[ooc] App for theposthumans
Character Name: Bruce Wayne, aka Batman
Canon source: DC Comics
Personality:
Bruce Wayne is a man who lives two lives, one as a fickle, idealistic billionaire playboy and philanthropist, the other as a dark, all-seeing vigilante crime-fighter. The question often raised by those who know his two identities is which one of those is the true persona and which the façade. For those who know him best, there is little debate. In the worst of times, Batman has functioned without Bruce Wayne. The reverse is seldom the case for long. For every attempted retirement or vacation from the cowl, there comes some event or enemy that only he can handle, and the greater good must be served. These days, he still has to try to play at being Bruce Wayne, to use a lighter voice, to smile, to laugh. Being Batman comes naturally.
Still, even as Batman, he is a creature of contradictory views and morals. On one hand, he is suspicious and cynical, constantly appraising every situation for how it could go wrong, who could betray him. He has carefully planned contingencies for how to disable and defeat even his closest allies, and allows almost no one truly close to him emotionally. He has secrets even Alfred, Dick and Tim don’t know. He knows that the war against crime is a war that can never truly be won, and that in Gotham, he’s too often losing ground. On the other hand, he truly believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He is almost always willing to give people a second chance, to choose rehabilitation over mere imprisonment. Time and time again, he has poured his fortune into Gotham and its causes, worked himself ragged not just fighting, but serving in other ways, especially in the wake of the various cataclysms that have rocked the city over the years.
Bruce, though a fantastic leader and motivator who is (as Bruce Wayne, at least) excellent in social situations, is still an introvert who prefers to keep his own council, and certainly doesn’t want to depend on anyone else. Except that he does depend on others far more than he’s willing to admit, not only for the help they give him, but for anchoring him to Bruce Wayne and to humanity. If it wasn’t for that handful of people he cares about, it would be too easy to become nothing but a crime-fighting machine without conscience or heart. His strongest and most lasting relationship, and the one he is most reliant on, is the one with Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred is family to him and one of the few people who needs Bruce Wayne as much as Batman. Alfred has also, on occasion, been the only person who could give Bruce a wake-up call when his actions as Batman have gone too far. More complicated relationships are those he shares with his two adopted sons and (now former) sidekicks, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake-Wayne. As Robin, each of them served not only as a partner (though not, despite their respective ages at taking the position, a mere “boy sidekick”) but as a symbol of Bruce’s humanity, a reminder that he had something to protect, something he cared about, a reason both to pull his punches and to watch his back. He still cares about them and admires the men they are becoming, but still wonders whether taking them under his wing was the right thing to do, and hopes that they can be better people than he believes their mentor is. Since he’s returned from being stranded in time and believed dead (and entrusted Dick, now also donning Batman’s cape and cowl, with the main part of Gotham’s protection), he has opened up a bit more to the rest of the Batfamily, and begun to realize that he can extend his reach even further if he delegates. Whether he will actually manage to sit at the center of the web without having to micro-manage everything is debatable.
Rather less successful in the long term are Bruce’s romances, of which there have been many, most limited to one side of his life or the other, generally (but not always) the Bruce Wayne side. Several relationships have broken through that gap and fared somewhat better, namely that with Selina Kyle, who he genuinely loves, but never entirely trusts and repeatedly pushes away. He tends to view commitment and actual love as a liability, and himself as something less-than-capable of the affection and devotion his lovers deserve. It’s unlikely that he’s going to find the woman who can convince him otherwise, if only because he (rightly?) believes that Batman in love would be less effective. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, will continue to have glorious flings and regularly leave his dates stranded and wondering where he disappeared to.
Though Bruce Wayne can radiate charm, Batman is simply intimidating, even to the people on his side. He’s a hard taskmaster, mostly because the person he drives hardest is himself. He strives for perfection in everything he does, and while he’s lenient toward others’ failures if they’ve given an honest try, he has a hard time admitting that he too is human and subject to human limitations. His reaction to tension or stress is generally to push himself even harder. He is a workaholic in one of the most dangerous lines of work, and when he's deep into a case, he often forgets to sleep, eat, or make his token appearances as Bruce Wayne. It often falls on his associates to remind him.
