Chapter Two: Second to None

I never had the courage to go all out,

until I reached the breaking point...

There's never any turning back,

when you're out on your own!

I can't do a whole lot for them,

but this I promise you:

If you ever step to me,

I will not stay on the ground!

I'll be fighting forever!

Pick it up...

It had been a few weeks since the turtles last encountered Rage. They had told their master about the strange girl, and how she put the Purple Dragons in their place (as told by Raphael). Master Splinter was a bit worried about the entire situation. The girl the turtles spoke of sounded as if she were a wandering ghost going through town. A ghost could be just as dangerous as a living person.

Donatello was in his labatory, looking through old newspapers archives; trying to find whatever Rage had pointed them to. One good thing about Donatello's curiousity, once something has him interested, he would never stop looking for the answers until he found them. The others had other ways of dealing with their curiousity...

Leonardo was meditating on the matter at hand; wandering if they'd ever see her again. Will she be their friend, and not try to attack them? Or is she an enemy? Is she in trouble? Or is she causing trouble? Questions like these are running unanswered in his mind; slowly driving him insane not knowing the answers.

Michaelangelo was reading his comic books, trying his hardest not to think about his own questions about the girl. Who was she? Something must've happened to her. Why else would she act the way she did? What happened to her brother? How old was he when he died? By the way she behaved at his grave, he could tell that she was in a lot of pain. He couldn't think about losing any of his brothers. It would destroy him! He shook his head and went back to reading his book; doing his best to block out all the possibilities of what might have happened.

Raphael was instructed to stay underground until his brainy brother found out anything he could on Rage. He had been punching on his punching bag; trying his hardest to keep his anger in check. He wasn't mad about not being able to go topside, he was furious about how the girl fought! He could've sworn that he saw her fight like a kind of monster! It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before in all his years of fighting. She was so wild; moving so fluidly like she was some kind of ghost!

The red-banded turtle grabbed his punching bag; holding onto it to stop his momentum. He dug his fingers into his punching bag; growling loudly in frusteration as he stared hard at the bag in his hands.

Leonardo opened one eye, and looked over to his hotheaded brother. "What's wrong, Raph?" He asked in a concerned tone; hoping he was in the mood to speak his mind.

Raphael growled and punched his bag forcfully. "Dis whole ding is stupid! I say we use the rock Rage gave us, find 'er, and make 'er tell us what we wanna know!" He yelled angrily as he threw his bag away from him, dodging the from hitting him when it swung back.

"Would you really want to open up to a bunch of strangers, Raph?" Michaelangelo asked, trying to help Raphael see things from a different point of view.

"Mikey does have a point, Raph." Leonardo said with a defeated sigh; getting up from his meditating position to get a better look at his frusterated brother. "She doesn't even know our names, right?"

Raphael stopped and blinked at the two brothers in the lair. "Uh-" He said; drawing a blank.

"Hey, guys! I think I found a clue about our mysterious Rage!" Donatello announced in a proud tone; looking down at the three arguing brothers in the dojo.

Everyone quickly climbed up the stairs, and crowded around Donatello's computer; waiting for Donatello to tell them what he had found.

"What is it, Donnie?" Leonardo asked in a curious tone, leaning over his purple-banded brother's to look at the screen before him.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I found a photo of an orphanage that shut down in '97. I dig a little more digging and found more pictures and articles of it that I think you might be interested in." Donatello answered in a logical tone as he looked up at Leonardo. "Here's the one that I first saw."

Leonardo squinted at the screen before him. It was of all the children who stayed at the orphanage with a few grown-ups that he assumed ran it. He saw someone familiar in the image and looked closer. Then realization struck him (as well as the rest of his family), and gasped in shock.

Michaelangelo looked at the image and seen what his brothers were looking at, and he too gasped at what he saw. There, as plain as day, on the far right, was a younger version of Rage! The girl in the photograph didn't look quite like the teen they encountered a week ago, but it was the same girl nonetheless!

The girl in the picture had bright red hair that put April's hair to shame, and was cut to look like a boy's hair cut, and the Chance that the turtles met had grown well past her rear end, and was now tinted with purple from little girl had solid blue eyes, and the Rage in the present had sad, gray and blue eyes. The most obvious difference between the girls was all the nasty looking scars on the older Rage's body. The turtles wouldn't have recongized her face.

