Chapter one is basically me introducing Ryu and her 'working' personality. (Honestly, I don't know why I bother with these "Author's Note" because no one bothers to read them, but Ravyne (KB) says that it's polite to put something personal above/below the actual story.

But whatever, I hope you enjoy.

Review please.

-Katt B.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Rise of the Dragon

PART 1


1

1-17: "TCRI":

The hood of her cloak hangs down low over her eyes, the gentle night breeze tossing it around every so often to reveal her right eye which gleams a deep amber in the moonlight. Her silvery white hair covers her other eye, which she keeps hidden from the world, and then falls over her shoulder in a tight braid that is clasped at the end with a single red bead decorated with a black rune of unknown origins. The city scape before her, a black silhouette against the dark blue sky beyond, reaches for the arriving stars above in towering buildings of various heights.

Just another city, just another search. Just another city, just another search, she keeps chanting the words over and over to herself as she gazes down at a small, square sheet of white paper in her slim fingers. There's a long list of directions that will lead her to her new living quarters, a place where she can lay low without drawing attention to herself while she works.

A temporary home, she tells herself, Nowhere will ever be home for me.

Her eyes lift up to gaze at the city skyline again as the breeze picks up, twirling a few loose strands of her silvery-white hair. They toss around playfully across her cheeks, but not enough to draw any emotion to her stone cold face. No matter how warm that amber gaze looks, it will always only ever be in color.

Let's get this over with.


She kicks at the old rusty chain fence and it clatters open, her grip tightening on the straps of her old draw string back pack; a bag that looks like it's been around the world twice and back again. The hems are frayed in most areas, others obviously patched up by hand, but it holds sternly. She gazes at the area around her: an old abandoned junkyard. Her eyes narrow in dismay.

Well, she thinks, I can't really be choosy. Most people in the world don't have homes to live in and I know what that's like. The chain link fence behind her clatters and she shifts her eyes to the right without turning her head, scanning the intruder. No quick vibrations come from him, no hint of any ill intentions. She blinks her eyes back to her usual blank expression and turns around.

"You must be the new tenant," the older man states, spitting onto the ground. "Old Louie told me they'd be comin' today. Didn't say you'd be a girl. You sure you're old enough to run a business, sweetheart?"

Switching up her expression with ease, she takes a few steps towards him with a smile and reaches into the side pocket of her cargo pants, hanging low on her hips. She pulls out her green, worn out, cloth wallet and flips it open to show him the license behind the clear plastic display piece on one side. Fake, of course, but this poor simpleton needn't know that.

"Yes, sir. I'm Lisa. Just graduated from college, but spent the last ten years working for my dad in his shop. I was born for this job."

More than you know, she finishes in her thoughts. She quickly flips her wallet closed and stuffs it back in her pocket, smiling wider. "I got my mother's genes; all us Sigmond girls look younger than our age," She explains to him.

The older man, maybe late fifties, throws his head back and laughs, "Sure would be nice if you could pass that secret on to my wife."

She raises an eyebrow at the man. Surely he didn't mean that. She rolls her eyes, this is the city; all the people are heartless here.

Right about now, she's wishing she had taken the job in a more rural town. Country people always seemed more welcoming to her.

"Well, this place was Louie's pride and joy. He may have retired and sold the place, but don't muddy its reputation, you got that?"

"I'll raise it higher," She promises, her small smile more genuine now than the guy would ever know. He waves goodbye and she closes the gate behind him, securing the lock on the chain this time. When she turns back around to face her new living quarters once again, she runs her gaze over the towering piles of junk.

"Let's get to work."


"Ugh, finally!" She shuts down the computer, pleased with her final chore for the night: sending a message back to her guardians to give them a report on her progress.

It had been simply wrote: grounded in, hating the location, but ready to work.

And their reply had been just as simple: you'll have to deal with it for a few months. We've had reports of the company here and confirmed that material you need is in their possession. Get started, Ryu.

With that she had shut down the communication line and fired up the security system of her own design. It would be the only line of defense she'd have here until the base is finished. Kicking the chair back under the old desk she'd found out lying forgotten in the junkyard above, she heads back upstairs to the main shop. She isn't exactly fond of having to live in the basement, but it would have to do for right now. She doesn't open the 'shop' for a few days so she'd have plenty of time to set up the real base.

