application; capeandcowl
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: bluemoon
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: emeralddarkness
IM: ceruleangarnet
E-MAIL: blue.crystalwings [AT] gmail DOT com
RETURNING: RETURNING! AGAIN! WITH PINKIE PIE!
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Terrence "Terry" McGinnis [Batman]
FANDOM: Batman Beyond
CHRONOLOGY: Halfway through Superman/Batman Annual #4
CLASS: 100% Hero, he's the classic bad boy gone good.
SUPERHERO NAME: Batman [The Tomorrow Knight]
ALTER EGO: Terry McGinnis, 19 year old PA extraordinaire
BACKGROUND:As with all other forms of Batman, like, ever, Batman Beyond takes place in Gotham. That being said, this is a far different Gotham than the original Dark Knight patrolled some 40 years earlier. Among the obvious differences are hovercars, fashion trends that include 'splicing' one's DNA with a variety of animals, and the fact that Asia appears to have taken over the world - or at least to be well on the way, based on the number of Asian characters splashed across buildings. Technology has clearly advanced, kids talk with funny new slang, people tend to carry laser guns rather than guns that shoot bullets, and physical cash appears to have been completely replaced with plastic cash cards. But hey, this is still Gotham, and some things never change. In the 20 years since Batman retired, Gotham has sunk back into the darkness it's always been known for. Gangs and criminals roam the streets. The current D.A., Sam Young, and his wife, Commissioner Barbara Gordon, try to hold the city together. Still, there's only so much they can do.
Batman Beyond 'starts' when an aging Bruce Wayne decides to hang up his cape for good. A mission went wrong when his heart decided that both he and it were getting too old for this, and he had a heart attack while attempting the rescue of a kidnap victim. As a result Bruce was forced to threaten a criminal with a gun, in order to ensure his survival and the survival of the girl he was rescuing, and that was the end of that. He retired the suit, turned off the power in the Batcave, promising to never again return to the night life. And, unlike other versions of the multiverse where one of the sidekicks might have taken over the role, or taken up the slack before Bruce's heart decided to force retirement, once Bruce was gone there was no one left to do so. About twenty years before this, the Joker had gotten his hands on Tim - the second and last Robin - and tortured him, twisting him and driving him insane, in such a way that led to Bruce firing everyone and largely refusing to even speak to any of his former partners, to avoid endangering them in such a way ever again. In the end this meant that, with him gone, the days of Gotham's superheroes were past.
Or, well, that was the idea.
The plot of the show proper starts 20 years after Bruce's retirement, when a boy named Terry McGinnis is 16 years old.
Terry's history is a liiiittle complicated, and it starts long before Bruce was actually retired. Some time back when Bruce was still doing the crime-fighting thing, there was a woman named Amanda Waller in charge of an organization known as Cadmus, which was dedicated to protecting the world from the potential threat that could be the result if superheroes ever went rogue. After a while of fighting this holy crusade against all metas, Amanda decided that actually Batman was a really good idea, and that the world should always have a Batman. For some reason she also seemed to believe that Batman was required by universal law or something to have Bruce's magicgenes, so one day she swiped some of Bruce's DNA and engineered a virus thingie with it and then set about tracking down a couple whose psych profiles matched those of Martha and Thomas Wayne as closely as possible. Who she ended up with were Warren and Mary McGinnis.
So, in order to set Project Batman Beyond in motion (i c wat u did thar DC) she somehow got into Warren what he thought was a flu shot but which was actually Bruce!virus, and somehow resulted in altering the DNA of Warren's reproductive material so that it was instead actually Bruce Wayne's. Sort of. Clone Bruce Wayne. Or something.
So then Warren and Mary went on to have their first kid, a boy they named Terry, who looks just like Bruce which makes sense because he's genetically Bruce's son even if he's technically biologically Warren's.
Are you confused yet? That's okay I am too.
Anyway Waller somehow had figured out that Bruce had decided to be Batman when he was 8, and his parents were murdered after leaving a theatre, and so this became a key element in Project Batman Beyond. Pretty much the entire plan can be boiled down to:
Step 1: Clone Bruce
Step 2: Kill Parents
Step 3: ???
Step 4: BATMAN!
Having accomplished step 1, it was time to move on to step 2. So, when Terry was 8 years old and leaving a theatre with his parents, Waller hied Bruce's ex-fiance to whack Terry's folks. Luckily for Terry, poor kid, said ex-fiance backed out when she was about 2 seconds from beheading Terry's parents in front of his horrified eyes, and the little family went blissfully on, none the wiser. Also fortunately, this little incident got Waller to think that hang on, maybe there was something a little wrong about orchestrating murder to create Batman, so she left Terry's family alone. Less fortunately, a few years after this incident (and after his younger brother Matt had been born) his parents decided to get a divorce.
They separated when Terry was 13 or 14 years old, and he reacted in a fairly typical teenage manner. He was an angry kid and wanted to take it out on the world and his parents, and consequently got involved in a gang run by a friend of his, Charlie Bigelow. The exact nature of the crimes he engaged in while in said gang are a little unsure. He tells a friend that they stuck mostly with small time stuff, "busting windows and shoplifting," but it seems quite likely that he was downplaying the severity because he dislikes that time in his life, based on a later conversation that he had with Bruce. He was probably involved with drugs, at the very least. Anyway, regardless of what he did or did not do, he was apparently never caught at anything serious (though to be fair this might be because his hobbies seem to have involved parkour and more parkour back in those days, judging by some of the moves he busts as Batman) until one day, when Charlie decided he wanted to move his gang up in the world. He planned some kind of heist, and took Terry along. Apparently he didn't know what was going on when they first started out, but he went with it even after he found out what was going down.
And then the next thing you know there's cops everywhere, and off he went for 90 days in Juvenile Hall.
Luckily for Terry this was a turning point; the 3 months in juvie appear to have been a wake-up call, and he straightened out when he was released. He still had a temper on him, and was still prone to getting into fights and such, but shed most of his habits upon entering High School and generally went from the kind of kid who will break windows to the kind who beats up bullies. He also got himself a girlfriend, Dana Tan, who was undeniably a good influence. All in all his life was working out pretty well.
Then his dad (Warren, that is; nobody knows about the Bruce thing) got murdered. He discovered a new nerve gas/biological weapon/virus/whatever it actually was that his boss Derek Powers, the CEO of WaynePowers, was using the company to manufacture and got killed for his troubles. Powers tried to cover his tracks by framing the Jokerz (a gang who wears clown makeup and such and plays cruel pranks in emulation of the original Joker, who vanished 40 years prior) for the murder. Warren, however, had managed to leave some kind of trail, and Terry quickly discovered that all was not well in the state of Denmark. And, if he hadn't accidentally discovered that Bruce Wayne had once been Batman a few days prior, things might have ended very differently. But they did, and he had, so Terry took the disk of incriminating evidence to Bruce, because he had been Batman and still was Bruce flippin Wayne, surely he could do something about rotten stuff at WaynePowers. But Bruce refused to help him, and told Terry to take the disk to the police. Terry tried things Bruce's way, but when that didn't work out decided to take matters into his own hands. He broke into the Batcave and stole the high-tech Batsuit that Bruce had been using shortly before his retirement, somehow figured out how to use it without seriously injuring himself in about 3 seconds, and headed off to see justice and revenge. After a few speedbumps involving Bruce expressing his extreme displeasure with the fact that Terry had just helped himself to his equipment were overcome without Terry dying, and Terry explained his reasons for taking matters into his own hands, Bruce agreed to help Terry find and stop the illegal shipment of that nerve gas/virus/toxin/whatever that was taking place that night. Terry managed to Not Die and apparently did it well enough to impress Bruce, who came to visit his apartment and offer him a job as his "assistant" shortly thereafter, provided Terry could live up to his exacting standards. Terry jumped at the opportunity. And for his pains spent the next who knows how long being perpetually sleep deprived and beating up and being beaten up by various criminals. Ah, the life of glamor.
