The future…

Terry McGinnis, the world’s latest Batman was battling a new alliance between the Jokerz and the Royal Flush gang. None of them could match the training that he’d received at the hands of Bruce Wayne and his sensei’s former student. Yet the sheer weight of numbers were keeping him on his toes, and Bruce kept doing his thinking, guiding his steps and … being boss. He’d been his own boss as Batman in his youth, and the boss of every sidekick from the original Robin to Tim Drake.

Now he was even Batman’s boss. He realized that he was getting older and older, that one day Terry would have to be able to think on his feet unaided, and then there was Terry’s lack of scientific expertise. How could he maintain and repair the Bat suit after Bruce died?

Suddenly Bruce’s concentration was interrupted by something he hadn’t heard in a long time. A sound beeped in the Batcave. He had installed a system which would let him know when the electronic door bell had been rung upstairs in Wayne Manor.

“Bruce, you still there?” asked Terry, as Bruce caught the sounds of punches and kicks hitting home in the background.

“Someone at the door upstairs,” said Bruce.

“I’ve got this,” said Terry, “You’re gonna have to regain a life of your own some time.”

There were no scientific weapons to work out, no mysteries to solve, just a large number of criminal thugs waiting to be taken out by Batman. Bruce couldn’t help with that anyway.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and went up to answer the door.

It was Mary McGinnis, Terry’s mother.

“Mr Wayne, may I come in?”

“By all means,” said Bruce, and showed her to the lounge room.

There was an old portrait of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and a more recent one of Bruce in his youth with his teen ward Dick Grayson. They both sat down, Bruce in an armchair, and Mary on a couch.

“I’ve talked with Terry sometimes, about how much future there would be for him at Waynetech. He’s never really even told me what he does. I guess I’m just looking for … more certainties for my son.”

Bruce had once taken a bold step and trusted Barbara Gordon with Dick Grayson’s Robin identity, hence revealing his own Batman identity in the process. Shortly after it had led to the end of a blossoming romance between Dick and Barbara. Although he’d never admitted it to Dick, he felt pangs of guilt over that outcome. Yet here was Terry’s mother with questions, and Bruce himself didn’t know, he’d just been thinking in the Batcave, what future he could offer Terry: wealth certainly, but not guidance from a dying elderly man who’d never had a wife or children, only brief painful attempts at relationships with criminals like Selina Kyle and Talia.

“I’ll show you something only Terry knows about,” said Bruce, and opened the door to the steps that led down to the Batcave.