This chapter was rewritten five times because I'm a forgetful prig. Seriously, by the 4th rewrite i was literally scratching my head and asking myself why none of them felt right. I went over it again and again and again and even went over all the sections i clipped out and shunted into my Extra scenes file. When i finally realized what was wrong i was absolutely livid with myself for forgetting something so important lol. There might have been some self directed screaming snd cursing involved.

This isnt going to go how anyone thinks and that is because of one very simple reason...named Raven.


THAT GODS-BE-DAMNED DRAGON! I'LL TEAR HIS TAIL OFF AND SHOVE IT SO FAR UP HIS ASS IT'LL SPROUT FROM HIS MOUTH LIKE A FLOWER!

Rage, calm down!

NO! THIS IS GOING TOO DAMN FAR! I SHOULD HAVE BURNED THAT BOOK AFTER SEALING HIM BACK IN IT!

I don't mean that-

OH YES THE HELL DO!

"Raven!" Smack!

The shock of the impact jarred Raven from her thoughts and she opened her eyes to see Rose standing there.

"Finally!" The former assassin said in exasperation.

"What? What is it?" Raven asked, looking around. All she saw was the other Titans looking through the room.

"Where did Beast Boy go?" Rose asked.

Raven was confused that Rose would ask her such a ridiculous question. "What?"

Rose glared at her and raised her hand. "I'll fuckin' do it again!"

"What are you asking me for, he's right…" Raven trailed off as she turned around to the last place she saw her boyfriend. "…here?"

"Yeah, no, see, he dipped somewhere between the doors opening and your little meltdown. Which, by the way, lasted entirely too long in enemy territory." Rose snapped at her. "Seriously, this is a really bad place to go mental, even if there isn't supposed to be anything left."

"Whatever." Raven huffed and closed her eyes, reaching out with her telepathy. Gar? Where did you go?

There was no response from him but there was a response from another source. It was a roar, one that shook the whole place. It only lasted for a few seconds but it startled everyone and sent several things bouncing to the floor.

"What was that?" Cyborg asked, his cannon coming up and aiming at the nearest door. He wasn't the only one to bring weapons up.

"Was that Beast Boy?" Robin palmed a trio of birdarangs and faced the elevator. "Don't think I've heard that one before."

"That was not friend Beast Boy." Starfire shook her head. "The voice was much too deep."

"Then what the hell was it?" Rose snapped, reloading her gun and gesturing to the tanks. "The thing that made those, maybe?"

"That wasn't Malchior." Raven said before closing her eyes and reaching out with her powers this time. Garfield was below them, along with something else that felt similar to him. And they were fighting. She was at a loss for a moment, for nothing they had ever encountered had a feeling like the shapeshifter did. That meant that whoever or whatever it was was the thing that was making his animal instincts act up. The scientists had left something out, apparently.

Up came her communicator from her side. "Pantha, come in."

It took a moment before she responded. "Yes Raven, what is it?"

"Where are you and the prisoners located?" Raven asked as she empathically observed the clash below.

"Entry level, just picked up Wintergreen."

"I need to see one of the scientists, the talkative one preferably."

A few seconds later the camera was pointed at the man. Raven focused on him and opened a portal at his feet, teleporting him to right in front of her.

"Thought you guys said there wasn't anything else here that was hostile?" She crossed her arms, trying to not wince as Garfield flared up in pain.

"Uhhhh…"

Rose pointed her gun at his crotch. "You wanna keep the left nut or right nut?"

He blanched and skittered backwards. "Wait wait wait wait! There isn't anything else here! It was just us and the robots and the projects!"

"Then who is downstairs fighting Beast Boy?" Raven snapped at him.

He hesitated long enough to think. "Um, well, I didn't see Doctor Register anywhere, so maybe him?"

"Who's that?" Raven asked Rose.

"Dunno." Rose shrugged.

"He must be new then." Robin said, staring at the man, who nodded hurriedly.