Anyway, Terry went from Terry McGinnis, Punk Kid and Ordinary High School Student to Terry McGinnis, Batman.
And ordinary high school student.
And Mr. Wayne's PA.
And boyfriend to a girl who really couldn't know how busy his life had suddenly become.
And Son With Responsibilities.
Life became pretty busy pretty quickly what with trying to balance two and a half lives, all while attempting to look normal for Dana and his Mom and Matt and everyone at school and then trying to keep his grades up and all the other things that a normal teenager has to juggle, PLUS trying to be more responsible around the house. As he went on, trying to fit himself into this new role of Batman and not die along the way he had lots of adventures of varying quality, got himself a rogues gallery, got himself an off-again on-again villain love interest (Ten of the Royal Flush Gang - or Melanie, as her real name is), where things generally don't go anywhere because he is (usually) still dating Dana and Terry is pretty good at being faithful. He missed lots of dates and other appointments with Dana though, who as a result breaks up with him regularly, sssso.
The only other big incident that happens in this span of time that isn't your usual 'find a villain and occasionally blow them up' (oh Terry) is that a friend and schoolmate of his, Max (Maxine) Gibson managed by complete accident to figure out he's Batman. Whoops. So she helps him out sometimes and balances that usefulness by constantly asking to be allowed out in the field with Terry. When she DOES come out with him, she rarely does all that much but make things worse, so mostly he tries to keep her away. As does Bruce.
Terry went on, sometimes training with killer robots who throw live grenades at him (oh Bruce) and generally became better and better at Batman. Then, when he was 17 years old and off headed off to stop some maniac from blowing up a library and HOPEFULLY still make it on time to a date with Dana, suddenly he wasn't in Gotham anymore.
He was in the City.
Whoops.
Getting yanked in like that was certainly an experience, especially as (upon being ported in) he was told that he'd already been there, and had no memory of it. He snarked back and forth with a few Batfam members who didn't even exist in his world, never mind that Bruce never said anything about anyone ever anyway so how was he to know. He also met Raven, who he had (according to her) been fast friends with that last time that he'd been flung in here. She had been crushed when he met her (again) and had no memory of ever having known her, so because Terry is a sucker for folks in trouble he decided to be friends with her again. He ended up living with her (no not like that) in this nice big house that she had several hundred miles from the City and teleporting back to fight crime and vampire nazis and stuff. After a while of turning his room into a deadly trap for anyone who tried to get in before ever sleeping he decided that Raven was telling the truth and not actually looking to kill him and relaxed a bit. He adjusted to having superpowers, aka hit his head on the ceiling a whole heck of a lot and nearly crash landing a dragon into the middle of the street, did some training, almost died a few times. The usual.
Then Raven got ported out.
Terry flipped out and flew back home manually, via the suit, worried that everyone had been blown up or something. That, at least, wasn't the case, but without Raven there to be a calming influence, tensions quickly began to climb between the people left at chez Raven, and after like 5 days Terry took off again for the City, to set up shop there. Said action was a bit premature, as she got ported back in for a little while, but she left not long after anyway. Instead he got a job working for Tim, one of the former Robins, and set up in a bat safehouse. He made firmer friends with more of the batfam, including Carrie Kelly - another Robin - who pretty much stalked him until he gave in and let her.
He went on, he fought crime, had a few moments of internal crisis over what was he doing, and began to feel increasingly restless. Bruce - his universe's Bruce, the 80 year old grumpy guy - got ported in for about 5 minutes before getting shipped off again, leaving Terry confused, frustrated, and angry. After having been in the City maybe 8 months or so he met Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. They chatted for a while over the network, with her not knowing he was Batman despite him knowing her title, and decided to meet for coffee. This coffee date got waylaid by a homeless puppy that they found on the sidewalk, who Terry decided to adopt.
Then he got ported out again.
Back home, Terry managed to defeat the guy who really liked his explosives and went on to have many adventures of a similar nature, learning and growing and honing his skills, and becoming more and more Batmanish. He teamed up with the Justice League Unlimited for a little while and managed to save everyone from Superman and the mind controlling starfish he was being possessed by, stopped a cult of snake-worshipers from dropping a bomb into a volcano to cause global warming so that they could live safely in their new half dinosaur bodies (look it was a weird episode), met Bruce as he'd been maybe when he was 50 or so, and fought by his side for a little while. He'd been at the gig for about 3 years total when something completely unexpected happened. The Joker, the original, appeared back in Gotham again.
Bruce freaked out about this and briefly forced Terry to quit being Batman in an attempt to protect him. This didn't quite work out; on his first night of being fired, some Jokerz (who were playing minions to Joker, now that he was back) had found Terry at the club that he was at with Dana. They'd proceeded to try to kill him and Dana both, apparently just because Dana was with him. Terry put his Batman on and managed to avoid being killed, but Dana got hurt and was hospitalized. Terry sped off to see Bruce to demand some answers as to why the Jokerz had been after him, specifically, and arrived to find the Batcave busted open and a scene laid out that was nightmarishly like the scene of his father's murder - the Joker knew who Bruce was, and had attacked him. Luckily Bruce wasn't quite dead, just badly poisoned, and Terry managed to get him the antidote in time. Afterwards, as Bruce recovered, Terry convinced Barbara to tell him the story of what had happened 40 years ago, and so learned about the horrors that the Joker had inflicted on Tim.
Terry suspected that Tim's madness had not been completely cured after what Joker had done to him, and some part of J. J. - the twisted double that Joker had tortured Tim into - was surfacing, explaining the recent attacks. He flew off to Tim's workplace, where his suspicions were apparently confirmed. After escaping the trap that the Joker had laid for him, Terry spent a while dodging lasers shot from an orbiting defense satellite that the Joker had hijacked and tracked Joker back to his current hideout, where the truth came out.
Tim was the Joker- kind of.
When Joker'd had Tim in his grasp 40 years ago, he'd implanted a microchip in his brain, encoded with the Joker's personality, memories, and DNA. After years of becoming stronger in Tim's subconscious the Joker was finally starting to take over, hijacking Tim's body to continue his crime spree. The Joker informed Terry of his intention to kill Bruce, Dana, and Terry's mother and brother along with hundreds of other innocents, and then there was an epic fight where Terry got the best of the Joker by doing something Bruce had never done, and openly mocking him. Joker lost his temper, and half-succeeded in killing Terry. Terry, however, managed to use the Joker's own joy-buzzer against him to fry the chip in Tim's brain, curing him of his Joker possession, before dragging him to safety.