Right now though, it's time for her to get started on the fun stuff.

She ducks into the bathroom behind the counter that would become the front desk of the shop and drops her bag on the floor. Pulling open the draw strings, she stares down at her uniform, folded neatly inside, and smiles. This is her real job; her real life.

And she welcomes it every night.


Hood pulled tightly over her head, she sighs deeply. Already, three people have passed her with looks of disgust and shock at the few strands of her white hair that have slipped out into public view. There must be a simpler way to move around this city at night to avoid this kind of scrutiny, she wonders, glaring at the cement under her feet.

She turns the next corner and stops, leaning against the brick wall to study her target. The building is huge, towering high over her like a lightning rod trying to touch the sky above. Problem is, dark clouds are barring its path.

Okay...hadn't expected it to be so big, she mentally groans, minor miscalculation. She takes out her phone and looks back over her information to make sure this is the right place. Sure enough, the symbol her guardians had sent her, a beehive-looking shape, is the same as the logo on the side of the tall building. Great, this is going to take longer than I thought.

She takes a few steps down the sidewalk towards the building before jogging leisurely across the street, thinking how she had never once taken notice of this building the last time she'd been in New York. Right before she can enter the doors, she spots a person approaching her from the opposite direction and she ducks back into the shadow of the building. The person is wearing a hood too, pushing a rolling cart loaded down with a huge cardboard box.

Now that's not suspicious at all, she thinks, narrowing her gaze. The second the automatic doors open to let the other person in and then close, she follows close behind. Not two steps into the huge front lobby, the hooded person in front of her calls…

"Special delivery!"

She ducks close to the wall, swinging out behind a weird column that widens out as it reaches the floor, and pauses. The hooded figure's voice had sounded female, young, but what would a kid be doing here and at these hours?

The hooded girl shoves the rolling cart forward with a grunt and it bumps to a stop inside the elevator before the doors close it in.

Okay, something else is going on here, she thinks. Looking back at the other girl, she finds her caught by the arm by an older lady who had been at the front desk.

"I must ask you to leave," The older woman says bluntly, sounding robotic. "We are closed right now."

Out of nowhere, six tall men, all looking like identical siblings, come strolling towards the hooded girl with seriously strange armored up guns. One of them continues speaking in the same tone as the receptionist lady had with a robotic accent saying, "The package that is delivered to us by you will not be delivered by you to us because you will be stopped by us before you-."

"Love to chat, but I gotta run!" The hooded girl cuts the guy off, jerking out of the lady's grasp before flashing her phone's camera in her face and spinning out an orange yoyo toy over her head in a wide circle, like a lasso. The taller men back up to avoid the toy and the hooded girl races back out the automatic doors into the night.

Back in the corner behind the column, she follows the other girl out with her eyes. Whoa, that was a pretty resourceful move. Wonder where she learned that.

The six identical suit guys head for the elevator and press the open button and it lights up at their command. "Kraang, prepare to destroy the thing that is needing to be destroyed by Kraang."

Geez, did these idiots go to school at all or do they just like making a mockery of the English language? She thinks, eyeing the elevator warily. The men all aim their weird guns at the elevator, waiting like statues for whatever is inside. Doing what she does best, she squats low to the floor and places her hand against the cool surface, feeling for vibrations so she can get a read on whatever it is that had been pushed into the elevator.

Nothing happens.

What the heck, she thinks. Her eyes fall to the floor and she glares at the shiny surface, her reflection staring back with the same confusion. Just what is this stuff?

It looks like regular metal, maybe just a new style of flooring that people want to try, but she isn't able to 'feel' through it. This isn't any type of metal she's come across in her life.

A loud roar tears her out of her thoughts and she snaps her head back up just as a monstrous creature comes barreling out of the elevator doors. The men start firing their guns and she ducks away behind the column as one of the bullets ricochet off the wall by her head.

"Those…are not…guns!" She growls through her teeth, peeking back up over the curve of the column. "Those are laser guns! Who the heck are these people?!"

The receptionist lady calls out above the firing weapons "contain him, contain him" but the huge alligator creature is taking out the identical guys too fast for them to do so.