"Dat ain't Rage, is it?" Raphael asked in a stunned tone, rubbing his eyes in disbelief.

"I barely recongized her!" Leonardo said, still in shock from the difference between the two girls.

"I wasn't even sure for a moment, but once I looked at the picture, there was no mistake about it." Donatello said in a grim tone, looking up at the trio behind him. "That is Rage."

He spun back around and faced the computer. "This is another article that I found." He told him, as he typed a few more commands, and pulled up another article on screen.

The next thing the computer expert showed his audience, surprised them. The headline read, "Twin Fighters Mysteriously Disappeared, Fire Claims 13 Lives at Orphanage". The bottom pictures were of two little children hugging each other with happy smiles on their faces. They looked completely innocent. And the other photo was of a few children on stretchers; being lifted in the waiting ambulance.

"A fire destroyed her home?" Master Splinter asked in a curious tone as he looked over at the photos Donatello was showing them.

Donatello nodded grimly at the girl. "Yes, but when I looked in the old hospital records for anyone named "Rage", but found no such name."

"So she lied about her name?" Michaelangelo asked in a puzzled tone, scratching his dome-shaped head.

"Well, when I came to a dead end, I tried to match up her old picture with anyone from the files, and this came up." Donatello answered in a serious tone as he typed in a few more commands on the computer; bringing up a file with the picture of the smiling girl the turtles saw before. "Her real name is "Allyce Sohma". This is where it gets a little freaky."

"Why? What happened to her, Donnie?" Leonardo asked in a serious tone as he put a hand on his younger brother's shoulder.

"I found her C.O.D. ..." He replied in a quiet tone, resting his hands on the keyboard in front of him.

"What's that, Donnie?" Michaelangelo asked in a confused tone, looking up at the ceiling for answers.

"It means, "Certificate Of Death", Mikey." Raphael said in a serious tone; punching the wall beside him in anger.

"But- that can't be right!" Michaelangelo protested in Rage's defense, "I mean- she was standing right in front of us! We all saw her!"

"Maybe she's posing as a dead girl?" Leonardo suggested in logical tone, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"Or she never died in the first place. You saw that one article Donnie found about the twins disappearing. Maybe something else happened to her and whoever took them covered it up?" Michaelangelo suggested; trying to understand what Donatello was telling them.

"We won't know anything for sure unless we ask her!" Leonardo spoke up in a final tone, "Come on, guys! Let's go find her! Where's that necklace she gave you, Raph? Uh-Raph?"

Everyone looked around, and found their short tempered brother missing from the group. They all looked at each other with a blank stare.

"I think he went on ahead." Donatello stated in a blunt tone, as he blinked up at the blue-banded turtle behind him.

Master Splinter smirked playfully at the remaining turtles before him. "It would seem that Raphael has connected to this mysterious girl..." He said in a thoughtful tone. He looked up at his sons with a fatherly smile. "Go and find your brother." He commanded.

Leonardo bowed respectfully at the old rat before him. "What if we find Rage, too?"

"That is for you four to decide."

While Raphael was racing along the rooftops, Rage was fighting against the same bunch of Purple Dragons in downtown. She had succeeded in taking out a few of her opponents, but she also suffered some damage on her end, as well.

She took a slash to her upper arm and a nasty nick on the left side of her neck. There was an ugly bruise on her right arm where one of the bad guys wrapped a chain around it; causing her to struggle against it.

Blood was dripping from her wounds as she panted; glaring up at her foes like a caged animal. She spit up a bit of blood and coughed and gaged on what little blood she tried to choke down.

The gangsters attacking her now were the exact same ones that got the best of her temper at the cemetary. Rage guessed that they wanted revenge, and from the looks of things, they were getting it with interest.

"Not so tough now, are you girl?" The Purple Dragon with the tattoo on his face said in a taunting tone; watching his buddies circle around Rage.

Rage chuckled wickedly at the men before her. "Is that what you think you're doing now?" She asked as she spat out some more blood.

The leader scoffed at the injured girl on the ground. "What do you call it then?" He asked in a blunt tone as he blinked at the girl.

"For you, it's revenge," she told them; staggering to her feet, "for me, it's just making me mad... and I'll show you why..."

And with that, the girl let out a demonic roar that could have been heard around the world. As if by some kind of magic, the girl's eyes turned solid black, and an errie blackened fire errupted from around the girl; causing the bad guys to step back in fear.