"Yeah, only been here for a few days!"

"He's being anything but friendly." Raven glared at the man.

He threw up his hands. "Hey, I don't know jack about him other than he was to work on these-" he waved at the dragon hybrids "- and that we had to wear facemasks for the first couple of days he was here."

"Facemasks for what?" Cyborg asked.

"He somehow breathes out a disease or virus or something that's fatal to humans."

Everyone stared at him.

"He what?!" Jinx almost shouted a moment later.

The man shook his head. "Look, I don't know. I didn't talk to him at all and Brother Blood made him a mask to filter out the whatever it is so that he could be around everyone else to work. We even had air scrubbers installed to deal with anything lingering. Although, even Slade wore a facemask and his healing factor should have been able to take it!"

"I wanna go home." Jinx said, grabbing Cyborg's arm. "Look, Stone, I deal with a lot of crap and I've seen a lot of crap. But a plague? No. Not happening."

He looked down at her. "Hey, he said the dude had a mask, right? Should be-"

Jinx shook her head. "No. I sat through entirely too many of Brother Bloods' lectures on the use of biological warfare and the so-called perks of introducing infectious diseases into communities for extortion and profit. I have seen too many pictures of results of that kind of stuff. I'm not staying here for this, Stone. Not for you, not for anybody."

Cyborg had never seen Jinx so shaken before. But then again, she wasn't a hero at heart like the rest of them (minus Rose). Her one true concern was herself and everyone else was second place. Considering her abandonment by her parents, her mentor Brother Blood, and even Cyborg himself, it was very understandable that she had such a strong self-preservation instinct. He couldn't, and wouldn't, deny her this.

"Warn everyone, make sure they evacuate the area as quickly as possible." He told her before looking to Raven. The empath said nothing, but Jinx disappeared into a portal seconds later.

"What is this virus called?" Robin asked the scientist.

"Uhhh…sakurita? Satukria? I…I'm not really sure, I only heard the name once and I wasn't paying much attention…"

"Sakutia?" Raven asked.

"That's it, that's the one!" He beamed. "Slade said in was incredibly rare, so how'd you know about it?"

"Because the same disease runs through Beast Boy's veins."

"I'm sorry, what?" Rose raised an eyebrow. "Your boyfriends' got super rabies?"

"Hardly." Raven replied, her attention focused more inward than anything. This was a man who Garfield considered to be as dangerous as Slade, a man who was basically a walking plague via the disease he carried. The same disease Garfield had locked away in his DNA. He gave off the same shapeshifter sensation that Garfield did too. That could only mean...

"This is someone from Beast Boy's past." Robin said slowly, coming to the same conclusion Raven did. "It has to be. He wouldn't have run off otherwise."

"That's what I was thinking too." Cyborg nodded.

"What, was BB's past some kind of mystery?" Kid Devil asked.

"Friend Beast Boy has only spoken about his time with the Doom Patrol." Starfire said as the ground beneath them trembled from the brawl below.

"And even then it wasn't much." Cyborg frowned. "I'm not sure how to handle this. He needs us, but we don't have anything to combat a virus of this level. I dang sure didn't bring anything for this!"

Raven was a little surprised to find out Garfield hadn't told at least Cyborg about his past. That meant it truly was a secret to them all, because even Raven didn't know much about it. What he had told her in the car months ago had been a motley collection of fuzzy memories and more than a few 'well, I'm just guessing but…'s. This was another piece to weirdest puzzle known to man, Garfield Logan. But as the battle raged on below her, she knew that she had to step in before things went too far.

A small portal opened up before her and a full face mask floated out into her waiting hands.

"Raven? What are you…" Robin started to say as a larger portal opened up off to the side.

"All of you evacuate." Raven said as she put on the mask.

"Whoa, you don't really expect us to-" Rose started to say before she was telekinetically picked up and thrown through the portal. Everyone stared at Raven.

"I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. Go." Raven said firmly. "Or I'll make you go."