Tim ended up in the hospital, where Bruce came to talk to him for the first time in like 40 years, and told Terry that he was the one who made Batman worthwhile, not the other way around, daw.
Some little time after this Terry started finding goons from Metropolis were starting to flood his city, and starting to flood it with new drugs. Upon closer analysis it turned out that the drugs had trace elements of kryptonite. So Terry ended up going on a little field trip, off to Metropolis to infiltrate the gang who was helping to make and distribute the drugs. He busted into a warehouse with them and grabbed some of the relevant ingredients for illegal drugs before getting jammed back into the City again, after having gained a new level in technopathy.
Almost the first person he talked to was Tim.
The Joker had been a bad experience, and having to fight the Joker (again) with Robin's memories and training (again) was not something that Terry wanted to do, so he gassed Tim, and then he and Carrie chained him up and swept him for microchips, just to be sure. Batfam in general proceeded to read him the riot act over this, and Bruce put him on probation.
Meanwhile it'd been like a week and a half in-city, as opposed to the like two years it'd been back home, and Terry (unsurprisingly) had completely forgotten about his make-up coffee date with Supergirl. She'd come over to make sure he was still alive and had accidentally knocked his door down, and seen the kryptonite that Bruce had given him and which he'd pulled out just in case Kon came after him for timnapping Tim. Kara put the fact that he was maybe too friendly together with the fact that he had lead-lined walls and kryptonite out on the table and had been trained to fight and, unsurprisingly, came up with the notion that he was trying to kill her or one of the other supers. She accidentally cracked a few of his ribs, he batman'd his way away from her, and explained the nature of his secret identity. Somehow this lead to playing monopoly, which lead to flirting, which lead to making out, which lead to the two of them projecting awkward at each other for a while. After something of the kind happened a few times (less the Kara breaking ribs and Terry poisoning her), they decided that they were probably dating and decided to go with it.
Then Kara got ported out.
Terry busted a lot of heads in anger and some grief for a while and took care of her cat in addition to the puppy he'd adopted. Luckily for him, not long after this Kara got ported back in again. Terry, figuring that in this place you might as well treat things as now or never as that seemed to be how they worked, had told her that he loved her - shortly before he got ported out. Again.
Now he's coming back again.
PERSONALITY:Terry is very much a bad boy gone good. He's got a rough background and is very aware of that fact - how else could he use it to his advantage? Though he sometimes acts more the anti-hero than a straight-up hero (hi, Batman), he's still got a heart of gold. He's in this business and deals with the crappy hours and constant cuts and bruises and fights with his girlfriend and the occasional broken bone because he wants to help others who can't help themselves. Gotham can be a bad place to live - he knows that better than most, as for a while he was one of the ones who made it so. And, even though according to the state his 3 months in juvie wiped him clean of all that, his soul tells him different. When he puts on the suit, he's trying to make up for past sins, so he'll fight hard for justice.
Terry learns much better by doing than by being taught, which usually means that one way or another he's gonna end up going off and making a whole bunch of his own mistakes no matter what he's told. As a result, either he'll succeed brilliantly or if not, he'll at least have screwed up in truly spectacular ways. But as should be expected, after he gets the hang of something, he starts picking things up really, really quickly. He makes the same mistakes twice occasionally, but not often - he's learned not to, as doing that gets painful really fast. And there's obviously a pretty sharp learning curve for someone aspiring to be Batman - he has to learn fast or he'd be dead equally quickly.
Terry is very much a protector at heart. You show him someone smaller and weaker, or just less able than he is, and he'll generally watch out for them. As a result he's ended up picking a lot of fights with random gang members who try tormenting innocent citizens, or with bullies who try to pick on kids at school. He maybe doesn't always plan this as well as he might, but he's good at thinking on his feet, so when combined with his ability to fight he generally ends up okay. He also has a short temper, though he loses it a lot less these days than he did before he started patrolling the streets by night. This is a good thing. He doesn't think as well when he's angry, and is more prone to viciousness.
He's a nice kid (usually), but Terry is far from a saint. Push him too hard, and you will get serious consequences - a few times Bruce has had to rein him in, and Terry seems less concerned with the fates of the various villains than Bruce normally was. His childhood was rougher than Bruce's, and he will sometimes show it in how he behaves.
Like his mentor, he adjusts pretty quickly and easily to new situations - especially at this point - which is good, it quickens his response to anything new and unexpected. Unlike Bruce, Terry likes the sound of his own voice. He likes being sarcastic or witty for the sake of being sarcastic or witty - an audience is preferable, but doesn't appear to be strictly necessary. Knowing that he's being clever is apparently enough. As a result of this, Terry really enjoys jibing his opponents, and sometimes just making remarks to himself on the situation in general, in volatile situations. At times this isn't a good thing - he can distract himself, though usually these days he's got a good enough sense of his environment that he won't, no matter how much witty banter he gets into. Other times this trait actually helps him - it throws his opponents off balance, distracts or enrages them, and makes them unable to concentrate. What happens sort of depends on who he's facing - the most notable example of how his love of words can be really, really useful is in the movie, Return of the Joker. Near the end, in an amazing three minute speech, Terry is able to completely destabilize the Joker by openly mocking him - something that Bruce never would have done.
He's opportunistic, to a degree - he'll tell the truth or lie, but appears to prefer sticking to the truth whenever possible. He's opportunistic in his fighting style as well. Terry is willing to take cheap shots that the original Batman or Robin wouldn't have - apparently as far as Terry is concerned, in the end tends to justify the means. However, he never sinks as low as he could in this regard, and he does specifically say that he would never kill an opponent. Of course, being a direct cause of their death doesn't seem to be quite the same thing. It's happened several times now, and Terry's never seemed to beat himself up about it.
At first, his brashness landed him in trouble pretty regularly. Mostly he's overcome that at this point, and knows when to rein himself in.
Terry is a good big brother but doesn't appear to know how to handle small children. He's generally a poor student as far as his academic life goes, despite knowing some impressive things about math and being very interested in things like biology and chemistry. There's a reason for this, once again: Batman. It's hard to stay awake all day in class when you've already been awake fighting crime all night. He's generally seen as something of a flake by friends and family because he's never home (Batman) but he is a sweetheart, and will try to make things up to the people he keeps on letting down. He tries to help take care of his family, as he's now effectively the man of the house.
Finally, he thinks very, very highly of Bruce Wayne, and looks up to him. He'll sometimes get into fights with him, mostly because he's a teenager and this is something that teenagers frequently do, especially as Bruce pushes him really, really hard. But he loves Bruce, who has become something of a father figure, and if there's something he can do to keep the old man (or his secret) safe, he'll usually go for it, no matter the cost to himself. Terry can be something of a martyr, but then that's probably a requirement for someone in a position like him.
He is smart, and is learning to look hard at the details - he's very serious about being Batman, and has put a lot of extra hours into looking through Bruce's database. This pays off for him, and he can prove he's serious. Still, of course, not so serious that he can't have fun. Sometimes nights off are very good things.
