Post by jordan on Oct 14, 2013 1:01:18 GMT -5
Ultimate Batman Issue #0.ULTIMATE
Prologue
Angels From Fire
by Jordan
*
We are all just men, aren't we? In the long run, we are. We are born and we live our lives, we leave our imprint on the World or we don't, and then we die--is there really anything else we can do? Is there anything that makes our lives special? That makes us the top of the food chain? I just can't even fathom to understand it at this point.
Once upon a time, we were the only creatures with the ability to reason, but then, somewhere down the line, most of us lost that. I'm not sure if the war and the kings and the blood bred it out of us, or if it was the crack and the crank, the crystal and the beer; but somewhere, somewhen, somehow--we lost it. We decided that beating our children was okay and that raping our women was fun and that fighting dogs was cool. Where did we go wrong?
No matter the when or the where or the how, we lost that ability to reason and our primal savagery came back upon us, we reverted, we somehow became everything we'd worked so hard to evolve away from. And those of us who maintained our cognitive skills, our abilities to reason, we built hubs and kingdoms and empires and we ruled the savages for oh so long, until finally, one day, in one massive upheaval, those same savages decided that they would be the ones to lead us. They revolted and they took charge, and then they concentrated in the same hubs, kingdoms and empires that we once held sacred and they spat upon everything that us decent people had once built, and then, as if that weren't enough, they turned it against us and made us fear our own perfections and showed us our own imperfections and then taunted us with those imperfections. They made us fear them.
It had been this way since I was born, and it is still this way. The only difference is that now, with every other crazy ruling this city, we finally have a crazy that is on our side, a crazy that fights for what's right and stands for truth, justice and hope in the face of everything that we fear. And what is his name, I hear you ask? Well that, my friend, is--
"Batman." The wind shifts ominously, the air becomes putrid with the smell of anger and sweat. My hair billows in the hard wind, my heart skips a beat and my eyes stare into the shadows as I anticipate the Caped Crusader's next movement. I hear the ever so soft shuffle of his boot on the hard concrete floor. I move my hand over to the large switch on the side of the floodlight and turn it off. Darkness engulfs the rooftop and everything goes silent for just a second.
"Why am I here, Jim?" His voice sounds like gravel being crushed under the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler. I see the whites of his eyes, and nothing more. Sometimes I wonder if he really is man and not something more. Maybe he's an angel sent from heaven to fix God's works...or maybe a demon sent from hell to ensure that Earth doesn't become worse than the flaming river itself. Who will ever know? I've been quiet for too long, I haven't answered his last question. He's becoming antsy, impatient. "Jim, what happened?" And finally, I speak.
"It's the Circus case, Batman." Batman's eyes keep calm, his never-ending grimace keeps ever present. I can almost hear the wheels turning in his head, the thoughts coursing through and his eyes darting through the shadows as my own did not moments ago--except his eyes search not for allies but enemies.
"Did you find something?" I reach into my coat and pull out a manila folder, holding it out with my erect arm, waiting for the Batman to grab it. It takes minutes at least, but finally he steps from the shadows and takes the folder from my hand. He opens it up and his eyes grow wider.
I've looked at that file over a thousand times, I know exactly what he's looking at--the picture of Dick Grayson, 12 years old, being carted away by a shrouded figure. The figure wears thick body armor and a helmet over his head, a domino mask hiding his eyes. On the small of his back is a symbol resembling an eagle. Batman slowly turns over to the next picture and stares at the same shrouded figure killing three armer thugs--thugs who work for the Maroni Family. He turns the pictures over again and again to see the same figure doing the same things to other thugs. Batman closes the file and stares at me.
"I've heard about this man, Jim. On the streets they call him Nightwing. He's taken up his own war against crime, specifically the Maroni Family. Twenty-three dead and counting. I haven't been able to find him, which means he's had ghost training. Luckily I have too, or else this would bcome much harder. I've been tracking him for weeks--come to think of it, ever since the Circus showed up." Batman stops talking and starts thinking. I hate when he goes silent like this. His eyes never stop searching the shadows for intruders and, hopefully, he never does find them.
"Batman?" I ask, trying to snap him back to the real world. He continues to stare listlessly into my eyes and my blood begins to chill. "Batman, do you know what this Nightwing character has to do with the Circus?" Batman grumbles slightly, I can't even fathom what's going through his mind.
