Starfire picked up Robin, leaving Jan to fend for herself. Being almost five floors up, she knew it was ridiculous to just jump down. She wondered for a moment how she was going to deal with these people with superhuman abilities. She was not on their level. But then her thoughts went to earlier comments. Robin relaying how she had forced down Cinder Block with her sheer strength, Starfire describing how she had manipulated the metal pieces in the warehouse, and Red X, telling her she was a many-faced thief. Jan didn't remember any of this, but she figured there had to be truth to some of it. Perhaps instinct would help her?
Jan leaned over the edge of the building, examining the height. She saw a streak of light all down the building. The entire side of it was made of windows. The girl remembered the mirror in the hospital room. Then, without thinking much, she jumped.
A part of her was frightened that she had just created her own death. But a calm overtook her, and Jan's feet touched the windows. As if taken over by an overwhelming habit, her body shifted to a position of someone who was unconcerned with the fact that she was sliding down the side of a building. She noticed her feet were on the windows as if they were the ground. As she came closer to the pavement, she willed herself to slow down, and she stopped three feet from the pavement. Hands in pockets, she stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up to see a mix of expressions. Some were impressed, others assured, and still others had their mouths gaping (Beastboy).
They got into the car, Starfire flying this time, and drove off to their new spot. There was another thievery at a bank. This time it was someone called Doctor Light. He looked like a man who had gone through his middle-aged crisis and come out of it by dressing up like a light bulb. He wasn't all that bright, either. The light bulb on his head lit up, but there wasn't actually a connection.
The light bulb seemed to circulate the power that Doctor Light was using to repel the Titans. Jan, remembering her earlier interactions with glass, flexed the glass so hard two minutes into the fight that the bulb shattered. Very suddenly, the whips and devices that Doctor Light had went dark. Only some of the Titans seemed to realize immediately what happened, but it certainly made the arrest very quick.
On the way back, Jan was feeling rather proud. She got praised for her help. Beastboy asked how she had slid down the building like she had. He was disappointed, though, because Jan couldn't explain it. She had to shrug and say she just did it.
By the time they got to the tower, Robin seemed deep in thought, but he accepted suggestions from the team. Jan was surprised to hear they were interested in seeing just how good she was by having her train with them. There was no mention of her becoming a part of the team, but she had certainly caught their attention.
"What was it that you wanted to talk about?" Robin asked as they were exiting the garage.
"Oh, right." Jan remembered.
She felt her cheeks heat up just a bit. How would anyone take this? Then she had to consider that this was Robin and a team of crime fighters that she was talking to. Would it spoil things if she told them she was supposedly a thief? Maybe she should just gloss some things over… If she could.
"X said some strange things after I was kicked into the building." Jan continued.
"You shouldn't always trust what a thief says."
"Right." Jan said a bit nervously. "Well, he said things like 'your roots are showing' and stuff. X seemed to know something about who I was before."
Robin took in what Jan would call surprisingly well. He did not freak out or narrow his eyes at her, though he did look at her with consideration for a couple of moments. Afterwards, he kept pondering the subject and headed to his room.
"Is he always like that?" Jan asked Cyborg while she sat at the stool next to the kitchen.
"Only when there's something important going on through his mind."
Jan wondered if it was because of her. She was more nervous than before, she noticed. But she couldn't do much about it, to be honest. Leaving would just place any kind of blame on her at this point, especially if Robin thought she was a thief. Still, if she were a thief before she lost her memories, then that would make her the person who was supposed to take the item from before, right? What happened between her and Slade, then? Did she take something he wanted? Did she do it to spite him? They couldn't be allies.
"Something wrong? You're looking pretty intense, yourself." Cyborg said, turning to Jan.
"Oh, I'm just a bit bothered. Red X said some strange things."
"You shouldn't listen to him." Cyborg said dismissively. "You're a new person here. It'd be a great opportunity for him to set us off-balance."
For some reason, this made Jan laugh.
"I'm not exactly a part of the team." She reminded him. "I'm just here until Robin can figure out whether I'm friend or foe, right?"
"No. Even if you were a thief then, you don't remember it now. We just want you to know where you're going before you leave."
"But I already told you-" Jan started, making vague hand movements.
"Something more specific than that." Cyborg continued, raising his voice above hers.
"Oi, Cy!" Beastboy shouted suddenly as he jumped into the living room. "Come play some games with me! I'll get that record this time, for sure!"
"Oh, you're on, little man!" Cyborg exclaimed, leaving Jan to her thoughts.