POWER:The real power that the porter granted Terry is the ability to manipulate the effects of gravity on a small scale. He can now adjust his own personal gravity, and the gravity of anything he's touching, to make it extremely light or very, very heavy. So. Being able to jump as though he was a flea? He can do that. Making a villain (provided he's touching them) so unbearably heavy that they cannot move, or even crush them under their own weight? He can do that too. Holding up a building, on the other hand, would prove to be too much for him - but he'd probably be able to delay it from falling for at least a few seconds.
In addition, he got some basic, minimal physical enhancement - he's stronger than he was, faster than he was, has better stamina, has better senses (particularly hearing, and his night vision these days is none too shabby), better reflexes, heals a bit faster, etc etc. He's not as powerful as he would be in the suit, but he'd still be able to do pretty darn well for just another kid without it.
Finally he's getting slight technopathy. It's nothing too extreme, but it'll augment his hacking abilities and such, and let him repair the suit from anything but really really serious damage.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:[Video]
[The screen isn't showing much, though occasionally the camera catches a flash of black-gloved hands as the video turns. Someone is fooling with their communicator. There's a voice going on in the background, fluctuating in volume depending on the position of the mic at the moment.]
... well this rips. Really. Totally schway. I like suddenly showing up God knows where and being bossed around by computers. Even better when I don't get an explanation for any of this, just packed off with some outdated looking weird little whatever this is. Oh man, I'm fragged. They're both gonna kill me, it's just gonna be a fight to see who gets to have me fir- wait a sec....
[The camera stops moving on the corner of a red triangle against a black background, and there is a pause as Terry realizes that he managed to find the 'on' switch a few seconds ago. He takes a further moment to collect himself, and then a second later, the recording switches to voice.]
Hey. Uh, if anyone's listening to this, could someone please tell me where I am? And, if possible, what's going on and how I got here?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:Being a hero was a thankless job.
Terry had always known this - he wasn't in the business for all the nice cards he'd be getting (and good thing; getting any of those didn't seem likely) and he didn't expect to come away with anything but bruises and hopefully that warm fuzzy feeling. But the suit was his penitence, his way to make up for the fact that a few years ago he might have been one of the guys he was always bringing in. Karma. Something like that. He didn't expect things to be easy, he didn't expect them to be nice, and he was still always grateful he'd gotten the chance. Being Batman wasn't something everybody got to do, and he had a record. Still, despite this, there were nights when he'd rather postpone the honor for a few hours. And maybe have a social life. Or get halfway decent grades.
He had homework to do - and really, you'd think that the teachers here would be understanding about things like failing to get your English in on time because you were out until three in the morning stopping riots/petty theft/murder/etc, but no. Of course not. That would be too simple. Some things never changed, and apparently failing school in an attempt to keep the city safe was one of them. So one couldn't really blame him if he took some of his frustration out on some of the thieves who kept on wasting his time, now could they?
"You know," he said as he (slightly grumpily, but not viciously) tested the cords that were wrapped around the pair who had attempted a smash-and-grab at the jewelry store, "back home when thieves like you got a chance like this, they were grateful for it. They planned. Or the smart ones did, anyway - they still got caught, but that's not the point. All you criminal types here are so spoiled - another megalomaniac shuts the power down, oh boy, happens like once a week. So off you go again and you don't even appreciate it and so even though I live in a city stuffed to the gills with heros now I still can't get a night off-"
"Uh-" one of the thieves began to say.
"Shut up. So even though I live in this place that has more heros than one place should ever need, I have to keep on chasing down dregs like you because you can't sit on your hands for five minutes. I mean really. Is that really so much to ask?"
"Hey buddy-" the other thief said weakly, before he was cut off.
"No. Now you just-" From down the street, there was the sound of someone running. "Slag it," Terry muttered under his breath, but duty called. He activated his wings quickly and rolled his shoulders a little as they flitted out; he was used to the sensation by now, but it still felt weird. You could feel them sliding through the fabric, almost against your skin but not quite and slick like feeling water through a film of plastic. Only not. A second later he activated the thrusters in his boots, and at this point he was ready for the sensation - the sudden, vicious kick of power and almost uncomfortable warmth that soaked through even the heat-absorbing coils built into the suit to spread across your soles. He hadn't been the first time he'd tried this (that had been an experience, boy oh boy), but even back then the sheer insanity and adrenaline rush of suddenly flying had been addictive, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that it had felt like he was about to crash into a building and die.
Terry loved to fly. It was one of the things that made it worth it - the bruises, the cuts, the occasional broken bones, the constant daytime haze of exhaustion, the lies and fumbling half-truths. It was a powerful motivater, knowing that darting through the maze of skyscrapers was entirely possible and being able to see the orange of the sunrise in a way that not a lot of people had- but it was only one of the things that made him keep coming back. Because, more than he loved flying, he loved the city, and he loved the life in it. People deserved to be able to go about their business, it was as simple as that, and so he was out to make sure that they could. So whatever. He'd deal. The City wasn't exactly Gotham (though it sure FELT like home sometimes - a psycho on every street corner) but it still had people who just wanted to be people.
So he swept across the few blocks, to where glass was tinkling against the sidewalk again, and landed lightly on a dead street-light. They looked young, whoever they were. "Well there, boys and girls," he said, and their heads snapped towards him. He grinned. "It's a little late to be out on a school night, wouldn't you say?"
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:There are some things in the show that Terry does which he wouldn't physically be able to do unless he'd had some background in parkour/free running. If you have no idea what this is, these are three good videos to start with, and youtube has lots and lots more.
Parkour is basically the ability to run up walls, jump 20 foot walls, jump over cars, jump off buildings, ETC ETC, or acting the part of a spider monkey/squirrel hybrid in human form. Also known as the cops will never ever catch you. He is or was on his school's wrestling team. In a semi-related note, he's not so good at the Martial Arts as Bruce is, but he's good in a fight despite never having had training - at least before taking up the cape. He learned how to fight on the streets, so his style is unorthodox but effective, and he's not afraid to fight dirty. Since becoming Batman he's had training in fighting and he has honed his body to at least Olympic levels in general (YOU try training under Bruce and having anything else happen). As is expected of Batman, he engages in regular and rigorous training to minimize his reliance on the Batsuit. Said training has left him with exceptional reflexes in addition to impressive everything else - without the suit he dodges gunfire, and falls several stories and lands on his feet. Among other things. He also - while wearing the Batsuit, but still - he managed to beat someone up while trapped in an illusion that left him unable to see his opponent, his environment or anything in it, and apparently trapped in an endless raging windstorm. In another notable instance, he runs around the room on the walls. He has the bad habit of leaving his left side open while fighting, or maybe had the habit at this point, as he has been notified of the problem and been working on it.
He's not the detective that Bruce is, but he has been trained in such and is improving.
He can change his voice easily - he takes on a deeper, harsher tone when in the Batsuit consciously and of his own accord, both to strike terror into the hearts of criminals and to disguise the fact that he's only 19. He can also do a very nice Brooklyn accent when he wants.
So basically, Batman! From the future! Now with parkour! Also his batsuit can do a lot.
Finally!
Terry is from 30 odd years in the future. He is a teenager, he uses slang, and the slang is different. So, for the curious, I have compiled a partial and under-construction dictionary of that crazy futuretalk.
