Resolutions pt. 2: Shattered Dreams

"I'm very disappointed in you," Slade said as he drove his daughter home. "You know I expect you to do your best at all times. No daughter of mine will be a slacker."

"Yes, Daddy," Tara Wilson answered. "I promise I'll do better. It's just... I've been having these dreams..."

Slade raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Please don't keep them to yourself. If you're having trouble... well, I'm here for you, dear."

"Well... okay... it's kinda silly, but I keep dreaming that I'm one of the Teen Titans. And it always ends with me in a volcano that's erupting, and everything goes white, and then... I wake up."

"Didn't you mention that one of the Teen Titans visited you last month?" asked the older man.

"Yeah, it was the green one. Beast Boy. He kept saying that I was someone called 'Terra', that I had powers, that I was a Titan. At first I humored him, because he seemed nice. But then it got really creepy."

"It's probably just your subconscious. Deep down, most likely a part of you was intrigued by the notion that you could have been a hero, and that's what's generating these fantasies. Rest assured, Tara... you are not, nor have you ever been, either metahuman or a superhero."

"I know, daddy... it's just... the dreams are so real."

"They may seem real now, but they'll fade eventually. You'd best just forget about it."

"I... guess you're right, Daddy," sighed Tara. She changed the subject. "Can I go to the mall with Cissie and Anita later?"

"Your grades are in no shape for mall-crawling, young lady," admonished Slade. "You're grounded until you get back up to at least a 3.0."

"But Jimmy Rook's new CD comes out today! We HAVE to have it or we're sentencing ourselves to total social ostracization!"

"I'm sorry, but your grades are far more important. However, if you get an A on your next test, I'll pick up a copy of the CD for you, how's that?"

"Arrggh!" screamed Tara in frustration. "That's not the same and you know it!"

Slade sighed inwardly. Lie low, you said. Try the normal life for a while, you said. Try to be the father you always wished you could be, you said.

Compared to the agonies of raising a teenage girl, super-heroes and giant demons were a walk in the park.

Beast Boy entered the command center of the Tower, where Robin already awaited in his seat at the big table.

"Sit down," he said calmly. Great, he's calm, thought Beast Boy. That's the worst. He nervously took his own chair.

"Look," he began, "about today...

Robin cut him off. "It hasn't just been today, Beast Boy. Remember last week, when Ding Dong Daddy and Johnny Rancid hit the auto show? You were late for that one, too. And a few days before that, when we took on the Gargoyle? You didn't even show up that time."

'Jeez... do you give Kid Flash and Jinx this kind of grief? They haven't been around either!"

"Kid Flash and Jinx ASKED for time off. You, on the other hand, haven't been telling anyone about anything." Aware that he was shouting, Robin lowered his voice. "Look... I'm not just the leader of this team, I'm your friend. If there's any kind of trouble..."

"It's... it's personal stuff."

"It's that girl, isn't it?"

"Uh... yeah, actually, how do you know?"

Robin smiled. "You don't spend years with the world's greatest detective without picking up a few things. Speaking of... I did some research. Beast Boy... that girl couldn't possibly have been Terra."

"But... she looked just like her... and sounded... and for a second it was even like she remembered."

"When was the last time you visited her statue? Wasn't it around early October?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Because that girl's been enrolled since September. While the Statue was still there in the cave. Face it... it's not her."

Beast Boy slumped. "You're right. I... I kinda just wanted it to be her. But it never was, was it." Slowly, he got up. "Can I have the night off? I need some time to myself."

Robin shrugged. "Okay. Take your communicator, though. We may need you."

"Thanks," Beast Boy said, as he left.

Jeez, Robin thought, I hope he can get his head together.

Page after page of mathematical problems stared back at Tara. Stupid pre-calc... make sense! The page stubbornly refused to obey her commands, though, and remained just as impenetrable.

This was all Daddy's fault, Tara's mind told her. I should be out there with my friends, but I'm stuck in here all night with stupid math problems, until they're done... and then I'm stuck here all night WITHOUT the stupid math problems.

Screw this. I'm sneaking out.

Tara tiptoed past the door to Daddy's study. Daddy usually spent his nights in there, doing who knows what... not that Tara had ever cared. It wasn't her problem. The window was Tara's target... from there, she could easily shimmy down the trellis and reach the ground. She had to be quiet, though... Daddy had really good hearing.

Taking off her sneakers, she tiptoed towards the window, carefully sliding it open, wincing at the slight squeak. She braced... but no footsteps followed. He hadn't heard, thank goodness. Carefully, Tara descended to the ground. Re-donning her sneakers, she hurried off into the night.

