TMNT Girls

Prologue

I'm Lisa. I train at New York City's Ninjutsu Dragonwith my twin sister, as I have been for years. A few years after we started training here, I began to appreciate the patience, skill, and, well, patience it takes to teach three-year-olds the complicated art of ninjutsu (especially me and my sister), and since then I've wanted to become a sensei myself. I train with the hoko(1), until recently. Our normal sensei is taking a two year long trip to Europe and in his stead, a rookie sensei entered. He isn't bad at ninjutsu; actually he's pretty good. But changing our weapons claiming that we needed to be more 'diverse' really put a damper on him. He changed mine to the katana blades(2), of all things. When he said diverse, he meant diverse. I'm almost positive that I'm going to embarrass myself majorly during training. Meanwhile, my twin is struggling with a problem of her own; how the heck is supposed to get her new weapons into parties? As silly as she is, sometimes I wish I could be more like her.

My name's Mary. I'm a straight A student, member of the reigning Battle of the Books team, as well as Odyssey of the Mind and the second Mathletes team. Oh yeah, I'm a second degree red belt in ninjutsu, *this* close to black, training at New Jersey's Champion's Dojo since I could remember. I've also been paying for my own training for a while now, and yet despite all of that, my mom wants to take me out of ninja training so I have more time for Mathletes, Battle of the Books, and Odyssey of the Mind meets and competitions. I'm honestly not trying to brag or anything, but I think I got school down. My sensei has been so far successful in convincing her to let me stay, but now that's he's been relocated to a different dojo in the chain, I am, for once, clueless on how to fix this. I explained my problem to the new sensei, and she said that changing my weapon might work. She's going to change everyone's weapon anyway so we can have a wider range of study. It'll probably work, but what is she going to change my weapon to? The bo-staff, of all things. I definitely liked my double kama(3) better. Wish me luck New Jersey!

Hi! My name's Elizabeth, but my friends call me Liz. I've been going to Ninjutsu Dragon for a while, and you already heard about the sensei switch-up. Sensei whoever changed my fukedake(4) and fuki-ya(5) with butterfly swords(6) to the nun chucks(7), as if he wanted to make my weapon as bulky as possible. I realize that darts and knives aren't normal weapons of choice, but after I mastered them, they really were the best choice for me, but the new guy thought otherwise. Too bad for me, my darts and knives were easily smuggled into parties ;). My sister, Lisa the leader, says that my reason is silly, but hers isn't so great either. She's so good at ninja, that she can do it blind-folded, no joke. Well, either way, it'll still take me forever to get the nun chucks mastered.

Catherine. I go to the Ninja's Shadow in Manhattan, or at least, I do if I can convince my mom that I do NOT have anger issues. She thinks that I have some major temper and martial arts will get in the way of my counseling appointments. I can't believe she even thinks I have issues, especially ones so bad that I even need counseling! This is exactly what makes me mad. The new sensei isn't helping either. My old one retired, and the dojo hired a new one, and with him new 'possibilities'. By that they mean, 'He's going to completely change the lessons and your weapons! Aren't you lucky?' I guess I wouldn't be so reluctant if I didn't hate him. One day I came in for training and he told me that I would no longer be using the chigiriki(8)that I have been using throughout my training. No, I get the twin sai(9). Jerk. It'll take me forever and a day to get the hang of these things. And they're so tiny!

Part 1; Beginnings (Mary's POV)

I walk off of the training mat and towards Master Lea. She called Jake and me from our Wednesday training, but she didn't mention why. It's fourteenth of March, only three days from St. Patrick's Day, and everyone already looks like leprechauns. Jake appeared last year a little before Master Lea, and though he's not the nicest guy on the planet, his brother Bruce is worse. He almost monthly comes in for training with a black eye from some street fight, and takes pride in his giant purple dragon tattoo twisting from his shoulder to his hand. He must be in a gang or something.

When Master Lea notices us coming, she turns, nods, and walks toward us. We bow.

"You asked for us, sensei?" I ask.

"Yes. You two have been nominated for this year's tournament. Congratulations." She says bluntly and quickly, as if to get it over with. But who cares how emotionless she sounds? I've finally been nominated! After all these years…I don't expect Jake to be too excited, though. He was nominated last year, and said that winning was so boring. Boys will be boys, I guess. I try to conceal most of my excitement, probably missing my mark entirely.

"Hai, sensei. Thank you sensei." I reply, trying and failing to be blunt.

"When does the competition start? I need to know what days not to make movie plans on." Jake inquires. Don't be fooled; he doesn't give a sherkin for this competition. Master Lea nods.