NAME: bluemoon
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: emeralddarkness
IM: ceruleangarnet
E-MAIL: blue.crystalwings [AT] gmail DOT com
RETURNING: RETURNING! AGAIN! WITH PINKIE PIE!
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Terrence "Terry" McGinnis [Batman]
FANDOM: Batman Beyond
CHRONOLOGY: Halfway through Superman/Batman Annual #4
CLASS: 100% Hero, he's the classic bad boy gone good.
SUPERHERO NAME: Batman [The Tomorrow Knight]
ALTER EGO: Terry McGinnis, 19 year old PA extraordinaire
BACKGROUND:As with all other forms of Batman, like, ever, Batman Beyond takes place in Gotham. That being said, this is a far different Gotham than the original Dark Knight patrolled some 40 years earlier. Among the obvious differences are hovercars, fashion trends that include 'splicing' one's DNA with a variety of animals, and the fact that Asia appears to have taken over the world - or at least to be well on the way, based on the number of Asian characters splashed across buildings. Technology has clearly advanced, kids talk with funny new slang, people tend to carry laser guns rather than guns that shoot bullets, and physical cash appears to have been completely replaced with plastic cash cards. But hey, this is still Gotham, and some things never change. In the 20 years since Batman retired, Gotham has sunk back into the darkness it's always been known for. Gangs and criminals roam the streets. The current D.A., Sam Young, and his wife, Commissioner Barbara Gordon, try to hold the city together. Still, there's only so much they can do.
Batman Beyond 'starts' when an aging Bruce Wayne decides to hang up his cape for good. A mission went wrong when his heart decided that both he and it were getting too old for this, and he had a heart attack while attempting the rescue of a kidnap victim. As a result Bruce was forced to threaten a criminal with a gun, in order to ensure his survival and the survival of the girl he was rescuing, and that was the end of that. He retired the suit, turned off the power in the Batcave, promising to never again return to the night life. And, unlike other versions of the multiverse where one of the sidekicks might have taken over the role, or taken up the slack before Bruce's heart decided to force retirement, once Bruce was gone there was no one left to do so. About twenty years before this, the Joker had gotten his hands on Tim - the second and last Robin - and tortured him, twisting him and driving him insane, in such a way that led to Bruce firing everyone and largely refusing to even speak to any of his former partners, to avoid endangering them in such a way ever again. In the end this meant that, with him gone, the days of Gotham's superheroes were past.
Or, well, that was the idea.
The plot of the show proper starts 20 years after Bruce's retirement, when a boy named Terry McGinnis is 16 years old.
Terry's history is a liiiittle complicated, and it starts long before Bruce was actually retired. Some time back when Bruce was still doing the crime-fighting thing, there was a woman named Amanda Waller in charge of an organization known as Cadmus, which was dedicated to protecting the world from the potential threat that could be the result if superheroes ever went rogue. After a while of fighting this holy crusade against all metas, Amanda decided that actually Batman was a really good idea, and that the world should always have a Batman. For some reason she also seemed to believe that Batman was required by universal law or something to have Bruce's magicgenes, so one day she swiped some of Bruce's DNA and engineered a virus thingie with it and then set about tracking down a couple whose psych profiles matched those of Martha and Thomas Wayne as closely as possible. Who she ended up with were Warren and Mary McGinnis.
So, in order to set Project Batman Beyond in motion (i c wat u did thar DC) she somehow got into Warren what he thought was a flu shot but which was actually Bruce!virus, and somehow resulted in altering the DNA of Warren's reproductive material so that it was instead actually Bruce Wayne's. Sort of. Clone Bruce Wayne. Or something.
So then Warren and Mary went on to have their first kid, a boy they named Terry, who looks just like Bruce which makes sense because he's genetically Bruce's son even if he's technically biologically Warren's.
Are you confused yet? That's okay I am too.
Anyway Waller somehow had figured out that Bruce had decided to be Batman when he was 8, and his parents were murdered after leaving a theatre, and so this became a key element in Project Batman Beyond. Pretty much the entire plan can be boiled down to:
Step 1: Clone Bruce
Step 2: Kill Parents
Step 3: ???
Step 4: BATMAN!
Having accomplished step 1, it was time to move on to step 2. So, when Terry was 8 years old and leaving a theatre with his parents, Waller hied Bruce's ex-fiance to whack Terry's folks. Luckily for Terry, poor kid, said ex-fiance backed out when she was about 2 seconds from beheading Terry's parents in front of his horrified eyes, and the little family went blissfully on, none the wiser. Also fortunately, this little incident got Waller to think that hang on, maybe there was something a little wrong about orchestrating murder to create Batman, so she left Terry's family alone. Less fortunately, a few years after this incident (and after his younger brother Matt had been born) his parents decided to get a divorce.
They separated when Terry was 13 or 14 years old, and he reacted in a fairly typical teenage manner. He was an angry kid and wanted to take it out on the world and his parents, and consequently got involved in a gang run by a friend of his, Charlie Bigelow. The exact nature of the crimes he engaged in while in said gang are a little unsure. He tells a friend that they stuck mostly with small time stuff, "busting windows and shoplifting," but it seems quite likely that he was downplaying the severity because he dislikes that time in his life, based on a later conversation that he had with Bruce. He was probably involved with drugs, at the very least. Anyway, regardless of what he did or did not do, he was apparently never caught at anything serious (though to be fair this might be because his hobbies seem to have involved parkour and more parkour back in those days, judging by some of the moves he busts as Batman) until one day, when Charlie decided he wanted to move his gang up in the world. He planned some kind of heist, and took Terry along. Apparently he didn't know what was going on when they first started out, but he went with it even after he found out what was going down.
And then the next thing you know there's cops everywhere, and off he went for 90 days in Juvenile Hall.
Luckily for Terry this was a turning point; the 3 months in juvie appear to have been a wake-up call, and he straightened out when he was released. He still had a temper on him, and was still prone to getting into fights and such, but shed most of his habits upon entering High School and generally went from the kind of kid who will break windows to the kind who beats up bullies. He also got himself a girlfriend, Dana Tan, who was undeniably a good influence. All in all his life was working out pretty well.
Then his dad (Warren, that is; nobody knows about the Bruce thing) got murdered. He discovered a new nerve gas/biological weapon/virus/whatever it actually was that his boss Derek Powers, the CEO of WaynePowers, was using the company to manufacture and got killed for his troubles. Powers tried to cover his tracks by framing the Jokerz (a gang who wears clown makeup and such and plays cruel pranks in emulation of the original Joker, who vanished 40 years prior) for the murder. Warren, however, had managed to leave some kind of trail, and Terry quickly discovered that all was not well in the state of Denmark. And, if he hadn't accidentally discovered that Bruce Wayne had once been Batman a few days prior, things might have ended very differently. But they did, and he had, so Terry took the disk of incriminating evidence to Bruce, because he had been Batman and still was Bruce flippin Wayne, surely he could do something about rotten stuff at WaynePowers. But Bruce refused to help him, and told Terry to take the disk to the police. Terry tried things Bruce's way, but when that didn't work out decided to take matters into his own hands. He broke into the Batcave and stole the high-tech Batsuit that Bruce had been using shortly before his retirement, somehow figured out how to use it without seriously injuring himself in about 3 seconds, and headed off to see justice and revenge. After a few speedbumps involving Bruce expressing his extreme displeasure with the fact that Terry had just helped himself to his equipment were overcome without Terry dying, and Terry explained his reasons for taking matters into his own hands, Bruce agreed to help Terry find and stop the illegal shipment of that nerve gas/virus/toxin/whatever that was taking place that night. Terry managed to Not Die and apparently did it well enough to impress Bruce, who came to visit his apartment and offer him a job as his "assistant" shortly thereafter, provided Terry could live up to his exacting standards. Terry jumped at the opportunity. And for his pains spent the next who knows how long being perpetually sleep deprived and beating up and being beaten up by various criminals. Ah, the life of glamor.
