((I just wanted to note that I in no way own any of the rights to, nor am affiliated in any way with the creators or owners of the Teen Titans, Cartoon Network, or DC Comics(or Time Warner, who owns all of them.). However I do retain rights to the ownership of all characters which I have made up for this story, such as Aurora(Melissa) and her family, among others, as well as the original plot for this story. based on a dream I had in July and August 2004.))

A Bright New Day

Chapter 1

It seemed like it would be just like any other day. It certainly started out that way. Melissa got up, got dressed, and went on the long ride to school. Just another run of the mill day in the middle of junior year. But by the end of the school day, she was feeling sick. She'd had 3 seizures already during the school day, and was feeling worse, not better. When she got home, she had a grand mal, something she hadn't had for almost 2 years, and had never had on this new medicine. She didn't stop breathing or fall on anything that would injure herself though, so her mother just brought her up to bed and watched her all night, once she could walk up the stairs.

In the morning, she had another one, and so she stayed home from school. But she'd been in bed when it happened, so she was fine. But as she started to feel better as the day went on, something else just didn't feel right. Melissa couldn't figure out what it was. It wasn't a seizure type of feeling, but something else, just like something was out of place. She went to bed early that night, exhausted from the seizures, and woke up even before her mother did the next morning. She went to school and had another run of the mill day, but there was still that feeling that something wasn't right. When she got home, her brother Rich was harassing her about some video game he said she stole. She knew Karin had it, but didn't say anything, because how dare he blame and harass her. Then he started to chase her, trying to sit on her to get it back-and 230 pounds on you isn't exactly a party. She ran into her room and tried to close the door, but he shoved it open, and was about to hit her. She put her hands up to block the blow, and suddenly heard Rich screaming. When she put her hands down, nothing was wrong, but he was laying on the floor. He got up and ran downstairs, yelling to their mother, "She wrapped me in some kind of stuff and tried to kill me! You have to get rid of her! She tried to kill me!" Melissa was scared, since she didn't know what the heck he was talking about and didn't want to get in trouble, but she figured it'd be better not to go argue her case, cause he always won, and she didn't want to get involved right now.

She went up to her room, and vented her anger and fear to her friends online. She told all of them what a psycho her mom was being, then went on to post about it in all of her online journals. It didn't help much, but it helped. Afterwards, she got offline, surprised that her mother hadn't screamed at her to get off already, and read a book in bed, slowly dozing off to sleep.

Meanwhile, at Titans Tower, the Teen Titans had just gotten back from a long night that began with a battle with Plasmus and Overload, followed almost immediately by 10 students from the H.I.V.E. attacking multiple banks. People had gotten injured. 4 of the H.I.V.E. students had gotten away. And the Titans were so exhausted they could barely make it through the doors of the Tower. They all went to their rooms and collapsed on their beds, even though it was only about 9pm. But they were tired, and besides that, it seemed to be one of those nights, and they were all sure another attack, robbery, whatever, would follow later in the night. But when Beast Boy got to his room, he suddenly remembered a new online video game he had bought the day before and had been dying to play. He forgot about being tired and immediately went to the computer and started playing. After he lost 5 times, he decided to surf the Internet for a little bit to see if he could find any cheat codes, before playing again. It was then that he stumbled upon Melissa's recount of her strange day, accidently, when he clicked on a site labeled 'Cheat Codes in my Online Journal... and was taken to her site instead of the one with the supposed cheats. "Yo... Yo, Rae, Robin, you guys have gotta come read this!" He yelled, running out of his room to go get them, and pulling them back, while they muttered groggily at him to shut up. Starfire and Cyborg were also awakened by his yells. "What." "Look!" He pointed at the screen, and Raven sat down to read, while Robin read from behind her, leaning on the chair to get closer so his tired eyes could see the screen. Afterwards he turned to the group and explained it, since Cyborg and Starfire still had no idea what was going on. "I think we should help her.", Robin said. "Yes! I agree! We must help this poor suffering clorthorg!" Starfire said jumping up and down. "Yeah, I guess man. I do kinda feel sorry for her." "Well, that's why I told you guys. She... well, she kinda reminds me of someone.." "I...I'm against this... but since you all want to..." Raven muttered, turning to go back to her room. "Then it's settled. We call her." Robin said, before returning to his own room.

