When Victor Fries learned Yukie was missing in the mountains during a blizzard, he immediately offered any help he could give. "Ms. Kuwano has been more than merely an employee to me. She has been a friend, a better friend than I even knew until quite recently. I will save my congratulations until she is safe, but I understand that you and she are now engaged. When I learned you were the 'someone' in her life, I was astonished, to say the least, but I respect her choices and I…want her to be happy."

"Thank you," Slade replied. "I know she regards you highly as well."

"How soon can you get to Tokyo, or shall I come get you?" was the scientist's next statement.

"It would be faster and more efficient if you came to me," Slade decided. Geographically he was closer to Mount Hakkoda, even though at the moment it would be easier for him to get to Tokyo, thanks to the storm.

"Very well," Fries said, and that was that.

Since it would be a few hours before the cryogenicist would reach him, Slade's next move was to contact Ra's, or rather, to set the wheels in motion since the head of the League of Assassins would answer if and when it pleased him to do so. Apparently it pleased him to do so in only a little over an hour.

"Which aspect of you do I have the honor of addressing, Deathstroke or Slade Wilson?" the ancient Assassin drawled.

"You're addressing the man whose fiancée was abducted by her family at your demand." Slade replied, reining in the snarl in his voice. "Something to do with resurrecting the Shinobi and an old debt to a 'Shutan Doji'. The abduction was botched by her idiot brother."

"Ms. Kuwano abducted? I gave no order to that effect," Ra's replied, and he sounded genuinely astonished. "I did not call in the debt. I wrote the Shinobi revival off as a bad investment over a hundred years ago, in all truth."

"Did you ever tell them that?" Slade shot back.

"No," Ra's replied, quite casually, "for I had another use for a controlled breeding program in Japan, and Ms. Kuwano is the result of it, as it so happens. You know about her grandmother, I assume?"

"Yes. She was a natural long-lifer."

"Indeed. She lived to be well over two hundred, as it happened. I hoped to breed another and I specifically wanted a woman. I did not know the program had born fruit until the night Ms. Kuwano appeared at the Jian Wu competition. She looks remarkably like her grandmother. Then I had to watch as the two of you met, courted each other, and made your vows to each other. In blood, no less. Most people spread that out over more than one day, let alone one Jian Wu duel. I was quite put out," The Assassin certainly sounded peeved.

"Wha-you mean you wanted-" Slade could hardly believe the inference he was drawing.

"I have had scores of wives and concubines over the last four hundred and thirty odd years," he said, matter-of-factly. "Almost without exception, I lose them just as they are becoming interesting as people. If you think people under forty are childish and empty-headed now, wait until you have two centuries behind you. It is no matter that this particular woman chose you over me. I am patient. I have to be. Besides, who is to say she will not tire of you in a decade or two?"

"If that was what you wanted, why didn't you court her grandmother?" Slade asked.

"Her grandmother was a courtesan. Ordinarily that would not bother me, provided she was in good health, but she was not merely a courtesan, she was an oiran. The term translates as 'castle-toppler'. It means she was one of a very few who were expensive enough to bankrupt a kingdom. In other words, she was a walking case of insatiable greed, as much so at a hundred and fifty as she was at fifty. Not a character trait I find endearing, and certainly one I would find repellant over time, no matter how charming she was otherwise," Ra's replied.

"Then what did you want to hire Yukie to do? She thought you wanted a nanny for your grandson."

"That is not far off the mark," Ra's said, "and it ties in with who I suspect of calling in the Kuwano debt in my name."

"Your daughter Talia," Slade concluded.

"Yes. Damian, that is the lad's name, is four now. Thanks to his unprecedented manner of gestation, and the regimen she has set in raising and training him, he has never become attached to any human being, not his caregivers, not me, not even her! He has no imagination or curiosity whatsoever, and has no feelings of empathy, loyalty or affection. All in the name of raising him to be my successor, and the ultimate Assassin of all time! Given how he is being raised, and what she has planned for him in the future, he is like to prove a disaffected, slaughter-minded sociopath on a scale not seen since Gilles de Rais, Vlad Drakul, or Elizabeth Bathory. I gave her a year to amend matters, and she has not done so."

Privately Slade wondered if part of the outrage was based in Ra's Al Ghul's intention never to die and therefore never to need a successor, much less one who would surpass him. "I don't see how Yukie ties into this, if you don't want her to be his nanny."

"My plan involves you as well. I want the two of you to raise him as your own," Ra's stated.

"What?"

"You have exceptional capacity as a trainer and teacher in the arts of assassination, and based upon what I have learned and observed, Ms. Kuwano is the ideal, perhaps the only, person capable of instilling humanity in him without also instilling in him a mawkish sentimentality concerning the sanctity of life," Ra's continued. "Is Ms. Kuwano all right?"

"Ms. Kuwano is lost on Mount Hakkoda during the worst snowstorm since 1902," Slade snapped, "I'm about to leave on a search-and-rescue with the help of Victor Fries."

"That is unfortunate," Ra's commented. "If she is not found alive or is incapable of taking on the care of a four-year-old, then some other arrangement will have to be made. I would never entrust him to your care alone."

"Why do you think I would ever agree to this in the first place?" Slade countered.

"Because then, one day you will have the pleasure of informing Batman that you are the only father his son has ever known," Ra's replied.

Of course. Who else would Talia Al Ghul have chosen to father her child? "You are too shrewd, old man," Slade admitted, "Considering the fates of my sons, though, do you really want to risk it?"

"Batman is at least as risky a caregiver," his almost-Father-in-law stated. "Two of his Robins have died, even if one did come back, and the others have been taken hostage, shot, broken bones and been otherwise injured even more often than your sons were. I consider the risks balanced. You are preferable in that you at least have no ridiculous scruples about not taking lives. Besides, since you will be competing against Batman in this, I expect you will prove to be a model of fatherhood."

"Huh," Slade grunted, thinking. Yukie did want children... "Does the boy show promise?"

"An abundance of it. That is why I am so concerned." Ra's replied.

"All of this means nothing if Yukie isn't all right," Slade pointed out. "After that, we'll see."

"Indeed. I, in the meantime, will look into exactly what role Talia played in this. Fear not, she will be reproved appropriately. Until such time as Ms. Kuwano's fate is known, then." He ended the contact.

A/N: A short but significant chapter, I think you'll agree! This one has also been brewing for some time. My thanks to my "Guest" and to joshlamont!

In case you are not familiar with the history of Damian Wayne, I quote from the Wikipedia article:

Having grown up in a laboratory, Damian Wayne as a pre-adolescent is left by his mother in the care of his father, who previously was not aware of his son's existence. He is violent and self-important and was trained by the League of Assassins, learning to kill at a young age, which troubles the relationship with his father, who refuses to kill. However, the Dark Knight does care for his lost progeny. After the events of Batman R.I.P. and Batman: Battle for the Cowl, he takes up the identity of Robin at ten years of age, becoming the sixth person to use the Robin identity. He first worked with Dick Grayson before going to work alongside his father, upon the original's return to the role of Batman. He continued to serve as Robin until 2013's Batman, Inc. #8, in which he is killed by the Heretic, an agent of his mother and his own artificially-aged clone.

Yep, that's right. His own mother cloned him and artificially aged that clone, which went on to kill him. Moreover, by the time she says "Surprise, Bruce! This is yours! And I trained him to kill people!" he has become, (I quote,) precocious, spoiled, violent, malicious, arrogant, and vicious. Before the age of ten. Plus she only hands him over to Batman in order to disrupt his crimefighting. Not a candidate for Mother Of The Year.