Chapter 241: Batman Begins
After several rounds of confrontation with the robbers, Hobbs finally lost his patience and began organizing his men, preparing for a tactical assault.
But before they could begin the operation, a mysterious superior suddenly shut down his plan and sent in a female attorney to negotiate with the robbers instead.
Ron didn't know what kind of political interests were at play, but he wasn't in the mood to get involved in corporate power games because he had something more interesting in mind, so he said goodbye to Hobbs and left.
But he didn't actually leave. Instead, he changed clothes and reappeared on the rooftop of the building across from the bank. Standing with him was another middle-aged man wearing orange spandex and a wig to cover his bald head. He was tugging at his costume and complaining non-stop.
"Boss, I gotta say, this outfit looks absolutely ridiculous. I honestly don't understand why I have to wear this thing?"
"Can't be helped. We're running a covert op, so we need to stay under the radar. Got it?" Ron's voice came from beneath the Batman mask. Through the voice modulator, even those who knew him well couldn't recognize his voice.
"But why do we have to wear these outfits from kids' comic books? They look like..." Arthur struggled, unable to think of a suitable comparison.
"Like we belong in Arkham Asylum?"
"Yeah, exactly!" Arthur squirmed uncomfortably. Seeing his hairy legs sticking out from under the tight shorts, he felt deeply embarrassed. "But this costume is insane! Why can't I wear the same thing as you?"
"Since when are there two Batmen in Gotham City?" Ron picked up the grappling gun from the ground, adjusted it, and handed it to Arthur, taking the other one himself. "You should be grateful I couldn't find gear in Hank's size, or he'd be here with me instead."
"Please ask him next time you need something like this."
"Shut up! Now let's get to work! If you keep whining, I'll get you a Wonder Woman costume next time!" Ron snapped, annoyed by Arthur's complaining.
Ever since Arthur started dating, Ron had noticed a change in him. No longer the cold, efficient assassin he once was, he was becoming more and more of a chatterbox.
"Wonder Woman? Who's that?"
"Trust me, you don't want to know." Ron finished speaking, closed one eye and took aim at the bank across the street. Then, his finger squeezed the trigger.
With a sharp whistling sound, a grappling hook shot from the gun's barrel, embedding itself in the roof of the bank across the street. Arthur followed suit, also firing his hook into the rooftop.
Then, the two exchanged a nod and glided across the gap along the zip line, their capes fluttering in the night air.
Once they reached the rooftop, Ron immediately cut the line with a knife and pressed a button on his remote control. The device on the other side whirred to life, quickly reeling in the severed cable before it could fall to the street below.
A police sniper positioned across from the bank stared in shock. He had only glanced up at the sky for a moment, only to see Batman and Robin swooping overhead.
Holy shit! This has to be some kind of hallucination! This is Los Angeles, not Gotham City!
The sniper rubbed his eyes in disbelief. When he looked again, Batman and Robin had vanished.
He hesitated, unsure whether to report this to his commanding officer.
If he didn't report it, he'd certainly be held accountable later, but if he did... he'd undoubtedly face ridicule from his fellow officers.
Batman in LA? Yeah right!
After much internal debate, the sniper finally decided to dismiss what he'd just witnessed as a trick of the light and chose not to report it to his superiors.
Unknown to him, several other officers who had spotted the caped figures had made the same decision.
Meanwhile, Ron and Arthur had infiltrated the bank through the rooftop access. Arthur, using his assassin's stealth training, moved forward as quietly as possible. Unexpectedly, Ron, after stowing his gear, strutted forward as if he owned the place.
As he passed an office, Ron even grabbed an apple from a desk and began munching on it, completely abandoning Batman's brooding mystique.
Arthur frowned. "Boss, I think you should watch your noise level. You're going to alert the robbers."
"Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?" Ron narrowed his eyes.
"No, I just think we should leave tactical operations to the professionals. While I wouldn't mind getting into a firefight with the robbers down there, I doubt that was your original plan."
After Arthur finished speaking, Ron, far from toning it down, became even more brazen. He even turned on the office computer and started playing a movie.
"Have you considered that what I'm doing right now IS the plan?"
Ron grabbed another apple from the desk and tossed it to Arthur in his Robin costume, then cranked up the movie's volume, as if he wanted the whole building to hear.
Ironically, the movie Ron was playing was Batman Begins, the first film in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
If Ron wasn't worried, then Arthur had nothing to fear. He sat down in the chair next to Ron and began eating his apple.
The noise coming from the upper floor office certainly caught the attention of the robbers. The leader left one accomplice to guard the hostages and immediately headed upstairs with two other men.
They carefully climbed the stairs, gradually approaching the office. However, they weren't professionals after all, and one of them accidentally knocked into a filing cabinet. The lead robber was so startled that he nervously aimed his weapon toward the office, expecting armed intruders to come charging out at any moment.
However, the people in the office weren't alarmed by the noise from their approach. Instead, they continued eating apples and watching the movie with obvious enjoyment, like a couple of comic book nerds at a convention.
The leader gestured for his men to stop, then slowed his pace even further and crept toward the doorway. Then he suddenly pivoted and aimed his gun at the two strangely dressed figures inside.
"Hands up! Drop your weapons!"
"Weapons? That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?" Ron said, waving the apple in his hand with amusement: "I don't think this qualifies as a weapon, what do you think, Robin?"
"Absolutely. If apples are weapons, then bananas must be assault rifles. What do you think? I'm aiming a banana at you right now—are you terrified?"
