Chapter 3 - Young Hero

3


"She's gone." Timmy murmured and held out his arm, allowing the pink watch to disappear in a puff of pink smoke. A fairy hovered near him after a second puff, pink hair curled up on her head and gossamer wings beating furiously. She was clad in a simple yellow shirt and black pants, looking almost panicked as she twirled a wand in her hands. The iPod made the same puffs, only green, and a male fairy took its place, floating in the air as he rubbed his head gingerly.

"Timmy, that was dangerous! If Vicky finds out you're still alive, she'll tell everyone in Dimmsdale!" Wanda, the pink-haired fairy, exclaimed frantically, "We'll end up back in New York, or worse!" Timmy pulled a hat from his back pocket and put it on his head, smiling at the familiar pink cap he'd had since childhood. Clutching her wand more tightly, Wanda looked to her husband for support. "Don't you have anything to add to this, Cosmo?!"

"Besides the fact that I'm hungry? No." Cosmo returned tiredly, fluttering to the sofa to rest his tiny battered body. His white dress shirt and black pants were torn, his black necktie undone. Part of his bright green hair was singed and he suffered from a few bruises, cuts and burns. Timmy bent to pull a small blanket over him, then sighed as he put a hand to the fairy's forehead.

"Sorry, Cosmo. I guess some of Crocker's older fairy traps still work." he murmured, "I thought he would have left them to rot, but apparently not." He stood by to watch Wanda fly down by her husband. She held her wand over him, the golden star at its end shining with magic as she began healing him. "So what are you guys up for today? Cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and apple juice sound good?" Timmy asked his fairy godparents, looking up at the clock, "We have some time before we meet Caleb and Cousin Danny for my training."

"That will be fine. Thanks, Timmy." Wanda replied distractedly. Cosmo had fallen silent, passing out for the third time since Timmy had raced out of the booby-trapped warehouse with the fairy in his arms and Wanda firing bursts of magic at incoming shrapnel from an explosion. "Disabling Crocker's fairy-hunting gadgets has gotten a lot more dangerous! Poor Cosmo!" she added, "It's not like the old days where they just blew themselves up!"

Dishes rattled in the kitchen as Timmy set to work preparing lunch. He heard the last comment and sighed, nodding in agreement. A lot of things had changed since he moved back to Dimmsdale from New York. He would have returned sooner but Caleb told him that time was needed to fade the town's memories and change his appearance. The android bought a house for him, provided food, clothes, communication and a teleporter to connect his home to Caleb's home in New York. For everything else Timmy could want he'd have to rely on his fairy godparents and himself.

Entertainment was easy; Cosmo and Wanda could poof up any video game or toy he could ever want, and on days he felt like going out, the three of them would poof to island locales and watch the people from the rooftops. It wasn't that he couldn't interact with normal people, more that Timmy just felt out of place and preferred to just watch the crowds move to the whims of human nature. Wanda had told him once that it didn't seem like him to do that, didn't suit his personality. It wasn't normal.

But what was normal for Timmy now? Since the days of chaos and heartache that tore up everything he considered normal, the word simply became laughable. Besides, with all that he'd gone through since then, he seemed to have grown up rather quickly and stopped taking the fairies' company for granted.

"And even if I was still a jerk, it's not like they can leave me anymore. There's nowhere else for them to go." Timmy sighed to himself as he warmed up the soup. For allowing their godchild to die and then to aid in the interference of Death to resurrect said godchild, Cosmo and Wanda had been banished from Fairy World. The punishment would have been death for themselves, but Jorgen twisted the rules to give them a more 'severe' sentence. Cast out of the world that provided them with magical energy and was once their home, the couple was forever bound to Timmy Turner, or as long as he stood beyond Death's reach.

The whole thing still seemed bizarre to him. All Timmy could remember of the events that led to this situation was falling from the jungle gym at school, a flash of pain, then a lot of cold. Cold and dark; Timmy didn't like it and he couldn't speak to wish himself away from the cold and dark. Then he saw his cousin's face, the determined expression, the snow-white hair, shining green eyes and brilliant white aura. Cousin Danny, in ghost form, had reached out to take him into his arms. There was a bright light and warmth, and Cosmo and Wanda were crying, Jorgen standing over them with a look that was so full of mixed emotions that Timmy's young mind couldn't process them all.

