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Oracle has been keeping tabs on the new Batman for about three months now. From his first outing, stopping powers from completing an arms deal that Barbara hadn't even known about, (Derek Powers was very good at one thing and one thing alone, keeping the evidence close to his chest.) to his most recent exploits stopping the "terrific trio" who had recently arrived in Gotham. She had almost called Supernova in to handle it if it had gone on too much longer. Mostly because of the eerie resemblance to what happened to Hank Henshaw. She was thankful it didn't come to that, and instead wrote up her file on it.
She was also wary, a new Batman, who she had very little information on beyond his name, his almost impressive rap sheet for someone so young, his father recently died, and his apparent grudge with Powers? She wasn't very confident in such a volatile combination of factors in one 16 year old. But she knew 16 year olds like that, ones who would do the right thing, with a bit of guidance. She didn't trust Bruce on a lot of things, but she did trust that this Terrence kid had his heart in the right place, and that Bruce knew that too. She can begrudgingly admit that Wayne can be a good judge of character.
She has the incident reports and all related footage from each Batman event noted in individual files. Wayne-Powers Infiltration, Fox Teca sabotage, the incidents with Willie Watt, Victor Fries, and Walter Shreeve respectively. Along with all of his patrols.
So she's almost insulted when she finds a package dropped off at the library, with photos of Inque inside. Like she didn't know about what happened with her. She knew! It just so happens that Oracle has a lot of projects that don't revolve around Batman. Between the small but quickly growing 'Undercloud' start up that she needed to try and get a hold of, Blackbird asking for Oracle to search around the Wayne-Powers company again for his exposé (which she will admit, that batkid and this stupid package helps), a recent string of thefts committed by a man who called himself Blight. He was so radioactive that the screen went hot whenever he was there. In her ordinary life, Barbara's trip to see Cass in a few weeks, and the fact that the damn elevator at her library branch hadn't been fixed when she knew that maintenance had seen her message. On top of keeping track of hundreds of other transports, shady dealings, and other rumors of high level threats that she needed to get to the right people at the right time. She had a lot on her plate.
Barbara had half a mind to simply return the package to sender. She could see herself at the front step of Wayne manor, throwing the file at Bruce, maybe punching him in the face, and then getting the hell out of there before he even had a chance to respond. It was a beautiful dream. However, this could help her. She groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose to attempt to ward off her incoming headache, before going to her unofficial lair.
Cross-reference with the footage she already had led to about net zero information. At least for the Power's investigation. It was all evidence of her involvement in the Fox-Teca sabotage, a blob of shadow identified to be her sliding off of the truck present at the first explosion, her presence in the server room. Overall not great information for what she needed, but helpful enough to keep it around for later. She stores the photos in her filing cabinets, secure in their disguised simplicity, and also the added locks and layers of security and touch sensors on each cabinet to notify the security system.
She opened the Wayne-Powers file and added the details she had gathered from the photos. Digitizing them would be a tomorrow Barbara problem. She had plenty of evidence around the contractors. All she needed was a way to connect this event to Powers. Then she could send it all over to Blackbird, and he could take it from there.
She needed to call Bruce. She leans over he desk, dials the number for the manor. Somehow it hadn't changed in all the years since they've talked.
"I see you got the package."
"You're god damn right I did. Didn't help much, by the way. You couldn't even call first before sending your new gopher to my job?"
"Didn't think you would want to hear from me."
"Cute. Now come on Bruce, why the hell did you give those to me." She taps her fingers against the desk, she wants this over as fast as possible.
"I know you have the channels to use this. Ones I don't have access to."
Blackbird. Bruce and this new Batman don't exactly have a good relationship with the press here, especially since the primary Gotham news networks are all owned or heavily funded by Powers, along with significant funding put towards a police department that's been corrupt since before it's founding. So the best option is one outside the city.
"Fine. I'm willing to have your guys help on this, and I have an idea, but the kid has to come here himself and answer my questions."
"I'll send him over tomorrow night."
"Thank you, Bruce."
He hangs up. Barbara slumps in her chair and decides to haul herself to bed for an early night.
