A Hudson University Dorm Room

Garfield Logan stood in front of the full-length mirror in his room. His gaze was impassive as he studied his reflection. It was a sight that he was all too familiar with. Then with a long-suffering sigh he sat on the edge of his bed and pulled knee-high socks over his feet. Once those were pulled as high as they would reach he grabbed a baggy pair of tan colored cargo pants and pulled them on over his boxers. A simple undershirt followed the pants, and Garfield tucked it in before securing the pants with a heavy belt. Another sigh and a button-down shirt was added over the undershirt, buttoned most of the way. A final glance in the mirror revealed his own dead eyes staring back at him.

It was a sight he had seen too many times.

Garfield pushed those thoughts away with yet another sigh and grabbed his trusty combat boots. These he laced up with a precision born of much practice. The cargo pants were then pulled down over the boots, their bottoms skirting the base of his ankles. Then Gar grabbed an antique pair of leather driving gloves—selected for their dexterity—and pulled then on up past his writs. Then a long, tan trench coat that hung to his knees and fell a bit long in the sleeves.

Now completely attired, he stopped for another look in the full-length mirror to be sure that his disguise was convincing for the role he had to play. Well, whether or not it would work, it was time to go. He grabbed a baseball cap and pulled the visor down low
to help shadow his face as he grabbed his backpack and left the sanctity and safety of his private dorm room.

Today was the first day of classes in the summer session, required of all incoming students with… unorthodox… educational histories. Garfield snorted a bitter laugh at that thought. 'Unorthodox' wasn't exactly the word he would choose to describe his childhood. Then again, the words he would use generally aren't accepted in decent company.

He was still a toddler when his parents took him to the Congo. They were doctors—research scientists to be precise, working on the genome project. The isolated genetic codes over countless generations provided a uniquely perfect setting for their research. Of course, the conditions provided for other things as well, things both unexpected and unfortunate.

They had been there less than a year when Garfield had taken ill.

Experiments with genetic codes require routine contact with animals, and not all animals are healthy. Garfield came down with a disease that had no name. It never needed a name before, because no human was ever known to contract it. Nevertheless, it struck the son of Mark and Marie Logan, and it struck hard.

Their son lay dying. There was nothing they could do—all known medicines were failing or would kill him anyway through allergic reactions. All hope seemed lost, but never tell a pair of geneticists that their son is doomed to die. They buried themselves in their craft and finally came up with a solution that seemed to work: they cured one of the infected monkeys. They had the solution! It just… only worked in monkeys. However, that wasn't about to stop the doctors Logan. All they had to do was break down the barriers that distinguish human DNA from that of animals. No small task…

…Though not impossible…

They succeeded. Garfield lived, and recovered from his illness. There were catches, however; prices to pay. His skin turned green, every inch of it; and his hair, every last strand. Everything of Garfield Logan turned a lovely shade of forest green, even his beautiful brown eyes.

It's been that way ever since.

Fifteen years.

Fifteen years of metahuman existence, years he's lived every morning when he looks in the mirror. Fifteen years that he's lived with the scar of his disease.

Fifteen years he's lived with the last tangible memory he has of his parents.

Garfield Logan doesn't have many memories of his parents. They died in a boating accident when he was six. He vividly remembers the accident, from the color of the water, the temperature of the air, the sound the boat engines made when they exploded. But that was in the Congo, twelve years ago. Nothing else has survived in Gar's possession to remind him of his parents—save the gifts of his disease.

Fifteen years ago this May…

It's been a long road from there to here, a road full of false families and empty promises. Such is the life of one in 'the system'… who slips through its cracks… or occasionally breaks against them. A hard life. Never stable and never gratifying. Never… full. Always lonely. Always…

Green.

Now the green little boy was a slightly less little, green teenager. He had managed to survive social services, children's protective services, and a few other less honorable organizations. He'd been with his most recent foster family for a little over a year—a new record for him. Steve and Rita Dayton seemed nice enough; treated him with respect and respected his privacy. They helped him finish high school and encouraged him to go to college. They even supported his decision to deny the existence of Space Trek, 2022.

