Sorry about the wait! I really wanted to post this a while ago, but my cat had her kittens a week earlier than planned. Despite our best efforts, two kittens were lost. We really did try, and between work, classes, Anime Detour and all that…well this became lost on the list of things to do. Thank you for your patience! Now onto an even darker chapter two.

Two floors below the warmth of the workshop, in the toy factory's forgotten sub cellar hidden away under the known cellar, all was dark and still and musty as things had been for many a decade.

Then a light appeared in the damp darkness. No one had turned on this light. It just came alight on its own accord, or as if an invisible hand had flicked a switch.

At first, it was not much of a light. Much like a flickering ancient light bulb, pumping its last light into the world. Dim like a cold winter moon. So most of the deep cellar remained cloaked in its black gloom. Nothing could be seen except for the stone floor and stacks of old wooden crates.

D.S. Toys was imprinted on every side of every crate, for that was the initials and name of the company that had worked the toy factory before Alfred had founded Trusted Toys. These boxes of various sizes were cocooned in cobwebs, weighted by years of dust's collection. Their lids were hidden by nearly an inch of blanketed dust and spider's off cast homes.

Something thumped in that darkness.

Something creaked.

Suddenly a shiny blade stuck up through the crack between the lid and the side of one of the crates. Something within this crate was prying its way out. Wood splintered with a dry sound of age. An old nail began to pull loose with a series of forced squeaks.

A disturbed spider scuttled down a trembling web to vanish into the darkness.

The gleaning blade moved along the crack inch by inch, prying at the lid, and one by one the nails pulled loose of its wood. Then the lid was thrown back, and Slade emerged from the crate that for decades had been his tomb.

Slade was a tall, slim but well-built action figure. It was if he was a ninja whose mask become all wrong, his armor in orange-red and black seemed almost that of a mismatched jester, but the only eye that gleamed from his mask shown only a dead-seriousness. That eye had a cold, wild look as he slowly took stock of the shadows around him.

The action figure's silver armor was tarnished and soiled with rust and questionably stains. His body suit was filmed with dust, and the coiled wraps around his wrists eaten away by moths, so that they hung in tatters off of his arms.

Cobwebs wound around him as he stepped out from his wooden prison. He brushed them coldly off his shoulders and legs. If he could have smiled through his mask, it would have been calculating and without humor or warmth. His mask was blank, as if no more than a robot's face. Only that eye was alive, even if it was a freezing stare.

"Alive," he said, and his voice echoed eerily through the darkened sub-cellar.
"At last, alive again."

He carried a sleek staff, from the ends a gleaming steel blade shown. When he touched a button on the side, the knives snapped back into the inside of the staff, entirely hidden.

The dim white light from the stained chandelier gradually began to brighten. Farther away in the vast storage room, another one came on and it too began to glow steadily brighter.

The deep cellar seemed like a hibernating creature that was finally awakening.

Slade laughed. It was a cold, mean laugh.

Unlike the Toy Titans two floors above, Slade was not a good toy.

I know it's short, but writing during a cold it's hard to think or plot for too long. Looks like my evil plans for stealing cookies will have to wait…as will Slade's plans. Who knows what they are??!