AUTHOR'S NOTE: Firstly I want to say that Batman does not belong to me. This is just a little pipe dream I had when I first heard the concept for Batman Beyond and now I've decided to write a little opening story. The concept will be explained a little into the story but all readers should know that this story is set about four hundred hears on from Batman Beyond in a post-apocalyptic world.

BATMAN: LEGACY

A scream wailed out into the night and reached a pair of ears covered by a black cowl. The costumed figure stood up from its crouch on the corner of the dilapidated tenement block. Its talons raked the red brick as it launched its body towards the sounds of peril. In a flash of shadow a huge cloak grew out from its shoulders and its corners found their way into the gloved hands.

The young man backed up against the wall as the gang members surrounded his prone form. He slunk down the wall into a crouch and started to cry as one of the thugs drew out a bat wrapped in barbed wire. The thugs drew into a tight semi-circle against the back wall of the abandoned Old Gotham cinema. One bat rose and another bat fell as the Batman descended onto the alley floor. A quiet crack rang out and was followed by a sound only describable by likening it to a sauce being squeezed from a packet.

"Holy shit it's him!" somebody shouted.

"It's the Bat-" the snap of a swivel kick took the words from the mouth of the man holding the bat. A sharp mechanical sound burst forth from the Batman and a streetlamp burst nearby. The alley was now in darkness and the huddled young man's eyes went wide as he heard several grunts, curses and bloodcurdling screams accompanied by the snap of bones and swish of limbs flying smoothly through the air. His bloodshot eyes began to adjust to the alley's dim lighting and he could see a black shadow crouched like a tiger ready to pounce, the Batman, and a man with a bleached white face holding a gun to the back of his head.

After kicking the last of the grunts Batman landed into a crouch, his sonar- like internal sensors adjusting after the rapid movement. He felt a smooth round metal object come in contact with the back of his skull, a click rang out that signalled the pistol was cocked. The last thought that rang through the Batman's head was not a prayer, it was not a regret, it was curiosity.

"Where did you get ammunition from?" he asked.

"Same place as last time Bats old chum," Joker replied then fired the gun, "I always keep a spare." The Joker smiled even more than usual as he watched the Batman slump, dead, to the pavement. The Joker then proceeded to turn on his heel and skip off whistling 'pop goes the weasel' out of the alleyway and into the lit main street of Old Gotham.

Several minutes later the young man was finally certain that he would be safe he crawled out from behind the dented garbage cans and moved over to the Batman's corpse. He picked up a thin wooden plank and poked the costumed corpse, it didn't move. Once satisfied the Batman wasn't going to be moving any time soon he began to feel the costume for hidden pockets that might contain food, money or a weapon. When his fingertips touched the embossed bat symbol on his chest some writing flashed up in yellow, an address. Intrigued, the young man hid the Batman out of sight under a pile of rubble around the corner and set off out of the alley in search of the address of the Batman. The young man's name was John Kane, and he'd always been an inquisitive person, this usually only lead to trouble like it had earlier when the clown's men ambushed him.

Addresses were starting to become useless in Old Gotham. John wandered the streets for a few hours in an eerie full-mooned night; it was obviously the very early hours of the morning now as people were sheltering themselves in the abandoned buildings of Amusement Mile. Eventually John found a street sign that showed he was where he needed to be and he looked around. Opposite the street sign there was a surprisingly intact building emblazoned with a logo John didn't recognise.

"Wayne Tech R.A.D." he read aloud to himself. He turned away from the building, thinking he'd been sent on a wild goose chase, and then he blinked and his eyes flashed back. John crossed the street, or at least what remained of it, and looked closely at the sign. He'd have sworn on his mother's grave that the W of Wayne looked like a bat when he'd turned to walk away. His inquisitive nature led him into the building and he opened the door onto a completely empty room with dusty grey concrete walls, floor and ceiling. The only light source in the room when he closed the door was a hole on the far side of the ceiling that shone a jagged star of moonlight onto a patch of floor. John walked up to the dusty far wall and looked up at the stars through the hole on the ceiling, it was a dead end.

John's head sank, he'd been almost enjoying this little adventure, it had taken his mind off his close escape earlier that night. Then he spotted something, a semi-circular wedge right at his eye-level that upon closer inspection appeared to be the toe of an army style boot. He looked down and saw more footprints following his own, footprints that strangely disappeared in the middle of the room. He got on his hands and knees and backtracked along the booted footprints to a very thin line just visible through the dust. He traced the line around into a square outlined on the floor and gasped in success; he'd found a trapdoor. He stood up and stood on the square but nothing happened. He jumped up and down but still nothing happened.

"Damn." He said under his breath as he slumped to sit cross-legged on the floor. Then he had an idea.

