I DO Not own Ninja Turtles
It was a deadly seventy-storey fall. There was no way any human could have any hope of surviving that fall. Anger filled me up, restoring my sense of pride and honour, refuelling my drive to fight and lending me strength that had been lacking in my brief but horrible imprisonment.
That strength enabled me to break the contraption still around my wings, shattering the Shredder's control over me. I didn't even have to think about my options –I swooped out of the shattered window after Adkins. I could not explain my loyalty to the man who had taken me captive so many years ago, but he had attacked the Shredder to stop him using the remote that would have meant another painful electric shock. Adkins was the less evil of two masters, and the one who had released me in the first place.
I pulled my wings tight to my sides, streamlining my body to go as fast as possible. I quickly gained on Adkins as he fell through the air. I caught his wrist and pulled one arm over my shoulder. As soon as I had caught him around the waist, I concentrated on finding a way back to the rooftop garden. But there was not enough of an air current to allow me to reach the top from where I was. I settled with landing on another rooftop, some distance away, but still close to hear the sound of battle that was now rising.
Adkins was in bad shape. His breathing was shallow and blood coated his side. There was no denying it: he was close to death. But at least he wouldn't die alone. I took his hand in mine, resting his head on my lap.
He opened his eyes and saw me above him. For what could be the last time, he smiled at me, and I saw warmth and care blazing in his eyes. He did care for me and Tzu, more than anything else.
"I truly never created you, Takara," he said in a whisper. I could tell that it was costing him a lot, but he wanted to say something. I would let him do so. "True, I gave you wings, but I could never have dominated you. You're too used to freedom to fall into a cage now. Now, go and burn the Shredder with your team mate. Be free again, Arianna Jenkins."
Those two words told me one thing –that was my true name, the one that had been deleted from my mind. I was truly called Arianna. Those two words were the key to unlocking my past.
When I could focus on Adkins again, I saw his eyes were blank and staring. He had died in my arms. Tears welled up in my eyes, and fell like crystals onto Adkins' face.
Then anger replaced my grief. Adkins had died at the Shredder's whim, and he would die at mine. Adkins had stolen my life, but the Shredder had been willing to destroy me. Now Adkins had given me the chance to start my life over again. But to find my family, I had to destroy my enemy once and for all.
I had had enough of the Shredder's cruelty. He would pay for what he had done. I would be Adkins' avenging angel.
I opened my wings and, leaving Adkins' body in safety on the rooftop, soared back towards the building where I had left my fellow and friends. We were all that was left. And the only other one who would die was the Shredder.
As I cleared the wall again, I saw the fight had spread into the garden. The four turtles were battling in the middle of a ring of ordinary –and by that I mean human –Foot Soldiers, fighting back to back. Tzu was isolated, at the feet of the Shredder, who was ready to kill him. Tzu was the closest thing I had to family right now, and there was no way I would let the Shredder harm him.
It was simple; we were a team, and we would fight together with no obvious communication, until the death if we had to.
I dived straight at the Shredder, spinning and tucking my wings to my side so that my feet collided with his helmet hard, making him stagger as I recovered. I had come out of nowhere. Tzu rolled to his feet and sprang at the Shredder. His fangs sprang from his mouth as he opened wide and sank his long fangs, dripping with poison, into a gap between armour and helmet. The Shredder was poisoned, and I would deliver the final blow to the already dying monster.
I swooped down on him, and grabbed him by the arms, lifting him into the air as I took him over the wall. He would see the city nights for the last time before falling to his doom. Even in his poisoned state, he was able to work out what I was going to do.
"No! Don't do this!" he pleaded, but I ignored the cries of my greatest enemy. Once he was gone, there would be no one who could threaten my family while I searched for them.
I released my grasp and the Shredder fell through the air, screaming like a banshee as he hurtled towards the ground. I landed on the wall of the roof, not really watching the fall but waiting for the inevitable crash to reach me. He had only minutes left anyway as the poison of Tzu coursed through his veins. One way or another, he would die in the time it took him to fall seventy storeys.
