Several months ago, I did a 500-follower draw, and the winner got to request a story of their choosing. The winner was Uggables, and it took me way too long to actually wrap my brain around the requested story. But ironically, a few days before the airing of the episode that will potentially Joss it, everything clicked. Here you go, Uggables. Sorry it took so long.

Disclaimer: This goes a bit darker than my stories usually do, so if you're here for the happy fluff, you may want to skip this one and wait for the next update.

Twisted Sister

"Karai!"

She was dreaming of dark, and smoke, and fire, but she was moving even as the sharp bark of her name pierced the fog of dreams, rolling toward the side of the bed. Seconds later, a kunai gleamed where she had lain only a moment earlier. Blinking at it, she shifted her gaze to glare at the nightmare who lurked in her doorway.

The thing that had once been Bradford only grinned. As alarm clocks went, the kunai was unforgiving, but she was awake. "Get up. Shredder wants you."

Her hand closed around the kunai, but Bradford was already slamming the door as the blade flew back at him and sank into the wood. Rubbing the last of the crust from her eyes, firmly telling herself it was just lack of sleep and not the remains of tears that caked her lashes, she pushed herself to her feet and padded to the stand where her armour waited. That sick, churning feeling in her stomach? Just the dream. Not fear that her father wished to see her. Never that…

Cursing, Karai shoved the armour stand, sending it crashing to the ground.

Damn Leonardo. Damn him all to hell. It wasn't enough for him to betray her. To cost her the one friend she had ever had. He had to ruin this, too, seeding doubt with his lies where there had always been loyalty. Trust. Father and daughter united to avenge the memory of her mother. And now she was losing that, too, as the threads of his lies wormed their way into her mind despite her best attempts to keep them at bay.

"Perhaps one day she will believe the truth…"

Scowling, Karai raked a hand through her hair as though it would banish the words from her mind, and tugged at the fastenings on her armour. There was only one truth. Father. The Foot. Honour. That was her truth; everything else was merely lies meant to make her weak.

Stowing her weapons, she headed toward her father's receiving room. Her father. Not the rat. Not a lie. The man who had raised her. Trained her. Made her into the kunoichi she was today. No lie could change that fact. But as she made her way through the halls, her hand drifted of its own accord to her belt, and the ragged, crumpling photograph she kept there.

She paused as she passed through the doorway into the room where the Shredder usually held court, every instinct screaming. It was never the cheeriest of spaces, but now it was thick with shadow, the skylight doing little to help thanks to her current nocturnal schedule.

"Father?" she asked, and despised how the echoing space swallowed her voice and made it small.

A tiny prick at the back of her neck was all the warning she had before the darkness surged forward to claim her.

She dreamed of smoke, of the roar of the flames, and when her mind was dragged, screaming, back to waking, the crackle of flames shifted to the thunder of water. Groaning, she brought a hand up to her face and it came away damp, and what she had at first taken to be tears turned out to be the spray of a waterfall.

Her vision swam as she pushed herself upright, blinking in confusion. She lay near the waterfall on a slap of stone tangled with roots and vines, and the moon hid behind a canopy of leaves overhead.

Where…?

Rising on unsteady feet, Karai groped her way to the wall of rock down which the water cascaded, her fingers finding holds on the stone based more on muscle memory than on any conscious thought, as she hauled her way to the top. It took her a moment, sprawling on the stone and gasping for air, before she could gather her strength enough to push forward through the dark. The air around her was hot, humid, hard to breathe, and she shuddered away from thoughts of fire.

It was only then, as she gazed up into the darkness overhead, that she realized that she was looking up at metal and glass, and caught sight of the sign barely illuminated beyond.

"I'm at the zoo?" Fury began to curl through her belly as she rested a hand against a painted wall. "Why-?"

A low growl stilled her voice in her throat, and she turned as a deeper shadow flowed out of the darkness toward her, green eyes reflecting the dim moonlight. Slowly, silently, Karai drew her blade, and as the jaguar leaped, she met its outstretched claws with an edge of her own.

A hurried burst of savagery and screaming, and the jaguar limped off in defeat. Watching it go, she had only a second to catch her breath before her blade was moving again, glinting in the moonlight to behead the cobra that reared at her feet.

"This is crazy," she gasped, leaping to a branch overhead and pulling herself up at it. Casting about desperately, she spotted the curve of a viewing bridge not far off through the trees.

