Long Live the King – Deathstroke's Forced Descent into Villainy
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Chapter 15: If Dogs have Tags, Then What About Their Owners?
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This one is more page break than true excerpt. Hope it hits closest to home for you fans out there! Just a trip to read into some old files of one; Slade's former forced protégé. Having fun with it so far, and last part explains a lot.
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Slade hadn't been the only one away, and on a long trip from home. Robin had been "summoned" by Bruce to Gotham to have a heart-to-heart discussion with the billionaire CEO at Wayne Enterprises, of all places to chat… He could have only imagined what for in that mid- October, after the severed "apprenticeship" to a madman had failed miserably for said "mad man."
Upon his entry into Wayne's office, the man sat and could not look up from his papers, until the boy unmasked, Dick Grayson, spoke up.
Dick cleared is throat nervously. "You called me out here; I don't know why you couldn't have jus –
"I knew too much, and you wouldn't be safe in the tower with the information I have to provide." Bruce said this without looking up from his reports and data files. Some were pasted onto the screen of the man's adjoined desktop, situated by his right side.
Where Robin had once stood.
"My team and I are, sorry…so, if you think that –
"October fourth to the fourteenth. Of this year…" (Made up based on release of ep.) Dick's blue eyes rose to meet the man with his pressed suit and tie, and sitting as an enigma. One, no better than the mad man in question's own startling gaze…
"You never reported back to me directly, never gathered or had any logs regarding your missions sent to be analyzed… even the ones most currently recorded under an alphabetical file in the cave….all of them are just –
"You can't keep doing this to me, Bruce." Robin grunted and came up to the man's desk, his palms to the wood as he demanded some justice. "You're not respecting our work –
"You are teenagers, look." Bruce stopped what he was doing to rap with his ward. "The JLA and I, we helped you to finalize your start up the Titans, but the deal was that you'd report back if any various threats became too much for your team alone, to handle." Bruce sternly dropped his work back off into a pile and looked up in the younger hero's direction. The Teen Titans' leader was upset. Oh, not that he'd not gotten to catch the bad guy, but that he'd been caught red handed breaking his code, the one he'd sworn to since the very start of his Robin career. To the Bat and to his friends, he wasn't entirely clear to anyone. That Bruce, no matter how noble his intentions, would keep lying behind his back – that he'd known about all of it. Right under Slade's own nose…They were similar. Pathological liars, just like the man who'd taken away his freedom…
"You masqueraded around town as this, Red – X; a dangerous thief that had taken the liberty of stealing three centralized computer chips from various tech center districts across Jump City, and you even were caught by the same person, the same criminal who YOU were trying to learn secrets directly from? What were you –
"No! I was trying to stop the Titans' nemesis from getting the upper hand! We almost had him, but Red X…was a mistake…I get it, so don't try to sound this patronizing!" Richard shot back with his hair in his eyes, in a slight panic.
Bruce sat back in his chair, perplexed that this fun fact had come up at all.
"Nemesis? Is that what he was?" Scoffed the dark knight's alter self. "The man, the mad man who used stolen tech to manipulate your entire team in only less than a week?? You don't know him, Dick…and I should be clearer about why I'm so enraged at that anti – heroic bit of, recklessness right now…" Sighing, Bruce reluctantly tried to find the right words.
"Your team, didn't just find out where you were being held by sheer luck." The billionaire said this, but Dick shook his head in disbelief. He not only guessed that Bruce had been holding something from his ward, but it was about to shake him to his young core by what Batman had deduced. "Wh…. what are you say –
"Your teammates had help, from my sources and the files I had stored away on the bat computer's –
" Bruce! Did you tag me??" The boy flinched at the thought of Bruce going too far to protect him. It was possible, and that was what frightened Dick the most about his mentor. Determined. Ser…. Robin wasn't through. "How?? You weren't there, you couldn't have not figured out it was me; I get that but…how??"
The teen exclaimed and stepped back swiftly, while Bruce never bothered to lift himself from his seat.
"No, no tags. Sorry. I found you with the right information, and the Titans were the ones who volunteered to act on implementing what they could... To save you."
Dick's jaw lay slack before the man before he closed it, gritting his teeth, as embarrassed that he'd not even expected the Bat to have gotten this low…
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A cold rush of air crept into the room from some far-off destination.
"The Titans, they called you?" The boy almost teetered over from the jest. Had to be a joke, right?
"No, I told them what I saw at the Wayne Enterprises you stole from, and we decided to work together, long enough to find Slade's lair in record time." Bruce explained the rest, easing the boy's mind a bit… but not by much.
"From, your computer…In Gotham…Great…" Dick gulped, hugging his arms to his chest. "And, after all of that, they ended up getting hurt because –
"Because, Slade still would have used the probes, but there wasn't enough time to neutralize each Titan without risking your safety, first. And, he made sure of it, Dick." Bruce bit his lip, dreading what to say next as it came rolling off the tip of his tongue.
"I, know this man's face, more than you would like to think I should…"
Dick's eyes got wider again, a confession was coming. That's all he needed to hear. He raised a brow up in suspicion.
"Slade, was originally a mercenary who had once been a soldier with super enhanced abilities in the United States military. That's all I'm allowed to disclose about –
"Wait, wait…. he could punch through solid steel…. he never got a scratch on him, I couldn't leave any marks…I broke his mask but..."
