Within a dorm room at Gotham University, Chase Davenport yawned as he opened his eyes at 6:00 am on the dot. His short brown hair was matted down and he was only wearing a pair of boxers and a tank top as he got out of bed and began his day.
His dorm room was a large single room, he didn't have a roommate, and all throughout it were little bits of devices he'd been working on before they were discarded. He grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste and walked out the door of his room down the hall towards the communal bathroom so he could brush his teeth.
'We are supposed to get assigned our partner for the Wayne Foundation Scholarship Project today. Well, whoever it is I can just carry them through it.'
He nodded absentmindedly as another guy who lived on his floor of the dorms came in to do the same as him. Once he'd finished, he walked back to his dorm room and began to get dressed. At one point he'd put more effort into his outfits, but after having settled into his freshman year he'd gone back to just wearing a crewneck and joggers to class. It was better than those who would just wear pajamas, so at least he wasn't the laziest.
Once he was ready to leave, Chase slipped the device he'd been working on the night before into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. Gotham University's campus was beautiful during the late fall/winter, although it hadn't gotten cold enough to snow yet.
While he walked, a display appeared in Chase's vision that only he could see. On it, a progress bar was displayed, the number reading "Decryption: 99%."
'Should finish this morning.'
The display was an intrinsic ability of the bionic chip imbedded in Chase's brain since he was born. His father, the delightful person that he was, stuck a chip in his child's head and then promptly dropped him off at an orphanage in Gotham without a care. Growing up, Chase learned that he was unique due to the chip, which gave him a variety of bionic powers.
The first one, and most prominently used by him, was super intelligence. His thinking ability was enhanced to a level that couldn't be compared to anyone else on the planet, and with his chip allowing him to directly connect to any device nearby, it let him directly download information from the internet straight into his brain. When he was younger, Chase used it to learn any skill he was interested in, whether it was playing the piano or martial arts.
Other than that, his five senses were also enhanced to extraordinary levels. As a child, he'd spent long nights screaming from sensory overload due to how much his senses were amplified. With time he learned to modulate how much he was paying attention to, but the lack of care on his father's part just went to show that Chase was just a lab rat to him and not a child.
Although those were the only bionic abilities he had at the moment, Chase had spent a lot of time devoted to trying to decipher everything he could about his bionic chip. A little while ago he'd discovered a hidden section of it, within which were a variety of hidden abilities he'd never even known he had. Once he'd found it, he devoted a part of his mind to decrypting the abilities, the first of which should be finished sometime this morning.
'No idea what it will even be, but hopefully it's useful.'
Gotham University had a variety of shops on campus and Chase usually stopped at a coffee shop near his dorm and relaxed for a bit before his first class, which wasn't until 9. When he got there, it was relatively busy, although he had no problem finding a seat after he got his coffee, with a girl reading a book behind him and a guy struggling to finish an assignment in front of him.
He spent the next hour with his laptop open in front of him. It hadn't taken him long to realize that even if he could connect to the internet mentally, people thought it was weird if you sat there staring off into space, so he used a laptop for casual use. A pair of earbuds were plugged in to let him tune out the noise, although he had to turn his hearing way down to not blow his eardrum out.
His relaxation was interrupted as the decryption process finally finished, and his attention was immediately devoted entirely to that. This was the first real progress he'd gotten towards gaining access to everything his bionic chip had to offer, so Chase couldn't help but get a little excited as he quickly looked through the information.
[Molecularkinesis: The ability to have limited control of physical forces and move and otherwise interact with objects from a distance.]
'Not exactly what I was expecting.'
Chase stretched his arms above his head after sitting still for so long, only for his cup, which was a quarter-full with the melted ice from his drink, to go flying through the air and smack into the back of the girl sitting behind him. The cap flew off and the small amount of water drenched the back of the clothes as she stared at him, unamused.
He looked at her awkwardly as he tried to figure out what to say. The girl had shoulder-length dark purple hair and a pale complexion. There was a ruby on her forehead, he assumed for a religious reason, and she was wearing a black tank top with a transparent loose-fitted shirt over it and jeans.
"Would you believe me if I said my hand slipped?" The deadpan look he got in return made it obvious she wouldn't believe him. The girl sighed and stood up to leave.
"Wait, wait, I'm sorry. None of it got on your book, right?" Chase quickly asked.
The girl held up her entirely dry book, although Chase's eyes were drawn to the cover which had different occult symbols on it, despite there being no title on the book itself.
