Disclaimer: Don't look at me. I don't even own any spandex…
Title: Bringing Home Strays
Pairings: Slight Mento/Elasti-Girl, BBT depending on your age threshold. Mostly just gen cuteness.
Summary: Mento really was a softie. [Beast Boy, the Doom Patrol, and a little lost girl with blonde hair and a talent for hitting people with rocks.]
A/N: I drew a lot from the Teen Titans Go! series for this fic—in fact, the entire first scene of this chapter is taken from one of those. You might also notice a few bits and pieces from the original Doom Patrol comics, but I've only read a few issues so I tried to keep it to a minimum. I still drew on them for backstories, though.
Also, I adore the cartoon's Mento. He tries to be so uptight, but he really does care about his family. The entire Doom Patrol is just adorably dysfunctional when you get them out of a mission setting.
I used both civilian and superhero names here. Hope that wasn't too confusing.
This was originally meant to be a multi-chapter fic. But it's been gathering dust on my laptop for so long that I decided to post it as-is. I think it makes a nice oneshot as well, although I really do like the ideas I have for this universe… well, maybe one day. But right now, fanfic has taken a backseat to life. It's a new year and I'm working at my school's library, starting my last (seventeen credit, urg) semester at undergrad, and applying for graduate programs in library science.
This is really a very general sort of fic. I may love BBT, but I feel like they're too young in this fic for anything more than a bit of puppy love. But something I've always appreciated about the cartoon Terra is the fact that, in the end, she's just a kid who made a lot of mistakes. Unlike her original comic-verse counterpart, she seemed sane and had genuine feelings and attachments to the Titans, despite having only been with them for a very brief time before she came back to try and tear them apart. But I had to wonder… what would happen if those bonds had started forming long before she caught Slade's eye?
This fic is how something like that could have started. I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
"Are you a man or a mouse, Beast Boy?"
The little boy stared up at the man who—despite how both would pretend to wave it off, if it was ever said aloud—was beginning to be like a father to him; raising his head, straightening his spine… and turned into a mouse. Rather than use actual English for a reply, the green rodent blinked up at him with wide eyes and answered with an emphatic "SQUEAK!"
Mento barely resisted the urge to sigh, and fixed the youngest member of his team with a stern look. "That response is as unacceptable as it is unamusing."
The furry ears sagged even lower before returning to their usual pointed selves. It was impressive, Mento had to admit to himself, just how similar they could look to the mouse ears simply by continuing to droop. But the boy had to face his fears sooner or later, and the sooner it was the less likely that it would come back to haunt him when he didn't have backup.
And speaking of backup, he could already feel Rita glaring at him from the alley she had hidden in. She really was too soft on the boy sometimes… but he didn't want to set her off any more than this plan already had, so he decided to wrap up his little pep talk as quickly as possible.
"Now," Mento told Beast Boy, straightening so that he could make the most of his imposing height as he raised an imperious finger. "Be a good little soldier, get in there, and stick to the battle plan!"
The boy winced, clearly hearing the emphasis on the last two words and recalling his last mission; when he had not only deviated from the battle plan, but torn it to shreds in his rush to get away from the very villain he was being sent off to face now. But his ears came up, and if there was still a little squeak in his voice when he stammered out a "y-yes, sir", well, he still squared his shoulders and walked in there on his own two feet, didn't he?
Mento padded after his adopted son, keeping to the shadows until the cracked door had closed behind the young shapeshifter. After that, he crept to the wall and waited. Familiar footsteps could be heard behind him, and he felt the even more familiar heat of a disapproving glare on the back of his neck.
But Elasti-Girl knew better than to start anything in the middle of a mission, especially this mission.
"…What have we here?" Something ripping, the clatter of one startled shoe on the wooden floor, and he knew that voice. "Has the Doom Patrol's little mascot lost his way?"
"Doom Patrol…" Mento began, letting a rare, fierce grin slip through. "ATTACK!"
"Cliff, that was so amazing! I mean, the way you went 'BAM!' and hit her right in the face and she went 'FWOOOM!' and then 'THUD!' and then how Rita squished her like 'EEEEW!' and Steve knocked her out with a 'Sleep' and she didn't stand a chance and it was so cool!"
