Disclaimer: All characters belong to their respective owners and not me. Only this story is mine, nothing else. Please read and review. Helpful reviews welcome, flames shall be ignored and/or deleted. Enjoy.

Stone Prison

By: Demonabyss

Chapter 4: Confrontation

I turned and stared at the one of the few people I did not want to meet anytime soon, if ever, Beast Boy. He was the same as the last time I had seen him, green skin in a black and purple uniform. I didn't know whether I was happy to see him again or angry that he had found me. Was I happy to have him find me? No, I wasn't. I just regained my freedom. True I was on the run now with just about every hero in the world after me, but I was still free. If he somehow convinced me to go back, what real guarantee did I have that I wouldn't go to jail or worse? None. Besides, his moods changed at the drop of a hat.

First he had a crush on me, and then he hated my guts when he learned I worked with Slade without letting me properly explain, and then he yelled at me when I was being controlled by that armor, and at the end he liked me again. As far as I was concerned he was the same as so many others I had met on the road, nice and kind to me as long I went along with what they wanted. But once I started thinking for myself or doing something different, they turned on me. He had demonstrated this when he broke his promise to me to always be my friend, just like so many others had done before him. Looking back on it, I have no clue why I thought he would be any different.

(Normal POV)

The green changeling stared at the black haired girl in glasses. He was silent as the train started to pick up speed along the tracks. Teva made no move while Beast Boy took a few cautious steps towards her. "Terra, is it you?" he asked tentatively.

"In the flesh," Terra/Teva said calmly. 'So to speak,' she added mentally.

"This is great. Come on let's get off this train and head back. The guys will love seeing you again," he said as he grabbed her arm to lead her out of the train car. She however pulled away from him, knocking his hand away. "Terra what?" he said confused at her actions.

The Geomancer just looked at him calmly. "Now what makes you think I want to go back?" she asked evenly while pinning him with a cold stare.

Beast Boy was startled both by her words and her icy glare. He had expected her to welcome him, to be her warm cheerful self when he first met her. Instead she was treating him like an annoyance. "What are you talking about? Don't you want to go back to you friends?" he asked surprised.

Teva just raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "My friends? If I remember correctly, wasn't you who said quote "Slade was right, you have no friends." Unquote?" she said coldly. Beast Boy paled as he remembered when he said that. She placed her hands behind her back and took a few steps towards him and even though he didn't intend to, he took a few steps away from her. "Also, wasn't it you who said it was all my choice? Essentially making everything that happened my fault despite the fact that you know perfectly well what Slade is capable of?" she said as she took a few more steps towards him, the look in her eyes reminding him of the death glares Raven usually gave him when he truly pissed her off.

Beast Boy backed up until his back was literally to the wall. Now he really wished he had brought some of the others with him. "Well, I um, I wasn't thinking. I was angry at you for what you did and I um," he stuttered, unable to come up with a suitable response.

"Don't worry, I don't hold it against you," she said sweetly, her overall impression changing back to the one he was used to. "You were just being you. I like you, you know." Suddenly, out of nowhere, Beast Boy was hit hard in the face by something moving too fast for him to see. He fell to the floor, holding his head in pain. What had hit him? Terra? "However, I don't like you enough to risk what little freedom I've regained. I'll just have to leave you behind," she said softly as she punched him again in the head. Before he lost consciousness he heard her mutter one last thing. "Just like so many others." After that, the green changeling lost all consciousness; the last sounds he heard were those of the train and cows.

Terra cracked her knuckles, which already had cracks in them. 'Whom needs brass knuckles when your fist can be as hard as marble,' she thought amused as her hand shifted back into human mode. She then picked up the smaller green boy by the cuff of his suit and dragged him up to the hatch on the top of the train. The girl opened the hatch and brought him outside. It was twilight out and the train was passing a large grassland area. Despite the wind, she hauled him out all the way and stood on the top of the train. Shifting the lower half of her body to stone to keep herself anchored, Terra picked up Beast Boy with both hands and chucked him over the side into one of the many stacks of hay dotting the countryside.

The black haired girl sighed as she watched him fade away in the distance. 'I'm so sorry Beast Boy, but I can't risk my freedom, it's the only thing I have left anymore,' she thought sadly as she went back down into the train. She picked up her bags, finished her soda, and started to climb out again. 'Thanks to you, I've got to get off this train,' she thought sourly as she got on top of the train, her lower half still stone. She waited until she was a decent distance from where she "dropped" Beast Boy off. Once she saw a highway nearby, she jumped. She landed solidly on the ground, her legs and feet holding firmly as she created a pair of trenches as she slowed to a stop. Once she did, she shifted her lower half back into her human form. Terra sighed as she started walking towards the highway. "Great, now I'm hitchhiking, thanks a lot Beast Boy," she said sarcastically out loud.

The green changeling sighed as he slowly regained consciousness. His head throbbed, he had a nasty bruise, and he was laying face down in a pile of hay. "Oh man, Robin is so gonna kill me," he muttered as he got up and looked around. It was nighttime and there was no train and no Terra in sight. He had expected her to welcome him with open arms not a sucker punch. He then noticed his communicator was beeping. While absently cracking his jaw, he answered. "Beast Boy here," he said timidly.

Robin's voice came over the device, sounding royally pissed off. "Beast Boy! Where have you been? We've been looking everywhere for you!" he yelled.

