- Created By mayjayann
Be A Clown
Mayor Hill is giving a speech at a construction site, saying the new block of apartments being built will herald a new, safer Gotham City. The speech is rudely interrupted by a pair of criminals who crash their getaway car and then open fire on the police pursuing them. Batman appears and takes them down. Rising from the podium he ducked under, Hill resumes the thread of his speech, railing against men who act outside the law. When Summer Gleeson sardonically asks him if he includes Batman, Hill responds, absolutely: "He and criminals like the Joker are cut from the same cloth." Joker happens to be watching this in his hideout, and is outraged at the comparison. He gets an idea for revenge from Hill's next statement, promising to make the city "as safe as [his] own mansion."
That weekend, the mansion is the site of a birthday party for the mayor's son, Jordan. The party is more a political media event than a real celebration, and Jordan feels overlooked and unloved. Practicing magic tricks alone in his room, he is mad when his father barges in and demands that he come out and greet the cream of the city. Hill has a surprise for his son, though. In addition to the important guests, he's invited a clown: the exuberant Jekko the Magnificent. Jordan is awed by Jekko's act, and asks how he can become a magician like him. Jekko laughs and says the first necessary step is to run away. Then Mayor Hill insist that Jordan leave the clown and come and greet the new arrivals, including Bruce Wayne. Fed up, Jordan runs up to his room.
For his parting gift, Jekko plants a large sparkler candle on top of the birthday cake It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Jekko is really the Joker, and the candle is really a stick of dynamite, but no ones ever accused the average Gothamite of being brilliant. As he leaves the Mayor, he lets out one of his trademark laughs. Hearing it, Bruce looks around and sees the candle. Pushing his way through the crowd, he pretends to stumble with the large present he's carrying, knocking the cake into the pool, where the bomb detonates harmlessly underwater. Hill calls the police, who find the real Jekko the Clown tied up down the road from the mansion. As Hill demands answers, Bruce realizes, "where's Jordan?" The scene shifts to inside Joker's van, where Jordan pokes his head up. Joker returns to his hideout, an abandoned amusement park. He starts to remove his makeup, but Jordan appears, saying he followed "Jekko's" advice and wants to be a museum like him. Joker is initially enraged at having his hideout invaded, but laughs it off and says he's been thinking about a protégé. Reviewing a home video of the birthday party, Bruce notices "Jekko" mention the name of his mentor, the "Great Prosciutto" – who was a performer at the amusement park. Back at the park, Joker is teaching Jordan how to swallow a sword. His lesson is interrupted when Joker's security system sounds an alert. As he scans his cameras, he notices Batman skulking through the park. He proposes that he and Jordan play a little joke on the Dark Knight and Jordan, remembering that his father says Batman is no good, and not wanting to upset his new mentor, agrees. Jordan lures Batman into the park's funhouse, where Joker ambushes him with his razor-tipped playing cards. Batman easily evades the attack and chases after Joker, who flees to higher ground and then tosses his ace card at Batman. This card detonates into a cloud of knockout gas, and Batman falls to the ground. Joker uses a fortune telling machine which drops a card predicting Batman's fate. Joker reads it and laughs, "You're gonna love this!" When Batman wakens, he is upside down in a tank rapidly filling with water, bound by a straightjacket and shackles. Jordan is nervous, but Joker tells him to watch the "show." Jordan applauds when Batman manages to get free of the straightjacket, but then realizes that Batman really is drowning. He grabs an axe and strikes the side of the tank, but Joker plucks the ax away before he can strike again, and reveals his true identity. Jordan grabs a seltzer hose and sprays Joker in the face, distracting him long enough to run out. As Joker chases after him, Batman pushes with his legs on the crack Jordan made, and manages to shatter the tank. Recovering his breath, he grabs his utility belt. ("All right, Joker – get ready for a little Bat-magic!") As Joker searches the amusement park for Jordan, Batman runs to the park's control room and throws the power switches, turning on the park's lights and attractions, to distract Joker and illuminate the area.
