The Once and Future Bat
a Batman Beyond fanfic
by
Mike Yamiolkoski
Bruce arrived at WayneTech as the last few employees were leaving the building. He was pleased to see that Lucius Fox was personally seeing to it that everyone was accounted for.
"Mr. Wayne!" Fox called as Bruce came in, and hustled over to speak with his boss. "We've taken care of everything. The people should all be out within the next few minutes, and I've made sure that the network backup discs and the important files have been loaded into one of the company limousines."
"Good work, Lucius," Bruce said grimly. "There are some items I need to get from my office. I don't want you to wait around for me. Would you mind taking the discs and files to your home? It's as safe a place as any."
"Of course, Mr. Wayne."
Bruce nodded. Lucius lived almost thirty miles outside of Gotham; sending him home lessened the chance that he might want to return while Bruce was still there.
"Are you all right, sir?" Lucius asked. "Forgive me, but you seem preoccupied with more than just the evacuation."
"It's a personal matter, Lucius," Bruce replied. "I'll tell you another time. Right now, let's attend to the business at hand."
"Certainly." Lucius went back to the main doors to check the count of people while Bruce headed for his private elevator.
* * * * *
Bruce Wayne didn't bother changing into the Batsuit, nor did he call up the image of the satellite display on his computer. He simply sat behind his desk and waited. If this "Batman" was in any way worthy of the name, he would come in due time.
For two hours, Bruce waited.
The window behind him opened. The alarm it would have normally set off had been silenced by Bruce when he arrived. He didn't turn around - he didn't move at all. He simply said, "You're late."
"You were expecting me?" replied the voice behind him.
"I did everything but send you an invitation. You should have been here much sooner."
"I was being careful. I didn't want to be seen."
Bruce turned around at last and faced the black suited man. "The mask. Remove it."
The man hesitated a moment, then pulled the cowl from his face. Bruce was surprised enough to raise an eyebrow. The face under the mask wasn't that of a man, but a boy. He couldn't have been more than seventeen.
"What is your name?"
"McGinnis. Terry McGinnis."
"Mr. McGinnis, I have some understanding of who you are, how you know me, and why you're here. Be that as it may, I still want the entire truth from you, here and now. You have sixty minutes."
The boy sat down on the window ledge, looking as exhausted as Bruce felt. "Can I ask a question first?"
Bruce nodded.
"What happened to Nightwing?"
"He is dead," Bruce said, his voice devoid of any emotion.
McGinnis lowered his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"You have fifty-nine minutes left."
Terry stood up. "This is going to sound a little crazy... but I'm from the future."
He waited for some response, but none was forthcoming. Bruce sat as if made of wood.
"Fifty years from now, you and I will meet for the first time. I was on the run from some Jokerz -" again, Bruce raised an eyebrow "- and you helped me fight them off. I remember being pretty impressed that a ninety-year-old-man could move the way you did. But you were sick, and I helped you back to your house. I stumbled across the entrance to the Batcave, learned who you really were. But a few minutes later, you threw me out." Terry paused. "You don't believe me, do you? You think I'm some kind of nutcase."
"Please continue, Mr. McGinnis."
"Look, I can prove to you that I'm from the future! This suit, it's cutting-edge technology in my time. And the laser cannon that Kruger's been firing around the city, you must realize that it's not from the world you know! You have to believe me! Everyone's life depends on it!"
Bruce slammed his hand down on the desk, making Terry jump. "Mr. McGinnis! I don't have time for childish hysterics. As it happens, I do believe you. Either what you say is true, or someone has gone through a ludicrous amount of effort to deceive me. While I don't rule out the second possibility, investigation in that direction is futile, and for the time being you are the only source of answers I have. I had hoped we could do this in a calm and rational manner, but I no longer have the patience. I don't care how we met, or how you came to wear that suit and assume you have the right to call yourself Batman. I want to know who is trying to kill me and how to stop him before any more innocent lives are lost!"
