A/N: I want to start with a big thank you to all of my reviewers, especially the critical ones, and I want to give another big thanks to the DarkPrince, for being an awesome Beta and sounding board for half-baked ideas.

I wanted to include a bunch of formatting and last minute editing in the last update but somehow the site didn't save it when it said it did, and it ended up posting the raw document (not that raw since it's already been through 3 separate edits).

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply. Now, in the immortal words of the chorus line from the Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show: On with the show this is it!


Here we go for the hundredth time

Hand grenade pins in every line

Throw 'em up and let somethin' shine

Goin' out of my fuckin' mind. – Linkin Park.


"How is he doctor?"

"Well, sir, your son was mauled very severely." The doctor looked at a worn clip board. "Both hands shattered, right arm has compound fractures above and below the elbow, left shoulder is dislocated, right knee shattered, left leg crushed below the knee, three broken ribs, left lung punctured and collapsed, fractured skull, heavy brain damage, and internal bleeding..." Slade grimaced inwardly as the young doctor trailed off, as though sensing that his mentor was both standing behind him and unhappy with something he'd done.

"Intern, LEAVE!" The young man jumped and tore out of the ICU and down the stark white hallway, leaving the door to slowly close behind him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wilson, I try to keep him away from people but he's gotten pretty good at slipping his straight jacket." the doctor said in a tone that made Slade wonder whether he was joking or not.

"It's alright. I asked him to tell me the truth. I would have preferred a lie."

"You seem to be faring well." the doctor said somewhat shocked by Slade's calmness.

"I'm an ER doctor. I've seen horrible things in my time." That statement was partly true, although he tended to see horrible things because he was the one doing them.

"I know. Nothing can ever prepare you for seeing a loved one in that condition."

"Yeah..." Slade let his voice trail off, playing the part of a distraught father trying hard to keep it together; the two men lapsed into silence.

"It's sort of hospital protocol to wait until a patient is awake or stable before allowing visitors, but your son is in pretty bad shape. I'll give you a few minutes."

"Thank you doctor." He led the disguised Slade to Robin's bed and closed the curtain around him, effectively enough sealing Slade and Robin off from the rest of the stark white sterile Intensive Care Unit.

Robin's condition was truly horrific; he was completely covered with bandages that were slowly turning red as blood continued to seep from still bleeding wounds, sensors and various tubes ran from beneath his blanket to various machines and blood bags, the standard IV running to a catheter in his arm, most likely feeding him nutrients and something to keep him comatose. Even Slade was taken aback by the extent of the boys injuries; he was also somewhat impressed that he was able to defend himself so well against four wolves in his weakened condition.

Slade reached into his inside coat pocket and produced a small worn leather satchel, pulling a needle from within its protective embrace. The syringe itself was unimpressive, even the silvery contents looked fairly mundane but Slade knew looks could be deceiving. He stuck the needle into the spare port in the IV bag and watched as the second dose of the silvery solution replaced the clear liquid of the IV. Within seconds the entire syringe full of the liquid had vanished into Robin's blood stream. Slade wondered if this could actually work, but accepted that only time would tell.

The mastermind sat in silence, listening to the hospital staff bustle about their jobs beyond the sterile blue curtain, every now and then a nurse would come in and check on him before leaving silently. He was just beginning to feel something akin to apprehension over the fate of his apprentice when one of the monitors made an irregular sound, and suddenly alarms were blaring. The heart rate monitor spiked and the brain wave monitor began fluctuating erratically as the silvery solution began working on the shattered boy. Suddenly the curtain was torn back as doctors and nurses flooded in and surrounded Robin, trying desperately to stabilize him. Slade played the part of a fearful father, and his character nearly broke into hysterics when Robin's blood curdling scream filled the ICU as he began to thrash and convulse. Once the initial trauma caused by the solution had subsided, Robin settled into a calm slumber, occasionally wincing or twitching as a particularly painful injury began to slowly mend.