"We're closin' in a half-hour, kid," the gravely-voiced waitress reminded Beast Boy. "I don't really care where you go, but y'can't stay here.

"It's okay, I should probably just get going."

He got up and was about to leave when a familiar figure entered the diner.

Beast Boy sighed. Of all the pie joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Tara wasn't sure what possessed her to walk into this particular greasy spoon. Upon entering, though, she knew it was the wrong one.

HE was here.

"Uh, hey," Beast Boy began.

"No! Just... leave me alone, okay! Leave me alone!"

"Actually... I kinda just wanted to apologize for the way I acted last month. It's just that you look a lot like someone I used to know and..."

Tara felt constricted. It was as though the walls were closing in. Walls of lava...

She screamed.

The earth itself echoed her.

It was a mild tremor, as they go in Northern California. On a normal day, people would barely even notice it.

The only truly odd thing about it was that it started at the exact time Tara screamed.

When it was over, their eyes locked.

"You... you just..." Beast Boy finally stammered.

"No... no, I didn't do that! It wasn't me!" screamed Terra as she fled the diner.

"Hey! Come back!" yelled Beast Boy, but it was too late She was gone, once again... and now there was probably no way she'd ever talk to him again.

"Okay," Beast Boy muttered as he got out his communicator. "Now maybe you'll believe me."

So shaken from the encounter was Tara that she didn't even bother with stealth once she reached home. So, when she loudly flung the front door open, Slade was easily roused from his work. Emerging from his office, he found his daughter frightened and sobbing.

"What happened?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, daddy, I snuck out to go to the mall but he was there and I saw him and he saw me and the ground shook and he said I did it and I was all 'no I didn't but he said I did and I just couldn't stand it any mo-"

"Pygmalion," responded Slade. Tara froze in her position, as though she had somehow become petrified; her eyes showed no awareness.

This was troubling, Slade thought as he paced. This iteration was supposed to have no powers... yet it seemed as if she had, in fact, a functioning metagene after all. The shock of the discovery would be the first crack in the dam he'd built to hold back her memories. Oh, he could easily wipe her short-term memory and eliminate this particular crack... but there would be other reminders, other potential slipups, other cracks, until they spiderwebbed across the surface and shattered it, and a torrent of memory poured forth to wipe away the new life Slade had built for his charge... destroying his final chance to do it right.

No.

This time, he would not fail.

He entered his study. On the south wall, there was a large bookcase. Hundreds of volumes lined the shelves, including Sun Tzu's Art of War, Machiavelli's The Prince, and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. The typical cartoon supervillain would have hidden a secret switch behind one of these books. No doubt, such a switch would cause the bookcase to slide aside, revealing a hidden staircase to some secret lair or laboratory. Anyone looking for such a switch in this office would be wasting their time. What they REALLY should be paying attention to would be the snowglobe of Jump City located on his desk. Shaking it activated a transponder that would contact a teleport device located in an obscure cave outside Star City.

Slade Wilson did exactly that now. Within a fraction of a second, he was in a hidden chamber deep within the cave.

Now, HERE was a supervillain lair. A wall of supercomputers here. There, a bank of monitors displaying activity in every major city. Elsewhere, his robot minions stood at silent alert, ready to do his bidding. Here, the cloning tanks that had been so instrumental to the whole project. And there...

It had been a while since Slade had worn the armor. The last time, the city was in flames and a massive demon lord loomed over the world. This time, the situation was far less apocalyptic, though potentially just as desperate, at least in his eye.

The armor still fit perfectly; of that there was no worry. Slade still trained eight hours a day, having little need for sleep. The experiment had seen to that. His body was constantly maintaining itself in peak physical condition, and even the bite of age had not been able gnaw away at his physical perfection. His eye was his only flaw... for some reason it had never healed.

Oh, well. 99.9 of perfection is still impressive.

His mask now in pace, Slade Wilson, the father was gone. Slade, the criminal mastermind, was firmly in charge now, for what he hoped was the last time.

From the corner of the lair, one item had to be retrieved... with it firmly in place, he could proceed.

And when he was done, no one would ever bother Terra again.

"I'm telling you, it HAD to be her!" insisted Beast Boy.

Sighing, Robin answered "We've been over this, Beast Boy. The records show that Tara Wilson was enrolled at Murakami High BEFORE the statue vanished."

"Well... records can be faked, can't they? Or maybe someone replaced the real statue with a fake, or maybe... the point is, she caused an earthquake!"

Less certain now, Robin still offered a defense. "Well... this IS California. It COULD have been a natural quake."

"Centered exactly where we were? The odds of that have to be astrotomical!"

"Astronomical," corrected Robin.