Later on that evening, Melissa was upstairs in her room, taking a nap before finishing her over 6 hours of homework, when her mother came up and told her someone was on the phone for her. "Who? Who is it? What do they want? Tell them I'm sleeping." But her mother had already gone back down, so Melissa got up and walked to the kitchen and took the phone, expecting one of the girls from school to be on the phone. "Hello?", she asked. "Hi.", said a deep, serious female voice. "You don't know us, but we kinda know you. Or of you anyway. Look, you're probably ready to hang the phone up, but don't. Um... one of my friends found something you'd written in an online journal today, and showed it to us. Well, we think we know what your problem might be, and we can help you. So we talked it over, and then my friends elected me to make the call." "Yeah, well...I'm gonna go now. Um...nice talking to you?", Melissa nervously said, thinking this was some kind of weird cult or something calling her up. It sure sounded like it. She was about to hang up the phone, but the girl started talking again, and she just couldn't hang up till she heard what she said, though she wasn't sure why. "Anyway, like I said, we can help. You may have noticed that you've been making stuff happen you can't explain. Probably freaked the hell out of you. That's normal though. So if you'd like our help to control your powers," Melissa cut her off before she could finish, "-Wait wait wait. Powers?" "Uh, yeah. Unless Beast Boy stupidly dialed the wrong number or something, cause he insisted on being the one to dial the phone. If he did, I'll kill him. But I was under the impression that you have some sort of energy abilities. At least, that's what Robin and I gathered from reading your account in your journal... Let us know if you'd like help." "Um..." Melissa remembered earlier in the day, when Richie had suddenly fallen to the floor, wrapped in some bright pink stuff, and she dejectedly consented to the girl's statements regarding herself. "Fine, okay, so you say I have these", she looked at her mother who was sitting at the other end of the table, half listening to the conversation, half watching the TV and lowered her voice to a whisper before continuing, "these "powers", right? So now what? What do I do? I think I almost killed my stupid brother today. You say you can help me. Well, how? What do I have to do?" "You want our help, right? Then we'll be at your house to pick you up in two days. Sorry, we're busy till then, or I guess we'd come sooner- even though I'm against all of this... Anyway. Be ready. Bye." "But-wait!", but the girl had already hung up the phone. "Great, I didn't even get a chance to ask who the hell she was. She could be like some guy who's a child molester or something, just used one of those things to change his voice. Or some evil devil worshipper who'll sacrifice me...", she said as she headed back towards her room. "So, who was that?", her mother stopped her dead in her tracks with that question. Melissa knew she would ask it, she always did, but she'd been so caught up in her own thoughts, she'd forgotten anyone else was there. "Um...a friend...from school. They..um...wanted to ask me a question about homework, and then we started talking about a show we watched the other day, where these people had weird powers. Can I go upstairs now?" "Yeah. Go ahead. Is all your homework done?" "Yeah.", Melissa said as she tore up the stairs and slammed her door behind her. Her homework wasn't done, nor anywhere close to it, but she needed time to think about that freaky phone call, even if she had to stay up all night finishing her work later on.

She lay on her bed and stared at the wall, trying to make sense of it all. The person on the phone knew what had happened to her today. They supposedly knew where she lived too, which was probably true, since they at least knew the phone number, and that was unlisted. "They", whoever "they" were, would be here on Saturday. They'd be here to get her. But what could she do? If she told her mother, all she would say is, 'Well, why were you so stupid? You shouldn't've talked to them. You should have told those people to leave you alone, hung up, then told me so I could call the police. And another thing- see you shouldn't use the Internet! Melissa knew all the blame would be put on her. Telling would only get her into more trouble, and make her feel guilty for endangering her family to boot. So she just lie there, trying to figure out what to do, and soon she was asleep, having nightmares about people coming and burning her family, or dismembering them in front of her, for some satanic ritual, while she watched helplessly from a makeshift prison, knowing she'd be next.

The next morning when Melissa's mother came to wake her for school, she was exhausted from waking up after each of the nightmares, but couldn't remember a thing about them, or about the previous night for that matter, thanks to the memory loss associated with her seizures, another of which she had almost immediately after awakening. But she'd already missed too much school that week, so she went in. It was the same old thing, the girl's acting like the bitchy snobs they were in their little cliques, and ignoring Melissa. But she didn't blame them. Everyone had always rejected her for as long as she could remember, at 5 different schools, since kindergarten, and besides, coming in Junior year wasn't easy. She expected them all to have their friends already established so why would they bother with ugly, lame her? At the end of the day, when Melissa's mother came to pick her up at 4:30 after getting Karin and Andy, she asked how Melissa's day was, and Melissa said it was great. She hated to lie like that, but her mother had been trying to find her somewhere to fit in for years, and Melissa didn't want her to feel completely powerless in making Melissa happy. Melissa was happier at this school then anywhere else in her life, and she knew she at least was pleased enough with her so-called, fair- weather, friends at MSMA to not want to shrivel up and die anymore. They went home, and that night she went to a dance at the boy's school that was affiliated with her's, St. Joe's. It was torture, but she bore it because her mother wanted her to meet someone to take to the prom in May, and it was already the end of February and she didn't know a single male being over the age of 14 and under the age of 30. She didn't meet anyone though, and sat around by herself for most of the dance, and was ecstatic when she was able to go home and go to sleep.

The next morning, she heard something outside, and not be able to sleep, even through the slightest noise, got up to go see what jackass was making noise at the high school this time. But it didn't sound like the wood shop, or the auto shop, and when she pulled up her blinds to take a look, she fell backwards onto the floor and almost passed out into another seizure. She stopped herself just in time, but then started screaming so loud it was as if the whole house would come down. A girl in black ripped the window off, then covered Melissa's mouth with some black substance. After she came in the window, four others followed, three boys and a girl. One of the boys was green, and another looked like he was a robot of some kind. By this point her mother and father were knocking on Melissa's door, which she hadn't even noticed the girl in black had somehow locked, even from where she stood at the other side of the room. She asked Melissa to please not scream, that they would explain everything, just that they needed her to pacify her parents first. She asked if she could let the dark energy around Melissa's mouth go now, if she could please not scream. Melissa nodded her head yes, and the black substance around her mouth disappeared with a wave of the girl's hand. Melissa then went to the door, which her parents were still banging on, and opened it ever so slightly. "Um...hi. Sorry I screamed like that. I'm fine, I just had a bad dream. So, can I go back to sleep now? As long as those stupid idiots over at the high school stop yelling. I'll bet you even heard them through my door!" "Well, are you sure you're all right? You haven't been feeling well these past few days, maybe we should stay with you a while." "No, really, I want to go back to sleep. I'm fine. Please!" Melissa's mother and father looked at her, then each other, then turned to go. "Fine, just leave the door unlocked in case you don't feel well again.", they said as they walked away. Melissa immediately closed the door and locked it. "Okay you people. Start talking."