some kind of app idek
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Bruce Wayne
FANDOM: DC’s Batman, pre-reboot.
CHRONOLOGY: Right after Final Crisis.
CLASS: Hero
SUPERHERO NAME: Batman.
ALTER EGO: Bruce Wayne, multibillionaire playboy extraordinaire. Sometimes plays at business a bit.
BACKGROUND:
Imagine this. You are born into a city full of corruption, into a family that's the richest in that city- maybe even the richest in the country. Your father is a surgeon - kind and handsome, with the fortune of your grandfather and his grandfather and his grandfather behind him, a long proud line. Your mother- she's so beautiful, with warm hands and the gentlest of smiles. You don't get to see your father much, because he's busy, but that's alright - you have your mother, and there's Alfred, your butler. You don't have many friends either, but that's alright too. Your family is perfect, and isn't that what matters?
Then one day, your father promises to bring you out for a movie. You beg and beg your mother to wear her pearls - you love those pearls, they shine like tiny moons, strung on a silk thread. Your mother agrees, and you go to a movie, to Zorro- and then you don't remember much of it. There's just an alley, and gunshots, and the sick smell of aftershave. There's your parents' bodies on your foot and their blood on your hands, and you cannot- cannot remember the face of the man who murdered your parents in front of your very eyes.
The police can't find him either. Your city falls, breaking itself into ruins in its grief. You hold back your tears and vow to take vengeance on the city and rid it of crime.
Your name is Bruce Wayne. Nothing will be alright again. But that's fine- because this is your first step as Batman. This is a new beginning.
Your life doesn't pick up again until you're twenty-five. You've spent the last few years - more than a decade - training in everything you can ever get your hands on to keep that vow. You have never forgotten it, and your faithful butler Alfred hasn't either. He keeps your house pristine for you, and you return to a ruined city that barely can smile enough to welcome you home. You find a man named James Gordon, and you begin your crusade- but there's something missing. The criminals laugh at you. There's a bullet wound at your side, and you're sitting on your chair. A single moment before you bleed out, and you need to make a decision.
There's a bat at the window. Then- you see.
Batman doesn't attack just the petty criminals. The crime lords, the corrupted officers- all of them need to be punished. You make yourself into something else- something to be feared. [ Batman: Year One -Frank Miller ]
You meet another man- a poor man, with a pregnant wife (you don't know that then, but you know that now, in this dearth of time). You follow him to a chemical factory, and he's wearing a ridiculous costume. A red hood- and he falls, falls, and he starts laughing, and he's not the first man that you can't save, but he's the one you would regret the most. The Joker. He's the Joker. The name resounds in your head, over and over, like a bad joke. [ The Killing Joke -Alan Moore ]
You walk down the path of darkness, so much like the alley of your childhood, and with every step you sink deeper and deeper into the mire. You meet another good man named Harvey Dent, and you didn't trust him- he sinks faster than you do, and acid eats away his face and his mind and one side of his coin and it's your fault and you are so very, very alone. [ The Long Halloween -Jeph Loeb ]
Then- there's a boy. A boy standing there, with the bodies of his parents around him. There's a trapeze and bright circus lights and no alley. The bodies are broken and twisted, not bleeding. But the details don't matter because you look into the boy's eyes and you see yourself in there. The pain, the loneliness- and you vow to give him what you never had. You want to give him closure, and so you abandon the boy- Dick Grayson- with the man you trust the most in the world and start to hunt his enemies.
Then you see him, dressed in his garish circus costume, trying to find his own revenge. You take him home, show him your true self- and when you find his parents' murderer, you bring him with you. The boy sees that man die in front of his very eyes, and you watch the steel creep into his gaze. [ Dark Victory -Jeph Loeb ]
You let him keep the costume, and train him to use it. You gain a partner, and slowly he starts to pull you out of the inky blackness that threatens to drown you entirely. You learned how to breathe. You learn how to forgive. [ Robin: Year One -Chuck Dixon ]
In the next few years, you learn that it's not just your city you have to care about. You meet a man of steel, a goddess-warrior, a man with a shining green ring, a man who moves like lightning. Your world expanded, forced apart by their presence, and your boy finds a larger world, too. You join the Justice League, Dick joins the Teen Titans, and years passed. Eventually the darkness starts tugging at you, whispering in your ears, and when you look at Dick you see not a boy, not a young man, but a potential corpse. You fear that you'll kill him one day, because of all that you do- and there's the fire from the Joker's gun, the curve of his body as he falls- and you make your decision.
You fire him, chase him from your side. For his safety. For your safety. [ Batman #408 -Max Allen Collins ]
He has forgiven you since then. You still don't know if you deserve it.
You work alone for some time. You barely remember. It seems so empty, without Dick by your side, with the silence except for the shouts and screams and the cracks of bone and flesh being impacted. No voices, nothing to distract you from the darkness, the never-ending grief you feel- and one day you find a boy. Another boy. Standing next to your car, with one tire gone. He's dirty, ragged, barely dressed, and in his eyes you see the deep-seated anger that echoes your own. His name is Jason Todd.
You know this is a bad idea, but you have to try. You have to, no matter what.
Because for the first time in weeks, he makes you smile. [ Under the Hood -Judd Winick ]
He's difficult. You're difficult. You should've known that this is a bad idea; that rage cannot calm rage, and Jason has seen too much. You know your limits, then- your parents loved (love) you, and you have never had to suffer through what he had. You don't understand. Dick doesn't understand. But you liked Jason out there, with his sharper barbs and the fierce joy on his face, and when you signed the adoption papers you have already thought of him as your son.
It's selfish. You loved, but it's not enough. But that's not yet the end of the story. There's Barbara, and Jim, and the Joker, and a bullet- and you look at her vibrant red hair and her broken spine and her useless legs and you know that this, too, is your fault. You laughed with the Joker and you know what it feels to be mad. And you know that you will always have to stop him. Always. [ The Killing Joker -Alan Moore ] It's alright- almost. Your Batgirl turns into an Oracle. But you distance yourself further, further.
Pause. Rewind back to Jason, and start again. A man falls off a roof [ Batman #424 -Jim Starlin ]. You start to suspect. He starts to glare and snarl instead of simply sulking. He turns away, and tries to find his real mother. You let him go, because you think that's what he needs. That he needs some sort of- stability, that you cannot give him. You don't know how to calm his rage anymore; you have only given him the tools.
You don't want to remember the next part. Sheila Hayworth's betrayal, Jason's death. You weren't in time- you have always been too late for him. His body is warm and stiff and broken in your arms. You didn't cry when you cleaned him up to put him in the coffin. You wanted to, but no- Jason's rage drives him, and it drives you now. Not even Dick can calm it, and you lash out and out and out and you wanted so barely to kill the Joker. He has diplomatic immunity. The man who fell off the roof is a diplomat's son. The irony almost kills you but you cannot laugh. You dream of wringing your hands around the Joker's neck. [ Death in the Family -Jim Starlin ]
But you cannot kill. You won't allow yourself to. If one dies then all the rest must, and you dig yourself deeper and deeper into the darkness and you can't find your way out. You want to kill. You want so badly to that sometimes you can smell the blood on your hands. Vengeance. You want vengeance. Jason's uniform is in a case in the Cave, clean and pristine- and the bloodied one is hidden in a corner of your closet. ( headcanon )
Salvation comes, again, in the face of a child. You wonder how you are so lucky- or unlucky. Not once, not twice, but three times. Tim Drake. He has a camera and you wonder why he's not dead by now, whether by your enemies' hands or your own. Harvey Dent has a knife against your throat, and it's almost like going through the motions when you stop him. Dick is by your side again but you know that's temporary, because he has his own life. He needs to.
