Instinct is a powerful thing. For most creatures, it rules every aspect of their life, their existence. It is the driving force behind the circle of life. From the smallest, meanest single cell organism, to the largest, greatest beasts in the ocean, all life is governed by Instinct.
To each kind there are given certain specific, peculiar instincts, perhaps unique to them and them alone, but for all creatures there are also at least two fundamental, universal instincts. The need to sustain one's own life, and the urge to propagate further generations, howsoever that may be done -- these are the two most fundamental and absolute of all instincts, the foundation upon which the entire circle of life is balanced.
Even humans are ruled by instinct. It is the impulse at the back of one's mind, the unthinking urge to do this or that, for no reason other than that you must.
The desire to feed, to sustain one's own life, is universal to all life forms. And so, too, is the desire to reproduce -- to "mate", for those many organisms which replicate via the mixing of genes with other members of their species. Food and sex, two of the most fundamental forces in human history, and in the history of all animal life. These are both powerful.
But sex is the stronger. Salmon will push their bodies to the point of breaking down, simply to reach the waters where they were born, to spawn the next generation of their kind. Octopus males die after sex, and the females will starve themselves to death guarding their unhatched young. And for countless other kinds and species, also, to reproduce marks the end of their own lives, which they would otherwise preserve instinctively.
So powerful, thus, is the desire to propagate, to reproduce, to mate. This is, perhaps, the greatest and most terrible of all instincts, the single most formidable, fundamental driving force in life as we know it.
Now.
We have thus established the potency of the reproductive instinct, of the desire to mate, in all forms of life. No creature is there, known to science, save perhaps humans and pandas alone, which will deny the mating instinct, and even for humans this is considered a great effort of will, if not outright foolish or futile.
And so, now that we have established this, imagine, if you will, an individual, a life form in which the genetic potential of all life, on all worlds -- past, present, or future -- resides. A person in whom lies dormant the combined force of instinct of eons beyond counting of adaptation and evolution for all the innumerable forms of animal life in the universe, that have ever been, or ever will be. A young man with the ability to transform himself, instantaneously, into any creature he knows of, alive or dead, extant or extinct.
Such a grand, sobering thought, is it not? A living embodiment of all animal life, the human incarnation of evolution and the infinite possibilities of the genetic code which governs the existence of all comprehensible life. Such a magnificent, poetic notion, staggering in the sheer scale of its implications to science and philosophy, and the human understanding of the vast, yet unassuming power contained within the humble ribonucleotides.
Beast Boy snorted in his sleep, drooling onto his pillow.
"Oh yeah... baby..." he murmured unconsciously, perhaps giving voice to some unknowable dialogue within the subconscious world of dreams. "Lemme get a nice... snrkgrle... that booty..."
He groaned, burying his face into his pillow, which was by now rather soaked with his saliva. Still asleep, still dreaming, he began thrusting his hips against his bed, no doubt imagining doing... certain things... with some lovely lady or other.
"Mmm..." he moaned sleepily, drooling a little bit more as he grunted in his sleep, biting a little into his pillow. "So tight, baby... hrngph... like that, don'cha..." He snored a little bit, his sleep-talk briefly fading into the cacophonous, throaty rattling, before resuming one last time with the mumbled, scarcely audible utterance of one simple name.
What was it?
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