Anyway, Terry went from Terry McGinnis, Punk Kid and Ordinary High School Student to Terry McGinnis, Batman.
And ordinary high school student.
And Mr. Wayne's PA.
And boyfriend to a girl who really couldn't know how busy his life had suddenly become.
And Son With Responsibilities.
Life became pretty busy pretty quickly what with trying to balance two and a half lives, all while attempting to look normal for Dana and his Mom and Matt and everyone at school and then trying to keep his grades up and all the other things that a normal teenager has to juggle, PLUS trying to be more responsible around the house. As he went on, trying to fit himself into this new role of Batman and not die along the way he had lots of adventures of varying quality, got himself a rogues gallery, got himself an off-again on-again villain love interest (Ten of the Royal Flush Gang - or Melanie, as her real name is), where things generally don't go anywhere because he is (usually) still dating Dana and Terry is pretty good at being faithful. He missed lots of dates and other appointments with Dana though, who as a result breaks up with him regularly, sssso.
The only other big incident that happens in this span of time that isn't your usual 'find a villain and occasionally blow them up' (oh Terry) is that a friend and schoolmate of his, Max (Maxine) Gibson managed by complete accident to figure out he's Batman. Whoops. So she helps him out sometimes and balances that usefulness by constantly asking to be allowed out in the field with Terry. When she DOES come out with him, she rarely does all that much but make things worse, so mostly he tries to keep her away. As does Bruce.
Terry went on, sometimes training with killer robots who throw live grenades at him (oh Bruce) and generally became better and better at Batman. Then, when he was 17 years old and off headed off to stop some maniac from blowing up a library and HOPEFULLY still make it on time to a date with Dana, suddenly he wasn't in Gotham anymore.
He was in the City.
Whoops.
Getting yanked in like that was certainly an experience, especially as (upon being ported in) he was told that he'd already been there, and had no memory of it. He snarked back and forth with a few Batfam members who didn't even exist in his world, never mind that Bruce never said anything about anyone ever anyway so how was he to know. He also met Raven, who he had (according to her) been fast friends with that last time that he'd been flung in here. She had been crushed when he met her (again) and had no memory of ever having known her, so because Terry is a sucker for folks in trouble he decided to be friends with her again. He ended up living with her (no not like that) in this nice big house that she had several hundred miles from the City and teleporting back to fight crime and vampire nazis and stuff. After a while of turning his room into a deadly trap for anyone who tried to get in before ever sleeping he decided that Raven was telling the truth and not actually looking to kill him and relaxed a bit. He adjusted to having superpowers, aka hit his head on the ceiling a whole heck of a lot and nearly crash landing a dragon into the middle of the street, did some training, almost died a few times. The usual.
Then Raven got ported out.
Terry flipped out and flew back home manually, via the suit, worried that everyone had been blown up or something. That, at least, wasn't the case, but without Raven there to be a calming influence, tensions quickly began to climb between the people left at chez Raven, and after like 5 days Terry took off again for the City, to set up shop there. Said action was a bit premature, as she got ported back in for a little while, but she left not long after anyway. Instead he got a job working for Tim, one of the former Robins, and set up in a bat safehouse. He made firmer friends with more of the batfam, including Carrie Kelly - another Robin - who pretty much stalked him until he gave in and let her.
He went on, he fought crime, had a few moments of internal crisis over what was he doing, and began to feel increasingly restless. Bruce - his universe's Bruce, the 80 year old grumpy guy - got ported in for about 5 minutes before getting shipped off again, leaving Terry confused, frustrated, and angry. After having been in the City maybe 8 months or so he met Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl. They chatted for a while over the network, with her not knowing he was Batman despite him knowing her title, and decided to meet for coffee. This coffee date got waylaid by a homeless puppy that they found on the sidewalk, who Terry decided to adopt.
Then he got ported out again.
Back home, Terry managed to defeat the guy who really liked his explosives and went on to have many adventures of a similar nature, learning and growing and honing his skills, and becoming more and more Batmanish. He teamed up with the Justice League Unlimited for a little while and managed to save everyone from Superman and the mind controlling starfish he was being possessed by, stopped a cult of snake-worshipers from dropping a bomb into a volcano to cause global warming so that they could live safely in their new half dinosaur bodies (look it was a weird episode), met Bruce as he'd been maybe when he was 50 or so, and fought by his side for a little while. He'd been at the gig for about 3 years total when something completely unexpected happened. The Joker, the original, appeared back in Gotham again.
Bruce freaked out about this and briefly forced Terry to quit being Batman in an attempt to protect him. This didn't quite work out; on his first night of being fired, some Jokerz (who were playing minions to Joker, now that he was back) had found Terry at the club that he was at with Dana. They'd proceeded to try to kill him and Dana both, apparently just because Dana was with him. Terry put his Batman on and managed to avoid being killed, but Dana got hurt and was hospitalized. Terry sped off to see Bruce to demand some answers as to why the Jokerz had been after him, specifically, and arrived to find the Batcave busted open and a scene laid out that was nightmarishly like the scene of his father's murder - the Joker knew who Bruce was, and had attacked him. Luckily Bruce wasn't quite dead, just badly poisoned, and Terry managed to get him the antidote in time. Afterwards, as Bruce recovered, Terry convinced Barbara to tell him the story of what had happened 40 years ago, and so learned about the horrors that the Joker had inflicted on Tim.
Terry suspected that Tim's madness had not been completely cured after what Joker had done to him, and some part of J. J. - the twisted double that Joker had tortured Tim into - was surfacing, explaining the recent attacks. He flew off to Tim's workplace, where his suspicions were apparently confirmed. After escaping the trap that the Joker had laid for him, Terry spent a while dodging lasers shot from an orbiting defense satellite that the Joker had hijacked and tracked Joker back to his current hideout, where the truth came out.
Tim was the Joker- kind of.
When Joker'd had Tim in his grasp 40 years ago, he'd implanted a microchip in his brain, encoded with the Joker's personality, memories, and DNA. After years of becoming stronger in Tim's subconscious the Joker was finally starting to take over, hijacking Tim's body to continue his crime spree. The Joker informed Terry of his intention to kill Bruce, Dana, and Terry's mother and brother along with hundreds of other innocents, and then there was an epic fight where Terry got the best of the Joker by doing something Bruce had never done, and openly mocking him. Joker lost his temper, and half-succeeded in killing Terry. Terry, however, managed to use the Joker's own joy-buzzer against him to fry the chip in Tim's brain, curing him of his Joker possession, before dragging him to safety.
