Teen Titans Presents Robin – Torn Legacy of a Prodigal Son –

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Chapter 60: I Saw Three Ships

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Time wasn't irrelevant underground to the former leader of the Titans. Yet, he seemed to wonder if there was time to act; if there was a way to trick or spook his captors and yet…

He wanted to see how deep this rabbit hole went, so they walked.

On through the tunnel, down a glass elevator without any glass, to a base larger than anything the Bat in Gotham had busted. Minus the Watchtower out in space.

~ Do you like where we are, young Renegade; where we have brought you to negotiate your release in private. ~

Dick looked up to see in partial shadow a figure as tall as a chair and yet nothing at all like one. His body was a glass and chrome metallic fixture. The figure had two glowing digitally displayed eyes. The one beside him looking quite, decrepit.

"I was not aware of where, and who was going to help someone they couldn't trust." Dick countered the animated marvel's response as the main contender did not walk but rolled on wheels that had its machine far from capable from escaping a raid of the base. He was a brain in a tall glass reciprocal; plain and simple. Dick dodged the glare of many operatives standing by, while only the older gent in navy blue military regalia and Mallah were there to keep the boy wonder from turning his back on his new allies – even if they were enemies of his enemy, this all seemed unfair to just judge by first glance.

~ Renegade is what you are called by the famous and very dangerous mercenary; Deathstroke the Terminator. ~

"He's been called a lot of things, I heard that too." Smirked the ex hero. "Why did you not try to get him to come here. Why are you trying to use his, helper?"

"You aid him in committing multiple crimes globally, yet it is just as well that we'd suspect you to not just to have appeared out of anywhere. Ah, I am the General Immortus, boy. This, is our leader…The Brain." He swept to the side as the brain in a jar was there to not look and lean, but to observe his readings. ~ My companions and I welcome you if you will only allow us; we wish to see that Deathstroke's true reason for making you his right hand are also thwarted. ~

"I won't give up and just come work for you." Snipped the ex hero to the Brain. "What about who is involved besides me. Are you after secrets? Data? Some sort of weapon –

"WE only wish to aid in your escape from another's tyranny, child." Mallah interrupted. "You look so worn, come. The Brain is not as criminal as he has once been painted. He will explain everything as we have promised."

/

"He's not going to let you in." Slade was held up as his head remained gashed by Rogue's cruel punishments. First being thawed and moved to a secret base where Richard might be, and then to throw himself at the feet of the Brotherhood; an organization that could do its worst if it tried hard enough. "I told you, I don't have a way to fix this."

"You cannot, or you won't." Rogue cupped the man's chin in her grasp as her fingers moved to wriggle and cage him in with much vigor. "I hear that our leader may want that boy kept alive to aide us in dismantling our former enemies." She smiled with her ruby lips not so lush anymore. "Wilson, you have lost this game. Your 'trigger' cannot hurt our new catch and as always, you couldn't have beaten the Brain anyway if you had tried." She grinned with her lips as red as sin in his face. "The children you choose always end up betraying you due to your, unorthodox methods of having them listen." She paused and let go of his face, the man's one cold blue eye giving her warning not to dive too deeply into his past. "That boy, the other one. Your first protégé, the Ravager." She wondered and paced slowly before his container. Strung up for her amusement, the man was shirtless and powerless in his degree of tampering. "Grant was found by one of our, associates in the last season. He has decided not to trust any heroes that make half – promises to him. Poor garson." She shook her frowning head as Slade wanted to spit on her face by that jab. "I'm aware he was taken, and that's his own fault –

"Then why did you let him live?" She moved to swish behind the man in her twisted form. The form now resembling, his son. Grant.

"He wasn't a threat to me –

"You hurt him, but pitied his existence…" Rogue moved her lips and then became to imitate the boy's speaking. His eyes flashing cockily at the wide eyed merc. "Dad, my team could do so much better if we had a guide. You really just want your lil Renegade to kill me off? Is that it? I'm still alive. Pops –

"You shouldn't be." Slade grumbled to himself. "I should have never had the serum injected into either of them. Rogue, your idiot taunting is pointless. The boy is a nuisance." He smirked, her body shifting as the rebellious woman only clenched her fists. "Rose was able to get away and join a new team, I don't care how they come back at me. They're a waste to kill. Not while Renegade will do the job for me."

