Teen Titans – Haunted – An Analysis in Red and Orange; Chapter 9: Misdeeds
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The one thing we can play on here, is I'm going to attempt this part with a pretty way of showing how the "reagent" took Robin to the computer to activate said protocol, then I'm going to have a half that shows Trigon's astrally projected nut Slade slicing up the bed's binds and letting the false mask Slade do all of the rest of HIS dirty work. Needs to get supernatural or we aren't having fun. Also! IN HAUNTED TO CLARIFY – HIS BED WAS KEPTUPRIGHT AND THE TORSO BELTFOR BED WAS NOT CUT, I WANT TO CLEAR THAT UP AN FIX INTO THE MONTH. ALSO – NO TAZER SO LIKE A FEAR TOXIN IT HAS TO BE THAT POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS. HOWEVER, IM STILL SKEPTICAL ABOUT THE RED EYE AT END OF EP. AND LASTLY – THE MASK OVER TIME FELL INTO LIGHT DECAY ( METAPHOR FOR THE EP) AS DUST COLLECTED AROUND THE MASK FROM "MASKS." THE DUST PTHERWISE, WAS ALREADY IN PLACE FOR ANYONE UNLUCKY TO GO DIGGING THROUGH SLADE'S PRIVACY. WHY NOT. ALL THE ITEMS WERE IN THE BOX, BUT RECALL SLADE'S MASK FROM APPRENTICE PART 2 COULD NOT BE - THE OTHER PIECE WAS LOST SINCE ROBIN'S CHANCE IN APPRENTICE PART TWO WAS A BUST. SLADE KEPT THAT MEMENTO AND A GOOD KICK IN THE TEETH TO OLD SKELETON MAN IN THIS FIC….PHEW! WE START OFF…..ON THE FIRST SPECULATION!
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Exhibit A:
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Dead. And yet, he could feel the ground. Trigon's magic was all powerful, but had he stayed awake…
Slade's mask was in place. He was unsure of how to address the hero he'd almost allowed to survive. By that figure of the boy's –
Wait. He could…. Interact? –
"Alone again, Robin?"
Why not test that theory out.
"As long as I'm around, you are never alone…"
"Slade!"
The growl was enough to tell him that he wasn't a figment of the kid's imagination. Well. This was, odd?
As if he was outside looking into a glass box, the hero was restrained and terribly fragmented in mind and body. Slade didn't even flinch.
This had to be it. The time he needed didn't involve…
But….
Slade replied, his voice with a mock sense of pity to it as it always was never without some sarcasm. As of now, anyway.
"I'm sorry that your friends don't trust you," Rub it in, make him hurt before he's ended inside this stuffy tower of useless soldiers. "Maybe you should consider going solo in the near future, that is… if I allow you to continue."
Robin bit back and spoke over the man's faint threat, "Will, you kill me? Is that why you're here? To enact your revenge on me? For Terra's –
"Terra was a pawn, dear boy," An object, yet never of his affections. She couldn't handle having that blood on her hands for long. Useless.
"I held no true attachment to that child. I was however, considering on a bet." Ah, he couldn't escape it now. Robin's Christmas colored demeanor was brimming with determination. Good boy. If he did survive this ordeal, maybe the next few years wouldn't have to seem too, lackluster between them. If that was, Robin could finally manage to unmask the man in the iron mask.
"One last chance to save yourself from all of this."
~ Yes! And the clock has started, Boy Wonder. Take the bait. Ruin yourself because of me. ~
Robin looked up in disbelief, then came back to chew his lip as he wondered if this was a bad idea.
~Of course! You'd be dead, little detective? Taking advice from a ghost? When no one else would listen….~
Dragging him down to the fiery depths. Slade was going to have fun putting Robin through an eternal hell. If only he cared to let the man suffer. Sigh. It was tough being so –
"I won't give into your games, Slade. My friends –
Slade shrugged, rather he listened and Robin might have gone red because of those words spilling forth from his mouth. He, couldn't tell him. It wasn't like he'd get it. He HATED the Titans. End of story.
Slade would have finished that sentence. ~Will gladly fall, or be annihilated…. Huh. You seem to be suicidal after all, kid. ~
More like right now, the hero wanted to prove that he was as tough as his original mentor. Wouldn't the bat in Gotham be glad to know that the boy still kept him as a role model. Stupidity at its finest.
Robin had to lose that attitude and come out on top. If, Slade were to be so generous in extending his ex – apprentice's sentence before –
(Right. No need to go ahead of ourselves! Into the misery!)
Robin fought with the binds as he tugged, trying to imagine them NOT being held in place. Slade, thought of a four-legged critter in a bear trap. Or, a net. It made him…
Ah, shoot. Now?
Slade dipped his vision to seek out the boy's pains. He had to say something. This was very painful to watch.
