Aimless
Chapter rating: T
Disclaimer: I do not own any form of TMNT. All rights belong to Nickelodeon.
Word count: 2525
Raphael is six and Karai is seven in this chapter. I imagined this 2012 verse.
Summary: Alternate universe where the Foot raised Raphael. What follows drabbles is the monster Raphael is trained to become, and watch him evolve through years of pain under the wing of Shredder. And what exactly did Shredder inject him with when he found Raphael that is impossible to make now? The tragedy through artificial intelligence and deadly strategy leaves the Hamato's in shreds.
R&R!
AIM
In the nautical twilight of a 4th December evening, a sleek aircraft jet challenges the sky. Out the perfectly translucent windows, glass needles perk up from the snow-patted streets in the distance. The light of thousands of vehicle headlights, yellow glows producing from glass windows of glass buildings, the aimless chatter of millions, travels for miles over the sea. And where Karai sits, encased in the black interior of one of the few window seats, she can see all of it.
The black aircraft with the Foot symbol stamped in claret on one side circles New York City once before landing swiftly and silently by the docks, where thousands of men load crates onto five different vessels.
"Karai." Karai turns her head obediently as a voice cuts through her thoughts. Her father stands before her in the aisle wearing, surprisingly, a black suit and tie. What is casual business wear looks strange on Oroku Saki's muscular form, where usually his battle armor is hiding his bulk. "I want you to stay close to me. I am only here to monitor how the shipment is being handled, yet I do not want to worry about disobedient daughters finding random trash and bringing them back home."
Karai smiles sheepishly and averts her gaze. She has a knack for finding objects, or even what she calls 'pets,' before bringing them home and hoping Father wouldn't find out. It's a shame he always does, though.
"Do you understand, my daughter?" Father pushes her silence.
Karai bobs her head up and down, her black bangs following the motion. "Hai, Father." She glances again at the window then back at Father. "But can I play by those trees over there––" Karai points a gloved finger at a skeletal tree blanketed by a gleam of white a distance away through the window. "Everything's dead anyway, so I promise I won't bring anything back Father." Oroku Saki sighs heavily but his attention is snatched by the copilot's "incompetence to land a jet properly out of view," leaving Karai to assume her unanswered question was some form of a yes.
The jet starts back up again and Karai crawls into the leather seat next to her to lean into the aisle and look up front to see why they're moving again. Father stands with his back to Karai, leaning over the copilot's hunched shoulder's as he spasms over the controls to park the jet further up the docks and out of sight of the men dressed in rags and grease.
Disregarding Father's ill temperament, Karai grabs her black coat out from under her and puts it on. It was a bit big for her petite size, the sleeves going over her slim fingers, but it was warm and should keep her heated as she plays in the snow.
Father, the two pilots, and Karai head down the steps of the jet, which are already gathering snow dust and making it quite slippery.
They all start walking towards the water's edge where the vessels are, but Karai nods over to the trees and takes off without so much a glance from her father. She dashes through the filthy men, adding up a high number of odd stares, but stops in her tracks when a group of men towards the last of the shipment crates gaze uneasily into the dark opening of a red coloured one.
"…I tell you! I know I heard something." Karai walks closer to the men to make out what they're saying but stops as two of them gasp.
"What is 'hat?" A man points at the shadows, grabbing the attention of the rest of the bored workers. The filthy man dressed in a dirty white shirt and brown cargo pants sticks his head into the engulfing darkness, then throws himself back. "Bloody hell! It's green!"
Karai, with a pang of rapidly growing curiosity, slips in between the small group of men, which paid her little attention by the newfound mystery.
A man comes up behind the first, squinting but not daring to look inside. "Don't know, Lorry. Do you reckon it's an alien?" Without an answer: "Yo-ho! So then!" No noise follows as the others quickly hush. "Alien?"
"Halloa!" Another shouts to the shadows.
"Don't be idiots, Tom, Joe. Aliens aren't real you dull-witted bastards."
"My Lord!" The first, Lorry, ejaculates. He put his head back into the crate. "A turtle?"
