Disclaimer: No, I don't own Teen Titans.

Chapter 3

"All right, all right - everyone just be cool!"

Cyborg waved his hands, trying desperately to catch the attention of his teammates. Robin's pacing was a little too intense for his liking, and Beast Boy's shouts of "see! I told you he wasn't mine!" were certainly not helping. Raven stopped trying to cover his mouth when he took a page out of Starfire's book and started licking her fingers. Now, she was just trying to stay calm amidst all the heightened emotions in the room.

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos."

"Really Raven?" Cyborg cried, exasperated, "I could use a little help here!"

The empath maintained her lotus position, but responded,

"Azarath, metrion - I'm trying not to destroy the tower. You're welcome."

Cyborg sighed. Starfire was often the one to diffuse the situation, but she was busy examining the child, prodding him to see if he was indeed as real as he appeared, and searching his emerald features for some clue as to what was going on or where he came from. None of these reactions was wholly unexpected, but sometimes Cyborg wished there was another mature almost-adult around. The mess of teens around him just didn't quite cut it. Cyborg took a breath, then tried again.

"Guys! Come on! We have to focus here!"

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos."

"But it's not my fault!" Cried Beast Boy.

"Azarath-"

"I am focusing!" Growled Robin while Starfire proceeded to pick the boy up by his leg and dangle him above the ground.

"Metrion-"

"On my planet," she addressed the group, as the boy swung dangerously from her grip, "children can fly from their very day of birth. Therefore, little one, let the truth of your claims be tested!" The boy shrieked as she flung him up into the air, and flailed his limbs as though he might be able to swim through the atmosphere instead of crash landing.

"ENOUGH!"

The child's eyes shot open at the unexpected sound, and he found himself hovering a few feet off the ground, encased in a black sphere of Raven's creation. Of course, this abrupt rescue from what surely would have been a broken arm or leg, did little for the child's mental state, and thus he promptly burst into tears. "What is wrong with all of you? We have no idea who this child is or where he came from. Like Cyborg said - we need to do a DNA analysis. So, med bay. NOW." Raven ordered, as she levitated the sobbing youngster into her arms and stormed out the door. Cyborg grinned. He wouldn't call her tactics particularly mature, but gosh, did Cyborg love it when she came through.

Despite her grand departure from Starfire's bedroom, wherein she acted the part of savior to a severely traumatized young boy, Raven was not very fond of children. True, she had managed to forge a bond with the child heroes she had babysat on a prior mission, but she would be remiss to say that she enjoyed more than thirty percent of the time she spent with them. Settling disputes about whose turn it was to play with a toy or who ripped whose blanket seemed rather trivial when she spent her days dealing with high powered criminals threatening world domination. But, of course, most children don't see the two as differing much in severity. In this case, though, the child in question had been admittedly in danger, so she allowed him to sob into her shoulder, burying his wet and snotty face into her cloak.

"Raven," Beast Boy tried to keep up as she strode down the hall, "wait up!"

She ignored him and kept walking. focusing on patting the boy's back in what she assumed was a comforting enough fashion. Raven would have levitated, but from her experiences with the other super powered children she had cared for, that was more likely to result in puke rather than comfort. The little boy sniffled.

"Be quiet, Beast Boy. You're scaring him."

Beast Boy shot her an incredulous look.

"Me? This wasn't even my fault! Starfire was the one who..."

But Raven had already phased through the floor. Hopefully that particular mode of transportation wouldn't have any adverse effects on the kid's stomach. Either way, the boy was suffering from some pretty serious shock, and it didn't take an empath to tell that he was terrified. He probably needed as much space from the others as she did.

The boy pushed his face into Raven's neck as the LEDs sputtered to life in the med bay, and tearily resisted when she tried to put him down on one of the beds.

"Ugh, you want to sit with me? Fine."

Raven hoisted herself onto the mattress, but misjudged the amount of force she needed with the added weight, and ended up losing her balance and falling back onto the mattress, the boy's head knocking hard into her jaw.

"Ow..." she muttered, then switched her focus to the boy, "you ok, kid?"

The boy scrambled out from the nest of damp cloak and hair, then nodded as he repositioned himself next to Raven's side.

"Good." Groaning, Raven sat up, and rubbed her tender jawline. "I knew you were thickheaded, but that was ridiculous," she spat.

Couldn't Beast Boy ever just leave her alone? Raven's eyes shot open. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. Despite their similar skin tone, the child before her was not Beast Boy. He didn't deserve her biting words, and he certainly wasn't going to brush it off like Beast Boy would. The kid would probably start crying harder, or-

"Ha!" A loud, high pitched chuckle brought her back to reality, "you're funny!"

Phew. Raven was lucky this kid seemed to have a good sense of humor. Or a bad one, depending on how you looked at it.

