Gender Bender

It was another beautiful day in Gotham City. A warm southern wind blew on this unseasonably toasty March day. Gothamites everywhere rushed out of work or school to enjoy this breath of summer on spring's eve. Gotham Public Library's head librarian Barbara Gordon was no exception.

It was a quarter until 3:00 p.m., Barbara's quitting time. As Barbara, dressed in a short yellow spring dress with a matching jacket, came around the corner of the large wooden front desk, she was greeted by one of the new evening volunteers, Susie. Susie, a former moll of the Joker who was serving time at the Bruce Wayne Home For Delinquent Girls, was volunteering at the library as part of a community service requirement at the home.

"My, it must sure be nice to get out early to catch some sun," Susie said to Barbara, dressed in a flowered sundress, wishing she could be soon going outdoors as well as she combed her long dark brown hair.

"Oh, don't feel so bad," Barbara replied to comfort Susie. "It's only four hours each weeknight. Besides, if you show up on time every afternoon and do everything well, you could be released from the home as soon as April and join your classmates at Woodrow Roosevelt High."

"You're right, Miss Gordon!" Susie answered more cheerfully, with her big brown eyes shining and her mouth curling up into a smile. "Once I'm out of the home, I'll be able to see all of my school friends again. I really can't wait to see Dick Grayson again! I wonder how he's doing? It would be dreamy not having to wait until visiting hours to see him again!"

On this note, Barbara left the library. Once outside, she removed her jacket since the air was over 80 degrees F. She put on a pair of sunglasses to protect her eyes from the bright sunlight as she walked to her apartment.

At the same time, Barbara's father, the Police Commissioner, conferred with Chief O'Hara about a threatening letter that a mysterious woman gave to Bonnie to pass on to the Commissioner.

Commissioner Gordon read the ominous letter aloud.

"Begorra, I knew it!" Chief O'Hara exclaimed. "That man-hater is just determined to rid Gotham of its fine young men, and Batgirl. Oh, that woman boils my blood up!"

"Mine too!" Gordon answered. "Right now, I think we better contact Batgirl to let her know of this fiendish plot!"

Chief O'Hara nodded his head in agreement. Immediately, the Commissioner contacts Batgirl by her e-mail.

Within moments, Batgirl was in her father's office.

"So Nora wants me to unmask myself on TV and give up crimefighting by midnight or she'll kill all boys under 21 in the city," Batgirl paraphrased the Commissioner. "That seems impossible! That would be close to a million people! I can't see how she can selectively kill that many people in a short time!"

"True, how true!" the Commissioner responded, his voice displaying both his concern and fear over the threat. "As impossible as this sounds, we mustn't take any chances. We have many prominent young men in Gotham, and without them Gotham would be brought to her knees. We need to find a way to stop her for all of the boys' and Gotham's sakes."

"Has she indicated how she is going to kill the boys?" Batgirl asked, questioning the feasibility of this mass murder.

"Nope," Chief O'Hara answered bluntly, trying himself to think of how Nora could do it.

"Until we can figure out something," Batgirl started, "I can go around Gotham looking for Nora's goons. She'll need a lot of them to kill a million people, so I should have no trouble finding them. In the meantime, you better call Batman and Robin just in case things go wrong."

"We'll see that it is done," the Commissioner replied as Batgirl left his office.

Meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor, Bruce, Alfred, and Mrs. Cooper were gathered in a side room, putting colored streamers along the wooden walls and across the white-tiled ceiling.

"My, won't Dick be surprised once he sees this!" Mrs. Cooper gleefully exclaimed as she put up a white banner proclaiming "Happy Birthday Dick!" in large, colorful letters. "I can't wait to see the look on his face once he comes in here tomorrow!" she continued as she put up the final tack and threw her arms up in excitement. The following day, the first day of spring, March 20, was Dick's 18th birthday. Mrs. Cooper, along with the other members of the Wayne household and many of Dick's friends, wanted to greet him with a surprise birthday party. Until then, the three worked secretly behind locked wooden doors so Dick wouldn't suspect anything.

