Bounty Hunting - The Mysterious Case of the Mysteriously Green Mystery Goop

[umadrobin]

WHO: Red X, Raven
WHAT: FISC accepts the contract for the mysterious green goop.
WHEN: Sunday, February 22, all day long.
WHERE: All over Nova City.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update this if it changes.

Red X was perfectly suited - no pun intended - to collect a sample of the goop. With the gloves being designed to channel and shield against a highly dangerous (and possibly radioactive) material like enriched xenothium, there was no chance of the goop making contact with his skin, though he'd need to decontaminate it later. Red X knelt down near a pile of it in an alleyway in Nova City, and slipped it into Raven's old Titans communicator to be analyzed; thanks, Cyborg for making that upgrade, what felt like years ago to both of them.

Red X - going under the alias of 'Jack Ulysses' for the purposes of this business - handed the communicator to Raven, ensuring there was no residue left on the device. "What do you think?" he asks, his voice obscured by the mask's electronic modulator. "Doesn't look like any sort of 'truth serum' I've ever seen. Too viscous, and no sane drug company would spill it like this and then refuse to clean it up."

He stood up, wiping his gloves off on the of the paper towels they'd brought, and tossing it into a marked bag that would later be incinerated. "What do we know about that 'private contractor?' What's their stake in this guy?"

Four times as much as the local authorities? That just screamed 'cover-up' to him. Still, this was Red X - he and Raven may have been together for almost three years, dating back as many worlds they'd been to together not counting their own, but he still made no illusions that he saw himself as any sort of hero. That was why they chose this line of work, after all. Raven could continue to fight crime, and Red X was in it for the money. He didn't have to pretend to be something he wasn't. After all, Raven wouldn't have wanted him to do that, anyway.

"That's a lot of money for discretion. I bet they know who this guy is, and where he's getting this stuff." He looked down at the goop again, raising one of his gloves, the X glowing. "And if I remember correctly, they never said anything about wanting the goop, too."

Comments

[feel_nevermore]

Raven - also know as Joyce Poe, the co-owner of the FISC - took her communicator back and frowned at it. "Brilliant. Another Mad Scientist on the loose." She paused, pondering what he said about the private contractor. "Or maybe Frankenstein's creature is the one on the loose." And the private contractor in question actually was Frankenstein. A Mad Scientist who lost control of his creature. This day was just getting better and better, right?

"I think we should try and find out more about this contractor, one way or another." She wasn't suggesting confronting them. She had a better self-preservation instinct than that. Yet she believed in keeping your friends close, and your enemies even closer. "Maybe if we do this for them, they might want to become a regular customer." And by knowing what they were interested in, Raven and Red X might find out what they were up to.

"Why do you think it's a guy?" But she just shrugged, discarding the question. Of course he'd think the evil mastermind was a 'he'. She glanced at him as the X started glowing. "I'd suggest we still let the authorities have some of it. In case it's ever used against the population. Though I doubt they'll reward us for just the goop." Which implied she approved of Red X keeping some of the substance too. Truth serum could always come handy, you never knew.

[umadrobin]

"Someone made that? Out of what?" He knew xenothium was an artificial compound, of course, but this? Truth serum and other forms of narcoanalysis weren't exactly unheard of, but this seemed a little too convoluted to be practical. There had to be a reason for all of this stuff just laying around.

He nodded in agreement. "This isn't an accident. Nobody loses this much product and leaves it laying around unless they had something to gain from it. I can tell just by looking at this stuff that it ain't cheap." He could see where she was going with that; Raven was more shrewd than most of the other Titans. Beast Boy and Starfire wouldn't come up with a scheme on their own, and Robin was too rash and prideful to do the bidding of a shadowy organization in hopes of getting close to him. Also, he tried something similar before. Twice. Red X existed because of it. It was unlikely that Robin would ever try it again; there's that old saying about the definition of insanity, after all.

The thief blinked, and looked back at Raven as she asked that. True, it was a poor choice of words. They knew nothing about their mystery culprit. Jumping to conclusions was a bad idea.

He lowered his hand, and sighed. "You'd think they'd at least have a hazmat team out here to get some of it off the streets. I always asked myself why the cops in Jump City were so useless. Now I know why: They get lazy when there's people like you doing their jobs for them." The 'and I' after the 'you' in that sentence was left out. For fairly obvious reasons.

"Alright, let's do it." He reached into his utility belt, and withdrew another vial, usually reserved for xenothium. He then began collecting more samples.