Hello everybody! Here's the LAST CHAPTER for the 'New Girl in Town' arc. Hope you've been enjoying it! Literally finishing the AN at 1am my time. I couldn't wait to post it. I HAVE A COMPULSION!

(Got some more notes for y'all at the bottom, so check it out after you're done reading.)

April 16, 2012

Leo held the binoculars up, scanning his sector of the city for Snakeweed. The boys had agreed to split up in order to cover more ground.

"Where is this guy?" Leo muttered. His thoughts were pulled in several different directions as he scanned the area from his rooftop perch. Direction 1: As team leader, should he butt into what was going on with April and Donnie? Their 'will they, won't they not talking to each other' act was throwing off the team dynamic. Or as a brother, should he just be there to encourage them? Direction 2: Even though Mikey and Raph bumping into him had caused the boy to drop the canister of mutagen, Leo felt guilty for what had transpired. Because of their carelessness, someone's life had been ruined! Direction 3: But if it hadn't been for the mutant chase and his fight with Raph, Leo wouldn't have met…

"Do you always talk to yourself?"

Leo smiled. He whirled around, casually drawing his katanas. "I happen to find myself to be excellent company." He twirled one of the swords. "Ya know… You appear to know a lot about me and my family. Care to even the playing field?"

The girl rolled her eyes, unsheathing her short katana from her back. "I'm Karai, the one who's going to end your life!"

"Okay, let's see how well you do against someone who can actually see." Leo settled into a loose fighting stance.

"Let's see how you do against someone who's actually better than you." Karai smirked.

"Well… let's see how you do against…" Leo stammered before pointing one of his katanas at the girl. "AGH! Let's just go!"

The two warriors rushed each other, exchanging blows. Leo would expect a kunoichi of this girl's caliber to be hitting harder. She's holding back, he realized.

"I'm Leo by the way," He spun out of range of one of her swipes. "I thought you'd be better than this, based on our last encounter." As Karai charged him again, Leo dropped a katana to grab her sword arm. He gently maneuvered her arm behind her back; enough force to incapacitate her, but not seriously hurt her. "Tell me how you know about me and my family and why you want to end us!"

"So forward," Karai purred. She leaned further back into his space, almost pressed up against his plastron. "Shouldn't you buy me dinner first?"

Leo flushed a deep red, sputtering. Karai took advantage of her opponent's freezing to break his hold. She elbowed him in the gut before retrieving her short katana and leveling it at Leo's neck.

"I'll make you a deal, Leo. I'll answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine. We can go back and forth until we run out. After that, we part ways. No harm, no foul."

Leo winced, holding the part of his shell she had hit. It did the job of protecting him, but her metal-studded elbow pads still stung. "So… basically 20 Questions?"

"I don't care how many questions you have," Karia frowned. "We each want to know more about our enemies, right?"

"Right, no." Leo carefully pushed himself to standing. "20 Questions is a game. But yeah. I guess we can do that." He held out his hand. "Temporary truce?"

Karai lowered her sword to shake his hand. She had to admit, the feeling of such a large hand enveloping hers was… interesting. "Truce." She agreed.

The two found a covered spot on their rooftop where someone had set up a couple of plastic lawn chairs. They made themselves comfortable, but neither fully lowered their guard. Karai gestured for Leo to ask his question.

"By all means, ladies first!" Leo shook his head. "Splinter did raise us to be gentlemen."

Karai snorted. "Very well," She leaned forward, her forearms resting on her knees. "How did a great warrior like Hamato Yoshi end up with humanoid turtles as ninjutsu students?"

Leo leaned back as far as the flimsy plastic chair would allow. "Well… Something brought Splinter from Japan. He doesn't really tell us much about his life before coming to New York, but the Mur… some friends of ours know." Leo truly wanted to get to know this girl, but he didn't want to give away all of the family secrets. His family would never forgive him if he endangered anyone because of his flirting. "Anyways, Splinter bought four baby turtles from a pet shop one day. As he came out, he ran across some sketchy dudes. We've found out recently that they're an alien race called the Kraang. They dumped some mutagen on us and Splinter, which transformed all of us. We became more human-like while Splinter became, less…" Leo trailed off.

"What did he transform into?"

"Is that one of your questions?"

Karai smirked. "Maybe later. Anything else?"

Leo shrugged. "He raised us like his own kids. Taught us how to fight. Not much else to it. My turn." Leo grinned as he leaned forward in his seat. "So… who sent you after us?"

"The Shredder."

The boy blinked. "That's a choice. Are you going to tell me anything else about him?"

Karai tugged on one of the sections of hair framing her face. "Are you going to ask any more questions about him?" Leo sighed.

"I mean… it would be nice to know why this guy is sending people after us. I'm assuming those other guys are part of your clan." He held up his hands at Karai's glare. "Hey, that wasn't a question. It was an assumption. If you'd like to correct my assumption, be my guest."

"They're part of the Foot Clan, like me. Ah ah," The girl held up her finger as Leo opened his mouth. "We never said how much info we would share. You chose to share more, I chose to share less. My turn again." She folded her arms, leaning back. "How old are you?"

"Why do you want to know?"

Karai shrugged. "Just curious. Don't interact with many younger people in the Foot. Everyone's older."

Leo felt a stab of sympathy for this warrior. True, he had grown up mostly secluded from the rest of the world, but at least he had his brothers and April. Without them… he would have lost it a long time ago.

"Our clan doesn't really celebrate 'birthdays',"Leo used his large fingers to put air quotes around 'birthdays'. "...but we do celebrate our 'mutation day'. My brothers and I celebrated our 15th Mutation Day about two months ago. What about you? How old are you?"

"Does this count as one of your questions?"

The turtle rolled his eyes. "Sure."