He learned soon after what had happened; his death at Dimmsdale Elementary, his godparents fleeing Jorgen with his body encased in a magic crystal coffin to preserve it, their contacting Caleb for help in healing his broken neck and reviving him. Caleb couldn't resurrect Timmy, too much time had passed since his death and the Grim Reaper had already claimed his soul. The only hope they had in reviving him was in Cousin Danny Fenton. Danny held the Veil Between Life And Death sealed with his body, a responsibility implanted in him the day he became a halfa. With the Lock and Key to the Veil in his hands, Danny tore open the barrier and sent his ghost half in to rescue Timmy's soul while his human half held the door open and secured.

Jorgen Von Strangle had arrived as the resurrection took place and demanded to know if they realized what they had done. In stealing Timmy's soul back from Death, the natural order of his life was suspended and Death could no longer see him as a mortal being, having already touched his soul once and being bound to a rule of its own, 'No mortal can be taken by the Reaper twice'. As Da Rules decreed, Jorgen punished the fairy couple to the utmost severity. In this case, instead of death, they were banished from Fairy World, doomed to watch over a child Death could no longer find.

"Lunch is ready!" Timmy declared as cheerfully as he could, bringing the tray of soups and sandwiches to the table. Cosmo, now awake and fully healed, grinned hugely as he flew into the kitchen, eyes shining happily. Wanda followed after him, a shaky smile on her face as she still held a few last traces of worry on her mind. Timmy grinned at her and reached out to stroke her hair, doing his best to soothe away that worry.

"Yay! Red soup! Mmm-mm! My favorite!" Cosmo cheered and immediately began lapping it up like a mistrained puppy. Wanda only rolled her eyes, but her mood lifted and she sat to dip her sandwich in her own bowl of soup. Seating himself at the table with them, Timmy smiled as he watched the fairies munching cheerfully. He might have lost his old life, but his new one did have its benefits. He could never lose his godparents, he could go on ghost-hunting trips with Danny, and he was learning magic from Caleb. The fairies' wands could only do so much without access to Fairy World to recharge and they were still bound to Da Rules. So it fell on Timmy's shoulders to be the offense-heavy magic user, though the thought of actually taking another person's life to protect someone else still made him queasy.

"Timmy, about Vicky...." Wanda began after a few minutes and the boy pouted, stirring his soup idly.

"It wasn't like I was looking for her! She found me first! And that night in the cemetery was just an accident!" he protested and winced, touching his fingers to his throat. "I haven't healed yet, have I?" He closed his eyes, summoning up the mana he had learned to tap into as a child, and murmured an incantation softly, "Light of mana, soothe the wounds of this battered form! First Aid!" Cosmo stopped his mess long enough to clap his hands and laugh, tomato soup staining his face and clothes.

"Ooh! Ooh! I love that part! The sparklies! Sparklieeees!" he crowed, wand floating by him as he clapped harder, "Do it again! Do it again!" Wanda gave him a nudge to quiet him, then returned to looking up at the teenager sternly.

"It doesn't matter who found who first. The fact is she's suspicious of you, of your knowledge about your former self... don't act so hasty to get your old nickname back!" she lectured and jumped as the boy glared at her fiercely.

"I'm still Timmy Turner, no matter what anyone says! I don't care about some stupid death certificate or whatever law the mayor put into effect!" he yelled and dropped his head into his arms on the table, hiding his face from view. "I'm still Timmy.... Even if I'm dead to this world, I'll always be Timmy Turner...." he mumbled, voice muffled by the barrier of messy brown hair and folded arms. Wanda walked across the table top to run her hands through the strands, a soft sigh escaping her mouth.

"I know, honey. You'll always be Timmy Turner to us and to the rest of Fairy World. But you have to understand that Fairy World and the human world both don't like the idea of someone escaping Death. It's not natural." she told him in a motherly tone, "And if anyone finds out about you, you could be taken away for government study and experiments." Timmy lifted his head and smiled weakly at her.