She's been waiting all day for the kid to show. It's her day off, which means she has ample time to do her work as Oracle. And unfortunately bring in and put up her grocery delivery. She decides to push Batman and Powers to the side for now. She takes a slow morning, her automatic systems for sorting data points from her network across the city does a lot of her work for her at least. So she can take it easy on herself, do some stretches, make a cup of coffee, maybe re-arrange and dust her nick-knack shelves. (Note to self: get Steph to dust high shelves when she comes down next.) When the automated systems are done, Oracle can finally get to work. Which means she can focus on what's going on with Blight.
She pulls up all the footage she can. This guy has been pretty under the radar, and showed up around the same time Batman did (she notes the times and sees if she can draw a connection.) He was first spotted by her own systems as a hot spot during a delivery for polymold just outside of Wayne-Powers, for what use, Barbara cannot fathom. The material is mostly used as a coating for prosthetic limbs and things like the touch sensors on her cabinets. He also showed up at a shipment of radiation resistant coating, mostly used for aerospace equipment. That one made more sense, with the still ongoing bid for the space station against Fox Teca, they might be gathering materials. Unfortunately, she can't confirm any of this beyond her own reasoning. She doesn't even have access to the security system that she helped build, because her backdoor got removed the moment the 'merger' with Powers was finalized. She was booted along with Lucius.
She's even more frustrated knowing that Blight could be anybody. Another new contractor hired by Powers after Fixx's unfortunate end at the bottom of Gotham harbor, a previous employee affected by some kind of fucked up experiment he was running. He was a mystery in nearly every way, except for this connection. Maybe when the kid stopped by she could get him to divulge what he knows about the guy. Maybe even some real photos where he isn't just a spot of blown out pixels. But, she does her due diligence and goes through everything frame-by-frame.
She doesn't have much else to do directly. Nobody from the Justice League has reached out as of late, probably stuck on another world ending threat somewhere else, though Tim hasn't mentioned Kon being off on a trip so they might just not need her help. Which is fine. She's fine. There's more crime online than ever, she has plenty to do. But, she's getting tired now. Not of her work as Oracle, but just generally. Her body can't keep up with the demands, the late nights and the constant surveillance that Oracle's reputation demands. She loves what she does, as Oracle, as Barbara, but age was creeping up behind her now. She could do even less, exhausted easier. Even with all the automation she had introduced into her system, it was getting harder than ever to keep track of everything in Neo-Gotham. The puppet she called Barbara Gordon could only push herself so far. Oracle needed to keep up, and she would find a way.
She doesn't have much else to lessen the weight of it either, even if she doesn't have help, what makes it worse is the loneliness. She doesn't really have anybody else. There's Tim and Cass, of course, and Steph, and her and Conner have developed a nice friendship over the years. She had Sam too, before his interests as D.A. conflicted with her interest as Oracle.
But they all have their own lives outside of Gotham. They all moved on, leaving Barbara clinging to a city that's too far gone and tries to kill her every day she stays. But who else was going to do it?
So she waits. She scrolls through GPD reports, adds them to her own system, and attempts to find more connections from Power's to his contractors. There's always a paper trail. No matter how good they cover it up, no matter how many hands messages have passed through, there's a trail. She just has to find it.
She's been banging her head against a wall for hours on this damn thing. Until she's ripped out of her self-pity by a knock on the window behind her. "Damn!" She hasn't had people knock on her windows in a while, and any knock at all still makes her jump still after all these years, but she needs to be more prepared now that there's a new bat flying around.
She looks at the clock, it's nearly 6pm and because it's still early February, the sun has gone down without her noticing. So of course the batkid is out and about.
She rolls to the windows and opens it after undoing the locks she has on them. The kid is standing awkwardly on her fire escape now, trying to stand nonchalantly while leaning up against the railing, but really looking like a moody and disinterested teen. Which was probably the truth.
"Hi, you're Ms. Barbara Gordon, right?"
"I am." She rolls back from the window and gestures inside, "Come on in. Bruce sent you right?"
He's crawling through the window, when he stops, crouched half in half out, "you know Mr. Wayne?"
"Unfortunately. Now come in please, you're letting in the cold."
The kid finishes climb in and stands up straight, "Yes, he sent me. Didn't say too much about it."