You wonder about Tim's parents. Tim has parents - Jack and Janet Drake. It's alright- he doesn't have to be your son. He can just be Robin. Not a son, not your child, and you make-believe to yourself that you won't get attached. You're not a thief. You've stolen Dick from John Grayson (and you have, because you're his father and he's your son, despite the word 'ward' and surely he must know-), Jason from Willis Todd, and you won't steal Tim from Jack Drake. He can be Robin, because you need Robin. [ Robin, Vol 1 Issue 1 -Chuck Dixon ]
Slowly, you pull yourself away from the darkness. Gotham seems to breathe again, receives a little light. It's alright- except the greatest light of the world disappears. Superman, that man of steel you first met, the first alien you have ever trusted, dies by Doomsday's hands, and you don't know how to react. You work together. He's invulnerable. Invincible. He should be the last to die- and you feel your hope choke itself in your own throat and die. [ Death of Superman -various ] Then all at once everything goes to hell. There is a man named Bane, and all of Arkham's monsters are freed. You chase and chase and exhaustion is a bitter taste at the back of your throat.
You're so tired that when he breaks your back, you can barely react. [ Batman #497 -Doug Moench ]
Dick is far too good for your cowl. He has Nightwing now; he doesn't need Batman. Tim is too young, and you need Robin to guide the new Batman. You give the cape and cowl to a man named Jean-Paul Valley, and focus on your recovery. Superman returns from the dead, and you know there is hope again. Greater hope than before, because now- now the impossible has been reached. A man returns from the dead. A man can walk again. Briefly, you think of Jason- but there is no time, because Jean-Paul is misusing your cowl. He is starting to kill, to go down the road you did after Jason died. There's a female doctor who worked miracles, and you hold onto that- the miracles. Then, you pushes yourself off your wheelchair, force your legs to work, and fight. [ Batman #510 -Doug Moench ]
You have your legs back. The League is reformed, with Superman as its leader. Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, the man with the ring and the man who moves like lightning, are gone- the latter in a Crisis you don't remember and you, strangely, don't want to recall. Wally West and Kyle Rayner takes their places. [ JLA #1 -Grant Morrison ]. You fight gods and monsters and you miss Gotham while in space, and you trust no one- not even those who are close. Not even Clark- Superman, Diana- the warrior woman, the Wonder Woman, or even J'onn- the Martian, the telepath. You keep their weaknesses in a file and Talia - the daughter of one of your enemies, Ra's al Ghul, and a woman who is unfathomably in love with you - steals the information. Ra's steal your parents tombs.
You will never forgive her for that betrayal. Especially after you were voted out of the team. [ JLA: Tower of Babel -Mark Waid ] Even now, you haven't forgiven Clark for his vote.
Gotham calls you back again quickly enough. An earthquake, a plague, and you can never have enough time to rest, can you? Gotham plunges into a No Man’s Land, and you suspect Lex Luthor is responsible. You rush to Washington, but here- it's your fault again, isn't it? Your cover is too good, and no one believes you're capable of anything. Your city is trapped, ruined, and it's all the League can do to stop it from being exploited. Oracle is blind and deafened. There's just you and your family here, fighting and fighting- and you find a girl. David Cain's daughter. [ Batman #567 -Kelley Puckett ]
She's the only child who is entirely yours. Her father isn't worth speaking of. You take her in and you teach her how to read, how to speak, and she understands you in a way that no one else does. Her name is Cassandra, and she's silent- but you like silent. She's more articulate than anyone else you know.
Throughout your time in the League together, your relationship with Clark strengthens. Somehow your paths keep crossing, and he grows from a tolerable comrade to an acquaintance to a friend. A friend whose archenemy is now the President; a friend with a meterorite headed towards him, covered in a mineral deadly to only him. Lex Luthor is a threat to Gotham. There's a chance Metallo could have killed your parents, and that's the final straw. Of course you have to help. [ Superman/Batman: Public Enemies -Jeph Loeb ]
This is also roughly when you find a girl named Kara Zor-El. A 'treasure'. Clark is a fool, and you keep an eye on her- and in her grief for her lost world you find a resonance with your own. Darkseid comes for her, and when you fight for her life, you win against the Evil God for the first time, with nothing but another man's stolen technology, your mind, and your willpower. [ Superman/Batman: The Supergirl From Krypton -Jeph Loeb ]
She's yours as much as any of your other children are yours. She might wear Clark's shield, but her methods and her thinking- are entirely your own. And somehow- you think you might be proud of that. No- no, you think. You are proud. You're proud of all of them, and you hope they already know.
There is once- no, that's not right. You used to have a friend, in your youth. Tommy Elliot, who is as loud as you are quiet; vibrant as you are intense. His father died in a car accident and his mother lost her face, and at the time you had grieved for him. Your father saved his mother's life, and when your own parents died you had thought, cruelly, meanly, that it isn't fair. That it isn't fair that Tommy has his mother, and you now have no one.
Tommy doesn't think it fair either, for entirely opposite reasons. You know that now, and you feel like a fool for grieving for him. He murdered his own parents with his bare hands, and later he doctors your Cave's computer and cuts your line and makes you owe him a life's debt when he heals the crack in your skull that he himself caused. You grieve for him again when he 'died', and you wonder now how many times you will grieve for this man, this boy-child of a youth long gone. You wonder why it's so difficult for you to let go of memories.
You see Jason again, and that's a raw wound that will never close. Jason, tall and strong- and disbelieving that you love him. You believe in your own righteousness, in your own strength of conviction. You think that Jason knows that you love him, and so you don't notice when he switches with Clayface. Even now, when you're thinking back, you still don't know when it happens- and it is another mark of your failure as a father.
You've forgotten to speak of someone else up to now. Her name is Selina Kyle. Catwoman. You've had dances across the rooftops so many times, but she is a cat and a thief and you're a bat and a hero. It's always a game, until she kisses you and it adds another dimension to the confusion. You're fighting against an unknown enemy and countless ghosts, and Selina- you love her. You love her with a strength you have never known yourself capable of- it is not intensity, no, because that is common with you. No- you've loved her since you saw her on that rooftop, all those years together, when you were still new at this instead of being old and tired. You still do.
She has never betrayed you. That matters, too. But you can never be sure, can you? You never can be. You cut her off even as you bring her close, and when you realise that it is Tommy Elliot who is Hush, that it is Edward Nygma who pulls the strings- it is too late. She is already gone.
You're getting used to that. [ Hush -Jeph Loeb ]
Tim eventually leaves you - you've been waiting for that, what takes him so long? And in his place, a little blond girl who reminds you of Kara finds your Cave, and takes the uniform. Her name is Stephanie Brown, she used to call herself Spoiler, and she has barely been trained. You agree to train her, and you now wonder if that's the greatest mistake you have made with her, or is it when you fired her? Or when you don't tell her about Matches Malone? [ Robin Vol 2 #126-128 -Bill Willingham ]
Everything happens too fast and like when you have lost Jason, you don't want to think about what happens next. It ends up with another body of a dead child in your hands, and the blank look in Tim Drake's eyes. You almost kill another man again, and even now- even now, you don't know why you haven't. Black Mask deserves to die- no, that's a lie. You can rationalise the why- but you've forgotten the how.
