Disclaimer: JLU doesn't belong to me. If it did, Flash would be the star, Blue & Gold would exist, and Vig and Shining Knight would get to go on more adventures together. And then there'd be many happy fun times.

Author Notes: I'm on a roll. Nobody can stop me now! Unless they have truffles to bribe me with.

And...

Trickster91 – Ah, another Vig fan, I take it? Well, he's not in this chapter, but you can count on seeing him later on. I've got some good scenes planned for him. Also, the boy's role in all this will become clear in time. Whether you're on to something or not... well, I can't confirm or deny. ;)

fluffyinmypocket– Well, crap. And that's even one of my biggest pet peeve misspellings. XD Thanks so much for pointing that out, now I don't have to discover it five weeks down the line and hang myself in shame. That said, a ritualized breakfast of sadness with GL and Flash... I would love to see that.

To everyone else; thanks for the reviews. They make me happy! And, as always, critiques are always welcomed.

:D

It took several minutes of thrashing around, coupled with pained gasps before Ray finally regained his senses. Breathing in short, unsteady gulps, he focused his vision enough to see that he was now on his back, although he couldn't recall ever falling. Flash was knelt down, trying his best to restrain him. Ray gave him a nod to confirm that he was fine, more or less.

"You alright?" Wally asked, letting Ray go. Although his face was covered with a mask, it was nonetheless clear that the younger hero was concerned.

Ray remained laying for a little while longer, before reluctantly pushing himself up. His muscles were sore, and he felt overwhelmingly tired. "Not entirely, but I think I'll be okay. What happened?"

"You tell me." Flash shrugged. "One minute you were about to go all tiny and stuff, then you just started screaming. I thought maybe your belt was messed up, like the comms..." He rubbed the back of his head, looking abashed and unsure of himself. "So I, uh, kinda took it off." He held it up and then handed it back. "I didn't know what else to do."

"Well, thanks. I guess." Ray examined the belt more closely. It didn't look broken, however it had just acted broken. Or something had stopped it from working. In either case, that effectively threw his escape plan out the window.

Flash stood up and returned to the door. It was metal, just like the walls, and almost comical in its similarity to those sliding doors one would see in a cartoon; giant rivets and all. But he wasn't here to appreciate the design.

"Hey! Mr. Evil Kidnapper Guy!" He had resumed his assault on the door, much to Ray's displeasure. "Ya gotta come in here some time! We need to, you know, eat and stuff!"

Ray pushed himself over to a corner, trying his best to block out Wally's irritated rantings. It wasn't easy to ignore the Flash, however. But maybe that was the point.

Three days had gone by since Flash had turned up missing, and two since Ray was spirited away by what seemed to be the same means. And now... now the search had been brought to a halt.

"Red Tornado, Steel, and Booster Gold. I'm sending you down to Norwalk." Mr. Terrific ordered as yet another alert cropped up. The team assembled quickly. Everybody had been on edge lately, ready for action on short notice. "We've got multiple fires spreading fast, and they're having difficulty containing them. Stopping the fire, and getting civilians to safety are your primary objectives."

Once each one nodded in acknowledgment of these orders, they were sent down right away.

Mr. Terrific looked back at the monitors. Superman was helping with a clean up in Metropolis, the aftermath of a series of explosions that had swept through the city, not unlike the one in Central City. So far, no traces of bombs or any other explosive were found.

And similar acts of destruction were happening all over the United States. Fires, explosions, the release of harmful chemicals into the air. They were clearly not of nature, but whoever was orchestrating these attacks continued to elude them.

Mr. Terrific sighed as another series of explosions began to tear through Chicago. "Ray, Dove, Ice?"

He sincerely hoped the investigation into this was going well. For everyone's sake.

A avian figure strode along the top of a building, looking out over the vast city of Chicago. It stopped to groom at its sable plumage, paying no heed as a bank, just a few blocks away, ruptured with a burst of flame and smoke. People shouted and scrambled out into the night, and a blue and white blur rushed in to help them.

