Batman recovers from his encounter with the drugged killer from last issue. Batman seeks to discover the secrets of Casebook X. Plus it is revealed what happened to Talia and Damien.
After being attacked by the hulking Bane/Batman, a battered Batman lies face down in his own blood and vomit. He tries to get up but can't muster enough strength to stay standing. Luckily, some of the prostitutes that Batman had stood up for earlier that night (see last issue) showed up and one decided to help. She puts him in her car and starts driving. Along the way, Batman wakes up and tells the woman to an escape tunnel in another part of Gotham. The tunnel actually has an entrance to one of Wayne's buildings, so after he gets dropped off, he takes an elevator to the penthouse, calls Alfred, and passes out.
While he's sleeping, Bruce has a nightmare of his son Damien in front of three twisted versions of himself. Two are versions he's encountered, the gun-wielding Batman and the over-muscled Bane version, and the third is new, but hidden in shadow. Bruce wakes up screaming and finds his wounds bandaged and Alfred and Tim waiting at his bedside. Bruce fills them in on what happened. He said that the Batman he fought looked like Bane, like he was designed to trigger his fear of having his back broken again. Alfred informs him that his spinal brace had been shattered but his back was intact. Tim decides to go after the impostor but Bruce tells him not to because the man is hopped up on Monster Serum and Venom. He goes anyway.
Bruce tells Alfred to get The Black Casebook, a file of all the strange and unexplainable things that Batman had come across over the years. Things like vampires, aliens and time travel. Batman wants it so he can look up a vision he once had, one where he saw the three versions of himself. The third version, the one he had yet to come across, had sold his soul to the devil and destroyed Gotham. At the time, he had thought them to be nothing more than hallucinations warning him of what he might have (or might still) become. Now he thought there was something more.
Getting out of bed, Bruce says he's going after the hulking Batman. He rubs a shirt he wore while going off on shareholders in the boardroom the day before and says that the one thing alpha males are programmed to respect is alpha male plus.
Robin arrives in the slums where the Bane/Batman stays and abuses his women just as the monster is leaving. He drives his motorcycle right at the man and tries to take him down with fancy moves and garbage can lids. He avoids the big man's grasp for a while but eventually gets caught. He's about to be slammed into the ground when the Batmobile pulls up and slams into the fake Batman. The real Bats shoots out of the car in a emergency eject seat and grabs Robin on the way up. From the seat he shoots rockets at the enemy and makes his car electrocute him. When they land, Batman tells Robin that he doesn't have to prove anything to him. He sends Robin to check on the women and takes on the big man himself, knocking him down a hill and beats him down with some pipes. He tries to get some answers about the third Batman but cops arrive and pull guns on him. Batman knows they're all dirty so he blows up his Batmobile behind them and uses the distraction to escape.
Batman sets up a meet with Gordon and they talk on a rooftop. Batman tells him about the two crazy cops running around in his costume and Gordon reveals that the the corruption goes all the way up to the mayor. In fact, the mayor is trying to get Gordon to ignore all the Batman stuff.
Elsewhere, Talia has just beaten Damien almost to death while testing his fighting skills. She says that he's definitely his father's son, and his mother's. She orders that he be taken to have all his organs replaced so he'll live. When she gets out of a shower, she gets news that Bruce has been out on another date with a supermodel, and she's not pleased.
In Venice, Bruce kisses his supermodel date as someone watches through binoculars.
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