View source for 2012-03-01 - No Mouth, No Tea.

{{Logsummary|
Title=2012-03-01 - No Mouth, No Tea.
|Summary=Raven enlists The Question to help track down an (allegedly) missing person.
|Who=Raven, The Question
|Date=2012-03-01
|Where=Titans Tower
|}}




There's nothing quite like taking a road trip. Especially when one has an awesome car. Especially when one has an awesome car with an 8 track player. Especially when one has a gas-guzzling awesome car with an 8 track player, no air conditioning, and no license plate. The Question is someone, and his car fits the descriptions in all of the previous sentences perfectly. Given the fact that he is driving illegally, he is forced to do so under the cover of night. This bothers him not at all, as he speeds along the road with his windows down with an old Andy Gibbs 8 track cassette playing as loud as the speakers on his classic GTO will allow.

After a long stretch of driving, Question arrives at the relatively vaunted Titans Tower. The crusty old car looks completely out of place parked in front of the shiny modern building, but then so does the crusty old Question. He opens his creaking car door and exits his ride, placing his blue fedora atop his head. Stretching for a moment after he shuts the door behind him, his head slowly tilts back to allow him a full view of the building. "Great, now I've got to figure out which floor she lives on..."

"No need.." Almost immediately as The Question muses that quandary to himself, a whispering somewhat raspy voice responds. From the corner of the Titan Tower huddled in a large blue cloak that covers most, if not all of her figure, stands Raven trying to appear as inauspicious as one can wearing a full hood and cape at night. "Mister Question...I take it?" The girl asks from afar motioning for the man to approach her with a simple flick of her hand, she's either not very trusting, shy or just plain antisocial...probably a healthy mixture of the three from the looks of it. "Come...join me...we cannot speak here in the open." 
 
As she says this, the girl opens her cape slightly and holds it to the side in a bull fighter fashion. Is she asking him to get inside her cloak? Why...would she do that? 

"Don't be silly. It's not safe to talk anywhere." However, Question walks toward the strange girl with only the slightest show of reservation. "The only sure way to keep them from eavesdropping on your conversation is to use a signal jammer. Of course you'd have to make it yourself, the ones they sell in stores have all been bugged." He gets quite close to the girl, but stands off to the side a bit. Leaning forward, he looks straight into the cloak for a second before reaching into his coat. After a second of rummaging, he pulls out a common magnifying glass and holds it up in front of his face. He apparently doesn't see anything worth noting in the cloak, but anyone looking through the magnifying glass from the other side would see a huge splotch of enlargened Question Face.

 
Raven doesn't respond right away, why would she? If the Question is right and there are ears and eyes everywhere then every word that comes out of her mouth can only further incriminate her. If she wasn't incredibly defensive and suspicious already, she is now. Just as soon as the Question brings out the magnifying glass, the sorceress takes the opportunity to envelop him on her cloak completely. Darkness surrounds the Question momentarily as he feels his body becoming light, as if he were floating in the air, and just as soon as the sensation comes it vanishes. Raven takes her cloak off his face and the two now appear inside Raven's inner most sanctum, i.e. her room. 
 
"Then...let's try to make it as safe...as it is possible." The girl walks away from the detective towards a small table with some chairs, a set tea pot and some cups already set in place just in case her guest is thirsty. She may be incredibly apathetic and morbid but at least she has manners! "Tea?..Although I don't see how you can drink without a mouth..." 

The Question appears in Raven's room still in the same pose he had assumed before being teleported. IE; bent forward with a magnifying glass near his 'face.' No stranger to teleportation, he doesn't freak out. Rather, he simply stands up, slides his magnifying glass back in his coat ans says "That'll work." For a few seconds, he looks around the room, doing a full, albeit slow, 360 degree turn to get the full effect of the place. "Thank you, but I already had some Dayquil and peanuts this morning." Despite his refusal of sustenance, he does walk toward the table. Instead of sitting down immediately, he bends down to look under his chair. Apparently satisfied that noting is amiss with it, he straightens back up, and then sits down in the chair with the grace of someone who recently spent hours cramped up in a car.

 
The Question is probably not going to see it, what with the hood covering most of Raven's features and all, but at the mention of Dayquil and peanuts as breakfast, the sorceress ends up making quite the disgruntled face. Quickly debating if she did right on picking The Question to handle her case, Raven decides that if he's paranoid to forsake a healthy diet just because of fear that someone might put a tracking device on his food, the he may be trustworthy enough to not rat her out. "As you wish." Says the sorceress unfurling her cloak behind her to take a seat on the chair opposite to the question. 
 
