Our Time in Reverse- What it Takes
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Chapter 53: Hairy Situation
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Horror dream sequence. If….and you'll see!
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Richard was balled up, back to the wall in the corner of his dingy prison. Slade wasn't coming back, was he ever.
The man had a new pupil. Some kid with the powers of a Titan. He fussed so much to be like him, to be like Slade…it never once dawned on Dick that the man could do the very worst thing of all.
Killing children.
He was sixteen, he should have known better – the coaxing, the warm welcomes and, his memories felt jumbled. A bog of trash to him, while the gate to his mercy opened ever wider for the boy to lift up his sullen eyes.
His escape had come.
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If he wasn't really good enough, then that's all it was. This was no longer his popularity contest. He had to leave –
The dais stood in his view as the man was no place to be found. He looked up at the catwalk and saw on the screens, the heroes. Were they going to miss him at all? They probably thought he was just a victim too. He hoped so, seeing as he'd done this for approval and had failed at that too.
Dick ascended to the higher level by lift as he saw the two seats. Thrones for one other person. He went up to it, staring and thinking of himself in that chair as someone he couldn't recognize. Dick recalled coming to this city and seeing Slade's eyes looking to someone else.
Never looking to him the same way he had in the estate, cities away. How Will just said to buck up and stay near him. How Slade was never wrong while everyone else…
How could he be his equal at all then? Dick frowned and took one last look at the throne before looking to the screens.
Of Starfire, Raven, Beastboy and….
Who was that girl with the blonde –
He heard it but too late; mechanical traps, arms as manacles had successfully pulled the boy back - they expertly caught his wrists. Dick cried out and fell, scraping his knee as it began to heal. He started to panic.
"NO! NO! I'M NOT –
The bands pulled him back, his scream unheard by a soul as the boy went flying right into the wrong dais.
Slade's. Dick's brow dripped as he tugged and kicked to have his freedom back. The chair was rigged to keep him here, his legs stuck too as the drone arms made sure he was immobilized completely. Dark locks plopped uselessly over his eyes, as a mask…
Dick gasped, seeing that there was….no mask before? Was this –
"You wanted to run, dear boy? You can't do that in here, you know." Slade emerged from the shadows in full regalia, his mask in place as Dick snarled forth, "Slade…. this…. I'm done! I'm not yours…let me –
Slade stopped and snapped his fingers as the searing hit atop Richard's flesh started to rip right out his throat in a hoarse cry. Electrocution. This chair, was his place to die and come back. To be tormented over and over again.
Panting, the man dragged the kid's sweat slicked mop of hair up with icy fingers in a firm hold. The kid bared his teeth out of pain as Slade proceeded to tear the mask off from Richard's eyes.
"RENEGADE." Slade said as if expecting a response back. "That is who you promised to be, for me. Would you throw all of your hard work away, just to let the bat win again? To tell you that you're useless? That you're not well? I know you're better than that, Dick. You should have trusted your master –
"You…want….to kill…. kids, I'm…. I'm not letting you-
Dick screamed out as another shock kept him down, louder this time. "I'd rather not have to punish you, my apprentice. You know it hurts both of our egos just as equally. This job was never meant to have a truly, happy ending. Why, did you expect it to?" The man chuckled and forced the boy's chin up to look him over. "Raven never found out your secret, did she? Starfire will have seen the entries. She'd call you a weakling for playing games like you tried to under my watch. Beastboy would tear you, limb from limb. After all, was what you told him not your biggest fib?"
"It…." Dick shook. "No…. I…. I did as you wanted…it isn't enough! I'm never –
"Self-loathing for you has always been your strongest weakness to overcome, since the day your parents died." Slade sighed, letting the kid's chin drop to his chest. "S…Slade, don't kill them…they –
"I'm not doing this for only my sake, boy." Slade huffed and turned to the big screens before them. "They'll come into their own when they can't be pushed around as much. When your friends are fully grown, like you, I will have lost my chance to change things to suit the image I have had in mind, for my future heir."
"Liar…. you're not going to make me your equal –
"Not until I can trust you, no. I don't think you deserve it." Hummed the mad man. "In fact, you've never killed yet. This was your exam, and you still failed it."
Dick looked away at the side, not wanting to respond until his hair was dragged up, Slade's eye staring wider and wild enough to call himself caught by a hungry tiger in its den. Dick for the first time, wanted to fight back. He roared out and tugged, expecting the serum to work. The chair though tugged him back and his neck now had a metal brace, a choker, as Slade left his hand to travel up the kid's cheek with a light slap. "Bad. You know better, apprentice." He mocked with a tap, as if to pat him instead of punish the boy. It was even more humiliating than a swat to knock his teeth out. Slade was smirking under that metal face plate, he assumed correctly.
"Bark at the bat. He didn't find you in time at your lowest point. He didn't stop that little brat in you from becoming what I saw. What I knew you should…. well, maybe I wasn't exactly what you needed after all." The hand pulled away slowly as Dick yelled out, his eyes staring to see the screams changing across those plasma rectangles. The Titans were here…they were –
"No! Don't kill them! I'm sorry! They're kids! Slade! Ma –
His master turned back to the boy and went right across the face with the back of his larger hand. Dick sniffed back a trickle of blood as that healed no sooner.
In disgust, Slade had wrung his hand out of the boy's saliva on it to a handkerchief in his compartment pouch. "Animal. I never raised a mutt." Sneered the mad man. "You earned one thing, dear boy. A demonstration on how things should have gone. When your former Titans exist no more in this city, I'll make sure this time that you can't run away. You made a promise, and that is still one that I intend to keep." Slade hissed at the kid as shakily, the boy tried to speak, yet his jaw throbbed so badly that his teeth might have fallen out.
In a dream, that was about getting too old to see the truth….
"Now, my apprentice…it's time to get up, wake up."
~ Wake up, Rob. We have a lotta' work to do. ~
~ Fix him, dude! We know you can do it! ~
~ Please, do not let that awful, bad man…~
The screens lit with cries of agony as Slade pressed the trigger before Richard could hold a gasp. His eyes never watered, shown in shock as the man released the trigger. Faces charred, boils in red and dying corpses….
Dick felt himself becoming light headed.
~ That's it, my child. Rest, it won't be long now…. ~
"I'm. …I…"
His eyes broke open with a gasp.
"S- s- stop!!"
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He bolted upright, the room as dark as before; he'd seen it so well, but it was all just a dream.
Dick wept into his arms one last time, as again the door opened. Will was there with some of the robots flanking him. "It's time for your procedure, young man."
Dick mouthed a wordless thought as he groggily rose, covered in dirt as one door over, they ended up taking themselves lower underground.
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The shower he was shown had the kid shoved in with a waterproof duo of bots, that stripped him down, giving him a white and blue hospital gown once he was never the less, less filthy.
Will tore away from the boy as he walked out, flanked again by some robots to what looked to be a hospital wing. Dick didn't look up as much since if he tried, it was pointless to gain a friend here. Everyone was a robot, even Will.
The older male opened the doorway to one room that was crisp metal tables and white walls.
Contraptions that Dick could not place sat all over the place in the room, some left easier to see, while others were for the use of other methods of care.
This was all military standard, he could tell. No average hospital had the fire power to keep one giant source of energy to power these devices. In popped from a separate door across from them, a man in a white surgeon's mask and outfit. Four others behind him looked afraid to step foot inside without risking their own death first.
"We're ready to begin soon, Mr. Slade."
The man in the surgeon mask nodded to the last person to enter the room.
"Good. It's about time we tested that wonder drug on a brand-new individual. My apprentice will be the perfect subject for the serum. Wintergreen, bring the boy over here, if you'd please."
Slade's tone did change as Dick's did as well. He turned to flee, yet Will had a great strength that a kick to the knee just wouldn't cut. "Sir, the patient can't be under a high state of stress before –
"Aware of that. Apprentice." Slade weaved his way over, taking the lead as he grabbed both of Dick's wrists and turned the kid to face his team of black-market doctors. "This project was banned the first time. Lucky for you, we worked out a whole mess of inaccuracies since that time. Isn't that wonderful? Now, these good doctors learned from the same soldiers' staff that made me what I am today. You wanted that too when we first met, to be just like –
"Not…anymore." Dick breathed out, Slade's eye going softer, as if thinking about that answer with a pause. "Too bad. The serum is already pumping through your veins from day one. I won't waste the chance if it could be successful, even if it is on you." Slade snorted and dragged the kid with the bots – the duplicate commanded to pick up his legs towards a metal medical table – lifted in midair as they worked to restrain him down. The tourniquet working itself over his arm as more tests were done, the stress increasing. "You'll be fine… mostly, maybe the fact that we're going to be even more alike will soften your reason to want them kept alive." The devil chirped coldly in the boy's ear. "See to it that he's not put completely under."
"Mr. Slade…he's fragile in this –
"Yet you told me as I checked before on your efforts. The serum. Won't. Kill." The man stated.
"N….no…th- that i…."
"Then, go ahead, doctor." Smirked the madman. "I'm paying you to see if that wasn't a fluke. If you harm that boy and give my dear pupil anything less than irreversible brain damage or he goes into a devastating mania, you can see your next check delivered. To your gravestone."
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The Titans couldn't ask the bat to step a hair out of Gotham, but the sent the next best thing off the radar as two blurs and a shadow appeared where a single was jammed from the mad man at long last.
"Gotta thank the dark knight for having us come talk to you." Green Lantern, John Stewart nodded right beside two others on his right. He and Cy had met, right when the Tower was funded and the heroes had become anything but. He'd tried to convince Cy to become a trainee of the JLA's program they were working on. Cy refused, so this cold reception had gone all but frosty. "Right when he needs us most."
A zipping man in a red suit that looked as quick as a bullet, zoomed over and placed a lean to elbow onto John's shoulder lazily. "Could…be a quicker way. I'm starting to think, you kids like being on your own island or something. I met up with Arrow. Said to show Wilson a what for. Call if he wants a rematch."
"That shall not be necessary, Barry." A face showed below as it materialized into a green skinned and noseless.
. being. "Wow…. league central?? On our rooftop??" Bb grinned. "What…uh, what's up? Why are –
"Batman sent us, you did get the message from Robin. Right?"
"We in fact have, yet there is much worry as to what power Slade now wields."
"That girl on your custody?" Barry or the Flash asked. "I think I heard about her case from the Gotham prince. Or, the news."
"Last briefing of Tara Markov. She was trafficked out by a criminal organization that uses Meta children to train as soldiers for hire. Slade ended up buying her and I assume you made sure she has nothing to –
"Tara is hurt, scared. Her life was brought to ruin by a political coup that almost had her made a prisoner. She escaped an experience that you must have documented."
"She's got a meta gene. She and her older brother. The oldest kid is a puppet for the chancellor, her Uncle IN Markovia. Her parents were killed by an assassin sent by the children's uncle, then taken under his custody to end up in such horrible conditions. Deathstroke however, may have been connected to this coup." John finished.
Cy shook his head, afraid that someone might have overstepped their bounds at this point. Time was not unlimited. "Wait, he was the reason-
"He saw them die, and since he knows who the exact killer was." Martian Man Hunter ended that sentence with a silent applause. "He erased the ones hired with his weapons. It was his plan. Slade was there when the country of Markovia lost its king and queen. Deathstroke was always there, hunting after that girl, Tara. Always intending on this very outcome."
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