"It's fine, you didn't damage it."
Despite Chase offering to pay for her drink or something, the girl just brushed him off and left to go change. The other people in the shop had watched the byplay amusedly, and once she left Chase gathered his stuff and left the coffee place.
Once outside, he quickly found a secluded area behind a building and focused back on the ability he'd just unlocked. Experimentally, he took a pen out of his bag and held it in his hand. With a flick of his wrist, the pen flew into the air and he tried to concentrate on stopping it mid-flight. The first attempt sent the pen flying off into the sky, Chase left watching as it soared up and over the building.
"Right, so just unlocking the ability doesn't give me great control," he muttered as he took a pencil out of his bag to try again.
Subsequent attempts had varied results, either moving the wrong object, putting too much force behind it and sending the pencil flying, or moving the pencil shakily in the wrong direction. It took a while, and Chase had to be watchful for anyone who might happen to walk over, but he finally managed to get enough control that he didn't have to worry about another incident happening unintentionally.
An alarm on his phone signaled to him that he needed to get to class, so he gathered up his things and walked through the campus while considering what his new ability meant.
'I already started the decryption process for the next ability, but who knows how many there are? I want to understand more about my chip, but if I'm going to be unlocking new powers, should I be using them for something?'
When he was a kid, Chase fantasized about using his powers to become a hero, but as he got older the idea appealed to him less. He'd figured out when he was younger that he was under surveillance, although it wasn't all that invasive. He'd just noticed one day that someone was monitoring him and it hadn't taken him long to hack them back and figure out that it was Batman doing it.
From there, he'd been able to connect to the Batcomputer and discover who the father was who'd implanted a bionic chip in him and had dumped him at an orphanage was; Anthony Ivo. The surveillance had started around when he was thirteen because Ivo had given Batman a hint about his existence when he was imprisoned in Belle Reve.
Chase was Ivo's attempt to go in a different direction from Amazo, instead of having a robot that could copy any power, he developed a way for a human who'd been implanted from birth with the chip to have powers instead. Ever since then, he'd been somewhat put off by the idea of being a hero. It wasn't like he'd done anything, having a hero monitoring his movements was frustrating, even if it was moderately understandable.
That singular time he hacked the Batcomputer had changed his goal in life. He'd never hacked into it again, not wanting to see anything that could cause issues, not after he'd caved to a stupid impulse and found something out he'd rather not have known.
Since then, Chase had focused on putting his intelligence toward developing ways to protect Gotham's police instead. His various devices were all different ideas for ways to help lower the mortality rate when the police had to deal with villains like the Joker or Clayface. The priority was defense, creating weapons was a recipe for disaster, so instead he was trying to create a way to protect their lives.
The rest of the day passed by quickly as Chase attended his few classes for the day, and once his last class for the day ended, he made his way to the classroom where the Scholarship Project was held. His intelligence had gotten him a full ride to Gotham University through the Wayne Foundation, but the scholarship had a stipulation that those "geniuses" would submit a project combining the topics of their own and their partner's area of focus.
He was one of the last students to arrive at the classroom as his class ended only a short time before, so he found a seat in the back and sat down. A quick survey of the room showed the roughly twenty students who were part of the scholarship, although he made a point of avoiding looking at one person in particular. Once the time arrived, the Professor in charge of the project came into the room and did a quick overview of the project.
Each student would be assigned a partner and the two would have to find some area of similarity between their majors to create a project for the improvement of Gotham City. It could be purely theoretical, or a practical project, but the research needed to be done thoroughly and the concept had to be completely developed. Thankfully, they would be assigned someone who's major at least somewhat lined up with their major or interest that was expressed when they applied to the scholarship.
When the explanation was finished, the sheet with partners was projected at the front of the room. It only took Chase a second to find his name on the list, along with the name of his partner.
'You have got to be kidding.'
Chase glanced at the person he'd prayed he wouldn't be assigned; Barbara Gordon. Commissioner Gordon's daughter was immediately looking at him, her long orange hair and green eyes were distinctive as she gave him a kind smile and nod. Chase gave a weak smile as well, although his mind was currently racing.
'It makes sense, they put us together because she's a Criminal Justice major and I expressed my interest in using my Mechanical Engineering degree to develop technology to lower police mortality rates, but why did it have to be her?'