Batman operates detached from his emotions whenever possible, choosing logic and cool decision-making even over his personal desires. Yet this involves him suppressing all anger, fear, frustration, and guilt, sublimating them into focused violence. This detachment and his calm temperament, make him slow to anger. When he does anger, it’s usually controlled and barely visible. He drops his voice rather than raise it, and tends to terrify whoever it’s directed at. The rare exception is when he has been pushed completely over the edge and actually resorts to violence in anger, a sight rarely seen but frequently near-fatal for whoever manages it.
Batman is, at the core, driven by guilt over his failures. The first (most obvious) of these is his parents' death, which shouldn't have happened, but wasn't prevented by the justice system in place at the time. It was that frustration at having been unable to do anything then, and unable to prevent similar things from happening in the future, which drove him to become Batman to begin with. The second failure which shaped him in different ways and still haunts him to this day is the death of Jason Todd. His inability to save his young partner killed some small part of the humanity left in him and forced him to close himself off even further from other people. Tim Drake was able to pull him out of that darkness to some extent, but his interactions even with Robin took on a shade of tortured desperation that has never entirely faded.
History: Dead parents, dead sidekick, running around in a bat-suit… you know the drill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman#Fictional_character_biography
Strengths:
The most obvious assets Batman has are his costume, vehicles, and equipment, acquired through his considerable personal wealth. Even in a new world where he lacks the funds set up by his parents, he’s a smart investor willing to take risks, and even if he can’t get his hands on the assets that Bruce Wayne has already established in his new environment, he still has enough available to build himself a new arsenal. He doesn’t hand-craft all his equipment, but he’s had almost everything tweaked and improved either by himself or by trusted experts, and modifies everything constantly when he finds a weakness in the current design or need that isn’t being met. Because of this, he doesn’t have one batsuit, or even one design, but a series of ever-evolving prototypes and models for special circumstances.
Bruce is a brilliant analytical thinker, capable of complex deductions, lengthy memorization, and high-speed learning. He believes in the ordered structure of things, even crime, and that if he can find the underlying pattern, he can strike first… and decisively. He’s usually right. He has multiple degrees in a number of fields and reads extensively, especially in relation to criminology. He readily admits that he isn’t the best in every field, but he has always been the kind of person who will seek out the best and humbly request their advice or assistance. That was a large part of how he trained to become Batman, and why he was forced to travel around the world to do it. When a case requires knowledge of some new field, he will plunge into it, devouring books, papers, and articles at a great pace, frequently at the expense of sleep. He plans obsessively, and has contingencies on contingencies, always looking at how things might go wrong and how to be prepared if they do. Yet plans only take you so far, and Batman is also well-practiced in thinking on his feet. To learn about the criminal element, Batman also learned to blend with it, and he still has considerable skill at acting and disguise. He has several criminal personas, mostly street-level thugs that no one would notice or miss, only memorable enough that their names ring faint bells of recognition. (One could also lump his entire life as a public figure into the category of false personas or charades.) He’s been called “the world’s greatest detective,” and at least in terms of his world, that wasn’t far from the truth.
Bruce keeps himself in excellent physical condition, and has master-level training in a variety of martial arts and other disciplines like acrobatics, gymnastics, and parkour. He has combined these to create a versatile style of fighting and movement all his own. He practices frequently in costume and with his tools, learning the ways that they affect his weight and balance and how he can use them to his advantage. His high sense of spatial awareness helps him not only keep track of his foes and plan his attack, but also encourages him to use his surroundings to his advantage.
Bruce can be an incredibly charismatic person, and a compelling commander, leading by example and pure force of will. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also a master of intimidation-even much more powerful beings hesitate to be on his bad side because when he’s Batman, he radiates complete confidence ruthlessness. Perhaps his greatest strength is that he plays his cards so close to his chest that he gives the impression of omniscience and omnipotence, leaving everyone guessing just what exactly he’s capable of.
