Purgatory? Hell? No, Womb. Oh, and Birth.

Opening my eyes, I realized...I couldn't. My eyes wouldn't open and I was in darkness. The only things to accompany me in whatever purgatory I'd entered...was warmth, and a steady beat echoing throughout my head.

I'd always been better at thinking in the dark. I guess darkness, to me, was peaceful? I was much more at home in the dark than in the light. Brightness was annoying but the dark was always so soothing.

Maybe that was an early sign that I wouldn't be a normal guy? Well, no matter what it said, I enjoyed night time.

Which is weird. Because everything goes bump in the dark.

Vampires, Werewolves, Liches and Zombies, Wizards and Witches - all of it was real. I should know, I was raised to hunt them after all. I was made in a tube, in a secret government lab, genetically engineered to do what normal humans couldn't do aka hunt and kill the monsters of the night. We were called 'Espers'.

Every human contains the potential to awaken some form of power, whether it be Magic or Ki, but Espers were genetically modified to have the strongest abilities, the hardiest physiques, and to be as inhuman as possible while still being strictly human.

We had Telekinesis. That was our main power.

You may be thinking 'Is that all? That's pretty weak'.

But the good thing about Telekinesis? It's incredibly versatile. With Telekinesis you could make Barriers that even a Tank couldn't break through, you could fly about with it, augment your strength, and most simply of all, you could take on a multitude of supernatural creatures and stomp them into the ground without even touching them. Or just use the environment against them with a simple thought.

No matter how you use it, Telekinesis is a brilliant power to have.

It's just a shame that I, an Esper, had a very limited lifespan. Because of the genetic modifications, we could only live to about, I don't know, 25 before our bodies started failing on us. By 30, we'd be dead.

Every Esper knew this. So we did whatever we could to destroy and kill as many monsters as possible, no matter the cost.

Looking back on it...

We were...assholes.

Complete scum.

I'd killed children just because their parents were different than me. Because they weren't human. Because I was told to do so by some bastard living the high life.

I'm...I'm not proud of that. And looking at the darkness around me, and remembering what my last memory was...I could only wonder if this was my afterlife? Was this Hell? Or simply Purgatory? Because I'm completely sure that I would never enter Heaven. Not after the things I've done.

But as I thought this...I felt something.

Energy. A sort of energy I was all too familiar with. Psychic Energy.

From two sources? The heart and the brain? But that's impossible! You can only have one source of Psychic Energy! Oh for fuck's sake, is this actually Hell? Are they going to force me to explode via Psychic Energy overload, over and over again?!

Despite my worries, despite how I was mentally ranting and raving...nothing happened. Psychic Energy just continued to flow around my body.

...What?

Confused, I took control of the energy but found I only had a fraction of the control I was used to. It wasn't because my skills had rusted but because the amount of energy in my body was...monstrously dense. If before I had water, now it was like mercury.

This just keeps getting better and better...

Using what little energy I could, I did a full-body scan and relayed the information back to my mind.

What I got was...surprising, to say the least.

I was a fetus. A 3-month-old fetus.

What the hell?

I did more in-depth scans and found something even more troubling; I seemed to have inhuman DNA in my genetics. Multiple different species just mushed together and weaved into my genome...Who did this? Or is this because of my parents?

Thinking this, I sent out more Psychic Energy and scanned the entire body of my, well, who I assume is my Mother. The results that came back were, I don't know, weird, I guess?

Not in the sense that she was the cause for my genetics, no, in fact, it's the opposite; She's a normal person. Completely. The other weird thing is that I appear to be in here with another fetus.

Carefully scanning through my twin, I found that they were completely normal as well. It seems that I'm the only one with weird genetics out of the three of us. Maybe my father is the root of the problem?

Thinking this, I went to send my Psychic Energy outward to search for my father, but before I could, I passed out going into a deep sleep.

Fuck me, right?

. . .

The next time I woke up, things were different. I felt pressure all around me, pushing me toward an exit and a quick scan with my powers revealed to me that I was being born, and after my twin at that. But I was covered in a sticky liquid...it wasn't until I exited the 'hole' that I realized it was blood.

And that I was the one who caused it.

But immediately after discovering this, I had to close my eyes as the brightness of the room felt like it was burning my eyes out.

Though that didn't stop me from listening to what the doctors and midwives were screaming around me.

"What happened to here?!" the person holding me screamed, "Why is she bleeding so heavily?! Has there been an internal rip?" the person, a man, quickly put me down next to my twin but as he did so, he quickly grabbed my hands, "Holy shit!" he exclaimed before quickly letting go of my hands and backing away, his shoes squeaking against the floor.

"What is it, Jerry?" a woman a few feet away asked worriedly and I opened my eyes slightly to look at my hands, holding them above me. What I saw was slightly shocking.

