Batgirl shut off the turbo engine on her Batgirlcycle, dismounted, and quietly began slipping along the outside wall of the abandoned egg packaging plant. If her information was correct, this was where Egghead had been hiding out since his escape from Gotham State Penitentiary ten days ago.
Batgirl remembered reading in amazement, how the villain had done it, gassing his guards with rotten-egg stink bombs he had tinkered up while working on kitchen detail. Then he had used his stink bombs again to escape in a delivery truck.
“He timed it perfectly,” she thought. Egghead had broken out less than three days after Batman and Robin had left for Londinium to testify at Lord Ffogg’s trial. That whole country was captivated by the scandalous ‘Trial of the Century.’ The trial was still ongoing and the Caped Crusaders were not expected back for at least three more weeks.
It had been decided that Batgirl would remain behind to watch over Gotham City. Her own dealings with Ffogg and his gang had been minimal compared to Batman and Robin’s. Before he had left, Batman had given her a stern warning against taking any unnecessary chances. Batgirl had taken the lecture from the chauvinistic crimefighter with a grin. These were the 90’s; Batman and Robin sometimes acted like they were right out of the 60’s or something.
At any rate, Batgirl was looking forward to apprehending Egghead, especially after what that slimy creep had nearly done to her the last time she had tangled with him, his consort Queen Olga, and her Cossack gang. As she moved toward the side door, Batgirl’s mind slipped back in time.
Egghead had almost killed her on that occasion, not once but twice, with bizarre bat traps. One of the ways he had tried to do away with her was by tossing her into a vat of frozen caviar while her hands were bound behind her back. Batgirl remembered feeling the heat being sucked right out of her body as she fought to escape drowning; remembered frantically pumping her numb legs to somehow keep from going under as the freezing cold stole her breath away. Only Batman’s quick rescue had prevented her from ending up as Egghead’s human hors d’oeuvre. As bad as that bat trap had been, it paled in comparison to the other ghastly attempt Egghead had made on her life.
Batgirl was knocked unconscious when she struck her head hard after slipping on some caviar Olga had thrown on the floor. She had awakened to find herself lying on her side with her hands bound behind her back around the outside of her cape. Immediately, Olga’s Cossacks had jerked her to her feet, shoved her roughly before Olga’s throne, and surrounded her. Batgirl remembered her own feeling of horror when Olga explained she was to be forced to perform “a Sabre Dance with frosted swords.” From her casual reading on Cossack culture at the library as Barbara Gordon, Batgirl knew that the Sabre Dance had originated on the Bessarovian steppes as a way for wild Cossack warriors to entertain themselves with captured prisoners in the frequent border wars with neighboring Samarkand. Batgirl knew from her reading that once it had begun, the Sabre Dance was inescapable and 100% fatal.
Immediately, the Cossacks had drawn their iced swords from baskets of ice, and the music had started. Realizing that her life could now be measured in minutes, Batgirl had suddenly found herself dancing frantically about, trying to see sword thrusts coming from all directions at once, as the Cossacks prodded her legs and body at will with their iced blades under the hot lights.
Batgirl remembered her own helpless feelings of horror as the deadly death dance progressed at its break-neck pace. She had known all too well how she was completely at the mercy of her captors. Knowing that the ice on the sword blades was quickly melting and that the painful pokes and prods she was getting would soon turn into bloody stabs and slashes. Painfully aware that the Cossacks could finish her off any moment they chose to, that any step could be her last. Perhaps most frightening of all was the knowledge that there was absolutely no escape, that she was going to die in this deadly, dancing death trap.
Batgirl remembered her own mind reeling, her ragged gasping and her near total exhaustion close to the end of the lethal ordeal. By that time, the frosted glaze had almost completely melted from the sword blades. Only Egghead and Olga’s fascination with her agile dancing ability had prevented the Cossacks from pressing the dance too hard and kept her from being cut. It was at this point that Batman and Robin had burst into the hideout to her rescue.
