Teen Titans- ReBeL Yell- If I Had Stayed A Renegade-
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CRY FOR HELP
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TAKES PLACE AFTER THE MASK IN HAUNTED – ONLY DICK KNOWS AND OVERHEARD THAT OT WAS ACTIVATED, SAW THE RED BY CHECKING IT OVER BECAUSE IT WAS NO COINCIDENCE. HE POURS HIS HOURS CAREFULLY BEHIND THE TITANS' BACKS INTO UNMASKING THE REAL PHANTOM AND TO HIS SHOCK, COMES UP BLANK…UNTIL THE PROPHECY OF TRIGON AND SLADE SHOWS UP TO TORMENT HIS FAVORITE EX APPRENTICE ONCE AGAIN. SADISM, DIALOGUE IS DARK AND SLADE HATES BEING TESTED BY HIS MINI NEMESIS, UNTIL HE PUTS A DAMPER IN ROBIN'S SPARK TO TELL HIM…. WHY HE REACHED OUT. FIND OUT!! WAS IN AN IDEA SLUMP AMD COLLEGE NEXT MONTH. VERY EXCITING.
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"Outside, the tower…"
The room's hall outside those closed doors bellowed a frightening cold against his already beaten and battered flesh. The wounds burned as Dick Grayson stifled a gasp and flew back by what his eavesdropping had now done.
No
"That…. that's not…. I can't let it go then…" Dick rasped in a whispered voice, not exactly a limp to his room as he shut the doors again. Silent humming devices and files all where he had left them.
"I'm sorry…" With a trudge into the stacks of missing documents, wayward threats and so much…
He realized that he was missing an important piece.
/
"It was right…here!" A shriek from Starfire had the team barrel into the room age and their co-captain were investigating. Cy gawked and shouted at the boxes below in the basement as Robin kept a lock on the security, not to be caught off guard or read by Raven. She was still winded from the spell. She'd seen all of his history and his life before joining the team. He just, did what his enemies might, and watched as the baffled four dug hopelessly through his evidence haul for the one thing they'd needed, but not as much as he might.
"The mastermind and mad man. Slade's…triggered face covering is not…. there was no one there! –
" That's why it's weird…somebody must a' gotten through MY state-of-the-art security! We had this whole place on –
"The quarantine protocol." Raven frowned from the side. "Thanks to Robin, no one could get in."
"OR out." Bb grunted.
The mask. Slade's reagent wasn't the kind that Scarecrow's toxin could replicate. Robin had successfully checked the back of the face plate that night over, his sleep schedule again limited by time. Time to try and stop his nemesis and to put an end to whoever was trying to resurrect Slade's name and legacy.
If that was all.
"Just have to be patient…not much time." He sighed and turned over the device in a bag in his hand. A zip lock and a gas mask on so he could try again.
This time, Slade wouldn't stick to him like glue.
/
"Trouble! –
"AH…. Are you ok, dude?"
Bb had knocked on Robin's door, to his joy it did open all on its own yet the one behind closed doors was drooling over forms of paper and tech at his work desk.
"DUDE! The alarm? You need to take five?"
"No…n…. yawn…. B…. just go ahead. I'll catch up to you guys…"
The hero in green tights rubbed his watery eyes and smiled, hair a mess as he shook it back to perfection.
Bb had many senses of almost every known animal on the planet and off of earth, yet months after when the mask had somehow left the tower grounds, Bb smelled something odorous and musty just from a single strand of that teen's spikey hair.
Bb growled, then ears going flat as he ran over the memory…
"Dust??..." He gasped to himself.
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"I. Don't. Have. It."
"I SMELLED IT, DUDE!"
"It could have been an instinctual response, you care. That's probably-
"No!" Bb flapped his arms as the three others looked on through the fog of their situation. Beastboy had finally gone loco. The smell of this "residue" had forced him to confront Robin after the battle with Brother Blood like a siren's song. "He has to be lying to us…you're still looking for him!! Even when he's underground in, LAVA!"
"I TOLD YOU…. HE'S DONE." Dick clenched his fists and stood before Bb, eyes as bat – glare habitually as could be enacted. "I was looking over the files of the HIVE case. That's it." He said with a straight face. "Go through everything, take the evidence and clear out my workplace. I don't care…I just want you to trust me."
"We do, yet your sleep patterns are erratic and interfering with our missions."
"Have they?" Raven backed up. "We defeated Brother Blood without losing. Robin was fine, I saw his aura and it looked…stronger."
"I'm also training a bit harder. Batman insisted I try to increase my endurance." Robin told the heroes. "Then, what about the hunch Bb had? You did have all the symptoms checked out but I did a scan last time and you were clean. No residue."
"It's like with Terra." Raven jumped back in, making Robin glad as well as nervous that she was so invested in his wellbeing.
"Beastboy. Your grief for Robin was maybe just as powerful as it had been with Terra's betrayal. It could be your unconscious fearing the worst, and your instincts are only working on human emotion….I'm sorry. The data shows that Robin is fine." She saw how he was not though, the ears and eyes still as animal as before.
