Well. I just had the scare of my life. I shut off my computer, apparently a file was corrupt, & it wouldn't turn on again! You must understand something. Every time I manage to write a significant body of work, my computer manages to delete it. This could have been the eighth time. Could, but this time I was victorious! After two hours of frantic reprogramming & liberal praying (cuz, you know, conservative praying just doesn't work), I got Windows to start up, & all my files were still there! Waaaahhhoooooooooooo! …You know, I should really consider backing up my files. Soon.

All right, before I start this chapter, I have just one more IMPORTANT thing to say:

PLEASE READ, EVEN IF THERE ARE MORE CHAPTERS AFTER THIS. PLEASE.
"Um, hi. So you know, Ihave an email account for people to contact me (click the hyperlink on my bio). You know, pressing questions, requests, any good jokes... Actually, it's there so my Reviews box doesn't getclogged (Yes, I know. I'm nuts.) Seriously, though, if there's anything you want orneed tosay to me that isn't specifically about the story you've read, write to methere. It also for ifyou don't want your message viewable to the whole world."

Hmm. That was longer than expected. Oh well, this chapter isn't all that important, though I do have to apologize about describing a bad way to die. PG-15?

Sunday, August 4 2042, 02:16:25

XXX

It was just a small piece of jewelry, a trinket. The tiny gold ring rested in his hand, somehow finding enough light in the dark night to gleam. It didn't seem important, but it was. It was his only way back to a simpler time, one that was growing more distant with every second. Subdued, he replaced the ring in its compartment on his belt.

Absently, Batman picked at the thick elastic material covering his neck, though the suit wasn't hot. Nor was it heavy, but it pulled him down all the same. His robotic muscles could do nothing to help him stand up under the weight. It wasn't a physical force that tugged him towards the ground.

Only sometimes could he imagine that it was the reassuring hands of his predecessor clasping his shoulders. Mostly, it was depression and hopelessness that weighed him down.

He crossed his arms lightly and felt bulky folds of leather wrap around him, covering the crimson bat emblazoned on his chest. With his eyes closed, it felt like he wore the same grim cape that the Dark Knight of yester-millennia had. It was only a worn-out jacket though, either an overly sentimental keepsake or a desperately needed security blanket, depending on his mood. At the moment, it was the latter. There had once been a boy who wore it. It had been his armor. Now the boy was gone, and someone entirely new hid inside of it.

Though he wanted to, Batman refused to stick his arms and head inside the comforting leather like a turtle into its shell. Instead, he looked out across the sea. It pounded up to the rock he sat on. The hissing, white spray lashed out at his face as the waves came in, roaring one by one. It roared at him.

With a sigh, he pulled off his mask. It was a habit that was quickly becoming a morose ritual. Batman—even now, with the mask off, he thought of himself as such. The first time had been sometime during the beginning of this month of Hell, and he had been shocked and fought against it. Now at the end, he had completely detached himself from what had been his "real" self. Now it took a lot more than peeling off a mask to switch mindsets. He looked away from the dark waves and shadowy foam. Seeing Mary McGinnis, Terry's mother, cry as a rapist shoved her to the ground had been enough to prompt the change.

His gaze focused on his hands and the symbol they held. He stared down at his cowl. Some time ago he had grown tired of concussions and inserted protective armor into the mask. As a result, it resembled a head even when someone didn't wear it. It felt odd to look at it and experience what criminals saw when he stared them down. Even stranger was how often he studied that cowl for clues that didn't exist. The whole world wondered how Terry McGinnis had gotten himself into the mess he had, especially those who knew about his night job. He himself had no idea. It was one of those mysteries that would go forever unanswered, it seemed.

The cowl looked up at him blankly, its eye lenses gleaming in the faint moonlight. It had an accusing stare.

The Bat wrung the cowl in his shaking hands, twisting it into a shapeless black rag. The suit helped him; it lent him the inhuman strength needed to warp the Bat's mask from its intended shape. He glared at the tight coil. Then, slowly, he let it slip from his grip. It instantly sprang back into the shape of a head, and the soulless face stared up at him again.