Arthur also mimicked Ron's behavior, comically peeling a banana and pointing it at the robber leader.
However, the robber leader had no intention of relaxing, keeping his gun trained on them nervously. "Who the hell are you?!"
"As you can see, we are Batman and Robin. We were pursuing the Joker when we followed him through a portal, and that portal brought us here." Ron crossed his legs, folded his arms across his chest and said matter-of-factly:
"Yeah, that's right, exactly like that. It's like we've traveled through dimensions. In your reality, we appear to be characters from comic book movies. This isn't Gotham City, is it?"
At this point, the robber's other two men had also arrived. The robbers who were supposed to be threatening them were now looking confused.
One of the robbers even asked his companions, "Does interdimensional travel actually exist?"
"How is that possible?! He's talking nonsense! Don't buy into it."
The robber leader took a deep breath. He felt more exhausted than he had been dealing with the police all day.
"Well, Mr. Batman, may I ask what your purpose is here? If you're planning to continue searching for the Joker, I can assure you we don't have such a person here.
If you have any other intentions, I suggest you consider whether the gun in my hand will permit them, and then carefully state your business.
But for now, I don't mind taking the famous Batman and Robin as hostages. What do you say?"
With that, the robber leader chambered a round and kept his weapon trained on Ron and Arthur, waiting for the slightest aggressive move before opening fire.
The two men behind him simultaneously racked their slides, waiting for their leader's command to shoot.
Arthur tensed his muscles. He was confident he could neutralize all three armed opponents at this distance. He simply waited for Ron's signal to take down these amateurs in seconds.
He was certain they were amateurs. Arthur could guarantee this with over a decade of experience as a professional killer; the way they held their weapons wasn't how trained operators handled firearms.
Ron, however, casually treated the three AK-47s as if they were toys from a dollar store, brushing them aside and standing up.
The leader and the other two robbers nervously refocused their weapons on him, but Ron ignored them completely.
Furthermore, he pressed the barrels of two AKs against his own head.
"Relax, relax. We mean no harm. And even if we did, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it, would you?" Ron said with a smile.
"Don't move! If you move again, I'll kill you!"
"Kill me? Go ahead!" Ron took a step forward and used his head to push back the two armed robbers, forcing them to step back. Then, in a mocking tone, he continued, "Come on, you pathetic wannabes! If you're going to play the part, at least make it convincing. I've dealt with bank robbers, terrorists, and cartel enforcers. Forget about a few guys with crappy guns—I've even faced people driving military hardware through downtown streets. You think I'm going to be intimidated by three pop guns?"
"I swear I'll kill you!" Seeing Ron's complete lack of fear, one of the robbers lost his composure and launched a vicious kick at Ron's shin.
But Ron was faster. Before the robber's kick could connect, Ron swung his arm and delivered a resounding slap to the robber's face.
"SMACK!" The blow sent him spinning 180 degrees before he collapsed to the ground, dazed.
"Don't move! If you make another move, I'll start shooting! I swear I'll kill you right now!"
The female robber behind the leader backed away in fear, shouting in a trembling voice.
"Hahaha, kill me?" Ron laughed so hard that tears streamed down his face. "If you want to kill me, just pull the trigger! Don't you know how? If not, I can teach you. Watch this."
Ron pressed his head back against the barrel of the female robber's gun, took her trembling hand in his, and guided her finger to the trigger.
"CLICK!"
The trigger was pulled, but nothing happened. Ron remained standing, and Arthur's tense muscles relaxed.
So these guys' guns were props? No wonder Ron hadn't seemed nervous from the beginning. It had to be said that these people had some serious balls, using fake weapons to rob a bank.
"That gun she's holding is fake, but this one I have is different. Want to test it?" The robber leader didn't retreat like his subordinates. This was a battle of wills. Even though he knew his gun was fake, he couldn't afford to lose face. Instead, he raised his weapon again.
But this time, Ron didn't choose to expose him. Instead, he softened his tone: "Easy there, friend. You know Batman has always been a champion of justice, so we're here to serve justice this time too."
"Justice? That depends on whose definition of justice we're talking about."
At this point, the conversation between the two men had become cryptic. The robber's men wisely stepped back and lowered their aggressive postures.
"Since I'm the one saying it, it's certainly my brand of justice. While I can't tell you exactly what kind of justice that is, I can assure you it's not the Hollywood movie version. Are you satisfied with that answer, Mr. Robber?
Or should I call you Mr. Mossad Agent?"
Ron tentatively used his suspected identification, but the other party didn't react defensively. Instead, he asked curiously, "Mossad? You mean the Israeli intelligence service? No, we're not Mossad."
He didn't sound like he was lying, so Ron temporarily believed him.
If they were Mossad, they wouldn't have come so poorly equipped. Moreover, if they were Mossad, they would have used far more brutal methods to deal with World War II war criminals.
"Okay, whoever you are, I'd like to propose a deal. As you know, I'm very interested in certain documents that the bank chairman keeps in his private vault. But they're useless to you. They'd be much more valuable in my hands. What do you say?"
The leader said cautiously, "Not much. Why should I trust you?"
Indeed, whether the other party was Mossad or Jewish extremists, there was no reason to trust a stranger, but Ron was prepared.
"How about this?"
Ron pulled a ring from his pocket. It was given to him by an elderly Freemason during their last treasure hunting expedition.
(End of this chapter)
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