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Not sure if it turned heads, but felt like a part two was in order.

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Our Flag Still Flies - War of Rebellion

Part Two: Dedication

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"Undress me."

"U…un…."

There was a light pause; Slade clicked his tongue, the General cross at times in their lore as enemies, yet how he dragged on by only watching. Waiting, as any good soldier might their protégé.

"Un….no…no!" Robin shook his head and fell back onto the edge of the bed with a shaken clatter. "That wasn-

"Anything I say, will do. Did my speech mean nothing?" The General brought his hands to drag the kid from the only space he was allowed to carry close, as Robin carried on with whining out the same dribble.

"No! I … AM A WAYNE! THERE IS NO WAY –

"Did you want to die today, Grayson?" Hissed the man as he knelt to grip the teen's smaller wrists in his own, massive power withdrawn behind that Icy stare. Still, he waited for the boy to simmer, to know his place as the tears could not keep him. Only his new agreement with his new master held that purpose, and Robin knew it well enough.

He was not leaving until the man was in nothing but his skin and flesh; rudely unclad before the once noble son of Gotemiln, the son of the future of Jumperei and Styr…of hope.

And to what ends had he but pledged his loyalty, to this conqueror? If he were to take the cloth of this…immortal scoundrel, he could never show his face again in either country…

" Are you, of the house of Wayne to be so prudent? I'm merely asking to be dressed, boy. My assembly in the yard with my soldiers is wasted effort if I cannot LOOK as they know me to be."

"You lie…" Seethed the boy as he let his eyes never stray. Teeth bared; the little pup could not strike while so coy. Slade took pity on it for the sake of his country's politics. Nothing more. He was just a bargaining chip to keep his post, but…

"I could, yet you don't deserve to touch me, child."

Richard paled as his old self felt defiled even at the sight of the man taking off his boots right in front of him. A hand to his chest as he batted it away, only to have himself pulled too close to the General. The chains sang along as he looked into nothing, the scare too much as with one yank, he was forced to open his eyes.

"I've chosen to save the magical contract I hold over your head, for a very different punishment. We'll need to get to work. Know my body and be ready to serve your new ruler at any time I demand it be done. Your allies are also, waiting." Hummed the general as the boy shook so in his hold. "Now, undress my top, then the rest."

/

Rushing water warmed his fingertips as they too trembled while the boy was let to his own devices. The General had called his people careless with having divided the classes and was or wasn't allowed to wash within a heated bath. He was allowed this much, and too far a thought had Richard remembered a small implant that could be crushed to work upon biting down…

A faked death of his own remorseful cases, Richard sighed and looked up at his reflection I the sink's one mirror. "I'm sorry, comrades…"

Filth, dirt. He did not want to live if that was what a servant did. He'd seen every pop and placement of muscle and sinew on that beast of burden, to speak of it now…Gods…. his father would disown what he had been before this war had ended.

Korina. If he could put down the General's many walls…

Choking on what could be vomit, he heaved into the sink.

Pitiful, he thought to only himself. To distract… seduce the General?...

The capped poison sleeping in its casing of his back tooth was popped loose, a swell of bursting agony as the noble bit down.

He'd rather die than pretend to love.

/

The General knocked quite loudly as Richard kept sweating through the pain, kept to his plan to reveal nothing to this disgrace of a louse ruler…as his family was formidable; able to withstand poisons a plenty, yet not this one.

A true double cyanide to kill within –

The hinges shook, the boy in a panic as he clutched the sink and fell to his knees.

The door was broken, the knob removed as the General reached out to scoop up his foolish servant. A fever –

"Sire…here I believe this was, intentional." An elder associate of the new ruler's guard plucked up a piece of the broken tooth cap on the floor, the boy unconscious as he was injected later with the same serum that had made the General a massive threat to even the Minvervan order.

/

The boy awoke again, this time chained to the man's bed that he wrestled with the feeling of living. Of losing his last resort, while the General had in his hand something important to imprint upon his prize for risking his rise to power.

"A rebel, always. Even when no one dies under my watch…you weren't listening very clearly before." The General had his sole one eye on the teen's still indecisive blue. Fight or…should he do as he'd thought impossible.

"I can't have a suicidal servant boy. Nor can Cobb know about your implant; go on, how many do you still think you have."

Richard huffed and raised his defiant eyes to the king of nothings, his words clearly true. Always.

"None." He told the ruler without keeping it secret to anyone else. "That capsule was a gift –

"A, gift." The General raised a brow. "Of death, you realize; even when my job is to make sure that you live."

"That may be true, General-

"SIRE." The General spat. "You won't be permitted to call me by anything else."

"Just as the gentleman whom found my trick, is that right?"

"Correct. He was saved by me, yet he refuses a privilege of power. States that he'd rather stay away from my influences. Be humble."

"Are you to keep me this way as well, sire?" Robin ached to speak of such a title.

Slade thought about it, how he was hung up and useless like this. The boy had to learn to bow or he'd be beaten to commit to killing his own kind. "Perhaps, whence you've earned the right to stand by my side. A soldier cannot flee if he is ordered to fight, and you seem to dodge this lesson –

"I have a noble birth right, Sire." Robin frowned and tugged lightly to adjust his wrists and chained ankles. "I want these cuffs off, how must…. I make that happen?"

"By trying to be better, Robin." The General knelt to have the child's breathing hitch as humored to the side of the bed, lower to a whisper. The boy was holding back all of his anger to learn, yet there was something amiss. Why ask so, plainly? Was he planning something?