The green teenager known as Garfield Logan made his way across campus to his very first college class: summer session college writing. He entered a small lecture hall on the second floor of a stuffy brick building—obviously a holdover from the university's founding. A few other students had arrived ahead of him but the professor was still absent.

Garfield took a seat in the very back row of desks in the far corner away from the professor's lectern. From this vantage point he casually surveyed the crowd as he dropped his backpack and removed his trench coat, which he hung on the back of a chair. Seated in the same row as him yet in the opposite corner was some girl with an interesting dye job. She wore black jeans and a blue cotton top that seemed to bring out the shimmer in her hair. Or was that just the fluorescent lights? She looked like an angel sitting there. Garfield couldn't help but stare, though he quickly shook himself out of it and resigned himself to the happy fact that goths were usually too introverted and miserably depressed to offer up any harsh remarks at his expense.

Two girls were gossiping in the next row up, and off to one side of them a boy was leaning back in his chair, softly snoring. In the next row another boy sat doodling in his notebook, and Garfield didn't need the nose of a bloodhound to sigh in disgust at the artist's choice of illegal extracurricular activities. A meek-looking girl sat in the front row wearing coke-bottle glasses and pigtails, the classic over-achiever. There's one in every class.

Gar then noted with interest as another student entered the room. He saw the newcomer's eyes sweep deliberately over the class. Garfield's eyes narrowed—he was sure he recognized the new kid from somewhere. He watched as the newcomer entered the rest of the way after seemingly having found what he was looking for—or not found it, whichever. He took a seat in the third row, which just so happened to be right by the door. Then once he was seated, it seemed that whatever airs of deliberation and purpose deflated. He was then just another student waiting for class to begin. Garfield sighed and pulled a notebook from his backpack. He hoped that there wouldn't be any more students in this class; he wasn't too fond of large crowds.


Raven sat in the back and surveyed the crowd with her third eye. The girl in front was fretting over whether or not she was supposed to have completed some sort of essay for the start of class today… the artist in the next row was wondering when the good parties were going to start happening… the slumbering jock was dreaming about some sporting championship… one girl was worried that her eye makeup was the wrong shade for her sweater and the other was conjuring up some rather inappropriate images of a boy Raven didn't recognize. She sighed to herself and closed her eyes, silently meditating to block out the extraneous noise.

Then another student entered. He breezed in past everyone and claimed the seat in the back corner without hesitation. His thoughts flurried at a mile a minute and disrupted Raven's concentration. She bit her lip as her senses were momentarily assailed. The newcomer was… jittery, almost frantic, but not in a panicked sort of way. No… No it was different. Almost…

Raven silently gasped.

Instinctual.

Heightened awareness. Like an animal—a caged animal pacing back and forth before the bars. All outward displays covering one simple truth: it was scared out of its mind.

Raven chanced a glance in his direction. She caught him looking at her and he promptly jerked his head away. Her eyes narrowed.

Is his skin… green?

Then she heard it. From his mind. A replay. Students in another school, jeering and taunting him… their laughter echoing cruelly there inside his head. And then a name, a name called above all others: Beast Boy! Beast Boy! They hooted and hollered and chased him away…

…And then the question.

Will college be like that too?

Raven sighed and tuned the rest of it out. It was starting to give her a headache anyway.

Just then another student entered the classroom. Raven instantly recognized her computer geek from the other day. He wore a pair of blue jeans with a tee shirt that was mostly obscured by a black hooded zip-up sweatshirt. His black hair was wet—freshly showered, and brushed casually out of his face. That didn't stop a few wisps of bangs from falling out of place and trying for his eyes, however; though he didn't seem to notice. Raven caught herself staring, having instinctually tried to glean his thoughts and finding that same darkness as before. She shook it off and directed her attentions elsewhere, glad for the idea that she can study his blankness instead of focusing on the rambling and disjointed thoughts of others.


Class progressed much as Garfield thought it would. Fortunately enough no one recognized his name when it was announced at roll call. Or at least, they had the good decency to not say anything if they did. And no one commented on his green skin, if in fact they noticed at all. The concept that no one noticed was an appealing thought if however improbable. Yet still, Gar couldn't quite bring himself to think that they noticed and yet refrained from commenting. He didn't have enough faith in humanity yet.