"What am I, Invisible Man?" Negative Man asked, but he seemed to be smiling behind the bandages as their hyperactive 'little mascot' practically danced around them, shifting from human to animal and back again every few steps to show his sheer excitement and waving his arms and babbling while in human form.
"No way, you're Negative Man, and you were awesome!" The boy hastened to assure him, shifting to hummingbird form to zip around him for a few seconds before shifting back and continuing his recap of the battle. "The way she just hit the floor with a 'Guh-KUH!' after you 'THWUMP!'ed her in the stomach was the coolest thing ever!"
"You didn't do too bad yourself, kid." Larry commented, his usually apathetic voice sounding downright smug.
"Really?" Garfield glowed.
"You did wonderful," Rita agreed, stooping to wrap the little boy in a quick, one-armed hug.
"You did okay, kid," Cliff smirked as much as his metallic face would allow. "But what about the rest of us? Negative Man wasn't the only other guy there, you know."
While the youth struggled to convey just how impressed he had been with all of his teammates, Mento shook his head to hide a very slight grin. He'd tell Beast Boy to calm down and act like a proper member of the Doom Patrol soon, of course. But the boy had done his part perfectly, so he supposed Garfield had earned the right to tire himself out. Not that it ever made a difference with the little green energizer bunny, a description that wasn't always metaphorical.
Besides, the final member of the Doom Patrol was smiling, and he dared to hope that she might have forgotten her earlier desire to strangle him and hide his body in a ditch. He might have been willing to travel halfway around the world to pin down Madame Rouge in this two-horse town, but he'd run that distance twenty times over if it meant staying in Elasti-girl's good graces.
Plus, the kid had stuck to the battle plan… a few more minutes couldn't hurt. They still had a bit of a walk left to get to their ship, which had been parked over an hour away to keep the Madame from hearing about their arrival before they could lure her out. How even Beast Boy had kept up his energy this long was something Mento would have paid to find out.
"So cool!" The changeling crowed again, turning into a gleeful little puppy and barking as he ran around the feet of his mentors. Larry gave a long-suffering sigh as he carefully stepped over the green-furred back. Mento would have done the same—minus the sigh, of course, he had an image to keep up—if not for the way that the bouncing blur suddenly… stopped, for the first time since he had stampeded into the Doom Patrol's Headquarters.
And thus, the leader of the fearsome Doom Patrol found himself flat on his face. In the dirt. Or, since it had rained the night before, the mud.
"Beast Boy…" He ground out through gritted teeth, picking his head up just in time to see an emerald tail vanish into the bushes. He spat out a few blades of grass before raising his voice in a shouted "Get back here right this instant! That's an order!"
It took a few moments, but soon a masked head reluctantly poked back through the leaves. It was not, however, wearing a sheepish grin or a guiltily nervous pair of puppy-dog eyes. In fact, he looked worried. "Someone's at the ship, I can smell them!"
"Doom Patrol!" Mento bellowed, leading the charge past his adopted son, who hastily shifted into a greyhound to keep up. They tore through the remaining distance, slowing only when their leader did. Silently, they crept the last few feet, peering through leaves and branches to see…
Nothing. Only the ship, seemingly undamaged—save, of course, for the dents that had earned Beast Boy so much of Mento's ire that he had refused to leave his room as anything other than a rabbit for almost a week. But there were no new signs of vandalism, at least not that could be seen. And no villain, either.
But the Doom Patrol trusted Beast Boy's nose, which was pointing steadfastly at their 'family car'. There was no sign of forced entry—although Mento knew that it wasn't impossible—yet whoever it was had to be right there…
"Beast Boy," he murmured, watching one of the flattened ears twitch and lift briefly in acknowledgement. "See if you can flush him out."
Elasti-Girl, on his other side, shifted slightly in the beginnings of a protest, but the (currently) canine changeling nodded and padded out into the clearing before she could say anything. The mission earlier had done the boy good, Mento decided, at least in regards to his confidence issues. Any improvement was worth Rita's wrath, so long as…
Wait a second. Why was the hound shrinking? And why was he running under the ship with his still-present tail… wagging?