Batgirl reached the door, which swung open at her touch. “Fortunately, Olga and her Cossacks have finally been deported to stand trial for crimes in Bessarovia and the word on the street is that Egghead has not recruited a new gang so far,” she thought. Batgirl knew from experience that Egghead was a real criminal genius at masterminding bizarre egg related crimes. Without a gang to back him up, however, he was really a whiny sniveling coward who wouldn’t put up much of a fight against her powerful ballet-kick style of fighting. Batgirl stepped through the doorway, proceeding into the lair as the door swung shut behind her.
Proceeding down a hallway, Batgirl realized she had struck pay dirt when she turned a corner and witnessed loud noises and flashing lights coming from up ahead. Moving swiftly, the Caped Crimefightress crept to the open door at the end of the hallway, peeking inside.
Sure enough, there stood Egghead, wearing a set of spotless white coveralls with a long work apron over them. As she watched, Egghead finished making a weld on a large chain-link cage, stepping back as he pushed the welding goggles up onto his overlarge forehead to admire his work.
“Eggcellent, eggcellent,” the villain cackled, “this should hold that masked menace Batgirl quite nicely when she arrives.”
Taking the mention of her name as a cue, Batgirl stepped several steps into the chamber and effected her best Batgirl pose. Her gloved fists resting lightly on her hips above her utility belt, feet spread shoulder-width apart, shoulders back and chest out, with a look of complete confidence on her masked face.
“You’ve got your wish, Egghead!” Batgirl said from the doorway, “but having me here is one thing; getting me into your cage is another!”
“Batgirl!” Egghead cried in surprise as he turned to face her. Immediately his features twisted into a crafty grin as he pulled off his work gloves and began evilly rubbing his hands together. “Come in, Batgirl, come in! I’ve been eggspecting you!”
“Come along quietly, Egghead!” Batgirl said as she confidently stepped forward out of the shadows toward his lighted work area. “Surrender now and I won’t have to hurt you!”
Unfortunately, in the gloom, Batgirl had failed to notice the dark tripwire at her feet, stretched taut across the floor. As she tripped it, a chute above her sprang open, instantly dropping several knockout gas eggs to the floor around her. Egghead’s plan hatched as the eggs broke open when they struck the floor, expelling thick green clouds of noxious fumes into the air. Batgirl barely had time to realize her mistake as she inhaled the gas. Her eyes crossed inside her mask then rolled up into her head as she slumped to the floor unconscious.
Egghead waited several moments for the gas to clear before moving closer. As he walked toward Batgirl’s unconscious form, he picked up a Bessarovian Cossack sabre from his workbench. Standing over the downed damsel, Egghead tested the edge of the sword with his thumb. It was razor sharp. Satisfied, Egghead slowly swung the tip down until the edge rested against the side of the unconscious heroine’s neck.
“Eggcellent, eggcellent!” Egghead laughed at his unconscious foe. “Much as I’m tempted to simply finish you off now, Batgirl, I’ve eggspended too much effort on my plan for your permanent eggsit to ruin it all on a whim!” Crouching over her to speak closer to her masked face, the villain continued. “When you awaken my dear, you’ll eggsecute the show of your life…an eggstremely short life!”
Octagonal in shape and about twelve feet across with solid steel vertical bars reinforcing the corners; chain-link fencing hung from corner to corner completing the cage. Looking up, Batgirl saw that the cage stood about twelve feet high, the top covered with additional chain-link. Looking back down inside the cage, Batgirl could see that a tracked steel ring, squared off and about four inches thick, ran around the inside of the cage attached to the cage walls just below the height of her armpits and suspended about a foot inside the cage. Below the ring, there were elongated pods over three feet long set vertically in the corners. Peering closer, Batgirl noticed the pods were covered with a thin frosty coating. Searching for the door, Batgirl quickly saw there was none. She immediately realized she must have been placed on the floor while she was unconscious and the cage had simply been lowered around her and locked to the floor. Her further inspection of the cage was interrupted by Egghead’s cackling laughter from outside the cage.
“Eggcellent, eggcellent!” Egghead laughed. “Glad to see you’ve finally awakened, Batgirl; awakened to meet your doom!”
