"I've been wondering when you were going to show up." "Terry McGinnis." "Or do you prefer being called..." "Batman?" "How could you do it to me, Bruce?" "The only thing that matters is the mission." "You know that." "What about people, Bruce?" "Dick, Barbara, Tim, Selena?" "They all loved you, but every single one of them left you." "Ever wonder why?" "Not for an instant." "They quit because in the end, they didn't have the heart for the mission." "Are you about to quit too?" "It doesn't really surprise me." "It doesn't?" "'Course not." "I've been expecting this day for years." "Why don't you put that thing away." "Take off your coat and sit a spell." "I've got some questions I need you to answer." "Of course you do, boy." "Why else go to all the trouble of breaking into the lair... of the great and powerful Amanda Waller?" "You want some green tea?" "I do." "Full of antioxidants, this stuff." "It's supposed to make you live longer." "I don't want tea." "I want answers." "Then you're going to have to humor me." "It's been a long time since I had a handsome gentleman caller." "Why is it that superheroes are always so good-looking?" "Drink up." "I don't want any tea!" "I'm sorry." "Sorry isn't good enough." "What's this all about?" "Your safety." "You know how much I care about you." "Sure, why else keep dating for 15 years?" "You know why I can't marry you." "If the" ""If the bad guys ever found out I was Batman they'd try to get to me by hurting you."" "Blah, blah, blah." "It's nothing to joke about." "You're right." "There could be supervillains hiding in the tall grass." "I'm poison, Dana." "Cursed." "You're silly, McGinnis." "It's not silly for me to wanna keep you safe." "Every moment we're together you're risking your life." "I've told you a hundred times, that's a risk I'm willing to take." "I'm taking the choice out of your hands." "What are you saying?" "I'm saying we're done." "I'm sorry." "Oh, that's okay." "I've only had that cup for 70 years." "My mother passed it on to me." "Guess that's what all this is about." "Legacies." "Doubt you can find this pattern anymore." "It's real china, not that synthetic stuff." "How can anyone be their own man living someone else's dream?" "It's been years since I've had enough friends to use the whole set." "How can I escape the curse of Batman?" "Still, one missing piece and the set's ruined." "Ruined, I tell you." "I would offer my condolences but that would be insincere." "That's it." "Caper's blown." "Get out of" "Ah, like water." "Very good." "Good of you to drop in, considering three quarters of the Iniquity Collective are from your rogues' gallery." "Well, it's the last time." "I'm not working with you guys anymore." "What?" "What are you talking about?" "You can't quit." "The Justice League needs Batman." "Forget it." "Batman is dead." "When did you figure it all out?" "I guess I've always known." "But a few months ago when Bruce's kidney's failed, and they needed a tissue donor to clone him new ones turned out I was a perfect histocompatibility match with him." "Perfect." "You know the odds?" "One hundred and eleven to one." "Yeah." "So you ran a DNA test." "Once I worked up the nerve." "I was 16 years old when you started training me, Bruce." "A punk kid with a smart mouth and potential I didn't even suspect." "I may have pretended otherwise, but I looked up to you." "Worshiped you." "What you wanted from me, I couldn't give to anyone." "Tell me something I don't know." "My dad wasn't a superhero." "He didn't save the world from the near apocalypse of '09." "He never battled Mr. Freeze, but he was a good man." "Even after the divorce, he always tried to do the right thing." "My brother and I were always provided for." "When Mom couldn't make the bills, he always helped out." "He tried to teach me right from wrong." "Would have too, if I'd ever listened." "And he never laid a hand on me, although I was asking for it." "What's your point?" "What's my point?" "My point is I never doubted that he loved me with all his heart." "My point is all those warm feelings I had for my dad, turns out they were just another lie, another in the long list of things you've stolen from me." "My point is I just found out Warren McGinnis isn't my father." "You are." "What do you want from me?" "What do you want from me?" "I wanna know the whole truth." "Sounds like you already do." "I wanna know the whole truth." "Sounds