Legal Disclaimer: I don't own TMNT, Peter Laird and his pals and associates and whatnot do. I only own any non-canon character I see fit to grace this fic with, including my main character, Violet, a young female ninja whose Ex-Foot father was murdered by them.
It's strange that sometimes something so painful is the kick in the behind one needs sometimes to get going on something they doubted they were able to do. I won't elaborate but...well that's what started this story.
While generally the backgrounds for these guys is the same as the toon (not the comics!) there are some differences: Old Shredhead is still in charge of the Foot, and they still live in their old Lair I enjoyed so much, for starters. Any others I'll note in due time if I see fit to twist it around to suit my needs. Enjoy. Rated PG-13 for language, violence, and eventually, sexuality and innuendo.
And as a last note...the tattered cloth angle in this story was intact in my mind (and elsewhere) before I ever saw the episode concerning Casey Jones's dad some months ago. When I saw that episode I figured they'd read my mind. Stuff happens.
Sunset of Death
By ZeoViolet
"Violet!"
A man's voice rang through the large house.
Only silence was his answer. He yanked open the door of the dojo room and called again.
"Violet!"
He startled the young girl out of her trance, all too easily for what he'd been trying to teach her-but she'd never been as good at meditiation as she'd been weilding her weapons anyways.
The small blonde girl blinked, getting her bearings. "Yes, Father?" she answered, using the more formal attitude she reserved for this room only. This room was where he was mentor and teacher, less just her loving parent. She acknowledged that fact obediently. Their lives depended on what she learned in these sessions, no matter where they were held.
"I was planning on making eggs benedict for dinner," he informed her as she rose to her barely-five-foot height. "Problem is-no eggs in the house. Can you run to the convenience store while I get the rest of the supper on the table?"
She nodded eagerly. Eggs benedict sounded wonderful, even to her normally-vegetarian tastes.
"I'll be back soon!" she raced upstairs to grab a white sweater from her closet and raced back downstairs at top speed.
Her father was waiting at the foot of the stairs, money in hand for the purchase.
Violet paused to stare at him, getting the uneasy feeling something wasn't right here. He was staring at her intensely, as if very worried about something. It was written all over his deep green eyes.
"Here," he said quickly, putting the money in her hand. "Go, hurry to the nearest store-and go fast."
"Father?" she stared at him. This wasn't him at all. He was so pale!
"Time is wasting," he urged her towards the door in a manner so opposite his normal self it set off alarm bells along her whole body. "Quickly now. There's no more time to talk, my daughter."
"Daddy, tell me what's wrong!" she pleaded. Icy chills were along her spine. She shouldn't leave him, all her instincts told her. She musn't!
He yanked her back and, to her surprise, hugged her hard against his firm body. "I love you," he said quietly, in words that were to haunt her ever after. "Always remember that. Now, go!" He got a stern look at the protest rising in her eyes, as well as fear. "Do not question me, just go!"
Too used to obeying that tone of voice, for her obedience to it might save her life one day, she obeyed, turning and hurrying out the door, out of the yard, as quickly as she dared to move without appearing too hasty.
The sun was setting upon her return, the pale yellow rays slowly deepening into beautiful red tones.
Violet scarcely noticed; so intent was she on getting back to her father as soon as she possibly could. Why had he acted like he didn't want her there?
As she got closer to home her sense of dread grew. Her instincts had rarely been wrong.
She came into the yard so swiftly and silently that at first the dark shadow lurking in the yard didn't notice her. Two other shadows climbed the stone walls encircling the yard and were already gone, and she barely saw them.
She was just in time to see the dark figure, tussling with her father in the yard, finally overpower him and, in one swift motion, use the already-bloody dagger he was holding to slice the weapon across the other man's throat-not very widely, but enough.
Her father, already wet with his own blood, fell silently to the ground as new waves of red sprayed once, quickly, splattering him and his attacker both.
The eggs Violet was holding didn't fall so silently as her father had. Sick horror had paralyzed her body and she could not move; only stare at the dark figure whose face was completely obscured. No sound could escape her throat, no breath could she take as she felt her heart inside her liquify with a new, unknown poison.