Robin sighed. He leaned on the evidence table, his gloved hands spread on the flat surface. He raised his head to glance around at all the things that coated the walls of the room- newspapers, evidence, and such to remind him what was and what is a threat. Slade was everywhere in here. He was still at large, but something else might be closer to home.
The subject of thought today was Jan. Robin picked up a small blade from the table. It was one of the few pieces of evidence he had from the multi-faced thief theory. He had scanned it thoroughly earlier, and everything had shown it was just a regular metal knife. So someone had needed to be able to manipulate its properties in order to make it do something like explode. This was exactly what Jan had done in the warehouse the other day, or so he had heard.
He was well aware that he had a tendency to get obsessive about things that eluded him, and he was certain this was not obsession. He had an inkling of what might have happened, and the more he thought about it, the more things made sense. This wasn't some far-fetched idea, like when Slade had managed to make him hallucinate after he was dead.
Before the Titans met Jan, they had come up with the multi-faced thief theory. Right after, there were three thieveries from different thieves in the same night. As Robin thought about it, it wouldn't be impossible for a single person to do all of that, though the timing would be very tight. After that, Jan appeared at the party celebrating the museum and research center. Anti-social actions aside, from what Robin now believed to be a moderately social person, Robin had never fully believed her story.
Now that Robin contemplated it, he realized that several of the thieves in the past six months used the same powers in different forms. He thought of the woman who took a thumbdrive of information. She had made her knives explode, as well as manipulated the windows.
"But if the three from that one night are all the same, how did she get into the wall vaults?" Robin muttered aloud.
The small holding boxes in the wall had been a security measure that no one but a select few had known about. They had been testing it. And then the thief came. Robin would bet anything that how the thief found that wall box would reveal a key part to her abilities. It would have to be something that would allow her to bypass appearances and regular restrictions. Perhaps it was a simple quality of the things she could see?
Robin examined the blade again. He set it down and viewed the rest of the items he had kept from the interactions he strongly believed were the same thief. They all gleamed back at him. Surely something that simple couldn't be it. So he dismissed the idea and stood up, his eyes moving to the vault in the wall.
The next problem was Red X. This thief had been a pain in Robin's neck ever since he had somehow managed to steal the suit. X seemed to know something about Jan, and Robin felt Jan hadn't said everything about their small conversation. But Robin wouldn't be able to question Red X about Jan unless X was caught… The more he thought about it, the more catching X, even for only a small while, seemed the solution to some of his problems.
The golden apple of the situation, of course, was that finding out more about Jan would lead to her connection with Slade. If Robin could figure this out, he would be able to find Slade again. Then he could end that tyrant's threat to Jump City.
Jan was just reaching her hand into a bag of chips when Robin entered the living area. He strode in with a purpose, and when Jan glanced about, she found that the others, Beastboy, Cyborg, and Starfire, were paying attention. They knew him well enough to know something was going on, Jan assumed. She wondered what it was. A guilty thought wondered if it was about her.
"Where's Raven?" Robin said.
Just then, the door hissed open behind him and Raven floated in, a book in front of her.
"Good." Robin said promptly. "Now, listen up. I've decided we should focus on catching Red X."
"And how are we going to do that?" Beastboy said skeptically.
"Yeah. No matter how many times we go up against the guy, he kicks our butts with your weapons and then disappears."
His weapons? Jan paid closer attention, trying to figure things out.
"What we need is some way to lure him in." Robin pondered, starting to pace.
"An expensive object?" Starfire suggested.
"Maybe."
"He'd see it from a mile away." Raven sighed, walking to the couch.
"Well, he is quite the flirt." Starfire fumed.
"Would you be able to-" Robin started, a startled look on his face.
"I WOULD NOT!" Starfire exploded, her hair seeming like it was on fire.
"Ok…" Robin assured her in a soft voice.
"She's already denied him once already, right?" Jan said, drawing on the recent stories she heard about Red X.
"Yeah. I guess he wouldn't fall for it after that." Robin sighed.
"I could do it." Jan said before she had even thought about it. The intense look that she got back made her blush and look down at the floor. "Red X is a flirt, and we've only met once. I haven't made that much of an impression, considering I wasn't much help in the fight. I might be able to manipulate that."
Carefully, she looked up again. The people in the room were considering it. Starfire was still angry in a corner. Raven's look was steady as always. Cyborg had a slight frown on, and Beastboy huffed a sigh.
"That wouldn't be any more use than putting a shiny object in an abandoned room." He said.
Jan shrugged.
"Maybe. But he's probably expecting that. He thinks he knows me from somewhere. I might be able to use that, too."
"He knows you?" Beastboy suddenly, sat upright, shocked.
"Weren't you paying attention earlier?" Cyborg said, shaking his head.
