A/N: Greetings all. This is my NaNoWriMo piece. It is well over 50K and split into two parts. I will be updating this story twice a week, since the first part is done. It's 10 chapters long, not including the prologue and the epilogue, so you'll have a lot of reading to do. It is based on the 2k3 Turtles and takes place a few months after the Good Genes arch. Ninja Tribunal didn't happen. Fast Forward didn't. Back to the Sewer didn't happen. Please enjoy!

Dedicated to and Beta'd by the lovely Kamerer220, who has been my sounding board and loudest cheerleader in all of this.

Prologue

"Those skilled at making the enemy move do so by creating a situation to which he must conform; they entice him with something he is certain to take, and with lures of ostensible profit they await him in strength."
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

-o-

Hamato Leonardo stared from his perch just on top of the water tower that was not far from Central Park. The hour was growing late. Dawn was starting show on the horizon, indicating it was time for normal people to start the day. This was not the case for Leonardo, and his brothers, instead it was time to go back underground, to fade away unseen by the "normal people" of Manhattan. After all, mutated turtles weren't welcome in regular society, even the teenaged ninja variety.

There was a chill in the air. It would be the time when they would have to start preparing the lair for the winter. They were cold blooded reptilians, after all, with an aging rat as a father. They were all susceptible to the cold and would need to battle against what was promising to be a harsh winter.

Leo didn't care about the seasonal cold at that moment, nor the soon to arrive Sun. He seemed to be completely oblivious to the physical world around him. There was an even colder frost starting to form in the pit of his stomach and his thoughts swirled around him. He clenched his fist, causing the paper to wrinkle a bit from the force of his hand. He unclenched quickly when he heard the letter threaten to tear, causing him to return from his spiritual visit. He carefully smoothed out the sheet and looked at the kanji written on it without taking in the meanings of the symbols, not that he needed to. He had read this missive five times over, having his insides become more troubled with each passing word.

He had found the letter, made out of a strong washi, while on the solo part of their patrol. He had made the executive decision to allow them to break up and give them solo assignments, for only one hour. The oldest brother usually preferred they pair up or continue as a group when going on their nightly patrol, but it had been quiet lately, and he felt they needed a little bit of time apart on the surface. It was a test to see how well they fared. If his brothers stayed on task and not get distracted by shiny objects (Donatello), get in an unneeded fight (Raphael), or just mucked around (Michelangelo), he would consider more solo runs for the ninja clan. The past few years had been rough, but he and his brothers had proven time and again that they have been able to handle whatever trials that their unconventional life threw at them.

The blue masked turtle had been on the last leg of his self-appointed task, the eastside docks that used to house weapons for the Purple Dragons which had been demolished beautifully by the combined force of Raph and Don. He wanted to make sure that the street gang, or some more nefarious force, hadn't tried to rebuild what was a great port area for any waterway deliveries. He had been there under a minute when felt that he was no longer alone.

He tried to quickly scan the area, in order to identify who had caused his ninja senses to tingle, when he heard the air around him become displaced and he quickly ducked his head to the left, narrowly missing the shuriken that landed on the wooden pole just behind where his head was. He only took note of it for a second as he got himself in a defensive position and tried to track where the ninja star had come from. He was only able to catch a shadow on the roof two warehouses away before it disappeared and so did the omniscient presence he had felt before. The turtle tensely waited a few more minutes until he was sure that his attacker was gone before he allowed himself to move again. Even then, he had decided to investigate the area where the shuriken had come from and its surrounding rooftops before returning to where the weapon had been embedded into the wood.

It was a typical four point throwing star, but even half embedded he could see the Foot insignia etched into the flat part of the metal. He started to shake his head at it but then noticed that there was a grey paper stuck to the metal spike that was facing out. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before, but put that thought to the back of his head as he pulled the shuriken and the attached paper from the building and gave a closer look at the offending object.

It was an origami turtle, with one of the spikes of the ninja star pierced right through the middle of it. It gave the image of a turtle being skewered and it sent a chill through Leonardo's spine. No doubt that was part of the message the Foot had wanted to send. He slowly lifted the origami shape from the star and opened it. The cold chill that had ran through his spine started to spread throughout his whole body. The kanji was distinct, he would recognize it anywhere.

