Nightwing: Legacy

Chapter 1.1

A red 1967 Mustang raced down a suburban road. The sun was setting behind the car, in between the skyscrapers of Gotham City in the far distance. The road was worn down, with faded paint in between the two one way lanes. On the driver's side of the road, there was a small grassy ditch, and ten yards away from the road was a wall of trees flowing into a forest. On the passenger side was an open grassy field stretching over a hill that rolled down into a polluted creek.

A man in his late teens to early twenties was driving the car, the windows down making his short black hair flow in the wind. He wore a red hoodie and jeans, with one hand on the wheel as he yelled out the lyrics to "Heart Shaped Box" by Nirvana. His blue eyes traced over to a boy in the passenger seat. He was looking in the rearview mirror at the city behind him, the palm of his hand stuck out the window to fight against the wind.

He looked much younger than the older man, maybe 9 or 10. He wore a prep school uniform, with a white shirt and a gray blazer and schoolboy shorts with a red and yellow striped tie. His jet black hair flowed in the wind, too, as his emerald green eyes looked at the landscape with a sparkle.

The older man turned down the music, looking at the boy and asking, "You okay, Thomas?" The young boy in question looked over at the other man.

"Yeah, Jason. I'm okay."

"Then what was that look for?"

"I'm looking at Gotham. It looks beautiful like that, with the sunset reflecting off of the buildings."

Jason looked in the mirror in the center to get a look. "Yeah it does." He looked over at Thomas again, and asked again, "Are you sure you're okay, Tommy? Did something happen at school?"

Thomas pulled his hand inside the car, "I got in trouble today. Max Evans was picking on me again. I called him a name they didn't like. And I got detention."

"What was the name?" Jason asked, pulling into a long driveway as the black gate slowly slid behind a perimeter of tall hedges and concrete. The car drove smooth over a concrete path lined with greenery and some abstract statues. In the distance, a giant steel assortment of tangled rings was the center of a roundabout at the front of the mansion.

It was made from wood and stone, with three or four stories and architecture that looked like it was made in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds. But it also looked like it had some modern reworks. One of the wings was made from concrete.

"I heard you say it," Thomas explained, "I called him an asshole."

Jason tried to hold back laughter, choking on his voice as he pulled up to the front of the mansion, "that's an adult word, Tommy. You can't say that."

"Oh. I still think it was the right word," Thomas said as he stepped out of the car, grabbing his backpack, it's holographic image of Batman and Robin glinting in the setting sun.

Jason turned off the engine and stepped outside with two bottled sodas, walking alongside Thomas as they climbed the set of stairs to the large oak double doors. He held out a bottle of root beer, "it probably was, but you still can't say it."

"Okay," Thomas shrugged, taking his drink from Jason. They entered the mansion and walked through a large foyer, then a wooden hallway, into an open room. The inside looked more modern than the outside. In the center was a large wrap around sectional couch, with a smooth gray wood grained box in the middle of the room to act as a coffee table. A few books and magazines lay on it with a stack of cork coasters.

The couch was gray fabric, and some blue and black fleece blankets were spread around on it. A large TV was facing toward the couch on a wooden tv stand matching the wood halls. A woman was sitting in the right corner of the couch, her legs bundled under a navy fleece blanket. She had an athletic build and black hair with a short pixie cut that looked grown out a bit. Her kind green eyes were watching a show on the TV. And she held a white mug to her lips that read "World's #1 Mom."