American Comics: Today's Big News

Chapter 69 Please remove your hand from the Lasso of Truth

Connors's thinking was simple: since Zatanna had decided to stay with him for a while, he had to drag her into the gossip too.

For no other reason than to increase the rewards of the gossip-eating system.

He was being chased by the statue all over the museum, the alarms were already blaring, and sirens were blaring outside.

If they dawdled any longer, Connors wouldn't be afraid of going to jail, but Wonder Woman Diana was getting impatient. She stood on the other side and shouted:

"Give it to me!"

"I won't throw it away, you'll just run away if I give it to you," Connors said.

Connors' words gave Diana a headache, but since the item was in someone else's hands, she had no choice but to comply, grabbing the greatsword and smashing it.

She finally abandoned the Lasso of Truth, which wasn't very effective against statues, and instead swung the Greatsword in a wide arc, smashing it solidly into one of the statue's legs, shattering it into pieces.

Good heavens, a berserker from the Amazon?

Connors, seeing the greatsword that nearly knocked him over, simply stuffed the cylinder into his pocket and ran away.

As he passed by Zatanna, he whistled as he picked her up around the waist and mounted Black Smoke.

The museum doors were tightly shut, and a large group of Gotham police officers were lying in wait outside. Just as a small team was about to open the doors to arrest the criminals who had damaged the artifacts, they heard the rapid sound of horses' hooves.

Then the door was violently flung open, and Connors, riding a cloud of black smoke, scattered the group of Gotham police officers who were about to break down the door, and sped off in a random direction.

The Gotham police were dumbfounded, and even Wonder Woman Diana inside the museum was somewhat stunned.

No, buddy, are you here to cause trouble on purpose?

Despite being stunned, the item was still with Connors, and Wonder Woman Diana was determined to get it back no matter what.

So she summoned a skeletal horse with gray-black wings and a jet-black skeleton, mounted it, and slung her greatsword over her shoulder.

Holding the reins of the skeletal horse with one hand and untying the lasso of truth from his waist with the other, he followed closely behind Connors.

Two men riding very different warhorses rode away one after the other. The Gotham police looked at each other and prepared to enter the museum again to check the missing items.

Inside the museum, the statue with a missing leg hopped to the entrance, ignoring the astonished expressions of the Gotham police, and chased after Connors.

The Gotham police officers all saw the helplessness in each other's eyes. Captain Gordon pulled out his walkie-talkie:

"The museum needs staff to inventory the damaged and lost items, and also needs helicopter support. The three of them rode two horses westward."

"A statue from a museum was also following behind."

The Gotham police were very efficient; they replied almost as soon as Gordon finished his report.

"He ran too fast, I lost him. The statue also stood still after running a block, seemingly dead—"

Oh, it wasn't alive to begin with.

Deep in the Gotham suburbs, Connors stopped the black smoke and, seeing Wonder Woman throwing the Lasso of Truth at him from behind, simply dispelled the smoke.

As the black smoke dissipated, Connors and Zatanna plummeted downwards, narrowly avoiding Diana's lasso. He then pulled a cylindrical object from his pocket:

"What is this thing?"

Retrieving her Lasso of Truth from its empty grasp, Wonder Woman, Diana, also brought the Skeleton Horse to a slow, steady stop.

"This is not something you should know."

In typical novels, when faced with questions from others, protagonists burdened with heavy burdens and grudges often utter a line that's not new to Connors when he talks to Diana, fully utilizing their imaginations:

"Shouldn't the things stolen from Catwoman and Batman belong to the same object as this cylinder?"

"You're equipped with all sorts of magical artifacts, you have no worries about food or drink, and you don't have any artistic pursuits like Catwoman, so this shouldn't be something you actively wanted to collect."

"For you to abandon the title of 'Wonder Woman' and do some theft, this thing must be quite important."

"It seems that either this is a tool specifically designed to deal with some villain, or it involves some huge threat."

Connors made wild guesses, then voiced the words he had been silently complaining about:

"Diana, you wouldn't want your people on Paradise Island to know you've been stealing from the human world, would you?"

A rather formidable opponent... or perhaps an ally.

Wonder Woman, Diana, with her eyes lowered and her voice heavy with sorrow, said:

"No, Paradise Island is gone. A villain with magical powers turned everyone on Paradise Island into stone."

He won't restore everything to its original state unless I collect everything he wants and give it to him.

Connors: "Oh."

Zatanna tugged at the hem of his trench coat:

"Aren't you going to ask her who that villain with magic is? Maybe I know something."

Zatanna doesn't know many spells yet, but she has read extensively since childhood under her father's tutelage and knows many secrets of the magical world.

Almost the instant she heard the word "magic," Zatanna felt that she had made the right decision to come, and that she might be able to learn more by taking advantage of this opportunity to come into contact with magic.

Wonder Woman Diana overheard Zatanna's whispers and, realizing that continuing to entangle with the two would be a waste of time, decided to drag them into the mess:

"His name was Faust, and he was a human man with an ugly face, wearing a dark blue robe."

"Faust? I know, the guy who studied black magic in order to gain endless wisdom and immortality. He was originally a university professor."

Connors understood immediately, even recounting Faust's origins faster than Zatanna beside him.

"You know him?" Diana asked in confusion, even she didn't know who this so-called Faust was.

But on Paradise Island, a magical petrification spell can turn everyone to stone, and a spell that makes the spell disappear into thin air forces Wonder Woman to obediently collect items.

These two abilities allowed her to easily defeat Faust, but she couldn't restore her people to their original state. Therefore, after discovering that Connors knew about Faust, she felt as if she had found a savior.

"I don't know him. That's all I know about him."

Connors said that he has two versions of Faust in his memory, one being Faust from Earth-3 in the DC New 52 universe.

One is what he just mentioned.

It's worth mentioning that Faust from Earth-3 is one of the members of the "Outsider" title that Connors is currently using.

Connors claimed he didn't know her, but both Zatanna and Diana remained skeptical. Diana, playing Wonder Woman, went even further, stating:

"I only need one more item to complete the collection. If you can help me, I will thank you on behalf of the people of Paradise Island."

The last missing item, which was found by searching for the glowing object given to him by Faust in Wonder Woman Diana's possession, was located on a deserted island not far from Paradise Island.

Connors can't fly, and neither can Zatanna, so the two of them rode together on Wonder Woman's skeleton horse.

"If only we could take those wings off and attach them to Black Smoke," Connors said with genuine envy.

Diana gripped the reins, and hearing the man behind her eyeing her warhorse, she said warily:

"Please remove your hands from the lasso of truth."

"Uh." Connors looked down and saw that his right hand, which was supporting Diana's waist, was resting on the Lasso of Truth hanging from her waist.

He lowered his hands slightly, trying to avoid the Lasso of Truth, but this made his posture look rather strange. At least in Zatanna's eyes, who was peeking out from behind, Connors was clearly supporting Wonder Woman Diana's buttocks with both hands.