A/N: I got all four of my wisdom teeth pulled this morning. All of them were impacted so I'm going through agony right now. It hurts so bad! So all my writing will be on a small two or three day pause because I can't focus. I can barely type this author's note right now. I hope you like the chapter. Please give a review!

Disclaimer: refer to every other chapter.

Chapter 12

Rose put down the notebook paper with a small shiver. Zach had finished reading earlier than her and was sleeping fitfully on the couch next to her. She looked around the broken room in despair. Slade had left for some reason, but only after skimming Gene's journal. He had been gone for two hours now.

Robots still stood at every doorway to prevent anyone from leaving. The Hive Five members were slowly picking up the pieces of their hideout. Kid Wicked already considered himself not part of the team anymore and refused to clean up with the others. He didn't dare leave, though. Slade would kill him if he did. So he just sat off to the side and watched emotionlessly as his old team worked.

Sparks suddenly flew up from the destroyed computer. Gizmo looked over to his wrecked creation with a sad expression on his face. He mumbled a few curses before picking his broom back up. Mammoth and the dozen or so Billy Numerous' had the same expressions on their faces as they patched their hideout back together at what seemed like snail pace.

Rose suddenly wondered what she had gotten into. She was a perfect attendance, straight A student who wanted to do great in the world when she got older. How did she get here, with a team of super villains and a madman out to get her boyfriend? She pulled her legs up to her chin with another shiver. A wave of hopelessness came over her usual happy, cheerful way of thinking.

"It ain't winter!" one of the Billys suddenly shouted. "Why's it freezing in here? Turn up the heat, Gizmo!"

"Yeah," Mammoth agreed while rubbing his arms, "It feels like its snowing in here. Look! I can see my breath!" He opened his giant mouth a few times, and sure enough, a white puff cloud could be seen before it lazily vanished into the air.

Gizmo rolled his eyes while using his jet pack to fly over to the thermostat. He could see it slowly turn down on its own. He frowned at the device and tried turning it up. He grunted as the thing didn't budge. "Stupid thing!" he yelled at it in anger. "It won't move!"

"That is because the Titans have overridden your main computer," Slade said while briskly walking into the room. Rose shook Zach awake. She knew he wouldn't want to miss what Slade was going to say. Zach got up with a daze like expression on his face. Once he spotted Slade, though, he snapped to attention.

"How do you know?" Gizmo asked him while folding his arms in front of his chest. Slade simply bent down and picked up a little scrap of metal and threw it at Gizmo, as if to answer his question. It didn't take long for Gizmo to know what it was and that it was created by Cyborg. He threw down the device with another string of muttered curses. It would be winter in their hideout till the Titans decided to change it.

"I have a plan on how to get into Titans Tower," Slade announced to everyone in the room. "They are expecting us, so let's move. That includes you, Kid Wicked." The teen frowned deeply but stood up anyways and followed after his old team.

"Wait!" Zach yelled after Slade while standing up. Slade stopped at the doorway and turned around with his eye narrowed on both of the teens. "What about us?"

"You are going to stay here," Slade said. "You are free to leave once I have Gene. Till then, my robots will keep you two from leaving."

"What?" Rose finally spoke up. She got to her feet with anger rushing through her. "You said we could see Gene! But now you're going to keep us here, captive, while you go and capture my boyfriend again! We had a…"

"Rose! You're eyes are freaking glowing!" Zach yelled at her to stop her shouting. Rose stopped and looked at him strangely. His own eyes were wide open in slight fright. "Do they usually do that when you're mad?" he asked.

"No!" Rose snapped back. She turned to Slade and gasped. He was gone. "Darn that man!" she cursed while stomping her foot on the floor. Zach took a small step away from her and bit his lower lip. This was the first time he had seen her angry.

"You okay?" he asked her as she sat down on the couch and buried her face into her hands. She looked up with tears in her eyes, but she didn't cry as she nodded to him. Zach ran a hand through his Mohawk and said with relief in his voice, "Good. That whole glowing eye thingy you did kind of scared me."

"But my eyes don't glow, Zach," Rose said to him softly.

"I swear they did just then," Zach said.

"And I swear you have cat-like eyes," Rose told him.

Zach frowned back down at her. "Fine, you win," he said. "I have cat eyes. But I didn't know I had them till you pointed them out the day Gene's first journal came. Happy now?"

"But why do we have these abnormal things?" Rose questioned out loud. "It's not like we have hidden superpowers like Gene."

Zach sat down next to Rose with a sigh. As if at the same time, a forbidden thought came to them. They looked up at each other with wide eyes. "Don't tell me that we're thinking the same thing," Rose said.

