Disclaimer: Teen Titans is the property of DC Comics. I own neither.

Ascension of the Beast

Chapter II

Breakfast and a Troubled Mind

"...but they could actually be in love with each other. Just because she's got a history on the wrong side doesn't mean she's evil now. Just because her father...well...doesn't mean she's evil either. I mean, look at me—I'm a demon's spawn! If I can be redeemed, so can anyone else, including her," Raven stated while entering the dining room with a cup of herbal tea in her hand. She was never quite drawn to gossip—in fact, she normally despised it—but this topic was too juicy for even her to ignore, and Cyborg was easily able to reel her into it. "Besides, she's beautiful, he's handsome, they have comparable intellects, they share common interests and strengths, and even if they don't really love each other, their relationship will encourage peace and moderation."

"I don't know," the cybernetic twenty-something replied. "I still have to worry if they've got him under some kind of mind control or something. It's just too weird," he added, before abruptly changing the subject. "By the way, when was the last time you saw B?" he asked while scratching his head, a concerned look pasted on his face.

It had been two weeks since the trio had arrived in Los Angeles, and Cyborg and Raven had seen their verdant landlord for a combined total of about fifteen minutes since the day after they moved in. Beast Boy had taken on the unusual habit of spending nearly all of his time in his father's old study. His friends only occasioned to catch a glimpse of him when he needed to use the restroom, or went to the kitchen to grab a plate of tofu. They were beginning to wonder whether he was sleeping in the study, or just not sleeping at all; his bed had not been used once since they moved in, and, alarmingly enough, his bedroom was spotless.

"I saw him getting something to eat on Tuesday," Raven replied. The day on which this particular conversation was taking place was a Friday. "Why? When was the last time you saw him?" she asked, becoming a little concerned herself since Cyborg's question made her realize how long it had been since she'd seen him. The house was large as far as houses go; treading along the borderline between being a particularly large house or a particularly small mansion. However, it was still small enough that they should have seen him several times a day if he was acting normal.

"I haven't seen the grass stain since...Saturday, I think," Cyborg replied, having to think hard to remember the last time he'd seen his best friend. "Something's wrong here, Rae. Whatever's going on, it ain't healthy!"

"I know what you mean," the empath replied. "He's starting to remind me of Dick," she said, referring to Robin's obsession with Slade, which manifested itself in a plethora of unhealthy ways years ago. "And I keep picking up an odd mix of emotions from him, too. Like a combination of guilt, grief, nostalgia, terror, and a few emotions I haven't even been able to identify. And he's broadcasting them loud," she grumbled a bit as she added the last part. Beast Boy was usually somewhat inert when it came to the emotions she empathically sensed from him, but now it was as if the floodgates had opened. Although she had been used to sensing the emotions of others for her entire life, this was actually starting to give her a migraine.

"Great," Cyborg said with more than a hint of sarcasm. Letting out a frustrated sigh, he pondered, "I wonder why he's so obsessed with this whole Lamumba thing. I mean, he's never said anything about ever having gone to Africa, but he's acting like the place is his homeland or something."

"You never know," replied the empath, "we don't really know anything about his life before he joined the Doom Patrol. Come to think of it, he's pretty much been even more secretive about his past than Dick, or even me. But he's never really struck me as the kind of person who's really been out in the world—aside from work. I don't know what to think right now, actually." She thought to herself for a moment as she sipped her tea, and then noted "it seems like every time any one of us has ever tried to get him into a position to talk about his past, he's always changed the subject."

"Well, B's good at that," Cyborg noted after swallowing the last of the bacon that was on his plate, "somehow he has that ability to change the subject without you even realizing it at the time. Sometimes I swear the stupidest things that come out of his mouth are things he's intentionally saying to throw us off the trail of something, and if that doesn't work he always resorts to doing or saying something annoying."

Raven thought for a moment, letting what her cybernetic friend was saying sink in. "You know, sometimes I think he's blocking his emotions; especially when he realizes I'm around."

"That wouldn't really surprise me, Rave," Cyborg knew enough of his best friend's time with the Doom Patrol to be able to put two and two together on that one. "Living under the same roof with Mento, I would think he'd figured out some sort of way to keep parts of his mind from being read."

Just then, Cyborg's cell phone rang. "Yes, sir...okay...I'll be on my way soon...noon tomorrow?...okay, bye." The half-robotic man thought for a moment and then decided to ask Raven a question. "Hey Rae, do you think you could do me a favor?"

"That would depend," the nearly-nineteen-year old empath replied with an inquisitive look on her face, "what do you want?"