Weaknesses:
Unlike many superheroes in his home universe or this one, one of Bruce Wayne’s biggest limitations in comparison to his peers is that he has no superhuman powers. He’s not only mortal, but has suffered serious injuries in previous years and is starting to creep past his physical prime. In some ways, he never expected to live this long, and part of the reason he’s been delegating lately is that he’s come face to face with the fact that someday, someone else will have to take his place.
Bruce has also found himself defeated by his own insecurities and tendency to drive himself too hard, especially when on a tough case, to push himself beyond his limits. On the other hand, when he isn’t being challenged, he grows restless and frustrated, and may even take much crazier risks than he normally would. He can’t handle not being Batman, not having something to fight. He’s only at his best when he’s walking the narrow path between those two extremes.
As far as fighting crime, Batman’s greatest weak point is the absurd, the random, the unexplainable. That’s why the Joker is such a perfect nemesis. Bruce can’t fathom wanton cruelty, or understand how people find humor in suffering and death. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s too good at getting inside the minds of his prey, and when he’s confronted by true madness, it threatens to drag him down into that abyss as well.
Bruce is also challenged in this setting because he’s in a strange place away from his support system and out of his element. This time, he also arrives after having disappeared from his own world while wearing the face of Bruce Wayne, so he’s lacking almost all of the tools he would have had as Batman. He’ll have to reassemble his equipment. He does have the advantage that “he” has been here before, but his inability to trust anyone will probably extend to this supposed “himself,” and it will still take time to investigate.
Preferred drop-in point: Seattle!
What are some of your plans for this character in their new environment?
Bruce is probably going to retrace "his" steps and try to figure out what is going on in this world, what he had previously done and built. He's probably also going to find everyone from his world that's also found themselves here and try to re-establish those connections. If he can use what the previous Batman did to help him find additional resources here, he'll do that.
He might try and convince himself that this isn't like Gotham. This is another world with its own heroes. Maybe, he'll tell himself, it's a world that doesn't need him to be Batman. Maybe he can try something else, just be Bruce Wayne, use his influence and money without using his fists.
He'll know he's wrong.
Third Person Sample:
[[Sample order swapped due to chronology.]]
The commercial loop carpeting beneath his face smelled like plastic and antiseptic, rubber, machinery, strange air conditioning. It wasn’t waking up on a strange floor that bothered Bruce, it was that he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Concussion? No. No pain, none of the head-too-full throbbing awfulness, but there was drowsiness, nausea, disorientation. Drugs? He opened his eyes.
The florescent lighting was momentarily painful. He blinked his surroundings into focus. Chairs. Table. Waiting room. (Interrogation room?) Woman. She stood a few feet away, and was looking at a clipboard at the moment, not directly at him. Good. He let his eyes fall mostly closed, slowed his breathing back to its resting tempo. He watched her through the hazy dark veil of his eyelashes, gathering more information before he revealed his return to consciousness. He could feel saliva trickling from the side of his mouth. He let it fall.
The woman wore a white lab coat, tan slacks, sensible shoes, a plastic-coated nametag and magnetic security badge, neither of which he could read from his odd angle. Doctor, he thought, but what kind of doctor left their patient sprawled on a waiting room floor? It was, he decided, time to find out.
He groaned softly and let his eyelids flutter open. The woman tensed, her hand drifting toward one of her pockets. Weapon? No, syringe, he was sure of it. More drugs.
“Mister Wayne?” she asked hesitantly.
Wayne. That was a surprise. Whatever happened, it didn’t happen to Batman. Or else these people knew his identity… Less likely. That would be flaunted by a foe. She wouldn’t have that question in her voice. Better to play it safe and ignorant. He blinked groggily up at the supposed doctor and levered himself up to a sitting position. His head swam. “Uh. Yeah? Where am I?”
She relaxed visibly, letting her hand fall away from her pocket. “A complicated answer. Simply, you’re in Seattle, Washington. Beyond that… ah. Perhaps it would be best if you just read the pamphlets and let us handle any questions after that. I’ll get you the full packet in just a moment.”
“Seattle? But…” He forced a weak chuckle and reached up to run a hand through his hair. “Wait. First questions first. Why was I on the floor?”
Her smile grew slightly strained. “When you first regained consciousness, you reacted… violently. We had to sedate you.”