Joker catches up with Jordan, hiding on one of the roller coasters, just as Batman sees them. Joker starts one of the coasters and he and Jordan roll away on it. Batman jumps on the second as it starts, slightly behind the first. As the cars speed around the track, Joker throws grenades (shaped like Kewpie dolls) at Batman's coaster. The third lands right in the seat of the lead car, and the coaster de-rails in the explosion. However, Batman has managed to jump onto the rear of Joker's coaster. Joker lunges into the back. As they wrestle, he tries to squirt Batman with his boutonniere, but Batman ducks and kicks Joker off the coaster, causing him to fall with a scream into a lake far below. Looking ahead, he sees the coaster is heading for a break in the track, while Jordan is still in the lead car. Batman yells for Jordan to take his hand. Jordan hesitates for a moment, scared of Batman, then reaches, and Batman swings them both away just before the coaster goes off the rails and crashes.
At the mayoral mansion, Hill is sadly toying with his son's magic tricks, when Jordan calls, "Dad!" and runs into his father's arms. Having learned a lesson about how truly important his son is, Hill shushes Jordan's apologies and gives him "the best birthday hug" he's ever had. Over his father's shoulder, Jordan sees Batman smile and give him a thumbs-up. Jordan smiles back and returns it.
heart of ice
As a ballerina effigy dances in her glass dome, a strange, armored man talks to the small dancer, promising a revenge against a "monster" for taking her from him.
Later on, Summer Gleeson gives a report on a series of mysterious heists pulled at various offices of GothCorp, all with the same M.O.: a "freeze gun" that creates a cold wave capable of generating thick sheets of ice and snow. Ferris Boyle, GothCorp's CEO, says he doesn't know what the mysterious perpetrator has against GothCorp, "the People Company," but hopes any differences can be patched up.
In the Batcave, Batman examines a list of the stolen devices, and finds that, when combined, they form a larger version of the freeze gun, large enough to become a fully-operational freezing cannon to the extent of being a city-wide threat. However, the machine is still missing one component, meaning Batman knows where the thieves will strike next.
That night, an armored vehicle attacks the GothCorp installation in question. When the Batmobile arrives, a freeze ray from the van creates a sheet of ice that causes the car to spin out of control, into a barely-controlled crash. Batman exits the car and engages the thieves: their ringleader appears, a man in a strange suit of armor calling himself Mr. Freeze. He fires his freeze gun at Batman, but misses and accidentally hits one of his own men in the legs, before managing to freeze Batman. Freeze orders his men to leave his comrade behind, and they escape. Batman manages to shatter the ice on himself, and is forced to take care of the thug, who is dying of hypothermia, rather than pursue Freeze.
After using a special bath to revive the man and melt the ice sheet on his legs, Batman — who has himself developed a cold from the encounter — visits Gothcorp as Bruce Wayne, hoping to learn who might have a grudge against it. Boyle says the only person he can think of is dead: a former research scientist employed by the company whose funding was cut, and who apparently died in a laboratory accident. When Bruce expresses mild surprise, Boyle, in private, reveals his true colors: "Look, Bruce, that 'People Company' line is great PR, but when the wage slaves start acting like they own the place, it's time to pull the plug." As Bruce is leaving, Boyle comments that he is to be presented with a humanitarian award.
Posing as a security guard, Batman sneaks into Gothcorp's offices and finds a security camera tape with footage of the accident: on it, a man named Victor Fries records that he has put his wife, Nora, into cryogenic stasis after she became terminally ill, to give himself time to research a cure. Suddenly, Boyle and a pair of security guards burst in. Boyle says that Fries's funding has been cut and he is using company equipment without authorization. He orders his guards to disconnect the equipment, despite Fries's horrified objections that Nora will die if they do so. In a panic, Fries seizes one of the guard's guns and orders them to stay back. Scared, Boyle attempts to reason with Fries. Fries lowers the gun — and Boyle kicks him in the chest, sending him crashing back onto a table of chemicals, which fill the room with vapor. As Boyle and his guards flee the room, Fries drags a hand over his wife's tank, calling her name. Watching this, Batman can only mutter "My God!", when Fries — now Mr. Freeze, appears behind him and blasts him with his cold gun.
Batman is kept prisoner in Freeze's hideout, partially frozen and without his utility belt. Freeze's men have finished assembling the giant cold gun, with which Freeze plans to attack Boyle's award ceremony. Freeze explains his suit: after the accident, he is incapable of living outside of a sub-zero environment, which the suit maintains.
