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Having powers doesn't make life easier. In fact if someone had a guidebook through having super powers with all these content warnings on the front page? They wouldn't have even covered half of it. Especially given the fact that a lot of problems are just because people are annoying as hell.
But surely that's not the reason why he's mentally complaining to himself. Duke had the misfortune of having powers that just so happened to also be genetic. It wouldn't have been unfortunate if his parents just told him but it turns out that he has a lot more things that he doesn't know about himself. Not only was his mother a meta and whatever power she had passed on to him but he learned that from the Joker.
There have to be some sort of laws against this or some sort of nuisance factor and the Joker was just making stuff up. Sadly it turns out that the Joker was not lying despite being a jokester. Honestly people should tell him that he really does suck at being a clown, Duke would really appreciate a laugh right about now. But the obvious non joke aside he couldn't quite ask his mom what power he got from her.
So for the most part aside from being thrown across the Foster system, learning that he has superpowers in making sure that he doesn't get sold on the black market and overall having the shittiest time ever. Duke was fairly certain that the whole power trip was the least of his worries. Turns out that was a lie too! What a shock.
He loves his parents he really does but he doesn't like that the moment that they're no longer constantly present in his life he starts learning things about them when they're not able to respond back. Such as the fact that he has a biological dad that isn't Doug? His biological dad is an immortal... something? Who also almost killed Duke because he didn't want to join him and to consume his powers. Wait— isn't that just cannibalism?
His mom was a meta, part of a super secret society of people who are definitely bad. His biological father is a villain and his stepdad is probably more than just a guy. Honestly he really hopes and prays that his stepdad was just a guy because if it's more than that, then yeah he doesn't want to deal with more problems. Duke already has a cluster fuck of issues and that's just by living in Gotham by itself.
Forget just being a quote on quote simple guy. Duke Thomas has come across several people that thought that he was just a foster kid, oh how sorely mistaken they were. Aside from the fact that he was somehow being fostered by the Batman and all the other kids in that house. Becoming a superhero was definitely not part of the childhood plan but if it works it works? Yes he may have done some questionable stuff before getting frustrated by Bruce Wayne but that's not important right now.
What was important was the fact that Duke had powers. Powers that literally quite blatantly went against the weird idea people had for outside of Gotham. For some reason the people outside of Gotham thought there was no metas allowed in Gotham which would be contradictory and itself as Poison Ivy was probably a meta? In fact Duke was pretty sure that several of the rogues counted under The Meta law and got them also has its own magical society but they don't talk about that.
So besides the point of being a late blooming teenager with superpowers and an attitude problem. Duke couldn't quite figure out what exactly his powers were, they could say that it was light based powers but that would be incredibly broad. As a lot of his power affected his sight which was actually quite impressive that his sight went from being 20/20 to magnifying more complicated than that. And he meant that in a literal sense he could see incredibly small things and a lot of stuff from very far away.
So it was one of those days where one of the bats wanted to test out his limitations. Tim who honestly Duke thought was going to come after him one moment or not. Red Robin was infamous for having the endless curiosity so do kind of just expect it to become one of his subjects at one point or another. Thankfully he wasn't violating any HIPAA violations even if Tim probably has and wasn't going to tell him. For his own mental sanity he's going to just pretend that he does not know.
Tim was unique in the sense that he knows that he's doing something nefarious, well testing out Duke's abilities. They weren't really sure what triggered certain things so they were just running every test in the book. Aside from the electrocution apparently Tim was not allowed to have that and honestly Duke doesn't want to know. So while running those tests do kind of end up somewhere and it was no longer in the batcave.
Yes it was strange he hadn't even touched the umbre part of his powers that he accidentally got from touching the tree of life. So teleportation shouldn't have been one of the factors but he ended up somewhere else in Gotham? Not Gotham he was just somewhere underground that was incredibly dark and Incredibly damp. To be fair anybody else who is from Gotham would compare it to Gotham.
Wow, wondering the dark parts of his weird teleportation for seconds he thought he saw a ghost. It wasn't a normal ghost, the gold Hue was what caught his attention and it kept turning corners before he was even able to make out what it was. He continued following it until it stopped in front of the door and turned slightly to look back at him. Did Duke say how much he hated his powers because he greatly hates his powers right now.
As some sort of weird taunting, the gold ghost was the perfect image of his mother but she looked significantly younger and tired. Not only was it replicating her perfectly it also showed signs of her being pregnant. Duke knew that he had the ability to look at the future or at least glimpses of the future but he didn't know that he could also see the past. A pass that was 17 years ago from way before he was born and she was looking right back at him as if she could see him.
Before he could say anything to her she silenced him before mimicking a kiss towards him and going through the door.
If his mother is a meta then there is the chance that his prophetic powers were something that he got from her. Not only was that power something that he got from her but something that his biological light bulb of an evil villain father wanted from him. She saw the future and knew that he would somehow randomly end up here. That there was a chance that he would try following her or at least following the Echoes that were left behind by her.
Honestly people can't make this shit up. It's a weird game of guess who and when but clearly the more he explores those Powers he will probably find more answers. Whether they're the answers that he wants or the answers that he needs to hear was entirely up to her. All he really needed to do was find where the other hints were even if it's at the cost of losing every bit of trust that he had.