A few shuriken took care of the scorpions that crept across the branch toward her as she raced toward the bridge, her breath coming fast as her heart pounded in fear. Not far now – she swatted away the angry baboon that leaped for her, its fangs clamping down uselessly on her gauntlet. Just a few feet—

She fetched up hard against an invisible barrier and screamed in fruitless denial, hands scrabbling uselessly at the glass wall. "No!" As she skidded down the glass, losing what little purchase she had on the thin cracks between the panes, she caught sight of a familiar silhouette in the gloom beyond the glass.

"Father!"

Her gauntlets screeched against the glass as she fell, splashing into the stream below and cursing as a school of piranha instantly beelined toward her. Floundering up to the shore, she stared up at the bridge, where the Shredder now stood flanked by the massive bulk that was Tiger Claw, and the skeletal frame of one of the Kraang. "What's that thing doing here?" Her gaze swept from one to the other. "Father, I don't understand!"

But there was no answer from the silent figure on the bridge. Her answer came instead in a flash of white through the trees, and she whirled just in time to throw herself clear of the path of the charging bear.

A polar bear? In the jungle?

Which was when she realized the truth. This wasn't just the jungle pavilion.

This was an arena.

The bear bellowed as it charged back toward her, its breath stinking of meat and rot. It reached out, its yellowing paws raking across her armour as its claws sought for purchase before her blade stabbed deep. Karai took the opportunity as the bear recoiled to leap free, but she couldn't go far. The netting that ordinarily kept the animals in their respective enclosures glowed a sickly purple, and she had no doubts that it would end poorly if she tried to go through it. Regaining her perch atop the waterfall, her eyes narrowed as she glared down at the circling bear.

"Nothing personal," she said, and drew her dagger.

Nearly an hour later, she stood on a killing field, but nothing they had thrown at her had managed to draw blood. She stood, defiant and proud as she held her dripping blade before her. "Father! Have I proven myself yet?"

What more could he ask? He had been testing her, surely, but none of the predators had stood against her. Not the tiger, or the lion, or the python. Not the eagle or the cassowary. All of them had either fled or fallen, and she stood without a mark on her. But her temper was wearing short, and there was still not a sound from the Shredder.

"Answer me!" she bellowed.

Which was when the last predator darted from its hiding place in the rocks, its teeth sinking deep into her ankle before she could sink her blade into its skull. Karai screamed as she pried the jaws of the massive reptile off her ankle, frantically searching for a name to put to the monster before her. Komodo dragon? Is that what this is?

The wound in her ankle burned so fiercely that she almost missed the prick at her neck again. Crying out, she reached up to rip the dart free…

Ice curled through her, her stomach dropping as she beheld the drop of glowing green shining on the tip of the dart.

"No…" she breathed.

Pain hit her an instant later and she fell, screaming, as the mutagen burned its way through her system. She writhed, her fingernails breaking against the rock as her body contorted, bones breaking and realigning, her spine breaking as the tail pushed free of her back, her skin splitting as scales erupted from its surface, serrated teeth erupting from her jaw. She had no breath left to scream in the end as the mutagen tore her apart and remade her like soft clay. The world began and ended with the pain; there was room for nothing else. As her twisted body grew, her armour split along its seams, the ruined buckles gouging deep furrows into her flesh. She rolled, attempting to drag herself to the stream with a vague mind to quench the fire that burned through her veins, and watched her hair falling like dark snow across the black claws that burst from her fingertips.

At last, after a small eternity, she lay panting and exhausted on the banks of the stream, her gleaming scales dusted with the waterfall's spray like a blanket of stars.

"Why?" She whispered, and her voice tore at her throat like the scrape of a knife. "I did everything you ever asked of me…."

Faintly, over the ragged breaths that tore through her new lungs, she could hear the voice of the Kraang. Pitiless. Emotionless. "The one known as Shredder was correct. The test subject that was provided yielded results that are pleasing to Kraang. The genetic material of the one known as Hamato Yoshi is stabilizing to the process of mutation."

Hamato Yoshi…

"All these years, you continue to deceive yourself, and everyone around you."

It was difficult to see through the tears of agony that blurred her vision, but as her clawed fingers scrabbled at the mud, they brushed against something and revealed a spot of colour beneath the muck. Panic seized her heart as she scraped the rest of the filth away, but though she could not get her hands to work properly, it was enough to reveal what she had feared.

A scrap of photograph, badly stained and torn, the place where the face had once been shredded beyond recovery.

Rage burned through her, coursing through her mangled, mutilated limbs, and she surged back to her feet. In two leaps, she had reached the glass wall, and though the tail was a challenge to her balance, the long claws on her toes splintered the wood beneath them, allowing her to hold on long enough to throw herself at the glass, which cracked and shattered beneath her new weight.