The eggs splattered the ground much the way her father's blood was now soaking the dying grasses of late autumn.
The attacker jumped, turning to regard her once-then, to her further horrified senses, spat on the ground at her before going and running after his companions without so much of a backwards glance.
A cold, cruel void was left in his wake.
"Father!" The half-screamed, half keening wail echoed over the walls and into the streets as Violet's body finally unlocked. She abandoned everything else to race to her father's prone, limp body, her senses dissolving into one narrow band of intense horror and pain.
He was still alive, but barely. The light in his eyes was dimming fast when she reached him, and moved to cradle his dark head in her arms, ignoring the blood spilling from his wounds to soak her, too. "Daddy..." she rasped almost soundlessly, knowing her own soul was dying at the same rate his was. He was all she had!
His dark green eyes bored soundlessly now into her matching ones, regret in them. He knew! she realized with a new wave of nausea. He knew he was leaving her!
"I have to go!" she whispered to him. "I've got to get you help-go after those who did this to you..."
He managed to shake his head just slightly, sending a new wave of blood coursing down his body and onto hers. I'm dying, said his eyes, heavy with regret. It's no use.
Her only answer to that was a soundless, tearless sob. She felt her insides twisting, forming something powerful, something awful-something so painful she could not understand it.
His arm twitched, and she suddenly noticed he was clutching something in his red-soaked hand, sinister in it's blackness. He made a faint sound--he wanted her to take it.
With great reulctance she moved to do so. The tattered black cloth fell open to reveal a horrifying redness of a different sort-the very symbol that had made up so many of the last years, terrifying their lives with the promise of their deaths if they were ever found.
Blazing back out of that evil red burned the symbol of the Foot Clan.
A fierce surge of anger darkened the poison forming in Violet's heart further, escalating to an intense hatred that, if he had known, her father would have been ashamed at her for feeling.
"Then I'll go after them!" she hissed darkly. "I'll go after them for doing this to you!" To the dying man, he'd never before seen such a look cross her face or haunt her eyes.
His eyes widened, and in their dying light she sensed a new urgency. But to her frustration Violet did not understand what he meant to tell her.
"I'll get them!" she repeated, then her face crumbled, but still tearless. "I'll find out what you can't tell me, I swear it! Daddy..." her voice trailed off as the intensity of her pain cut into her words. "I'm so sorry...I coudn't protect you. I failed you..."
He shook his head again, then gave a deep sigh-it sounded more like a gurgle. The glimmer of life in his eyes faded away to almost nothing.
His free bloody hand reached up once more, pressing against her chest over where her heart lay pounding listlessly with a hollowness that now sustained only her body.
"Don't leave me..." she pleaded faintly now. "I want to go with you, and I will...I won't let you leave me alone..."
Distress was lingering in the depths of his eyes, and he pressed his hand against her heart harder. I forbid it! she knew it meant. Your promise that you won't follow me!
"No!" she choked on sobs that still held no tears, no release from her private hell. "I won't promise!"
A steely resolve entered his eyes, and he pressed against her chest once more, with one last surge of forceful strength that astonished her.
It held the force of a command that never in her eighteen years had she dared to disobey-and he had trained her well to always keep a promise that she made.
"All right!" she choked through lungs that held no air left in them. "I promise, damnit!"
With those words she sealed herself to an existence that she felt would never show a moment's joy for her again.
A faint relief echoed in his green gaze as he reached up enough to stroke her cheek-leaving several red marks-before moving to press against her heart one last time.
That, and the message in his eyes, left no doubt as to what he meant to say.
I love you.
"I love you too," she whispered, her eyes at last filling with tears--but they never fell. Her soul was gone so she had no right to them now, even if she had known how.
A last glimmer--acknowleging her words--and his arm dropped. Where it had touched her white sweater, his palmprint now blazed red with his life's fluids.
The last deeply crimson rays of the sun disappeared over the garden wall, coloring the sky brightly with a deadly evil hue--and as the darkness took it's place, so too on the wings of the sunlight did the last glimmer of life in her father's eyes flee.