“Sedate me? Sorry. I guess they’re right, and the subconscious can do some strange things. Maybe I still thought I was in a dream.” He climbed to his feet (he was dressed, he noticed, smart casual, in a blue shirt, silk tie, expensive chinos and leather loafers. Bruce Wayne’s clothes, after all. Good.) and, now that he was above the woman’s eye-level, flashed a smile of his own. “It must’ve been some nightmare to threaten a lovely lady like yourself.”
She barely blushed. Was it something in his voice, some lingering trace of threat? He thought himself more conscious than that… She allayed his fears with a small nervous laugh. “Oh, you didn’t threaten me, precisely, I was just stu-assigned to watch over you.”
“Lucky me. Now… you said something about a packet?”
“Of course.” A genuine smile, now, and she opened the door with a swipe of her card in front of the panel beside it. “Now, the first thing we have for you is a new phone…”
“Oh, I love it when strange women give me things. Well. Usually.” He winked, and this time she responded with a laugh, but Bruce’s eyes lingered on the door as they passed. What kind of hospital… what kind of organization had that kind of security to keep people in?
Third Person Sample 2:
Seattle stretches out before him, littered with rooftop landmarks not found on any map. He commits the view to memory, noting the places where criminals would congregate, where citizens would be watching their backs on a night like tonight. Few of them. Surprisingly few. Even Seattle’s rain feels cleaner than Gotham’s; less oily beneath his boots and gloves. He tastes it on his lips and doesn’t cringe… and yet he misses the acrid chemical miasma he fought so hard with Bruce Wayne’s dollars. What kind of Batman would lay claim to Seattle?
He’d found the spare suit precisely where he would have left it in the Wayne Enterprises building, hidden in the vault locked with the 28-digit passcode he would have used. It fit perfectly, and he found the general-purpose belt to be precisely stocked, except for a few neatly-labeled vials he hadn’t remembered including and a slight variation on the grappling hook’s locking mechanism. Just as if he’d left them there, despite having no memory of ever having done it, no memory of ever having been here at all. His theory that this was a set-up was dented by the discovery. Perhaps it was simple memory loss or some odd trick of trans-dimensional travel. Unless they’d delved deep into his very thoughts, no enemy knew him well enough to lay things out so precisely. He still couldn’t put it past them or lay the paranoia to rest.
A flash of light catches his eye just before sirens wail from a police cruiser hurtling toward the waterfront. Batman straightens from his crouch and taps a button by his ear, turning on the radio he’d silenced for contemplation. There’s a crackle of static before the police dispatcher barks a call sign, answered by a fuzzier reply from the car. Armed robbery. Two suspects, fleeing on foot. He feels his lips pull back from his teeth in something that isn’t quite a grin.
Seattle rain falls more heavily on the silent rooftop.
Batman is already gone.
First Person Journal Sample:
[text, private, encrypted]
This seems too elegant.
A world, an alternate Earth which lost its own superhumans, now finds itself visited by an assortment of “heroic” beings from other worlds--gathered here, one would assume, for some greater purpose. On the communications network I am connected to through the smartphone they gave me, names and faces I recognize only from fiction mingle with people I have known. Tim. Hal. Diana… Nygma, once The Riddler. Why him? Are there others who simply avoid these outlets? No, not the biggest question.
What rumors and records I can find say that I have been here for some time, that I disappeared briefly but have a life here. Wayne Enterprises is flourishing in Seattle, a growing company with strong investments right where I would have put them. More troubling, there are also reports of activity by Batman. It seems as if I was here before, but the last thing I can remember is sitting in on a charity board meeting, discussing rehab centers in the East End. I’d excused myself to check my messages, and then… what? Nothing, until waking up here, on the floor of a high-rise building in Seattle. Seattle, a city I’m only passing familiar with. There is no Gotham City here. Because I would recognize the differences?
This feels real, but stinks to my logical mind, makes me edgy, like I’m wanted to relax here, wanted to step into my own shoes and into someone’s trap. Paranoid, yes, but sometimes (too often) paranoia is justified. I can’t say yet whether this is one of those times.
All I can do is dig deeper and stay alert.