"So now I have to watch out for people like Crocker coming after me for being immortal? This must be what life's like for you guys, huh?" he asked with a forced laugh and listened to the clock chime, "Well, it's one o'clock. Let's go to New York." He stood up and collected the dishes as Wanda aimed her wand at Cosmo and poofed him clean once again. When everyone was ready, Timmy headed for the teleporter hidden in the downstairs closet and pat his shoulders, a silent signal for Cosmo and Wanda to perch there. With his fairy godparents sitting on him, he stepped onto the glowing violet disk set onto the floor and vanished in a beam of light.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Derris-Kharlan~

Target practice. Timmy loved target practice. Cousin Danny did not. Cosmo and Wanda floated by Caleb, watching with wide eyes as Timmy shot a flurry of fireballs at his target. Danny held up his ecto-shield, wincing each time a fireball missed the shield and hit some random ruin or the surface of Earth's second moon.

"He's hitting four out of six times, so he's improving." Caleb remarked neutrally. Wanda watched with a droll expression.

"It doesn't help that Danny Phantom's not moving. Half of the bad guys Timmy takes down fall because they run into his fireballs by mistake." she pointed out and flinched along with Cosmo and Caleb as a yell of pain sounded out across Derris-Kharlan.

"Timmy! That hurt!" Danny shrieked, racing by them with his arms over his head. The redheaded android watched him fly past and sighed.

"Timmy! Just Fireball, please! Or tell your cousin that you're switching spells!" he called out. The boy laughed harder, clutching his staff as he tried to catch his breath. Target practice was one of his favorite exercises. And because Danny's ghost powers made him immune to magic, at least until the ecto-shield went down, he made a perfect target for Timmy to practice on. Between studying how magic and mana worked in a world that didn't believe in it, and disabling fairy-hunting devices scattered throughout Dimmsdale, ways of having fun with magic was hard to come by. And with Cousin Danny more interested in going on dates with that girlfriend of his than goofing off with him, Timmy felt the halfa deserved a hot foot now and then.

"Whoo-hoo! Ghost toast! I'll get the butter!" Cosmo cheered and raised his wand to poof a tray of butter and a butterknife into the air. He grabbed both and flew after Danny, laughing playfully at his new game. Wanda pulled her hand over her face.

"This is embarrassing. Isn't there some other magic lesson Timmy can work on?" she asked the teacher. Caleb thought carefully about it, rubbing his chin as he mulled it over.

"There's always Enhanced Curative Magic." he remarked absently, "Know where I can toss Cosmo to get the crud beat out of him?"

"Fried Phantom is fine." Wanda sighed in resignation.


Timmy ran up to his cousin, who sat on a fallen pillar and combed his fingers through his hair a few times to clear out the sparks of electricity. Four years had changed Danny as well as Timmy. The haz-mat suit remained largely the same, but was now adorned with a pair of armlets ringed with small green crystals and a shimmering golden gem was mounted on a crest attached to the base of his neck. Both he and Caleb claimed they aided in ghost-fighting, but Timmy had yet to see the real benefits of them. The halfa had grown stronger and mastered many of his powers, and trained often as new powers appeared over time.

"Heh, sorry. But you deserved it for blowing me off last week." Timmy told him with a chuckle and held out his staff, bracing his legs as he focused, "Now let's try that spell again. Light of mana, soothe the wounds of this battered form! First Aid!" The curing magic circled around the phantom, restoring health and repairing the singed hairs and skin from the Lightning spell Timmy had fired off. Danny looked up at his cousin and grinned as the boy sat by him on the pillar.

"Thanks. Hey, I'll make it up to ya. We'll go exploring in the Ghost Zone next Saturday. Promise." he remarked and reached out to rub his hair, flattening the pink hat on his head in the process. Timmy yelled and waved his hand away, fixing both hat and hair as he did. He matched the older boy's smile with one of his own, the buck teeth that had once dominated his face as a child shining in the light of the mana-filled world.

"Okay! Just you and me, then! No running off to make out with that weird Goth chick!" Timmy pointed out and laughed as the half-ghost's face turned a deep shade of red. He jumped to his feet again, staff in hand. Yup, he deserved that. Because of him, he wandered to the cemetery out of boredom and got spotted by Vicky. "So, wanna help me some more with my aiming? I'm pretty good with light and lightning attacks, but the rest of my elements are still way off." Timmy added brightly, spinning the staff in one hand.

