EPISODE NUMBER: 13
Production Code: 513

PLOT SUMMARY:

It's night in Gotham City, and all seems peaceful at first. We see a police blimp in the distance as we pan across the Gotham City skyline. A gray figure is scaling up the side of a skyscraper, and we move in closer to see that it's Catwoman, with her black cat Isis curled around her neck. Catwoman flicks her whip around an outcrop from the building and clibs onto the ledge. She glances into the window of this apartment, and we see the occupant is fast asleep. Catwoman makes her way across the ledge, and glances into another window to see a diamond-studded necklace. She uses her claws to cut open a circle in the window and then sends Isis into the apartment. Isis can see the security lasers guarding the necklace, so it's no trouble for her to leap past them and snag the necklace. It seems like this burglary was a success, but Batman has been watching this crime from the top of the building.

Catwoman makes her way down the building, and is momentarily distracted by the sound of something dropping past her. She looks, but sees nothing. She drops down to the roof of a neighboring building, and is about to write it off as her imagination playing tricks on her when Batman appears. Catwoman races off and leaps off the edge of the building. She uses her whip to swing from a flag post, and lands onto the roof of another building. "So long, Dark Knight," she calls up to him. "Drop in anytime," Batman utters from the shadows next to her. Catwoman takes off running, but Batman manages to keep up with her this time. The duo race down a fire escape, and Batman leaps off towards the end to land in front of Catwoman. She launches several attacks at him, which he easily evades, managing to drive him back against the alley wall. Her last swipe slashes open the shoulder of his cape. "I'll have to try and trim those claws," Batman threatens, but Catwoman knocks over a pile of trash cans on top of him and flees the alley.

Batman crawls out from beneath the cans to find Catwoman clambering up the side of a building. She's left her cat behind, however, and Isis is in danger of being run over by a truck! Catwoman doesn't have time to rescue her pet, but fortunately Batman is able to run to the rescue. Catwoman blows a high-pitched whistle, causing Isis to spaz out and escape from Batman's arms. She climbs up the building's rain gutter and rejoins her master. Batman stares after her retreating figure, mildly impressed, and then notices that Isis has left a cat hair on his costume.

Elsewhere in Gotham City, there's an Animal Rights Celebrity Auction taking place, and the next celebrity being auctioned is none other than Bruce Wayne! Bruce comes up to the stage, receiving numerous calls of adoration from several of the women in the audience. The bidding starts up very quickly, and rises to $1000 after only a few bids. It seems like that's the end of the auction, until a voice from the back bids $10,000. The audience is astonished, and the auctioneer pronounces that the date with Bruce has been sold to Ms. Selina Kyle. Bruce comes down off the stage, surprised since he's never seen Selina before. One of the audience members tells him, "Rumor has it she's a wildlife nut. She's supposed to be sponsoring a mountain lion preserve outside Gotham." Bruce goes over to meet with Selina, who is standing with her secretary, Maven, but she doesn't seem to have much interest in him. "It's purely for the animals, Mr. Wayne." Bruce doesn't want to let her go that easily, and persuades her to at least take him to lunch. Selina reluctantly agrees, but their conversation is interrupted by the sound of machine gun fire and police sirens from outside. The instant Maven and Selina look away, Bruce vanishes.

The Gotham police are taking heavy fire from the machine gunners as they give chase to a Army truck carrying loads of weaponry. Batman watches the chase for a moment, and then leaps on top of the truck. He grabs on to the driver, causing the truck to veer wildly out of control. Batman loses his grip for a moment, and then throws his bat hook around the steering wheel. He yanks hard on the wheel, causing the truck to flip over, and putting a quick stop to the police chase. The driver escapes from the truck and escapes down a nearby sewer hole. Commissioner Gordon arrives on the scene, and heads over to the mouth of an alley to confer with Batman. He warns the Dark Knight that the feds have tipped him off about a terrorist named Red Claw being in Gotham, and this weapon heist seems to be linked to it. Batman promises to look into it.

The next day, Selina is getting ready for her date with Bruce, but she's daydreaming about Batman. The phone rings and Maven goes to answer it, leaving Selina to answer the door. Isis is lounging in front of the door, but she darts off as Selina approaches. "I wish it were Batman standing behind this door," she mentions as she opens it. The date gets off to a rocky start, however, since the phone call is from Selina's lawyer. As Selina argues with him, Maven informs Bruce that Selina was "negotiating for land for a wildlife preserve. Some cartel just muscled her out of the deal," and now the landowner is planning to sell to Multigon International. Selina's lawyer can't get Mr. Stern, the chairman of Multigon, to answer any of his calls. She's is pretty irate about this turn of events, and doesn't think she'll be very pleasant company for Bruce. Bruce offers to help, but Selina says there's not really anything to do, "unless [he] can get [her] a meeting with the chairman." Bruce picks up the phone and asks, "What time's good for you?"