She didn't need her empathy to tell her how reluctant they were to go. But whether they wanted to or not was irrelevant. It was far safer for someone of her capabilities to go help Beast Boy than anyone else, save perhaps Kid Devil (who could turn up his internal heat to several thousand degrees, cooking any virus inside and anyone within ten feet of him).

Starfire was the first one out, followed by Kid Devil and Cyborg. Robin trailed after them, but not before casting a look over his shoulder. Raven ignored it to focus on the task ahead of her.

As Robin disappeared into the darkness, the portal shut behind him and Raven dropped through the floor.

And into a warzone.

The walls, ceiling, and floor had been wrecked. There was stone rubble everywhere, along with other debris Raven couldn't identify. A bent sword stuck out of the ground to her left and a smashed samurai helm clung almost helplessly to a piece of rebar on her right. And there in the center of the room was a roiling mass of purple and green flesh.

The Beast was there, locked in combat with…hell, Raven didn't know what it was. A massive centipede-like creature with arms and legs made of dozens of creatures, a gaping maw held open by the Beast, and dozens of eyes all over its face. There were wounds all over it and the Beasts' own fur was matted with blood.

The Beast roared and kicked the purple monster's jaw. The breaking of bone was audible even to Raven and the creature shrieked in pain, whipping it's head to the side and sending the Beast flying. The Beast rebound off the wall easily and smashed into the creature once again. He drove it into the wall before digging his claws in and turning hard. The monster was thrown face first across the room into another wall, but it hit it and crawled right up to smash down onto the Beast again. Limbs morphed into stingers and tendrils, claws and spikes as it happened and the Beast roared in pain as the monster tried to wrap itself around him.

With a single focused thought, Raven turned off the powers of the purple monster, leaving a purple skinned, brown haired older man standing before the Beast…who promptly Spartan-kicked him across the room.

Raven sighed in her mask as she reached out and turned her boyfriend's powers off too as he charged his fallen foe.

"There is entirely too much testosterone in the air." She grumbled as Garfield stumbled and tripped over a sizable stone. Even without his powers he was still going after the downed man, who was wheezing on the floor in the fetal position. A large shadowy hand reached out and snatched the green shapeshifter up and pulled him to Raven's side. He snapped and growled and roared in fury, straining against her magic. It was futile, but he wasn't in the state of mind to know that.

"Doctor Register, I presume?" Raven called out to the downed man.

"Y…yes." He wheezed. She was certain half his bones were broken.

"I don't know what you did to piss my boyfriend off, but I suggest you surrender now. He'll be less likely to break you when I let him go." She said firmly. He looked up at her and, for a brief moment, Raven released control of her powers. It wasn't something she typically did, but considering that this was now obviously an alpha male versus alpha male thing…well, it seemed appropriate.

She could feel his deep hatred of Garfield be immediately replaced by fear of her overwhelming power. He didn't even know what he was looking at, but it terrified him.

Good. She thought. Be smart and stand down.

He trembled in the seemingly unending darkness for a few moments more before he finally spoke.

"I surrender." He said softly.

She could feel that he didn't entirely mean it. He had every intention of striking when their guards lowered. It would likely be a strike of desperation, made with the intent of distracting her long enough to escape. Raven decided to cut the head off that snake before it bit (to use a crude and archaic acronym) and encased the man in the very darkness around him.

Now that the startled man was safely contained in a bubble, she turned to the still writhing Garfield.

"I'm sorry for interrupting your little duel." She said in slightly aggravated tone. "But given the highly unusual side effect of his very existence, I felt it was necessary to end this before anyone got caught in the crossfire."

She was in a bad mood and she knew it. Garfield didn't deserve her ire. She really needed to meditate these negative feelings away. That room with the dragon hybrids had been too much.

Garfield, however, didn't seem to notice. He was still trying to get to his enemy.