The sound of battle had faded. I looked around to see that the Foot Soldiers had retreated now that their master had fallen. We were alone, and the battle for our freedom was over. Tzu clambered onto the wall to stand with me, and looked down.
With my incredible hawk-like sight, I saw the Shredder collide with a parked car with so momentum that he not only squashed the metal work but disabled the alarm. As people, mere ants on the ground from where we stood, gathered around, we stepped away from the wall.
"It's over," Tzu said. He was finding it as hard to accept our freedom that we had just won as I did. We had defeated our worst enemy, and were free to go home, to find our families again. It seemed almost too easy, too straight-forward. But the day was won, and the Shredder was definitely dead by now.
"We did it as a team," I said. Tzu put an arm around my shoulder as I tucked my wings in tight to my sides and back and laid my head on his shoulder.
"But we did suffer a loss," Leonardo said, coming over to join us. "Where did you leave Adkins, Takara?"
That was when I remembered; I had left Adkins on a rooftop, out in the open for people to discover if they ventured up there. I remembered his final words had been to tell me my true identity. Tzu saw it in my face.
"So what's your name?" he asked.
"Arianna Jenkins," I replied. "Those were the last two words he uttered."
"Come on," Tzu said. "Let's get the body before someone else gets to it first."
We would have plenty of time to discuss how to find our families later.
We burnt the body in the quiet outskirts of the city. Tzu slipped below the ground, and visited our original prison to get a neat ceramic pot to put the ashes in.
I had no words to say at his graveside. He had been the man I had hated for two years because he had abducted me, and I had been so wary of him for ages after. But he was also the man who had freed us, told us to run from Saki, turned against the man who had employed him and died in the process of protecting us. All I had been able to do was throw a bunch of poppies I had picked from the ground only a few feet away from the makeshift pyre. Tzu had managed to sum up all what I felt when it had been his turn to speak anyway.
We had no idea what he would have wanted us to do with his ashes, so we took the pot filled with his ashes back to the lair until we could work out what to do with them. They sat in the bedroom that Tzu and I shared. As I struggled to think of him as Liam Marks, he found it an effort to call me Arianna. Somehow we had grown so used to being called Tzu and Takara that it was hard to think of ourselves as anyone else.
At the same time, I was researching the name Arianna Jenkins, looking through news articles. There were any number of girls with the name Arianna, but I knew where to look. I hacked into the police computers, not afraid of being detected due to constantly changing codes that hid the identity of the laptop I had taken from the underground lab where we had been held prisoner.
And then I had it: Arianna Jenkins had been missing for over two years, presumed dead. I printed out the pages I needed. There was a photograph and, take away a few bruises from recent fights, it was me.
From that, I found articles relating to me, calling me the eldest of three children, a sporting champion, with a scholarship to come and study at an American sports college. I found that I had a sister called Lucy, who was a really brainy kid and was two years younger than I was; I also had a brother called Frank, the music prodigy of the family, between me and Lucy.
And then there were my parents –a lawyer and a president of a major string of computing plants. They had loved me deeply, the articles said; they wouldn't stop searching the city where I had disappeared until they found me; no matter what the odds were, they were sure I was alive. It sounded like one big happy family. I could vaguely remember their faces among others, but now at least some had some significance to me. At last I was regaining the memories I had lost.
But I couldn't look for them straight away. First I had a promise to keep. I had sworn to stand by Tzu until his family accepted him for who he was. He had been missing for four years, but he had more to worry about. He was partly a poisonous snake now, although he was still more human.
We got the help of Casey, who contacted the Marks family, saying he had found their son safe and sound. Now we had an appointment to meet the family.