You can't do it again. [ War Games -various ]
It's too much, too much- there's too much that happens at the same time and you have no rest. But you can't say that, can you? You're a detective; you should have known- you should have known what they have done to Doctor Light. What they have done to you. You cannot trust, and because of one madwoman, your Robin has lost his father. Jack Drake is dead. The people you have trusted the most have erased your memory- have touched your mind. You do not only fear when they will be attacked by psychics and mind-stealers- you start fearing their methods. Their purposes. You have to know how to stop them. [ Identity Crisis -Brad Meltzer ]
Back in Gotham. You lose one child to gain back another- except Jason isn't Jason anymore. He dresses himself in the Joker's old clothes like a child playing pretend, and he has come back from the dead and you do not understand. He starts to kill, and kill, and Black Mask's empire shatters, crashes, smashes into pieces and you disgust yourself with your pride at him even as you know you've failed him for the methods he uses now.
Jason is brilliant - he's improved, with his methods, with his training. You only wish that he would not kill. You will do anything to stop him. You will keep trying to save him, over and over, in hopes that it means that you're forgiven for not succeeding the first time. (But at the same time, you know that's impossible. You cannot be forgiven. Not by him. Not by yourself.)
But you know this: you cannot forgive yourself for not being able to save him. And you cannot forgive him for making you choose between himself and the Joker; between him and Dick- Dick, in Bludhaven during a nuclear incident. You cannot forgive him for not understanding you enough to know why you cannot kill- that you cannot stop at a single one. That if you kill one, you will destroy them all. [ Under the Hood/Family Reunion -Judd Winick ]
You cannot forgive - not the League, not Jason, and there are too many variables and you're so near to your breaking point that you start smelling the blood on your hands again. You want, you want, you want-
You have to watch them all. They cannot betray you again. You will not let them. And so you build the Brother Eye. And you forget, just once, that this means that you are now the traitor. Not just to those who have hurt you- but to all of metahumans in the world.
In the end, it backfires on you. Conner Kent is dead, and Tim- Tim is cold-eyed. You leave behind the cape and the cowl, training Harvey Dent (he will always be a better man than you are) to take care of Gotham in your place. You leave for a year, to calm yourself, but when you return Harvey's downward spiral into Two-Face makes you wonder how you found in yourself the selfishness to leave in the first place. [ Face the Face -James Robinson ]
Then- Talia. That one night you have tried your best to put out of your memory. A son- and that is a greater betrayal than anything else she could have done. She could have dived at you with a knife and the hurt would've been less. She should've known how important family is to you, and you look at the boy- Damian, who is everything you despise about Ra's al Ghul and his League of Assassins. He hurts Alfred; he hurts Tim- and Talia forces a child to choose between his parents and you will never forgive her for that either. There are many things you cannot forgive. [ Batman and Son -Grant Morrison ]
Another charity function. Dressed as Bruce Wayne, at Alfred's behest. You have to relearn how to be yourself - isn't that ironic? But it's not funny anymore, because there is the Black Glove. The ultimate enemy. Jezebel Jet. The pieces are coming less clearly now, pieces upon pieces barely joined. But you remember- Jet trying to make you believe that you are mad even as you fall for her (that's another betrayal, but it's alright- because it's expected).
Hurt is not your father, but he tries to ruin you. The sensation of the drugs in your system is so stark. You barely remember everything and yet you remember it all- all of it. The blurriness, the stumbling. Clawing out of your grave in a straitjacket. Batman of Zur-En Arrh. Your last, desperate attempt, and you wonder what part of your mind has decided on the baseball bat. Hurt escapes- but you have put the fear in his eyes. In the Devil's eyes. He is not your father. [ Batman R.I.P. -Grant Morrison ]
You can barely breathe. You promise Alfred that you will return just as Clark sounds Code Amber. Darkseid. You remember the chill of the radion bullet - always cold, never warming up to the heat of your leather gloves. Being captured- god, that is so stupid of you to not notice. Then, suddenly, you're living an entire other life. Alfred. Alfred as an avatar for a monster farming your memories. You break out of it, barely, and you don't know how you did it but it's not important. Not so near the end. You break out of it and you will never forget the next sight:
Rows and rows of your own bodies. All in death- violent deaths. Suicide. You remember the sting of bile at the back of your throat- but there is no time. You need your utility belt. You need the bullet. There is a gun- and the bullet fits any gun.
Billions of lives enslaved. Your fingers close over the handle of the gun, and of course you know how to use it. You remember Joe Chill- you remember the man who killed your parents-
(How do you know Joe Chill? How do you know his name?)
- and you raised the gun to Darkseid, in his chair. He's dying. Your hand is barely steady, and you pull the trigger. That's one vow broken- and Darkseid screams like a dying animal. That's poison you used. Then there's heat. The Omega Sanction. Then-
Stop. [ Final Crisis -Grant Morrison ]
PERSONALITY:
Everyone knows this story: a boy is born to happily married parents, and he had a great childhood. Then one day, when he was eight years old, he went to a production of Zorro, and when they got out of the theatre, his parents were threatened by a robber. He shot the poor boy’s father first, then the mother, before running away and leaving the child soaking in twin pools of his parents’ blood. Scarred by this experience, the boy - Bruce Wayne - vows to never let something like this happen again. He travels the world, gains experience and, finally, returns to his hometown Gotham and dressed like a bat to fight crime.
But that is not the whole of the story, is it? Because, you see, hundreds of children see their parents die daily, weekly. Very little of them, even in the DC universe, decide to go on a crusade to get rid of all crime, much less to dress up in a costume and punch out criminals himself. There’s just something about Bruce that makes him predisposed to becoming Batman.
It’s his sheer, utter intensity. His capacity of obsession to the point of blinding himself to everything else. No normal person would become a man driven completely by a mission because of one thing that happened in their childhood, much less letting that mission drive them throughout their entire life, leaving no space for anything else. No normal, sane person would think that the best way to express his love for his city by dressing up as a bat, beating up villains, while putting on a vapid persona in public so people would think that he didn’t give a shit. Most people simply don’t do that kind of thing.
Bruce... isn’t a normal person. That much is apparently. He’s incredibly, incredibly intense, in many ways. The first and most apparent is his ability to master every skill that he sets out to do; his sheer mental focus when he concentrates on learning something such that he becomes very good at it in a very short time. Canonically, he has highly developed skills in piloting, organic chemistry, engineering, business administration (even though he has a reputation as a vapid playboy, he’s shown to be able to out-play Lex Luthor, who does this for a living openly), forensics analysis, physics, biology, biochemistry... and a million other things. If the plot requires him to be good at it, he probably is.
Except cooking. He seems to be magically terrible at cooking. It’s part of why Alfred owns his ass.
And, of course, he’s the World’s Greatest Detective. Which means that he’s also very observant, has very good analytic skills, generally knows things way before everyone else, and is clever enough to figure out ways to defeat even the most powerful of beings. This sometimes has been overused by writers who assert that he knows everything, and that he can defeat everyone if he knew enough about them-but generally, Bruce has limitations. Normal, human limitations. Sometimes, he’s wrong. Sometimes, he doesn’t know everything. It wasn’t shown often, but he does.
It might make him sound perfect, but Bruce’s greatest flaw is that though he is highly intelligent, though he is a great martial artist, his emotional maturity remains that of an eight-year-old kneeling in the alley, trying to not cry as he watched his parents bled out in front of him. The Batman way of showing that he cares about someone is to never tell them about it, to keep endless surveillance on them, run background checks on all of their loved ones... and, of course, keeping notes on ways to take that loved one down if that person has powers. Just in case they are ever mind-controlled and used against Batman.
Just ask the Justice League during the Tower of Babel incident. Did I mention that Bruce is intensely, intensely paranoid? His tactically ability and way of thinking means that he knows all the ways that his friends and allies can kill him, whether willingly or through mind-control, and he keeps records of how to take them down as a contingency measure.