"Jim, how long ago was the picture with the Grayson boy taken?"
"About three hours ago." Does Batman know something that I don't? I suppose he always does, doesn't he?
"Jim, we need to get to the Circus--now!" His voice is urgent, powerful and even angry--everything but fear and happiness--just like always. He takes a step back into the shadows, I hear the flutter of wings and he's gone. I move my mouth to the radio on my shoulder.
"This is Commissioner James Gordon, I need all available units to converge on Haly's Circus immediately. Over." My voice is full of power and pride. I command thousands of soldiers in a never-ending war on crime.
I stand there for some time. Batman has fluttered into the darkness, dozens of cops are converging for what seems like the end of an era and I'm just standing here. I am proud and I am prestigious. But it's moments when I tand here and I think about the Batman and Gotham and my life that I wonder--why am I doing?
When I was a boy my life was perfect. My family gave me everything I wanted and they'd spoiled me--until the die my dad fell to one madman with a gun a million miles away, no matter how much it felt like it had happened right next to me. That was the day I saw the evil in everything, I saw the evil everywhere and I decided that I would do something. That was the day I decided that I would fight not only for revenge but also for justice. I couldn't play their game, I had to be better--it was about the mercy at the end of it all. It took me a long time before I figured out the mercy--and that day when I figured it out, that's that day I realized that I needed to start fighting for more than my mother and my father, but I needed to start fighting for myself or else I would never be everything I could. It was on that day that i became a police officer for the Gotham City Police Department. It was that day that I answered my calling to be better than those primordials who like to think themselves still human.
On that day, I swore an oath to avenge everything I'd ever know and to save the world, to chance the world, to fix the world and return the best of us to our thrones.
My eyes cross the horizon and land on the billowing flames--and I see his silhouette across the flames and I've finally learned what it is that he truly is--not an Angel com from Heaven to fix Earth's problems or a Demon from Hell to keep balance--but instead something much, much worse--an Angel from Fire here to tell us that we need to fix ourselves or we won't be here much longer. If we don't fight for ourselves then nobody else will either. Maybe there is a meaning behind all of this in the end after all?
END
Next Time:
Who is the Nightwing and what does he want with young Richard Grayson?
What drives the Batman to do what he does?
What is going on with Haly's Circus?
And More!
Prologue
Angels From Fire
by Jordan
*
We are all just men, aren't we? In the long run, we are. We are born and we live our lives, we leave our imprint on the World or we don't, and then we die--is there really anything else we can do? Is there anything that makes our lives special? That makes us the top of the food chain? I just can't even fathom to understand it at this point.
Once upon a time, we were the only creatures with the ability to reason, but then, somewhere down the line, most of us lost that. I'm not sure if the war and the kings and the blood bred it out of us, or if it was the crack and the crank, the crystal and the beer; but somewhere, somewhen, somehow--we lost it. We decided that beating our children was okay and that raping our women was fun and that fighting dogs was cool. Where did we go wrong?
No matter the when or the where or the how, we lost that ability to reason and our primal savagery came back upon us, we reverted, we somehow became everything we'd worked so hard to evolve away from. And those of us who maintained our cognitive skills, our abilities to reason, we built hubs and kingdoms and empires and we ruled the savages for oh so long, until finally, one day, in one massive upheaval, those same savages decided that they would be the ones to lead us. They revolted and they took charge, and then they concentrated in the same hubs, kingdoms and empires that we once held sacred and they spat upon everything that us decent people had once built, and then, as if that weren't enough, they turned it against us and made us fear our own perfections and showed us our own imperfections and then taunted us with those imperfections. They made us fear them.
It had been this way since I was born, and it is still this way. The only difference is that now, with every other crazy ruling this city, we finally have a crazy that is on our side, a crazy that fights for what's right and stands for truth, justice and hope in the face of everything that we fear. And what is his name, I hear you ask? Well that, my friend, is--
"Batman." The wind shifts ominously, the air becomes putrid with the smell of anger and sweat. My hair billows in the hard wind, my heart skips a beat and my eyes stare into the shadows as I anticipate the Caped Crusader's next movement. I hear the ever so soft shuffle of his boot on the hard concrete floor. I move my hand over to the large switch on the side of the floodlight and turn it off. Darkness engulfs the rooftop and everything goes silent for just a second.
