The Oracle of Gotham

Barbara was watching the screen attentively, as the scan result on the fragments of weapons Batman and Nightwing recovered from the industrial area appeared on it. The Penguin's men didn't leave much, they destroyed the crates on first sign of interference. Dick even said it wasn't triggered by the men themselves, the crates just exploded as they made their first move, there was no trigger man. The fact the transaction was made under heavy SHF and UHF interference, means that the Penguin's men have access to some military grade technology to specifically block any cellular and radio signals, apart from some really low length radio waves, their radio used. The worrying thing was, they also blocked the Bat family's way of communicating wirelessly, since it's a very highly guarded secret known only by a few, this worried Barbara. Tiffany reassured her that it was still highly encrypted by the program they wrote for their communication, and that the code itself is stored and kept very well, but Barbara ordered her to check their cyber defenses anyway, make sure everything is kept safe, change few of the hash function's parameter's to change their encryption and remove the communications code from the computer to an external hard drive and keep it safe as well. Barbara teased Bruce sometimes about how paranoid he was sometimes, but right now it seemed more than reasonable for her to take precautions, she was the Oracle, and it ill-suited her to not know whether or not their communications were compromised and how.

Another thing that bothered the Oracle of Gotham was the weapon's origin and utility, the weapon fragments were weird, firstly, they had no cartridges or a slot where to put the magazines in. Next, what seems to survive from what appears to be the barrel is nothing but a polymer tube, it wasn't a metallic barrel standard rifles had, but the dimensions of the weapons were large enough to suggest they were rifles. Nothing of the mechanism itself survived, only a couple of handles, some exterior casings and nothing much else. The self-destruct charges were placed specifically in the weapon's mechanism, each weapon had one, and surrounding the weapons in the crates themselves we tubes filled with acid that would burst during the self-destruction sequence, someone really didn't want anyone to learn anything about these weapons.

"Oracle" came a voice via the old secure cellular connection. "Yes, Batman" Barbara answered. "Any news on those weapons yet?" Batman asked, a clear sound of wind came through the line. "Nothing new for now, I doubt I'll having anything concrete for a while." Barbara replied, looking at some of the notes she made on the computer, and the progress on Tiffany's work. "Communications upgrade will be up in three Batseconds, I will have an update on something else for you then." She said, Batseconds weren't real seconds, or just a name for seconds to make them cool. Each Batsecond meant something else based on the received time of the communication. Since it was 2:10 AM, one Batsecond meant five minutes, it changed definition every ten minutes and returned upon itself every second whole hour. It was a complicated way to retain some encryption even if the communications infrastructure was compromised. A direct result of Batman's paranoia in Barbara's opinion, but since Penguin's men somehow managed to find out which frequencies they use for communication, they had to be vigilant. "Understood, will wait for you then" Batman replied.

At 2:25 the update was ready, uploaded and already installed on all Bat devices, and Tiffany stored the code, pseudo-code and documentations safely on an external hard drive, you can't hack something which isn't connected. "Batman" Oracle said to her microphone, "Oracle" Batman answered. "The weapons are a dead end for now, whatever wasn't destroyed by the charges in the weapons themselves was corroded by the Fluoroantimonic acid in the tubes. I cannot discern their use or functionality, the only reason we know they are weapons is because Felony's men called them weapons." Barbara said, waited a second and continued. "What I can discern is that having charges in the rifles, and having a rare and highly dangerous acid in the crates means they put a lot of money into these weapons, especially into keeping them from falling to the wrong hands." Barbara continued, to which Batman replied "And how much money Black Bat and Batgirl recovered?", Barbara looked at her notes again "Only 10 million dollars, this means we must've missed more transactions, or maybe it was a lure for us to look elsewhere when the real big money was exchanged", Oracle finished. A slim dark skinned girl approached her desk, passing Barbara a note, she could feel the headache beginning as she read it. "Our informants are dead as well, this was definitely a lure." She said. "We must've found out about the weapons deal by mistake" Batman replied, "Keep searching for mentions of a new type of weapons in one of the gang's hands, I want Batwing to deal with that exclusively. Have Batgirl and Black Bat do a shake down on Felony's gang, find out where the real transaction happened and what was its outcome, whether it was cancelled do to the weapons being destroyed or made it continued, indicating there were more weapon crates." Batman ordered. "I don't think even Felony has that much money" Oracle replied. "I think so too, but let's be sure" Batman answered, "I'll try and find out who supplied Penguin with these weapons".

"How's the girl?" Batman asked, changing his tone to a quitter one. "She's coming along, I'm not sure she'll be part of the family any time soon, but baby steps." Barbara replied to Bruce. "She's a good girl, she'll be fine" She added. "Glad to hear that, keep me posted, we might get a new one soon." Bruce replied.