Tim ended up in the hospital, where Bruce came to talk to him for the first time in like 40 years, and told Terry that he was the one who made Batman worthwhile, not the other way around, daw.
Some little time after this Terry started finding goons from Metropolis were starting to flood his city, and starting to flood it with new drugs. Upon closer analysis it turned out that the drugs had trace elements of kryptonite. So Terry ended up going on a little field trip, off to Metropolis to infiltrate the gang who was helping to make and distribute the drugs. He busted into a warehouse with them and grabbed some of the relevant ingredients for illegal drugs before getting jammed back into the City again, after having gained a new level in technopathy.
Almost the first person he talked to was Tim.
The Joker had been a bad experience, and having to fight the Joker (again) with Robin's memories and training (again) was not something that Terry wanted to do, so he gassed Tim, and then he and Carrie chained him up and swept him for microchips, just to be sure. Batfam in general proceeded to read him the riot act over this, and Bruce put him on probation.
Meanwhile it'd been like a week and a half in-city, as opposed to the like two years it'd been back home, and Terry (unsurprisingly) had completely forgotten about his make-up coffee date with Supergirl. She'd come over to make sure he was still alive and had accidentally knocked his door down, and seen the kryptonite that Bruce had given him and which he'd pulled out just in case Kon came after him for timnapping Tim. Kara put the fact that he was maybe too friendly together with the fact that he had lead-lined walls and kryptonite out on the table and had been trained to fight and, unsurprisingly, came up with the notion that he was trying to kill her or one of the other supers. She accidentally cracked a few of his ribs, he batman'd his way away from her, and explained the nature of his secret identity. Somehow this lead to playing monopoly, which lead to flirting, which lead to making out, which lead to the two of them projecting awkward at each other for a while. After something of the kind happened a few times (less the Kara breaking ribs and Terry poisoning her), they decided that they were probably dating and decided to go with it.
Then Kara got ported out.
Terry busted a lot of heads in anger and some grief for a while and took care of her cat in addition to the puppy he'd adopted. Luckily for him, not long after this Kara got ported back in again. Terry, figuring that in this place you might as well treat things as now or never as that seemed to be how they worked, had told her that he loved her - shortly before he got ported out. Again.
Now he's coming back again.
PERSONALITY:Terry is very much a bad boy gone good. He's got a rough background and is very aware of that fact - how else could he use it to his advantage? Though he sometimes acts more the anti-hero than a straight-up hero (hi, Batman), he's still got a heart of gold. He's in this business and deals with the crappy hours and constant cuts and bruises and fights with his girlfriend and the occasional broken bone because he wants to help others who can't help themselves. Gotham can be a bad place to live - he knows that better than most, as for a while he was one of the ones who made it so. And, even though according to the state his 3 months in juvie wiped him clean of all that, his soul tells him different. When he puts on the suit, he's trying to make up for past sins, so he'll fight hard for justice.
Terry learns much better by doing than by being taught, which usually means that one way or another he's gonna end up going off and making a whole bunch of his own mistakes no matter what he's told. As a result, either he'll succeed brilliantly or if not, he'll at least have screwed up in truly spectacular ways. But as should be expected, after he gets the hang of something, he starts picking things up really, really quickly. He makes the same mistakes twice occasionally, but not often - he's learned not to, as doing that gets painful really fast. And there's obviously a pretty sharp learning curve for someone aspiring to be Batman - he has to learn fast or he'd be dead equally quickly.
Terry is very much a protector at heart. You show him someone smaller and weaker, or just less able than he is, and he'll generally watch out for them. As a result he's ended up picking a lot of fights with random gang members who try tormenting innocent citizens, or with bullies who try to pick on kids at school. He maybe doesn't always plan this as well as he might, but he's good at thinking on his feet, so when combined with his ability to fight he generally ends up okay. He also has a short temper, though he loses it a lot less these days than he did before he started patrolling the streets by night. This is a good thing. He doesn't think as well when he's angry, and is more prone to viciousness.
He's a nice kid (usually), but Terry is far from a saint. Push him too hard, and you will get serious consequences - a few times Bruce has had to rein him in, and Terry seems less concerned with the fates of the various villains than Bruce normally was. His childhood was rougher than Bruce's, and he will sometimes show it in how he behaves.
Like his mentor, he adjusts pretty quickly and easily to new situations - especially at this point - which is good, it quickens his response to anything new and unexpected. Unlike Bruce, Terry likes the sound of his own voice. He likes being sarcastic or witty for the sake of being sarcastic or witty - an audience is preferable, but doesn't appear to be strictly necessary. Knowing that he's being clever is apparently enough. As a result of this, Terry really enjoys jibing his opponents, and sometimes just making remarks to himself on the situation in general, in volatile situations. At times this isn't a good thing - he can distract himself, though usually these days he's got a good enough sense of his environment that he won't, no matter how much witty banter he gets into. Other times this trait actually helps him - it throws his opponents off balance, distracts or enrages them, and makes them unable to concentrate. What happens sort of depends on who he's facing - the most notable example of how his love of words can be really, really useful is in the movie, Return of the Joker. Near the end, in an amazing three minute speech, Terry is able to completely destabilize the Joker by openly mocking him - something that Bruce never would have done.
He's opportunistic, to a degree - he'll tell the truth or lie, but appears to prefer sticking to the truth whenever possible. He's opportunistic in his fighting style as well. Terry is willing to take cheap shots that the original Batman or Robin wouldn't have - apparently as far as Terry is concerned, in the end tends to justify the means. However, he never sinks as low as he could in this regard, and he does specifically say that he would never kill an opponent. Of course, being a direct cause of their death doesn't seem to be quite the same thing. It's happened several times now, and Terry's never seemed to beat himself up about it.
At first, his brashness landed him in trouble pretty regularly. Mostly he's overcome that at this point, and knows when to rein himself in.
Terry is a good big brother but doesn't appear to know how to handle small children. He's generally a poor student as far as his academic life goes, despite knowing some impressive things about math and being very interested in things like biology and chemistry. There's a reason for this, once again: Batman. It's hard to stay awake all day in class when you've already been awake fighting crime all night. He's generally seen as something of a flake by friends and family because he's never home (Batman) but he is a sweetheart, and will try to make things up to the people he keeps on letting down. He tries to help take care of his family, as he's now effectively the man of the house.
Finally, he thinks very, very highly of Bruce Wayne, and looks up to him. He'll sometimes get into fights with him, mostly because he's a teenager and this is something that teenagers frequently do, especially as Bruce pushes him really, really hard. But he loves Bruce, who has become something of a father figure, and if there's something he can do to keep the old man (or his secret) safe, he'll usually go for it, no matter the cost to himself. Terry can be something of a martyr, but then that's probably a requirement for someone in a position like him.
He is smart, and is learning to look hard at the details - he's very serious about being Batman, and has put a lot of extra hours into looking through Bruce's database. This pays off for him, and he can prove he's serious. Still, of course, not so serious that he can't have fun. Sometimes nights off are very good things.