Alfred glanced at his watch. It was a quarter until 4:00. "We should finish shortly," he warned the others as he tacked a blue streamer to the ceiling. "Master Dick should be home at any moment."

The three shuffled to hang the rest of the streamers. They quickly and quietly exited the room and locked the door behind them. Next, Alfred put on his usual green apron, picked up his duster, and started dusting the bookshelves in the main room. Bruce and Mrs. Cooper each took a book off one of those shelves, settled on a couch, and began reading.

In about five minutes, Dick came in the front door. Angry at things that happened at school that day, he threw his books down on the table in front of Bruce.

"Dick, what's wrong?" Mrs. Cooper asked, surprised that her nephew threw his books and worried about how he was feeling.

"Everything!" Dick shouted. "First I get to school and can't open my locker! Then I'm late for class! Then I find out that I got a "B" on my Mythology test! Then I slip on a banana peel at lunch and spill my food over Principal Schoolfield! Then I go outside and find my car keyed! That'll be the third paint job on it this year! Then..."

"Dick, relax!" Bruce interrupted him in an attempt to calm him down. "Everyone has their bad days. For instance, look at what happened to me last week. A million dollars was missing from the Wayne Foundation bank account. I thought I would have to close down the cooking school until a math error was found at the bank yesterday. And besides, a "B" isn't that bad. It's better than a "C"."

"I guess you're right, Bruce," replied Dick, who was a little calmed down, but still red in the face. "But it still doesn't help me with Mythology or the paint job!"

During this conversation, Alfred heard the red phone beeping in another side room. He answered it, left it off of the hook, and returned to the main room. There, he announced, "Master Bruce, a call for you, Sir."

Bruce entered the side room and picked up the phone. Dick ran after him and joined him at his side. "This is Batman," Bruce answered the phone.

"Thank goodness you answered!" the Commissioner exclaimed jubilantly on the other end. "We have a grave situation on our hands. Nora Clavicle is once again causing mayhem in our fair Gotham and this time she threatened that if Batgirl doesn't publicly unmask herself and quit crimefighting by midnight, she'll rid Gotham of all boys under 21!"

"Holy Male Genocide!" Dick exclaims angrily. "If I ever got a hold of that battle-ax, I'd take those skinny arms and legs of hers and twist them in a knot! Then I'd..."

"Enough, Robin!" Bruce quickly scolded Dick. "You know it is not nice to call people names and make threats toward them, even if they are fiendish criminals. Just because you had a bad day doesn't mean you can take it out on everyone else!"

"I guess you're right, Batman," Dick replied reluctantly.

The Commissioner continued, "Batgirl is already aware of the situation. Right now she is trying to round up Nora Clavicle's henchwomen. She told me to contact you to be ready in case things go awry."

"We're on our way," Bruce replied. He hung up the phone and went into the main room with Dick, where, taking advantage of Dick's school mishaps, he told Mrs. Cooper that he and Dick were off to meet with Dick's mythology teacher about Dick's lackluster performance. Next, he and Dick went back into the side room and told Alfred what has occurred. Bruce lifted the head of the Shakespeare bust and pressed the button underneath. The bookcase moved to expose the poles going down to the Batcave. Bruce and Dick slid down them, and they were on their way.

Meanwhile, a group of five young women entered an abandoned warehouse along the east end of Bourbon Street. The warehouse, once the home of the now defunct Thompson's Lumber, was now a dark, cool building filled with piles of old lumber. It was seldom used by anybody, not even the homeless. Around the large room were also many mannequins, the majority of which had holes poked in their necks. After the women closed the rickety steel doors behind them, they were approached by several other young women and their leader, Nora Clavicle.

"Excellent!" Nora greeted the women, anticipating their arrival. "You are just in time. Ladies, I need you to run downtown to get census papers. We need to know where to find every boy under 21 just in case the hoodlums slip up, like I expect them to. Remember, I have a treat for you when you're done," she continued, hinting that she'll give them some of the $10 million she got from Bane a few weeks earlier.

