Volte-Face

Does anyone else find it coincidental that I'm posting the 17th chapter for my 17th birthday?

Thank you…
Moonlit Lightning- Robin? Jerkish? He's just kind of... a prat. Frequently. :)
Xment2bursX- I'm currently laughing too hard from re-reading your review to even think of a coherent response. I love you. xD
BipolarPenguins- You're a very strange child......
A Forgotten Ghost
des-ka
godborn
APurpleAvacado- I highly enjoyed your use of the word "joo-joo." And "cotton." :D
Mutou Yasu
It Ain't Just A River In Egypt- Have I ever said how much I love your name...
Shutter Shades
FREAKSHOW1- Poor communication does worse than kill, it also ruins the possibility perfectly good spaqua romances...
homicidalgummibear
Weeble Wobble Chic
Liyah the Dutchess
Vertical Lie
sleepyjane
Rosalie-wannabe
Itami Yatake- You are too nice. :D
0dd0ne0ut
heavenmidori- You didn't hear this from me.... but chapter eighteen will be up next week. Shh! :)
Bizerko-Kittykins
PyroPixie
Astrum Ululatum- You win this chapter's award for "Being Able to Realize What Carni Wants You To Realize," because you're one of the few so far who sees (or at least, has said in their review) the links between everyone! :D Also, I presume you're a Latin student? (That wins points too. Aves pennae...)
Ivorydrum

Funny story about the reviews last time: I think I got more replies about my Torchwood obsession than the chapter itself. xD

Part I of Carnipalooza 2009. It's starting…!

"It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place."
—Lewis Carroll

It was never a surprise when Wintergreen worked quickly and efficiently to accomplish his master's goals. That's what he was paid to do, and where the money didn't lead him, the loyalty he had to Slade took over. Under his watch tasks were managed, tangibles attained, threats given accordingly.

But it was a surprise when Wintergreen returned to the mansion's library that afternoon with a young woman in tow, just minutes after Slade asked the man to find a psychic.

"Excuse me, Sir," Wintergreen said in his slow, even drawl, sweeping an arm toward the guest. "Allow me to present Miss Ivy Pierce. I believe she has the skills you're looking for."

Slade put down the mechanics book he had been paging through and stepped away from the shelves, hands clasped behind his back. "That was… prompt of you, Wintergreen." The words formed an accolade, but his voice was laced with doubt.

"Sir, I barely left you when there was a ring at the front gate." He nodded toward the woman. "She gave me your name and personal history as well as a verbatim version of your request for a seer. Which, I might remind you, had only just been uttered by you yourself."

Slade raised a brow, the edge of his lips curving up. "A seer who sees her own clients?" he asked, extending a hand to the woman. "Then I suppose you already know what I want you to tell me… Miss Pierce, was it?"

She gave his hand a strong shake and nodded. Now that their eyes had met, Slade felt uneasy about her abilities. Her right iris was normal—a hazel color that was benign, almost bland—but her left iris was black as pitch, with a single white streak forming a vertical radius. By the time his subconscious had barely formed the question, she was already beginning to answer.

"Yes, I'm conceptually blind in that eye," she said evenly, smoothly taking a seat in one of the arranged lounge chairs. "I can see the present with one, and the future with the other. And the past is simply in my memory. It's both a blessing and a curse."

"A curse?" Slade asked, dismissing Wintergreen with his hand. "How so?"

"The future is always changing, based on the shifting opinions and decisions of its participants. Before your servant explained who I was, you were planning on giving him the code word for 'Dispose of her,' and I could see myself dying in my left eye. But as soon as you gained some approval of me, I saw myself being directed to sit down and make myself comfortable." She smiled, watching his expression change to a further degree of unrest.

But Slade didn't notice this smile. "You said you're blind—conceptually. Not physically, but conceptually. Why?"

She thought for a moment. "Imagine two computer screens placed side-by-side. On one, data is scrolling past at high speeds, never stopping, unable to be controlled unless you really put effort into it. On the other, your garden variety television shows are airing. That's how my eyes work. One continually shows the future and can't be accessed unless I focus. The other eye is normal—it sees what you see, at normal speed, with normal color and no subtitles." She smiled again. "I can't see the present with my left eye, that's what makes me conceptually blind. And yes, it's sometimes very tedious. Imagine making love to someone while witnessing their tragic death at the same time. Inconvenient, wouldn't you say?"

Slade cleared his throat, and opened his mouth to speak. But once again, she cut him off with the answer.

"Of course, let's stop the idle chatter and move on. Tell me what you want to know."

He narrowed his eyes. "You already know what I'm going to ask."

She shrugged. "I can tell you several different paths to take, all of them leading to a separate end. When you ask the questions, you're selecting your way, and I can hone in on a specific event as soon as it falls into place. But I believe your main goal is something to do with the boy, Roy Harper, also known as Speedy, member of Titans East Tower."

At that, Slade smirked. "What would be the best step for meeting him?"

