Post by deo on Apr 6, 2014 6:25:51 GMT
VS 
It was 9:47 am and the volume on the Barbara's TV was turned to fifteen. On screen, Vicki Vale struggled to report over the blend of sirens and shouts coming from beyond the cloud of smoke behind her.
“…Hello Gotham, this is Vicki Vale. If you’re just joining us, at 9:30 this morning three simultaneous explosions occurred across Gotham City. The three known and verified attacks have all occurred in the Gotham Metro district, at Wayne Towers, the Gotham City Stock Exchange, and at a private office building on Central and River. Things are still unclear as to nature of the attacks and the number of dead and wounded. Numerous reports are coming in about other attacks across the city, but GCPD will not confirm anything and are urging everyone to remain…”
The screen cuts to an underprepared Jack Ryder in the studio. He scans to a teleprompter in front of him as bullets of sweat leak down onto his tie. The studio is dead silent as Ryder fails to speak for a moment. He keeps staring at the teleprompter; then he begins to blurt out whatever it says.
“I apologize for the interruption… Actually, I don’t… I am not Jack Ryder. My name is Oracle.”
Barbara Gordon moves closer to the television and examines the reporter as Ryder continues to read in a terrified staccato.
“My name is Oracle and I killed, all those people. I’m probably going to kill more if I find the time.… I’m using this little man to get out my message to you. And that message is very simple. Catch me, catch me as fast as you can… And now for something entirely different… Roses are Red, Violets are Blue—A rose by any other name would be just as sweet—Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness!—I have eaten the Plums that were in the icebox,”
The Bat-com on Barbara’s waist buzzes and she answers.
“Nightwing.”
“Hey Barbara. You’re watching the news?”
“Yeah, I got everything before Ryder decided to break down into a poetry slam.”
Jack Ryder was currently halfway into a Doctor Seuss rhyme before he switched to Dickinson.
“It isn’t Ryder doing it,” Nighwing says,
“Sure looks like him.”
“There was a 911 call from Channel Six a few minutes ago. They said someone hacked into their media system and high-jacked the teleprompter. The first words it said were ‘read everything as written or I detonate the bomb in your building’.”
“So that’s why Ryder’s,”
“Yeah. Lets just hope he doesn’t make him do tongue twisters. Anyway, I’m afraid were undermanned here. Batman’s away on League Business, Tim’s with his team on something, and I’m still in Bludhaven. Bad timing I guess.”
“It wasn’t timing,” Barbara says, “They knew Batman would be gone. They waited for it. This was meant for me, or for Oracle at least.”
“Oracle’s been gone for over a year Barbara. Who would still be that angry at her to do this?”
Jack Ryder was beginning to trip over some of his words. Fear gleamed in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Barbara says, “But I think I know where to find out.”
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The Oracle Command Center had remained intact in her absence. She had told herself it might have come in handy to have another secure location to manage a crisis in. It would work as a failsafe if anything ever happened to the cave. It would always be there if she needed it, but she never wanted to need it again.
Thick lines had been worn into the floor where the chair wheels had rolled. The boards creaked as she stepped across them and the monitors hummed low and dull, and glowed with a pale green. It was the only light in the room, and she knew that if you stayed there a few hours your eyes would ache, but if you lived there, they would adjust. Everything was covered in a year and a half’s worth of dust, everything except the bright pink flash-drive. It was lying right on top of the keyboard, and it wasn’t hers. The security had been mostly deactivated after she stopped being Oracle. No one was supposed to know this was here, no one should have tried to find it.
She took the flashdrive and plugged it into the old Oracle supercomputer, which immediately ran a security scan. It may have been a few years old, but it was a confidential Waynetech prototype when she installed it, and was still years ahead of anything on the market today.
It took three seconds to search the flashdrive. It only had a single three megabyte audio recording titled ‘Hello’. She opened the drive and played the file.
“Hi there, name’s Jim Moriarty,”
The voice was chipper and overtly camp.
“Sorry honey, but this is all you get. I hope you weren’t expecting someone else; maybe Calculator, maybe that new friend of yours in the purple pajamas, maybe even that idiot Nygma… Anyway I just wanted to say hello. I’ve heard so much good things, Oracle. You’re supposed to be the actual genius behind the typical brooding vigilantes of Gotham. The girl who does all the thinking for the boys. Congrats. I’ve always wanted to meet a ‘consulting hero’… But then you went and got your legs back, and became one of the boys, became complete, standard, normal, and ordinary… and now all the ordinary people are going to come after you. That should be fun. And the best part is, the only one who can save you is little old me…Try and catch me Barbara, try and stop me; you won’t do it, but it might be distracting enough to watch you try… don’t dissapoint.”
The audio file ended then immediately deleted itself.
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End date: April 12th
Batgirl
Moriarty
