Cassandra Cain

Disambiguation

Cassandra Cain was the 4th Batgirl.

• 1st Batgirl: Bette Kane
• 2nd Batgirl: Barbara Gordon
• 3rd Batgirl: Helena Bertinelli
• 5th Batgirl: Charlie Gage-Radcliffe
• 6th Batgirl: Stephanie Brown

Disambiguation notes:

• Pre-New 52: Cassandra is currently using the alias Black Bat.
• Future’s End: Cassandra was back as Batgirl, as part of the League of Batgirls.
• New 52: Cassandra is introduced with a modified origin. After helping Batman’s former sidekicks take down an international criminal ring, she joins the Batman Family as Orphan
• DC: Rebirth: Cassandra remains a member of the Bat-Family fighting crime in Gotham. She operates independently most times, but also as a member of the new crimefighting team Batman assembled.

Origin

David Cain trained Cassandra in isolation and kept her away from human speech, raising her on the language of motion and violence. The idea was to adapt the language centers of her brain, and train it to interpret physical movement as a language. This gifted Cassandra with superb body-reading abilities, and has made fighting her “mother tongue” so to speak. However, this upbringing has also rendered her dyslexic, and when taught to speak, with audible speech-impediments.

When Cassandra was eight, Cain took her to carry out a hit in Macau. Cassandra did as her father trained and instructed her to do, and ripped out the throat of a local triad boss. Due to her body-reading ability, she was able to see how death effected the man, and was traumatized by her irreversible sin. Her father came to congratulate her, and she rejected him by delivering an emotional uppercut. Shocked, Cain did not pursue Cassandra when she fled in tears. Cassandra would then wander the Earth for the next eight years, before meeting her father once again in Gotham during No Man’s Land.

Creation

Cassandra Cain was created by Kelley Puckett and Damion Scott. She first appeared in Batman #567 – Mark of Cain Part 1.

Major Story Arcs

Pre New 52

Batgirl

As a child, she was trained by not just David Cain, but Bronze Tiger, Merlyn the archer, and Alpha, among many others. Cain kept her trained and focused on fighting, by never teaching her speech or reading. The parts of her brain normally used for speech were trained so she could read other people’s movements and body language and predict , with uncanny accuracy, their next move. This also caused her brain to develop learning functions different from most, in a form of dyslexia that hampered her ability to read and write for years to come. Training her in a variety of secluded locations Cain recorded many of their sessions.

When Cassandra was 5, Cain began taking her along on his hits so she could be cultured to accept death and killing as normal. At age 8 he decided she had progressed far enough to test her abilities in the real world of an assassin. He took her to a hit where she would hand out the killing blow; the target Faizul, would never see it coming. At the time however despite going along with her father’s wishes she had no idea what she was doing; she may have even believed it was only a game however after striking the deathblow, she “read” the target as he died and knew in intimate detail what it meant to take a life. This experience left her scarred emotionally and she ran away from her father for what he had caused her to do. Cassandra spent the next nine years homeless as a wandering, mute drifter.

Cassandra spent the next nine years homeless, beating herself up mentally over what she’d done as she traveled the world. Entering Gotham City during No Man’s Land, Cassandra came to be a courier for Oracle, even picking up rare delicacies like apples alongside her missions. Oracle took her on as a student and tried to teach her how to read and write. Over time Barbara began to see that Cassie had training and skill, but had been abused in some way. Cassandra became involved with the Bat Family after seeing the handiwork of her father, Cain, and realizing that he planned to kill Commissioner Gordon, she confronted him and saved the Commissioner. She was given the Batgirl costume with the blessings of both Batman and Oracle.

Usually going out under the Batman’s watchful eye she was finally allowed to go on a solo mission when a patrol station needed guarding against a local gang. Near the end of No Man’s Land Batman noticed her death wish and forced her to make a decision between suicidal actions and self preservation. She opted for self preservation.

Cassandra works as Batgirl with Oracle, and they become a team to be reckoned with. On time they were trying to solve a bombing at the diamond exchange that killed several people. Two-Face caused the bombing and took credit for it but the problem was why did six of the bodies disappear. It turned out they were being reanimated and used by a man named Malcolm Greymater (The General) in his crime-syndicate known as the Trio. The machine that brought people back didn’t really work on everyone’s minds leaving some complete zombies while others with slight memory loss that just got worse as their brains rotted. Good looking women were taken to a strip club where they would perform. Strong men were recruited in his own gang.