Closing his eyes to avoid that gaze, Batman let his mind drift to the past. Mind numbing days in school, hitting the clubs and arcades with friends, debating whether was mystery meat was really tofu or fungus (or if there was even a difference)—he could easily recall a time when things had been okay. When hadn't thought of himself as Batman. It hadn't been all that long ago. Only a month ago, the cowl had just been a mask. Then, almost instantly, everything had changed.

XXX

Atop the cliff stood Wayne Manor. It glared out at the sea, its windows dark and empty. A stone path wound from ajar French doors to an unused bench that overlooked the sea. A shadow lay curled beneath the bench's wooden slats. Paws poked out from either end, and two old eyes watched the man fearlessly straddling the cliff's edge.

A somber expression brought out the deeper lines of his weathered face. Unlike the other's, his eyes were young and sharp, no matter their aged framing. They cast their gaze down upon the rocks below as the waves crashed in, sending up cascades of white foam. His object of interest, however, was hidden in the darkness beneath the white.

He had come out there often in the past month, his thoughts on some new vain hope—and when that failed him, he returned to that sad fantasy of a world where things hadn't gone horribly wrong.

Bruce Wayne looked out into the distance, where the dark sea and black sky melted together and there was no telling where one ended and the other began. There was no horizon. Was it so bad to fantasize, he wondered. When the present was hopeless and the future just as bleak, perhaps the past was the only place to run to. That or insanity.

Insanity: that was the question that plagued his mind now. This entire month had been a breeding ground for it, and he knew the new Bat hadn't escaped from it unscathed. It had to stop before the madness won.

Wayne looked up at the sky, starless but only because the roiling clouds had smothered them. He had decided, then. Nodding to himself, he turned back towards the manor. Ace stretched out his limbs, stiff from lying there so long, and padded after his master. The man stopped and scratched the dog's ear as he glanced up once more. There had been no stars for a month, it seemed. Perhaps, when this madness was cleared away, they would shine again.

He felt Ace's muzzle questioningly rub his hand, and he smiled down at his old friend. "Just Romantic musings," he confided. And he looked back at the endless darkness beyond the cliff. He didn't understand why such thoughts were called Romantic, when what they described was darkness.

XXX

Batman wore the mask again, preferring to hide behind it rather than face its accusing stare. The gold ring rested on the console of the cave's sprawling mega-computer as it hummed, compiling data. It had been hours, but there was no way of telling if dawn had come yet. The dim, electrically lit lair of the Bat was only a small overhang in an enormous series of sunless chasms that seemed to stretch without end, a candle in a world of darkness. Only a few key entrances had ever been charted; the rest was a great unknown, unless one was a bat. A real one.

The Imposter kept to the safe area lit by the glow of the lights. He stretched, using the suit's strength to pull his muscles out of their complicated knots. Always, he had at least one eye on the computer, watching it work. But of course, it only finished its task when he had stood and rolled out his shoulders, closing both eyes. He jerked at the sound of the beep, ruining most of his work to relax his neck muscles, and hurried to the computer's console.

There he closed his eyes again, not wanting to read the message displayed there more than once. Search Failed.

His hands balled into fists, and he could hear the suit's material groaning from it. A month, and that was all he had to show for it. Failure. His eyes shot open, flashing, and the first thing they saw was the gold ring resting so innocently on the console. It was a nose ring. It was nothing, absolutely nothing, and he had spent hours staring at it when he should have been working.

The appropriate thing was to scream with rage, but only a low, inaudible growl escaped his lips and seized the nose ring and did the only thing he could think to do. He hurled it. It went beyond the overhang and fell into the darkness. His electronic ears twitched at every metallic chime as the ring struck the cave walls down and down until there came an odd plop, and the cave was silent once more.

He stood afterwards, breathing much harder than the simple throw warranted. It had taken almost no exertion, especially with the suit's muscles wrapped around him, but he felt exhausted suddenly.

"You're breaking down, mentally," a voice explained coolly.