"Well I was thinking about what Gene told us in his journal," Zach said hesitantly.

"But he was only guessing that there are other clones like him," Rose pointed out. "And wouldn't the clones look like him?"

"Well, how do we explain my sudden cat-like eyes and your creepy glowing ones?" Zach asked.

"No, Zach," Rose said stubbornly, "We are not clones like Gene. You're just letting all this excitement get to your head."

"Oh! Don't give me that bull crap!" Zach snapped back. "For once I feel like I'm thinking clearly, Rose. My brain is, like, in overdrive. Those few days we were waiting for Gene's journal, I was sitting in my room taking apart stereos and any other appliance I could carry to my room. I then put them back together perfectly after I found out how it worked. Tell me, Rose, that that is normal for my age. Give me the parts to a CD player right now, and I could make one for you in less than an hour, I swear. Something is different in me! Doesn't anything feel weird for you?"

Tears flooded Rose's eyes. "Fine!" she shouted while crying. "I admit it! We're freaks just like Gene! I didn't want to say anything because…I don't know; I just didn't want to sound crazy to anyone! But as I was waiting just like you for that journal, I spent hours at the gym's indoor pool. One day I realized I didn't need to hold my breath while underwater. I'm like a freaking fish!" She buried her head into her hands again and sobbed.

"Rose, we're not freaks!" Zach told her.

"Yes we are!" Rose shouted back.

"No. Just because people have abilities to do things normal people can't do doesn't mean those people are freaks," Zach said. "We are now like the Titans and Gene. These powers we have should be cool. Gene thinks they are awesome, why can't we? I mean, come on! You can breathe underwater! That's sweetness at its best right there. I don't even know exactly what my power is."

"But it's just so…"

"Weird?" Zach finished for her with a wry smile. She nodded and stopped crying with a sigh. "Duh," Zach admitted. "I was worried for days once I saw my creepy looking eyes. I kept looking at them, which made me look like a retard in school."

"But who were we cloned after?" Rose asked. "What Titan is a mermaid?"

"Don't know, but the glowing eyes remind me of that alien girl from that picture on the Internet we got from researching them," Zach said with a bored shrug. "You must be a mix of her and someone else."

"Why someone else?" Rose asked. She tilted her head to the side in confusion.

"Because Slade fused two DNA strands to make Gene," Zach explained. "Gene is half Raven and half Robin. If Slade cloned us, he probably did the same. We are a mix of two superheroes." He sighed while adding, "Gene was right. Life is more complicated than what we thought."

"It was complicated to begin with," Rose muttered.

-Red X-

Loud hard rock music pulsated throughout the small apartment room. A masked figure leaned back in a nice leather chair bobbed his head to the hard beat with a smile. The bottom of his mask was pushed up so the only exposed skin he had at the moment was his chin and mouth, which he was stuffing with Hawaiian pineapple pizza. The other hand was casually twirling a red X with one finger.

He still hadn't taken off his Red X outfit from the night before. He liked the sly feeling he had whenever he was in it. At two in the morning on a Saturday, Red X was celebrating a job well done for his latest heist with pizza, loud head banging music, and a good search for the next wanted or expensive thing in his city. That was the life of Jump City's greatest thief.

"Let's see what I got," Red X said to himself after finishing his third slice of pizza. He took his feet off the glass computer desk and stared into the flat screen monitor before him. "This city is getting boring," he said to himself even tough he couldn't hear his voice over the blasting music. "This is just crap," he said. "Where is the good stuff?"

After a minute or two of finding nothing of his personal interest, Red X was about to leave empty handed. Then something caught his full attention. "Hello!" he yelled at the monitor with a giant grin coming to his face. He put his slice of pizza back in the box and turned down his music. He laughed as the thing he read just kept getting better.

"I know how to settle this fight," he said with another laugh. "The kid will go to the person with the most cash. I'll decide winner."

-Teen Titans-

"So where do you think Slade went?" Beast Boy asked Cyborg and Robin. The girls were stationed around Gene as he slept in the infirmary while the boys watched the video footage of the Hive Five's hideout. They were all on high alert ever since they saw Slade leave the hideout two hours ago.

Cyborg was at the computer controls while Robin monitored the footage around the Tower, the hideout, and parts of the city. Beast Boy was just there as back up. If they needed an extra person somewhere, Beast Boy would be the one to go.

"He's looking for an easy way into the Tower," Robin said as he kept his sharp eyes on the black and white video footage boxes that switched every few seconds. "He doesn't want to just barge in here," Robin explained. "So he finds a way inside and ambushes us with the Hive Five."

"He must really want that kid," Beast Boy said. "Why can't we just wake him up and ask the dude why Slade wants him so much?"