After Freeze leaves, Batman manages to free himself. At the building, Freeze's cannon opens fire, covering the lower part of the building in ice. Freeze tells his men to go on firing until the entire building is covered, but Batman arrives and barely stops the cannon. Unwilling to admit defeat, Freeze smashes a fire hydrant and uses his gun to convert the fountain of spraying water into a column of ice that lifts him to the top floor of the building. Smashing his way into the awards ceremony, Freeze confronts Boyle and begins freezing him slowly from the legs up. He has just reached Boyle's waist when Batman arrives and distracts him. However, Freeze reveals that his suit's circuitry also triples his strength, and Batman is outmatched.
As Freeze holds Batman aloft, helpless, Batman remembers he is carrying a thermos of hot chicken soup that Alfred gave him for his cold. He dumps the soup onto Freeze's helmet, and the temperature difference causes the helmet to crack and shatter, letting the room-temperature air into Freeze's suit and paralyzing him. Freeze laments that he has been denied justice, but Batman says he won't be: he gives Summer Gleason the video tape of Fries's accident, then leaves, without freeing the still-shivering Boyle.
In Arkham, Freeze laments above the same ballerina effigy, and asks Nora to forgive him for failing to avenge her.
Harley and Ivy
It's another night in Gotham City, and once again the Joker is fleeing the Batmobile in his own car, with Harley Quinn in the driver's seat. When Joker orders her to turn, she protests, but he orders again, and she does so – causing the car to careen down a construction hill. Irritably, he snaps at her to hand him his gun, which she does after rummaging through her bag. He takes gleeful aim at the Batmobile's tires, but the gun turns out to be a dud. Batman gets close enough to snag Joker's rear bumper with a tow cable. As he reverses, Harley presses a button and jettisons the boot, leaving the Batmobile behind.
Back at the hideout, Joker rants about Harley's screw-up with the gun. When Harley timidly mentions that she did get them away from Batman, Joker sarcastically asks if she thinks she's a better crook than him. She dares to say, "maybe," and he tosses her out of the hideout in a rage.
Defiantly, she decides to pull the original heist she planned herself. She goes to the Gotham Museum of Natural History to steal the Harlequin Diamond. She evades the security system with ease, but then the alarms are tripped by Poison Ivy, stealing specimens from the museum's lab. The two women are cornered by the police. Harley grabs one of the specimen bottles and shoots it with her popgun, creating a cloud of gas that disables the police and lets them get away. As they speed away in Ivy's car, she says, "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Ivy takes Harley to her latest hideout, a house in an abandoned housing development begun over a toxic waste dump. As they bond, Ivy is disgusted at Harley passive acceptance of Joker's abusiveness, and declares that Harley needs to buck up her self-esteem.
For their first official caper, they invade the men's-only Peregrinators Club, tie them up with dropped vine creepers, and then loot the trophy room. Before long, they are committing a spree of crimes all over town, enough to draw Batman's attention. They also become best friends, though Ivy is exasperated at Harley's undying affection for "that psychotic creep."
Elsewhere, Joker is missing Harley in his own fashion: without her, the hideout has become a mess. When he demands why she hasn't come back yet, one of his henchmen nervously shows him the latest headline: "New Queens of Crime." Joker is enraged that Harley is out-doing him as a crook. But he gets his chance when Harley secretly phones him from Ivy's house, allowing him to trace the call. At the same time, Batman analyzes a soil trace from one of their tire tracks, and realizes where they are hiding out. Batman gets there first, but is subdued by one of Ivy's creeper plants. The girls chain him to an old table and dump him into a chemical waste pit. But they re-enter the house to find Joker and his goons, eagerly scooping up their stolen gains. When Ivy protests, Joker gasses her with his boutonnière, but it doesn't work on her. She knocks Joker and his goons to the ground, then drags Harley along with her to make their getaway.
As his goons give chase, they are subdued by Batman, who has managed to escape the trap. Joker picks up a tommy gun and opens fire, despite Batman's warnings about the cocktail of flammable and explosive chemicals they're sitting on. Sure enough, a stray shot ignites a chemical drum, and soon the whole waste dump goes up in flames. Joker's goons flee, while Batman knocks Joker out and then saves them both in the Batmobile.