POWER:The real power that the porter granted Terry is the ability to manipulate the effects of gravity on a small scale. He can now adjust his own personal gravity, and the gravity of anything he's touching, to make it extremely light or very, very heavy. So. Being able to jump as though he was a flea? He can do that. Making a villain (provided he's touching them) so unbearably heavy that they cannot move, or even crush them under their own weight? He can do that too. Holding up a building, on the other hand, would prove to be too much for him - but he'd probably be able to delay it from falling for at least a few seconds.
In addition, he got some basic, minimal physical enhancement - he's stronger than he was, faster than he was, has better stamina, has better senses (particularly hearing, and his night vision these days is none too shabby), better reflexes, heals a bit faster, etc etc. He's not as powerful as he would be in the suit, but he'd still be able to do pretty darn well for just another kid without it.
Finally he's getting slight technopathy. It's nothing too extreme, but it'll augment his hacking abilities and such, and let him repair the suit from anything but really really serious damage.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:[Video]
[The screen isn't showing much, though occasionally the camera catches a flash of black-gloved hands as the video turns. Someone is fooling with their communicator. There's a voice going on in the background, fluctuating in volume depending on the position of the mic at the moment.]
... well this rips. Really. Totally schway. I like suddenly showing up God knows where and being bossed around by computers. Even better when I don't get an explanation for any of this, just packed off with some outdated looking weird little whatever this is. Oh man, I'm fragged. They're both gonna kill me, it's just gonna be a fight to see who gets to have me fir- wait a sec....
[The camera stops moving on the corner of a red triangle against a black background, and there is a pause as Terry realizes that he managed to find the 'on' switch a few seconds ago. He takes a further moment to collect himself, and then a second later, the recording switches to voice.]
Hey. Uh, if anyone's listening to this, could someone please tell me where I am? And, if possible, what's going on and how I got here?
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:Being a hero was a thankless job.
Terry had always known this - he wasn't in the business for all the nice cards he'd be getting (and good thing; getting any of those didn't seem likely) and he didn't expect to come away with anything but bruises and hopefully that warm fuzzy feeling. But the suit was his penitence, his way to make up for the fact that a few years ago he might have been one of the guys he was always bringing in. Karma. Something like that. He didn't expect things to be easy, he didn't expect them to be nice, and he was still always grateful he'd gotten the chance. Being Batman wasn't something everybody got to do, and he had a record. Still, despite this, there were nights when he'd rather postpone the honor for a few hours. And maybe have a social life. Or get halfway decent grades.
He had homework to do - and really, you'd think that the teachers here would be understanding about things like failing to get your English in on time because you were out until three in the morning stopping riots/petty theft/murder/etc, but no. Of course not. That would be too simple. Some things never changed, and apparently failing school in an attempt to keep the city safe was one of them. So one couldn't really blame him if he took some of his frustration out on some of the thieves who kept on wasting his time, now could they?
"You know," he said as he (slightly grumpily, but not viciously) tested the cords that were wrapped around the pair who had attempted a smash-and-grab at the jewelry store, "back home when thieves like you got a chance like this, they were grateful for it. They planned. Or the smart ones did, anyway - they still got caught, but that's not the point. All you criminal types here are so spoiled - another megalomaniac shuts the power down, oh boy, happens like once a week. So off you go again and you don't even appreciate it and so even though I live in a city stuffed to the gills with heros now I still can't get a night off-"
"Uh-" one of the thieves began to say.
"Shut up. So even though I live in this place that has more heros than one place should ever need, I have to keep on chasing down dregs like you because you can't sit on your hands for five minutes. I mean really. Is that really so much to ask?"
"Hey buddy-" the other thief said weakly, before he was cut off.
"No. Now you just-" From down the street, there was the sound of someone running. "Slag it," Terry muttered under his breath, but duty called. He activated his wings quickly and rolled his shoulders a little as they flitted out; he was used to the sensation by now, but it still felt weird. You could feel them sliding through the fabric, almost against your skin but not quite and slick like feeling water through a film of plastic. Only not. A second later he activated the thrusters in his boots, and at this point he was ready for the sensation - the sudden, vicious kick of power and almost uncomfortable warmth that soaked through even the heat-absorbing coils built into the suit to spread across your soles. He hadn't been the first time he'd tried this (that had been an experience, boy oh boy), but even back then the sheer insanity and adrenaline rush of suddenly flying had been addictive, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that it had felt like he was about to crash into a building and die.
Terry loved to fly. It was one of the things that made it worth it - the bruises, the cuts, the occasional broken bones, the constant daytime haze of exhaustion, the lies and fumbling half-truths. It was a powerful motivater, knowing that darting through the maze of skyscrapers was entirely possible and being able to see the orange of the sunrise in a way that not a lot of people had- but it was only one of the things that made him keep coming back. Because, more than he loved flying, he loved the city, and he loved the life in it. People deserved to be able to go about their business, it was as simple as that, and so he was out to make sure that they could. So whatever. He'd deal. The City wasn't exactly Gotham (though it sure FELT like home sometimes - a psycho on every street corner) but it still had people who just wanted to be people.
So he swept across the few blocks, to where glass was tinkling against the sidewalk again, and landed lightly on a dead street-light. They looked young, whoever they were. "Well there, boys and girls," he said, and their heads snapped towards him. He grinned. "It's a little late to be out on a school night, wouldn't you say?"
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:There are some things in the show that Terry does which he wouldn't physically be able to do unless he'd had some background in parkour/free running. If you have no idea what this is, these are three good videos to start with, and youtube has lots and lots more.
Parkour is basically the ability to run up walls, jump 20 foot walls, jump over cars, jump off buildings, ETC ETC, or acting the part of a spider monkey/squirrel hybrid in human form. Also known as the cops will never ever catch you. He is or was on his school's wrestling team. In a semi-related note, he's not so good at the Martial Arts as Bruce is, but he's good in a fight despite never having had training - at least before taking up the cape. He learned how to fight on the streets, so his style is unorthodox but effective, and he's not afraid to fight dirty. Since becoming Batman he's had training in fighting and he has honed his body to at least Olympic levels in general (YOU try training under Bruce and having anything else happen). As is expected of Batman, he engages in regular and rigorous training to minimize his reliance on the Batsuit. Said training has left him with exceptional reflexes in addition to impressive everything else - without the suit he dodges gunfire, and falls several stories and lands on his feet. Among other things. He also - while wearing the Batsuit, but still - he managed to beat someone up while trapped in an illusion that left him unable to see his opponent, his environment or anything in it, and apparently trapped in an endless raging windstorm. In another notable instance, he runs around the room on the walls. He has the bad habit of leaving his left side open while fighting, or maybe had the habit at this point, as he has been notified of the problem and been working on it.
He's not the detective that Bruce is, but he has been trained in such and is improving.
He can change his voice easily - he takes on a deeper, harsher tone when in the Batsuit consciously and of his own accord, both to strike terror into the hearts of criminals and to disguise the fact that he's only 19. He can also do a very nice Brooklyn accent when he wants.
So basically, Batman! From the future! Now with parkour! Also his batsuit can do a lot.
Finally!
Terry is from 30 odd years in the future. He is a teenager, he uses slang, and the slang is different. So, for the curious, I have compiled a partial and under-construction dictionary of that crazy futuretalk.