Hopefully, this will answer a lot of the FAQs from the last couple chapters. Let me know if it doesn't. As always, I don't own Young Justice.
Chapter 23
"Does anyone else notice that he keeps looking at the same spot?" Kid Flash asked, as the video that recently made the news finished again. He and Aqualad had hopped on a train to the nearest zeta tube the second they had seen it, but it still took them a while to get back. They had to switch trains twice and the nearest zeta tube was a thirty minute cab ride from the nearest train station. They were planning to discuss with Batman putting more zeta tubes into Europe.
"Yeah, it's kind of weird. It's like he doesn't truly notice or care what's happening to him until the fifth strike." Rocket replied.
"When he starts screaming," Miss Martian said with a shudder. There was a crack as the metal bar Superboy was holding split down the middle. All eyes drew to him.
"Sorry." They returned their gaze to the video.
"Was he doing that, looking at only one point, in the first video?" Rocket asked.
"No," Kid Flash said. "His eyes were flitting all over the place, but tended to focus on three points. Batman thinks that he was trying to tell us how many kidnappers there were."
"So, why change his viewpoint now?"
"His expression, too." Artemis pointed out. "Go back a bit. There! Freeze Frame." They stared at it for a moment. "It's almost… reassuring, but he's not trying to reassure us, or he'd be looking at the camera. R2D2, what do you think?"
Blue Jay, Robin, Jr.'s current alias, fidgeted in the seat next to her. He had changed his alias three times in the past two months after Batman had finally admitted that Robin wasn't coming back any time soon, so the team had simply decided to call him R2D2 or RJ unless he settled for something permanently. Both had already evolved as valid nicknames courtesy of Kid Flash, so the team found it pretty easy to stick to, and much easier to remember than trying to figure out which alias he was on.
"I think you're right. It does look kind of reassuring. Maybe there's someone else there? That he's trying to keep calm. He'd give me the same face when I had nightmares…and that's the face he makes when he's hurt and doesn't want anyone to know." Blue Jay muttered the last line, but it was still audible to the rest of the room. The team winced at the blatant reminder that this was one of their own and he was hurt.
Zatanna took a deep breath. "Do you think that's who they shot? We know they didn't shoot Richard." She contributed to the analysis.
"When I said they didn't shoot Richard, it's because they didn't shoot anyone. The sound of a bullet hitting flesh and concrete is different at the super hearing level. It hit concrete." Superboy divulged, thinking back to his recent super hearing lessons and patrol with Superman.
"They also would have shot him on camera if they were going to shoot him for real." Kid Flash said. "Shooting him off camera doesn't have the same yield. Shooting him on camera would have been far more effective."
"Can we stop talking about Dick being shot? Please?" Blue Jay begged. "He didn't get shot. Let's leave it at that."
"But we need to figure out the motive for Bonanza not shooting him. He's a different guy than the one in the last video. We need to figure out a rough idea of what's happened in the past few months if we're going to find him." Kid Flash said. "Sorry, RJ" Blue Jay fidgeted again.
"Back to the matter of there being another kid. Anyone could work to make him cooperate, if they threatened the other person. Dick's passionate enough that he won't let anyone be hurt because of him. But reassuring? And constantly looking back even when he's in pain? I think he cares a lot about the other kid, maybe even feels responsible for him or her. Like a younger sibling, like Jason. Maybe he's bonded with the kid in the past few months." Everyone was staring at Artemis when she finished. She blushed and grabbed the first excuse she could come up with. "What? I'm taking AP Psych this year."
She did not want to confirm another part of the dream had been true. The injuries to Dick's back and the hair were already prominent. She needed to find a way to find out if the tattoo was there, and, if it was, suggest that some kids might have escaped and they could find them to lead them back. It was creeping her out how much of her dream, which did not seem like such a dream, was actually true. Had she actually been speaking to Dick in the dream? If so, could she repeat the experience? What if she was talking to a ghost? What if she wasn't? Could they use a similar experience to track him?
"There is that possibility. Red Bond, can you get a reflection of the other person? If there is one."
"Yes, Aqualad. But, I'm going by Blue Jay now." Blue Jay pulled out his holocomputer and got to work isolating the frames, searching for anything reflective. He wasn't nearly as good or as fast as his older brother, but he could still do it.
"I see. I will be sure to remember that."
"Aqualad, did you and Kid Flash have any luck on the search in France?" Miss Martian asked.
"We have been keeping Batman updated, but I assume he has not seen fit to share all we have found with you?" The team nodded.
"Well, he has told us a little, but not much. He said you had a lead?" M'gann said.
"We do have a small one. Unfortunately, we had no luck in France with the CS Coyote, but we believe we have another avenue. Have you done a frame by frame yet, in case Richard slipped in a message?"
"No, we were planning to do that next, after analyzing the overall picture. We don't think he sent a message though." Artemis replied. No, the message was probably sent through the dream, although how was worth asking. Aqualad nodded. There was silence for a minute.