Mento had a hunch that he didn't want to know. That hunch became certainty when he and the rest of the Doom Patrol left their ambush to find Beast Boy, now a puppy, excitedly sniffing the arm of the little girl who was snoring against one of the plane's wheels.
"Ta—Terra." The child's eyes were wide in her dirt-streaked face. "My name is Terra."
Elasti-Girl raised an eyebrow, but other than that showed no sign that she had caught the brief slip. "Well, Terra, why were you sleeping under our ship?"
"It was raining." She swung her feet nervously. "I didn't want to get wet, and there weren't any caves around or anything, and nobody was here…"
"But what if Beast Boy hadn't found you?" Rita asked sensibly, keeping in mind the almost casual way the girl had mentioned looking for caves. "We might not have realized you were there in time, and you could have been hurt!"
"I..." She looked down for a moment, nibbling her lip as she stroked the green kitten in her lap. Mento didn't look entirely pleased with that, but Rita had given him a Look. Garfield was obviously helping the girl, and besides, she didn't think his hormones would kick in for at least a few more years.
Fortunately, Mento had at least somewhat realized that as well, and kept to sulking in the background. And really, it seemed to her that he was doing it more for the sake of his reputation than anything else—Steve could be so stubborn sometimes.
But she'd tease him about that later. Elasti-Girl returned her attention to the child, along with an encouraging smile. She kept her voice low and soothing. "It's okay, you're not in trouble—"
The little girl's gaze flickered to Mento. Everyone in the plane pointedly redirected their own eyes. "It's just that you need to understand—"
The blonde muttered something under her breath. The changeling's ears pricked, and Beast Boy opened his feline eyes to blink up at her. Rita, however, had no idea what had been said, and so continued. "—that you could have been seriously injured, if not killed."
"…would've been fine." The girl mumbled, just loudly enough to be heard this time.
"Sure," Negative Man drawled before Rita could even digest the sentence. "If you call being turned into road kill fine…"
"Shows what you know!" She retorted, jumping to her feet. Beast Boy, still a kitten, clung to a ripped part of her shirt, the only part of her clothing that wasn't tight enough that doing so would cause him to scratch her as well. The rip was spreading, but Terra didn't seem to care or even notice. Her fists were clenched as she glared up at the startled hero—after all, it wasn't often that he, or any of them for that matter, found themselves berated by children—and she was visibly shaking. "I'm not a little kid who needs to be rescued!"
"Terra…" Rita began, a bit taken aback. In fact, all of the Doom Patrol wore startled expressions, although some were better at hiding it than others. Had the blonde been calmer, she might have wondered if Beast Boy really was as cheerful and friendly as he had acted with her, from the way that they didn't seem used to her outburst.
But at the moment, she wasn't even aware enough of the changeling to feel him hanging onto her clothes for dear life, much less wonder about how he might be when he wasn't a ball of fluff.
"I'm not!" She screamed, and suddenly everything was gold and noise and why won't they just leave me alone?
And then…
"Ow."
"A geokinetic." Mento said flatly, shaking his head in mingled exasperation and disbelief. "We find a kid sleeping under our plane, and she turns out to be a geokinetic."
"Yeah, keep saying it," Negative Man grumbled. "I mean, we obviously weren't there, and even if we were we didn't hear you the last twenty times."
"What's the matter, Larry?" Robotman asked with a glinting grin. "Still got that headache?"
Honestly, Negative Man knew he was being somewhat harder than he should have been on his leader, but his skull had almost been crushed by a boulder and thus he reserved the right to be dishonest for a while. The Animal Vegetable Mineral Man, Madame Rouge… even the Condiment King would have been better than a rock to the head! Especially one controlled—or uncontrolled, if their suspicions were correct—by a panicked little girl, of all things. A panicked little girl who had not only lost control, but knocked herself out with her own rock.
The Justice League would never let them live this down, Mento realized with a muffled groan. As if he didn't have enough problems already…
Beast Boy glanced from one adult to the next, ears low and feet shifting constantly. "She'll be okay, right?"
