Rise of Batwoman.

As she stood on the top of a building, clad in her recently improved Batsuit, Kate could not help but wonder what was going to happen now; after she had spent so long denying that she was the new Bat in Gotham even though she was virtually living in Bruce's home, using his suit, his weapons, and adopted his look just so she could deal with Alice/Beth rather than sort out Gothams' problems even if they were needed, Kate had to admit it was good that she had managed to sort out a different problem.

And yet…. Kate had been reluctant to be the hero Gotham desperately needed since Bruce had vanished for reasons she didn't understand, and she wasn't even sure if he did return. Just because Luke believed he would not return did not mean that it was so. For all she knew, Bruce would return in a few years from now, but if that were true she had no idea.

One of the reasons she had been reluctant was because she'd wanted to focus her attention on Alice, and get her sister back so they could work with her, find out what the hell had happened to Beth years ago and heal her so she could come back. She couldn't do that if she spent her nights wasting her time and energy pummelling the crap out of crooks, and encountering the criminals' Bruce had fought as Batman.

Joker.

Penguin.

Mr Freeze.

Mad Hatter (she momentarily wondered if Alice was in some way aligned with Jervis Tetch, but she pushed it out of her head; she'd worry about that later, especially if the Mad Hatter turned up).

Scarecrow.

Riddler, and many more.

She didn't want to encounter any of them; they were complete unknowns, and even with the Batcomputer back at the cave to give her insights into their methods and their personalities, Kate knew defeating them would be hard. That was why she had only donned the Batman suit rarely, so then people would just think the return of Batman was just a story, a rumour, (She cursed the fact she had been seen after she had rescued Sophie from Alice, it would have made the rumour of Batman's return more refutable).

Thinking about her confrontation with Tommy made her shudder.

The guy had wanted his parents dead so he could claim their inheritance.

Kate knew it wasn't uncommon. There were dozens of stories describing it happen, but she had never heard let alone seen anyone go to the steps Tommy had tried to take to get revenge on Batman, going to so much trouble as to steal a special weapon from Wayne Enterprise's itself designed to tear through the Batsuit like a blowtorch through rubber.

Tommy was soon pushed out of her mind - she didn't know and frankly did not care what happened to him at this point, but she knew she would be lucky to avoid him in the future given he didn't seem the type to let go of a grudge - and she focused on her encounter with Alice.

Beth...

Kate looked down, remembering the unnerving encounter, but then every encounter with Kate was unnerving, simply because ever since she had found that knife, and realised that it was her sister underneath the blonde hair thanks to the ruby-red gem set into it, she was now left thinking every time she met her now deranged sister.

As adults, their personalities had drastically altered since they had been kids before that crash, and where Kate herself had toughened up as a person following the loss and heartbreak she'd felt at the simultaneous loss of her mother and twin which had torn her family apart before Catherine's clearly erroneous news about the skull bone fragments found miles from the crash site had driven a wedge between her and her father, a rift which had widened more and more as her father kept fighting her life choices and her desires - the revelation of her sexuality had only deepened the rift, but that was irrelevant at this point, even if Sophie basically going along with the guys at that fucking camp had not only let her down, but had hurt her on a more personal level, and came before that mess where she had told Sophie to stall the Crows so she could meet with Alice, even though she understood it once she heard the story of how Alice had murdered that innocent couple whose only crime was living in their old home - but she was scared to find out just what Beth had gone through to twist her into that!

Granted, Beth had a temper when they were young, well they both had a temper, but Kate still found it hard to believe that her twin had been transformed into that.

A part of Kate wondered if someone had taken Beth deliberately as part of some sick experiment to twist her into a female version of the Joker, a more lethal version of Harley Quinn, but until she had answers to her questions she wouldn't know for sure, and she was trying her best not to think about what could have happened to Beth to transform her into a lunatic like Alice…

Kate shuddered as she remembered how she had last confronted Beth/Alice…

She had just grabbed hold of Alice/Beth, unnerved by her insane, creepy talk, but then ever since she had discovered that Alice was her own sister, long since thought to be dead she had been both bemused and horrified by her sister's casual and wacky way of speaking, especially the way she had casually spoken about torturing a corpse.

But at the same time she had been annoyed; all this time Beth had seemed…amenable to her and her company, even being willing to give her a blood sample to prove her identity by matching it with Kate's own blood, and yet here she was, seeming to both deny and acknowledge who she really was.

Kate was sick of it.

She wanted her sister back more than anything, but it wouldn't happen if Alice kept going on like this.

Did she even understand that, or did she simply not care?

Why was she doing this?

"If you kill again, its over," she said harshly, glaring at Alice to make the blonde realise she was serious, "and I will stop thinking of you as my sister."

A slow, sinister smile crept over Alice's face. "Your….finally…catching….on?" she asked, and Kate had to fight the urge to not pull away in horror. She….didn't want her (Kate) to see her as her sister? Then what the hell was the point behind her actions? Had Beth's mind split into so many pieces, with some fragments wanting to make peace with the world, reunite with her family again, while the others just wanted to see the city die screaming?

"That….is exactly what I want," Alice went on, uncaring about what the effects of her words were having on Kate.

"You say that, but it's not true. And I know you know that too."

Kate sighed as she closed her eyes from underneath the cowl, her heart still aching while she replayed that horrible conversation in her mind. She had no idea how this would play out in the future after what Alice had told her that she didn't want or care if she (Kate) saw her as her sister but she knew she would encounter Alice again in the future. Hopefully, she would have a better idea of what to do then, but Kate honestly hoped it wouldn't come to that; with Luke and Sophie being the only ones being her voices of reason, and her father denying Alice as his daughter, she needed all the optimism she could get.

Damn, I wish you were here, Bruce, she thought to herself. I could use your advice right now, but what would you say to me? I mean, I was so reluctant to don this suit not only because I didn't want to be a hero, but also because I was scared of letting you down. But if you ever come back, I hope you realise, no matter what I face…no matter what kind of misery Alice causes me with her insane quest to rip Gotham apart and fill it with chaos…I want you to know its worth it.

Kate winced in surprise when she was nearly blinded by a blinding light, and she realised she could hear the sounds of a helicopter. She lifted her head, squinting her eyes in the glare, surprised that the helicopter was even there. She had been so lost in her thoughts following the fight with Tommy and the unnerving encounter with Alice, she hadn't even noticed the sound of the blades. But she didn't move.

There was no point.

The helicopter crew had already seen her. They had also probably worked out she was a totally different kind of bat, but there was nothing she could do about that now.

Batman had had his time, now it was the time for her. Kate wondered what the media would call her, but she found she didn't care, as long as she received a mature name, she could live with that.