Circus Clowns

-heist-

"Fake?" Robin didn't look amused as Beast Boy snatched away the fractured disk and held it up to the like for professional inspection. The changeling looked perplexed as he prodded the thing with a bandaged finger. "It's fake? Red X did all that for a fake disk? What a jerk! If we'd known that we'd have just let him make off with the darn thing. How come the museum didn't tell us they had a stupid decoy?"

Raven jerked her head out of the sink's basin, Starfire at her back with professional hair-care fingers coaxing red goo from her tresses. "Because," she said frostily. "They didn't. Someone got to that disk before Red X even knew it existed –and went through a good deal of trouble to place a decent counterfeit. Good enough to fool even the security director who checked in every night. We wouldn't have known it from the real deal if Red X hadn't chucked it at Robin's head."

The Boy Wonder slanted her an unpleasant look as he twitched the disk back from Beast Boy and she made a show of ignoring him. At her back, Starfire fretted over the girl's tangled mauve hair, looking downright aggrieved.

"Ooh! Hold still friend Raven or I will have to pull your hair from the root. Robin, is there not a solvent for this obdurate muck?"

He peered at the two girls as if he'd never quite seen anything like them before. Raven gave him a very hard stare. The white of the teenager's mask narrowed and Beast Boy tried to make himself small enough to hide behind his tofu burger…failing naturally, but he didn't want to get caught in this battle of the behemoths. The changeling glanced to Starfire whom also looked unnerved by the thickness of tension hanging between their leader and sorceress.

"I'm afraid Red X has adding something to the mix. I haven't the faintest notion how to dissolve it," he said eloquently. His gaze never left Raven's and he leaned back in his chair, gazing at her expectantly.

The sticky heroine looked momentarily appalled, as if punched below the belt. A beat passed and she recovered ungracefully from the underlying insult. "Well I think red's my color!" she hissed from the sink, hunched there like some kind of wicked goblin, baring her teeth. He jerked her fierce stare to Starfire. "Don't you think red's my color?"

Pinned. The Tameranian proceeded to tie her tongue in knots formulating a reply to adequately satisfy both Raven and Robin, sputtering many-a 'err's, 'ooh's, and 'uh's before Beast Boy made a choking gesture. Starfire's gaze traveled slowly to the bottle of soap on the counter…then by some means unknown to man she made a gigantic show of crying, "Well, I'm afraid I don't really –" Then swung her arm out by 'accident' and tipped it off the table. "Oh goodness! I'll get that!"

She dove after it and didn't resurface for a while. Robin chose this distraction to dive back into the business at hand.

"Someone else is involved with all of this. Someone very well connected to have fooled the owners so far ahead of time," Robin said carefully, voice measured as he watched Starfire root around after the elusive dish-soap. She seemed to be missing it repeatedly, green eyes skipping over it somehow as she scurried about on the tile. Beast Boy looked jealous, hiding behind his burger. "It looks like someone is pulling strings. A third party as we suspected, though we can't rule out Red X himself switched the disks to put us off his trail. But we'll have to be more alert to the possibilities."

"These mysterious around the X grow ever more perplexing," agreed Starfire worriedly, finally discovering the soap and standing up. "I am not sure…but to me X seemed afraid tonight. He seemed to be shocked and uncertain. Like a wild creature cornered. He never attacked us so recklessly as he did tonight."

"Yeah," Beast Boy added on, looking earnestly to Starfire. "That guy went bonkers. He was using every trick in the book after Raven hit him."

Robin glanced at the girl in question. "Yes. He did…"

Raven skittered a brief, contemptuous glance his way, but returned her gaze masterfully to the wall. A nonverbal snub. Robin gritted his teeth and looked away from her, a small part of him squirming and squeaking out something like, 'We Don't need this right now! Not with Cyborg gone!' but it got lost in translation somehow. Raven glanced at him again, but he turned his gaze pointedly back to his computer.

Each Titan member had returned home that night with a few more injuries to show than they thought prudent for a four-on-one fight. Beast Boy bruised and a bit charred about the edges, Starfire only mildly battered, being of superior strength and resilience, Raven with a quickly healing concussion (magic was useful, no?) and Robin aching through the belly and forehead. But than again this fight had been off kilter. Everything about it had been skewed. With Cyborg gone no one could deny a certain sense of uncertainty in their fighting tonight; as if some of the power had been stolen from their punch, some edge from their focus as it were. They were all off and it showed.

Raven over compensated for the lack of power by attacking more harshly. This dealt X a dangerous blow, made him panic and act out of sync with the cocky, collected Red X they were so accustomed to. The thief had been overwhelmed by their collective assault, but in the end the tension of his wound make him shoot off his mouth more freely and it had earned him a disjointed split-second to make his get away. Raven must have regretted her move, she was smart enough to see it, and felt a spark of annoyance toward herself. However, Robin's failure as a leader to put aside emotion at a critical moment…

Well, it made her less inclined to trust him with information gained. They were at odds now. Red X was making everything more complicated than need be.