That makes sense for Bruce, always resented having to talk to other people like they couldn't read his mind, "You can sit down on the couch if you want. I'm not gonna be mad." She has a hint of smile on her face. Barbara rolls to close the window, and presses her remote to shut the blinds for her.
"Alright." The kid relaxes a bit and takes a seat.
"So, Terry, you want some water, tea, coffee? I admit I don't have much in the way of food, I'm still waiting on groceries." She rolls towards the kitchen, it's connected to the living room, so she can see the look on his face when he realizes.
"I'll just have- hey!" He stands up and follows her into the kitchen, Barbara has to hold back laughter. "How the hell do you know my name?" He's tense again, eyes narrowed, she knows the thought process, did Bruce just send me into a death trap without telling me? But she could be projecting.
"Relax, Bruce wouldn't have sent you to me if he thought I was dangerous." He would create the danger himself. "As for how I know who you are, it's hard not to figure it out, for someone like me." The kid wasn't exactly subtle. Even if most people wouldn't expect a former child delinquent to be the new Batman, if you new who the old one was, and had access to almost every single camera in the city, well, it wasn't hard to figure out.
"What, A librarian?"
"No. Oracle." She doesn't expect recognition, her whole persona has been designed to he under the radar, but, surprisingly, his eyes widen into giant saucers.
"No shit!" He leans against her counter and reminds her of the pile of dishes in the sink. Forgot to do that this morning. "I mean, Max has always talked about Oracle, I thought she was full of it but it makes so much sense now!"
"Sorry, who?"
"Oh, my friend Max from school. She's way into to hacking and software stuff. Talks about you like you're her idol." He pauses, "I uh, thought you didn't exist."
Barbara tilts her head, she needs to look into this Max kid, later. "Well, I do exist. But more importantly, what did Bruce tell you specifically about me, and how I could help."
"Not a lot, like I said. But he said you had contacts to get payback on Powers."
"Well the first order of business is to find a way to gather evidence so that we can give it to my contact. Can you and your boss help me with that?"
"I'll do whatever I can."
"That's all I ask." She pours herself a cup of coffee. "Now, if you could turn off your comms, then I would like you to answer a few questions."
The kid's eyes narrowed, before he shrugs and taps something on his wrist. "He's not listening in anymore."
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
Batman looks around, making sure all the windows are covered, before tugging off the cowl as well. "Would it be alright if I grabbed a cup of coffee? I woke up at 6 so I could make the atrak to school."
She gets him a mug and let's him set up his own drink.
They both end up in her living room, him on the couch, and Barbara in her recliner with her chair in it's designated spot next to it.
"Can I ask you a question first?"
"Sure." She sets her coffee down on the side table. The kid is taking initiative, she can't fault him for it.
"What happened between you two? Mr. Wayne won't budge on anything I ask. But I mean, I'd like to know more about why you two stopped working together, other than the obvious that he's, him."
Barbara sighs and a chews on the inside of her cheek, deliberating. Decades of poor decisions and terrible fights on both ends culminate in a blow up fight. Weeks of silence and then Barbara isn't online when the worst thing happens. She sobbed about it for hours to Dinah. "You asked a real complicated question kid." She takes a moment, carefully choosing her next words, "Just so you know, though I doubt you'll meet the rest of us, it's a sore subject. Most people don't want to talk about it. It's a long story, and all you need to know is that when Nightwing died, everything else went to hell."
"Oh. Sorry." Terry leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, he looks like he's curled in on himself.
"Don't be, really. It happened a long time ago. Can I ask you some questions instead?"
"Shoot."
"How did you become Batman?"
He grins and returns to his former confident posture, "That's also a very long story." She sees him glance at the clock on the wall.
"Nothing is going on right now, and if there is, then I'll get an alert about it and you can head out."
"Schway." He takes a sip of his coffee and starts telling the story.
When he finishes, all Barbara can think is how the hell is this kid alive! From directly being targeted by one of the most prominent gangs in the city, to then finding the batcave and not getting brought up to the Justice league to get his memory erased or whatever they did these days, going up against Fixx and Powers, to stealing the batsuit. Terrence McGinnis had a lot going on. Barbara had helped build that defense system herself, and as far as she was aware they weren't any gaps to exploit. But here was a 16 year old, casually describing getting around a state of the art security system like it was no biggie, before stealing one of the rarest and most expensive pieces of technology in the world. Barbara could admit she was impressed.
