A/N:
Wow, it's been a while. Found some time here and there to work on this, and voila.
TheForeIsStrongWithThisOne: Yeah, I saw that when I went looking through your works. None of them ring any bells though. But OOT is pretty interesting.
And I really don't like that you're so confident about that because if that is what the letter was about you look psychic or something, but if not it may look like I'm trying to change it. Either way, the truth will be revealed.
InuShiek: Glad to hear it's that interesting. And as I keep saying, you'll eventually find out.
Eris: Chances are you'll find out either this chapter or next chapter.
Chapter 3:
For the rest of the day and the whole night the green teen continued to sleep. Even when it came time for breakfast he was still in his room.
"Man, I knew BB was a deep sleeper but this has got to be a new record for him," the Mexican teen muttered between mouthfuls of cereal.
"Give him time. He clearly went through something not so pleasant," Starfire implored, which was backed up by Dick.
"Yeah, I know. It's just that it's been kinda boring around without him here." The others could agree, each to a different extent. Even Raven was willing to admit it was, at the very most, less lively in the tower during his absence.
As if summoned, the resident empath suddenly felt the signs of the mentioned teammate starting to stir in his room. She was about to tell the others he was awake, but figured she should instead give him the privacy they were just discussing.
About a minute later the green teen sluggishly walked through the door and entered the kitchen. Bags hung from his eyes, and his face didn't seem as lifted as it usually was.
"Morning guys," he greeted with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm in his voice. He quickly buried his face in the refrigerator as he scoured for something to eat. Eventually he reemerged with a couple of apples, a banana, and a glass bottle of soy milk. The others watched as he hungrily devoured the fruit and downed the milk in record time.
"Geez hermano. Did you starve yourself while you were gone?" Jaime asked at the display of...whatever it was.
"Just wasn't hungry most of the time. But I guess it's finally coming back to bite me," Beast Boy replied with a shrug. His face was soon back in the fridge and he pulled out an entire head of lettuce.
"Do not tell me you're going to eat that," Raven requested in disbelief.
"Fine. I won't tell you," he sarcastically replied before taking a large bite from the green plant. Then another, and another. Less than three and a half minutes later he had chewed the entire thing down to the stump, which was promptly thrown in the trash. "So, what's the plan for toady?" he asked Starfire.
"I believe we will proceed with our common agenda. But more importantly, are you sure you are well enough to get back into training?" the orange skinned woman responded.
"Well, it can't be too good for me to take a lot of time off. And I've honestly missed the usual routine," Beast Boy offered.
"Very well. We will meet in the training room in an hour," Starfire told the group. They all gave an affirmative and went to do their own things. Soon it was only her and Dick in the kitchen.
"Do you really think he should put himself back into the 'swing of things', as the saying goes?" the Tamaranean asked.
"Honestly, yes and no. He needs time to recover from whatever happened. However, this could be how he recovers for all I know. And telling him to sit on the sidelines could only make him feel worse. I think the best course of action would be to tell him to take a break if he needs to, but not force him to," Dick explained. His girlfriend understood his logic, but wasn't completely comfortable with it.
As instructed, the three teens were all in the training room by the time Kori and Dick arrived. Immediately she stole a quick assessment of the green teen. He looked...more put together than before. Maybe Dick was right. Maybe the training could take his mind off things. She gave them the usual instructions before having them partake in solo simulations. Raven passed with flying colors and Jaime did great as usual. Beast Boy passed, but made a few more errors than usual.
"Yeah, I need to work on keeping my surroundings in mind and work on my tactical approaches. I made a few slip ups here and there that only led to more down the road," Beast Boy admitted before his leader could.
"That is correct. But I understand that you're not in the best state of mind right now, so I suppose a mistake or two was unavoidable. All in all, you still passed, and that's what matters."
Following that the three were put in a teamwork simulation that went rather well, then Star and Dick joined in a higher difficulty simulation. After an hour and a half the three teens were catching their breaths as the two older Titans watched. A little critiquing was required, but aside from that they were allowed to spend the rest of the day as they wished, barring villain attacks. Raven went to her room and Jaime roped Beast Boy into making up for lost time in the city.
