Batman: the Long Road
Prologue: What Lies Beneath
Gotham City, NJ, October 10th, 2000,
A crisp autumn day hung over the bustling city of Gotham and its hilly outskirts. Up in the hills, away from the hustle and bustle of the urban center, trees continued to grow, their orange and red leaves starting to fall, leaving skeletal branches clawing at the grey, overcast sky.
Sitting among the hills outside Gotham was an old, stately manor that sat upon acres of privately owned land. The manor stood four stories tall, made of stone and mortar, designed in a gothic architectural style. Large bay windows looked out onto different parts of the grounds and a gravel road led to the manor from the road at the edge of the property.
In one part of this expansive property, just within sight of the manor, five children ran through the freshly clipped grass, the sound of their laughter filling the air.
"Come on, Tony!" a boy with black hair and blue eyes called, "I just want to see it!"
"No chance, Bruce!" another boy with brown hair and light brown eyes replied with a laugh as he jogged to a stop and turned to face the other children, "Finders-keepers!"
"Yeah, but you found it on my property!" the first boy, Bruce, argued haughtily.
"Wow, I'm not sure you could sound more stuck up if you tried, Bruce," a third boy, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes, said with a snicker.
"Shut up, Tommy," Bruce replied as he turned to glare at the other boy.
"Can we see it, Tony?" the fourth child, a girl with short, red hair, pleaded as she batted her green eyes at him.
"Please?" the fifth child added with an identical expression, another girl who looked identical to the first except she wore her red hair longer.
"Okay," Tony relented with a sigh as he grinned at the girls, "But only because Kate and Beth asked so nicely."
"I wish you wouldn't make goo-goo eyes at my cousins, Tony," Bruce groaned, crossing his arms and looking away from Tony, "It's gross."
"Whatever, Bruce," Tony said as he held a clenched hand out towards Bruce while Kate and Beth stuck their tongues out at the boy, "Do you want to see it or not?"
Bruce turned back towards Tony and gathered around the boy's extended fist with the others. Slowly, Tony opened his hand with his palm facing upwards, revealing a black, stone arrowhead.
"Whoa," Tommy said in amazement, "An arrowhead!"
"Alfred said there used to be a tribe of Native Americans living around here," Kate, the one with short hair, said as she looked at the arrowhead in fascination.
"The Miagani, I think," Beth added.
"What do you think, Bruce?" Tony questioned.
"I think," Bruce said as a mischievous grin crossed his face, "Finders-keepers!"
Before Tony could react, Bruce reached out and grabbed the arrowhead then turned and took off running, laughing as he went. The other watched Bruce run for a second, too stunned to think.
"Hey!" Tony suddenly shouted angrily as he began running after Bruce, shaking his fist in the air, "Get back here!"
Bruce laughed louder as he ran, looking back at Tony, seeing Tommy and the twins trailing behind the other boy with smiles on their faces.
As Bruce continued to look backwards, he didn't notice where he was running until the sound of his feet pounding against dirt and grass turned into the sound of him moving across loose wood. Looking down in confusion, Bruce found that he was running over a sinkhole that had been covered with old, wooden boards. As Bruce looked down at the boards, there came a loud crack and he only had time for his eyes to widen in panic before the boards snapped under his weight in a shower of splinters, sending the boy hurtling into the darkness below as he screamed at the top of his lungs.
The darkness rushed past Bruce with a woosh of air, his screams of fear echoing off the rock walls that surrounded him. Then, just as suddenly as it had started, Bruce's fall ended as he landed on the hard-packed earth with a thud.
Bruce let out a cry as a spasm of pain shot up his arm. Rolling onto his back, Bruce gripped his arm with his other hand, shutting his eyes and gritting his teeth as he hissed in pain.
"Bruce!" he heard Tony's worried voice echo down to him, "Bruce, are you okay!"
Opening his eyes, Bruce could see the hole he had fallen through some twenty feet up, the forms of his four friends crowded around it backlit by the bright, grey sky.
"My arm's hurt!" Bruce called back, "I think I fell on it wrong."
"We should get Dad and Uncle Thomas!" Kate exclaimed, a panicked note in her voice, "They'll know what to do!"
"You guys go and get them," Tommy said, his voice calm compared to the others, "I'll stay here with Bruce."
There was a pause as three of the shadowed figures above Bruce left, the sound of their pounding feet quickly faded away.