Her expression must have betrayed her, because before she has a chance to respond the kid deadpans, "What? Shocked into silence?"
She considers, before returning in the same tone, "That's sums it up."
He shrugs, "Yeah, it's been a wild few months."
"I can tell." She takes another sip of her coffee, the kid has a lot more to say, now that she's broken the dam.
"I mean, it's been awesome, don't get me wrong. Beating up bad guys and helping people has been nice. But it doesn't help that on top of everything my girlfriend keeps getting mad at me because I have to dip out to do Batman stuff. I want to be Batman, but I don't get time anymore, I'm totally slagged."
"I know the feeling," She hadn't had time to herself in what felt like decades. She tried to make time, but it was hard when she didn't have all that much to do outside of work.
"I'm glad Mister Wayne isn't here. Every time I try to talk to him about this it's all 'you're ungrateful and you need to be focused on the mission' or whatever."
This only confirmed to her that Bruce really hadn't changed a bit. "He does that with everyone, don't take it to heart. You do what you think is right."
He narrows his eyes before shrugging, leaning back in her sofa and staring at the ceiling. "So, what about the Power's stuff? What do I need to get to your contact?"
She thinks for a moment, "You don't still have that disk, do you? Because that would be very helpful to us."
He groans before dragging his hand down his face. "No. The disk got destroyed when Powers came into contact with the nerve gas."
And the rest of the evidence of both the nerve gas and deal with Kasnia are at the bottom of the Sprang river.
"That's fine. We have other ways to get him." She pauses, squints and tilts her head, "Terry, I assume you're confident in your skills in breaking and entering?"
"Why? I mean, I am confident in those skills, I've been rooftopping since I was like, 12. But why?"
"If you're alright with it, then I think I have a plan on how to nail Powers."
The plan is going well. Batman managed to break into the Wayne-Powers building all too easily. Only made easier once Bruce was convinced to give Oracle access to their security cams. (All the unprotected balconies in the upper east sector helps too) She can't access any of the backlogs, since they're stored in a different location, and Bruce not doing his job for the past twenty fucking years, has had the result of removing his access to the vast majority of the system. But that's fine. That's why the kid is going in to fix that. She follows Batman's movement along the security cams, the suit is invisible at the moment, but she also has his suit cam for reference on where he is. The board meeting that Bruce is in seems to be going well also. After the violent attempt to destroy historic crime alley, he's been taking a more active role. Maybe the kid is having a good affect on him.
"You see the sign beneath you that says 'server room'?"
"Yeah."
"Go there. Don't worry about a keycard."
The kid doesn't say anything, but instead drops down from the ceiling and stands pressed against the door. She tries opening the door. It won't unlock. Shit.
She has to think fast, "Change of plans, do you know any other way around the building that I don't?"
"Um. I used one of them once, but that's a B question. "
Of course it is. She needs to find a way to find the paths, "For now, just get somewhere hidden, there's a room that shouldn't be in use down the halls to your left." Having the public schematics for the building pulled up is handy, but they don't have any of the secret passages or false walls. She takes the next minute to figure it out herself while Terry walks around the room.
She zooms in on the area they're focusing on, and she finds a ventilation shaft that runs directly into the room. A safety hazard in a world like theirs, but very convenient for her current purposes.
She very quickly turns her attention back to Terry, who in the amount of time she was searching might’ve already gotten himself into trouble. "Batman, I need you to get into the vents above you."
"Can do, O. But there's something you gotta see first." He turns to face something, and Barbara feels her heart stop.
The kid is in a new room. A room that isn't on any of the maps she had. She's about to start yelling to get out before she's stopped in her tracks when she sees what Terry sees. Skin on a table, and on a mannequin head, a very distinct face.
She glances over to her other monitors, just to make sure she really is seeing this correctly. Derek Powers is currently sitting at the head of table in the board room, staring menacingly at his fellow chairmen, as he is want to do. She looks back at the thing on the table. Then a thought occurs to her. The nerve gas. Terry had mentioned Powers being exposed to the same nerve gas that was supposed to kill people less than 48 hours after exposure. And she thinks of the deliveries of polymold. Synthetic skin.