"The competition is on the twenty-first of May. Also, you will meet your competitors unarmed tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. We're going to a New York dojo called the Ninjutsu Dragon. Wear your dojo shirts." She informs us. Hold up, tomorrow?

"Hai, sensei. May I ask you a question?" I ask. She nods. "Why are we doing this on such short notice?" Master Lea looks at me. After a short pause she says:

"My computer crashed. I couldn't check my e-mail until today, when I found out about the meeting." I nod in response. She seemed almost surprised, and it took her a minute to remember her story. But wouldn't she have expected me to ask?

"Why are we going unarmed? We didn't have to last year." Jake speaks up.

"It's a new trust custom." She replies, unwavering. He nods. She motions toward the mat.

"Go back to your training. You should practice as much as possible before the tournament. You have no idea how hard this year's tournament can be." Master Lea tells us. I barely register her fleeting smirk. We bow and head back to training. I'm crazy excited. After so many years of training, I had finally made it to a tournament! Ever since I started I had wanted to be good enough to make it. Oh, the day has finally come! Even if I am six-teen now, it takes a little bit of time to get good, especially with a weapon change.

Its 6:45 and everyone's here. I'm in my gray 'Champion's Dojo' shirt and denim shorts. Jake's got the same shirt, and he looks about as bored as possible. I ignore him. Master Lea has her still gray 'Champion's Dojo; Sensei' shirt and yoga pants. She tells my mom that the time we return will vary depending on traffic and how well the meeting goes. Though personally, I think that it should only take about two hours and a half at the most. Possibly three. It really shouldn't take too long. Master Lea hustles everyone into the van. Wait a minute, the van? Why don't we use the company car? This van can hold up to twenty people.

"Uh…Master Lea? Why don't we take the car? The van uses more gas." I look quizzically at Lea.

"The car is out of gas." She replies and revs the engine. Sputter, sputter, sputter.

"Oh."

She revs the engine again. Soon the familiar whir of the engine comes. Traffic isn't too bad; the ride takes about thirty minutes. The Ninjutsu Dragon is a pretty nice dojo. It looks like they have about fifteen trophies, and those are only the ones on display. We bow, and the Dragon girl's sensei makes a short speech that I pay very little attention to. All the other sensei's give a short speech of gratitude for welcoming us to their dojo, blah, blah, blah. Finally, they announce that 'the time has come for introduction'. The girls from the host dojo go first.

"My name's Lisa and I'm sixteen. I train with the katana." The taller of the two says. We don't mention our color belts; this a second-degree black belt contest. She also looks to be the more serious of the two. The other one speaks up.

"My name's Elizabeth, but you can call me Liz. I'm sixteen, and I have recently mastered the nun chucks, despite how bulky they are." She smiles at us. I smile back, barley suppressing a laugh. Her teammate looks embarrassed.

"Excuse my sister. She's not very serious." Lisa apologizes for her. They must be twins. They move us along to two more girls from a dojo in Manhattan called the Ninja's Shadow.

"I'm Catherine, I'm sixteen too. I train with daggers, oh, sorry, twin sai." A girl who looks, and quite frankly sounds, very hot-blooded.

"My name's Valentine and I rock the tessen(11)." Catherine's companion said. "And I'm eighteen."

Last but not least, another New York dojo called Traditional Martial Arts is introduced.

"I'm Manny. I use the manriki(12). I'm eighteen."

He's really, really short. I mean, seriously, this guy needs divine intervention! Or a late growth spurt.

"And I'm John. The chigiriki is my weapon of choice. I'm seventeen." Catherine glares jealously at Manny's skyscraper of a partner. Manny and John are complete height opposites. The sensei's give another speech on good sportsmanship, fairness, friendly competition, ect. I do some quick math and guess that we've been in the dojo for about an hour, including the speeches. To close, we bow. Except, I'm no longer bowing. I'm on the floor and someone's on top of me making it hard to breath. I push up, only to be push back down.

"Sorry, girlie. I'm not done with you yet." I think its Valentine holding me down, but the way she speaks it could be Catherine. I barely manage to push her off of me and get up to do a quick survey of the fight before me. It was Valentine, Catherine's on the floor yelling (and kicking) up a storm at her captor. I almost feel bad for…Jake! I can hardly believe it! I keep scanning the room and find Master Lea holding Liz down. Both of them are traitors! Two more people knock me down after my few seconds of standing up, but not before I see Lisa fighting off her sensei and Catherine's. I twist my head so I can see what's going on while wiggling enough to make it very hard for John and Manny to tie me up. They try for my feet, and almost sprain my ankle trying to get me to stop struggling. I don't.