The prick of the tranquilizing darts barely slowed her down. It took the combined force of Tiger Claw and the Kraang to wrestle her to the walkway, and as she struggled at Shredder's feet, her vision blurring beneath the drugs, she heard one single word drift down from the man who had raised her as his own.

"Pathetic."

They tried to put her back in her room, but after she destroyed its contents, the door, and a squadron of footbots, she found herself chained to the wall of a basement cell. She knew from experience that no amount of screaming would be heard on the levels above, but that didn't stop her from screaming her throat raw. Even then, she had expected him to come. Expected to see that familiar silhouette beyond the bars. But he left her, alone and abandoned, until she had no fight left in her and she sagged to the cold concrete floor.

The Kraang had been right. Unlike most of the other mutants they had encountered, she was still completely sane. This wasn't madness.

This was fury.

She had known that they could not leave her down here forever, but when her isolation was finally broken, it was not her father that came to see her. Glaring up balefully from her hunch against the wall, she let out a snort of contempt. "Did you come to gloat?" Her voice rasped like sand over gravel, and she didn't have the strength left in her to care.

Tiger Claw looked down on her with his one remaining eye. "I have come to salvage what is left of you."

The laugh that startled out of her creaked like rusted hinges, and she turned her face to the wall. "You're too late then. There's nothing left of me." She didn't cry - she wasn't even sure she still could cry – but she would not give him that satisfaction. She had that much, at least.

"You think you are being punished?"

The links of her chains clinked softly as Karai shifted to look up at him, awash in incredulity. "I failed him, so he turned me into a monster. Seems pretty straightforward to me."

The feline growled low in his throat. "You were given the chance to fight. To test those forms that would be yours to see which was wanting. Only the deadliest, most ferocious, was to be yours. The only form worthy of you." A clawed hand gestured toward her. "You are a dragon."

A dragon. She looked down at the rings of iron encircling her wrists, which had already scored deep lines into the scales there. She curled her hands, the dark claws digging in to the smaller scales on her palms and leaving pinpricks of blood in their wake. "I am a freak."

Karai had expected a response. Wanted one. Facing explosive outbursts of anger was something she knew how to handle. The fact that he just stood there, staring at her, unsettled her immensely.

"Do you think I do not understand?" he said at last. There was no pity in his voice, nor accusation. Just flat, practical curiosity. "What it is to be taken at a young age and made into an assassin? Do you think I do not know the challenge of learning to fight once more in a body that is not your own?"

Drawing a shuddering breath, she looked up at him, her movements accompanied by the whisper of chains. She'd never considered that… but that was different. He'd been taken by the Kraang, not betrayed by his own father. They were nothing alike.

"Why should you even care?"

At that, he knelt, seizing her face in one of his massive hands and forcing her to meet his gaze. She bared her teeth instinctively, her stomach roiling as her forked tongue darted out, tasting the air and telling her too many things she didn't want to know. His scent tasted of smoke. Of blood. Of mutagen. Of her father. Of the city. Too many things she didn't know how to process any more. She clamped her jaws in anger, and a strange, bitter, acrid taste flooded her mouth, drowning out the traces of scent that clung to her tongue.

"I am chunin," he said. "It is my duty to deal with those problems that should not trouble the Shredder. If you can be remade into something that is of use to the Foot, I shall present you to him. If not, you shall remain here, caged like the animal you prove yourself to be."

Part of her almost wished that he would rage as she did. It would have been better than that flat, unconcerned, almost offhanded tone. She was just a problem to be solved. Not even worth the Shredder's time. She would not cry – no, she would not do that – but despair boiled within her like black smoke and stole her breath, leaving her gasping.

At that, some kind of emotion stirred within him, and his hand eased the crushing hold on her face. It was not pity, exactly. Understanding, perhaps. "There is a thing you must always remember if you are to survive this, child."

She hissed, and there was a certain satisfaction in the act. "Which is?"

"The Shredder did not raise you to be his daughter. He raised you to be his weapon." Releasing her, he rose to his feet and spread his hands. "You are of no use to him if he cannot wield you."

His words rained down like blows upon her, and she cringed, helpless beneath the truth in them. It had not always been so, surely. Could not have been so, for she remembered a time when she was happy. True, it had never been that saccharine, candy-coated vision of family they liked to show on TV and in movies, but she had smiled. She made him laugh. He stayed up late with her in the dojo to help her perfect her forms, and he got her the armour that she had always wanted, and had carried her to the hospital when she had broken her arm as a child, and stayed with her as the doctor had set her arm and she had tried her best not to cry, and bought her red bean mochi afterward and told her he was proud.

There had been a time once when he had been more father than master. But he had changed. Ever since…

Leonardo.

They ruined everything. Everything. And now there was nothing left. Nothing, but the chance to exact revenge.

