Robin tapped a birdarang on the desk in front of him impatiently. He had been in the dark evidence room for at least an hour, and hadn't thought of anything remotely useful. The newspaper clippings and broken gadgets from previous encounters only filled his mind with memories. Not the kind of memories that he treasured, either. These were the kind of memories that he wished he could forget. Memories of Slade. Memories of Terra. Memories of every time he'd failed to stop the madman. Memories of when he had even served him.
"Focus!" he told himself out loud. "Thinking like that won't help anybody! Just move on and figure this out. You can do this. Starfire believes you can do this."
He stood up and walked from one end of the room to the other, examining all the evidence he had collected on his arch foe. A couple broken masks, a couple of pictures taken with Beast Boy's camera during a chase that still revealed nothing important, and that earpiece with the dreaded "S" printed on it that Robin himself had worn once. And newspaper clippings. Lots and lots of newspaper clippings.
It felt like they were surrounding him on all sides, those paper cut-outs. They were everywhere he looked. "Mystery Man Strikes Again!" "Who is that Masked Man?" "Robbery Attributed to Man Called 'Slade'!" "Slade Nearly Captured!" "Criminal Known as Slade Reappears!" Robin could see them swirling around him like a black and white tornado, taunting him with their enticing titles. "Slade is Back!" "Slade Strikes Again!" "Who is Slade?" That last one repeated in his mind over and over. He shut his eyes and tried to block it out.
He was back at Slade's first lair, his red and green uniform switched out for a black and copper one. Slade stood in front of him, just a few paces away. "Hello, Robin," said Slade's very recognizable voice. "Alone again?"
Robin took a step forward. "My friends are with me. We're going to bring you down, Slade, just you wait."
Slade shook his head as though he'd just heard the most ridiculous story of his life. "Your friends can do nothing. This is just between you and I. We are like father and son, master and apprentice."
Robin tensed. How dare Slade dishonor the memory of his father! "You'll never be a father or a master to me! I'm nothing like you!"
Slade walked until his one-eyed mask was directly above Robin's head. "Oh, but you are. You think you can lead your little friends against me, but you couldn't even resist me yourself. You couldn't save yourself from my influence, you couldn't save Terra. What makes you think this Kim Possible will be any different?" He bent down so that his metal face almost touched Robin's nose. "You liked working for me, and you know it. What makes you think you won't fall for it again?"
Robin yelled and moved to punch Slade in the face. Slade grabbed his wrist just before impact, and with a few quick moves twisted Robin's arm behind his back. "Give up, Robin. You wknow this is all useless. You thought I was gone, but I came back. Then when you believed me dead, I returned. You thought you'd seen the last of me while fighting Trigon, but you were wrong. Even now, you can't have a moment of quiet time without me being here in your mind. I own you, Robin. As long as I'm here, you can't save your friends and they can't save you."
He's in my mind, Robin realized. This is a dream. Slade loosened his grip and let the Boy Wonder fall to the floor. "It's my mind, and I'm telling you to get out right now!"
Slade took a step back, but was not at all frightened. "You know I can't do that. I am everything you hate and fear. I haunt all the darkest corners of your mind. You can push me back as far down as you want, but I will still be waiting for you. Even if you kill me, I will still be here, lurking in the shadows of your thoughts."
Robin covered his ears, trying to block him out.
"You want to help your friends," Slade continued. "You think they can defeat me. What part do they have in this fight? You know it's really just you and I. They are useless to you, and worthless to me."
"No," he said. "My friends are stronger than you. You can't stop them. You don't know what they can do."
Slade kept speaking as if there was never an interruption. "They are merely your little pawns. You and I are the only kings in this game." Robin looked around. The floor had been replaced with a giant chess board, with pieces as tall as he was surrounding him. "One by one," Slade's voice spoke, though Robin could no longer see the masked madman, "I will pick off the little worthless pawns…until I reach the king." The pawns on his side suddenly changed so that they all carried one of his teammate's heads. He could see Cyborg, Beast Boy, Raven, Kim, Ron, and Starfire. A giant black king appeared above him out of nowhere. He ran away and ducked behind Starfire's pawn. He heard a sinister laugh and watched the black king knock down Starfire's white pawn first, breaking it into pieces on impact.
"NO!"
He blinked. He was back in the evidence room. He had fallen asleep at the desk again. Now he was sweating and panting. The door slid open and he looked over to see Raven.
"I heard you scream," she said. "Are you okay?"
"No," he replied. "It was Slade. He came back and I couldn't do anything. He told me I couldn't do anything, and I think I believed him. It was awful."
"It was a just dream, Robin," she told him. Once, Robin had honestly thought he saw Slade when it was only a hallucination. She'd had to enter his mind and see everything the way he saw it. The process had given the two of them a sort of bond. Even after she had stepped in, he nearly killed himself before he realized it was fake. She hoped he wasn't relapsing back into that.
"I know it was," he said, reassuring her. "It's just that what he said…" he trailed off, thinking about what had happened. All of a sudden, he looked super worried. "Starfire! Where is Starfire?"
Raven looked around her. "Not here. I'd say probably doing something girly. Maybe she's shopping, or getting her hair done, or…where are you going?"
Robin took off in the direction of the main room. He plugged his communicator into the computer and waited for it to load. He could have done this without the computer, but it would be easier to see her location on a bigger screen. A map showed up with little green dots marking where Titan communicators were. A cluster of four was in Jump City. Three more were off in Middleton.
"She must be with Kim Possible," Raven figured out.