"C'mon man, I've never seen the arcade fail to make your day," Jaime exclaimed as the two entered the building. The familiar sounds of lasers, roars, gunshots, and other game sounds accompanied by various flashing lights did bring up the changeling's mood a little. "So what're we playing first?" the Mexican teen asked his green skinned friend.
"How about DDR?" Beast Boy suggested.
"Yeah man! Let's go!" Jaime shouted as the two walked to the platform. Most of the people recognized the two as heroes and made way for them to play. Just another benefit of being a superhero.
The two danced to two songs, the crowd not once dying down or faltering at the quick footwork they displayed. While Beast Boy didn't full out smile, Jaime say a quick upturn of his friend's lips. As soon as the second song was done the two stepped down from the platform and were greeted with cheers and pats from the audience.
"Okay, you choose now." After a quick mental inventory of the games, Jaime led Beast Boy to the Aliens: Armageddon system. A half hour of shooting bugs and a xenomorph queen resulted in Jaime getting the ninth place high-score, which placed his initials on the board for the third time. Next they moved to a racing game, then a basketball hoop, and finally a game of skee ball.
"Hey, you feeling better?" Jaime asked as the two walked down the street. The occasional fan would stop them and ask for a photo or autograph, but they had learned to enjoy the attention.
"Yeah. A little. Thanks." The scarab alerted him that his friend was being truthful but lying at the same time. Something about the traces of dopamine and endorphins currently fuzzing his judgement of his emotions for the time being. However, Jaime was quick to ignore the analysis and focused on the positives of their outing.
The next few days went by somewhat normal by their standards. Beast Boy was clearly not feeling as well as he usually did, but there was notable progress. Just under a week of his return he almost seemed back to normal. Something about the speed of his recovery set Richard in his detective mode, which really meant just keeping a close eye on his body language and micro expressions. Every now and then something would catch his attention and he would mentally add it to a list that he would go over.
But for now, he was willing to let his friend heal in his own way.
It was about a week and a half after his return. Thursdays were deemed "off days" with the normal requirements of keeping informed about villains and responding to calls from others. It was about noon when Jaime finally came out of his bedroom. This was nothing unusual for him, as the others knew he stayed up late binging movies on Wednesday nights.
"Morning guys. Where are the others?" the teen asked after a yawn.
"Technically it's afternoon. And Raven and Beast Boy both left for the city," Dick replied.
"Oh. Did they go together or..."
"No, Beast Boy left earlier in the morning and Raven left a few hours later," Starfire responded. She took whatever was in the frying pan and placed it on her plate before sitting down next to Richard. Jaime decided to grab something quick and return to his room before the two had a chance to get all lovey-dovey with each other.
Normally, Raven preferred to stay out of the city when she could. The noise and wide range of emotions got on her nerves, and the fans were typically annoying at best. But even she needed a change of scenery now and then, which is why she was currently walking down the sidewalk in a leather vest and long black skirt. She had visited her favorite coffee and tea store not too long ago and was contemplating spending the rest of the day at the library when a familiar emotional spectrum tugged at her senses.
A quick look around revealed the source to be coming from the graveyard across the street. An eerily small procession of just two hearses and the burial crew were just leaving, with a lone figure standing in front of two headstones. The character was wearing black jeans and a black hoodie which was currently covering his face, even though his back was to her.
Still, she could immediately recognize Beast Boy's aura. It was an odd sight in a way. Someone always so full of life in a place known for death almost felt wrong. While part of her wanted to go see whose graves he was looking at, another part of her deduced he wanted to be alone for the time being. After all, he hadn't even told the others about this. She memorized where he was standing and left for the library.
Having finally reached one of her favorite places in the city, she found a book she had yet to read and plopped down at an unoccupied table. For the most part she was unable to concentrate; something about the image stuck in her mind and constantly demanded her attention. When she finally managed to gather her focus and read, she spent a full hour flipping through pages. But of course her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to see if he was still there.