He is so emotionally stunted that most of the people he cares about-the Bat-family, as coined by fans-generally didn’t think that they matter much to him. For example, Jason Todd’s death devastated him, and he literally lost control for a few weeks after the boy’s death and came really close to breaking his moral code and the Joker. But Bruce is so incapable of showing what he feels that when Jason came back from the dead, he believes so incredibly deeply that Bruce doesn’t care for him that he turns into the criminal Red Hood. Because Batman never told him that he cares, that he grieves, that Jason’s death tears him up inside, that he sees it as his greatest failure-no, instead, he keeps Jason’s uniform in a glass case in the Cave and stares at it mournfully every single day.
So. Emotional stupidity. To the extremes.
And that’s another notable thing about Bruce: his very strong moral code; his stringent sense of what is Right and Wrong. Batman does not kill, ever. When Jason Todd, resurrected as the Red Hood and angry that Bruce didn’t kill the Joker for killing him, Bruce was so unwilling to kill the Joker that he slit the Red Hood’s throat for it. Jason lived, of course-the wound wasn’t fatal-but it proves just the extreme that Bruce was willing to go to in order to keep his moral code.
Of course, that had a very good reason. Remember his intensity? Bruce knew that if he crosses the line, if he kills-he will never stop killing. In a canon alternate universe (comics canon, I love it), known as Earth-51, Batman did kill the Joker after the latter killed Jason. And then he figured that since he had crossed the line, he might as well go the whole way-he ended up killing every single villain in that world. Bruce doesn’t do things halfway: if he crosses the line, he will go so over it that he ends up in another galaxy.
Did I mention his intensity and obsession yet?
POWER:
He has no canonical powers, but his power in game will be Cityspeaker, as styled after Tamora Pierce’s Wolfspeaker series.
Basically, he can ‘talk’ to cities, which means that he can figure out what happens every time, he can probably find people unless they hide themselves really well, and when the city is in danger, he will instinctively know. If the city is injured, such as an explosion, he will know, and he will be instinctively pulled there. With great effort and concentration, he can manipulate the buildings and everything that is characteristic of a city to move for him-for example, a building can bend for him, a streetlamp will turn itself off if he told it to, a bridge can bend itself into two and its cables snap into half if that was what he wanted.
Think Jack Hawksmoor of the Authority.
But there is one very, very strong limitation on his power. Two, actually, but the first one is the most important-he can only control a city to the point of moving things if he loves the city. The stronger his emotional connection to the city, the better it will obey him. In the beginning, he will be able to ‘hear’ whispers, at the most. He will know the city’s general mood, not unlike extremely empathic people who first exit the airport-except more accurate. However, if he has a very strong emotional connection to the city, such as in Gotham… The gargoyles will rip themselves off their perches to fight for him; the buildings will curve to reduce impact on him to stop him from being injured. But he will need practice before he can actually do that. Lots of practice, or else the effects won't stay for long enough.
There is also his second limitation-the fact that he hates metahumans. He will most likely be repressing his powers, so it’s highly unlikely that he will ever be that powerful, or use his powers that much.
It’s a pride thing.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
BATMAN:
voice;
[ The sound of the wind is very much deliberately caught on tape. As is the sound of a heavy cape being caught in it. Flap, flap, flap. ]
I've been away too long.
[ Oh yes, the voice is a familiar one, isn't it? All darkness and gravel, scraping rough against skin. Sandpaper is gentler. It's deep, too. Resonant. Commanding. It's the kind of voice old generals had to train themselves to have. The kind that makes everyone sit up, listen, and obey. ]
If you think you have the chance to run free... you still have the time to change your mind.
[ Isn't he cryptic. :| And yes, that's the end of the transmission.
The Bat's back, and he's not letting anyone believe that he's been gone in the first place. ]
BRUCE WAYNE, AROUND 3 DAYS AFTER BATMAN'S POSTING:
video;
[ The video blinks on suddenly, catching the corner of the chin. There's a shift of it left, right, before it settles on a pair of ice blue eyes, far too close. Familiar eyes, and an even more familiar face when he pulls the screen back.
Bruce Wayne. ]
You know. [ He clears his voice quietly. ] It's a really surreal experience to be snoozing next to a beautiful lady - and let me tell you, her breasts are fantastic - and then suddenly landing back-first into a strange city. It's terribly rude.
And to make it worse, I switch on this thing, and the first thing I see is my own face. [ Pause. Dramatic pause. He's letting that sink in, City. ] I think there's a word for it - deja vu? But words don't seem very adequate right now, no.
[ There's a scuffling as he sets down the camera on a nice surface. Rocky, though. But it steadies after a while, and he clears his throat. ]
Unfortunately, as handsome as my own face is, I don't remember making any of those posts. Or talking to any of you surely fascinating people [ Bright smile. ]
Care to enlighten me?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
A new city. A new world. Darkseid now hopefully a memory, with the gun Bruce used to shoot him still weighty in his hand. The burn of the Omega Sanction, the heat of a sky that he hadn't seen in months. The chill and artificiality of Darkseid's hideout, in Bludhaven; the buildings in this city. Metahumans. Familiar faces. An information package about a Porter, of a City that needs Heroes and the Porter choosing those to bring. Familiar codenames. Familiar voices.
His own face on the screen.
His own face, repeated over and over, mixed with the stench of blood and human waste.
Darkseid's plan; an army of himself. He figured it out in time to use his own memories as weapons, to turn the Lump against Desaad- or was that an illusion? Would this be another trick?
The floor felt solid around him. The pains from his muscles atrophying for months in Desaad's torture chair remained. But those things originated from his mind still, and proved nothing except the possibility that even his most intimate sense had been fooled. It might be telepath. There was a telepath here. Men, and women, whom he had seen a long time ago, who called themselves Avengers; who came from a world that the League had disdained without understanding.
The odds were balanced. Bruce weighed them in his head, considering. Alfred was not here, but they could have just found a new face for Lump to use. Gotham was not here; maybe they were trying to prove to him that Gotham didn't need him. He saw another Batman, with a different voice; with a familiar, small figure by his side. If they could not eliminate Batman by saving his parents, then they could try to destroy him by showing his worthlessness.
But there were flaws to this theory. There were flaws in this world; in this place. The logic didn't flow easily; it stuttered, stopped itself, ran in circles. Bruce Wayne's face in the device, without Batman. A Batman with a slightly different build; slightly different voice. Conversations that he wouldn't have.
A red-headed child in Robin's insignia. Strangers having entire, sprawling lives. Either the Lump had new material or they were real.
A perfectly logical world was a false world. Only a world where rationality didn't work all the time, where cause and effect weren't so easily seen, where correlation and causation mixed themselves up- only a world like that could be reality. It didn't matter what was in that world; not even the physical rules mattered. Bruce had gone through too many Crises for that.
The answer hid itself in logic. Truth was rarely completely rational but a sprawl of different possibilities that eventually were reduced by the process of elimination. In order to work as a detective - a good detective - Bruce had to rely on his instincts, on a singular feeling that could never be justified entirely by logic.
Right now, his instincts told him nothing. The possibilities were too many.
Bruce took a step. Threw the device up, and caught it again. He could not decide on either. Given the Omega Sanction, given what had just happened, the possibility that he was still trapped in an illusion, that he only imagined escaping, was too great.
He took another step. He wasn't being driven now - he wasn't so before, either - so it was both an invitation and a necessity. He needed to find out more.
He switched the device on.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
Um! I can't find good icons with him looking as pretty as he's supposed to, so I'm using Chrisitna Bale as his PB. However, he will still have black hair and blue eyes, as per comics.