"Yeah, I'm not going to get involved in all this crazy crap," she hisses to herself. "Just go get the material and get out, Ryu." Keeping close to the wall, she slips past all the chaos and ducks into the elevator just as the doors close once more. She presses the button for the top floor, deciding that it would be easier to search this place from top to bottom so that she can make a hasty escape if need be. Leaning back against the back wall, she gazes up at the display screen above the door as the red, digital numbers increase with each floor she passes, but then it stops. She blinks in confusion.

A ding of the door has her body going tense and she readies herself to run. She doesn't like to fight if she can help it, but won't hesitate to do so if it has to come to that. It's what she's been trained for. The elevator doors slide open.

She's not really sure how to register what she's seeing; whether she should be straight up confused or completely grossed out.

"Robots," she says. Beyond the doors is a whole hallway full of those identical suit guys, a few of them slipping into those said suits, others pulling on fleshly masks, while others look just like the guys from the front lobby only fiddling with those armored up laser guns. "Robots," she repeats, "Yeah. Totally didn't see that coming. I think I need to wash my eyes."

"It is one known as what the ones called humans refer to as an intruder," One of the robots points at her and they begin to move towards her, aiming their guns at her chest.

She dashes forward, reaching quickly for the buttons, but a few of the robots make it onboard with her. One of them shoves the barrel of their gun right into her face, forcing her to pause, and she sighs in frustration.

It's at this second that she recognizes the scan screen above the floor buttons. Of course, she thinks, a retinal scanner. So I'll need one of these guys to move the elevator again.

She raises her hands in surrender, turning to face the armed robots slowly with a sheepish smile. Their eyes glow a pinkish-purple, making them look even weirder. "Well, I guess all that wishing for an easy night was for nothing," She shrugs, the robots raising their guns higher in response to her voice.

She shifts her right wrist subtly, feeling the metal wristband hidden away under her dark green cotton arm warmer react to the command, and an iron dart double the size of a tooth pick is shot up into her awaiting palm. She flips it through her fingers like a playing card and her sheepish smile shifts into an impish grin.

"Oh well," She finishes. With a sharp jab, she runs the tooth pick though the digital screen above the retinal scanner and an alarm blares out suddenly, the lights flickering out above them. When they come back on, they have turned red, switching on and off in time with the alarm.

Perfect cover, she thinks. The robots glance up for a moment and she takes that distraction to attack, dropping to spin kick the nearest one off its legs. It drops with a heavy clang and the other robots responds by letting loose a flurry of laser fire. She's forced to dodge, unable to pause to land an attack, but it doesn't really bother her the second she realizes that their random laser fires are knocking each other out. She flips off the back wall just as the last laser gun is fired and two robots facing each other start to spark and short out to a halt.

Her feet land on the elevator floor right in front of the door again with barely any room to spare. A second later, there's a new sound. Something metallic, like a hatch, opens up from above and then something small flies towards the floor. It's white and round, hardly visible in the poor lighting, but she catches the movement out of the corner of her eyes and she has a brief second to realize what it is. Gasping, she tears out of her hoody, flipping it off over her head and dropping it to the floor, and unclips her gas mask off her belt from its hook on her hip.

A purple smoke fills the room up in seconds just as she's slipping it on over her mouth and nose. With the flashing lights above giving the small space a strobe light feel, she is able to just make out the forms of four large shapes come flying down from the escape hatch above. They start swinging their weapons around crazily, aiming for the two robots just beginning to fall to the floor, and she's forced to doge their attacks in a flurry.

"Guys, guys, stop! We're not hitting anything," A male voice calls out. The figures stop swinging on command. "They're…already…out."

"How?" Another voice asks. The lights flicker again and one of the figures turns towards her. It attacks from her left, swiftly, faster than anything she's ever seen in a long time. In a flash, she holds up her right arm and the approaching weapon strikes the metallic bracelet under her arm warmer with a sharp clang. The light system corrects itself then with a low whirl and returns to normal, bathing the inside of the elevator with normal white light instead of the freakish red-purple glow it had been.