Wide-eyed, Terry continued. "His name is Gene Kruger. He's a physicist. I don't know his whole story, but apparently he was working on some kind of matter-transference device using government grant money. When the grants weren't renewed, he turned to other sources. Somehow he managed to convince some local crime boss that his machine could work and could be used to transport valuables out of bank vaults, or files out of locked offices, or gold bullion out of Fort Knox. But before he could perfect it, you busted the gang and he was carted off to prison as an accomplice. Oh, and he was apparently blinded in the scuffle, something I guess he blamed you for."
"I don't know any Gene Kruger," Bruce said. "And I've never heard of anything like what you're talking about."
"Then it hasn't happened yet," Terry said with a shrug. "Of course, the timeline's so screwed up by now, it probably never will, which kind of begs the question of how he and I are both here. I don't have answers for that kind of stuff, I barely passed applied calculus."
"I'll remind you that my patience is very thin right now. Tell me more about Kruger."
"He stayed locked up for twenty years before he was paroled - I guess they tied him in with some pretty serious stuff. In the meantime, all his work was discredited, and of course he couldn't get a job anywhere with his record. So he apparently went back to the mob. I suppose they still had a use for an egghead, even one who couldn't see. This is where it gets a little fuzzy, because by that time you were more or less retired, and it was about when you were telling me this part that all hell broke loose. But one thing I do know is that somewhere along the lines, probably while he was still locked up, Kruger started applying his theories of matter transference to something else. Something he called 'temporal transference'."
* * * * *
- FIFTY YEARS IN THE FUTURE -
Terry tailed the large cargo craft at a discrete distance and let his tracer do the work of keeping tabs on his quarry. Mr. Wayne insisted that this particular theft was tied in to the various other high-tech hijackings that had been plaguing Gotham lately. How exactly he knew that, Terry had no idea, especially since the pattern was completely different. The other robberies had been convoluted and intricately planned almost to the point of absurdity - this one was a simple hit-and-run, with no attempt to disguise it. Terry gave it about two minutes before the police joined the chase. To be fair, the only reason he'd beaten them to the punch was that he'd been in the right place at the right time.
"Mr. Wayne, I've got a bad feeling about this."
"So you should." Wayne's gruff voice came through the suit radio.
"I keep wondering if I should be looking out for something else. This was so obvious, it might be a decoy."
"I can't fault your thinking. But a more disturbing possibility is that the perpetrators are so near the completion of their plans, they no longer feel the need for secrecy. You've dealt with Cobras before, you know they play for high stakes."
"You're the boss." Terry gained some altitude and took up a high surveillance position above his target. If need be, he could be right on top of them in less than half a minute, but the odds that they could see him were low. "Listen, have you got any idea what they're actually up to? I mean, I'd like to have some idea of what I'm about to get into here."
"I'm afraid not. The components they're taking don't seem to be parts of anything in particular. But they're not being chosen at random, either - it's all state-of-the-art materials. The only thing to worry about by itself is the laser cannon that disappeared from the Gotham Armory."
"Hang on a sec." Terry checked his readouts. "He's slowing down. He seems to be stopping in the condemned district, by the old fusion plant."
"Make your move. But be careful."
"Count on it." Terry directed the Batmobile over the older section of Gotham where his target had stopped, put the Batmobile on autopilot, and with no more than a deep breath to prepare, dropped out of the bottom hatch at an altitude of three thousand feet. He speared down out of the sky, plummeting quickly and silently towards the old, abandoned fusion power plant.
* * * * *
"Kruger!"
Gene Kruger didn't bother to turn at the sound of the voice. He continued his fine adjustments on the console, sliding two bare wires against each other, feeling for the right resistance to the circuit. He heard soft feet approaching him from behind.
"If one of you grabs me and makes me slip," he said quietly, "the resulting electric shock could well kill us both."
The footsteps stopped. Kruger found the setting he was looking for, tightened down the connection, and finally stood. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"
"Face the King Cobra when you address him!" shouted a burly Cobra bodyguard.
Kruger obliged, even though the helmet he wore obscured his eyes.
The King Cobra, a slim, young man who hardly seemed old enough for the job, stepped forward so as not to be compelled to look upwards at Kruger. "You have violated our trust," he said simply. "Please explain to me why we should not now carve you into pieces to feed the cloning vats."
