Before the Mask

by Jones6192

Before the mask, there was a man. A young man, alone and afraid, living in the slums of Gotham City. But by chance, he meets a poor man who has plans to exact revenge on his upper-class family, and as the two develop a partnership, this young man will undergo a change that will start him down the path toward eventually becoming the bane of Gotham...

PROLOGUE:

BROKEN

Five high schoolers in the largest room of an abandoned building. All big, all strong, all eager. They stood in a circle around the figure, who was on his knees in the center of the room, with a large bag covering his entire head. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling. Outside, rain could be heard falling upon the roof, with occasional bursts of thunder. The five listened to the gasping breaths of their victim, with the occasional sob.

Then one of them stepped forward. He was the tallest of the five, as well as their leader. He walked up to the bent-over victim, and knelt down in front of him, smirking. He said, "You have my permission to talk."

Instantly the victim spoke, in a voice that betrayed his foreign origins, though the exact nationality was unclear, "Please! Guys, just…just…let me go! I swear to Christ, I'll never tell! I swear!"

The leader chuckled, "Sorry, Tom, but this is how it has to be. Freaks like you don't deserve to live."

Then the leader raised a hand, grabbing the bag, and ripped it off, to reveal a young man's face, about the leader's age, about seventeen years old. There was blood trickling from his nose, with gashes across his perfectly bald head. Tom's eyes were locked onto the leader, filled with fear.

The leader continued, "Y'see, Tom, we have a reputation to uphold. My gang can't be seen as just standing by while some freak gets to attend school and make things miserable for all there."

Tom's eyes suddenly turned from pleading, to being filled with indignant anger, as he blurted, "How the hell am I—?"

"Think about it, Tommy boy. Everyone there thinks you're a weirdo, even the teachers. Girls laugh at you, guys wanna puke when you come near…face it, you don't belong with normal people. There's no room for foreign nerds with goofy pseudo-European accents in our school. You should be either one of two things: dead, or in a circus freak show."

The leader then stood up, and motioned for his friends to come forward. As they moved in on Tom, he said, "But I prefer the former…"

One of the other four then swung a fist, and smashed it into Tom's face, sending him tumbling onto his side. Another kicked him in the gut, while another stomped on his arm. Tom's screams of agony echoed in the room, even raising above the thunder outside, and the leader then barked, "That's enough. I don't want him crippled."

As his friends backed off reluctantly, the leader knelt down to the moaning Tom, who shivered from fright as the bully lowered his face to meet his.

"But…I-I thought…you wanted to…kill me?"

The leader patted Tom on his bloody head, as he cheerfully said, "I said I'd prefer it. But no, we're not going to beat you to death. We just wanted to make sure you knew we mean business when we say, never show your face in the Narrows ever again."

Tom, with his eyes barely open, whimpered, "I-I promise. I won't come back…"

The leader nodded, satisfied. "Good."

And then he threw his own fist into Tom's face, being the last thing Tom saw before completely losing consciousness…

COMING SOON: CHAPTER 1