A/n: This chapter is alternatively known as: Who's screwing Night Terror and does no one remember she's seventeen?

"Well isn't this a smashing evening?"The news anchor lilted in a mock form of a sultry voice. He leaned forward on the desk in front of him, winking at the camera. It would have been weird had he not been handsome, with brushed and polished hair, baby blue eyes, clean shave, that Californian tan, and a blue suit that screamed professional. He smiled to show his pearly whites, and then he chuckled, shuffling the papers in his hands. "Because it most certainly is on this cold winter night. I hope you're huddled close to your loved ones, because even the Justice Against the Police of New York City has someone to hold."

Uh oh. Mikey shuffled from his comic book, looking at the TV with interest now. The only justice against the police was Night Terror. Which was Liza, and this anchorman looked pretty smug about it all. "Uh, Liza!"

"We've recently received footage of the Black Mask Terror, the one and only Elizabeth Lanier, doing the smoochy smoochy with the most unlikely of candidates." The news anchor continued to prattle.

"Yeah Raph?" Liza asked as she trailed into the room from the dojo. She had some clothes April brought as a surprise, yoga pants, which looked weirder than they sounded, and an exercise top. They didn't look comfortable, in fact they looked constricting to work out in. I watched Liza put them on, and the yoga pants squeezed and stretched in all the wrong ways. But she liked them, and she did look good in skin-tight pants.

Leo walked behind her, wiping down his katanas with a towel. He wasn't as nicely dressed, in fact, as Haley called us, he was naked. Except for elbow pads, knee pads, and a belt around his waist. They'd gone into the dojo a few minutes ago so Liza could get a hand-on-hand action with Leo. She was studying how we fought so when Don was finally done with the voice changer, we could start immediately on the training.

"Uh, yer on the news," I said, pointing at the screen, which was currently doing recaps of all the fights she's had on the past. A lot of them involved Night Watcher, but that was because we let them happen.

"Doing the smoochy smoochy with someone," Donnie murmured in an eerily calm voice. "With the unlikeliest of candidates."

"Liza?" Leo asked cautiously. Liza looked just as confused as the rest of us, in fact, she looked more confused than the rest of us. She looked between me and the TV, and I could see wheels working in her head.

"You're probably wondering why we showed you all of her past fights when I said the Terror was doing anything but fighting," The news anchor said, getting our attention once more. "But folks, there's a reason. How many of you remember that first fight with Night Terror and Night Watcher? Boy did they have in for each other, and there were several times one or the other should have dropped, but they somehow got out unscathed. Because of that, we got footage of them facing off again, and again, and again, and again."

"Is he implying what I think he's implying?" Leo asked now. Liza's face dawned with realization, and then she looked sharply at me.

"Did we..." She made a motion at the TV and then between us. I shrugged, because I couldn't remember a time there was a camera on us when we took our masks off. If there was footage, things might get hairy.

"Dude, that newscaster just implied Liza kissed Night Watcher, and you're not going psycho on her?" Mikey asked. I looked over at him. His comic book was placed on the arm of the couch, and he was watching the screen avidly. I looked at the screen, and was surprised to see a crappy security camera footage. I didn't even hear him say anything about showing it.

I don't give police crap about how terrible their security cameras are because, well, they are crappy. Especially at night, because most cameras didn't have night mode. They can only use the lampshade provided by streetlights, and in an alley, it's even worse. This video footage is covered in shadows, but there were two very distinct features. A completely black and accessorized Night Terror, equip with dagger and sword, was staring at a shiny body of metal. That shiny body of metal was wielding his chains, swinging it over his head in a circular motion. My metal glowed in the dark, casting weird lights in different directions.

They were already fighting, so I must have missed the intro. They were fighting fast, so this must have been one of the later battles after Liza got her memory. If I had to guess the footage was taken in December, there was no snow on the ground but we could see our breaths. I didn't specifically remember that night. In fact, I don't think it happened at all, but they were our fight moves.