"There!" Blue Jay shouted suddenly. He pulled up the picture on the big screen, and cropped and enlarged an image of a reflection that briefly appeared when the gun came into view. They could make out a tiny, blurry figure, mostly white with a dark spot at the top. Artemis's heart sank. That had to be Damian.
"Can you enhance it?" Aqualad asked.
"Working on it," Blue Jay replied while typing. The image refreshed a few times, becoming slightly clearer each time it returned to view. "That's the best I can do. Batman might be able to enhance it more." He said finally.
They looked at the picture, which had clarified into a little boy with a large hand over his mouth. He was clothed mostly in white, and had black hair and pale skin. They couldn't make out the expression in his eyes, but they looked to be a bluish-green color.
"He looks familiar." Kid Flash said.
"Really familiar." Blue Jay added. He did something fancy on his holocomputer, and pulled up a couple images. One was of a young Dick Grayson. Another was of a young Bruce Wayne. "I think he's either another missing kid or related to one of these people. Wait, one second." He added a picture of a young Clark Kent, who was wearing an extremely dorky outfit. Superboy smiled. "Sorry, one of these people. Don't tell Superman I showed you this picture. We've been using it as blackmail."
"Hang on a second." Zatanna said. "Put the picture of the kid in the reflection next to the one of Bruce Wayne." Blue Jay did so. "They look a lot alike." Artemis shifted uncomfortably.
"Maybe they made a clone of him?" Miss Martian suggested.
"People we know have had a tendency to get cloned or be clones." Rocket said, giving Superboy a soft smile. He snorted.
"Or we could consider the fact that Bruce Wayne is a notable playboy," Artemis said. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he was out with someone and accidentally made a baby he does not know about. The kid could be his son." They all stared at the two pictures some more, and Blue Jay pulled down the other ones to enlarge the two they were examining. There was no denying the similarities between the two.
"Perhaps, we should discuss the matter with Batman." Aqualad said, finally.
"Yeah, perhaps." Blue Jay said.
"Has anyone done a trace on the video yet? Figured out where it originated from?" The team froze, and all eyes turned to Blue Jay, questioning if he'd done it yet.
Blue Jay looked up from his holocomputer, which he had been typing on since he got there. "Batman tried it. No luck. We have another try going on the Batcomputer currently, as well as one focusing on that anklet. He's working on finding the original broadcast and isolating the anklet signal from it. We think it might be a tracker because they probably didn't want to lose him if they didn't shoot him on camera. Batman says it's further evidence they didn't shoot him because no one wastes technology on a dead kid. If we can isolate the anklet signal, we can trace it. It's taking time though. He has me working on it while I'm here."
"So, what do we have so far?" Artemis started. "A kid who looks a bit like Bruce Wayne and who Dick obviously cares for, a psycho who has yet to be identified that we are calling Bonanza, who is different from the guy in the first ransom video, a potential trace from the anklet if you can isolate it, and a lot of blood, is that it?"
"There's also the threats he made. He made it sound like there were a lot more kids than just Dick and the kid. Maybe we're looking for an organization."
"Hey, what's that on his arm?" Kid Flash asked, looking up at the still of Dick they still had up on a screen. The team studied it, narrowing their eyes to see it better.
"It looks like, a blemish, or ink. A tattoo, maybe?" Zatanna said. "R2D2, can you enlarge it?"
"Give me a second," He enlarged and enhanced the spot they were looking at.
"It's a number." Miss Martian said in horrid fascination.
"169…" Superboy said.
"Holy crap, does that mean they have 168 more kids?" Artemis exclaimed, whirling with the further confirmation that the dream was a little more not a dream at all. She really needed to try to have another one to get answers to all these questions. Artemis decided she would tell the team if she had a second one. She might be imagining it, after all.
"At least." Aqualad stated, dumbstruck. "It has been five and a half months since Richard disappeared. They could have gained many more in that time."
"Let's hope there are at least 169 kids… If there's not, we can only guess what happened to the others." Rocket said.
"What happened to the other guy? The one in the first video. He looked like he was in charge then." Zatanna asked.
"Could they be the same person in different disguises?" Aqualad asked.
"Huh. R2D2, can you pull up a picture of him?" Zatanna demanded of their frenzied replacement hacker.
"One second," he growled. He quickly pulled up a picture of the guy from the first video and switched back to the isolation program. This was hard. How did Dick do it so easily?
"Different heights and builds." Artemis said, after a second. "Unless the jerk grew four inches in the past few months and aged a few years, as well as changing his voice, these are two different guys."
"But why? Why change spokesmen? If this is an organization with so many kids, wouldn't they want to keep the person who people see the same?" Zatanna pressed.
"Maybe they want to throw people off their tracks. If we had a second video of the same guy, we might have a few more leads to find that guy, who is probably staying off the grid, right now."
"Maybe they sold Richard?" Superboy suggested. He immediately faced an entire room of glares. "What? It is a valid possibility. The person who initially did the ransom could be the collector of sorts, finding kids to kidnap and selling them to the guy in this video. Or this guy could be his boss."