Lisa gets knocked off her feet but she keeps fighting from the ground as they topple on top of her. She rolls out from under the sensei's weight. As she gets up, her sensei throws a punch that catches her in the jaw. She falls, and they start struggling again.

"Stop, Lisa! They'll only hurt you more!"

But Lisa doesn't listen to her sister. Manny and John manage to finish tying me up and go to help Lisa's opponents. Soon she is tied up like everyone else. No space in between our hands behind our backs, and just enough between our feet so we can barely walk normally without tripping. Jake escorts me to our van. Valentine seems to be taking pleasure in half dragging Catherine to the van, unable to scream because of the gags they fitted us with. Catherine has resorted to making muffled threats through her gag. After we're all loaded up, they attempt to rev the engine, but it again will not start. I never thought I'd be happy about its horrible engine before. We hear a thump from the side of the van, but can't see out the windows from the floor. It sounds like someone was thrown against the van during a fight. Which would ultimately mean that…someone came to rescue us! Yes! But just as hope begins to form, our van starts and swerves away. My immature hope topples, as the people trying to rescue us are only faint yells now. I bang my head on the floor in frustration. So close to escaping, and yet so far.

We drive straight for a while, and I'm guessing we got in a minor traffic jam, judging from the horns going off in all directions. I listen hard for any clue as to who might've tried to rescue us. I only hear little snitches of whispered conversations. Things like,

"Were those turtles?"

"…came from the sewers…"

"…so quickly…" And one particularly loud sentence,

"Could those be Yoshi's students? The one's Master Shr- uh, sensei always talks about destroying?" So these people must be enemies with the people who attempted to help us. But what was that bit about turtles?

Finally, after about twenty minutes, we pull up in front of a large building. The dingy sign reads, 'Nature's Lab'.

"What do you plan on doing in there?" I ask. But it comes out more like:

"Wdsj ds yik psjd oon daoim in tjdija?" Manny laughs and I glare at him, trying to remind him of his size. They remove my gag just enough so I can speak. After I repeat my question, Jake says this:

"You are the official subjects for an important experiment." Excuse me? I wish I can make myself think that their kidding, but their ice-cold eyes tell me that they are dead serious about experimenting on us. John and Manny escort me into the building, and the deeper we go more afraid I get. I would personally keep the most valuable and/or expensive experiments in the hardest to reach places. I barely start to hope that maybe, just maybe, the people who tried to rescue us might've caught up to us during the traffic jam, but I tramp any hope that can possibly disappoint me. One more turn and we're pushed inside a room with four slender cages with drains. The cages trigger absolute panic, and I forget to think. I. Am. Terrified. I'm completely losing my train of rational thought.

"Take out their gags; I want to hear their screams." Valentine smirks, and with an authorizing nod of Master Lea's head, takes off Catherine's gag.

"Why did you use us? This seems planned." Catherine, or Cathy, spits immediately. "Geez, Valentine, loosen up! I'm not going anywhere." Cathy attempts to sit down, only to have another sensei help drag her into a cage. Cathy's got a point. She was the only one taken from her dojo, same as me. Both of the Dragon girls were taken, though. There's no pattern except that certain people were taken. Or which ever four failed to defend themselves. How many people knew of the experiment? Jake, Valentine and Lea, obviously, but who else?

After we're all behind bars, Lea starts spouting orders.

"All of you come with me. We don't know how many there could be. I'm not taking chances with those snobby scientists."

"I thought they were helping us." Jake stated. Lea doesn't even turn her head.

"I don't trust them. Who knows what they could have up their sleeves? Now let's go!" After rallying her troops, Lea and her army leave to take out the scientists who have what she wants, I guess. I glance at the others, who seem pretty dejected. Except for Liz who has resorted to-stretching? She hits head in the middle of her backbend.

"Oww!" Liz moans.

"What are you doing, Liz?" Lisa is as bewildered us. Liz finally pulls a butterfly swordfrom her boot. We gape at her.

"What?" She asks innocently as she cuts her bonds.

"You were supposed to come unarmed!" Lisa points out.

"I'm never unarmed, you know that." Liz gives Lisa a weird look.

"Who cares? Pass that thing down already!" Cathy says, excited. Liz nods and passes it down to Lisa, Lisa to me, and me to Cathy. We're all free, but I hardly notice as I pick the lock. All I'm armed with is a bobby pin and a brain, which, given time, can pick this lock. Only, I don't have time. Every time I almost have it, the pin falls out, I turn it the wrong way, or the pin gets stuck in the gears. I'm about to get it once more when we hear footsteps. I hurry the best I can, but to no ado. We failed to escape. Liz stops trying to bash the lock, Cathy stops trying to bend the bars, and Lisa gives up slipping through the bars. Our captors have caught us red-handed, right in the middle of an escape attempt. Cathy holds the sword behind her back and pretends to be absolutely crushed. Even though I just met her, I can't believe they buy her act.