Liza's sword was wrapped in my chain and I yanked it. Her sword went flying, and I could hear the metal hit the wall like a memory, even though there was no sound from the security footage. Liza pulled her dagger next, ducking under my arm. She swung around, bringing her arm out. The dagger scratched the back of my suit and put enough force that I stumbled. I turned in my stumble and my back hit a wall. Liza was on me in a second, hooking the dagger under the metal helmet.

We stood still for a second, but I could guess that we were talking. And then I reached up, and took off my helmet. I flinched, waiting to see what showed on camera. But the shadows were on my side, and the camera couldn't get my face. All they could see was that the head had no hair, and a black and white camera couldn't show green. I dropped my helmet to the ground, and hooked one my fingers under the chin of her mask. I peeled it off her head, taking her hood down with it. There was another trade of words, and Liza had to stand on the very tip of her toes to reach my mouth. She pulled the dagger away from my neck and put it back in its sheath at her pants line.

"Elizabeth!" Two voices shouted. I was surprised Mikey used her full name, and Leo sounded genuinely hurt. Liza looked confused as she continued to watch the screen.

"That must have been early December..." She murmured, trying to figure out when it was just like I was, and what the hell we were doing in an alleyway we had no idea had a camera. There weren't any bodies around us, as Liza was prone to doing when we met up. There wasn't a bloody symbol on the wall that said it was a previous murder site. It was like a Meet-And-Greet, like we had purposefully chose that spot out of all the spots in NYC.

"You're pinpointing the day it happened, even though you've got a boyfriend sitting right freaking there?" Leo asked sharply. Liza snapped out of her reverie, and she looked around at us. Her face expressed surprise then.

"Wait, you guys think that I... cheated on Raph?" She asked, absolutely surprised. She looked between the three of them. "With Night Watcher?"

"It looked like that." Mikey said, pointing at the screen. Liza's eyebrows shot up and she goes to respond. But she stopped, because the family didn't know I was Night Watcher, I was the guy she had pinned against the wall. My brothers didn't know, and she wouldn't tell because I asked her not too.

"It's not what it looks like." She stuttered, which sounded bad even to my ears, and I was in on it. I flinched at the glare Don gave her, and his fingers tapped at his arm in that patient anger he had. "I've never... I would never cheat."

"Well look at the-"

"She's sayin' ta truth," I interjected, literally standing up to her aid. Leo looked at me with something close to disbelief and anger as I crossed the room to Liza.

"Does that look like a truth?" He asked, pointing at the screen. It was a recap after commercials, so new viewers weren't lost. She just had her dagger hooked under my chin and my helmet was being removed.

"She sayin' the truth because..." I stopped. If I said who I was, Leo would go crazy on me, and I hope Mikey and Don would be there to help if it got into a real fight. We hadn't fought for a while because he was still healing, now he was having training sessions as often as possible and worked more than two of us combined.

"Because?" Don asked. Liza pressed her hand to my forearm, but when I looked she was staring at the katanas on Leo's back. She wasn't looking with fear or worry, but caution. I was struck with the last time there was a confrontation like this. Angry Leo, the two bystanders being Don and Mikey, and Liza and I on a side. And this time, Liza would probably fight back.

"Because... I'm... Nighwater." I mumbled. Don shook his head like he was clearing it. Mikey propped himself up a little more and Leo turned his head to hear better.

"What was that?" Mikey asked.

I glared at them, one at a time, and I sighed heavily. "I'm Night Watcher."

Their reactions were almost comical. Mikey's face spread out into a grin, like I just made his biggest wish come true. Donnie looked about as surprised as Leo did, his jaw dropping halfway to the floor. Leo looked surprised, and then he got angry.

He inhaled deeply through his nose, his hands furling and unfurling to stop himself from doing anything rash. It was an anger that I'd only seen directed at me twice in my life, and I'd bickered him and pushed all his buttons for days before then. And he only truly got mad like that when I pushed sensitive buttons involving situations he couldn't control. I made him mad with three words.

"You're..." Leo gritted his teeth, "That vigilante?"

