Coba walked cautiously through an empty, dark hall. She had no idea of how long she had been walking, nor did she know where she was going. A light shined through the cracks of a doorway several feet in front of her. Curiosity overcame Coba's senses, and she slowly pushed it open. Seeing nothing but blinding light, she stepped inside. To her surprise, the door shut behind her, and the room she had entered revealed itself to be a familiar office. My mother's office, she realized with a pang of sorrow, before it was wrecked by Fixx and the Jokerz.

A gentle voice coughed behind her, though to get her attention and not as a sign of illness. Coba knew the voice too well. She turned slowly, then saw a familiar figure standing there. "Mom?!" she gasped. "Is that really you?"

"Yes, my daughter," the figure responded softly. "I apologize for not talking to you very much."

"Don't be sorry, Mom," Coba reassured Natalie sincerely, approaching her. "I know you're only able to speak to me when I need guidance more than ever." She hugged her mother, comforted to feel that she was like an actual living being instead of air. "It doesn't mean that I haven't missed you, though," Coba said sadly in a quiet voice.

Natalie hugged her only daughter back warmly. "I know. I've missed you, as well."

The girl allowed herself to savor this moment with her deceased parent. She looked back up at her after what felt like a few minutes, gently pulling herself out of her embrace. "I'm confused, Mom."

"No kidding, Captain Obvious," Natalie joked in good humor. Coba could not help but smile at this, immediately feeling better. "There's that smile," her mother said fondly. Her expression became grave and understanding once more. "What's bothering you?"

"Well, I found out that Bruce is really my... you know..." Coba said awkwardly, "and where and how I got these powers." She regained stability of her voice. "He and Grandfather are keeping things from me that I know I must know to survive against Deathstroke, who's been after me since I was a baby. Bruce may or may not accept that I'm his... and he probably doesn't trust me anymore." Coba blinked back tears of confusion. "I don't know what to do, Mom. I... I feel so lost and alone."

The woman stroked Coba's long hair reassuringly. "Things will get better, daughter. You must remember: you are not truly alone in this fight; and some things are not as they seem. In the meantime, do not lose sight of what and whom are important to you. Take care, my little Coba. I love you."

It was only a brief second later that Coba felt her mother's presence completely leave the room. Even though she knew it was a bit late, Brooklyn softly murmured, "I love you too, Mom. I'll do my best."

"Coba? Are you okay?"

Coba slowly opened her eyes to see a rat-like figure sitting on her chest, looking at her concernedly. It was then that she realized that her face was wet from shedding tears of mourning during her dream. "Yeah, I'm fine, Ed," she answered in her pet's language. "Just an illusion." She looked at him, realizing something different about him. "What are you wearing?"

Ed flourished a long black cape that was hooked to a black and gray suit he was wearing. "Check it out!" He stood heroically on his hind legs. "I am Cheddar. I am the Night. I. Am. Batrat!" he proclaimed.

Brooklyn struggled hard to suppress a laugh, her face burning from the effort. "Yes, yes you are. Where'd you get the suit?"

"I made it, duh!" Ed stated indignantly. "You're not the only inventor here, you know!"

"True," Coba grinned, stroking the rat fondly. Though the memory of her mother's spirit's visit in her dream was still fresh in her mind, Ed had helped her forget her sorrow.

~!~

Shriek awakened from his slumber, opening his eyes slowly as he did. To his surprise, he saw Spellbinder standing in front of him, his mask off and revealing his moving mouth. It took the sound genius a moment to remember where he was and how he and Spellbinder got to be there. It surprised him that the psychologist would be willing to show his face, but then again he knew that they were both aware of the other's true identity.

Realizing that Ira was talking to him, Walter put on his headgear, which he had removed so he could sleep easier. "What?" he growled.

"What do you mean, what?" Spellbinder asked, perplexed. "I've been saying the same thing repeatedly for about five minutes!"

"I'm deaf, you idiot," Shreeve retorted angrily.

Billings blinked, surprised. "Well, that's ironic."

"No kidding. Next time you want me to wake up, I suggest you poke me or something."

Spellbinder looked at Shriek's suit warily. Shriek could tell right away what was on the other villain's mind. "I didn't say you'd get lucky if you did," he smirked darkly.

This dreg really is a sick man, Spellbinder thought, successfully hiding his fear from the sound expert.

Deathstroke had silently strode into the part of the warehouse the two villains were in as they conversed, evading their attention until he came up behind Spellbinder. "I see you two are socializing," he stated.