Today was Tuesday. After the writing class—which shouldn't be a problem aside from all the hours of homework and essay writing—Gar had three other classes during this summer session. After writing he had a break for lunch and then it was off to introductory French. Gar spoke French when he was little—missionaries and other doctors spoke it in the Congo when he was there, but it's been a long time and he's sorely out of practice. He could only hope that he'd remember enough to get by.

Tuesday's schedule would repeat itself on Thursdays. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he was blessed with the privilege of sleeping in before having his last two classes in the afternoon. Right after lunch he had his math class, college algebra. Then it was off to the rudimentary literature course, which was the essential cramming in of every novel that should have been read in high school. Gar wasn't sure which class of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule he was going to hate the most.


Math class. Most definitely math class.

Sunday night. Garfield had been attending classes for nearly a week now. He had an essay due on Thursday on his motivations for going to college for his writing class. He needed to have the days, weeks, months, and measurement units memorized for a French vocabulary quiz the same day. Oh and there were the twenty simple equations he needed to solve and hand in tomorrow, at the same time he needed to have the entirety of The Great Gatsby read for literature class.

He was on page thirty-four.

Gar had the French down pat. The essay was outlined in his word processor and waiting to be fleshed out, and currently twenty unsolved math problems were staring him in the face. And it was seven p.m. If he got all those equations done by eight then he could be up all night reading Gatsby and then sleep until class time.

It was a good plan, but there was just one catch: he had absolutely no clue how to solve the equations.

The professor's instruction was useless, the directions in the book even more so. Gar contemplated blowing off the math in favor of the reading, but if he did that then there's no guarantee that he'd find someone to help him with the equations on such short notice. And he needed help, or else he wouldn't learn the material, and he just knew that a pop quiz was going to follow the discussion of the homework problems. Gar grumbled, sighed, whined, and did his damnedest to come up an excuse, but they all fell short in the end. He had no choice now: he needed to seek out extra help.

After even more heartrending deliberation, Garfield formulated a plan. Dick Grayson was in his every class—he finally realized where he'd seen him before: you don't spend a few years in Gotham without seeing Bruce Wayne or his ward on the news at least once. And Dick Grayson seemed the stereotypical loner. Gar never saw him sit with anyone in particular during class, nor did he ever see him at lunch and dinner either. He lived in a single at the other end of the hall and listened to a rather eclectic mix of music that one could only hear if they paused right outside his door.

Translated, Dick didn't have a clique to answer to that would take exception to the notion of their comrade aiding and abetting the 'green guy,' the 'beast boy,' or whatever the current flavor of taunt was now. Dick was smart, Gar knew, from being in class with him, so should be more than capable of helping him. And Dick seemed… well… Gar didn't get the feeling that he would be rejected out of hand. There was something about this loner ward of Bruce Wayne that made Gar feel like they had something in common. Perhaps it was the whole being orphans thing. It made him oddly curious to want to get to know Dick Grayson.

It was that curiosity, spurred on by his flimsy logic about the nature of the reclusive loner at the end of the hall that made Garfield pull on his gloves, trench, and hat before grabbing his math book and notebook and heading for the door.

He paused just outside what he knew to be Dick Grayson's door. The two had walked back from classes together before. Well, more of beside each other than with each other, but Gar had seen Dick go into that room so he knew where he lived even with the absence of the little red bird the RA had crafted to reveal their names. Gar listened intently with his keen hearing… nothing. No music playing right now. But wait—rustling! Dick was in!

A tentative knocking. A pause. Another knock, more deliberate this time.

Suddenly the door swung open. Dick stood in the doorway and his gaze immediately lowered to the petit form in the dark hat and trench coat standing before him, holding a book and notebook beneath one arm. Garfield seemed to wilt under the sudden embarrassment. He hadn't realized Grayson was so tall…

"Um… Hi?" he managed to croak. If he had been attempting to make eye contact rather than study the sparkles in his shoelaces he would have seen his would-be tutor smirk.