Everything led them to Arcadia where she and Oracle worked with the Ghost. Two-Face also went to Arcadia on a separate issue of revenge against the General as well. Everything ends with Two-Face and the General killing most of their own men and the base for the General is destroyed as well with him getting away talking about moving to Metropolis and setting up again.

Cassie’s desire for a family grows ever stronger as she continues to live with Oracle and watches the dynamics of the Bat Family. Information on her childhood continues to be gathered as she studies her father and his movements, suspicions of her mother’s true identity begin to come to light and she decides against Batman’s wishes to chase down Lady Shiva and confront her about her true parentage. Having faced Shiva once before the woman had hinted at her role in the child’s upbringing trying to get the girl to fight her as Cassie’s new training in speech and her telepathy had thrown her off balance, Cassandra barely defeated her with a cheap shot. Later, Cassandra then requested Shiva to retrain her to read people like her. Shiva accepted her offer, only on the condition that in one year, they would fight to the death.

One year later, Cassandra and Shiva fight once more, with Shiva killing her in minutes. Shiva then restarts her heart, and learns that Cassandra had a death wish. After learning this, the two have a real fight, in which Cassandra wins.

Following the trail she heads to the latest home of the League of Assassins, who were lead by Nyssa, Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter. While making her way into the compound, Cassie drops in upon Lady Shiva’s training of the latest assassin recruits. Preparing to attack, she was stunned to see the recruits address her as: “One who is all”, the one who defeated Shiva in combat. After Shiva explains why she is in league with The League of Assassins, she attacks Cassie. While Cassie tried to get Shiva to answer if she was her mother, the duel was interrupted when Mr. Freeze appeared and froze Cassie. Somehow, Cassie convinced Mr. Freeze to let her go in exchange, she would help him revive his wife, Nora. When Freeze put his wife into the Lazarus pit, not only did it make her crazy, but it gave her powers to reanimate the dead and called herself Lazara. Cassie convinces Freeze to refreeze his wife by destroying the base of the Assassins with a freeze device. As Cassie made her way out, Shiva tells the students to pick their side, half go to Shiva half to Cassie. A fight breaks out and Cassie is attacked by her brother Mad dog. Mad Dog kills Cassandra, Shiva takes Cassie’s body and walked away from the training session.

Taking Cassie down to the Lazarus pit , Shiva threw her in and waited for the girl to be reborn. Shiva told Cassie the story of her birth while the women fought, finally getting the battle she wanted Shiva continued to tell the story as Cassie fought back, telling of Cain’s use of her, of how he killed her sister to get a rise out of her. That finally he did Shiva a favor as she was stronger and better than ever, that Cassie could be so as well. Finally, Cassie was able to defeat her once again, stabbing her through a chained hook leaving her to die above the Lazarus pit. Cassie, realizing who she was raised to be, handed the cowl back to Batman and quit being Batgirl.

Robin goes to track down Cassandra after she disappeared from the Bat family and found her to be the new leader of the League of Assassins. Believing her to have been captured Tim had bought along the body of David Cain as ransom. Cassandra was found to have been injected with a serum by Deathstroke that clouded her mind and judgment and forced her to obey his will. Robin tried to talk Cassandra down and offered his support to take her home, handing him a gun Cassie tells Robin to join her and kill her father to prove his worthiness an ordeal to which Robin refused. Cassie then, takes the gun and kills Cain herself, while he tells Robin that there are more girls like Cassie. A fight breaks out between Robin and Cassie until an explosion breaks out and Cassie and Cain disappear.

It was later revealed that Cain and Deathstroke had set the whole thing up, hoping to work with Cassandra to create a new breed of Assassins. Using a new drug that would turn the girls into metahumans. Cassandra later turns up as a member of Titans East still under the control of Deathstroke. A strong member she works with him to try to take down the Titans, while under his control via the serum he has injected into her body. During her time there she faces Ravager Deathstroke’s daughter and battles her, Robin steps in during the fight and injects Cassie with a counter serum. Her desire to kill Deathstroke and Cain begins as she sees what they have done to other girls like her and Rose.

Ghost/Batgirl

Under the tutelage of Oracle, Batgirl investigates the bombing of the international Diamond Exchange which has resulted in severe casualties. Two-Face openly claims responsibility for the disaster but reports show that nothing is stolen, nor were there any high profile enemies at the scene that Two-Face would consider targeting. Oracle’s investigation lead to the city of Arcadia, where Ghost is on the search for Malcolm Greymatter, a Civil War veteran kept alive by his own scientific experiments.