Shriek and Spellbinder both jumped at Slade's surprise appearance. "Can't you approach people a little more formally?" Spellbinder inquired a little irritably.

Slade narrowed his only eye at the psychologist. "I approach people however I want," he hissed. "If I didn't, you would probably be back in prison by now."

Ira remembered Wilson's intervention the previous afternoon when Batgirl and Nightwing were chasing him, and wisely chose not to push the issue even further.

"Let's discuss business now, shall we?" Deathstroke inquired authoritatively.

Shriek and Spellbinder nodded reluctantly after a brief moment.

"Good." Slade turned on the big screen behind him without turning his head, knowing that to turn on such dangerous foes at this time of day would undoubtedly result in an attack with unfavorable results for all three parties. A text document came up on the screen. "I want you to take a good, long look at this."

Shreeve studied the document, narrowing and widening his eyes repeatedly in surprise. He's specific about what he wants, I'll give him that, he thought. His thoughts are probably darker than his personality, also. But what is his purpose for this thing?

Billings read the description as well, equally surprised. For one with much muscle, he certainly knows his anatomy, he marvelled. Though, there's something I'm not fully understanding. He looked at Deathstroke. "Why show this to us?" he asked, keeping his voice calm in hopes of not provoking the villain to violence.

Deathstroke seemed to be amused by the psychologist's question. "I feel that you two are capable of building it. Who better for building a supersonic weapon that can kill a mind torturously than an expert in sound and one who knows the human brain like the back of his hand?"

The two enemies of the newest Batman could hardly believe what they had heard. That's what he plans to acheive from this thing?! Shriek thought in surprise.

This man is more insane than Shreeve! thought Spellbinder in shock and horror, though keeping his feelings hidden from the mercenary.

"After all, I know what your deepest desire is," Slade continued, "which is another reason why I got you both involved." He could not help but chuckle darkly as the Shriek and Spellbinder stared at him in confusion. "It's not that hard to figure out. I desire the same thing: revenge on the Batman."

"Well, you could've just said that instead of threatening to destroy our life's work," Shriek stated. Instead of threatening to kill Ollie as well.

"One can never be too certain that the others will not turn on him," Slade said levelly. He turned and began to walk away. "Consider what you both will need for the machine," he called over his shoulder, "then we'll discuss a plan of getting it." The fools don't realize that I'm not after the same Batman as them, he thought darkly. Nor do they fully realize my true intentions of this machine, which the Bats will soon discover.

~!~

Blüdhaven, late that afternoon.

Grayson blocked Coba's attack with his bo staff as she swung hers at his waist. He quickly returned the blow, only for the girl to block it and trip him. Dick fell to the ground with a surprised grunt. Coba placed an end of her bo staff on his chest. "Surrender?" she inquired cheekily.

"Nope." Dick swiftly swiped his staff at her legs, tripping her. Coba hit the floor with a surprised gasp. Dick pinned her down before she could react, making her unable to move. "Balance and awareness are key when fighting an enemy with a weapon," he chided her in a stern voice, "even when he or she is downed." He got up and helped her stand, and noticed a look of anxiety in her eyes. "Take a break," he said calmly. "You need it after going non-stop for twenty minutes."

"Okay," Coba said quietly, calming herself down. "Quite a record for me, eh?"

"Yep. You alright?" he asked concernedly. "I didn't mean to scare you like that."

"I know," Brooklyn reassured him. "I'm fine. It's just—I don't know," she said awkwardly. "It seemed like what happened yesterday, when..." She trailed off, looking down at her feet.

Dick became more concerned. "When Slade had you pinned down?"

Coba paused, then nodded solemnly. "Yeah."

The man considered this, then sighed. "Kid, there's something I need to tell you," he said gravely.

"You don't have to," Coba calmly interrupted. "I know you were Slade's apprentice at some point."

"I thought I asked you not to interrupt me after reading my mind," Dick said sternly.

"I didn't need to read your mind. I... overheard your conversation with Bruce last night," Coba admitted. She looked at him once more. "But... why'd you train with him?"

Grayson's only eye betrayed an intense amount of anger, along with a hint of guilt. "He threatened to kill the Titans if I didn't."

Batgirl's eyes grew wider. "As in the Teen Titans?" she asked in surprise.

"Yeah." He noticed her surprise. "Why the sudden shock?"

"I'm just surprised that you're talking about a time when you were with them. Every time I've asked about when you were with them you'd become pretty distant."

"And you stopped asking after a while," Dick noted. "For that I'm grateful, though I feel that I should've told you about this sooner. I didn't want to talk about being with them not because we grew to hate each other, but because..." He trailed off.