"That too!"

"Look, even if you ARE right... what can we do? She's said she wanted to be left alone."

"Well, maybe she's under some kind of control or something?"

Robin was about to try a rebuttal when the viewscreen crackled to life.

"Hello, Titans," the masked figure on the screen said. "It's been a while, hasn't it."

"Slade," muttered Robin under his breath.

"You remember. I'm flattered."

Robin whipped out his communicator. "I want EVERYONE at the Tower immediately."

"So, that's Slade?" asked Kid Flash, bored. "Should I know who he is?" Jinx elbowed him in the ribs to shush him.

"I'm glad you could all join us," said Slade. "Is that Jinx? I'd heard she'd gotten herself a conscience. I wonder how long it'll last."

"Shut up," muttered the reformed witch.

Whatever camera was relaying Slade's image followed him as he strolled around his lair. "I believe you recognize my guest." He indicated a statue of a young woman in long hair and a tattered battlesuit, frozen in a position forever.

"It's a fake," muttered Beast Boy. "I saw her. I felt her powers."

"Oh, I assure you, Beast Boy... this IS the real thing. You are looking at Terra's actual petrified body."

"Again, who?" asked Kid Flash.

"He's lying!" insisted Beast Boy. "It's just some statue he carved to look exactly like Terra!"

"I have no reason to lie, Beast Boy. One never lies when the object is to teach."

"So... what's the lesson?" asked Robin. To the side, he gave Cyborg a nod that was instantly understood to mean Do you have a trace on him? Cyborg shook his head.

"I assume you'll want to ascertain her authenticity. Meet me in Haney Valley in one hour. You'll have your chance to assure yourselves it's her."

"We'll be there," assured Robin.

"I look forward to it," Slade replied as he cut off contact.

"Okay, I know I'm the newbie here, and I know I don't know anything about anything, but doesn't this whole situation just SCREAM trap?" asked Kid Flash, confused to the point of exasperation.

"Of course it does," Robin answered. "But one of our own is in trouble. We HAVE to answer the call."

Haney Valley was located halfway between Jump City and Star City, a flat gap in the Cardy Mountains. Stone towers jutted up all around, jagged peaks reaching to touch the sky.

It was here the Titans had first met Terra. Slade had clearly not chosen this location at random... Slade never did anything at random.

"So, where is this guy?" asked Kid Flash, a blur of impatience. "I don't wanna miss tonight's Marooned." Suddenly, he vanished, then returned. "Never mind. TiVO'd it."

"Focus!" hissed Robin.

"Ah," echoed a voice through the dusty valley. "You've arrived."

The team whirled. Somehow, even though they were prepared, Slade had gotten the drop on them. He stood, now, behind them, the Terra statue at his side, a silent witness to the tableau.

"And now, the lesson: No matter how often you foil me, no matter how often you thwart my schemes, there is always one weakness. One crack in your armor that I can always exploit."

Fear clenched Beast Boy's gut like the claw of some giant emotion lobster. Deep in his heart, he knew, just KNEW, how the next seconds would play out. And he was powerless to do anything about it, because his brain had no clue.

"And that crack is called... hope."

It happened so fast that no one, not even Kid Flash, could have prevented it, yet it seemed to occur in slow motion. Slade's fist swung toward the statue, connecting with its torso. It shattered on impact, the force of the blow spreading outward, reducing the statue to nothing but rubble.

"If you'd like, you may examine her now," Slade continued as if nothing had happened.

"BASTARD!" screamed Beast Boy, morphing into a triceratops and charging the villain. Slade moved to stop it in its tracks, but now Beast Boy was a kangaroo, leaping over his blow... now, tackling him as a baboon, now crushing him as an anaconda. The force of his coils cracked open Slade's mask, revealing the circuits and servos underneath.

"Another robot," groaned Robin. "This is getting really old."

Beast Boy shoved the automaton away in disgust. "He's lucky it WASN'T him. If I get my hands on the real thing, I'll..."

"Calm down," Raven admonished. "Anger won't solve anything. We don't even know if that was her or just a fake."

"Uh, well, actually..." Cyborg looked up from the rubble he'd been scanning, a sad, defeated expression on his face. "I'm picking up fragments of human DNA in the shards." He sighed deeply. "It's her."

All eyes now turned to Beast Boy. Already furious, the green-skinned teen looked now as though he would burst into flames.

"Then Slade's DEAD," he said, cold fury in every word. "And God help anyone who tries to stop me."

To be continued...

Next: Will Beast Boy make good on his promise? And the answer to the big, big question:

If that WAS Terra that Slade just smashed, then who the heck did Beast Boy run into at the diner?