This oneshot was spawned from me wondering why, if Beast Boy can become alien animals, he never takes advantage of that fact to morph into sapient alien animals with superpowers of their own. I still don't have an answer for why he never tried going dragon after the team fought Malchior, though. Maybe that form is too big to maneuver through the city?

Fun fact: the episode Betrothed is immediately followed by Crash, which actually gives this story a neat little niche to fit in. You'll see what I mean later in the story.

"I may not be smart enough to do everything, but I'm dumb enough to try anything!" – Beast Boy, Crash

Creature Feature

Beast Boy narrowed his eyes and stared at his hand. He was alone in the common room, sprawled out on the couch with a forgotten comic tossed to the side.

The Titans had recently returned from their first-ever trip to Tamaran, and it had certainly been… an experience. A good experience in the end, mind you, but the whole wedding thing and Starfire being a princess and Blackfire having at some point taken over the planet and then the wedding thing being a trap that they stopped and Starfire kicking her sister's sorry butt and taking the crown… It had all been kinda overwhelming.

Pretty cool though. Even if Beast Boy still couldn't figure out how half the furniture on that planet worked. Was that what Star had felt like when she first came to Earth?

Anyway, point was, so much had happened during their little space trip that he had almost forgotten something cool he'd learned about himself. Now that he remembered, though, he couldn't get the thought out of his head.

A low whoosh signaled the entrance of another Titan, and Beast Boy's ears pricked. He sat up and looked over the back of the couch to see Starfire floating through the doorway.

A wide grin split his face. "Hey, Star! You got a sec? I actually wanted to talk to you about something."

Starfire perked up at the sound of his voice, and she made her way over. "What is it?"

Beast Boy started bouncing in his seat. "So, you know those giant freaky Tamaranean guard dogs?"

Starfire blinked. "Guard do- You mean the gloorgs?"

"Sure, the gloogs or whatever. Point is, when we were trying to crash your wedding, I was able to morph into one! How cool is that?"

Starfire's eyes widened a fraction, and she sat down and scooted closer to him. "Fascinating. So, you wish to learn more about Tamaranean wildlife so you may better wield their forms?"

Beast Boy shook his head, still grinning. "Not exactly. See, sentient lifeforms like humans are just really smart animals, right? So if I can turn into Tamaranean animals, then I should be able to turn into a Tamaranean. How cool is that?!"

Now, when he had pictured this conversation in his head, this part had led to a lot of gobsmacked awe and maybe a call for celebration over the sheer potential of his newfound power. Tamaraneans were, after all, a plainly powerful race – and not the only one, either. With a little effort, he could probably morph into a Martian, or an Atlantean, or even a freaking Kryptonian.

He could be ALL the superheroes.

Instead, Starfire's response was simply to clap once and smile at him. "Oh, that does sound interesting! I would be quite happy to share more of my heritage with you, if that is what you wish."

Well… That wasn't quite the expected level of enthusiasm. Beast Boy deflated a little, but he shook it off. She probably just hadn't considered all the ramifications yet.

"Okay, just sit tight," he said instead, adjusting his position. "I'm gonna try it."

Starfire nodded, and Beast Boy squinted and tried to focus. His shapeshifting was more-or-less an instinctive thing, but he needed a firm grasp of the animal in question to do it. He was too used to thinking of Star as just another person with powers, rather than a whole different species.

After a few moments, he pinpointed what he wanted and stretched. That was the only way he could ever think of to describe it, even when he was shrinking his form.

It was a… bizarre sensation. He was used to changing shape completely, his flesh warping around itself in a way that was a lot less unpleasant than it sounded. This time the shift was much more subtle – little more than a vague tingling sensation and a few more noticeable shifts in his face and gut. That was… probably a good sign?

Not sure what else to do, he held up a hand and looked at it again, flexing and curling his fingers. He couldn't see any difference, but no real surprise there. Still…

"Hey, do I look any different to you?" he asked her. "Taller, maybe? I feel like Tamaraneans are all really tall."

Starfire looked him over and hummed in thought, then smiled. She zipped over to the kitchen and rummaged around for a few moments before returning with a large metal platter and holding it up to him.

Beast Boy squinted at his reflection. It took him a moment to notice what with all the green already on his face, but then his eyes widened.

The whites of said eyes weren't so white anymore. Also, his eyebrows had shrunk to little dots.

With a triumphant cackle, he leaped up on the couch. "Dude! It really worked! I'm a Tamaranean now!" He started punching the air.

"Okay, when do I get to start chucking starbolts at bad guys?"