She would be a weapon, all right. A weapon that would end the world.

Karai raised her head and held out her chained wrists, proud and defiant. "All right, then. Re-forge me."

The wind both chilled and invigorated her as it tore across the rooftops. It was strange, this body; in one sense, the scales protected her from the biting wind, but this shape despised the cold in ways she never had before. She shifted, tasting the air, and frowned as the cords holding her armour to her body snagged and tugged on her scales. There had been no armour for this monstrous form, of course – she'd had to make do with cast-off pieces from various footbots. Refuse held to her body with cord and twine.

Her shikomizue, at least, was still hers, and if it sat strangely in her new hand, she was still more comfortable with it than without it. She took a step, her foot resting on the ledge that bounded the rooftop as she stared out over the city.

Nearby, Tiger Claw shifted in the darkness. "Patience, little dragon. You have much still to learn."

Karai snorted. "Worry about yourself, tabby cat. I'm just fine."

A sound, a strange mix of growl and laugh, drifted from the shadows. "Name one thing you have that I do not."

"Depth perception," she said dismissively, and stiffened. She tasted mutagen in the wind.

Ghostlike, she moved through the dark, and though she had lost some of her silence thanks to the scraping of the tail she could not fully control against the rooftops behind her, the sound was masked by the raucous laughter of the four of the rooftop below.

A snarl curled her lip away from the razor edges of her teeth. Some ninja they were. Couldn't even follow the first rule of ninjutsu. What had they done to deserve being so happy? Silently, she drew her blade as Tiger Claw landed next to her.

"Leonardo is mine," she whispered through clenched teeth.

The cat stared at her for a moment before nodding and moving to position himself on the far side of the roof. Karai's snarl deepened, but it was of little importance. He could mistrust her all he wanted; it wouldn't matter any more once Leo was dead.

She pushed herself over the edge and fell into the night, her blade poised to drive straight into his heart.

He heard her. Somehow, he always heard her, and the clash of their blades echoed across the rooftops, stopping his brothers' sport in an instant. They moved to help him – of course they did – but Tiger Claw was there first, holding them at bay while she dealt with their leader.

"Okay, I know who tall, dark, and furry must be," she heard Donatello quip, "but who's the ugly one?"

"Who cares?" Raphael retorted. "Let's trash 'em and go get pizza."

"Dibs on making the call!" cried the third – Michelangelo, she remembered – and the flippancy in his voice filled her with rage. How dare they? Was everything a joke to them? With a snarl of outrage, she redoubled her attack as Leonardo gave ground before her. Once, she could have ended this quickly, but the adjustments she was still making to her new form slowed her just enough that they were just about evenly matched.

Steel sang against steel as they moved through their deadly dance, Leonardo attempting to bait her, to close the distance between him and his brothers. But she was on to him. That was his weakness; a ninja was so much stronger when she didn't rely on anyone but herself.

"I don't know who you are," he grunted as her foot caught him in his side and he skidded backward. "But whatever the Shredder told you about us, I can pretty much guarantee it's not true."

Her eyes narrowed, and she spun, driving hard to find some chink in his defenses. Incredible. Even when he did not know it was her, the lies continued to pour like smoke from his mouth. He would pay for that. Karai was the dragon, not him. Baring her teeth, she lunged, driving her shikomizue toward his throat.

Silver flashed across her vision as he brought his swords up to block, trapping her blade between them, and suddenly it was a contest of strength as each fought to gain the upper hand. He was strong, but her new frame was all muscle and sinew over bone like iron, and his limbs shook with the exertion of holding her back.

Until she made the mistake of looking at him, and caught sight of herself reflected in his blade.

All this time, she had avoided any mirror, any surface still enough to let herself catch sight of what had been done to her. And now that she had, it was worse than she had ever imagined. She was beyond hideous. She was nightmare made flesh, a monstrous thing that had no right existing in this world. Unable to stop the cry that tore from her throat, she recoiled, yanking her blade free as she staggered back from him. But even that was not as terrible as the, soft, incredulous word that he spoke next.

"Karai?"

There was such gentleness, such sympathy, in the voice that breathed her name, and the fragile web of rage that had held her mind together snapped. She was unable to find the words to answer him as she trembled beneath the strength of her name, but that didn't stop him from pursuing her. Yet there was no steel in the hand he held out to her.

"Karai, what happened?"

"I—" her throat tightened until it stole her breath, and she shook her head. "He—I didn't— I didn't want-"

"Karai, please," he said, and there was something in his voice that raised her gaze to meet his. "Please. Let me help you."

