2 What it means to be Batman
Do I have what it takes to be Batman?
I do have the money.
The original took years to acquire and perfect an untold number of skills driven forward by nothing but tragedy, a desire for justice and sheer determination.
But I just don't have any of those things.
Could a real person reach Batman's level?
Well, his workout routine was published in "the batman files" and most fitness experts agree it would pretty much kill whoever tried it.
He is a guy that can bench one thousand pounds (454 kg) and leg presses two thousand five hundred pounds (1.134 kg).
Those numbers are in range of the real world records for both skills, and he could still run fast enough to keep up with the best speed and endurance athletes in our world.
But that isn't as crazy as it sounds!
In the book "becoming batman" written by kinesiology and neuroscience professor doctor E. Paul Zahr, serious consideration is given to the limits of the human body, and the author himself concludes that a dedicated trainer could more or less become Batman.
With twenty years, a strict study, workout schedule, a crazy sleeping schedule and 4000 calories a day.
Yeah, that dude should never be hungry.
To compare, the average man needs to eat about 2.000 calories per day to maintain his weight.
But we all know that the best way to understand how Bruce Wayne became Batman, is to study his life.
The basic version: a billionaire child has his parents killed in front of him, swears vengeance on crime and becomes a superhero.
But what about in between years?
So, I do know Bruce Wayne became an orphan when he was only eight years old, and it presumably triggered some serious will power.
He decided as a child that he would become a one-man war on crime.
Not exactly realistic for most humans, even the most skilled fighters in our world have trouble when outnumbered 10:1 by opponents with weapons.
Granted, Bruce had the backing of the Wayne fortune to help even the odds as much as he could.
From eight to fourteen, he mastered knot tying, acting, acrobatics, martial arts and all the sciences math and languages available to him.
Which is really impressive, if I may say so myself.
But not impossible!
Bruce Wayne IQ is generally estimated to be around one hundred ninety-two, and he has a knack for multitasking.
Could a dedicated genius child manage to pick up all of those skills with a packed schedule?
One already did, at least in comics.
Not forgetting to mention the mind training.
Bruce streamlined his education by teaching himself speed reading, lip reading and total recall along the way.
In an attempt to learn as much as he could as quickly and efficiently as he could, Bruce made sure to learn as many learning methods as he could.
He is likely ambidextrous, with expertise in memorizing numbers and great learning speed would suggest he might have synesthesia.
Synesthesia is a phenomenon in which certain sensory experiences become tied together in our mind.
It's highly suspect that we all... kind of have this to varying degrees, but intense training or genetics can allow you to experience it to a greater degree than the average person.
The young Bruce Wayne would take advantage of this kind of association to read faster, memorize better, perform complicated equations in his head and graduate at the age of fourteen.
After which he used his finances to obtain the best college education available.
All of them.
For the next six years, Bruce Wayne audited classes at Cambridge, Sorbonne, the Berlin school of science and over another dozen of other prestigious universities.
But he was never in one place for long.
Bruce Wayne usually only stayed at his current college for a few semesters.
Picking up the courses he deemed relevant and moving on to the next expert.
This bears striking similarity to a method of study used by Sherlock Holmes, in the book "a study in scarlet".
During which Holmes demonstrated that he only focused on gathering information important to his work and strove to ignore things like astronomy, politics and literature so his head wasn't bogged down with useless information he had to shift through.
Sure enough, Bruce Wayne took similar cues by studying the detective and criminal worlds in his spare time.
He trained under renowned detectives like Harvey Harris and Dan Mallory and paid a ton of money to take private boxing lessons from the current heavyweight champion Ted Grant.
Or wildcat.
But when he reached the age of twenty, Bruce Wayne was finally ready to fight crime...
As an FBI agent.
Yeah, he actually underwent FBI training.
And he scored perfectly on every test, except for gun handling.
Sorry, but that's a bit dumb.
But when admitted in the FBI, he only stayed for six weeks before deciding it wasn't for him.
At this point, Bruce Wayne was skilled in almost everything you would think he might need to fight crime.
But... he wasn't the best!
The young billionaire traveled east to find the best and become even better.
There's a lot unknown about his training henceforth.
He was training in some areas completely out of touch with civilization.
But we do know his first stop was an ancient temple in the peak Tucson Mountains of Korea.
It took him six weeks and forty thousand dollars in bribes, but Bruce managed to train under a legendary martial artist named kirigi for nearly a year.