Tzu was extremely stressed out on the day of the appointment at the manor house he remembered. He had covered his skin with a long coat with gloves to hide his upper body. Underneath, he wore trousers, a polo neck and a baggy top to hide his scales. His hair, which was green in colour, was hidden under a cap. But he couldn't hide his face so well, so he compromised with shades to hide his eyes.
His problem was that he didn't look human anymore. He was a snake-boy, with many snake qualities.
As we approached the house, Tzu began to doubt the wisdom of coming here. As he stared at the house where he had been lived four years ago, he started to tremble.
"I don't think I can go through this," he confessed. "They're not expecting a freak. And that's what I am."
"If they call you a freak, then so am I," I said. We had both been altered genetically, but I looked a whole lot more human. But we were both in the same boat. An insult to one of us was a shared insult. We would be friends forever, no matter what else happened, and we had such good friends in this city.
I opened the gate, holding Tzu's hand to prevent him from turning tail. It was another instance of when we reversed roles as follower and leader to support each other. We approached the door and I rang the doorbell. For a few moments, we waited. And then the door was opened.
A woman, probably in her early thirties, with tightly curled hair and dressed in a sober black suit, stood before us. She looked very professional, and her eyes were a bright green, almost like Tzu's.
"How can I help you?" she asked.
"Casey Jones phoned to tell you that your son was alive," I said, feeling awkward as I gestured at my friend. The woman's eyes fixed on Tzu –sorry, Liam.
"You'd better come in," she said. She led us into the lounge and gestured to a two-seater couch. "I'll go get Francis and the twins. Would you like anything to drink?"
"I'll have a soda, and so will Liam," I said, covering for Tzu's continued silence. When we were on our own, I looked at Liam. "There are twins?"
Tzu nodded. "China and Flora would be about thirteen years old by now. I've missed so much of their lives."
I put my arm on his shoulder. A few moments later, two girls stepped into the room and cautiously sat opposite us, staring at the boy who was their lost big brother. They were identical to one another, and I mean completely. The only way to tell them apart was the fact that they had very obligingly decided to wear different styles of clothing –one wore a skirt and the other trousers and a baggy top.
After them, a man stepped into the room. He was tall and very fine, dressed in the clothes of a gentleman. His hair was beginning to turn grey. His wife returned a few minutes later with two glasses of soda, which she handed to me and Tzu.
"So, who are you?" Mrs Marks asked me. "Are you Liam's girlfriend?"
"Not exactly," I said. It was going to be difficult to summarize our bond properly. "I'm known as Takara, just as I know Liam as Tzu, a name stemming from the Japanese word for a snake. My name stems from that of a falcon.
"I met Liam over two years ago, when I was abducted and taken to the same place where he was held prisoner. We escaped, and were on the run until about two weeks ago.
"There's something you should know about us. We're not entirely human anymore. We were genetically altered. I'm one-fifth crane hawk, and Liam's one-third black cobra. As such, we have certain...abilities."
I nodded at Tzu, who slowly took off his coat, gloves, sunglasses and hat. The family stared at the features I was used to. Even my warning had not been enough to lessen their shock. Tzu sat motionless, not looking at any of them. The two of us waited in silences for the storm of reaction that was sure to arrive soon, in one form or another.
The girls were captivated by his appearance; Mrs Marks had her hand over her mouth; Mr Marks just stared.
Mr Marks broke the silence; standing up, he walked to the mantelpiece over the fire and took down a photo. He looked carefully at the photo, and then at Tzu. Somehow I got the feeling he was comparing the Liam in the photo with the present Tzu. We waited in silence for his verdict.
"He does like a bit like our son," Mr Marks said eventually.
"There's one way to know for sure," his wife said, fixing us with an unflinching gaze. "Liam, our son, had a birthmark on his right arm, just on the edge of his shoulder."
I had seen a red birthmark on Tzu's arm a thousand times in the course of our time together. Tzu rolled his T-shirt up, and showed the adults the birthmark, shaped like a moon.
