My name is Elena Rachel Marrigold. Yeah yeah, I know, stupid name. My family's kinda like that, all goofy and snobby. I know I come from a better background than most, but GOD do I wish I didn't! Everybody acts like I'm just some item to better improve their position in the world, even my dad seems to think I should put logic before emotion. He's pretty frikkin' robotic like that, all 'Elena! Don't cut up your dress! That's not modifying, that's destroying blah blah blah!'. Urgh... Truth is I could never stand my life. All the time I had someone else making my choices for me, no matter what they were (which gets pretty creepy at times. Ever have a dad insist you use tampons during formal occasions? Even I don't talk about that stuff, it grosses me out, and there he is slipping into casual banter over dinner! Literally!). I wasn't allowed to grow my hair out, I had to wear some dumb bottle glasses instead of the nice ones I chose, I had to where a long skirt and some stupid french made shirt to school. I had no control over my life. Had no control. I've got plenty now... Just not by honest means. See, the day I was meant to start school at fancy-name-snobbington's (I never bothered to remember the name), the good headmaster 'accidentally' lost my file. You'd be surprised what you can do when you have a good decryption program (and if you're password is 1234, you deserve to be hacked really...). Since I don't exist at the school, my parents never hear of my absence. As a bonus, I got into Roosevelt! It's normal and public and not filled with people who have names like 'Darcy' or 'Hariton-Charles-Equitor'... Seriously, what is wrong with these snobs? Of course, I never revealed my actual name cos that'd be social suicide. Instead, I called myself Elena Richards instead. Short and sweet. Better yet, I didn't have to conform to some god forsaken uniform. I got to choose my own look! (and went a little overboard, I admit...)

To spite my family, and all the snobbiness I'd always been choked with, I figured I'd go nuts. I got purple highlights in my hair, ditched the glasses for contacts, went for a black tee with a purple-y plaid skirt and a set of rockin' mudstompers to boot! (or, rather, for boots). Little make-up here and there and I was done. Goodbye dorky loser, hello public school bombshell that lived by her own rules! I mean, I wasn't a bombshell-bombshell... There was prettier girls there than me, but I was the only goth! ...I think. There was this other girl around, she was kinda weird. She hung out with this red-head, no idea what her name was, but at times you'd think she was some robot or something. She'd was just so stiff, whenever the red-head talked she'd just lock up the moment friends were mentioned. Eh, not my problem... I actually made a few friends though. Sarah, Alan, Kevin, Paul, all stand-up kinda guys. We'd pretty much met as social outcasts during lunch and hung-out together ever since. Sarah was a reject because she was a gun nut (her entire bloodline apparently had a gun in their hand at some point), she even carried a small taser with her at all times because, and I'm quoting her, "Those little cry-babies in congress think a teenager with a semi-automatic rifle is a health hazard"... Yeah, she really needed to check the news more before she spoke. Alan, on the other hand, had a few screws loose. He'd apparently been kicked out of school once for burning it down... Kindergarten, according to him. He was pretty nuts but, damn, was he good with fireworks. It's like they obeyed him, dancing and moving as he requested, and always made the sky light up like nothing I've ever seen before. Then there's Paul, mister ninja extreme. He may have been a geek but the boy has spirit. He's actually pretty good at what he does only he insists on doing it everywhere he can. Back-flips off vending machines, jumping over cars, one pretty awesome kick in football (which hit the teacher in the face instead of score a goal, but who's to say that isn't still awesome?), he's crazed about it. Scares the hell out of me most of the time, he's like a cat. Just pops up out of nowhere. Never did find out what happened to his brother Timmy...

Anyway, Kevin's the last of the bunch. He's got an iron stomach, he'd eat anything if you dared him too. Says he's got a fast metabolism. It would explain why he's not huge but I'm guessing it's mostly because he roller blades pretty much everywhere. Got him in plenty of trouble before, though most of that is because he's been skitching and someone slammed on the brakes. It's a miracle he's still got all his teeth (though I swear he's got a bumper imprint on his brow). They're all pretty awesome. In my case, I guess all I bring to the party is my own secret life. I mean, I love baseball and I can do some amateur hacking but that's pretty much everything. Though, the funny thing is, while we were the outcasts before we're not the biggest freaks in town anymore. Yep, there's bigger creeps wandering around. Literally bigger in some cases.