A quick walk to the graveyard yielded an empty scene. No new burials, no visiting family members, no hooded changeling.
Even though she didn't see him she still took a quick second to reach out empathically. He wasn't anywhere within her range at the time being, so she carefully crossed the street and made her way to the two graves he saw her teammate standing at. She read what was engraved in the one on the right, yet nothing rang any bells.
Here lies Mark Logan
Father, Husband, Scientist
April 5th 1961 - 2008
She read the other one, but there was still nothing she recognized.
Here lies Marie Logan
Mother, Wife, Scientist
August 23rd 1965 - 2008
(IMPORTANT NOTE: I made those dates up because I could not find any actual dates from quick searches. If anyone knows the actual dates I will change them. My logic was he's roughly 16-17 in this story, and his parents died when he was young, let's say 6 or 7 for the sake of argument. That would place this story around 2017 (Release year of Judas Contract) -2019 depending on which figures you use.)
She read the markings again and committed them to memory. She needed research, and she knew exactly who to ask.
When she teleported back into the tower the first thing she did was check for Beast Boy, who still wasn't back. With this information in mind she made a portal and teleported to Dick's "research room". The former pupil of Batman was hardly fazed by her sudden appearance, and turned around in his chair to face her.
"Hey Raven. What can I do for you?" he offered.
"If you're not busy, could you look into two people for me? The names are Mark and Marie Logan. Mark was born in 1961 and Marie was born in 1965. Both died in 2008 and both were scientists in one way or another," the empath requested.
"Sure, but any particular reason you want me to?" Dick asked as he started doing his thing. If Raven had to guess, he was setting up some kind of web filters that sifted through the most relevant results and compared recurring themes among the most like results.
"I read about them in the library," she responded. Whether or not he wanted to push the subject further, he let it slide as multiple tabs popped up on the screens. He spent a few minutes reading through the results until he came to a strong enough conclusion to give Raven.
"Let's see. Both were geneticists. They were working on using animal DNA as cures for diseases..." he said, then skimmed another few pages. "Their most recent expedition was in Africa with their son almost a decade ago. Not much is publicly available, but allegedly their son caught something called 'Sakutia'. It's not known if they found a cure, as they died in a boating accident soon after. None of the bodies were found, so all three were presumed dead," Dick added.
"Sakutia? Never heard of it," Raven stated. Then again, she wasn't overly versed in the medical field.
"Same. Hold on a sec." Dick did a little more research and found a few good pages on the disease. Raven heard him whisper "Holy shit" under his breath, and not in a good way.
"I've seen some nasty stuff working with Batman, but this takes the cake." This wasn't particularly comforting given the few stories he had told the group involving the Joker.
"Basically, it tears the infected apart at the genetic level. The bodies literally start falling apart from the inside out after three days or so, and it's not painless by any means. Of the eight worldwide known cases in humans, seven died slow, painful deaths. Except Garfield Logan, who died in the accident with his parents."
Only, Raven knew he didn't die, either to Sakutia or the accident. He was here, with them. He had to be; why else would he have been at the graves? Who else could it have been?
"Are you sure Garfield died? You did say the bodies were never found, and no one knew if they found a cure to Sakutia. Maybe he was cured and somehow survived the accident," Raven suggested, which was quickly dismissed by Dick.
"Technically it is possible, but it's extremely unlikely. To this day there's no known cure. And even if he was cured, I don't know many children who could survive the plummet of a waterfall," he explained. "Why do you ask?"
"I have a hunch on something. Just tell me what else you found on the Logan's and Sakutia," the half demon requested.
"Well, there's actually not much left. We already went over everything regarding the Logan's, and not a lot is actually known about Sakutia," he stated while scrolling through a report from who-knows-where on the affliction in question.
"Transferred by bites like rabies, no cure and a hundred percent kill rate, nasty effects on the body, and..." Dick read aloud, then suddenly stopped.
"And?" Raven asked, encouraging him to continue.
"Apparently, one of the side effects of the genetic destruction is the recoloration of the pigments in the host's body. According to this, the virus turns-" he started.
"It turns the infected green," a voice finished from behind.