Disclaimer:…. I obviously do not own Ninja Turtles. Peter Lair and Kevin Eastman do.

"And we'll be carrying on, until the day it doesn't matter anymore; step aside, you forgot what this is for

We fight to live, we live to fight; and tonight you'll hear my battle-cry

We live our lives on the frontlines, we're not afraid of the fast times

These days have opened up my eyes; so now I see where the threat lies!"

"Frontline" by Pillar.

Michaelangelo was awoken by the sudden feeling that something was wrong – and as soon as he was awake, he gagged. The air was thick, acrid; the whole cave in which he and his daughter lived in was full of smoke. The smoke was a reddish-brown color and had a sharp, biting odor.

'Please be okay, please be okay.' Michaelangelo chanted in his head as he held his breath and crawled over to Moth's sleeping mat, he tried his best not to panic; having lost many dear to him already, the prospect of losing another member of his family was one of the few things on this planet Earth that could truly hurt him.

He turned his sleeping daughter to lie on her back instead of side and put the side of his finger under her nose – no breathing. He put another finger to her neck and the side of his head to her chest; there was a heartbeat and pulse, but both were very, very slow. He mentally sighed in relief; the Shasta Mountains had forests fires every other year and it was often that the forest would rain ash and fill with smoke as result. For most, breathing would become a hazard; but thankfully, Michaelangelo had learned Chi Kung, an internal martial art that focuses on breathing exercises that many ninja's learn. With practice, one can take short breaths not that often, and decrease their heart rate. He had Moth practice this to the point to where she could literally slip into a session in her sleep whenever her body felt the lack of oxygen. He could do the same.

'I don't remember a fire…' Michaelangelo thought 'And this doesn't smell like a typical forest-fire smoke… It's almost like…' His single blue eye widened; frantically, he yanked his black cowl from the side of his bed and put it on, and grabbed his nunchucks. Equally as frantic, but still calm as not to disturb his breathing, he equipped Moth with her over-gear and weapons. Quickly, he picked Moth up bridal-style and ran out of the cavern.

Once he was outside; he took a deep breath of oxygen. Wrenchingly, his paranoia was found to be correct; only the cave was filled with smoke, outside it was a clear and normal almost-dawn night.

They had been smoked out – like mice or rats in wall-holes.

Safe; he needed to find a safer place first, or whoever (or whatever) had done this to them would find them.

Sad thing was, he had a pretty good idea of what had smoked them out.

Michaelangelo dashed through the trees while listening intently for anything that would be out of the ordinary in the forest, and there was; silence. Contrary to popular belief, the forest was never silent; he knew from experience that crickets stopped chirping whenever someone/thing large came close to it, and night creatures would still be prowling about if they didn't feel threatened. Meaning, he and Moth were not alone in this forest.

Finally he came to somewhere that could be considered safe; a large pipe jutting horizontally out of the ground from a ditch. In the past, it must have been used to transfer spring water from point A to point B, but the spring dried up and the pipe was abandoned. The circumference of the pipe was actually very wide and the ditch was very deep, enough for both of them to hide just for a little while.

Crouching in the ditch, Michaelangelo placed Moth on the inside of the pipe sitting upright, and he grabbed her shoulders, shaking her fiercely "Moth. Moth; wake up!"

His daughters eyelids fluttered open, revealing confused amber eyes. Moth sucked in a sudden, sharp breath upon awakening, as ending to her Chi Kung session.

"Wha s'appening, father?" Moth asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes.

"We are under attack." Michaelangelo whispered, which shot Moth awake almost instantly.

"What?" Moth whispered back, then realized they were not home "What happened? Why are we here?"

"Someone tried to kill us," Michaelangelo told her, his single blue eye flashed with hatred "they filled our cave with Nitrogen Dioxide – it's a toxic gas. If we hadn't slipped into Chi Kung in our sleep, we'd both be cold corpses right now."

Her scarred, dirty face pale; Moth nodded "What do we do, then?"

An almost malicious grin filled out her fathers green face as he said "We turn Shasta Mountains into the forest of the blood-stained leaves, of course."

With a crazed grin of her own, Moth took out her tomahawk and said "I agree – it is only correct we do not let invaders in our territory."

"Do you think it is dead yet?" A sentry asked his comrades as they returned to the turtles lair; the Nitrogen Dioxide had cleared by now, and in the few hours it had been since they had started to fill the cave with the toxic gas, it had been more than enough time to terminate the turtle.

