Chapter 11 Pride and Prejudice (Part 2)_3

But this had also resulted in Shiller's prejudice against Batman.

In his opinion, Batman is supposed to behave as he does in the comics, never apologizing because he doesn't believe he's in the wrong, thinking that it's necessary to guard against his allies.

This created prejudice in Shiller's mind. Batman does apologize when he realizes he's wrong, he still feels regret and guilt.

Indeed, Shiller wanted to teach the young Batman a few lessons, like not to judge prematurely, not to be swayed by anger, and to maintain independent thought.

But suddenly Shiller realized that he wasn't qualified to teach Batman to avoid prejudice, because he himself held a nearly unshakeable stereotype of the character. He hoped Bruce would quickly become the Batman from the comics that he had envisioned in his mind.

But now it seemed, the story was not about a wise and learned professor and his impulsive young student, but rather a classic case of "Pride and Prejudice".

With absolute pride in his reasoning, Batman assumed Shiller was the culprit. Drawing from his prejudiced preconceptions, and armed with evidence that conveniently fit his bias, he was almost ready to pull the trigger on Shiller.

But Shiller also held a prejudice towards Batman, seeing him as a mature, cautious, and skeptical dark hero, as he is in the comics.

The two were as bad as each other.

It seemed that Batman had learned this lesson and recognized that he was not omnipotent.

His reasoning could be greatly flawed due to prejudice, and his impulsive actions under such arrogance could be incredibly fatal.

Upon seeing the wound on Shiller's neck, left by his Batman dart, he had assumed Shiller was a criminal and threatened him as if he were a criminal. Even though he didn't pull the trigger today, as Gordon mentioned, the wound was deep and would likely leave a scar.

Batman felt guilty and scared at this thought.

He realized that law's inability to correctly judge every criminal did not justify his arrogance in acting as judge over others.

In situations when he couldn't ensure his correctness, any impulsive violent action might leave an ireraseable scar on an innocent person, or even a good person.

He was simply relieved that the price paid by the innocent was not life.

Standing in the shadows, Batman decided to completely prevent such occurrences, pledging that no matter how disastrous a criminal he face, he would never kill.

If any innocent person were to die at his hands, he would be no better than the criminal who killed his parents.

Because the criminal who killed his parents may have done so for money or revenge, causing the loss of two lives.

However, if Batman were to slaughter the innocent, there would be no hope left for this city.

In the comics, Batman's principle of not killing seemed to have always existed.

Shiller never really explored the reason behind this principle, thinking it was rather annoying. Like, why couldn't Batman just kill those annoying criminals, those crazy guys who repeatedly escape prison and cause chaos? He had thought about it countless times while reading the comics.

But what he hadn't expected was that in this world, the young Batman had solidified his principle of not killing criminals because of him, because of Shiller.

Because he is Batman, the city's only hope, if his guilt from killing an innocent person breaks him, then this city would be utterly hopeless.

By a strange twist of fate, although Shiller had not been able to help the young Batman establish his spiritual pillar, he had successfully solidified one of Batman's principles - not to kill.

Little did Shiller know that he would regret this meddlesome act countless times in the future.

When Batman finally matured, Shiller found himself repeatedly screaming out in his heart, wondering why Batman couldn't just squeeze the life out of those damn criminals with his fingers, to prevent them from continuously appearing before him and disrupting his peaceful life!!

All of this, stemmed from today's events, was the result of his own actions.