Raven raised an eyebrow. He was totally unresponsive to her. That was unusual, even for the past few days. She poked him in the stomach and he growled at her. The eyebrow rose higher.

His eyes are red. She noticed. Not just flecks of red, but completely red!

His pretty emerald eyes were now more like rubies than anything. A deep, dark red that she found to be a tad unsettling. His teeth were still fang-like and his gloves had been shredded to reveal his clawed hands. Even with his powers turned off, he still had a partial morph?

"What is going on with you?" She murmured as she used her powers to pull his arms to his sides. His legs snapped together too, leaving just his head free. He snapped and snarled as if nothing was happening.

"I take it that it was you who turned my powers off?" Register wheezed. An astute observation to make in such a situation. The man must be on the more intelligent side of villainy.

"Yes." Raven replied, inspecting Garfield's face. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary…

"I don't suppose you'd turn them back on by any chance, would you? I'm in quite a bit of pain."

Raven snorted and obliged the man. Just as she expected, there was a thump as he tried to break his way out of his confinement. She responded by shrinking the bubble by a full quarter of its size and turning his powers off again.

"So what did you do to him?" She asked a moment later, blatantly ignoring his escape attempt just to annoy him.

"Me? Aside from try to kill him, nothing. If anything, he did something to me."

"As if I'm going to believe that." She turned and looked at him before jerking her thumb at her entrapped boyfriend. "That, right there, has never happened before."

Doctor Register tilted his head to the side to look at the boy. "Oh really? 'Cause that's the second time I've seen it."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "Second time?"

"Mhm."

She crossed her arms. "Why don't you tell me about the first time?"

"Let me out of this bubble and I'll-" He started to say before the bubble shrunk again, leaving him in quite the cramped position.

"This isn't a negotiation. You will give me the information I want." Raven said darkly.

"I could have sworn your file said you were the most reasonable of the Titans." Register said as he tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position.

"Not today I'm not."

The two stared at each other for a long moment before Register finally gave in.

"Fine!" He snarled. "I don't know what the hell it's about, but whenever his eyes go red like that he's more animal than human. Hell, considering how readily he attacked me this time he might not even be human right now! Just another dumb aggressive animal!"

"How was he brought out of it last time?" Raven asked, growing more concerned.

"I don't know, I was unconscious from a sneak attack by Mento." The man huffed. "Really-"

Whatever he said next was lost to Raven, who had pulled out her communicator and called the Doom Patrol.

"Hey Raven, what's up?" Robotman said as he answered the call.

"Where's Mento?" She asked. "I need him, urgently."

"Gimme a minute, he just got in the shower."

Raven waited for several minutes before the soapy-haired and maskless Mento materialized.

"Raven? Are you okay? What's going on?" He asked.

"There's something wrong with Garfield. Look." She pointed the communicator at her boyfriend, who growled at it.

"Jesus Christ, again?" Mento swore. "How'd that happen?"

"We've had a very stressful week and his animals started acting up, so to speak. The instincts that come with his powers were reacting very strongly to just about everything. On top of that, we've come across someone that triggered his instincts even more, making him…well, you saw him."

"It's his powers. Some sort of fight or flight response that's hard wired into him." Mento shook his head. "I had to knock him out last time and go deep into his mind to find the instinct. I guess you could say I gave it a hard flick to turn it off. It worked, fortunately, cause when he came to he was himself again. Granted, he didn't remember anything from that time, but still…"

"Were you able to figure out why it triggered?" She asked.

"All we have is speculation, but we think it happens because both his human and his animal sides are afraid or angry to the point where his mind can't process it, so his instincts kick in to keep him alive. Like breathing in your sleep."

It's like his first transformation into the Beast. Raven thought. Pure animal instinct that's overridden his human consciousness.

"Like I said though, it's all speculation. His powers are so weird compared to so many other people's abilities that from a logical point of view he shouldn't be able to do anything from the strain it puts on his body." Mento made a face. "To be honest, Raven, I've always wondered if his powers came from someplace else."