"Alright. If we tried this, how would you get close to him?" Robin asked.
"I'm not sure." Jan replied, choosing her words carefully. "But I know he wouldn't trust me if I was just a friend of the Titans."
"I don't think he would trust you even if you weren't." Raven said flatly, acknowledging his highly distrusting nature.
"He might be able to relate better to another thief." Cyborg suggest. Jan thanked him in her head.
"Relate, yes. But trust?" Starfire put her opinion on the table.
"If there are other suggestions, I would really appreciate them." Jan said with a nervous smile. "I don't even know if I can steal anything properly."
Vents were tight, unyielding places. You couldn't turn around properly in them, and if you had to go through an air vent that was connected to a room, you had absolutely no space to even turn your head. It was hard to get into most of them, and Jan's least favorite part was getting out. They were very noisy, being only made of thin sheets of metal, but they still provided themselves to be the best unwatched pathways through most buildings.
Following the schematics brought her above the room. It was scattered with different types of jewels on podiums and covered by glass, which she could see from the vent. She couldn't see the one she was after from here, though. It should be in the southwest corner.
"You're weak." Echoed a voice from nowhere. Jan shook it off, and the image of someone walking away with it. As much as she wanted to know who she was, she didn't want it to get in the way of this job. And suddenly, this vent was more stifling than before.
Jan lifted the vent cover and set it across from the hole. Slowly, she lowered herself down through the hole, making sure to bend her body so that, eventually, she was holding herself parallel with the ceiling. Extremely glad of the gloves she was wearing, Jan reached onto her head and pulled down a set of glasses. Looking down again like this, she saw the little red lasers that were guarding the jewels from theft. Examining them a bit further, she saw the hole in the system.
She had to extend her arms somewhat and tuck in her legs so that she wouldn't hit the topmost layer of lasers. Then she swung a little bit, and let go, spinning in the air so that she could land in the only hole in the system. She paused for a second, listening hard as she crouched there. No sound but her heartbeat seemed to be there, so she stood partially, analyzing the lasers further for a moment.
Jump, crouch, slide across the floor. She ducked and weaved her way through the patterns that crossed their way about the room. Thank goodness her amnesia did not leave her without the grace and precision she had been previously capable of. Robin had helped her, of course, to master it a bit better. But if she blew this and touched a single laser… Well, it was safe to say that Robin had not set up this thievery.
It wasn't that Jan did not trust Robin, nor that she was trying to take advantage of his trust. She knew that if she were caught here, Robin would be all over her for doing something she didn't tell them about. But Jan did not believe that Robin's methods would win X over. If the Titans were there every time to let Jan slip just out of their reaches, it would seem just as suspicious as them never being there. Jan had to compensate for the times the Titans would be there.
She made it to the southwest corner. Pausing in a small area clear of lasers, she looked around again. Now she could see her prize. It was a clear stone encasing a small bit of metal. This metal, though not yet formally named, was scanned by scientists in order for them to synthesize a copy metal. Jan, realizing her affinity for shiny objects, decided a piece of this extra-strong metal might just suit her fine.
She jumped over to it, taking every care to not touch anything. Once she stood before it, she felt as if the easy part had just been finished. Jan stripped her hands of the tight-grip gloves and shoved them onto her belt. Then she took a small, sharp metal disk from a compartment in her belt. She took its edge and carved a hole in the glass casing, and then reached in with both hands, feeling like a person manipulating some radioactive substance. Only she was missing the gloves.
Carefully, Jan grabbed the metal that looked like it had been frozen in amber. The sharp disc was placed carefully under the frozen metal, replacing its spot on the pressure plate. Despite the disk's small shape, it was extremely heavy, and easily took the place of Jan's prize.
As Jan pulled away carefully, she was surprised to know that the metal was about as light as she thought the casing would be on its own. She looked at it for a moment in wonder before a glint caught her attention. Jan looked, and immediately felt like a bad child. She saw a beautiful jewel, opaque in appearance, which only drew her in more. Maybe just one more object wouldn't make a difference.
The opaque jewel was right next to her podium, and it was easy enough to slip to the side. She examined the casing and how it was set up. There were a series of wires connected to it, each one probably monitoring something. After a couple of moments, she figured she knew which one she needed to cut, and pulled out a quarter from her pocket. Using her ability, she smoothed the edge with her thumb to make it sharp and then cut a hole in this glass, too. She was careful to put the round piece of glass down where the lasers wouldn't sense it. Then she reached in with both hands again. One hand held the required wire, and the other made a quick series of motions to cut it.