"Master said this turtle was clever, do you think he survived?" Another sentry asked; there was a large group of them, about a score of them in fact. They had at first thought it to be ridiculous that there have to be so many of them for one simple recon mission to just gas a turtle, but their master had warned them of this turtles ability to deceive.

"It should be safe to check." Another said and dashed inside. He returned moments later, and his face was deathly white.

"It is not there." He choked.

"Impossible!" One barked; "It should have stayed asleep until it was dead!"

"It must have escaped!" Another rationalized "We must hunt it down."

"Interesting odds." A sudden, new voice from the opposite side of the clearing said; in shock, the sentry's turned around and held out their swords, only to almost drop them.

Even though the beginning of dawns light was very faint, through the darkness they could see what looked like a short, humanoid bear, with scimitars held in both 'paws', a wolves head and a persons scarred face.

"What the hell is that?" One sentry whispered.

"Lets see…. There is only one of me," the thing continued to muse "and uhh…. How many of you? I'm having a hard time counting in the dark…"

"Let's kill it now!" One commanded and half of the recon group charged.

"That's better." The thing said and charged at them, with a swift strike of it's swords it cut off the heads of the sentries from their bodies and filled the air with sprays of blood "One severed head…." It had started to count "Two severed heads, three severed heads, four severed heads, five severed heads, six severed heads, seven severed heads, eight severed heads, nine severed heads…." It couldn't count as swiftly as it was actually cutting the heads off.

The remaining eleven sentries who had not charged stood frozen in horror as the blood-spattered creature stopped and turned its face to them; amber eyes wild behind its red mask and an insane grin sported.

"Looks like I'm close to double-digits now." It hissed and pointed its bloody scimitar at them.

"Let's get the hell out of here!" One of them shrieked to his comrades.

"I don't think so…." The creature chuckled "My friends here are going to have to stop you…." As if on cue, coyotes jumped out of the bushes; two of them held daggers in their mouths and the rest had what looked like metal claws around their paws, much like the ones roosters use in illegal cockfights.

The sentries were like statues as the coyotes jumped them.

"We're here." Michaelangelo said as they came to the Whiskey-Town dam, early in the morning. His daughter grunted; they had to drag all nineteen bodies of the sentries here by dragging them on a cart that Moth had to pull while he lead.

"Dump them in, if the fish don't eat them than authorities will just assume there's a serial killer." He instructed, and she did just that.

"Why did they come after us?" Moth asked him, the concealed rage Michaelangelo had been hiding inside for years gnawed at him. He damn well knew who had done this.

"Because your oh-so-dear uncle sent them after us." Michaelangelo responded in a growl "Which means war is on, and its time that son-of-a-bitch was destroyed."

Moth nodded and kept a grin to herself; finally, a rest from training.

The Sergeant of the Foot waited patiently at the foothills of the Shasta Mountains in an abandoned building that some moonshiner must have used at some point but was arrested a long time ago.

His malevolent light brown eyes did not waver when the door burst open; he calmly turned around and saw one of the sentries at the doorway, breathing heavily as if he had been running non-stop for hours. H was covered in grave, extensive wounds and cuts. He was covered in vicious claw masks, teeth marks and somehow, even wounds that had been inflicted by weapons.

"Was he there?" Sergeant asked coldly as his underling fell to the ground.

"Creature…." The Sentry croaked "w-wolves… Retaliated… All dead…" The Sergeant walked into him and grabbed his jaw in on hand and squeezed, causing the injured man to cry out of pain.

"Was he there?" The Sergeant demanded, even harsher this time.

"Y-yes…." The sentry answered "A-and he's not alone…."

"That is all I need to know." The Sergeant said before taking out his katana from the cross-sheathe on his back "You are of no more use to me." He stated emotionlessly as he sliced off the head of the Sentry.

He whipped the blood off of his face with apathy and grabbed the communicated from inside of his uniform "Target found." He said into it "Send reinforcements immediately, many squadrons."

The Sergeant knew that the sentries stood absolutely no chance at all, but he honestly did not care as long as they told him what he needed to know; the whereabouts of Hamato Michaelangelo. It had taken twenty years and many dead leads, but they had finally found him.

