My area had an Ice Day today- A day off because the roads are icy and no one here knows how to drive on ice or has the proper tires for driving on icy roads-, so early update. This is how Damian got into the kidnappers' clutches. Enjoy.

I don't own Young Justice.

Chapter 10

Although he would never admit it, Damian was scared. These peasants had managed to successfully subdue him, with a bit of effort, and then had the nerve to laugh about it, to laugh at him! The bluemen, as Damian decided their official name would be, were really strong, but they should have fear of his grandfather. Grandfather would not stand the cruelty dealt upon him… Would he? Actually, it was well within Grandfather's domain to give tasks such as Damian to those lesser than he, but surely not as low as peasants. That would be an insult! No one untrustworthy was to know about Damian.

But… Where was Grandfather? If this was not sanctioned, as Damian suspected, then Grandfather's Shadows should have burst in by now to rescue him. Grandfather would not allow him to be on his own for so long, unless he knew where he was and what he was doing. Like the time Grandfather had made Damian climb the mountain peaks earlier this year. Damian made it up on his own; it was expected, but Grandfather had known where he was and what he was doing. Damian was too important of an asset to lose.

What had happened? Surely these simpletons could not have defeated Grandfather. He was invincible! He had an army of Shadows to protect him, and, if that was not enough, he had the Lazarus Pits to heal him. No, he could not be defeated.

Wait, was he looking for Damian? He had to be looking, right? Damian had given him no reason not to… Oh wait, Damian thought back, yes he had. Damian had run away. Maybe this was his punishment. That would make sense.

Damian thought back to when he had first encountered the simpleton's partners.

It was a cloudy morning in Baghdad, Iraq, and a small boy was wandering the streets, following the crowd. Earlier, he had been traveling with his mother and a few Shadows, but, after an argument with his mother over… something—he could not remember what it had been about—he had run off into the crowded streets. He had no doubt that the Shadows would find him later. They always did. His mother was in town for some business meeting and would be here for the next week, so they might let him wander around on his own for a while.

Whatever happened, he knew where the hotel was. On the slim chance he might not actually remember the way, he knew how to read a map. An ah Ghul did not ask for directions, so he did not fully understand that idea, but he did know how to ask for a map. He could speak three languages: Arabic, English, and some of French; However, his mother was planning to teach him more. Perhaps, Russian or Spanish or Swahili.

Damian turned into a small alleyway. He was looking down at his feet, steaming about the argument with his mother, when he heard a small sound behind him. He froze, and then slowly turned around. Behind him was a huge man, bigger than Ubu even. Damian's eyes traveled up the man's feet to his face, which was covered with a facemask.

That was when Damian did something that brought shame upon his ancestors. He stayed frozen as the man reached for him, leering. When the man got close, Damian punched him in the groin (Damian was too small to knee him there, so settled for the next best thing) and tried to run, just to run straight into a second man, who was almost as big. The second man grabbed him in a firm hold. Damian screamed and struggled, but to no avail. His blows, while practiced and precise, had no effect on the man holding him and were losing power and precision as Damian began to panic. PANIC! Grandfather would have been so disappointed. Something pricked his arm, and, after about a minute, Damian succumbed to darkness.

After leaving Baghdad, Damian began a hellish journey across the European continent by land and ferry with the simpletons. At first, Damian had been kept with other children his age and older. Damian was fairly certain that the oldest amongst them was at least three times his age and three times his size. There was maybe five to ten of them to start but the number grew every few days.

Nevertheless, Damian masterminded an escape plan. When they were passing through a mountain range, in Switzerland Damian believed, he set his plan into motion. The bus stopped for a break in a hidden enclave and the prisoners were allowed to stretch their legs. The guards kept watch with their eyes and semi-automatics trained on the group. At their last rest stop, Damian had come across three rusted nails. They would do the trick. Carefully, he slid from the guards' view and crawled underneath the bus. He stuck the nails into the front tires. It would take a while for the air to lower enough that they would have to pull over. Phase 1 complete.

Damian snuck back out and rejoined the other prisoners. However, he had been gone just long enough for one of the simpletons to notice his absence. An iron grip clamped on to his thin shoulder. Damian jumped with a yelp. How had the imbecile managed to sneak up on him? Damian was better than that! He must have been too absorbed in his plan to realize…

Damian writhed, kicking and spitting, as the man steered him to another one of the guards, and held him still while the second guard tied his arms behind his back. Damian got one good kick in before he was hauled off his feet and deposited into the seat in the middle of the bus that had been dubbed the "troublemaker seat" by the guards. His captor sat next to him, pinning him in as the other kids were loaded onto the bus, the guards taking the front seats, back seats, and seats near the emergency exits. The bus took off back onto the road.

The bus was nearing an exit when the driver noticed that the tires were failing.

"I've got a flat." He told the guards up front. "I need to pull over."

"Fine. You have a spare?"

"I do."

