Chapter one

A what?

Fate has a nasty habit of messing with one's head. One minute you're as happy as someone who just won fifty trillion in cold hard cash and the next you find out that it was a lie. The same thing has happened to me.

I'm what you might call an assailant, perhaps an assassin but I strongly doubt that. In all seriousness, I'm not your average teenager: I have… certain abilities. No one actually knows about this, not even my parents, and that makes me feel like a big fake. I have to pretend each and every day that I'm something I most certainly am not just to prevent some… information from being revealed about me.

I go by the name of Simone: an ordinary teenager leading a normal life… until nightfall… Then, I go by the name of Simone: an assailant with no weakness and no past. In all honesty, I actually enjoy every minute of it, but the world constantly needs saving and those of us who do save it go unacknowledged and nonexistent… We're not a bunch of invisible people, but he says that we must be to co-exist in this place.

My brothers and I have a solid relationship, nothing can tear us apart. My "father" has raised me since I was just a baby, took me in like his own and cared for me. I'm younger than my brothers but, for some unknown reason, I'm much more mature.

My one room is actually damp and dark while my other one is filled with sunlight and cool air. I love blue, especially a beautiful shade of it. My hair is a lovely snow-white, my eyes are the colour of soft and perfect grass while my skin is a beautiful shade of beige.

My life as a normal teenager does go along well with my other life: the one no one knows about. I go to school each day, I get top grades and I'm popular, though I don't really have friends except for my brothers. I'm too scared to have my secret revealed to dangerous ears and I can't, no, don't, want to imagine the consequences if something like that actually happened.

"Father" has always told me that I'm special, but very different and that made me even more special. I still believe him, but I feel too different to see myself as special. He took me aside one day and told me everything I needed to know: I wasn't his child, with him being the way he is I figured it out long ago, and that I should leave for a while. I was to find myself a family, but I was to still keep contact with them.

When I was younger I assumed I was from another planet and that I was sent here to do something, blame it on my brothers and all their movies, but then I find out where I was actually living, what I really am and what I shouldn't expose to the outside world…

I now live my life as two: one as a normal teen and another as one that'll make you die of shock. It does tend to be difficult every now and again, but I've learned to cope with it.

My adoptive parents kept my name Simone, believing that another name would make me unresponsive and rebellious. I agree with that statement whole heartedly: I loved my name and I will not change it under any circumstance. My parents paid for my education, for my clothes and everything else that I needed. I learned new values, I learned about what is acceptable and what isn't and that made me question "father's" teachings.

I did ask him about it once and he simply told me that his were more for dangerous situations rather than everyday life. I accepted his response without question and continued living my life.

My parents died recently in a horrible car crash while I was visiting my other family. When the news reached my perfectly trained ears, I was at the scene faster than lightning. All I saw was a red pavement, a wet street and cars placed like someone threw a deck of cards in a random direction. I was destroyed. I couldn't accept the fact that they were gone, I truly couldn't.

If it weren't for my brothers and father, I wouldn't have made it through. They supported me, visited my adopted family's grave with me, celebrated traditions with me the way my adopted parents always did and even became my therapists when I needed one. I truly have one crazy life…

Here's why: It's been some time now and I'm living with my family in the sewers, in the lair they always had. My father is a grey rat half my height and a mutant, my brothers are turtles taller than me with a small shell on each of their backs and mutants. All four of them wear a different colour blindfold with holes for their eyes and a brown karate-belt. Each one of us has a different weapon, but can use the other's just as well as our own.

They call themselves TMNT, short for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I go along with that. Being raised by a bunch of mutants will make you feel like one after a while, trust me. I just go by Simone: an assailant with no weakness but a past that'll shock you to death.