"He was scared," Raven said suddenly to break Beast Boy's background rant about 'crazy ninja stuff'. She closed her eyes as Starfire combed the last of the ooze from her hair. She assumed a familiar stance, eyes closed, contemplating the skull-faced visage of Red X, most likely. "He was scared enough to use all that xinothium during the fight and then he burned excessive amounts to get away from us after he'd fled. He wasn't the one who planted the decoy. Someone else did. I'm certain."

Beast Boy snorted. "And we all know how intuitions about Red X turn out. Painfully. Did you see these bruises?"

"Not through your fur. Now can we try to figure out our next move?" Raven asked while toweling her head dry. "Red X is hurt. Badly from what I can tell and that will buy us at least tonight and tomorrow. Maybe even tomorrow night if he's no good with injuries. The hospitals are on the lookout for deep lacerations along the ribs so he won't go there if he's smart."

Robin stood to his feet and paced a bit, dismissing all personal worries for the moment even as they all scampered mightily about his knees, squawking for attention. Cyborg, Raven, Red X's cryptic words quoting all the way back to the Christmas shenanigans…What was this thief playing at here, if anything at all? What could he possibly know of Slade? No. Not right now. X.

"What's X's next move," he asked aloud, glancing at his remaining team who watched him hopefully. "If Raven's right –," He stopped here as if to imply something but it flashed by too quickly to mean anything for certain. "–then Red X has been out maneuvered by someone and if that's true then we could be looking at a whole new situation. We don't know who's hassling him or why, or if it has anything to do with Peterson's murder. Red X will try one of two things: Run…or attack."

The others exchanged looks.

"The Red X…he will not back down," Starfire said slowly. "He seems to think…he can prove himself innocent."

-heist-

"Clever bastard, eh?"

Bannon kicked his heel against the side of the stone pedestal, winding white medical tape around his slashed side and wincing as sloppy, self-inflicted stitches strained unhappily at the pressure. He spoke through tightly clenched teeth as he tore the final strip from the roll and smoothed it down over the thick swath of gauze. The Titans, he hoped, would never think to look here for him because if they did they wouldn't technically catch him with his pants down, but from the belt up he was baring a bit of skin.

Including his face.

He shivered a little in the cool air of the cave's inner chamber where air breathed in only through the crack in the ceiling and the long winding tunnel that slithered down from the surface to the belly of stone. The Red X suit nested, folded and quiet in the bottom of a green denim shoulder bag Bannon had procured from an open storefront. Various bright shopping bags of unspecified origin stood like empty sentinels about the stone around his feet.

The thief sighed, grunting slightly as he wormed back into his shirt and pulled a name-brand sweatshirt over his tussled head. He paused; frowning a moment, then reached behind the hood and yanked a price tag off the seams. He tossed it in the growing pile of stickers beside Terra's petrified boot, stickers reading 'Medium', 'Large', '$50.99' and other conspicuous things for a teenager who rarely carried a wallet. Who didn't have one presently.

He rubbed the uneven line of stitching, like brail through the tape and gauze over his skin, like he could read some obscure message from the barely wrapped wound along his ribs. Bannon knew what it felt like to be outwitted, outdone or out matched. It didn't happen often but when it did it hurt. He didn't care to forget easily and redo old mistakes, but he felt like he'd done all this before. The ache in his side told him somewhere, somehow, he'd forgotten something and it was coming back to bite him in the ass.

"Blockbuster…" he muttered, leaning his chin into his cupped palms, propping his elbow on his thighs. "He's no Slade, but he's starting to work my nerves." It was impossible to tell whether he spoke to the air or to Terra. "I don't like that he's sending other people to do his work. That he's gathering information on me. Slade was enough. Frankly I don't need another round of this mental, acid-trip psycho-babble."

He paused thoughtfully.

"Or maybe, I'm the one talking psycho-babble…" he mused. "Either way, he's starting to tail my movements closer than I'd like."

Terra didn't have much to say on the subject, preoccupied with whatever infinite secret lay in the stars that peeked through the crevasse overhead. Bannon chewed over the night's proceedings, analyzing it. Then he turned over the previous night's action and did the same for them. He listed quietly the facts, stringing them like silent beads on a thread.

"Blockbuster is angry with me. He doesn't know who I am yet, though. That's good. But he frames me for murder and suddenly starts stealing from WAYNE Enterprises." He paused again to let the beads lie, sparkling in his mind's necklace. "So he's taking highly black ops encryption breakers, one piece at a time. Why? If Blockbuster could steal the second chip, Socio, so far in advance without so much a blink from security then how is it he sends two-bit thieves like Jinx and Gizmo to steal Espia?"

It didn't make much sense. Sense is something he expected Bloclbuster to make as the man had already proved himself a genius in all things criminal. No. He wanted someone to catch Jinx and Gizmo. Why else send them in there like sheep to the slaughter? But who? Who was Blockbuster luring? The Titans?

"Or me?" he said quietly. "And better yet, who's feeding him his information? How does he know so much about me?"

Terra remained thoughtfully silent. Bannon glanced up at her with a despairing kind of grin. "Don't suppose you could step down from there and give a guy a hand?"

'Fraid not.

