I'm so sorry! This chapter is super long, but the rest will be average sized. To get the story started, I needed to put in a lot of detail. Oh, and if you're okay with reading a 12 to 25 chapter story, then you'll love this one.

Arete tightened her grasp on her katana. She glanced over to her father, who was at the other end of the dojo, and saw him nod solemnly. Arete returned the nod and then ran forward, holding her katana to the side of her right leg, with eyes only for the hanging practice dummy that she was charging for.

"Ugh!" she grunted unflatteringly as she swung her sword. It slashed through the air like a bolt of lightning and ran straight through the dummy's stomach. The dummy's top half slid slowly from its hips, and fell to the floor, spilling stuffing across the dojo mat.

"My, my," said Arete's father as he walked to his daughter,"You are certainly getting better. I suppose that by your sixteenth birthday, you'll be able to do that move in half the time."
"But that's six months from now, Hayai!" whined Arete. Hayai was the name of her father, which she liked to call him by it instead of 'Dad'. She wasn't sure why but it was probably because it made her feel like more of an equal to him.

"True talent comes gradually, so oneself may learn to control it at the same pace," sighed Hayai.

"Great..I think," replied Arete. She slid her katana back into its holder. Suddenly, she pulled her collection of three well-crafted ninja stars out of the satchel connected to her belt and held them out for Hayai to see. "Or, you could stay here all week and teach me how to do that move quicker...or else." she said. Hayai's eyes widened, so Arete sighed and explained,"It's a joke."

"Oooh," drawled Hayai,"Yes, I think I'll try to train you in humor as well as ninjitsu sometime. Race you to the wall and back?"

"Yeah!" agreed Arete. She backed up against the weaponry rack with her father as he counted down.

"Three...two...one!" he said.

Arete bolted forward. What she lacked in ninjitsu skills at the time being, she completely made up for in speed. As she was dashing forward at break-neck pace, already half-way to the wall, Arete turned her head to see just how far behind her Hayai was. But he was nowhere to be seen. Arete became nervous and slowed to a jog. "Hayai?"

"YAAH!"

She quickly looked up. To Arete's enormous surprise, she saw her father practically falling from the ceiling, about to land on her! She stood, frozen in fear.

Hayai landed on top of her and trampled Arete to the floor. Though, he did it in such a way that he didn't hurt his daughter in the least, except maybe on her knee a little. Hayai had put his palms on Arete's shoulders as he fell forward, quickly pressed his left leg to her side, and brought his other leg against her calve and caused Arete to trip. As they fell, Hayai made sure that his daughter landed perfectly.

"Woah!" said a dazed Arete on the floor as he father jumped up and reached the wall. "Am I gonna learn how to do that?"

"In time," Hayai replied briefly,"You see, as you may be faster than me in running, I can use my vast ninjitsu skills to beat you. This art is one part skill and another resourcefulness. Now, let's go home.

The father and daughter walked outside of the dojo, clambered into their beaten-down junk pile of a car and puttered back to their house.

When Arete walked inside of her house, she saw her brother, Keran, sitting on the living room couch and watching television. Keran was sweating and looked to have newly formed sunburn, so Arete figured he'd only arrived home from basketball practice a few minutes ago. Keran wasn't particularly flexible so, obviously, ninjitsu wasn't his exercise of choice.

"What are you watching?" questioned Arete as she put her ninja weapons and gear in the back of the closet, so her brother wouldn't pull them out and hurt himself with the katana or something.

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!" chanted Keran, acting like a child a year or two younger than his age, which was thirteen. Keran just had a natural tendency to be immature and like things that might be considered too young for his age.

Arete smiled. She'd had a stressful day at school, and though ninjitsu practice had taken away some of the stress, there was still a bit remaining that could be drained away with television. She sat down on the couch and began to watch. Though, she was almost sixteen, Arete also loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She'd never admitted that though, even to her family, so she pretended to only half-watch the episodes with Keran. Arete liked to watch Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello do all those fancy ninja moves that she dreamed of mastering someday.

On the television screen, Michelangelo was about to speak, but before he did, Keran opened his mouth and shouted "IT'S BACK TO POLKA!" in his best Michelangelo voice. Arete was jarred back to attention and realized quickly that her brother was only shouting the lines from the show. He had this episode down to every word.

A moment later, Michelangelo onscreen yelled,"IT'S BACK TO POLKA!" The siblings chuckled.