Councilman Fletcher, while at a social event, reveals that his daughter is among 6 persons reported missing after the bombing of the International Diamond Exchange. Bruce Wayne mentions that no body has been recovered, and this may indicate she is not dead. The disheartened Councilman responds “if Harvey Dent has her, she may wish she were.”

Wayne instinctively assumes Barbara Gordon may be planning a mission to apprehend Dent, and specifically warns her not to. He claims that Two-Face is Batman’s responsibility, and adds that if Batman needs help, he’ll call.

Gordon, ignoring Wayne’s order, plans a trip to investigate St. Mary’s Hospital in Arcadia. Meanwhile, Ghost is investigating the disappearance of a young woman named Debbie Scoggins. Both she and Batgirl end up meeting for the first time at an underground nightclub. Although they are unable to communicate verbally, the two quickly realize their agendas are compatible.

With the assistance of Oracle and Batgirl, Ghost comes face to face with Malcolm Greymatter, the mastermind behind the disappearances of numerous woman in Gotham and Arcadia. While Ghost believed Greymatter faked their deaths in order to sell them into servitude, he reveals their deaths were real and that he was responsible for reanimating their bodies through the use of his “resurrection machine”.

Two-Face seeks revenge on Greymatter for reanimating the corpses of henchmen he has killed himself, claiming them as property. The conflict is cut short as Ghost and Batgirl wreak havoc on Greymatter’s heart of operations. Facing defeat, he destroys the base of operations with a bomb, leaving no evidence of the reanimated bodies or the resurrection machine. Ghost and Batgirl are unable to capture the villain.

Justice League Elite

The reformed assassin, Kasumi’s skills are legendary amongst the underground; said to have killed 200 people by the age of 16. While it is unclear whether or not a girl named Kasumi actually exists, the Kasumi that entered the Justice League Elite was actually Cassandra posing as Kasumi to keep a check on the experimental team; a spy inserted by Batman (Bruce Wayne). With Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) acting as her backup, Cassandra secretly delivered annual reports to Batman on the team’s progress.

Sticking rigidly to her sense of responsibility and, under her disguise, redemption, Kasumi’s self discipline attracted the attention of Coldcast (Nathan Jones) as a brotherly influence for her on the team as it began to fall apart. When Coldcast was accused of murdering a captured dictator in cold blood, Cassandra insisted on his innocence and, after the team was disbanded due to Manchester Black’s return, Cassandra infiltrated Coldcast’s prison to break him out and face Black before he destroyed the planet.

Batgirl Returns

When Cassie returned to Gotham, most of the Bat Family embraced her but not everyone. Nightwing still mistrusted her and continued to berate Batman about allowing her back into the family. Oracle and Batman worked together to try to pull Cassie out of her depressive angry state. There was nothing any of them could say or do to help her to move on, Cassie had been a victim, used and abused, and for that she needed them to pay, needed to finish her father to allow herself to move on. Finding the name of a doctor who had worked on the experiments of Cain and Wilson, Cassie broke into the Batcave and hacked her way into the bat computer, with Oracle watching and intervening. Cassandra pleaded with Oracle for support and understanding, Oracle her heart understanding the girls need for redemption helped her by removing all trace of her hunt through the computer.

Cassandra continued to hunt for her father, trailing the streets she followed the trail only to find a woman killing several girls strapped to a massive roundabout table. The woman Marque was killing the new creations of Cain and Wilson, a new breed of girls to fight where Cassie had left off. Marque explained she had been one of them, but had managed to escape and now vowed to destroy their plans. Cassie begged the woman to hear her out and trust her but to no avail, the woman disappeared and left Cassie with a blood sample to test. Taking the test back to the cave Batgirl was confronted by Nightwing who had tracked her down through the use of the bat computer and had a hunch that she was seeking vengeance against her father. With his hunch being correct all along, Nightwing confronted Cassie and the two began to fight. They were interrupted however by the arrival of Batman and Robin, and Cassie fled from the scene. Knowing, if she had not they would try to stop her, the thought made her realize she would kill them if they did.

Tracking down Marque she managed to convince the woman to team up with her and for them to work together to find Cain, but with the promise that no one would be killed other than Cain himself. During their journey they were put upon by Rose Wilson aka Ravager, the daughter of Slade Wilson (Deathstroke) the co-conspirator of the creation of the female army.

