"That movie was great, wasn't it, Morgan?"

"Yeah, Zorro sure cleaned their clocks! It would be great to have a sword like his, and go around making my mark on bad guys! I wish cousin Tony was here to play Zorro with us, but Uncle Tony and Aunt Maria sent him off to boarding school."

"At least you get to visit them and hang around with me! Someday, maybe I'll be a cop...they get to catch bad guys..or even a secret agent!"

"Listen to those kids, Thomas," said one of the men, a black-haired, dashing man. He smoked his cigarette in a rakish manner.

The other man, tall, imposing but serene, responded. "Yes, Tony, you'd think that to them, fighting crime was a game, and criminals existed to be toppled down one by one."

"I wish it were that easy," Tony responded.

"Let's hurry home, honey," said Tony's wife. "I don't like the looks of this neighborhood."

"Sure, sweetie," Tony responded. "Let's just duck down that alleyway just down the street here...I think it's a shortcut to where we left the car."

Tony resumed his conversation with Thomas. "Anyway, I just had to cancel something I was working on because of a crime...a big contract...me and my assistant Alex Luthor were almost done with it when I found out our work was going to be used to fire chemical weapons at people."

"That was the big contract you were working on for Justin Hammer! Aren't you going to lose millions from not fulfilling that?"

"It's worth it, if I know that I'm not responsible for spreading chemical weapons all over the world. It wasn't a popular decision. Luthor swore he'd get me someday, maybe fulfill the contract himself. Hammer said that things can happen to people who don't fulfill contracts."

"A threat, then?"

"Perhaps. I'm watching my back. Hammer's a businessman, so he wouldn't strike at me directly, but I've seen a lot of tough characters hanging around his plant. Here's the alley we want. Come on...follow me."

Just as the group entered the alley, they saw two figures waiting for them in the shadows. Another figure followed them in from the street, trapping them in the alley.

A commanding voice called out from one of the figures. "Stark. Looks like you and your friends took a wrong turn."

"It's you! Leave my family out of this, you! Your problem's with me...leave them out of this!"

A voice intruded on the scene.

"Batman! Robin's here!"

"Oh! Hello, Robin! Glad to see you responded to my call so fast."

"Don't sit up too fast, Batman. You need to save your strength," Iron Man advised, walking over to the side of the bed.

Robin stepped over to the other side of Batman's bed. He was a slim nineteen-year-old young man. He wore a black mask, with a red jacket and darker red pants. His lightly armored yellow cape moved aside as he grasped the rail of Batman's bed.

"I was coming back to Gotham anyway, Batman. School is off for Spring Break, so I was able to fly the Batplane right over here, like you asked."

"Good you see you're coming around, Batman," Iron Man said. "Doctor Benson said you have to stay in bed for a couple of days at least to let the wound heal. You were lucky the bullet didn't penetrate anything vital..it didn't take the doctors long to remove it."

"Did you find out from Spymaster about who he was working for?"

"Not yet. I wanted to blow his head off with my repulsor ray, but I thought that would take me down to his level. I can't have my Security branch hold him here any longer...we should turn him over to the police." Iron Man got up and looked out the window. "We'll never get an answer out of him now."

Batman thought for a moment, then smiled. "I know how you can get the confession you need...but not as Iron Man."

Spymaster threw red playing cards from a deck in his hand at two cards that were leaned against a crack in the cell wall. He waited for morning to come and the police to take him away. The worst rap he could get from the judge would be breaking and entering, and Justin Hammer's lawyers would get the sentence down to some cushy amount of time. As long as Spymaster didn't end up blabbing about the CleanJet sabotage, he was almost home free.

Suddenly, a ghostly figure entered the dark hallway near the cells.

"Who's there?"

"You know who it is, Spymaster. You should know who it is after what you did to me."

The figure grew nearer, and was revealed to be a ghostly, almost transparent apparition of a man in a suit. His flesh and clothes were charred, and his arm is bent backwards from being broken, but his face was still recognizable to Spymaster.

"Stark! But you're supposed to be dead!"

"Dead, but not gone. I'm going to haunt you for the rest of your days for what you and Deadshot did, Spymaster. Wherever you are, if you try to sleep, if you're sitting back and enjoying the money you make from killing and stealing, I'll be watching."

"You can't touch me. Go away!" He tried to swat Tony Stark's ghost away, but his hand went right through the apparition.

"Ha!" the ghost laughed. "It's not that easy, Spymaster. You see, I'm a ghost with a mission of vengeance...vengeance for the six people you killed along with me, and the hundreds who died from the explosion of the plane." The ghost moved through the bars of the prison cell and stood right in front of Spymaster. "You never know when you'll wake up in the middle of the night trying to catch your breath with ghostly fingers around your trachea..."

"No! It's not my fault! I mean, it was my fault, but it wasn't my idea! You see, he hired us to pull that job. There was nothing wrong with your plane! Deadshot and me..we were told to stow away...we had an insider as one of the baggage handlers who let us hide in the cargo bay. While you guys were busy flyin' around, we set to work on the plane's engines...and whatever computers we could find to sabotage. Everything was set to go kaput at a certain time after the plane took off."

Spymaster was shaking a little, afraid of Stark's apparition. "The boss sent us. It was his idea, honest!"

"Who is he?" the ghost demanded, drawing closer to the shuddering villain.

