Disclaimer: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all related characters, and all derived works are the intellectual property of Nickelodeon, Viacom, Eastman, and Laird. This story is for entertainment purposes and not for monetary gain. In no way should this story be taken to be anything other than a fan-based expansion of and commentary on the source material. n00btmntfan is in no way associated with the makers of TMNT.
Karai perched on the edge of a building, high above the New York City streets. Despite the late hour, the narrow channels of traffic teemed with humanity. The city that never sleeps. The gateway to America. To freedom.
Freedom. Her inward being ached when the word drifted through her mind. With a silent sigh, she sat down on the edge of the building and dangled her legs over the side. She thought of nothing so dramatic and messy as suicide; she merely loved the sensation of being on the precipice where the cool wind played freely in her hair.
She removed her metal faceguard and placed it into her lap. She despised wearing it. The condensation of her breath collected inside and made her face hot and stifled. Nevertheless, she wore it faithfully; ostensibly, she wore it for protection. In truth, she wore it because the first time she had put one on, her father smiled at her.
The smiles were few and far between. She craved them like she craved fresh air and free wind; her comfort was a small price to pay.
Strands of the blue-black hair that framed her face fluttered in the breeze as though they longed to float away to places unseen, but tethered to her as they were, they tickled and caressed her cheeks and nose instead.
Slowly, she reached into her pocket and extracted the four-pointed shuriken she had hidden there. She clasped it in her hands, examining her reflection in the shiny metal. Her face peered back at her amidst the emblem of Hamato Yoshi—of Hamato Leonardo.
Leonardo. "I think you're looking for a way out of the Foot," he had said to her once. He had been her friend then, but he had stabbed her in the back when he tried to kill her father whose smiles were so precious to her. That day, hot hatred as she had never known boiled in her veins. Yoshi had taken her mother; Leonardo had tried to take her father.
So why did her thoughts linger so frequently on the one who had betrayed her? When he had said, "It's over, Karai," it felt as though the door to her way out had slammed abruptly in her face.
Open, the door meant nothing. Closed, it was as stifling as her faceguard.
Intently, she turned the shuriken over in her hands. When she looked at it, it was as though she saw a glimpse of what was on the other side of that door, something she both hated and yearned for.
"You know, it would extremely easy to push you off," a voice said from behind.
Immediately, Karai rolled away from the edge and leapt to her feet, unsheathing her tanto as she did; the shuriken and her faceguard clattered to the roof.
Her stomach leapt in disgust and ached with hunger when she saw the speaker. With one of his katanas unsheathed and poised to attack, Leonardo stood less than thirty feet away from her.
"Then why didn't you?" Karai snapped. A gust of air swept her hair across her face; impatiently, she tucked it behind her ear. "Some misguided sense of honor, no doubt."
Leonardo narrowed his eyes. The tails of his mask fluttered behind him, stretched out on the cool wind like the mane of a galloping charger. "What are you doing up here alone anyway?"
"None of your business. What are you doing here?"
"I lost one of my shuriken up here the other day."
Her face grew warm; her voice stayed cold. "You retrieve every shuriken?"
"I have finite resources."
For a moment, they stared at each other like snakes coiled to strike. Then, with a grimace, Karai lowered her gaze to the rooftop where the tiny sharp circle of metal lay. She pointed to it with her sword. Leonardo's eyes followed the tip of her weapon; cautiously, he strode over to his lost shuriken. As he advanced, Karai slowly circled back away from him.
Still not taking his eyes off of her, Leonardo stooped to reclaim her only glimpse of the door's other side. Karai's faceguard lay less than a foot away from it; he regarded it for a moment and then picked it up as well. He sheathed his katana slowly and deliberately.
Holding her faceguard out in front of him, he said, "Here. You dropped this."
Hesitantly, she approached him and snatched it from his hand.
A vague smile crossed Leonardo's face when her fingertips brushed up against his. Skeptically, he shook his head. "What were you doing up here all alone, Karai?"
"Looking for something" With a practiced, automatic motion, Karai snapped her faceguard back into place. She held Leonardo's gaze for only a moment longer; then, with an acrobatic flip, she fled the windy rooftop and worked her way to the cramped streets below. As she stole through the sleepless city back to her father, her face grew hot and itchy behind the metal plate.
"It's over, Karai," Leonardo had once said to her.
Her reply to him then had been a promise and a plea:
"For now."