After observing his children watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show for a few minutes, Hayai smiled and walked into his room. Kids and their shows these days! He reached under his bed and pulled a dusty black-painted wooden box out and blew the thick layer of dust off. Engraved on the top of the box was one word: memories. Flipping the lid open, Hayai sighed in happiness. He pulled out a small photograph of his wife and children. In this picture, Arete was only six and Keran was only four, sitting on the laps of their mother, Nazo. A tear leaked off of Hayai's face and splattered onto the yellowing photo. Nazo had died seven years ago and yet he still missed her dreadfully.

Farther down in the pile of memories was an even older and yellower picture. It was of Hayai as a young kid in Japan, practicing ninjitsu at a dojo with his best friend, Hamato Yoshi. Hamato's gleeful smile as he kicked down a practice dummy in midair had been frozen in time for nearly fourty years. The boy had gone missing about twenty years ago and had not been seen since, but Hayai had a strong feeling that, somehow, Hamato Yoshi was alive...somewhere.

Too much memories for today, thought Hayai, slamming the box shut, hiding it again, and laying down in bed to go to sleep early.

This was the umpteenth time that Arete had seen this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode. Though she loved the show, Arete's mind began to drift elsewhere. She began to replay the vague and few memories she had of her mother, Nazo, in her head, particularly ones where she was doing ninjitsu. Making sure that Keran was immersed in the show, Arete leaned over and pulled up a loose floorboard. She took the purple box inside of the floor out and blew off the dust. One word was engraved on the top: Mother. Opening the lid, Arete pulled out the content on top. It was a ragged white ninja mask Nazo had given her for her eighth birthday, the last one Arete's mother had been alive to see. Arete didn't know why, but she had a feeling that she should keep the mask inside her pocket, so she did so.

Other contents of the box were weapons, such as Nazo's pink-hilted katana with her name inscribed in it. Arete ran her hand across the hilt slowly and then swished the blade through the air silently, trying to grasp some memories of her mother and hold on to them tightly.

After a few moments shifting through the old box of ninja gear and worn photographs, Arete found something that caught her eye. It was a photo, but she'd never seen it before. Hayai, as a young child, was sitting astride a friend of his, smiling at the camera. Off in the distance, there was another boy who seemed to have been accidentally caught in the picture, writing the word "Shredder" over and over on the pavement with a blue piece of sidewalk chalk and glaring up at Hayai and his friend. Arete thought this mysterious background kid looked slightly familiar, but very creepy. And why was he writing Shredder, the name of the villain in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, on the sidewalk? Was this picture taken around the time when Teenage Mutant Turtles was popular in the 1980's and 90's? Arete didn't think so, because her father had never heard of the turtles before the 2012 show had premiered and he was about fifty-five or so, and the kid in the background looked to be the same age as Hayai was in the picture.

"AAAAGH!"

Arete and Keran jumped up. "That was Dad!" Keran said, stating the obvious, as Arete crammed the box back into its hiding place but stuffing the photo in her pocket with the white ninja mask.

The siblings ran to their father's bedroom as fast as they could. What they saw when they opened the door was unbelievable. The side window was completely broken and a man, wearing shiny, pointy, silver armor everywhere on his body was holding Hayai up in the air by the collar of his shirt. The man looked almost exactly like Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, though Arete thought he looked familiar from somewhere else, too. Yes, the man looked like the strange kid in the background of the picture!

"SHREDDER?" shouted Keran in absolute confusion and shock.

Shredder, seeing he'd been caught, looked at Hayai. "I'll get the answers out of you soon, Hayai."

The Shredder man then leaped through the broken window, throwing a kicking Hayai onto his back as he ran.

Keran and Arete bolted to the window. Looking down, Arete realized that it was almost two stories to the ground. Arete already had the skills to make that jump from her ninjitsu training but Keran did not.

"He's gone," said Keran, pointing into the distance. Sure enough, the Shredder man wasn't even visible anymore. Long gone.

"We can't give up!" exclaimed Arete,"We'll follow him!" She leapt onto the ground and instructed her brother to meet her outside with a pack full of supplies.

"Why don't we just call the police?" asked Keran.

"Keran, you saw that man!" shouted Arete,"He looked like he could take out the entire police force, and the S.W.A.T, and.."

"Okay, okay, I get it!" interrupted Keran, walking out of view to gather the supplies.

Arete looked at the horizon. "Don't worry, Hayai. We'll find you. Even if it kills us. " Just then, Arete had a thought. It probably would kill her and Keran. If that man was as talented at ninjitsu as the Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which he looked to be, how could a girl with only three months training and a boy who knew only basketball defeat him? Arete took out the photograph and the white ninja mask out of her pocket. Looking at the photo for reassurance, she slipped on the mask and tied it around her head. Carrying a memory of her mother and a memory of her father gave her courage, and as soon as Keran came out of the house with a backpack of food and weapons, they began to run in the direction the Shredder man had.