He glanced behind his back to watch Bruce Wayne step from the shadows behind the computer. He smiled self-depreciatingly. Able to hear a tiny ring clacking against stone far beneath him, yet he hadn't detected the approach of an arthritic old man. He turned back to look down into the depths where the nose ring had fallen. A colony of bats roosted just below the Batman's overhang, and everything below them was plastered with their leavings. The worthless bit of jewelry fit right in. Perhaps the odd splashing sound had been it plummeting into a pool of guano. "How long have you been hiding there?" he remarked at last in an acid tone. "One hour? Two? The whole damn month?"

When Wayne didn't answer his question, Batman prompted him. "This is the part where you're supposed to say 'long enough.'"

"That was self-evident."

The Bat pulled at the suit's material around his neck. "I know why you've come here," he said, smiling at nothing.

"It's time to end this charade."

"—and you're wrong," he continued. "You want me to put this suit back in your little display case. I won't do it. You know why I can't."

He could feel Wayne's glare. "No, I don't. The only reason I agreed to this was because Terry McGinnis and Batman disappearing on the same night would raise too many eyebrows. "You were right about that, but it's been a month now. It's past time for you to leave."

Batman folded his arms. "By that logic—"

"Logic?" the man thundered. "You're past logic. I should put you in an asylum."

He snorted, "Arkham?"

"Elysian," Wayne corrected. "A mental institution that specializes in dissociative disorders and delusions of grandeur!"

"Dissociative?" he scoffed. "I do not have a multiple personality."

"Don't you, Batman?"

His fingers dug into his arms, digging through the protection of his suit down into the helpless flesh. "Why don't you understand that Gotham needs me?" he asked.

"Because it doesn't. The city is pulling out of an economic depression, a symptom of which was an elevated crime rate. Now crime is down—you had nothing to do with its drop—and you aren't needed."

He thought of the Ground Level. An economic depression had nothing to do with that; those people had been there for 40 years, Gotham's very own Untouchables. Who needed him more than them? "You're a fool," was all he could manage to say, turning to face the man.

Wayne stood at the computer, his hand resting slightly on the console. "Am I?" he asked as his eyes strayed over the keys, settling on one in particular, a raised circular thing in one corner. An internal debate held his hand firmly on the console edge, but once the decision was made, his movement was unhesitant and quick. His fingers grasped the round key. He gave it a decisive half turn and pressed it. Only then did he look at the person in the dark costume.

The Bat held deathly still. Then he raised his hands to the level of his eyes and inspected them. "You know," he mused, flexing the fingers, "even though I dismantled it weeks ago, I half-expected that suit kill-switch to work." His hands fell to his sides. He stalked towards Wayne. "You just don't get it, do you?" he snapped. "I don't want to bring up your senility, but what else can explain you being so stupid! You're just standing around while everything goes to Hell, and the first thing you do in a Goddamned month is to try to take me down. Yes, Wayne. You're a fool. You're a Goddamned fool!"

He reached forward and grabbed up two handfuls of Wayne's suit, lifting the old man up and towards him. His dark face was contorted with rage, and his opponent's was of fear. The original Bat was by no means frail, but when placed up against the new one he might as well have been. He did the only thing he could and called out a name, the real name of the person under the Bat's mask.

Wayne was thrown back into the computer's chair as Batman snarled and ripped off his mask. The inserted techno-armor in the suit served the double purpose of protection and making the new Dark Night seem larger. Now that armor compressed and went limp, and the suit shrank to fits its wearer's much smaller shape.

An undoubtedly more feminine shape. He was a she. And she was livid.

"Maxine—" Wayne started but stopped when she glared up at him through a damp mess of pink curls. Crying.

"What is wrong with you!" she shrieked, but it wasn't her voice. A thin wire ran from the suit into her mouth and down her throat, and what came out was dark, angry sound, half like Terry McGinnis, half like the Batman of old. The voice, laden with her tears and despair, came from inside her and screamed at Wayne, "What is wrong with you! You move on and forget when he's out there. He's still out there. How could—Goddamn it, Wayne, how dare you!" She tilted her head, as if seeing him at a different angle would make him change his mind. "Help me, Goddamn it! Help him. Please."