"Do we have to leave home?" Moth asked, dissapointed, as they filled their packs.

"For the hundredth time Moth; yes!" Michaelangelo responded impatiently. "We will go visit our friends and stay overnight, then get your aunt Venus, and then we all go back to New York."

"We'll kill Leonardo, right?" Moth asked, somewhat excitedly.

"No, we won't kill." Michaelangelo told her, seeing her expression drop he added "We'll make him suffer. His last screams will be him begging for death, and then we'll present his head to Satan."

"Nice." Moth said and continued to hide her kunai, shuriken, throwing-knives and metal-splinters (very thin needle-like metal pins that are thrown at throats or veins) in her gear and secret compartments in her cowl.

It was mid-day and they were about to abandon their home for the past fifteen years and trek down to Redding to stay overnight with their friends the McLeods, then hitch a ride on a plane to Chicago, find his sister Venus DeMilo and they all go hitch another plane to New York, where they will finally kill Leonardo, and Karai who still bore the Oroku clan curse, and take down all of the Foot Clan.

Venus did not live with him – around the time they escaped to New Jersey they went their separate ways, Venus felt as if it would be safer to flee farther away, but Michaelangelo had been too stubborn to leave familiar territory. He and Moth had visited Venus in Chicago a few times (Venus had eked out a quiet day life of a newspaper editor, which she only really needed to correct grammar/spelling errors via the internet, and a not-so-quiet night life of playing vigilante much like her former mentor Nobody.)

Out of the corner of his eye of sharpening his throwing-knives, Michaelangelo saw Moth's head snap up, her amber eyes wide and he could almost swear the lifeless ears of her wolf-head-hood twitched. He had lived here in the forest for a long time, but the forest was all Moth knew; if anything was wrong with it, or if 'invaders' were nearby (Mostly other coyote packs, or black bears) than Moth could sense it.

"Something wrong, Moth?" Michaelangelo asked, he knew something was, he could sense it himself – aura, aura of the presence of others. Others who were not animals. They were humans, and a lot of them…. And a vaguely familiar aura that stood out among the other aura like a single tree in a field of grass.

And they were only a few miles down from them.

'Shit' Michaelangelo thought and clutched his nunchaku; he hadn't been in battle in years, the closest he had come were the occasional street fights he had when he went down to the Shasta/Tehama county areas for supply runs, or when he was sparring with his daughter. And Moth was inexperienced, how could either of them handle his enemy being here now?

"Moth," he called to his daughter, she hummed in acknowledgement "you sense it, right?"

"People." Moth said and bared her teeth "They are invading, heading towards us. Do we attack?"

"No." He answered hastily. Foreseeing her protests, he said "We have to leave, now!"

He threw the rugged backpack over his shell and grabbed his daughters arm to force her up and hurry her pace; soon they were running.

Under most circumstances, he would never run away; but his enemy was clever, there was no way he would just waltz up here unprepared. He had an army milled around him, and Michaelangelo knew the only way to kill Leonardo would be if it was one-on-one.

And he couldn't let Leonardo discover Moth – not just yet, not if the plan was going to work.

When they had ran a mile or so, Michaelangelo felt a sudden wave of new presences' closing in. He stopped abruptly, so did Moth who stared at him in confusion. "Hide." He ordered, plain and simple.

"But-" She protested, he cut her off.

"Now!" He commanded in a yell; Moth nodded and hid in the bushes, lying down for safe measure and peering through the barrier of leaves.

All of a sudden, scores of people in black appeared; Michaelangelo was still and his eye was transfixed on a single figure – the one that lead.

Moth let out a mental gasp when she saw who led the army of the black-garbed people; a leaf-green, mutant turtle wearing a battered red mask and a black cowl without the hood. Moth could see the thick scars lacing his face, neck, arms, legs and even his plastron. His hands were gloved in metal gauntlets, he also wore metal wrist/elbow and shin/knee guards. From behind his black cowl, she could see twin katana cross-strapped over his shell. Leonardo had a cruel grin and an evil look in his eyes

But it wasn't only her first glance at Leonardo that shocked her; at his side stood a near-identical turtle who was a much younger, unscarred spitting-image of Leonardo, except his eyes were green instead of light-brown. Not to mention he had a kusarigama strapped to the back of his shell, and a single katana strapped to the side of his waist. He had a rather apathetic, uncaring look of him; not a wicked look like Leonardo bore.

