OnAHiatus
patreon
INTERLUDE: ORACLE
🕑 Added 2025-03-17 08:00:07 +0000 UTCBarbara had seen this before.
The names changed. The faces changed. The city didn’t.
Gotham was a meat grinder. You stepped in thinking you could handle it, that you were the exception. Then it chewed you up, spat you out, and left you broken in a way you couldn’t come back from.
Some tried anyway. Some put themselves back together with whatever pieces they had left. Some didn’t.
And then there were the ones who thought they were fine right up until the moment they weren’t.
Taylor Hebert was running out of time.
Barbara’s fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up feeds from traffic cams, security footage, satellites—anything that might help her track the girl before she went too far. Before the city swallowed her whole.
She patched through to Nightwing’s comm. “You need to stop her.”
A pause. Then Dick’s voice, steady, but wary. “I take it things aren’t improving?”
She pulled up a grainy security feed—an alleyway in the Narrows. Two men sprawled on the ground. One clutched his leg at an angle that wasn’t natural. The other barely moved. Taylor was already gone, a shadow slipping into the night.
“No. They’re getting worse.”
Dick exhaled, barely audible over the line. “Spoiler’s been keeping an eye on her.”
“Yeah, and she’s in over her head.” Barbara adjusted her glasses, switching feeds. “You saw what happened last time we waited too long. We let him go too far, and we lost him.”
Silence.
She didn’t have to say the name. They both knew who she meant.
Jason.
“Batman won’t let it get that far,” Dick said finally, but there was an edge to his voice now, an unease he wasn’t bothering to hide.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Barbara muttered. “You know how this ends if she crosses the line.”
There were only ever two ways it went.
You made it out. Or Gotham made sure you didn’t.
She flicked through more footage, watching Taylor move through the city with a single-minded focus. Operation after operation dismantled, informants broken and bleeding, safehouses torched. She should have been facing more resistance by now.
But she wasn’t.
Barbara frowned, fingers drumming against the desk.
It was too easy.
Gotham never made things this simple. Someone should have stepped in by now—fought back, pushed back, done something. But no one had.
It felt less like Taylor was tearing through the underworld and more like the city was letting her.
And that was what worried her most.
“You’re the only one who might be able to reach her, Dick,” she continued. “But you don’t have much time.”
“…I know.”
Barbara watched the screen as Taylor disappeared from another camera feed. The city was closing in.
And if they didn’t stop her soon, Gotham would do what it always did.
Comments
OnAHiatus
There's a way I could have explored this sort of situation with her power set, but—you call me lazy—it’s honestly easier like this. And allows for some good character development and growth
Bent Alex Rane Bundgaard
Which wouldn't be the case with her originsl powerset, She IS the queen of escalation after all. there is really only Batmite that might know just where she has come from and what she has seen, nobody else
OnAHiatus
Really bad ones. At some point, it just became unrealistic and quite frankly, stupid
Disorder
Exactly. That's what the entities wanted, choosing damaged people to give powers to. Doesn't help that just like Taylor even the good guys ended up making bad calls.
OnAHiatus
Not to mention that there are few good people on Earth Bet. Most are so hilariously selfish/evil that it is almost funny
Disorder
That's an understatement. Despite the fact that this world should be worse off than her world, somehow humanity and the heroes are still able to move forward, civilization not at risk of collapsing like in her world. Perhaps being given the full picture will make her realize the thing we readers know about her world. Yes, the people in Worm are flawed, but things are falling apart in Earth Bet because of the greatest monsters in her world, Scion and Eden. They set thing in a way that humanity wasn't meant to win anything. Civilization was supposed to fall apart and no matter how hard the good people tried to fight back, they would lose as the game was rigged from the start.
OnAHiatus
It will certainly make her reevaluate a lot of things
Disorder
You know, once Taylor gets through this bad experience with the villains, this may help her realize that the same thing applies with the heroes. In her world, she managed to get the heroes to bend to her demands because they and the PRT kept underestimating her. Not to mention they were corrupt, which helped her get the drop on them. Here, the heroes aren't corrupt and will learn if she somehow manages to get the drop on them. It also helps that heroes here are more united compared to Earth Bet.
OnAHiatus
Yup, that's what I was trying to tell u in the last chapter. Taylor thinks she's doing harm, but she doesn't know they are allowing her to do harm
Disorder
Dick is the only one in the family that can fight her, win, and talk her down as he's one of the most empathetic members of the family. Batman is no good with words, he'd just get Taylor angry with him, and he wouldn't care. Batman has no love for vigilantes that go too far, and Taylor is slowly rising on that list. Also, talk about tunnel vision as Barbara sees what Taylor doesn't, that the enemy isn't responding as it should. Guess Gothams criminals have decided to roll out the mat for this new vigilante and show her just how weak she really is. That she only lasted this long because they've been generous to her and now that generosity has run out.