If there had been pity in his voice, she would have killed him where he stood. But there wasn't. Only earnest understanding, and the desire to help the broken, twisted creature who stood before him…

…his sister.

She hadn't even realized she had made up her mind until her shaking fingers met his, and his strong, steady hand closed around hers and drew her close. She was aware of the flash as the purple smoke surrounded them, cloaking their movements as his arm slipped around her and bore her away. She was aware, too, of Tiger Claw's furious bellow as he threw himself after them, and the shouts of the others as they followed suit, but if there was one thing Leonardo's family had always excelled at, it was running away.

And it seemed that this was to be her legacy, now, too.

They didn't take her to their home, of course. Not even Leonardo was that stupidly naïve. Instead, they holed her up in some abandoned utility room, but there was, at least, running water and a shower, which let her wash herself properly clean of the mud from the riverbank and the blood that caked the marks around her wrists where the shackles had dug in. She caught him staring at the wounds, of course, but he said nothing.

Which was not to say he had nothing to say. As she cleaned herself, she could hear the four of them arguing in the room beyond, the others adamant in their assertions that they couldn't trust her. Which was fair enough, she supposed. She'd have thought them idiots if they'd trusted her unconditionally. But their fighting could lead to only one thing, in the end, and she wasn't sure if it was relief or dread that filled her when their quarreling at last fell silent, for she knew it could mean only one thing. Steeling herself, she tied her armour back into place and went out to face him with her head held high.

It lasted only until she saw him. There were so many names she had heard him called over the years. Splinter. Hamato Yoshi. The rat. Father, a small voice within her whispered, which she immediately silenced. Shredder had called him a freak and a monster, but there was nothing in the eyes that stared at her but shock and dismay, and the pity she had feared from the others.

"Miwa," he whispered.

"My name is—" she began, but the words stuck in her throat. Miwa was a dream, a life that had been denied to her. But Karai… Karai was gone now, too. At a loss, she turned to the youngest of them, who looked back at her in surprise.

"Uh," he stammered, rubbing at his head. "Lemme think about that. I'll get back to you."

Splinter stepped forward, though he knew better than to try to touch her. She couldn't have predicted what she would have done had he tried it. "Why has he done this?"

A bitter laugh escaped her as she wrapped her arms around herself. "Because his weapon was weak."

The turtles looked to one another in confusion, but the rat knew exactly what she meant. She watched, unsure, as he sank to one of the benches that sat in front of a few rusted lockers, resting his hands against his knees.

"I am sorry, child," he said quietly. "For so many things. There are so many paths left unwalked. So many things I would have done differently had I but known…" He sighed; her own heart ached at the sound, and she hated it for that. "If I could change the past, I would choose a different path for you. But for now, I can promise that we will do all in our power to help you."

A bitter laugh broke from her lips, and she looked down at her hand. "Can you give me back my humanity?"

Splinter turned his head to the tallest of the turtles. "Donatello?"

Donatello frowned, a finger tapping against his chin. "I'd need a lot more mutagen than I have right now, but in theory, the refinement process should work the same way. If Kar—if she can help us find some of the Kraang's stores, I should be able to whip up a batch outside of a month."

She could only follow part of what the scrawny one was babbling, but it was enough. She stared at him, her tongue darting between her teeth in surprise. "Wait… you can fix me?"

He started, as though he'd forgotten she was there – though given the way Stockman got when he'd been deep into his science stuff, that was entirely possible – but he blinked at her and nodded. "I wouldn't use the word'fix' exactly, but I could recreate the retromutagen that restored Mr. O'Neil. Really, it'd just depend on how stable your mutation is."

A soft laugh of incredulity burst from her. "The Kraang said something like that. That the Hamato genes produce more stable mutations."

Her words fell into silence, and she realized that it was the closest any of them had come to acknowledging her acceptance of the truth. That they were, like it or not, bound by blood, and all the trappings of honour that came with it.

It was Splinter who finally broke the silence, rising to his feet with a weariness he had not carried on his arrival. "It is late," he said, "and I imagine you have much to process. Tomorrow, we shall bring you some things to make you more comfortable, and see if we cannot make sense of this situation."

"Not you," she said, the words slipping free before she could stop them, and she couldn't stand how the hurt expression that crossed his features hurt her in return. One night, and she was already growing as soft and weak as the rest of them. "I just… I need time to…"

"I understand," he said, bowing his head to her. "My sons will return then. Until you are ready."

He slipped free of the little utility room without another word, and Michelangelo and Donatello were hard on his heels, their faces twin masks of concern. Raphael lingered in the doorway, glaring, as Leo pulled open one of the lockers.