I pulled back, surprised at his use of words.

"A vigilante? I do what the police can't. I get ta the crime scene before they can and hand them over. How am I the vigilante?" I asked. And why was that the part he focused on?

"You parade around the city in a suit of metal fighting crime! What if one of those times the criminal got the upper hand? None of us would be able to help out because we didn't know you were out there. You just spilled our secret right there!" He shouted at me.

"I've got Liza!" I shouted back. Liza looked over at me, a hint of a smile on her lips.

"There is no way she's there for you every time you go out. She's got her own problems. She's got Shredder to deal with daily, she's got a job she has to deal with every night, she's got Hun and the Purple Dragons tracking her and ready to beat the shell out of her twenty-four/seven, she's got the Foot attempting to watch her every move, she's hiding from every police organization in the United States! She tries to come by every three days even though she's got all that on her, and you really think she has time every night to come and help you?" Leo spat in rapid-fire.

I never thought about how much work Liza had. She was this person who had all the time in the world to me because that's how she showed herself. I knew about the Foot, Shredder, Hun, the Purple Dragons, her job and about the police. I knew she had a lot, but it was never addressed until now, so I'd never thought just how much trouble she could be in if she got caught by anyone, not just Shredder. Liza was always there for me. She did nightly patrols still, and she knew what days I went out. She always found me in some way, she was like this guardian angel. I never asked when she slept or if she slept. I never asked about her food intake, or if she was sore. But that was how Liza was. She'd crossed America, starting at age thirteen and ending at age sixteen. She was bitter when we met her, and would have saved her neck before ours. But Liza was now a mix of who she was before and who she was now. Hard-shelled, but emotional. A survivalist through and through, but she would die for us. I never thought about just how much that statement was true until now.

"Sorry," Liza cut in, and I looked down at her with a different light. "But you guys knew he left a couple of times a week for two years before this. You never put two and two together?"

"From the night we first went topside, Raph made it his mission to go as often as possible. After nearly three and a half years, we gave up stopping him." Donnie piped in. I smiled despite myself, remembering a couple of the spats between Leo and me for the first year.

"We should have kept trying," Leo muttered darkly. I looked back at him, and his arms were crossed. "Liza is probably tired. But she loves you too much to stop."

"Why does me bein' Night Watcher have ta do with Liza? I expected ya ta yell at me, not reverse this an' have Liza look like a victim." I shot at him.

"She is a victim!" Leo snapped back.

"Woah now, back the fuck up." Liza budged in. Her curse dug into my brain, and Leo looked noticeably miffed that she cursed. She didn't do it often in front of us because Master Splinter and Leo didn't like it. We weren't against saying a couple of curses, but the one she used was one that we tended to avoid as often as possible. "First off, I'm not tired. I use the two days in between my visits to sleep in. I might be training daily, but they aren't the whole day. I train from five in the morning to noon or from noon to seven in the afternoon, and I have the rest of the day off. When my training is in the morning I do my nightly business, when my training is in the afternoon I visit you or I sleep the night away. I'm careful about my health. I traveled the goddamned United States of America, I know how to take care of myself."

Leo paused, looking at her closely. She stared back, and I could see something passing between them through their eyes.

"I was using you as a reason for him to stop," Leo grumbled finally. "Your life is on the line, constantly, for him, and he goes out and plays the hero. To the police, the Night Watcher is a vigilante, if he stopped there would be questions but no one is looking for him. You, the police will shoot you on sight. You aren't a vigilante to them. You're just a murderer."

Liza didn't flinch at the insult, she didn't do anything with being called a murderer. She stood there, staring at Leo with a silent wrath. I did though. Leo attempted to duck my blow, but I scuffed the top of his head, knocking him off-balance. The leg he slung out to get my knees hit their mark and we both fell to the ground. I spun on my shell, holding Leo's shoulders to the ground as I placed a knee into his stomach, only distantly aware of not putting too much weight on him. Leo blocked my first blow, and rammed his elbow up and into my side before I could get my third. I felt my breath expel from my lungs, and Leo brought his leg up around, kicking my chest.