Visiting hours ended and Slade was eventually ushered out, he made his way back to his lair to check on the other fazes of his plan.


Dr. Jan Itor was a large man, a little over six feet with the build of a man you didn't want to meet in an alley at night. He was sitting on the worn sofa in the doctor's lounge sipping lukewarm coffee and thinking about the kid that came in earlier tonight. Apparently he got lost hiking and was attacked by wolves that he had somehow managed to kill before sending up a flare and succumbing to his injuries. And the green and red spandex suit was odd to, but not so much as the domino mask the kid wore. He'd tried everything he could think of to remove it and nothing had worked. He was sure he'd seen that getup somewhere before but before he could piece the mystery together he heard shrill screaming. Guessing it was coming from the still unconscious boy, he tore out of there even before the nurses paged him, leaving his luke-warm coffee to become cooler still.

He raced towards the ICU, ignoring his pager as it beeped for his attention, and once he burst through the large windowed door it didn't take long to figure out where the screaming was coming from. Nurses and orderlies were surrounding the boy, trying to hold him down without exacerbating his injuries.

"Nurse, status." the doctor barked.

"I don't know doctor," She told him, the beginnings of panic telling in her voice. "I was doing a routine check and his vitals spiked, he started screaming and thrashing."

"Administer morphine."

"We did. It didn't have any effect." Dr. Itor watched as the nurses struggled for several more minutes before the boy calmed down.

"Nurse get him in a private room, he's waking up the other sick people and scaring staff."

"Yes doctor." The nurses bustled off to do his bidding.

After running a battery of tests, Dr. Itor couldn't figure out what was happening here. The boy was healing at an extremely accelerated rate, he'd run blood tests but all that did was rule out the boy being a Meta-human. X-rays showed that there was a sort of metallic looking substance diluted throughout his body but it was most likely that he just had too much iron in his system. If the boy woke up, and at this rate that was a very real possibility, he'd consult with him about the importance of proper nutrition and a balanced diet.


When Robin woke up it was dark and he was hungry and thirsty. There was a steady and irritating beep beep, beep beep, beep beep coming from the heart monitor in the corner of his room. His right arm was itchy and when he tried to scratch it he was met with resistance and an odd clanking sound. He panicked slightly when he realized he was restrained to the bed. He tried to look down at his body and found that his head was secured as well. Panic touched his mind again and he pulled harder as his heart rate monitor began increasing the tempo of its beeping. The steel shackles began groaning from the stress he was exerting on them and he pulled harder. The heart rate monitor was screaming in the corner.

A team of nurses burst into the room and he let up on his assault against the restraints. The head nurse came to an abrupt halt when she saw that Robin wide awake and looking at her through clear, inquisitive eyes and that the steel frame of the bed was warped. The following nurses were unprepared for the sudden stop and collided with the lead nurse, resulting in the whole procession winding up in a tangled heap on the floor. A tall broad shouldered man in a white lab coat strode into the room, casting a contemptuous glance at the pile of nurses that was trying to extricate itself from the floor. Even from across the room Robin could see that the man's badge read; Dr. Jan Itor M.D. and a few greys were beginning to intrude in his chestnut brown mop of hair. Crow's feet were just beginning to make themselves known and slight discoloration around his eyes said he had been lacking sleep of late.

"Why am I tied down?" Robin asked sternly, using the same tone he did with criminals.

"Because you were thrashing around like a fish in a boat. There was a very real chance of you hurting yourself or one the nurses." the man shot back, not the least bit intimidated by the tone that often made the hardiest criminals in both Gotham and Jump tremble in fear.

"Untie me." The doctor gestured to the nurses, who had finally managed to right themselves, and began doing neurological tests as the nurses removed the restraints. After running the standard battery of tests, Dr. Itor was flabbergasted. Just yesterday the kid looked like he'd gone ten rounds with a spike laden steam roller and now he was wide awake, healthy as a horse and demanding to be let go. It just didn't make sense.

"Nurse, schedule a stress test for first thing tomorrow, and finish removing his bandages."