Talons. Out of the tip of my fingers, there were sharp but short claws coming out of them.

"What are those?!" the woman screamed as she looked at my fingers and talons, covered in blood from my mother.

Shocked I quickly tried to will them back in or something but this thought only caused something else to happen. Which was equally as weird...yet it cleared up my confusion a little.

When I focused on hands, fingers, and arms, the talons did go back into my fingers but the pressure caused something to shoot out of my wrists and hit the ceiling. Getting a better look at it, I discovered that it was some kind of...spider silk.

Oh shit.

Even as an Esper back in my past life, I still had hobbies. It may seem stupid to waste your time on such things when you have a limited lifespan but without hobbies and things you enjoy, you'd go insane doing the atrocities I had to do.

Comic books were my hobby. Reading about heroes and villains helped lessen the burden on my mind back then. I always did think I would be a pretty good anti-hero.

Anyway, this hobby was coming in helpful as of right now. Talons? Check. Sensitivity to light? Check. Organic Web shooting out of my wrists? Check.

I've got the same powers as Spider-Man 2099 aka Miguel O'Hara from Earth-928.

Oh shit. Does that mean I'm in Marvel?

This question was put on hold quickly as a tall, black-haired man rushed into the room after hearing the shouting, "What's happening?!" he shouted before looking directly at me and the man who had picked me up and put me in a...well I don't know what he wants to put me in. Turning my head slightly, I saw that he wanted to put me in a medical waste bin--You bastard!

I know that what I just did was pretty gruesome--I'd cut my mother's insides up a 'little'--but I didn't have any control over it! I didn't even know I had the damn talons until just now!

I felt more in control of my body than I suspect a normal baby would be - they're fumbling little shits after all - and putting this advanced control into action, I went to web myself away. I would have used Telekinesis to break this guy's limbs and float myself away but I don't know how badly that would affect and strain my barely formed brain.

Speaking of my barely formed brain, how am I even holding a rational and coherent thought?

Such thoughts were knocked out of my head when I heard the black-haired man roar from behind the man carrying me, "Unhand my son, you bastard!" before I felt the man get spun around and two rough yet gentle and caring hands tore me away from the man who had wanted to put me in a medical waste bin.

"But-but Mr. Wayne, he's an abnormality! Just look at what he did to your wife!" the man who had been carrying me, a significantly shorter man than whoever my father was, crumbled under the rage-fill gaze of my father but he still managed to point a weak finger between my blood-covered hands and my bleeding mother, though the bleeding had stopped and she seemed stable from what my eyes could pick up. She was even smiling in my direction.

Before I could react, I felt myself be shifted to my father's left arm only before I saw my father send a right hook straight into the man's jaw, knocking him on his ass with blood running down his lip, "Don't you ever call my son an abnormality in my presence ever again. I'll have your goddamn job taken off of you after this," he paused before looking down at me and smiling, "And whatever my son did...he cannot be held accountable for - he's just been born for god's sake! He probably doesn't even know what's happening!" he looked back up at the others in the room, "Now, I want complete secrecy on what you saw happen in here, otherwise, you'll all be in a world of hurt. Understood?"

His voice was commanding and I've gotta say, if this guy's gonna be my dad, I'm not opposed. At least I won't have to worry about people messing with me. Though I doubt I'd ever have to worry about that anyway. With my Esper powers and my newly discovered Spider powers, I have enough to protect me from quite a lot of things.

"Thomas, bring me my children!" a weak, yet loving voice called out and my father spun around and his attitude underwent a complete 180, turning from anger and commanding, to all smiles and sunshine. Nodding, Thomas as my father was called apparently, walked over to the crib and picked up another child who seemed to be a little smaller than me despite being my twin. I also saw that she was a girl and had a small tuft of black hair on her head.

When we were handed over to our mother, my father leaned over and kiss her on the head, "You've done so well, Martha. I love you," he smiled down at her before looking down at us, more specifically me, "Even if one of our children is a troublemaker as soon as he came out," he chuckled but despite what you'd think, he still looked at me with unconditional love, just the same as he did to my sister and mother.

Weakly pouting, my mother put on a grumpy look, "I know, right? He's a naughty little boy who hurt his mommy...Though I will admit that he didn't feel like he was doing it on purpose. But I do wonder what caused this...uniqueness? Do you think you could divert some of the companies funds to see if he's healthy or not Thomas?" she looked up at her husband with a worried look on her face, her blue eyes pleading for her husband to do as she says.

Wait. Martha? Thomas? Wayne? Company? Seemingly high influence?

Am I in DC?! Did I just replace Batman?! Or is Batman my...sister...Did I genderbend Batman into a future Batwoman?!