They arrive at Multigon International, and things don't look well for Selina. The decor in the Stern's office shows off a lot of wildlife trophies, so hopes of the land being used for a wildlife preserve seem pretty far off. The chairman plays a small piece from Ode to Joy, which causes a small model of a major resort to rise from the floor. This is what Multigon plans on doing, and it really fires Selina up. "The land's in the middle of nowhere! It's worthless except to wildcats." The chairman promises that the wildcats will be taken care of, one way or the other. Based on the decor, I guess we can figure what that "other" will be. With that, Mr. Stern calls the meeting off. Selina tells him this isn't over, because she plans on getting, "every environmental group and animal right's activist breathing down [his] neck," looking over his resort project for any violations. Once they leave, Stern walks over to a false wall in his office, which rises to reveal Red Claw. Stern thinks that Kyle will turn out to be trouble, so Red Claw orders him to have someone keep an eye on her.

Outside, Selina asks to take a rain check on her lunch date, so that she can take care of some business tonight. Bruce agrees, mostly because he plans on "working late" himself. Later that evening, a crime boss is planning on getting his gang to increase their cuts in the gambling activity in Gotham. He asks, "Anybody got a problem with that?" and is answered by Batman's arrival. He grabs the crime boss and demands information about Red Claw. Batman threatens to lean extra hard on him and the other crime bosses until he finds the terrorist leader, which doesn't seem like a pleasant notion to the crime boss at all.

Back at Multigon International, Stern is packing up for the day. Once he leaves the office, Catwoman appears at the skylight and breaks in. Meanwhile, Red Claw is beginning a mission briefing for her next plan. The following evening, a train under military escort will be passing through Gotham. This train will contain a viral plague that Red Claw wants to get her hands on. At Multigon, Catwoman returns to Stern's keyboard and plays Ode to Joy again. Once she finishes the rest of the verse, a computer terminal slides out of the wall, revealing a safe filled with documents. Catwoman starts taking pictures of this information, unaware that she's tripped a silent alarm and that Red Claw is now aware of her snooping.

Catwoman is just finishing up when she hears someone trying to break in through the office door. Red Claw and her goons finally manage to get the door open, but Catwoman has already escaped through the ventilation system. Catwoman admits to Isis that they may be in over their heads. She looks ahead to find one of the goons ahead of her, ready to fire his machine gun at her. Catwoman crawls into a side duct, and the goon gives chase. He doesn't get very far, however, because Catwoman has left a trail of cat-shaped caltrops in her wake. The path Catwoman's on leads to an elevator shaft, and the elevator doesn't seem to be in sight. Her trap has only slowed the thugs down, so she has no choice but to climb up the elevator shaft. She reaches the roof and blocks the door with a handy piece of wood, but the thugs simply shoot open the door. Catwoman leaps off the roof, but doesn't quite make the leap across the gap and winds up dangling from the edge of the roof. Back at the Mutligon roof, Red Claw loads a grenade launcher and takes aim at her foe. Catwoman gets Isis to leap onto the roof to safety, just as Red Claw fires. The grenade misses Catwoman, but manages to knock her from the roof. Batman swoops in to save her, and Catwoman gives him a long kiss. "That was for saving my cat," she tells him once they've landed safely on another roof. Batman tries to take her mask off, but Catwoman resists.

"If I don't unmask you, the police will," Batman threatens.

"The police? Don't be silly," Catwoman says. "You can't deny there's something between us."

"You're right. And I'm afraid it's the law."

This seems to hurt Catwoman's feelings, and as Batman crosses the roof to comfort her, she flips him over the edge of the roof. Batman catches a hold of a window ledge, and Catwoman warns him to, "Never trifle with the affections of a woman." Catwoman arrives back at her home, and informs Maven that she found evidence of an abandoned military facility underneath the land Multigon wants to build the resort on. Selina plans on using this information to stop the building of the resort, but her secret identity has been discovered by Red Claw's thug. She may plan on saving the mountain lions, but who will save her?

To be continued...

WRITTEN BY: Jules Dennis, Richard Mueller

DIRECTED BY: Kevin Altieri

STORY BY: Sean Catherine Derek, Laren Bright

CAST:
Bob Hastings (Commissioner Jim Gordon)
Kevin Conroy (Bruce Wayne / Batman)
Robert Costanzo (Detective Harvey Bullock)
Neil Ross (Additional Voices)
Frank Welker (Additional Voices)
Adrienne Barbeau (Catwoman / Selina)
Herb Edelman (Stern)
Kate Mulgrew (Red Claw)
Mary McDonald-Lewis (Maven)

QUOTES:
Catwoman: Never trifle with the affections of a woman. Until next time.
Batman: And there will be a next time.

INTERESTING NOTES:
- Frank Welker provides additinaol voices in this episode, he is most known for the rolses of Fred from Scooby Doo, and Megatron from Transformers.

SCREEN GRABS: