So, there was I, staring down at a green-skinned feral child, flaggerbasted by the fact he was a kid instead of a man, or even a teenager as I hoped, Garfield, in turn, stared up at me with teeth bared, but it was clear he was scared of me. Then, I remembered that Allera had gone to Grundy during the forties, well before the Logans were born, and he was apparently the last person empowered by her. That still left a space nearly sixty years.
Indeed, my hopes for a quick mission were washed away when the realization that fully sank in.
And yet, despite the age discrepance, Beast Boy was nonetheless in front of me. His body radiated the red energy that gave him his power, but strangely I didn't detect anything metallic inside. It seemed that Arella only did that specific ritual with Grundy.
Looking around the cave without moving, I saw the remains of dead animals littering the floor, some little more than bones, others a bit meatier. Whatever had happened to his parents, at least Garfield had been capable of caring for himself thanks to his powers.
But for how long, though? Weeks, months, years? Maybe his entire life? If so, what did happen to his parents to leave him in the middle of Africa's largest rainforest?
Still not knowing what to do at the moment, I decided to pull off my helmet, not just to not scare him further by showing him that I was a person, but also to see him with my eyes. Then, I crouched low to seem as less threatening as I was.
Garfield, mesmerized by the fact that (from his point of view) I pulled out my 'head' to reveal another, normal one underneath it, and that I looked like him, stopped growling and, after several seconds of silence, crawled up to me and stood up on two legs to see my face more clearly before doing what any curious boy his age did: touch my face, grab my nose, pull on my beard to see how would I react, the typical.
I let him because I wanted to earn his trust, and because I was probably the only real human contact he had for a long time. Plus, seeing him play with my beard put a small smile in my face. Then, inspection of me completed, he stepped back a bit and looked at me again.
I stood there for several minutes, both of us staring at each other, before I slowly rose up and walked out of the cave, helmet still in hand, the pitter-patter behind me signifying he followed.
As I walked around the jungle in search for something that might tell me about his parents' fate, I either heard Garfield's steps or saw him stalking me from afar, clearly believing I could not discern his green camouflage from the jungle. After an hour of fruitless search, and before I could ask VEGA to scan the area, Garfield jumped in front of me. However, he didn't attack me as some of you might think, but instead merely looked at me for several seconds before. It was obvious he wanted me to follow him, and that he knew something.
Eventually, after following Garfield through the jungle for several hours and the sun began to set, I found what I was searching for: a large, ovoid clearing in which the tattered remains of a long-abandoned campsite rested, one littered with human bones.
The moment Garfield entered the clearing he stood there, frozen as he stared at the bones. By his stance and sad eyes he had already come there before I found him.
There were no footsteps around to indicate who or what did this, no spent brass cartridges, no camera with the recording of a doomed expedition... nothing that could tell me who did this, and the Logans had no one who wanted them dead. However, I did find out something upon a closer inspection: some of the skeletons had been crushed like twigs by something.
"VEGA, can you find anything? Any leads about what might have happened?"
"I'm afraid not, Slayer. However, I can tell you it's been abandoned for three years"
His response made me grunt in displeasure. For the first time since I came here, and not counting Rachel, we were in the blind about something, which I didn't like the slightest. John could help, but he was busy at the moment, and as much as I hated to I knew I couldn't just deviate myself from th mission just to find out how they died. At the very least, I knew had to have raised Garfield somewhat.
Again I looked around to find something, anything that could direct me, but all I found was Garfield still standing there, contemplating two particular skeletons. Seeing him there, staring at the vine-covered bones of his parents. Pretty sure the only reason he was not crying was because he had done so a long time ago and his tears had simply dried out.
I approached the boy and embraced him as gently as I could, and while he squirmed at first, eventally he stopped resistingh.
I really didn't know how else should I comfort someone with such a loss, as since my arrival here, and other than the Voyager's debacle, I never dealt with doing so; that was how Clark lived by, and even Bruce, but not me. Still, didn't mean I lacked a heart.
Whoever had done this, they would end up wishing they hadn't come out of their stinking hole.
Sadly, as said earlier, and as much as I hated to, I could not stay there to investigate further, and neither could Garfield. Sure, he had managed to survive there by himself for however long, but at the same time something made me refuse to leave him in the jungle. As for giving him to his living relatives...
So, it was decided: I would take Garfield to the Fortress.
I didn't realize it at the moment, but I essentially adopted the boy, just like that, although it took some time for both of us to realize it.
Plus, Grundy could use the presence of someone who wasn't scared of him... after some controlled interactions, that is.
I let Garfield go before standing up and opening a portal on a side of the clearing; while naturally startled by the sudden appearance of the dark blue vortex, just like before, Garfield approached it with curiosity. Then, I stepped through the portal into the fortress, and after several seconds of waiting Garfield followed.
It was the beginning of his new life.
..........
It ended up being both easier and harder than I thought it would be; easier, because he adapted quite well, harder because he first had to adapt which, given his ability, was kind of a problem.
One would expect him to act more like a beast than a person given his past, but aside from morphing into animals. eating with his hands and moving on all fours, he acted like the toddler he was, if much more energetically. It seemed that being brought to civilization (as much as the Fortress could be called that) had resurfaced the human in him, which was good.
Back to Garfield's first days in the Fortress, I gave him one of the smaller and closer to mine's rooms of the Fortress as his, big enough for him to move around in his elephant form (not that big yet, but still as large as a mastiff). For starters, the animals I had seen him into had been fauna exclusive to the Congo Basin, elephantss included. It seemed that for him to use his power, he had to have seen the animal he wanted to turn into before.
Wanting to test the theory, I put an hologram of a tiger in front him, an exact copy of the animal the point one would have believed it was the real deal until they tried to touch it. After a short while, understanding what I wanted from him, Garfield grunted and winced, and then turned into a tiger. A cub, but a tiger nonetheless. I did the same with several other animals not native to Africa (specifically a brown bear, an emperor penguin, a tapir, a komodo dragon and a dingo), and he promptly turned into all of them.
It would be a long time before he could transform into Earth's most powerful megafauna (and given this was DC it didn't encompass just dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals), mostly because I didn't want him to yet, but this was a good start. As for the end goal for this, one day he would stop being a child and would want to be a hero.
Being a child who had been for himself in a jungle, Garfield was, for lack of a better term to describe it, prone to causing mischief, even though most of it had been accidental. Among the many things he caused:
-Akane nearly getting her ears bit off when, after being told of Garfield and seeing him she grabbed the boy from behind. She happily forgave him, but was sure of never surprising him again, at least from the back.
-Cracking a screen with his gorilla form when it lit up next to him. He cut his hands for his troubles, and after I stopped his attempts to throw stuff at them he refused to go near any screen too low to the ground afterwards.
-Ripping some hair strands from Grundy for some unknown reason. Grundy didn't even feel it, but he did see Garfield run away and comment upon it.
"Little animal boy is weird."
Oh, Grundy. Again, you might think he must have lacked the patience, but instead he was fascinated by the mere existence of Garfield, having never seen someone so young yet at the same time older than Arella's baby. It wasn't true friendship per se, at least at first, but close enough nonetheless. Maybe it was a side effect of being avatars of.
Another thing about him: being around me and VEGA for over a week had improved his vocabulary, if only by a little. I hoped it would improve further, to get him out of part of his big brute image when he finally came back to Earth and met the public in person. Plus, I took the time to close his gaping wounds, because of the previous statements and because seeing his muscle, bone and sinew arose my inner want to rip something apart. It wasn't an unbearable feeling, but it was still there.
So, to summarize, Garfield acquitted himself well to his new surroundings.
And then came the day I told Bruce and Clark about Garfield, and what I had planned for him. Let's just say that, despite his still face, the Batman was not happy with my decision, not one bit.
..........
In his thirty-odd years of life and through his career as vigilante, Bruce had seen many, many things, from a crocodile man strong enough to lift propane cylinders nearly as big as him and throw them with ease, to a man faster than a speeding bullet, to a bona fida alien invasion, and many, many other things.
He never, ever expected to see Solomon Grundy having a staring contest with a boy who could not be any older than four perched on his shoulders (much less one with green skin and pointed ears) before turning into a bird and flying off. A boy that, if Slayer's words were anything to go by, could turn into any animal from Earth, and might be able to do even more than just that as he grew older.
He, Clark and the Flash had been called by Doom Slayer to inform them of what he had found on the Congo in his search of the 'elemental avatars': the host of the Red, a boy called Garfield Logan, who had been living by himself on the rainforest for an unknown amount of time after his parents had been mysteriously killed. Slayer said he had left their remains back there in the jungle out of respect, not wanting to disturb them, but planned to take them to their other relatives.
Strange. If Arella had done the ritual sixty years prior, that meant she linked Garfield's grandparents, not his parents. Maybe it was inheritable? They had asked Slayer about it, and even he was stumped about it.
And then there was the fact the boy basically shared house with Solomon Grundy. No matter how well-natured he was now, one misstep and the boy would...
