Batgirl # 5 2024

 By Mark Rodriguez

An ancient group of ninja monks called The Unburied are out to kill Lady Shiva and her daughter, Cassandra Cain. Cassie finds out that Shiva has aligned herself with Nyssa Al Ghul and the League of Shadows, since they are being hunted as well. Before Cassie can dwell too much on this, they get attacked by The Unburied and Lady Shiva was captured. Cassie teams up with The High Priest of the Order of Shiva, Jayesh, and head off to rescue her. What will happen next?

 

"Mother Part 5 of 6" opens eighty miles North of Gotham as we find out that Cassandra planted a tracker on Lady Shiva shortly before she was captured. Cassandra checks on the homing device as she rides alongside Jayesh. She remembers her mother apologizing for how she treated her. They soon arrive at a cave, the nest of the Unburied, and Cassie steps inside.

As Cassie goes deeper into the cave, she finds a ledge. She remembers when she leapt out of Shiva's high rise alongside her as she told her to fly. Cassie leaps off the ledge and flips and bounces off the sides of the walls so she can land safely. As she sneaks deeper into the cave, she several members of the Unburied as they walk around. Some of them are doing their martial arts training while others are working on advanced computers. Cassie remembers her mother's words as she says how she lost all her softness once she was born and held her in her arms. Just then Cassie sees a cheerful child running past her.

Cassie sees the child's parents pick him up and they seem happy. She sees men getting water from a well and women bringing carts of food. There's an entire village hidden underground as The Unburied live their lives.

Up ahead, Chodak complains about how his ears are ringing and Lady Shiva almost killed him. He wishes to ends things now. Kalden says everything is going according to plan and Chodak almost died because he and Nergui went off script. He comments that they broke Nyssa and her League of Shadows and have defeated the Order of Shiva. Nergui asks about Batgirl, and Kalden says she is no true heir of Shiva and has learned her lesson twice.

Cassie remembers her mother's words, 'there will always be someone better and the second she drops her guard, the best will take her out'. Kalden tells Chodak and Nergui to follow the plan as their leader demands it.

Cassie's homing device makes a beep sound. As she looks around, she is suddenly knocked into next week by Chodak. He shows her that he has found the tiny tracker and asks if she thought they were stupid. He violent kicks her hard enough to send her airborne. Cassie bounces off the ground as she hits hard. She remembers her mother's words telling her to get up since her enemies won't defeat themselves. Batgirl gets back up and tells Chodak to test his luck.

 

Batgirl is surrounded by Unburied ninjas, and she easily takes them down. Chodak is glad to find a worthy challenger. Batgirl leaps back and forth, hitting him with multiple rapid strikes from different directions. She leaps back as she tosses explosive shuriken. The blast sends her flying back. As she gets up, she finds herself in another part of the cave with an opening above her, letting the moonlight in. She sees that she is standing in a field of the Blue Poppies.

Just then Nergui shows up, calling Batgirl a sneaky little bat. Batgirl lunges towards him but he is too fast for her. He blows blue mist in her face which knocks her out. As she sleeps she had flashbacks of her life with her mother and several fights to the death. There was even a fight in which Cassie snaps her mother's neck and leaves her to die. Naturally Shiva got better. There was the time Cassie was down and Shiva hits her chest with chi. 

Cassie wakes up and finds herself in a void with white mist. She then sees another Batgirl, Stephanie Brown. Both women hug. Cassie asks if she's dead. Steph says not this time, which is a good thing since then she'd have to find a Lazarus Pit. Steph says Cass has been through a lot and asks if she wants to talk about it. Cassie says she's not good at that. Steph says they're in a dream and everything is possible so she might as well give it a shot.

Cassie explains that her mother has returned in her life and whenever that happens she always falls apart. She doesn't understand why since she didn't even know her until she was older. She wondered about her mother but David Cain always kept her on a short leash. She spent her life unlearning everything that Cain taught her. She was hoping that at least her mother was innocent, possibly another pawn in Cain's cruel game. Instead her mother turned out to be heartless, manipulative and cruel... just like her.

Cassie says she looks at her mother and sees what she once was. She can't love her because she doesn't love those parts of her, but she loves her because she is those parts of her. She is trying to save her because maybe she can save that poor little kid that had no control of her life. Stephanie hugs her and asks how she feels. Cassie says she feels better and worse. Stephanie says that's how it always goes... but now the dream is over and it's time for her to take control and wake up. She knocks Cassie back, snapping her back to reality.

Cassie wakes up, tied up and hanging upside down and sees her mother is also tied up and hanging, but the regular way. Shiva asks if she got her beauty sleep, because their enemies won't defeat themselves.

 

My Thoughts- 

So in this one we finally get more insight on Cassandra's feelings towards her mother. Cassie didn't meet Shiva until later in life, so she was raised mostly by Cain to be a killer just like him. Despite all the mental conditioning, Cassie held out hope if she ever met her mother, maybe she was the good guy of the family or at least also manipulated by her father. Of course, her mother is Lady Shiva so that hope went out the window once she met her. Shiva turned out to be just as murderous as she used to be. David Cain was only shown in silhouette here, so I'm glad I got to read that 2008 mini-series to get more context. 

Speaking of context, we got a cameo of Stephanie Brown during Cassie's 'dream sequence'. I was confused by how much of Cassie's backstory was referencing older pre-New 52 events since I thought that wiped out most of her lore. I found out that while the New 52 removed most of Cassie's lore (and pretty much wiped Steph from continuity altogether), the Rebirth soft reboot reinstated most of the pre-New 52 lore for both Batgirls. That even includes Steph's brief stint as Robin. The authors also now have a 'every story matters' approach, so if they need to dig into pre-New 52 events that weren't specifically mentioned as being reinstated in Rebirth for the sake of the story, they will.

 

We're on the verge of the final chapter of this particular story and I wonder how it will wrap up in a single issue. Batgirl is severely outmatched by Kalden and was taken down effortlessly twice. She didn't fare much better against Nergui either. It looks like she had better luck against Chodak, but it remains to be seen if those explosives did any actual damage to him. Chodak seems to enjoy the thrill of the fight for fighting's sake, while Kalden is more efficient with his moves and sets to end his fights quickly. 

We also have to see who is this leader they are taking orders from. Another question is why so much focus on Lady Shiva. I'd say they have a bigger grievance with Nyssa Al Ghul, but they chose to leave her behind and get back to her later while capturing Shiva seemed to be top priority. Even if they knew that Shiva stole some of the magical flowers, Nyssa's father was the one that killed the Unburied's ancestors to begin with.

I also wonder what the hell happened to Jayesh? I thought it was 'we are going to rescue your mother', not 'I'll drop you off and then I'll dip'.  

Another thing we saw in this issue is that the Unburied seem to have an entire community living in their hidden nest of underground caves. Entire families, living their day to day, separate from the ninja warriors that go out on murder missions. We'll see if that comes into play next issue since now we see there are a lot of innocent families among the ranks of the Unburied. 

 

We'll see how this all gets resolved next time. I hope things aren't super rushed for the sake of cramming it into one issue. I also hope that if Batgirl somehow takes down Kalden this time there's a reasonable explanation and not just 'she suddenly got good'. I mean she was taken down twice so quickly and effortlessly there wouldn't be time to properly read his moves and learn anything other than 'stay the hell away'. Let's see how the Mother storyline ends next time!