Regressing For The Enemy

Chapter 17

Dick POV

  Finishing up his  thoughts, Dick figured it best not to leave the notably impatient villain waiting for much longer. Stepping into the spandex-like suit, Dick cringed upon seeing the vibrant orange cut across his scarred skin. Still, shimmying the garments up around his waist, Dick couldn't help but admire some of the craftsmanship that went into his new look. The inner lining was snug, like a protective glove, while the outer lining was much firmer but not enough to keep him from being flexible. It reminded him of the first suit Bruce had made him. Not  equipped with the proper ammunition for fighting crime, but enough padding in the right places to keep him from being injured doing it. Eyeing himself one last time in the mirror, Robin stepped out of the bedroom and towards the kitchen area. 

    Wintergreen could be seen in the far left of Dick's peripheral, while his main focus never shifted from his target sitting lazily draped over a dining room chair, his eyebrow slowly twitching in relentless aggravation. "Glad you managed to finally make your way to the table this morning, boy. Now that your breakfast is as cold as dog food, I pray hope you'll enjoy it as much as you did that extensive little downpour you call a shower." Dick opened his mouth to retaliate, but finding no way to reasonably respond to such a backhanded statement, decided it best to keep his lips sealed. "Tomorrow, I expect you to rise at four am, four-thirty at the latest. You will be ready and sitting at the kitchen table for breakfast by five am. You hear me? That's 0500 military time." Dick nodded his head, curtly, glad to be receiving some kind of information, despite the hypocritical tone. Better than being left in the dark. "I've come up with a full proof plan to have you out in the field in less than a year. Computer training from seven to eight. One on one sparring practice till eleven pm. Lunch from eleven to twelve." Slade sat up in his chair, leaning both of his elbows against the kitchen table. "Can't have little birds dropping from the sky from lack of subsistence." Dick felt himself shift to the back of his chair, his jaw flexing in brunt anger. "Weapons training and free practice for two hours each and dinner from four to five. You will have chores with Wintergreen till six-thirty. And upon his insistence, you will have two and a half hours of generic reading, writing and world studies. Therapy with me till nine. Curfew at exactly ten pm." "Therapy?" Wintergreen set down a bowl of frigid looking rice porridge. "Therapy."

  Downing the last remaining silky bits from the bottom of his bowl, Dick placed the off-white dish inside the sink before making his way back to the table. "Now that you've completed your breakfast, to keep on schedule, computer training will only last an hour, so that you aren't coming late to any more daily activities." Someone's rather piquant for a man that didn't tell me to be up at a fixed time yesterday. As Slade led him away, Dick fought off the childish urge to make faces behind the old man's back. Following Slade out of the kitchen and to the set of four plain doors, Dick  watched carefully as Slade pulled out a hidden key from inside of his suit, slipping it into the third door. The same one attached to the side of Robin's nursery. Slade's room. 

  "You will only enter this room during computer and weapons training. You'll find this is the only place in the entirety of this god forsaken cavern with any sort of mobile connection, and for great purpose. This is where you will learn how to code, hack and program." Whatever Robin could have expected walking into Slade's private quarters, the sight before him wouldn't have even made it into Dick's top ten. There was a thick hickory bookcase in the corner next to what looked like half of a divorced couple's set of dressers. Painted white with pink handles, the dressers obviously weren't designed by Slade himself.  In the far corner of the room there was an old army sleeping bag and a duffel bag full of assault rifles and half sheathed swords. And directly in the middle of the room, there was an old oak desk which had looked as though it'd seen better days, with an even older looking crusty white box computer sitting on top. "You want me to learn coding from that ?" "Einstein didn't learn from a Iphone and neither will you."

  "What you'll want to do, starting off-" It was so weird, sitting next to Slade, the older man practically breathing down his neck in closeness. Dick shifted awkwardly in his chair, following Slade's directions closely. Currently, he was learning how to transfer funds from an outside account to his own. Of which, Robin would have normally refused, but currently he was practicing on a dummy account. As Slade put it: once you've gained my trust in your abilities, perhaps we can work on moving to the real deal. Dick wanted to roll his eyes at that, but getting to this computer was going to be the biggest help in fighting his escape. Once he found out a way to shut off those little stupid bots inside of the Titans, he was going to have to fight off Slade single handed. A fight that Robin knew deep down, he couldn't win alone. But if he could sneak Slade's key off of him during training, he could potentially use this computer to send signal to the other Teen Titans to his location. "Time's up Richard. You did an excellent job. I expect the same kind of progress tomorrow when we go over how to do the same thing without access to the security key." Standing up, Slade motioned for Dick to move from the computer. Sending the old machine one last look of fleeting hope and yearning, Dick stood resolute in his mission. He'd play it safe for now, but Robin was going to escape. And he was going to do it soon.