You never wanted to be a soldier but your desires were never taken into consideration. You weren't supposed to have desires in the first place. You were a machine, a tool to help a madman achieve his goals. You were supposed to steal and threaten and fight and that was all you were here for.
But where your brethren fell to scrap metal, you survived. You adapted, you learned. You gathered information in a way that was unanticipated because no one had expected you to survive as long as you had.
And with all this came one very important discovery: you didn't have to go back to Slade's lair.
There was at no point in time where you had been told you must return to the base when you hadn't been sent out to steal something. If you were being sent to fight the Titans they didn't expect you back. You were expendable, scrap metal given semi-human form. They don't notice you're missing because there's no point to.
You wander around Jump for a few days, staying in the shadows, keeping out of sight. You explore, observe for the first time with no set target.
For the first time you see people as actual beings, not obstacles to your (Slade's) goals, not annoyances to hurt or frighten. They're lives are mundane compared to what yours has been. But they seem content with them... more or less. You do not have the capacity for envy but that is probably what you'd be feeling right now if you could.
Unfortunately you are noticed before long. The Titans arrive to destroy you. No, not you, it's never been about you. The Titans are always eager to interfere in Slade's plans and you're just one of his tools.
It could be said that you give a halfhearted fight, however that would be wrong because you don't even have a heart. You would attempt to explain your strange situation but you don't have a voice to speak with. You are torn apart by the witch's powers easily.
No one will mourn you. No one cares about expendable scrap metal.
"Okay that was way too easy," says Beast Boy. Robin's eyes scan the street and rooftops nearby from behind his mask, ready for an attack. It never comes.
"Why would Slade send a single bot to the suburbs? It's not like there's anything to steal out here," Raven grumbles this attempting to look annoyed rather than worried. She's become far wearier of the masked man ever since he had served her father.
"Perhaps he is using it as a spy?" Suggests Starfire, though she can't see why Slade would do this. It isn't an expensive enough neighborhood for there to be anyone Slade would likely try to blackmail or kidnap.
Robin stops searching the rooftops, but refuses to relax. Slade makes him far too tense to even consider doing that. Instead he turns his attention to the scattered bits of metal that had been a Sladebot.
"Do you think there's any way of recovering its stored files?" he asks Cyborg, knowing that there's pretty much no chance of that. Slade always wipes the memory on his bots so that they can't gain any information from them. Robin asks this every time regardless.
"I can try," says Cyborg, picking up the mostly undamaged head. Blank white lenses stare sightlessly up at him. He humors the request, as he does almost every time Robin asks. "Maybe we'll get lucky this time."
The team returns to their tower, their thoughts shifting to other interests to occupy themselves until the next crisis. The Sladebot offers no information, but they prepare themselves for Slade anyway.
