TW: A little bit of body horror. If you want to skip it, you will know when to stop reading (it's hard to miss when it starts), and you should just skip everything after it aside from the end note.


Beast Boy was in Haven. He was never as camera-shy as his teammates, and was also much more open and happy to participate in any kind of festival. It didn't hurt that his powers were extremely well-suited for it; changing into multiple different animals was always a way of making kids go 'oooh!'. Adults would react as well, although they usually just hid it better.

And, in addition to that, he just enjoyed the festivities. Multiple games, and so many otherother attractions. And, to add to this, somehow the mayor even got Wonder Woman to appear! This, in his opinion, was beyond amazing.

He was a huge fan of hers. Even though Justice League was still a relatively new organization, she immediately became known as a defender of oppressed, in every way. She managed to keep a perfect balance between her role as de-facto face of Themyscira, requiring some diplomatic tact, and still saying clearly what is right and wrong.

It was amazing that he could just talk with her like that. She made sure to spend some time with him, as well as with other people on the festival, before her planned speech later. For Beast Boy, today just couldn't get any better.

He knew not everyone enjoyed it as much as he did, sadly. Raven, obviously, appeared only for a moment in the beginning, leaving shortly after, probably to go read some book. Robin was outwardly smiling, but for those who knew him it was obvious it was just another mission for him.

Starfire, on the other hand, was beaming with happiness. Since arriving on Earth, she didn't really have any occasion to participate in anything like this. Last time they tried to relax together in this way, she was nearly kidnapped by Centauri police, and then had to fight her own sister. Not the best way to rest.

Now, however, they finally weren't in any kind of danger, and Starfire could just enjoy her happiness. Beast Boy smiled widely, seeing her fly over him, making a complicated figure in the air, and landing before amazed group of kids and adults alike. Her welcoming, friendly attitude – and, let's be honest, also her literally exotic beauty – made her the center of attention among the Titans.

And she enjoyed it greatly. She flew from a group of visitors to another, performing impressive aerial figures, sometimes lighting up her starbolt and becoming a yellow-green line on the sky, causing many to cheer. She spoke with people, taking in their gratitude, requests and just small talk. Autographs were given left and right – fortunately for her, Tamaranean way of learning languages covered not only spoken, but also written word.

In in the beginning, her writing was perfectly identical to Robin's own. It caused Boy Wonder some worries, sadly, with his overwhelming paranoia. Beast Boy kept wondering, back then, what kind of plan Robin had for something like this, but it turned out that the effect was only temporary and faded with practice.

Of course, Robin assigned her some writing, ostensibly to test her ability and make sure it works correctly, but it was obvious to Beast Boy he was just trying to speed up this process. Paranoid, sadly, as always.

He was happy that after his defeat at the hands of Slade – both physical, and in terms of being outplanned easily – Robin was very, very slowly opening up. He even gave them his plans to incapacitate them, allowing them to be erased forever, and promised to never do something like that again.

And Beast Boy was very thankful for that. Last thing he needed was someone with detailed knowledge about him making some kind of crazy plans to defeat him. One time was truly enough.

"Is it true that dogs can see ghosts?!" Someone asked him. Beast Boy turned around, and smiled, seeing one of his fans.

"If so, I never saw one. Maybe they just hide very well." He answered, smiling.

"Can you change only one arm? Can you change into magical animals?" Was the barrage of questions after it, with more coming still. Beast Boy answered all of them, some more seriously than others. Many of them were genuine questions he wondered himself, actually.

He answered what he could, and then excused himself and turned to other groups of fans. To his delight, he saw some people wearing more or less obvious LGBT symbols. Always nice to see more people openly being who they are. Even a trans flag – he made sure to give that girl an autograph with personal dedication. Never hurts to support others who may need it, and being a superhero, he was in a perfect position to do so.

He was showing off his transformation skills to a group of kids, when he noticed something different about Starfire. She had some kind of shining, red necklace, no doubt a gift from some fan. Robin was clear about not taking anything valuable from people – they already had to deal with occasional fan mail, creepy souls-stealing dolls included - so whoever that was, must have been really persuasive.

And he had to agree, it fit her perfectly. It was red, normally not her color, but somehow it was shining in a way that only made her look more stunning, with her hair now like a living flame. Beautiful.

Beast Boy continued to perform, but his mind was already somewhere else. Or, rather, focused on someone else. To be honest with himself, he definitely felt an attraction towards Starfire – seriously, who wouldn't? She was beautiful, smart, and always so happy. So open to everyone around her, but it would be a lie to say she was naïve – she was just, through and through, a nice, honest and good person.

It fascinated him how she and Robin seemed to slowly gravitate towards each other, on occasion. Wonder Boy was just the opposite of her; hiding his thoughts and emotions, serious most of the time except for an occasional one-liner in a fight. It must be true that opposites attract.

Beast Boy made a few circles in the air, only partially focused on sounds of amazements from the crowd. He was deep in thought. Funnily enough, he also felt a little bit of an attraction to Wonder Boy himself. His celebrity crush – come on, it was THE Robin himself! – faded away as he got to know him, but something still remained.