Violet only held him now, crooning softly in a rhythm that offered no escape from grief, as a final gurgle rattled in his chest, and her disbelieving mind took several seconds to accept the fact--he was gone.
"That's weird--what'dya make of that?" came a slightly harsh brooklynese accent, squinting from the shadows as, far away across a number of buildings, three dark figures seemed to flee from something. "Them foot on the loose again, but--"
A gentler voice, but one that held the unmistakeable ringing tones of authority, answered him. "That is not unusual nowadays, Raph," came his answer as he too watched the silently fleeing figures.
"Yeah well they been up to some mischief or they wouldn't be runnin' so hell-bent insteada movin' their usual patterns-an' usually their groups are larger than three."
"Yeah, they're running," said the one in blue, named Leonardo. "Means they weren't out scouting around for us. And if they weren't doing that then they were up to something worse. I think we should check it out."
"I'm up for some shell-kickin' if you are," Raph uttered, true to his nature. He had removed his sais from his belt and twirled them around absently.
Beside them, a third turtle held up a small, flat device to his eyes, a pair of electronical binoculars. "Did it occur to either of you that the direction they are fleeing from is the same general direction of April's?" he asked gravely.
"Yeah," Leonardo answered his brother in purple, Donatello. "Let's go."
"I hope she's all right," piped up a fourth brother, who wore an orange bandanna. "'Cause I'm hungry-what?" he winced as Rapahel's hand smacked the back of his head.
"Will ya quit thinkin' about yer stomach? Yer drivin' me crazy."
"Short trip," Mikey retorted, rubbing his sore head.
"Cool it," Leonardo said sharply before his hot-tempered brother could launch himself at their baby brother. "We've got a job to do."
The four brothers, all of them green turtles who stood upright and had learned ninjitsu, turned their toes in the direction of the home of their close friend, April O'Neil.
"No, everything's okay here," said the pretty, surprised redhead at the four turtles who crowded her doorstep. "No Foot ninjas lurking around my place tonight."
She stepped back so they could file inside before they were seen. "Why? Did you see any flitting around here that I didn't?"
"Not exactly," answered Leonardo as they all settled into sofas or chairs about her living room. "We did, however, notice a small group fleeing from something and it was from the general direction of your place."
April smiled at them. That was so sweet that they'd worry about her so. She loved these guys to death-like little brothers, mind you, but love nonetheless.
She just shook her head. "Like I said, it's a quiet night here." Her bright green eyes sparkled as she remembered something. "Oh, yes. Hey, Donny, I finally got that transmitter you wanted."
Donatello's eyes lit up brightly. "Really?" he asked eagerly. "Can I get it?"
April gave him a sweet smile at his enthusiasm for their shared hobby. "I'll get it for you. I'll be right-"
She paused as wailing sirens picked up in the distance, and swiftly grew louder. In a city like New York such sirens weren't unusual, but considering the timing of the turtles' visit, it made her pause.
She went to the window and glanced outside as the sirens reached a deafening peak and police cars, an ambulance, and a fire engine all raced madly past her building and off into the distance.
"Could that be heading towards the source of your concerns?" she asked unnecessarily, knowing they were all thinking the same thing.
"Probably so," Leonardo agreed. "However, if the police are around, we can't be."
"I could look it up for you later," April offered.
Leonardo gave her a grin, knowing she was skilled at such things. "I'd appreciate that. It's best to keep up on what the Foot are up to. Just call Donny if you need any help."
"Give him the transmitter he wanted an' he'll be over here in five seconds flat," Raph added wickedly. "That's gratitude for yeh."
Donatello turned bright red. "I'd do it anyway. April never needs to hold something over my head just to get my help!" he said, clearly irritated.
"Oh, Raph, behave," April scolded him lightly. "Or I'll make Casey return the part he got you that would jump the motor on your shellcycle to new speeds."
"Oh, all right," Raph groused. April always knew just where to hit with her remarks. It was not a lie that he really wanted that part she mentioned. "Yer askin' a lot, but I'll be good."
She grinned smartly at him. "That's my boy."
For the next two weeks, Violet was to think later, where she went and what she did were hazy memories at best. She wanted to remember nothing at all. Nothing...