Somehow, he survived that gas. That can't have happened without some kind of treatment. There aren’t any that she knows of, since she doesn't have access to the damn file. But, with some leaps in logic, maybe there was radiation involved, and the lingering nerve gas had a reaction to it. Maybe enough to make a man into a walking talking demon core. Maybe, just maybe, she found a lead on the Blight case as well.
"What are you thinking? Cause I know what I'm thinking," He says, slowly backing away from the table.
"I have an idea. But right now, we just need to make sure that you've recorded every single inch of it, and you need to head back to the server room."
"But isn't this evidence! With this room alone I should go and beat up Powers right now!"
"I know, but right now we need to get you out undetected. We can deal with Blight later. Plus, we can't exactly confirm this right now. It's better used in somebody else's hands."
He climbs through the vents, attempting to make as little noise as possible, with Oracle giving him directions through it all. Until he lands in the server room.
"Where do I go from here, O."
"You have the key I gave you, right?"
He doesn't respond but instead waves the key in front of his eyes.
"Don't get cocky."
She guides him to the server tower that stores high level employee information and logins. It has protections, of course, but nothing that's too hard for Barbara to get past, as Terry inserts the sd card into the second, unused slot.
"Is that all I had to do?"
"For now. What, upset that nothing went wrong?"
He huffs, "No, it's just that normally by now a bunch of guards have found me and I have to fight them off."
"Well. Considering that you only have Three months of experience, I'm not surprised. Now let's get you out of there before you have to start punching."
He starts heading out the same way he came in, and Oracle turns her attention back to the board meeting.
And of course, this is the moment something starts going wrong. She can see it happen across her screen, Powers is getting upset because Bruce is pushing back hard against something, because that's what he always does. Then his skin begins to crack. He stands from the table. Then the whole screen goes white. She acts fast.
"Batman. Change of plans. You need to get to the top floor where the board room is, now."
"Why, what's happening?" He's almost made it to the front door, but he stops dead.
"Our hunch was right. Derek Powers is Blight."
He doesn't reply, and she sees him start to sprint to the nearest stairway. She watches him fly up through the stairwell, some stunned onlookers shaking out of their surprise and attempting to grab him out of the air, always just out of reach.
She turns her head back to the board room cameras, and all of them are still completely blank. She fights back the urge to yell at Terry to hurry up, and instead focuses her attention on calling GPD to the building. They may be chummy with Powers, but the same can't be said about his alter ego.
The kid is doing good, fighting off Power's guards. Until he finally reaches the door.
"When you go in, you're on your own."
"I got this."
"Good luck."
The doors slams open, and the camera goes white. The radio is nothing but static. So she slides off her headphones and waits. She's feeling restless, as she normally does whenever this kind of thing happens, losing contact with her team. She can only tap her hands against the desk, stare at the clock. How long is this gonna take?
She can't help the fight from here, so she might as well start one what she actually wanted to do in the first place. She reluctantly minimizes the camera feeds, and gets to work. The files might not be needed now, but it's always better to have more.
The new login works just as expected, with complete system access she can gather all relevant files (and maybe some she doesn't quite need) without being noticed. Considering the chaos going on in the building. She copies everything over to her personal servers, it takes a while, and she'll have time to go through it later. But her eye does catch on a folder that doesn't follow the surrounding naming conventions. "011020XX_TULLY_RESULTS"
She narrows her eyes and opens up the folder, and starts opening up the files. She knew vague what it was about, Harry Tully, a lab technician for Powers had been reported missing nearly Three months ago. Terry had mentioned him, a close work friend of his father's, and somehow he was involved in the creation of the weapon Powers had been developing. She assumed it was a misplaced file from his own experiments, but what she actually sees isn't anything like what she expected.
The first photo is a shot of Tully from above, with patches of necrotized skin across his body, blackened with a ring of red surrounding it. The next is similar, but farther along in the process, all of his extremities are black, with red and purple skin sloughing off around the edges. The next few are close ups of his hands, as what she assumes to be the nerve gas eats through his tissues layer by layer in rapid succession, with only a few minutes between the timestamps on the photos.