The green boy sighed before answering. "I found Terra on a train heading east. I tried to convince her to come back with me but she sucker punched me and now I'm sitting in a haystack in the middle of nowhere," he explained.

There was silence on the other end for a moment before the response came. "Return to Gothem, we need to regroup with the League to see how we're going to handle this. Robin out," he said as the line went silent. Beast Boy sighed and transformed into hawk, starting back for the city in the opposite direction he truly wanted to go.

Robin closed his communicator as he brow furrowed in thought. He, the Titans, and the League were all meeting in the Bat cave to figure out what to do now. "That's three times now she's slipped away. How does she keep doing that?" he asked angry at both himself for missing her and at Terra for getting away again.

Starfire floated next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Please calm yourself. Terra did say she was an experienced traveler. Maybe she is used to, how you say, handing people a piece of paper?" she asked tentatively since she wasn't sure if that was the correct phrasing.

It took a moment before Raven translated. "I think you mean, giving people the slip Starfire. In any case, she's right Robin. Also, Terra was trained by Slade so who knows what he taught her about hiding herself from people like us. And unlike Slade, she has no reason to stick around with us in the area," she said in her usual monotone voice.

It was then Batman came up behind them. "I'll check the train records and see what I can come up with. If we're lucky, we can nab her before she gets to another town," he said in his own deep monotone voice as he worked at his computer.

In the back of the cave, Question was quietly thinking to himself over this new tidbit of information. As he did, Terra's words from before came to mind. 'Clues in plain sight huh? I wonder,' he thought as he looked over what the League knew apart from what he himself knew. The girl had come to Gothem and set herself up as a delivery girl with a new identity in order to hide herself, especially after that little disaster she caused. Then once she knew the League and Titans were here looking for her, she immediately skipped town, obviously to prevent from being found. Simple logic, something anyone could do, but most people wouldn't on the grounds that they'd be confident that their disguise would prevent them from being found. But not this girl, she knew better then that, both from experience and from her training with Slade.

'So taking that into consideration. If I were found by the people who were looking for me who I didn't want to find me and if I knew that they knew that I was heading east on a train, what would I do?' he thought to himself. Then it hit him, the answer was so simple, get off the train and go in a different direction. 'She's not on that train. She's probably not heading east at all anymore,' he thought as he looked at the map. 'If she's no longer moving by train, what's the next fastest way to travel on the ground, not including her powers?' he thought until he noticed that a couple of roads that passed close to the train route. Duh. 'Clever little girl,' he thought to himself.

Terra sat in the truck as it drove southeast towards the farm country near Reno, Nevada. It was an old truck belonging to a farmer from the area. A simple married man, judging from his clothes and the ring on his finger, not a person that someone like her needed to worry about. Having hitchhiked quite a bit, she knew which people were okay to ride with and which ones weren't. She sat in silence as she watched the scenery go by. It was a few minutes past sunset, coloring the sky in purples, reds, oranges, and gold. 'What a day this has been. The League and the Titans got a little to close this time and now that they know it was me, they won't give up easily. Worst yet is that the longer this goes on, the more people will find out about me and the more people will start to chase me. But what can I do? I'm out numbered, out classed, out financed, and most definitely out gunned. I don't have many options here,' she thought sourly.

"Hey kid, you okay?" the old farmer driving asked, seeing the look of deep thought on her face. He had picked up hitchhikers before, some male, some female, some old, and some young. However, the look on this particular girl's face bothered him, especially her eyes. They looked like they should belong to a person four or five times this girl's age, like she had seen more in her short life then most people do in their entire lives. It was downright disturbing is what it was.

The girl with black hair turned to him and looked at him with tired eyes from under her glasses. "I'm fine. Just a long day is all," she said simply. He nodded in understanding. He knew not to ask questions, people like what this girl seemed to be, spoke only when needed. She'd tell him if she wanted to, not that it mattered much. The girl had asked him to take her to the nearest bus station, nothing more and he agreed to do so. However, that didn't stop the old farmer from wondering who this girl was.

They soon came to the bus station. Though it was late it was still open. Terra thanked the man and went over to the listings to see where she should go now. 'I need to find a place that's out of the way. A place most of the big time super heroes don't normally go to,' she thought as she looked over the listings. The girl then noticed one place in particular, Dakota. 'I've heard of that town. That's town's protected by Static Shock and Gear and is crawling with meta-humans. That's sounds like a good place to hide out if I ever heard once. Any mayhem I cause will be chalked up to other meta-humans and since Static and Gear are "junior" heroes, they won't be nearly as much a threat to me as the League or Titans would,' she thought with a grin. With that she decided to sleep in at the station and take the first bus in the morning after grabbing some breakfast.

On the other side of the station was a man in dark clothes watching her. He spoke quietly into a small device. "Target has been sighted is now stationed at the Northern Bus Station, over" he reported in a low voice.

Another voice, equally as low and serious responded. "Good. Keep tailing the target until further notice. Do not engage target until we have confirmation. I repeat do not engage. Once confirmation has been established, return to base for further instructions and preparations, over," the voice on the communicator commanded.

"Copy that. Over and out," the man ended as put the device away and returned to watching the black haired girl in glasses and newsboy's cap sleep on the bench in the station. He absently fingered a gun in his pocket, ready to use it if anything happened.