Gotham needs me. I have to get back.
Canon source: DC Comics
Personality:
Bruce Wayne is a man who lives two lives, one as a fickle, idealistic billionaire playboy and philanthropist, the other as a dark, all-seeing vigilante crime-fighter. The question often raised by those who know his two identities is which one of those is the true persona and which the façade. For those who know him best, there is little debate. In the worst of times, Batman has functioned without Bruce Wayne. The reverse is seldom the case for long. For every attempted retirement or vacation from the cowl, there comes some event or enemy that only he can handle, and the greater good must be served. These days, he still has to try to play at being Bruce Wayne, to use a lighter voice, to smile, to laugh. Being Batman comes naturally.
Still, even as Batman, he is a creature of contradictory views and morals. On one hand, he is suspicious and cynical, constantly appraising every situation for how it could go wrong, who could betray him. He has carefully planned contingencies for how to disable and defeat even his closest allies, and allows almost no one truly close to him emotionally. He has secrets even Alfred, Dick and Tim don’t know. He knows that the war against crime is a war that can never truly be won, and that in Gotham, he’s too often losing ground. On the other hand, he truly believes in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He is almost always willing to give people a second chance, to choose rehabilitation over mere imprisonment. Time and time again, he has poured his fortune into Gotham and its causes, worked himself ragged not just fighting, but serving in other ways, especially in the wake of the various cataclysms that have rocked the city over the years.
Bruce, though a fantastic leader and motivator who is (as Bruce Wayne, at least) excellent in social situations, is still an introvert who prefers to keep his own council, and certainly doesn’t want to depend on anyone else. Except that he does depend on others far more than he’s willing to admit, not only for the help they give him, but for anchoring him to Bruce Wayne and to humanity. If it wasn’t for that handful of people he cares about, it would be too easy to become nothing but a crime-fighting machine without conscience or heart. His strongest and most lasting relationship, and the one he is most reliant on, is the one with Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred is family to him and one of the few people who needs Bruce Wayne as much as Batman. Alfred has also, on occasion, been the only person who could give Bruce a wake-up call when his actions as Batman have gone too far. More complicated relationships are those he shares with his two adopted sons and (now former) sidekicks, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake-Wayne. As Robin, each of them served not only as a partner (though not, despite their respective ages at taking the position, a mere “boy sidekick”) but as a symbol of Bruce’s humanity, a reminder that he had something to protect, something he cared about, a reason both to pull his punches and to watch his back. He still cares about them and admires the men they are becoming, but still wonders whether taking them under his wing was the right thing to do, and hopes that they can be better people than he believes their mentor is. Since he’s returned from being stranded in time and believed dead (and entrusted Dick, now also donning Batman’s cape and cowl, with the main part of Gotham’s protection), he has opened up a bit more to the rest of the Batfamily, and begun to realize that he can extend his reach even further if he delegates. Whether he will actually manage to sit at the center of the web without having to micro-manage everything is debatable.
Rather less successful in the long term are Bruce’s romances, of which there have been many, most limited to one side of his life or the other, generally (but not always) the Bruce Wayne side. Several relationships have broken through that gap and fared somewhat better, namely that with Selina Kyle, who he genuinely loves, but never entirely trusts and repeatedly pushes away. He tends to view commitment and actual love as a liability, and himself as something less-than-capable of the affection and devotion his lovers deserve. It’s unlikely that he’s going to find the woman who can convince him otherwise, if only because he (rightly?) believes that Batman in love would be less effective. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, will continue to have glorious flings and regularly leave his dates stranded and wondering where he disappeared to.
Though Bruce Wayne can radiate charm, Batman is simply intimidating, even to the people on his side. He’s a hard taskmaster, mostly because the person he drives hardest is himself. He strives for perfection in everything he does, and while he’s lenient toward others’ failures if they’ve given an honest try, he has a hard time admitting that he too is human and subject to human limitations. His reaction to tension or stress is generally to push himself even harder. He is a workaholic in one of the most dangerous lines of work, and when he's deep into a case, he often forgets to sleep, eat, or make his token appearances as Bruce Wayne. It often falls on his associates to remind him.