Rogue let her claws scratch his cheek, her face on fire as her roar made him wonder if she was any of the nurturing sort. No, she wanted him to fall from this? A few threats?

Slade was a threat to himself, and Renegade was the cure…if ever they could meet again. "Renegade, MY soldier isn't kept in line with the trigger. It's incentive, nothing more. He's like me, he isn't ready to embrace it yet." Slade shrugged with a dry chuckle. "But what choice will he have when he finds that the Brain knows that there is no cure to his condition."

"Oh, but there may be." Rogue sighed with hwer head nearly off of her long neck. "We know a way to make him THINK that his powers aren't there. That he cannot power through what the Brotherhood intends to teach that boy. If he has the ability to become our mole and find out the secrets of the Justice League at our leader's command –

"You…who are you talking about has that power?" Slade bit his lip. "What the hell is going on, Rogue?? The Brain isn't the one trying to act here, not alone…so, who is it that has any power over my protégé…." He started to wrestle with the chains until the shocks took hold. Slade let out a scream as Rogue turned up the power. "I won't let you interfere." She said, outright. "That man helping to accomplish any of this is also the savior of another, and why should I tell a man who calls his own flesh and blood a distraction?"

"Because…they are –

"HAAAGGHH!!!"

"This can fry, skin." She put to giving a chef's kiss as the man's epidermal was ransacked. "Think of it as a belated gift from all of the ones you've wronged. All of them, including your eldest child."

"Renegade –

"GAAAH!!" Slade slouched and shook as the pain had his body quiver. "You….are not as methodical, my dear…" He coughed. "I have more power…you…have nothing –

The red witch brought her hands to suffocate the man as his teeth gnashed together. "I am only at one tier, but after you suffer just enough to see your own empire crushed…" She hissed into his ear softly. "They might just promote me to watching over your little prince of disaster. He's very cute, so naïve. So, trusting in others. Not you, but maybe…Maybe I could raise the boy?"

Slade's eye went bloodshot as he squinted into her red and black sights. "You won't get that chance, my dear."

"Ah, but who is going to tell you, that you can't always be correct, Wilson." She smiled and let go of him, his humorous state having her in such better spirits. "I can use him, to just keep you here for me to play with. Besides, you both are not able to be hurt and feel it. Am I wrong? He went through with the training that you did. That was the news your real boy told us."

Slade squirmed in his binds. "Grant is under whatever is trying to test me, their control." He growled in a gruff sounding voice. "He doesn't know, no one should –

"Yes, he did." Rogue was getting bored as she moved away to the exit beside her guards in their high defense armor. Slade pulled at the taught cords as the vessel keeping him began to flood with gas. With a bitten, bloody lip, his glare had her turn around at once. She knew it. He was going to kill her for opening her big mouth to him about his helpers. His apprentice. The one he trusted to truly come to his senses by threats and more so, that he had the power to kill even without that manufactured switch in his grip currently.

"He's too dangerous to house here." She told herself as Rouge moved quickly to recover herself into her villainous circle of conquering allies. "It's over, he'd not be that –

A sound of a creak in the wall had her jump, while the only one to join was one of her henchpersons. "Madame, our leader has been contacting you. I apologize…you look, pale?"

She touched her own face. Visions of slain soldiers and her kin littered her mind as they would the ground if that animal ever got loose from his cage. "He is not to have any freedoms, I won't – I won't lose to the General that betrayed our trusting arms." She told her guards behind her. They stood a bit stiffer in place. "Deathstroke, would not only destroy the base if he has that power. He would kill every single one of you, even our leader would not stand a chance. DON'T. She pointed harshly at them both, both nodding and very alert to her words. "EVER. OPEN that door without MY say."

The rest departed, all while Slade decided to send a final message through his walls. A more deliberate one to a rather confused Titan. This was going to sting more if he didn't try to do things alone; Dick was waiting to tick him off, to get his attention and to also dig up some answers on someone he also loathed. Maybe this was brash thinking. As Slade shut his one eye slowly, blood trickled from a cut in his temple.

That. He could not ignore.

~ Joey. JOE. I need you to listen; it's not just about me this time. You can save Richard. I want you to bring help…. ~ He didn't need to be Raven to get in touch with someone that had such a gift. This time, it only took one call; long distance, for so long to have it ring in the right person's ear.