"I assure you the table is not bugged." Speaks she plainly "But feel free to inspect it...I will ask you not to touch that mirror over there though." The girl says pointing to a large object draped in a black curtain, somehow she figures that warning the Question like that is just invoking a case of the curiosity killed the cat, but might as well take the necessary precautions. "At any rate..thank you for answering my summons so quickly. What I am about to tell you however...cannot be discussed to anyone else...I know you are a man of... 'principles'" She chooses her words carefully "But I still want to hear it from you...can I have your word that you won't divulge this to anyone?" 

The Question turns his head to look at the indicated mirror. His gaze lingers on it for a few seconds, or at least his head remains turned in that direction. It's not exactly possible to tell where his gaze is lingering. Regardless, his head turns back around in order to nod politely at her spoken thanks. "I guess I can promise that. With the obvious loopholes." He relaxes a bit in his chair, bringing one leg up and resting his ankle on top of his knee. "I'm assuming that you've got a good reason for asking me to keep quiet..." A few seconds of blank staring ensue. Whatever he's looking for in her face, he apparently finds it "... so I don't see a problem." He leans back a bit further in the chair and lets his arms dangle freely at his sides. "I've got to admit that I'm curious. You seem too young to have any real problems."

 
At some point Raven decides to stop being all brooding and mysterious. It may be because the Question has her beat soundly on that game, or it could also be because it's kind of hot and stuffy inside the room, but for whichever reason, she takes her hood off to reveal her rather young, pale skinned, purple haired face. Though she looks young, her eyes are narrowed with unspoken wisdom and maturity, too much apathy on those eyes, even for a normal teenager girl. "Hmm..." The girl wets her lips lightly with her tea at The Question's words. "Loopholes such as....torture?" Dares she to propose "I doubt it would come to that..but alas...such are the risks of this profession." She sets her tea cup down and daintily crosses her legs, cloak flicked to the side to reveal herself more, no longer feeling like she needs to be so secretive, although of course, Raven being Raven, she's secretive to some extent in every way she acts. "Well...let me put it this way." 
 
The girl leans her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her knuckles looking pensive. "What would you say if...hypothetically speaking...I told you I killed someone recently?" 
 
This sounds pretty serious. 

"It would depend." A simple enough answer, but surely The Question will expound upon it in a moment. He seems relatively casual for someone who just heard a 'theoretical' murder confession. Slowly, he brings his arms up from their dangling position at his sides and places his palms behind his head, allowing him to relax a bit more of his body. "Hypothetically, if you killed someone recently, you'd probably only be asking me for advice if you thought it was justified. And hypothetically, if you thought it was justified, you'd either have a good excuse, or you'd be sociopathic." The chair creaks a bit as The Question leans back even further, causing the two front legs of the chair to lift just a bit off the ground. "So in the hypothetical situation that you had acted in self defense or to prevent a time loop that inevitably ended with the destruction of the planet because a beloved superhero was going to commit murder if you didn't commit the murder instead thereby preventing him from suffering from a moral crisis and a tarnished reputation... I think I'd be pretty understanding."

It's about the answer she would expect from someone that The Question's reputation, the long winded response doesn't quite disconcert Raven to the point where she is completely lost trying to keep up with the detective, she's pretty sharp herself in that regard, but it's vocabulary that she doesn't use frequently and it takes her a moment to process his logic. Taking a moment to organize her thoughts, her eyes narrowing more and more as she begins to comprehend what is the Question trying to tell her. "Right.." Even if she's intelligent in her own right, Raven has a surprisingly simplistic method of communicating, she doesn't see the point of using fancy jargon, so she simply doesn't use it. "I was hoping you'd say something like that." Did she really? She takes another sip of her tea. 
 
"I won't mince words then..Mister Question..." Her manner of speech is deliberate, cut short here and there as if she had trouble breathing, but she relates her tale anyway. "I answered a distress to Metropolis a few weeks ago...an armored convoy were transporting some kind of radioactive substance from Lex Corp somewhere..I teamed up with some locals...not the cape mind you...to stop them and we engaged them, you know the drill." A dismissive wave of her hand indicates to the Question that the details are not important. "In the midst of things I accidentally threw one of the mercenaries protecting the cargo... a woman...into the radioactive substance and she fell of the train into Metroplis' sea." She pauses there, trying to see The Question's expression or lack thereof, before continuing. "The body was never recovered." 
 