Batman operates detached from his emotions whenever possible, choosing logic and cool decision-making even over his personal desires. Yet this involves him suppressing all anger, fear, frustration, and guilt, sublimating them into focused violence. This detachment and his calm temperament, make him slow to anger. When he does anger, it’s usually controlled and barely visible. He drops his voice rather than raise it, and tends to terrify whoever it’s directed at. The rare exception is when he has been pushed completely over the edge and actually resorts to violence in anger, a sight rarely seen but frequently near-fatal for whoever manages it.
Batman is, at the core, driven by guilt over his failures. The first (most obvious) of these is his parents' death, which shouldn't have happened, but wasn't prevented by the justice system in place at the time. It was that frustration at having been unable to do anything then, and unable to prevent similar things from happening in the future, which drove him to become Batman to begin with. The second failure which shaped him in different ways and still haunts him to this day is the death of Jason Todd. His inability to save his young partner killed some small part of the humanity left in him and forced him to close himself off even further from other people. Tim Drake was able to pull him out of that darkness to some extent, but his interactions even with Robin took on a shade of tortured desperation that has never entirely faded.
History: Dead parents, dead sidekick, running around in a bat-suit… you know the drill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman#Fictional_character_biography
Strengths:
The most obvious assets Batman has are his costume, vehicles, and equipment, acquired through his considerable personal wealth. Even in a new world where he lacks the funds set up by his parents, he’s a smart investor willing to take risks, and even if he can’t get his hands on the assets that Bruce Wayne has already established in his new environment, he still has enough available to build himself a new arsenal. He doesn’t hand-craft all his equipment, but he’s had almost everything tweaked and improved either by himself or by trusted experts, and modifies everything constantly when he finds a weakness in the current design or need that isn’t being met. Because of this, he doesn’t have one batsuit, or even one design, but a series of ever-evolving prototypes and models for special circumstances.
Bruce is a brilliant analytical thinker, capable of complex deductions, lengthy memorization, and high-speed learning. He believes in the ordered structure of things, even crime, and that if he can find the underlying pattern, he can strike first… and decisively. He’s usually right. He has multiple degrees in a number of fields and reads extensively, especially in relation to criminology. He readily admits that he isn’t the best in every field, but he has always been the kind of person who will seek out the best and humbly request their advice or assistance. That was a large part of how he trained to become Batman, and why he was forced to travel around the world to do it. When a case requires knowledge of some new field, he will plunge into it, devouring books, papers, and articles at a great pace, frequently at the expense of sleep. He plans obsessively, and has contingencies on contingencies, always looking at how things might go wrong and how to be prepared if they do. Yet plans only take you so far, and Batman is also well-practiced in thinking on his feet. To learn about the criminal element, Batman also learned to blend with it, and he still has considerable skill at acting and disguise. He has several criminal personas, mostly street-level thugs that no one would notice or miss, only memorable enough that their names ring faint bells of recognition. (One could also lump his entire life as a public figure into the category of false personas or charades.) He’s been called “the world’s greatest detective,” and at least in terms of his world, that wasn’t far from the truth.
Bruce keeps himself in excellent physical condition, and has master-level training in a variety of martial arts and other disciplines like acrobatics, gymnastics, and parkour. He has combined these to create a versatile style of fighting and movement all his own. He practices frequently in costume and with his tools, learning the ways that they affect his weight and balance and how he can use them to his advantage. His high sense of spatial awareness helps him not only keep track of his foes and plan his attack, but also encourages him to use his surroundings to his advantage.
Bruce can be an incredibly charismatic person, and a compelling commander, leading by example and pure force of will. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also a master of intimidation-even much more powerful beings hesitate to be on his bad side because when he’s Batman, he radiates complete confidence ruthlessness. Perhaps his greatest strength is that he plays his cards so close to his chest that he gives the impression of omniscience and omnipotence, leaving everyone guessing just what exactly he’s capable of.
Weaknesses:
Unlike many superheroes in his home universe or this one, one of Bruce Wayne’s biggest limitations in comparison to his peers is that he has no superhuman powers. He’s not only mortal, but has suffered serious injuries in previous years and is starting to creep past his physical prime. In some ways, he never expected to live this long, and part of the reason he’s been delegating lately is that he’s come face to face with the fact that someday, someone else will have to take his place.
