Damian's Second Chance - Part 2

==Chapter 4==

While he had slept rather soundly, Damian was rather disappointed to wake up and find that he was still in the toddler-themed room. The lights had switched on again and the vivid blue wallpaper greeted Damian's waking eyes as he rubbed them. As he started to stretch, Damian soon realized that he was no longer weighed down by a heavily bloated stomach and he could now try to leave the crib. But the moment his sat upright, the crib's front bars automatically opened, granting him even easier access out of it.

"Huh, weird..." Damian muttered to himself.

Wasting no time, he moved his legs off the mattress, and stood up out of the crib. As he remembered everything that happened before he fell asleep, Damian quickly put his mind to finding a way out of this strange place. His first thought would be to wait until that weird chair-robot returned and quickly escape through the door it came through when it opened, but who know's when that was going to happen? So Damian decided to check out the dresser on the wall left of the crib; maybe there would be something useful in one of those drawers. Unfortunately, all he could find in the dresser were more shirts just like the small, blue one with a bear on it that he was wearing and an excessive amount of spare pull-ups.

He then noticed the baby-monitor on top of the dresser; maybe someone would hear him through that. He quickly tried to grab it off of its spot on the shelf but it was somehow attached to the dresser and wouldn't budge.

"Hello?" Damian said, leaning toward the monitor's speaker. "Can someone help me, please? My name is Damian, I'm fourteen years old. I think there's been some sort of mistake. I was given the wrong set of clothes and I'm in a room that has a bunch of little kid stuff in it. I'd appreciate it if someone could get me out of here."

No response came from the baby-monitor, but Damian figured the device must've been one-way or maybe not even turned on at all. With nothing else to look for in the room, Damian decided he would have no choice but to wait, either for someone to come get him or to make his escape when the feeding robot arrived. He walked over to the hidden door and pressed his back against the wall right beside it. He thought if he was quick enough, he might be able to dash through the door right after the robot entered the room but before the robot would even have a chance to catch him.

And so he waited from his spot beside the door as time dragged on. Again, with no clocks in the room, Damian could hardly tell how long he had been standing there. Minutes? Hours? He had no idea. Not to mention he didn't know when the robot would be coming back, if it would even came back at all. His attention soon drifted over to the toys on the floor: a wide spread of fun looking items Damian could probably amuse himself with to help pass the time.

"No, no! Stay focused!" he said, shaking his head and returning his attention to the door.

He couldn't distract himself like that, he had to be where he was right at the moment the robot came back, otherwise his plan wouldn't work. Besides, these things weren't meant for him, he thought, he was a teenager! Teenagers don't play with toy trains and building blocks! Still, even with his diligent mind set, Damian soon became rather bored when the robot still had not shown up yet. He needed something to occupy his mind while he waited. Damian then noticed the yellow ball sitting in the corner beside him.

"I guess this'll be okay..." he muttered quietly, bending down and grabbing the ball.

He lightly threw the ball up into the air and caught it in his hands when it came back down. Sure it wasn't a video game, but at least it was more entertaining than standing up against a wall all day. He continued tossing the ball up into the air and catching it when it fell, the height of each toss gradually increasing until it started hitting the solid ceiling above him. Once he had enough fun with that, Damian started bouncing the ball on the floor. It would fall to the ground, and he would be ready to catch it when it sprang back up. He then began dribbling the ball with one hand, using it as a make-shift basketball. As Damian played with ball, he was no longer bored and actually almost forgot about how humiliating his situation was for a moment. He then started throwing the ball against the other walls in a playful trance. It sure was bouncy, he thought.

The ball eventually bounced out of Damian's reach and as he absent-mindedly took a step to go retrieve it, he snapped out of his playful mood and remembered why he was by the wall in the first place: he had to wait for the robot so he could escape. He quickly returned to his propped-up position against the wall, leaving the yellow ball where it had landed. For some reason, Damian was almost sad that he couldn't play with the ball anymore, almost like a little kid inside him was disappointed play-time was over. But he shook off these weird feelings and focused on the door again.

"Any minute now..." he told himself. "Any minute now..."

It was quite a bit longer than Damian had hoped, but eventually the automatic door opened with a mechanical noise and Damian's heart leapt with energy. However, even before the robot had completely entered the room, its robotic arms seemed to know exactly where the boy was at that moment and grabbed him right as it rolled in. Damian struggled to break free from its grasp and head for the door, but it was already too late: the split-second the robot had passed the door, it automatically closed in the blink of an eye.

