Long Live the King – Deathstroke's Forced Descent into Villainy
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PART TWO
This one is purposely shorter, so do enjoy!
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Chapter 21: The Good Old Days – In Hell
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Digging trenches.
Cutting the enemy down.
Sinking bloody battle ships.
Slade had gone too far this time when he'd returned a total decimation of a person to Wintergreen's side.
"I'm home," didn't quite cut it. At first, Will nearly fainted and turned on the estate's alarm systems to full force, only to find them offline without a certain Wilson to start up the program. It dawned on the British elder that something was strange about this skeletal figure coming into the world from deep below the resources of…could he say it? Was there a movie being shot somewhere outside of the city? A deliberate prank, or…was it supernatural in origin?
Will relented, once the man with paper skin and bones showing through heaping scraps of armor and cloth, spoke in a voice that had the man standing still as a statue in a mine field.
To add that to the list, Will knew that blasted voice all too soon, so the creature was forgiven for startling him in the middle of the night.
"You…survived…where is the girl? Tara?" William looked over the spawn figure's shoulder by the door as it simply heaved. As it walked, near dead and dying yet not so that it could leave this very place alone, it spoke. "I got lucky, Will" The madman sounded disturbed but, he didn't show it. His face had very little to say as he gathered himself to fall into the sofa in the nearest room over. He laid himself out as he always had, a lazy arm over his eyes to block out the lamp light above him.
"Slade! Talk to me, man. What happened to you??"
"Will. Let me, rest." Slade sighed out cinders from his dry lips as William's eyes saw the flakes fall in a messy pattern by the disfigured being's arm. "Let me…rest…. a while…."
Slade sounded old. Older than time or to the oldest of allies. Wintergreen nodded, but it broke his heart to see Slade the way he'd become in only a few short months. It had felt like days to the man as he turned off the lamp in the room and left his dear friend to recover what part of himself that he could.
He never would, again. And as Will believed he was horribly wrong; that there was never a way to prove his point false.
As he'd soon find out, there had to be some way, even not of this earth.
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Slade slept and by the time morning broke, he was not as before. He felt skin for the first time. He felt his nails and hair….and a not so bony ass?
Slade snorted and rose to his feet. He felt the floor, the reality though, was not to be set in stone. He still had a job to do to have his entire level of feeling back. To being what he once was.
An unbeatable soldier with anger issues.
And angry he surely was.
Slade needed to get out his defeat, his rage. He was annoyed at the study first, the painting of himself in a damned safari outfit made his blood boil. Slade went out to a shed out back of the manor, dug up a couple of messy painting tarps from the largest storage unit there and got to work with liberating himself from that face he kept seeing.
A more than fleshy, human…face!
He tossed tarps over mirrors, tore down paintings of his past. Made quick work of anything that red ogre could tamper with. He was the demon's eye in the sky and on the ground. He had to be –
"Slade?? What the bloody hell are you doing to that portrait! I demand to know what's gotten into you this instant. Now, put DOWN the painting…slowly."
Slade huffed and rubbed the back of his neck as the item was then laid to lean against the wall of the hallway's second floor.
"What is happening, what did you in this time? This, isn't at all like the man I've known." Will looked Slade up and down, seeing the male turn his head. "Well, out with it, then!"
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And so, he told Will a good chunk of how he'd come to be a walking hell's agent – because he was. He was a demon's eyes and ears to the real world…
"If I expose anything else to you, Wintergreen, then I'll have signed off your soul along with the rest of the human race's." Slumping into a large lounge chair, Will didn't have any words. He was, stunned. It was rational to want your life back, but this???
"You devil…how…. how is this justified? I'm not the problem here! You are trying to do the same damned thing as before w –
"Blood sold them out first!" Slade snarled, losing his temper. Will just coldly stared back, countering the raging bull's tantrums. "The heroes will be the death of me –
"They already HAVE been!" Will wanted to smack Slade upside the skull for spouting such dribble. "Then you have to fix this, with or without the Titans' full approval. And I can't believe I'm going to add this…" Will sighed and broke a gnarled hand to his temples. "The Justice League might –
"Damned if I do that!" Slade shot and stood up, afraid to start a few –
"Your hand! Look out!" Slade looked down and saw that fire had completely collected in his palm. He shook it just as Will had grabbed a pitcher for the house plants and proceeded to drench his friend in order to keep him alive a bit longer.
Slade panted as soon as the water had hit his skin. Will was gritting his jaw, so Slade explained that…. too.
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"You've got fire powers now?? What are you hoping to accomplish?? Hold the city for ransom?? Make ungodly demands to be its king?? I can't…What are…" Will tried not to lose it to this, animal in man's skin. "You'll get good old fashioned super-science to repair your flesh and bone, so do tell that devil down below that you aren't sold –
"The task was, to destroy the Titans." Slade soon had his fire recede. At least he was a fast learner. Will too in a breath and tried his hardest to listen to anymore of this crime lord's twisted ideals. He owed the man for life, so it wasn't his place to say nay to the overpowered meat puppet.
"The demon Trigon sired a child here on earth with a woman from the older, Church of Blood's order." Slade recited as the fireplace bowed to his abilities. He might ask to keep some of the spoils.
"They were supposed to bring the end of the world, so I decided to see about who that entailed… and to my shock you would not believe who that lucky offspring really was…."
"Well?" Will raised an eye as Slade' boots full of soot paced the dirtied rung twice over. "Who is it, Slade? What possessed you to help guide this creature? Do tell me w –
"It's Raven, Wintergreen!" Slade let out a joyful hiss through his unkempt despair. He felt no fury, only that desire to put every last hero onto the pyre. His very soul burned to let the Titans know his wrath was not a farce.
Wintergreen felt his eyes cross, suspecting that Slade had maybe suffered a perfect paradox by his trauma. By falling face first into that hot magma below Jump city, he'd been reborn into his worst self. Not surprising, since every time the man was brought back, Will was usually the one forced to cope with Slade's hissy fits. No one else.
"The…the empath??" Recited the butler. "What in the devil does she –
"They know nothing, which means I'll be one step ahead. All of the time." Slade let out a breath that just felt intoxicating. Despite the dragon's billowing smoke that was his burning passion to get revenge on the ones who'd let him fall, he felt pretty relieved to have let go of that much built up pressure in his chest. "Poor girl…she probably wants to keep being a perfect example to her team, but it ends. I won't let her have her wish. Not until before mine has been granted by her daddy dearest."
Will's jaw dropped. Trigon was real, as were Slade's delusions of what the monster might provide. Should he follow through and taken what Trigon wished to own…a, person. A teenager, and…
It made Will queasy. Slade had changed to him, and unless he'd have a guardian angel taking pity on that bloody mercenary's soul…
The man he knew was a goner.
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