"It's not much," he said. "But the towels and blankets are clean, and there's a cot tucked away in the closet. There's no pillow, but—"

"I've slept on rocks," she interrupted tersely. "I'll be fine."

He looked at her for a moment before he nodded and backed away. Of all the people here, he was probably the only one capable of understanding the words she couldn't bring herself to say.

Thank you.

In another moment he and his brother were gone. She was alone at last, a mutant freak in the sewers where she belonged, and she was suddenly struck by a bone-deep weariness. Tugging the cot out from the closet, she dropped down on it and wrapped herself in the musty blankets from the locker. Only then did she give in and finally let herself cry.

The days to come were some of the most surreal she had ever known. When she had finally managed to drag herself out of her fog of depression, it was to find an alarming number of visitors. Most often Leonardo, bringing her blankets or books, or movies to keep her entertained, though occasionally Donatello arrived to pull some sort of genetic sample from her, or Michelangelo swanned in bearing food of questionable origin. Raphael was always there, too, a malevolent shadow for the others, watching her with his hands in easy reach of his weapons.

She had to admit, he was smarter than she'd given him credit for.

Thankfully, they kept the princess away, which was likely for the best. She spent most of her time trying to forget that the other girl existed. The girl who had the tessen which she now realized by rights should have gone to Karai, and the family that doted on her every whim. The family that seemed for all intents and purposes to be so much happier than the one she had known. Had the redhead swanned in with her adorable freckles and her perfect humanity, she didn't know what she would have done. But she was fairly certain that April's humanity wouldn't have been so perfect at the end of it.

"What about Toyotama?"

Michelangelo's question startled her out of her brooding daze, and she frowned at him as she took the tray he held out to her. "Luminous pearl? I don't think so."

"No, it's from one of the storybooks Splinter used to read to us. She was—"

"A dragon princess. I know." She poked at the unidentifiable mass on her tray. "What the heck are you poisoning me with today?"

"Pizza pudding," he answered, only half paying attention. "But seriously, it totally fits! She was a badass dragon. You're a badass dragon." He dropped down on the floor next to her cot. "And the only other thing I can come up with is Lizardbreath."

"No." She set down the tray and picked up a piece of what she assumed was pepperoni with the chopsticks, jamming it into her mouth. Only belatedly did she realize that it was to hide the smile that longed to break free. He was annoying as all get out, but he also had ways of startling her into laughter that she found profoundly unsettling.

"No to which one?" he asked plaintively as Raphael snorted from his usual skulk in the corner.

"Either. Both. Just no." Swallowing the mouthful with only a slight triggering of her gag reflex, she shook her head. Lizardbreath is out. And I'm no princess."

"You could be," he said, regarding her appraisingly. "A little nail polish on those claws, a little make-up, and don't try to tell me you're not a cosmetic type of girl, sister, I saw how much you loved the eyeliner."

"No," she insisted again, and despite her best efforts, the smile slipped free, earning one of his in return. And as much as she hated it, it was like the sun coming out, filling her with warmth until her lizard heart basked in it.

"Just wait. I'll bring you some electric lavender polish and you'll change your tune." He rose to his feet, waving at her as he swanned out of the room, Raphael pulled in his wake.

Shaking her head in bewildered shock, she absently took another bite, and immediately regretted it. His company wasn't completely unbearable, but his cooking certainly was. And for the first time, she found herself sorry to see one of them go.

But it wasn't all fun and games and toenail polish. There was fighting, too. Usually with Leo or Raph, though Donnie got his share of the edge of her forked tongue. If she was being fair, it wasn't entirely her fault; she was at war with herself as much as with any of them, and it had a habit of bleeding over when one of them was around. She had been raised to believe in duty. Honour. But duty warred within her – did she owe it to the Foot clan who raised her, or to the clan with whom she shared the genetic secrets the Kraang valued so highly?

And so while she wanted to help them track down enough of the mutagen to make her a cure, she drew the line at disclosing the locations of the Foot's secret strongholds. Something that displeased Leonardo to no end, and any time they attempted to discuss it, it inevitably ended in screaming and drawn blades.

"How can you stay loyal to them after everything they've done?" Leo demanded, his katana warding her shikomizue off as he rolled backward over her cot. "Don't you want us to make you a retromutagen?"

"Why so eager?" She leaped to the cot, driving her blade down at his head and hissing as he deflected her again. "Is my face too hideous for you?"

"Karai, I'm a reptile," he snapped back, his voice thick with irritation as he held a hand up to hold Raph back, who was watching the fight with his usual unease. "I don't see anything wrong with how you look."