“What are you planning to do to me, Egghead?” Batgirl demanded hotly as she moved to the edge of the cage to view him. She could see he had changed into his immaculate white tuxedo while she was unconscious and he was standing next to a desktop computer with several monitors on a sturdy table. Additionally, several TV’s and VCR’s were situated on adjoining tables where he could view them all.
“Why I’m going to eggspunge Gotham City of your meddling influence, of course. I'm going to force you to perform a Cossack Sabre Dance once again . . . but this time, Batgirl, Batman and Robin aren't going to rescue you. This time you will dance to the death!” In stunned dismay, Batgirl listened as Egghead explained what was in store for her.
He told her about his stay in Gotham State Penitentiary and the lunch conversation that he had shared with the Joker one day. They had swapped stories, comparing the plots and traps they had tried in their attempts to rid the world of the Caped Crusaders and Batgirl. The Joker quickly agreed that the historic version of the Cossack Sabre Dance made a perfectly inescapable Bat trap and, together, they both had lamented how Batman and Robin had interfered and prevented the untimely demise of their partner Batgirl. The Joker had then mentioned how he had nearly done in Robin with something similar, by strapping him to a mechanical mobile that swung razor sharp swords as it moved about.
No longer able to call on Olga and her Cossack gang, Egghead had immediately seized on the idea as the model to create the perfect bat trap. Over a period of time, Egghead had designed a truly fiendish device. He had cataloged all the building materials plus the tools he would need to build it down to the last nut, bolt, wrench, and wire. With that accomplished, he had then written the computer program to run it all, in ASCII text no less. What made it even more incredible was that he had accomplished it all in his exacting mind; nothing was on paper. Next, Egghead had carefully planned his escape, knowing full well that Batman and Robin were going to Londinium to testify and leaving Batgirl behind. As soon as he had escaped, Egghead had immediately tapped the hidden funds he always kept tucked away for emergencies, gathered his supplies, and quickly built his trap.
“And you are standing right in the middle of it, Batgirl!” Egghead cackled. “I knew you would eggshibit your usual impetuous and foolhardy nature like you did last time. I knew you would eggzert an effort to capture me on your own. Well your impetuosity has been your undoing and you are about to eggsperience an eggstremely unpleasant ending because of it…observe!” With that, Egghead pressed several buttons on his keyboard and then stared intently into the cage.
Stepping back toward the center of the cage, Batgirl gasped in horror as the refrigerated pods hissed open. Iced Cossack swords slowly rose from them, affixed on long strong multi-jointed robotic arms. As she watched, the arms nimbly clicked into position and began sliding left and right on the tracked ring as the swords waved about experimentally in the air. Next, a large spotlight above the cage clicked on. In no time at all, the interior of the cage went from mildly cool to toasty warm.
“Yes, Batgirl, “ Egghead laughed, “I’m very proud of this little Bat trap I’ve created just for you. You’ll find it is quite eggscape-proof too, I’m afraid. Let me eggsplain some of its features to you.”
With that, the criminal genius pointed out the clusters of egg-shaped acoustic, visual, and laser sensors situated along the corners, top, and bottom of the trap…all there to paint a three dimensional picture of her body’s position and its location, transmitting updates to the computer every nanosecond. With this continuously updated picture of her dancing figure in its memory, the computer would determine which swords were in the best position to make an attack and what kind of stabs or slashes they should make. Then the computer would send the commands to the robotic arms holding the swords to make the attack. “With this built-in randomness factor, Batgirl, you’ll eggspeditiously discover that there is no pattern there for you to discover and dance around. Every attack will be eggstremely unique and original,” Egghead explained.
Next, The Smartest Villain in the World pointed out to her the powerful cameras mounted all around the outside of the cage that would capture the event from all angles, transmitting it to the VCR’s for recording. “Yes, Batgirl, once I eggshibit my videos of your destruction for Gotham’s criminals, they’ll come flocking to me to be their leader. By the time those caped clowns Batchump and Birdboy get back from Londinium, I’ll be running Gotham City and be completely unstoppable . . .
but now it’s time for you to play your eggstensive part in my plan, Batgirl,” he said as he leaned closer to watch through the cage. “I eggspect you to smile for the cameras too, my dear,” he chuckled. “After all, they’re recording your last dance before you eggspire.” With that Egghead began typing in commands on his keyboard.