"You…. told me before, that you'd have me…to know your body…" The voice recalled in a small quake. "W- Would…. that imply, something more –

The General stood up; eyes startlingly wronged by such a question. "You're a virgin, child. I would never defile such purities as you want, and Cobb will come for you whence you are trained to take direct orders." He turned on his heel to leave the child in his time out room for now. "Remember; you'll sacrifice for me, and Korina might be set free…. maybe even your father if you impress me before you trial ends."

/

The Swooping down of a green crow and a black Raven familiar side by side, was a ride for not only freedom, yet for help. Rachelle called to her familiar as the green crow cawed and mutated back into the boy Garrison. Victor and Wallace both took to the back roads to survey the damage of the city where Richard had been taken away.

"Anything, Garrison?" Victor asked the young cursed child. The teenager shook his head and sighed forlornly, a set of drooping ears by the curse and green flesh not withheld as he'd been to upset to keep even a tail hidden. "Not a hair, nor a foot…" The boy whimpered and reverted to the face of a dog with drooping eyes and ears. "Wallace? Your force of the speed of light can only go so far." Victor noted that the gifted runner who was given the speed of a Greek God was winding down as a frail old feeble adult, so he told the speedster to sit and refuel on some of their protein and carb packed rations from Azarian Rachelle's only Azarian cookbook. "My people were wanderers and nomadic, we had to eat these…rounded pieces to survive when food was scarce." She told Wallace and handed him four very densely packed clay colored protein orbs.

"Did your stomach revolt as well?" He groaned and felt his own do the same. Rachelle have him a hard look as Wallace shoved the item into his mouth with a crunch and a pop, very grateful for the food.

"TSNN LINN…..CHNIRB!" ( taste like chicken.)

"Why don't we return to the base." Victor spoke to his companions calmly. "All of us have been up tirelessly searching and not a clue yet until we know where to truly look."

"I agree." Rachelle bored her head, Wallace and Garrison doing the same. "I would also like to send a letter across the states of wartime; to Harold ( the Herald) in Steelston City."

/

Roy was escorted to his carriage by the Court's own security officers, sneaking by as a crowd of protesting folk in Styr spat out and yelled, his eyes seeing how much the world had been left to fend for itself and he came clopping into the town square, right before a fallen statue of his former father figure.

"Sir Harper." One of the male's newly assigned attendants tapped the son of Styr's brightest on the shoulder.

"You must speak to the people. We will be watching, go."

He came upon the group, their anger and avarice as well as fears made plenty clear, while the eyes of deception did so taunt him from afar. The Minervan order owned him now, yet he had a plan. The Lexian country of Metropoli was still neutral. He would see to forge an alliance to protect his people, to be taken away from these chains of his undoing. Gotemiln was foolish to try and bar up its walls for so long, not while the messengers of Minerva and the Court had seeped their ways through so many weathered and obvious cracks in the country's infrastructure.

With his lungs cleared and fingers still trembling beneath his gloves of the country's last hope and assemblage to peace, Roy spoke well as he'd been taught, the Court always watching room the shadows as his plan was to rebuild. That the Bluddbechian army was no real foe, that he could protect them.

"WE SHALL NOT ALLOW OUR PRIDE OF STYR TO CRUMBLE!! WE ARE THE HOPEVOF TOMORROW, ONLY YOU MAY FIND MY WORD WORTHY – WHO WISHES TO UNITE A NATION?? TO SALVAGE THE COUNTRY OF NOW THE GREATER STYR CAPITAL, UNDER THE BLUDDBECHIAN CROWN???!!"

Roars erupted as the speech paid off. Roy smiled and stepped down to spy a brush of green and long dark tresses by his walk to his carriage.

She was a former lover; Jade CRUICKSHANK ( CROCK.) She was once a spy for the Lexian capital, a special assassin before….before they'd fallen in love. She was rather pale, body cloaked in a grey shawl as her hand went over her stomach, the attendants and guards ignoring her as he saw her dark eyes alit.

~ You betrayed it, the child that was never yours to know. ~

That was what he believed she'd say, she had in fact looked to be very pregnant as he tugged his collar roughly up and got into the craft with less ease than earlier. "Why didn't you come with me…." He whispered and rocked himself, seething through his teeth as the temper had died. " Why did you betray ME?...my beloved…."

/

The raw clank of a rusty old gate got the prisoners jumping up into the bars, begging to be set free. For their enemies to show amnesty. Any pity they were told was given only to those "worthy" of it.

The one beaten soul not believing any of the General's words was too tired to protest and lift his head. Purple bruises, chained down resistant bonds and a black eye or cut lip aside, he was darkly believing the war to rage on. Even at the corner of his nearly closed lid, the scraggly soul listened to the guards. To the ones come here for only one purpose.

To mock a prisoner before he was beheaded or thrown to shame in the gutters, with all of the rest of the snickering bickering swine in the city of Nanda Parbat. This was where he was held as a trophy, to live out his days in misery to wallow…

Had the gates not opened with the pitch of a lost little wren.

The man raised his head to see not one, but two as they parted ways. The younger was in fact a teenager with a black and red uniform below his brown cloak. He moved quickly and quietly, the one beside him much younger and far too young to be alone in the dungeons of such a keep of the Al – Ghuls.

The boy beneath his cloak moved to the bars of the lost and beaten man's cage. He spoke softly, lips dry and chapped as his mentor's own.

This man, why was he remembered?...

He dropped his hood; green eyes bright and as youthful as he'd recalled, Bruce melted and tears fell with a gaping croak.

"S…on…m- my...t…Tim….?"

/

Stopping here, and it will be a fic. Too much to put and so…we shall see.