"We should never have agreed to let him go to the police academy. Gotham may not be what it was twenty years ago, but there's always danger!"
"Martha, give it a rest. I think the brat's enjoying himself!"
"Enjoying himself? I certainly don't see it. Thomas, he's our only child! Someone beat him up like this. Doesn't that hurt you?"
"But how can an eaglet learn to fly without learning to fall? Look! The brat's awake. Why don't you ask him how he feels?"
Smiling, Thomas took a bottle from the liquor cabinet and poured himself a little red wine.
Lying on the sofa, Will slowly woke.
No, more precisely, it was the personality named "Bruce," which had been sleeping in his subconscious.
In Bruce's memories, he had only just endured twenty nightmarish years. When Hugo Strange fastened the memory extraction device onto his head, he quietly gazed at the clone in the cultivation vat.
He did not know whether he would still exist. Even if the operation succeeded and the clone was loaded with all his consciousness and memories, would that really still count as him?
In all honesty, Bruce did not want to die. He had dragged this crippled body through twenty full years of fighting fate, an experience that had tempered his will until it was almost indestructible.
But he also knew that if he wanted to change this broken, corrupt city, he had to abandon this frail body.
To be reborn through fire like a phoenix.
"Whether or not you're me, please understand me, become me, and surpass me. Save Gotham. Save its poor people."
When Bruce opened his eyes again, he saw that familiar face. Martha was cleaning his wounds with an alcohol-soaked cotton swab, while the old man beside her, Thomas Wayne, swirled his