"Hi," Dick returned, his voice bland. "Garfield, right?"

"Ah… yeah," Garfield forced himself to look up. "Garfield Logan—I have class with you. Well, classes with you—I mean, several. That is—" His babbling was interrupted by a slight laugh. It wasn't a cold laugh however, though it did silence him.

"Writing, math, lit, and French," Dick listed.

Garfield smiled—he hadn't been told to piss off yet. "Yeah!" he agreed. Then he seemed to falter and his eyes found his shoelaces again.

"Did you need something?" Dick asked. His tone was mild and betrayed only curiosity. When Gar stole a glance up Dick did his best to offer a reassuring smile. He figured that social interactions were quite difficult for one with such… obvious… reasons to be ostracized by his peers.

"Well…" Garfield choked down his fears and forced himself to look Grayson in the eye. "Well, since we have so many classes together—I mean, I've seen you in class—not that I was, you know, paying any extra attention—what I mean is, er, well, I know you're smart n'all—smarter than me. And, you see, well, I was hoping—"

"Which subject?" Dick interrupted the breathless babble. He raised an eyebrow just slightly in a rather amusing imitation of Alfred.

This seemed to put Garfield at ease. He smiled genuinely, lighting up his face in such a way that Dick realized how rare a sight it must be.

"Math," Gar chirped excitedly. "I don't understand the homework one bit and the adjunct they've saddled us with is too busy working on his dissertation to offer convenient office hours."

Dick laughed as he stepped back and pushed his door open in a wordless invitation for Garfield to enter; and the green teen did so, smiling all the way.

"Have a seat anywhere," Dick directed as he pulled down the monitor on his laptop, hiding what Gar thought was a half-finished essay before the screen was banished from view.

Garfield dropped to the floor—onto the rather expensive looking area rug—and began spreading out his materials. Dick grabbed his own notebook and joined him effortlessly.

"Thanks so much," said Garfield with much enthusiasm.

Dick smiled but said nothing as he flipped through his notebook for the section containing his algebra notes. In all honesty he was well above the level of math they were requiring him to take, but the school assured him that after this class was on his records he would be able to sit down with his advisor to find a more suitable math starting point for him. Yet the diligent student that Dick was trying to be demanded that he take notes in class.

"No problem," he said as he found the appropriate page. "Here, see if my notes make any sense to you."

Gar nodded and took Dick's notebook. He seemed to be concentrating awfully hard on the material at hand.

Dick studied his new tutee with a critical yet lackadaisical eye. He'd recognized the name 'Garfield Logan' instantly of course, having been guilty of watching the cheesy Star Trek rip-off that was Space Trek, 2022. Reruns were on at about the time Batman and Robin would return from an uneventful patrol and the show was just amusingly, painfully, awful enough for them to unwind to before going to bed. When the show was cancelled, the teenaged actor Garfield Logan disappeared from Hollywood.

So when he showed up in Dick's writing class the former detective's apprentice was naturally curious—and with good reason. Clandestine research revealed that Garfield Logan was a metahuman—the result of the genetic experiment that saved his life as a young child. Garfield's 'gifts,' as the circle of metahumans would call them, include the green skin and hair, heightened senses of smell and hearing as well as low-level darkvision. Rumors also had it that Garfield could transform into any animal you could name, voluntarily and at will. This fact alone was enough to keep his profile in the Bat computer's archives.

Records for Garfield Logan are patchy at best, though thankfully more complete than the ones on Raven Roth across the hall. The disease that nearly killed him and whose cure created a metahuman struck when Garfield was only three. Then his parents died in a boating accident when he was six. A close fiend of the Logans, King Tawaba, took it upon himself to raise their only son, feeling that it was his final duty to them. After all, their medicines helped to save his tribe from some dreaded European disease.

King Tawaba was a good surrogate father to Garfield and the tribe was more than welcoming of the little orphan. However, all good things must end eventually. When Gar was eight something happened within the tribe. Police and Interpol reports were sketchy and incomplete at best, but it was verified that a number of tribal warriors were killed. When the dust settled after those deaths Garfield Logan had disappeared along with the tribe's shaman. Gar was missing and feared dead.