John huffed and puffed as he dragged the heavy corpse of the Batman into the concrete room. As soon as the door was closed behind him hidden lights came on and the trapdoor opened.

"Yes, I knew it!" John exclaimed under his breath. He'd had a hunch that the Batman's costume held the secret to his hidden sanctum and he wasn't feeling quite up to leaving the man's body naked in that alleyway. He hefted the Batman up onto his shoulders again and carried him down the hidden steps and into the room beneath.

The room inside the hatch wasn't as much a room in that it was a miniature train station, there was a platform and a train and everything. The train went into a tunnel that had a slight angle on it, pointing towards what was once called Tri Corner and was now just New Gotham.

"Figures that Old Gotham's champion is one of those daylighters," John said to himself. He walked towards the small black train, emblazoned with a yellow bat of course, and the door opened to a comfy looking cabin. John hefted the Batman inside and sat down next to the corpse. For a moment he thought about the stupidity of the situation, he was sat in a secret underground train station with the corpse of a superhero and it would be daylight soon. He got up to get out but the train door closed, from out of nowhere a thin stretch of something shot out and bound him to his seat.

"Good morning Batman," a neat female voice said, coming from a set of small speakers in front of him, "the next stop will be the Main Cave and the journey will be roughly three minutes. Please remain still." There was a humming coming from the train that slowly rose higher and higher in pitch as its engine reached full power.

"Oh shi-"

Screeching brakes sent sparks flying into Batman's cavernous inner sanctum, dissolving into the air before hitting the ground. The door of the train slid open and John stepped out into cave, a few seconds later ceilings lamps lit sequentially and showed all the marvels hidden away underground. There was a giant silver coin, an enormous computer, a large playing card, a puppet in a box, what seemed to be a life-size model Tyrannosaurus Rex and a long glass case full of costumes. In the back of the room where two sets of stairs, the first was winding upwards to a large arched door and the second was straight and led downwards to a small sombre looking doorway with a red bat symbol embossed on the door. The door at the top of the winding stairs opened and a tall thin man with greying hair and a thin moustache, he took his steps evenly and quickly and shouted out without looking down to where John stood.

"Good morning Master Jeremiah, how did your-" he suddenly looked up to see John standing there and the body of the Batman inside the carriage, "what did you do?" "I didn't do anything, he saved me but then this pale man killed him so I brought his body to the address on his chest." John said in one breath.

"Who are you?" the thin man asked cautiously.

"John Kane," he replied, "what about you?"

"I'm just the butler," the thin man said as he brushed past John and hefted the Batman's body onto an examination table in a dark corner, "and I have a friend to see to. Please take a seat, don't touch or do anything until I tell you."

The butler used a small black device to pop open a seal on the Batman's chest and slowly the black costume the Batman wore began to ooze like a liquid into the Batman insignia on his chest and back. Soon all that was left of the costume was the boots, gloves and a cowl and shoulder section. The butler took these pieces of costume off too and pushed the examination table in through the small door with the red bat insignia. The door shut behind him with a finality that John did not like.

John sat in the same place, not moving, not doing anything or touching anything for some time. He didn't have a watch and there didn't seem to be any clocks in here so he couldn't tell how long, but when the butler came out of the little door pushing the examination table again he didn't look happy.

"I'm sorry if I was rude earlier Mr. Kane but I was a little distraught at the death of my master," he looked away for a moment then composed himself, "he'd been serving as the Batman for quite some time now, I considered him a good friend."

"I'm sorry for your loss," John replied truthfully.

"Thank you Mr. Kane, now if you'll follow me there's something I have to show you," he said and walked over to the enormous computer. He pressed a small button in the very centre of the keyboard and a sombre grey-haired old man appeared on the screen.

"Hello," the old man said as he interlaced his fingers. He was wearing a style of suit that was so old even old people didn't wear them anymore and he was sat in a chair facing the same computer John now faced, he also noticed a cane leant against the arm.

"My name is Bruce Wayne, and I am Batman. The first Batman. You are here because you are about to join a very small number of people, men and women who have fought and died to honour the symbol of the bat. Most likely you have just witnessed the death of the previous Batman and this will probably not endear you to the task."

"Yeah, too right," John said under his breath.

"But," Wayne continued, "I can tell you that if the man you saw die is anything like me, then he sacrificed his life gladly. I know that every night I went out on patrol I knew that the odds were I wouldn't be coming back but I still went. I still went because the people of my city needed me, where there was suffering, where there was pain, the Batman was there and he helped. The Batman is not just there to beat up thugs and disappear into the shadows; the Batman is a symbol a hope, of justice for those who have been wronged. In short, Gotham needs the Batman. If you don't take up the mantle there will be no more Batman. I never regretted any of the sacrifices I made, take my advice and try it on for size."