Starfire set the platter down and commented, "I very much doubt that you will be able to do that."

Beast Boy froze mid-punch. "Huh? Why not?"

Starfire leaned back on her hands. "It takes a significant amount of power to generate enough stellar energy for ranged use. It bears similarities to training the muscles to increase your strength." She shrugged. "I required several years of training to use starbolts with any consistency."

Beast Boy frowned. "Oh. I guess that makes sense."

Well, bummer. Still, he wasn't about to be deterred. Hopping down to the floor, he asked, "So what about flying then? I could still fly around and punch stuff and not have to worry about my arms getting tired!"

Starfire perked up. "Oh, that is much simpler! For that you must focus on the unbridled joy of flight. If you feel flight, and allow that feeling to buoy you, then it will come to you naturally."

Joy? Piece of cake. Beast Boy squeezed his eyes shut and pictured himself zooming through the air, doing loop-de-loops and punching through walls and all the other cool stuff he'd seen Star do even when she wasn't hurling glowey green lasers around.

It was going to be awesome.

With that last thought, something clicked in his head and he felt his feet leave the ground. His eyes snapped open to find himself halfway to the ceiling.

"Ha-hah!" he shouted, pumping both fists in the air. "Behold the mighty Space Boy! I am invincible! I am –"

And that was when he smacked his head hard against the ceiling.

"So that's how I learned that stopping and steering with weird mental flight powers is a lot harder when you haven't grown up doing it."

Beast Boy, human again, held an ice pack against the back of his head as he finished his story. From where she was meditating a few feet away, Raven cracked an eye open and turned it on him.

"Did you really hit yourself hard enough to need that?" she asked.

Beast Boy shrugged. "Eh, not really. Tamaraneans are pretty tough." With a grumble he added, "And now I know why."

He pulled the ice pack away and frowned at it. "Also, apparently they need to focus on something to make super strength work, too? What is even up with that?"

"Considering Starfire can tear through solid concrete with the muscle mass of a bean pole, I'd imagine a lot."

Beast Boy's eyes slid over to her, and a smirk made its way to his mouth. "Buuut, you know what does make sense as something you need focus for?"

Raven opened her other eye and narrowed both at him. "I don't like where this is going."

Beast Boy jumped to his feet and started bouncing on his heels. "Seriously! You're from, like, another dimension, right? And your magic kinda works on its own, so it's gotta come from whatever species you are instead of being something you have to study for like a wizard. Tell me I'm wrong!"

His companion simply crossed her arms. "I'm half human."

"Really? Oh, well, the other half then." He gasped. "Or maybe I could actually be a hybrid! Why did I never think of that before? I could mix together all the best species and become some sort of ultra-beast!"

Raven rolled her eyes. "Hybrids don't work that way." Sighing with the air of defeat that said she'd never get her meditation done now, she swung her legs out of the lotus position and stood up.

For his part, Beast Boy shook his head. "Right. One thing at a time." He returned his full attention to her.

"Sooo, spill the details. What do I need to know about your super-cool interdimensional magic half?"

Raven looked suddenly very uncomfortable, for reasons he couldn't quite place. Looking back on the conversation later, he'd come to conclude that it probably had something to do with the freaky giant probably-not-the-human-parent "father" he'd once seen in her mindscape (and much later he'd understand that it had everything to do with him). But for now, all he knew was that she was avoiding eye contact and hesitating as if looking for an excuse to change the subject.

Finally, she shook her head and settled on a simple, "Forget it. It's way too dangerous, and if you couldn't handle Tamaranean powers then there's no way you'd be able to handle mine."

Beast Boy deflated. "Aww, how come? Your powers are a straightforward 'think a thing, make a shield or whatever,' right? No special physical training or weird emotion games."

Raven let out a long-suffering sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose. "First off, it's not that simple. But more importantly, let's put it this way. You remember the incident with the Puppet King, when Starfire and I had to save you with our bodies switched?"

Beast Boy shuddered a little at the memory. "It's kinda hard to forget."

"You might not have noticed considering your… condition at the time, but the differences in our training and emotional states meant we both had trouble with each other's powers. In my case, I had a hard time accessing her powers because of the emotional energy they required."

Beast Boy snorted and muttered, "Yeah, no wonder," under his breath. Raven turned a withering glare on him, and after a few moments of squirming he cleared his throat.

"Uh, sorry. Go on."

The sorceress just kept her warning look on him as she continued. "In her case, she was in a constant struggle to keep from accidentally blowing us up."