Her father kept a solid look even as his former brother spoke to him. "It has been a long time, Mikey." Leonardo said, his voice was feigning sweetness.

"Not long enough; the sight of you still makes me want to fucking puke." Master Michaelangelo snapped.

"Now, now Mikey," Leonardo said disapprovingly and wagged his finger at him "no need for language like that; you're starting to sound like Raph." When he saw the pained look in his younger brothers single blue eye, he mockingly asked "How is Raph, hmm? Or Donnie? Splinter? How are they, Mikey?"

"They're dead!" Miaster Michaelangelo yelled; rage hot as plasma in his single blue eye, frightening Moth "You killed them yourself, you bastard!" Then his eye finally fell upon the 'shorter' Leonardo at his former brothers side "Who's the brat?" He asked caustically.

"This is my son," Leonardo answered, not even looking at his son "Oroku Kai (1) – Karai is his mother." The boy, Kai, did not even blink even though he was the subject.

"Eww." Master Michaelangelo stated flatly, his eyes were as blank as his tone.

"But enough trivial conversation," Leonardo took a step foreword and drew out his katana "it is time for you to die." Leonardo had a surprised expression in his evil light brown eyes and scarred face when the other turtle started laughing hysterically – Moth herself was pretty surprised too. The evil turtle scowled "What is so funny, fool?" He demanded.

Michaelangelo stopped laughing and grinned his own evil-ish grin "You honestly think I'm going to stand by and let you kill me?" He chucked a bit "You really think I never changed? Leonardo, I am disappointed; I'm forty-five, not five. I've waited for this day, and saw this coming. You may have an army, but I have home-turf advantage"

Leonardo was silent when Michaelangelo added "I have this mountain rigged like fuck with booby-traps."

"Yeah right." Kai muttered; his tone was about as apathetic and empty as his expression; Moth wondered if he was actually a turtle-droid or something.

"Is that so?" Master Michaelangelo asked, nonchalant. He raised a three-fingered hand and snapped his fingers; on cue; the ground under Leonardo and Kai collapsed and they fell into a hidden pit under them.

Moth had to suppress a laugh – even though this was the mountain, Moth still had chores – although, her chores wasn't cleaning like most other people, her 'chores' consisted of setting up booby-traps her father thought up. Growing up, she found it rather annoying and unimportant, but now she felt as seeing that was well worth the several hours it took her to dig that hole. It was even funnier that in that pit, she dumped the entrails of the animals her and her father gutted, for they did not eat the insides of animals only the meat.

The second Leonardo and Kai fell into the deep pit, some of the ninja's jumped into the hold to help their leaders but succeeded only to get stuck in the hole themselves, whist the rest jumped at Master Michaelangelo instead.

Moth's amber eyes were wide with amazement as she watched her father in a real battle – in her eyes, her father was the greatest ninja in the world. She had only seen her father duke it our seriously one time in her life, but at that time she was slowly dying.

There was the snap of bones breaking and the crack of his nunchucks striking the Foot ninja. In one arm he was beating down Foot ninjas, and with the other he was pulling metal-splinters, kunai and shuriken from random hidden places along his garb and throwing them. He was also using kicks – he would alternate kicking one leg and standing on other, or even doing split-kicks.

Moth heard rustling from the bush she was hidden in and looked up to see a Foot ninja had discovered her.

"What the hell are you?" He asked, Moth responded by raising an arm and punching him with a clenched bear-paw gauntlet, the claws cut through the thick black full-face mask of the Foot ninja.

Moth dashed off. "Moth!" She heard her father call her, but she kept dashing away.

"Get it!" The Foot ninja with the hurt face yelled, and a faction of the Foot ninja squadron ran after her – but Moth still had what her father called 'home turf advantage'. She had lived in the forest pretty much her entire life – she knew just when to hop, skip and jump. She knew what the climb and how, she knew whether or not you hang on something, jump on something or jump over it. The Foot ninja were clueless. They struggled to keep up, getting hit repeatedly by branches and other foliage while Moth could effortlessly weave through it like the wind.

Already, she was near the cave of her coyotes – she needed the Foot ninja to believe she was some kind of demon-beast and not a human; they already believed that because of her cowl, leading a group of blade-wielding coyotes would intensify this image and throw them off even more.