"Someplace else?" She asked, surprised. "How do you figure that?"

"Because his biology doesn't make sense. It never has. And even if you could justify it, it doesn't actually explain why he can shapeshift or why he has animal instincts when he was born pure human. Hell, there's nothing in his bizarre genetic code that explains why he's green!"

Raven frowned and looked to her boyfriend, then to the ensnared Doctor Register.

"Where did you get your powers?" She asked him.

"That little bastard right there, that's how!" Register snarled and pointed at Garfield. "Not even three days after he turned green from that damned monkey bite did he lose his shit and bite me himself!"

"Who's that?" Mento asked in confusion.

"His name is Doctor Register and he-"

"Register?! Are you sure?!" Mento interrupted her. She looked at him through the communicator and raised an eyebrow.

"Yes." She said. "I'm certain."

"Raven, he's incredibly-"

"Dangerous due to the Sakutia he exhales. I know." Raven interrupted him this time.

"He shouldn't even be wherever you are, he should be locked up in a secret prison in Europe!"

"Noted." Raven couldn't keep the displeasure from her face. "Thank you for the information. I have it from here."

She hung up before he could reply. Rude, she knew, but she wasn't in the mood for niceties.

"So you go your powers from Garfield, who got them from a monkey?" She asked. She wanted more information before she went rooting around in her boyfriends brain, just in case.

"Go ahead and arrest me already, I'm not telling you a damned thing more without a lawyer!"

His change in attitude wasn't surprising since he'd been trying to weasel his way out of the bubble since she caught him. He probably would try everything in the book to get out. However…

"Tell me, Doctor…have you ever been to the moon?" She asked slowly.

He was understandably confused. "What? No? Why-"

"You wanna go see it?" She was already angry and growing angrier by the minute. She needed to meditate, badly, before she hurt this man.

"You…wouldn't." He said, wide eyed.

"Try me." Oops, Rage slipped out for a moment.

Once more they stared at each other before the doctor relented yet again.

"Garfield was bitten by a green monkey that was carrying sakutia, which is absolutely fatal to humans. His parents, zoology geneticists, whipped up a serum that somehow mutated the sakutia and turned Garfield into a green monkey for a full day." He was clearly very unhappy but Raven didn't care.

"And just how, exactly, did that come about?" She asked. It was more than a little absurd to hear.

He shrugged. "I don't know. They were trying to cure him and that happened instead. For the life of us, we couldn't figure out what happened, just that he now had shapeshifting powers."

"Okay." She was also beginning to suspect that was indeed an outside factor in Garfield's powers. She would need to investigate outsider-type entities that had correlations to animals after she brought Garfield back to his senses.

"You said he bit you and you got his powers?" She continued on. This part did warrant some curiosity since Garfield had bitten her and she didn't get sick.

"Yes. He bit me, transferring sakutia to me, and I was forced to use a variant of the serum his parents used to save myself from dying." Raven could feel his hatred and rage towards her boyfriend and it irritated her to no end.

"Why did he bite you?" She asked.

"I was taking blood samples from him and he got fussy after a half dozen. He wouldn't sit still and I wound up jabbing him in the arm in an artery. He had an absolute fit and bit me while running away." He rubbed his arm near his elbow. "I can still remember how sharp his teeth are, little bastard."

And now Raven knew why Garfield didn't like doctors or needles.

This day was just full of unwanted surprises.

I say we send him to the moon anyways. Rage rumbled in the back of Raven's mind. He deserves it.

Down, girl, down. One of the other emoticlones said gently.

She took a deep breath to try to calm herself. It didn't help much.

"Let's wrap this up then." She said more to herself than anyone else. "I need to meditate."


Needless to say, everyone just about jumped out of their skin when Raven popped up with Beast Boy and a purple man in a bubble in tow.

"Holy shit, you brought him here?!" Rose shouted.

