A/N: I must warn you, this story might start out semi-fluffy, but it gets bad. x.x VERY bad...There is noncon involved and maybe more. ::Sniff:: So no flaming me for this. Also, this is a Slade/Robin slashfic. Don't like it? Don't read it. Easy as that. Don't flame me for it when I clearly told you ahead of time. Oh, one last thing...o.o; I wrote this for me...and I really don't want to hear how bad it is. 'Kay? " Thanks.

-Apprentice, Continued-

By Lyla Hayden

Part One:

Robin sighed heavily and plopped down in front of the large television screen, ready to watch some random show that just happened to be on. But he guessed the evil villains of the city had another thing planned. The alarm went off and the Teen Titans gathered to see what was wrong.

Robin was the first to get there, and therefore the first to see what it was. Slade. Wasn't he dead? No, Robin guessed he isn't if he's standing on the screen of the one and only Titan Tower. "SLADE?" he found himself asking in shock. "Aren't you..."

"Dead? No."

"Then...Terra..."

"Was turned in vain, really."

"How?" He gaped at the man standing on the screen. He had been so sure the man had died!

"Jetpack, my lovely. Jetpack."

"But I saw..."

"That wasn't me." Robin fell over in shock.

"What's goin-SLADE?!" He looked over his shoulder. The other members of the Teen Titans had appeared. The alarm turned itself off, although he hadn't been hearing it for quite some time now.

"Robin, what do we do?" He pulled himself to my feet and looked at his friends.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm contacting you?" 'Why was he calling like this? If I were him, I'd just attack while we thought he was dead. It would give us the shock of our lives,' Robin thought to himself.

"Why are you...?" Beast Boy asked, unable to finish his sentence when Slade cut him off.

"I have something to show you. If you would please look over there." He raised one bare arm to point over to one side. The camera swiveled to focus on five monitors. In each monitor, stood a classroom of second or third graders, huddled in a corner sobbing with five of Slade's men standing with guns pointed at them.

"You better hurry. You have fifteen minutes before they start shooting."

Beast Boy walked into the room as a small mouse, hoping to surprise the men. The school had been easy to find since it was the only elementary school in this part of the city. He first noticed something was wrong when he saw no children, and only one man in the middle of the room, just standing there.

He transformed back into his normal shape and stepped up. A beam of light shot up, forming a tight circle around the both of them. "Welcome Beast Boy. I am called Horror. Please, have a seat." A seat? Where? Beast Boy looked around and saw nothing.

He was just about to ask, when in the middle of the circle, a set of chairs and a round table appeared. "Oh." He took a seat, why, he wasn't really am not sure. The strange man took the seat across from him.

Raven flew down the hall after separating from the group. She burst through the doors into the room to which she was assigned and fell to the ground with a thud. She gasped and looked up. There, across the room sat an old man, naked except for a pair of brown pants.

"Raven, welcome. I am Mystery."

Cyborg burst through the door with a loud bang, arm raised and ready to fire his main weapon. No children. Only one man standing in mid air waiting for him. "Cyborg, welcome. I am known as Action here. Please, do step within the pre-set boundaries so that the game will begin."

Starfire flew into the room, eyes ablaze, and fists ready for action. She stopped and looked around the empty room. "What?" When out of the shadows, a mysterious figure emerged. Rather charming in his good looks, he had on an old cow-boy style outfit.

"Welcome, my dear. You may call me Romance."

Robin did a tumble, tuck, roll into his own classroom to find this one void of life. What a waste of a grand entrance. "Welcome, Robin." Out of the shadows walked Slade. "I have quite the show for you this evening. Won't you have a seat? Oh, and don't bother trying to attack me. As you might have already guessed, I am not real.

"I'm simply an illusion meant you show you the games." The Slade look-alike motioned to a chair that Robin hadn't seen before. He reluctantly took a seat and immediately regretted it.

From the armrest sprung clasps for his wrists, the feet of the chair, clasps for his ankles, and last but not least, the back of the chair gave him a thick metal collar to hold him firmly to the chair.

Grunting with the effort, Robin pushed and pulled trying to free himself, but to no avail. He was stuck. "Please look over this way and we will begin the show." Robin looked where he motioned and found four large screens up on the wall. Each of the four screens showed one of the rooms that the remainder of his team were occupying.

Beast Boy blinked and eyed the man before him. "Horror?"

"'Tis but a nickname." He steepled his hands before him and looked at the green boy sitting in front of him. "The game is set. We will wait for the rest to get ready."

"Game? What?"

"You will see soon enough, my friend." Beast Boy snuffed and shifted uneasily in his seat. "Ah. The signal. Let us begin." And begin, Horror did. His body grew dark until he was indistinguishable from a block of shadow, then, slowly, the shape began to move and change. Much too slow for Beast Boy's liking, the shape began to take that of...his father?

Raven pushed at the ground, trying to get up. She managed to get up to her hands and feet, but found no reason for her body to feel so heavy. Mystery sat in silence, watching for a moment before speaking. "Let us begin."

"Begin wh-" was all she could get out before something thick pressed into her back, knocking her down to the ground and holding her there tightly.

"This is a battle of the minds. Can you get up? If you do get up, you win. It's as simple as that."

Cyborg looked at the man floating there. "Action? That's your name?"

"It's only a nickname. Now come, step within the circle." For some reason, he did as he was told. Light flared up behind him, blocking his exit and forming a circle around the room. "Let us begin." And he seemed to fall from the air, catching his footing and fly straight at Cyborg, fist out and ready to fight.

Starfire blinked, her cheeks burning a light pink. "Romance is your name?"

"Nickname, my dear." He paused for a moment before saying, "Let us begin."

"Begin what?"

"This is a battle of the heart. Come, let us go for a walk." As if pulled by an imaginary string, Starfire descended and followed the man out the door from which she entered and into a large maze of roses and other such flowers. "While I might say 'heart' I say it in a purely metaphorical sense. Whomever gives up, loses. Easy as pie, one might say. At the end of the maze is the exit. Fairtheewell, my dear."

And with that, he turned and took a different route from the one that they were currently on. Starfire took to the air once more and flew off down the course, hoping that her twists and turns would bring her to the exit before the stranger.

"This may all seem perfectly harmless, my dear, sweet Robin, but I can guarantee you that should you not agree to my terms, not one of them will make it out of these so-called 'games' alive. Well, the poor Raven might make it out alive, but should she fail to stand, she will forfeit her mind to Mystery."

"And what 'terms' are those? You don't want me to be your apprentice again, do you, because we all know how well that one turned out," Robin sneered.

"Yes and no. I want you to be my slave slash apprentice."