Holed up in Wayne Manor, Bruce begins to work out what has happened since he has been away. While doing so he spots a bat flying around the ceiling. He goes back to the abandoned well and climbs down. Through the crack in which the bats appeared when he was attacked in his childhood, Bruce finds a huge cave filled with bats, which is connected to the lowest foundations of Wayne Manor. Coming to terms with his fear he establishes the cave as his base of operations.
Bruce decides to announce his return and reports to Wayne Enterprises, where he makes a dramatic entrance to his own company's building by seducing a secretary into playing office golf. Earle, clearly shocked, warns him that he cannot prevent the company from going public at this later stage. Bruce explains that he is not bothered by this and that all he wants is a job, preferably in Applied Sciences.
Earle sets this up and Bruce goes to meet his new 'boss', his father's best friend Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman). Fox explains to Bruce that the Applied Sciences Department is a dead end, where Earle can reassign employees he considers troublemakers. Fox introduces Bruce to some of the equipment he's invented, that Bruce finds worthy.
One is a special bulletproof Nomex survival suit, a Kevlar suit that will stop knives and any gun but a straight shot. It was meant for military use, but it apparently never caught on because the Army didn't think soldiers' lives were worth the $300,000 cost.
Other items Fox shows to Bruce include a grappling gun and a safety harness. Bruce casually asks Fox if he can 'borrow' the gear for spelunking. Fox allows it, considering all the equipment belongs to Bruce anyway, though he is curious why Bruce is expecting to run into a lot of gunfire in the caves he's exploring.
Bruce continues to explore the cave where he and Alfred find the lower foundations of the southeast wing of Wayne Manor and an old elevator shaft leading back up the house. Bruce also begins to modify the battle suit he borrowed adding bat-shaped gauntlets and spray-painting it a satin black.
A few nights later, Bruce dons a ski mask and the grappling gear, goes to the police station, and breaks into Gordon's office, recognizing Gordon, who since we last saw him has been promoted to sergeant, to be one of the city's few uncorrupted cops. By threatening him with a staple gun behind his back, Bruce questions Gordon on what it would take to bring Falcone to justice.
Gordon responds that leverage on the corrupt Judge Faden and a D.A. brave enough to prosecute will be needed. Bruce tells him to watch for his sign, then escapes by jumping off the roof across to the next building, injuring himself in the process. Gordon tries to give chase, but it proves worthless to chase a random nut.
Bruce realizes now that he needs a lightweight fabric to make a glider wing or parachute. He goes back to Fox and asks if there is any technology there that would suit him for 'BASE-jumping.' Fox shows him a special material called memory cloth, which is designed so that the molecules realign to form any type of rigid shape when an electric current passes through it.
Bruce then takes interest in a tank-like transport called the Tumbler. As he drives it around an open warehouse floor, Fox explains that it was built as a bridging vehicle for the army. It is able to accelerate to high speeds, is tricked out with a variety of gadgets and weapons, and has a booster rocket that can send the vehicle into a "rampless" jump. At the end of the session, Fox asks Bruce what he thinks of the Tumbler. Bruce only has one question: "Does it come in black?"
Back in the cave, Bruce adds further modifications to his suit, adding a radio transmitter, a cowling, the memory cloth, and a utility belt. He makes steel shurikens in the shape of a bat. He explains to Alfred that he has chosen the bat as his symbol because bats frighten him and it's time that his enemies shared his dread.
At the docks, Falcone and a corrupt police officer, Arnold Flass (Mark Boone Junior), are watching Falcone's thugs unload a shipment of drugs from an inbound cargo ship. The drugs are concealed in toys -- stuffed bears and rabbits.
The bears are to go to the drug dealers and the rabbits to a mystery man in the Narrows -- a poverty-stricken area of Gotham overrun by crime. However, three of the thugs mysteriously vanish leaving nothing but a loud scream as they vanish into the darkness. As the others investigate, more disappear.
The Batman quickly disposes of the remaining thugs and attacks Falcone. Gordon and his officers arrive to find the drugs and disarmed thugs at the scene and Falcone bound to a searchlight with his coat cut in such a way as to produce the shadow of a bat in the night sky.
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