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Caped Crusader
Four Years in Hell

Bruce Wayne, age eighteen, had spent four years in Hell. Seventy-two months of fighting to maintain his sanity. Twenty hundred and eight weeks of trying to preserve his identity. Deep in the jungles of Southern Mindanao, a war waged over Bruce Wayne's soul. The family Rā's al Ghūl had introduced to him turned on him. He could sense them working away at him. The family attempted to break whatever reservations stood in the way of full membership.

Life had given him what he wished for. He had received the best training in the world. In four years of extensive training, Rā's al Ghūl had taught Bruce four decades' worth of lessons. He had acquired a formidable hybrid martial art that incorporated elements from jujutsu, ninjutsu and multiple forms of kung fu.

The depth of his experience frightened Bruce Wayne. Rā's al Ghūl even knew ninja tricks he claimed to have learned from actual ninjas. He taught Bruce Wayne his best stuff, stuff he didn't even teach Lady Shiva though he seemed to have a relationship with her that went beyond the professional or the platonic.

Speaking of relationships, Talia had grown a great deal from the love-shy fourteen-year-old who hid from him when he first arrived. Age eighteen, Talia sent out all the signals. Though Wayne men had reputations as ladies' men, eleven years of obsessive training and self-imposed isolation had blunted his seductive edge.

He didn't have to try very hard though. Talia trusted him with her life. Bruce Wayne might almost say he had fallen in love if he believed in that sort of thing. The more he looked at Talia, the more he believed.

It began simple enough. She would take him aside from his training and she'd practice on him. She kissed him repeatedly. She always had a fairly convincing excuse. All the time she commented that she need to know how to kiss when she grew up. Her future husband would naturally expect to marry a good kisser.

Talia's presence had aided Alfred Pennyworth in his half-hearted consent. Also, Rā's al Ghūl had found a novel way to neutralize his butler's impact on Bruce's life. He had a book collection rivaling the Library of Alexandria. He had first editions dating back seven centuries. Quite the bibliophile, Alfred couldn't resist.

Bruce Wayne went incognito with his senior students to the mountain retreat not far from the monastery. There, he saw what looked like the fiery pit mentioned in the Book of Revelations. The searing liquids undulated. In Arabic, they prayed to something called Lazarus Pits. During the ceremony, Rā's al Ghūl patted Bruce on the back. "Excellent work, Detective. A lesser man would have fallen for your disguise. Alas, I know you better than you know yourself."

One night, Bruce and Talia crossed the line. In an abandoned church in the nearby town, they consummated their relationship. It did not end with the church. Their hormones did a lot of the work. The natives of the village almost certainly thought them insane. In the throes of passion, Talia confessed a secret.

"Bruce, I don't know how to say this." Bruce nodded with easy acceptance. He waited his whole life for a moment like this. To listen to a beautiful woman say she loved him. "I want you to kill my father." Only half hearing what she said it took a couple moments for the full force of her words to register.

Bruce stared at Talia intently. The questions poured out like rain during monsoon season. "You couldn't understand unless you really knew the man." She curled her arms around her knees. "He wants me to follow in his footsteps. Only I know what he really does for a living."

The obvious question arose. "What, Bruce? Didn't you know? My father trains his students so he could sell their talents to the highest bidders. Mercenaries. Assassins. Bodyguards. He uses the money to fund his . . . experiments." Talia told him horror stories about attempted genocides more befitting a supervillain than a martial arts instructor.

Talia handed Bruce something. A Desert Eagle handgun snatched from the weapons cache at the mountain retreat. A venomous look crawled across her face. "Kill him. A moment's courage and all these horrors will end."

Bruce Wayne felt deathly ill. The love of his life asked him to kill a man whose existence perpetuated an industry of death. Killing him might actually make the world a better place. It'd free his daughter and himself from his unrelenting tyranny and growing madness. But something felt wrong.

Armed with a Desert Eagle, Bruce walked into Rā's al Ghūl's study. His extensive training in invisibility would come back to haunt him. Just as he descended on the figure in his chair, he fired a shot through the back of his chair and into his head. Only now did he realize that Rā's al Ghūl had set up a scarecrow.

A blade pressed against Bruce's throat. "Excellent work, Detective." Four years ago, he loved that title. Now he wished he'd never heard the word. "A lesser man would have died just then." Rā's al Ghūl tried to hand him his blade. "Enough practice. Time for the real thing." Bruce slapped the blade from his hand.

Bruce refused. He had regained his senses when he thought he had really killed him. "This will change your mind." From the dark, Lady Shiva brought out Talia gagged and bonded. "Kill me or kill her. I don't care which." As Bruce's muscles tensed up, he made the hardest decision of his life. He dropped the handgun.

Rā's al Ghūl shook his head in disappointment. "I believe the Detective must learn his lesson." He gave Lady Shiva the signal. In moments, Bruce once again watched a loved one die, this time by way of bare hands. "I tried to train you. If you will not kill to save loved ones, you do not belong among warriors. Now . . . get out of my sight."

Crestfallen in a way he had felt since his parents died, he and Alfred gathered their things and marched through a mosquito-infested jungle to a middle-of-nowhere town. Bruce's martial arts training had ended. Rā's al Ghūl had broken Bruce's fighting spirit or rather he proved he never had one to begin with.

Bruce Wayne wondered about his obligations. He couldn't kill even under the most extreme circumstances. Such a gutless neurotic couldn't bring order to Gotham. Nothing learned in a dozen lifetimes could compensate for such a glaring weakness. He left the monastery with the fight beaten out of him.