The rain poured from the black night sky, heavy and loud onto the dark pavement underfoot.
"Who was that Thomas." She asked her husband. "Who did you see in the lobby?"
They had avoided the proper exit and now left the Movie Theatre from a side door. Between them their son.
His father snapped open his umbrella, immediately the rain drummed loudly on the taught canvas.
"Bruce Mathew." His mother cajoled him using both her sons forenames; she often did this to indicate her growing disapproval. "Come here!" she chided.
Bruce danced away from her, his fists raised. His lips pursed as he made the doof-doof sound to accompany his shadow boxing. Oblivious to the rain.
"Rocky?" She sniffed at his Father. "Thomas, you had to take him to see Rocky?"
"Martha mine look, our child's enthusiasm isn't it contagious." Thomas asked.
A cool stare was his answer. His Father then said in a firm voice. "Bruce, come on, your getting wet."
Bruce returned splashing through the fast forming puddles still boxing the air as he went. The boy saw his father wasn't watching him, rather Thomas was staring up the long dark alley.
Beyond were the brighter lights of the main street, where the Movie theatre's classic illuminated sign cast a red glow.
"Thomas?" Martha said, summoning her husbands attention.
"It was just someone I really didn't want to talk to." His father told her, answering her earlier question.
"Not that reporter?" His Mother asked. Her voice trembled ever so slightly.
Bruce gripped his fists all the tighter.
"No, not Jameson." His father replied.
Bruce stared into the distance. A tall broad figure walked around the corner into the mouth of the alley; a giant of man suddenly framed by a flash of lightning.
Bruce felt his father's firm hand, as Thomas dragged him to his parents side. "Bruce you must do what your mother says." His father hissed. His tone had changed. Something was wrong. Bruce was a precocious child, blessed with a peculiar intelligence.
Wide eyed Bruce looked up at them, he wondered what could be the matter and his heart beat faster.
Bruce looked back to the Main Street, but the big man had disappeared. Bruce relaxed, still a child, still supremely confident in his parents invulnerability.
"Here let's shelter in here." His father gestured to a covered space between to paired buildings. "I'll call Alfred." Thomas added, saying to Martha "No point in trying to hail a cab, since our cover is blown any way."
Bruce's mom touched her husband's rain kissed cheek. "At least we got to go to the movies like normal people." She said.
He smiled in that soppy adult way. "Like when we were kids."
"Before the Paparazzi."
"Before Jameson."
Bruce looked away, thinking there was going to be kissing. He stared into the shadows, and shivered.
Thomas led his family across the dark alley into the conjoined buildings across the street. The rain rattled on the tin roofed bay that ran between the two brick built units, exiting the other side. On either hand there were raised loading platforms allowed goods to be rolled onto the beds of visiting trucks. Lightning flashed and for a moment the dilapidation of the buildings were exposed in the brightness. Whatever place of business this had been, that work had stopped and some time ago too, given the state of disrepair. Still it was shelter from the driving rain.
Bruce resumed play, he was boxing and dancing, he was king of the ring.
Thomas grabbed the mobile phone from his coat pocket, and pulled the aerial up. Punching the green-yellow backlit keys of the blocky device, the grey LCD display registered his home number.
"Alfred..." He stopped talking, letting the phone drop away from his ear.
The voice on the other end said. "I'm en route in the car sir." But his father wasn't listening. He didn't ask why Alfred was already coming for them. His father's attention had been snatched away from his cell phone.
Bruce stopped playing. His mother gasped and grabbed for them both.
The man had been hiding, concealed by some up right 50 galleon metal oil drums stood rusting on the left hand loading platform. The flap cap wearing figure dropped onto the cracked concrete at their feet. Lightning flashed. A unshaven chin was revealed, his other features hidden by shadow cast by the brim of his hat. Wearing a long dark dirty coat, the unkempt man was everything you might expect of a hobbo, except for the gun. It was black and purposeful. The hand that held it was steady, paradoxically the gunman's other arm twitched spasmodically.
Bruce saw a man at war with himself, and he didn't understand why this was happening.
"Please – we're just sheltering from the rain." His father said.
"Money, watch, jewellery, yer fancy walkie-talkie. All of it. Now." The stranger demanded.
"Fine, take it, easy, sure..."
"Cash, now. Hurry it up."
"Fine." His father said, reaching into his pocket.
"Slowly!" The mugger barked.
Thomas acquiesced, withdrawing his wallet steady he extended it in his hand outwards. With is free hand the robber grabbed for the leather bill-fold, jerking it from his father's fingers, clumsily. The wallet fell to the ground. He ignored it stepping forward instead.
"And the Jewellery." He growled, his still grasping fingers pressed towards his mother's neck. To where her pristine white pearls glinted.
"No." His father snapped, putting himself between the mugger and his wife.
Bruce was to remember the next moment forever. The flash of the gun. The sound of thunder. In that self same moment an even brighter light burst above as the storm lit up the sky with jagged energy once more. Above them the sky light broke. Shattered shards fell as a dark figure dropped as if carried on wide dark wings, billowing outwards. At the same time Bruce saw two red eyes, burning like hot coals in the darkness, beneath a yellow cowl. There was a figure infront Bruce, his father, his mother; between them and the gun. Appearing in an instant - as if by magic.
Following the flash, the gun shot, there was more; bang, bang, bang, chaos. The yellow figure falls backwards, driven by the iron fire. His arms spread wide, revealing a bright red chest, and a familiar bird like crest. That's like mine Bruce thought. His mother called his, the Robin Red Breast sweat shirt. Bruce is bewildered, his fathers hands push him away, hard. The world turns upside down as boy tumbles away from his parents, bouncing across the cold damp concrete, coming to a stop against the wall of the loading bay.
Bruce catches his breath and looks again for the bad man with the gun.
The dark figure from above had landed on top of the robber, their would be killer is splayed out on the hard floor.
"You picked the wrong night to go robbing rich folk bub." A deep voice growled.
Bruce looked up and across the prostrate figure. The wings his saviour wore was in fact a large black hooded rain cloak, the oversized oilskin was just like the one his father's Butler Alfred sometimes wore.
Looking back he saw how smaller figure, lay atop of his parents. Again Bruce's analytical mind recognised the details. The yellow cloak was familiar to him too. So like another oilskin from Alfred's closet. Bruce remembered wearing the too big waterproof one stormy day.
Bruce then heard a voice coming from the alley backing the Movie theatre.
"There they are."
"Whose that with them?" A second stranger called out.
"Doesn't matter." A third responded. Framed in the storms flashing light was the giant man, and he was far from alone.
There was a roar of automatic gun fire, bullets whizzed through the air, the man in the black rain cloak leapt like an animal, complete with bestial roar. The boy, for Bruce decided it had to be someone only a little older than he stayed with his parents, holding them down as bullets fell around them. It was the last thing Bruce Mathew Murdoch-Wayne ever saw.
A stray bullet, and there were plenty of them struck one on the drums above him. Liquid erupted under pressure, his face turned to the noise, and his eyes were bathed in toxic goo.
Bruce cried out in agony, the last thing he remembered before the pain caused him to pass out was that he wasn't the only one screaming.