Chapter 12

Domino Effect

Having returned to the nest, Coral sat down in the couch where Nile was already watching something on the TV. What didn't matter to Coral, as she paid it no mind, she was far too preoccupied with her own thoughts and dilemmas.

"You wanna watch more of those soaps?" Nile asked after a little while.

"Hmm? Oh. No. No, thanks."

Nile raised an eye ridge.

"Are you okay?"

"I… I'm not sure…"

"You do look a bit… out of it?"

"I guess I just got a lot on my mind… In more ways than one…"

"What do you mean?" Nile asked, no genuinely curious.

"Do you remember your creation?"

"Most of it, yeah."

"What was it like?"

"Pretty simple. Woke up right out of the pod, saw the others and the doc, we all knelt before him."

"But why? How did you know he was your master?"

"I… You know, I have no idea. We all just… knew that he made us and that he was in charge."

"So he must have given you that information while you were still in the pods then."

"I guess. It makes sense now that you mentioned it. I mean, we were newborn and still knew and understood so much. It had to have come from somewhere, right?"

"But you don't know everything, do you? You're no expert in biochemistry or quantum-physics. None of us are."

"Uh… no. What are you getting at?"

"That there are limits to the information we were given prior to our births. Either by limitations of the science, or by Arden's will."

"Hold on, you're not seriously suggesting that the doc would withhold stuff from us?"

"Would you create a living weapon, far more deadly than yourself, and give it unrestricted access to all information available?"

"I… guess not…?"

"Just like I suspect doctor Arden intended with us. He wants us deadly, but not intelligent enough to question him, or our origins."

"Oookay… You know what, there's nothing good on right now, so… I think I'll lift some weights instead." Nile excused himself before standing up and leaving.

"Do as you wish. I need to think."

With the distraction gone, Coral was left with her thoughts, but were they really hers?

Images, faces, even names, flashed in her mind.

Michelangelo.

The viper, Kate.

Arashi.

Arden.

And the unknown woman, whose face seemed the most familiar to Coral, yet she could not place it. And no name accompanied it either.

The harder she focused on the face, the less sense it made to her. Why would this stranger be burned into her mind? What significance did she have?

If only he could see the face more clearly, enough to know who it was, to know the name of the strange woman.

It frustrated her to no end. With an irritated sigh, she grabbed the remote to turn off the TV, but instead managed to change the channel to a weather report.

"… and later this week, we can expect a fair bit of rain-" the weather reporter said before Coral turned off the TV properly, the news not helping her mood.

"Great… rain. I hate rain. Always have." she groaned, then she realised something. "Wait a minute… there hasn't been any rain since I was born, how can I always have hated it?"

This, as insignificant as it seemed, felt like it was a key to the puzzle of her mind, so she racked her brain trying to find something that connected to it. Anything at all, no matter how small."

"Why rain? Rain… rain… rain… ren…? Ren? What, or who, is ren?"

There was something about that word, or perhaps a name, that stood out to her. It sounded familiar, felt familiar on a different level. This was possibly the best clue she had on what was going on in her mind, and she was determined to find out where it would lead.

Keeping to the shadows, Coral returned to Arden's laboratory, and she was happy to see that it was currently empty of people, but she knew that it wouldn't remain that way for long, so she had to be quick.

As Arden was the one who created her, who implanted her with all the knowledge she possessed, there was a very high chance of him having the answers to so many things that she needed to know.

The questions was; could she find and access it before she was discovered.

Moving through the lab, looking for a computer to use, she came across the very pod that she was born in. Despite not really having the time, she stopped and looked at the glass pod for a moment, seeing her reflection in the glass.

Gazing upon her reptilian features, she ran her fingers over the face in the glass.

Suddenly, her face was replaced by that of someone else, the face of the mysterious woman.

Recoiling in shock, Coral quickly looked back, but saw only her own reflection.

Sweat formed on her forehead and her heart beat at double the rate. She needed to find her answers, and quick, for she felt that she was running out of time, possibly in more ways than one.

She hurried to find a computer and began her search.

Breaking through the password protection took a little time, but was still surprisingly easy, especially since that kind of skill was not something that she should possess, and yet she clearly did.

Another question she hoped to learn the answer to shortly.

Searching for the word 'ren' gave her a lot of results, but the vast majority were quickly dismissed due to the word only being part of another word, such as 'currently' and 'different'. What she searched for was files where 'ren' was the main topic, and she found just that.

A file titled 'Izo, Ren'.
Written by doctor Arden himself.

Coral's heart pounded even harder than it had when she saw the image in the glass pod as she opened the file.

'Personnel file: Izo, Ren.

Niece of Izo, Arashi.

Of all our Foot ninja, miss Ren is clearly one of the most skilled we've had in a long time. She exudes an air of superiority over he colleagues, and possess the skills to match.
Deadly in hand-to-hand combat and an expert with all our weapons, she is also a master infiltrator in the making, having prior experience in acting and computers from her educations.

Despite having the potential to become one of the Elite ninja, or possibly because of just that, Arashi has ordered her to be kept from active confrontations, so as not to risk losing her to the freaks and their allies. The possibility of Arashi also looking out for her due to their family ties is also to be taken into consideration, though I doubt that this would change the decision to protect a precious asset and the resources invested in her.