The five women, not saying a word, left the warehouse to go on their way. Nora and the other women stayed behind to work on other things.

Batgirl zoomed down Washington Street on her Batgirl cycle. She had to admit that the warm breeze blowing through the hairs of her wig was a great contrast to the cold winds that went through in the weeks before. She didn't have long to enjoy it, though.

She heard a broadcast over the police radio on her cycle. "Attention all cars," the announcer began. "Census reports were just taken at gunpoint from the Vital Statistics Building fifteen minutes ago."

Not long after the announcement, Batgirl spotted a suspicious group of five young women along the corner of Washington and Maple Streets. They were holding huge piles of documents. Batgirl knew at once that these women were the ones who held up Vital Statistics.

She pulled up to the curb besides them. She parked her cycle and jumped off of it. Quickly getting in her classic pose next to the cycle, with her hands on her hips and her legs spread slightly, she proclaimed "Where do you young ladies think you are going?"

None of them said anything. One of the women, standing behind another so Batgirl couldn't see what she was doing, slowly and quietly grabbed a can of spray from her purse. She quickly moved to the front of the group and sprayed a mist in Batgirl's face. The mist was a sleeping compound, and it knocked Batgirl out in seconds.

About an hour later, Batgirl woke up in a strange room, tied down to a chair nailed to the floor. She looked around, seeing that she was in a large dark room with a few small windows near the ceiling. Seeing piles of lumber around the room and smelling it in the air, she determined she was inside an abandoned lumber yard. She also saw some women leaving what they were doing to approach her. She turned her head, and to her surprise she saw Nora Clavicle to her right, staring down at her.

"I warned you not to try to find me!" Nora said harshly to Batgirl. "Since you did, I am going to give you that bonus I'm sure you'll love."

"Nora, you are nuttier than a bowl of cashews!" Batgirl snapped at her captor. "How do you expect to kill a million boys with only a handful of women?"

"He, he," Nora started out with an evil chuckle. "That is for me to know and perhaps for you to find out," she answered coldly.

As Nora spoke, she placed the cap of a machine that looked almost exactly like Minerva's Eggplant Jelly Vitamin Scalp Massager on top of Batgirl's head. She tightened some straps on it. Then, she walked over to a lever on the wall next to a doorway. She pulled it, and, within seconds, the lights went out.

The lights came back on. Suddenly, Barbara found herself in her own apartment, sitting down on a couch. She saw that she was wearing a gray sweatshirt with matching sweatpants. For some strange reason, she had the urge to look at herself in the mirror. She went into the bathroom to do so.

Barbara was shocked at what she saw. In the mirror, she saw a man with dark brown stubble on his face. Oddly, he was also short, had short dark hair and green eyes, and was wearing gray sweatclothes, just like Barbara.

Thinking that maybe some man playing games may be standing on the other side of the mirror and in the neighbor's apartment, since it is next to the bathroom, Barbara put her hand to the mirror to see if it went through. It didn't. Next, to make sure that her mirror, which was attached to the outside of the door of her medicine cabinet, wasn't somehow replaced with a window, she opened the medicine cabinet door. Upon opening, all she saw was some cough syrup, aspirin, and her toothbrush and toothpaste.

She closed the cabinet door. Once again she looked in her mirror and saw the man with dark stubble on his face. Puzzled, and getting an eerie feeling, she placed her hand on her face and rubbed it along her cheeks and chin to feel for their smooth- or roughness. Upon rubbing, Barbara felt stubble!

Surprised, with her hand still on her face, she looked into the mirror again. She saw that the man in the mirror also had his hand in the same position. In addition, the man had the same look of shock on his face as she did on hers.

"Oh no!" she said in fright, also noticing that her voice was deep, like that of a man. At that moment, she realized that she was that man in the mirror!

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