Alyssa hummed in satisfaction as she put the screwdriver down. She stretched, there being something distinctively feline to the motion as she gloried in not having her body sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies as she did that after several hours of stooped-over work. Seriously, going from an out-of-shape body in its thirties to even a regular body in its early twenties would have been fantastic. Getting the upgrade to one as utterly bullshit as her current model made even the gender change thing unimportant in comparison.
Well, she supposed she might have had a different opinion on that if Tamaraneans had a menstrual cycle. They didn’t though. One of the many less obvious advantages that had come from choosing Starfire as one of her power input bodies. Which didn’t mean she hadn’t discovered drawbacks, too. Her dramatically increased senses had proven to include a superior sense of smell, something that was not exactly a wonderful thing to have in Gotham. Though thankfully it wasn’t nearly as upshifted as her vision. Which was, frankly, spectacular. As evidence by the fact she’d been working on very small parts for hours without once needing a magnifying glass.
Ah, her new device was fully booted and running the code she’d spent the better part of three days on! Activating its self-diagnostics, she only had to wait a few moments to get a report back. One which, once she’d probably processed it, made her smile.
She’d designed the device after her memories of an Omni-tool from Mass Effect. Though she’d altered the concept so that the keyboard could project out in front of both hands instead of being moronically locked to one arm. The bracer it was set into was also a little on the chunky side, but that was acceptable. She’d been repurposing high-grade civilian electronics for the most part. Specifically, parts from two Dragon Tech phones, a Stark Phone, and two Wayne Enterprises ‘Design Pro’ Tablets. The tablets being the source of the holoprojectors she’d used.
None of the architectures were the same, of course. That had been intentional on her part, though. The amalgam she’d custom created from the chips and bits she’d pried out of the various devices used something much closer to the architecture unique to Ghost in the Shell. One that didn’t lose out to any of those she’d examined from this reality. It was even, honestly, a fair bit more advanced than anything of the civilian-grade devices used. More importantly, it meant that none of the known hardware-based vulnerabilities of any of the systems applied in a meaningful way to her own work. Better yet, no one should be familiar with either the architecture or the programming language.
Of course, even with three days and the mind-boggling speed she could both think and type at, the OS running on the device was currently primitive and limited. Barebones, really. Yet, they were solid bones, ones that had reached the point they could fulfil her current needs. The device outstripped just about anything on the civilian market, and she’d focused on the features she’d need first. Combined with an improved (though still imperfect) version of the Thermoptic Camo she’d used before, it would do the job she needed.
It was time to become a real girl. Even if that meant doing a little B&E.
… … …
Alyssa had possessed choices for where to do her breaking and entering. Each had advantages and disadvantages, and in truth she would really need to hit at least two of them to really do a proper job of her current task. She’d ultimately decided that the records office at City Hall itself was going to be her main target, as only it would have the access into state level records that she’d need. Faking records of her existence at, say, the DMV would have been possible as well. But that agency would likely only have very specific access to New Jersey state records.
She could have given herself a driver’s license, but not a birth certificate. For that, she needed access to the Office of Vital Records for the State of New Jersey. Thankfully, as the single largest city in the state, it was virtually guaranteed that Gotham’s county clerk’s office had access. Enough access, at least, that Alyssa could easily hack the rest of the way to what she needed. With this world having a Deep Net that required Netrunning gear, trying to punch through the external cybersecurity without that sort of gear would have been near hopeless.
Doing the same thing from inside a system that already had access though? Cakewalk.
Of course, it did mean that she had to get through the physical security on the City Hall building. Which, given this was Gotham, was much more elaborate than you’d normally find on a City Hall. Given the number of villains that had tried to kidnap the mayor, hold City Hall and everyone in it hostage, or just level the place? Yeah, its security was closer to military-grade than something more normal.
Which was, of course, why Alyssa had needed her thermoptic camo and her new omni-tool. Even the roof had possessed formidable security, and the locals were not big enough morons to use wireless tech for the cameras. Everything was wired, with wireless backups that would only come up if the wires were cut. Which is why she’d very slowly floated under the cover of her tactical cloak until she’d been able to physically access a terminal.
That terminal had been alarmed and watched by a camera of course, but the nature of her camo meant that getting between the camera and the terminal resulted in it not being able to see what she was doing. Major Kusanagi’s time with Section 9 Counter Intelligence meant that, even with near-military-grade security, it took the inheritor of those skills less than a minute to bypass the alarm and tap into the security network. Seconds after that, she’d uploaded a custom daemon that would completely erase her presence from security. Leaving a small wireless adaptor connected meant she would also continue to have access to said security, to prevent anyone from getting alerts about opened doors or bypassed motion sensors.