Speeding away in their car, Ivy exults, "no man can take us prisoner!" Then their car is disabled by a well-aimed shot from Renee Montoya. They are arrested, and sent to Arkham Asylum along with Joker. In Arkham, Joker swears that this is the last time he ever starts a gang with any women in it, while Ivy has some rather resentful feelings towards Harley.
mad love
Commissioner Gordon goes in for a dental appointment, only to find the Joker in the place of his dentist. Harley Quinn ties him to the chair, and just as Joker is about to kill the Commissioner, Batman crashes in. He tosses a pair of chattery teeth to the floor with disdain, and tells the Joker that the clue was easy to figure out, calling him sloppy and predictable. Harley interrupts Batman's bashing and claims credit for the idea, then stuns Batman with a spray of gas. She tosses out a pun about it, much to the Joker's outrage. As they make their escape, Joker tosses a grenade into Gordon's lap, but Batman hurls it out the window in the nick of time.
In the Funnibones warehouse, Joker is poring over various plans to kill Batman (in an appropriately humiliating yet comedic manner). He is so obsessive that he fails to notice Harley prancing around behind him in an alluring negligee, and when she announces herself, he irritably orders her away. Joker laments that his trap at the dentist's office was, indeed, "sloppy and predictable," and he must try harder to come up with the "perfect" means of defeating the Dark Knight. A little impatient, Harley asks "why don't you just shoot him?" However, the idea of murdering his archenemy in such a mundane manner enrages him. With mounting fury, he tells her that Batman's death must be "nothing less than a masterpiece!" and squirts his acid flower at a dummy of Batman, barely leaving Harley enough space to duck.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, Joker notices one of his old blueprints and becomes excited at his plan for "The Death of A Thousand Smiles" — lowering Batman into a piranha tank to be devoured — but then remembers why he dropped it in the first place: because he couldn't make the piranhas smile, defeating the whole theme. As he slumps in dejection, Harley resumes her advances - to which the Joker responds by kicking her through the door into a pile of garbage, near Bud and Lou.
Alone, Harley bemoans the sorry state of her life: whatever career she had as a legitimate psychiatrist is long gone, she's a wanted fugitive all over the country, and hopelessly infatuated with a psychopath who treats her like dirt. She starts to wonder where things went wrong for her... but her thoughts quickly swerve away from putting any blame on her beloved "pudding," and instead she concludes that Batman is the one who has always persecuted her happiness, as he has "from the very beginning..." Few years ago, Dr. Harleen Quinzel was a career-orientated psychiatrist interested in "extreme personalities," which led her to take an internship at Arkham Asylum. There, she met the Joker, who quickly started to work his charms on her. After placing a rose with a note inside her office (revealing that he was somehow capable of escaping his cell unseen), Harleen confronted him in private and threatened to turn him in, but Joker waved her off, saying that she would have already done it had she really meant to. He teases her by saying he likes her name, which could be easily tweaked into "Harley Quinn," a spin on the word "Harlequin."
Harleen was not amused, and walked away coldly, but then Joker said he would be willing to confide in her in therapy. The ambitious psychiatrist saw this as a potential landmark in her professional career, and grabbed the opportunity. After nearly three months of background research, Dr. Quinzel arranged a session with the Joker. She believed herself ready for any tricks he might pull on her - but instead she found him opening up to her. He confessed to having a traumatic childhood, with an alcoholic father who frequently beat him for no apparent reason. The Joker said that all he wanted to do in life was to make people laugh, and when he told her about some of his early routines, she found herself laughing helplessly with him - and then crying as he then said how his father responded to his jokes with more beatings. But, he shrugged, that's one of the inescapable truths of comedy: "You always take shots from folks who just don't get the joke." In a way, he mused, his father and Batman were a lot alike: their problem was, they just didn't "get" him. After several of these sessions, Dr. Quinzel became increasingly sympathetic to her patient, believing that his traumatic childhood had driven him to a life of crime, while Batman's continued persecution only prolonged his misery. Soon, Quinzel and her patient switched roles: she started to confide in him, and he reacted with understanding, explaining how, in her ambitious drive to make a success of her career, she had somehow forgotten how to have fun, and was needy for someone who could make her laugh. There was no question that now Dr. Quinzel had fallen head-over-heels in love with her patient.
