Tag: justice league

Gotham City

“Scum.”

The word once uttered was more growl than intelligible speech, not that it mattered. Once the gloved fist impacted the side of the head, the explosion of pain triggered a deep ringing that made hearing difficult.

“That’s the last time you’ll mess with the Phantom Stranger!”

Phantom Stranger? Is this guy for real? Despite the pain, scattered thoughts still filtered through the would be mugger’s mind. He would have followed that thought up with an audible retort, but the masked man that had gripped his shirt with one hand was landing another blow, this time across the nose, with the other hand. There was a crack and blood spurted. The crook decided cowardice was the better part of criminal enterprise, and blacked out.

The Phantom Stranger released his grip. His former punching bag sagged against the alley wall and slid to the ground like a bag of broken bones. In all likelihood, that was bound to be not just metaphor.

The Phantom Stranger reached down and retrieved an expensive looking leather handbag. He offered it to the woman standing on the other side of the alley, frozen in place.

“Here you go, ma’am. And next time, I’d park in a more well lit area if I were you. Gotham’s dangerous enough in the daytime.”

She took it without a word, and walked as fast as she could back towards the street. The Stranger watched her go.

The Phantom Stranger turned and climbed up a fire escape. Reaching the building roof, he strode to the edge and looked over the street. He watched as the woman made it back to her car, and only when she was safely inside and pulling away did he relax. He pulled off the ski mask he was wearing and ran a gloved hand through his hair.

Bruce Wayne flexed said hand, and vowed to sew more padding into the glove when he felt the familiar sharp pain of bruised bone. Criminals may be stupid, but skulls were still too hard to hit without consequence. Bruce briefly remembered the mugger in the alley. Usually he preferred to leave the thugs for the cops, trussed and waiting, but without evidence of a crime there was little point. Besides, Bruce was noticing that most of the crooks he did deliver to the police, evidence helpfully pinned to their clothes, didn’t end up behind bars. Someone seemed to have sway over the law which meant little jail time for offenders. Bruce was still working up his list of suspects, but it didn’t take a genius detective to connect dots. Crime in Gotham was a family business, and the Falcone family was large and prosperous and slightly beyond the reach of a seventeen year old vigilante.

Bruce’s phone buzzed. He edged back into the shadows before picking it up. The caller ID showed as “Wayne Manor”. Only one person ever called from that line.

“Yes, Alfred?”

“Ah. Master Bruce. How nice of you to answer. May I assume you are still at the library?”

By library Alfred Pennyworth meant Gotham Public Library, where Bruce had said he was going to be.

“Uh, yeah. Still studying.” Bruce was distracted, watching a bum in a ragged coat shuffle down the street. He couldn’t decide if the man was drunk or suspicious.

“That would be an achievement indeed as the library closed an hour ago. Where are you, Master Bruce?”

Bruce cursed. Caught again, and by his butler!

“Oh, right, uh, I mean I’m in the parking lot of the library. Still, uh, studying.” Bruce cringed. What a stupid excuse.

“Indeed. Shall I come collect you?” Alfred’s voice was cold as ice. He was upset. Because Bruce’s mother was dead and his father a coma patient, Alfred had assumed the role of surrogate parent.

“No. I’m on my way home.” The bum had collapsed against a dumpster and had presumably fallen asleep. No real threat there.

Bruce hung up on Alfred and retreated back down into the alley. By the time he emerged onto the dimly lit street, he had removed the mask and gloves of the vigilante known as the Phantom Stranger and had morphed back into Bruce Wayne, aspiring high school graduate. As a matter of fact, he should have been studying. Alfred was pushing him to finish with the same good grades he had always gotten so that he could apply to the prestigious Metropolis University, not that a Wayne would be denied entrance to any university in the country. Bruce’s family fortune guaranteed admittance.

Descending into the Gotham Metro, Bruce contemplated his chosen life, and not the public one that everyone knew. Even Alfred was unaware of the Phantom Stranger and Bruce’s penchant for late night pummeling. Ever since he was a kid, Bruce had felt a churning rage and frustration. He hated injustice and couldn’t stand criminal violence. He often wondered why it seemed more people didn’t stand up for themselves and fight. Without being fully aware, Bruce always felt like his parents’s death was preventable, and hated his younger self for remaining frozen while they were gunned down. He had promised himself he would never be that scared kid again.

He still remembered the first time he actually intervened against a bully, at school one winter a few years ago. The power and the sense of justice he felt was potent. Soon after, Bruce started looking for fights, and not just with school bullies. Leaving a Gotham Raiders baseball game one summer evening, Bruce noticed two guys grab a backpack from a older man after savagely pushing him down. They ran off with their prize, and without thinking Bruce was after them. Three blocks from the stadium he caught up to them. Up close, they were bigger than he was, and not at all intimidated by a kid, but Bruce didn’t even think. He demanded the bag back, and when they refused, grabbed for it. He acquitted himself well, but failed, and had to explain the blood and bruises to a curious butler later. After that night, he trained harder and decided to give himself a bit of an edge. Also he realized it wouldn’t do to be beat up as Bruce Wayne. He was, after all, fairly famous. And thus, the Phantom Stranger was born.

Arriving at the library stop, Bruce, exited the metro car and climbed the stairs to the outdoors. Summer was nearly here and he would soon graduate. Alfred would insist on another summer long journey to some far off country for a three month vacation or “cultural learning experience” as he called them, and then it would be off to Metropolis and college. Soon the Phantom Stranger would disappear from Gotham’s streets.

For some reason Bruce couldn’t quite pinpoint, that burned somewhere deep inside.