"Ora di cena, ora di cena, ora di cena," the robot repeated, strapping Damian in its chair exactly like it had done before.

Knowing what was coming, Damian gave up struggling and forced his mouth shut, clenching his jaw as tightly as he possibly could. When the robot held up a baby bottle to his mouth it attempted to get it into the teen's mouth by gently jabbing the pink tip into his lips. When this had no effect, the spare robot hands clasped onto opposite sides of Damian's head and tried to force his mouth open, the motors whirring loudly as Damian kept his jaw locked shut.

Ha, is that all you got? Damian thought, feeling quite proud of himself.

Then the robot arms did something rather unexpected: one of the gloved robot hands pinched Damian's nose, causing him to panic on the inside at the sudden lack of breath. With no air passing through his nose, Damian soon had no choice but to open his mouth to breathe, doing so without even really thinking about it. Once his mouth had opened, the robot let go of his nose and stuck the bottle into his mouth and forced Damian to drink more of that warm milk. He tried not to swallow it, and while some did spill out of his mouth and trickle down his chin, the rest flooded to the back of his throat where it had no where to go but down.

Just like last time, once the bottle was empty, another robot hand shoved the next one into his mouth and made him drink from it, all while repeating that same phrase: "Ora di cena. Ora di cena. Ora di cena. Ora di cena. Ora di cena."

Soon Damian's belly grew tighter and he became sleepier as he was filled with the all the warm milk the robot had to offer. Right around when Damian's stomach was reaching its maximum capacity, becoming round and heavy once again, the robot stopped once the last bottle had been emptied. One of the robot hands pulled out a cloth napkin and wiped the excessive milk off of Damian's mouth as he groaned groggily. The straps unbuckled and the robot proceeded to lift Damian over its ‘shoulder’ and burp him again. After Damian spouted a few small belches, the robot placed the bloated teen back into the crib and swiftly left the room through the automatic door.

"Well, that didn't work..." Damian mumbled, staring at the section of wall that closed right behind the robot as the lights began to dim. "Guess I'll have to try again tomorrow."

As the blue star-shaped lights turned on and the music box started playing, Damian let out a rather long yawn, closed his eyes, and snuggled into a comfortable position, his belly gurgling quietly as it digested.

When he woke up the next day, Damian got out of the crib and got ready to try his escape attempt once again, this time staying a few feet further away from the door so the robot wouldn't be able to catch him immediately, but hopefully close enough to get through the door before it closed. He didn't let any of the toys distract him today, no matter how bored he got he remained where he stood. A long while later, the robot did return to the room just like before and Damian made his move. He bolted straight to the open door, but the robot seemed to know where he was headed and snatched him before he even got close. Just like before, it strapped him in its chair, fed him milk until he was too full and sleepy to move, burped him, and then put him to bed, all the while repeatedly saying: "Ora di cena."

The process repeated itself the following morning. This time Damian crouched down on the floor, thinking maybe the robot wouldn't be able to see him down low like this. When it eventually arrived, he crawled as fast as he could past the robot's wheels, almost reaching the door until he felt something yank at his small shirt and pull him away while saying: "Ora di cena. Ora di cena."

Day in, day out, everything went exactly the same way. Damian soon just started hiding from the robot, hoping maybe if it didn't find him it would give up and leave, allowing him to follow it out of the room. He tried hiding behind the dresser, on top of it, behind the crib, even inside the crib pretending to be asleep in the hope that the feeding robot would over-look him. But every time it came into the room it knew exactly where to find him and Damian was helpless to avoid its constant and forceful feeding. After a while, Damian just ultimately felt like giving up the idea of ever escaping through that door, or at the very least...he would wait and see how he felt about it in the after some sleep.

One morning, as Damian awoke to the day-time room lights, something about his body felt a little different. After rubbing all the sleep out of his eyes, he looked down at his hands. For some reason they looked…smaller? How could that be? He looked down at his feet. The top of the tight socks seemed to be over his ankles more and his feet seemed closer to his body than he remembered them. At least...he thought they did.

No, it couldn't be, he thought, lifting each leg up and then down to make sure they were indeed his.