Instantly, the Cossack sabres that had been swinging about at the end of their mechanical arms all suddenly moved to point directly at her. Batgirl did a rapid mental calculation and realized that with the mechanical arms fully extended, the razor-sharp blades had over a foot of overlap in the center of the cage…right where she was standing! Batgirl felt beads of sweat start to run down her forehead under her cowl and knew it wasn’t entirely from standing under the hot lights as a cold knot of fear tightened in her stomach. In the time remaining to her before Egghead sent the command that would activate this deadly trap, Batgirl dredged furiously through her mind for everything she could recall from the extensive additional research she had done on the Sabre Dance after her near-fatal ordeal, trapped dancing in one.
The information she had found on the Cossack Sabre Dance was quite fascinating, too . . .in a macabre way. The Sabre Dance was thought to have been born in Bessarovia in the early 1500’s, although some records indicated it might have started even earlier. Over time, a codified list of rules had come into being for the swordsmen to follow, with regards to the nature and timing of sword strokes to use on the victim. After all, everyone agreed that the victim could easily be killed with the opening sword stroke and there certainly wasn’t much entertainment value in that. As time progressed and Cossack swords evolved from double-edged broadswords into the curved single-edged sabre, the rules had changed again.
Over time, the Sabre Dance had begun to be used, not only for amusement with war prisoners, but also as a means of public execution and popular entertainment with luckless Bessarovian criminals. This new use of the Sabre Dance had earned Bessarovia a dark notoriety that was actually greater than France’s use of the guillotine during its revolution, although it was not as well known to the Western world.
The most recent innovation to the deadly art and its rules had occurred in the early 20th century when refrigeration had been developed…by the last Cossack King of Bessarovia no less, before the country had fallen under Communist dictatorship. King Olav the Good (?) had felt that iced sword blades helped prolong the victim’s suffering, yet allowed the swordsmen to press more forceful attacks without inflicting crippling wounds too early in the dance. Olav had reasoned that the icing injected a needed element of chance to the event. With an iced blade, a determined sword stroke might or might not inflict a wound on the victim; it all depended on the icy coating remaining on the sword. Adopted with enthusiasm by the Cossacks, this version of the Cossack Sabre Dance was considered the highest form of the death dance art.
After World War One and Bessarovia had fallen to the Communists, Sabre Dancing had been ruthlessly stamped out. The only thing the Communists had allowed to remain was a highly stylized form of the Sabre Dance for cultural events. Conceptually very similar to the Japanese Tea Ceremony in that proper form and the correct sequence of events were everything, this non-lethal form of the Sabre Dance was now the national symbol of Cossack culture in the newly freed Bessarovian Republic and was performed everywhere by troupes of dancers.
Batgirl nervously glanced outside the cage to see what Egghead was up to. He was entering a few final commands into the computer and then looked up at her. “Ready to begin dancing to your grave, Batgirl?” he laughed. Without waiting for a reply, Egghead clicked a quick command with his mouse, then sat back to enjoy the show.
Immediately, speakers blared loud Cossack dance music throughout the room. With a start, Batgirl realized it was the same bad Cossack dancing music that had been played the last time she had been forced to perform the Sabre Dance. In the final moments before the swords moved to attack, Batgirl recalled one final bit of gruesome knowledge about the Cossack Sabre Dance.