Kruger faced the King Cobra with equanimity. "My machine is very nearly complete. It required but one last component. I wished to have it here as quickly as possible."
"You have betrayed us!" the King hissed, much like the snake his costume made him resemble. "We have spent years - years, mind you! working with an unprecedented level of care and precision to prevent the authorities from discovering us here. We have used every means at our disposal, sacrificed the lives of loyal Cobras, placed other vital plans on hold to accomplish what he have here. Then, because you grow impatient, you destroy our secrecy in one stroke! The police are probably on their way here already, damn you!"
Kruger shook his head. "It makes no difference," he said. "My machine is ready. Nothing else matters."
"You will learn what it means to defy and betray the King Cobra."
"Kill me now," Kruger said, "and all will truly be for nothing. Only I can activate this machine. And only in the machine is your salvation."
* * * * *
Batman slipped into the huge facility's main reactor room silently and invisibly - or almost silently. He couldn't repress a gasp at what he saw.
From the spread below him, it seemed that they had only been aware of a tenth of the Cobras' take. The scene resembled a spacecraft launching facility in size and complexity; a jumble of controls, a maze of cables, high columns of steel supporting massive structures that Terry couldn't begin to identify. At the center of it all, illuminated by blinding white lights and wired at thousand different contact points to everything else in the room, was a towering arch of mirror-polished metal. Or rather, a circle, as Terry looked closer and saw that half of it extended below the floor and met itself at its bottom. And at the center of the circle was the fusion reactor sphere itself, looking much better than it should have after twenty years of neglect.
"Someone's been busy," Bruce said in his ear.
Terry didn't respond, but concentrated on keeping quiet and moving as stealthily as he could toward the only people in the room. It looked like the King Cobra himself was in on this one, but he couldn't tell who the others were.
"Go back for a moment," Bruce said. "Get a better look at the man the King is talking to."
Terry did so. He was surprised to see a that the man was masked - or was it a helmet? Whatever it was, it completely covered the upper half of his face, including his eyes.
"Interesting," Bruce said. "Are you close enough yet to eavesdrop?"
Terry held out two fingers and activated the sonic pickups.
"...will truly be for nothing. Only I can activate this machine. And only in the machine is your salvation."
"I grow weary of your promises, Dr. Kruger. I grow angry at your incompetence. Your experiments are at an end as of this moment. Your machine will be dismantled and you shall pay for this blatant fraud with your life. And we shall take a very, very long time indeed in extracting that payment."
"The police, as you say, are probably on their way here," Kruger said. "My machine can save all of us, and with the knowledge I have gained from building it, I can easily construct another in only two months time at a tiny fraction of the cost."
"You expect us to continue financing your mad experiments when you give us nothing in return?"
"Look there," Kruger said, pointing at the center of his apparatus. There was a small metallic cube there that Terry hadn't noticed until it was specifically pointed out.
"What of it?" asked the King Cobra.
Kruger gestured to a small enclosure just to his left. A sudden flash of light erupted from within it, accompanied by a loud bang. Terry winced as his sonic pickups toned down the volume just an instant too late. When he looked back at the box, he was surprised to see a second cube sitting inside it.
"Now," Kruger said, "Observe." He moved a lever on is control panel. The large circle lit up around its circumference, and began to slowly turn end over end over the cube on the platform. As the circle brightened and the power cycled up, a field of energy formed across its center, bisecting the cube. As the field passed around the cube, it seemed to slice it right out of existence. The power cycled down, and the platform was empty.
"Conjuring tricks will not impress me," the King said sardonically.
"Do you not see what I have done?" Kruger asked, suddenly animated and even a bit frantic. "I have, for the first time in the history of the universe, sent a material object into the past! The cube here in this enclosure is the same one that was on the platform a moment ago! I sent it half a minute into the past, and there it sits before us!"
"He's crazy," Terry murmured.
"Don't be so sure," Bruce said in his ear. "I've had some experience dealing with Dr. Gene Kruger. He was involved with the Thorne syndicate years ago. If I recall correctly, he was working on practical matter transference. Looks like he's managed to do one better."