"Is that even possible?" he wondered aloud, but gasped and covered his mouth as he heard a slightly different voice say those words. It was definitely his voice, but it sound so different, so...young. "What's happening?” he said quietly in a frightened prepubescent voice.

Damian's eyes then drifted down toward his hardly covered belly. While he was no longer full from last night's feeding, his belly looked a bit...rounder than it was before. Ironically, it seemed to be the only part of him that didn't shrink. He poked and prodded it with his finger, it was definitely softer than it had been, and Damian, for some reason, actually kind of liked it. He smiled as he started playfully patting his squishy belly like a drum, those previous thoughts about him possibly getting smaller just carelessly floating away.

"I'm not shrinking..." he muttered happily. "I've always been this size, my belly's just a little bigger."

Once he was done, he hopped down out of his open crib, not noticing that his feet could dangle from the crib’s mattress now.

"Now, let's see..." he said, tilting his head slightly to think. "Was I...going to do something today?"

He racked his brain trying to remember what was happening, but it proved to be a bit of a challenge, his mind had become a murky stew of old memories. He vaguely remembered a woman with glasses: someone kind who helped look after him, but he couldn't remember her name. Then there was something about another lady...she was a very pretty lady...and some kind of a bathroom with gray doors...and then...But before he could try to make anymore sense out of the blurry pictures in his head, Damian soon took notice of the wooden train tracks over by the dresser. Instantly forgetting about what he was trying to figure out, he walked over toward it.

Damian always knew there was a train set in the room, but he hadn't taken the time to really look at it since he had arrived here. Among the pile of long and curved track pieces, he found a little purple train engine with red stripes painted across it, six red wheels, and shiny magnets on the front and back so it could push and pull the other train cars attached to it. I looked so shiny and new, like it was just pulled out of the box.

Having peaked his interest, Damian sat down on the soft puzzle-piece floor and began building a track from the jumbled pieces. He placed down long lines of track that eventually curved and squiggled, branched into different directions, and there were even pieces that allowed him to build a long bridge that arched over the tacks he had already built. Once he created a looped track that was to his liking, he gathered all the train cars together, picked the ones he wanted to use, and connected them all behind the purple engine on the track. He then moved the train along the track with his hand, effectively emulating an actual train moving. He dragged the engine along the path he had created, watching it move along all of his fancy twists and turns with increasing amusement.

He pretended the engine was carrying people to various stations across his railroad, making numerous stops at certain spots on the track. Then he loaded more cars behind the ones he already had to see just how long he could make the train. When he pulled this across the tracks he would sometimes lose a few train cars off the back and quickly use his other hand to reattach them. Then he started leaving cars loose on the track by themselves, using the engine to ram into them as hard as he could and watch them go shooting across the track or even just derailing onto the padded floor with Damian giggling at the make-believe disaster. He then took off a few of the bridge pieces and ran the train off the broken track, sending the engine and train cars tumbling into ruin below and entertaining Damian even more so.

When things started to grow stale, Damian quickly noticed the toy helicopter laying on its side across the room. After rebuilding the track again, he grabbed the toy helicopter and began twirling the big blades with his finger to imitate a flying helicopter, even making a few sputtering noises with his mouth to add to the effect. He 'flew' the helicopter over to the train track, holding it high in the air to show how high above the railroad it was.

"The Channel 4 News Copter arrives on the scene of the new railway system," he said in a goofy deep voice. "But what's this?!"

He lifted his hand up to copter and pulled it back, pretending a big explosion just shot off the helicopter with a loud: "KaBoom!"

"Oh no! The helicopter's breaking down!" he continued in his narrative voice.

He then dramatically lowered the helicopter, holding it by the blades and spinning the copter itself to make it seem like the vehicle was spiraling downward.

"It's heading straight for the railroad! Oh goodness!”

He crashed the helicopter onto the wooden railroad tracks, breaking the track into pieces by hand and making explosion sounds and people screaming with his voice to create the chaos of a helicopter crash. The wild and funny destruction sent Damian into a mild laughing fit, he toppled onto the floor and laid on his back while he continue to let his laughter spill out. Eventually it died out and Damian's smaller face went from hysterical to a more relaxed but still quite happy expression as he started regaining his breath.