Before, when the Utrom Oroku Saki was the Shredder, and Karai was not completely sold to his dishonorable plans, Leo and she had secretly exchanged letters and notes. Having been raised in the forced seclusion as they were, they were all desperate for a confidant outside of their little quirky family. April O'Neil's intelligence and fiery nature had claimed Don's attention, along with his scientific mutant equal, Leatherhead. Raph found a companion in the brash and destructiveness that is Casey Jones, and Mikey could find a friend in almost everyone who they met and were accepted by. But Leo was more introverted and wary of the outside world, even if he craved it.

Miyamoto Usagi, the Samurai rabbit, was as close of a best friend he could find. But he lived worlds away, and not always readily available when Leo had questions he could not pose to his family. Karai, though, was different. She understood the pressures of being their father's successor. And her beliefs in bushido and honor were close to her own, even if she was on the opposite side of the same coin. With her, he felt he could say and do things he couldn't with anyone else, and to have that sort of person in his life that he could count on in that way made the load he carried so much lighter.

And Leo couldn't deny the romantic inklings he had stated to feel for her. Physically, she was an attractive person, very appealing to a hormonal teenager secluded from the rest of society. Her green eyes memorized him, and she was so hard, tough, yet so soft, like a steel butterfly. But it was her warrior nature that appealed to him the most, keeping him intrigued with every time they had spoken or exchanged letters. She had also felt the same battle he had between his honor and his family, and she was essentially his other half.

He had dreams, some were sweet, others slightly erotic, of them and future plans. And he had hopes, that one day she would see the truly evil nature of her father and she would join him, fight by his side and that they could make the strongest clan. That he would have someone he saw as an equal, and that the searing emptiness he felt every time his brothers ignored an order, or his father looked at him with disapproval, he would have someone to turn to, someone on his side.

But the katana-wielding ninja now knew those dreams, those ambitions, were false, when Karai chose to still fight with the Shredder even after she knew his plans to kill them, and then stabbed him in the shoulder with his own katana after he had saved her. Since then, Karai has proven that her sense of honor was tied securely with her imprisoned father, and not with her father's enemy. She destroyed their lair, nearly killed his brothers, all in the name of vengeance. She took over control of the Foot and named herself the Shredder, and continued her father's legacy.

So all those dreams, those hopes he had for Karai faded into a dull ache, something he looks back with regret rather than fondness. But it still happened, those times of perceived closeness, and he feels guilty for allowing himself to be tricked into thinking that there would be anything more than false promises and this deadly game of cat and mouse with her. He's glad, in some ways, that the Foot had destroyed the lair. After Karai finally picked her side, Leo hid all of her letters in his room, buried out of his eyesight, but unable to bring himself to destroy them. When he returned home after his pilgrimage with the Ancient One, he found his room barely accessible. The spot where he had hid them completely blocked off from him and he did not even try to retrieve them. He had left them to crumble into dust as their friendship had become.

So, yes, he could recognize the writing style of the current Foot clan leader from their past communications but this brought him no comfort as the others had at one point in the past. The words were emotionless and cruel, intended to inflict the maximum amount of damage with as little keystrokes as she could muster.

It was a threat, and a promise, for horrible things to happen to his family if he did not comply with her demands. She would strike his family down, as she was so close to doing before, one by one until he was the last remaining member of his family. She would make sure that he wouldn't be able to save them this time, that his grief would be as real as hers was, and that he would finally pay for his betrayal and lack of mercy that he had shown her father with his own life, and by the time she was done with him, he'd beg for it.

But if he wants to avoid this very real future for his brothers and his father, he would meet her, in a week's time, at the Oroku Saki Tower at midnight to have a final battle between the two clans. It would be a battle to the death. No saves, no mercies. The winner would be claimed victor, and that would be the end of the war. If Leonardo dies honorably in battle, she would spare his family. The Foot would remain in New York, but she would not touch, nor allow any of her Foot ninjas to touch them. If Karai dies, the Foot are instructed to leave New York and never set foot in the United States again. They would choose a leader who wishes to keep the Oroku Saki enterprises in their home country of Japan. Either way, Leonardo's family would finally know peace from the Oroku clan, and their blood feud would die with them.