Cyborg and Beast Boy burst into the room. "Yo, what is going on in here?" Cy asked.
"Yeah," Beast Boy added. "We heard somebody scream 'no', and at first I thought somebody was watching Clash of the Planets, but then I realized neither of you two watch Clash of the Planets, so something must be wrong."
"Anyway, we came up here as soon as we could," Cyborg finished.
"Robin had a dream about Slade," Raven explained, "and now we're stalking Starfire."
"I'm not stalking her!" Robin insisted. "I've dreamed about Slade before, and sometimes they're a kind of foreshadowing. Like right before I became his apprentice, I dreamed that I took off his mask and saw my own face. In this one, Slade said he was going to pick you all off one by one, like pawns in a game of chess. Then he…and Starfire…she broke…I just want to make sure she's okay."
The Titans all knew he meant it. Despite what Cyborg sometimes said when he teased him about it, Robin really did care for Starfire a lot. "Well," Cyborg said, "the T-Ship is available if you need it. Thanks to Beast Boy, I've got some more repairs to do on my baby. For future reference, ocelots are pretty bad with cars."
Beast Boy crossed his arms. "Well, I was going to help you some more, but just for that, I'm going to play Mega Monkeys without you."
Robin unplugged his communicator and walked out of the room, checking the screen for the little green dot. If it was green, she was okay. Usually. He heard the air move behind him in the hallway. He turned around and saw Raven levitating.
"I think I should go with you," she said, "just to make sure you're emotionally stable."
"That's probably a good idea," he admitted.
The two most serious members of the Teen Titans piled into two seats of the T-Ship and took off in the direction of Middleton, following a little green dot on Robin's screen.
Back at his headquarters, Dr. Drakken paused his work to wipe the sweat from his brow. "You know, Shego," he said, "I almost wonder if you're right."
"Right?" Shego asked. "About what?"
"When you mentioned that Slade is telling us to do everything. I'm over here adjusting my robot prototype according to his specifications, and I don't see him doing anything. You think maybe he's being a bit dishonest with us?"
Lying was as natural for Shego as flying is to a bird. "Of course not, Dr. D. If he were trying to trick you, I would have noticed it a while ago. Just get back to your toys."
While Dr. D grumbled about his inventions being called toys, Shego walked out of the room with a wicked grin. After signing the contract Slade had shown her, it was official that Shego was on Team Slade. However, her new boss had insisted that they keep Drakken under the illusion that they were both still allies with him so that he would keep working without suspicion. They would drop the news on him once he was no longer useful. Shego couldn't help admiring her new master's scheming. She was sure Drakken was incapable of this kind of double-crossing.
She entered the main room where Slade was waiting patiently in front of the giant computer screen. "Okay, Slade, what did you want to see me for?"
"Welcome," he replied. "I want to inform you of the next step in my plan." He clicked on the monitor and revealed the feed from a Club Banana security camera. Kim and Monique were helping Starfire try on new earth clothes.
Shego winced. "Whoa, Kimmie," she said to the screen as if Kim could hear her, "that is so not her color. She is totally a pastels kind of girl. What with the neon body and everything…oh yeah. Okay, that goes better. Fashion crisis averted." She felt a large, cold hand on her shoulder. "Right, next step. What's the next step?"
"The next step," he explained, "involves destroying our now mutual enemies: the Teen Titans and Kim Possible. With them out of the way, conquering cities should be much easier."
"I like this job already," Shego said, her right hand lighting up in green flames. "Who do I go for first?"
"Patience, apprentice," Slade said. "Though they are children, the Titans, and so far as I know Kim Possible, are quite intelligent. To rush into anything would be disastrous. We must wait until our strength is built up, then strike them all down."
"Okay," the green woman replied, her hand returning to normal. "Not really my style, but okay."
"What I need you to do," Slade instructed his apprentice, "is to plant this nanoscopic bug on one of their communicators." He held out his hand. In it was a barely visible silver dot. "Each of their communicators can locate every member of their team. With this bug installed, we will be able to track their locations so that we can find the right time and place to execute the plan. It is so small that will look practically invisible, even against bright yellow." He dropped the nanoscopic bug into a small plastic bag and handed it to Shego. "You will find at least one of the communicators at the football game the evening at Middleton High School. Kim Possible will be cheering. Judging by how well they're getting on, I'd say Starfire will probably be there as well. Find just one of their communicators, and bug it."
Shego looked at the camera feed. Starfire had found a cute floral sundress and was modeling it for Kim and Monique. "Here's what I don't get, slick," Shego said. "If they're going to be at the game, why can't I just crush them right there."
"Patience, apprentice," he said again. "You will have your chance to destroy Kim Possible. You merely need to wait until the timing is just right." He turned around as though he was leaving, but stopped before reaching the door. "I will also need the password to get into Dr. Drakken's invention storage room."
"That place?" Shego scoffed. "The room where he keeps all his great unfinished ideas? There is nothing worth anything in there. I mean, he keeps it locked up, but I've broken in a few times and none of those ideas are remotely good for anything."
"I want the password, apprentice," Slade repeated. "You are going to give me the password, and you are going to allow me to do whatever I need to do in there. Is that clear?"
"As crystal," Shego replied. "Now, excuse me for a minute. There is a mud mask that is calling my name, and you'd better hope this mission doesn't interrupt my personal spa time." She walked straight past Slade out the door.
"I will need to do something about her attitude," Slade said to himself, watching her go. "An apprentice must be respectful and obedient. Oh, but she will be. I'll be certain of that."