It's never outright stated but based in the part of the world Bruce was in and the mannerisms of his master, focusing on patience, peace and clearing of the mind.
It's likely Bruce was studying some martial art with roots in Buddhism that intertwined the physical and mental aspects of battle with everyday life to achieve perfect balance.
This system attempts to study all forms of martial arts and does not consider itself limited to any single discipline.
So, within one year Bruce basically learned every Korean fighting style at once, along with a certain amount of mental training.
He went to France next and there he worked alongside a detective and mercenary named Henry Ducard, known across the world for his ability to track anyone down.
The relationship helped further hone Bruce's detective skills but there was eventually a falling out due to the unnecessary brutal and deceptive tactics Ducard used.
He then left civilization again to find Willi Doggett, a legendary investigator and tracker in the wilderness of Alaska.
Later he learned Kung fu with a grand master, likely a combination of each form.
And with Shihan Matsuda, Bruce spent nine months training the art of Tummo Meditation and under these technique he could limited the amount of oxygen he needs to survive, gain complete control over the functions of his mind, slip into a coma to conserve energy if he needs to and even control his own body temperature.
And that all probably sounds crazy, until you realize this is a real technique that has been scientifically proven to work.
Tumo can conserve and focus the body's energy enough to lower a subject's metabolism by sixty-four percent.
To put that into perspective, our body metabolism only slows by about ten or fifteen percent... when we are sleeping!
And one guy, named Wim Hof, once ran a marathon in the arctic circle wearing nothing but shorts and was completely fine because of similar training.
Martial arts expert, David Kane, taught Bruce several exotic fighting styles he hadn't studied before.
And then the future Dark Knight eventually hit Russia, where he would perfect his engineering skills under a man who was essentially a mad genius named Sergei.
He taught Bruce everything he knew about building wiring and thinking criticality and it all came to a climax when they went to Egypt and he sealed Bruce inside the Sphinx with a limited air supply and a handful of random gadgets.
He needed to build his way out or die!
Bruce Wayne survived!
Ultimately, there were a hell of a lot of people Bruce trained with.
Martial arts experts, assassins, sword fighting experts, brutal military leaders...
He even studied both the light and dark sides of Taoism to channel his inner peace and rage, pushing him to levels human beings normally just shouldn't be capable of.
Man, one of his masters could even use this knowledge to trick opponents into literally thinking he was invisible.
Batman studied with Richard Dragon, perhaps the single best martial artist in the world.
And with John Zatara, an expert escape artist, magician and father of Bruce's future Justice League teammate Zatanna.
But Batman couldn't have done any of this without the Uberman Sleep Schedule.
A real life sleep pattern that select people have adopted only requires about two to three hours of actual sleep every night.
Someone without the proper supervision shouldn't try it, but when we sleep our brain goes through several stages of rest to keep your mind sharp and the most important of these stages is called Rem Sleep.
We typically get about one and a half hours of Rem sleep squeezed between several other stages.
But adopting the uberman sleep schedule changes things.
Since it consists of six strategically placed thirty minute power naps, our mind eventually changes its method of rejuvenation to enter Rem sleep as soon as we lose consciousness.
And we would get what is more or less a full night of sleep in two-three hours.
I've no doubt that this method is not only crucial to Bruce Wayne fighting crime as Batman, but crucial to finish his training at all!
Because when he returned to Gotham from his world tour, it had only been FIVE years since he left.
So...
Who or what is Batman?
He is a man, he studied dozens of academic subjects, knows nearly every martial art by training with their roots and understands a variety of crime-fighting skills because has practice with the best.
Are there things he doesn't know?
Well, sure!
He has admitted that Wonder Woman and Shiva are probably better fighters than he is.
His hacking skills aren't usually as good as cyborg.
Constantine is generally a better planner.
And Lex Luthor is smarter.
But Batman is a representation of how well-rounded a person can be.
His records are on par with olympians.
His friends and co-workers are gods.
Imagine the lengths I will be able to reach with a kryptonian physiology if I follow and manage to improve his steps towards becoming Batman.
It's almost kind of scary.
But totally cool!
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North of Gothic Metropolis, Wayne Manor.
It was the inherent duty of a father to teach his child about the lessons that he or she would need to learn in life.
Most of these lessons would undoubtedly be very hard for the child to understand or accept.