"Don't say that I didn't warn you..." She said in a dangerous tone as she stared them down...

While Raphael ran along the rooftops, he gave looking for the girl the way he knew best. He stopped running and took the necklace he wrapped around his wrist and looked down at it skeptically.

It was a crystal fragment that looked like it had been cut in the form of a mystic pendulum. He remembered seeing a similar crystal in one of Master Splinter's old books. If memory serves him correctly, he could tell by the dark color that it was a smokey quartz. He looked up at the memory of when the girl threw the necklace his way...

"Wait!" Raphael shouted hastily, reaching out to Rage, as she turned back around.

"We'd- we'd like to see you around some time!" Michaelangelo said, speaking up with his brothers.

The girl took a hold of her necklace, and held it out; looking at it for a moment. Without a word, she ripped it from her neck, and threw it over her shoulder.

Raphael caught it instinctively and held it out for his brother to see. They looked up at her with a puzzeling gaze, about to ask when she stopped them.

"That pandant zones in on my energy. Just hold it out before you and it will show you the way to find me. No matter where I am." She explained as she turned her head back in front and began walking away...

Raphael shook his head from his memory and sighed in defeat; running out of options.

"I can't believe I'm actually gonna do dis." He said in a defeated tone; holding the necklace out in front of him.

And just like Rage promised, the pendulum lifted itself into the air. It had pointed NorthEast from where he stood. It was like it really was showing him where to find the hidden Chance.

"I guess dat's what Rage meant by "Showing me the way to find her"." He said in a blunt tone as he took off in the direction the crystal was pointing; putting the necklace around his neck as he ran.

Just as Rage promised, the crystal had lead Raphael to her. There, he saw her standing on wobbliy legs while the Purple Dragons were scattered all around her like pieces of trash. Bloody trash, but trash all the same. The girl didn't look any better herself. Needless to say, she was looked like she had been through just as much as the wounded men have.

"Rage!" Raphael shouted from the rooftop; causing her to look up. He was surprised to say the least that she was able to find him so quickly. 'Must've been trained betta than I thought.' He thought in observation, as he slid down the fire escape.

The girl stumbled over towards the alley where he was hiding. She expected to collasp onto the ground, but when she fell, Raphael quickly put his skills and speed to good use, and caught her before she had the chance to kiss the ground.

Rage looked up weakly as Raphael gently placed the poor girl on the ground. He looked down at his hands, and saw blood covering his hands and chest. He gasped as he heard the girl coughed and sputtered.

"Rage, you gotta stay awake! Don't fall asleep!" He begged; shaking the girl on the ground.

Rage coughed up some blood and looked up at Raphael with tired eyes. "I'm tired..." She moaned as she closed her eyes.

Raphael paniced and kneeled down next to her. "No, you have to stay awake, Rage! Com'on! Keep yer eyes open, will ya?" He asked as he picked the girl up in his arms and began shaking her; trying his best to keep her awake. He looked around for any sign of help. "I gotta take you to da hospital! Hang in dare!"

Rage gaged on some blood, and reached for Raphael's forearm, "No, no hospitals, please!" She begged, "They'll- find me faster that way..." She added between breaths.

Raphael looked down at the girl in his arms. "Who's gonna find ya?" He asked, hoping the girl could tell him, but it was too late. The girl had spent all her energy talking to him that she passed out in his arms...

Not having many options, he carefully placed the injured girl back on the ground and stood up. He reached under his belt, and pulled out his shell cell and dialed up Donatello...

Meanwhile, somewhere in Ohio, in a mysterios unmarked building, a man dressed in shadows sat in a high-tech office, and stared at the large screen ahead of him.

A white ninja appeared behind him in a submission form. "Master O., I've found the experiment that you require." He said in a robotic tone; looking up at him with deadly gaze.

"Where is she?" The shadowy man asked in a creepy tone, not taking his eyes off the screen in front of him.

"She is in New York." The white ninja spoke, "But she has made friends with some... creatures not of this world."

"It matters not. What matters is that we know where the brat is." The man in charge spoke in an arrogant tone, looking behind him to see the white ninja. "Find her and bring her to me! We have some unfinished I'd like to put an end to."

"By your wish, master..." The white ninja said as he stood to feet and stepped into the shadows...