"Do you think you could try to get B out of that damn study and maybe out of the house once in a while today and during the weekend?" He knew asking her this question was a crap shoot which depended entirely upon what mood she was in.

"Why can't you do that yourself?" It's not that she didn't care about Beast Boy. In fact, she cared about him a lot; so much, in fact, that she wished to protect him from the danger of her throwing him into an anoxic dimension for annoying her too much. Also, she had no idea what would actually interest him enough to tear him away from his obsession with Lamumba without subjecting herself to torture.

"Eh, that call I just got was from work," he nervously scratched his head as he paused for a moment. "Turns out the WHO is contracting S.T.A.R. Labs to work on developing a vaccine for some tropical illness that kills everyone who gets it. Apparently, the big-wigs figure it's impossible, so it got delegated down to the new guy," he chuckled a little at his situation. "Anyway, they need me to jump on a plane to New York, and between work and other things, I probably won't be back until Monday night."

"Other things, huh?" the empath said with a mischievous, albeit barely visible, smirk on her face. "Those other things wouldn't happen to include a blonde who may or may not happen to have an alliterated name, would they?" She was in a rare mood to tease him, and she knew well of his female friend in the Big Apple. Ever since Bumblebee and Herald got together, the New Yorker was now the only remaining single female in whom Cyborg had an overt romantic interest.

Cyborg, however, chose to diffuse the teasing. "Actually, that's the exact reason I'm not coming back on Sunday," he said with a grin the size of a half moon. As he got up from his seat, his face turned serious again. "Just, please Rae, remember to get B out of that study for a while. I'm startin' to worry we might permanently lose the green bean we know and love if this keeps up for too long," he said as he made his exit.

"And that would be a bad thing, how?" she asked no one in particular. She decided it would probably be best if she meditated for a while before approaching Beast Boy. She had actually been enjoying a fairly stress-free existence living in the Logan house so far, to the point where she actually relaxed her early determination to find work—it helped that, as soon as they got to LA, Beast Boy reminded her again that there was no pressure, and his voice in that moment actually made her suspect that he felt he needed her around even more than she needed the home. To know that she was serving some purpose, and was helping someone, was always something that made her feel good. Perhaps there was still some lingering need to prove to herself that she had indeed risen above the purpose for which she was originally sired and defined her life by her self-appointed mission to have a positive impact instead.

Nevertheless, this was Beast Boy. For as long as she had known him, his impact on her was never anything other than huge. When he annoyed her, he really pissed her off. On the other hand, when he made her happy, he usually made her happier than anyone else was able to. There was no moderation to it—regardless of what emotion the changeling made her feel, he always made her feel it with an inestimable strength. If she was going to spend her day trying to draw him out of his obsession with Lamumba, she needed to know for absolute certain that she had her emotions under control.

When Beast Boy, Cyborg and Raven arrived at the Logan house, the study looked like an orderly home office. After two weeks of the changeling's Lamumba obsession, however, the room's appearance changed to a form which was nothing like its previous one. With the passing of every hour, it was looking less like a home office and increasingly more resembling John Nash's room from A Beautiful Mind. Every inch of space on the desk was covered with books and documents, and every inch of wall space was covered with papers and photographs. Well, every inch of the wall except for the spot where he had mounted a flat-screen television, which was now constantly playing CNN.

Although it was certainly bringing his mental health to the brink of the abyss, this condition was not in itself caused by any sort of mental health problem. Beast Boy's obsession with Lamumba was personal and professional, founded upon a mix of instinct, emotion and intellect. Lamumba was a special case for him, and retired or not, he was still a hero. He could not allow himself to fail the people of Lamumba, as he had failed his parents before; but with the victory over the Brotherhood of Evil now years behind him, he knew now that he had the capacity to defeat evil. He was not stupid, even if he didn't presently know how he would save Lamumba. He didn't know the end game yet, but his instincts told him enough that he now knew he must collect and digest all pertinent information on the situation, in order to prepare himself to form a plan.

The leader of the coup was a career military officer by the name of General Mwenye Kibwana. In the first few hours, soldiers under his command murdered the country's President, Sefu Mtwa, and proceeded to dissolve the Parliament by force of arms. Although Prime Minister Zuberi Kiongozi was saved from sharing the President's fate by the fact that he was on a state visit to Zambesi at the time, it was exceedingly clear that he could not return to his country—a point which was very strongly driven home when the Kibwana regime threatened to invade Zambesi if Kiongozi was permitted any further safe haven there. Within hours after the threat was issued, Kiongozi was granted asylum in the United States, where he began working to form a government-in-exile.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the coup was the absence of foreign state sponsors. None of the world's major powers were particularly pleased with the coup, and two weeks into Kibwana's reign over the central government, no country had yet recognized his regime as the legitimate government of Lamumba. Beast Boy dug deep into all of the background information he could find about General Kibwana. While the General had a unique political philosophy, Garfield's instincts somehow told him that someone had to be backing Kibwana, but his intellect knew that whomever it was, they were not a state.