Karai picked at an invisible hangnail under her glove. "I turned 16 before I left Japan… so… about a month ago."

So she and April are pretty close in age… Leo thought. They both shifted in their chairs. The plastic was quickly becoming uncomfortable.

"How many of you are there in the Hamato Clan?" Karai asked.

Leo squinted. "Are you trying to figure out how strong we are so you can report back to this Shredder guy?" He blinked as she laughed.

"Are you always this paranoid when someone's trying to get to know you?"

"Only when they've previously held a sword to my throat." Leo grumbled.

Karai stood, placing a hand over her heart before bowing. "On my honor as a kunoichi, I will tell Shredder none of this. This is actually for my own amusement."

"Uh…" Leo didn't know how to react. He cleared his throat as she returned to her chair. "Okay… There's Splinter, of course. I'm technically the oldest, but there's no actually way to tell. Then you've got Raph, Donnie, Mikey and…" Leo pressed a hand to his head at a sudden sharp pain. He had been about to mention April, but this pain seemed to not want him to reveal anything about his sister. That's weird...

"And…" Karai rolled her hand, wanting him to continue.

Leo shook his head. "... and… Ice Cream Kitty. Mikey adopted a cat recently and gave it full Hamato rights." He chuckled at the genuine laugh that came from Karai. That's a strong laugh…

"Seriously? This cat's not afraid of giant turtles?" She wiped the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

Leo joined her in her laughter. "Turns out, Mikey's been cleaning an alleyway a couple times a month to 'help take care of his city'. This cat must have started seeing him when she was younger and gotten used to him. By the time we finally saw her, she would run straight to him and demand attention." He cracked his neck. "Alright, I've got a good question!"

"Hit me." Karai lifted her chin, smirking.

"What's with the eye decoration?" Leo returned the smirk, gesturing to the red marks above her eyes. "They look kind of like the markings on a red-eared slider turtle, which is technically the species we were mutated from." The boy's grin grew at the look on Karai's face. "Maybe we're related somehow."

"Don't even joke about that!" She lifted a hand to her eyebrows. "It's just eyeliner! Have you ever met a girl who took pride in her appearance?"

"Do you have to do that every morn- hey, what's wrong?" He stood quickly as Karai shot to her feet.

"Attack me," She whispered. She drew her weapon.

"What?" Leo barely had time to draw one of his katanas before the girl launched herself at him with a fierce cry. "What's going on, Karai?" He growled, their clashing swords bringing them closer.

"I'm being watched." She pushed him further back towards the edge of the rooftop. "Make it look good."

Leo nodded. He dropped to the ground, sweeping her leg. Karai grunted as she fell. Leo kicked her short katana a few feet away before flipping her over to hold her arms against her back.

"LEO!"

Both Karai and Leo looked up in surprise to see the out of breath red-clad turtles join them on their roof.

"Raph?"

The boy was out of breath. He paused before pointing to the girl at Leo's feet. "Why weren't you picking up your phone? AND WHO'S SHE?"

Leo glanced quickly from his brother to his new… friend? "Uh… Raph, Karai. Karai, Raph."

The girl wiggled her fingers from where they were held behind her back. "Yo."

Raph shook his head, still not sure what he was seeing. "We don't have time for this, Leo! Snakeweed is right behind us!"

All heads turned towards the sounds of screams and whoops growing closer, along with the deep demonic sound of an angry animal. Leo let Karai up to retrieve his katanas.

"WHOA!" Karai shouted. "That thing's huge! Does this happen often to you guys?"

The boy shrugged. "Eh. Not every day- AHHHHH!" Leo was cut short by a tendril wrapping itself around his ankle, slamming him against the wall of the structure which led to the stairs into the building. He gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. He locked eyes with Karai standing on the edge of the roof.

"KARAI! Please, HELP!" He flinched as something buried itself into the structure next to his head. A quick glance showed that it was a small dagger… with a phone number?

"Sayonara," Karai whispered, flipping off the building into the dark of the night.

Leo grinned. There was something about this girl that set his heart racing. He jerked the dagger out of the wood to stab the Snakeweed tendril holding him in place. Time to get back in the fight!

WOW! I'll admit that I had a difficult time getting revved for this chapter, but once I got started, I couldn't stop!

I noticed a couple things in the reviews that I'd like to address.

1. No, April was not in this chapter. I haven't been doing a great job of including all of the turtles (particularly Leo) into the story, so I wanted to give some others a chance to shine. Introducing Karai and her new dynamic with Tiger Claw is going to play a HUGE part in the story to come. Keep an eye out for that! But... April will be in the next chapter! While the boys were off fighting Snakeweed, she was off doing some deep thinking. We'll see what about next time.

2. Yes, April had a pretty explosive reaction to Donnie's confession back in Everything I Ever Thought I Knew part 2. That had been in the script since day one. I don't know why, but it's always been a part of the vision. My reasoning is that she's had all of this LIFE CHANGING information dropped on her like a NUKE along with the trauma of being kidnapped by the Kraang. All of that plus being a teenage girl with teenage girl stuff swirling around in her mind created the perfect storm. I think I had mentioned that she felt "safe" in Donnie's arms. Yes, she was contemplating how she felt about Donnie, but he's always been a constant and safe harbor in her life. With all of this change, April was craving a safe haven to crash in for a bit. Suddenly, it was all upended by three little words.

Anyway, that was part of my thought process. Hoped that helped or gave y'all a fun insight!

WANT A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT CHAPTER BETWEEN APRIL AND DONNIE? Then go listen to "Crash and Burn" by Savage Garden. THIS song has been a part of the vision since DAY ONE. I'll explain more of how it fits next time, but I think y'all will enjoy the chapter more having listened to this song.

See y'all next time and STAY CREATIVE!