Bruce shook his head to keep away from such thoughts, but he was certain Slayer saw him.
"So, let me get this straight." He heard Wally said before summarizing what they had been told. Unlike him or Slayer, both him and Clark could only communicate via audio due to having only an earpiece given to them by Bruce (originally he had only made one for Clark, but after Slayer's arrival and meeting the speedster in person he decided to keep in touch with him) and so could not see anything from either of them. "Did I get it right?"
"More or less."
"Any idea of who did it? The deaths, I mean."
Doom Slayer shook his head. "As much as I hate to admit it, nothing. Whoever killed them was very thorough in making sure they wouldn't be found. That, or just lucky. As for using John's help, he's still working and I don't want to bother him. Besides, I can't exactly divide my time right now."
"What about his family?" Clark asked, before clarifying. "I mean his living family. He has to have uncles, aunts. You can't just make him stay in the Fortress forever."
"He does, but after VEGA ran some simulations of them meeting Garfield I decided that the best for him, and for them, is that they don't know about him. The Logans didn't stell them anything about expecting a child either, so they don't know Garfield exists."
Bruce had to stop himself from crying out at his response. Refusing to let his family see the boy, even not telling them about his existence just like that?
"Simulations? Seriously? Look, I kind of like VEGA despite the guy not even having a face, but
"Maybe, maybe not, but I don't want to take Garfield to his uncle only for him to scream the moment he sees his nephew looks like a freak. I didn't need to simulate the encounter given the many examples already out there."
Bruce grunted, but at the same time he had to agree with his reasoning, especially given he knew about the 'examples' Slayer was talking about: being treated like a freak by your own family was the very same reason Croc became the misanthropic man-eater he was today, and many other villains out there he knew of.
He still did not like the alternative, which he knew because he had done something similar with Dick.
"Then who will you send him to?" He asked slowly, even though he already knew the response.
Instead of replying, the soldier merely looked at him through the screen. Even though they couldn't see either of them, Clark and Wally knew what exactly was he getting at, the latter being the one to speak.
"You mean-"
"Yes, I'm taking Garfield under my wing."
The mental image of a green-skinned savage capable of turning turn animals, linked to Earth's animal kingdom and all that implied, and being not merely trained, but outright raised by someone like Doom Slayer made Bruce's eyes twitch. Someone so young, practically pure being under the care of a man not afraid of ripping his enemies with his bare hands, see their blood spill to the floor, and hear the desperate screams of their friends before going for them.
It didn't matter the sheer ridiculousness and impossibility of Slayer training the boy for that precise reason, but still.
It seemed that the soldier noted his fears, which admittedly wouldn't have been hard. "No, I'm not making him my sucessor, or even my damned sidekick. He's just a toddler, Bruce. Besides, the most he can do is turn into animals."
Bruce allowed himself to give a sigh of relief. Nonetheless, he would have to do something to see if Doom Slayer was being honest or not, or at least he limited himself to just train the boy for mere self-defense, which would make sense.
"Always the paranoid." Clark remarked. "Still, aren't there other options for Garfield?"
"Did you really expect me to leave the boy there, in the jungle? He's got human contact here more since I'll still bring to Earth to at least meet you, and VEGA is more than capable of being his private tutor, so he doesn't need to enroll in a school either."
"Damn, talk about being prepared for anything. Do a giant zombie and two japanese werewolves count as human, though?" Wally asked.
"I didn't say that you're not able ot taking care of Garfield." Clark clarified, ignoring Wally's question. "He must have other relatives that would take him in, maybe even his parent's friends. If not, I'm sure an orphanage might take him in."
"You sure they'd actually take him in, though? Or anyone at all" Wally pointed out."I mean, just look at him: he's green, and... Okay, can't exactly look, but you get the idea: he wouldn't be just bullied by some snotty brats. Trust me, I would know."
Green, pointy-eared and fanged to boot.
"Alright. Since the issue with Garfield is solved, at least for the moment, is there anything else you want to tell us about?" Bruce asked. In truth it wasn't solved (they still didn't know how did Garfield get the Red linked to him despite Arella doing her magic sixty years prior, or who killed his parents), but for now he couldn't do anything about it.
Doom Slayer nodded. "I found another of the linked, this time the Clear, the element of water."
"And where did you locate it?"
"It's in Atlantis."
'Naturally.'
Did I handle Beast Boy's situation right? Is the overused, cliché excuse of 'family'll treat him like a freak' a good reason to keep him in the Fortress, even though, as just stated, it's an overused trope? Again, if the ending seems rushed to you, lag is still tormenting me. Maybe because the chapters are too long?