The thing which most disturbed the changeling, however, was the new regime's propensity for the use of political violence. Within a day after taking power, General Kibwana issued an edict dissolving all existing political parties. Within an hour of the declaration, the parties' headquarters were raided by the military. As a warning to the other political groups, an army captain summarily executed the leader of the country's Communist Party with a simple—and very public—gunshot to the head. As more time went by over the interceding two weeks, people who opposed the regime began to either "disappear" or end up being the victims of similar summary executions. While the bodies of the people who "disappeared" had yet to turn up, it was presumed that most of these people—who for one reason or another could not be overtly murdered—had been secretly killed.

By the end of the first week, Garfield was very worried for the safety of King Tawaba and his sons in particular. Tawaba never backed down in his opposition to the regime, which Gar knew would make the King a target for the regime's violent repression—especially considering the fact that Tawaba's refusal to accept the regime left the country on the brink of civil war. On Tuesday, Beast Boy's fears were ultimately realized when it was reported that the King and his family had gone missing.

The changeling was beginning to realize he might be a little too immersed in this for his own good, but at the same time, he couldn't seem to tear himself away from his obsession on his own. At this point, he didn't even know what day it was anymore, until one of the hosts on a CNN show noted it. So immersed was he in the matter that, although his animal DNA had left him with the strongest senses of all the former Titans, and the knock was more than loud enough that a normal person should have been able to hear it, he didn't hear a thing when Raven knocked on the door. Luckily for Beast Boy's sanity, she was not in a position nor mood to allow the lack of a response to stop her.

The empath opened the door, half expecting her friend to be passed out from sleep deprivation or malnutrition, but she quickly found that he was very much conscious. "Gar," she said trying to get his attention; he gave not the slightest indication of having heard her. "Beast Boy," she said a little louder while walking toward the desk, but to the same effect. "Garfield!" she shouted as she began to shake him. He initially jumped in shock, but quickly realized it was his empathic friend who was in the room with him.

"Oh, hey Rae!" the changeling finally responded. "What's up?" he asked, knowing that Raven wasn't one to interrupt people's activities without an important reason of some sort. Frankly, this was not an exception—seeing Beast Boy like this scared the crap out of her.

She decided honesty would probably be the best policy. "Vic and I were worrying about you," she said with her hand still on his shoulder. "I wanted to see if, maybe, you wanted to watch a movie, or spend some time out of the house for a while?" Garfield carefully considered what she had asked him; he was aware that what he was doing wasn't really healthy, and maybe it would do him some good to get his mind off from everything for a while. He was also keenly aware that Raven wouldn't be doing this unless she really was worried about him.

"I guess," he said with a hint of hesitation in his voice. While he consciously knew that he needed to get away from his obsession with Lamumba for a while, he still felt bad about the prospect of spending time on recreation. He smelled himself and paused for a moment. "But maybe I should take a shower first."

Author's Notes
This chapter is still kinda slow and considerably shorter than the preceding chapter, but I hope it's steadily building up the plot.

The second half of this chapter starts to tread into some dark territory, but it won't be the darkest chapter by any measure. The next chapter will be much lighter, though, as Beast Boy and Raven spend a weekend with each other in the LA area.

I've established that Beast Boy's instincts are telling him that there's some sort of "power behind the throne" in the Kibwana regime, but whether such a shadow influence actually exists and who it is are still open questions. We can confirm that it's a non-state actor, though.

Annatheavidreader- Although I really do not want to spoil the plot right now, I will confirm that at least one (perhaps more) of your guesses are right on the money. I don't really want to identify which those might be, or the quantity of correct guesses, though. I agree about the characters maturing over time; no one really stays the same. I really like what Bruce Lee said about how there's really no such thing as maturity, but rather an "ever-evolving process of maturing" that carries on until the day the person dies, and I hope that the characters in my story will kind of exhibit that ever-evolving process. If there's a sequel (I'm actually considering multiple sequels, depending on how this story goes), that process will be even more pronounced in the overall series of stories.

Stay Tuned
Is there a power in the shadows sponsoring the Kibwana regime, and if so, who is it? Will Beast Boy's past be revealed, or will he lose his sanity first? What happened to King Tawaba and his family? Stay tuned for the answers to all these questions (and more)!