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Mating Season	By : EvilFuzzy Category: DC Verse Cartoons - Teen Titans > Threesomes Plus Views: 47297 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to ownership of DC Comics or the Teen Titans franchise, and furthermore makes no money from writing or publishing this piece. This is a non-profit fan work.

Chapter List
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Beast Boy let out a sigh of relief at Cyborg's words.
"Oh, good..." he said. Tension seemed to melt from his shoulders, and his face was bright and worry-free. "So you mean, like, they're on the pill or something?"
A pregnant pause ensued following that remark. The drone hovered a little lower in the air, and the image on the screen seemed to flicker for a moment, and blur a little with static. Cyborg looked distinctly awkward, and Terra laughed.
"Birth control?" she said. "Why would we want that?" She wrapped her arms around Beast Boy from behind, pressing her small but perky bosom into his back.
Beast Boy gulped. "Um, to keep from getting pregnant?" he ventured. "I mean, I... you're a great friend – you all are – and, well, I don't know if it's just hormones or whatever that's making you guys do all this, but..."
He shook his head, running a hand through his hair with a sigh.
"You're worried that once this is over, we'll regret doing all of this?" said Raven quietly, coolly.
"Yeah, basically..." muttered Beast Boy. "You guys are just acting like this because I'm in rut, or whatever, and putting off a bunch of super strong pharaoh-whatsits. Once it's all over..."
There was a snort, and a laugh from the drone.
"Wait, seriously?" came Cyborg's voice from the drone, and his face was filling the monitor in a way that made it look like he was leaning in close to the camera. "Is THAT what you think is going on?" he said, sounding torn between incredulity and amusement. "That's ridiculous."
Beast Boy blinked.
A beat followed.
"Dude?" said the changeling. "What are you talking about...? Star told me all about how I was going into heat, er... well, rut, or whatever... but, she told me... um..." Beast Boy paused, trailing off.
Actually, now that he thought about it, Starfire's whole comment about putting all of these girls in quarantine with him had been rather fishy. Particularly the part about infecting other people with his pheromones.
In hindsight, that really did sound simply absurd.
Raven scoffed. "I told you we shouldn't have let Starfire explain it to him."
"Hey, she seemed really eager to..." replied Terra, looking sheepish. She worried awkwardly at one of her blonde tresses. "But... I guess she must have misunderstood some things..."
"Or else Beast Boy misunderstood her explanation," retorted Raven.
"Dude?" interjected the shapeshifter in question. "Guys? Mind filling me in? I'm a little lost here..."
"You ARE in heat, BB," said Cyborg through the drone's speakers. "I don't know what else Star might'a told you, but that much is true."
"Well, I figured that much," replied Beast Boy. "I mean, I have been pretty, um... tense, recently... But, what about the girls here being the ones who'd been exposed to my thingies?" he asked. "My pheromones?"
"What?" said Terra. "No, that's silly. The girls here were all briefed on the situation, and agreed to come here. It didn't have anything to do with your pheromones."
"Huh?" said Beast Boy. "But, then, why are they in quarantine with me at all?" he asked. "I mean, the risk of someone getting knocked up..."
"Quarantine?" said Cyborg. "Man, where did you get that from? That makes it sound like you've got some infectious disease."
"I know!" said Beast Boy. "That's what I told Starfire."
"Well, I dunno why she told you something like that, but nah, man, you aren't in quarantine."
"Okay?" said Beast Boy, feeling a little lost. "This isn't a quarantine, then. Okay, I get that." He frowned. "But... then, why are all these girls in here with me? It's not like this is a matter of national security, or anything..."
"Actually," interjected Terra, "from a certain point of view, you could say that it is."
"Eh?" said Beast Boy, now thoroughly perplexed and bemused. "What are you talking about, Terra?"
"Your DNA," Raven said. "It's the genetic Holy Grail, so to speak. You can turn into any animal you know of, completely reconfiguring your genetic code as you break down your body cell by cell, then rebuild it into whatever creature you're turning into."
"Right," said Cyborg. "Biotech companies have been trying to get at you for years, haven't they?"
Beast Boy grimaced, recalling some memories he would have rather left forgotten. "Yeah..."
"Well, think about it, BB. There isn't a single existing organism on the planet with DNA like yours. Never even mind the way you're tearing the laws of thermodynamics a new one every time you turn into a T. rex or a housefly, your genetic code has the potential to do damn near anything."