"You think that was for real? Get serious, he's just trying to put one over on the Cobras!"
"I know him. He's mad, but he isn't delusional. It's just within the realm of possibility that he's managed to do what he says. And if he has, you need to destroy it!"
"Why?"
"A machine like that in anyone's hands is dangerous. A machine like that in the hands of Dr. Kruger or the Cobras is terrifying."
"All right, I'll bust it up. Where are the police?"
"Delayed. There's a major fire a few blocks away from you. You're on your own for at least ten minutes."
"Swell." Terry moved stealthily down a support column toward the floor. "What else can you tell me that might be useful?"
"Kruger's more dangerous in a fight than he looks. His helmet gives him three-hundred-sixty degree vision, in any wavelength. The only reason he hasn't seen you already, despite the cloaking field, is that he's being a bit careless. Without the helmet, he's blind. Go for the helmet first."
"Schway."
Terry continued to creep down the wall while Kruger recomposed himself. "Your highness, forgive me. Obviously one demonstration is insufficient. Allow me to demonstrate further. This is a second experiment I had arranged, in case the police came too close." Kruger activated a second lever. The machine cycled up once again, even as a cart holding a small package rolled automatically into the center of the circle. It, too, met the field within the circle and vanished from sight.
"That package," said Kruger as the noise died, "was a powerful explosive device, loaded with highly flammable material. It has been sent five minutes into the past, and two miles away, where it exploded just a few minutes ago. As a result, the police have their hands full with other matters besides ourselves."
"Did you catch that, Bruce?" Terry whispered. "Is that for real?"
"It's hard to say," Bruce said. "Though reports say the fire started very suddenly. It could be."
"Well, I'm convinced," Terry said, flexing out an explosive batarang.
"Terry, don't!"
"Intruder!" Kruger shouted.
Terry was startled, then noticed too late that his batarang wasn't covered by the suit's cloaking field, and that Kruger, with literal eyes in the back of his head, had spotted it. "Oh, crap," Terry whispered.
The Cobra bodyguards pulled out plasma rifles and opened fire on him. Terry leapt from the column, dropping down below the floor and flaring his wings out to slow his plummet at the last moment. He landed hard on the lower level but rolled with the impact and got to his feet quickly.
"To the platform!" Kruger shouted. "I've set it to send us six months into the past, into another facility where I can build my next machine. Quickly!"
The King Cobra dashed for the platform. Terry paused under a set of enormous power transformers, and took a moment to set one of his explosives. If he could manage to disable the machine in time, he could still trap them here.
The huge circle had begun to power up again. Terry ran for it, tossing his batarang in front of him. The field appeared within the circle just as the batarang struck - and disappeared into the past.
Several plasma bolts burned through the floor just at his feet. Terry jumped to one side and rolled behind a pair of large cabinets, where he set another bomb. The King Cobra had reached the platform, and the circle began its slow swoop down on top of him. His men joined him.
"Kruger! Come quickly!" the King shouted.
Kruger ran, but stopped short at the edge of the platform. As the circle's field engulfed the King and his guards, Kruger actually waved his farewell, saying, "Enjoy the late Cretaceous period, my reptilian friends..."
Their sudden screams of terror were cut off as the field sliced them out of reality.
Terry moved again, running under the circle itself as it swung back upwards. Rather than powering down, it seemed to be speeding up and cycling more power. He couldn't attach a bomb to the circle itself, and so dropped one on the floor just below it. Then he fired his jets to take him up through a gap in the floor to the main level.
There was no sign of Kruger.
"Ah, Batman," came a voice over a speaker system. "Or some reasonable facsimile. It's ironic you should be here, actually. In a way, you're about to witness your own demise."
"Not likely," Terry growled, and touched off his bombs.
Blasts erupted from the three points where he'd set the explosives. One entire side of the catwalk dropped away, while the second one he'd dropped by the cabinets took out some major support beams and sparked a blazing inferno.
The third failed to detonate. The power from the apparatus interfered with its signal, and Terry noticed that Bruce's radio signal was also obscured by static.