She paused once the wire snapped. The room was still as quiet as before, but if anyone had seen her on the cameras, they would be coming down the halls now. So, quickly, she grabbed the jewel and took a small moment to examine it.
Glancing up, Jan could have sworn her heart froze for a second. She could see herself in what was left of the glass. The shirt and pants, as black as the rest of her outfit, were tightly fit to her body. There was a simple pull-over mask on her face, not as tacky as the standard ski-mask, but showing others rudimentary reflective lenses in the place of eyes and no mouth at all. She was about to shove both her prizes into the half-jacket's inside pockets when she saw the reflection of a masked figure in the glass, standing somewhere behind her. Sharply, Jan turned. She wondered at her sanity for a moment, because there was no one there.
Well, no matter. She needed to get out, anyways. Carefully, but quickly, she made her way back to the vent system, replaced the vent cover, and then took the short route to the outside. Jan dropped quietly onto the outside landing. This view was really quite beautiful. She was running along, about to make it to the exit point, when someone in a black suit dropped down in front of her.
Yes, this job was done in order to catch Red X's attention. It was still surprising to see X right there in front of her, his half cape, looking tattered at the edges, blowing in the slight breeze from this height. He made a self-confident noise, and then chuckled at Jan.
"You didn't think you could take my jewel and get away with it, did you?" He said, his ego just radiating off of him.
"I believe I already have." Jan replied, feeling the voice changer tickle. A costume just hadn't felt right without it, and she didn't want X to recognize her voice anymore than she wanted the Titans to.
"Is that what you think?" X chuckled again.
Jan glanced around as the warning lights began flashing red. From a distance, she could hear the alarms from the inside. Jan laughed too, finding this funny for some reason. In fact, it made things just a little bit more fun. Now she'd have to compete with him and the law enforcers posted in this building.
"Just when I thought I would get away clean."
"Hand over the jewel, and you can get away without much fuss," the boy said, holding out his hand as if things had already been decided.
"I'm a thief, not a kid." Jan lectured before deciding on something that would get anybody's attention- she jumped off the building.
It was another one of those skyscrapers. The city was full of these, and Jan quite enjoyed them. They made for excellent escape routes. To Jan's surprise, however, X appeared in front of her. He teleported in, lounging as if he were laying on a couch instead of falling from a tall building.
"Look, you're cute," he started without any real conviction, "but I want that gem."
"You mean this one?" She said innocently, pulling it out from her coat. Then she shoved it down her shirt.
"Don't tempt me." X warned. "I'm not afraid of doing anything to get a job done."
Jan tried out a girlish giggle, which might have been whisked away in the wind, and then turned in the air, adjusting herself so that she was speeding towards the windows. X tried to follow her, and just as she was reaching toward them, she felt his hand on her ankle. Now, if she went through the glass, he would go with her, so Jan was forced to crash through, and the two rolled along the ground until they managed to land in a crouch.
The easy thing for Jan to do at this point was head for the window again. But she couldn't do that at the chance that X would follow her. He reached to his belt to pull out a few Xs, which were thrown at her like throwing stars. Jan, miffed that she'd have to play with him for a little while, dodged while she began to worry. The alarm here was going off, so there was no doubt that the Titans would have their alarm going off as well. She could waste no time if she wanted to convince them it wasn't her. Guilt, and a fear of being chewed out by Robin, pushed Jan closer to X.
She had noticed, once before, that Robin and X looked similar when they were fighting. Now, she was strongly reminded of her training sessions with Robin as X's leg swooped over her head. As she came up again, a barrage of punches came at her, and she fended them off swiftly, adding in a kick of her own, which caused X to jump back. He grabbed for something at his belt again.
"I'll give you one last chance to hand it over nicely." his disguised voice said in mock kindness.
"I wish people would learn to stop giving me chances." Jan found herself saying, and then wondered at her own words.
"Oh well." Red X said happily, and then threw something at her feet.
She wasn't fool enough to look down. Instead, she tried to retreat as fast as she could, but the bright light that her arm was shielding her from was accompanied by an explosion, and she almost tripped over herself. The hesitation gave X the time to run up to Jan. Out of pure instinct, she swiped aside his strike and threw her palm against his stomach. A smoke bomb of her own allowed her to separate herself from him. Taking the moment X would need to reassert himself, she sprinted for the windows. In the reflection, she saw him just make it out of the white cloud, policemen entering through a doorway that was being kicked down. Then she jumped through, and rolled expertly in her own room.
Shieb: Dynamic exit! Way to go, Jan, you're finding your thieving self again. I'm sure everyone's happy about this. Well, except for Robin, but he's being kind of a stiff. :/ And don't worry about Slade, he'll be showing up.