In most cases, the dock of a freight company in Manhattan New York would hardly be exciting. Nothing really happens there except the importing and exporting of goods between countries. Of course, there was always an oddball case, and this particular night happened to be one of them.
It was a spring night of the year 2010. The waning gibbous moon reflected on the calm waves by the docks, barely illuminating the crimes that might be happening within the city. Where the silver light failed to touch, however, a city light took its place. But right now, the internal city is not of concern. That freight ship that had just come in from Southeast Asia is where the story begins, bringing in not only valuable spices and other goods, but also a tiny hitchhiker.
That figure made sure to keep to the shadows as best as it possibly could. It moved with a grace unnatural to the human race, every movement of theirs seemingly planned and smooth. If anyone was fortunate enough to catch sight of the figure, they would be unable to distinguish any features or even their silhouette.
Quickly, without hesitation, the figure made it out of the industry's docks and into a dark alleyway leading into the city. Watching the form, one might think that it knew exactly where it was going, but that was not the case. The figure climbed its way up a fire escape, finally coming to a rest on the roof of the selected building. With the unclouded moonlight on the figure's back, the features were finally revealed.
Upon a first, quick glance, the figure was obviously not human. Cat ears protruded from a head neither human nor feline, but something in between. Thick fur covered the cheeks, a scratchy fur on the nose's bridge. The body was slender but powerful, the back curved like a house cat's spine. A bushy tail continued down the spine a good length more. Long arms supported the upper half of the body while shorter legs folded under it. At least, the limbs were short and long in relation to a human. Four stubby fingers with a hardened paw pad ended the arms while three stubby toes on a cat-like foot completed the leg. No feature gave away the gender of the humanistic feline.
"It's a jungle of stone," the creature commented out loud to no one in particular. Her voice—for the pitch of it was obviously feminine—expressed a confused awe. "Unnatural lights, dirty sounds, hard surfaces. Where am I?" She looked around her, and then got on to all fours of her paws, slowly making her away to the edge of the building. She looked over the edge to a street below. Still speaking out loud, she continued her observations: "Shiny blocks of color, furless creatures burdened with … some sort of malleable outer skin, just as colorful as the big blocks next to them. Are they oblivious to the noise they make?" She twitched an ear to the other side, feeling sorry for the creatures she didn't know as humans. Her sense of hearing was more reliable than her eyes, and she couldn't bear the thought of deafness, even unto the features below her.
She didn't have anything in particular to do, nor did she have a plan, so all she could think of to do was to continue her witless journey. Having explored the whole top of the building she had first climbed on, though without a clue as to what anything on it was, she prepared herself to leap from the one she was on to a new one in hopes that it would give her more clues as to what her surroundings were telling her. Her eyes scaled the distance that she was to jump, and her haunches prepared for the energy she would have to exert in order to make it. Giving herself a little running start, she leaped from the concrete edge of the first building, managing to get a grip on the edge of the other and enabling her to pull herself up. She gave this rooftop a search as well, but found nothing new.
Sitting once more, she began to examine the paw pad of one of her hands, pulling her brows together more out of frustration than of concern, although both were present. "I'm accustomed to the soft dirt and grasses of an open field. This wide expanse of hard, flat rock is roughing up my pads." Sticking out her tongue, she gave the hand she held up a lick, wrinkling her nose when she tasted the stink on her pad. Trying her best to ignore the retched taste, she continued to clean herself and to make her paw pads feel better, but the process was halted when an ear jerked to the side. Lifting her head and looking around, her gray eyes searched out the cause of the soft noise she had heard, as it had been close, but she saw nothing. Slightly concerned, but not too bothered, she once again began licking herself, but the bath was quickly interrupted.
A small group of black-clad furless men jumped on to the same roof that she was currently occupying. The fur rising up on the back of her neck, and her tail fluffing up with sudden caution, she rose to her two hind feet. Her eyes flicked between each of the men, her ears following the minimal amount of sound that they made. The sound of metal quietly rasping made her jerk her head in that direction quickly enough to dizzy someone. When she saw what it was that he was revealing, she was confused yet again. A long blade of metal was clenched in both of the black man's hands, held in front of him like it would somehow protect him. Once he made his move, the rest of the clan followed suit, and the cat-person found herself surrounded by hostile figures.
Her lips peeled back in a slight snarl, the claws unsheathing from her paws. "I don't know who you are or what you want," she began, not even thinking about whether they spoke her tongue or not, "but I don't want any part of it. I'm minding my own business, and if that's not enough, then—" Her speaking was cut off as one of the men gestured, and all of them came at her suddenly. Letting out a yowl, she jumped out of the way of one of those blades of metal just in time to dodge it. Without another sound, and with only a glance over her shoulder, she streaked out of their shadows and on to another, shorter building, down another fire escape, and finally into a darkened alley.
Small puffs of breath escaped from her mouth as she looked around, but she found no one. The hair gradually relaxed along her spine, but she brushed her tail with her hands anyway to help smooth it down and to calm herself. She no longer dared to speak aloud in case the black men would follow her by sound alone, despite the fact that she had been flushed into a busier part of the city, and even in the dead of night a few cars passed by. To her sensitive ears, the soft run of the motor was nearly deafening, but no matter what she tried, she couldn't get away. Eventually, she couldn't smell the water over the overwhelming fumes of exhaust, and she was effectively lost. To her reasoning, she also figured that the hostile men had lost her as well.
