For many
years in the city of New Gotham, a secret war waged by night.
Unknown
to the everyday world, a battle for the very
heart of the city was waged between Batman and Joker (Roger
Stoneburner and voiced by Mark
Hamill). But one night the
final battle was fought...and Joker lost! Jokers
revenge was taken not on Batman himself but on the ones he loved.
Helena Kyle (Ashlea
Scott)
didn't know her father was Batman. Nor did she know that her
mother was once Catwoman. And Catwoman
was the Jokers first victim. Helena Kyle's life was forever changed
that dark night, but the Jokers revenge wasn't finished. Batman
had trained many protégés over the years, and one
of them was Barbara Gordon (Ashlea
Scott)
who called herself Batgirl. And Batgirl was next on his list.
Joker came for Barbara Gordon
personally, and their encounter left her confined to a wheel
chair, crippled from the waist down. Elsewhere in the world,
Dinah Lance (Rachel
Skarsten)
was no more than a child living far from New Gotham...but she
saw it all. Her foster mother told her that
all she had was a dream, but Dinah knew her visions would become
her future, and so seven years later, she headed to New Gotham
following her dreams and her destiny.
Dinah heads
to New Gotham by bus, talking with another passenger. He introduces
himself as Jerry (Aaron
Paul) and warns Dinah that it’s
a dangerous city. Dinah says she's looking for some people she
knew. Or at least knew about.
At New Gotham High
School, Barbara Gordon sets up for the new term and talks with
the new counsellor Wade Brixton (Shawn
Christian).
They talk about Shakespeare (since Barbara is an English teacher)
and he asks her out for coffee. Barbara agrees, and gets a beep
on her pager - a Delphi alert. She mumbles that she has business
to take care of and leaves the school, heading to her secret
lair deep inside the New Gotham Clock Tower. Once there, she
discovers there has been a murder, and contacts Huntress via
her comm-set. But Huntress doesn't answer...she's taken her comm-set
off while she talks with her therapist Doctor Harleen Quinzel
(Mia
Sara).
Little does she know that Harleen Quinzel is just an alias for
Harley Quinn, the psychotic girl friend of Joker. During
the session, Quinzel encourages Helena to open up, but she is
only interested in working through her anger management like
the court ordered her to do. Quinzel talks about how Helena watched
her mother die and was later taken in and raise by Barbara Gordon.
He files have no mention of her father. Helena explains that’s
because at the time she didn't know who he was. But she does
now. Harley is shocked to hear that Helena's father is actually
the reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne. Helena moved in with Barbara
as Bruce Wayne didn't even know he had a kid...she was raised
by her mother and she misses her very much. And that was when
she changed into someone she wasn't meant to be.
At the bus station,
Dinah arranges to meet Jerry later tonight for a party at the
address he gives her. Once he's gone however,
she watches a man scream and then run onto the road and get hit
by a truck. Dinah rushes over, and when she touches him she has
a flash. The man is shouting "don't let them get me" and
then he is covered with rats while a man watches from a nearby
bench. When Dinah lets go, she is surrounded by people and she
spots the same man sitting on the bench. But when she blinks
he is gone. When the Police arrive, Detective Jesse Reese (Shemar
Moore)
talks to her, wanting to know what she saw. His partner, Det.
McNally (Brent
Sexton), thinks it was a suicide but Reese thinks something
more strange is going on. He gives her his number and asks if
she thinks of anything else she needs to call him.
Once she's gone, McNally
hassles Reese about his beliefs that something prowels the
night in Gotham, but Reese jokes its a
routine case where a normal guy with no problems jumps in front
of a truck. McNally says the things they've seen is nothing more
than "freaks, weirdo's and urban myths". Reese isn't
too sure and he vows to find out what’s going on in the
city when the sun goes down.
Across town, Helena
works at the Dark Horse bar serving drinks. Barbara wants to
know where she was when she comm’d her,
but Helena says she was seeing a shrink all because of what happened
while chasing a bad guy. She complains that they fight so many
crime lords and super villains for nothing. Barbara asks her
to go on a sweep to find out why normal people are killing themselves.
When he shift ends she puts on her comm-set and goes to kick
some ass.
In the dark allies
of Gotham, Dinah arrives at the address Jerry gave her but
there is nothing there. He jumps out at her and
attacks her, but Huntress flies down from above and knocks him
to the ground. She kicks the crap out of him, pinning him against
the wall. When he asks who the hell she is, she replies "I'm
the Huntress and you're the prey". He ends up running, and
Dinah instantly recognises Helena for the woman she saw in her
dreams. Huntress thinks she is a crazy kid and tries to leave,
but when Dinah touches her she has a vision of the Clock Tower
and the security codes. Huntress leaps up, going from building
to building leaving Dinah alone in the ally.
Back in the Clock Tower, Helena tells Barbara that the deaths
are all just normal suicides. As they talk, the alarm goes off
- someone has breached their security. Helena hides when the
intruder walks through the tunnel and knocks her out. When they
talk about what to do with her, Helena jokes they could kill
her but Barbara points out they are the good guys and they don't
kill innocent people. They don't kill anyone. When she wakes
up, Dinah also recognises Barbara and says she should have known
they'd be together. She explains that when she touches people
she sees things only they know, and sometimes her dreams come
true. Barbara scans Dinah to see if she is meta-human...someone
with the gifts beyond that of a normal person. The tests confirm
she is a meta-human. She asks to join the superhero club but
Helena says no. Dinah goes on to say she's got no place to go
and she came to Gotham looking for something...life as a hero.