She extended her hand to him until he cooperated and placed his hand in hers. Closing one eye—presumably to focus on the future images better—she hummed slightly, her all-black eye twitching, scanning, watching an unrealized scene playing out before her.

Then she let go of his hand and blinked both eyes at him. "Do you have any medical kits on standby?" she asked. "Of course you do; you even keep surgeons and practitioners on standby. Keep enough supplies to mend a sprained wrist and sanitize a few cuts, and keep them within ten minutes of the bend on Interstate 84. A blanket as well," she added as an afterthought.

Slade opened his mouth to inquire further, but she held up her hand to stop him.

"Don't question me. I'll contact you when you should report to the said area."

"You want me to meet him on a cliff in the middle of nowhere?" He massaged the bridge of his nose, sighing. "Titans aren't exactly common in places like tha—"

"Just trust me," she murmured, standing. She shook his hand and smiled. "Besides, I never said he would be on the road. Quite the contrary. You'll be looking at the bottom of the cliff, a young man with a battered motorcycle." Her giggle was almost mocking. "Why do think you need medical supplies?"

Without another word, or even time for Slade to comment, Ivy Pierce swept from the library.

"Wintergreen," the man said quietly. His butler appeared in a doorframe to his left, hands clasped behind his back. "You heard her orders, I take it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Follow them." Slade exhaled a deep breath. "Implicitly."

—

Violet eyes were staring at Roy when he woke up, the deep purple seeping through between dark lashes and juxtaposed against pale skin.

Roy just groaned and covered his head with blankets. It elicited a laugh from the Atlantean, who seemed to be crouched beside the bed with his chin resting serenely on his forearms. Lithe fingers pulled the blankets away from Roy's face easily.

The archer blinked against the light, nuzzling his face into the pillow. Incoherent, he murmured, "If you keep being the first thing I see in the morning… I might get too used to it."

Garth chuckled, bringing Roy a little farther out of his disorientation. "Is that a pick-up line you use often?"

Roy cracked an eye open. "Wha… What'd I say? I can't… remem…" He yawned, burying himself into the covers again.

"Nothing, nothing. And it's not morning. It's practically dinnertime, Sleeping Beauty."

His green eyes flew open, apparently remembering the events of the day. "Did Robin call yet?" he asked, pushing himself onto his elbows. But instead of an answer, Garth put a hand across his forehead for what felt like the fiftieth time in the past day.

"Your fever's gone," Garth announced, granting him a broad grin.

Roy only rolled his eyes. "That's great. Did Robin call yet?"

The prince shook his head, shrugging one shoulder. "But did you really expect him to? He's probably fact-checking whatever you wanted to know. And then fact-checking again, just in case. You know how he is."

Sitting up, Roy squinted at his teammate. He seemed to realize something. "Why are you here? Just… watching me sleep?"

"That would probably count as stalking. No, nothing creepy like that," Garth laughed. "Karen and the twins went out for pizza. Menos was too hungry to wait for you to wake up."

"M'sorry."

"You're sick—that's nothing to apologize for. I stuck around to make sure you ate something decent." He drummed his fingers on the mattress and gave Roy a brilliant smile. "Hungry?"

"You want to go out to eat." Roy groaned and rubbed his eyes once more. "I'm just so tired…" He pulled the blanket over himself, head on the pillow again, eyes closed. But then he cracked one green eye open when Garth's hand found its way into his hair, tenderly mussing the red-orange strands.

As much as Roy hated to admit it, Karen's analysis of their interactions was absolutely right. Especially then, looking intently into a violet gaze, allowing pale fingers to tug affectionately in his hair, Roy could see how the way he and Garth acted around each other might be misconstrued as blatant flirting. Which, he considered, it might be—but only one-sidedly. Of course Garth didn't think anything of it. This was just a close friendship on his part, and Roy fully intended to keep him in the dark about any other possibility.

He was yanked from the feeling of total contentment when his communicator began beeping. Garth was already halfway to the door by the time Roy could even reach for the noisy device, probably to give him privacy. The T-comm display read Call from: D. Grayson, and somehow those few words made Roy's anxiety flood back in one enormous wave.

"Robin?" he answered. Garth stopped in the doorway, clearly curious about Dick's news; Roy idly beckoned him back into the room.

"Roy, get out of your room."

The gravity of the sentence made Roy clamber out of bed and grab Garth by the wrist, leading him hurriedly into the hallway. "What's going on?" he asked.

The indisputable tone gave another order: "Go to the garage."

"Dick, tell me what's going on," Roy said slowly, but he obeyed. "Why do we have to—"

"I need you out of the Tower. Right now. All of you."

"Karen and the twins are already out—"

"Fine," Dick said, still calm and cold. "Take Aqualad and get out."

The elevator doors were pinging open at the garage level. As Roy led the way toward the team's jet-black so-called 'town car,' he gestured for Garth to get inside. "Dick, what the hell's going on?" he asked as soon as the keys were in the ignition.

"Drive away from the Tower."

"Where are we supposed to go?"

"Just drive." Then the click of a severed connection elicited a string of low oaths from the archer. He snapped the T-comm shut and threw it in the backseat, at first too distracted by driving to notice Garth's uneasy expression.

