KNIGHTSEND-ROBIN'S COMICS

Jean-Paul Valley sees visions of his dead father, who had programmed him at birth to be a deadly weapon. These visions tell Jean-Paul to avenge his father's death, and Jean-Paul searches Gotham for his father's killer. Though the killer, Carlton LeHah, had already been encountered and defeated (in Sword of Azrael), Jean Paul's conditioning had warped his mind to the extent that he no longer remembered the incident. He eventually comes to believe that Penn Selkirk, a Gotham mobster turned weapons dealer who has taken over the remnants of LeHah's organization, is his father's murderer.
Returning to Gotham, Bruce meets with Tim. Even though Jean-Paul disobeyed his order of not to go after Bane, Bruce is impressed with his results to let him remain as Batman and decides to retire. But when Robin tells him of Abattoir's death, Bruce sneaks into the Batcave and demands that Jean-Paul step down. Jean-Paul refuses and threatens to kill Bruce if he ever returns.
To rehabilitate his skills, Bruce asks the famed assassin Lady Shiva to retrain him. Instead, Shiva pits Bruce against several vengeful expert martial artists.^[1] Shiva's caveat is that these attacks will continue indefinitely until Bruce Wayne breaks his vow to never kill. Finally, in the midst of another attack, Bruce feigns using the fatal Leopard Blow Shiva had taught him, leaving his would-be assailant apparently dead. Shiva finally declares him worthy of fighting her at some point in the future. Only six masters appear in the storyline although seven masters are mentioned.
Now back in fighting shape, Bruce returns to the Batcave and resumes his role as Batman. Along with Robin and Nightwing, he tracks Valley down to Selkirk's penthouse. Coincidentally, Catwoman is chasing the same man because he owns a neural enabler which might allow her paraplegic friend to walk again. Selkirk already wants to kill Jean-Paul for destroying a valuable weapons cache in Gotham Harbor.
When they eventually all meet, mass fighting and gunfire ensue. The battle ends with Selkirk's helicopter crashing into the Gotham Narrows Bridge; Jean-Paul falls aflame into the Gotham River. Bruce and Catwoman save Selkirk and his aides just before the helicopter explodes from the leaking fuel. When Bruce tries to find Jean-Paul using the Batmobile, it explodes. Nightwing fears Bruce dead and takes his vengeance out on Jean-Paul on a party boat. The police arrive in time to prevent Nightwing from murder, but Jean-Paul escapes. However, to his shock, Jean-Paul finds Bruce waiting at Wayne Manor.
The final battle of the Knightfall saga takes place between Jean-Paul Valley and Bruce Wayne in the caverns surrounding the Batcave: rather than beating Jean-Paul at hand-to-hand combat, Bruce outwits him by escaping into a passage too narrow for Jean-Paul to go through in his armor, thus forcing him to remove most of it. Bruce then opens a hatch to the outside, which covered the very hole he fell into as a child,^[2] allowing sunlight to enter the night lenses in Jean-Paul's helmet. After being momentarily blinded, Jean-Paul removes his cowl, sees Bruce standing over him in the original Batman costume and concedes defeat, saying "You are Batman...and I am nothing." Bruce comforts Jean-Paul, who leaves to wander the streets of Gotham, homeless and destitute. Bruce decides not to take Jean-Paul to the police because it was his decision to make Jean-Paul the Batman.^[1]
KnightsEnd was collected into a trade paperback about a year later. Originally released as Batman: KnightsEnd, recent editions retitled it as volume three of the Knightfall saga.