The three women eventually fought through their issues and came together to hunt the men responsible, with the promise that Slade belonged to Ravager. The women managed to track down the training compound for this new breed of women but were thwarted as Deathstroke had been tracking his daughter and found the girls. Using the new army of girls he attacked the three, a massive fight continued until Deathstroke blew up the building making sure his daughter and the girls escaped.

Cassandra is abandoned but manages to work out Cain’s plan, when she overhears his phone call with Deathstroke she picks up the message that he is going to kill someone and it will shake Gotham to its core, realizing that he means Oracle she runs off to kill her father before he can manage the task. After saving Oracle the father and daughter fight atop the roof opposite the clock tower, Cain mocks Cassandra’s skills and tries to use her own emotions of belonging against her, she finally managed to conquer her own demons and threw him off the building, but he managed to hold on. Watching as he slipped Cassie tangle with the demons inside her, the need for her father to die tangling with the training Batman had given her, she finally made the lunge for him to save his life, as Batman and Robin arrived at the scene. She could not grab her father’s hand but he was saved by a lower roof top and sent to hospital by Batman as they helped Cassandra. Batman seeing that Cassandra had finally dealt with her demons, made the gesture of adopting her as he had the others in the family finally cementing for her the love of a father she had always craved.

Batman and the Outsiders

Cassandra joins the outsiders at the end of Batman and the Outsiders. Only for the team to fall apart during “Batman R.I.P”. When Green Arrow is offered a part of the team by Batman he is angry and is disgusted that the former leader of the League of Assassins is the new leader. While on a mission Green Arrow and Batgirl fight one another and form a bond.

Though unwilling to form bonds with her team Batgirl continues to lead them with strength and later forms tight bonds with them and gains their respect when she frees them from the Chinese Military. After her disappearance during the new Batgirl series, the Outsiders begin to fall apart with her loss.

During a mission with the JLA, Batman is killed and the Bat family are thrown into a state of disrepair. While Jason and Dick fought over the Battle for the Cowl, Cassie was faced with the pain of losing a family member yet again. Meeting Spoiler (Stephanie Brown) during a patrol of the city. The two women fought side by side, afterwards Batgirl stripped off her outfit and left it for Stephanie saying she had no use for it any more. Although Cassie did not appear in Gotham until Bruce’s return, it was revealed that she was operating in Hong Kong and had remained in touch with Red Robin.

Hong Kong and Black Bat

When her adopted father Bruce Wayne returns she reveals that he had told her to give the Batgirl mantle in the event of his death to Stephanie Brown. A conversation with Alfred, reveals that Bruce Wayne always knew where his adopted daughter was, and that Tim Drake (who is now Red Robin) has secretly been in touch with her the whole time. When Red Robin visits Cassandra in Hong Kong they talked about her coming back home to Gotham; however, she refuses to become Batgirl again and but still wishes to be a member of the family. At this time she had adopted another secret identity incorporating a ninja motif with a sword.

Months later at the behest of Bruce Wayne, Cassandra joins the new super team Batman Inc. operating under the alias of Black Bat in Hong Kong. This new identity incorporates elements of her previous costumed persona’s. She has also bonded with Damien Wayne (the son of Batman and the new Robin) who idolizes her.

Batman Incorporated

Cassandra later becomes an operative of Batman Incorporated protecting Hong Kong, using the suit given to her by Tim and calling herself Blackbat. Bruce Wayne has her take down a neo-heroin smuggling operation.

Blackbat travelled to Paris following a homing signal to Red Robin to the final site in a tournament of assassins, saving him from being raped by Daughter of Acheron, Ra’s Al-Ghul’s half sister, and defeated the vigilante Promise while freeing Drake. Cassandra then proceeded to take a sword and impale Tim in the chest, triggering confirmation that she had won the tournament, being only the eight in history to do so, and activating a system that would ‘immortalize’ her, by killing her with a laser. Red Robin saved her from the beam, and the two revealed they had faked Red Robin’s death, using a trick sword, blood packets, and a stopped heart to fool the temple’s automated systems. They attempted to examine the base, but although Tim conversed with the assassin tournament’s creator, a previously unknown centuries old immortal, the base self destructed before they could learn any close as to his location.