The drone activated a projector, which shone on the far wall of Raven's room. A movie began to play. It showed the traditional depiction of a double helix DNA molecule, coiled in on itself inside the nucleus of every cell in every living organism's body (at least, those cells which have nuclei).
"Every known form of organic life uses DNA to store its biological blueprints. The oldest known fragments of DNA retrieved from bacteria in salt crystals—" an illustration of a globular amoeba inside a geometric halite fragment showed up next to the double-helix. "—show that even as far back as 250 million years, the deoxyribonucleic acids that form the basis for modern life were nearly identical in construction to what you would see in comparable modern day organisms..."
Beast Boy groaned. He was already lost.
"...the Guanine, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine coding of DNA allows for extremely efficient storage of information – a necessity, given its function in the body – and furthermore the DNA molecule is massive, and even bacteria can have upwards of ten million base pairs in their genetic code," continued Cyborg. "In spite of this, though, most of the DNA molecule doesn't actually code for anything. Not in humans. Most of a person's DNA is made up of viral DNA left over from illnesses suffered by our ancestors millions of years ago, and maybe even farther back than that. Somewhere around 80% of the genetic code of all known terrestrial animals is identical, and most of it is just junk data left over from eons of life."
Beast Boy probably would have been starting to nod off, he was so bored by this, if not for the fact that he had just woken up from a good, refreshing sleep. As it was, though, he was still going mad from the boredom.
"Even between humans and chimpanzees, 99% percent of the DNA is identical." said Cyborg, the projector showing an anatomical comparison between an adult human male and an adult male Pan troglodytes. "That one percent is the difference between a human being and a chimpanzee. That one percent represents the difference between atom bombs and flinging poo. Does that help you understand? Even the tiniest changes to the genetic code can result in massive physiological and anatomical differences."
The projector cut off, and the drone turned to face Beast Boy, Raven, and Terra.
"BB, your DNA rewrites itself every time you morph. Your body is broken down and rebuilt, gaining or losing mass as necessary with no observable changes in local thermal or electromagnetic energy levels."
"Unlimited cell division..." murmured Terra. "Is that right?"
"Partly, yeah," said Cyborg. "BB's DNA can perform transcription, translation, and replication hundreds of trillions of times in a fraction of a second. Even disregarding the metabolic implications of this, the fact is that his cells don't appear to have a Hayflick limit. His telomeres should be shortening like crazy, with all the cell division that occurs every time he shapeshifts, and this repeated division should be causing all kinds of errors and mutations to appear in his genetic code. But BB's body freely produces telomerase to counteract the shortening of telomeres, and his DNA seems to reset to a, well, fresh copy every time he morphs."
Beast Boy heard a sharp intake of breath from Terra, and Raven's eyes widened.
"Fresh copy...?" said Terra. "You mean, any damage to his DNA gets reverted every time he shapeshifts?"
Cyborg nodded onscreen.
"This is even bigger than I would have thought..." Raven murmured. "This isn't just a study of genetic evolution, is it? I might not be a biologist, but I'm well aware of the implications of what you're saying. Vertebrate cells have a limited lifespan, a built-in cap on the total number of times they can perform mitosis. When cells reach this limit, they stop dividing, and the organism's health will degenerate as cells slowly die off without being replaced."
Beast Boy gulped. "Seriously? Dude, that sounds awful! Isn't there a cure?"
Raven gave him a strange look and a small, morbid smile. "There is no cure for old age, Garfield. Everything dies eventually."
"Old age? Wait, you mean...?"
"Yeah, normal cells can only divide so many times," explained Cyborg. "This limits mutation in a single organism. Errors naturally accumulate in the DNA over a person's life, and environmental toxins slowly damage it, too. In complex, vertebrate organisms, mutations are almost always more detrimental than helpful, and errors in DNA can create defective cells. With the Hayflick phenomenon, it's just an evolutionary choice between an assured, inevitable death, and a prolonged, statistically almost as inevitable one."
"But my DNA doesn't have that?" said Beast Boy, perplexed and befuddled. "What, does that mean I don't age? But, I've grown a lot since I got my powers..."
Terra, next to him, shook her head. "Growth isn't the same as aging. Not in this context, at least. In fact, it's almost sorta the opposite."
"Okay..." said Beast Boy. "But, still, I mean... it almost sounds like you're saying I'm immortal, or something..."
Cyborg, on the drone's monitor, shrugged.
"For all we know, you MIGHT be. And that's part of why the scientists at BioGenetech offered to fund this."
Beast Boy blinked.
"Huh?" he said. "Fund what?"