Then in 1995 Interpol received a call from the Gotham Police Department. They had two cadavers on their hands whose descriptions and fingerprints matched those of two mercenaries on several national wanted lists across the globe. These mercenaries, apparently dead from drug overdoses that just screamed 'organized crime hit' from the other evidence at the scene, turned out to have been linked to an illegal poaching ring in Africa that had seemingly gone underground and was yet to be cracked.

Meanwhile back in the Congo, Tawaba's people had been coordinating with the authorities to try and crack down on seemingly random inter-tribal skirmishes that had sprung up in the aftermath of the deaths of their tribesmen. They believed that something sinister and evil was at work and the authorities put up with the 'voodoo' because hardly any of the colonist-influenced civilized population spoke enough languages to be effective in the investigation without the tribe's linguistic and navigational aid.

This investigation led to the ruins of a looted temple—and the remains of the body of the shaman who'd gone missing with Garfield Logan. If the authorities were to believe their tribal guides then they finally had an explanation for where the members of organized crime were able to get the cash to furnish their increasingly large and overbold forays into all things illegal—things like supplying stolen US and British military weapons to remote African tribes to try and escalate tension and create a war-zone dangerous enough to discourage governmental involvement from everyone including the likes of Interpol and the Red Cross.

Interpol believed that the reason the poaching seemed to have stopped was because the criminals found a better source of income in invaluable religious artifacts and gold from the looted and ruined temple. The local authorities believed that the recent tribal skirmishes were meant as a diversion from something even deadlier than natives toting AK-47s.

Even with all of this progress, neither the local authorities nor Interpol were able to piece together exactly what the criminal activity was. The locals refused to step on the toes of tribes with itchy trigger fingers—corruption in their own military most likely to blame and so the investigation came to a grinding halt after the disappearance of the Interpol agents sent in to investigate against the government's will.

That is, of course, until two bodies showed up at a morgue in Gotham. When a low-level crime boss was implicated in the deaths of the mercenaries along with the distribution of unique designer drugs to school children the Gotham PD received some surreptitious help from their resident vigilante. To save his hide after a display of good cop/bad cop between Gotham PD and Interpol, the boss turned rat. He had already implicated all of his more prestigious clients, but threats made behind closed doors and out of the hearing of Commissioner Gordon convinced him to reveal the identity of his supplier. He gave the officers a hotel address in Kinsbasa, in what was then Zaire.

The authorities that were so unwilling to help before now were itching at the chance to aid in the investigation—most likely because it didn't involve them roaming through the jungles and getting shot at. The hotel was raided and arrests were made. The designer drugs on American streets were engineered locally in Zaire and the entire drug ring went under.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Fingers were pointed and more arrests were made in Nairobi, which led to a large bust in Zanzibar that revealed ties to anyone and everyone from corporate America to former Soviet nations. Information gathered here led to further investigation in Zaire, which led to the discovery of an abandoned biological weapons research facility. The work suggested private—and criminally intended—research of the Ebola virus. Long since cleared out, the paper trail was virtually untraceable, even though the unofficial reports point the finger at an offshoot of Lexcorp in Kyrgyzstan.

The temple raid gave the criminals the money to start the biological weapons plant as well as the designer drug research and manufacturing process. When the temple riches ran out in that very quick manor of illegally obtained wealth the drug trade was up and running and providing the necessary income to keep the weapons research going. The tribal infighting was the deterrent necessary to keep the authorities away from the true crime going on, but only for so long. When the authorities finally got wind of it the entire place was liquidated and international blame fell on the Kyrgyz for trying to find something with which to fight the Russians. However, only the highest authorities in Interpol—and Gotham's own caped crusader—were able to piece together that the entire Kyrgyz government was the well-paid cover for the real pursuer of biological weapons: Lexcorp. Blame fell on a government that could care less, and nothing was done even at the UN level, and no one could prove Lexcorp's involvement so nothing was done about Luthor either.

Yet victory was attained in breaking up the drug ring, which solved the original poaching problem, and in the naïve belief that there were no more weapons research facilities in the African Jungle the case was closed. Every dot from Tawaba's shaman to the temple to the mercenaries to organized crime to Lexcorp had been connected and the authorities were pleased.

