Kansas Breakin

Rating: T
Disclaimer: copywrite, DC
Notes: I haven't written anything quite so descriptive and wordy in a long time. Hope it came out okay.

"Me and Dinah had a fight about you."

"Oh?"

Grass crunched under the thick soles of Green Arrow's boots as he paced, eight steps one direction, eight steps back. The night sky was cloudy, with a half-moon descending towards the horizon. Wind whistled through the empty plain to Arrow's left (or right, depending on which direction he was currently pacing) and ruffled the leaves of the lonely little copse of trees over their heads.

"I told her about the aglets, she called you crazy, I said you weren't that bad, then she called me an asshole and left."

Arrow glanced at the Question as he paced. The suited man was sitting crosslegged in the dirt, back to a tree with a small laptop computer balanced on his knees. The soft light from the LCD screen lit up his featureless face, casting back the shadows born from the brim of his fedora, and creating deeper ones in the hollows of his cheeks, eye sockets and nose. Backdropped behind all that, hundreds of feet away and further down a gentle slope, was a large compound of buildings, brightly lit and heavily fenced.

"Huhm." The steady clicking of keys didn't slow for even a second.

Arrow narrowed his eyes, turning to pace his eight steps in the other direction. "Then we went to your room on the Watchtower and had mad, passionate sex on your bed."

Click-click-click went the little keyboard without pause.

"Dinah is pregnant with my child. Twins, actually."

Click-click-click...

"We're going to name one Rush and the other Limbaugh."

"Quiet, please. Trying to work."

Arrow fell silent, but not before letting out a quiet, self-satisfied 'hah'. The green-clad archer continued his pacing for a minute longer, before boredom forced him to break the monotony. "So how many years will this be worth?"

Question cocked his head to the side, stopping to perhaps read something on the screen before him. "Legality is questionable, but is Batman sanctioned."

"Oh, good. I'll make sure to tell that to the cops when we get arrested for trespassing."

Question snorted in almost laughter. "If this place is what I think it is, they wouldn't bother alerting local authorities unless otherwise forced. Guards won't be looking to arrest, they'll be looking to kill. Less complicated that way, with not as many questions."

"Gee Question, you sure do know how to instill confidence into a guy." Arrow finally stopped his pacing, absently fingering the taunt string of the bow thrown over his shoulder. "You almost done with that?"

"Almost." The gloved fingers flew nimbly across the keyboard once more. "Security on their network is quite advanced, so I 'acquired' a laptop from an employee that already has access to on-site wireless."

"'Acquired'?" Arrow smirked faintly, finding himself strangely blasé with the thought of civilian theft, if the one doing the thieving was Question.

"Arthur Blake, age 39. Born in Dayton, Ohio. Father of two, ages eight and eleven. Divorced. Shouldn't report laptop missing until approximately seven hours from now."

"And how do you know that?"

"Blake lives alone, in suburban home far from neighbors. Left Blake tied to chair bolted to floor. Cut phone lines. Disposed of cellphones. Shouldn't be found until children dropped off by mother in the morning."

Arrow wasn't quite so blasé about civilian assault. "Question!"

Question's blank face rose to meet Green Arrow's aghast expression. "I didn't harm Blake, Arrow, and I'll tip the local police anonymously if he is not found by ten in the morning."

Arrow hesitated, still feeling uncomfortable and faintly disturbed. Luckily, he was distracted from any further moral quandaries by the sudden triumphant noise Question grunted from the back of his throat.

"Done. Once I had a foothold into the metaphorical door, it was laughably easy to sneak into their security system. I've just finished disabling locks and alarms along the path to offices we need and set cameras to loop indefinitely. Though in twenty minutes, the system will recycle, and they'll know something up." He rose to his feet, stuffing the laptop into a bag as he did so. Once the bag's strap was settled comfortably over a shoulder and across his chest, Question took off down the hill towards the compound, veering off slightly to the left.

Arrow sighed, and jogged a couple of feet to catch up. "Remind me again why I'm here instead of Huntress? Hasn't she become your usual bodyguard for these kinds of things?"

"Since she's no longer a member of the Justice League, her modes of transportation have become quite limited. She couldn't get off of work long enough to drive to Kansas and back."

"Huh. I've gotten entirely too complacent with instant teleportation."

Question nodded in agreement, and both Leaguers fell silent as they closed in on the last hundred yards to the compound's tall outer fence. They ducked in close to a section of fencing made relatively blind to the area where the scheduled guard was suppose to be patrolling by a largish storage shed about ten yards inside the compound grounds.

Arrow tensed as Question reached out to absently test the fence for electrical current, other hand busy digging through a large trenchcoat pocket for a pair of tin snips. When the faceless man wasn't instantly fried to a crisp, Arrow let out a relieved sigh, absurdly glad they had managed to cut off the electricity to the correct portion of fencing.

The tin snips made quick work at creating a makeshift entrance, and both men slipped inside soundlessly, darting those ten yards to huddle at a corner of the storage shed. Question stared at his watch, and after about a minute of patient waiting, signaled to Green Arrow. The blond haired archer immediately leaned out around the corner, impact arrow nocked and at the ready, just in time to see the patrolling guard's back disappear around a building corner. Arrow wasted no time in sprinting freely across the open courtyard to the nearby two story building, knowing that the cameras he could see mounted high on walls around him had been rendered useless for now. The barely audible sound of flapping trenchcoat tail was the only sign that Question was following right behind him.

Green Arrow took up guard position beside a glass windowed entranceway, glancing back to make sure Question had made it across safely. Question ghosted past him, footsteps strangely nonexistent, and pulled out yet another item from his pockets – this time a plastic keycard Arrow could only assume was also a 'gift' from the unfortunate Mr. Blake. A swipe later, and the door clicked open, Question holding it open as Arrow swiftly entered, loaded bow pointed downward and three fingers curled around the string and the arrow nocked there.

The hallway they entered in was mercifully empty, the building quiet except for the omnipresent sound of climate control. The ceiling lights were on in the hallway, but dimmed in respect to the late time, with all the rooms branching off the hall appearing to be dark.

Green Arrow nodded once, in a sign of readiness, and Question took the lead, Arrow close on his heels.

The hallway lead to another, set at a sharp ninety degree angle, along with a catercornered door. This door they took, and up the stairwell to the second floor, which looked much like the first. Question headed right, down three doors, and into the first door on the left.

It appeared to be a normal office from what Arrow could see in the meager light provided from the hall, with nothing spectacular jumping out at him, but Question headed straight for the sizable wooden desk and the computer upon it. While the computer booted up, Question reached inside the laptop bag at his side and pulled out what appeared to be a decent sized portable hard drive. After that, Arrow quit paying much attention.

While Question did his thing (Green Arrow could access the internet and check his e-mail, but that was about as far as his computer knowledge extended), Arrow finally released the tension from his drawing arm, removing the unused arrow and returning it to the quiver on his back. He closed the office door until it almost latched, waiting until his eyes had adjusted to the near darkness, then started to explore the room more throughly.

It didn't take him long to realize there was absolutely nothing of interest along the walls and in the various drawers, except for a slightly humorous motivational picture dealing with a train and a cliff. He wandered back over to the desk, planted a hip on a corner, and started exploring the brickabrack strewn about the desk top.

Arrow was in the process of trying to decide if the teenager in a framed family photo was actually male or female, when the door swung open. A beam of light cut across Arrow's startled form, and a man stood clearly outlined in the doorway.

In less then a second, Green Arrow had an impact arrow loaded, nocked, and drawn, with the nonlethal but still highly painful end pointed dead center and ready to do business.