Red Robin came to Hong Kong to assist Black Bat in Cassandra’s hunt for Cricket, but Red Robin and Black Bat were defeated by the superhumanly fast assassin, badly injuring Tim including having an arm and several ribs broken, and Cricket promised to fight Cassandra ‘For real’ next time.

Black Bat returned to Gotham to aid Dick Grayson in his hunt for The Architect. Alongside Tim Drake and Damian Wayne, she played a major role in solving the case, and in a conversation with Tim, expressed an interest in stopping by Gotham more.

New 52

Future’s End

In the Future’s End continuity, Cassandra is shown to be one of Barbara’s successors and part of the League of Batgirls. She is close friends with her teammate, Stephanie Brown, and displays a big sisterly protective streak toward Tiffany Fox, the team’s youngest member.

It is unknown what her back-story in the New 52 continuity is, but Barbara states that Cassandra “has been through hell,” and expresses admiration for her ability to continue onward with her life.

Convergence

Cassandra Cain’s Pre-New 52 incarnation returns as Black Bat, alongside her crime-fighting partners, Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, and Tim Drake as Red Robin.

Batman and Robin Eternal

Cassandra first appears after the Joker’s endgame, after Batman loses his memories. She arrives in Gotham to deliver a message to Dick Grayson from Batman. The message was for Dick to investigate a list of names affiliated with a secret criminal organisation led by a figure known only as Mother. Bruce intended for Cassandra to gather up his former Robins take down Mother and all those working for her. When an agent of Mother, codename Orphan, attacks Harper Row in her apartment, Cassandra arrives and helps drive Orphan away. She then heads off to find the Red Hood, another potential target of Mother. However, he believes she is the one after him and tries kill her, but Dick arrives to stop the fight before things escalate.

Once the Robins and their friends are gathered, they begin investigating Bruce’s message, but Cassandra and sneaks off with Harper. However, they are attacked by Orphan again. When Harper is wounded, Cassandra intervenes and drives him away yet again. Later, Dick arrives in the Batplane and takes them with him to Prague to start tracking down Mother. Once they arrive and set up shop, Dick instructs Cassandra and Harper to investigate someone on Mother’s list: Prague’s Prima ballerina. While they watch the ballet, Cassandra gets enamored by the sight of dancing, and almost doesn’t notice when the dancers try to kill them. The two of them fend off the dancers until Dick arrives to help finish them off, but before they can leave, Cassandra runs off on her own.

It is revealed that Cassandra went back to Mother’s base of operations to stop her from killing all of the children under her control. as she travels trough her old home, she remembers her own story. Her father David a.k.a Orphan raised her is secret inside Mother’s base. Rather than teach her how to read and speak, he taught her to read body language to hone her into the ultimate fighter. Whenever she tried to sneak out to be with other people, he would lock her in a pitch black, soundproof box for long periods of time as punishment. When she grew up, David presented her to Mother, but she was only upset that David kept a secret from her. Eventually, she decided to take a better path and escaped Mother’s base. Wanting to see Mother taken down, she traveled to Gotham and informed Batman that Mother, who he thought was dead, was still active. Preoccupied with the Joker’s attack, he asks her to deliver a thumb drive with everything he knows about Mother to Dick should he fall fighting the Joker. He then tells her that despite the terrible things she’s done in the past, he is glad she chose to be more than what everyone wanted her to be. He then hugs her and leaves.

In the present, Orphan catches her and shows her a hole filled with the bodies of Mother’s children. Cassandra escapes and prepares face her father, but Dick and Harper arrive and knock him out. While they prepare to leave, Mother appears on a hologram and informs them that she rigged the base with a nuclear bomb to take hem all out. While Dick fights a recovered David, Cassandra takes Harper to the base’s control room and covers her while she tried to shut down the bomb’s countdown timer. When that fails, the two are surrounded by defense drones, but they all deactivate before they can kill the two. Dick found the shutdown controls after defeating David, and the three take him and escape in the Batplane just before the base explodes.