"Probably because I used to be a clown in another life."

That really got him giggling, and she noticed, with some pride, that he started wiping the rest of the moisture from his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Aunt Raven?" He scooched closer to the titan, wrapping his arms around her and snuggling into her chest, "do you think Daddy's mad at me?"

Notwithstanding her discomfort with being called so endearing a term as 'aunt', Raven was dumbfounded. This child's self-proclaimed mother had intentionally almost killed him five minutes ago, but here he was worrying about what Robin thought? Raven hadn't had what one would call a traditional upbringing, but even she could tell that this did not bode well for Robin's parenting style. Raven patted the boy on the back.

"Ro-I mean, your dad is...um...just...confused right now."

She could have told him that Robin wasn't mad at him, or that Robin's unpleasant mood wasn't his fault, but Raven didn't believe in lying, so the kid would have to deal with it. Sometimes dads were the worst, even if they are the boy wonder himself. The kid might as well learn it sooner rather than later. The child nodded, and resigned himself to playing with her cloak. Cloak-envy. Yet another Beast Boy trait. While the child occupied himself, she took the opportunity, before her friends showed up, to study his face. Obviously the first noticeable thing was the green pigment covering his body, but what was striking was that he was only green. Not even the whites of his eyes were, well, white. Much like Starfire, his irises were just a slightly darker green than the rest of his lime-tinted eyes. His brows, she also noted, were also the same shape as Starfire's, and his hair, though mussed from earlier encounters, was not the messy fields of Beast Boy's grassy tendrils, but soft and gentle waves of a bottle green sea. The frontmost locks curled into Starfire's bangs, hanging across hit small forehead. The nose was Star's as well, but the fang jutting out from that lower lip was unmistakably Beast Boy. Raven shook her head. What could possibly have happened in their future to cause this? Not that the boy had mentioned being from the future, of course, but Raven was a smart young woman, and his ability to find his mother's room in the dark at night, plus his immediate recognition of the titans heavily implied that he was probably their legitimate future progeny. Robin was not going to be happy once it was confirmed. Raven sighed and looked down at the child in her arms. Poor little guy. He was in for a rough ride.

"Robin," Cyborg's voice resounded through the hall, "I can't let you go in there if you can't be cool about this. He's just a little kid - you can't take...whatever this is...out on him."

A pause. Then a grumbled, "fine. But the second I see any sort of danger -"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, plenty of butt kickin' for all," Beast Boy cut in.

Raven tensed, her arms instinctively closing tighter around the boy. In theory, her friends only wanted to help, but based upon what she had seen this morning, they were making things substantially worse in practice. Beast Boy was the first to enter the room, pushing past Cyborg and leaping onto the overcrowded bed.

"Beast Boy..." Raven warned as he squeezed beside her. As usual, he paid her no attention.

"Hey buddy," he coaxed the boy, "I'm sorry about all that craziness before. Are you doing ok?"

The child nodded from the safety of Raven's arms.

"Great! You guys had me worried for a second there! You disappeared on us! One second you were there, and the next-POOF-you were gone! How'd you do that, little man?"

Raven rolled her eyes.

"You know exactly how my powers-"

Beast Boy covered her mouth with his hand, "I wasn't asking you!" He gestured to the boy, "I was asking him!"

He let her go with a wink. She glared in response. The little boy looked left, then right, then over both shoulders, making a big show of it, and wriggled out of Raven's grasp.

"It's a secret," he whispered, and gestured for Beast Boy to come closer. The teen played along, doing his own exaggerated check to make sure no one was watching, then leaned towards the kid and turned his head. "It's...it's..." he whispered, and Beast Boy leaned in further, "NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!" he screamed as loudly as he could.

"Ahhhh!" Beast Boy toppled off the bed clutching his head, "my ears! My sensitive ears!" The boy was howling too-with laughter, and though Raven did say "that wasn't very nice," she did add, "but it was funny."

The boy beamed at her, grinning from ear to pointed ear.

"Uncle Beast Boy is a good pranker," he informed her, "but I'm gonna show him I can be even better!"

Raven wasn't sure that deafening someone was a legitimate prank, but the child couldn't be more than five, so she gave him a break. Beast Boy got up once the ringing in his ears died down, then hopped back up on the bed.

"That was mean, little dude," he grinned evilly, "so you're gonna have to pay!"

Starfire watched the ensuing tickle fight from her spot by the large computer, waiting for Cyborg to finish his analysis of the green fur they pulled from her sheets. torn between joining the trio on the medical bed and standing by to see the results of the genetic analysis, but eventually opted for the latter. She had to know. How could she possibly have conceived a child with Beast Boy? How could anyone have succeeded in such a thing, even in a lab? He was human, an entirely different species - was it even possible?

"What does it say?" Robin's voice anchored her back to the present.