Regardless of the form of the death dance, all versions reached a common point where the victim was too crippled from wounds to their legs and body to continue. At that point there were four basic means of finishing off a victim. By far the most popular was simple beheading, where the victim was pulled to their knees and the lead Cossack administering the coup de grace. The other three were: a simultaneous stabbing attack to run the victim through from all directions, a simultaneous slashing and hacking attack where the victim was literally chopped to pieces, and the last one was throat slitting. A fifth way of ending the dance, to inflict severe wounds and then leaving the victim to bleed to death was almost never used. It was considered to be very unsporting by the Cossacks. Of course, all of these endings were also dependant on factors like whether the victim was still on their feet or not, the inclinations of the swordsmen, and the desires of the show’s audience. Batgirl swallowed hard as she wondered which of these endings Egghead had planned for her. If she didn’t figure out an escape from this trap quickly, she knew she was going to find out. Already, she could see slippery drops of water on the floor where the ice had started to melt from the heat.
The dance began with the flat of a sabre blade slapping Batgirl across her rump. Startled, Batgirl jumped forward a half step and automatically turned to look in the direction the attack had come from. Immediately, there was a sharp prod in the side of her right calf, then the edge of another blade was glancing off her left thigh, and then Batgirl was leaping to avoid a sword swipe at her feet. In no time at all, Batgirl found herself breathing hard and sweating profusely as she leaped, ducked, and dodged the attacking blades, dancing helplessly for her life.
Immediately, Batgirl adopted the strategy she had remembered from her reading. She began dancing off center directly into the blades coming from in front of her. This strategy allowed her to keep out of reach of at least three to four swords behind her. The problem with this approach was that she was now dancing closer to the swords to her front and their response time was much faster. To get around this problem, Batgirl found herself constantly having to shift left and right or switch sides of the circle entirely to avoid attacks. While it reduced the number of swords she had to avoid, it was unfortunately, also, much more strenuous for her to do and Batgirl found herself rapidly tiring.
Outside the cage, Egghead watched eggstatically as the Dynamic Damsel danced toward her death. Just like last time, her dancing was exceptional. As the dance progressed, however, he could hear Batgirl’s breathing becoming more and more labored and gasping and the once steady drum-beat of her high-heeled boots clicking on the floor took on a note of discord as she tired and began to stumble slightly.
Egghead’s eye briefly strayed over the Delete key on his keyboard. With gallows humor, it was the button he had decided to rig for immediate kill. If he pressed it, Batgirl’s life would be over in seconds. “No, not yet,” he mused. “Batgirl has only been dancing about 15 minutes and much of the ice still eggzists on the blades.” He turned from watching the scene directly to watching the different views on the TV monitors that were recorded the event for Gotham’s underworld to see. “Eggcellent!”
Inside the cage, the dancing heroine’s mind was reeling as she fought to hold on against her exhaustion. Suddenly, a sword slipped between her legs from the side as she stepped forward, neatly tripping her. Surprised, Batgirl suddenly crashed down on the floor, landing hard on her shoulder. In panic, Batgirl rolled over onto her back to stand up, stopping short. All the Cossack swords were wavering there, less than an inch from her heart or throat.
“I’m finished!” she thought as she gasped loudly and regarded the dripping blades, waiting for the killing strokes to come. Suddenly, two robotic arms she had not seen before, hooked the startled heroine under her shoulders with hand-like appendages, pulled her to her feet, and shoved her roughly back toward the center of the cage. Unceremoniously, the swords started their poking and prodding attack, beginning the dance once more. Evidently, Egghead wasn’t finished toying with her yet.
Batgirl continued dancing desperately as the swords whistled through the air around her. With horror, the exhausted heroine could see that the ice was now nearly all gone from the blades.
“NO (gasp) ESCAPE…NO (gasp) ESCAPE…NO (gasp) ESCAPE FROM THIS (gasp) DEADLY TRAP!” The words screamed in Batgirl’s reeling mind as she tried to keep from staggering. Her legs were like rubber now and the courageous crimefightress knew that the ice-free blades could start cutting her at any moment. “If only (gasp) there was a way to….!”
“YOWCH!!!” Batgirl cried out as a white-hot pain suddenly burned high across the front of her right thigh. Shocked into momentary immobility, Batgirl glancing down and saw a shallow cut, about three inches long, slashed across her leg horizontally. As she gasped in horrified surprise, a small trickle of blood began to run down her leg. Batgirl looked around in rising panic as the blades moved to attack her again. The cutting had begun!