Author's Note: We'll switch to Sergius's perspective for awhile.

Chapter Three: Early Skirmishing

Something clicked in the doorknob—and then the door swung open. Framed in it was a man in a werewolf mask with brass knuckles on his hands. Someone else was standing behind him, but Sergius couldn't make out the details immediately—

Werewolf Guy made it a whopping three feet into the room before his head collided with Batgirl's fist. This was rapidly followed by his belly colliding with her boot, his neck colliding with the edge of her other hand, and his head thumping against the carpet as he fell. The second man—wearing a Frankenstein's Monster mask—had stopped in the doorway when his friend's fracas with Batgirl blocked his advance. Now Batgirl moved toward him, stepping daintily over the first attacker . . . the second man jabbed at her with a fist . . . and Sergius couldn't quite follow what happened next, but it ended with the Frankenstein's Monster Guy suddenly flying through the air and landing face-down on the couch by the window. The thug started to push himself back up—but Batgirl rabbit-punched him and the fight was over, just like that.

Sergius was relieved it was over, but he told himself he wasn't particularly surprised at the quick outcome. He'd never seen Batman fight—Sergius had already been unconscious before the end of the one adventure they'd shared, years ago, so he'd missed the best part—but of course he'd heard stories. It only stood to reason that if this girl hadn't had the right moves to let her walk all over a pair of thugs in a matter of seconds, then Batman never would have permitted her to dress up as "Batgirl" in the first place.

"A nice opening number," The Spook's voice said chattily from overhead. "Now that you've earned the right to leave this room, try your luck elsewhere if you hope to find me!"

Sergius wondered where the camera was. The Spook obviously knew who had won this little dust-up. Of course, he could just be playing the percentages—perhaps he'd never expected the first pair of attackers to be more than light exercise for a real superhero? But if this were a thriller novel, there'd be cameras in every room of the master villain's lair, so they'd better assume the worst. If they could find the cameras, and disable or cover them . . . then Sergius still wouldn't know what to do next to "take advantage" of that situation; he didn't have any secret weapons up his sleeve that he needed to hide from The Spook's gaze.

"I guess we have a choice of two strategies," Sergius said to Batgirl. "On the one hand, we can play The Spook's game and try to find our way to his control room, somewhere in this house." He supposed she was listening to him, but he had to take it on faith; while he spoke, she stepped out into the hallway through the now-open door, apparently didn't see any threats demanding her immediate attention, and glided silently back into the music room.

"Of course," he conceded, answering an objection she hadn't uttered, "That's exactly what he wants us to do, and he could have every step of the way booby-trapped. The other option is to circumvent the rules somehow and call an escape a victory. . . ."

Batgirl crouched, wrapped her arms around the middle of the piano bench, straightened up again, and stalked out into the hallway. Sergius followed her at a respectful distance; he was working on the theory that he was safer if he stayed close to her. What did she need the bench for? To stand on so she could reach a high place?

As he came out of the music room, he got his first good look at the layout of the house's ground floor. Over at the right end of the hallway was a big front door; that would be the way he had entered when The Spook (or a flunky?) had herded him indoors with a bag over his head. Directly in front of him was one side of a staircase, ascending upward (to his left), with the sort of very long, well-polished bannisters you expected kids to slide down in movies set in old Victorian mansions. To the left, a few more doors on this side of the hall, and then a big set of double doors, closed, at the very end. He stepped to the right to better see past the foot of the stairs. Another line of doors lining the other passageway on the far side of the staircase. All the doors he could see were closed, and all of them—including the big front door—had little electronic keypads set in the walls at the level of the knobs. Treasure hunt, The Spook had said. Somewhere in this house, there were clues to the passwords which would open those powered locks—a different password for each doorway, Sergius was guessing. (Actually, if he'd been writing a book about this, he would have made sure the Big Bad Guy had one master code which would open any door when he was in a hurry. But Sergius didn't really figure The Spook would share that with them, so he resolved not to waste any more time on the thought.)

Krash!

Batgirl had just shattered a window to the left of the big front door with a blow from the piano bench. The business end of the bench didn't penetrate very far though; it stopped abruptly after an inch or two. She drew it back and swung again, and then again, now getting a clanging result with each new blow. Sergius moved closer and peered through the window frame. Sure enough—thick metal bars; nothing much bigger than a ferret was going to crawl in or out that way.

Something tickled the inside of his nose, and he hauled out a handkerchief from a side pocket of his Inverness cloak just in time to muffle a sneeze. "Is something burning?" he asked as he stuffed the handkerchief back where it belonged.

Batgirl set the piano bench down on its four legs and pointed to the end which had been taking the brunt of each impact. The cushioned top was scorched at that end—because it had been colliding with the bars?

Sergius blinked. "So either those bars are electrified, or else they're extremely hot," he mused. "Either way, trying to rip them loose and crawl out through the window probably isn't a healthy idea. And it's a safe guess they extend in front of the door on the outside—or something equally nasty secures the door, just in case we try to break it down."