"Bruce?" Tommy's voice echoed down to him, "Are you still there?"
"Y-Yeah," Bruce replied, a frightened tone to his voice, "Yeah, I'm here."
"What's it like down there?" Tommy questioned, calmly.
The question struck Bruce as peculiar, but with his curiosity peaked, he started to look around. In the dim light, Bruce could see that he was in a small cave. Glancing around, Bruce could make out a few tunnels, smaller than he could fit through, leading deeper into the darkness.
"I'm in a cave," Bruce said, looking down at one of the dark tunnels, "There are some small tunnels leading further down."
"Your dad said that there were a bunch of caves beneath your house," Tommy replied conversationally, "Hey, want to hear a story I once heard about these caves?"
"S-Sure," Bruce replied, happy to have something to take his mind off of what was happening.
"You remember those natives that Kate mentioned?" Tommy questioned, "The Miagani?"
"Yeah," Bruce answered, "W-What about them?"
"Well, when people first settled here, you know, from England and stuff, they didn't get along with the natives, like a lot of settlers back then," Tommy explained, "So, it wasn't long before the settlers went to war with the Maigani. Like a lot of those wars, the fight went south for the Maigani and eventually the settlers forced them into a cave. It seemed like the settlers had the Maigani beat, but when they followed them underground, they discovered that beneath Gotham was an entire system of caves. It was there they found the Maigani in the dark. With their god."
"Their god?" Bruce questioned, his heart jumping in his chest as he heard sounds from down one of the tunnels.
"You see, Maigani means Bat people in their language," Tommy explained, "They lived in caves and hunted in the dark and had a god to match. I guess the settlers would have called it a demon. The story said he was huge with a bat's head and bat-like wings for arms. The settlers called him Barbatos."
"He was real?" Bruce questioned as he looked up at the entrance to the hole, watching as Tommy's silhouette shrugged.
"Maybe," Tommy replied, "Or maybe he was just a big guy in a bat costume. There's really no way of knowing at this point."
"What happened next?" Bruce asked.
"There was a battle," Tommy said, "A lot of people died, apparently including Barbatos."
"Who killed him?" Bruce questioned.
"No one knows for sure," Tommy replied, "Some say it was this "Knight of the Owl" or something. The Cobblepots really like that version, since their family crest is an owl. Other people say it was Laughing Jack."
"Who's Laughing Jack?" Bruce asked in confusion.
"You've never heard of Laughing Jack?" Tommy questioned dubiously, "He's a folk hero around Gotham. He's one of those trickster heroes. They called him Laughing Jack because he was always telling jokes."
"What happened to the rest of them?" Bruce asked, "The Maigani, I mean."
"After Barbatos was killed, it was all over for them," Tommy explained, "The settlers killed a bunch of them while the rest fled deeper into the caves, deeper than any of the settlers were willing to go. So, they left and sealed the cave behind them."
"So, all the Maigani died?" Bruce questioned.
"Probably not," Tommy admitted, "People are still finding ways down there. The Gotham Underground, they call it. So, it's likely that the remaining Maigani got out. Still, no one ever saw them again."
"I wonder what happened to them," Bruce pondered aloud.
"Maybe they left," Tommy hypothesized, "Maybe they went and made a new tribe and named it something different. Maybe they joined another tribe. It's not like the settlers back then would have known the difference. Maybe the story exaggerates what happened and the settlers let the surviving Maigani stay and they just became part of the colony. Or maybe…."
"Maybe….?" Bruce repeated as Tommy trailed off.
"Maybe they're still down there," Tommy said thoughtfully, "Watching and waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Bruce questioned as his heart began beating harder in his chest.
"I don't know," Tommy calmly replied, "Waiting for someone to fall down the right hole, I guess."
Suddenly, the sound of movement came from one of the tunnels, causing Bruce to jump in surprise as he whipped his head around to look down the dark passageway.
"H-Hello?" Bruce called hesitantly as the movements stopped.
"Hello?" Tommy said from above, "Bruce, are you okay?"
"I think there's something down here with me!" Bruce shouted back with a frightened voice.
"Are you scared, Bruce?" Tommy questioned, his voice so low that Bruce could just barely hear him.
"...Yes," Bruce whispered into the darkness.
