Nightwing #7

I highly doubt it.

The spectators at the circus are fleeing the fire from the explosion caused by Saiko. The fire is chemical based and the sprinklers are only making it worse. The doors are locked. Everybody is going to die unless Dick Grayson can come up with a plan.

Maybe his plan was to convince Raya that he really loves all of his circus freak friends! That way, she'll go against Saiko and help everyone escape. Too bad Batman is still trapped in the underground owl labyrinth. And Batwoman is currently bouncing across time and fighting Falchion. And Batgirl is busy with Gretel and Batman. Wait, Batman is busy saving Robin from Nobody! Unless he's busy fighting Scarecrow! Or in Penguin's casino. Or helping Batwing stop Massacre. Or lying to Justice League International and telling them they're capable of doing a good job.

Batman sure is busy! No wonder he doesn't have time to help Nightwing!

Oh oh! Here it comes! Confession and Motive Time!

It sounds like Old Man Haly was an asshole. And climbing Barbed Wire naked can make you into a super villain? I bet he could have defeated Nightwing if Haly had made him climb Razor Wire!

Saiko brags that the fire is a magnesium fire. And of course Batman taught young Robin the best way to put out a magnesium fire was to smother it in sand. And Robin learned early on that most of Gotham was built on Catacombs built in layers of sand. So now Nightwing figures that dropping the gigantic Gotham Convention Center Scoreboard will send it crashing right through the floor, taking the fire with it and smothering the fire at ground level as a cloud of sand blows up from the blast!
That's a good plan as long as Batman isn't currently trapped just underneath the Gotham City Circus Convention Center! Or is the Convention Center sponsored by Waynetech? So it's probably Waynetech Arena.

Hopefully the sand blasting everywhere doesn't smother all the people trapped inside the Arena as well. I'm sure they'll all survive. Or anybody that dies isn't important to the DC universe anyway. It's just I don't like to see a story arc where lots of innocent people die but it's okay in the end because the hero survived and he was able to save the people that matter. I've probably read too much Kurt Vonnegut to not care about what happens to everyone in a story. I can't just blind myself to the main characters.

Anyway, Nightwing and Saiko fall to the ground with Nightwing about to fall into the hole caused by the scoreboard and Saiko ready to push him in.

See this, Nathan Edmondson? Kyle Higgins is taking into account cause and effect within the story. The whole sand catacombs scoreboard thing might be a bit over the top and ludicrous but at least he deals with the repercussions of Nightwing's act.

 

Haly's son, the one that felt betrayed that Dick Grayson inherited the circus realizes that Raya and Raymond have lied to him. He did know that they were going to kill Dick but he didn't realize they were going to go this far and kill everyone at the show! Raya may not have known it would be this bad either. But Dick has already gotten to her and she's probably about to open the doors and save everyone from strangling on sand and lack of oxygen.

Raymond must be really messed up to think Raya would follow him this far.

The fight ends with Raymond choosing to plummet to his death into the catacombs (or at least plummet to his disappearance and reemergence 15 issues later) (the police actually find Raymond's body in the catacombs. So maybe he really will stay dead. Maybe). The reason Raymond blamed Dick for the whole mess was because Dick's name was in the book. Dick was meant to be the successor. Which meant Dick was the one they really wanted to torture and train. But Dick left when his parents died and so Haly came for Raymond instead.

But Raymond wasn't good enough and was left in a forest to die. That's why Raymond became Saiko instead of the Court of Owl's next Talon. Yep. That's the secret of the book of names Dick found. It's also a huge Spoiler about Batman #6 and #7 which I haven't read yet!

I guess I'd better read Batman #6 and #7 before Nightwing #8 which is a Prelude to The Night of Owls!

Nightwing Issue #7 Rating: +1 Ranking. Consistently good. The end.