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Batgirl Begins (dbspock/WendyTheRed)

She shrugged at the motorcycle question. "Nothing specific. I had some thoughts about things I could use it for." Once more she realized she was treading close to a line. How would Rick react if he found out what she was truly trying to do? She shot a look at him when he confirmed they did have a sonar device. "Is this device portable? I mean, I know it is, I think a better question would be, is it easy for one person to use? Hand held maybe? Could I borrow it at least?"

She could almost feel them staring at her while she changed but when she shot surreptitious glances their way they were usually either looking away or briefly looking at her then looking away. Truthfully, moving into the hallway had occurred to her but she figured then she risked maintenance or other R&D personnel walking by. Knowing her luck it'd be Tommy though then she could tell her dad he'd ogled her while she was changing and R&D wouldn't have to worry about him anymore. The thought made her smirk briefly in amusement even if she knew that she'd never tell her dad anyway since then she'd have to explain how he'd come to see her in such a state.

As she began to talk to Pete she nodded along as he explained his own thoughts. She'd seen the look on his face when she expressed her initial thoughts but she didn't say anything. She was used to having to prove herself and she also knew she had gotten off on the wrong foot with him. She lifted the receiver when he pointed it out to her and reached out, moving a lamp on a swivel over so she could look at the part in the light. "Hmmmm...the connections look fine. I believed you when you said it was fine, don't get me wrong." She looked up from the receiver, her blue eyes studying him for a moment. "I just prefer to verify things for myself." She shrugged and set the part back down.

She noticed how Pete seemed to relax when she explained her actions and she even chuckled along with them. "R&D is probably the part of Wayne Enterprises I wanted to see the most and I've made several of you upset because I..." she motioned to her hair "let the stereotype of a red head take over for a moment and briefly lost my temper." She shook her head. "Mister Wayne even made sure to tell me that he wasn't going to let me transfer here."

She laughed quietly and watched the two men exchange a look after she mentioned her programming skills. Once more, she wasn't offended and she reminded herself she needed to stop bragging about her skills for multiple reasons. She nodded at Pete's thoughts about missing something in the code. "It happens. You look at code so much after a while you start subconsciously seeing what's supposed to be there, not what is really there." She grinned. "When I wrote one of my earliest programs it didn't add some numbers correctly and I couldn't figure it out. I read it and reread it and did such logical things as yell at my computer that 'it's right. Why aren't you working?' I finally figured out I accidentally put a semicolon after the code for my loop but before the block with the instructions for it. So the loop just ran on its own and then ran the following code exactly once instead of continuing until it had finished its addition."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, clearly embarrassed by the simple error. She decided not to tell them how young she'd been when she did it. She looked from Rick to Pete, then took out her phone and cued up the video demo of her Batmobile decloaking program. She slid it over to Pete and motioned for him to play it. "This was what I showed Bruce Wayne in an attempt to get hired here. I thought it'd get me an internship. Well, I hoped it would. Or if I was supremely lucky, a job down here. Obviously, it got me more than I imagined." She smiled slightly. "I just wanted you to know that I am skilled and can help you."

As was usual for Barbara, her mind raced as she thought about the situation and she spoke as she thought, verbally working through her thoughts. "Hmmm...as I see it, one of two things has likely happened. One, it's just a simple mistake somewhere in the code that had an unexpected effect. The odd thing is that not only did it go on a rampage, it didn't respond to commands. You'd expect a simple bug in the code to do one or the other, not both." She frowned and looked at the receiver again. "Another possibility...who else has access to this lab?" She looked at Pete. "Is it possible someone didn't want your project to succeed?"
 
"Well, if you want to race it, just make sure its an officially sponsored race. We don't need the publicity if you get caught hotdogging it." Rick warned her, unable to come up with another reason she might need the motorcycle, except evading Gotham City traffic that was notorious. But if she was going to be breaking traffic laws, that was her father's problem more than Rick's.

He frowned as she kept asking about the sonic device. He didn't bother answering if it was portable...it would be useless if it was not, and she figured that out on her own. "Yeah, one person can use it. You pretty much just push the button. It's not hand held, though. The base unit is about as big as a bowling ball, , and its got a laptop for the display.' he shrugged at her next question. "You can borrow it if you fill out the paperwork, but I'm telling you, if you dropped a pen or an earring or something, it won't do you any good. It's not designed to find anything like that."

