GOTHAM CITY, 15 Years Ago…
"No...no no…" Raphael repeated, hearing each footstep splash in the puddles of Gotham's backstreets. Each footstep, and the echoes of gunshots, and sirens.
This wasn't the life an 11 year old should've had, but it was the kind of thing he'd read about. Parents in a shoot-out with the GCPD, and what felt like the entire city crumbling down around him.
The backpack he'd kept was getting heavier and heavier with every burning step.
Raphael stopped at the scream.
Mom, He thought.
A scream from a man, and the gunfire stopped.
Dad!
And that was that. Parents are dead, with drugs of every sort in their veins, and now here was young Raph Keaton, on the run from the GCPD, as if he too had been a criminal, just by being the son of two.
He'd heard stories about the cops of Gotham from his parents, and when they weren't telling him stories about cops, they were telling him not to ever trust them, no matter what.
Surely, they had to have been lying. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Raph knew what cops were supposed to do. They were supposed to protect people.
But the gunshots and screams he'd heard moments ago told an incredibly different story.
Nevermind that. Just gotta keep running.
"Freeze! GCPD!", roared a voice behind him.
But Raphael did no such thing, not after what the GCPD had just done to his parents…
But never did he think they would do the very same to an 11 year old boy.
Never had he been quite so wrong.
BANG!
After the piercing pain in his shoulder, everything started to fade out. But he could hear a faint bit of, what sounded like arguing as he hit the filthy asphalt of this alleyway in a city that had never seemed so much like an entire world.
What the hell did you do….?
...Just a kid…!
...Didn't know…
...ulance here, now…!
And then came the blackness he knew so well, growing up a poor boy in Gotham.
When Raph woke up, there stood a man, unfamiliar, but friendly looking...a moustache on his face, glasses, and brown hair. Next to the man, reading from a storybook, though Raph couldn't make out the story, sat a little girl with red hair, and a pure smile when she'd realized Raph was awake now.
"Daddy, look!" She squealed with delight.
"I see it, Barbara...You've been an amazing little caretaker. The best 7 year old ever!" The man smiled down at her. Barbara, was it?
Barbara beamed with joy, but the smile was replaced with concern. "Are you okay?"
The man's smile lasted just long enough to tell Barbara she was just like her mother.
"I...Who are you?" Raph asked, looking all about to see the flashing monitors, and the tubes connected to his body.
"My name is Jim...Officer Jim Gordon of the Gotham City Police Department." He said, holding up a badge.
Officer?
The word was enough to send a jolt through his body.
"Relax, Raph, everything is okay. You don't have to be afraid...I'm one of the good guys." Jim's eyebrows rose up, as if he was about to cry.
"What's wrong, Daddy? Why is he so scared of you?" Barbara whispered.
"Some cops aren't as nice as your old man, Barb. This young man met one of those mean guys...you remember I told you about that mean Mr. Flass, Barbara?"
"Mr. Flass hurt this boy?"
Raph could tell Barbara was struggling to get the words out.
Jim nodded at her.
"What's going to happen to me now?" Raph finally said, keeping his eye on Barbara. She wasn't nearly as scary as Jim was.
"Well, the judge thinks you should be put into a new home...Don't worry son, you'll be okay...You'll stay at my house with me, and my little girl, Barbara. We're going to take care of you while some of the good guys take care of the mean cop that hurt you."
Cops were liars. That much had been ingrained in his mind by Raph's parents, but somehow, some way, this Jim Gordon person felt different…
As the weeks went by, Raph's dark memories of Gotham streets were replaced by the fresh cookies Barbara had baked, and the stories she would weave about magical beings, and warrior princesses. Barbara would swear up and down that a warrior princess existed somewhere, but Raph just wouldn't buy it.
"One day, I'll meet her, and you'll see she's real. You'll see!"
Several cookies and conspiracies later, no princess ever came...surely there was no "Wonder Woman" like Barbara's stories told of.
And there was no Wonder Woman to save him from that dark orphanage the Joker attacked when he was 16.
And then there was no bulletproof Superman to stop the bullets in the middle East from recreating the wound in his shoulder when he had left for the military.
And now there was only Genghis Khan to pay him enough to save him from falling right back to the Gotham alleyway it all began in.