"Fool!" shouted Kruger's voice. "Do you really think I needed all that? My controls are better-protected than that, and my machine is indestructible once acitvated. Feel free to toss more bombs at it if you want them going off at random times and places somewhere in the past. Perhaps you'll even kill your own grandfather and cause a pretty little paradox, hm?"
Terry waited on the platform just outside the spinning circle's reach. Kruger couldn't harm him by talking at him, and sooner or later he was bound to make a run for the platform - it was his only means of escape.
More of the catwalk crashed to the ground as the fire weakened the steel support beams. If enough of them fell, the entire apparatus would collapse, and despite Kruger's boasting, that would likely destroy it. That meant he was bound to make his move soon. Perhaps Terry could keep him talking long enough to make him miss his chance.
"So run into the past," Terry called out. "Build another machine, if you can. I can find that one too."
"You found this one because I led you to it," Kruger yelled. "I wanted you here. I wanted you to witness this moment. And, just between us, I don't particularly care about building another machine. This one will serve its purpose nicely, now that those treacherous snakes are out of the way."
"What purpose?"
"I'm glad you asked," Kruger's voice boomed. "To coin a phrase: The Untimely Death of the Batman!"
Terry tensed, prepared to dodge.
"Not you, you insufferable fraud!" Kruger shouted. "I want the one, true Batman! The one who robbed me of my sight, stole my life! I will go back to destroy him before he even knows I exist - and, as an added bonus, destroy you as well!"
A piercing whine split the air off to Terry's right. He activated his rockets and leaped into the air just as a brilliant red slash of light burned through the floor he'd occupied a moment before. He turned in mid-air and saw a small hovercraft, with a powerful laser cannon mounted at the front, burst from a darkened corner of the room and curve toward the now brilliantly lit and rapidly swooping circle. Terry fired two batarangs at the craft, but they disappeared as they passed over the platform.
He dove headlong toward the craft, knowing he couldn't possibly intercept it.
The hovercraft slipped into the center of the platform as the great circle swept downwards, then caught the leading edge of its field on the upswing. In a blinding blaze of white light, the entire craft vanished from sight - gone into the past.
Terry threw out his wings to slow his descent. The apparatus was collapsing around him. He had only seconds to decide what to do, and Bruce couldn't help him. He had to make the call on his own.
Without further hesitation, Terry turned head down and dove headfirst into the center of the spinning circle.
And the universe went mad.
* * * * *
Light without light. A blaze of pure, fierce, primeval energy that burned like a thousand suns.
A vortex, spinning into infinity, tunneling straight into his mind and out the other side, turning him inside out and upside down and through dimensions he couldn't begin to fathom, dropping him into the Void.
His mind pulled free of his body, his soul wrenched away from his mind. All that he was fell into a singular point and vanished from the universe, yet still he fell, on and on, in a direction that was neither down nor up nor any way that he could name, but he plummeted all the same, his consciousness screaming, his sanity ripped away.
And the pain, the pain, the terrible, soul-searing pain...
It ended in a flash of pure white.
* * * * *
Terry fully expected to be dead. It was with some degree of shock that he opened his eyes and learned that wasn't so.
The moon was the first thing he saw, bright and full. That seemed odd for some reason, though he couldn't quite imagine why. For the moment, he couldn't even remember who he was.
As if waking from a terrible dream, his reality came back to him in a rush. Terry lay at the bottom of a hole, a crater, like something made from a meteor. He tried to move, but the half-faded memory of intense, unimaginable pain momentarily paralyzed him. It was almost a full minute, or so it seemed, that he could force himself to lift an arm, shift a leg. His circulation rushed into his extremities with a burning of pins and needles that hurt in its intensity, but that discomfort would fade.
Terry moved his hands beneath him and pushed into an upright position. The hole wasn't deep, and he crawled out with a groan. Little flames danced around him, a bit of wood here and a stack of papers there that had caught fire. He ignored it, and turned his face back to the full moon.
Before his trip through the machine, it had been nothing more than a slim crescent.
"I'll be damned," Terry whispered. "The son-of-a-bitch really did it."