Walking over, he saw the hero flinch as he took out the tazer from his pocket. It was an illusion, but it would work. He was after all partly here and not back in bed. Wintergreen would have such a fit by tomorrow…
"Relax, Robin. I promise. You won't feel a thing." To leave him guessing, slick as always…
"Ah…" the kid just gulped. Telling himself to stand attentively as the man did his worst, no…. He was, in shock. Slade was that good at making men weep uncontrollably.
"Are you thinking I want to make you suffer like this?" Obviously, he would eventually.
~ Sheesh. Way to give the kid hope, Wilson. ~
"You can't even leave a mark on my face." Point taken, as Robin's fists remained clenched by his sides. He was losing it. His fire. He had to get it back.
"Why would I bother ending our game before I've had my fun." Not a question of WHEATHER it was going to be the outcome. Slade was going to finish his task and go to bed before…. well, he was tired of fighting children. Robin, he might ask to spare.
(We'll see…)
Pulling back the tazer from his belt, he took to instead using a small knife and cut away two of the four binds that were holding the boy to his fate. Binding him to this fated reality. He did keep the ones around the young man's torso intact. He needed time to focus on something more, constructive before an untimely demise unfolded here in Titans tower.
Robin looked up at the man in disbelief before he went to pull off one last trick. His shadow – sided hallucination that Robin had helped to conjure would do the rest. After all, this Slade was still without his flesh an blood.
The man walked over to the Titan's computer by the far wall. He punched in a code he'd accessed through an accredited source after Terra's demise. Dearly devoted then, Red X had been so kind to share a few codes out of his back pocket that he'd taken to hack into the boy wonder's vault. Well, he'd done it with a Slade bot tailing him and a few spotted cameras keeping a low profile so far.
It would be a fun ride, if the rest of the Titans lasted to see…
His fingers moved swiftly as they had when the tower was about to go underground – when Terra had won the trust of the heroes, becoming a spy for his sake. No one else.
Robin bit back as the snap of the material round his stomach was severed, clicked loose. Quietly. Little sneak. Good. Getting back up, he'd get his strength back if Slade let him have that moment to recover.
Just in case…
"We can make this a bit easier." The older man airily spoke, not looking up from the keys at the confused and drugged up Titan's leader.
"I want to win, and I know you'd like to keep your life. Robin." The young man was aware of his presence. He had it. That gaze was determined to stop the crooked mad man. Alright, then…
"Or…your sanity."
He was on fire.
"You and I are both here, I'll face your tricks and stop you myself!" Did he sleep in attack mode? Well, it would be worth it to see him try to unmask the shadow haunting his dreams. "No more games!"
A demand. What a waste. But…He wasn't through putting the kid down.
"Then I suggest you take my offer and try to avoid capture. Dead of alive." Slade finished tapping away to deliberately let his words sink in. He knew how to use them, pen being mightier than the blade one warrior might wield into battle. Robin wasn't mentally sound at the moment. He had a handicap, sure. But Slade was everywhere all at once.
Robin was stunned.
~Good. He's never faced a true assassin with the wall of heads above his mantle to prove it. The Golden son is about to get a wake up call. ~
"Run, hero. Hop to it. You have a two minute head – start. Starting, now." Being one who didn't take a joke well, Robin would take this to the very core of his decision. He was being hunted now, and that meant he had to stay alive. Hah. The look on his face was pretty hilarious. Then again, sadism was sometimes a part of the older male's ego. He couldn't help it if this was going to go down a bit sloppy in the end. It had to happen. No buts.
Robin watched at the man slunk back towards the shadows, his face indecipherable all over again as the hero rose from the bed to stay on his toes, though his feet still wobbled by the earlier painkillers the Titans had administered.
Slade rushed from behind and grabbed the boy by the back of his throat, shoving him roughly back onto the hospital bed. He tried to avoid falling into it. That would be…. A very bad end.
He rolled right off the lumpy mattress and took to keeping from it, kicking the man in the stomach to build a distance between them and rolled out and off the bed.
Aha, did he think –
Slade leaped up again to ambush the hero and hold him down, but Robin had a clue like he had been trained – and by a rather respectable figure, he tossed the other extra side BED at the man and let it barricade the boy as he got ready to fly away. Such a reckless move, kid…
Slade pulled out the tazer and waved it around in front of the hero's eyes. He was frantic and could have spat acid, that shaken hero. It was not the first time his ex – apprentice had practically been this –
Slade shoved the metal bed complete with its mattress to fall onto its side. He was stronger, yet Robin was proving himself to be just as much. Not a bright, not with his foggy consciousness fading into la – la land at the moment but still, he was quick to retaliate.
Oh, lovely. He had more furniture.
