Hallo. After much laziness, a sudden spell of work ethic, and enough nitpicking to kill a man, I'm back with the next chapter. Knottaclue, I may be partial to your review because it was my first, but, jeez, is that the best review anyone could get!

I don't like this chapter much, but it's necessary. What's your opinion?

Sunday, June 2 2042, 16:12:54

The cave was oppressive and gloomy as usual, but there was a hint of change mixed in with the stagnant air. "Hard Eyes" Bruce Wayne wasn't at his normal post. The massive chair before the sprawling mega-computer sat empty. Instead, the man stood at the foot of the stairs that would lead him out of the cave—assuming he'd ever leave. He just stood there, a poster child of yester-century. Powerful, age-spotted hands grasped the trademark ebony cane in an unrelenting death grip. Long legs planted themselves firmly upon the uneven rock floor, completely unaided. The cane was just an accessory. Except for cracking the occasional skull, its only use was to make him look frail. At the moment, it was failing completely. He was immortal.

Wayne's eyes had always been piercing, but right now his gaze could burn a hole through titanium. It seemed that the young man lying sprawled on the cave floor was made of stronger stuff, though, because he lazily smiled back at his mentor.

"A false identity?" Wayne asked. It the latest item on a verbal checklist that been going on for the better part of an hour.

"Check."

"A second criminally active "true" identity?"

"Yes."

"Iris, voice, and genetic patterns—and fingerprints—temporarily wiped from the master databases?"

"Oui."

"A way to gather evidence against the criminal that can be used in a court of law?"

"Si."

"An alibi for Terry McGinnis?"

The young man's smile wavered. "Terry is—supposedly—accompanying Bruce Wayne on a worldwide business trip. In other words, partying his ass off with sexy exotic chicks for two months. …God, I wish I was me right now."

"But you're not," Wayne reminded him. Was that a hint of a mocking laugh in his voice?

"Don't you have a plane to catch?" Terry asked pointedly. Unfortunately, Wayne's private jet wasn't going to take off without him, so the man could stay and pester his apprentice until Doomsday if he wanted.

The checklist went on, and Terry quickly ran out of ways to say "yes." It wasn't his fault there was only four thousand languages in the world. So he lay there, making up words. There wasn't a single thing on Wayne's checklist that he didn't have covered. He'd been preparing for this for months, and he intended to do it right. Wayne called it a trial run. Terry preferred to think of it as his Master's Thesis for Vigilantism. If he passed, he would graduate from Bat University with his Dark Knight degree. Bruce would stop peering over his shoulder every second. He could call the shots, and if he wanted to go on a date, his cell phone wouldn't ring right when things got good.

He couldn't wait, but for now, the big guy still called the shots. It had to be killing Wayne to be leaving the reins in his hands for two months, especially during a major infiltration that the man had almost no information on…

Terry blinked, finally realizing what Wayne had been trying to get at for an hour. "I'll call if I run into any trouble," he conceded.

A slight smile hinted itself on Wayne's face, and he nodded. "It would help your alibi if you did spend some time touring with me," he suggested. "A day here and there."

With that ending note, he turned and ascended the winding stone stairs. Terry stared at his receding form, his jaw dropped to the floor. "Did…did he just give me permission to take a day off? Okay, who is this guy, and why didn't he knock off the real Wayne years ago?" The man on the stairs stiffened and shot a dark look back at him, then looked up pleadingly at the cave ceiling. Perhaps he was praying for it to collapse on top of his cheeky apprentice and reduce him to blood splatter. Whatever his fantasy, he finished it and stalked out of the cave.

Terry waited two minutes for the old bat to get out of hearing range before muttering under his breath, "Hallelujah, free at last." He picked his way to his feet, and then headed off to take a shower. He'd been lying on the cave floor for so long, rock dust had worked its way into his pants.

XXX

He ambled back into the main cave in a robe and sneakers an hour later. Yawning, he headed to the computer console and punched a few buttons. The manor cameras came on, and he was amused to find a pink haired, mocha skinned Tinkerbelle poking at the books in a wall-to-wall bookcase. "Good old Max," he smiled. "Wayne isn't gone five minutes, and she's already trying to break into the bat cave." He turned and left her to her search for the magic book that would open a secret passage.