Yet where was Garfield Logan?

That was the question that plagued Dick Grayson as he read through Interpol report after Interpol report. If Garfield had disappeared with the shaman then where was he? Was he involved somehow? Granted he was only eight at the time, but his metahuman abilities tend to shift suspicion.

Dick finally found mentions of Garfield Logan in Child Protective Services documents. Currently he was living with the couple that won a long and lengthy custody battle for him against Nicholas Galtry, the Logans' ex lawyer. The battle was intense, the Daytons thought that Galtry was an unfit guardian and sued for custody of the only son of their longtime friends. Gotham PD and Interpol, in turn, had been investigating Galtry in connection with the organized crime syndicate responsible for the mess in Zaire because he had been legal counsel for one low-level crime boss. Galtry was eventually proven guilty and is serving time in Leavanworth thanks to the iron fist of Interpol, and the Daytons won custody.

However, the Daytons weren't granted custody until the verdict came down on Galtry. Garfield was bounced between foster care and orphanages for the entire five years of the custody battle. Dick, reading from the present and working his way back, finally found where Garfield resurfaced on the proverbial radar. In 1997 a homeless shelter in Gotham called Social Services on Garfield's behalf. He was then claimed by Galtry, whom he stayed with until the Daytons heard about it. The custody battle started in 1998, and it was foster homes and orphanages until 2003 when the Daytons won custody. It was during the stint in foster homes that he was picked up by a talent scout and cast in the worst television show to air in the last ten years.

According to Hudson University records, Garfield Logan is the adoptive son of Steve and Rita Dayton, and he's attending the summer program because the myriad of different school systems made it next to impossible to place him at the correct level for classes. And so… here he is, studying math on the floor of the one who spent three consecutive nights researching his past to determine if his presence was a threat or not.

The detective's apprentice finally concluded that just because everyone around him was involved in criminal activity that doesn't mean that Garfield himself was involved. A victim of circumstances mostly in Dick's eye, he figured that the best thing to do was give the benefit of the doubt. And, as he watched with growing sympathy the small green teenager struggling to both conceal his supposed deformity and grasp the concepts of basic algebra, Dick was practically certain that Garfield wasn't the criminal type.

"Here," he said, kneeling down next to the frustrated metahuman. "What's giving you trouble?"

"Everything!" Garfield groaned dejectedly, closing his eyes in defeat. He heard Dick snicker but not maliciously.

"Ok… what's not giving you trouble then?"

Garfield frowned in thought. "Numbers are for math, letters are for English. Why'd somebody have to combine the two?"

"Well the letters stand for numbers that we don't know yet," Dick explained.

Garfield frowned. "How do they expect us to solve these problems if we don't have all the numbers?"

Dick stifled another laugh. He remembered asking Alfred similar questions. Shortly thereafter Bruce took on the task of math lessons…

"Well that's what the equations are for," he explained. "The point of these math problems is to find out what the letter stands for."

Garfield blinked and then returned his gaze to the book. "So… that's what 'solve for x' means?" Dick nodded and Garfield smiled. He then returned his attention to the book. "So… how do I do that?"

Dick quieted his sigh. "Ok, copy the first equation into your notebook." Gar patiently did as instructed. "Now, do you remember what professor Wildman said about how to solve equations?"

Garfield glanced at his own notebook. "The equation must be equal on both sides," he read, quoting.

"And?"

"And… I have to-to isolate the variable!" He finished proudly.

Dick nodded.

"Ok…" Garfield seemed to be waiting patiently for more instruction. "Can you do that?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"What's a 'variable'?"

Dick forced himself to not laugh or even comment on the question. Actually, for some reason, he seemed very intently focused on not accidentally offending the deceptively small metahuman on his floor. In a way, he reminded Dick of a frightened young boy when he first arrived at a big and drafty Wayne Manor without any real knowledge of life outside of the circus.

"'Variable' is a fancy term for the letter you were complaining about."

Garfield's eyes widened in surprise. He looked quickly from the textbook to Dick and back again. "You mean all I have to do is get that x all by itself?"