Cyborg pulled up the analytics for the boy's DNA, cross referencing it with Starfire and Beast Boy's, both of which were already in the system.

"It's a match," Cyborg confirmed, "he's the real deal. That kid right there is definitely Starfire and Beast Boy's."

Robin said nothing, but it was clear from the way his fists were balling, and the was the muscles in his neck tensed, that he was not thrilled.

"Yo, BB!" Cyborg called over, "congrats!"

"Huh?" Beast Boy, totally lost in his tickle monster role, had all but forgotten the reason they were here in the first place.

"It seems, despite your obvious denial, that you are indeed the 'Daddy'," Raven clarified. "Can't say I'm surprised."

"Why?" Beast Boy waggled his eyebrows, "did his devilishly handsome ears remind you of mine?"

"No," Raven countered, "it was his sense of humor."

"Hah!" Beast Boy smiled smugly, then faltered and snapped his head back to her, "wait? Was that a compliment or an insult?"

Raven shrugged.

"You'll have to decide for yourself."

"Uncle Beast Boy?" The boy on his lap tapped his arm, "what do they mean you're a 'Daddy'? Everyone knows that-"

"I'm your Daddy!" Beast Boy smiled, teeth and all, hugging the tyke.

"No! No no no no NO!"

Beast Boy didn't understand. Why was the kid fighting him? Weren't they having fun two minutes ago?

"Dude - what's wrong?"

"You're not my Daddy!" He screeched, then turned into a little green mouse to escape Beast Boy's firm hold.

"Hey! Wait!" Raven held her teammate back, "Raven, let go! What's you're problem?"

"You just told a little boy who has no idea what the term biological father even means, that you're his dad, instead of the man who raised him his entire life."

Beast Boy cocked his head.

"So...I'm guessing that's bad?"

Raven leaned her face against her hand and groaned.

"...I'm going to that that as a yes."

Starfire, though still trying to process the information she had been given, was ever the compassionate one. Thus, she was certain that however confused and odd she was feeling, the little boy - her little boy - was suffering tenfold. And as his newfound mother, it was her duty to comfort him and restore him to his previous high spirits. Starfire wore her emotions on her sleeve, and was well aware that as much as she was affected by those around her, children were that much more impressionable. At least, they were on Tamaran. But her child must also be part Tamaranean, so any assumptions to be made about him in reference to her own childhood must be true for him as well! Comforted by these thoughts, she flew over to Raven and Beast Boy, neither of which appeared to be in particularly good spirits.

"Friends," she greeted them, noticing the lack of a green child amongst them, "where might my new bumgorf be?"

"Probably hiding from the genius that claimed to be his real father."

Starfire was puzzled.

"Sorry? I believe I do not understand."

"He ran away from Beast Boy," Raven amended, "he turned into a mouse and ran away."

Starfire's eyes began to glow a dangerous neon, "my son ran away and you did not think to follow him?"

"He...he..." Beast Boy gulped, chuckling nervously, "Star, I-I'm sure he's fine!"

"He probably went to go find Robin," Raven speculated, unfazed by her friend's display, "he seems to really worship the guy."

This had an immediate calming effect on Starfire.

"Of course!" She smiled, clasping her hands, "Robin will be sure to make sure he comes to no harm!"

"Yeah!" Beast Boy chimed in, happy to be off the hook, "he said Robin was his dad, right? I'm sure papa Rob'll take good care of him!"

"Thank you, friends!" Starfire called back as she flew out the metal doors, "I shall let you know when I find them!"

"Phew!" Beast Boy let out a long breath and let himself fall back onto the med bay bed, barely missing Raven. "That was close!"

"Beast Boy," Raven chided, "you need to get up."

"No I don't! There's no alarm, no kid that I'm responsible for - I'm a free man!"

"No, you're not," Raven's voice grew irritated, "you need to find him. Now."

"But you just said he's with Robin!" He whined, sitting back up.

"And he probably was. For five seconds before Robin kicked him out. Knowing him he's probably going over security footage now to figure out how exactly an unarmed child made its way into the tower without triggering any alarms."

"Uh," Beast Boy gulped, "you don't think he'd enjoy the company?"

Raven rolled her eyes, then shoved the green teen off the bed.

"Get going."

"Aren't you going to help?" He pouted.

"I'm going to see if I can sense where he is in the tower," Beast Boy moved to speak but Raven stopped him, "and yes, you do still need to track him. It's a big tower, and I have a feeling that Starfire will go easier on you if you're already an active part of the search party."

"Ugh, fine."

Beast Boy morphed into a bloodhound and sniffed the mattress of the med bay bed, familiarizing himself with the scent of what he would now refer to as Starfire's son, then took off into the hallway, barking a quick goodbye to Raven, who was already chanting her mantra.