like you already do." "Guess I didn't wanna believe you were so incredibly arrogant, that you thought the world couldn't go on without you." "Or someone like me." "It's not arrogance." "It's fact." "You set the whole thing up." "How?" "You were already a teenager when I first met your mother." "I don't know." "I don't know." "Maybe you dug up that Cadmus nanotech, and rewrote my genes to match yours." "Maybe you dug up that Cadmus nanotech, and rewrote my genes to match yours." "That technology's been illegal for over 40 years." "Didn't stop the Joker from using it on Tim Drake." "All right, low blow." "Because you'd never lie to me, right?" "Fine." "Believe what you want." "But you know as well as I do, accident or not, it's a good thing that you're almost a clone of me." "The world does need a Batman, and it always will." "The mantle of Batman is an honor, Terry." "You know what, old man?" "All those years, turns out everybody was right." "You are insane." "Being Batman's no honor." "It's a curse." "Look at all this." "A pill for blood pressure." "A pill for my diabetes." "A pill to replace my pituitary function." "I don't even know what this one's for." "Oh, yeah, Alzheimer's." "Don't pretend you're a dotty old lady who can't remember anything." "I've got questions, and you're the one left with the answers." "Besides Bruce, you mean." "Bruce can't be trusted." "I should've realized what he was capable of." "Once he settles on a course of action, he won't stop at anything." "If you think that, you don't know him at all." "Let me tell you a little story." "It was a long time ago, when Batman and I were young." "The Justice League was cleaning up one of my old messes." "The second group of villains called The Royal Flush Gang." "Or the third." "Who can keep it all straight?" "Eventually the League took them down." "Most of them, anyway." "That's where I came in." "Waller." "I should have recognized your hand in this." "No time for the usual pleasantries." "Before you go after Ace, know what you're getting into." "I've met her before." "She has the power to give people hallucinations, as you can see." "It's worse than you think." "Ace's powers have evolved." "She doesn't create hallucinations now." "She telekinetically warps reality." "Please." "Are you trying to tell me all this is real?" "Real, growing, and permanent if we don't put a stop to it all." "Cadmus psytechs predict Ace is days, maybe hours, from a massive aneurysm." "Problem solved." "Not that simple." "When she goes, the psychic backlash could kill everyone in range of her powers." "That's a distance measured in miles." "Take her down before she takes everyone with her." "I'll do it, Shayera." "I'm the only one of us Ace knows." "She might let me get close enough to use it." "Do you understand what you're agreeing to?" "The only way to stop Ace for certain is to kill her." "Hey." "Batman." "Ace." "Did you like playing with my new Royal Flush Gang?" "Can't say that I did." "Yeah." "They aren't any fun at all." "I gave them their powers, and they still hardly ever play with me." "Can't imagine why." "When I was little, Cadmus used to make me play all kinds of games but they weren't any fun either." "They'd strap me into their machines and poke wires into my brain." ""Ace, can you move this object with your mind?"" "Yeah, I can move it." "They weren't really games, you know." "They were training me." "Turning me into a weapon." ""For justice," they said." "They got their weapon." "I got cheated out of my childhood." "I know what that's like." "You do, don't you?" "You don't have to answer." "I've read your mind." "That's how I knew you weren't going to use Waller's weapon on me." "No, I wasn't." "You were going to try and talk me into fixing what I've changed before I die." "Yes." "I'm dying very soon." "Yes." "I'm sorry." "Would you stay with me?" "I'm scared." "He sat with her until her time came." "That's the Bruce Wayne I came to know over the years." "You think he showed mercy?" "Maybe." "But he probably deduced that Ace wasn't gonna hurt anyone." "He always was two steps ahead of everybody." "That's right." "Even when it looks like it's your call, it isn't." "Think about it." "Bruce wanted a successor, another Batman." "He planned it all from the beginning." "I never had a chance." "Honey, Bruce didn't overwrite your DNA with his." "I did." "How?" "Why?" "Because the world