A high-pitched squeal reached his ears, like a siren. Terry realized after a moment that it was a siren, though different from the ones he was used to. He stood up, testing his legs gingerly, and looked around the sky. There was no sign of approaching craft.
Wait. The sound of the sirens was coming from the ground level.
Terry took in the alley at a glance, and saw a ladder leading up the side of a nearby building. He grabbed the lower rung and pulled himself up, unwilling to use his rockets and attract further attention. The climb was relatively easy despite the numbness in his limbs, as the suit seemed to be working properly and was giving him considerable help. He reached the roof in seconds, just as ground vehicles with flashing red and blue lights pulled into the alley. The smell of oily smoke wafted upward - internal combustion engines. He really was in the past. But how far? Thirty, fifty, a hundred years? Terry wished he'd paid more attention in history class.
He noticed a red tag on a steel box next to him, and took a closer look. "INSPECTED (date) 07-99" Well, that helped to narrow it down a bit. He looked around the sky again, but could see no sign of Kruger or his hovercraft.
Back down in the alley, police officers were getting out of their vehicles. Terry assumed that was what they were, though he wondered why they weren't dressed in helmets and body armor. Surely police work was as dangerous in this era as his own - he thought they would have had some regard for their personal safety. Fire trucks had arrived as well, but the little hot spots caused by Terry's arrival had already gone out.
His limbs felt almost normal, as the sensation of pins and needles began to fade. He mind felt like it had gone through a wringer, however - as if he hadn't slept in weeks. The adrenaline rush of the experience was wearing off, and a cold fatigue was settling on him like a blanket of snow. Terry found he was fighting to stay alert.
The police were shining lights around the alley, and some of them were beginning to look at the surrounding buildings. Quickly Terry activated the suit's cloaking shield, and was pleased to see that it still worked. He vanished from sight just as one of the police swept a light across his face.
The surface of the roof was covered with tiny stones, making quiet movement difficult. Terry crept over to a short wall of brick and jumped up to the top of it, walked along it as far as he could, then dropped back to the main surface of the roof and -
Stopped.
Someone else was on the roof.
Terry remained as still as he could, barely daring to breathe. He'd only been there for a few minutes - was he already about to meet the Batman? Bruce Wayne himself, in his prime? And if he did, how could he possible explain himself?
But it wasn't Batman that crept stealthily onto the roof. His costume was black and dark blue, his mask covered only his eyes, and his hair was long and free. Nightwing. Terry swallowed hard. Nothing had made this so real as encountering this man who he'd known only in legend. He crossed the rooftop in total silence and looked over the edge at the activity below. Terry hoped that perhaps the distraction would be enough for him to get away unnoticed, and made to creep over to the other side of the roof. He took a step -
Nightwing spun around as if a firecracker had gone off, and leapt behind a large steel duct. A batarang, or something very like it, flashed in his hand. Terry cursed inwardly.
"Show yourself!" Nightwing whispered, "I know you're there!"
Terry waited, hoping for a noise from the alley to mask his footsteps. His limbs still didn't respond properly, and he couldn't be as silent as he needed to. In his very effort to stay motionless, however, his foot slipped minutely across the gravel.
Terry didn't stand still and wait for the inevitable attack. He leaped to one side, narrowly avoiding Nightwing's expert throw. All attempt at stealth abandoned, Terry made a run for the edge of the roof. With the suit's enhancement, he knew he could outrun any human being, even Nightwing.
He heard a whistle of another batarang, and ducked - but not quickly enough. A shock of fire arced through his body, and he couldn't choke down a scream of pain. The suit's sensors momentarily winked out from overload, and somewhere in the back of his mind Terry knew he'd lost his invisibility cloak as well, perhaps permanently.
Before he had the chance to get to his feet again, Nightwing was upon him, locking his arms above his head in a simple but very effective wrestling hold. Terry knew he could break free through brute force, breaking his opponent's arms if necessary, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Fortunately, Nightwing made a grab for his cowl. With one arm free, Terry was able to duck and flip his opponent off his back. He got up and ran again for the edge, leaped into the night, firing his rockets and leaving the police and Nightwing behind him.
TO BE CONTINUED...