That, however, was not the case. By the time she had settled herself completely down, more of them had showed up behind her. Fingers had clumsily brushed against the fur on her neck by the time she realized that she was no longer alone. Letting out another yowl, she took off to a space that she thought unoccupied, except for another car heading down the street. Instantly turning around, she shot through the legs of one of the men and headed to a dumpster to launch herself up a fire escape and to a roof, thinking that they couldn't possibly follow her quickly enough. Again her logic was faulty. Countless more of the black men waited for her on the rooftop, surrounding her. She tried to turn around to get back into the alley, but the same uniformed men stood in the escape, blocking her way.
The crowd in front of her parted, and the cat-human thought it was her break, except for a slightly smaller figure making her way through the ninja men. Crouching down on all fours, but with her fangs showing in a hissing snarl, the cat-woman greeted this all-important lady. But, thanks to her cowardice, she didn't strike.
"You are to be coming with the Foot Clan," the woman announced with a heavily accented voice. "Any struggles and the Foot cannot guarantee your safety."
The Japanese woman received a hiss in reply, giving away the mutant cat's intentions immediately. Without hesitation, and only a lazy gesture, the woman reacted in kind by releasing the Foot on the small cat-human, turning her back.
Now the cat was panicking, finding no way out of the enclosing crowd of ninja. Seeing no other way out of the situation, she jumped on to the ledge of the building and streaked her way around the perimeter, dodging any of the larger men that came at her. Skidding around a corner, her claws digging into the tiny holes of the cement to save her, she continued down another side to pick up enough momentum to jump. Bunching her muscles, she dodged one last man before taking a flying leap to another building, hoping to escape the mass of strange people.
Just as she was airborne, a thoughtless man grabbed at her tail, almost jerking her back to the building she was trying to escape. Emitting a sharp cry of pain, the momentum that she gathered up pulled her tail from his grasp, but it was no longer enough for her to cleanly make it to the next building. Extending her claws once again, she grabbed on to the rough surface and clung there, trying to pull her whole body safely on to the new rooftop. Her upper body strength failing her, all she could do was helplessly watch as waves of ninja followed her to the building she clung upon, simply holding on tight enough to keep from falling. She kept expecting rough hands to pull her up to take her captive, but instead she heard sounds of fighting.
Her muscles began to burn from holding up her weight, and she was certain that her claws were being pulled out of her paws. She was just thinking about letting go of the building to chance a drop, but before she could do such a thing, a pair of hands did pull her up, but they weren't what she was expecting.
These hands had a soft grip, and instead of the five fingers the black-clad men had, they had only three each. Thick, green skin covered the surface of the hands. As the cat let herself be pulled up by them, she was shocked to discover that a humanoid creature resembling a turtle was the owner of the hands.
"Hi. I'm Donatello. But we'll have to exchange pleasantries after I get you out of here." The cat cast a glance over the shoulder of the turtle-man to see a writhing crowd of black men. Most of them lay unconscious on the rooftop. "Come on, follow me."
Hardly thinking, the cat followed Donatello around the rooftop to safely exit to an alley below. None of the black men followed the pair of them, but Donatello kept a long wooden stick in his hands out of preparation nonetheless. "Here, you'll be safe down here."
The cat nodded as the turtle pulled a large circle from a hole in the stone ground, exposing a black tunnel. She stared down it for a moment, holding on to the edge as she leaned over, but she didn't enter. Instead, she lifted her head and looked into the eyes of the green man, her nose wrinkled. "It smells terrible down there," she told him.
"I know," Donatello sighed, glancing up to the roof of the building, "but if you don't hurry up, the Foot will have you for sure."
Taking another glance down into the stinky, black hole, the cat turned around to retreat down a ladder, almost falling over once her bottom paws touched the slimy bottom of the tunnels. Standing off to the side, she made out Donatello's silhouette as he descended down the same ladder that she had just climbed down. Feeling his touch lightly upon her arm, she followed him through the pitch-darkness of the tunnel. She could hear her light footfalls as she made her way after him, but no matter how much she strained her ears, she couldn't hear his. The only sound other than them was the light sound of water traveling through the tunnels.
"Do you know why the Foot were after you?" Donatello inquired after a while, since she hadn't spoken up at all.
"No," she answered simply, especially since the shake of her head would have gone unseen in such darkness. Only dim light from other hole covers with the silvery moonlight peeking through could be seen at times, and that was hardly enough for the cat to see by.
The turtle sighed, still holding on to the cat. "I suppose we'll find out soon enough." He let another long silence continue as they took turn after turn down the labyrinth of smelly tunnels. "In all the commotion up top, I didn't ask your name."
"Oh," the cat said softly, blinking. She hadn't met new beings in most of her life, so she took it for granted that he would know what to call her. "I'm Lila."
"Well, Lila, welcome to home." With that being said, quiet sounds were heard before blinding light suddenly filled the tunnels. Cringing automatically, wrenching her arm from Donatello's grip, she shielded her eyes from the light until the gradually adjusted. When she looked up again, Donatello was still standing near her as if he was her guard, a soft smile on his beak. "I should have warned you about that. Sorry. Come on in." He turned around, heading into the big, round, stone room. Once Lila had followed him in completely, he touched a part of the wall, and the large, moving part of the wall returned to its resting place, leaving Lila and Donatello trapped in his home. "My brothers will be back soon, once they've taken care of the Foot. I had to take you out of harm's way." He gestured with his hands to no place in particular, but to the whole place. "Make yourself comfortable while we wait. Leo's going to have a lot of questions."