needs a Batman." "Not that I always thought so, mind you." "Before you were born, Bruce and I were enemies." "His Justice League was easily the most powerful force on Earth." "As you know, I was in charge of Project Cadmus." "Over the years, I came to respect Batman, even trust him." "Guess the law of averages means somebody would have to." "I was the government liaison to the Justice League for a while." "I met some extraordinary people in that job." "But none of them were the equal of Batman." "Right." "Who could be?" "Not my point." "I saw him save the day dozens of times, with nothing but his wits, body and will." "But I saw something else as the years passed." "He was getting older, slower." "Soon he'd have to retire, or, more likely, someone would finally manage to kill him." "The thought of a world without Batman was unacceptable." "So I decided to make a new one." "I used my old Cadmus connections to gather the technology necessary for Project Batman Beyond." "Bruce's DNA was easy enough to obtain." "He left it all over town." "Not remotely what I meant." "Then I found a young Neo-Gotham couple with psychological profiles nearly identical to those of Bruce's parents." "Your father thought he was getting a flu shot." "Actually, it was a nanotech solution programmed to rewrite his reproductive material into an exact copy of Bruce Wayne's." "A little over a year later, your mother gave birth to you, a child sharing half her genetic material and half Bruce's." "But when you're making a Batman, genetics is only part of the story." "The rest is tragedy." "Stop me if you've heard it before." "You're 8 years old." "Your parents have taken you to a rousing adventure film." "A grand time is had by all." "But unknown to you, a mysterious figure hides in the shadows." "My plan was simple." "The killer would leap out at you and kill your family." "The trauma would put you on the path to becoming Batman." "One problem." "My assassin wouldn't pull the trigger." "I argued with her, deep down, but I knew she was right." "People say Batman's obsessive, that he'd do anything to achieve his goals, but he'd never resort to murder." "So if I was to honor all he stood for neither could I." "And yet my dad wound up murdered... anyway." "Don't you get it?" "No matter what, I was gonna end up being Bruce's carbon copy." "It was fate." "You know, the Lord's been a great comfort to me all these years." "Try not to look so surprised." "Yeah, I've got a lot to answer for when I meet him, but I'd like to believe that for all the harm I've caused" "I've also done some good." "Maybe the angels need a sharp sword too." "Like the Good Book says, he moves in mysterious ways." "His plan is a mystery, but here's what isn't." "He gave us free will." "We choose our own fate... for good or ill." "I've known Bruce Wayne for over 50 years, and I've been keeping an eye on you your whole life" "You're not Bruce's clone." "You're his son." "There are similarities, mind you, but more than a few differences too." "You don't quite have his magnificent brain, for instance." "You do have his heart, though." "And for all that fierce exterior," "I've never met anyone who cared as deeply about his fellow man as Bruce Wayne, except maybe you." "You want to have a little better life than the old man's?" "Take care of the people who love you or don't." "It's your choice." "Hello?" "Hi." "Terry?" "What time is it?" "It's just after 3." "Oh, baby, I have to be up at 5." "What's wrong?" "I just wanted to know if we were still on for this weekend." "Yeah." "Why, something come up again?" "No." "I just wanna ask you somethin'." "So ask." "No, not until I see you." "Okay." "So Friday night?" "Fine." "Good night." "Love you." "Love you too." "You're in my chair." "Yeah, guess I am." "Where the devil have you been?" "I had some stuff to take care of." "Enigma's overrated, especially at 3 a.m." "You could've called." "I made you some soup, but it's cold." "Sorry." "Didn't mean to worry you." "I was worried about Gotham." "If Batman's not around..." "I've got it covered." "Always." "Kent called." "Nothing apocalyptic." "He just wants your opinion on a case he's working." "Said you could meet him at the Metro Tower." "Right." "Better suit up." "You should eat something first, keep up your strength." "When I get back." "You're a stubborn piece of work, you know that?" "Just like my old man." "Did you see that?"