Dick couldn't stop the chuckle as he nodded again.

"Why didn't Wildman say so!"

"… He did."

"Oh." A pause in which Garfield studied the equation intently in light of this new information. "Uh… how do I do that?"

"What do your notes say?"

"Uh… To add, subtract, multiply, and divide, being sure that both sides of the equation are equal, until I'm left with an isolated variable."

"Well, you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, right?"

"Of course I can!" Garfield replied defensively. Dick sat back and raised his hands to signal no offense was meant. "Sorry." Garfield muttered to the floor.

"That's okay," Dick reassured. "I was just going to say that simple math in equation solving is really no different than simple math everywhere else."

"Huh?"

Dick suddenly shifted into a sitting position as he came up with a different approach to helping Garfield learn algebra. "Ok, think of it this way. Look at the equation again. What signs do you see?"

Garfield took a look. "Uh… a plus sign and an equal sign."

"Alright so that means that the equation involves addition. What's the opposite of addition?"

Garfield took a moment to think about it. "S-subtraction?" he asked meekly.

Dick nodded. "We undo addition with subtraction," he clarified. "Now, what two things are being added?"

Garfield looked again. "Uh… 4x plus 14."

"Right," Dick reassured—it seemed important. "Now, since we solve equations by getting that x all by itself, what's the first thing we have to do?"

Garfield took a second to think about it. "Get rid of the four?"

"Not yet," Dick corrected. "In order to get the x by itself, we have to first get the 4x by itself."

Garfield blinked. "The fourteen?"

Dick nodded. "How do you get rid of a +14?"

"Uh… you subtract fourteen?"

"And if we have to keep both sides of the equation equal…"

"I give the fourteen to the other side?"

Once again Dick fought the urge to sigh. "Not quite. You subtract fourteen from both sides."

"… Oh."

Dick sensed that his tutee didn't quite grasp the concept. "It's not as complicated as it sounds," he said. "I'll walk you through it." Garfield nodded hesitantly. "First, on the next line of your notebook, write a -14 right below the +14."

Garfield did as he was told and then returned his gaze to Dick expectantly.

"Ok. Now write another -14 below the 110 on the other side of the equals sign." Once again Garfield did what he was told. "Now all you have is two subtraction problems to solve!"

Garfield looked to Dick and then to his paper and back again and his face lit up in a grin that reminded Dick exactly why he offered to help in the first place. He solved 110-14 and got 96. Then he paused when he got to the other side.

"Uh…"

"Don't worry about the 4x," Dick explained. "All you're solving is 14-14."

"Oh… Zero!"

"Right! Now on the next line write the new equation." Garfield hesitated a moment before writing 4x + 0 96. "You don't need to write the plus zero," Dick explained.

Garfield laughed at himself and erased the line to rewrite the equation. "Is it done?" he asked tentatively.

Dick smiled and shook his head. "Not quite. The x isn't alone yet."

"So, how do I do that?"

"Well," Dick began, "4x is the same as saying 'four times x.'"

"Times… multiplication?"

Dick nodded.

"So if four times x equals 96, then I have to…" Dick waited for Garfield to reason it out on his own. "Divide both sides by four!"

"See, not as hard as it looks," said Dick with an encouraging smile.

In a flurry of writing Garfield wound up with x 24 written in his notebook as the answer for the first equation. "Di—Did I do that right?" he asked, staring at the notebook so he wouldn't have to meet Dick's eyes.

"Perfect."

Gar smiled with reckless abandon and Dick had no choice but to return the gesture.

"So…" Dick said at length. "Do you think you can do the next one?"

Garfield redirected his gaze to the textbook. He then copied the equation over to his notebook and stared at it some more. "I—I think so." He looked to Dick, who merely nodded. Gar then followed the same steps he used before, occasionally looking to Dick for verification, which was given with a simple nod or shake of the head. After about five minutes the problem was solved correctly.

"There you go," said Dick. "And the next one?"

Once again the process repeated itself. This time Gar didn't need any input from Dick as he completed the problem. When he was done he looked up expectantly.