"Relax, he can't get out and neither can his virus." Raven waved her off. "I wouldn't do something reckless like you would."

"Hey! I'm not reckless!" She protested.

"You sure about this Raven?" Cyborg asked as Jinx ducked behind him, mask on her face. Where she got it he didn't know.

"Yes." Was all she said about it. "Can we please go home now?"

"We still have to deal with the…clones." Robin forced himself to say. He still wasn't comfortable with all of this.

"I don't want to." Raven crossed her arms. "Rose volunteered, so I say let her do it."

More than a couple of raised eyebrows looked at Raven, but she didn't care. She didn't want to be here anymore.

"You okay Rae Rae?" Rose asked.

"I'm having an absolute blast. Can't you tell?" Came the sarcastic response. "But no. I want to go home and go back to my regularly scheduled programming."

"Well, Rose and I can stay here to do that.' Kid Devil said. "I can crank my heat up to cook any lingering virus and Rose can wear a mask. You guys can go home and quarantine until you know you're safe. We can wrap up things here."

Robin thought about this, glancing at Cyborg and Bumblebee. They looked at each other and then back at him with a shrug and a nod.

"Alright then." The caped crusader looked to the Herald. "Titans Tower, medical bay please."


The very moment they appeared in the tower's infirmary was followed immediately by Raven shunting the purple man into a legitimate quarantine room that had been built a long time ago but had actually never been used before.

"I told you that room would come in handy one day!" Cyborg nudged Robin, who rolled his eyes beneath his mask.

Between the two of them, they secured that particular room first as everyone spread out. It was cramped having all those scientist prisoners with them, but it was necessary to keep everyone in the same area until they knew it was safe.

It was an unpleasant process, taking blood samples from everyone and having them do other tests as well. It probably should have taken longer than it did, but a still irate Raven used her magic to hasten the process.

It still took about three hours for everything to be done though, which was more than enough time for Rose and Eddie to reappear.

(Un)Fortunately, nobody had contracted the virus at all which irritated Raven even more.

"There! It's done, we're clean, I'm leaving!" She all but snapped at them before stomping out. Beast Boy, still incoherent and floating in her shadows, trailed after her.

"Damn, she is cranky." Rose muttered. "BB better give her some dick so she'll chill the fuck out."

"I don't think their relationship has gotten to that point babe." Eddie nudged her towards Robin. "Come on, time to report."

"Sorry I didn't get to you when you came in." Robin said with a sigh, leaning against a chair as several of the Titans led the scientists out.

"It's cool, Rob, this was super important." Eddie waved him off.

"We got them all unplugged and made sure they were all…well, dead, before we came back. Eddie incinerated them after that." Rose sat on a gurney beside Cheshire, who still hadn't taken her mask off. Speedy stood close by with Bumblebee making a couple of small adjustments to his mechanical arm. On the other side of the room Cyborg was trying to coax Jinx out of her face mask.

"You sure you're okay after that Senorita Rose?" Bunker asked as he came up.

"I used to kill people for a living, so…yeah?" She shrugged. She got more than a few concerned looks but she didn't care.

"Yeah, well, this was a first for us." Robin shook his head. "I guess we really weren't prepared for what we found."

"I dunno, you guys took it better than I thought you would. Well, until we got to the dragon room anyways." Rose snorted. "She's got some serious beef with that Malchior guy huh?"

Robin nodded. "He's one of the few people that legitimately make her angry."

"Speaking of angry…what's wrong with Beast Boy?" Bumblebee asked as she finished with Speedy's arm.

"We haven't quite figured that out-"

"He's alive, that's what's wrong with him." A voice interrupted.

They all turned to see the purple man leaning against the viewing window to the quarantine room, a sneer on his face.

"You open your mouth again and I'll peel your dick like a banana and make you eat it." Rose told him, a knife appearing in her hands from god-knows-where.

"No you won't, superheroes don't do that." He said with a triumphant hmph. The girl called Raven wasn't here, so he wasn't particularly worried about any of the other Titans.