CHARACTER NAME: Bruce Wayne
FANDOM: DC’s Batman, pre-reboot.
CHRONOLOGY: Right after Final Crisis.
CLASS: Hero
SUPERHERO NAME: Batman.
ALTER EGO: Bruce Wayne, multibillionaire playboy extraordinaire. Sometimes plays at business a bit.
BACKGROUND:
Imagine this. You are born into a city full of corruption, into a family that's the richest in that city- maybe even the richest in the country. Your father is a surgeon - kind and handsome, with the fortune of your grandfather and his grandfather and his grandfather behind him, a long proud line. Your mother- she's so beautiful, with warm hands and the gentlest of smiles. You don't get to see your father much, because he's busy, but that's alright - you have your mother, and there's Alfred, your butler. You don't have many friends either, but that's alright too. Your family is perfect, and isn't that what matters?
Then one day, your father promises to bring you out for a movie. You beg and beg your mother to wear her pearls - you love those pearls, they shine like tiny moons, strung on a silk thread. Your mother agrees, and you go to a movie, to Zorro- and then you don't remember much of it. There's just an alley, and gunshots, and the sick smell of aftershave. There's your parents' bodies on your foot and their blood on your hands, and you cannot- cannot remember the face of the man who murdered your parents in front of your very eyes.
The police can't find him either. Your city falls, breaking itself into ruins in its grief. You hold back your tears and vow to take vengeance on the city and rid it of crime.
Your name is Bruce Wayne. Nothing will be alright again. But that's fine- because this is your first step as Batman. This is a new beginning.
Your life doesn't pick up again until you're twenty-five. You've spent the last few years - more than a decade - training in everything you can ever get your hands on to keep that vow. You have never forgotten it, and your faithful butler Alfred hasn't either. He keeps your house pristine for you, and you return to a ruined city that barely can smile enough to welcome you home. You find a man named James Gordon, and you begin your crusade- but there's something missing. The criminals laugh at you. There's a bullet wound at your side, and you're sitting on your chair. A single moment before you bleed out, and you need to make a decision.
There's a bat at the window. Then- you see.
Batman doesn't attack just the petty criminals. The crime lords, the corrupted officers- all of them need to be punished. You make yourself into something else- something to be feared. [ Batman: Year One -Frank Miller ]
You meet another man- a poor man, with a pregnant wife (you don't know that then, but you know that now, in this dearth of time). You follow him to a chemical factory, and he's wearing a ridiculous costume. A red hood- and he falls, falls, and he starts laughing, and he's not the first man that you can't save, but he's the one you would regret the most. The Joker. He's the Joker. The name resounds in your head, over and over, like a bad joke. [ The Killing Joke -Alan Moore ]
You walk down the path of darkness, so much like the alley of your childhood, and with every step you sink deeper and deeper into the mire. You meet another good man named Harvey Dent, and you didn't trust him- he sinks faster than you do, and acid eats away his face and his mind and one side of his coin and it's your fault and you are so very, very alone. [ The Long Halloween -Jeph Loeb ]
Then- there's a boy. A boy standing there, with the bodies of his parents around him. There's a trapeze and bright circus lights and no alley. The bodies are broken and twisted, not bleeding. But the details don't matter because you look into the boy's eyes and you see yourself in there. The pain, the loneliness- and you vow to give him what you never had. You want to give him closure, and so you abandon the boy- Dick Grayson- with the man you trust the most in the world and start to hunt his enemies.
Then you see him, dressed in his garish circus costume, trying to find his own revenge. You take him home, show him your true self- and when you find his parents' murderer, you bring him with you. The boy sees that man die in front of his very eyes, and you watch the steel creep into his gaze. [ Dark Victory -Jeph Loeb ]
You let him keep the costume, and train him to use it. You gain a partner, and slowly he starts to pull you out of the inky blackness that threatens to drown you entirely. You learned how to breathe. You learn how to forgive. [ Robin: Year One -Chuck Dixon ]
In the next few years, you learn that it's not just your city you have to care about. You meet a man of steel, a goddess-warrior, a man with a shining green ring, a man who moves like lightning. Your world expanded, forced apart by their presence, and your boy finds a larger world, too. You join the Justice League, Dick joins the Teen Titans, and years passed. Eventually the darkness starts tugging at you, whispering in your ears, and when you look at Dick you see not a boy, not a young man, but a potential corpse. You fear that you'll kill him one day, because of all that you do- and there's the fire from the Joker's gun, the curve of his body as he falls- and you make your decision.
You fire him, chase him from your side. For his safety. For your safety. [ Batman #408 -Max Allen Collins ]
He has forgiven you since then. You still don't know if you deserve it.
You work alone for some time. You barely remember. It seems so empty, without Dick by your side, with the silence except for the shouts and screams and the cracks of bone and flesh being impacted. No voices, nothing to distract you from the darkness, the never-ending grief you feel- and one day you find a boy. Another boy. Standing next to your car, with one tire gone. He's dirty, ragged, barely dressed, and in his eyes you see the deep-seated anger that echoes your own. His name is Jason Todd.
You know this is a bad idea, but you have to try. You have to, no matter what.
Because for the first time in weeks, he makes you smile. [ Under the Hood -Judd Winick ]
He's difficult. You're difficult. You should've known that this is a bad idea; that rage cannot calm rage, and Jason has seen too much. You know your limits, then- your parents loved (love) you, and you have never had to suffer through what he had. You don't understand. Dick doesn't understand. But you liked Jason out there, with his sharper barbs and the fierce joy on his face, and when you signed the adoption papers you have already thought of him as your son.
It's selfish. You loved, but it's not enough. But that's not yet the end of the story. There's Barbara, and Jim, and the Joker, and a bullet- and you look at her vibrant red hair and her broken spine and her useless legs and you know that this, too, is your fault. You laughed with the Joker and you know what it feels to be mad. And you know that you will always have to stop him. Always. [ The Killing Joker -Alan Moore ] It's alright- almost. Your Batgirl turns into an Oracle. But you distance yourself further, further.
Pause. Rewind back to Jason, and start again. A man falls off a roof [ Batman #424 -Jim Starlin ]. You start to suspect. He starts to glare and snarl instead of simply sulking. He turns away, and tries to find his real mother. You let him go, because you think that's what he needs. That he needs some sort of- stability, that you cannot give him. You don't know how to calm his rage anymore; you have only given him the tools.
You don't want to remember the next part. Sheila Hayworth's betrayal, Jason's death. You weren't in time- you have always been too late for him. His body is warm and stiff and broken in your arms. You didn't cry when you cleaned him up to put him in the coffin. You wanted to, but no- Jason's rage drives him, and it drives you now. Not even Dick can calm it, and you lash out and out and out and you wanted so barely to kill the Joker. He has diplomatic immunity. The man who fell off the roof is a diplomat's son. The irony almost kills you but you cannot laugh. You dream of wringing your hands around the Joker's neck. [ Death in the Family -Jim Starlin ]
But you cannot kill. You won't allow yourself to. If one dies then all the rest must, and you dig yourself deeper and deeper into the darkness and you can't find your way out. You want to kill. You want so badly to that sometimes you can smell the blood on your hands. Vengeance. You want vengeance. Jason's uniform is in a case in the Cave, clean and pristine- and the bloodied one is hidden in a corner of your closet. ( headcanon )
Salvation comes, again, in the face of a child. You wonder how you are so lucky- or unlucky. Not once, not twice, but three times. Tim Drake. He has a camera and you wonder why he's not dead by now, whether by your enemies' hands or your own. Harvey Dent has a knife against your throat, and it's almost like going through the motions when you stop him. Dick is by your side again but you know that's temporary, because he has his own life. He needs to.