The group then head’s to Spyral’s HQ to interrogate Orphan and figure out Mother’s plan. While Spyral and the Robins try to come up a strategy, Mother uses Spyral’s own technology to implement her plan: brainwash every child and teenager on Earth and force them to kill every adult. This include Cassandra and Red Robin, who begin attacking Dick and Helena Bertenelli. However, Tim told them that Scarecrow’s Fear Gas could neutralize the brainwashing. Once the two teen s regain their senses, Dick takes Cassandra and they leave to find Harper and stop the brainwashed students around them. When they find Harper, Cassandra puts a fear gas mask on her. While she is no longer under Mother’s control she tries to kill Cassandra anyway because she learned from Orphan that Cassandra was the one who murdered her Mother years ago. Out of options, Cassandra forces herself to fight her best friend. Hoowever, she holds back allowing Harper to gain the upper hand. Before she can kill her, Red Hood saves her, but the fear gas causes her to see Jason as her father, driving her to use Harper’s taser gun on him. However, the floor is covered in water, so all three of them are shocked.

Cassandra is later seen with Harper, the two of them having been captured by Orphan. As they are fly to Mother’s base in Antarctica, she tries to convey an apology to Harper, but she is not interested in a apology. While she understands and is no longer angry with her, she cannot yet bring herself to forgive her. When they reach Mother’s base, David presents Cassandra and Harper to her. Though she is pleased, she kills him and drops him out of the base. She then unveils a new group of Orphans, and activates her brainwashing program across the world, and have the two knocked out. When Harper recovers, Mother offers her a chance to join her. She then shows her Cassandra, completely immobilized and at her mercy. She instructs Harper to kill Cassandra and join her. Before Harper can move, the Robins and heir allies stop Mother’s brainwashing program and Dick arrives to finish her. Both Mother and Dick try to get Harper to do what they think is right, but Cassandra, deciding to make things right, tells Harper to kill her. Having made her choice, Harper frees Cassandra and attacks Mother. However, Mother draws her hidden gun and fires, but Cassandra takes the bullet for her. As the remaining Robins their allies, and more Orphans arrive, Harper forgives Cassandra and helps her to her feet. Alongside Spoiler, they charge into the melee.

As Mother and her Orphans are defeated, she decides to kill everyone by triggering the base’s self destruct, which involves activating the dormant volcano the base is built on. Before she can escape, Cassandra leaps in to stop her. She easily best Mother, but instead of killing her like everyone thought she would, she vows never to take another life and leaves her alive. However, her father, who survived Mother’s betrayal, stabs Mother and pins her in place as the base falls into the lava. Having seen the error of his ways, he apologizes for being a terrible father and falls into the lave with Mother. Everyone escapes alive, and Harper and Spoiler accept her as a friend.

A month after Mother’s death, Bruce has regained his memories and resumed being Batman. After talking with Harper about everything she learned, he instructs Cassandra to come out of hiding as Harper leaves. Batman tells her that even though she will have to live with killing Harper’s mother, she can take another path. He asks her to leave the life behind, but she refuses to stay and help him in his fight as the new Orphan.

Detective Comics: Rebirth

When Batman realizes that someone is targeting all of Gotham’s vigilantes, he begins recruiting them to train them to ready them for this new threat and to help them become better crime fighters. After enlisting Batwoman to help lead his new team, they begin gathering the recruits. Deciding on their second recruit, they find Orphan taking down a group of sex traffickers. After she dispatches them, Batman calls out for her to come with him. She and the other recruits arrive atop GCPD Headquarters and the two explain their plan to train them.

During one of their first training sessions, the team is forced a fight a simulated army of Jokers. When Spoiler gets overwhelmed, an already fatigued Cassandra rescues her. When Red Robin shuts down the simulation against Batwoman’s orders, she calls everyone out on their flawed performances. Cassandra’s flaw was that she divided her attention. As the best fighter present, she focused too much on fighting for everyone. After they break for the night, Cassandra decides to drop by Stephanie and Tim’s apartment, but when she sees the two are talking, she heads off to find someone to fight.

Later, after Batman is captured by the Colony, Batwoman and Red Robin summon the team Cassandra is the last to arrive, but before she can go inside the Belfry, she notices jets overhead and realizes something is amiss. When Colony soldiers drop onto the roof of the Belfry and demand her surrender, she merely says “no” and charges into battle. When another contingient breaches the base, she follows them in after dispatching the first group. She tries to fight them off but they shoot her with tranquilizer darts to keep her down. She recovers as the teams uses the Belfry’s escape hatch to reqroup and come up with a plan. Once Orphan confirms they are not being followed, the group head over to the Bat-Train Tim designed for fast exits. Cassandra is also present when they storm the Colony’s base to free Batman. She is tasked with clearing their escape route of soldiers. By the time the others reach her, she has taken them all down, enabling them to escape.