Damian felt the bus began to slow and move over to the shoulder. He looked out the window and saw an exit a quarter mile ahead. "Perfect," he thought. Some of the men got off the bus. Damian waited until the guard next to him was distracted. The guard was an inconvenience Damian was fairly certain he could work around. While the guards outside made noise, Damian maneuvered his hands in front of him, ducked down under the seat, and crawled to the front of the bus as quickly and quietly as he could. When he reached the front, he took a brief second in the now empty front seat to wiggle his hands out of the ropes. Then, he quietly snuck off the bus.

As soon as he set a bare foot on the ground, he heard a shout from the middle of the bus. The guard had discovered his disappearance. Reacting more than thinking, Damian took off like a shot away from the bus to the forest cover near the side of the highway. As he reached the woods, he felt a wind whistle past his back, coming close but missing. Damian kept running, and slipped on the wet leaves and small bits of snow. He tumbled down a hill and hit a tree midway down.

Groaning, he heard the sounds of people following him, albeit a bit more carefully. Damian scrambled to his feet in time to dodge a kick to the head. He instantly sprung into battle pose. This time, he would go down fighting or not at all. The man pulled back for a punch and Damian punched him in a pressure point on his side. Then another one and another one as the man faltered.

Just as the first man went down, two more took his place, and Damian was reminded that he was halfway down a steep slippery slope. The second man kneed Damian in the stomach while the third grabbed at his upper body to immobilize him. Damian aimed for the pressure points again on the second man, but his wrist was caught by the third man. Damian responded by attempting to kick the second man in the groin, crude but effective, however the bigger man merely moved back slightly to put himself outside Damian's range. The third man caught Damian's other wrist as Damian again attempted to punch the man in front of him.

Pulling Damian's wrists above his head, the third man dangled Damian like a punching bag, about a foot off the ground. The second man rained blows onto the small boy's body until he stopped thrashing and hung limp. Damian's eyes were full of tears that he refused to cry, but he was too injured to effectively defend himself. The second man looked into Damian's eyes, and then nodded once to the third man, who dropped Damian.

The second man sneered at Damian as he struggled to his feet unsteadily. Damian wavered and looked up at his captors, fighting dark spots. He closed his eyes tight, and swallowed his tears. Composed, he sprung out with a punch, startling the two men when it connected with unexpected force with the second man's upper thigh. Before Damian could land a second hit, the third man grabbed him around the stomach, pinning his arms to his side. Damian gave a half-hearted attempt to struggle as the men switched into some language other than one of the ones Damian knew, and spoke in soft murmurs.

The two men looked back at the first man who Damian had downed with a look of disgust. Then, the second man raised his gun, which he'd strangely kept away while beating up Damian, and shot the first man in the head before Damian could make the smallest noise of protest. The two men turned back to their captive, and then the second man raised the gun, and hit Damian in the head with the butt of it.

When Damian next awoke, he was surrounded by darkness. He reached out, discovered his hands were bound together in front of him, and felt walls all around. His stomach dropped, especially when he realized there was an oxygen mask around his face. He was in a moving vehicle, but it didn't feel bumpy like the bus, smoother, less big. The guards must have decided he was too big a threat to keep with the other prisoners.

Damian didn't know it, but three children had managed to escape and go for help while he had kept the guards distracted. They made it to a nearby town and called the police, but the police waited half an hour to ensure back up was on the way before going, and so didn't make it on time. They found an abandoned bus, a dead adult body in the woods, and three seriously injured preteens, two of which would die from their wounds, and the third of which would slip into a coma, and wake up four months later to be grilled by the Justice League who were hard on the trail of the kidnappers.

Six additional kids had attempted to escape. One, an eight year old girl, had hidden under the bus while the other five kids and the four who weren't brave enough to try to run were loaded into black vans along with Damian, who was placed in an airtight box with an oxygen tank. One of the guards had called for the vans the second they climbed off the bus to do repairs. Originally, they had planned to simply get a better tire to replace the spare, but when they saw that two tires had been damaged with obvious sabotage, they decided that it would be better to leave the bus behind. One of the guards wiped down the bus as they waited while the rest guarded the children and made sure none were stupid enough to attempt another escape. They continued on their way, trading vehicles every now and then to throw any pursuers off their trail.

About a week later, Damian was transferred to a car with four other boxes in it, which he knew because the men had counted. He had been given small amounts of water and some of a weird red drink during his time in the box. They were transferred to body bags at one point and into stiff beds at another. When Damian came to enough to realize he was untied, he fought back, but to no avail.

The contact with the weird boy named Dick was about the friendliest contact he'd had since one of his nannies gave him a lollipop a long time ago. It was odd that he would get friendliness from another in the same mess as he was, as evidenced by Dick being tied down as well, but Damian appreciated it. For a second, he even managed a small smile. Maybe, maybe there was a way out of this.

Did you like it? There's a couple Son of Batman references in here, like Damian climbing a mountain when he was four, which isn't something a normal four year old would do.

Review please. All comments, suggestions, etc are welcome.

On another note, my younger sister Al Pal 18 finally located and posted a one-shot called Pickup Lines we co-wrote almost a year ago. It's become something of an Inside Joke between us because she kept forgetting to post it and then lost it. It's in her one shot collection, "Birds That Fly." Go check it out please. The second part should be up soon.