Max was housesitting the manor while Wayne "and Terry" were gone, and the manor had been Max-proofed accordingly. She wouldn't be able to get into the bat cave if there was an army of signs pointing straight to the entrance. The old grandfather clock, nicknamed Alfred, wouldn't budge an inch, let alone swing open to reveal the secret stair, until Terry unlocked it from inside the cave. Chances were that Max wouldn't stop looking until the end, though, and it would be entertaining to see just how creative she got in her quest for the cave.

Smiling, he meandered into the depths of the cave, where Wayne kept his museum of vigilante memories. Terry had peeked into enough of the old case files to know about most of the old mementos, but a few still confused him. The gun, for example. It was tucked away in a dark corner on a shelf without a glass case. Terry ran a finger along its silvery barrel. It wasn't nearly as dusty as it should have been. It was being wiped down on a regular basis.

Strange. Wayne couldn't stand guns. The man had never fired one in his life, and for someone of his age and background, that was a big statement. Why hold onto one, then?

Terry shrugged and moved on, strolling through a set of metal doors. This area was less a museum and more a warehouse of old cases. He had found the most amazing things in here. Enough drugs to OD the entire population of China, for example. At times, he hated being the good guy.

Tonight his attention lay on a metallic box approximately seven feet long and four deep. He flipped open a small panel and tapped a few keys on the console inside. There was a whirring noise as the machine came to life. The lid flipped open, revealing a sort of mold in the shape of a human being. Terry continued to work at the console, programming it carefully. He had first learned about the machine when reading through one of Wayne's old cases. It had been a full-scale infiltration in the early twenties, and the old bat had needed to be a black man.

Long story short, the disguise worked perfectly, though Wayne had never used it again. Oddly enough, the machine had been developed for the Witness Protection Program, and they had stopped using it just as quickly. Terry had done his research, but he had never been able to find out why. It wasn't as though the machine did any permanent damage. The console bleeped its readiness, and Terry shrugged. And sighed. He ran his hand through his damp hair one last time before kicking off his shoes and letting the robe fall to the cave floor.

If there had ever been a good time to appreciate the beauty of the human body, that was it.

He climbed in, and the machine lid slammed shut. A needle found it's way into his neck, and his body fell slack.

XXX

When he woke, he instantly understood why Wayne had never used the machine again. Best way to explain it, he'd been dipped in a vat of lye and his skin was dissolving. The lid of the torture machine swung open and he rolled out, not wanting to stay in it another second. He fell to the cave floor panting, and lay there a moment. The cool stone seemed to help with the pain. The relief was only temporary though, and the pain soon came back in full force. Grunting, Terry pulled himself to his knees.
Movement caught his attention, and he turned to stare at his reflection in the machine's polished metal side. The raven's hair was the same—and the golden nose ring he had forgotten to take off—but everything else was a stranger to him. His skin was slightly darker now, with a golden hue. His eyes slanted and the bridge of his nose had mysteriously disappeared. There were so many more subtle differences between this new body and the one he knew. It didn't look half bad. It hurt.

He pulled the robe around his shoulders and slid his feet into his shoes. He was dirty from his fall onto the cave floor, but he didn't leave to take another shower. Instead, he hobbled off towards the locker room where a whole boatload of pain meds was kept. There was less than half a boatload when he was finished. From there he stumbled towards a bed set in one corner, sleepwalking the last ten steps.

XXX

He woke to the sound of an alarm in lessagony than before. The fact that his blood content was about 50 percent pain relievers may have had something to do with that. He lay, staring up at the stalactites, trying to remember who he was and, more importantly,if he was the person who had to get up because of that awful blaring noise. The alarm didn't stop for minutes, so he supposed he was. He staggered out of the bed and searched for his shoes a second before realizing he was already wearing them. He shuffled across the rock towards the source of the noise: the speakers of an enormous computer set into the cave wall. The screen glowed green, and there was something displayed on it, but his vision was too blurred to read it.

He had stumbled forward and fallen into the chair before he could make out the words Terry, you have a call to make, a string of numbers he recognized as his home phone line, and then Y/N? He stared at it, then swore and punched Y. The alarm finally shut off and was replaced by the sound of a phone ringing.

The first ring didn't last half a second before the phone was snatched up and his mother asked, "Terry?" expectantly into the phone.

