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Gotham was a city perpetually draped in gloom. Even on the rare occasions when it wasn’t raining or shrouded in mist, the ever-present smog hanging over the skyline ensured the sun remained a distant rumor. For Ella Rodriguez, a 17-year-old scholarship student at Gotham Academy, it was one of the hardest things to get used to.
Back home in Central City, the sunlight was something you could count on—bright and warm, cascading over the city’s clean streets. It was the kind of light that made everything feel less dire, less grim. But here? Gotham felt like a city that had forgotten what sunlight looked like.
She pulled her scarf tighter as she walked across the Academy’s cobblestone courtyard. The air was damp, heavy with the kind of cold that crept into your bones. The Academy, a sprawling, gothic campus, loomed around her with its pointed spires and stone gargoyles. Ella adjusted her bag and glanced up at the sky. Overcast, as usual. Just another gray Gotham day.
The first scream broke through her thoughts like a thunderclap.
"LOOK OUT!"
Ella froze mid-step, her heart pounding. The scream was followed by a chorus of shouts, students pointing toward the sky with frantic gestures. She turned toward the commotion, half-expecting to see one of Gotham’s infamous rogues—maybe the Joker’s blimp or a bat-shaped silhouette swooping through the clouds.
Instead, it was… sunlight.
A single patch of golden light pierced through the dense gray clouds, casting a warm beam onto the Academy courtyard. Ella blinked, confused. The light illuminated a circular area of stone, making it shimmer like a portal to another dimension.
It was just sunlight. Ordinary, bright, beautiful sunlight. But this was Gotham, where ordinary didn’t exist, and so the students—many of whom had probably never seen the sun in their lives—reacted as though the world was ending.
"Is that… a nuclear bomb?" a boy shouted, shielding his eyes.
"ARE WE BEING ATTACKED?" screamed another girl, clutching her bag like it could save her from impending doom.
Ella stared at them, dumbfounded. "It’s not a bomb," she said, loud enough to be heard over the panicked murmurs. "It’s just the sun."
Her words were met with skeptical glares and a few incredulous laughs.
"Yeah, right," someone said. "You think that is the sun? It’s too bright! It’s gotta be some kind of weapon."
"Or a signal," another student suggested. "What if it’s the League of Shadows? Or worse… LexCorp!"
Ella pinched the bridge of her nose. "It’s not a weapon. It’s sunlight. You know, the thing that lights up the world during the day?"
"No way," the first boy said, shaking his head. "I’ve lived in Gotham my whole life, and I’ve never seen the sun look like that."
"That’s because you live in Gotham!" Ella snapped. "The sun exists. It’s real. It just doesn’t show up much here."
Her voice seemed to calm a few people, though many still cast wary glances at the sky. The sunlight lingered, golden and unthreatening, and Ella felt a pang of homesickness for Central City, where patches like this weren’t treated like omens of doom.
The situation didn’t improve when a teacher, Mr. Thorne, arrived on the scene. He was the kind of teacher who always seemed perpetually stressed, his tie perpetually askew and his glasses slipping down his nose.
"What’s going on here?" he demanded, eyeing the crowd of students.
One of the seniors pointed at the patch of sunlight. "Something’s wrong with the sky, Mr. Thorne!"
Mr. Thorne followed their finger and froze. His face twisted into a mask of dread, and for a moment, Ella thought he might actually faint.
"Great Scott," he murmured. "What in the world…?"
Ella groaned. "Mr. Thorne, it’s just sunlight."
He whipped around to face her, his expression wild. "Are you sure? What if it’s something else? Something… unnatural?"
"It’s literally the most natural thing in the world," Ella said, exasperated. "I promise. The sun is fine. The sky is fine. Everyone needs to calm down."
But her words fell on deaf ears. The students continued to murmur, their paranoia spreading like wildfire.
Within minutes, the panic had reached a fever pitch. Someone claimed to have seen a "weird glow" near the sunlight, which sparked rumors that it was a portal to another dimension. Another student swore they’d heard a humming noise, though it was probably just the wind.
"It’s the end of the world!" one girl cried, clutching a rosary she definitely hadn’t been wearing five minutes ago.
Ella couldn’t take it anymore. She climbed onto the courtyard fountain and cupped her hands around her mouth.
"HEY!" she shouted. "EVERYBODY CHILL OUT!"
The crowd quieted, dozens of anxious faces turning toward her.
"It’s not the end of the world," she said firmly. "It’s just sunlight. You know, the thing that happens when clouds part and light comes through? I get that it’s rare here, but it’s not dangerous. It’s not a weapon. It’s not a portal. It’s literally just the sun."
The crowd murmured uncertainly, some nodding while others still glanced nervously at the sky. Mr. Thorne adjusted his glasses, looking both embarrassed and relieved.
"You’re… sure about that?" he asked.
Ella sighed. "Yes, Mr. Thorne. I grew up in Central City. We get sunlight all the time. It’s normal."
He nodded slowly, though he still seemed unconvinced. "Very well. Everyone, let’s get back to class."
As the crowd dispersed, Ella hopped down from the fountain and started toward her next class. The sunlight lingered for a while longer before retreating behind the clouds, leaving the city as gray and dreary as ever.
Later that evening, as she sat in her dorm room, Ella couldn’t stop replaying the day in her head. The sheer absurdity of the situation—the screaming, the panic, the nuclear bomb theory—made her laugh out loud. Only in Gotham could something as simple as sunlight cause such a stir.
She pulled out her phone and texted her best friend in Central City:
"Today, the sun came out for like five minutes, and everyone in Gotham thought we were being nuked."
The reply came almost instantly: "You’re joking."
"Nope," Ella typed. "I had to stand on a fountain and explain sunlight to them like a medieval peasant discovering fire."
Her friend’s response was just a string of laughing emojis, but Ella didn’t mind. For the first time since moving to Gotham, she felt like she had a story that could make someone else laugh. And in a city like this, that was a rare gift.