Terra had been deposited in one of the airplane's seats, unbound save for the purple seatbelt. Her chin rested against her crumpled and stained shirt, which barely moved due to the shallowness of her breathing.
"Garfield…" Rita came over to her adoptive son, pulling him against her side. "We just put her under for the trip, that's all. Just until we figure out we're going to do."
"Do?" The shapeshifter echoed, his brow furrowing under his mask as he looked up at her. "About what?"
The Doom Patrol exchanged a glance. The boy had been with them for years now, more than long enough that they sometimes forgot he hadn't always been at their sides when he wasn't scampering underfoot or soaring overhead. It was times like this, when the green youth stared at them with such frank curiousity and concern, that they found themselves forcibly reminded of how young the changeling really was.
"Come on, green bean," Cliff spoke first, in an almost gentle tone. "You know what we're talking about."
"I do?"
Mento couldn't resist wincing along with the rest of his adult peers. Even Rita hadn't been prepared for the sheer confusion on her son's face. But then again, he'd never been in a situation like this before, at least not since that first day they'd spent chasing a one-kid zoo around Dayton Manor. They still hadn't gotten all of the scuffing from his goat form's hooves out of the kitchen tiles…
But since then—well, the Doom Patrol had always been somewhat distant to the rest of the world, even compared to other superhero teams. Sure they'd done the occasional publicity stunt, thrown the first pitch for a few baseball games, but most of the time they were apart.
And why shouldn't they be? They were the freaks, the former Hollywood doll who'd gone from perfect plastic to rubber, the track star turned talking tank, the pilot who couldn't get a crew to work on any plane of his since he'd become radioactive, and the 'pot-head'. The public tended to shake their heads with a smug little grin at 'what the freaks were up to now' rather than lower their voices to hushed whispers as they did with the Justice League, or shake their heads in awe as they would over the latest exploits of the Challengers. Sure, they were grateful, sure, they were impressed, but there was always that slight condescension that went unnoticed by everyone save the 'freaks'.
Beast Boy had tried to jump into 'normal' society a few times, to do what was supposed to be a given for kids—but Steve had been the one to pick him up after a mere few days at Boy Scouts. Rita knew why, even if Mento had never been told. In a way, he couldn't help but feel almost wistful… sure, he encouraged the boy to be strong and independent, but his son never even tried to tell him such things anymore. But he reminded himself that it was all for the best; that his son would grow to be the bravest hero the world had ever seen. He knew Garfield had it in him, the boy just had to find that out himself.
The kid probably still thought of metahuman fighting as clashes between heroes and villains, of good and evil. He'd been lucky from the start—his parents had not only been able to love a green boy, but the family of three had effectively been isolated from all save a few African villages, all of whom had been grateful enough for their help in ordering medicines and vaccines that they kept quiet about the strange little green boy. The most contact they had had with the 'civilized' world had been sending in the results of their research, and on the rare occasions where they found themselves faced with cell-phone toting tourists or colleagues they had claimed that their child was 'a little under the weather, see, he tired himself out playing in that hot sun yesterday'. There had been the requisite tutting and well wishing before the issue was dismissed entirely and the conversation had been moved to safer territory.
And even before joining the Patrol, Beast Boy had been isolated. Ever since he had, well, gone green, Garfield's parents had hidden him as best as they could—which, in the wildest parts of Africa, had been very well indeed. The most they had let him know about the 'civilized' world was never to be caught transforming, lest some of their less-scrupulous 'colleagues' cart him off to a lab somewhere. And after they'd died, he'd spent most of his time in the public eye in such deep shock so as to be catatonic, only coming out of it after almost a month spent at a police station.
Nobody had been entirely sure what to do with the little boy with green skin and pointy ears, especially since the only relative who could have taken him in had been penniless and facing a very long jail sentence for everything from fraud and embezzlement to mafia connections and tax evasion. And the boy had been quiet enough, sitting in the corner of the station next to the coffee machine, that it had been so easy for the already busy officers to forget about him despite his weird color. Of course, there had been a few officers who had noticed when the elfin boy had been replaced by an empty folding chair, but by then a highly displeased Doom Patrol had been banging down the front door.