"Not an amazingly inspiring speech is it?" the butler said when it was finished, "but it was made in a much simpler time, hundreds of years ago when Gotham was a much easier place to live. You know why I think people like you still put on the suit?"

"Why?" John said, inwardly admitting he did want to try it out.

"You've a darksider aren't you? You live in Old Gotham?"

"Yeah, but weren't you telling me why I should do this?"

"You've probably suffered, you've probably felt scared, helpless," as the butler spoke John's mind cast itself back to earlier that night, "and if you're the kind of man I think you are then you would want to make sure hat nobody else has to go through what you've been through. You want to be a hero." The butler paused for dramatic effect, "Correct?"

"I-" John paused and thought about what he was about to say, "I'd like to give it a try."

"Well let's get you suited up Master John," the butler said with a thin- lipped smile, "by the way, my name is David."

Ten minutes later John was wearing the boots, gloves and shoulder-armour of the Batman. David stood by to one side with the ebony cowl in his hand and looked at John in the armour.

"I have to tell you something about the suit," he said as he stepped slightly closer with the cowl in his hands, "the suit was developed at the height of technological advance before the war. It was specifically designed to adapt to every host it encounters, it is in truth a sentient life form in and of itself that bonds physically with its host. It links to your body synapses and helps you to adjust to the power boost it gives you."

"What?" John said, looking confused.

"I think it'd be better if you just put it on." David walked over to stand behind John and slowly lowered the cowl onto John's shoulders. There was a soft hiss as the locking mechanism closed the seal on the costume and then the black oil that comprised the symbiotic Batman costume oozed out and began to come together into a sort of shadowy second skin. In front of John's eyes a green-highlighted display screen flashed up and a green power bar rose to one hundred percent, he felt new power coursing through his veins as the costume energised him. His muscles pumped and it felt as though his heart was beating louder and faster, his senses seemed to expand and the world seemed to reveal all its secrets to him.

"I can, feel everything," John said in a gasp.

"The suit links all of its sensory equipment directly to your central nervous system, in effect the suit becomes an extension of you." David explained.

"Hey, you seem to know a lot about this," John said, turning to look at David, "how many Batmen have you served anyway?"

"Since my father stepped down and left me completely in charge of looking after the Batman's affairs?" David said and he looked up as he counted to himself, "seven in all, and eight more wards."

"Seven?" John was concerned, "how long have you been doing this?"

"About eighteen years."

"So the average Batman has a shelf life of under three years?" John said, almost shouting, "why didn't you tell me before I got all jazzed up about the suit?"

"You wouldn't have accepted." David replied quickly before dismissing the subject with a wave of a hand, "you should try the suit out, if nothing else you can check out the daylight world. See if it's all its cracked up to be."

A black army boot stepped onto the floor of a pristinely clean white cube of a room; it was dark outside and looked roughly an hour before the little bands of sun peeped over the horizon. The pair of boots began to step more quickly, John ran forwards and leapt into the air and pushed off the wall with the toe of his boot. His enhanced strength allowed the small push to throw him far into the air and out of a small square hole in the roof of the white room. Instinctively John spread his arms wide and the black cloak shot into his hands, the talons of his thumbs locking into the cloak as he slowly glided across the dark night sky.

He landed on the wall of a large building and his talons dug in, anchoring him in place for a moments rest before leaping away from the building again he flapped his cloak and rose several hundred feet up. He knew the physical effect from flapping his cloak couldn't have done that and presumed some sort of thrusters were hidden in the suit. He rode the air currents and dodged the suspended roadways and anti-grav vehicles to land on a high rooftop. John stepped to the edge of the building and looked down, hundreds of feet below was the slums of the city. These were the slums that were like living the high life for a darksider. John put his boots on the very edge of the building and lowered to a crouch, putting his talons in the ridge around the top edge of the building. Under the cowl he smiled and threw himself off his cape making a sound only describable as the fluttering of hundreds of tiny featherless wings.

It was John Kane who stepped up to the edge of the building, but it was the Batman who jumped off.

AUTHORS NOTE: I hope you enjoyed this story readers and I'll be glad to write some more, but to be honest I'm not going to bother unless I get some reviews. I know its shallow and shameless and whatever but unless I know people actually read this I'm not going to waste time writing more. I do however have a few future storylines lined up for some more chapters. If you want to know what eventually happened to Bruce and Terry, or what happened between Batman Beyond and the beginning of this tale, or even what some of the other Batmen were like then just send me a bloody review. But if you hated it then don't bother, any and all criticism is welcome though.

Anyone interested in my writing should go to Another World or you can e- mail me on sam@sgcharrison.freeserve.co.uk