Barbara lets Dinah stay the night until they can figure out what
to do with her.
The next morning, Alfred Pennyworth (Ian
Abercrombie),
Bruce Wayne's old butler, brings Dinah some clothes and a
glass of juice. He suggests
she should have a shower and change and makes her some breakfast.
Alfred tells Barbara he wishes Helena would come and live in
the Wayne manor...after all it is her birthright. But Helena
wants nothing to do with Wayne Enterprises. He also notes how
gifted Dinah is and how gifted she is. Barbara however maintains
the arrangement is just temporary. Before Alfred can say another
word, Dinah walks in and notices the dead guy...she tells them
she was there when he died and it wasn't a suicide.
Later that day, Huntress talks with Harleen Quinzel about her
discovery that Bruce Wayne was her father. She says he had a
whole other life...she says he had a really aggressive hobby
that she didn't know about. Helena thinks Barbara rescued her,
but Quinzel offers the idea that Barbara saved Helena for herself.
Meanwhile at the Clock
Tower, Dinah talks about her vision and says the guy muttered
something about a phoenix. Barbara looks
it up and discovers that Phoenix Industries are working on several
developments in New Gotham including the old dockyards. It looks
like a dummy corporation set up to gain access to Gotham’s
infrastructure - sewage, shipping, etc. But the interesting thing
is, out of the four owners of Phoenix Industries, two are dead.
Oracle sends Huntress to protect one of them as the other is
out of town. He ordered a pizza so they know he is home, but
when Huntress enters she finds him dead...apparently he hung
himself. Moments later, Detective Reese bursts in and handcuffs
Helena. She protests her innocence but obviously can't say why
she was standing over a dead body in the middle of the night.
Helena says the guy obviously killed himself, but Reese says
there are a lot of those going around and he thinks there is
something else at work. He wants to know who she is and why she's
there, but Helena tells him to do some detecting. She eventually
tells him she came here to protect him, but when Oracle objects
over the comm-set Helena tells her to back off making Reese think
she's talking to herself. Helena then decides she needs to go
and breaks out of the cuffs before jumping out of the window
and running across the rooftops.
In the Clock
Tower, Barbara says the next guy on the list is Larry Ketterly
(Chris
Ellis)...someone Helena used to know when she
lived with her mother. Huntress heads to Larry's while Oracle
sends Dinah to the dockyards to snoop for clues. Oracle watches
on the screen as Dinah takes images of the area. Oracle recognises
the area, and guides Dinah where to go. Meanwhile, Helena s discovered
by Larry and he invites her in. He gives her some tea and the
two talk about the dockyards. Back at the construction site,
Dinah falls through the floor, discovering some ancient tunnels
as old as Gotham itself. Barbara says she's been there before
as Batgirl when she cornered Joker along with Batman. That was
the last time she saw Bruce Wayne. Batman could have killed the
Joker, but he didn't. His honour had a price: Joker sent someone
to kill Helena's mother and came for Barbara herself. He drove
Batman mad and he left Gotham and the daughter he didn't know
he had.
Back at Larry's, Helena asks about the deaths. He says its coincidence
and asks if Helena has come to protect him. Meanwhile, Dinah
comms Oracle...someone has been there - Ketterly. As Helena becomes
a little drowsy thanks to the tea, Ketterly tells her that the
dockyards was where a great leader fell and he has plans to revitalise
his vision. He then asks what Helena is afraid of, driving her
into her own private limbo.
Barbara rushes to the rescue, as does Dinah. Larry gets Helena
to talk about her mothers death, sending her back into the memory
of that night. He gives Helena a knife and tries to get her to
kill herself just as Dinah burst in. Larry knocks her to the
floor, and as he tries to give her a finishing blow, Barbara
smacks him on the head with a bat-erang. Oracle tries to talk
Helena out of it, but Larry says where she is no one can get
to her. Dinah however insists that she can. When she touches
Huntress, she too goes into limbo. With her other hand she touches
Barbara, bringing her in too. Barbara appears as Batgirl, and
tries to talk Helena out of killing herself. Its touch and go
for a couple of minutes, but eventually she puts down the knife
and Ketterly appears. He tells Barbara she doesn't have any legs
and she drops to the ground, then he picks up the knife and rushes
Helena. They fight, and eventually Ketterly falls on his own
knife. As the three heroes hold arms, they are returned to the
world as they left it to find Ketterly lying in a catatonic state...some
part of him was inside Helena's and when he died his mind was
broken. They dump him outside Gotham Police department and Reese
in turns drops him off at Arkham Asylum under the care of Harleen
Quinzel.
Once she's alone with him, she talks about how he ruined her
plans...she wanted to see people writhing in pain for what they
did to the Joker all those years ago. But now she knows there
is someone out there with the power to stop her.
Back at the Clock
Tower, Helena and Barbara talk about the days events and they
give Dinah the good news - she can stay. Dinah
is excited and she gives them both a hug. Later, out on the balcony,
Oracle talks about what it was like to run across rooftops as
Batgirl. She admits she hasn't given up her identity as Batgirl,
and Helena says she'll never be what Barbara was...to which she
replies "good, just be yourself instead."
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