Author's notes- I do not own any of the TMNT or their compadres.
Thank you Kyabetsu, ChibiLover, Zwinky and Ruby for all the reviews
Enter Baxter Stockman
As Leo drives the truck and Donny directs him, I look around it in awe.
"You ain't been outside in a few days have you Karm?" Mikey asks.
"Nope, and why the hell haven't I been in this thing before?! It is just TOO cool." I grin at my brother.
"Well, yanno, I'm kinda good at this stuff." Mikey leans back into the car seat coolly, when a jolt unsettles him. I laugh at him and he grins sheepishly.
"Almost there, just left here and… park." Donny says bemused. We come to a halt and pile out the back.
"We're at the docks?" I frown.
"Then where's Raph?" Casey asks. Donny and Leo come around the back of the truck.
"Well, you see that huge ship with that red symbol on? He's on there." Don says matter-of-factly, putting his bag over his shoulder.
"Oh." Casey says.
"Good job we can swim eh?" Mikey pats me on the shell and wanders over to the docks.
"What about Casey?" I ask.
"You can swim can't you Case?" Mikey asks.
"Yeah!"
"Then we're fine." Donny and Casey follow Mikey. Leo looks at me.
"Are you okay?" He asks softly.
"Yeah." I look up at him.
"You don't have to come, this is more dangerous than we thought Karm."
"I want to. I want to…" '…rescue Raph.' My mind says. "…help you guys." My mouth says. Leo smiles.
"I'll protect you." He takes my shoulder and leads me to the water's edge. I jump into the icy, murky water and Leo follows. Mikey, Donny and Casey are already swimming ahead. I shudder and start swimming alongside Leo. I glance up at the night sky, not a cloud in sight. Twinkling stars are sprinkled across the deep navy sky like glitter, and the moon hangs between the glitter, giving off a beauty of its own.
'It would be such a lovely night, if I wasn't swimming in icy water trying to rescue one of my family who may or may not be on a boat crammed with… jeez, only knows.'
We climb aboard the ship, hiding behind some crates to organise ourselves.
"Okay, Don, Mikey, Casey, take the lower levels and work up searching the rooms, Karm and I will take the upper level and work down. Call if you find Raph." Leo takes charge.
"You might need these." Donny pulls out two pairs of goggles from his bag. "Heat sensitive goggles, to help you see any of these apparently 'invisible ninja' Casey saw."
"Thanks." Leo hands me a pair. We head our separate ways.
Leo abd I enter one of the upper hallways, with doors scattered down it. We search through three rooms without any trace of anything useful and sneak past the door of another. We peek in the window in the door to see three ninja sitting around. Leo frowns.
"Ninja coffee break." I whisper and shrug. Leo smiles and carries on down the hallway. We come to two doors beside each other. We peek in the first one and I see Stockman. His back is to the door, but I know it's him. I close my eyes and my head is bombarded with him.
'You're perfect.' 'You're scum.' 'You'll wish I'd killed you.' 'You're my pride and joy.' 'Karma, oh Karma…'
"Karm." Leo's voice brings me back to reality.
"I'm okay." I lie. My heart pounds at my chest, my blood feels like ice, my head twirls and my lungs burn. "But it's… it's him. It's Stockman." I whisper. Leo nods sullenly. He creeps along the corridor, to peek in the room next door and I follow.
"Raph."
"Strapped to an operating table?" I frown then reach for the door handle. Leo grabs my hand and shakes his head.
"Two way mirror," he points out the mirror in the room Raph's in, "There was a mirror in Stockman's room. Keeping an eye on him I guess." Leo looks away absent-mindedly, thinking about what to do next. I take matters into my own hands. I pull off my mask and put the wakizashi down on the floor. I go to open Stockman's door but Leo grabs my leg.
"What are you doing?!" He hisses.
"If I go in, he'll be too pre-occupied to wonder how the hell I'm here and why to notice you sneaking in and busting out Raph."
"How are you gunna escape?"
"He's one man, I can take him on, I've been wanting my revenge... heh, my karma." I look darkly at Leo. Before he can give any objections, I open the door. I hear Leo inhale quickly, then pay attention to the man in front of me.
"Don't you know how to knock?!" He says indignantly, spinning around on his chair to see the intruder. "126? Karma? You're back?! Where from? What are you doing here? What-" He screws his face up in confusion.
I walk over to Stockman and stand in front of him so his back is to the secret window.
"I don't even half know. I was wandering the streets for so long, hiding in an abandoned warehouse down here by the docks. I saw the ship and recognised the symbol, I think… I don't know, my head is blurry." I lean against the wall, holding my head.