I toppled back to my shell, rocking awkwardly on my back. Leo swam into my vision, and I crossed my arms over my face to protect it. Someone came up behind Leo fast, one of my brothers ready to help me. Leo wasn't going for a blow though, he grabbed my wrists and pried them off my face. My wrists were pressed into the ground on either side of my head, and Leo's expression was all I saw. There was a hand on his shoulder, and based on how slender they were, I bet it was Don.

"Raphael!" Leo shouted. I took a deep breath, clenching my fists closed. I stare into the fire of his brown eyes, contemplating bucking him off. But Don was there, and he didn't have to be part of this fight. "What the shell!"

"Ya called Liza a murderer! I wasn't goin' ta stand there an' let ya insult her." I spat back.

"Uh, guys?" Mikey cut in.

Leo's hands tightened on my wrists, and he growled low in his stomach. The sound caught me off guard because we almost never used a growl. We could do a hiss as turtles did, and we could chur, and growl, but we never used the last one. It was a scary sound, even to the person who did it. When we were kids and Mikey watched scary movies, I would do the growl behind the couch and scare him, and regret it later because it wasn't a nice sound.

"She is a murderer, Raphael. We think she's the good guy, but a murderer is a murderer. She's willingly killed over a thousand people, the ones the police know about at least, in New York City alone. People who had families, jobs, pets, kids, someone who had a spouse to go home too. On the news, she's this big top celebrity who's cleaning New York City, but no one wants to ask the families how they feel. How many people have been thrown on the streets because their only source of income was murdered? How many pets are in pounds because their owners are dead?" Leo stopped abruptly, caught off guard by his own words.

I felt a cold, slithering feeling slide down my stomach. My heart started pounding hard in my chest, and I could feel my ears try to stop sound. I focused on a single spot in the roof above Leo, and I tried not to think about Liza and her 'Job'. A thousand people in New York City alone.

"Guys?" Don murmured.

"Raph, I'm not saying Liza is a bad person. I'm saying what she's doing is bad. She's killing people, she's tearing their throats out, she's shooting them, she's hacking them to pieces. When someone pretended to be her, she carved words of caution into his skin and killed him. If we met her in the middle of a crime scene, she'd have tried to kill us, and we would have tried to stop her permanently." Leo continued.

"Guys," Mikey said, louder.

"We can help her." I murmured, attempting to focus on Leo again. His face looked calm, but his jaw was grating with suppressed anger. "We can help her get away from all that. After Shredder's death, she told me she'd stop. She doesn't want ta do it anymore. Ya know she doesn't want to be a murderer, Leo."

"Do you really think-"

"Guys!" Don and Mikey shouted.

"What?" Leo and I snapped, looking at the two youngest. Mikey pointed towards the door, and Don spoke up.

"She left." He said.

I looked around, trying to find the source of this conversation. My girlfriend was gone, the door closed tightly behind her. I looked at the wall next to the door, and I saw her sword was gone with her, which meant she wasn't coming back tonight.

January 25, 2008

Liza disappeared for a week. No murders, no foot soldiers wandering the sewers, and no Haley to ask questions. I wasn't allowed out at all, and every time I tried, all three of my brothers stood in my way. No amount of persuasion budged them, no amount of fighting stopped them. I was stuck in the lair, and I wasn't able to do my Night Watcher business. To pass the time I would punch a bag or sit in my room sharpening weapons. Every time my disappearance appeared on the news Leo would glare at me and ball his fists, and he'd go into the dojo and work out to ease his anger. Don hid out in his room, working on the thing Liza wanted. None of us mentioned Liza, because that meant facing her job again.

And Mikey? Well, he's Mikey. He'd distract us with pointless things like playing games or teasing the crap out of us. I'd be sitting on the couch and he'd come up behind me and use my head like a drum. If Leo was working out, Mikey would move things around the dojo so it was never where Leo thought it was going to be, and his training was slowed down so he could find the missing item. For Don, Mikey would make loud crashes and say 'Sorry Donnie!' like he'd broken something important. Don would come out every time, making sure Mikey hadn't actually broken anything.