If Pete was offended when she verified his assessment of the receiver, he gave no sign of it. A second opinion had never hurt anyone. He nodded in agreement when she said she wanted to verify it for herself...he was the same way. But as he expected, he hadn't missed anything on the receiver, at least. He laughed when she related her own software story, but not because he was making fun of her, but because he could relate to it. "I think we've all been there." He admitted with a nod, then gestured at the pile of parts on the table again. "It's probably just as well this thing isn't working...you wouldn't want to hear what I called it when I was taking it apart."

A quizzical look came across Pete's face when she placed her phone on the table, and he obediently pressed the play button. "What the hell is that?" he asked, not recognizing the vehicle that he was seeing, or what was so special about watching a car drive through an intersection. Had she hacked the traffic camera system to download this footage? That...really wasn't that impressive. Pete knew the guy who ran the company that secured the GCPD computers...there was a reason they were the lowest bidder. he recalled the glimpse he'd gotten of Bab's legs when she changed in front of him, and had his own idea about how Bab's might have gotten her job, but of course he kept that thought to himself. But still, even if she had hacked that primitive firewall, it was more than the average citizen would be able to do, and there was no harm in letting her look at the file...unless she was a spy or something. But if that was the case, she had access to far more sensitive data in her position than some corrupt code. Especially if she brought donuts. But...she didn't confirm Rick's promise she'd bring donuts, and ignored his request for a cream filled one, and his hopes of her providing at least something of note at their next meeting fell, along with the look on his face. But still, she worked directly for the boss, and refusing her without a damn good reason probably wouldn't go over well, so he'd have to put up with her.

Pete nodded along with her reasoning. She knew the right buzz words, at least. "My current theory is all the memory stacks got overloaded, so it was trying so hard to process the internal commands any new input got discarded." He told her, then pointed at the pile of circuit boards. "But I won't be able to tell until I get it up and running again, and run a diagnostic. But don't worry...that's all I'm connecting. No more rampaging robots...not from my lab at least. I can't speak for the guys down the hall." Pete and Rick shared a brief chuckle at that, though they quickly grew serious at her last question. "Industrial espionage is always a possibility. Frankly anyone who has access down here could have sabotaged it...except for you, I guess. It would have had to have happened before you were hired. But anyway, if someone was working for Lexcorp or something, they'd probably want a working model to steal. Not sure what good sabotaging it would do."
 
She considered Rick's reply and nodded, realizing that just taking out a Wayne Enterprises vehicle for what she hoped would become her new nightly activities wasn't smart. It was probably why Bruce just had them make an engine. Though she did wonder where the frame and other vehicle parts came from. Did he assemble it all himself from various parts? Hopefully she'd get a chance to ask him someday.

She decided to let the idea about the sonar machine drop. Rick seemed a bit annoyed by her questions and there was no way to hide what she was going to do from Bruce Wayne, especially if he was in the office. It occurred to her, she might be able to make something on her own if she could get access to tools. No one around here seemed to believe in the tech skills she had and she decided to test the waters. "I know it seems like a subject change, but do you have a spare lab no one is using? And if so, what would you say if I asked to use it to tinker on a project of my own? I promise, nothing dangerous or illegal."

She was a little surprised by Pete's lack of reaction. She glanced at the phone and saw she'd set it to play after the Batmobile appeared due to her program. "That is the Batmobile. It hides from GCPD traffic cams so they can't track Batman as he moves around the city. Not that way at least. I wrote a program that breaks through the, well, cloaking I guess? It's not really cloaking like in Star Trek or something. The Batmobile doesn't disappear. It's more like it replaces the image of the Batmobile on the cameras with a picture of the street in real time. My program undoes that and voila, the Batmobile reappears." She shrugged as she idly looked through the robotic parts. "I have no intention of sharing the program. My goal isn't to catch Batman. I just wanted to show Bruce Wayne what I was capable of. I wrote that program earlier this week while staying at my friend's house."