-heist-

It was blinking. The 'new mail' icon flashed hyperactively in the corner, waving to get his attention. Robin regarded it was a detached sense of interest, wondering quietly how he could possibly answer witty banter from Bandit right now. He could hardly think of clever things to simulate conversation with an empty soup cup. His head ached from the blow delivered by Red X's knee and his mind swirled like a snow-globe, a million bits and pieces randomly falling. He had to anticipate Red X a second time because he'd let his emotion get the better of him at WAYNE Enterprises.

He wondered vaguely if Bruce was going to be hearing about this. He shuddered at the thought and prayed that it would go unmentioned. Nevertheless, he'd gone to Mrs. Miriweather, the security director, and demanded more details on the nature of the two stolen disks. She'd promised to send him the full schematic design. Security protocols didn't apply now that both disks had been stolen. Red X having one disk and some third party having long since stolen the other.

The Titan leader leaned back in his seat, propping his chin in his hand and gazing without seeing at the flashing screen. Everything fell like raindrops, all hitting him at once, drenching him from head to toe in unanswered questions. The longer he sat, contemplating, the more and more he felt like a drowned cat and less like a crime-fighter.

Was Red X working alone? Who was this third party? Was there a third party? Did Raven know something about Red X that he didn't? Perhaps Red X was trying to thrown them of his trail with the fake disk? Was he that clever? Why steal disks? What did they have to do with a dead book-keeper at the marina? Raven knew something! Why didn't X leave Jump? Why hang around and furthermore, who's side was he really on? He stole from the Hive, WAYNE, Soto, private dealers, other criminals; hadn't Doctor Light said something during their last fight about some 'Halloween costume-freak' stealing his power generator as a quote 'night-light'? And why did Cyborg want to pick up and leave anyway!

He groaned and massaged his stinging eyes before hitting the 'Check Mail' option.

The Commissioner had e-mail saying that Kitten and Killer Moth had admitted to trying to destroy the city with earthworms and Kitten had let slip something about a benefactor interested in her father's work, but Moth had shut her up. They were digging into it and further interrogation had revealed little, but they were hoping to –

Robin stopped reading it and scrolled to the next one.

Miriweather had sent in those the design and details for the two disks. The first one, Espia, was the outlet chip as it were. It was the disk that physically joined the structure of other nanotech, merging with their technologies and aligning itself with their system matrix. Apparently, the nature of the disk was black ops and open market only to the military as a means of technological espionage. Extremely sensitive and utterly compatible, it would merge with any nanotech directly exposed to it. This was the disk that Red X had.

The second disk, Socio, was the remote control. Inserted into a computer it would provide an advanced control layout that provided a link to the infiltrated system, thus allowing the owner to control that system depending on its nature. This disk lay in unknown hands and that worried Robin more than Red X's involvement with the first chip.

"Great…any advanced security system in the world will be and open book," he sighed at length.

He closed the entry and scanned the remainder of the in-box. Near the bottom a Subject header read: Homeless Clown. Obviously Bandit's sticky fingers at work on this one, he thought ruefully, clicking on the link and waiting as the dialogue box sprang from the void. Haphazard words bled onto the screen and he casually skimmed the sleepy complaint about being woken up, mocking his screen-name, etc. He must have been exhausted this was more of a rant than anything coher –

He stopped dead.

His body floated there, unmoving for a moment of exquisite horror.

Then he jerked forward in his seat and hunched over the keyboard, eyes running along the sloppy grammar and misspellings. His fingers coiled at the edge of the desk, gloves making faint groans of strained material. The white of his eye-mask narrowed and widened in reaction to the individual words, as if drawing meaning from each one. He read this four times:

Fr: Bandit13 CircusRunaway Whatsyurname,

Thank U so much for the sleeping tips. Since yu e-mailed last night and I was busied I chose to ignore your message. So while Im sleeping suddenly, my comp makes a 'ding' sound and wakes me up to tell me that you've e-mailed me a couple tips on how 2 sleep. Wow. This must be karma for all the cars I've been jacking lately. A couple hundred actually. I guess I deserve this or something, eh, chuckles?

But yu wanna know some weird shit? In high school I used to run X-country a lot…so I'd sleep really well at night…and that has nothing to do with anything. I just suddenly thought about running. Like running away from the circus…what kind of lame-ass name is CircusRunaway anyhow? Makes y' sound like a damn clown and an unemployed one at that. Oh! Weirder shit! The last circus I went to was awful. There was this huge accident and two of the performers died during one of the acts…I'm not sure which one. Good lord, I feel sick. Later.

-Bandit13

Reply Fr: CircusRunaway Bandit13

What was the name of the circus?

-CircusRunaway

-heist-

Author's Note: Apology for the long hiatus, but the Christmas season brought with it no friendly holiday inspiration. But I've got my plotline back and I'm ready to get back on track. Joy! For the few of my loyal die-hard fans still reading my psychotic story, I hope you liked my shaky hand at nervous breakdowns. The mechanics of this story are more difficult to do than I thought they would be. Neh. That's what you get for trying to be realistic. Ja n e!