He gave a short laugh. "No, Mom. I'm a total stranger." Looking in the now dark computer screen, that was partially true. His reflection was a stranger to him. It was his voice that was still the same.

"How was the flight over?" she pressed. "Not too boring?"

He shrugged, "Not really. I slept the whole way over. Mr. Wayne had to wake me up to call you." He absently made an obscene gesture at the computer screen.

His mother sounded equally amused and mortified. "Terry, you sleep more than most cats." Whatever that meant, it sounded like a lot. He shook his head. If only she knew. He'd just slept for longer than he normally managed in an entire week. "I hope Mr. Wayne didn't mind," she went on.

"Actually, he thought it was smart." Wayne never thought anything he did was less than idiotic, but one little white lie never hurt. "I basically killed my jet lag. It's nine in the morning over here, and I'm wide-awake. Mostly."

"You aren't driving, are you?" she worried. "The roads are different over there."

He laughed, "Are you kidding! Wayne won't let me near a steering wheel. He's hired drivers for the whole trip." That much was true, at least. "So what time is it over there –two?" he asked and leaned back in the chair, wincing only slightly.

"Three in the morning," she yawned. "We've been munching and watching old movies."

"Three! Why did you wait up for my call? You should be in bed…wait…what do you mean by we?"

"What took you so long, Twip?" his brother Matt chirped into the phone, sounding way too awake.

Terry blinked. "You definitely should be in bed. Mom, what happened to 'you can stay up late over my dead body'?"

"Extenuating circumstances. His words, not mine," she replied. "And now that Terry's called, it's time for someone to say goodnight."

Matt complained, "But the movie's not over yet. I wanna see what happens to the kid with the hairy feet."

"He falls asleep. Go to bed, Frodo," she ordered.

There was much G-rated cursing on Matt's part as he stomped away towards his room.

She chuckled, "So. London. What do you think you'll be doing first?"

He thought about his answer for all of two milliseconds. "Sleep."

"Terry!" She sighed and was probably shaking her head at him. Her voice softened. "I'm so proud of you, Terr. You made it work. Graduating, GCU next fall—and this trip is such a great opportunity."

He looked around at the cave, all dank and dreary. Home sweet home. "That's what everyone keeps telling me," he sighed. "Love you, Mom."

"Love you." She yawned. "Ah, I think it's time to call it a night. Talk with you later."

"Can do," he replied and waited for her to hang up. Yawning himself, he brought up the manor cameras on the computer again. Max had gone home, and the security system was primed. It felt strange being the only living thing there. Even Ace was gone, lapping up the high life at a classy kennel. Terry had suggested several times that Wayne should take the dog with him, but the man always said no, citing their short stay in South Korea.

Shrugging, he stood and shuffled back to bed.

XXX

He woke up with the pain a not so dull throb. It wouldn't be so bad, except he hurt everywhere, even underneath his fingernails. He went to the locker room and dug out one of the outfits he had picked out for the next two months. One of the accessories was a watch, and he used it to figure out it was about noon. Time to catch some lunch, he supposed, and his stomach agreed with him wholeheartedly.

He dressed quickly, throwing on jeans and a vintage T-shirt advertising a dead band. He took a minute to study his reflection after he donned the green and black leather jacket. He would have liked to wear his normal one, but it was practically an heirloom. His father had given it to him, mentioning that he'd never find another one like it. It would be awkward if someone recognized the jacket as Terry McGinnis's. Hence the green one. It looked good on his reflection, at least.

He looked the young man in the mirror up and down. He was mongoloid, but there were some traces of European blood in him too, possibly Irish. He was tall, and there was a graceful curve in his spine that meant he commanded his height, as opposed to gawkily misusing it. Compact muscle knitted his long bones together, but he stood loosely in his jacket and jeans, completely flexible. Raven hair framed his face unevenly, brushing the base of his neck at the back, and a toy of a beard played on his chin. Blue eyes, equally able to dance or hold deadly still, stared from within slanted lids with short, curling lashes. The golden nose ring was almost a natural extension of his body. It simply fit.

Terry's stomach growled impatiently, and he rolled his eyes. Glancing once more at his reflection, he nodded. "Nice to meet you…Eight…Pantharis…whoever the Hell you are." He paused and thought. "Sean," he said at last. "My name is Sean."