/

Joey was bolted to a chair as a mad doctor looked over some tools to toy with. Joey knew that if he possessed this man, he could go and free himself. So, he did it and ended up sneaking away to find one person closer to him at that time. Starfire. In her glass hell.

Raven was not there. They were held in other rooms as Joey's powers took to knocking out scientists and scoundrels of this awful place. Raven was a way out, but so was Kori. He worked to have his puppet unlock her hatch as the princess of the stars gasped and awoke with a rough startle. "I am –

She looked up as the face of a blonde teen met her green eyes, his sincerity as just as his mute self-had always seemed. ~ I've come to find my friends, and we must go. ~

"But…" She looked at the guards and the rest of damnable minds on the floor surrounding them. "What about Robin?"

Joey looked into her eyes and with a serious glance at the exit, he took to her body. ~We can't trust him to show. He's too busy saving himself. ~

Starfire fought the takeover as she hit her own bolts into her arm like a bee sting. He stumbled out as she held her arm to him with her eyes alight. "I am not to be trusted as well; for what I might do to you…you cannot keep us apart. He was willing to be saved, so we have promised not to leave him to that awful man –

~ My father will hurt you both! ~ Joey shook his head and signed. ~He's the one I'm more afraid of, and Renegade is afraid to try to fight his control. Grant almost died. Jason was infected, what will happen if he's too strong? Too quick? ~

The blonde signed rapidly as Kori let down her arms, rather discouraged by the plan of an attack on whoever had taken them hostage. "You, are right…. I cannot become like my sister or as ruthless as Slade. He is most dangerous when Robin is involved…when Renegade is…" She choked back despair as Joey put a hand to hers. ~I'm not afraid of him. He would hurt anything and everyone to be a king of nothing. ~

"This, you have overcome many things while he was…different." She wondered. "Will he ever be forgiven, do you believe?"

Joey shook his head with a small shrug and a smile. ~ When he learns about his own anger at the world and tames his discord from within…I think the first person he needs to forgive is himself…but Renegade. ~

"Jer –

"YOU!"

Starfire left the wall and Joey came along, never protesting as he was lifted into the air bridal style. "I am very sorry for harming your working staff…. yet we must be going now please!" Kori zipped off; Joey tried to remain small as they wove through the underground lab's, halls as his eyes had started to glow a bright blue.

"How –

~ This will allow us to phase for three minutes, go! Find our teammates. ~

Starfire could look later for her missing teammate. Right now, Dick had some new burs to pluck from his skin.

/

Dick sat in a room that had a chess board in front of him. On a table, he saw the next player of this "round" enter. None other than the Brain as Dick steeled himself for some enigmatic threat. "Why are you trying to do this."

~It is not a matter of why or what, child. ~ The Brain voiced without moving a set of lips. ~ Come, I have a game prepared for us while I go over the reason for your arrival. Will you not accept as seat at my table? ~

/

Dick was afraid of losing for two reasons. The fact that he was playing against the Doom Patrol was the first. The second was that the Brain had taken the Titans from Russia and Slade was as well trapped in this place. For another third reason…he felt responsible for their capture.

"I'll let you go first. Bit rusty." Dick lied. He could not leave the game, and so it went like that for some time.

~ Losing a game of war, wit, it is all the same to you of a lower insight and developing intellect. ~ In other words, inferior to the Brain. Dick watched as a pawn on the board was taken. ~You are not trying to win, why. ~

So, he could think that far ahead.

"I'm not sure if that would embarrass the mastermind of this place. I was trained to overcome torture to some degree by my last teacher." Dick moved as the knight toppled a rook. Far from over, he had to win. Bruce was outside of those walls and he didn't like being the black knight to execute any souls by those hands. He wouldn't decide a fate of any living being.

Another knight, lost, as Dick grunted at the hit. "I'm sure that you are well believed by everyone you've led to think yourself a true leader. But leading, means to sacrifice. Not to just take and get what you want –

"Did your current master tell you that."