With a thousand shrieks from a thousand mouths, a swarm of bats came pouring out of the tunnel. Bruce held his arms up to protect his face, his screams of terror intermingling with the bats' high-pitched shrieks. Pain ran along Bruce's arms as he felt the bats buffet and scratch his arms as they flew around him in a disorienting cloud. Eventually, the bats found their way up, funneling out of the cave and into the open air, leaving Bruce alone once more, screaming despite the bats' departure.
Slowly, Bruce regained his wits as he stopped screaming and fought to catch his breath.
"Whoa, Bruce, are you still down there!?" Tommy called down the hole.
Bruce started to reply when a new noise caught his attention and the answer retreated back down his throat. It took Bruce a moment to recognize the sound. Something was beating against the air. Something leathery and large.
"Bruce!" Tommy continued calling from above the boy, "Did they eat you or something!? Bruce!"
Bruce ignored him, the color draining from his face as he saw something moving through the darkness towards him.
"Bruce, I can see your dad coming!" Tommy shouted, "Bruce, can you hear me!?"
Bruce couldn't hear Tommy though. His attention was focused entirely on the thing emerging from the tunnel. Bruce realized it was a giant bat, easily five times the size of the other bats, its wingspan barely allowing it to fly through the tunnel. The bat shrieked as it saw Bruce, looking at him with pure white eyes, bits of saliva flicking off its fangs and out of its open mouth. Bruce screamed as the bat descended on him, everything going black as the creature's wings blocked out the light and for one horrible moment, he could have sworn the bat shouted his name with his father's voice.
"Bruce!" his father called from far away, his voice sounding murky as if he was talking underwater, "Bruce!"
Suddenly, Bruce was awake, even though he couldn't remember being asleep. He was alone in the cave, the giant bat nowhere to be seen. Looking upwards, he saw his father, a man in his thirties with the same black hair and blue eyes as Bruce, being lowered down into the cave by a climbing rope attached to a harness he wore around his chest.
"Bruce, can you hear me!?" his father questioned, shining the flashlight he held down at Bruce.
"I can hear you, Dad," Bruce replied, holding his hand up to block out the bright light of the flashlight.
"Are you hurt?" his father questioned as he reached the ground.
"My arm hurts a little from the fall," Bruce explained, holding his arms up to his father, "And there were bats."
Shining his flashlight on Bruce's arms, the boy's father could see dozens of tiny, red scratches up and down his son's forearms.
"Come here, Bruce," his father said, ushering him over, "Let's get you out of here. We'll have to get you cleaned up so those cuts don't get infected."
Nodding his head, Bruce stood up and made his way over to his father on stiff legs. Bruce's father quickly put his flashlight in his belt and wrapped his arms around his son before shouting up towards the surface. A few moments later, the rope began to pull the two of them upwards.
"Are you okay, Bruce?" his father asked him as they rose up towards the surface.
"I was so scared," Bruce admitted as he gripped his father tightly, "The bats-"
"I think those bats were more afraid of you then you are of them," his father said with a small smile.
"You don't understand, Dad," Bruce aruged, "It wasn't just the little bats. There was one big bat too. Bigger than I've ever seen and I think….Dad. I think it knew me."
Bruce's father said nothing in reply though he did look at his son with concern.
By that time, they had reached the tip of the hole, allowing Bruce to look out of it. Standing to the side of the hole were three men who were hauling the rope up together.
One man seemed to be in the military, with short-cropped red hair and a muscular physique. The second man resembled Tony with dark brown hair, light brown eyes and a bushy mustache covering his upper lip. The third man was the oldest of the three, his black hair greying in places and possessing a pencil-thin mustache below his nose. A three men had their sleeves rolled up as they pulled Bruce and his father up to the surface.
As soon as he could, Bruce's father put his feet underneath him and stood up, his son still clenched in his arms.
"I saw it, Dad!" Bruce continued to plead, "It was there!"
Looking around, Bruce found his friends standing a short distance away with three women. A woman with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair stood with Tony whole the twins stood next to an athletic looking woman with her blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun. Tommy stood next to an auburn haired, sickly looking woman who sat in a wheelchair.
"Tommy!" Bruce exclaimed, pointing at his friend, "You were there! You saw the giant bat, didn't you!?"
"I…." Tommy began to say, glancing at Bruce's father then back to the son in his arms, "I didn't see or hear anything. Just you screaming after the bats left. I think you may have passed out."