"My precious experiment, I am glad you are back." He gets up, and uses his hand to lift up my chin to look at me. I freeze at his touch, terror and rage fighting against each other in the whole of my body. I use my breath to stop my self from shaking and screaming. He picks up the tag hanging around my neck to look at it and smiles to himself. "We can get back to your training, can't we?"
"My training?"
"Yes, your ninjitsu training, you're going to be a kunoichi, the most deadly kunoichi. Do you not remember?" He cocks his head to look at my face.
"No." I scrunch my face up.
"Well, you were being trained, to be a killing machine." Stockman says it all too calmly. "And if you do these killings, I-we will get rewarded, a lot." He smiles evilly. "I'm sure you would be able to jog your memory if you read your diary Karma."
"Diary?" I look up at him and frown.
"Why yes, you had a diary, it was in the lab. How did you get out of the lab by the way?"
"I just-I ran, I just ran from the destruction."
"You managed to remember to pick up your necklace on your way out and not your diary? How strange." He muses. My eyes wander to the mirror on the opposite side of the room. Empty.
'Good, now I just need to-'.
The door bursts open, Leo is flung to the floor, then Raph. A huge man steps through the door, cracking his knuckles. I look up at him, a tattoo of a purple dragon curls around his left arm, and the same symbol from the boat tattooed on his right arm. Scratches don the left side of his face & neck.
"I found these freaks tryin' to escape. If you don't want nothin' else with 'em, I'm gunna kill 'em in the worst way possible." He grinds his right fist into his left palm.
"No, why don't we give this experiment a test run?" Stockman pushes me forward. "Go on, hand out the karma to these freaks."
"Is that why I'm called Karma?" I spin around to look at him.
"Yes yes, now kill them already." Stockman says in a bored tone.
The huge man draws Leo's katana from his back and throws them to me. I hold them hesitantly and walk over to Leo, who looks up at me with brown eyes.
"I'm sorry." I look into his eyes and say. He looks down at the floor.
I raise the katana and throw them down, aiming for the big mans foot. He moves it at the last minute, dodging it.
"What? What are you doing?!"
"Not listening to you anymore Stockman," my heart pounds at my chest, "I'm not your puppet!" I hiss.
"Fine Hun, do with them as you wish." Stockman turns his back. I get picked up and restrained by the huge man, I'm guessing he's Hun, as well as Raph. Leo is picking up his katana and just as he reaches them, Hun puts a heavy foot on Leo's shell. "But wait…" Stockman picks something up from his desk. "I wonder what this video tape contains?" He turns back to me. "You sent these two to search my lab, yet you know nothing of the diary they found."
"What?" I ask, puzzled
"You're clearly suffering from amnesia, there is no way my experiment would talk like that to me. But they found a diary, your diary. A diary that could fill all the missing gaps in your life. I guess they never gave it you did they? Left you to suffer in silence…" He sighs.
"Liar!"
"I lie? Let's see what the tape says, shall we?" He turns to a TV, and puts in the tape. It shows Raph and Leo clambering through the debris of the lab. Leo picks up something shiny and small, then something else bigger.
Stockman then turns his back on us. Hun takes his foot off Leo's shell.
"Try any funny business, and I'll squeeze the guts out of these two. MOVE!" He shouts at Leo and kicks him in the shell. Leo glares and Hun herds him into the room next to Stockman's and throws me and Raph to the floor. He grins evilly and shuts the door. I hear the click of the lock and sigh. I sense Raph move next to me.
"So what the hell else have you been hiding from me?!" I turn on the two brothers. Raph avoids my eyes but Leo looks over at me. "Raph… Leo…" My heart pounds against my chest.
"We found your diary Karm… we didn't wanna give it you, we didn't want you to be haunted by such memories. The lab you were in… it was horrible…"
"You kept it from me? You kept my past, who I am, away from me? You knew for weeks now that I'd struggled with who I am, but you kept it away?!"
"We though it would be best for you Karm…" Leo pleads.
"Best for me?… You thought… it'd be best?!"
"I'm sorry Karm." Leo comes over to me.
"Stay away from me!" I roar. "I guess you've read that thing, known what I am, known I was created only to kill you. You've been biding your time, trying to be all nice and sympathetic, when after all of this, you were gunna go and sell me to some bloody circus or stab me whilst I slept or something! I was created to bloody kill you, why do what's best for me?!" I run out of breath. Silent moments pass until Leo asks one thing.
"You wouldn't kill us though… would you Karm?"
I just turn my back on him.