Barbara always liked to think she had a strong stomach, but these make her want to hurl as she continues to click through them. Especially the final photo. Harry barely has any defining features left, and there is no skin on his body, his muscles beginning to get eaten away in a similar fashion.
Her eyes are wide, and after clicking through the last of the photos she closes out of the file, quietly moves forward with the file transfers. If this is what Powers was willing to do to a whole country, she needs to be more terrified of what he's willing to do to Terry.
And like some act of mercy from whatever is out there, the image comes back on her monitor. Bruce looks safe, white knuckling his cane leaned up against the wall, while the other board members look panicked. Some are standing still in shock, others are pacing the room. The glaring problem is the broken wall, and that Batman isn't there, and neither is Powers.
She acts fast, switches over to her hallway view cameras and tunes back into the comms in an attempt to find them. She searches for any abnormalities, and unfortunately finding exactly what she was looking for. Terry is in a tough spot, but not an impossible one. He's leaning back up against a railing again, running his mouth, goading Powers into getting angrier than he already is so he gets sloppy. It's a different approach than his predecessor, and it reminds her of Dick, if she's being honest. They would've gotten along, she thinks, before pushing that as far away as she can, and focusing in on the fight.
"How's everything going kid?"
"Doing good, Blight over here isn't exactly a top-notch fighter, sitting behind his desk all day."
She can feel the vitriol from Powers as he rushes up on him, flinging small energy bursts Terry's way all the way.
"Woah!" Powers manages to catch him up against the railing. The suit cam goes out again, and she resolves to fix the problem before he gets back into the suit, but she can at least see bits across the other angles.
Despite the fact that Terry has shown himself to be a capable fighter, she tenses. He's just a kid, and the alarms connected to the suit are going off, but she can't help. All she can do is sit and hope that GPD gets their sooner rather than later.
Then they both fall over the railing, and her heart stops. Barbara is torn in every direction at once, trying to see where GPD is at, switching her feed to the cameras below to track their fall, calling Bruce.
She's about to dial Bruce when she sees the kid show back up on her camera. Powers isn't in sight, but that's secondary when she sees the hand shaped hole in his mask, and as he lands back on solid ground, he goes and sits against the wall.
"I- fi- just ne- my breath." The comms are damaged, obviously, but she only sighs in relief to hear him talk.
She isn't sure how much comes through when she says, "Get out of there and get somewhere safe, GPD is there." But he gives her a thumbs up through the security cam, and takes off once again, he runs through the halls, probably burned through the battery power required to fly, but she's confident he can make it out safe. She instead turns her attention to try and find Powers once again. Something that turns out to be a fruitless search, he's gone. She furrows her brows and huffs at nothing in particular. She knows that this mission wasn't fruitless. That they have Powers nailed and she now has the ability to access most of the data she needs access to, but it's always difficult when the guy gets away.
Before she has a real chance to catch her breath, she gets a call from Bruce. She picks it up out of instinct more than anything.
"Where is he?"
"Powers got away for now-"
"I meant Terry."
She's pleasantly surprised to hear that, "not sure, I told him to get out and go somewhere safe since GPD is there. The GPS in the suit is damaged, so If I get word I'll let you know."
"I'll do the same. Thank you, Barbara." Then he hangs up again.
15 minutes later, she gets yet another knock at her window. She's not shocked this time, so she moves the blinds and lets the kid inside, trying to get a closer look at his injuries as he practically tumbles inside her home.
"That sucked." He rips off the mask and tosses it to the ground, not unlike a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Barbara chuckles, now that she knows he's okay, she can relax a little bit. He gives her a dirty look which only makes her laugh harder. When she stops, she invites the kid to sit down on her couch, she takes a moment to message Bruce, before going to join Terry. He still has furrowed brows, staring off into the middle distance. "Don't worry kid."
"What?"
"I know how it feels, bad guy gets away and you have no way of making up for it right now. But you did good, we got what you went in there for, and you kept people safe."
"Yeah, but…" he trails off, expression still tense, maybe he's more similar to Bruce than she thought. But she lets it go for now.
"Do you wanna help me sort through files to send to my contact?"
"Only if you tell me who it is."
She snorts, "No, but you can raid my fridge."