They were meant to placate her, she knew. But those innocent words slipped beneath her defenses, cutting deep, and her vision hazed red with rage. "Is that why it's taking so long? You want me to stay this way, don't you? A freak, just like the rest of you."

"Karai, don't be stupid!"

"I'm stupid now?" The force of her next blow drove him into the lockers, his shell denting the metal.

"That's not what I meant!" A slide of his foot, a well-timed twist, and he had her back against the lockers, his hands pinning hers in place. "If you'd just listen—"

But the fury, the hurt, the confusion wouldn't let her listen, and in desperate frustration, she lunged.

There was no conscious thought behind the movement. She hadn't even known what she was doing until she felt serrated teeth tear through flesh, tasted that burning, acrid bitterness on her tongue, and heard Leonardo screaming.

She let go and ducked just as Raphael's sai drove into the lockers where she'd been. Staggering back, she stared at the blood welling between the fingers that Leo had clamped to his arm.

"You bit him?" Raphael steadied his brother with one hand as he glared at Karai, and there was no sympathy, no kinship in the disgust with which he regarded her. "What kind of animal are you?"

She took another step back, her hand trembling as she sheathed the shikomizue. "A dragon," she whispered.

Turning, she fled into the tunnels.

She couldn't go back. Not now. Not after what she'd done. She still could scarcely believe it herself, it had all happened so fast. But there was an animal within her, one that could not be tamed, controlled, or reasoned with. And she wasn't sure it was fear for herself, or fear of what that monster would do that kept her from returning. The look of betrayal in Leonardo's eyes as he had attempted to staunch the wound she had given him. Like a rabid animal that needed to be put down.

Perhaps that was why there was so little fight in her when Tiger Claw finally tracked her down. Why the motions she went through to defend herself from him felt so mechanical as he attacked her. Why, when he finally froze her in her tracks, encasing her limbs in ice, she barely felt it. Barely felt anything but shame.

Until the turtles arrived.

She knew instantly that something was wrong. She could read it in every line of them as they fell upon Tiger Claw, with no trace of their usual ineptitutde. Every movement they made was precise. Calculated. Lethal.

And there was only three of them.

This fact, more than anything else, managed to penetrate the fog around her mind as the others drove Tiger Claw off, and when Raphael advanced on her, there was nothing in his expression but raw, unadulterated fury. It was the last thing she saw as he drove the butt of his sai toward her head.

She didn't understand. Struggling to comprehend as they dragged her, near insensate, through the sewers, she rolled it over in her mind again and again. She'd beaten them before, and they'd never shown this much anger. This much rage. Even Michelangelo's usual sunshine was gone, hidden by a brooding darkness in his face that made his focus sharp and his actions precise as they heaved her onto a cold steel table and strapped her down.

That was when she heard the screaming.

Leo?

She turned her head, blinking her blurred vision clear, and found herself staring in horror.

His arm was gone.

Soiled bandages wrapped the stump of his arm just below the shoulder, but even then, she could see that it had not been enough. Dark lines radiated out from beneath the bandages, spreading up his neck and across his chest as he writhed, crying out in pain. Something was eating him from the inside out.

"I need her mouth open."

Donatello's voice broke through her confusion, and she turned her head in time to see Raphael and Michelangelo bearing down on her. She fought, thrashing, as strong hands caught at her face and forced her jaws apart, and Donatello advanced, brandishing a pair of pliers in his hand.

A moment of blinding pain later, and she stared up at the tooth he had yanked from her mouth. Something dark and swollen clung to the root of it, and as she looked at it in dawning horror, bile rose in her throat as she realized the source of the bitterness that still clung to her tongue.

A venom sac. Her venom. She had done this.

Even as the terrible truth flooded through her, Donatello was racing across the room to his workbench, lighting flames beneath a bewildering array of scientific equipment and placing her tooth at the centre of it. He plunged a syringe into the venom sac and pulled back on the plunger, filling the vial with a clear, milky fluid.

"I've got it," he said. "I don't have much time, but I think I can synthesize—"

His voice broke off as his last words fell into a deafening silence. All eyes turned toward the other table where Leonardo lay still, his glassy eyes unfocused and staring at nothing at all.

"No…" A voice, rough and broken, drifted from the doorway as Splinter stared at the body of his eldest son, anguish etched across every feature on his face. He moved, his steps unsteady, as he passed Michelangelo, who had sunk to the floor and buried his head against his knees. Kept moving, shaking his head in denial, and Karai's head moved in concert with his.

She hadn't meant… she had never meant…. He had saved her. More than once. He had believed in her when no one else had. He had been the only friend she had ever had, and now…

Splinter's head turned slowly, the terrible emptiness in his gaze falling on her. "Everything you touch turns to ash."