It took him a few seconds for that to fully sink in.

"…Oh."

"Aww, come on, you gotta have something!"

Hot Spot let out a low sigh over the communicator. "I don't know what to tell you. I was raised by human parents, my powers and the ones the other hybrid kids have are all different, and I haven't exactly taken the time to study H'san Natall biology. For all I know, you wouldn't get any new powers at all."

Beast Boy groaned dramatically and flopped over on his chair. "Duude, I'm having like no luck with this!" He huffed. "Thanks anyway."

Hot Spot gave him a flat look. "Yeeeeah, next time you want to learn more about the vicious alien invaders who secretly sired and later kidnapped me, just feel free to hit me up."

After a moment's thought, he added, "Have you tried Aqualad yet? You guys are buddies or something, right?"

Beast Boy chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Yeah, turns out like half of his powers are some kinda magic that doesn't come with the species."

There was a long awkward moment where neither hero knew where to take the conversation. "So, is that everything?" Hot Spot finally asked. "Because if you didn't need anything else…"

Beast Boy sighed. "Yeah, that was it. Talk to you later."

The line went out, and he looked morosely over his list of non-human Titans. It wasn't too short considering there were only five core members and a handful of honoraries, and he'd been so sure he could find something that worked. But Hot Spot had been his last hope. Maybe he should just try morphing into a H'san Natall and see what happened?

He tried that, squeezing his eyes shut and focusing on what he knew about Hot Spot. He strained for several seconds, but nothing clicked, nothing stretched, and in the end, he probably just looked like an idiot.

Well, nuts. Either he couldn't do hybrids after all and Hot Spot wasn't enough to give him the full species, or whatever had let him morph Tamaranean didn't apply here.

Technically, he could still ask Robin to hook him up with the Justice League's alien members. But if he couldn't even work out how to mimic his own teammates, what was the point?

With nothing else to do now that his little project had failed, Beast Boy found himself heading toward the garage. Cyborg was there, making yet more upgrades to the T-car.

"This is delicate work, don't touch anything," he said by rote as he saw his friend enter.

Beast Boy sighed again and plopped down on a workbench. "Yeah, I know."

Cyborg looked up from his work. "No luck with 'Space Boy,' I'm guessing? Because I hate to tell you, but I don't think robots count as a species."

"You heard about that?"

"The girls filled me in." Cyborg switched tools and got back to work.

Beast Boy flopped back on the bench. "You know what's really nice? Animal instincts. Not having to work out how to fly, or pounce, or use your teeth and claws, because you just know."

Cyborg raised a brow at him. "You have to train with your animal forms all the time."

The shapeshifter frowned. "I guess. But they still make more sense than starbolts or magic."

Cyborg snorted and wiped his hands off with a cloth. "Coulda told you that." He frowned thoughtfully.

"You know, maybe you've been going about this all wrong. That Tamaranean guard thing was impressive. Have you tried anything new other than sapient beings with complex powersets of their own?"

Beast Boy's ears perked, and he sat up slowly. "I guess I haven't really thought a lot about it yet. You think I could do more alien animals?"

Without another thought he shifted back into a gloorg. Cyborg yelped and ran around to shield the car with his body, but the now-alien creature just shifted his weight a little and trotted in place, testing out the new form.

Morphing back, he hummed in thought. "Not too different from some of my dinosaurs, but I still don't know all of its tricks and there's a whole planet of probably terrifying animals to explore. I gotta talk to Star!"

Cyborg glared at him, still pressed against his baby. "Please don't experiment like that next to the delicate machinery."

Beast Boy waved off the comment, barely registering it. "Yeah, sure thing. Ooh! Maybe I can do hybrids, like a liger or something. Would that be any better than a regular tiger? Oh! Or what if I go the opposite way? Maybe I could be an amoeba. It'd be the perfect infiltrator!"

Peeling himself off the car, Cyborg frowned. "Does that even count as an animal?"

"Not according to modern taxonomy, but neither should alien creatures, so who knows!" Beast Boy cackled and started vaulting up the stairs to the tower proper, two steps at a time. "Space Boy, AWAY!"

He couldn't see the look on his friend's face as he ran off to find Starfire again, but as much as he wanted it to be awe and maybe a little envy over his mad skills, he knew it was probably something more akin to pure bafflement. That was okay. As far as he was concerned, Beast Boy had a whole world – no, a whole galaxy of options just waiting to be tried. He didn't know how many of those options he'd end up using on a regular basis, but that was okay too.

Because whatever happened, it was going to be awesome.