"Uh…"

Her eyes stay blank as she takes in the figures before her. She knows them. She's seen them once before, the last time she visited New York, a long time ago. They stare back at her with not so blank expressions. One of them, baring two katanas, wears a blue mask. Another, the tallest of the group with a bow staff in his hands, wears a purple mask. The shortest, with nun chucks, wears an orange mask. And the last, who bares his sai very close to her head if not for her arm, wears a red mask.

"Um…" The one in the blue mask mutters. He stares at her in a combination of hesitation and confusion, but taps his comrade's shoulder nervously all the same. "Raph…"

"What?" The red one barks, showing no signs of backing down.

With a single movement, she turns her hand so that she can move the tip of his weapon out of her face with two fingers so she can step towards him. Stopping not four inches from his face, finding him the same height as herself, she reaches slowly around him; taking each movement cautiously. His eyes widen in surprise at her approach but none of them move, everyone kind of caught off guard at the moment. She watchfully takes the severed robot head the short, orange one holds, the poor guy staring at her with his jaw dropped, and then backs away towards the elevator doors again. Still none of them move, none of them speak; even she's not sure how to address them.

They wouldn't remember her anyway, they hadn't seen her before. Don't get involved, she tells herself as she holds the robot head up to the retinal scanner. The less people who know about you here the better.

The elevator dings and a female, robot voice comes through the speaker, granting them access. The elevator starts to climb up the shaft slowly again. Swallowing, she stays facing the door, unable to break the silence that surrounds them with tension.

"Um…so…" The tallest one laughs nervously. He doesn't continue.

"Miss, you're probably wondering why there are talking turtles dropping into the elevator but-." The blue one starts.

"Leo! She could be Kraang!" The red one snaps angrily.

"Uh…look around genius. We're surrounded by Kraang bodies. I'm pretty sure she's not one of the Kraang," The purple one bites back.

"That doesn't mean anything!"

"Raph, Donnie's right," The blue one, Leo, says with all the authority of a leader. "So, miss, as I was saying, you don't need to be scared of us 'cause we're not-."

"Oh, I know." She finally speaks. They all pause in hesitation.

"You…know?" Leo asks.

"Monster alligators, freaky robots, and now you guys; this town gets more and more interesting every time I come to visit. I have to admit, though, I didn't expect to be running into Splinter's boys," She shrugs, her voice sounding like static coming through her face mask.

"Hey, guys, she knows master Splinter!" The orange one exclaims excitedly. "She's family!"

"Then what would we call Shredder, ya moron?" Raph growls at him.

The orange one pauses, hands still held high in the air mid-cheer, and for a long moment she doesn't think he's going to respond but then, "Uncle?"

Raph smacks him over the head.

"Guys, enough. Ma'am, how do you know us? Or Splinter for that matter?"

She glances to the side, eyeing his katanas thoughtfully. She looks back up at the digital display screen over the doors. One floor from the top. That'll have to do, she says mentally. Touching the button for her floor, it lights up and the elevator jerks to a stop. "Looks like this is my floor."

"Wait you can't just-!" Raph starts to growl something but then the doors ding and open. They all pause in shock. Kraang robots bar their path, aiming those laser guns again. She blinks, propping a hand on her hip.

"Soo…clear this up for me. These guys aren't regular robots are they?" She grumbles.

"They're alien brain bots from dimension X," The orange one explains with a proud smile.

"Mikey!" The others snap at him.

"Great," she responds. "Perfect. Just what I need: more obstacles. My life just keeps getting better and better."

With that, she raises her hand, calling out the fist-sized rock from inside the small pouch hanging on the side of her belt. The top flap on the pouch opens up on its own and the rock floats up out of it to hover in a circle above her awaiting palm. She can hear them fumble for words behind her, but ignores them.

"See ya around," She flicks her fingers, the rock breaking apart into smaller pieces, and then she flings them forward. The pebbles fly at an alarming speed, embedding into the barrels of their guns so that their shots are blocked. The elevator doors start to close again, but not before she races out, jumps up to step on one of the robot's head and propelling herself towards the wall. She runs along it safely over the group of aliens and then lands safely on the other side of the hall.

Back at the elevator, the doors slide to a shut on the turtles' awed expressions as they gap in union, "Whoa…"


Author's Note:

We DO NOT own TMNT.

Ryu, along with any other new characters, and our storyline is copyrighted to Katt B. and Ravyne.

Review please.

-Katt B.