Bruce has also found himself defeated by his own insecurities and tendency to drive himself too hard, especially when on a tough case, to push himself beyond his limits. On the other hand, when he isn’t being challenged, he grows restless and frustrated, and may even take much crazier risks than he normally would. He can’t handle not being Batman, not having something to fight. He’s only at his best when he’s walking the narrow path between those two extremes.
As far as fighting crime, Batman’s greatest weak point is the absurd, the random, the unexplainable. That’s why the Joker is such a perfect nemesis. Bruce can’t fathom wanton cruelty, or understand how people find humor in suffering and death. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s too good at getting inside the minds of his prey, and when he’s confronted by true madness, it threatens to drag him down into that abyss as well.
Bruce is also challenged in this setting because he’s in a strange place away from his support system and out of his element. This time, he also arrives after having disappeared from his own world while wearing the face of Bruce Wayne, so he’s lacking almost all of the tools he would have had as Batman. He’ll have to reassemble his equipment. He does have the advantage that “he” has been here before, but his inability to trust anyone will probably extend to this supposed “himself,” and it will still take time to investigate.
Preferred drop-in point: Seattle!
What are some of your plans for this character in their new environment?
Bruce is probably going to retrace "his" steps and try to figure out what is going on in this world, what he had previously done and built. He's probably also going to find everyone from his world that's also found themselves here and try to re-establish those connections. If he can use what the previous Batman did to help him find additional resources here, he'll do that.
He might try and convince himself that this isn't like Gotham. This is another world with its own heroes. Maybe, he'll tell himself, it's a world that doesn't need him to be Batman. Maybe he can try something else, just be Bruce Wayne, use his influence and money without using his fists.
He'll know he's wrong.
Third Person Sample:
[[Sample order swapped due to chronology.]]
The commercial loop carpeting beneath his face smelled like plastic and antiseptic, rubber, machinery, strange air conditioning. It wasn’t waking up on a strange floor that bothered Bruce, it was that he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. Concussion? No. No pain, none of the head-too-full throbbing awfulness, but there was drowsiness, nausea, disorientation. Drugs? He opened his eyes.
The florescent lighting was momentarily painful. He blinked his surroundings into focus. Chairs. Table. Waiting room. (Interrogation room?) Woman. She stood a few feet away, and was looking at a clipboard at the moment, not directly at him. Good. He let his eyes fall mostly closed, slowed his breathing back to its resting tempo. He watched her through the hazy dark veil of his eyelashes, gathering more information before he revealed his return to consciousness. He could feel saliva trickling from the side of his mouth. He let it fall.
The woman wore a white lab coat, tan slacks, sensible shoes, a plastic-coated nametag and magnetic security badge, neither of which he could read from his odd angle. Doctor, he thought, but what kind of doctor left their patient sprawled on a waiting room floor? It was, he decided, time to find out.
He groaned softly and let his eyelids flutter open. The woman tensed, her hand drifting toward one of her pockets. Weapon? No, syringe, he was sure of it. More drugs.
“Mister Wayne?” she asked hesitantly.
Wayne. That was a surprise. Whatever happened, it didn’t happen to Batman. Or else these people knew his identity… Less likely. That would be flaunted by a foe. She wouldn’t have that question in her voice. Better to play it safe and ignorant. He blinked groggily up at the supposed doctor and levered himself up to a sitting position. His head swam. “Uh. Yeah? Where am I?”
She relaxed visibly, letting her hand fall away from her pocket. “A complicated answer. Simply, you’re in Seattle, Washington. Beyond that… ah. Perhaps it would be best if you just read the pamphlets and let us handle any questions after that. I’ll get you the full packet in just a moment.”
“Seattle? But…” He forced a weak chuckle and reached up to run a hand through his hair. “Wait. First questions first. Why was I on the floor?”
Her smile grew slightly strained. “When you first regained consciousness, you reacted… violently. We had to sedate you.”