"Did you see him, man?" Cyborg asked the changeling. "The kid pretty much passed out, he was so tired."

"Slade's back at the hideout," Robin said suddenly. The other two snapped into attention and their eyes flew to the screen above them. They all watched silently as the Hive Five left. Robin's eyes narrowed as Slade turned back around to talk to the two mystery kids who had showed up with him three hours before. Cyborg had already done some research to see who the two teens were, but nothing had come up. They were as mysterious as the kid right now.

"Okay, now where is he going?" Beast Boy asked as Slade left.

"Here," Robin said emotionlessly. "He's found a way in."

"Or he could be trying a front attack with no surprises," Cyborg said. "The Hive Five could fight us while he goes after the kid."

"He knows that we know he's coming," Robin said. "He's found a way in. The question is; where?"

"Robin, I have video cameras at every corner of the Tower," Cyborg reassured the teen. "I could track a stupid squirrel all night if I wanted with this much technology. We will see them."

"Maybe there is one place you forgot to put cameras at, dude," Beast Boy said with a shrug. He knew that Cyborg was telling the truth, but it was best to be safe than sorry. You always had to check all possibilities.

"Every room has one," Cyborg answered sternly. Robin and Beast Boy glanced at each other before giving Cyborg stubborn frowns. "Fine, I'll prove it to you guys," Cyborg said. He turned back to the key board and typed in a few keys. "Here are all the rooms inside the Tower."

"How come the basement one is off?" Beast Boy asked while spotting the only black box out of the many others on the screen.

"It's not off," Cyborg corrected, "The lights are just not on down there. They can't get in from down there, anyways. Our drain into the sewers is too small even for Gizmo to fit through. They can't duplicate what we did to them."

"But they have Kid Wicked," Beast Boy pointed out with a wince. "He can make a flipping portal! Didn't you think about that?" Cyborg was only able to frown as he saw his mistake. Robin was already ordering Raven and Starfire to keep a sharp eye out for anything on his communicator. He nodded for Beast Boy to go ahead. The changeling took off in a sprint for the basement door after giving Cyborg a sorry shrug.

"Make sure no one else comes in," Robin told Cyborg. "Tell the girls or me if you see anything." Cyborg nodded and turned back to the computer screen as Robin raced to the basement. The door was already flung open, and Robin could see Beast Boy jump off the railing of the metal stairs. The green teen morphed quickly into a bird and glided down to where the Hive Five was.

Robin skidded to a stop on the top of the stairs and glanced down at the small group of teens below. It didn't take long for Robin to notice that Slade wasn't with them. He spun around while reaching for his Bo Staff. He was quickly met with a shoulder to his chest. With a cry more out of surprise than pain, Robin was sent over the railing. The teen managed to grab onto one of the railing's metal bars with one hand to prevent himself from falling.

A wave of intense pain shot down Robin's arm as his body pulled against the muscles there. He winced as his body dangled precariously three stories above the ground. He looked up and glowered as Slade looked down at him with slight amusement in his one eye.

Slade then ran out of the basement and locked the door behind him. "It's not that easy, Slade," Robin growled as he swung his body back and forth. He then flipped himself over the railing and landed in a crouch. He swiftly took out two small bombs from his belt and slapped them onto the two hinges.

The soft tick of the bombs gave Robin only seconds to get away from the soon to be explosion. The teen leapt off the railing while whipping out his grappling hook and shooting it at one of the rafters. As he soared through the air, the bombs blew the hinges off the locked door. Robin swung back toward the door and forced it open by plowing right into it. With a giant bang and cloud of dust, the door fell down with Robin on top of it.

Wasting no time at all, Robin sprinted off to the infirmary. He didn't like leaving Beast Boy all alone to battle the Hive Five, but Slade needed to be stopped before he got to the kid. While taking the stairs three at a time he took out his communicator and ordered Cyborg to help their green friend.

It suddenly dawned on the teen that Slade could have no idea where the kid was. Slade could actually be following Robin to where the kid was located. Instead of going all the way to the fourth floor, Robin stopped at the third and burst through the Tower's gym doors. He briskly walked to the center of the room and waited.

"Bravo, Robin," the familiar smooth voice said to the teen. The man slipped silently through the door as he said this. He didn't bother turning on the lights as he slinked his way toward Robin, his one eye narrowed dangerously on the boy. He stopped a yard away from Robin in a calm stance with his hands clasped behind his back.

Robin was already in a firm fighting stance, masked eyes intensely locked onto Slade. He was breathing heavily from his hurried sprint up three flights of stairs. His controlled gasps for air echoed around the large gym, making it the only sound in the room.

