To be a hero: Chapter 6

Terra opened her eyes slowly. A bright light shone down into her face from above her head. For a moment Terra thought that maybe... just maybe... she was in heaven. Her eyes adjusted to the introduction of such bright light and she realised she was in fact in the Titian Tower medical bay. The continuous beep of a life support machine which she guessed she was hooked up to drilled into her skull relentlessly. A groan escaped her lips. She felt like she had just died and come back to life in the space of 24 hours. Which was actually not so far from the truth.

Terra sat up on the bed and put her hand to her temple. She searched every corner of her mind to find a memory, a clue, anything! Which would explain why she was here. Her right hand instinctively moved to her left wrist, where scars were still evident. Terra' eyes widened. They knew. As Terra's hands feebly traced the scars, bringing back the memories of the previous night back into her mind's eye

Phantom had saved her once again. It was just at this moment where Beast Boy entered the room.

"Hey Guys!" he yelled. "She's awake" The shape shifter jumped on Terra and engulfed her in a bone-crushing hug. Soon after Starfire flew in and gave an even more painful hug.

"Help...me." She rasped. The other Titians laughed and gathered around her bed.

"What happened last night Terra?" asked Robin. Cyborg rolled his eyes.

'Straight to business as usual then Robin' he thought. Seriously, could he not let the poor girl rest before bombarding her with an endless river of questions; many of which could be private or make her feel extremely uncomfortable

"You don't have to answer straight away Terra." Robin frowned at Cyborg's words. This could be an important security risk! "Take your time to get your memories straight."

"What's with those scars? They look... are you an emo!" everybody frowned at Beast Boys stereotyping ways. He made it sound like he was accusing somebody of a serious crime. Not labelling somebody unfairly and unturned insulting a large number of the population in the progress. Terra was worst hit. This was one of many reasons that she had never rekindled the romance they had once shared. Beast Boy was too much of a kid. To set to label people without even so much as a second thought to how they actually feel about what he was saying. In her youth Terra had actually quite liked the emo look, if it wasn't for Slade... when he was actually sane, she would most likely still have the looks of a stereotypical emo girl.

"No I'm not 'emo' as you so ignorantly put it; I just... lose control sometimes."

"Losing control of you're emotions doesn't usually make people cut themselves Terra." said Raven. Though her voice still sounded monotonous to most people, anybody who spent a lot of time around her would know that she was actually speaking in quite a concerned tone. Terra knew that his was true. She couldn't let then know her secret could she? No... maybe Danny, but not her teammates; not until this Phantom thing was over.

"I don't think I'm ready to tell you yet." she simply stated. Robin opened his mouth to object but was silenced by death glares from everybody else which seemed to say, 'Respect her wishes or be subjected to he worst possible pranks ever thought by a human mind.'

"Fine, maybe we can get some more info out of Phantom." Terra turned her head to where Robin was pointing. On the other side of the room a figure lay inside a quarantine chamber. The sides of the chamber were glowing with red energy but despite that you could clearly see a teenage boy dressed in a black hazmat suit. Terra let her eyes wander and take in all there was to see about the boy who had saved her life time and time again. His snow white hair covered his left eye but you could see from the right that they were a hypnotising neon green. They even seemed to be glowing slightly in the bright room. Terra was startled to see that he was unconscious but his eyes were still open. Was he dead? But ghosts can't die after all, been there, done that.

Terra quickly sprung out of the hospital bed and near flew towards the end of the room. The titans were perplexed, all the injuries and fatigue they were expecting to see fro her were virtually none existent; though she favoured her right arm as opposed to the left. Her face was pressed up against the glass as the other Titans gradually moved up to join her. Just on cue, Danny started to wake. When he was sitting up and the shocked look on his face had disappeared, Robin started to ask questions through a small intercom.

"Phantom, who are you and why have you taken such an interest in Terra." He spoke clearly into the mike. Phantom gave a small smile in Terra's direction before he turned his face to address Robin. Terra gave a small blush; it was almost an exact replica of the smile Danny gave. The one which made her heart soar and stomach do flip flops whenever she saw it.

"Well Robin," he started seriously. "For starters I have saved her many times, including last night, from certain death. I was the one who dropped her off her after she had finished with Slade." His voice took on an almost playful tone at the end as he started ticking off the points he made on his fingers.

"But why?" asked Beast Boy.

"Why not." He bluntly answered. He didn't want to go into details about how she reminded him of what he could have become. Evil and unforgiving. She had defeated her omens as had he, so it was only fitting that she survived to a ripe old age. Besides the fact the fact that Danny thought she was pretty cute…

"Fair enough, what did you do to her last night?" Danny rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. Terra gasped; another thing he had in common with her Danny. Where was he anyway? Terra voiced this question.