The hardest part of the infiltration done, Alyssa created a temporary glitch in security, causing it to fail to notice the rooftop access door being opened for less than a second and a half. After darting inside, she began making her way down deeper into the building to where the unglamorous Records section had been banished. Nothing beyond a man ‘working late’ (banging his secretary), and a pair of nightwatchman crossed her path as she headed down.
To her surprise, her paranoid double check of the records office revealed that it did have a secondary security system. One that looked home built. She smirked as, after bypassing it, she spotted a ranting message directed at ‘The Bat.’ Apparently, Batman and his copycats accessed this place often enough looking for things that someone in the office itself had gotten annoyed and started trying to rig their own security. Honestly, it was actually somewhat impressively well done, with a lot of redundancies. Actively harder to bypass than the building security had been and she’d had to stop to sweep for hidden cameras and cover half a dozen of them that weren’t connected to the secondary network.
Yes, someone working here had grown very annoyed with the Bat-clan.
Still, despite having to take far longer than expected to triple check she hadn’t missed anything clever, she did ultimately get to the computer system. There, it was clear that whoever was working on their own office security didn’t have IT privileges, as there was nothing extra. Decent protection for a government office, but nothing that her own code couldn’t find a vulnerability for in under three minutes.
Once inside the system, it was even easier. The office did, indeed, have all the access she needed. Working her way around the various attempts to limit the user privileges was child’s play, and she was soon uploading her birth certificate data. Not to mention adding any number of the small little details that ought to be in the system for someone who’d lived their whole life in Gotham. Taxes, parking tickets, some connections to school records she’d been able to easily add to a public school days ago, without needing to even leave her hotel room to do so.
The framework of a real person, all backdated and constructed in a way that Major Kusanagi’s skills insisted would make them look legitimate. All she’d need to do after this was break into a hospital and add some medical records, and anyone trying to look into her background would find a perfectly legitimate set of records for one Alyssa Sumire King. The Alyssa name had grown on her, and her facial structure had a very slight Asian cast due to who her physical characteristics had come from. So tossing in a common female Japanese name in the middle would just help sell the identity a little more.
Job done, she slowly restored everything back to how it had been, except for drawing a little Bat symbol on one of the hidden cameras just to mess with whoever had set them up a little. Grinning, she headed out of the building…and only barely avoided being spotted by a redhead in a bat-costume that was sneaking down to records herself. Wow, the Bats must really sneak in here that often, huh?
Well, at least she was now nearly certain she was right about who both Batman and Batgirl were. Though the differences were as important as the similarities in some ways. After all, she’d discovered Jim Gordon’s death during her perusal of Gotham’s history and what notable figures she could remember. There had also been a notice that one Bruce Wayne had adopted Gordon’s daughter Barbara, who had only been fourteen at the time. That had been six years ago, meaning she was twenty now…and she just so happened to perfectly match the rather fetching figure that Alyssa had watched sneak past.
She’d suspected it, of course. But this was pretty close to outright confirmation about at least Batgirl. Mostly likely, that meant that Wayne was Batman here as well. Though it’s at least possible that he was simply funding Batman, instead of being him. Enough other things had been different that she was doing her best to actively avoid making assumptions.
Hmmm. It was a little curious that Barbara was still Batgirl, come to think of it. Alyssa was pretty sure Grayson, who most likely was Nightwing here as well, had moved on at eighteen. Records of his adoption, as well as matches to the original Robin, certainly existed. As did Nightwing, though he was currently out of LA, there being no record of a town called Bludhaven. More, there was no sign of a second Robin ever running around, which she was fairly sure should have happened by now. Too many differences, despite the number of similarities too.
Well, no matter. It was really just another datapoint for the time being, to map out Gotham better with. She had a fair bit more research and prep work to do before she considered getting involved with any of them. Also, it was probably a good thing that she hadn’t ended up using that image or skillset of Barbara anywhere in her build…
... ... ... ... ...
A/N 1: It always sort of annoys me when people handwave 'buy fake ID from underworld.' I mean, in certain settings (like Cyberpunk), that fits well enough. Stupid to trust that the person making it for you won't sell it out just as easily, but conceivable it could work. I've actually put some thought into what you would REALLY need to do in the past, though, and decided I might as well use it here.