Chapter 4
Slade, still wearing multiple bandages from his imagined fight with Robin, but cured of the reagent, continued his previous task—building another Slade-like robot. Brother Blood approached again. "Master Slade," he began. "I've successfully fixed your memory-transfer machine, but the memories from the past four hours when the machine was down didn't transfer. You'll have to do it manually."
Slade looked around. "Thank you for the report Brother Blood. I'll replace the missing four hours." He pointed to the nearly-complete robot that resembled him everywhere except the face. "Build me another three robots just like this one," he commanded. "Make them the same in every way. Everything must be identical down to the millimeter." Then Slade left the room.
In the next room Slade tapped a series of bricks, then walked right into the wall and phased through. The wall, in fact, was a hologram, backed by a forcefield that could be deactivated by the right sequence of taps on the wall. Slade phased back through the wall into a small room with several pieces of electronic equipment including two computers, and a glass tank filled with liquid containing a naked body of the exact dimensions as Slade. A few wires were attached to the body's head and spine. Slade sat down in a chair and removed his helmet and mask, setting them on a conveniently placed table nearby, and placed his head inside a metal band held by a frame slightly higher than the computer screen before him. He typed into the keyboard in front of him, and the results were displayed on the computer screen:
Please enter password:
Please select from following options: 4
1) Deactivate machine
2) Reboot
3) Upgrade hardware
4) Replace lost memories
5) Delete memories
Enter approximate start time of replacement: 0920
Neural link established
Transferring information to disk…
Transfer complete.
Sending information to project Clone8.hme
Done
Satisfied, Slade stood back up and left the room. Now the figure in the tank—actually a clone of him—was truly identical to him. The sleeping clone had all the memories, skills, and strength of Slade. If Slade died, the clone would take his place to haunt Robin. In the meantime, he had Brother Blood making him an army of robots.
Slade re-entered the main chamber. Brother Blood was just attaching the right foot of one of the four robots. The other three were nearly complete except for a mask and head each. "That's enough," he announced to Brother Blood. "I can take it from here." Brother Blood bowed and left the chamber. Slade used the solder to attach the heads—one to each robot—then flicked the secret on/off switch behind each robot's mask. The robots sat up on the table and awaited their master's command.
The Titans had a rather uncommon afternoon. Raven sat on the couch reading her horror book and, since they had run out of teabags, she had to drink hot water instead. Robin took a break from training, for once, and played video games with Beast Boy. It should have been Starfire's turn to get the groceries but since she didn't understand most of the shopping list Cyborg volunteered to accompany her and teach her about the Earth groceries. Beast Boy had already lost to Robin four times in a row and was becoming more and more frustrated.
When the living room became too loud for Raven to concentrate on her book she moved into her room, leaving Robin and Beast Boy with their racing game. Beast Boy pushed buttons on his controller faster than ever before, while Robin didn't really try at his controller, leisurely playing at a slow pace. Yet Robin's car pulled inexorably ahead of Beast Boy's, leaving Beast Boy more and more frustrated while he continued to push buttons faster to no effect. Suddenly, as Beast Boy looked from the screen back to his controller, he noticed that his controller wasn't connected to the console!
"Robin you cheater!" shouted Beast Boy angrily, "You disconnected my controller!" He threw his controller at Robin, but Robin leaned back and dodged it. Before they could continue fighting, however, the alarm sounded. It turned out to be Slade robbing another bank. Robin forgot all about the video game, thinking only of Slade as he ran down the stairs to the garage and got on his R-cycle. Beast Boy transformed into a cheetah to keep up while Raven phased through the wall of her room and flew to join them.
Cyborg drove the T-car with Starfire in the passenger seat and the groceries in the back. As they headed towards the bank in question the T-car suddenly exploded from beneath, trapping its occupants in rubble.
At the bank, Robin, Beast Boy, and Raven faced off against three different Slades, one of which seemed to be the leader, since he directed the other two. The lead Slade motioned to the others, who drew freeze disks and hurled them at Beast Boy and Raven, while he himself ran towards Robin.
Cyborg and Starfire climbed out of the wreckage of the T-car. (Another) Slade emerged from the door of a nearby restaurant and rushed at Cyborg, while a second (fifth?) Slade jumped off the roof and with his foot outstretched hurtled towards Starfire. Cyborg fired his sonic cannon at his opponent, who cartwheeled out of the way. Starfire shot her eye-beams at her opponent, knocking him against the wall of the apartment from which he had jumped. He pulled out his grappling hook and hooked onto a windowsill just in time to break his fall. Cyborg fired his sonic cannon again but his opponent whipped out a bowstaff and deflected the cannon shot. Starfire's opponent also used his own bowstaff, batting away several starbolts before throwing a freeze disk.