Like, mushy pink aliens in ugly robots big.

It's was getting colder out but me and the gang decided it'd be okay to head down to central park and see if we can have some fun (Kevin planned on tagging places with whatever he felt like drawing while Alan had packed a zippo lighter and a butt-ton of fireworks. The kind that are likely on a terrorist list somewhere). Next thing we knew, aliens were everywhere. It was just a swarm of pink lasers and triangles everywhere. Think they called themselves 'Kraang'. Weird. Thankfully, our resident screw-loose Alan wasn't as shocked as the rest of us. Some lighter-spraypaint later and he was roasting our way to safety. Sarah snagged herself some kind of laser rifle, she's scary when she gets a gun in her hand, and we made pretty good progress back into the city. It was chaos, obviously, but we worked with what we had. Over the next few hours, we ran anywhere that could help us arm up. Sarah was fine with what she had but I knew of a sports store a block away. I managed to get myself a bat, even some finger tape as a precaution, and Paul was eager to grab some kickboxing equipment (his reasoning being that he'd need the protection more than a weapon, his training/obsession focusing on using the body as the weapon instead) while Sarah grabbed a sports bag. Good thing too. Few more blocks, a few more stores hit, we managed to get a nice little army thing going on. Alan insisted we hit the DIY store and, honestly, I'm glad he did. He was insane but REALLY good at making illegal weapons. He spiked my baseball bat, he added chains to Paul's protective gear, made himself a nice little cattle-prod and took Sarah's bag before loading it up with mini-explosives made him his fireworks. Even took a blowtorch for fun. As for Kevin... I don't even want to know where he found a katana. He swears blind he saw some "funny looking bug-eyed ninja thing" down the street and snatched it up. Either way, ready to fight, settled on using Roosevelt as a safe-house. So did other kids, apparently. It's not even been a day and we've got an army of teens ready to fight for our freedom... This is why I love these guys, they give a damn unlike the snobs I grew up around.

We've no idea what's happened to our parents. Never occurred to me I should've phoned. Either way, we're just hoping things get back to normal soon. Tonight we're gonna hit the stores on a supply run. Technically not stealing if the city is invaded by aliens, right? Well, guess that's everything. Wish me luck... OH! Wait! I nearly signed this in my nickname! Funny story, actually. My first week of school I was so nervous that I stuttered all the time and would always end up tripping over my words. It's why my friends all call me-

"Are you done with that already?" Kevin leaned over, trying to spy on what his friend had written in her journal. She slammed the book shut, green eyes glaring at him from the invasion of privacy. "Dude! Rude much?" She scoffed and slipped the book into her bag, picking up her baseball bat and resting it on her shoulder. Kevin grinned a Cheshire grin, circling her on his skates. "Aw, don't be mad! We get to go kick alien butt tonight! I mean, if we run into them! Which we might not!" Every end of his sentences had the same excitable kick as the last, his childish personality both annoying and sweet in such troubling times. He darted off as Elena paced up to the front doors of the high-school, her small gang ready and waiting for her arrival. Sarah smirked, gun cocked, as she prepared to co-ordinate their run. "Alright, you know the rules. Stick together, watch your backs and be quiet. Last thing you need is the big'uns coming down on ya." With a creak, the doors opened softly and the crew stepped out. Elena stopped, looking up at the moon, hoping that life would return to normal but that her friends never would. That was until she heard the bark from her gun totting buddy.

"You coming, Erma?"

To clarify the ending, the Irma I was writing about is the 'true' Irma of this TMNT universe. I knew Irma when she was in the 80s turtles and it was kinda a bummer to see her passed off as a Kraang-made machine in the 2012 version. So I figured I'd give her an alternate existence and remade her as a rebellious teen from an upper class family. Her nickname 'Erma' is based on a common stutter (saying 'Erm...' or 'Er...' when you can't think of anything to say) and is obviously phonetically alike to the actual spelling of her name. So there we go, Irma in a modern format that doesn't have a tin butt! Hope this clears any confusion up for you all.