"Finally," Bruce Wayne said as he stood on the rooftop and surveyed the scene unfolding below him,"this is it." Bruce had on a pair of tights which his butler had sewn together for him that Bruce referred to as his 'Batman' disguise. It was Bruce's intention to use this outfit to scare all the criminals that he planned on stopping. He had been planning this since the night his parents were shot right in front of him by a mugger who had been standing there waiting for them as they left the theater where the Wayne family had been seeing the latest Zorro picture. Bruce had studied until he was an expert in karate and he had also designed various gadgets to go in several pockets in the belt of the suit that his butler had made for him. Recently, Bruce had decided that he was finally ready and that 'Batman' would make his debut on the streets of Gotham City tonight.
Down below in the alley, a well-dressed man and a woman with a small boy huddled together in fear. Two men with deranged gleams in their eyes kept the three of them cornered in the alleyway at gunpoint. The larger of the two gunmen wore a grey sweat suit and athletic sneakers that looked old and battered. The smaller gunman wore a t-shirt with what looked like the log of a rock band on it, ripped jeans, combat boots, and a leather jacket with a large skull on the back. Both of the gunmen had shaved heads.
"Okay," the smaller gunman, who seemed to be the leader, was saying,"just hand over your money and none of you have to get hurt."
"C-C-Certainly," the man in the tuxedo stammered as he reached for his wallet,"my family and I don't want any trouble." His wife held out her purse to the two criminals.
Just then, Batman unhooked a small device from his belt and shot a grappling hook which attached itself to the fire escape of the adjacent building. He swung from the rooftop down to the alley below. Pain shot through his leg as he landed and pushed the button that retracted the grappling hook. It seemed as though he accidentally landed on his ankle wrong. Batman tried his best not to show how much that had hurt him and thrown him off.
"Alright, scum," Batman shouted as he rapidly began advancing towards the gunmen,"stop this at once!! Leave these good citizens alone! Yes, or you will have to...both of you...you will both have to answer to THE BATMAN!!! Umm, that is me, by the way. I'm the Batman. And I'm here to stop you. Yeah, from harming these, umm, good citizens over here...Wow, this sounded better when I was envisioning this moment in my mind."
"Hey," the larger of the two gunmen yelled,"what do you...? What the...? Who...?" His eyes already appeared glazed as though from excessive drug use and he had for a long time been glancing around furtively as though some unseen enemy was about to attack. When Batman made his grand entrance, however, the larger gunman's agitation increased exponentially. He shot multiple bullets into the man and the woman. The two of them were dead before they fell to the ground. The larger gunman then shot at Batman several times and managed to hit him twice in the chest. Batman collapsed to the ground not far from the two unfortunate people who had just been killed by the mugger.
"What were you thinking?? That was stupid," the mugger in the leather jacket said to his partner as he reached up and slapped the larger man on the back of the head,"Come on, let's get out of here." The smaller mugger began tugging on the larger mugger's sleeve to bring him out of his daze and to indicate that they needed to leave. A few seconds later, the smaller mugger grabbed the woman's purse as his associate grabbed the husband's wallet and then the two men ran off into the night.
Batman helplessly watched as the two criminals escaped. He wondered what he had been thinking. The worst part wasn't that he was dying but rather that his death was resolving nothing and all his hard work had not helped anyone. Clearly, emulating the swashbuckling antics of those Zorro movies which he had enjoyed as a child had failed miserably and he was now about to die without finding whatever it was he had sought to obtain when he had created this other identity for himself. The real world, perhaps, had no place in it for grand schemes such as this one. Yes, perhaps there is no place in this world for heroes engaged in epic struggles or for the lofty ideals of a protagonist from some simplistic children's story. None of the actors in the Zorro movies ever died from the sword wounds they were pretending to suffer up on the screen but the bullets in Batman's chest were undoubtedly going to bring about his death extremely soon. Even though he had good intentions, he hadn't saved the day and no cheering crowd was coming to carry him off. The last thing Batman saw before he died was the child whose parents' death was largely his fault staring down angrily at him and the last thought to run through his mind was that the tabloids would certainly have a field day with the rich kid who went crazy and put on a wild costume because he thought he could save the world.