It was late, by anyone's standards. The digital clock read 2:30am, and Robin continued his staring match with the open, empty safe that had once housed the remnants of possibly his greatest mistake.
Then again, he made lots of mistakes where Slade was involved. Big ones. His most recent, a failed attempt to earn Slade's trust through thievery and other illegal activities under the guise of Red X, had been the most disastrous. Not only had he lost the trust of his friends and broken the very laws he swore to protect, but now, someone had stolen both the suit and its unstable power source.
His stupidity had put the entire city in danger. Again. Robin sighed and restarted his long derailed examination of the scene of the theft. He may be an untrustworthy idiot, but he was still a detective and a hero, and both of those required that he on up to his mistakes and catch the thief.
The scene had been wiped clean. Dusting revealed no fingerprints, there were no traces of hair, spit, blood, nor any stray pieces of fabric. In other words, Robin had jack-shit to go on.
The pattern of crimes committed by Red X revealed little. Tracing the stolen goods, he saw that most had been sold to the highest bidder—Red X must be working alone and short on cash. What could X be so desperate to get? With the power source for that suit, he would have the energy and the means to do almost anything he pleased, at least until the suit ran out of Xenothium.
Xenothium! That must be it, X must be looking for a refill for his suit. Excited, Robin typed hurriedly, searching the villain database he had spent years helping the Batman put together and hours more hacking into the Batcave's mainframe in order to obtain a copy for himself. Now, the boy wonder thought to himself, who would have both the means to supply Red X with Xenothium, and enough power to ensure that X actually paid for it? Maybe Doctor…
"Robin?" A soft voice from the doorway of his office interrupted his breakthrough. "It is late, and Cyborg asked me to remind you that you still need your rest. He has suggested that you stop for now and resume in the morning with the 'fresh eyes.'" Robin turned towards the Tamaranian girl, mentally preparing to insist that he wasn't the least bit tired, when he suddenly yawned hugely.
"Sure, Starfire," he said, as every exhausting moment from the past forty eight hours seemed to crash upon him at once, "I could use a couple minutes of sleep…" This admission seemed to open the floodgates to all of the hours of sleep he had missed lately, and he pitched forward, asleep before he even started to fall.