She was completely unaware that her lack of reply to the donut thing was making Pete doubt her intentions. In truth, she'd filed it away as something to do but had immediately gotten distracted by the technical issue in front of her and had neglected to do the social thing that was expected and give a verbal reply. She nodded at his theory about what may have happened. She leaned over and looked at the circuitry that was exposed on the table. Her right index finger moved in the air above the motherboard as if she was mentally tracing the paths that the signals when it was active, her eyes moving to the RAM and the CPU then going to what appeared to be an imbedded SSD.

She looked up from the scattered pieces when they responded to her thoughts about sabotage. "You're taking that a bit more seriously than I meant. I didn't mean an infiltrator from Lexcorp or something, unless this project is in direct competition with them for a contract or something. I meant something more...petty. Someone like Tommy sabotaging Pete out of jealousy or to try to get his job or something."
 
"What kind of project?' Rick asked, though he sensed Babs wasn't going to give him a straight answer. "I mean...there's room down here. Your boss could take over the whole place if he wanted to. But I'll need to know what kind of equipment and tools you might need. I mean...are you building a space shuttle and need the entire garage bay? Or a miniature radio you could make in a cubbyhole somewhere?" Rick guessed the answer was somewhere in the middle, of course, but those were the two examples that came to mind.

"Seriously?" Pete looked aa bit more interested when she claimed it was the Batmobile, and he played through the image again as he listened to her explanation, then glanced up at her. "The cops ain't the only ones who'd be interested in this." He warned her. "There are many who would pay a pretty penny to know where Batman was, or where he was going, even if they had no interest in catching him." He still didn't quite believe her program did what she said it did, it would be easy enough to fake, after all, and the fact Bruce Wayne appeared to believe it didn't count for a whole lot in his mind.

Pete shifted over in his seat as she leaned over to take a look at the dissembled circuity. Her breast had gotten a bit too close to his arm for his taste. He raised an eyebrow a bit as he saw her move her finger around...he recognized the pattern, and truthfully that impressed him more than the Batman program...or her panties. She did seem to be tracing the circuity out, and there weren't many teenagers who could do that.

He scowled when she mentioned Tommy, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breathe. "Tommy isn't allowed anywhere near this project." He finally said firmly, while Rick had to suppress a chuckle.

"Pete's job is secure." Rick promised, and even if it wasn't, there was no way Tommy was getting it. Not while Rick was running the lab. "But yeah...I guess it's a possibility, but let's not jump to conclusions or start any rumors, okay?" Rick tried to avoid gossip in the labs, he didn't need that kind of drama.
 
She considered his questions. "I'd just want access to a spare lab. The tools I'd need would be those used for working on electronics primarily. As for parts and such. I can get you a list. Or, if you all have some kind of supply room I can simply get what I need from there." She looked at him. "I'm not going to pretend this is some kind of official request from upstairs. I could probably ask Mister Wayne and I suspect he'd say yes just to see what I could do if nothing else. The reason I mentioned a spare lab is I don't want to put you guys out or kick someone out of their space or anything like that." She smirked slightly. "Unless it's Tommy. Then all bets are off."

She looked at Pete with a slight smirk. "Do you live in this lab? How do you not know what the Batmobile looks like? Yes, that's it. And I'm aware of how dangerous my program is. That's why I plan to delete it. I only held onto it this long on the off chance I had to give a real-time demo or something." She didn't know Batman had already deleted her program, something she'd likely be slightly miffed about when she discovered. "And while money could help my dad and I out, I'm not selling my program to anyone. Not Bruce Wayne. And certainly not to any criminals or nosy reporters or whatever."

She nodded distractedly as her eyes had already returned to the circuitry. Chloe would recognize the look on Barbara's face right now as that almost extreme focus she got when her mind was working on a problem. "Believe me, I want to avoid gossip too. Worse than you do probably." She looked at Pete's computer monitor briefly and her fingers actually twitched towards his keyboard before she seemed to almost physically stop herself and she stepped back. "I'll help you fix this. I owe it to you and besides, it's the kind of technical problem that will occupy my thoughts until I solve it. But, if I don't stop now I'll be here for hours and Bruce Wayne will send a security guard to see if you guys kidnapped me or something. How about I look at the code remotely from my computer upstairs when I get a chance?" She was going to do it regardless assuming the code wasn't on an isolated system which she doubted but she figured if she asked it'd go over a lot better.
 
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