Probably even if his mind wasn't so fogged, Damian couldn't remember the last time he'd had so much fun, and while a few days ago he would never have even dreamed of playing with this room's babyish toys, today for some reason, he didn't care as much. It might've just been because he was completely alone and he had nothing better to do, but Damian somehow felt much more happy and carefree when he played with those toys, almost like he actually was a little kid again.

After relaxing on the floor a bit longer, he quickly went back to playing with train set for a little while longer. Getting most of his excess energy out, he rebuilt the track and went back to playing with it more casually; no more catastrophic disasters. When he was done with that, he remembered the yellow ball he had played with a while ago and decided to play with that next. Like he had done before, he tossed it into the air, made it touch the ceiling, dribbled it on the floor, and made it bounce off the walls to a different part of the room, forcing him to run after it.

“Boing! Boing! Booooing!” he said, imitating bouncy sounds happily as the ball bounced around.

Soon all that playing and running around made Damian very hungry, and just as he was starting to run low on energy, the door opened and the feeding robot rolled in and said: "Ora di cena." Those words clicked in Damian's mind, alerting him that more of that strange warm milk was coming his way. Today he wasn't afraid of the robot, he simply remained where he was and let the robot strap him into its chair, knowing that he had no choice. He didn't struggle or keep his mouth closed, instead he allowed the robot to feed him from the large baby bottle and actually drank from the bottle on his own.

The milk actually tasted a little better to Damian this time, either he was getting adjusted to the taste or maybe there was something new about this batch. It felt much more thick and creamy, almost like a milkshake, but it still tasted just like regular milk. Regardless, Damian mildly enjoyed drinking all the milk, it was something good to fill his empty belly.

As he drank the abundant amount of fluid, his stomach once again stretched outward to make room for it all, replacing the soft squish of his new pudge with the usual bloated feeling he got after these feedings. Once he started getting full, the robot had to squeeze the remaining milk into Damian's mouth as he had stopped drinking it himself. Even if he was somehow smaller, the robot seemed to feed him the same amount it always fed him. When the milk was finished, the robot proceeded to burp a very tired Damian, only this time the robot did something different before it carried him over to his crib. One of the robot hands grabbed a blue pacifier out of the compartment on its back and stuck it into Damian's mouth. This new addition to the routine caught Damian by surprise, causing him to become slightly more alert as he drew his attention to the item in his mouth once the robot had placed him in the crib.

Even though he had just spent the day playing with a train set without any objection, Damian still felt he was way too old for a pacifier. But at the same time, it oddly seemed to relax him even more so. What was rather interesting about this particular pacifier was that the soft bulb in Damian's mouth had a very sweet cherry taste, almost like a sucker, only softer. Knowing no one would see him and since he was enjoying the taste of it, Damian simply decided to keep it in his mouth as he lay in his crib.

The lights dimmed and the music box started up as usual, lulling Damian's already sleepy mind. He soon snuggled himself in on the soft mattress and let his eyes close, letting relaxing thoughts swim around in his head about how content this place was starting to make him feel.

==Chapter 5==

The gentle increase in light slowly awoke Damian from he's peaceful sleep, his large blue eyes slowly blinking open. He then let the pacifier that had long since lost its taste fall out of his mouth so he could yawn as he stretched his small but thick arms and legs. Shifting his weight, he rolled over onto his back and began to sit himself upright, a task that proved rather strenuous with an enormous belly. His light-blue teddy-bear shirt was now a much better fit for him, only now his round stomach bulged out from underneath it, exposing soft, chubby, skin that hung over his pull-up.

The crib's gate opened up, and with that Damian slowly crawled backward over the mattress and carefully exited his crib, his socked feet landing firmly on the colorful and padded floor and his head barely above the crib's mattress. Once the bars closed, he turned around and glanced around the room to find something interesting to do, his eyes shining with curiosity.

Weeks had passed since Damian arrived in this bizarre kiddie-room, even though he had no way of knowing for sure. As time went on though, he slowly grew accustomed to his new life. Any thoughts of escaping, or really anything outside the room by now had simply left his mind, leaving him free to enjoy everything the room had to offer: the fun toys, the yummy milk, and a cozy crib to nab in, blissfully unaware of his slow and abnormal transformation from a slim teenager to a very portly toddler, with his thoughts growing more simple and childish day by day.

