Now let's see what DaddyBats is doing about all this. X3

11

Batman crept into the rundown apartment he knew Red Hood and Red Robin were using to meet in. He suspected something was wrong with both of the former Robins if they were working this much together behind his back. Though Bruce's door was open to Jason if he changed his ways (he had mellowed out over the past couple years), he was still rather upset with Tim. Sneaking around like this, blowing off his assignments, this was not how he behaved. Personally he blamed it on the lad's time on the Uthernet, the programming there making all its users more aggressive. He hoped staying away from the cowl for a while would bring him back to earth, back to a stable mind frame, but he was teaming up with Jason and ignoring all of Bruce's phone calls.

Something was seriously wrong.

Unfortunately, Dick seemed completely uninterested in helping him find out what. Said it was a 'breach in the brother contract' if he told him anything, if he knew anything. The young man seemed to be pleased with Tim for some reason too, as if he succeeded in getting him to do something. Working with Jason like this couldn't be that though.

Bruce had asked Alfred if he knew what was going on but the butler strictly said there was a time when young men simply did not talk to anyone unless they wanted to. Even after nearly twenty years, the man was upset with him taking off to train around the world. Asking him to find out what was going on wasn't going to work.

He already had Oracle trying to keep tabs on them, but Tim knew how to circumvent her systems. She could only get so much on them, but she did tell him about a 'John Blake' who was rumored to be buying up warheads and missiles in order to use them as scraps as fast as possible. His method of payment and targets were similar to the ones she and Tim used in order to do undercover work, so Blake's accounts were being followed. Red Robin was quite a busy bee, but that was all they could get.

The other girls were too busy with their missions to be bothered and Damian simply didn't care. Other than throwing insults around, he would not accept Tim or Jason as any part of his family. Stubborn kid didn't even realize that his position was more fragile than theirs because they fought to keep it while he just assumed his would always be there.

Mentally sighing, he pushed it all aside to see what these two were up to. The room itself was small and hardly lived in. It was more of a crash pad than an apartment, a place to recuperate, talk, then take off. The bed was made and everything was in place, but a thin layer of dust covered everything. Neither young man had been there in a couple days.

Batman's eyes narrowed. This did not bode well to him. Carefully he swept the room, looking for any sign of what they were doing. The trashcan had scraps of transcripts and invoices, giving detailed locations and purchases, but all of them were old. Looking through them, he realized these were everything John Blake had handled already, a closed part of the case. Useless.

Returning them to their place, he put on the thermal lens on his cowl and looked around. In order for Tim to continuously scramble his and Hood's conversations, he'd need a constantly running computer system. Since he couldn't find a tower around there, he could only assume... There, under the floorboards near the central cooling system. Within minutes Batman was taking an active laptop out from beneath the wood and waking it up.

It didn't take long to crack the log in password on the computer, but that was the easiest part. There were folders ever present on the desktop (which featured a swimsuit model on a motorcycle, probably courtesy of Jason's tinkering), but each and every one of them were locked. Time locked even. They could not be opened for at least another week, and only if another constant program was shut off. That program was what was scrambling the communications signals the Reds were using, and hacking that would take a while. Tim's programming skills were at least on par with Barbara's.

The part that confused him most was the file names. Each were labeled 'FAILSAFE', then had a member of the crime fighting community's alias next to it. The only ones he'd have thought would be there for some kind of failsafe, but weren't, were Superman and Wonder Woman. Curiosity alighted, the detective tried to open or analyze the programs, but could only get a little more information.

The file meant for him was the largest. Second largest was for Jason and third for Aquaman. Why the king of the sea was a large part of his 'failsafe' was beyond him. They only met a handful of times. The file for Damian was quite small but an added tag for 'URGENT' was next to it. Dick's was around the same size as Barbara's, but they weren't key players in whatever plan Tim had cooked up.

Growling to himself, he folded the computer shut and took it with him. Tim had jerry-rigged the thing so it couldn't be turned off and his scrambling program would remain active. The battery would work on its own for several weeks. Damn kid was a genius.

Looking around the place one last time, he headed out. He had other things to worry about. One of which was finding out who broke nearly every bone in Joker's body and flopped him in front of police headquarters with his larynx severely damaged the previous night. As much as he liked the idea of Joker not being trouble for a while, he did not like the brutality that came with his capture.

"Hey B! Got some news for you."

Oracles voice over the coms had a brighter side to it that night. Something good must have happened. Shooting off a line, he gave a grunt to show he was listening. The woman continued. "Harley turned herself in! Apparently she's worried someone's going to kill her precious Mr. J and she needs to protect him."

"Joker in protective custody?"

"Protection and coma. No one's seeing him out of the hospital for at least two months, probably longer. Arkham'll have him once he can breathe on his own." Dark humor filled her voice. "Any idea who saved us from the big bad clowns?"

"Some."

"Care to share?"

Batman cut the line for his answer, eyes narrowing in thought. One possibility stuck out to him, but what would Joker and missiles have to do with Jason and Tim? And where were those two? Things did not look well to him. Not in the slightest.

A/N: So joker is out of commission! Harley is with him too. Two guesses who did what. Bruce is still in the dark, but not for very long. He's suspicious at the very least, and this kinda explains why Timmy was in exile too. really think the Uthernet messed him up a bit while he was recovering from everyone's deaths and revivals. That led to Boomerang. Fun theory at least. Well, until tomorrow! ^^V