The sad truth was that there were no procedures in place for such situations. Sure, there were rules and regulations and precedents for orphans, even orphans who had spent most of their lives oceans away before going being shipped to America, but metahumans were usually a 'shoot first, ask superheroes questions later' issue. There was little precedent for how 'normal' people were supposed to deal with them. That was probably the only reason why the government had put so little effort into actually tracking down the locations of the H.I.V.E. Academy and Darkway Prep—out of sight, out of mind for a few more years.
Besides, kids were usually well treated in places like that, hard as it was to believe, and when graduation day finally came so did the cut-and-dry label of supervillainy. And who cared if a few of those were sent off to some high-tech prison that wouldn't hold them for an hour and a half? Nobody, really, except for maybe the wardens.
Rita took a loser look at their 'prisoner'. This girl, Terra, or whatever her name was, was scrawny and skinny-limbed. There was some slight muscle, but no fat. Her clothes were worn and even torn in places other than where Beast Boy had been forced to hang on. Beneath her closed eyelids were far too visible bags. Overall, she hadn't been anywhere near as lucky as Beast Boy.
But still…
Robotman let out a groan. He knew that look on Rita's face.
"Steve," she began, carefully, shooting the other members of the team a 'let me handle this' look. "I think we should wake her up."
"Of course we will," her husband replied distractedly, busily some readout. "After we figure out a way to contain her abilities—"
"No, Steve," the superheroine shook her head. "I meant now."
"Now?" Mento echoed, incredulous. "You want to wake her up now?"
"Why not?" Rita asked, pushing her thoughts to the forefront even as she spoke. "She's been asleep for long enough that the only thing keeping her that way is our sedatives, the bump on the head would have worn off hours ago. We'll be lucky if she doesn't have a concussion!"
"She attacked us on the ground," her husband pointed out. "What is she going to do when she wakes up thirty-seven thousand feet above the ocean?"
She smiled. "Nothing."
"…come again?" Had they not been electronic, Cliff's eyes would have been bugging out of his head. Larry snorted.
"So she's just going to wake up asking for a lollipop and a bandaid?" He drawled. "Or are you going to give her a Barbie doll first?"
"Don't like dolls…" Everyone froze for a moment before slowly turning to stare at the little girl, who mumbled for a bit longer—something about dresses and hair-pulling—before curling in on herself as much as the belting would allow and falling back into silent slumber.
"Um… guys? I think she's waking up." Beast Boy finally said, when none of his teammates seemed willing to point out the obvious.
Steve glared at Rita. He knew her, knew that as Elasti-girl she was more than willing to make her opinion clear during a mission or even a battle, but he also knew she'd never go against his orders—against the entire team—when it could put them all in danger. And even she had to admit that a little girl was a danger when she could juggle boulders. And when said little girl tended to drop them without meaning to, well…
"If she panics—"
"When."
"Fine," really, she couldn't argue with that. "When she panics, there won't be anything around for her to lose control over."
"Assuming her reach has a limit," Mento threw out a hand towards the window. He really needed to stop being so overly dramatic… "What if she can control the ocean floor? She could trigger tidal waves, or a war with Atlantis, or both! Or what if she can control the plane? It may be refined, but metal still comes from the earth!"
"She's just a child, Steve! A—"
"Terrified little kid trying to undo her seatbelt to get away from the angry grown-ups who scared her before?" Larry offered.
"That was you, not us," Rita snapped distractedly. "and…wait…"
She and her husband exchanged wide-eyed glances before whirling in unison, just in time to see the subject of their discussion claw off the rest of the restraints. She shot one wild-eyed look at the adults, just long enough for Rita to take a single step forward, and bolted.
Or tried to, at least. Her escape attempt lasted for less than three seconds before her scrawny legs flailed at nothing but air. "Let me go!"
Cliff deposited her back in the chair and shot Mento a pointed glance. He may not have been able to raise a single eyebrow before his accident, but he could certainly make it clear he would have been doing so if he ever could have. The genius was left to scowl, but admit defeat—clearly; their 'guest' had no more control over metal than Beast Boy.