You wonder about Tim's parents. Tim has parents - Jack and Janet Drake. It's alright- he doesn't have to be your son. He can just be Robin. Not a son, not your child, and you make-believe to yourself that you won't get attached. You're not a thief. You've stolen Dick from John Grayson (and you have, because you're his father and he's your son, despite the word 'ward' and surely he must know-), Jason from Willis Todd, and you won't steal Tim from Jack Drake. He can be Robin, because you need Robin. [ Robin, Vol 1 Issue 1 -Chuck Dixon ]
Slowly, you pull yourself away from the darkness. Gotham seems to breathe again, receives a little light. It's alright- except the greatest light of the world disappears. Superman, that man of steel you first met, the first alien you have ever trusted, dies by Doomsday's hands, and you don't know how to react. You work together. He's invulnerable. Invincible. He should be the last to die- and you feel your hope choke itself in your own throat and die. [ Death of Superman -various ] Then all at once everything goes to hell. There is a man named Bane, and all of Arkham's monsters are freed. You chase and chase and exhaustion is a bitter taste at the back of your throat.
You're so tired that when he breaks your back, you can barely react. [ Batman #497 -Doug Moench ]
Dick is far too good for your cowl. He has Nightwing now; he doesn't need Batman. Tim is too young, and you need Robin to guide the new Batman. You give the cape and cowl to a man named Jean-Paul Valley, and focus on your recovery. Superman returns from the dead, and you know there is hope again. Greater hope than before, because now- now the impossible has been reached. A man returns from the dead. A man can walk again. Briefly, you think of Jason- but there is no time, because Jean-Paul is misusing your cowl. He is starting to kill, to go down the road you did after Jason died. There's a female doctor who worked miracles, and you hold onto that- the miracles. Then, you pushes yourself off your wheelchair, force your legs to work, and fight. [ Batman #510 -Doug Moench ]
You have your legs back. The League is reformed, with Superman as its leader. Hal Jordan and Barry Allen, the man with the ring and the man who moves like lightning, are gone- the latter in a Crisis you don't remember and you, strangely, don't want to recall. Wally West and Kyle Rayner takes their places. [ JLA #1 -Grant Morrison ]. You fight gods and monsters and you miss Gotham while in space, and you trust no one- not even those who are close. Not even Clark- Superman, Diana- the warrior woman, the Wonder Woman, or even J'onn- the Martian, the telepath. You keep their weaknesses in a file and Talia - the daughter of one of your enemies, Ra's al Ghul, and a woman who is unfathomably in love with you - steals the information. Ra's steal your parents tombs.
You will never forgive her for that betrayal. Especially after you were voted out of the team. [ JLA: Tower of Babel -Mark Waid ] Even now, you haven't forgiven Clark for his vote.
Gotham calls you back again quickly enough. An earthquake, a plague, and you can never have enough time to rest, can you? Gotham plunges into a No Man’s Land, and you suspect Lex Luthor is responsible. You rush to Washington, but here- it's your fault again, isn't it? Your cover is too good, and no one believes you're capable of anything. Your city is trapped, ruined, and it's all the League can do to stop it from being exploited. Oracle is blind and deafened. There's just you and your family here, fighting and fighting- and you find a girl. David Cain's daughter. [ Batman #567 -Kelley Puckett ]
She's the only child who is entirely yours. Her father isn't worth speaking of. You take her in and you teach her how to read, how to speak, and she understands you in a way that no one else does. Her name is Cassandra, and she's silent- but you like silent. She's more articulate than anyone else you know.
Throughout your time in the League together, your relationship with Clark strengthens. Somehow your paths keep crossing, and he grows from a tolerable comrade to an acquaintance to a friend. A friend whose archenemy is now the President; a friend with a meterorite headed towards him, covered in a mineral deadly to only him. Lex Luthor is a threat to Gotham. There's a chance Metallo could have killed your parents, and that's the final straw. Of course you have to help. [ Superman/Batman: Public Enemies -Jeph Loeb ]
This is also roughly when you find a girl named Kara Zor-El. A 'treasure'. Clark is a fool, and you keep an eye on her- and in her grief for her lost world you find a resonance with your own. Darkseid comes for her, and when you fight for her life, you win against the Evil God for the first time, with nothing but another man's stolen technology, your mind, and your willpower. [ Superman/Batman: The Supergirl From Krypton -Jeph Loeb ]
She's yours as much as any of your other children are yours. She might wear Clark's shield, but her methods and her thinking- are entirely your own. And somehow- you think you might be proud of that. No- no, you think. You are proud. You're proud of all of them, and you hope they already know.
There is once- no, that's not right. You used to have a friend, in your youth. Tommy Elliot, who is as loud as you are quiet; vibrant as you are intense. His father died in a car accident and his mother lost her face, and at the time you had grieved for him. Your father saved his mother's life, and when your own parents died you had thought, cruelly, meanly, that it isn't fair. That it isn't fair that Tommy has his mother, and you now have no one.
Tommy doesn't think it fair either, for entirely opposite reasons. You know that now, and you feel like a fool for grieving for him. He murdered his own parents with his bare hands, and later he doctors your Cave's computer and cuts your line and makes you owe him a life's debt when he heals the crack in your skull that he himself caused. You grieve for him again when he 'died', and you wonder now how many times you will grieve for this man, this boy-child of a youth long gone. You wonder why it's so difficult for you to let go of memories.
You see Jason again, and that's a raw wound that will never close. Jason, tall and strong- and disbelieving that you love him. You believe in your own righteousness, in your own strength of conviction. You think that Jason knows that you love him, and so you don't notice when he switches with Clayface. Even now, when you're thinking back, you still don't know when it happens- and it is another mark of your failure as a father.
You've forgotten to speak of someone else up to now. Her name is Selina Kyle. Catwoman. You've had dances across the rooftops so many times, but she is a cat and a thief and you're a bat and a hero. It's always a game, until she kisses you and it adds another dimension to the confusion. You're fighting against an unknown enemy and countless ghosts, and Selina- you love her. You love her with a strength you have never known yourself capable of- it is not intensity, no, because that is common with you. No- you've loved her since you saw her on that rooftop, all those years together, when you were still new at this instead of being old and tired. You still do.
She has never betrayed you. That matters, too. But you can never be sure, can you? You never can be. You cut her off even as you bring her close, and when you realise that it is Tommy Elliot who is Hush, that it is Edward Nygma who pulls the strings- it is too late. She is already gone.
You're getting used to that. [ Hush -Jeph Loeb ]
Tim eventually leaves you - you've been waiting for that, what takes him so long? And in his place, a little blond girl who reminds you of Kara finds your Cave, and takes the uniform. Her name is Stephanie Brown, she used to call herself Spoiler, and she has barely been trained. You agree to train her, and you now wonder if that's the greatest mistake you have made with her, or is it when you fired her? Or when you don't tell her about Matches Malone? [ Robin Vol 2 #126-128 -Bill Willingham ]
Everything happens too fast and like when you have lost Jason, you don't want to think about what happens next. It ends up with another body of a dead child in your hands, and the blank look in Tim Drake's eyes. You almost kill another man again, and even now- even now, you don't know why you haven't. Black Mask deserves to die- no, that's a lie. You can rationalise the why- but you've forgotten the how.