Shortly after his latest esape from Arkham, Joker was recaptured and brought back by Batman, badly injured. The sight of her beloved, swathed in bandages, sent Dr. Quinzel over the edge. She stole a harlequin costume and various trick gags from a novelty store, then sneaked back into Arkham, neutralized the guards and broke the Joker free. Dubbing herself Harley Quinn, Harleen embraced a life of crime with her newfound love.
Harley decides that as long as Batman is around, she and Joker can never be happy, so she takes matters into her own hands. She sends a videotaped message to the GPD, warning them that Joker has gone totally crazy and is preparing a gas bomb that could kill the entire city. Telling the police that she has finally come to her senses, she promises to help them stop the plan, if they can protect her. Batman meets her at the docks, where she delivers a set of papers that seem to confirm the Joker's heinous plan. As Batman examines them, the Joker appears on a boat speeding towards the pier, calling Harley a traitor and opening fire with a submachine gun. Batman dives on top of Harley to protect her and hurls a batarang at the Joker, which cuts his head clean off. Batman looks again and sees that he's actually decapitated a robotic dummy, but his moment of shock is all Harley needs to inject him from behind with a sedative. When Batman wakes up, he has been chained from head to toe, relieved of his utility belt, and is hanging upside down over a piranha tank inside the empty Aquacade aquarium. Harley, noticing him awake, explains that the story about the gas bomb was a fake: her real goal is to finish him off, using one of her beloved's plans. All it needed, she realized, was to have Batman upside down when he was lowered in, thus making the piranhas' downturned mouths look like smiles. As Harley prepares to finish Batman off, she admits to some small regrets, since she's really enjoyed some of their escapades. But, in the end, all she wants to do is get Batman out of their lives so she and her "loving sweetheart" can settle down.
Hearing that, Batman, incredibly, begins laughing derisively. Unsettled by the fact that Batman never laughs, Harley tells him to stop, but then Batman lashes out at her with scorn, telling her that Joker has tricked her into thinking he actually cares for her, when she's nothing to him but an occasionally useful "hench-wench." Angrily, Harley rebuts that Joker trusts her, he confided secrets to her... to which Batman responds that Joker told those same lies many times before, and to many other people. Harley is severely shaken, but screams through her tears that Joker does love her, and killing Batman will win him back. Without further ado, she starts to lower him in, but Batman points out that Joker won't believe her, since the piranhas won't leave a body behind as proof. Nervously, Harley ponders her next move...
Back at the Funnibones warehouse, Joker is still poring over his plan ideas, while the phone is ringing incessantly. Fed up, he grabs the phone, and hears Harley's voice on the other line. But when he hears what she has done, Joker is livid at being upstaged and speeds to the Aquacade in his car. On his arrival, Harley runs lovingly toward him... only for him to strike her viciously to the ground. Confused, she asks what is wrong, and he says that only he can be allowed to kill Batman. Harley starts to explain that it is his plan she is using, only she has improved it - then Joker snatches the blueprints away and rips them to shreds, ranting that any joke that has to be explained to the audience is no joke at all. Menacingly, he advances on Harley, counting her as just one more person of the many he's had to cope with, who "don't get the joke" - and knocks her out the window, to plunge several stories down into a garbage heap.
Lying bruised but alive, Harley mumbles that it was her fault for not getting the joke.
Joker promptly swings Batman out from over the tank and lowers him to the table, while apologizing for Harley's impetuosity. He cheerfully proposes that they forget the whole fiasco occurred and take a raincheck for their next confrontation. He starts to walk away, whistling... But then he realizes that Harley has given him an opportunity too good to miss after all, and he'll go ahead and kill Batman himself. He flips the still-chained Batman onto his back and takes aim at his forehead with a gun, tossing out a lame pun and rejoicing that Batman is "going out on a laugh after all!"