Terra fidgeted in her seat, trying to glare up at the towering heroes but very clearly fighting off the urge to curl up with her knees against her chest. Her legs did twitch a few times, but she forcibly kept them down. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the edges of the chair.
"Calm down," Mento finally told her with a sigh as the Doom Patrol moved to gather behind him. Even Elasti-Girl had taken her place at his shoulder, acceding the opening move to the Patrol's leader whether he liked it or not.
Arguments aside, when the Doom Patrol did something they did it as one. "We're not going to hurt you."
Eyes flashed—gold? No, Rita assured herself; it was just a reflection. "You kidnapped me!"
"You attacked us," he reminded her. Cloth rustled behind him as he heard, rather than saw, Negative Man fold his arms over his chest. "And you lost control of your powers."
"…I'm working on it…" she mumbled, not meeting any of their gazes.
"And what happens if that's not enough?" Mento pressed further as the child's arms started to quiver. "You're lucky you didn't give yourself a concussion! What happens if you hurt someone else next time?"
"I won't!" She snapped, her head snapping up. "There won't be a next time, I can handle it! That's why I left!"
He pounced. "Left where?"
She gasped, and covered her mouth. She was very clearly not willing to talk about that. And Rita knew that she hadn't married a man foolish enough to think that reading the mind of an already-suspicious metachild would lead to anything but disaster. But there was something the Doom Patrol needed to find out before they could worry about the rest of it.
"What happened?" The telepath stared down his nose at the child, and Rita stiffened. Careful, Steve…
"Nothing!" She shouted, and a key puzzle piece plunked into place.
"You can't run away from your power." He told the little girl gruffly. "You've lost control before, and it'll happen again. The only difference is who's going to have to pay the price."
"No one," she whispered, with her head suddenly bent and fingers twisting in her lap. "Me."
Rita stiffened, but just forced herself to subside. They could worry about the child's obvious confidence issues later, but first they had to make sure that a later would come. Mento opened his mouth to remind Elasti-Girl that she couldn't be sure when Terra would lose control, or if there was a town on the same fault line, or some innocent campers in front of a rockslide—
"You're not no one." Beast Boy cut in, his young voice tremulous.
"You're not no-one." Beast Boy cut in. His father almost walked over to the wall to start banging his head against it, and only the sheer shock he also felt kept him from doing so. The little boy was usually timid enough so that, even if he didn't always catch on to the fact that there was such a thing as tact, he was too busy being a mouse to show it.
But still, didn't anyone on this team care that they were dealing with an emotionally overwrought kid who could easily take down a city? He knew they wanted to handle it as gently as possible, but—
"I used to have a lot of trouble controlling my powers," his son was creeping past him now, and he might've grabbed the boy by the scruff of the neck if not for a firm hand resting on his shoulder. "I still can't transform into anything big, but I'm a lot better now." He hastened to add the last. "Really! Wanna see?"
Beast Boy's ears were perked under his mask, and his teammates could easily picture the eager, wide eyes he was favoring their guest with. She blinked at him for ten silent seconds before managing an answer. "O-okay…"
And a little green finch immediately fluttered up onto her shoulder. It let out an excited stream of chirps before stretching fluidly into the lithe form of a ferret, which nuzzled it's perch's neck and scarpered carefully down her arm so that she was forced to either snuggle the wriggling animal or let him tumble to the ground. She grasped him clumsily, but tightly, and the fuzzy creature squealed happily before jumping back towards the ground.
Beast Boy obviously tried to repeat the seamless shifting he had displayed on the girl's shoulders, but his human fingers slipped on the jet's meticulously cleaned floors and—
"Again, kid?"
Negative Man sighed while the team's young charge tried to disentangle himself from Robotman, who he had rolled into. The cyborg let out a good-natured groan at the sight of the newest addition to his collection of Garfield-head-dents. "Darn it, Beast Boy, I just got my leg buffed!"