The raven paused and looked down, dark eyes fixing themselves on this blur. To one who could perceive it quick enough, it became clear as nothing more than a young man traveling at a moderately exceptional speed.

Clicking its beak, the bird moved to the other side of the roof. A woman, clothed in a costume of the same color, had created a slide out of ice, which was allowing the people on the higher stories of a weakening office building to escape.

Finally, a man in gold and black had knocked away falling debris from fleeing civilians. Afterwards, he headed into another building that was starting to collapse.

The bird flicked its tail and ascended from the roof, trailing above the throngs of people as they tried to get away from the destruction. More precisely, it followed after one particular member of the crowd; a small boy with jet black hair.

Don Hall was sure he had gotten everybody out of the bank. It hadn't been very big, after all. But as he was moving off to rejoin the rest of his team, the sounds of screaming caught his ear. Somebody was still trapped.

Returning to the caving building, Dove ignored the blazing tendrils that lashed out at him. He followed the voice to where a young woman had been trapped by fallen wood and plaster. He nearly tripped on something along the way.

"Help!" She begged as the rubble that held her caught aflame. "Please!"

"I'll get you out of here, just stay calm." He told her softly, carefully moving the weight off of her until she managed to pull herself free of her own power. Then Don helped her up and slowly carried her out.

Out of the corner of his eye, almost under foot, he took notice of a small, shimmering dome. It looked like part of some machine, although heavily damaged. Sort of like the leftover shell of an explosive, and that's probably what it was. But there wasn't any time to examine it.

He brought her out to where most of the people had gathered in the middle of the streets, awaiting medical help or other such relief.

He barely had time to ask if she was okay before another thunderous blast shook the air.

There would be no rest for any of them that night, not for many hours.

The morning sun returned to the very picture of devastation. Dozens of structures now lay in shambles. It was indiscriminate ruination; everything from housing to all walks of businesses had been targeted. Just as with all the other attacks.

Only this time, a clue had been left behind.

"Right here." Dove declared as he dug through the remains of the bank.

Batman watched patiently as the young hero removed the charred remains of some kind of shell. It was dome shaped, but otherwise featureless. He took it from Don and turned it over multiple times.

"I almost stepped on it going out." Don relayed to the Dark Knight, hoping something of his story would be of help. He thought back to the moment when he'd nearly fell while going in for the trapped woman. "And I think I might have kicked on the way in, so this may not have been the exact spot it was originally in."

Batman nodded. "Finish with clean up." He ordered curtly, then took off in his usual, abrupt manner.

Neither Flash nor the Atom could remember how long it had been since they were locked away. Days, most likely.

Ray could still feel some ghost pains from his attempted break out, but all his worry was now on Wally. Their captor hadn't shown themselves thus far, and that meant they had gone this long without food or water. With his high metabolism, Flash was fairing worse by far.

The speedster was sitting in the corner nearest the door. He hadn't spoken in quite a while, and even though that meant peace from his constant attempts to get somebody's attention, it honestly scared Ray. He also wondered if this had been the plan; to trap them here and then starve them to death.

In the midst of his pondering, Ray almost missed when the door began to slide open. A short, lithe silhouette stood in the entranceway, looking around wordlessly.

Flash was on his feet in an instant, although he quickly had to steady himself against a wall. "About time!" Wally snapped. He looked like he was ready to attack the stranger and make a run for it, but his strength had dissipated, and all he could muster was a trembling fist.

"You're unwell." There was a slight hum as the figure stepped through what looked like a force field, and into the light of the room. It was an elderly woman, or at least looked as such. Her hair was pale brown and her eyes were a dark shade of green. She was looking Wally over.

"Of course I'm not well." Flash stammered out, after getting over the surprise at her appearance. "I haven't eaten since... whenever we got stuffed in this place." He had an eye on the open door way behind her, and it was a given what he was contemplating.

"I see. I'll try to find something to feed you." She smiled warmly. The woman didn't need to follow Flash's line of sight to know what he was thinking about. "And please don't try to escape, you won't get anywhere. The defenses around here are horribly painful, sometimes lethal."