Such as the harsh reality of life, one of which was that the concept of 'fair justice' was not an absolute rule upheld by the universe.
That crime sometimes does pay.
And that not every wicked man ended up losing in the end and punished for their crimes.
Nor would every good man ended up rewarded for their deeds.
However, Thomas Wayne had been teaching his son from a very early age about the importance of character integrity.
"No matter how cruel the world might be Patrick, one must stand by, uphold, and adhere to the values that makes one an exemplar for others to follow. Loyalty. Nobility. Courage. Honor. And above all, the willingness to do good when you are more than capable of doing so."
Patrick, the one and only son of Thomas and Martha Wayne, grew well under such teachings that Thomas Wayne had given to him.
Seven years of age still, but he was wise beyond his age and without a doubt, having a bright future ahead of him.
The boy was gifted, this was known to everyone who knew him.
He was much more capable in learning things in comparison to even those older than him, earning him some respect along with some ire from the other students at his school.
However, despite his reputation, he was a charismatic, extroverted person by nature.
And because of that, despite his young age, he was very popular with older kids.
But he never called them as his friends.
At best, he would call them acquaintances.
It's not that he thought of the others as inferior compared to him, but it was more about how he only had eyes for the rest of the world, contemplating his future adventures across the world.
He felt at home with his parents, but his ambitions were still making him desire to make the world his.
In his school, most of his schoolmates considered him to be a pleasant person to be with and the teachers really admired him, he had the ability to easily connect with others.
And, Patrick Wayne was well known for his tenacity.
In him, there were two natures that sometimes collided, due to one of them contradicting the other, he found a way to make one complement the other from time to time.
His more selfish perspective shaped his tenaciously outgoing persona to search for ways to become smarter and stronger.
He mentally had two role models.
The Dark Knight and the Man of Tomorrow.
At times, these two sides of himself would clash with one another, creating a friction that caused him to appear either a naive goody two-shoes or a dense edge lord.
Despite the fact that he was uncertain on which to commit to, he never gave up on extracting the best from both worlds.
However, that did not mean that he did not deserve to be raised by a loving family.
"Hardships in life are inevitable, Patrick. The important thing is... You must learn from them. ...Why do we fall, Patrick?"
"So that we can learn to pick ourselves up."
And so he faced every challenge with his head held up.
He kept trying to be a symbol of inspiration to other people, but he would be lying if he said he never got his hands dirty after dealing with some bullies.
All in all, he had been rather successful with his childhood.
He finally had a loving family, the luxuries of being wealthy weren't bad either, and because he didn't remember his previous family, he could finally live his life without regrets.
But for now, he's still living very comfortably with his family.
If Thomas was the one whose job was to instill goodness and a proper sense of morality into his mind, then Martha's job was to become a loving, caring mother for him.
And now.
In one of the many study rooms that the manor had, specifically the one located at the east wing side of the manor, where his father used due to it having the best view of the city on the horizon in all of the manor.
"Father." Said Patrick from his chair after finishing all of his homework for the week.
"Yes, Rick?" Thomas responded to his son's call after folding the newspaper he was just reading.
He was sitting on the comfortable armchair that was near the fireplace.
"I've finished my duties for the week, may I take a break?"
Dr. Wayne rose from his armchair and looked at the pile of books in his son's desk.
And he found that everything was completed, unfortunately he no longer was able to actually help his child given he already was coursing through very advanced subjects.
The young boy was politely awaiting his father to inspect his homework.
"It appears every question has been fulfilled. Congratulations, you're not only improving your knowledge but actually being very quick with it." Thomas praised his son.
"But you should await your tutor's arrival before taking a break."
The patriarch perfectly knew the reason why Patrick Wayne, his son, was eager to do something else.
Being his father, and one of the few people who knew of his son's origin, Thomas had a different perspective from the feedback given by every teacher and private tutor.
He knew his son wasn't just a gift with his mind, being a doctor allowed him to notice his great muscle growth.
It was something he didn't talk about, but recorded never having the need to treat his child from any kind of illness.
Because he knew that Patrick was different from anyone else, he pushed his son to always be better.
Patrick had been exhibiting stellar physical skills and exceptional mental maturation from an early age, the cause of which was not something that was known as of yet, but was heavily implied as an influence made by his mysterious origin.
"Understood father. Has mother arrived already?" Said the boy. "She said after work we would eat on the terrace."