“Sedate me? Sorry. I guess they’re right, and the subconscious can do some strange things. Maybe I still thought I was in a dream.” He climbed to his feet (he was dressed, he noticed, smart casual, in a blue shirt, silk tie, expensive chinos and leather loafers. Bruce Wayne’s clothes, after all. Good.) and, now that he was above the woman’s eye-level, flashed a smile of his own. “It must’ve been some nightmare to threaten a lovely lady like yourself.”
She barely blushed. Was it something in his voice, some lingering trace of threat? He thought himself more conscious than that… She allayed his fears with a small nervous laugh. “Oh, you didn’t threaten me, precisely, I was just stu-assigned to watch over you.”
“Lucky me. Now… you said something about a packet?”
“Of course.” A genuine smile, now, and she opened the door with a swipe of her card in front of the panel beside it. “Now, the first thing we have for you is a new phone…”
“Oh, I love it when strange women give me things. Well. Usually.” He winked, and this time she responded with a laugh, but Bruce’s eyes lingered on the door as they passed. What kind of hospital… what kind of organization had that kind of security to keep people in?
Third Person Sample 2:
Seattle stretches out before him, littered with rooftop landmarks not found on any map. He commits the view to memory, noting the places where criminals would congregate, where citizens would be watching their backs on a night like tonight. Few of them. Surprisingly few. Even Seattle’s rain feels cleaner than Gotham’s; less oily beneath his boots and gloves. He tastes it on his lips and doesn’t cringe… and yet he misses the acrid chemical miasma he fought so hard with Bruce Wayne’s dollars. What kind of Batman would lay claim to Seattle?
He’d found the spare suit precisely where he would have left it in the Wayne Enterprises building, hidden in the vault locked with the 28-digit passcode he would have used. It fit perfectly, and he found the general-purpose belt to be precisely stocked, except for a few neatly-labeled vials he hadn’t remembered including and a slight variation on the grappling hook’s locking mechanism. Just as if he’d left them there, despite having no memory of ever having done it, no memory of ever having been here at all. His theory that this was a set-up was dented by the discovery. Perhaps it was simple memory loss or some odd trick of trans-dimensional travel. Unless they’d delved deep into his very thoughts, no enemy knew him well enough to lay things out so precisely. He still couldn’t put it past them or lay the paranoia to rest.
A flash of light catches his eye just before sirens wail from a police cruiser hurtling toward the waterfront. Batman straightens from his crouch and taps a button by his ear, turning on the radio he’d silenced for contemplation. There’s a crackle of static before the police dispatcher barks a call sign, answered by a fuzzier reply from the car. Armed robbery. Two suspects, fleeing on foot. He feels his lips pull back from his teeth in something that isn’t quite a grin.
Seattle rain falls more heavily on the silent rooftop.
Batman is already gone.
First Person Journal Sample:
[text, private, encrypted]
This seems too elegant.
A world, an alternate Earth which lost its own superhumans, now finds itself visited by an assortment of “heroic” beings from other worlds--gathered here, one would assume, for some greater purpose. On the communications network I am connected to through the smartphone they gave me, names and faces I recognize only from fiction mingle with people I have known. Tim. Hal. Diana… Nygma, once The Riddler. Why him? Are there others who simply avoid these outlets? No, not the biggest question.
What rumors and records I can find say that I have been here for some time, that I disappeared briefly but have a life here. Wayne Enterprises is flourishing in Seattle, a growing company with strong investments right where I would have put them. More troubling, there are also reports of activity by Batman. It seems as if I was here before, but the last thing I can remember is sitting in on a charity board meeting, discussing rehab centers in the East End. I’d excused myself to check my messages, and then… what? Nothing, until waking up here, on the floor of a high-rise building in Seattle. Seattle, a city I’m only passing familiar with. There is no Gotham City here. Because I would recognize the differences?
This feels real, but stinks to my logical mind, makes me edgy, like I’m wanted to relax here, wanted to step into my own shoes and into someone’s trap. Paranoid, yes, but sometimes (too often) paranoia is justified. I can’t say yet whether this is one of those times.
All I can do is dig deeper and stay alert.
Gotham needs me. I have to get back.