She takes a brief moment to see if the detective has anything to say on that regard, see if he has any questions, while also pointing out a few things of her on. "By the way, you should stop leaning back so much. That chair has a woobly leg." 

"Hurm." The Question stretches his back just a bit more before letting the front legs of the chair rest once again on the floor. "Doesn't seem that heinous as far as fights involving radioactive substances go." He drops the resting leg, spreading his knees far apart as he leans forward. "But I'm not sure why you'd need to keep that a secret." He doesn't react visibly to the mention of LexCorp, but given his history with the man and his company, it's likely that his wheels are turning pretty fast. Continuing his forward motion, he rearranges his arms in such a fashion that his elbows rest against the table and his fingers are placed together, touching only at the tips. His expressionless chin is brought down to rest on his steepled fingers, allowing him a slightly more intimidating pose from which to stare at the girl. Most people would be avoiding his gaze and acting all manner of fidgity by now, but Raven seems to be at least as much of an expert in the field of Creepology as The Question is. "I'm also not quite sure what you think I can help with. If the body dissolved in some LexCorp chemicals, I don't think there will be much left to scoop up."

Honestly Raven half expected for the Question to fall backwards at that moment, nothing like a bit of old fashioned slapstick to break the serious mood of the conversation. She'll have to conform with simply carrying on and perhaps a bit more tea to comfort her on her time of need. Closing her eyes as she takes another dainty sip, the sorceress tries to recall the events of that ill fated evening before she speaks again. "That's what I thought as well." Whispers she. "Until I got wind a super powered woman was last seen assisting Maxima in her latest assault. I didn't participate in the defense..but I swear...she looks almost exactly like the mercenary I flung into the radioactive waste." From her cloak she procures a newspaper that she sets neatly before the question, tapping at the face of a woman flying next to Maxima. "From what I understand...she goes by the name of Wyld Knight...but I do not have any proof she's the same woman." 
 
"If you could find any connection between this Wyld Knight..and the events that I spoke of..I would be greatly in your debt. It won't please me to know I gave birth to some kind of deranged villain, but it would put me at ease to know that she still lives." 

"Luthor..." The Question seems to be lost in thought. Unless he's merely being quiet for dramatic effect. In the meantime, he manages to lean forward just a bit more, his head putting noticeable weight on his thumbs. Idly, his unburdened fingers strum against each other in a slow steady rhythm while the flesh-colored splotch that makes up his mask simply 'stares.' "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to look into it, if it would help you to sleep better." It's highly unlikely that's the actual reason he's considering taking the case, but he states his reason in a convincing enough tone. Suddenly he stands up, almost too fast. "Yes... yes, I'll look into it. I should be able to find all the information I need from the incident report which was most likely scrubbed to contain no information." He clasps his hands together behind his back and does a somewhat awkward-looking stretch. "If you'll zap me back down to my car, I'll hook up my computer, see what I can dig up."

 
True enough /most/ people would have been greatly unnerved by the Question's take of the penance stare, the lack of a face is not something a normal person wants to deal with as it is down right unnatural. Yet Raven can hardly be considered to be most people, as it can be said the same of the great majority of super heroes and thus her only response to the blank stare is to simply keep drinking her tea. "Excellent." The faintest look of a smile can be seen in her dark lips as the Question accepts her case. "Seek out Super Boy and the Blue Beetle, if I'm not mistaken they were present when Wyld Knight was last seen, but I'm not very clear in the details..." She hands him the newspaper, just in case. "Also...there's this one new kid in the block. Kinetic I think is his name...he was there both in Metropolis and when Maxima showed up..he would be the first person I would look into..in fact..the only reason why I'm not doing this myself is because my interrogation abilities are....well..they're lacking." Sucking someone inside her cloak and exposing them to their deepest nightmares face first kind of tends to creep her allies out. "Of course." Raven extends her cloak out to grasp the Question and just as before, darkness envelopes him before he is left outside next to his car. 

"I really ought to get a cape. Maybe with a question mark on the back." The Question strokes his chin as he gives the matter some thought. "An orange question mark." The argument that the garment Raven wears is a cloak rather than a cape would probably be completely lost on Question. He walks over to his car door, and the squeak of old machinery can be heard as he opens it, sits down in his seat, and then closes the door. He puts the keys in the ignition and the classic engine roars to life in the angry masculine fashion that only old muscle cars have. He peals away from the tower, leaving tire marks behind him. As the sounds of Andy Gibb compete with the sounds of the engine, The Question muses. "I can probably be done with the scene of the incident in a couple of hours. I'll need to pick up some Dayquil first though."