There didn't seem to be any reason to believe she was lying, especially after the demonstration they received the last time they tried to get out.

"Oh, and one more thing." The woman placed a small device on the floor. It had a single button on it. "If you need anything, just press this and I will come. The master would not like me doing this, but I do not revel in needless cruelty. I believe you deserve at least some comforts."

She disappeared again, and the door slid shut behind her.

"That was... weird." Wally observed, then promptly sat down again and leaned back tiredly. "I wonder where everyone is. This is supposed to be the part where Wonder Woman breaks down the door and comes to my – our rescue."

Ray smiled slightly. "Give them time. They're probably still out looking for us."

"You're right." Wally tapped a finger against the soft floor. "I wish there was a way to get a message out to them."

After a moment's thought, Ray moved over to the calling device the woman had left. "There just might be a way..."

Flash frowned skeptically. "Ray, last time you had an idea, you damn near killed yourself."

"No, this different." Ray examined the small machine carefully. "Our communicators don't work, but this supposedly does. There must be some way that it's built that prevents it from being disrupted. If I can find out why, maybe I can get a signal out."

Wally looked decidedly lost, but it did sound like it could work. "Yeah, but how are you going to do all that? We kinda don't have any tools."

"Sure we do."

It took Flash a bit to discern that Ray was staring at the side of his head, and just a little longer to figure out why. Wally lifted a hand to touch the lightning bolt on the side of his mask and groaned. "Oh, come on. Ray."

In a small, featureless room, two bodies stood before one another. It was too dark, and the shadows obscured everything about their features.

"Your plan is proceeding well, boss." The shorter one spoke. His voice was raspy and very deep. There was a lapse of silence before he continued. "For the most part, anyway. Snags have been hit."

"Snags? Alright, please go on." The second spoke with a faint Irish accent, and was easily much younger.

"There was a accident with the trap. We caught an extra; he was poking around too much, it seems."

"Hmm. But we have the Flash, correct?"

"Of course. That was the easy part."

The taller one held back a chuckle. "If our unintended guest makes himself into trouble, you may put him down. Anything else, therewith?"

"Yes. We failed to eliminate our target, due to a technical error." There was an impatient shift in the shorter one's position. "If I may sir, I know I could do a much better–"

"No. That's not how we're going to play this story out." The 'boss' reached out and perched his hand on the other's shoulder. "Your time will come, Dar. I promise that much. But for now, just make certain the assassination transpires per my instruction."

"I'll see that it does, boss. We will succeed this time, you have my word."

"And you have my faith. Carry on."

For once, things were peaceful. Comparatively speaking, at least. No longer were there disaster alerts springing up every five minutes, and for once, the majority of the League didn't have a whole lot to do.

Batman was not among them. Holed up in his cave, glued to the computer, the Dark Knight was hard at work.

There wasn't much left of the bomb casing Dove had found, although Bruce was amazed to discover that a number of the vital internal workings were still intact. And to the uneducated, it might just seem like the explosive and never gone off.

But to Batman, it didn't only seem to be a fact. It was inarguably one. It was with this knowledge that Bruce put together a scenario of what could have happened that night.

A bomb had gone off within the bank, that much he was aware. But the one he had in his possession was not the same. If the theory was correct, it had been moved in after the initial explosion. The materials used to create the bomb were frail, easily destroyed by heat. This was doubtlessly intended so that it would utterly disintegrate, leaving behind no evidence.

This bomb, however, had failed to go off for whatever reason. And so it had only been so badly damaged by the fire.

The question now was why. Why plant the second bomb? What was the rationale behind such a thing, when one was more than enough to bring the structure down?

Bruce leaned forward, clasping his hands together and pressing his chin against them. He stayed like this, unmoving, for what might seem to a casual observer as quite a long time. But unexpectedly Batman snapped back, eyes opened wide.

"Batman to Watchtower."

End-Of-Chapter Notes: Dun dun dun! Aw, okay. Who am I kidding? I'm sure ya'll figured it out. But if not... um, suspenseful cliffhanger in the face!

::bounces away::