But if Leonardo was a coward and refused to meet with her, his family would die. If he tried to be dishonorable and trick her, his family would die. Their deaths would not be swift, and she would not be merciful. If he tried to run, she would use every last cent to track him and his family down and make sure they feel the worst pain they have ever felt in their life.

She ended it by requesting that he remember his honor. He owed it to her for taking her father away from her.

Leo was immensely grateful that he was alone when he received this letter. His brothers would have never let him read the letter alone, they would have wanted to know the contents of the letter. Even if he would somehow been able to keep them from reading it, he knew his facial expressions would have given everything away. He was a skilled ninja, he has stared death in the face without so much as blinking, but this… this obvious threat to his family, he couldn't hide the fear and fury he felt at the ultimatum Karai gave him. The fear for his beloved family and their safety, and fury for his apparent lack of decision. She was giving him very little choice in this, setting all of the terms and forcing his hand. While he had been trained to have his back pressed closely against the proverbial wall, he absolutely detested the feeling.

His first instinct, as both leader and ultimate big brother, is to protect his family from the horrors he knew were out there. If he could take down all the evil forces on this world (and apparently many others) by himself, and spare his family the trials and tribulations they faced on a daily basis, he would do it, gladly.

He remembered when they were younger, and Raphael had started to speak unbelievably cruel and colorful language that had Splinter running for the soap, Leo would go to the nearest younger brother and placed his hands over their impressionable ears to help block out the nasty things their hot-headed brother would spew. Michelangelo was more receptive of Leo's attempts, smiling pleasantly and cuddling against the hands that surrounded his head as Raph would rant on and on. Donatello, on the other hand, grew irritable every time Leo tried to grab his head. A small scuffle would ensue where Don would try to run away from his older brother's mothering and Leo would continue his pursue because he knew that if his brainy brother was concentrated on him, he wasn't listening to Raph's foul mouth. They were slowly moving towards adulthood and becoming independent individuals, it was a losing battle to try and protect brothers who were capable to handle themselves. It didn't mean he stopped trying.

Leo barely remembered coming back to their preselected meeting spot. He had been the first to arrive, unsurprisingly, and had stood in a daze, not really keeping his usual vigilant eye at his surroundings as he waited for his brothers to appear. He was lucky enough that his ninja training allowed him to snap out of it quickly when his first brother arrived, and had the wits about him to grill Michelangelo on if he had any activity to report. The other two had arrived by the time their baby brother had finished exaggerating his report of what probably was an uneventful rooftop run and they had also claimed to have had a similar quiet patrol. Leo had scrutinized his three brothers silently, trying to determine if they had been lying but was only met with boredom and impatience. When he was asked how his had gone, he had hesitated, and then had declined to give an accurate account of his own solo run, instead said that he was releasing them from the rest of patrol and said he had some business to attend to.

This was met with jubilate answers from Raphael and Michelangelo, who both claimed to have prior engagements to attend to (Casey, in Raph's case, and a new comic book for Mikey.) Only Don looked to have thought it was odd, giving the leader a questioning look. When Leo refused to verbally acknowledge the raised eyebrow, the genius unsurprisingly kept quiet. Don was always the least likely to pry into his brother's lives, far too busy with the issues they purposely bring to him to borrow trouble.

This left him alone under the water tower pondering what should his next action be. As he sat for hours upon hours, staring at the quickly rising sun, no magical answer appeared to him. He would have likely sat there well after dawn arrived if his shellcell had not beeped right after sunrise, a text message from an impatient Raphael inquiring his whereabouts. He quickly sent out a text stating he would be home shortly and stood. He turned to look at the rising glowing orb for one more second before turning and disappearing into the fading shadows.

-o-

A/N 2: This beauty is a piece that has rested in the back of my mind for probably seven or eight years, since the 2k3 was still in full swing. I've worked hard on this baby, this being my first year to really try to write for NaNoWriMo. I hit the 50k mark three weeks in. I'm really proud of this puppy, and I know it's going to be a long road for you, reader. Some of the chapters are much longer than others, those won't start happening until the middle of this one.

This series also has a soundtrack. The song for this chapter is "Erase" by MIKA.

Reviews and Constructive Criticism are welcome. I don't have bribing material for them because 9/10ths of the entire collection has already been written.