Dick's blood rattled as he clutched the bishop before setting it back. "He's not." Dick growled low at the Brain. "I'm trying to get home, to get out. Even if it means locking him up in a better jail –

~ We are enemies, child. Deathstroke took to much opportunities we gave him and wasted every second. Coming back, that was not a coincidence. ~ Brain's mech arms moved the knight he had to take another pawn. ~One by one, you had a choice. The man took you apart piece by piece. As I see it, the analogy is right in front of you. He intends to try harder if you should try again. ~

"I know, which is why I will…"

~ Fear, yet you cannot feel the same pain as before. ~ The pawn was out; Dick however didn't care. "He's got me cornered. If I resist, I get hurt too. And I could care less…if it didn't have to be just me. Only me, which is why –

~ You want us to guide you without any reason to reap the benefits of housing Deathstroke's unwilling apprentice. Yet, what can you trade for such a service. ~ The former hero looked down. Hiss rook was quite stuck. The towering queen looked so frail. Vulnerable.

~ What can you sacrifice to have that peace of mind returned. ~

Dick knew it was wrong. A human life…and if Slade caught him. Ruined him from this…

"Him." The words slipped out as the Brain's arm stopped. Dick saw the trick. The mastermind moved to take a pawn, leaving himself a checkmate. Dick looked up, astonished with a wide set of unsettled orbs glancing up and down at the board.

~ You may have won it, if you really want to sell off one soul to save a dozen more…~

"He won't get out, right." Dick gulped. "He's dangerous, angry. If I –

~ You can rest assured. As long as the plan to have the information he has granted to us…~

Dick froze. "Info, on what…" He stopped, his head snapping forth as the pawns and his own queen with the board went flying. "He has the data I'm not supposed to use! No! Leave him out of this!! It's not his –

~ The Justice League is a problem; the Doom Patrol always was a fighting force…but now? ~ The Brian's eyes lit up a bit as he pulled away. ~ The man is a gold mine of information, and with your efforts, you will both have what we need to destroy the watch tower's guardians for a very long set of decades to come ~

"I…I never said –

~ He was a safe, and you let us have the key, Renegade. ~

Dick scrambled to maul the mastermind as guards came out to taze him into submission. "GAH! I'm not a Renegade! Not a traitor! Brain!! Don't do this!"

~It has already happened, little turncoat. ~ The machine rolled off as the guards made sure to keep Richard from rising…had he not been injected with a rather dizzying trickle of a stopper to the serum's super effective measures. "No……Slade…. n…."

~ I suppose this is what you would call, a check and mate. ~ Brain rolled off as Dick fell and lay there. The guards hauling him to his cell for a proper reprogramming. ~ To decades of failing and victories to come. You are an instrument for anyone willing to push past their insecurities. Slade Wilson forgets; we know every war fought. Immortus will have no concern when it comes to finding the formula – even if we also should have to take you apart with your unfortunate master….in order to have our own meta-army. ~

Dick was not able to hear much in his drugged state, but it sounded dangerous and EXACTLY what Slade had warned him about. So unreal, and yet…

The Brain sees me as an object, but Slade…. he didn't really. Just…I'm so confused…. who is the real enemy anymore???

A laughing robotic supervillain stood as his lullaby. While the big bad wolf below…. had just cut through the last of his binds with a sharp shard of glass. Sirens done sounding as one guard's neck was cracked in a rather uncomfortable position.

"You can all watch." Slade watched a man's eyes pop out of his skull as he carved a symbol into the bastard's forehead with precision. " As my empire is the one, will be….Brain…" He growled. "I'm coming for all of your little minions…. ALL of them."

As Slade then left to let the gruesome scene play out, to break a door down or seven, the blood symbol read one thing.

An extra bloody, jagged S. The kind the Titans feared. The kind he'd gladly carve into the back of that witch and her immortal brethren. He was done sitting. There was nothing left to give, not even fresh blood as he stepped. Thundering close to one door that was there and guarded poorly. A woman stepped out as he saw her battered self-fizzing with power and anger from below the surface.

"Better time as any, Raven."

/

"I could hear, screaming." She said with a scowl on her face. "I won't stay, what do you want. After causing this to escalate."

"I want out." Slade lied. "Same as you and your friends."

"What about your apprentice." She spit, fueled by vitriol, and something…..darker. He liked it, actually. His ticket out if things went well. "What could you possibly do to handle him if he suddenly joined again, was set free…when my "apprentice" was actually the one who put us here." He snorted without the mask to hide everything. His face. Her reading eyes. He had to use extra caution against the empath.