But just as he pulls the trigger, Batman kicks the gun upward, so the shot shatters the piranha tank, releasing a flood of piranha-filled water that knocks Joker down. As Joker thrashes around, trying to pull off the piranhas nipping at his flesh, Batman flips to his feet, grabs his utility belt with his teeth, and manages to extract a lockpick and release his chains. Joker beats a hasty retreat, and Batman dashes after him. The Joker jumps out of the building, falling on the top of a moving train. While he pokes fun at Batman for not catching up, the Dark Knight somehow appears behind him. Batman confides that Harley actually came very close to killing him - much closer than the Joker ever has, in fact - and that he had no way out other than to trick her into calling him. Batman then teases the Joker by calling him "Puddin'" — Harley's pet name that he so loathes. Joker goes berserk and launches himself at Batman, leading to a brutal fistfight between the two. As the Joker finally pulls out a knife, Batman delivers such a fierce uppercut that it sends Joker flying off the train and falling, screaming, down a smokestack.
Back in Arkham, the inmates are watching Summer Gleeson on the news. She reports that Joker's body has not been found, but, although he has cheated death many times before, he is extremely unlikely to have survived this last encounter with Batman.
An injured Harley is wheeled to her cell, vowing internally to turn over a new leaf and leave the craziness behind her, finally seeing the Joker as the murderous psychopath he really is... but then she sees a flower and a get-well card signed "J." sitting on her nightstand, and that is all it takes to change her mind. 
sins of the father
In the middle of the Gotham night, a young boy is being hotly pursued by an elderly police officer who demands the lad returns his donuts. Over fences and through the dingy alleys they go, until finally they reach a dead end. With a keen mind and a display of acrobatics, the youth vaults himself onto a fire escape; however, the window to the apartment is firmly sealed, to the officer's glee. Yet, the little one has one more trick up his sleeve: a Baterang! He wields it with a marksmanship that displays it isn't the first time he's thrown one of them before, and manages to get the cop all wrapped up in somebody's clothes line, allowing him to make his getaway. SSomewhere across town, thugs Manny and Mo are banging on an apartment door demanding 'Drake' to come out and go talk to 'the boss'. When no one answers, they pull out their guns and kick down the door. The place is an absolute mess, and to their surprise – and disbelief – there is a small collection of Batman stories and pictures affixed to the wall in a sort of collage. Just then, the window opens and in creeps the same boy who was being chased by the police. One of the thugs grabs him by the scruff of his neck and inquires where his father is. The resourceful and feisty boy makes his escape using the donuts and some ingenuity with a banister and a floor mat. The guys open fire, unloading no fewer than ten rounds, but all without so much as nicking the boy. Just when it appears that he'll be home free yet again, he runs right into the perpetually coin-flipping Two-Face.
They take the kid to the docks in order to get some privacy for their interrogation. After a few moments, it becomes clear that they won't get any direct answers from the child, so Two-Face orders a search of his possessions. One of the thugs finds a letter to 'Timmy' saying that he has to leave town. Enclosed with the letter is a key. Two-Face must recognize it because he immediately puts it in his jacket pocket and walks away. As he's departing, one of his men asks what they should do with Tim, to which – naturally – he flips his coin: kill him! Before that can happen, a pair of Baterangs whiz through the air knocking the guns from their hands. Enter Batman. A fight ensues! The quick-thinking Tim manages to free himself from his bondage, but not in time to help Batman, who gets bashed with a crane's massive hook, sent his way by Two-Face. He ends up crashing into a stack of barrels filled with ominous red liquid; it's at that moment the two men recover their guns and open fire, resulting in first a fire, and then a series of explosions. Batman, obviously hurting with one arm cradling his abdomen, uses his other arm to scoop up Tim and lunge into the water below, just before an even bigger explosion. Down below in the water, Tim assists the caped crusader, who seems teetering on the edge of consciousness. Two-Face and his men hover above with flashlights in one hand and guns in the other, trying to put an end to the pair once and for all. Thankfully for their sake, Batman is conscious enough to remove a remote control from his utility belt and summon the Batboat. Tim wastes no time helping the wounded hero into the craft, but finds it impossible to understand the controls, resorting to desperately pushing everything he can get his hands on. Compounding his anxiety are the three men above