Raphael ran through the darkness, sai drawn, his anger building as his two-toed feet made their way down the sewer tunnels that he called his home. He hadn't meant to keep her a secret this long, he hadn't meant to exclude her from everything, but she was something special, something he really didn't have to share with his brothers, his own little secret.
Why it had taken him so long to figure out she was a danger to his brothers he didn't know. After all, the first time they had met she had almost killed him… it didn't help that his mind was on "male things".
His mind drifted back to the evening he had met her.
*~*
He was walking through the streets, hidden beneath a trench coat and a fedora, walking home from some cheesy movie that he didn't want to see he just needed to get out of the lair.
He had turned the corner of an alley to return to his home in the sewers, when he heard a woman's scream…
"It's got FUR!" she cried in hysterics, just as a youth ran by gripping a loaf of Italian bread in the paper wrapper. Raphael poked his head, seeing a woman fainted to the side while strangers tried to gather up a bag or three of torn groceries and no one had gone after the thief.
"Taking advantage of a woman, that's not too high in my book, pal." He muttered, and started off after the youth.
The young person he was chasing wore a green hooded sweatshirt and a pair of very big jeans, and cradled the bread in its arms lovingly as if it were the most important thing in the world right then.
It had come to a dead end in an alleyway; the youth made a sharp turn, ending in a park near the riverside. No one was in the park, since it was now nighttime in the city.
That's when the person had tripped to the side of the stairs leading to the river below. The bread went flying as the youth's head hit the concrete steps, tumbling into the water below with a splash.
Raphael swore aloud, very loudly, and ran down the stairs after the crook, taking off the trench and fedora as he ran, and leapt over the guardrail that separated the river from the land and into the chilly waters of the Hudson River.
He surfaced, blowing the polluted water out of his mouth with a huff as he searched for the hood, or bubbles, or anything that might alert him to the position of the youth.
He saw the dark green hood float about ten feet away; swimming over her pulled the hood up and back, exposing a mass of silvery-gray hair.
"Kids…" he shook his head, "dying their hair weird colors." He drug the person back to shore, and lay them flat on their back… and was greeted by a not-so-unpleasant surprise.
It wasn't a kid. At least, not any kid he knew of that could have been normal.
Lying before him, not breathing, was a teenage, mutant, cat!
It had gray fur and silvery hair held back by a red handkerchief, eyes closed and the mouth parted slightly.
"What the hell…" Raph said softly, and put a hand to her mouth, feeling no breath.
He couldn't leave the cat here, not to die like this. That wasn't the right thing to do, but he was scared. If there were more mutant animals out there, would they be friends or enemies? What about the cat?
He did the only thing he could do. He administered CPR.
He cupped his hands together, knowing his mouth was too wide to fit over its and still blow air into her lungs, and gently blew…
That's when he heard a hard THUMP in the groin area of his shell.
And then that's when he heard a grunt of pain beneath him, and the body below shudder.
He knelt back as the cat reached beneath its sweatshirt, exposing katar, or punching daggers. In a flash, he too had his weapons, his sai drawn.
They looked at each other a long time, neither moving, her breathing labored.
Raphael recognized something in the cat's eyes, those orbs of blue and black, those windows to this stranger's soul.
He saw pain. He saw fear. He saw loneliness.
He growled, and narrowed his eyes, then blinked, noticing for the first time the heaving chest…
And that the cat was a girl.
"Hey, kitten, you put away your weapons, I'll put away mine, and we'll talk." He said, a hint of mean in his voice.
Amazingly, the cat complied.
And Raphael kept his word, as the cat slid the blades below the sweatshirt, he re-holstered his sai.
The warm-blooded cat shivered slightly in the cooling night air, and Raphael sighed, picking up the trench coat
"Look, that fur's gotta be a pain when it's wet, here, take this." He said, handing it to her.
