The Reward for a Job Done Well

At first you think it's punishment, an attempt to force you to quit. The old man never wanted you to barge into his neatly ordered life (if you can call that a life), and he probably thinks the only way you'll stay away from the suit and not blab about him is if you quit voluntarily. He's probably right about the suit (adrenaline has always been your drug of choice), but he's wrong about you blabbing. You can keep a secret. You're keeping this secret, even though you're covered in bruises and can barely stay awake on dates with Dana. You're not a quitter, so you accept the verbal abuse and the diet and the training regimen because you know that it's the only way to show that you're committed. His response to you keeping to the diet is to make it stricter. His response to you finishing the obstacle course on time and without getting hit is to raise the level.

After a while, you realize he heaps the same abuse on everybody, that the only defense against it is to stand up to him (it won't make him back down, but it makes you feel better. Sometimes you think you almost hear a smile in his voice when you snark back at him). Everybody who's known him, the real him not the version he trots out for board meetings and soirees and the like (and it's a little disturbing how he can do that on cue. The commissioner claims it used to be worse, but you can't imagine how. You're afraid to ask), for a long time does it (well, not Superman, but he's Superman. Superman doesn't snark, even to the old man). You almost think he's trying to make you grow a spine, except for the fact that you already have one and he knows it. You wouldn't be here if you didn't.

When you have to be faster than you'd had to be for the Level 9 training program (you're on level 10 now) to dodge the Jokerz' newest "toys", when you have to use some of the knowledge he pounded into your head just last week, when you learn about Mr. Drake, you realize that it's not punishment. It's training. It's giving you the skills he knows you'll need to survive to be a cranky old man giving orders to a new Batman.