The girl was already at the door with her mask back on, reaching for the handle, knife in hand, when the red skinned boy pounced on her.

"No!" He said firmly.

"Gimme five minutes, just five minutes!" She cried out as he dragged her away and out the door.

"No!"

"Just so you know…" Robin said to Register, "Rose isn't a superhero. She's…an associate. One that we don't necessarily need to publicly recognize."

The sly grin the boy wore spoke volumes to the doctor, who was unfortunately aware of how willing some heroes were to get their hands dirty. Mento had proven that to him years ago during his interrogation. And if he remembered correctly, this boy was Robin, the sidekick of Batman, who was known to have less-than-stellar interrogation methods himself. But surely he wouldn't be that much like his mentor.

…right?

"On my planet, we would have already executed you." Starfire said cheerfully as she floated by.

Samuel Register sat down in the sole chair in the room and quietly contemplated just exactly how he was going to get out of being a prisoner. Again.

Cooperating was clearly the safer option.


"Alright, so, what's the plan?" Cyborg asked and he and Robin left. Ahead of them was Jinx and Starfire, who were discussing the differences in prison sentences between Earth and Tamaran.

"We'll give the facility a few days to air out the virus, if there's any left for the air scrubbers to get." Robin said as they turned a corner. "That'll give us time to go through the data you pulled and make sure everyone's mental health is okay."

Cyborg already knew he was talking about Raven and Beast Boy. He grimaced. "Yeah. Its not been a good week."

"Maybe a taking vacation would be a good idea." Robin mused. "One or two of us at a time, a week to do whatever we wanted."

"We already know we have enough Titans and they're trained too."

"Batman does have a nice cabin on a mountain he doesn't use…"

"You wanna go somewhere cold?" Cyborg chuckled.

"Temperature is irrelevant to me, but Star prefers the cold." Robin grinned.

"Kiss ass."

"Damn right."


The mind of a shapeshifter was strange. Very strange. It wasn't just full of thoughts and feelings, it was full of things that had no true definitive meaning. Instincts wasn't even entirely accurate. These things were a part of his existence on a level that Raven could barely even brush upon. Hard-wired had been putting it mildly.

It was the first time she had gone into Garfield's mind proper and it was both awe inspiring and terrifying.

He would kill for her if her life was in danger. He would kill for any of the Titans, his 'pack'. He would fight to his dying breath to protect them, would chase them across the world if he needed to. He was absolutely loyal to her now that she was his.

His instincts were why he slept longer in the winter, as it was the time for hibernation just as it was time to fly south to avoid the cold. His instincts were why he was so drawn to bright flashing lights as insects were, yet also the reason why he avoided bright red things that were known as dangerous. His instincts were why he consumed so much junk food, he needed the energy to survive. And yet they were also why he drank so little water, as he didn't need that much. He felt without feeling, thought without thinking, and moved without moving. Everything about his psyche was so complex yet simple that it was almost mind boggling.

I exist, therefore I am.

Garfield didn't have the ability to morph into any animal he'd seen. His existence was the entire animal kingdom shoved into one body.

Raven's growing curiosity made her want to explore his psyche further. She wanted to know why he did some of the things he did, like not change his socks often. They had to be animal related.

But this wasn't the time for that. She had to find that fight or flight instinct that had made him the way he was now.

So she dove deeper into his mind, moving past his consciousness, past the learned instincts, and even further. The deeper she went, the more she came to realize something.

There was something else in here with her.

It was no effort to find it, for it wasn't hidden. It was identical to the instincts that dwelled within Garfield's mind, yet it was also something was different. It felt…stronger, yet subtler. It had a presence.

And it was…red?

That was unusual. There were no colors in the actual depths of the human psyche. No sounds, no colors, no shapes, just thoughts and feelings. What was this? Was this the thing that gave Garfield his powers?

She peered into it, more curious than before.

It looked back at her and blinked.