Wayne pulled himself upright in the chair. Reasonably, he said, "Give me back my suit and we'll talk."

"This isn't a bargain!" She curled in on herself after her outburst, fingers digging into her curls. "You'll help me," she said. "You'll pull all your little Underworld strings and find him. I'm keeping the suit. It's not a power trip. They need me. Nobody worries about the Ground Level but me. People will die if Batman stops patrolling there." Her hands released her head and she reared up. "Is that important enough to "let" me patrol, or are you too proud to care about the poor, huddled masses? Does it have to hit closer to home, Wayne?

"Two nights ago Mary McGinnis—Terry's mother—was this close to getting base raped. The monster had two hundred and fifty milliliters of highly concentrated Calcium Hydroxide. She would have died dissolving. By the time anyone found her, she wouldn't have existed between the upper torso and knees! Goddamn it, Wayne, Matt broke down because she was twenty minutes late getting home! What do you think that would have done to him? What if I hadn't been there, Wayne? What if you had thrown this tantrum three days ago and won?"

Her voice softened. "She would be dead, and Matt would be fresh out of relatives. Would you take him in? Because let me warn you, he will be the carbon copy of Terry in a few years. Would you be able to look in his face? Hell, even if he looked nothing like Terry, could you look in his face? Could you tell Matt that it's all your fault? That because of your pride and indifference, because you just looked away, you killed his family? You killed them; his father, his mother, his broth—"

She froze, realizing what she was saying, and shook her head. "No."

Wayne's voice was comforting. "Even you've said it, Maxine. It's been a month, and no one's found anything." Max turned away from him, whispering her denial over and over, but he pressed on. "You have to admit it."

"No!" Her hand hid her face. "It was just a hypothetical situation. I was making a point," she explained softly.

His face showed every lines, lines he hadn't had a month ago. His gnarled and veined hand gripped the arm of his chair as stated sadly, "He's dead, Maxine. Terry's dead."

She jerked, and whatever he might have said to console her was lost as she turned to face him, every trace of humanity gone from her face. "Get out," she ordered. When he didn't move, she came forward and hurled him from the chair.

He got to his feet slowly before facing her. Trying once more, he said, "He's dea—" And that was as far as he got before he was struck. Not physically, but by a single look that left him slack jawed and shaking. Without the mask, female, pink-haired, sleep deprived, and crying, Max had managed the soulless, spine-chilling stare of the Dark Knight. Not only that, but she'd terrified its own creator with it.

"Get out," commanded the low voice resonating from deep inside her throat. It wasn't Max; it was the Bat.

Wayne stared, knowing he had lost. He had lost her. Then he half-closed his eyes and studied her, perhaps for the last time. "You're taller," he remarked at last.

"I know," was the reply, allowing no discussion.

With that he turned and began the long walk up the stairs to the Manor. But like Orpheus, who looked back into the mouth of Hades at the last moment, he too looked down from the top stair and found a modern day Persephone staring back at him. She stood by the computer, one hand resting on the keys, the other stroking a worn leather jacket that had been carefully draped over the empty chair. As always, it would have been better not to look. He left the cave as quickly as he could, and when the Grandfather clock shut behind him, he knew there would be no going back.

He stared at it, wondering. The new Justice League, or his contact in Macau, perhaps. Or maybe just hot tea and a warm chair by the fire, the cold comfort for every old knight who had found himself totally and rightfully bested. He walked into the great room, and there he saw a dark antique phone waiting on a polished pedestal. But he also found an armchair and Ace curled up before the crackling fire.

XXX

Max waited to hear the latch click before she pressed the right combination of keys, locking the entrance through the old grandfather clock. Then she turned away from the computer, taking in what was now her personal domain and having no clue about what to do with it. Count supplies and gauge whether she could last another eleven months on her own steam, she supposed. It had been a month already, and eleven would make a year. That was the critical period for finding Terry. If she hadn't found him by then, her chances of doing so all but die—disappeared.

