The Shadow's Secret│TMNT

01 || The Shadow Saviour

I watched in envy as a tall, cheerful woman hailed down a passing cab and climbed into the passenger seat. As they drove past me, I could hear her chatting happily with the cabbie. Her loud, exuberant voice could be heard through the glass of the window and the busy streets of honking horns and grouchy people around me.

I sighed, wishing I could just take a cab home instead of having to walk every day. Going to school friendless was bad enough, but when I either had to shove my way through people or be shoved on the way to and from, that was just a cherry on top of a sour mood sundae. And today, I was having none of it.

This wasn't the first time I'd gotten fed up with this city. The sidewalks constantly boiling over with inconsiderate adults and grumpy drivers laying on car horns long enough to damage eardrums was enough to drive anyone insane.

So of course, I knew all the shortcuts home; when to dart across which streets, which crosswalks were fast and which ones took too long to register their button being pressed, and of course, which alleyways to take, and which to avoid. Even though Olivia constantly warned me about alleys.

"Never go down alleys, Raiy." She'd said after I'd mistakenly told her about my first walk through one after school. "They always have weirdos camping out in them, or homeless people, and dumpsters that can rob you of your sense of smell, or giant potholes you could literally drown in. And the biggest rats you will ever see."

But, being stubborn old me, I'd ignored her warnings a million times.

I know New York City like the back of my hand!

I turned down an alleyway without a second thought, letting out a breath of relief as I left the raging rapids of people. Navigating the puddles and potholes of cloudy water in the tall shadows of the buildings around me required no thought and I breathed through my mouth as I walked past graffiti-covered walls and dumpsters. Olivia had always been right about the smell.

My foot dropped with a splash into a deep pool of dirty water. It swirled up into my sneakers faster than I could yank it out. A curse Olivia would not be proud of flitted through my head. When did that get there? It wasn't there yesterday. Potholes that big don't just appear in the middle of October.

I frowned as I walked, one shoe squelching with grey pothole water. A lingering chill crept up my spine, in sync with my increasing heart rate and the footsteps approaching me quickly from behind. I quickened my pace, anxious to reach the busy sidewalk and disappear into the crowd. But I had no such luck.

A bunch of European men with overgrown beards and sideburns, wearing scruffy flannels with torn jeans strode from the walls in the alley and blocked off all my escape routes. Jeez, these guys look like a gang of hardcore Movember participants.

They didn't look too intimidating until one of them gave a sharp whistle and the men started converging on me, forming a circle like a pack of wolves obeying their alpha, making me wish I had just listened to my sister's warnings about alleys.

"What's in the bag, girlie?" Alpha asked.

"N-nothing," I managed. Wrong alley, wrong alley, wrong alley!

Deep growls resonated from the gang members' chests. They didn't like my answer.

"She's lyin," one muttered.

"Well we'd better check." Alpha waved a finger, giving me a moment's warning before three of his guys simultaneously assaulted me.

A rag I did not want to know the origin of was pulled across my mouth while my hands were grabbed and my school bag was ripped from my shoulders. The cheap blue Roxy backpack I'd come to love was upended. It's contents spewed out across the uneven pavement, some splashing into puddles or rolling under dumpsters. A notebook, a textbook, lip balm, earbuds, the pear I didn't eat during lunch, stray pencils, pens, highlighters and erasers.

I stiffened when my phone vibrated in the pocket of my insanely yellow jacket and prayed they didn't hear.

Alpha threw my backpack to the ground angrily. "Where's yer phone and money?" He demanded, stepping towards me.

I shook my head vigorously. "I don't have any," I lied, my voice muffled by the gag. I prayed that they weren't smart enough to check my phone case where I always stashed two twenty-dollar bills.

"She's lyin, again!"

My heart pounded in my chest so hard it must've been loud enough to be heard three blocks away.

"Check 'er pockets!"

I was too in shock to fight back as Alpha roughly shoved his hands into my coat pockets. He grinned and extracted my phone with a flourish. His hot, dog-like breath mingling with the combined BO of eight other guys and the odour of the alleyway dumpsters made my stomach churn. The men mirrored his unbrushed toothy grin.

"I got second dibs on the girl," one guy called, then winked at me. My mind immediately flashed to a movie Olivia and I had recently watched, and I half expected to find a crescent moon and star tattoo on each of their hands.

"What's yer name, girlie?" Alpha asked, stepping closer to me. My mind raced at a million miles an hour.

"Melanie," I blurted in a panic, then winced at the sound of my mother's name. Alpha ran a cold finger down the side of my face, leaving a numb trail along my skin. His eyes took in every inch of my fearful, shaking body.

"You'll be worth a pretty penny. Ever been to Europe?" The gang members snickered. When Alpha motioned to the guy restraining me to bind my hands, my mind must've finally seemed to clue in and told my body to get the hell out of there because the next thing I knew I'd yanked my hands from the guy's grip, turned around and thrust the heel of my hand at his nose. The guy gagging me released his hold on the cloth in my mouth and grabbed my arms before I could run off.

"Gag her!" Another man darted forward and snatched the fallen cloth off the pavement to shove it into my mouth again. The man I hit cursed and held his now broken nose while wiping tears from his eyes. The other guys glanced at each other in surprise, some even laughing.

Broken Nose scowled at them. "Ay, shut the hell up!"

A thick, grey cloud rolled into the sun's path, plunging the alleyway into a deeper darkness than before. I stared defiantly up at Alpha, who growled and flipped open a pocket knife, then hooked the point of it under my jaw.

"You best not try that again, girlie," he sneered. I stared daggers at him while trying to wrest my arms free of the other man's iron grip.

Something in the corner of my eye moved. A shadow. I strained to get a better look at whatever had shifted.

"Whatcha lookin at?" Alpha demanded. The gag fell away from my mouth at the same time one of the men behind me yelled in surprise and I heard something heavy hit the pavement.

"What the–?"

The same fate met the man who was restraining my arms.

"Wh–what the hell!?" Alpha swiftly moved behind me, one arm grabbing my wrists and the other holding the knife against my throat. I watched in amazement as this big figure danced from shadow to shadow, dispatching the gang members swiftly and without hesitation. With the sun trapped behind a cloud, the most I could make out were quick flashes of silver and a short but bulky guy racing around at the speed of light.

"Stop right there!" Alpha yelled, as the last of his men dropped to the ground.

The man was nowhere in sight. Alpha turned me around with him, searching wildly for him.

"I'll kill her. I swear to god, I'll slit her throat!" His knife bit into my skin, drawing a thin line of blood. I held my breath, in fear of the blade cutting deeper into me.

A streak of silver knocked the knife from his hand. Alpha squeaked in surprise and dragged me with him as he tried to run. The figure seemed to appear from thin air in the darkness in front of us. Alpha only managed to yell before he fell to the ground, limp as a leaf. I looked up in amazement at my rescuer. The only discernible feature of his was a pair of alien-ish, electric, blue eyes.

Our gazes locked. And he was gone before I could speak a single word of gratitude.

AN: How well do you guys know your turtles? Do you know who saved her?