Robin chucked the swivel chair from by the computer at the man next, while Slade just let it go to the side, in a wreck as much as the bed had become.
~ Ah, run rabbit – Run! I'm not done punishing you for tossing me aside. ~
Slade watched as the boy's lucky shots ran dry. He'd tripped over the curtain that was by the bed while trying to hit the door – as if the heroes had the ability…. Slade paused.
He couldn't.
The poor boy flopped, crawling and scrambling to rise. Slade's eye loomed overhead as he walked over to drag the hero by the collar to have him look his enemy in the eye. He had only his withheld fears to confront.
Again, he tossed the brat into the overturned bed as his arms barely caught at the rails with a grunt.
~ Right in the gut. Hurts, Titan? My shins would say the same, if they could feel right about now. ~
Slade walked over, very slowly. Robin bounded up and found his escape, so Slade let that two-minute head start move to THIS time. He needed a challenge. Robin was proving to be a load of entertainment and it would be a waste to quit while he was still ahead by a few extra points for ruthlessness. If that was even a quality for winners to have.
The kid leaped up to kick open the air vent and wandered in as he had as Slade's apprentice. Of course, he knew. He wasn't the Boy Wonder; brain dead side kick to the bat. He was the former side kick to the Dark Night. The vents were a second home away from home. He'd just have to learn to see in the dark.
Slade waited for the time to strike. Tick tock…. One more thing?
The tazer was still in his belt. How was….
The Titans. It was worth a shot; the room was already a mess, what was another etching of graffiti over this enemy's stronghold to this dead – set, criminal mastermind.
Slade sighed and waited for his cogs to turn right round, while his arm lazily set off for the heart monitor and he hatched it, a way to play the team. Robin wasn't who they thought he'd seemed to anyone, anymore. At least, not by yet time Slade would be free of the leader- having a claustrophobia spell by the sound of those scurrying boot – wearing feet.
A zzap, and the fun would continue, just as that nosy alien heroine came to the door with a gasp. He was gone, and they were trapped in his little locked room surprise. The heroes sniffed for clues right away… figures…
"Robin's activated the quarantine protocol." Raven could get into the system? It figured. She was third in command. "Nothing can get in or out."
~ That you are right, Raven. That you are…~
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EXHIBIT B:
Alone again, Robin?"
His eyes sensed the man, he heard every soft footfall from those steel toed disasters - and yet, nothing. Silence rung in and out his swollen eardrums.
"As long as I'm around, you are never alone…"
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Robin tugged at the binds.
Looking up at the man now, he was stalling. This had to be another trick.
"Relax, Robin. I promise. You won't feel a thing." Slade moved in closer, closer…..and his looked to be armed with! –
Robin shook his head and growled out. "No! Stay back! Slade!"
He was seriously hoping the man wasn't going to give him an electric shock when he was already down. He looked unblemished, while Robin had scratches on top of multiple bruises.
The man was going to get his….Robin had something, his only chance out.
Bird a rangs. Gone. Staff. Gone….
What….the tazer. Slade held it and Robin could bite. Buy some time. He wasn't a fake. Slade was –
He put down the tazer a moment and swapped it with-
Knife…?
A cut to his wrist cuffs, but the torso straps remained.
" As much as I'd like to see you squirm, this isn't a very sporting way to end things between us –
Now, in reality - that's what Robin WAS IMAGINING. So? What did it really take, to break free..
…?..?...
Robin was without his tools, but he also had his gloves and that key... The one that was also a drill in of itself. Cut? More like burned off. The torso was left because it was not a fight without it, seeming like a handicap would be fitting enough. A way to stay angry at the man who had put the boy wonder in these chains.
NO MORE.
He got up from the bed just as Slade was by the computer, keying up some trouble.
When in FACT…
ROBIN let his skills work unconsciously, meant to keep Slade in his cage so that he'd finish the task of unmasking the titans nemesis. He set up the lock down, though having no memory of doing so. A drugged and trance state from the dust that clouded his judgment.
……………….
He was sent to the floor by a topple or two. Slade was left unharmed and the tazer shocked the bed –
And……WHAT HE DID???
The tool Robin had used on his7 binds earlier, shocked the bed, causing him to fly up and latch onto the vent shaft's panel as Slade eyed this Lil monkey from down below. The heart monitor then, went wild.
?...
The best is what can be done, but not sure if it keeps. How did the heart monitor do so well in the show? Well…..my money is still on half of the dust not just being why. The tazer and heart rate readings did not add up. As in, Slade could tolerate the shock better than Robin due to HIS abilities. This was a horror themed episode. You could tell it from scene one that nothing would end on a happy note. My sentiments exactly, so " keep guessing kids!" A fun Red X line from Tt DC hero shorts. Read on and hope you liked the recycled and uncalled theories.