Of course, there were small problems with both of the above. Starfire seemed to have some kind of an attraction to Robin, for one. And Wonder Boy himself was, judging by his reactions, very much not interested in men if not slightly homophobic, even.

Beast Boy changed back into a human and made a theatrical bow to the crowd, trying to get his thoughts off that topic. He was still a teenager, and a superhero. He wasn't even sure how romance is supposed to work, in all honesty, and Mento and Elastic Girl's relationship was… let's just say not the best thing to emulate.

He cleared his throat, only to feel a sudden dryness in it. Damn, he was thirsty. He looked around, trying to find one of the ubiquitous places where he could get a drink, only to feel someone put a glass in his hand. "Thank you!" He said, drinking it. Some kind of fuzzy drink; it left a little bit of a sour aftertaste, not to his liking. He looked for whoever gave him the glass, but they were already gone in the crowd. He shrugged, and went for some snacks to kill that weird aftertaste.

While he did that, he had no idea he was being observed by someone very familiar with him. Dr. Samuel Register was hiding in the crowd, his laboratory clothes discarded in favor of casual clothing and sunglasses hiding him perfectly. He even applied something to mask his smell, just in case Beast Boy was able to smell him.

Of course, he wasn't there to participate in festivities. He was a scientist through and through, with a clear goal, not easy to just distract. Or at least that's what he told himself many times. In fact, 'obsessive' was a much better word to describe him.

If you ask him, others were just fools. Logans, especially; they managed not only to save their son, but find the missing link between humans and animals. To think of all the possibilities! There was even a theory of Sakutia virus being a driving force of evolution on entire planet.

And to think what humanity could have achieved with it. Many animals had properties that were, until now, impossible to replicate in humans. Regenerating body parts, boosted immune systems, greater strength, sharpened senses – all of this was just in their grasp!

Of course, other didn't not appreciate his genius. Their loss. Stupid government, firing him over 'unethical experiments'. Did they not understand that the price of progress has to be paid? Hypocrites, having no problems using results of an old Nazi research, but not going to accept him and his own research!

Of course, the fact that he was literally comparing himself to Nazi researchers didn't cause him to reconsider his actions. He was laser-focused on his goal. He just needed a small sample; Beast Boy was the only stable survivor of the Sakutia virus, and getting just a little bit of his DNA would push his research decades forward!

Unaware of two different dangers to his life, Beast Boy took some snacks from the stand, when he suddenly felt a weird tingling in his right hand. He looked at it, and to his surprise he saw one of his fingers growing, and changing. It wasn't painful – his body was adapting without any problem, bones and muscles moving aside and changing as well – but he never saw anything like this.

Beast Boy focused, and forced his finger to change back to human; but he could already feel the weird tingling spreading to the rest of his body. What was going on? Was Sakutia virus getting out of control? Nothing like that ever happened before. Was it some delayed side effect of fighting Plasmus?

He was losing control by the second. He excused himself and changed into a bird, flying away – although even in this form, he was barely keeping himself together. In moments, his bird feet changed into monkey paws; he could feel a hard shell growing on his back, and… was that a second beak emerging from the back of his head?!

Beast Boy lost control of his flight, and fell down, mutating rapidly. His right wing changed into a bunch of tentacles; the left one became a mix of multiple bug limbs. When he hit the water, he already had two heads; in addition to his quickly mutating bird head, now with three beaks, he was now growing a humongous ant head on his back.

Samuel Register, who was observing Beast Boy until the moment he hit the water – causing a small panic among few people who noticed it - decided to rethink his life choices. First, he was going to rethink eating anything today; that was disgusting even for him.

Secondly, he decided Beast Boy is not actually stable. Not at all. He would have to think of another plan. He heard that S.T.A.R Labs had a sample of Sakutia virus; getting inside there would be hard, but at this point it was probably safer than whatever happened right now. He left the festival grounds among the growing panic, as people started to realize that something is very, very wrong.

In the meantime, Beast Boy slowly fell down until he gently hit the bottom. However, his transformation was nothing but gentle. He was no longer in any form recognizable as an animal, or a human; he was a mass of mutated meat and muscle. Hundreds of limbs were waving around in agony, only to be swallowed by the growing mass of flesh. Heads would emerge and disappear, eyes opening in the middle of the skin and bone, in places that were never supposed to see. Leather wings, covered in teeth, grew out of tentacle-like limbs, only to bloom like bloody-red flowers, with ears instead of petals.

And among this all, was Beast Boy, panicking and scared. All his animal instincts jumpstarted at once. He was suffocating, but his body adapted to it; he was drowning, but he could not. He wasn't in any pain, and could feel every part of his body; even unconsciousness was denied to him.

Beast Boy had no mouth, and he was screaming.


Beast Boy's animal forms make trapping him nearly impossible. And with his sharpened senses, he can detect almost any trap. However, it is also his greatest weakness; the Sakutia virus made his DNA inherently unstable. The best way to neutralize him is to distract him and apply any substance that would destabilize it, leading to him being unable to control his changes. A so-called Man-Bat serum seems to be an easily available option.

- Agamemnon Contingency. File codename: Evolution.