"Do the next one," Dick directed firmly.

Garfield's smile fell slightly but he did as instructed. Unseen, Dick bit his lip and silently sighed, a silent rebuke of his slip.

Meanwhile Gar spent quite a bit of time on this equation since it was more involved than the previous two. He didn't dare look to Dick though, perceiving that in some way his tutor was testing him. Of course he had no way of knowing how accidentally true that was, and so nevertheless he strove to solve the problem swiftly and correctly.

"I-is it right?" he asked tentatively when he was done. "It was longer than the others." Dick's eyes narrowed just slightly as he studied the math. Gar began to get nervous but then Dick smiled.

"It's right," he conceded with a nod. "You'll notice that no matter how big and complicated the problems look, you use the exact same steps to solve them. Just sometimes you have to use more of them."

Garfield nodded as though a great secret of the universe had just been revealed to him.

"Do you think you can finish the rest of them on your own?"

Gar studied the other problems in the textbook briefly before nodding ever so slightly. "Could you, ya know, uh, check em for me when I'm done?" he stammered. "Just in case?"

"Sure," Dick said, forcing himself to smile. "Why don't you finish them here? I have to work on my essay for writing class. Just let me know if you need anything."

Garfield smiled brightly and nodded fervently. Dick nodded approvingly in return as he stood up. He went back to his desk and opened his laptop. Soon the soft symphony of laptop keystrokes filled the room, punctured every so often by the harsh sound of an eraser grating across paper.

"Is it just me," Gar said eventually, "or is it hot in here?"

Dick smirked and swiveled in his chair. He glanced at the thermostat he had installed to regulate the heat in his room. It was quite a project, involving generous uses of stealth and several harried phone calls to Alfred because the radiators were verifiable antiques, but Dick had managed to isolate his room from the central heating of the rest of the dorm. His radiator was now controlled directly by the programmable thermostat on the wall by the door.

"It's sixty-eight," he said neutrally. "Maybe you'd feel cooler if you took off the hat, trench, and gloves…"

Garfield blushed noticeably—which is saying something given his green skin. "I, uh, well…"

Dick snickered and Garfield practically bowed to the floor.

"It's ok," he said quietly. "I can finish in my own room. Thanks for your help."

Dick didn't know what to say or do and so he merely watched as Gar packed his things and all but fled from the room. He wasn't so naïve as to wonder if it was something he said, however. Instead he sighed, stood up, locked and his door behind Garfield's exit. He thought about returning to his essay, but he had time and for some reason felt like being lazy. Instead he grabbed the remote for his entertainment center and clicked it on. Lyrics washed over him as he collapsed down onto his bed, his eyes fixed distantly on an old publicity poster for Haly's Circus on his door.

Crawling in my skin… these wounds they will not heal. Fear is how I fall… confusing what is real…


Song credits: Crawling; Linkin Park-Hybrid Theory

AN- Beast Boy's parents were indeed research scientists in the Congo, and he did get his powers from that disease. However, he's a little green human, he doesn't look like a Martian. The pointed ears and sharper teeth are assumed to be a choice on his part, to be explored eventually.

Everything from how he got his disease to how his parents died to his adoption by the African tribe is found in comics. However, all that's said after that is that the shaman didn't like him and kidnapped him. Two American thugs were supposed to loot that temple, but they failed and they took Garfield instead, thinking that his abilities would bring profit. Depending on which comic you read, Gar spent some time being forced into petty criminal activity before being rescued by Galtry. The custody battle is also canon, as is Galtry's shady motivations. However, everything in canon is very dated and left large gaps. Therefore the everything about the genome project, Interpol, drug trafficking, and biological weapons were invented by the authors to modernize the history and provide plausibility.

It's also canon that BB is a wannabe actor and he did star in the short-lived television show Space Trek 2022 before becoming a Titan. DC wanted to create something akin to the first Star Trek series in concept, but couldn't say that due to copyright laws.

The names of Garfield's current foster parents are also canon. This story was written before season 5 aired, and in our version Beast Boy was not a part of the Doom Patrol. Whether or not he knew of his foster parents' alternate lifestyles remains to be seen.