"Mousey!" he giggled happily in a youthful voice, waddling over to the wind-up mouse toy sitting in the corner, his chubby body bouncing around as he moved.

He picked up the grey, plastic mouse and happy twisted the silver key on its back. Once the key was tightly wound, he dropped it onto the floor and the little wheels underneath it made it scurry off toward the other end of the room with Damian lumbering behind it, making the other toys bounce slightly on the padded floor as he ran. When the mouse hit the wall, it bounced backward, turned, and darted off in another direction with Damian right behind it. Soon the key slowed down and the mouse eventually came to a stop, allowing Damian to finally catch it.

He reached down over his large belly, grabbed the mouse off the floor and began turning the key again.

"Again, again!" he giggled with amusement.

Once it was wound, he sent the toy mouse shooting across the floor and chased after it again.

"Come back, Mousey!" he called out playfully.

The mechanical rodent seemed a bit too quick for the overweight toddler to chase on his own, only really catching it when it eventually slowed down and stopped. Nevertheless, Damian continued winding-up and running after it with a smile on his round face. Pretty soon, Damian himself was running out of steam from so much running. The final time the mouse came to a halt, Damian merely plopped onto the floor, taking deep breaths in exhaustion.

When he caught his breath, he lifted his head slightly and glanced down at his rotund stomach. He then lightly patted it with his hand, making it jiggle for a moment. Using both hands, he then playfully squeezed and shook it around. He sucked in his stomach, placed his hands on top of it, then pushed his stomach back out as fast as he could, feeling the immediate growth in his palms as he did so. Damian enjoyed playing with his big belly like this, it just felt so fun to play with all of his soft squishy fat. A short moment afterward, he had enough and he wanted to do something else. He took notice of the building blocks and stackable ring tower near the wall beside him and decided he would play with those next.

He rolled over onto his stomach and crawled toward the toys, his belly dragging along the ground and he could feel the plush carpet rubbing against it. Since he had left all the colorful stacking rings on the floor yesterday, Damian figured he would put them all back in order on the stacking tower first. He quickly grabbed the ring that was closest to him: the small red one, and placed on the tower, sending it to the bottom of the yellow pole. He then grabbed the larger blue one and added than one to the tower, soon realizing that it was actually supposed to go on before the red one.

Silly me, Damian thought to himself as lifted the rings off the tower and put them back in the proper order.

It took him a bit longer to figure out that purple was supposed to got on the bottom, green went on before yellow, and both of those went on after red, but Damian eventually got all the rings stacked in the correct order in their sequential rainbow pattern. He smiled proudly at his handy work before fully seating himself on the floor and getting his hands on the wooden building blocks next.

Using the same color pattern as the stacking-rings: starting with the block with purple “D”s, then blue “O”s, then green ”J”s, and so on, he began to stack each block, one by one. It wasn’t long before the tower reached a good height, and although Damian tried his best to make it straight, a few blocks were a tad askew. Just as he started to placed a red “A” block on top, his thick arm raised high above his head, the entire tower toppled over and all the blocks spilled onto the floor. While certainly disappointed that he couldn’t finish his block-tower the way he had hoped, Damian was kind of excited to try it again.

He quickly gathered up all the blocks together and began to stack them one on top of the other again. When this played out the same as before, Damian tried again, only this time using four blocks as a base before trying to stack another column. He continued to play with the blocks for a while, building structures that either toppled over or held their own and were then happily knocked over to build something else, and all the while Damian enjoyed it.

After building a small tower of blocks placed in a 2 x 2 pattern, Damian looked around to see if he miss-placed any blocks, hoping to make it even taller. He then glanced down at his stomach and got a fun idea. Getting to his feet, he carefully walked over to his tower of blocks as close as he could and then sucked in his stomach. With his seemingly flat belly just about an inch from touching the blocks, he immediately let it bulge back out into its large, round shape. Effectively knocking the block tower apart with his big belly and making him laugh at what he did.

"Hehehe, big belly!" Damian giggled, saying the words in a deep voice and patting his tummy.

He quickly built another standing tower with the blocks, then used his stomach to knock it over again, laughing even more. He once again fell flat on his backside, his excessive fat and the soft floor cushioning his fall, and then laid down flat as he continued to giggle at his silliness, his bulbous belly jiggling up and down as he did so. When he noticed his stomach moving like that, he got another idea.