"Tst! Lorry! Don't get the others going!" The only blonde man, who is also the one who scolded Tom and Joe, shouts.
The men were all British, their voices Southampton rough. The man, Tom, who seemed to Karai like he bathes in grease and exhaust for a living, snatches a rusted and bent metal pipe lying a few feet away.
"Tom, don't be an––" the blonde starts but it was too late. Tom aims and throws the pipe into the darkness of the crate. A rough yell follows.
Gasps.
"It is an alien, William!" Tom retaliates.
"Hmph." The blonde and ill-tempered William crosses his arms and looks away as Tom smiles at him.
Karai pushes through to the front of the small group of men, who are now staring at her.
"Hey!" She cries, and bolts into the crate. There is a line of cursing behind her from the men, but none make a move to follow her.
It would be practically 100% darkness inside the crate if it weren't for the dim light of vessels and watchers doing and passing rounds every couple of seconds. Karai lets her eyes adjust to the new blackness and very faintly, in the corner of the shipping crate, Karai can make out a weird shaped silhouette a different shade then the darkness around it.
"Hello?" She whispers, already knowing there is someone there, and it acknowledging her. "I promise I won't hurt you." Then, more cheerfully: "I like finding new things! I may be able to convince Father to let me bring you home!"
The silhouette moves, yet hesitantly, and calls out. "'Father?'" The voice was young, broken, and male.
"Yes..?" Karai says, confused by the thought that the silhouette didn't know who 'Father' was.
"I…I can't find my father," his voice breaks. "I lost him and I've been looking for him."
"Hey, little girl." A voice cuts through and the blonde William enters the crate. His lean and tall figure blocks most of the dim light entering the metal box. "It isn't safe in there. Do you want me to take you back to your father?"
Before Karai can answer, the figure emerges out of the shadows. The Lorry man was correct; Karai could make out a turtle's form even with the bad lighting. He was pressing his right hand over his left shoulder, where something dark was gushing out.
"Holy––" William stumbles out, and Karai hears the others snickering at their "daredevil."
"You're bleeding!" Karai gushes at the small mutant. Over his eyes is what seemed to be a mask. She reaches out and grabs the turtle's good arm and drags him into the night.
"By Lucifer's name!" Lorry shouts and stumbles back with Joe as Karai and the mutant emerge.
"ALIEN!" Tom screams and bolts in pure fright.
"Shut up you imbeciles!" William scowls and pushes the others. "Obviously what ever it is is hurt you blind bats!" He whirls back on Joe. "NO! It is NOT an alien you son of a gun!" Joe cowards back with Lorry in shock that William heard his muffled comment.
William bends down to look Karai and the creature, masked in red, in the eye. To both of the scared children's surprise, a smile tugs his lips.
"Now, I do reckon you are far more…exotic than what Lorry and I found on the bottom of the River Thames last month." He directs his statement at the turtle, clutching hard on his freely gushing shoulder. "And that idiot Tom never does shut up, so don't mind a word from that bloody mouth. Look, I don't have the slightest idea what you are, but I know you aren't going to hurt me?"
The red mask turtle shakes his head, eyes wide. William stands up and scowls back at his group.
"See, you disloyal bloodsuckers? We have confidential proof that this…red-banded turtle will not hurt us, nor is an alien." He looks each of the men in the eye.
"Now aliens, that topic is still debatable." Joe gives a toothy smile and shrugs a shoulder. William raises an eyebrow at his friend and turns back to Karai and the mutant.
"Do you think Father will let me keep him?" Karai clutches the turtle's elbow hopefully, the black sleeve of her coat dropping down to her wrist. William chortles.
"I'm good with persuasion. I'll make sure of it." He brushes his tangled hair out of his eyes with an impatient gesture as Karai yeeps. "But I'll need to know your name." Again, directed at the mutant.
"Raphael. My father used to call me Raphael." William frowns, probably with the strange image of a taller, talking turtle with perhaps a different colour mask as this Raphael's father. If only he knew...
