After briefly checking in with Jason Bard, Robin realizes that Batman has gone out of his way to avoid running anything past any of the fellow Bat-Family members. Stubborn and obsessive detective techniques may be Bruce's style but ignoring obvious angles of investigation isn't. Furthermore, after stopping in with Officer Harper, Tim finds that none of Batman's black casebook files match up with any official police documents. All of this is making Tim even more concerned for Bruce's mental health. Could someone be controlling the mind of the Dark Knight Detective?

Black Glove member Buckethead (whom Tim refers to as "Swagman") launches an RPG at Tim and Stephanie. The two manage to avoid the blast and Tim defeats Swagman and heads to confront Penguin over his misleading information.

After crashing through the window of the Iceberg Lounge on his motorcycle, Robin gets in Penguin's face and demands to know why he was lying about the photographs of Batman. Penguin reveals however that he did in fact receive a cell phone picture message of Batman looking mighty unstable. Tim takes Penguin's phone and re-dials the number.

Tim is shocked when the gang member's phone rings from Stephanie's utility belt. He confronts Stephanie about the lie but she explains that she was keeping the truth from Tim to deliberately push his investigation off course because Batman asked her to. Sometime before going insane, Batman had come to Spoiler and warned her that Tim may try to hunt him down - but Batman asks Spoiler to keep Tim from finding him. Stephanie needs to help Robin learn to stand on his own - to be a hero without Batman by his side.

Confused and hurt by this betrayal Tim heads off into the night all by himself. As he flies off into the night he realizes something. The color change to red and black, the mask he borrowed from Nightwing - these cosmetic changes were not the only things to change about Tim Drake. He's finding himself becoming more and more his own person. And although Gotham may not always have a Batman, it will always have Robin!

Elsewhere, a certain someone is contemplating donning the Red Robin costume....

NOTES:
- In this issue we find out that Tim's new mask was given to him by Nightwing and contains a self-destructive mechanism. This was a function Nightwing actually had to use in last week's Trinity #9 (during the back-up story "Making the Pieces Fit" - also written by Robin scribe Fabian Nicieza).
- Tim makes a passing mention of Bard's inappropriate relationships with clients to which Jason replies, "Once is clever. Twice would just be tacky." This is a reference to Jason sleeping with a client who had murdered her own husband in Detective Comics #818 - an issue in the Face the Face arc.