When they return to the Belfry, they discover from Tim that the Colony is trying to purge members of the League of Shadows from Gotham at the cost of several hundred innocent lives. Wanting to save as many people as possible, the team splits up to cover more ground. Cassandra is seen clearing out a shelter, unaware that member of the Shadows walked right past her. She is not seen again during the evacuation attempt.

Personal Characteristics

• First Appearance: Batman #567 (July 1999)
• Civilian Name: Cassandra Cain
• Status: Hero
• Occupation: Adventurer, vigilante
• Base: Gotham City
• Height: 5 feet 9 inches
• Weight: 130 pounds
• Eyes: Brown
• Hair: Black
• Known Relatives: Sandra Wu-San (mother), David Cain (father)
• Marital Status: Single

Powers and Abilities

• Unarmed Combat: Due to the harsh training she went through as a child, Cassandra is one of the greatest martial artists in the world and is a master assassin. Some of her feats include shattering brick and stone as well as a sword. She has used nerve strikes and pressure points. She has dodged bullets at point blank range and even disarmed a gunman before the bullet could hit her. She has invented her own styles and techniques. She can lift about twice her weight and carry 230 lbs while running.
• Reading Body Language: She is skilled in being able to comprehend a person’s body movements as if it were language or speech, and thus knows what actions a person will use before they actually do. Her ability to comprehend body language enables her to quickly learn new martial arts style, such as learning Escrima from a single sparring session with Oracle. After having her mind altered to think like a normal person, her ability to predict movements was lost. However, Lady Shiva retrained Cass to read body language.
• Weakness Perception: Starting in The New 52 and going forward, Cassandra has the ability to see the weaknesses in almost any person or thing she sees. Because she sees everything in this way, she can assess the weaknesses she sees and determine how best to beat or kill a target in a matter of seconds. Combined with her ability to read body language, Cassandra can both determine a target’s actions and calculate the best counterattack, making her more dangerous. This ability is a double-edged sword, though, as Cassandra is always aware of which weaknesses will kill her target and which won’t. Because of her vow against killing, she constantly battles the impulse to kill her enemies outright. However, because she is always aware of the ways to kill her opponents, she has to willingly ignore those options and attack in a non-lethal fashion. This nature of holding back makes her think and act below her full capabilities, which hinders her when facing opponents on her level, such as her mother.
• Intellect: Cassandra was given some detective training from Tim Drake while they were in Blüdhaven.
• Weapons-Master: She is also a master of different kinds of melee and ranged weaponry. Her time with Barbara Gordon and the Batman only enhanced her already considerable skills.

Weapons and Equipment

Current

• Batman Family Equipment: Cassanda carries an assortment of Bat-gadgets such as Batarangs, smoke grenades, small explosives, grappling hooks and lines.

• Orphan Suit: Cassandra currently wears a modified version of her original outfit, thought the design is largely the same, rather than a hood, the suit comes with a mask completely covering her head. The mask itself has a stitching pattern around her mouth to symbolize her limited speaking abilities.

Former

• Batgirl Suit: Cassie wore a costume originally created by Huntress, taken from her by Batman. As Blackbat, she wears her old Batgirl costume with a domino mask. Her cape is torn, and her hands are wrapped in bandages with claws on the fingertips of her gloves.
• Original Outfit: When Cassandra was introduced into the New 52, she wore a hooded black and yellow ninja outfit similar to her father’s Orphan suit. She also wore a utility belt for carrying equipment and weapons for her missions. For a brief period, she fashioned a mask for herself resembling the Batman symbol by painting her face with blood of some of her father’s victims. This was presumably an act of defiance against her father and a sign of her admiration and respect for Batman.

Other Version

Elseworlds

An adult version of Cassandra appeared as the subject of an issue of Solo. She was shown to be married to Tim Drake.

Pre-52

In the Pre-52 Cass was given her language from a physic and didn’t need to study language, however in the New 52 she has to learn how to speak through normal circumstances.

Other Media

Justice League

In the season one finale, “The Savage Time,” Cassandra makes a cameo appearance in an alternate future timeline, alongside Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, and Barbara Gordon.

Video Games

Batman: Dark Tomorrow

Cassandra Cain appears in a cameo alongside Tim Drake.

DC Universe Online

She appears in the Justice League Watchtower in the Tech Wing. In the game she acts as a vendor for the Tech Iconic Suit and the Dark Spector Batsuit.

Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure