“Knowing is Half the Battle”

by remix17

Slade paced in front of where Robin stood sullenly quiet in his new uniform. It was just the two of them in his lair, standing in the main chamber in the late hours of the night. Looking at his apprentice, Slade couldn't help but smile behind his mask.

“This won't last forever,” Robin said. “Sooner or later, I will end this.”

Slade stopped his pacing, coming to a stop in front of the boy. He indicated the wall of screens behind him that monitored his friends' vital signs. “Yes. Sooner or later, it will end, Robin,” he conceded with a smirk. “But I am willing to bet that it will end very differently than how you imagine...”

Robin looked away from the man, anger twitching on his face, which looked so much paler in the light generated from the glowing screens. His fists balled together in the tight-fitting black gloves he had slipped on for the first time only hours ago, and Slade knew he was trying to constrain his rage, doing everything he could to not attack the man. His friends' lives hung in the balance, after all.

“Just think of what happens if you will disobey me,” Slade reminded him, and he started to pace again. He was enjoying this. He'd waited for this. “Imagine millions of nanoscopic assassins attacking your former teammates from the inside out, their bodies wracked with pain and twitching on the floor...with the push of a button, my little devices can attach to your friends' red blood cells, decimating them and filling them with agony—”

Robin's head shot up at the man, and he held out his hand, silencing him. “Wait wait wait...what was that last part again?”

Slade felt like sighing. “Red blood cells, Robin,” he said, slipping a particularly condescending tone to his words. “My nanoscopic probes are poised to target them, and—”

A look of complete befuddlement came over the boy wonder's face, and he stared at Slade incredulously. It took him several seconds to speak.”Wait, that's what the probes...oh, okay. I am officially the stupidest person in the world.” He put a hand to his forehead, laughing in a self-effacing manner.

Slade paused. Normally he would enjoy hearing that, but...“What?”

Robin laughed again. “Okay, I admit it, you really had me going there for a while. Heh.” He turned away from Slade and began walking for the door.

“Where do you think you are going?” Slade demanded. He held up the trigger that would dispose of the Titans. “You don't leave unless I say so, young man.”

Robin turned around, shaking his head, an uncharacteristic, lopsided smile on his face. “And why should I stay?”

“Have you not heard me bragging for the last twenty minutes?” Slade asked, indicating the Titan's vitals behind him with a large sweep of his arm. “Your friends' lives are literally in my hands.”

“Yeah...about that...you do realize that you can't kill someone that quickly by attacking red blood cells, right? And it won't be anywhere near that noticeably painful.” Robin smirked, a choleric, relieved look of amusement on his masked face. “Well, I've been here longer than I really should. See ya, Slade.”

Slade stared at the teen hero's back, watching him leave. Behind his mask, his eye was twice it's normal size and his mouth was ready to fall open.

“But...but...” He looked down at the trigger in his hands, then at the screens on the wall. “But I...I spent so much money...It took forever to get this plan to...” His shoulders slumped, and he tossed aside the trigger. “Well...don't I feel like a jackass.”

-THE END-