Blanket Disclaimer: Poison Tonic LX does not own the Teen Titans or any characters therein. Don't sue her, please, because if you do I won't have a home anymore…-Ralph, the muse
"What do you mean, run? I'm not a coward no matter what you—"
"That's not what I meant, stupid!" The Boy snapped. "You and Dawson and Prime have to get out of here. I dunno how much longer I can keep Prime's clones from seriously coming after you guys, and I think Methuss is starting to get suspicious."
"What are you talking about?" The Original asked.
"Something funny is going on." The Boy replied.
"What's that supposed to mean?" He asked suspiciously.
"It means what it sounds like, Dawson." The Boy said. "Something weird is happening." He looked back at the broken window again. "You guys have to leave, trust me."
"Trust you? Dude, are you kidding me?" The Comic Relief asked.
"Do I look like I'm kidding, green boy?" The Boy demanded. "The last time I came here…after I went home, the clones were acting strange, so I gave them this serum Methuss told me to stick them with if they got…rebellious. And the next day…they were back to normal. They didn't remember anything…they didn't even remember Dawson showing up. I had to debrief them."
"What does that have to do with us running?" He asked.
"It means Methuss has come up with some sort of serum that makes people forget stuff." They stared at the Boy blankly and he rolled his eyes. "Don't you get it? It's a brainwashing serum. If the clones…" The Boy shook his head. "If we catch you guys and take you back to Methuss, he's going to use it on you. And whenever you start…remembering stuff and rebelling, he'll give you more of it. You'll be puppets, understand now? You have to get out of here!"
"What do you care?" The Sorceress asked.
The Boy shrugged. "It's not in my blood to follow orders. I guess it was inevitable I'd rebel at some point. Methuss knew it, too…I was supposed to give myself that stuff, but for whatever reason I couldn't. I…I think I'm starting to lose it. Maybe I'm unstable, I don't know. Just…just run, okay? Promise me you'll run, Nemo." There was a strange note of desperation in his voice.
"I'm not gonna run, Neo." The Squirt said.
The Boy exploded. "Are you stupid? This is no time for your self-righteous bravado, Nemo! If you don't leave he's gonna make you…he's gonna make you do stuff. Stuff like I do…stuff you aren't supposed to be doing, Nemo. You're not…you're not the kind of kid to do this sort of stuff, okay? Please, just get out of here. Just run. Nobody's gonna be mad at you if you'll just…"
"I said I'm not going to run, Neo."
"Nemo…"
"No! It's not right! Running doesn't help, Neo. He'll catch up to us eventually."
"But at least you'll be safe for a little while longer. Maybe long enough for someone to stop him. You don't even have that chance if you stay here! He'll make you forget everything! Even me! Why won't you understand?"
"I could ask you the same thing! And what's more, why do you even care?"
"I don't!" The Boy yelled hoarsely, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears with his hands. "I don't, okay? I'm not allowed to care! I only have one purpose in life—to follow orders! I was born, I was trained, and now I'll fight, and when I've outlived my usefulness I'll die! If you stay here I'll have to take you in, and once Dawson and Maxwell are back with Methuss everyone will have outlived their usefulness, maybe even you! I don't want to die, Nemo, not yet! And I don't want you to die, either!" He shook his head suddenly, letting out a pained cry. "It doesn't matter what I want! I'll die! I'll die!"
"What's wrong with you, Neo?" The Squirt asked, sounding a little concerned and more than a little frightened by the Boy's actions.
The Boy shook his head, shuddering, and coughed as blood dribbled from his mouth, abruptly calm once again. "God, that hurts…I didn't figure on it progressing so quickly…today must be a bad day, then…" The Boy grimaced and ground his teeth together. "I don't want to die, I know I'm supposed to but I don't want—" The Boy gasped and clenched his eyes shut. "It doesn't matter, it doesn't. I'm not supposed to want anything, I don't want anything—if I keep telling myself that will it be true? I can hardly think through this pain, I won't be able to convince you to leave if I don't pull myself together, Nemo, and you have to leave or he'll hurt you, too, and I won't be around to save you next time, not like I was back then and like I am now."
"N-Neo…what…?"
"He's going to kill me—but then, if I stay here for much longer I'll die anyhow…how can I be so calm? I don't want to die…I was made to be like this, I guess…you were, too, but they trusted me with your development and I made sure they couldn't make you stay, I made sure they wouldn't be able to hurt you for long, not like they hurt me, and I made sure to plant ideas in your head that would make you run away. I destroyed all of it, I did, and I'm proud of it, too, and once they figure out I really did do all of it they'll wish they hadn't killed me so they could make me tell them how to fix you, but I'll never, ever tell, even if they do keep me alive!" The Boy shook his head vigorously, letting out a bark of laughter that turned into a hacking cough and groaning in pain once the coughing had passed.
"This kid is really starting to freak me out, dudes…" The Comic Relief said.
The Boy didn't seem to have heard. "They didn't know I was smart enough to do it, but once I saw them tinkering it was easy to figure out what I needed to do…"
"Neo, you're starting to scare me." The Squirt said. "Please explain what you mean? And why are you in so much pain?"
