Beatrice Wayne doesn't need to work hard to get people to underestimate her.
After all, she's just another socialite, burning through her inheritance like it's funny money. Never mind that Waynetech's stock has doubled in worth since Beatrice took over. Forget about how the company is landing government contracts right and left.
The credit surely belongs to someone else.
Anyone else.
Beatrice Wayne belongs on the covers of Gotham's tabloids (though sometimes she's carried in the nationals too), dyed blond hair in disarray and arm in arm with a pouting array of arm candy, her red-tipped lips pulled up into a predator's grin. She knows how to live, that one.
She disappears from Gotham (and from the face of the planet) during her early twenties, purportedly to find herself.
But she's not without troubles, of course. Living in Gotham won't allow for that. Even the untouchable can be brought down, in Gotham. And this poor little rich girl's got a sad story, all right. Her parents, pillors of the community kind of folks, were gunned down in front of young Beatrice. She was only eight years old, found almost catatonic in the pool of her parents' blood.
(Beatrice Wayne never wears pearls. Not even on the rare days she deigns to wear a cardigan, to the shame of her WASPy for-bearers.)
In any case, the Waynes' death marks a turning point in Gotham's history. Things darken. Things shift. Things change.
And twenty years to the day, something moves in.
Criminals are running scared. There's something in the dark, something inhumane. Something unforgiving. Something that won't let you do wrong in this town.
(It doesn't kill. No. But it doesn't have to.)
It has a name, carried from mouth to mouth, in hurried whispers.
The Bat.
And when the police -- that is to say, Commissioner Gordon, sets up what everyone jokingly refers to as the bat-signal -- and well. It's a symbol, all right. A challenge, one meant to shake Gotham out of its deadly indifference.
It's too bad then, that it also encourages the crazies.
And Gotham's got a lot a crazies.
+
When the intrepid reporter and Ms. Wayne's sometimes paramour, Vic Vale asks Beatrice Wayne what she thinks about Gotham's new masked vigilante, she shrugs, eyes hidden by a gigantic pair of sunglasses.
But Vic is nothing if not sharp. "Is that shiner, you got there, B?"
Beatrice shifts in her seat. Then she leans in, movement deliberate and studied.
In a stage-whisper, she says, "That's right, Vic. Off the record and all? I am the Bat."
Vic laughs long and hard at that. He doesn't even notice when Beatrice doesn't laugh along.
Instead, she smiles thinly and rings for Alice to come and show Mr. Vale the door.
a great leap in the dark
After all, she's just another socialite, burning through her inheritance like it's funny money. Never mind that Waynetech's stock has doubled in worth since Beatrice took over. Forget about how the company is landing government contracts right and left.
The credit surely belongs to someone else.
Anyone else.
Beatrice Wayne belongs on the covers of Gotham's tabloids (though sometimes she's carried in the nationals too), dyed blond hair in disarray and arm in arm with a pouting array of arm candy, her red-tipped lips pulled up into a predator's grin. She knows how to live, that one.
She disappears from Gotham (and from the face of the planet) during her early twenties, purportedly to find herself.
But she's not without troubles, of course. Living in Gotham won't allow for that. Even the untouchable can be brought down, in Gotham. And this poor little rich girl's got a sad story, all right. Her parents, pillors of the community kind of folks, were gunned down in front of young Beatrice. She was only eight years old, found almost catatonic in the pool of her parents' blood.
(Beatrice Wayne never wears pearls. Not even on the rare days she deigns to wear a cardigan, to the shame of her WASPy for-bearers.)
In any case, the Waynes' death marks a turning point in Gotham's history. Things darken. Things shift. Things change.
And twenty years to the day, something moves in.
Criminals are running scared. There's something in the dark, something inhumane. Something unforgiving. Something that won't let you do wrong in this town.
(It doesn't kill. No. But it doesn't have to.)
It has a name, carried from mouth to mouth, in hurried whispers.
The Bat.
And when the police -- that is to say, Commissioner Gordon, sets up what everyone jokingly refers to as the bat-signal -- and well. It's a symbol, all right. A challenge, one meant to shake Gotham out of its deadly indifference.
It's too bad then, that it also encourages the crazies.
And Gotham's got a lot a crazies.
+
When the intrepid reporter and Ms. Wayne's sometimes paramour, Vic Vale asks Beatrice Wayne what she thinks about Gotham's new masked vigilante, she shrugs, eyes hidden by a gigantic pair of sunglasses.
But Vic is nothing if not sharp. "Is that shiner, you got there, B?"
Beatrice shifts in her seat. Then she leans in, movement deliberate and studied.
In a stage-whisper, she says, "That's right, Vic. Off the record and all? I am the Bat."
Vic laughs long and hard at that. He doesn't even notice when Beatrice doesn't laugh along.
Instead, she smiles thinly and rings for Alice to come and show Mr. Vale the door.