"I….I…." Bruce muttered in stunned confusion, trying to make sense of his muddled thoughts and memories.
Bruce's introspection was interrupted though as another person. a woman with auburn hair and green eyes ran up and embraced him, holding the boy's head against her breast, near where she wore a clay pin in the shape of a lopsided heart, attached to her shirt.
"Oh god Bruce, I was so worried," she said as she looked up at the boy's father, "Is he okay, Thomas?"
"He's a little shaken up, Martha," Thomas answered, "And he has some cuts I want to get bandaged up. Other then that, our son is fine."
"Thank god," Martha whispered as she kissed Bruce on the top of his head.
"Shall I prepare the car for the hospital, Master Thomas?" the older man questioned as he walked up next to Bruce's parents.
"That won't be necessary, Alfred," Thomas replied, shaking his head as he began walking towards the manor, Martha following and the other adults following behind with Bruce's friends, "Help Tommy push his mother back to the manor though."
"Of course, sir," Alfred replied with a stiff nod before walking over to Tommy's mother and pushing her wheelchair across the grass, tailing behind the others as they went.
"Is Bruce going to be okay, Uncle Thomas?" Kate asked with a worried tone.
"He's going to be just fine, sweetie," Thomas reassured her as they reached the manor, Martha opening the door to let him carry Bruce into the house.
Thomas carried Bruce through the house before he walked into a library, tall bookshelves stuffed with books lining most of the walls. Thomas lay Bruce on a lush, red couch, illuminated by the light from the setting sun streaming in through the bay window behind it.
"Anything we can do to help?" the military man questioned as the group followed Thomas into the library.
"Jake, can you get me my medical kit?" Thomas asked before turning to the man with the mustache, "Howard, can you get Bruce some water? I think he might be a little dehydrated."
"Sure thing," Howard replied as Jake nodded stiffly before they both left the room.
"Man, that was a heck of a fall, Bruce," Tony said with a smirk as he walked over to Bruce's side.
"And why do we fall, Bruce?" Thomas questioned rhetorically as he took his son's hands so he could look at his arms, "So we can pick ourselves up again."
Bruce smiled at his father's comment.
"How does he look?" Martha questioned as she nervously played with her finger.
"He should be fine," Thomas replied, "We just have to make sure these cuts don't get infected.
As Martha nodded in understanding, Jake returned with a medical kit and handed it to Thomas. Rummaging through the bag, Thomas pulled out some gauze bandages and a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide along with some cotton balls. Taking one of the cotton balls, Thomas soaked it in peroxide before taking Bruce's hand again.
"This is going to sting a little," Thomas warned before he started to dab the cotton ball on Bruce's cuts, causing the boy to hiss in pain as he felt a burning sensation from the cuts. After a few moments, Thomas was done and he began wrapping Bruce's cuts with the bandages.
"There," Thomas declared as Howard reentered the room with a glass of water, "All done."
"Here you go, Bruce," Howards said as he handed the boy the glass, "First round's on me."
"Thanks," Bruce replied with a chuckle as he took a sip of the water, quenching his parched throat.
"Perhaps we should call the evening off," Tommy's mother spoke up, a concerned look on her face, "I'm not sure Bruce is up for it now."
"I think you might be right, Elaine," Martha agreed, a look of worry on her face as well.
"N-No," Bruce argued as a pang of guilt went through his heart, "I'm alright."
"Are you sure, Bruce?" Thomas questioned, giving Bruce the same look as he had went his son had told him about the giant bat.
"I'm sure," Bruce insisted, "They're just a few scratches, like you said. I don't want to ruin everyone's night because I fell down a hole."
"Alright then," Thomas replied, a smile on his face, "I guess we should all get ready then, because it looks like we're going to the theater tonight."
A/N: Thanks to all those who voted in the poll, half of whom voted for having this fic be the first of what I'm calling my Earth-668 series. I, like many other people, love Batman and I'm looking forward to writing this story. I should note that this is what I'm calling a Year Zero story, which will be more about the character becoming the hero we know and less of them actually being that hero. Still I think you'll really like where I take this and I'm very excited to show it to you. I know a number of people were disappointed to start a new comic crossover series, but I feel this first chapter is already much better than my previous work and I hope you all agree. As always, feedback and critiques are always welcome, so please review! Later, True Believers!