As History Repeats
This chapter was inspired by supenena (hope I got that right). Thanks for the PM. I went back to check the chapter and realized that I didn't have much left before it was finished.
Chapter 7
"Either my mother is trying to figure out a way to keep a close watch on me from now on, or she is trying to let me be my own person. I have yet to figure out which one, and I am not sure if I want to know just yet. Either way, I'd say we have a good couple of weeks." Gabby said this as her bgreeting when she waltzed into the main room where the Delphi system was set up.
"What was this week's lie?" Barbara asked, not looking up from what looked to be a motherboard from a peice of the Delphi. Gabby was glad her mentor wasn't looking, because she winced again.
"It was some big lie about my friend Dinah and her supposedly strict mother. My mom assumed she was my girlfriend when she gave me a ride home afterschool, and I... sort of went along with it."
Now Barbara looked up. "What?"
"What else could I say? It seemed to be the only story that my mother would believe, and I am actually surprised she bought it," Gabby said defensively. Barbara's head tilted slightly as if to say 'Right, really?', and the teen just shrugged at her.
"I don't know if she bought it, exactly, but I don't understand why she would suddenly put trust in you." As she spoke, Barbara's head went back down as she returned her concentration to the work she was doing, which to Gabby, was nothing more than poking at some microscopic wiring with the pointed part of her flat headed screw driver.
Gabby sank into a chair and let out the smallest of moans. "I don't either. It is driving me crazy, and I am wondering if that is my mother's intention, to guilt me into telling her my secrets."
"Is it working?" Barbara asked as she put the motherboard away and studied Gabby. The blonde shrugged, but she didn't reply at first.
"I wouldn't give us away, if that's what you're asking," she finally said, a hint of defenciveness in her voice.
"I know you wouldn't, at least, not on purpose," Barbara said carefully. Gabby's eyebrow rose, but she stayed quiet. Barbara looked at her protoge', assessing her to see if the teen was now angry, but both od thier faces seemed masked of emotion. There was the small aggitated fidget that told the redhead that Gabby was a little upset by this. "I'm not saying that I don't trust you with this, Gabby-"
"How can you say what you just said and then turn around and tell me that?" the teen scoffed.
"If I didn't trust you with this, you think you'd be here right now? I'm just saying that things happen, and sometimes people find out. I mean, that is what happened with you."
"So this is your way of saying be careful?"
"Yes."
"I will," Gabby said, but there was a little huff in her voice. There was a small silence.
"Good."
"So..." Gabby said after a few moments of silence, "what am I doing tonight?"
"I was going to gut the Delphi and show you how to put a couple of the peices back together, but I thought we might not have the time, since you got here pretty late and all." Before Gabby could argue that, the redhead continued, "And I know that wasn't your fault entirely."
"What're we gonna do instead?" Gabby asked, deciding that she would rather move on than to continue to argue with her mentor.
"Well, I know we've got to go over the security feed from last night to see what happened. You said something about a door?" Barbara also picked up on the change and knew it was best they got to work right away, since there wasn't much time to waste that night. She still had to go out as Batgirl, but she also needed to make sure that she knew what she was looking for that night and if she had to be extra careful in certain areas now that there was another metahuman that she had to avoid or possibly reprehend.
"Yeah. One of the men was looking at the door when the cops came. And there was something in one of the windows. Someone was looking in the window, or there was a reflection of a feminine figure. I don't know if she was in the building with them or not. It was just a short little glimpse." Barbara nodded at this, and then patted the table next to one of the keyboards of the Delphi. Gabby kicked off from the floor and let her chair glide in that direction, resisting the juvinile urge to let loose a small 'whee!' along the way.
"Alright, I want you to go through the files from the night before. Get to the hostage times and lock in on both the door and the figure you saw. See if you can get a closer look and run the facial recognition program. I will search the security cameras of the buildings around the- Thanks Alfred," Barbara said as the butler placed a cup of something steaming, which Gabby assumed was tea in front of her, "-around the credit union to see if maybe I can get a better look. She might be the woman who fought with Huntress."
"And if she is Carolyn's daughter, someone must have found her and trained her. It is possible it is someone you knew. You might recognize her fighting style," Gabby suggested. Barbara turned in her chair and looked at Gabby, surprise evident in her eyes.
"That makes a lot of sense. How else would she know to come here to New Gotham if someone hadn't sought her out and trained her?"
Gabby nodded and went to work on the task Barbara told her to do, and for a few minutes, there was nothing but silence and clicks from the keyboards. "Barbara," Gabby said after a while.
"Yeah Gabby?" Barbara replied right away, making a couple of clicks and then turning again in her chair.
"Look at this. It isn't a door, but it looks like it could be. It just... I don't know, has this really... obvious look of a door, but it seems to just be a decoration- part of the wallpaper-ish markings along the top near the ceiling."