Nearly all of her life, she has lived by the alias of Shari Turner, which has given her an impeccable alibi for undercover missions, one of which she will embark on soon. Her goal is to befriend the turtles or their allies, gain their trust and then give us their location. A risky and long term mission, just the kind that miss Ren excel at.

I look forward to seeing the results.

Doctor William Arden

Edit: Miss Ren's mission has ended in failure. Scouts reported her falling in battle with a newly encountered ally of the turtles, one that has been identified as a female mutant viper, most likely an associate of the dragon.

From the battle Ren has suffered grave injuries, having been injected with a massive dose of viper venom and had her neck snapped. Despite all this, she has managed to survive, though not without paying a heavy price. A good portion of the venom found its way straight into her central nervous system, which together with the trauma to her neck has caused her to end up in a comatose state.

While I have no doubt that I could wake her, everything from my tests point towards her brain having suffered damage that not even my best healing serums can repair, just like my scar.

It's a shame, really, that all the work, all those years, were so easily lost.

Arashi has shed no tears at this, given that she failed her mission, and he has stated that he cares not how I dispose of the 'garbage', a clear sign that blood relations, even to our masters, does not offern any protection should they fail, only higher expectations.

Still, I hate to waste resources. In order to make the most of this, I will keep miss Ren in suspended animation, and will only bring her out when I need to test my experiments. No need to use active ninja when I have got a perfectly docile test subject right here.

I already have several ideas that I wish to pursue, and Ren will be an invaluable 'assistant' to me.'

What followed in the file was a comprehensive list of all experiments that Arden had performed on Ren, complete with dates and photographic documentation of the results.

And Coral recognised the face of Ren, it was the same as from her dreams and visions.

But how could that be?

Ren had been defeated many years before her creation, so they could not have run into each other in the base, and Coral had never seen any sign of her in the laboratory when she had been there.

Come to think about it, where could she be kept? All the pods she knew off were empty, including her own.

Her own pod.

A horrid feeling crept into her being, a possibility that could explain everything that was going on with her mind and the fate of the mysterious Ren, but she dreaded the implications.

And yet, she needed to know.

She was not yet at the end of the file, so she scrolled down to the latest entries, holding her breath as she did.

What she found turned her blood to ice.

Several new entries, dated around the day that she was created, and that differed from the usual experiments that Arden had conducted on Ren.

All titled 'Coral'.

"No…" she gasped.

A video clip was included. A recording of a major experiment, the last one. It showed an unconscious Ren in a glass pod, her skin a patchwork of scars, blemishes, discolourations, and foreign skins.

The machines connected to the pod activated, and the pod was filled with swirling and bubbling liquids, and mere minutes later, the contents calmed down, revealing Ren, now in a new form, that of a humanoid blue coral snake.

"No! It can't be!" Coral almost screamed. "That woman… Ren… was me?! I'm Ren?! But how-"

She nearly doubled over as a surge of pain shot through her brain.

The truth she had uncovered washed over her mind like a tidal wave, a cascading chain effect where each memory uncovered led to even more resurfacing and from them to more still.

It felt like an eternity, but after a few minutes the pain started to subside, leaving the snake with three sets of memories in her mind, all separate yet connected.

First was her life as Izo Ren, living under the guise of Shari Turner, right up until she fell in battle with the viper mutant, Kate.

Then there was her brief life as Coral, from waking up in the pod with a lot of information implanted by doctor Arden.

And lastly, a series of fragments bridging the two others. Things that her mind subconsciously registered whilst she was in her coma, things that only now started to make sense to her.

Including a single word uttered by Arashi.

Garbage.

Tears began running down her cheeks.

"No… uncle Arashi… why?" she sobbed. Then she looked at her reflection in the monitor and her hands. "Why did you let them turn me into this… into a freak… why?"

"Who's there?" a female voice asked all of a sudden, and Coral instantly turned her head to the entrance to the laboratory, where a medical ninja stood. The same one that had been with Arden when he had gotten the idea to infiltrate the Venomous Five with a new mutant.

"Coral? You're not supposed to be here without doctor Arden." the ninja said when she saw the mutant.

"You…" Coral hissed.

"Is something wrong with you?" the medical ninja asked, not out of concern, but to determine the mutant's intentions in the lab.

"You were there…" Coral said, straightening up and approaching the black haired ninja. "You gathered the sample the doctor used to make me…"

"Yes… so?" the ninja started to get worried as the venomous mutant walked closer.

"You made all of… this… possible" Coral gestured to her body.

"What of it? We all serve our masters in our own ways."

"That you do. But you know what?" Quick as a flash, Coral lunged at the ninja, easily covering the short distance between them, pinning the ninja to the wall.

"You don't any more." Coral hissed aggressively, only to sink her fangs into the neck of the shocked ninja. The venom started working nearly instantly, and as the life was fading, the snake locked eyes with the woman. "And neither do I."

Letting the increasingly limp woman drop to the floor to perish in the coming minute or so, Coral turned her attention back to the computer.

Her path was clear to her now, and there was no turning back any longer, if there ever was.

Sometimes, the answers we seek are not the ones we want to hear, and Coral learned that the hard way.
What will she do now that she's turned on the Foot? Well, check in next time to find out.