The two adults folded their newly recovered son into a tight embrace. China and Flora followed their parents to throw their arms around their brother's neck. I stepped away, out into the open, and up into the air. Tears coursed down my cheeks; the reunion had gone far better than I had ever hoped. Now Tzu was Liam Marks again, and I would have to search alone for my family.
The manor was on the outskirts of the Staten Island borough. I had to turn to the north to fly out over the river, over Brooklyn and towards the central Manhattan. I settled on the rooftop of an abandoned warehouse on the banks of the Hudson River. It was a tidal river, and the tide was way out. Folding my wings tight to my side, I stared around the city.
Now that the Shredder was dead, I was free to fly without fear of being caught by the Shredder or his cronies. Now Tzu and I were free to rebuild our lives, but I was afraid that we would never be as close as we had been. There was a gap in my heart now Tzu was accepted back into his family. His fears of rejection had not been realised, but my fears of being separated from my best friend had just begun.
I stayed out until it was late and dark. I was still cautious about being seen by the people of the city –a flying girl was an incredibly easy description to remember, and the last thing I wanted to do was draw too much attention to my presence. The Purple Dragons were still very much the power of the streets, and I had a feeling they'd be searching for those on the rooftop for a long time. And I had a feeling that it would be safest to lurk underground until the gang war that would presumably begin between the remaining mobsters now there was a vacuum of power was over.
When I tucked my wings in at a manhole cover, it was getting on for about six o'clock. As I descended into the tunnels, I knew Tzu was probably settled down to a decent, if not large meal, or else watching some television with his family. Well, I knew life always had to move on –there was no point looking back at what had already passed.
The four turtles were still involved in rigorous training with Master Splinter. I watched the exercise of balance on bamboo shoots for a while.
"So, how'd it go?" Mickey asked when he saw me, and was rewarded with a sharp blow from Splinter that knocked him off.
"This was an exercise of stealth and silence, Michelangelo," he said. A few moments later the lights flickered back on as he called an end to the lesson. "That concludes training for today."
Mickey picked himself up as Master Splinter headed into his apartment to mediate. The others gathered around me.
"Tzu's back with his family," I said. Raphael punched me lightly on the shoulder.
"Come on, let's spar. I'm so going to get you back."
I sighed. I didn't feel that much like fighting, but I didn't think I'd be able to distract myself any other way. I pulled out my naginata and joined Raphael on the floor. It was true that I had been able to disarm him without too much difficulty for the past few sparring sessions.
Raphael had always been the most aggressive of the four turtles, a hothead just as Casey was. He was always confidant he could win a fight, even a sparring session, all the time. And that pride was something I had dented when I had nailed him to the floor for the past few weeks.
As we settled down to eat, a proximity alarm flashed red on Donatello's console. Someone was nearing the lair. This wasn't armed with a tracker, like the one Tzu and I had run into so long ago.
We got into position to repel an attack, dimming the lights. I hid in the rafters, holding my naginata ready. Someone emerged from the tunnel into the darkness of the huge circular lair. I could only just make out the dark figure.
I swooped from the rafters, naginata held in front of me and ready to cut at my opponent, coming in quietly and quickly. There was no way anyone could see me coming.
But whoever the intruder was did see me coming. He grabbed my extended arms and used my own momentum to drive me to the floor. With the intruder perched on my chest, pinning my arms to the ground, I was helpless to defend my life.
"Now that's not very friendly, is it?" the person sitting on my chest asked, and I was stunned; I knew that voice only too well.
Someone put on the lights, and I saw Tzu was the one sitting on my chest. I was amazed and delighted.
"What happened?" I asked as he released me and held out a hand to help me up. "What went wrong?"
"Nothing went wrong," Tzu said brightly. "They were delighted to have me back, but they don't mind me living out in a secret location as long as I visit every now and then. So, do you want to focus on finding the Jenkins family now?"