"What…he wasn't with you to be a sad little student. That's a –

"A lie?" Scoffed the anti heroic male. "No, my dear. I speak only the truth in our journey together. Alexikov was held hostage by this organization, to take something you called a hero. A reactor – so we were hired to secure him at any costs. Red Star, was it?"

"Was a hero, and will be once we can help him to stabilize control over his radiation abilities." Raven floated down the hall. Any that stood in their way, instant world of hurt. Both were on a mission. Slade just soldiered on behind. Raven didn't want to be too close and to get sucked down into his little devious mind. The thought of that…

"Where are you going to g –

"Wait!"

Raven held down her arm, and then the alarms had started to sound by who walked round the corner.

Ran, more on a skid, was Insight. Slade's eye slipped lower, his expectations dissolved as the mute teen confronted his best friend and his enemy.

~ Raven, Starfire has gone to find Terra. These people…they are looking to make an army of meta soldiers...~ He signed while avoiding eye contact with Slade. His father, who had perfected the serum while others were just as thrilled to try and tamper with it. ~ I don't want him to come with us. Go. Don't bother to be good anymore. ~ Frowned the teen as Slade looked kicked in the face by his youngest child. Second, if you counted poor Rose. "We don't have time –

Deafening marching of feet; they were blocked in?

Mallah had his weapon on as the man armored guards got ready to fire. Joey could not overpower the rest, yet Raven threw up a shield in time to force it to shove them all BACK. "Get…. away!!" Her eyes shot four red slits as she shook her head, the power not only dropping the men on their heads, but freezing them. In time.

Slade looked wide eyed at the empath, who was shaking, muttering something he could just make out. "No... not now…I can't…. not…. him, no…"

~ Raven! ~ Joey beckoned her to run with him, Slade following and keeping an eye on how far a range the power to stop time, went.

/

The last door Kori had to destroy was very, heavily reinforced. She sneaked around as the soldiering goons in front held guns and tazers. She walked instead, her body not in tatters as the others since she'd been unconscious in her uniform anyway. "Hey, you can't be down here. Where is –

She used her bolt and strength as the men ended up upside down while she dusted her hands clean of their complaints. The more this went on, the more her strength was starting to mimic Blackfire's. Starfire kept walking. The stretch had a girl in g –

She looked. In metal, and some sort of solid collar. Kori reached out and rammed open the hatch as the blonde's eyes popped open with a gasp. "Terra!" She rejoiced and hugged the geo using ally. "Starfire…. I…. what's going on?"

"You, Renegade, Raven Joey were taken by a mastermind that was not Slade even though it was a part of his plan, and we were brought to their base to be contained…I believe for research of some purpose."

"I know why, and Star?"

Stafire cocked her head as Terra pulled back away, getting out of her cell bed as Starfire sadly looked on. The girl made her body glow, smiling back with tears running down her face as she made rocks crumble. "Get everyone out, I'll stall –

"No!" Kori protested. "We have lost too many of our friends to this invisible battle. You must not think that…I will not leave you behind. That is final, I am not –

"I'm the only one who can stop what they really want to do though." Terra sighed, her body burning with an alchemic force. "They want to use us, have us hurt so many people…. Dick didn't know, and I do forgive him for being afraid but right now, you have to be the hero. I'll be the detonation."

"Terra…I refuse to –

" Go. Before they win!" A rock of jagged proportions boxed in the geo user as Kori found herself only able to move towards the exit. Terra was going to decimate the base, causing her powers to overload. Starfire shuddered at the screaming girl's last fight. The light of gold as it threw her towards the door, and Terra's last smile.

"You will always be my friends, the people who helped to save me from myself…let me do the same…be a hero, all for you to do what's right."

"Terra…" Star wept as she flew off and sobbed only until the door had been blocked by solid rock. Terra was doing things right after all. The next voice Kori heard was a raspy one.

"Star?"

"What's going on." Slade moved, yet Starfire held up a bolt, before she tackled the mercenary wherest he stood gawking.

/

So…. Star is mad, Raven is concerned and the rest? This by the way is not the end of Terra. I have a whole other part to make her into Gaia as her new identity but not yet. So far, who was the one who was helping the Brain as he told Dick? Was it a common threat? Will this stop the Brotherhood from collecting info on the super – soldier serum that could eliminate the JLA? Find out! ALSO, RAVEN LOST CONTROL. That means that Trigon will be in later chapters. Don't wait up. Read on!