"Erm…" What the Titians saw was Phantom move closer to the edge of the containment device. Danny knew that he couldn't phase out of the chamber. However this didn't stop his powers from working fully. An invisible duplicate appeared outside of the box. He smiled at himself, literally. Clone-Danny reappeared outside the room and promptly turned back into his normal human self. His clone walked into the room to receive a huge hug from Terra. From his multi view, Phantom could see Beast Boy's eyes narrow at this act of affection. Danny raised an eyebrow at his reaction. He personally thought that her and Beast Boy had gotten over their feelings for each other months ago, seems like all was not what it seemed in that department. This could get interesting. He thought before turning his attention back to Robin's question.

"I saved her life, using my very ecto energy to stimulate her body." Terra's face flushed with red as she associated the word 'stimulate' with a certain innuendo. Beast Boy turned even greener with envy also, but the involuntary joke was lost on the other occupants of the room. Robin asked for an in-depth explanation but Danny honestly had no more additional knowledge to offer.

"Could you let him go now please? It's hardly very gracious to leave him locked up after everything he has done really is it?" Clone Danny said. Though Robin wanted to ask more questions, he was swayed by a pleading Starfire with puppy dog eyes to let the shields down. Phantom gave one more wave to the group before turning invisible and joining back up with his clone. Now that the burden of having a multiple consciousnesses was lifted from Danny's mind, he could turn to bigger problems. Almost as soon as he and Terra had gotten away from the rest of the group they went back into her room. Danny had to talk to Terra about what he had seen earlier. Cutting…

Terra reluctantly walked into the room and immediately jumped onto the bed. It was a strange situation, on one hand Danny was in her room again and they were going to hang out, all alone. Of course he must know about her, tendencies, by now. Her secret had practically been the topic of choice whenever she wasn't around, not that she knew that. They sat down on her bed and Danny told her to make herself comfortable so she lay down on her soft, comfy pillows.

"I'm not going to shout at you Terra." Danny near whispered, his shoes catching his attention. "I just want to know why?"

Terra bit her lip. She shouldn't tell him, what would he think of her if he knew the truth of her heritage? Would he laugh? Would he get angry at her for what she had done in the past? Terra had the urge to slap herself; of course Danny would understand, he would care for her and help her through this, he would do everything in his power to make the others understand and volunteer his home to take her in if she was rejected. Danny Fenton was her guardian angel in this situation, along with her protector Danny Phantom…weird how similar their names are.

"Do you promise not tot tell anybody!" she pleaded. Danny lifted his head and his ice blue eyes penetrated her stone grey.

"Of course I won't tell anyone Terra." he assured her. "It's obviously a big thing for you so you can tell it to your friends in your own time." Terra sighed. Here goes everything.

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A small girl ran into the forest near her town. Her house was ablaze and the mob of angry villagers searched tirelessly for her, around the houses, near the shops.

"She can't have gone far! Split up into teams to find the demon." Shouted one of the members of the mob angrily. Tears streamed down her face as she watched the entire scene unfold from behind a tree. She watched her own mother get beaten and viciously raped by people who were once her friends. It all started the day the girl went down to the old quarry for a trip with her preschool. She started playing with the nearby rocks and didn't notice at first that they were floating until her teacher started screaming; yelling that the devil had found the village. Everybody in the old village were old time devout Catholics. The kind which had never grown out of middle age stupidity. So when they found out that one of their own (even if it was just a small, five year old girl) was exhibiting powers. They instantly believed that the girl was a witch. It never crossed their minds that such powers could be used for good, perhaps even to benefit them in the near future.

As a team of villager got closer the poor girl ran further into the forest. She felt like she was running for hours until the fatigue of the constant strain on her young muscles caught up with her and she was forced to take a small rest on the side of a nearby stream. The young girls face was marred by the tear-stains which now adorned the pale, cute features. There was nothing the girl wanted to do, as she pulled her legs towards her chest, than to just leave it all behind. She was so innocent, she had no concept of suicide or death, but she still felt the primal human emotion to just fade into the background; stay curled up in the protective ball forever and a day.

"Hello there little one. What's your name then?"

The kind face of a middle aged man, deceptive, charming. Little was the innocent to know that he would soon manipulate her, even if he didn't know about her powers. So she responded, albeit cautiously.

"Terra."

VERY SORRY ABOUT THE WAIT!

I just stopped writing completely recently, even if I have wanted to update for ages now. Hopefully this is a little longer and you have all enjoyed it. I will try to update this story more often now.

-James