The Boy smirked, the expression flickering as he was bombarded with more and more pain. "It's the failsafe, Nemo. We can think as many rebellious thoughts as we want, but if we act on them the failsafe kicks in, and if we haven't stopped after an hour we're supposed to die instantly. Mine is defective, so instead of just killing me instantly after an hour, it hurts and keeps hurting until I pass out from the pain, and then—and only then—will I die. Yours…yours is nonexistent. I destroyed it before you were much more than a fetus in a test tube. God, I might be as evil as Methuss wanted me to be! I ruined everything—all of his plans!"
"Neo…" The Sorceress began.
"What do I mean? I sabotaged Nemo's creation. I'm shallow and I'm selfish and they should've known better than to trust me. They shouldn't have let me hear them talking about him replacing me—in fact, they shouldn't have let me near him at all, whether I heard or not. They told him we're Dawson's personality split in half, and maybe they actually believe that's what really happened, but the truth is I deleted the dark portion of Dawson's personality from his DNA, and then I destroyed his failsafe feature, and then once he had been born I kept making subtle suggestions to him to run away and go find Dawson. I made sure he got out, and I made sure he hated Methuss and the rest of us clones with all of his being! I'm the clone of a thief, after all…and I stole Methuss' chance at the perfect clone. He would've been the perfect clone—I heard them talking about it. With the progress they would've made with him, Prime's super clones wouldn't be as ineffective as they are now. Too bad, too bad…"
"Shouldn't the failsafe have kicked in?" The Kid asked.
The Boy giggled. "That's the best part—the failsafe, even when it was working properly, didn't pick up on it. If I rebel to help myself in a way that won't hurt Methuss—like going against an order in a way that'll make the job turn out better—it let's me do so without protest. I'm a very arrogant clone, almost as bad as Three, and I thought I was the best ever…which I am, since I sabotaged Nemo…so in my mind I wasn't hurting Methuss, so the failsafe never kicked in! It was so simple it's a wonder no one caught me, but I guess the best plans are the simplest ones. I was helping myself, and not helping myself at the same time!"
"What do you mean by that?" He asked, confused.
"I'm helping myself right now, only this time I'm suffering from no delusions that it won't hurt Methuss. I want him to hurt! But the thing is, I'm not helping me, I'm helping Nemo, but I'm still helping myself. Do you understand?"
"No." The Sorceress drawled.
"Nemo and I are clones of the same person. Does that clear everything up?"
"Dude, no." The Comic Relief said.
"Our DNA is exactly the same, except for his not having the evil bits. If this wasn't going to hurt Methuss as badly as it is, the failsafe wouldn't kick in because by helping Nemo, even if it's got nothing to do with me personally, I'm helping myself. He's me, I'm him, we're both Dawson, do you get it now? I don't have any more time to explain!"
"We get it…sort of." The Kid said.
"Good." The Boy dry heaved, shaking his head as if to clear it as he held his stomach. "Look, Nemo, just run, okay? Get out of here before he catches you, 'cause if he doesn't kill you he'll make sure the failsafe is integrated into your system."
"I already told you I won't run! It's cool that you did all that stuff for me…I think…but running won't do any good. At least here I can fight."
"You'll lose." The Boy said, but didn't push anymore, shaking his head again. "Whatever. If you won't run, just go to Gotham City and find a man named Lucius Foxx at Wayne Corp. Tell him you know a friend of Timothy Drake's named Owen Williams. He'll know who you are and hopefully he'll have an idea of what to do. If not…pray."
"How do you know Lucius Foxx and Tim Drake?" The Kid demanded.
"Let's just say there are days when my failsafe doesn't work at all, and I don't really like playing Methuss' pet monkey." The Boy laughed again, the laugh sounding more like a cough as he was apparently having a difficult time breathing. The Boy turned away, walking towards the window, but paused at the edge, looking at them over his shoulder. "If I'm not killed, don't count on me…helping myself…next time we meet, Nemo. If I do survive…I won't be me anymore. I'll be another puppet. I would apologize, but…" The Boy smirked. "That's not my style."
"Neo…" The Squirt bit his lip. "Hey…no matter what happens…you're my brother, right?"
The Boy winked at him. "Sure." The Boy said. "Later, little brother."
And with that, the Boy stepped over the edge and disappeared.
(THE RUSH)
A/N: …I did warn you it was going to get weird…for anyone who didn't quite understand what just happened, here's the gist of it:
The serum Neo used in chapter 21 was a brainwashing agent that made the super clones forget about rebelling against Methuss. What was making Neo so weird was a failsafe that's integrated into all the clones' DNA, so if they rebel against Methuss—anything beyond thinking about it, that is—they instantly die, or in Neo's case more and more pain builds up until he passes out and THEN dies. Nemo doesn't have a failsafe because Neo heard some scientists talking about Nemo being better at him, so he got jealous and sabotaged the experiment by deleting all of the evil DNA (and the failsafe) out of Nemo, then manipulating Nemo into running away and looking for Rush before it could be fixed. The failsafe doesn't pick up on clones helping themselves (like Neo was doing to Nemo) as long as it doesn't hurt Methuss (Neo didn't think he was, since he's as "humble" as Rush), which is why it didn't kick in then, and it wouldn't kick in now if Neo still at least thought Methuss wouldn't get hurt by him helping Nemo and Rush, even though technically he isn't helping himself. Since he, Nemo, and Rush are basically the same person thanks to their blood, the failsafe treats them like a single entity.
I think that's everything…just tell me in your review if anything else confused you…