"Hammer! Justin Hammer, OK? He said that after we did the crime we had one more job to do at your plant, just to put the icing on the cake, and then we could go down to his island and party with his other goons! Please don't kill me..."

"Then perhaps it is Hammer whom I should haunt...I'll tell him you sent me."

The ghost disappears, and leaves Spymaster cowering in a corner of the cell.

"Great performance, Mr. Stark! Where did you get this thing?"

"Just one of the new designs from the boys in the lab, Robin." Tony Stark removes the fake broken arm from his body and puts his real arm back in his sleeve. "Thankfully, you and Batman are such masters of disguise that you came up with this getup for me. My hologram projector couldn't have done it alone." He put his Iron Man armor back on.

"I'm putting a lot of trust in you, son, showing you my true identity," he states soberly. "But the way you've helped us out ever since Batman got shot lets me know that you can be trusted."

"My real name is Chuck Barnes...I'm related to Bucky Barnes, who was a prominent superhero during World War II. After my parents were killed by Flag-Smasher and his goons, I knew that I needed to carry on my great-uncle's tradition."

"Well, you do your family proud," Iron Man states, clapping the young man lightly on the back. They head for the door as Robin closes the hologram recording program. "Quick, let's tell Batman who's behind this!"

"So, what do we do now?" asked Robin eagerly. "Can we bring him in for conspiracy or destruction of property?"

"We need proof that he told them to blow up the plane and that he paid Deadshot and Spymaster to do it!" Batman reminded his ward. "Otherwise, we'd just be kidnapping him if we brought him to justice!"

Iron Man sighed. "Spymaster probably won't rat out his employer in a court of law, no matter how much we try to force him...Batman, are you all right?"

Batman lies back in his bed and closes his eyes. "Sorry, friends. I'm feeling a little weak..."

"You crossed me big time, Stark. I had a lot of interested parties who wanted what you were paid to develop for me...and you dropped the ball. Now it's time for us to drop you."

"Black Assassin, if you would step forward, please."

A ghoulish-looking man with a light blue hood and a swastika patch on his chest stepped forward with a machine gun in his hands.

"Hag, come forward."

The figure blocking the alley stepped forward. It seemed like a woman, only with a fiendish, pustuled face. She held a thirties-style tommy gun and wore a tattered brown dress.

The speaker stepped forward. Bruce recognized him from the newspapers his father left around Wayne Manor. It was Justin Hammer, with his eyes only partly covered by a fedora hat.

"I'll show you what happens to people who let me down, Stark. Sorry, Mr. Wayne, but I can't have anyone know that this happened, so I'll have to kill you and your family, too."

Young Morgan bravely stepped forward.

"You leave my dad alone!"

"Kill the kids, too. They're old enough to tell someone what happened here. Kill them now."

The Black Assassin and the Hag sprayed their captives with bullets. Anthony Stark went down trying to shield his wife, who was blown away from behind by the Hag. Thomas Wayne grabbed for the Black Assassin, but was cut down, as was his wife, whose pearl necklace scattered pearls everywhere. Bruce ducked out of the way, in deference to his father's last words.

"Find the kid. Kill him, too. We can't have any witnesses."

At that moment, someone shouted out, "Freeze! Police!"

The murderers escaped through another entrance in the alley as pistol shots rang out. A beat cop steps into the scene and is alarmed by the carnage.

"Holy God! What happened!" He bent to examine the smoking bodies as he heard sobs from behind a dumpster.

"Hey, kid! Are you all right? I'm Officer Gordon...come out, now. It's safe."

Bruce Wayne slowly came out from behind the dumpster to see the corpses of his parents lying sprawled across the alley. The Starks and their son Morgan lay dead next to them.

"Don't look, kid. Just come here, just come with me..."

Officer Gordon clutched the child to him as sobs came out of young Bruce Wayne.

"That will..help us, Robin. Can you leave me and Iron Man alone for a moment?"

"Sure, Batman," the young crimefighter said, slightly offended at being left out on the older crimefighters' conversation. "I'll just wait outside until you need me again."

Iron Man was taken by Batman's mentioning of the tragedy. "Why, yes...they were killed in an alleyway by a gang of criminals. You were there when they were killed..you were the only one who survived. The worst thing is that it was just a random murder, just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"No, it wasn't. I don't know how this happened, maybe it was the shock of having been shot myself, but now I remember what happened that night. Those were supervillains who cornered us in Crime Alley...and the person who ordered them to kill our parents and your cousin was...Justin Hammer."

Iron Man was so taken aback by the news that he staggered into a hospital chair, almost breaking it with his iron weight.

"You know..." he responded. "I don't want to believe you, but from the way he's always treated me...from the way he's tried to sabotage my every business venture...I've always known he was responsible." He pounded his left fist into his right palm.

"Let's get him, Batman. Let's drag his scaly old rear end off his posh island and bring him to justice."

"Yeah...bullet wound or not, we're both going to get him. We'll need one more to help us..ask Robin to call her, so we can pick her up along the way. We'll rig up a bed for me to sit in in the Batcopter, so I can direct the attack."

"I'm ready to prove myself, Batman. It sounds like we'll be facing some big time bad guys."

"Yes, Hammer has quite a stable of supervillains working for him, from what we've been able to gather from Oracle. But I know you're up to the challenge, Batwoman."