"What's going on?" Garth finally asked. They were on the mainland by now, closing in on downtown Steel. Roy was going too fast on the deserted highways, ignoring signs that he deemed arbitrary, speeding even around the treacherous area of so-called Devil's Curve.

"What's going on?" Garth asked again. "What did Robin say?"

When the archer didn't reply this time, Garth leaned forward to get a better look at his face. An intense scowl clouded his features, drawing dark lines into his forehead.

Garth recoiled back into his seat in surprise when Roy's hand shot out, grabbing the car's cellphone from the front console. "I'm calling Raven," he growled, throwing the Atlantean a dark look. "I don't like this."

"Why? What did Rob—"

"Raven?" Roy said into the phone after a moment, then he attached it to the sound system. "You're on speakerphone. What is Robin trying to pull?"

"What do you mean?" she asked. "Where are you?"

"We're in the car, going into the city—"

"Wait, I'm confused. 'We'?"

"Hey, Raven," Garth said.

There was a pause from the other end, and then she made a brief noise of amusement. "I see."

"Listen, where's Dick?" Roy asked, ignoring her reaction. He knew she wanted to make a comment about his car companion, but that had to wait. "He just called and made us evacuate the Tower, all of us."

This time, the silence on the line was foreboding. "I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Roy snapped, "He tells you everything—and you can sense anything he doesn't say."

"No, really," she muttered, distracted. There was the clacking sound of a keyboard in the background. "He left the Tower in a rush a little while ago. Around twenty minutes ago, according to the security feeds. Did he say why he wanted you out?"

"Of course not. Apparently none of you can tell me anything these days, even if it pertains to me. No—especially when it pertains to me."

"Hey," she said quickly, "I don't know why he left either." Then, after a moment, "I'll figure this out. In the meantime, did he say where to go?"

"Away from the Tower, that's all," Garth supplied. His eyes were glued to Roy's hands on the wheel—his fingers where quivering; either with rage or something else, he didn't know.

"Then just go to a café or something until I call you." Another click ended the phone conversation, and the dial tone emanated throughout the car.

Roy returned the phone back to its compartment and sighed, tightening his grip on the wheel.

"Want me to drive?" Garth offered.

"No."

"Want… to go downtown? There's a little French place I go to sometimes…" He gave a placating smile. "If you're hungry…?"

—

Robin had turned off his communicator, cell phone, and even the emergency locator signal built into the sole of his boots. But in his haste, he made a clumsy error and had forgotten about the R-cycle's location indicator.

He never caught the mishap, but Raven figured it out as soon as she noticed the empty R-cycle parking spot. It took her only moments to track its location: Titans East Tower. From there, she rebooted East Tower's mainframe—Robin had shut it down—and scanned the place for heat sources. The Boy Wonder was in Speedy's bedroom, apparently pacing the perimeter of it.

So that's the room where Raven materialized from the floor, transitioning from her shadow form with a sigh. "What in Azar's name are you doing?" she asked curtly.

Robin tensed but didn't step moving. His eyes were roving the walls, his hands sifting through every trinket, picture frame, bookshelf and fixture he could find.

"What are you looking for?" She crossed her arms. "And why did you kick them out?"

"They would've asked questions, and I couldn't have given answers. It has to do with Slade."

Now Raven became tense. Her eyes darkened and she joined Robin, walking next to him and watching him work. "What do you know that I don't?"

"There are cameras in here. Bugs, too. He hired someone." Dick nodded at a near-invisible pile of wires and discs. "I found some of them already. I should've gotten an exact number when I asked."

"Asked who?"

"It doesn't matter who." He read into her dubious tone, and added, "But he's reliable." He could feel her trying to pry his mind for an image of this source, but he put up mental walls, and ignored her harrumph of protest when she finally gave up.

"Now," he said after a few minutes, "it shouldn't matter if there are a few left—I took them out with one of Cy's sonic interrupters, so they shouldn't function. But even so, I'd feel better if we scoured every inch of the place, just in case he was using stronger equipment than I anticipated." He looked at her sideways. "Wait, did you talk to them? How did you know—"

"Speedy called me from their car."

Dick's forehead creased. "Did you tell them anything?"

"I told them to lay low at a restaurant until I called back. I can't tell them what I don't even know…"

Nodding, he stepped toward the center of the room with his hands on his hips, looking around, completing a mental checklist of possible camera locations. When he was satisfied, he scooped the tiny pile of devices into one palm.

"What will you do with those?" Raven lifted one of the discs—it was black, and no bigger than the eraser at the end of a pencil. "Incinerate them?" She dropped it back into his hand.

"I was thinking I might put them into water, to make sure they've shorted out, and then break them apart, and then I'll incinerate them…" He smirked. "You can never be too thorough, after all."

This chapter was actually really impossible to write, because 1) a lot happens, but only a lot of little things, and 2) those little things contain ridiculous amounts of foreshadowing. Oh, the foreshadowing...

Comments? Predictions? Concerns?