It wasn't until a few weeks to a month later that Robin had a chance to see Bb in a whole different light. He was loyal, yet feral for his remaining humanity. Raven was the person he'd protect like a sister, yet Dick….
He'd only made the beast angry as he rushed to pull off his mask and hop into bed. Bb's attitude now that he was healing from the chemicals, he'd really…
The hushed whisper of the wind through his window had the piles of papers on his desk fall over. Including the mask as he rushed to it, grabbing the gas mask for extra precaution.
On the back, was a strange etching in red.
"Expect a test…. what?"
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After that, Starfire and he grew closer, better…until...
Until…
Raven's turn came.
And the truth, came out in a bold red etched S upon the enemy's brow.
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"Scath…." Growled the hero to the perp they'd run into at an old abandoned lot. "Slade…you returned but you're not serious; Raven isn't going to go through with this plan."
"Didn't you get my M.O, boy wonder?" Chuckled the mercenary as if they were old friends. "I did say there would be a test. And, if you can't pass with an A plus…I'll have to expel you all from this city to make the end come about. The pro –
"Not so fast!" Dick rushed into the mad man, his bulk protected by demonic flamed as they danced a familiar dance that struck Dick as…odd.
"You remember. But, I'd rather these lessons stayed private-
"How…" Dick panted as he was left to watch the man fading into the flames again. "How do you have that memory?? It can't… Slade !! Explain yourself!!"
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Yet hell was not a pretty place, sorely not. Slade trudged a few steps without his initial healing. Robin waited flanking behind the man in case he decided to bolt which…seemed highly unlikely. "Tell me, if we don't get what we both want."
Robin's words were not in warning, yet curiosity. Slade's one eye turned to him, just as cautious. "How did you, know how to act. The mask from the robot duplicate was in our tower and…you knew how it walked, how it fought." Dick clenched his fists, eyes coming up to be level with Slade's frailest form.
"Because YOU were the thing that haunted me, tried to erase me –
"Not true." Slade snorted and kept walking. Then, he paused to consider what he should say. "After the lava as I told you earlier, Trigon had given me a bit of…lee way into your world. Problem was, not the way that I'd expected. I gave him reason to hunt for the gem seeing as it was so important to gaining what I wanted. You were the only thing standing in my way, a capable nuisance."
Dick shrugged off the insult. "Thanks, but that still doesn't answer my question."
"Patience was something you never retained, kid." Slade groaned and walked slower, body feeling ridiculous pieces back together. The factor from the serum only just barley giving him his life in parts as the boy wonder messily squandered away their time to be free of a demonic curse.
"Patience didn't let me know that you were coming back. Patience didn't stop Raven from becoming the portal. And Patience, won't save someone like you. But you'll tell me, before you leave this city and never come back…did you take part in trying to attack me with the dust."
"To leave my last mark, and to make sure I suppose, that you'd be ready."
"READY?"
"As a last resort, a cry for help. It wasn't me in your dreams, boy. Trigon is more than us both. He can maintain forms as a trickster, which was how he found out everything needed to know about Raven. Through you. I'm sorry, he took my memories and used that to attack, and I was glad then to be rid of my last failure. The fact you still stood, while was…"
"Half – dead? Ruined, because of a teenager."
"Very thorough, so yes." Hissed the merc with a hand to his ribs as he kept walking. "And I won't be the very last."
"As long as you disappear, don't ever haunt my team with your face again."
"Or, you…Grayson."
Dick stopped. "Use that info, and Batman –
"I already had the intention to drag you to my side, once." Slade snipped as they didn't quit wondering if the other would retaliate. Slade gave up, tough. Boy wonder was as amused as he was by the fact that Slade HAD wanted him in the ground. Maybe they'd be roomies, you never know.
"A few more steps and I'm gone. No more, if that is what has to happen. I'd count yourself fortunate to even know my name. Did your search come up with any shockers, Richard? That you met my true face once upon a time, in Gotham."
"I don't care, right now it's my turn to help her. Raven is my teammate. You, you're just offering your services because it suits you….I'm not just here to help the world."
"Too bad, it was a fun reunion. While it lasted."
"I don't see it that way."
"Maybe, not now." Slade shrugged, thinking down the road that a future bird would get blue and return to his roots eventually. Trigon could see the future, and sadly…
So had he. A true kill joy till the end.
/
It was all, with a mask. It started with a single enigma, as Dick put the thing in a box and left it to rust….years later….only then when he wasn't so sure that he could stand the sunshine- that he missed those storm clouds most of all, right before he became the blue winged vigilante, he saw by the airport terminal a face that was not easy to discard in a box.
"Hello, Wilson."
Nineteen not even, yet as Slade J. Wilson looked up from his paper in the waiting area. The boarding delay was killer as he sighed, folding the Daily planet and putting his hand on his knees, gathering his thoughts as the man chuckled and shook his head. He was amazing, that boy wonder.
"The Titans finally had enough of you, kid?" His eye glittered up as the patch today was a bit less menacing than it had been before when they'd fought. "What's the time of your departure; I'm still off duty as of right now –
"I know you pushed us to believe that Terra wasn't your doing, bringing her back." Dick watched the man's façade crack a little, a hand to his temples as the strain wasn't the issue. "Though, you decided to confront me in an airport boarding sector. Well, good luck getting a straight answer. Was that all?"