I agreed to a game of Halo in the middle of the night because I wasn't able to sleep. It was too cold in the lair, and it was hard to find heat without wearing clothes. Halfway through a random campaign, Mikey chose, the lair doors opened. Mikey looked over the edge of the couch, able to spare his eyes. I wasn't able to because I was surrounded by three enemies and was trying not to die. In my peripheral I saw Mikey do a double-take, and his jaw went slack a little. Curiosity got the better of me, and I paused the game to look.

Liza stood in the doorway, cupping her bleeding hand. No, it was her wrist that was bleeding, it just looked like her hand was. Her mask was in her bloody hand, the metal teeth stained gruesomely with someone's blood. I really hoped it wasn't Liza's, and then I hoped that it was an animals and not someone's. Knowing Liza, it was probably a human.

"Liza?" I asked carefully. Her shoulders shook like she was crying. Her head was ducked, her black hood pulled over her head. The sword she had was strapped to her back, and there was a red line around the hilt.

I stood up, circling the couch and walking over to Liza. As soon as my feet were in her view she launched herself forwards. She wrapped her arms around me, shell and all now between her really warm arms. She pushed herself into my front side, pressing her face into my chest. I tipped backward, the sudden movement knocking me from my balance. I regained it quickly, and wrapped my arms around Liza. I felt the blood from her wrist falling down my shell, and shivered when it curled around the bridge and trickled there. She was warm in the cold weather, and I could feel some feeling in my fingers return as I pressed them against the small of her back.

"Turn on the TV, I don't know when it'll show up." She whispered into my chest. It took me a second to register her words. She didn't sound hurt or like she was crying. The base of her blade was leaking blood out of its sheath, and I had to wonder what she did to cause that amount of blood. And why she didn't wipe it off.

I looked over at Mikey, motioning to the TV with my head. It took Mikey a second, but he got it. He ended our game and flipped to the news. Several different news channels actually, and turned them up to see which would get what Liza wanted. Next, Mikey went upstairs for Don and Leo, dragging them downstairs. In the time it took for him to do that, I walked Liza over to the couch and set her in my lap. I wouldn't mention how much I loved the warmth her body emitted, but I wrapped her tightly to me to keep it close.

The three came down the stairs, and Don was carrying a medi-kit. Liza dropped her mask to the ground, unfurling her hand from around my back and showing it to Don. Leo took a rag from Don and walked behind me. I leaned forwards, letting Leo get the blood off my shell.

Liza had a slice down the side of her arm, from elbow to thumb. Don immediately started wiping the blood away, and set about for stitching. The only sound was the several news channels who talked about various things. Leo remained quiet, Don didn't look at Liza, and Mikey was next to us, holding Liza's clean hand. Liza never took down her hood, and her face never showed. It was an hour later when her arm was officially safe that Liza looked at the tvs. Mikey looked at her face and at the TV, going back and forth to see which one she was looking at. He moved slowly, and lifted the controller up. He pressed a button and all the TV's turned to Channel 7 News.

"-And apparently we were wrong," The News Anchor said. He flashed us a small smile, and shuffled his papers nervously. "The time of his death was estimated two hours ago, and folks it wasn't a pretty sight."

Leo took in a sharp breath, and I saw a picture of my mask on the screen. It was a crime scene picture. My mask was pierced on a wooden pike, and the wooden pike was covered in blood. With a slow and sickening jolt, I realized there was a head in the helmet. On the wall behind the helmet was her insignia BMT, very large and dripping of blood.

"Liza, what did you do?" Don asked in terrified awe. Liza ducked her head, placing her head under my chin.

"There is your picture of Night Watcher... Murdered and... beheaded. Under her insignia were four meaningful words." The News Anchor's face shook a little, and his confidence wasn't as strong.

A picture of the wall showed. The beheaded man and pike must have been removed, because the angle was perfect. And true to the newsperson's words, under the BMT was, 'Here's your Night Watcher."