"That is strange. If they are hiding a door there, they are being really obvious about it."
"Do you think there really is something to hide then?" Gabby asked, shifting the image slightly to get a better look at the so called 'door', and then making the image go back to its original size. "It could just be a ruse, and whatever these guys were looking for is somewhere else- if not in the building, then somewhere else entirely."
"I think you're right. We still don't know if whatever they were after is still there, or if, as you say, is somewhere else. I will have to investigate later tonight. Since this building is a Wayne Enterprise side company, I will have access to the building." Barbara did a little more work on the Delphi. "What about the girl? Did you find the image of her?"
"Actually, right here in this frame. After looking at the footage, I found the shadow, but all I saw was blackish hair and the side of her face. She's wearing a mask, and here, going closer," Gabby said, as she made a few adjustments to the stilled servailence footage and had it give a closer shot of the figure, "you can sort of see the eye. Does that mask look familiar at all?"
"Yes."
"They are those white, expressionless masks. Creepy, if you ask me."
Barbara let out a laugh at this. "Not your thing, huh?"
"Man, if you're gonna wear a mask, you might as well make it something. Paint a squibbly on it- or something!" Gabby said as she brought up an even closer image of the female in the blank mask. "She's tall, this girl. Lean. She seems about 58', 5'9. If you look at the way the hair moves, I'd bet its a wig."
"No real hair, no real face, no real identity. She isn't an amature," Barbara said, more in a murmur to herself than out loud to Gabby.
"Her hands are covered in gloves, she's wearing a body suit. Hot, by the way-"
"Gabby, no drooling over the enemy," Barbara said, but her voice wasn't stern, but absent as she, too, tried to find footage of this girl.
"Hey, this person has no real identity, so oggling's free until we figure out who she really is."
"True, but if you get saliva all over the keyboards, there wouldn't be much chance of us ever finding out who she is," Barbara shot back without missing a beat.
"Well, she's young. She can't be older than 25," Gabby guessed.
"Mmmhm," Barbara said as she put in more information into the Delphi. "What else?"
"Uh... Well... Ah! Here," Gabby said as she replayed the security footage with the close up. "Okay, it isn't the reflection- she is outside- But look, the hand that is showing here? Its clenched. I think she is nervous, which may have been why she was ducking in to take a look. I don't think this operation was supposed to have taken as long as it did."
"Very good, Gabby," Barbara said. She really was impressed by how smart Gabby was, despite what people might think of her from the start. She is far more observant than she is given credit for. "Ah! Gothcha now," Barbara said as she pulled up a strange angle of the Huntress and the mystery girl in a fight.
It looked almost as though the girl was sneaking around and keeping watch. For Batgirl? For the police? It wasn't really known who she was waiting for, but she was definately the lookout. Then, when Huntess swooped down on her, the mystery girl was ready to fight. Objects moved around, startling Huntress a little bit, but the short haired brunette moved smoothly and swiftly to dodge them.
"Who's drooling now?" Gabby asked as she studied her mentor, whose eyes were fixed on the figure of the Huntress.
"Shush," the redhead replied. Gabby laughed as Barbara huffed, and then tried to pull up a closer angle. She could barely see how the mystery girl moved. "She doesn't seem to be on the offencive right now. She heavily depends on her powers. She seems more bark than bite, but if she learned... Her bite could become deadly," Barbara said.
"But you just said that she's not an amature," Gabby argued.
"Maybe not with hiding. Even as she uses her powers, she knows how to conceal herself," Barbara said.
"So..." Gabby looked at the screens as well, comparing the angles of the mystery girl. "It looks like we've got to speak with Kitten Britches to see if maybe she spoke to her at all, or if she could see this girl's eye color."
"Even if Huntress saw this girl's eyes, you think she wore contacts? I mean, she covered herself really well." Barbara said as she stared at the screens. The redhead leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes at this. In her mind, she asked herself over and over if this girl really was Carolyn's daughter or another girl who had by chance gotten this power. Barbara didn't believe in coincidences, and she doubted that Gabby did either. She knew that this girl had to be Carolyn's daughter, and that she had to find a way to help her before it was too late.
"This is true," Gabby said softly after a pause to think about it.
"But the voice is hard to make out in a fight," Barbara continued on, "Unless you have something against your voicebox shifting the sound of it, Huntress might be able to tell us more and give us a better estimate to just how old she is. It's possible that there might be more clues that Huntress picked up face to face with her that we can't see from these camera angles."
"When are you leaving?" Gabby asked as she ran her right hand through her blonde curls.
"Now. As soon as I get changed." Barbara stood up and looked at her protoge', wondering what was on the blonde's mind, but she wasn't sure if she had the time to ask.
Gabby nodded. "Alright."