"Raphael," William tests, and his workmates smile behind him. "Alright, lets get you cleaned up."
Across the aisle sits a very hushed assassin. His green arm is wrapped with white bandages, spotted here and there with the copper drops of blood. The bandages were William's work, and although wrapped awkwardly over his newly cracked shell from the pipe aim and throw, it earned him a spot as the new Foot's medic. William sits in soaked clothes, water dripping from his face from him 'dip' in the freezing Atlantic water to clean himself in ecstasy from the "promotion." He refused a towel as he boarded, and although Father sends death glares back in his direction, he continues to smile to himself.
Karai leans forward to look at Raphael. Father has decided to sit in the spare seat next to Karai instead of upfront with the pilots, most likely to block his daughter's line of sight of the mutant for the long flight back to Japan.
After Karai's hurried explanation whilst clutching the mutant tightly and what seemed to Saki like persuasion from the Southampton Brit, he gave into bringing the green creature back to Japan with them in much fury. Saki only gave in at the end because he was reminded of his beloved Tang Shen, and how she always hoped for a pet to take care of. After giving in, he roughly pulled Raphael and Karai apart and pushed the mutant towards the two disgusted pilots for boarding. Karai practically bursted into tears when Saki mentioned putting him in a cage for the way back, so he decided to sit between them incase the monster lashed out.
And that's when Saki is hit with an idea. To train a monster…and teach him, this Raphael, to use this cold nature to his advantage in battle…
Saki suddenly straightens, and Karai swiftly whips her head towards the window, expecting a scolding. Yes, exactly. An assassin.
Four days have passed since Saki, Karai, William, and the creature boarded the quinjet. It took a treacherous thirteen hours for them to arrive back at the Saki Tower in Tokyo, many delays with air traffic and two incompetent pilots who swerve and tilt to miss hitting birds.
Saki (dressed back in his infamous battle armour) now overlooks the production below him. In the medical facility blocked off to the public, Saki decided this center was the best for the operation. Dozens of medical experts, being handed the creature, Raphael, yesterday, still continue to gawk at his mutant form as they hook him up to several machines. Two experts inject two syringes full of azure coloured serum into his arms, and lower him into a glass case with a miniature oxygen tank breather over his mouth/beak.
The director of the project, Physician Valdez, with many PhD's and years of experience in both theoretical and action, stands next to Oroku Saki.
"Will this ensure his mutation?" Saki asks Valdez. The physician runs a hand through his greying hair.
"Sir, I have many years of experience in this line of work. But this––this mutant, it's unlike anything I've seen. Honestly, I'm unsure if the serum will work properly, even with all the effort our scientists put into altering it."
At that moment a young Japanese women, Doctor Kin, walks over to Valdez and Saki.
"Sir's," she addresses them by bowing her head.
"Lock the mutant up. Erase his memory and inject him with artificial ones involving his final form." Valdez hands Doctor Kin a clipboard with many pages of equations and information regarding the setup process.
"And your daughter? Karai?" Her dark eyes look up at Saki. He sighs and glances back down at the table over by the right. Two doctors hover over her unconscious petite form. He knew he shouldn't be subjecting her to the experiment, but he had no other choice.
"Wipe her memory," he says. Doctor Kin looks taken aback.
"But––but sir. We only have two batches of the memory serum. Please, if you give the scientist more time we can replicate and make more before all our research is lost––"
"Portia," Valdez coats.
"No. Portia––Doctor Kin––the longer we wait to erase Karai's memory of that…creature's form, the more we risk her remembering. I want artificial memories injected into her too of the mutant's final form."
Saki walks away before any objections, and heads towards the observatory room a flight above to witness the procedure.
Cliff hanger! Next chapter will explain what exactly is going on with the procedure and what the "final form" is. I promise it's nothing morbid :D
So that's how Raphael got the cut on his plastron in this universe.
The term 'quinjet' belongs to the MCU universe (Marvel Climatic Universe) only because I couldn't think of a cool name for the aircraft.
Wow, that end sequence seemed a lot like Wolverine: Origins to me, despite hating that movie.
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