputer, assisted by Alfred, he quickly gathered important intelligence about this world.

“The World Consciousness stuffed too much into my brain. I just now realized it also gave me a full list of all the actors available for us to arrange.”

Of course, the director of this play was not a lone commander; the World Consciousness generously hired many actors to fill in for the missing heroes and villains of this world.

He and Clark could transmit pre-written scripts to these actors via mental channels and even communicate with them in real time during their scenes.

However, Bruce could not yet summon all the actors into his mind for a meeting to check their status; he still had to rely on the computer to gather information.

Because, aside from him and Clark, the other actors could only receive the script from the director unilaterally before meeting them.

That was why Alfred almost caused Bruce to break character—he hadn’t warned Bruce of his arrival before coming down to the Batcave.

Fortunately, once they shared the same room and locked eyes, Alfred officially connected to the mental channel, allowing future communication regardless of distance.

Bruce’s eyes swiftly scanned each identity, cross-referencing the actors’ list in his mind, marking those native to this world.

“I have an idea. Maybe we don’t have to act all the time. Among fellow actors, we can relax a bit. After all, if there are any slip-ups, they can cover for each other—just like Mr. Alfred just helped me…”

“Master, I hope you’ll call me Alfred directly when using the internal actors’ channel to communicate.”

Alfred—the actor version—had just realized a minute ago that the directors knew nothing and successfully reminded Bruce of his name through their internal channel, preventing a catastrophic break in character.

He was now methodically organizing clues and intelligence at hand, while irritably reminding two rookie directors who hadn’t even finished writing the script.

“You’ve never acted before, so your skills are probably terrible. To avoid breaking character in front of genuine natives, you’d better maintain specific forms of address and tone even when using the internal channel, so you don’t mess up the switch later.”

“You make a good point, Alfred.”

Bruce admitted he couldn’t handle a split personality yet and accepted the advice humbly.

He multitasked—marking the list while pondering how to arrange the script.

Even without watching DC, he knew all stories naturally centered around battles between heroes and villains.

However, as an ordinary, law-abiding citizen, Bruce could hardly imagine the casualties if such large-scale events were played out in reality.

In the upcoming script, he had to ensure the villains under their control would keep the initiative and strive to guarantee zero casualties among innocents.

Fortunately, after scanning Gotham—the main city where Batman operated—Bruce was pleasantly surprised to find most of the high-risk neurotic villains were actors, including the infamous Joker, whom he had heard of before.

“Joker is an actor? That means the Joker doesn’t really exist in this world!”

After receiving Bruce’s shared intelligence, Clark brightened considerably.

Having just finished watching the Injustice League, he firmly believed that without the Joker—the prince of crime—half the dark, grim plots in DC could be avoided!

Moreover, this meant his childhood friend wouldn’t have to constantly play the nemesis of a high-IQ, anti-human lunatic.

However, when he used the Fortress’s AI to gather information about this world—especially seeing a certain shining bald head under the bright sun of Metropolis—his excitement plummeted.

“God… Rao, the Joker’s gone, but why is this Luthor fellow still here?!”

They had said only the bald one and the clown wouldn’t betray them. This world originally had no Batman or Superman, and the Joker, Batman’s designated arch-nemesis, did not exist. So why was Luthor so stubbornly persistent?

Metropolis could be without Superman, but it couldn’t be without Luthor, huh?