As a boy, Dick Grayson had watched his parents fall to their deaths while Haly's Circus was in Gotham City. It was an event which could either have destroyed him or defined him. Today, Dick is Nightwing, and a memorial show in Gotham for his parents has taken a disastrous turn. His childhood friend Raymond has come back as an assassin called Saiko, despite the fact that he is supposed to have drowned in a car accident on the same night that Dick's own parents died. The stadium is now on fire - a magnesium fire, which prevents it from being put out with water - and all of the patrons and circus folk have been trapped inside. Nightwing and Saiko battle high above the trapped patrons, and Saiko taunts that none of this would have happened if Dick had just stayed with the circus.