A/N: And after a long hiatus, it is time to post a new little ficlet. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Karai, the Shredder, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or any other character or location appearing in this story. I make no money from this and I mean no harm. Please do not sue.
What I Let Myself Become.
Karai glared over the railing of the balcony around the 47th story of foot headquarters. Over the past year so much had happened. Her father had been stolen from her thanks in no small part to Leonardo and his accursed brothers. She had hunted them to the best of her ability since that time until a few weeks ago when an even darker and more potent enemy had surfaced. Once again she found herself needing Leonardo's assistance. Or rather she found herself accepting his request for help.
Were Leonardo and his brothers really so bad? They had enabled the utroms to capture her father rather than letting him go as Karai had wished. He would have been free and he would have been gone. They would not have had to worry about him anymore. Everyone could have been satisfied.
Oroku Saki had not been the most honorable of people.
That was a lesson that Karai had learned when she was young. Still, she had been raised to have a strong sense of honor. Her honor had grown and been supplemented by those in the Japanese contingent of the Foot that she had run for so many years. She had grown away from and freed herself of her father's distorted version of honor. At least, she thought she had.
The helmet of the Shredder sat on the railing next to her.
A staple of ninja honor demanded that she exact vengeance on the turtles for what they had done to her father. For how they had torn her small family apart. Past months had been littered with attempts toward that end, and each had been thwarted.
But what had her attempts earned her?
And had they been worth it?
The first question was easy to answer. Her attempts had thus far earned her nothing as the turtles and their rat master still lived. The second was less straightforward.
Had all of this been worth it?
Karai looked out over the edge of the building one more time. Her dark hair danced in the light breeze that wound its way through the tallest of New York's skyscrapers. She looked down at the helmet on the railing.
The Shredder.
She had become The Shredder. She had become not the good things about her father that she loved and respected, but the parts of him that she hated and despised. That was something she had not intended. It made her question the wisdom of her attempts at vengeance.
A flash of lightning on the horizon drew Karai's attention. The cloud before her was not the only storm brewing. There was another, one that was far more potent. It threatened not only rain, lightning and thunder upon the City of New York, but death and destruction reigning down upon the world. That was something that Karai's remaining sense of self and honor could not permit. No matter whom it meant teaming up with.
Once more, she looked at the helmet.
Karai had taken what she had hated and made it part of her. It was time to retake herself, her honor and her soul. Perhaps she would never look at Leonardo and his brothers in the same light she once had, respecting their honor and their abilities, but with Leonardo's latest suggestion the time for vengeance was over.
She would do what was asked of her. The job was something that only she could do. If what she had heard was true, she was the only Shredder who had ever lived who might consider what she was about to do.
Karai picked up the helmet and looked at it for a long moment before she tossed it to the floor of the balcony.
It was time to put the past behind her, and to bury the Shredder once and for all.
It was time to take back her soul.