Robin gasped….
"He is actually…Invincible?? But, Starfire…. she was –
"He's prepared for anything, and…he quite frankly respects as much as hates The Batman with a passion..." Another gawking face, and Dick couldn't hold back.
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He paced, messily running a hand or two through his slicked down, ebony hair. Bruce just took in a breath and tried to think. Dick… was new to this, he had to be careful after all the boy had gone through…All while Slade had done his own sort of damage control, while the Batman had been away.
"A, killer? A... murderer?? That's who we're up aga –
"The league, is." Bruce interrupted, clarifying his point. "He's taken us all on, Dick. A few months ago, a wave of crime had popped up in droves in your city, and we thought it odd that something so insignificant had been there at all to start that brush fire. We, were very wrong." Bruce furrowed his brows. "Around that same time when the Titans formed, the fight with Plasmus as you reported, there was a striking connection between that uptick and your enemies all working through a single network."
"Slade..." Robin narrowed his eyes at the opposite wall. "He hired those, "Hive" agents AND Cinderblock…. the agents were made to attack Titans Tower, to leave a message and.. But, why me? Was it for some other purpose?..."
"To find out everything they could about your team, before Slade took you down with him. That's my guess." Bruce corrected by connecting the dots to this bigger picture. "Slade strategizes faster than an average person can. Ninety percent of his brain is limited by nothing, to no one, Dick. Once he's taken everything; dirt, data, intel on his target, then it's all over unless the victim can beat him at his own game." N He wouldn't tell Dick the real reason. Then he'd have no one left to trust...
"And, we did." Robin turned his hopeful eyes up towards the man who'd raised him. " We fought him and we won, Bruce." Richard stated proudly. "I got out. He can't do anything to the Titans, and Jump is now safe thanks to the Teen Titans that YOU CLAIM are just irresponsible teenagers."
Bruce frowned, seeing that case of denial in Richard's features. "For now, he'll lie low, but even I can't trust that he'll have the same intent as before..." Bruce disagreed somewhat strongly with his ward's foolhardy declaration. "Remember; he was in Jump City long before you formed your team's headquarters there." Bruce reminded the boy wonder, who nodded back with a much better understanding. Of his slight error from earlier. "Slade wants to keep it that way so he may attack, push you out with more force than the Titans –
"Then, we'll have to be ready for when he does show his face." The heroic leader reassured with his arms crossed over his chest, looking very serious in his casual duds. "Last time, we had no idea what Slade could do. Now, we know; that he's not to be taken lightly."
"And it should stay that way." Bruce nodded back in agreement this time. "You'll have to promise me, solemnly swear it if that helps, that until we know this monster's true motives, you won't go after Slade again." Bruce eyed the boy from across his desk. "Not on your own. Not until we both know that the Titans will be better prepared to defend themselves in a fight against that killer."
Snorting, the boy was taking this rather calmly, but their talk wasn't over. Bruce chose to leave out the reason Slade had gone after the teen wonder in the first place.
His inspiration for the plan had been almost if not always, because of the Batman's intervention. Because of their stupid truce, and their respect of each other was…not unheard of. The harder Slade pushed to one – up the bat, the greater chance that Bruce's words had done more harm than good in protecting his young ward who'd marched off on his own to make a better living for himself. A name, should the ever change.
And Slade had won, he'd not admitted it. The way Robin had said Wilson's name in a rage or a hiss, Dick was scarred for life by the incident. Slade had done just as he'd promised; he'd made the boy remember his name, his face, staring back at the hero in Richard's every waking daydream… and it sickened the billionaire for more reasons than just one.
Robin would never stop fighting, and he'd never forget that the time during his apprenticeship to a murderer could have been the teen's very last, goodbye. His fateful farewell, had the Titans not arrived when they did.
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A few minutes after they'd parted ways, Dick pulled out his unit in the backseat of a black british, retro style towncar, only once Alfred had come to fetch the boy standing outside of Wayne Enterprises's main building. Bruce still had a dozen meetings to attend, a conference and one more gala for November to set up. He was a very busy man, to the point that Richard just looked off into space; at those galas, retreats, anything to get himself to forget his time here. If even for a little while. To forget his old life and to move forward into the present, again.
Dick clicked closed the device,then opened it again. Listening to the small sound as it acted in sync with his demands. However...Slade had questioned everything, made him question himself with a few sly tricks up his armored sleeves.. He'd gotten in so deep that…
It was never over. Richard closed the unit once more with a snap, deciding against losing his friends a second time. He didn't open it again after that. After all, this was still his enemy, his problem. Bruce could go shove his logic somewhere else for all Dick cared!
"I need to go home and pack, Al." Richard called up to the driver in the old London – age town car. "Of course, Master Dick. "Stepping" on it, right away." The engine revved a bit and off they flew, to have Richard not miss his last flight home to Jump City.
He looked out his right side's tinted window and saw a large jet from one of the next over city's military hubs…was it time to inspect the fuel, yet? Had Dick ever realized that the jet was something easy to spot, he might have put the pieces together much sooner – but…this wasn't his story to tell. Or, was he just a part of someone else's journal entry?
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