"At least I didn't knock any screws out this time, right?" The changeling boy squeaked as his fellow hero shot him a metallic scowl, and hurriedly darted back towards Terra, turning into a squirrel that clung to her ragged shirt. She couldn't help herself—she giggled slightly, then harder after the little green animal chattered at her. Robotman somehow managed to snort, despite his lack of nostrils.
"Terra," Elasti-Girl watched as the small, startled smiled fell from the little girl's face, hating herself for breaking this brief, light moment. She shared a quick, sidelong look with Steve—they'd long since passed the need for telepathy in situations like this—before starting a cautious tread towards their guest.
When they were a few feet apart, she knelt down and whistled softly. The squirrel's ears perked and within moments a finch had landed on the woman's outstretched arm. She smiled at her son, before looking back at the strange girl.
"You have three choices. You can help us contact your family, and if we believe they can help you control your powers or at least contain them, you'll be home by tomorrow. Or you can go to one of the few facilities for young metahumans—" she felt Beast Boy's little talons tighten "—but there aren't a lot of those, and most of them aren't places where anyone should have to live. Or…"
The Doom Patrol had gathered behind her. Rita twisted her wrist as she stood up, and when she backed up to join them Beast Boy was there in his place beside her, and they all watched the frightened little girl as one.
"…You can stay with us," Elasti-Girl finished. "We'll train you; it won't be easy, but we'll teach you how to use your abilities to help people."
"H-help people?" The blonde's eyes had widened until they seemed to take up most of her face, bright against the dirty skin. "Could… could my powers really do that?"
"After you learn to control them." Mento's reaffirmed sternly, and Terra managed to overcome her fear of this mean adult in a brief flash of shiny-eyed hope. "And when that time comes, we'll figure out we're going to do with you."
"I can take care of myself!" She claimed, but there was something like shiny-eyed hope supplanting the sullen fear she had once regarded the most rigid of her interrogators with. She jumped out of her seat and braced herself with firmly planted feet. "I want to help people! I'll do anything!"
Mento fixed her with a hard stare that stretched on until the girl's eyes watered, but she refused to even blink. He felt the rest of the Doom Patrol waiting on his answer, although Beast Boy was the only one who did so noticeably.
"Then get that harness buckled," he barked, "you'll need to be alive for training tomorrow."
He turned away, pretending not to hear his son's cheers. Larry, heading back towards the pilot's seat, lingered for a moment alongside his leader. The radioactive man's bandages crinkled where they mapped out a mouth, evidence of an insufferable smirk. "You old softie. Admit it."
…darn it.
"Larryyyyyy!" Mento hissed, hating the heat that had risen in his face. He kept a keen ear on the jubilance behind him, just in case the excitable changeling decided to try and show his gratitude. He made a mental note to step up Beast Boy's training while they started Terra's—heaven knew the boy could use a little more discipline, and he'd more than proved he was ready in the mission that didn't seem as if it had really taken place only a few hours before.
"Nothing wrong with that," his old comrade continued in the same low voice. "The kid's needed a friend for a while. And who knows what's going to happen after she learns some control?"
"If she learns control," came the correction.
"Don't sell yourself short," and now Cliff was chuckling as he ambled over to them, ostensibly to lean over a nearby terminal. "You've done a lot with the bean sprout… I get the feeling this kid'll be just fine."
"And I get the feeling we don't know anything about her." Mento snapped. "So until we do, don't let her out of your sight."
The other two men nodded, and when he caught the eye of the last adult member of his team there was a third, almost unnoticeable little inclination of her head.
"Switching to manual," Negative Man called as he settled into his chair, buckling the harness. On his way to his own seat, Mento caught sight of a little green monkey darting back and forth along the back of their first-time passenger's chair, trying to direct her fumbling with the safety harness through gestures and excited chittering. It was slow going, but the man decided to let them be and settled down next to his wife.
"Doom Patrol," he called in a slightly-louder-than-necessary voice. Every occupant of the plane turned to watch him, including two with eyes far closer to the ground than the rest. "Let's go home."
A/N: Reviews are like doses of Nyquil. And my sinuses have seriously taken over what little life I've had leftover lately. Now, though, I'm off to sleep. Yes, sleep is a very good thing indeed…