"No, I wanted to…thank you, for leaving her and keeping your promise. You tried to right a wrong that…" Dick scratched his head and thought this was….impolite, despite a menace helping him stop a world from going to the hands of some dark lord.
"No one that wasn't, human….would have done something that bold. You chose not to announce it, but it was obvious from the start."
"Are you sure about that assumption, Grayson." Slade raised his arm and saw the dial change to noon. He was going to be a few minutes too late to greet his new –
"If. If that's not the truth, then she did it by herself. She emerged as the person she wanted to be. No one telling her how to live or what was possible anymore. I would have just walked away, as did your teammate, Beastboy."
Slade, was right as Dick nodded, his thoughts a bit jumped over if in fact, in fact, Wilson himself had not been the cause of her new face. Or, if ever the demon that wasn't really there was not Slade but a man trying to change his ways. Just as Richard was trying to leave the shadow of the bat far behind him. Slade had another face, another place he dwelled as any enigmatic form in the dark. Dick had expressed that Slade was….useful, that he'd not told the man about his desired swap or decision to become a vigilante in some run down town for himself.
If he EVER saw that man again, they'd fight.
And he'd win it, he'd be the only one.
"Where are you headed with such a scowl on that face of yours, kid?" Slade cocked his head, the question swinging in the air as a pendulum to the waters of their time apart. A world that existed as an in-between. A silent place that could only be shattered through conflict.
"My new home, new work to be done. There is still, time to fix what I'm not anymore."
Slade hummed, not feeling the desire to tell the kid much, yet he did like to tease on occasion. "My friend as you remembered; Wintergreen, is bringing a surprise to New York. The rest, I cannot tell you out of confidentiality."
"Same here." Dick said, looking at the analog clock by the door to his destination. Slade must have sniffed out the kid's impatience to get going.
The fact that they were both headed to the same area of the world, only hours apart. "Going to miss that sea air." Sighed Slade, Dick not budging as he spoke in a low drawl. "What about her –
"Taking a break. She's still…patrolling. You'd better not become complacent while I'm away."
"I never intended to test them, you realize this."
"No." Dick frowned, the clock making his eyes glue to it, the want to leave as he was….kept beside his living shadow – the kind that would never leave if he wanted it to. Same as the bat.
The boarding light and intercom to Slade's plane went up as he started to shift in his seat with the paper back in a briefcase. A rather large one, metal and secured with a combination scanner and lock. Dick just kept his eye on the other wall, not the doorway. Never hive your enemy the satisfaction, yet…it was already too late to hide what he'd let happen.
"I'll probably see you on the flip, should our paths cross again.. take care of yourself, boy wonder." Slade nodded himself off and walked away, knowing the kid would see him soon. He had a new bit of news, his daughter was coming to live with him. Seems her adoptive parents weren't a right fit for a girl with a special skill under the hood. Courtesy of her old man.
"See ya." Dick's wary voice was a bit placid, cooler with that cautious air subsiding.
Slade stopped, waving but keeping his eyes on the door, not trying to be so chummy with the same kid that would one day wear his crown. Oh, maybe down the road they'd meet, have coffee while the city burned. Maybe his new protégé would be a bit less like Terra and more stubborn like Grant or Dick Grayson.
Down the road, he'd imagine the one who was now haunting him WAS the squinting face if that same boy wonder. No longer donning tights, growing a few feet at nineteen. Practically the Bat's style.
The flight was short and sweet, all while Dick walked off as Slade sensed the direction his feet were headed by the serum.
He smiled, knowing damn well they'd be meeting again in a couple of months' time. "You just won't rest, will you…boy wonder?" He shook his head, chuckling as soon as no one was watching.
Yet, months was more like days as Slade shut his one eye in his first class seat and forgot the world he'd built around them had ever existed in the first Bludhaven. That boy was going to the ratiest city next to Gotham? Slade should have said more, but hell. Might be fun to watch the kid squirm. Since he wasn't an undead servant, he had time to watch the bird flop and fall, then he'd swoop in for an enlightening chat all over again. Predictable, as the plane should have stayed aloft a little long. His dreams going a bit deeper and deeper still….
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So, that would be the Dick is up on the idea of go full Nightwing very, very soon but Slade can see right through his ex protégé's layers. He wears that mask to hide from others as well as to give himself a title, yet he isn't the bat and Slade won't hold back now that he's aware of who this bird wants to be. I thought it immortalized the How long is forever Nightwing better than the current, while Slade is going to meet up with Rose from the tt03 comics cartoon ver. She went to look for her dad's stuff but then? Yup, so it may be just a short here. Slade is observing even while keeping his distance and when Dick assumed that Slade had brought Terra back as a way to atone for past errors, he could be right. He could, yet Slade is redirecting that thought to make sure he stays the bad guy. Will Renegade emerge as Slade's right hand after all of that fighting his shadow? Find out and don't expect a part two unless you want it! Comments welcomed!