"The man has been identified as Thomas Anderson. He was 24 years old, single, had no kids, and had a respectable job as a Tax Accountant with a side job of Jujitsu. A letter was left, but since it will be court evidence, we are not allowed to read its contents aloud at the present moment."

Liza spoke up, saying what the news anchor couldn't. "Here is your Night Watcher. You thought him great and I did too. We had fun chasing each other to crime scenes and fighting, which was why I let him live and why he let me stay free. There was never any intimacy between us though, and because of the untruthful video you showed, he had to go. I extend apologies to Night Watcher, he was fun."

"What the fu-" Leo paused, stopping himself. And then he threw caution to the wind. He flinched as he said, "What the fuck Elizabeth!"

Liza's head stayed duck, and she rubbed the base of her stitching. I reached up, pulling the top of her hood off. Liza didn't stop me, she just curled farther into my chest.

"You were right, Raph shouldn't be going out. And since I wouldn't be able to stop him, I decided to stop Night Watcher." She muttered.

"By killing an innocent man?" Don asked, standing up tall and looming. Liza sat up sharply, and my neck felt cold. I fought the urge to reach for her, because I didn't know what to say about this. Liza just killed a man to save me. Liza killed an innocent man to save my family. My brothers are going to see that, but killing someone was against our code of honor. Leo let it slide most of the time because they were all criminals, but the one thing we are never even supposed to think of doing was touch someone who was innocent under justice.

"No!" Liza said, horrified. "I'd never kill someone who was innocent! Thomas was a foot ninja. He'd been in the business for nine years, and in the nine years he'd gone through so many gangs and murders I look like a normal person."

I felt faith again, and I looked over at Leo and Don. The situation wasn't better to them, but at least Don didn't look he wanted to kill Liza, and Leo appeared calmer. Liza sighed heavily.

"I left when Raph attacked you, so I don't know what was said. My brain cut off after the "Leo using me to stop Raph", and when Raph attacked, I left to do that." She waves her hand at the TV's. "I stopped the reason Raph left because I agree with you. When I first found out he was Night Watcher, I also yelled at him. But he said it was safe, and I wasn't not going to believe my boyfriend. You guys survived seventeen years of hiding. I thought he had it down. But then you said alone, and I knew my mistake. And I fixed it."

"By killing someone?" Don asked.

"I kill at least four criminals a week. They're on the news every time. You can't seriously be aching about this one time." Liza snapped. She stood up, leaning up to stare Don down. He easily towered over her, and I saw her hand twitch. The imprint of her dagger became noticeable, and I tensed my legs to jump up should I have too.

"Yes. Because you killed that man because of us. We're the reason that man is dead." Don whispered. Don didn't get angry, well no, we can all get angry, but Donnie's anger is different from all of ours. He doesn't lash out, he gets tactical. He gets angry with a level head, and knows exactly what to do and what not to do to win a fight. A real fight between him and Liza would be a long and scary fight to behold.

"I would have killed him eventually," Liza muttered.

"Beside the point. He was an unneeded death. He did not need to die!" Don exploded. Liza pulled back, and I finally saw her entire face. She hadn't been crying, she had a thin cut across her left cheek, which she'd been hiding. It stopped bleeding, so stitches weren't needed. It also wouldn't leave a scar if she treated it right.

Silence stretched, and Leo was officially out of this fight. Don and Liza stared each other down. Mikey finally stood up, stepping between them. He had to push both of them because of how close they were together, and once between them he looked lost.

"Hey look on the bright side. Liza is going to stop her killings after Shredder's gone." Mikey said, sounding optimistic. Don and Liza looked at him, and Liza smiled a little. Mikey smiled at her, and looked over at Don. Don didn't smile back, but at least he didn't look as mad.

"Will you really stop?" Don asked in a clipped tone. Liza looked back at Don, and her smile faded.

"Yes." She answered simply. Don sighed heavily.

"In that case, your... thing is finished. You can start your training with us." He said.