Damian grabbed one of the loose building blocks next to him and lifted up. He sucked in his tummy again, and then he dropped the block. At the last second, he bulged his stomach out just as the block was about to touch it, causing it to bounce off his belly and back into the pile of other blocks beside him, making him laugh even more. He then grabbed as many blocks as he could and placed them over his contracted stomach. When he quickly puffed it back out, all the blocks leapt off his bare skin and fell to his sides.

Damian couldn't believe he never thought to try something like this before, it was so fun! His belly was like a big trampoline for his toys, he thought. Now what else could he use?

He then spotted the yellow bouncy ball on the other end of the room. He sluggishly sat up and got back on his feet, this task was slowly getting harder and harder for him to do on his own. Damian then made his way over to the ball and plopped back down on the floor on his back, ready to bounce the ball on his stomach. He lifted the ball as high as his arms could hold it, held in his gut, then promptly stuck out his belly as he dropped the ball. It shot high up into the air, then arched over Damian's head, and continued bouncing on the floor behind him. He stretched his neck upward and watched it eventually stop moving when it reached the opposite corner of the room, which was upside down from Damian's perspective.

"Ha ha, big belly!" he chortled, giving his stomach some playful patting.

And so the day continued as Damian happily played with the toys in his room, now using his belly to come up with new ways to play with them. He made the little wooden train engine drive up his belly several times like it was a steep mountain, even letting it roll down on its own once it reached the top. He made the toy helicopter 'fly' around above him then soon land make a landing on his wide stomach. Then later he simply chased after the wind-up mouse again, this time crawling on all-fours pretending he was a really fat kitty-cat.

Pretty soon, Damian’s started to get hungry and his stomach started making noises, signaling that it was almost time to eat and it wouldn’t be long before the mechanical chair would arrive to feed him. Sure enough, it arrived right on cue, the hidden door briefly slid open and the feeding robot drove into the room, it’s automated voice chirping: “Ora de cena. Ora de cena.”

“Yay! Ora de cena!” Damian yelled happily, standing up and lumbering his way over to the chair.

The robot didn’t even need to grab Damian or strap him in its seat, the plump toddler eagerly climbed into the chair, sat still, and opened his mouth as wide as he could, closing his eyes as he did so. While it continued to say: “Ora de cena”, the robot arms grabbed the large baby bottles filled with that strange milk from the compartment on its back and dutifully stuck one into Damian’s waiting mouth which quickly closed around the soft pink tip and began to chug, his already round cheeks bulging out further as he drank.

It was the only thing Damian had eaten since he arrived, but each time he was fed, the milk somehow tasted even better every time he drank it. He simply couldn’t get enough of it! Luckily, the robot was now feeding him and putting him to bed about twice as often as it did before, and it always had plenty of milk for the greedy little boy.

Damian placed his hands on his exposed tummy and began gently rubbing it as he drank bottle after bottle of his delicious milk, feeling it slowly getting stretched and heavy. He couldn’t quite piece together that the milk was what was making him so fat, but he definitely knew it made he feel very full and sleepy; a sensation he really enjoyed now.

After several minutes of feeding, filled with plenty of “Ora de cena” from the robot, Damian’s tummy was nearing its limit, but he just couldn’t bring himself to stop drinking from the bottles: it was just too good! He knew he was full, but he just wanted to drink even more milk! However, the robot eventually ran out, signaling the end of its feeding time with a quick "ding". It then proceeded to heave Damian over its ‘shoulder’, its motors groaning under the amount of weight it had to lift, and began to lightly pat his back, forcing a rather large burp out of the small boy.

“Ora de cena,,,” he moaned quietly before the robot stuck a fresh cherry-flavored pacifier in his mouth, hopping maybe it would feed him a little more if he mimicked its phrase again. Thankfully, the pacifier seemed to keep his tongue happy while his belly was too full to take anymore milk.

The robot then rolled over to Damian’s crib, where the bars automatically retracted, and placed him gently on the mattress with his huge tummy facing up. When the bars rose back up, Damian slothfully sucked his pacifier, grabbed his favorite of the stuffed animals beside him: a large teddy-bear with soft and fuzzy brown fur, and squeezed it between his arms, getting himself pleasantly comfortable. When the robot had left, the lights dimmed down, the music box started, and the blue star-shaped lights began to hypnotically dance around the room.