"How did you cut the ropes? They were secure!" Lea is steamed, like she had everything planned and fool-proof, and something going wrong should be impossible. I feel pretty good right now, and I start to grin. Cathy slowly takes out the butterfly sword from behind her back. I kill my smile before attracts any attention. I sneak a side-glance at Cathy before turning my gaze to Lisa, who is currently being interrogated. Cathy's preparing to throw the sword (probably at the fire alarm), and Lisa's doing a great job making the story of how we got our bonds cut and who might've helped vague. Mostly. I almost laugh because she's actually managed to make it seem as though the people who tried to save us at the dojo managed to make it here cut our bonds and went off to try and stop the experiment a few seconds ago using the window. To keep Lea from seeing my half-hidden smile, I turn toward Cathy long enough to know that she's definitely NOT planning on throwing it at the fire alarm. She's aiming for Valentine.

My smile disintegrates as Cathy throws the deadly projectile. Any sound that could've come out sticks in my throat, something that I'm not entirely used to, being the 'annoying' younger sibling. I let out the breath I didn't know I didn't know I was holding when it whizzes past her shoulder creating a hole in her shirt. Valentine looks like she's battling between anger, terror, and an impossibly small smidge of awe. She decides on anger.

"Why you little-!"

Valentine starts toward Cathy, only to be held back by her sensei. Glaring, she steps back. Cathy glares back.

Lea nods to Jake, and he starts toward Liz's cage. He points to Manny saying,

"Go to the second cage." Or to me. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a canister of glowing goo. Should I be worried? Tossing it to Manny he says, "Here." He does the same with John and Valentine, John to the third cage (Lisa) and Valentine to fourth (Cathy).

"Open the latches." Jake orders, and standing on his tip-toes, opens a hole in the top of Liz's cage, just big enough for the average hand to fit through. The others follow in suit. They're probably testing some kind of chemical on humans, when directly touched by the looks of it. They could probably just inject it into our circulatory system, but this could be some kind of destructive chemical, or maybe it only works when poured directly onto skin. Maybe it's just more fun to watch it that way.

"Pour in the mutagen." Jake orders in a steely cold voice.

As soon as I get over my shock, I press my body as far away from the hole as possible. Are they seriously going to mutate us?

"You got to be joking." Liz exclaims, her back pressed against bars so hard it must've made an impression. Jake shakes his head, not really enjoying this, but not regretting it either. Is he being paid to do this?

Manny keeps his eyes on Jake, until Jake nods at him. Manny nods back and opens his canister. Realizing that he is way to short, he grabs a step stool. When he climbs up, he barely reaches the opening. I smirk at him. He smirks back.

"At least I'm not going to be a hideous freak." He snaps.

"At least I wasn't born one." I shoot back. He scowls, I glare.

As he starts to dribble the mutagen into the cage, I press away from the slow-moving goop. But the cage is too confined; I won't be able to avoid it for much longer.

Suddenly, I see the goo sling forward, and onto my ankle. At I don't feel anything happening, then it hits me. A fiery pain starting it my leg and working its way up. I scream in absolute pain, and as my ankle collapses I fall into the rest of the glop. It touches my shin and knees first. Then the stuff soaks through my pants, starting cold then turning into an inferno. My skin stretches past breaking point, my clothes rip, and I have an extreme case of growing pain in my every thing. My fingers are forced together, and my nose feels like its being smashed. After I finally stop burning, my back painfully bloats and hardens, leaving me numb, save the massive throbbing throughout my body and a migraine. Most of the mutagen has slowly drained out of the cage, leaving only a few stray spots that I'm careful to avoid.

I can't bring myself to look down at my legs, so I lift my hands instead. I gasp. I have an overall total of three fingers, three on each hand. I have no fingernails, and my skin is green. I start breathing harder as I look down at where my shirt should be, only to find a shell. I look at my legs, finding them green just like the rest of me, and I only have three toes on each foot. I feel my face, only to find that I have no hair, ears, or nose! Then how come I can still smell? And hear? I must have internal ears; I'll know more after I figure out what animal I am. I look at my companions. It looks like we all suffered the same mutation:

I gasp. In a hoarse voice I yell,

"We're all g-giant…turtles!"