"Because of Slade's constant feuds with you, and the marks they left," Coba said knowingly, a sad tone in her voice. "I can only imagine that you became so obsessed with stopping him that it tested your friendship and trust with the Titans."

Dick nodded gravely. "Many times. There have been a couple notable times, including the one when I had to..." ...be his apprentice.

Coba could hardly stand to see her grandfather feel so distant. I wish we didn't have to talk about this, she thought sadly, but it doesn't look like we have much choice aside from accepting our deaths. "What happened?" she asked quietly, keeping her voice gentle in hopes of not getting Grayson more upset.

The man looked at his granddaughter through his only eye solemnly for a moment before he began, unaware that Coba had stepped in his mind to get an idea of what was going on as he spoke. "He had contacted us one morning with a threat to use a Chronoton Detonator on Jump City—" where the T Tower is located, he added mentally, unsure of whether or not young Brooklyn had known that— "unless we could stop him. We scoured the city the whole day, but every lead we had was a dead end. That is, until we learned Starfire was allergic to the core used for the machine."

"Metallic Chronium," Coba put in.

Grayson was surprised. "How did you know that?"

Brooklyn shrugged. "Just a guess. I tried working with it once when I was younger, trying to make a time machine." She shook her head, her face burning with embarrassment. "I had to stop the project when rashes formed on my arms. Plus, you said the weapon was a Chronoton Detonator, which pretty much gave away the name of the core." She noticed an even more surprised look from her grandfather. "I research materials and their uses before using them for my inventions."

"Good idea," Richard commented. "Shall I continue?"

"Yeah," Coba said with a nod, "go ahead."

"We followed Starfire's allergy through the sewer system," Dick said after a moment of trying to remember where he left off. "It wasn't long until we saw Slade's drones loading the weapon into a raft. Cinderblock broke through the wall right then and grabbed me. I told the others to go after the weapon, and I easily beat Cinderblock as they did." Because of my rage about Slade. "I found a tracking device on Cinderblock with Slade's base's location on it, and took it. I was too pleased with the fact that I was finally able to face Slade in person that I failed to realize how easy it all had been.

"I found Slade standing in front of a screen, watching my friends as they went after the detonator. He placed the remote on the floor and walked away, challenging me to take it. I went to grab it, but he attacked. As we fought, he kept telling me how much alike we are, but I denied it, my anger growing until I eventually beat him and grabbed the remote. To my surprise, the remote fell apart in my hands. It was then that I realized I was duped.

"Slade explained that the machine was a fake, just as the remote was. His plan was not to freeze time: it was something else entirely. The whole point was to seperate me from the others. He had been looking for—well... a successor."

"And he thought you were the best candidate?" Coba could not help but inquire.

Dick nodded sagely. "Exactly. Of course I refused, but he had some incentive to persuade me: he had used a ray to implant nanobots in my friends' blood cells." He hesitated, recalling the painful memory. "In order to save them, I agreed to serve Slade and never speak to them."

"Whoa," Coba breathed, taken aback by the incident. To her surprise, she realized that the story was not bringing up bitter feelings towards Grayson as she knew both he and herself had feared. Instead, she felt something else, though it was already present in a somewhat different way: respect for him. He had to give up his freedom and some of what was left of his innocence to save his friends, even turning against them in the process. "How did you get out of it?"

Nightwing thought about it for a moment. "Well... it happened during my last mission for him. Two factors helped me see a way out: when I refused to shoot Starfire he activated the probes, the other was who I was going to steal from."

"Who?"

"Wayne Enterprises."

Coba blinked, surprised at first, until she remembered that Bruce's company had a lot of equipment that villains would definitely steal. "So when you realized you nearly stole from the man who took you in and that Slade nearly killed your friends, you rebelled?"

"And fought him, yes," Dick replied solemnly with a nod. "Except this time, I couldn't beat him on my own. He warned me that if I disobeyed him again, he'd kill my friends. Defeated, I swore I wouldn't disobey him. That was the moment my friends broke in to rescue me, having just found out about the nanobots. To ensure that I didn't do anything stupid, Slade activated the probes."

Brooklyn's eyes widened. "What did you do then?" she asked, anxious from being caught up in the story and visualizing it.

"Well... I did something everyone would call 'stupid:' I infected myself with the nanobots. I told Slade that if he killed my friends, he'd lose his apprentice."

"And he hates to lose," Coba noted.

"Exactly."

"How did he react to this?"