He knew most people would be excited to work with her. Barbara Gordon was a remarkably intelligent, attractive young woman. Unfortunately, Chase couldn't ignore the fact that when he'd hacked the Batcomputer, his idiotic crush on Batgirl had led to him discovering her identity. He'd regretted it right after he discovered it, but he was incapable of forgetting anything and that discovery is the reason he made a vow to not look into any hero's identity ever again.
'Alright, it'll be fine. Just pretend she's any other girl, I'm partnered with Barbara not Batgirl.'
They were dismissed to meet up with their partners and discuss the project, so Chase stood up and made his way over to Barbara, who had already stood up.
"Guess we'll be working together, Chase Davenport."
"Barbara Gordon. I remember you from the meeting at the start of the year, you want to make a device for police use, right?"
Chase nodded his head and grew more relaxed as he moved into familiar territory. "Yeah, that's probably why they paired us up."
"Your ideas were interesting," Barbara said and glanced around, noticing that around half the students had decided to relocate somewhere else. "So, do you want to go to the cafeteria to work? I'm starving."
He hadn't eaten since this morning, so he quickly agreed and the two made their way out of the classroom and began their walk towards the cafeteria. The more they talked, the easier it was for Chase to separate Batgirl and Barbara mentally, something he hadn't been able to do previously due to never having actually interacted with Barbara herself.
"Did you decide to go into Criminal Justice because of your dad?"
Barbara laughed at that comment. "Yeah, but he wanted me to do anything but that. Who would've guessed that all his interactions with Gotham's special brand of crazy would make him not want his daughter to go into the same field."
"Yet you still did," Chase pointed out. "I'm guessing that didn't go over well."
"Got the whole stern Commisisoner voice and everything, but my mind was made up and I had a full ride so it wasn't like he had any say in the first place."
At this point they'd made their way through the line and gotten their food, quickly finding a seat where the two sat across from each other.
"Well, let's see if we can come up with a good project, and maybe the Commissioner won't have to worry about his daughter getting swept up in Gotham's craziness."
Despite his previous misgivings, Chase found himself excited for the project. His partner had a similar interest as he did, and her input would help ensure that whatever he made was as effective as it could be. Overall, as long as Chase didn't think about the fact that the girl sitting across from him was actually Batgirl, everything should be fine.
----
Within the Batcave, Bruce was at the computer. His hands were put together and he rested his chin on his fist while looking through the multitude of windows he had open at the same time. His attention was taken by an alert on the screen, which was information about a low-priority observation target.
"It seems that Miss Gordon has been partnered with Chase Davenport," Alfred commented from behind Bruce. "Should we inform her of his...history."
Bruce turned his chair around and looked at the man that had essentially raised him. "No, Chase Davenport is low-priority. He doesn't show any inclination to become a villain or misuse his abilities, he's just an abnormally intelligent young man."
When Ivo had initially hinted at his existence, Bruce had been worried about what a child given power by the creator of Amazo, a robot who had copied the abilities of the entire Justice League, could do. It was only when he'd looked into it that he'd discovered that Chase predated Amazo, and was essentially a discarded project of Ivo's.
Ivo had found humanity incapable of delivering his vision, so he'd abandoned Chase at the orphanage and hadn't interacted with him since. Bruce would get notified if anything happened involving a hero or villain, but otherwise it wasn't worth informing Barbara about who he was and tainting any interaction they may have.
The last thing he needed was to push the boy towards villainy when he seemed content to remain a normal person, even putting his intelligence towards helping protect lives. It was the reason Bruce had approved his application to the Wayne Scholarship in the first place.
There were already enough issues in Gotham, Bruce would do his best not to create new villains when he didn't need to, just because of someone's parentage and abilities.
"I read his application myself, his ideas for police protection were good, and he explicitly denied the idea of creating weapons. Having him working with Barbara would be good for both of them."
----
Author's Note:
Let me know what you think and feel free to throw ideas of different bionic powers Chase could eventually unlock. I want to portray a good Batman, not the flanderized version in most fics. Batman is careful, and paranoid, but not to the extent that he would vilanize a child just because he had powers, nor for who his dad is. Especially Young Justice, which was probably the most caring portrayal of Batman we've ever gotten.
Let me know if there's anything you think I could improve on, I'm not the best at writing dialogue and I want to make sure that it flows smoothly and doesn't come off wooden or inorganic. It's probably the hardest part of writing a story, just making sure the characters actually talk like real people.
I like adding random polls, so I'll ask a very, very important question. Who do you like more?
1. Barbara
2. Zatanna