Damian gazed sleepily up at the slowly spinning mobile above his head, the colorful stars and lights being the last thing he saw before his eyes closed for good, allowing sleep to take over his body and send his mind into a blissful state of relaxation. Damian could no longer remember being a teenager and how lonely he felt without any family to take of him, for now he had everything he could ever want. He was so happy with his life in this wonderful room, he wanted to stay here forever.

==Chapter 6==

Everything was the way Damian wanted it to be: he just spent another long day of playing with his toys, had a big belly filled with milk, and was now snuggled with his favorite teddy-bear as he slept quietly, sucking on his thumb since he misplaced his pacifier earlier during his nap. But unfortunately, his slumber did not last much longer. He felt something wedge between him and the soft bed, lifting him up into the air and away from it, leaving his beloved teddy-bear behind in the process.

Before he opened his eyes, he grunted at the disturbance of his serene sleep and soon began to cry. He didn't know what was happening. Why would anything interrupt his perfect nap? He continued to whine and sob in displeasure, until a gentle voice muttered: "Shh...there there. It's okay..."

Damian finally allowed his eyes to open, his vision a little blurry from the tears starting form, but when his eyes had adjusted, he stopped fussing. What he saw looking down at him made him very curious, for he had not seen anything like it in quite some time. Looking down at him was a young woman with curly black hair, deep brown eyes, shining with tears of their own, and a genuine smile on her face.

"Darling, look at him..." she whispered softly, although Damian couldn't understand anything she was saying. "He's beautiful!"

A man with short brown hair and a stubbled beard then appeared beside the woman, looking down at Damian with the same delicate expression of joy.

"Yeah..." the man agreed. "He certainly is."

While still sad his ideal nap was so rudely interrupted, Damian couldn't help but stare blankly at these large people looking back at him. He had no idea who these people were, and yet somehow he did not feel threatened or in danger. In fact, he felt rather safe and protected in the woman's arms. He made himself a bit more comfortable and resumed sucking his thumb.

"He sure is a tubby little guy, isn't he?" the man said, gently poking Damian's stomach with his finger. "Look at the size of that belly!”

Damian didn't enjoy this stranger making fun of his exposed tummy like that, so he used his free hand to try tugging his small, light-blue shirt over the area he was poked with a slightly annoyed look on his face.

"It's merely some baby-fat," another man's voice explained.

Damian turned his attention toward the source and saw a man in grey suit and tie in front of the couple.

"He should eventually grow out of it as he gets older," he continued. "Alright then, everything is in order. As of this moment, he is now officially yours!"

"Isn't it wonderful?" the woman said, a tear finally falling down the side of her cheek. "Now we have our very own baby."

"What did you say his name was again?" her partner asked the man in the suit.

"Damian," the man replied. "He's been in our care for about 3 months."

"I just can't believe someone would put this adorable little boy up for adoption," the woman said, taking her attention off Damian for a brief moment. "I mean, who wouldn't want this precious little bundle of joy?"

"Well, that is our job here at the Esposito Youth Welfare Association," said the man in the suit. "We make sure every child we take in finds a loving home by any means possible.”

The man grabbed Damian's teddy bear from his bed and slowly handed it toward the plump infant, who happily snatched it and squeezed the stuffed toy with a big hug, causing the couple beside him to smile at the cute display of affection.

"If you have any further questions, you may contact us at anytime," said the man in the suit.

"Thank you," said the man beside the woman, shaking hands with the man in the suit. "You have no idea how much this means to us."

"It's my pleasure," the man in the suit replied with a smile.

"Come on then, Damian," the woman said softly. "Let's go home now."

And with that, Damian watched as the woman turned on the spot and began to walk away with her partner walking right beside her, everything around him was gently bouncing away as he was carried off. The repetitive but gentle movement actually relaxed Damian, and now that he had his bear back and he was suitably comfortable, he figured he might be able to resume his nap again. He then closed his eyes, sucked his thumb with one small hand and clung to his teddy-bear with the other. Little did he know that his life had changed forever: no longer was he a miserable foster-kid with a glum future, he now had the opportunity to be raised by two loving parents who would care for him at the very beginning of his mysteriously regressed life. Damian had received a second chance.