The cat looked at Raph for a moment, then to the coat, and took it into her human-like paws
"Thank-you." She said softly as she took off the wet clothes. Raphael's eyes went wide as she exposed not a bra or panties, but a leather halter-top and a metal skirt laced with chain mail. She slipped the trench coat over her shivering body, then knelt back down, looking at Raphael.
"What you looking at?" he asked her.
"You." She answered honestly. "Who are you, or do you not have a name?"
"I'm Raphael, who are you?"
"Ali Kat."
"Original."
"I could say the same."
"Fair enough."
They looked at each other a moment longer.
"Where you from?" she asked.
"Here. You?"
"I'm not quite sure."
"How come?"
The cat didn't answer, her ears perked up
"Wails…" she blinked.
"Wales? You're Welch?"
"Banshees." She said, and got up, looking towards Raphael "The blue banshees, their wails, their keens, they hurt my ears. We should go…"
"I don't hear anything…" Raphael started, then paused. Distant yet, he heard police sirens.
"You're right. Let's go." He said, and walked over to a grating in the sewer system. Ali Kat followed him, looking nervously down.
"You want me to go down there, into the Forbidden?" she asked, stepping away.
"Forbidden? Look here, Kat, this is my home down there! Sure, it stinks but hey, it's not so bad most of the time."
"But the Shadow-Man…"
"You wanna get away from those banshees?"
"…"
"Good," Raphael said decisively. "Then follow me." He slid down into the sewer, grabbing a foothold, and holding the grating open. Ali slid down, landing on her left foot silently.
"She's quieter than Leo." Raphael mused to himself as he set the grating back in place, looking up as the red and blue lights engulfed the area. He turned, looking at Ali, and thought "How in the world did I get my shell into this mess?"
*~*
Ali Kat had been living in the sewers, hiding from the other three turtles in a distant part of the system, where Raph had set her up with a bed and some blankets, pinching some comforts of home from his brothers. He felt awful of course, but sometimes caring for others can turn one against their brothers, he supposed.
But there was still something wrong.
The first night, Ali had slipped in the greasy tunnels, and had slit her footpads open on a piece of broken glass. She had commented she was strong, and walked fine (minus the limp from trying to fight Raphael), and though now she could walk perfectly, she seemed weak, and her eyes were glassy. Raph knew she was sick, but he didn't know what to do. He wasn't a nurturer, he wasn't a healer, and he damn sure wasn't a doctor. He was scared he had done something wrong, and it was gonna kill Ali.
He climbed up a ladder reaching into a dead-ended abandoned tunnel, which Raphael had painstakingly hooked up one florescent light to.
Ali lay sleeping peacefully in a sleeping bag (which used to belong to Leonardo - April had bought it since he never got the couch at her apartment), her silvery-gray hair spread around her head, creased and crimped as if she had been tossing and turning. Raphael knelt at her side.
"Ali… hey kiddo." He said softly, putting his hand on Ali's shoulder and shaking slightly to awaken the younger mutant.
The blue eyes of the cat opened slowly…
"Raph, what's going…"
"RAPHAEL!" Came a chorus of angry cries… Raphael turned to see his brothers, angered.
"What the hell do you think you were doing Raph? Master Splinter's missing and all you can think about is…" Leonardo started, then saw the cat.
Ali stood, hissing, showing her sharp teeth, her whiskers shaking as she stood. The gray tail swished angrily behind her as Leonardo drew his katana.
Everything was coming back to him about HER.
*~*
It was on one of his walks when he first saw her, the gray warrior cat sitting to the side; her eyes focussed on him. He had startled her, obviously… she had been in the middle of carving something on the side of the sewer.
"Hey!" he had started as she stood and turned… then found himself clubbed in the back of the head with a piece of metal. As he turned, he saw the bright katar blade shining briefly in the light in the alley above and then... darkness.
She had done something to him; he could hear chanting, and a deep, craggy voice that reminded him distantly of The Shredder.
And then he was blanked.