"Why am I here, Jim?" His voice sounds like gravel being crushed under the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler. I see the whites of his eyes, and nothing more. Sometimes I wonder if he really is man and not something more. Maybe he's an angel sent from heaven to fix God's works...or maybe a demon sent from hell to ensure that Earth doesn't become worse than the flaming river itself. Who will ever know? I've been quiet for too long, I haven't answered his last question. He's becoming antsy, impatient. "Jim, what happened?" And finally, I speak.
"It's the Circus case, Batman." Batman's eyes keep calm, his never-ending grimace keeps ever present. I can almost hear the wheels turning in his head, the thoughts coursing through and his eyes darting through the shadows as my own did not moments ago--except his eyes search not for allies but enemies.
"Did you find something?" I reach into my coat and pull out a manila folder, holding it out with my erect arm, waiting for the Batman to grab it. It takes minutes at least, but finally he steps from the shadows and takes the folder from my hand. He opens it up and his eyes grow wider.
I've looked at that file over a thousand times, I know exactly what he's looking at--the picture of Dick Grayson, 12 years old, being carted away by a shrouded figure. The figure wears thick body armor and a helmet over his head, a domino mask hiding his eyes. On the small of his back is a symbol resembling an eagle. Batman slowly turns over to the next picture and stares at the same shrouded figure killing three armer thugs--thugs who work for the Maroni Family. He turns the pictures over again and again to see the same figure doing the same things to other thugs. Batman closes the file and stares at me.
"I've heard about this man, Jim. On the streets they call him Nightwing. He's taken up his own war against crime, specifically the Maroni Family. Twenty-three dead and counting. I haven't been able to find him, which means he's had ghost training. Luckily I have too, or else this would bcome much harder. I've been tracking him for weeks--come to think of it, ever since the Circus showed up." Batman stops talking and starts thinking. I hate when he goes silent like this. His eyes never stop searching the shadows for intruders and, hopefully, he never does find them.
"Batman?" I ask, trying to snap him back to the real world. He continues to stare listlessly into my eyes and my blood begins to chill. "Batman, do you know what this Nightwing character has to do with the Circus?" Batman grumbles slightly, I can't even fathom what's going through his mind.
"Jim, how long ago was the picture with the Grayson boy taken?"
"About three hours ago." Does Batman know something that I don't? I suppose he always does, doesn't he?
"Jim, we need to get to the Circus--now!" His voice is urgent, powerful and even angry--everything but fear and happiness--just like always. He takes a step back into the shadows, I hear the flutter of wings and he's gone. I move my mouth to the radio on my shoulder.
"This is Commissioner James Gordon, I need all available units to converge on Haly's Circus immediately. Over." My voice is full of power and pride. I command thousands of soldiers in a never-ending war on crime.
I stand there for some time. Batman has fluttered into the darkness, dozens of cops are converging for what seems like the end of an era and I'm just standing here. I am proud and I am prestigious. But it's moments when I tand here and I think about the Batman and Gotham and my life that I wonder--why am I doing?
When I was a boy my life was perfect. My family gave me everything I wanted and they'd spoiled me--until the die my dad fell to one madman with a gun a million miles away, no matter how much it felt like it had happened right next to me. That was the day I saw the evil in everything, I saw the evil everywhere and I decided that I would do something. That was the day I decided that I would fight not only for revenge but also for justice. I couldn't play their game, I had to be better--it was about the mercy at the end of it all. It took me a long time before I figured out the mercy--and that day when I figured it out, that's that day I realized that I needed to start fighting for more than my mother and my father, but I needed to start fighting for myself or else I would never be everything I could. It was on that day that i became a police officer for the Gotham City Police Department. It was that day that I answered my calling to be better than those primordials who like to think themselves still human.
On that day, I swore an oath to avenge everything I'd ever know and to save the world, to chance the world, to fix the world and return the best of us to our thrones.
My eyes cross the horizon and land on the billowing flames--and I see his silhouette across the flames and I've finally learned what it is that he truly is--not an Angel com from Heaven to fix Earth's problems or a Demon from Hell to keep balance--but instead something much, much worse--an Angel from Fire here to tell us that we need to fix ourselves or we won't be here much longer. If we don't fight for ourselves then nobody else will either. Maybe there is a meaning behind all of this in the end after all?
END
Next Time:
Who is the Nightwing and what does he want with young Richard Grayson?
What drives the Batman to do what he does?
What is going on with Haly's Circus?
And More!