Batgirl nodded once. She didn't look surprised or disappointed by the conclusion; Sergius suspected she had only been going through the motions of trying to break out that way, just so she could feel she hadn't neglected the obvious. She didn't bother to explain her thinking, though—Sergius was coming to suspect she rarely explained anything.

So far, her entire demonstrated vocabulary consisted of: "Wait," "Batgirl," "Yes?" and "Spook. Villain. Gassed me." Seven words in the last several minutes? Not exactly a chatterbox. Granted: Batman was not the most loquacious fellow in the world, but at least he had been known to use complete sentences. Sergius's current theory was that English was not Batgirl's first language, and so she preferred to avoid the embarrassments of mangled grammar until she had taken more classes . . . although he thought she understood almost anything he said. She was still somewhere in her teens, he supposed, but he was terrible at estimating the ages of Asian women. (Not that he was much better with any other type of woman.)

It was embarrassing to see a superhero with her mask off, but apparently it was far more embarrassing for him than it was for her; she didn't look like she'd be losing any sleep over it. Of course, if The Spook was the guy who had removed her mask (as seemed likely) then she might figure her cover was already blown regardless of anything Sergius did or didn't see. (Not that he had any intention of ever spilling the beans on the "secret identity" of Batman or any of Batman's friends, and maybe Batgirl somehow sensed that?)

"If we can't get into these other doors without the passcodes," he observed, "then we must be intended to go somewhere else to find the first code. Upstairs, or toward the back of the house, or maybe downstairs if there's a basement."

Batgirl stepped around the foot of the stairs and pointed down the hall on that side, toward the rear. Sergius decided he was supposed to tag along. Wasn't like he had any better plans at the moment . . . sure enough, as he stepped in her direction she glided away. He decided to keep a distance of about ten feet between them, to avoid crowding her. She sure wasn't rushing, though—perhaps she was scouring the passageway ahead of her for signs of trip wires or other nasty devices, for all he knew.

"You realize," he added, knowing it was silly, "that anything useful we find in this house, we'll have to fight for." Even as he said "we," he knew he really meant: You'll have to fight for it; he'd never liked pain enough to stay in any self-defense classes long enough to count for much. He was not a diehard pacifist, but she shouldn't count on him to be more than a brief distraction for any huskier, and/or well-trained, combatant. He wondered if he should say so.

Without glancing back at him, Batgirl waved her left hand in a dismissive manner which he interpreted to mean: So what?

The hallway on this side of the stairs made an abrupt right turn. Sergius, following in Batgirl's wake, saw that the hallway ended in an open doorway—perpetually open; no doors in sight—with what looked like kitchen counters beyond. Batgirl moved forward, and just as she was about to spring through the doorway into the kitchen—

"Welcome to my kitchen!" said The Spook's voice through speakers, both in the hallway and inside the kitchen, Sergius thought. "Enter freely and of your own free will!"

Well, so much for the element of surprise, Sergius thought dourly. Anyone lurking in ambush knew it was time to get ready to offer a warm reception, courtesy of The Spook's loud greeting.

Batgirl took the invitation at face value and dove through the doorway, rolling as she hit the floor. Sergius didn't rush to follow—his decision was inspired by the way a carving knife suddenly flew through the air from the right of the doorway. Batgirl dodged it easily as she spun in that direction, and the knife kept going past her shoulder and out of Sergius's field of vision, until he heard it thump into something (probably a wall).

Sergius guiltily accepted that he'd be useless in a kitchen battle with cutlery slicing through the air, and stayed back in the hallway to see how things developed. Meanwhile, The Spook suddenly decided they needed a soundtrack. Loud, ominous music filled the air. Sergius couldn't identify the tune, but it sounded as if it came straight from a horror movie, in one of those scenes where something terrible is about to materialize. Psychological warfare, he told himself . . . and in his case, it was working. He knew his pulse was speeding up, he thought he was sweating more than he should be . . . but he had no idea how Batgirl felt about it; heck, for all he knew, she might be tone-deaf!

After a moment, his ears adjusted enough to let him sort out the noises from the kitchen that weren't part of the music. Things thudded against other things. Glass broke. Metal clanged. Someone screamed like a girl. The music stopped a moment after that. Silence from the kitchen. Sergius wondered just how long he might stand here before he worked up the nerve to poke his head through the doorway and see what—

Never mind. Batgirl suddenly appeared in the open doorway and crooked a finger, beckoning him in. She looked none the worse for wear; obviously no one had managed to connect with her face, nor cut any portion of her flesh—although he supposed she might have acquired a few sprains or contusions which didn't show through the dark leather outfit which covered every inch of her slender body below the neck. He remembered The Spook saying they had to work together as brains and brawn; apparently she figured the stage was set for Sergius to start doing his share.