Tonnage

Bad Dream

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“I'll... I guess I'll assume you're a kid.”

Tom isn't sure what he's going to do. He dreams, and he even remembers them sometimes. But this is the clearest dream he's ever had. The void stretches out seemingly forever in all directions. Crisp and black with nothing hazy or indistinct about it, and the only thing keeping him company is this voice. It's deep. Older than his sixteen years by a fair amount at least. It seems... Strong, but confused. Somewhat resigned.

“I really can't tell if you're lucky or not, kid. This is kind of a... prerecorded message? I guess? I'll... I'll never meet you.”

The voice becomes slightly clearer and louder which would mean in the real world that the speaker had turned to face them directly. What it means here? Tom has no clue.

“If I understand what happened... Look, I ain't even gonna try to lie here. In my dimension, a whole bunch of us just randomly died. And we were sitting around some other place when we started getting shuffled out of there and into other people. Some egghead had the theory that since energy can't be created or contained or... Matter...”

There is a pause for a few seconds, then the voice comes back. Crying.

“I never graduated. God, kid. I don't even know what to tell you. I guess... I guess I'll tell you what I wish somebody had told me.”

There is a small pause again, and Tom can almost feel the man, who must be a giant based on the height the voice is coming from and just how deep it is, gathering his thoughts.

“You ain't gonna be pretty. You ain't gonna make a living on your looks. But you will be strong. I've tanked down shots from some of the toughest sons of bitches that ever even walked on my planet. Put a lot of them in a hurt locker, at one point or another. But... I went wrong. At the start. I got pissed off about the things people would say and I ran off. Joined the circus as a strongman and freak, and got involved in crime. Never really managed to get my life back together after that. Never managed to get an education. Was always working under one lunatic or another. Was always...”

There is a sigh.

“It'll be easy to go wrong. The good guys don't like to cozy up to people like you are going to be because, well, you won't be able to turn it off. You won't be able to go home and be, you know. Normal. But the secret I learned after a long, long time? The bad guys aren't going to trust you either, and they'll do whatever they can to make you miserable and then blame everybody but themselves to get you pointed in the direction they want. And they'll want to. Because you'll be a regular monster after a while. Don't do it. Not saying you have to be a hero. Just that you don't have to be a villain. You'll be too strong to be forced, and if you aren't a villain, maybe the good guys will be nice?”

There is a strangled, choked laugh, followed by a sigh.

“It's getting dim here. I must be running out of time. I guess the last two things would be that you should plan on stocking up as much food as you can. If you are in bad shape food-wise, learn where the food banks and the soup kitchens are. Until things even out, you are gonna be eating a hell of a lot. Even after they do, you'll be eating about four times normal just to live.”

There is one final pause, and the voice that has run the gamut of emotions picks up one that could almost be considered... Prideful and menacing?

“Not gonna tell you what my old handle was when I was on the job. Didn't pick it myself, wasn't something that made me happy. But if you run into somebody that is really getting on your ass and you are gonna have to throw down? Tell 'em Fred Dukes says 'hi' for me.”

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Then the dream ends, and Tom wakes up. Glancing at the clock by the bedside table, Tom stiffens and then launches himself out of the bed.

Sleeping through an alarm and waking up an hour late for work does everything you'd think it would to both wake him up quickly and banish the odd dream from his mind.

Rampaging through the overnight dump-off at the salvage yard he works at takes a couple of hours, and when he is finally done he waves goodbye to his uncle who is crushing old cars at the moment.

He'd said that he'll train Tom to use the crane and magnet next summer, but that he wouldn't be able to be certified to run it solo and be on the insurance until he's eighteen.

He finds himself sprinting to school, hoping to make it before eight to take advantage of the free breakfast. Plowing through crossings and intersections in the worst part of town at breakneck speed, sweat began to fly from his brow and short-cropped hair. His body is slender. Built for this kind of thing. For speed, and freedom.

The freedom to blitz through the final intersection between him and the school just to be hit in the side when he has the light by a senior who was also running late. In their old beater of a van.

Tom flies thirty feet off the bumper of the vehicle that was going about twenty miles over the limit of the school zone and takes a header in the bench by the bus stop.

He wakes up hours later in Gotham General. And he's ravenous.

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Author's note.
Spent a week some time ago reading a huge assortment of stories based loosely on 'Young person becomes somehow entangled with the Bat-Clan. The person either joins up or goes home. The person in question has an unbelievably good chance to be named Peter, Danny, or... (Sigh) Ladybug.'

Nothing wrong with these stories. But it made me wonder, how would the Bat-Clan react to a 'Meta' that has no real intent to be a hero, but cannot in any way pass for normal. In other words, if, say, Croc's kid were to randomly show up would that person be allowed to be a hero, would they be allowed to be a normal person in any way? Or would the rogues find a way to get to them, or the Bat-Clan lose their crap and get rid of them? Drive them off? And what would they do when they would need to call in metahumans to get rid of him?

Because for those that didn't get the reference when I dropped the name? Fred Dukes is the Marvel X-Men enemy, The Blob. He's the mutant known for being fat, enormous, immobile when he wants to be, and strong. He doesn't have the capacity to deal damage like the true heavyweights of the Marvel or DC universes, but he is impossible to hurt short of superpowers or the kinds of things that would be used to take out bunkers and battleships. Even those often fail against him. Any Kryptonian would make short work of him. Other beings that operate at their level would as well most likely. But once you get out of that power tier, Blob is the king of the next division down for sheer ability to ignore you and keep going. Without nasty tools and equipment, He'd completely plow under most of the rogues. Blob has survived hits from The HULK, Juggernaut, and Colossus. With the addition of a Gotham-approved gas mask, the only three Gotham regulars I can think of off the top of my head that might stand a chance would be Clayface, Grundy, and Ivy. The first two because their levels of invulnerability are high enough that I think the fight would take out several blocks and then they'd get bored and go home.
Ivy attacks people with trees, and I've seen 'The Evil Dead.' If I have to say more, you haven't seen the movie.