You can't do it again. [ War Games -various ]
It's too much, too much- there's too much that happens at the same time and you have no rest. But you can't say that, can you? You're a detective; you should have known- you should have known what they have done to Doctor Light. What they have done to you. You cannot trust, and because of one madwoman, your Robin has lost his father. Jack Drake is dead. The people you have trusted the most have erased your memory- have touched your mind. You do not only fear when they will be attacked by psychics and mind-stealers- you start fearing their methods. Their purposes. You have to know how to stop them. [ Identity Crisis -Brad Meltzer ]
Back in Gotham. You lose one child to gain back another- except Jason isn't Jason anymore. He dresses himself in the Joker's old clothes like a child playing pretend, and he has come back from the dead and you do not understand. He starts to kill, and kill, and Black Mask's empire shatters, crashes, smashes into pieces and you disgust yourself with your pride at him even as you know you've failed him for the methods he uses now.
Jason is brilliant - he's improved, with his methods, with his training. You only wish that he would not kill. You will do anything to stop him. You will keep trying to save him, over and over, in hopes that it means that you're forgiven for not succeeding the first time. (But at the same time, you know that's impossible. You cannot be forgiven. Not by him. Not by yourself.)
But you know this: you cannot forgive yourself for not being able to save him. And you cannot forgive him for making you choose between himself and the Joker; between him and Dick- Dick, in Bludhaven during a nuclear incident. You cannot forgive him for not understanding you enough to know why you cannot kill- that you cannot stop at a single one. That if you kill one, you will destroy them all. [ Under the Hood/Family Reunion -Judd Winick ]
You cannot forgive - not the League, not Jason, and there are too many variables and you're so near to your breaking point that you start smelling the blood on your hands again. You want, you want, you want-
You have to watch them all. They cannot betray you again. You will not let them. And so you build the Brother Eye. And you forget, just once, that this means that you are now the traitor. Not just to those who have hurt you- but to all of metahumans in the world.
In the end, it backfires on you. Conner Kent is dead, and Tim- Tim is cold-eyed. You leave behind the cape and the cowl, training Harvey Dent (he will always be a better man than you are) to take care of Gotham in your place. You leave for a year, to calm yourself, but when you return Harvey's downward spiral into Two-Face makes you wonder how you found in yourself the selfishness to leave in the first place. [ Face the Face -James Robinson ]
Then- Talia. That one night you have tried your best to put out of your memory. A son- and that is a greater betrayal than anything else she could have done. She could have dived at you with a knife and the hurt would've been less. She should've known how important family is to you, and you look at the boy- Damian, who is everything you despise about Ra's al Ghul and his League of Assassins. He hurts Alfred; he hurts Tim- and Talia forces a child to choose between his parents and you will never forgive her for that either. There are many things you cannot forgive. [ Batman and Son -Grant Morrison ]
Another charity function. Dressed as Bruce Wayne, at Alfred's behest. You have to relearn how to be yourself - isn't that ironic? But it's not funny anymore, because there is the Black Glove. The ultimate enemy. Jezebel Jet. The pieces are coming less clearly now, pieces upon pieces barely joined. But you remember- Jet trying to make you believe that you are mad even as you fall for her (that's another betrayal, but it's alright- because it's expected).
Hurt is not your father, but he tries to ruin you. The sensation of the drugs in your system is so stark. You barely remember everything and yet you remember it all- all of it. The blurriness, the stumbling. Clawing out of your grave in a straitjacket. Batman of Zur-En Arrh. Your last, desperate attempt, and you wonder what part of your mind has decided on the baseball bat. Hurt escapes- but you have put the fear in his eyes. In the Devil's eyes. He is not your father. [ Batman R.I.P. -Grant Morrison ]
You can barely breathe. You promise Alfred that you will return just as Clark sounds Code Amber. Darkseid. You remember the chill of the radion bullet - always cold, never warming up to the heat of your leather gloves. Being captured- god, that is so stupid of you to not notice. Then, suddenly, you're living an entire other life. Alfred. Alfred as an avatar for a monster farming your memories. You break out of it, barely, and you don't know how you did it but it's not important. Not so near the end. You break out of it and you will never forget the next sight:
Rows and rows of your own bodies. All in death- violent deaths. Suicide. You remember the sting of bile at the back of your throat- but there is no time. You need your utility belt. You need the bullet. There is a gun- and the bullet fits any gun.
Billions of lives enslaved. Your fingers close over the handle of the gun, and of course you know how to use it. You remember Joe Chill- you remember the man who killed your parents-
(How do you know Joe Chill? How do you know his name?)
- and you raised the gun to Darkseid, in his chair. He's dying. Your hand is barely steady, and you pull the trigger. That's one vow broken- and Darkseid screams like a dying animal. That's poison you used. Then there's heat. The Omega Sanction. Then-
Stop. [ Final Crisis -Grant Morrison ]
PERSONALITY:
Everyone knows this story: a boy is born to happily married parents, and he had a great childhood. Then one day, when he was eight years old, he went to a production of Zorro, and when they got out of the theatre, his parents were threatened by a robber. He shot the poor boy’s father first, then the mother, before running away and leaving the child soaking in twin pools of his parents’ blood. Scarred by this experience, the boy - Bruce Wayne - vows to never let something like this happen again. He travels the world, gains experience and, finally, returns to his hometown Gotham and dressed like a bat to fight crime.
But that is not the whole of the story, is it? Because, you see, hundreds of children see their parents die daily, weekly. Very little of them, even in the DC universe, decide to go on a crusade to get rid of all crime, much less to dress up in a costume and punch out criminals himself. There’s just something about Bruce that makes him predisposed to becoming Batman.
It’s his sheer, utter intensity. His capacity of obsession to the point of blinding himself to everything else. No normal person would become a man driven completely by a mission because of one thing that happened in their childhood, much less letting that mission drive them throughout their entire life, leaving no space for anything else. No normal, sane person would think that the best way to express his love for his city by dressing up as a bat, beating up villains, while putting on a vapid persona in public so people would think that he didn’t give a shit. Most people simply don’t do that kind of thing.
Bruce... isn’t a normal person. That much is apparently. He’s incredibly, incredibly intense, in many ways. The first and most apparent is his ability to master every skill that he sets out to do; his sheer mental focus when he concentrates on learning something such that he becomes very good at it in a very short time. Canonically, he has highly developed skills in piloting, organic chemistry, engineering, business administration (even though he has a reputation as a vapid playboy, he’s shown to be able to out-play Lex Luthor, who does this for a living openly), forensics analysis, physics, biology, biochemistry... and a million other things. If the plot requires him to be good at it, he probably is.
Except cooking. He seems to be magically terrible at cooking. It’s part of why Alfred owns his ass.
And, of course, he’s the World’s Greatest Detective. Which means that he’s also very observant, has very good analytic skills, generally knows things way before everyone else, and is clever enough to figure out ways to defeat even the most powerful of beings. This sometimes has been overused by writers who assert that he knows everything, and that he can defeat everyone if he knew enough about them-but generally, Bruce has limitations. Normal, human limitations. Sometimes, he’s wrong. Sometimes, he doesn’t know everything. It wasn’t shown often, but he does.
It might make him sound perfect, but Bruce’s greatest flaw is that though he is highly intelligent, though he is a great martial artist, his emotional maturity remains that of an eight-year-old kneeling in the alley, trying to not cry as he watched his parents bled out in front of him. The Batman way of showing that he cares about someone is to never tell them about it, to keep endless surveillance on them, run background checks on all of their loved ones... and, of course, keeping notes on ways to take that loved one down if that person has powers. Just in case they are ever mind-controlled and used against Batman.
Just ask the Justice League during the Tower of Babel incident. Did I mention that Bruce is intensely, intensely paranoid? His tactically ability and way of thinking means that he knows all the ways that his friends and allies can kill him, whether willingly or through mind-control, and he keeps records of how to take them down as a contingency measure.