"Yeah, your Fireballs are more like flyballs!" Danny taunted, flying up and erecting the ecto-shield. The staff spinning stopped abruptly and a circle of red light bloomed at Timmy's feet. The brunet looked up at his cousin with a determined smile.

"Them's fightin' words, Danny Phantom!" he declared with a laugh and threw a hand towards the halfa, "Burn! Fireball!" The storm of small flames assaulted the ecto-shield, several flying off wildly to hit more of the ancient ruins Caleb had teleported them to from New York for training. "Aww! Six out of eleven!" The circle faded as Timmy made a face, sounding both exasperated and berating. "Man, at this rate I'll wind up being an arsonist more than a hero." he grumbled as his cousin landed. He looked around himself, now realizing that in the whole time he'd caught up with Danny, he hadn't seen Cosmo around. Hadn't the fairy been chasing the halfa? "Cosmo? Are you out there?" he called out.

"Over here! I found a new friend! I'm gonna call him Pete!" the fairy answered airily. Timmy ran towards the sound of Cosmo's voice as his cousin took flight to follow him. Cosmo sat on a piece of broken rubble not far from them, holding a charm of some kind that was big enough to be held comfortably in both of the fairy's hands. He looked up at his godchild happily and held out the charm, showing off the gray stone that was shaped somewhat like a sarcophagus.

"What is that?" Timmy wondered aloud, taking the item from him for a better look. It lay in the palm of his hand as Danny floated by him and peered at it himself. He tilted his head thoughtfully.

"I've seen this before. Caleb calls them Reverse Dolls. They start off like that but you carve them to make them look like a person." he replied, "That person wears it like an accessory and if they get hit with a fatal blow, the doll breaks to take the place of them dying." Timmy studied the charm with a sudden new intensity.

"Danny...." he murmured after a long silence, "Does it... work for fairies, too?" The halfa lifted an eyebrow in confusion, moving his green-eyed gaze from the charm to his cousin.

"Dunno. Magic is universal, isn't it?" he returned in a puzzled tone, "Or am I confusing it with mana? You can ask Caleb. These charms are from his era, created during the time of the Lost Age of Union." The younger teen nodded and stood from his crouched position, tapping his shoulder again. Cosmo flew up and sat there, smiling cheerfully as his wings fluttered once, then stilled in rest.

"Yeah. I think I will." Timmy murmured, eyes still on the charm in his hand.


The android was just as puzzled by the question as Danny had been. He turned the charm over in his hand, eyeing the fairies hovering around Timmy. Though Caleb's face remained perfectly clear of emotion, both Timmy and his cousin knew from his lack of an immediate answer that he was stumped as well. After several more minutes, the redhead sighed.

"Maybe." he finally answered, "Fairies are a magical race with their own source of power. It runs alongside mana in the energy spectrum, but it's not quite the same. Charms are supposed to be universal, but compatibility with a magical creature is, at best, questionable."

"Uh, English, please?" Timmy grumbled in annoyance, blue eyes narrowing at the strange phrasing of his teacher's answer. Caleb blinked, then shrugged.

"It's iffy. I can carve it for you but the chances of it working on a fairy.... Eh, your guess is as good as mine." he amended. The boy frowned and looked up at his godparents.

"Wanda's good at dealing with stuff. She can get herself out of most situations. I trust her with handling the dangers we go through." he remarked, earning a sheepish grin and blush from the pink-haired fairy, "But I worry about Cosmo. The last fairy-trap littered building we cleaned had a nasty trap that tore him up pretty badly."

"It wanted to shake hands!" Cosmo put in as a protest, holding out his hands for emphasis.

"With twelve blades, five baseball bats, three boots and a hammer?" Wanda asked dryly, giving her husband a sidelong glare.

"It was the super-secret twelve-blades, five baseball-bats, three boots and a hammer handshake!" Cosmo insisted, "I messed up 'cause I didn't have the blades!" Timmy pulled both hands over his face and groaned as both Caleb and Danny laughed at the fairies' antics.