There was a critical period for everything. Wayne had missed his chance to wrest the bat suit from her by a good two weeks. The same went for earning her trust. She leaned against the computer console, thinking. If the Justice League wasn't set upon her in the next two hours, they wouldn't be coming. She stood up and stalked off, not about to wait for them. Then she stopped at turned back. She knelt on the rock floor and picked up the Bat's mask. The armor was still stiff and it was much like retrieving the head of some beheaded demon. She studied it, turning it from side to side. She had fixed the too feminine jaw line problem she'd noticed two nights ago, but now it looked too much like Terry. She stroked its brow absently. She'd have to adjust it again. Later.

Gently she placed the mask in the seat of the computer chair before walking off towards the area by the showers. She stopped by a row of lockers. Why a solitary creature like the Batman needed an entire row was beyond her. She would ask Terry when she found him. She went to the first locker and opened it. Empty. The next: empty. Empty, empty, empty, not. She had almost missed it, but when she went to move on, she saw an odd reflection playing on the inside of the door near the top. The top shelf was over her head. Though she had grown, there was a big difference between "not tiny" and "giraffe."

Groping with her hand, she came across a folded set of papers. She pulled it out and opened the tri-folded affair. The first word stopped her heart. Terry. She closed her eyes, praying for a moment that this was a clue. Then she read the full letter.

Terry,

First a thanks and an apology. I guess I owe you all that for the rest of my life. Next congrats are in order. You're This close to getting the old Bat's full approval. Dick so jealous it's sickening.
So down to business. Cripes you handed me a challenge, kid. I'd say you owe me one, but…yeah. Well you wanted it, so you got it: the perfect, undetectable, crystal audio/visual spy camera. Granted, it's a disposable spy camera, but I'm not God. That's the old man's job.
Well, it's in the package I sent you, plus a couple of spares. Full instructions are in the rest of these pages, but since you'll probably never look at them, just stick the prong in the right hole. Basic Sex Ed.

See yah, kid,
Drake
P.S.: I conned Dick into donating one of those sweet new Bludhaven models to your cause. Machine Heaven on two wheels, kid.
P.P.S.: The old man specifically forbade all of us to help you. Ha! Right.
P.P.P.S.: I hope you still wear that sweet looking nose ring. Sorta important, that.

Max frowned. "Nose ring?" She flipped through the instructions and paled at the sight of a diagram. In an instant, she was back in the locker, hunting for the source of the reflection on the door. She came away with a small plastic bag. Of nose rings. She closed her eyes. Terry had spy cameras on him before he disappeared. In the shape of nose rings. Nose rings perfectly identical to the one he had given her a month ago, that she had mistaken for a parting gift, that she had just hurled down into the guano-filled depths of the bat cave. She had just thrown away her only clue. Shit.

She was having a really bad night. It was one of two talents that ran in her family. The entire Gibson Clan was remarkably adept at totally and irrevocably screwing good things up. As for the other talent…

Max closed the door of the locker slowly and eyed the panel of metal with a practiced eye before whacking her forehead into it. And again, and again, and again. She could do this for hours. It was a gift.

"Meh, so I lied; the chapter is kinda important. It sorta changes your whole perception of the story. Max is the Bat, and damn did she just screw up.

"…So. Where's Terry, then?" (Just because you guys might be a little scared, he IS in the land of the living, 'kay?)

Out of curiosity, who sawthis coming?

…Okay, I admit it! This chapter has me freaked! I mean…I choose to tell you this NOW, on the EIGHTH chapter! What was I thinking? It was one thing to trick you into thinking Two was Terry, but this is me trying to get you to believe that Terry was Batman—and we all know how impossible that is…snicker…um, ahem—the problem being that you KNOW Terry is Batman, and if I tell you anything different, there are going to be MAJOR REPERCUSSIONS! Like me being roasted over Flames like a damned pig on a spit! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

…Or maybe I'm totally overreacting, who knows?

Have a great Memorial Day, guys.