Chapter 1: My Life Shattered
I don't own any part of BATMAN. There's a chance this may be my best work so far. It received a good review from my mom. I wasn't sure if I should choose The Flying Fox Begins or A Perfect Union as the title. The reason for either one would become clear eventually. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Have you ever felt like you weren't living the life that you were meant to? That you didn't know who you really were? I used to ask the same questions. But a week before my 15th birthday, a series of events began that answered all of them and helped me find my real place in life.
My name is Alexandria Rolfe. I was on a field trip to some museums in Gotham City. We were hoping it wouldn't be long, as Gotham was known for having several strange criminals. This made my parents rather uneasy, Batman or no Batman.
Both of my parents worked at my school – Hamilton Fish High School, in a small town in New York that no one has ever heard of. (If you don't know who Hamilton Fish is, he was the governor of New York and a U.S. Secretary of State.) My mother was a teacher and my father was a bus driver. Neither of them looked like me. My father was tall and stocky with short blond hair and dark brown eyes. My mother was short and stocky with short red hair and pale blue eyes. I was tall and slim with long black hair and emerald green eyes, like a cat's. I loved my parents very much, but they didn't always understand me. We lived pretty average, middle-class lives. Until this black day.
Dad honked the horn. "Lousy Gotham traffic," he growled as he drove over a bridge. That's when I heard the alluring, cheerful music. It would make kids rush to the source like rats following the Pied Piper. Either there was an ice cream truck or a circus nearby. I looked out the window. Yep, it was an ice cream truck. But something was wrong with it. There was a spinning object on top of it with a green and purple spiral.
I heard a man laugh dementedly. That bloodcurdling cackle gave me a pretty good idea of the driver's identity. But I didn't have much time to think. For the Joker – if that was the driver – appeared to press a button. The spiral thing flew off the truck and shattered the bus's windshield.
BOOM! The thing exploded and so did the bus. There was some odd green gas in the air. Parts of the bus and the remains of the passengers' bodies flew everywhere. I heard two sounds at that moment that still haunt me and I'm not sure which is more disturbing: the explosion or the insane chuckling.
I'm not sure why I was the sole survivor, and it's not likely I ever will be. Could I have a guardian angel? Or was it simply not my time to die? But I had bigger problems than the mystery of my salvation.
I was an orphan lost in Gotham City armed with only the contents of my backpack and purse and my skills in judo and gymnastics. Before I could get very far, a white hand grabbed my neck, I heard the laughter again, and the whole world went black. (Or, more accurately, purple and green.)
OK, a few things may be a little obvious. But I still think this is one of my best stories. I'll try to finish Chapter 7 soon. Please review!