"No questions?" Slade finally asked Robin with a hint of slyness in his voice. "Usually you are just filled with them." Robin gritted his teeth in anger at the insult, but still kept his silence. The man started to walk around the leader as he said, "You don't know anything about the boy, do you?"

"I know enough," Robin said.

"Oh, but you have no clue what the boy is," Slade said, still circling Robin. "If you did, I'm sure you would hand him back over to me. You, Robin, don't know what you have gotten your team into."

"Don't tell me what I should do!" Robin spat back spitefully. "And you should know by now that that lame line doesn't discourage my team and me." He smiled wryly as he added, "It actually motivates some of us."

Slade stopped circling and said sternly, "Enough childish mind games. I'll get right to the point. Show me where you are hiding the boy or I'll make you."

"Not very many options, are there?" Robin pointed out with a teasing smile. He backed up a little and said, "I guess I would have to choose you trying to make me. Trying is the main word there."

Slade folded his arms in front of him and told Robin firmly, "I'm serious, Robin. You do not want to intervene into this matter. Just give me the boy and I will leave."

The man's strange manner caught Robin off guard. He stood up straight and gave Slade a questionable look with one eyebrow raised in suspicion. "What is he, Slade?" he asked the man. "What did you do?" If Slade was so serious about this that he was leaving the option of just flat out leaving, it had to be big. Robin was now starting to worry. It was rare that you saw Slade like this. It meant something bad.

"I'll admit one thing," Slade said coldly, "That boy was a mistake of mine. He is my problem, not the Titans. Show me where he is. Now, Robin!"

Robin shook his head no. "I can't," he said. "He is all our problems, even if you like or not. He doesn't want to go back with you." He narrowed his masked eyes as he muttered, "You seem to emotionally scar everyone you come into contact with."

Without warning, Slade attacked. Robin barely had time to react as he ducked the fist aimed for his forehead. He did a few back flips to give himself some breathing room. Slade didn't give the boy a second as he rushed in for another attack.

The man whirled out his Bo Staff and swung it at the teen. Robin didn't have time to dodge. He blocked the blow with his left arm. The hard force drove Robin to a knee. He winced through the shattering pain as he came back quickly with his own Staff raised high above his head.

The room was suddenly filled with intense battle yells and loud clashing and clattering of metal on metal as the two adversaries went at it. Slade was relentless in his hard hitting attacks of his Staff. Robin strained both his mind and body to keep up with the man. He used every skill in his arsenal to fight back.

Slade wasn't playing with him anymore. He seriously meant it when he said he would make Robin show him where the boy was. Robin tried to push the questions and thoughts about Slade and the boy out of his head as he focused on the battle raging on. He had never seen Slade like this. There was no toying to his moves. He was set out to quickly and swiftly take Robin out.

With one powerful blow, Slade rammed his staff under Robin's chin. The boy managed to stay on his feet as he backed up with a grimace of pain. Slade then drove the end of his staff into Robin's gut, forcing him to his knees and dropping his Bo Staff on the floor. Slade piteously slammed his metal bottom foot onto Robin's outstretched hand that was going to retrieve his staff. The teen cried out as his hand was crushed under Slade's weight.

Robin looked up with widened eyes as Slade picked up the other staff off the floor and raised both of the Bo Staffs over his head. The teen gave a sharp yell as he pulled his hand free and rolled out of the way of the powerful blow of the staffs. He was now out of a weapon and resorted to full time defense as Slade unremittingly came at him with both staffs twirling and whipping around his body. Every blow was deadly and precise. Robin was having the worst of times dodging the man now.

Suddenly Robin's communicator went off. The noise put Slade on pause. He stopped in mid swing. Robin was on his back on the floor, looking up at the man. Both of them breathed heavily as the stared at each other. Robin's sweat dripped off his body and silently splattered the metal floor beneath him. He was just thankful that Slade had stopped. He couldn't have gone on for long.

Robin pulled out his communicator and opened it. "Yeah?" he asked after taking a deep gasp for air. Raven was on the other side. She looked stressed beyond belief. She didn't answer him for a second as she closed her eyes to calm herself down. "What happened, Raven?" he asked with concern.

"He's gone, Robin!" Raven finally said. Robin shot a glare up at Slade, but the man's widened eye indicated that he was just as surprised as the teen. The teen looked back at Raven with a confused look. If Slade didn't have the kid, then who? "It was Red X," Raven said.

A/N: I love cliffhangers and twists! I hope this provokes people to review. Ouch! I'm in pain. At least wisdom teeth only get pulled out once in your life time. I would cry if I had to do this again someday. Well, my readers, review. I'll try to update next weekend for you guys.