When Moth was close to the entrance of the coyotes den, she turned back and saw the Foot ninja still following and then to the direction she was running.

Big mistake; for one thing, Moth should have just kept her eyes ahead, because turning her line of vision away from a rock-wall while she was rushing towards it at top speed proved to be a horrible mistake.

She crashed, face-first, against the rock wall, having missed the cave entrance by a few feet – she took a woozy step back before falling over onto her back, her vision blurring up and very twisty.

Moth was near unconscious when she saw the blurry shine of a sword right in front of her, and then her sight went black.

She heard growling…

It was night when Moth regained consciousness; she was looking at the dark sky with it's tiny points of light. And the moon was a quarter-full. Moth groaned; her head hurt like hell and she struggled to recall what had last happened.

What happened to father? And how was she alive, weren't the Foot ninja about to kill her?

Moth sat up and looked around; her eyes widened in horror and her breath caught in her throat.

Around her were strewn the bodies of her coyotes; all dead, and the bodies of Foot ninja, equally dead.

Now she figured what had happened; after the first Foot assault, she had taken the bonds off of her coyotes mouth since she would be trekking down to New York for what could be several months. However, her coyotes still saw her as alpha – and when she had returned and passed out, the coyotes had protected her like any other members of the pack – they killed the Foot ninja, but all died in the process.

Splinter was without his head, Savage was lying on the ground with a sword through her body, Song had one leg cut off and must have bled to death, Speed was covered in deep, extensive injuries and had a throwing knife in her throat….

She heard whimpering in the cave; preparing for the worst, she entered the dark cave.

Indeed she saw the worst.

Moths heart twisted when she saw Raphael whimpering and howling over bodies of Non-Fang, Jumper, and Hoot; but pups had been sliced across the throat by a knife, and Non-Fang had been cut vertically down the belly from chin to tail-tip, and her entrails pooled out of her cooled body.

Nearby lay the body of a Foot ninja that had been torn apart. She constructed the story; the Foot ninja decided to exact revenge on the coyotes by entering the cave and killing Non-Fang and her pups, Raphael saw this and killed the Foot ninja, and even ripped his body to shreds.

She often tried not to personify animals, but now it was pretty fucking hard not to; Raphael was whimpering and howling to his dead family, as if trying to call them back to the world of the living. The coyote was grieving.

Moth walked up to the coyote and sat next to him; she knew for sure he was deep in grief, for he did not snap his jaws at her. She patted him between the ears.

"I'm ready for war now." She told Raphael "And you need revenge."

Thus began a shaky, questionable alliance that could not be called a friendship, but more of a partnership based on the lust for revenge. They had finally found common ground; Leonardo had killed most of Moth's family (even if she had never met them, she still saw them as loved family member), and the Foot clan had taken all of Raphael's family. And they both were after blood.

The coyote could finally see Moth as alpha.

"That fool got away!" Leonardo roared to no one in particular as he angrily scrubbed away the gore he was still convinced covered his body, even though he had scrubbed his body clean over a dozen times. "He is going to die!"

Kai was silent; he was all too used of his fathers rather theatrical, melodramatic outbursts – he too had hated that he fell into a pit of rotting guts and gore; he had pretty much lost his sense of smell which would probably return after a week.

Personally, he did not care if his 'uncle' was dead or alive; having opinions was bad in this family. He followed orders without question, and he would continue to do so until his parents were dead and he was the head of the clan with his own children.

After his fathers piss-rant, Leonardo called his wife, also Kai's mother, Karai and told them they would stay another couple of days and hunt Michaelangelo down.

Kai had noticed how some of their ninja went missing – he figured they had followed Michaelangelo, who had fled, and were killed.

The fifteen-year-old wondered faintly why his father hated his own family so much; Kai had been raised to hate his entire life….

Yet he never found a reason to hate things. But he had to destroy the things his father hated; that was what he was for. So long as this was so, he would make himself an unfeeling stone, to shield himself from the reality that his parents would burn in hell and he was likely to roast in the fiery pits with them.

(1) Kai means 'water', which references to Leonardo's mask being blue in many incarnations, his name is also similar to his mother, Karai.

The whole bit about Moth couting severed heads... Remembered when I said she was nuts? Proof right there... Anyhow, this chapter took so long because I was at Frezno all weekend at a state wrestling tournament. Lotta fun, but real tireing .

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