"He shut off the nanobots." Dick rubbed his eyebrows. "We managed to defeat him in the ensuing battle, but he got away when his base was falling apart. We all got out okay, then returned to the T Tower and removed the nanobots." He sighed. "Still, things were never the same between me and the Titans after that."

Brooklyn knew that the story was over, yet she knew by the look in her grandfather's only eye that it still bothered him as though he were still going through it. She placed a sympathetic hand on his uninjured shoulder. "I'm sorry, Grandfather," she said gently. Her gaze suddenly hardened without her knowing it at first. "He won't hurt you again," she promised gruffly. "I don't know how he won't be able to, but I know he won't."

Dick blinked in surprise at the girl's statement, though Coba knew that he was not exactly reassured at first. He sighed, placing his uninjured arm over her shoulders. "As long as he doesn't hurt you, you'll be correct."

Coba nodded wordlessly, understanding that it would hurt him emotionally if she had been harmed by the dangerous man. At the same time, she could not help but feel a twinge of relief that her relationship with Grayson was strong as ever. I wish I could say the same about Bruce, though, she thought regretfully.

Several moments of solemn silence passed by. "But why would he allow Spellbinder to get away?" Coba wondered aloud at last. "It doesn't exactly sound like something he'd do."

"You're right about that," Grayson agreed sagely. "Any theories?"

"Maybe he has something planned that involves Spellbinder, possibly even Shriek?" Coba suggested. "Maybe... maybe he had something to do with at least one of their escapes from prison," she stated in a quiet, steady voice. "He may have something planned with them, or for them. But... what could it be?"

"I don't know, kid," Dick said solemnly. "But we'll find out soon enough."

As if to atone his statement, Bruce's voice crackled on the radio. "The silent alarm system at Wayne Tech just got tripped," he said gravely, though Coba and Dick knew that he was talking to Terry, who was out on patrol at that time. "Check it out."

"On my way," Terry informed him.

At the sound of this, Coba instinctively grabbed her Batsuit. Grayson looked at her. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked concernedly.

"To help Terry," Coba replied determinedly from inside a dressing room. "I know Bruce won't like the fact that I'm cutting my training short, but Terry's my brother... and Bruce's son. I have to help him."

"Alright, I won't stop you," Dick gave in. He walked into another dressing room and donned his Nightwing suit. "Though you're not stopping me from coming along," he said as he quickly got it on and stepped back out.

Coba stepped out of the dressing room she was in, wearing her Batsuit, and grinned at him as she pulled her mask on. "I suspected as much." And I figured you'd get your suit on well before I got mine on, as usual. Without another word, the two heroes left the building.

Author's Notes:

Sorry this one took so long to get up! Yeah, I always have a rough time when getting the villain's side of the story thought of and written, but I feel as though I'm getting the hang of it. Well, and I was also trying to figure out how to break up chapters, though I don't have them fully written yet. I feel that this story will have more than eleven chapters including the prologue and epilogue, but I'm hoping less than fifteen.

Partial writing credit goes to TRON0602, since some of the dialogue between Dick and Coba about when Dick was Slade's "apprentice" came from a role-play we had recently done. Thanks a ton for getting me aware of Teen Titans, my friend, and for allowing me to use dialogue from our RP. :D

The sequence with Ed putting on a Batsuit for himself was also TRON0602's idea, as a tribute to my rat Shadow, who died the day I posted the epilogue for "Last Resort". I would like to dedicate that scene to Shadow, TRON, and my newest rat Bruce (and yes, his middle name is Wayne), and another round of thanks goes to TRON. :)

I know I usually have Coba's dreams be nightmares, but this time I had it be more like a message from her mother. A vision during her slumber, if you will. Aside from Coba being based on Bruce, Terry, Dick, Selina (sort of), myself, Barbara (sort of), and Tim (mostly the comic book version, though he is pretty small in the BTAS episodes), Coba is also based on several other characters from literature: Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Blackberry (all four from Watership Down), Spider-Man (a little), Tails and Shadow (Sonic the Hedgehog), and Francis from the book (and film based on the book) Felidae. Like Fiver from Watership Down, Coba gets visions while she's awake. Like Francis from Felidae, she gets nightmares and weird dreams that are linked to future happenings. So yeah, there's a little more about her origins for ya.

The tension between Dick and Coba is pretty much over now, but, of course, I can't say the same about the one between Coba and Bruce. Well, I guess I could say it, but then I'd be lying. Unfortunately, the situation between them will get worse before it can get better. That's just the way things go with some conflicts in my stories.

Any-who, please leave a review if you would like to (I love reading those!) and have a great rest of your day! :D