Robin and Slade at the bank matched each other blow for blow, freeze disk for freeze disk, electric disk for electric disk, bowstaff for bowstaff, etc. Beast Boy charged at his opponent as a rhinoceros but that Slade jumped up and somersaulted over the rhinoceros. Beast Boy turned into a gorilla and slammed at his opponent but his opponent jumped out of the way again while throwing a freeze disk, which Beast Boy avoided by morphing into a snake. Raven's black shield cracked under the impact of her opponent's bowstaff. A nearby car glowed black and flew towards Slade, but he threw himself to the floor and the car barely passed over him. Slade somersaulted forward, landing his heel on Raven's shoulder and crushing her to the ground in pain.
Starfire moved aside and Slade's freeze disk missed, instead striking the door of the opposite restaurant and freezing it. Slade threw some electric disks instead, but Starfire destroyed them with starbolts. The other Slade connected a fist to Cyborg's (metal) groin and recoiled in pain, shaking his hand, but managed to dodge Cyborg's punch. Cyborg stepped forward and punched and kicked at Slade, but he nimbly dodged all the blows, which were too powerful to block. The other Slade backflipped off the wall behind him and aimed a flying kick at Starfire, batting away her starbolts with his bowstaff. Starfire jumped out of the way and Slade landed perfectly. Slade made his first mistake when he drew an explosive disk and was forced to lean back to dodge Cyborg's sonic cannon. The sonic cannon beam hit the disk in his hand instead, before he could throw it, and the resulting explosion vaporized Slade. Starfire evaded the flying kick from the other Slade by flying around him, then kicked the dropping Slade in the head. The head fell away from the body and that robot deactivated.
Another Slade momentarily lost track of Beast Boy, who had turned into a mouse. When he spotted Beast Boy at his feet it was too late, as Beast Boy morphed into a gorilla and brought his fists down on Slade, crushing the robot to a pancake. Beast Boy transformed into a lion and charged at the Slade that was trading bowstaffs, disks, kicks, and punches with Robin. That Slade somersaulted away, throwing two smoke bombs. Robin was unable to pursue him through the smoke and he escaped. They turned to Raven, who was drawing shields to block Slade's kicks and punches. Robin aimed a freeze disk while Beast Boy ran towards Slade. Both their attacks were too late as a black halo surrounded Slade, shattering his robotic body.
Robin was disappointed as the Titans met up again. "Those were all robots. None of them were really Slade!"
As if on cue another Slade rappelled down from above, planting an electric disk on Cyborg's back before kicking Raven right in the face, then drawing a bowstaff. The other Titans looked up. The ends of the bowstaff had sharp dagger blades sticking out. Slade twirled the staff around and ran right at Robin. Starfire shot out more starbolts but Slade deflected them all; Beast Boy charged as a rhino but Slade somersaulted over. Robin raised his own bowstaff and blocked the attack. Then Robin did something unexpected: he spun his staff again and sharp blades extended from each end, just like Slade's bowstaff.
"Titans, lethal weaponry!" ordered Robin, and he started trading blows with Slade at an unimaginable pace. The others were afraid to fire for fear they would hit Robin. Soon Slade showed that he had a trick up his sleeve: He removed his mask with one hand while dueling Robin with the other, then held the mask's forehead and punched forward. The sharp edge of the mask cleaved through Robin's body, splattering blood everywhere.
"Robin, you've been looking for the real Slade for so long!" said the man in the Slade suit, a brown-haired, blue-eyed man of about thirty. "Well, now you have him! Here is the real Slade in front of you! Didn't you ever consider for a moment that the real Slade was more than you could handle? No! You couldn't just stick to practicing on my less-skilled droids. You had to find me. You have me now, are you happy?"
The other Titans charged. Slade pulled out two hemispheres of black metal that were about half the size of a baseball. He held them in the air and slammed them together.
A bright light appeared in downtown Jump City. The Titans, Slade, and any living thing outside caught fire and burned to death. Buildings melted and imploded. A massive gray mushroom cloud rose over the ruined landscape. Disfigured, bloody corpses filled the crater that was just a few seconds ago known as Jump City.
Far underground, a naked, sleeping man with brown hair opened his blue eyes, stepped out of a cloning chamber and put on the orange and black suit attributed to Slade. At the cost of his own death, as well as many others, Slade was finally rid of the Teen Titans forever.
The End