With a roar, the flames on the Bunsen burners flared high, shattering the vials that bubbled above them and igniting their contents into a wall of fire. Smoke filled the air, dark and choking, and Karai cried out, tearing her hands free of their restraints as Splinter lunged for her. Still the smoke poured forth, shrouding the lab in darkness, until all she could see were his eyes, burning red in the smoke and the flame at the end of the world.

Karai…

She squeezed her eyes closed, shaking her head in denial as the heat from the fire seared her skin.

Karai. Open your eyes, child.

She did so with a gasp, certain that death had at last come for her, only to find that the smoke had turned white. A vast, featureless expanse of white surrounded her, no sign of Splinter or the turtles. She was alone in the endless void.

No… not alone. There was a figure in the mists before her. A figure who towered over her as it drew closer, and Karai found herself looking at a goddess, great and terrible in her beauty. With a cry, she reached out, her claws snagging on the shining fabric of the kimono the woman wore. And as she struggled, the garments faded and drifted away like mist.

"You are right, of course," a voice said, carrying with it just a hint of amusement. "This is much better."

And as Karai looked back at the woman, she found herself looking not at a goddess, but at a women just a little taller than herself, wearing jeans and a plain, pretty blouse, her dark hair falling loose over her shoulders as she smiled down at Karai. And that face…

She knew that face.

A cry tore from her throat as she fell to her knees, her terrible, clawed hands covering her face in shame.

"Oh, my poor child." There was no accusation in that soft voice. No anger or condemnation. A gentle hand rested against her head, stroking lightly, and beneath the softness of that touch, her scales split and fell away, pattering to the ground like rain. Over and over, that gentle hand moved, stripping the scales away until Karai knelt, naked, in the featureless void, clad only in hair that fell down her back as it hadn't since she was a very young child.

Then, only then, did she have the courage to raise her face, streaked with tears, to meet the woman's eyes, and in a trembling voice, she uttered the word that nearly paralyzed her with hope and fear in equal measure.

"Mother?"

"Oh, Miwa," the woman sighed. "I have been waiting for you."

Those soft words undid her utterly and she fell against her mother, sobbing until she feared it would tear her apart. But those arms, strong as iron beneath their softness, drew her close and kept her from breaking.

"Oh child. My poor, lost baby. Whatever have they done to you? How am I to send you back like this?"

"Back?" Karai sniffled, looking up in confusion. "But… aren't I dead?"

"No, sweetheart." Those kind hands cupped her face, thumbs drying her tears. "But you are at a crossroads. There are dark days ahead of you, my daughter, and I see a dozen different paths for your future. Indeed, the path you walk now is but one branch of what might have been."

The mists swirled, and through them, Karai caught sight of other figures moving through the shadows. A young Japanese girl, laughing as she raced through the sewers, a turtle at her side. "Neesan, neesan watch what I can do!" They swirled again, and that same girl ran before her to a woman standing beneath a sakura tree. "Kaasan, I got in! The school accepted me! Can we please go to the dojo to surprise Tousan? Please?" Again, the mists swirled, but what she had already seen was painful enough.

She shivered, leaning closer and wrapping her arms tightly around Shen's waist. "Then… what happened tonight…"

"Is one possibility of many. One that your dreaming mind fears more than most." Sighing, Shen rested her cheek against the top of Karai's head. "I do not envy you the choices that lie ahead of you, my darling. And I do not know how much of this you will remember when you wake."

"Wake…" she repeated. Panic tore through her and she looked up desperately. "No! I don't want to wake up! I don't want you to leave me!"

Smiling, Shen gently took Karai's face between her hands. "My sweet Miwa. My precious one. Don't you realize?" Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to Karai's brow, and a peace and sweetness flooded through her that left her gasping and brought with it a fresh flood of tears. "I have never left you. Not for a single day."

The mists thickened and swirled around her until all she could see was white. But though the void stole her sight and left her blind, her mother's hold on her never wavered.

Wake, Karai. Wake, and if you can, remember me…

"Karai!"

The harsh bark from her doorway yanked her into waking and she reached out to snag the kunai from the air, sending it spinning back to its source before she had fully opened her eyes. Rahzar yelped as the blade scored his arm, and he glared at her, his fangs bared in as snarl. "Get up. Shredder wants you."

She threw a lamp at him for good measure as he slammed her door behind him, frowning as she pushed herself to her feet and padded toward the stand in the corner that held her armour. Her life had been turned upside down over the last few days, everything she had worked for her entire life yanked out from under her. There was no reason for her to feel so… so…

Happy.

Shaking her head, she rubbed at a tingling spot on her brow, and made herself ready for a new day.