He is so emotionally stunted that most of the people he cares about-the Bat-family, as coined by fans-generally didn’t think that they matter much to him. For example, Jason Todd’s death devastated him, and he literally lost control for a few weeks after the boy’s death and came really close to breaking his moral code and the Joker. But Bruce is so incapable of showing what he feels that when Jason came back from the dead, he believes so incredibly deeply that Bruce doesn’t care for him that he turns into the criminal Red Hood. Because Batman never told him that he cares, that he grieves, that Jason’s death tears him up inside, that he sees it as his greatest failure-no, instead, he keeps Jason’s uniform in a glass case in the Cave and stares at it mournfully every single day.
So. Emotional stupidity. To the extremes.
And that’s another notable thing about Bruce: his very strong moral code; his stringent sense of what is Right and Wrong. Batman does not kill, ever. When Jason Todd, resurrected as the Red Hood and angry that Bruce didn’t kill the Joker for killing him, Bruce was so unwilling to kill the Joker that he slit the Red Hood’s throat for it. Jason lived, of course-the wound wasn’t fatal-but it proves just the extreme that Bruce was willing to go to in order to keep his moral code.
Of course, that had a very good reason. Remember his intensity? Bruce knew that if he crosses the line, if he kills-he will never stop killing. In a canon alternate universe (comics canon, I love it), known as Earth-51, Batman did kill the Joker after the latter killed Jason. And then he figured that since he had crossed the line, he might as well go the whole way-he ended up killing every single villain in that world. Bruce doesn’t do things halfway: if he crosses the line, he will go so over it that he ends up in another galaxy.
Did I mention his intensity and obsession yet?
POWER:
He has no canonical powers, but his power in game will be Cityspeaker, as styled after Tamora Pierce’s Wolfspeaker series.
Basically, he can ‘talk’ to cities, which means that he can figure out what happens every time, he can probably find people unless they hide themselves really well, and when the city is in danger, he will instinctively know. If the city is injured, such as an explosion, he will know, and he will be instinctively pulled there. With great effort and concentration, he can manipulate the buildings and everything that is characteristic of a city to move for him-for example, a building can bend for him, a streetlamp will turn itself off if he told it to, a bridge can bend itself into two and its cables snap into half if that was what he wanted.
Think Jack Hawksmoor of the Authority.
But there is one very, very strong limitation on his power. Two, actually, but the first one is the most important-he can only control a city to the point of moving things if he loves the city. The stronger his emotional connection to the city, the better it will obey him. In the beginning, he will be able to ‘hear’ whispers, at the most. He will know the city’s general mood, not unlike extremely empathic people who first exit the airport-except more accurate. However, if he has a very strong emotional connection to the city, such as in Gotham… The gargoyles will rip themselves off their perches to fight for him; the buildings will curve to reduce impact on him to stop him from being injured. But he will need practice before he can actually do that. Lots of practice, or else the effects won't stay for long enough.
There is also his second limitation-the fact that he hates metahumans. He will most likely be repressing his powers, so it’s highly unlikely that he will ever be that powerful, or use his powers that much.
It’s a pride thing.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
BATMAN:
voice;
[ The sound of the wind is very much deliberately caught on tape. As is the sound of a heavy cape being caught in it. Flap, flap, flap. ]
I've been away too long.
[ Oh yes, the voice is a familiar one, isn't it? All darkness and gravel, scraping rough against skin. Sandpaper is gentler. It's deep, too. Resonant. Commanding. It's the kind of voice old generals had to train themselves to have. The kind that makes everyone sit up, listen, and obey. ]
If you think you have the chance to run free... you still have the time to change your mind.
[ Isn't he cryptic. :| And yes, that's the end of the transmission.
The Bat's back, and he's not letting anyone believe that he's been gone in the first place. ]
BRUCE WAYNE, AROUND 3 DAYS AFTER BATMAN'S POSTING:
video;
[ The video blinks on suddenly, catching the corner of the chin. There's a shift of it left, right, before it settles on a pair of ice blue eyes, far too close. Familiar eyes, and an even more familiar face when he pulls the screen back.
Bruce Wayne. ]
You know. [ He clears his voice quietly. ] It's a really surreal experience to be snoozing next to a beautiful lady - and let me tell you, her breasts are fantastic - and then suddenly landing back-first into a strange city. It's terribly rude.
And to make it worse, I switch on this thing, and the first thing I see is my own face. [ Pause. Dramatic pause. He's letting that sink in, City. ] I think there's a word for it - deja vu? But words don't seem very adequate right now, no.
[ There's a scuffling as he sets down the camera on a nice surface. Rocky, though. But it steadies after a while, and he clears his throat. ]
Unfortunately, as handsome as my own face is, I don't remember making any of those posts. Or talking to any of you surely fascinating people [ Bright smile. ]
Care to enlighten me?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
A new city. A new world. Darkseid now hopefully a memory, with the gun Bruce used to shoot him still weighty in his hand. The burn of the Omega Sanction, the heat of a sky that he hadn't seen in months. The chill and artificiality of Darkseid's hideout, in Bludhaven; the buildings in this city. Metahumans. Familiar faces. An information package about a Porter, of a City that needs Heroes and the Porter choosing those to bring. Familiar codenames. Familiar voices.
His own face on the screen.
His own face, repeated over and over, mixed with the stench of blood and human waste.
Darkseid's plan; an army of himself. He figured it out in time to use his own memories as weapons, to turn the Lump against Desaad- or was that an illusion? Would this be another trick?
The floor felt solid around him. The pains from his muscles atrophying for months in Desaad's torture chair remained. But those things originated from his mind still, and proved nothing except the possibility that even his most intimate sense had been fooled. It might be telepath. There was a telepath here. Men, and women, whom he had seen a long time ago, who called themselves Avengers; who came from a world that the League had disdained without understanding.
The odds were balanced. Bruce weighed them in his head, considering. Alfred was not here, but they could have just found a new face for Lump to use. Gotham was not here; maybe they were trying to prove to him that Gotham didn't need him. He saw another Batman, with a different voice; with a familiar, small figure by his side. If they could not eliminate Batman by saving his parents, then they could try to destroy him by showing his worthlessness.
But there were flaws to this theory. There were flaws in this world; in this place. The logic didn't flow easily; it stuttered, stopped itself, ran in circles. Bruce Wayne's face in the device, without Batman. A Batman with a slightly different build; slightly different voice. Conversations that he wouldn't have.
A red-headed child in Robin's insignia. Strangers having entire, sprawling lives. Either the Lump had new material or they were real.
A perfectly logical world was a false world. Only a world where rationality didn't work all the time, where cause and effect weren't so easily seen, where correlation and causation mixed themselves up- only a world like that could be reality. It didn't matter what was in that world; not even the physical rules mattered. Bruce had gone through too many Crises for that.
The answer hid itself in logic. Truth was rarely completely rational but a sprawl of different possibilities that eventually were reduced by the process of elimination. In order to work as a detective - a good detective - Bruce had to rely on his instincts, on a singular feeling that could never be justified entirely by logic.
Right now, his instincts told him nothing. The possibilities were too many.
Bruce took a step. Threw the device up, and caught it again. He could not decide on either. Given the Omega Sanction, given what had just happened, the possibility that he was still trapped in an illusion, that he only imagined escaping, was too great.
He took another step. He wasn't being driven now - he wasn't so before, either - so it was both an invitation and a necessity. He needed to find out more.
He switched the device on.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
Um! I can't find good icons with him looking as pretty as he's supposed to, so I'm using Chrisitna Bale as his PB. However, he will still have black hair and blue eyes, as per comics.