shooting endlessly at the conspicuous boat below them. With the last bit of strength he can muster, Batman voice-activates the autopilot, set to 'home'. After a short, high-speed journey home, the two are welcomed by a shocked Alfred, who never expected to see a boy in the drivers seat. He immediately sees to Bruce's injuries, all the while Tim is having a look around the Batcave. Unable to concentrate on two things at once, Alfred loses track of the lad who has made his way up the stairs, through the clock, and into Bruce's study. The secret is out: Bruce Wayne is the Bat-Man! Just then, out of the shadows springs Batgirl to take him back downstairs. Despite having just attempted to pilfer some cash and a watch, Tim insists he's trustworthy. Batman, however, doesn't seem to care one way or the other, and is merely interested in why Two-Face is after Tim. He divulges that his father used to work for him, but that he's now skipped town, provoking sympathy from Batgirl. With great adolescent spirit, Tim declares that he can take care of himself, and proves it by pulling out his Baterang and using it to slice off a few stalactites. They're impressed. They get back on track discussing the connection between Two-Face and his manhunt for Tim's father, and Tim can only show them the letter that was with the key. From being wrapped up together for quite some time, the paper has developed an imprint of the key, which Batman immediately recognizes – as Two-Face had – as being from Gotham airport. It's there that Batman and Batgirl ambush Two-Face and his cronies, yet, Two-Face manages a getaway with the satchel Drake had hidden in the airport locker. There's only one thing for Batman to do: give chase. Alas! in the end, the mobster gives him the shake.
It's back to square one and time to turn to some basic detective work. 'Shifty' Drake's file is brought up on the Batcave's computer and – unfortunately for Tim – matches a John Doe found floating in the Metropolis River. Unbeknownst to the two bats, Tim was behind them listening to every word. He guesses his father is dead and will never come back for him, and while Batgirl begins to offer him hope and comfort him, Batman coldly confirms that he is never going to return. At that moment, Alfred interrupts, saying there is something that should be seen on television. Indeed, it's Two-Face with his own brand of a public service announcement: if he doesn't get 200 million dollars by two in the morning, he's going to release a deadly gas in Gotham. As Batman openly despairs that they have to find him before he wreaks havoc, Tim says that he thinks he may know where 'Puke-Face' is hiding out: the old Janus Theater. They waste no time; Batman and girl hop in the Batmobile and are just about to leave when it appears that Tim wants in on the bust, but Batman tells him quite plainly and authoritatively, 'No!' After they leave he vents his frustration and Alfred, seeing this, tells him that this is the way things are and always have been. At the Janus Theater, it's two minutes to two and Two-Face orders the masks brought in, obviously eluding to setting of the deadly gas. Just then, outside the room, somebody's cry of pain can be heard, and Two-Face instantly knows what it is and declares, "He's here." Just after one of his goons asks where, the Dark Knight leaps out from behind some crates and decks him! The three remaining cronies try to shoot him, but vaults those same crates their way and they have to scramble out of there. As one is trying to get away, Batgirl swings into action (literally), laying one out. While the fighting continues inside, Tim is just arriving outside the Janus Theater (via the roof of a passing bus), but he looks quite different: he's wearing the Robin costume! Inside, Two-Face's thugs keep the Dark Knights at bay long enough to set off the three-minute countdown to destruction. Just then, he picks up a tommy gun and fires it in their direction, ensuring they can't even get close to disturbing his scheme. All hope seems to be lost . . . Enter, 'Robin'. He does his best to stop Two-Face, but is simply inexperienced enough to watch his back, and ends up in the clutches of 'Puke-Face' after all. Tim wastes no time pulling out his Baterang and using it to cut the ropes holding a large grate above them, in a similar fashion he had earlier cut the stalactites. Two-Face is too quick to be caught (his henchman is not as lucky), but he has nowhere to run but into the path of one angry Bat. Saving the day is left up to Batgirl, who – at the two second count and out of options – rips out the wires from the side of the contraption. Now all she wants is to go home. Tim enthusiastically chimes in in agreement, but gets a stern stare by Batman in return.
Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce is ostensibly training Tim as they batter each other with pugel sticks. He also tells the youngster how it's going to be: Tim always gives him 110%, and Bruce makes the rules. At that moment, from out of the shadows steps Dick. Everyone is ecstatic to see his return.