"...She must already be on her way." Said Thomas while checking his pocket watch.
Patrick seemed to accept this answer as he went silent, actually hearing his mother's unique heartbeat approaching their home at the average speed of a car, he then began reading a book that he enjoyed reading multiple times. For no specific reason, other than enjoying the author's writing style.
At that, his father returned to his previous action, they were awaiting the meal they prepared together to get ready.
What Patrick always did whenever he finished reviewing his answers with his tutor was to secretly speak with his personal AI.
His ship might be hidden under their manor, but he still could hear the frequency Brainiac communicated and his special vocal chords allowed him to speak in it as well.
So.
After receiving his daily report, he grinned knowing some of his plans were almost ready for him to proceed.
He then went to the manor front door and opened it to give pass the one who just arrived.
"Hello Mother!" Patrik said happily to Martha.
Her eyes sparkled with joy as she smiled as Patrick walked briskly towards her.
"Hello dear. Have you been waiting for me, uh?" She said as she opened her arms to welcome him into a hug.
"Welcome back. How was your day at work? I like welcoming you." The boy said quickly.
"Well it was good like always." Martha answered.
"Is your dad at home yet? I want to talk to him about something." She asked after remembering something.
"Yes, he had arrived earlier from the hospital, but now he is waiting in his favorite study room." Said Patrick.
"Very well. Now, after I speak with him, what do you think about the three of us having dinner on the terrace?"
Her son's wide smile was the indication that he was already expecting it.
"Excellent idea, father and I had already prepared the meal. We thought you might arrive from work hungry." Said Patrick, who seemed very proud of his action.
"Very thoughtful of you two." said Martha, giving him a genuine praise with a smile.
Martha then left Patrick in the living room, and while making her way she admitted to herself.
Seeing Patrick growing up was one of the most pleasant things that she had ever experienced.
Even more so when she could see him growing up to become a good child, one that any parents would be proud of having.
Understanding it would take a while before dinner, Patrick ran out of the manor dressed in casual t-shirt and jeans towards the backyard of the manor, towards the extensive range of the land that the Wayne family owned.
He liked to test his improving skills in a more secluded area.
That was his favorite pastime he always did whenever he was back from his private school, especially when it was recess time.
Never mind the fact that he had practically done this dozens of times that the layout of the manor and its surroundings had become so ingrained on his brain.
This was his home.
There was one time during this little activity, he ended up finding the edge of a small cliff with a waterfall that went down to a small river.
It probably connects to the stone well, the one ravaged by time and covered in vines.
That was a part of the Wayne Manor, being one that was located quite far away from the manor itself, and probably one of the things that was installed when the manor was first created.
...
Later.
The sun was on its way to settle down on the horizon when Patrick began to walk back towards the manor, already satisfied with his progress.
Maybe even more so than last time.
The darkness suddenly became clearer to see, something that would normally happen to human eyes when they got accustomed to a dark environment, but never at such a speed.
Nor was it ever that clear either, especially now that the only source of light was the rays of the setting sun.
And so, it appeared to be a normal late afternoon after a relatively normal day as Patrick was planning to take a bath and then have some quick read from his favorite book again before joining his parents for dinner.
"Hey there young man." Thomas greeted him while standing in the entrance.
When Patrick was about to enter, his father noticed that he was happy.
Certainly, he was not overflowing with happiness, beaming uncontrollably nor smiling rather exaggeratedly, but Thomas could tell by how his eyes seemed to shine.
"You seem rather happy, little Rick."
At this, Patrick smiled and he said to him.
"As a matter of fact, yes." He answered rather succinctly with a polite tone to it.
"Might I ask the reason?" His father asked, not because he needed to know an explanation, just out of curiosity.
After a moment, the young man answered him. "I'm really glad to live with my caring family."
Thomas simply nodded and patted his son affectionately on the back.
"And so are we, son."
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(06/08/2020)
*Hey there! Thanks for reading my work! I hope this chapter is of your liking. You should definitely try "The Imaginary Axis" channel on YouTube!
Any ideas for powers, equipment, girls and anything else that might be a good match with my fic is more than welcomed. I might not use anything, but you will have my gratitude for trying.
If this chapter is a mess of grammatical errors, please wait so that I will promptly try to fix it. But for that i need your feedback.
Thanks as always for your time, hope you have a fantastic day and please stay safe. Bye.