"Make it for Cosmo. The next trap might have a nastier surprise." he muttered.

"Ooh! I love surprises! So does Pete!" Cosmo declared joyfully, catching the teen's last word, "Is it Pete's birthday? Pete! Why didn't you tell me?! I thought we were friends!" He flew off, sobbing dramatically with Danny watching, baffled. Wanda sighed and flew after him.

"Give me ten minutes." Caleb muttered flatly, picking up the charm and digging into his satchel for carving tools. Timmy nodded and began walking after the fairies. His cousin called out to him as he left.

"I gotta run! School and all. See ya next practice!" he cried and waved before flying off towards a large blue disk that was the main teleporter Caleb had built long ago. Timmy waved back and pressed on with a wistful sigh.

"Can't believe I'm saying this but... I miss school." he murmured, "I know just as much and maybe more than average kids my age, but without my old friends to hang out with it just doesn't seem the same." He continued his search, calling out his fairies' names as he peeked around rubble and into decrepit storage rooms. It didn't take very long. He eventually found them both sitting on a boulder, gazing at the Earth that seemed so far away and the normally invisible Fairy World with its rainbow bridge to the world. Silent, he joined them in their planet-gazing.

Fairy World stretched over vast pink clouds, suspended far beyond the world's gravitational pull and completely out of sight from the eyes of the masses. Those who had fairies, or knew of the world's existence, could see Fairy World and the bridge that joined it with the human world. Derris-Kharlan had to be repositioned after Caleb met Timmy and his godparents, as he had not realized Fairy World existed above the Earth and the comet-turned-second-moon had been dangerously close to colliding with the magical realm. Since then, Caleb would relay information back and forth between Fairy World and Earth, archiving the fairies' histories for safekeeping on the comet.

"I didn't mean to get caught in the trap." Cosmo suddenly remarked softly, voice strangely clear and intelligent, "It was an accident." Timmy snapped out of his musings and managed a small smile.

"We know. Things happen; we just have to keep going and learn what we can so we can be better prepared for stuff like that." he returned and sighed, leaning back and bracing himself as he gazed at the world. "Do you think I'll make a good hero for Dimmsdale someday? Like the Crimson Chin?"

"You'll make a great hero, Timmy!" Wanda answered confidently, "You're already our hero!" She waved her wand around, tracing circles with the star point. "Once all the fairy traps and anti-magic devices in Dimmsdale have been destroyed, we'll be able to safely use our magic in all parts of the city! We'll be the first fairy godparents to use wishes to stop criminals on a regular basis!" Timmy smiled at that, the idea of disabling every last bit of Crocker's gadgets appealing to the kid in him, the kid who managed to foil evil schemes with very little effort at times. With the anti-magic gear gone, he could roam the city more freely and start seeing what had changed and what was still the same.

"We'll protect Dimmsdale like Cousin Danny protects Amity Park." he agreed and grinned, "And who better to do it than a kid who can't be killed?" He blinked as a charm suddenly dropped into his view. A tiny recreation of Cosmo dangled before him and he looked up at Caleb holding it suspended from a cord.

"All done." he remarked with a smile.

Timmy brightened and took the charm in his hand, looking it over. It certainly resembled Cosmo, though in a very simple form. Hair, face, clothes, wand, wings, crown; everything was recreated in the stone. It was even painted the right colors!

"Thanks a lot! Wow! This is so cool!" he exclaimed gratefully and looped the cord over Cosmo's head so the charm rested by his necktie. Wanda smiled at how large the charm was compared to her husband's small frame and waved her wand to resize it. "Don't lose it, Cosmo." Timmy added with a grin. Cosmo blinked at them, then down at his new accessory, confused, before lighting up in joy.

"Pete! You got a makeover!" he cried and laughed, "Hey! Wow! You look so handsome! But you look familiar, too; did we meet at the Fairy World Wand Convention?" Wanda shook her head in exasperation but Timmy only smiled wider and returned to gazing at his home planet.

It wasn't much but anything he could do to keep Cosmo and Wanda safe was worth it. Just a little longer and all of Dimmsdale will be safe for them. He would be a real hero, just like he often wished he could be when he was a ten-year-old.

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