"While that is a valid argument that must not be ruled out, the leads we have found so far do not point in that direction."
"What did you find in France, Aqualad? Did you find the kids from the boat?"
"Yeah, Kaldur! Report."
"I am afraid we did not find the kids. All trails had gone cold by the time we reached France due to the massive disconnect of time between when the C. S. Coyote arrived in France and when it arrived in Rhode Island. The shipyard only keeps surveillance from the previous two months, and we missed the tapes by three days.
"We kept an eye on the harbor, and had the security guards at the dock tell us if any similar vehicles appeared, but none did. I suspect that they stopped using that port when they learned of the Justice League's involvement from a sentry at the shipyard in Savannah, Georgia. We have set sentries at other ports on the European coasts, but we have yet to receive any tips.
"On another note, we discovered an incident in late- November near the Austrian- German border. A few, previously missing children ran into a small town calling for the police to help. The police found a bus with a flat tire, three seriously injured kids— two of whom died from their injuries—and the corpse of an adult male. They also, later, found a small girl hiding under the bus. The four uninjured kids were returned home, and we arrived just as the last child, Anna, was waking up.
"The story we've heard was that a group armed men were transporting a busload of about twenty kidnapped children somewhere unknown coming from the Middle East through Turkey. The bus got a flat and pulled over, and one of the children made a run for it. A few of the men went after him and managed to recapture him, although not easily. The three children who managed to reach the town reported that they had made a break while the guards were distracted with the first kid along with about six other kids. The guards fired at them, and that's how two died. The young girl under the bus reported that she heard a gunshot in the woods, and then two men came back with a small, unconscious boy with dark hair who was maybe four. They loaded the rest of the kids into three black vans, but put the smaller boy, who the police believe was the one that first ran, into an airtight box with a "weird mask", possibly an oxygen mask, over his face, before placing the box in the van.
"Then, they left. The police were able to trace, and find, two black vans, but they were abandoned. They likely changed vehicles. The police were going through street security tapes from around that time to try to find the bus to find who was on the bus as well as the vans and any cars big enough to hold the remaining kids they might have traded with near the vans were found, but it was slow going. We joined them on that, trying to help speed up the process."
Kid Flash picked up the debriefing. "That's around the time we saw the video. We left the police on the case and came back to regroup and see if we could get one or two new leads, stronger ones hopefully. Did you guys come up with any theories while we were traveling?"
"Is it-?" Artemis started. "Is it possible that some of the kids escaped from where they're keeping them? If we look for the tattoos, we might be able to find them. Then we'd just have to convince them to lead us back."
"That is not a bad idea. But we would not know where to start searching. The best we could do is contact the emissaries and see if anyone has come to them with the tattoo. However, they might not do that because the Justice League is not searching per the risk, and they don't want to risk the kids." Aqualad said.
"So, we tell them we're not the Justice League! We're acting on our own. We can't give up on those kids!" Miss Martian said.
"Alright. We should split up and contact as many as we can in person. Superboy, take the Super Cycle, Rocket, and Blue Jay, provided his father is alright with it, and go to the emissaries in Portugal, Italy, and Spain. Miss Martian, take the Bioship, Artemis and Zantanna and go to the emissaries in the Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Kid Flash and I will go to Belgium, Germany, Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic since we were already in contact with emissaries in Germany and Austria. Kid Flash and I will contact Batman and Red Arrow and see if they will join us or contact additional emissaries. They will let you know if they are joining your group or taking one of your countries. We will meet in Switzerland in one week. Understood?"
"Yes, Aqualad."
"Then go."
A/N It's the homestretch! There's a plan in place now. We move onwards. There's a poll on my page on which one you want to happen first: finding the tracker signal or finding the escaped kids or neither. Please vote.
Good luck on finals everybody.
Guest responses:
Please get an account so I can discuss some of your ideas more in depth. I promise you won't get spam. Fanfiction only sends emails you request like 'this story just updated' or 'this author just favorited you'.
Guest: Thank you. I try. I have yet to find a good way to add Timmy in to this story. I think I found a way for him to be in the sequel and maybe the epilogue, but he (and Babs for that matter) just haven't found their way into the main plot of this story. Tim has his own family still. I like an idea I saw in another fanfiction somewhere (credits to that author. I can't remember who it was) where Dick babysat a young Tim Drake who was his neighbor, so that happened. Unfortunately, since Dick was kidnapped and Jason is still too young to babysit, he hasn't really been around the manor too much. He probably came over once or twice when Bruce and Alfred were both home, but not too often. I might write a TMB If Only Chapter with him and Babs. Speedy just seemed right. Thank you! I will.
No One Important: Thanks. Huh. Accurate description. Only the 4th? You're slacking. I'm on probably my 16th go. :P Rambling is good. Thank you. I can't really update when I have no internet though.
crimsonshadowj: Thank you.