The nurse worked silently and quickly, leaving Robin alone with his thoughts.

What was going on here? Just yesterday he'd been mauled, nearly to death it seemed. Then this guy, a doctor didn't even flinch when he'd used his tone. The one he learned from Batman. The tone that made hardened criminals literally shake in fear. Thinking back, even the Brotherhood of Evil hadn't been afraid of him, they just thought of him as a kid in a Halloween costume. Even Batman never really treated him as an equal, still keeping him on a leash and making him check in like some child the first time they were home alone. He was almost nineteen damn-it! Sure the Titans thought he was the bomb, but they were still kids, literally. They didn't know anything, not really. In fact, the only one who ever treated him as being worthy, whether as an adversary or otherwise, was Slade. In fact, Slade had been trying to mould Robin in one way or another for nearly as long as Robin had known the man; constantly pushing him to be better, to overcome his limitations and weaknesses.

Let Slade train you.

He wasn't sure where that though came from but it was so strong he could have sworn he physically heard it. It did seem like a good idea, though. Slade was the best; it couldn't hurt to learn from him.

"Try getting some sleep." The nurse's soft voice jarred him from his reverie, "We'll be in to check on you later." She closed the door softly behind her.

Robin tried to sleep but he couldn't. Something was wrong; he was a regular human not a Meta-human, a fact he was damn proud of. There was no way he should be completely healed after being so severely ravaged just yesterday. And earlier, he could hear the steel in the restraints groaning against the pressure he was putting on them, he was strong but that was something else. And since when were his eyes this good? Sure he'd always had perfect vision, but he had never seen with this kind of clarity and detail.

He thought back to the night of the attack, somewhat startled to find that he remembered it in perfect detail, right up until he lost consciousness completely his memory was clear as day. Slade had been there. When he was fighting off unconsciousness Slade had come and fought off the wolves. Probably watching him the whole time, Robin realized. Slade had done something to him. To make him heal as he had. That's twice now that Slade had saved him. If I had listened to him in the first place I wouldn't have needed to be saved.


It was ten o'clock the next morning and Robin had been on the treadmill for nearly an hour. He was hooked up to all sorts of monitors testing everything from heart rate to brain function. The test itself wasn't so bad, just run so they can get an idea of what your vitals are doing when you're placing stress on your body, the bad part was that he had been at it for an hour now and the test still hadn't started. They were waiting for his heart rate to elevate, even with the treadmill set to maximum speed and incline it still wasn't happening. In fact, his vitals had barely elevated at all.

For perhaps the hundredth time this last hour Robin let his focus shift from the task at hand to his surroundings. The vertical blinds still obscured the view out the window of the fourth story room. The nurses were still trying to figure out what was wrong with the monitor. Eventually he shifted his focus to the smaller details, patterns on the ceiling tiles, what everyone was wearing, who was walking by the window.

It was during one of these interludes when Slade walked past the window beside him and came into the door.

Robin turned his head and waved, playing the part of a bored child whos father had finally arrived to take him home, all without breaking stride on the running machine.

"Hello Zarimar." The disguised criminal said with an affectionate smile, hiding his surprise as only he could. "I'm glad to see your doing better now."

"Me too," Robin chirped, "Any chance you could get me out of here? They keep waiting for me to get tired so they can start the test but it's been an hour now and all that's happened is I've gotten bored."

"I'll talk to them son, just keep at it for now." And Slade left the room after a brief exchange with one of the nurses.

Zarimar. So that was the name Slade had given him. Eventually, Dr. Itor came into the room and had Robin get off the machine. Deciding instead to keep him for a few days of observation.


A/N2: I also lay no claim to Scrubs but Janitor and Dr. Cox are two of my favourite characters so I had to have them in here! Combined into one person no less!! I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter but even if you didn't drop me a line and tell me why. I would love to be able to crank out higher quality stuff for your guys and gals to enjoy.

Until nest time; Peace, health and happiness.

-Kobez-