"The raising of any babies that might be born from this," said Terra.
"And hazard pay to the potential mothers of these hypothetical spawn," added Raven.
"Yeah," said Cyborg. "The company wants to study the general health and physiology of babies fathered by the only extant member of Homo therium."
"Homer what?"
"Homo therium," repeated Cyborg. "Didn't you know, BB? A bunch of geneticists and evolutionary biologists got together a while after that Brotherhood of Evil fiasco. As a superhero, that was really your international debut, you know? You took a ragtag bunch of heroes and made them into Titans. People really started taking notice of you as an individual superhero after that incident, and this one scientist apparently did some digging and proposed that you represent a whole new species."
Beast Boy scowled.
"So I'm like an animal they want to study?" he muttered with unusual bile.
"Humans are animals," replied Cyborg. "Really intelligent ones, maybe, but still members of the kingdom Animalia. It's only natural that scientists would want to study you, and find out whether or not you represent a new species, Homo therium, or if you are simply an anomalous specimen of Homo sapiens."
Beast Boy's scowl softened, and his expression turned strangely thoughtful. "A new species..." he whispered contemplatively. "They want to see if my abilities can be passed on to children?"
"In laymen's terms, yes. That's why they sought out such a wide range of volunteers," explained Cyborg. "From outright alien lifeforms like Star and Supergirl, to anomalous human and semi-human lifeforms like Raven and Terra, to plain old ordinary humans like Arrowette and Kitten. It runs the genetic gamut, so to speak. If any of them are able to be impregnated by you, and give birth to children with your shapeshifting abilities, then that is effectively proof that you can be considered a new species."
"That... seems kind of seriously unethical," said Beast Boy. "I mean, isn't this basically human experimentation? And not just the girls, either, but what about the babies? Er, if any babies are made, that is... I didn't sign up to raise any, and I'm not sure I'd even be able to afford it... "
Terra shrugged. "It was a strictly volunteer thing. They were completely upfront about what they wanted, and we got plenty of brochures on potential risks, both theoretical and run of the mill," she said. "I suppose it must sound pretty suspicious, but it's all completely aboveboard. We all know what we signed up for, and this experiment was even proposed to, and approved by, both the UN and the Justice League. People are calling this the next Human Genome Project."
Raven nodded. "It's all for the advancement of science and human understanding of the natural world. That's what they're saying, at least. But there's much that could be learned from this. Adult stem cell research, possible cures for cancer, insights into the mechanisms of evolution and adaptation... it's a long list."
"And if babies are born?" said Beast Boy, frowning. "What happens to them? Are you saying you all signed up to raise any kids you have because of this? I don't believe you did. That's a lifetime commitment."
"Protocols have been established to ensure the the physical and emotional well being of any children born during this experiment," said Cyborg through the hovering drone. "If the mother decides to keep the baby, she'll a generous monthly stipend for childcare expenses until such time as it is no longer necessary. Otherwise, the kids will be adopted and raised by employees of BioGen Inc."
Beast Boy frowned. "I'm not sure I like that..." he muttered. "Would I get to see them? The kids, that is?"
"Yes," said Raven. "If there are children, and they do have your abilities, then the company would want not stop you from educating or bonding with the children."
"And if they don't have my powers?" he asked.
"... ... ..." He received no answer for several seconds. Terra, Raven, and Cyborg were all silent. A pregnant pause seemed to swallow up all sound in the room.
Then, finally, Terra spoke.
"...if the parent or parents have no objections, then yeah."
Beast Boy swallowed a grimace.
"What if I want to raise the kids myself?" he asked.
"Then you would be given financial assistance the same as the mothers would be, at least as long as you proved a sufficiently competent parent," replied Cyborg, looking sympathetic for his little green buddy.
"So I do have the choice..." said Beast Boy slowly, after a moment of thought. "This is pretty heavy, dude. It's a lot to take in..."
He then felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind once more. They were familiar, and he immediately knew whose they were.
"Oh, don't worry," Terra purred into Beast Boy's ear, smiling into his neck as she trailed her hands down his chest. "Just relax, and let us take care of the complicated things. You aren't here to think." Her fingers danced playfully down his abdomen, and she smiled at the drone. "So, if you would excuse us, Cyborg. I want to test a certain... hypothesis... of my own..."
Beast Boy shivered, and the drone's monitor shut off. It turned around and hovered on out of the room.
Garfield Logan would not be getting out of this any time soon, it seemed.
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Mating Season