He swung his leg over his motorcycle, left in the library parking lot, and revved the engine. Pulling his helmet on, he glared into the darkness. With a spin of the tires, he gunned off for Wayne Manor. For tonight, the Phantom Stranger was off the clock. Bruce Wayne had finals to study for, and this time, for real.

The constant beeping of the medical monitors intruded into what was an otherwise serene hospital room. A young man around 15 years old stood at the foot of a patient bed, watching. The patient was an older gentleman. His features were strong, noble. His dark hair was flecked with grey at the temples, and streaks of grey mottled otherwise uniformly black locks. His eyes were closed. His breathing was regular and strong, which wasn’t surprising as it was machine regulated. The youth was very much a younger version of the man in the bed. His hair hung long around his shoulders, but otherwise their faces could have been mirror images.

The Martha Wayne Long Term Care wing of Gotham General Hospital was named in honor of Gotham’s beloved first lady. Martha Wayne hadn’t been a politician’s wife, or anyone of any royal bloodline. What she had been was nurturing, caring, and completely selfless. While her husband, Thomas Wayne, ran his multi-billion dollar corporation and worked at Gotham General as a surgeon, Martha cared for the gutter dwellers of Gotham. The nation’s most populous city, Gotham was also knee deep in poverty, crime, and suffering. Martha had devoted every second of her time to bringing hope to a destitute population. Her bright light was snapped off in an instant. Everyone in Gotham knew the tragic story: a family caught in a mugging, a nervous and desperate gunman, and Martha was slain. One of the very souls she tried daily to save snatched her away.

Her husband was also cut down that day. But Thomas Wayne hadn’t died. The gunman’s bullet bored a hole straight through his brain, leaving him alive, but in a coma. Thomas rested in his wife’s loving arms as a long term patient in her wing. Bruce, now a teenager, was orphaned that night in the alley. He buried his mother in the ground and his father in the hospital. Neither would see him grow into a man.

Bruce watched his father breathe and thought dark thoughts. As it did every week when he visited, the sight of his father fueled a growing rage in the young man’s heart. In his head, his parents’ murders played on an endless loop. A scraggly beard. A ragged man. Booming gunshots. Blood. The senseless nature of the act stabbed in Bruce’s brain like an ice pick. The violence of the act burned in his soul like a churning volcano. The gunman had never been caught. Alfred told him later that his parents’s murderer ran past him as Alfred sprinted into the alley. Waiting in the car, he had heard the gunshots. But Alfred was more concerned with his charges than running down a fugitive that night. The police response, though rapid, was poorly coordinated. The panic over Gotham’s most prominent family being murdered overshadowed police procedure. The gunman simply disappeared into the overgrown fraternity of crime. Bruce seethed at the law enforcement ineptitude that allowed a killer to escape justice. He cursed them for their failure, their inability to provide safety at the Opera House and their inability to provide legal closure.

It became too much. Bruce turned abruptly and nearly ran out of his father’s hospital room. He ignored nurses and doctors who nodded or offered greetings on his way out. Though the Gotham day was bright and crisp, all Bruce saw was darkness. All he felt was the gnawing bite of injustice.

In his room, at midnight, on the night of his parents’ death, Bruce vowed vengeance. He was only a boy when he left for the Opera, but he returned a man. He promised the world that he would avenge his parents and that he would never let anyone suffer that pain again. But it galled Bruce to wait. He was only a boy, then. He could do nothing. He was powerless, weak, and small. And so he waited. He grew, he aged, and he matured. As a teenager his childish impatience hardened into careful preparation. He studied everything he could. He buried himself in school, in athletics, in the Gotham Central Library stacks.

Bruce knew that the secret to fighting evil lay in forging the perfect weapon. Having nothing but himself, Bruce dedicated every minute to forging himself into the perfect weapon. Outwardly, everyone saw a young man living life for the parents that he lost. They saw a star football player, a gifted baseball player, a devastating wrestler. They watched a master debater, a chess champion, an artistic prodigy. They saw a young Wayne emerging from tragedy to be every inch his father with all the heart of his mother. That Wayne was a lie, a disguise, an alter ego for the monster of anger, rage, and vengeance that was his true self.

Only Alfred saw both sides of Bruce. The loyal butler cared for his charge as best he could as surrogate parent, guardian, and caregiver. He heard Bruce’s nightmares. He heard Bruce’s fits of rage. He heard Bruce’s sobs of sorrow. Bruce would never openly betray the depth of his feelings to Alfred, but he did relax a bit of his facade at home. More than anyone, Alfred saw the real Bruce Wayne. As much as Bruce loved the family valet, he kept him and everyone else at a distance. Alfred also understood, to an extent, the depth of Bruce’s feelings. He gave the boy space to find himself again, to remake his life. Alfred saw the opportunity to mold a man out of the boy who suffered, and ever so gently and patiently, Alfred guided Bruce’s evolution. As crudely as Bruce built himself into a weapon, it was Alfred who tempered the process, refined the build, and sharpened the edges.

Bruce exited the hospital through whooshing automatic doors. Across the drop-off circle, Alfred was standing patiently next to the family Bentley.

“How is your father today, Master Bruce?”
“He’s still dead, Alfred.”
“The dead only sleep, Master Bruce.”
“Whatever you say.”

Alfred opened the door for Bruce, and the young man slid into the backseat. Entering the driver’s seat, Alfred regarded his ward in the rearview mirror. Bruce’s eyes flashed behind his hair. His face was grim.

“Where to, Master Bruce?”
“Home. I have work to do.”
“Very well.”

Alfred engaged his turn signal and gently pressed the accelerator. The large luxury car purred and pulled forward into the road.