Her eyes with a thousand sun rays inside them welcomed his.
But the sun rays, they were almost real. He could nearly feel it as the burning yet satisfyingly sweet tingle of a sensation tickled his own gaze, her two yellow portals to unknown lands leading him anywhere- resting under the sophisticated yet rebellious silver stars of Hawaii- skidding through the summer-blue water teasing you as it stroked the bottom of your stomach- striding through vintage towers and brick buildings under London's Big Ben, brushing under emerald-green leaves through Brazil, skiing through powdery snow in Greenland, feasting in one of the million delicious restaurants in China.
With her two golden portals, he could go anywhere.
Yet, somehow, the intense epiphany and bullet of love was a bit much, so much, nearly... nearly too much. He guessed... he thought her hypnotising eyes were almost like... a spell-
"Karai!"
Leonardo's two human feet stumbled through the alarmed star-shaped leaves and he had no idea how but he was already losing his breath. Needless to say, why did breath matter when he was standing right in front of her? Her, the skilful single-bladed kunoichih with the long legs, fierce aura, and tantalising bad-girl vibes? "Karai, how did you get here?" The words ricocheted out of his panting mouth into the air but not to his ears.
Above her sun-basked stone of glimmer, above her delicate long legs bent over it like a heavenly mermaid, her golden gaze glistened. Golden as cheese on a miraculously cooked pizza. "Leo." She said his name. She actually said his name. And her voice that seeped like melody into his ears was silken with so much elegance he thought he was going to faint. "I followed you through the portals and got lost. Come with me-"
"You followed us?" Some stupid part of his brain glitched just to distract his eyes from diving into every inch of her sharp, cool face. "How?"
The fluttering of her enchanting, thick lashes pummelled his soaring heart with it. "I don't know how I've gotten here... I have lost all my memory." The world gifted him as she edged an inch and a million meters closer. "Except for you-"
Except for me...!?
"-Leo, I only remember you."
The world stopped in a heartbeat. And it was only them. She and him, locked in a single heartbeat.
The only harmonic, angelic sound in the entire universe oozed into the margins of his skin, blood, head, and to his bone, living and revelling there rent-free. "You, Leo, I need you to help me get out of here... I'm lost... it's just going to be you and me... Leo... please..."
"Of course, Karai, of course I'll help." Suddenly, he was whispering now, caressing her heart with an affection that she deserved, such an affection that he would instantly keep giving and giving to her even after they died. An affection that he would never even try on anybody else in the endless confines of the pirouetting galaxy. "I'll take you back to my brothers, April, and Renet." Karai needed the team. And the team also needed Karai.
Out of absolutely nowhere her instant retaliation shook the roots of his soul, making him internally scream with the never-ending pain of guilt. "You can't." Leo's arms hung indignantly in the sudden brittle air as the swish of Karai's head declined the embrace, squeezing her beautiful eyes shut. Oh no. Oh no. What had he done? "We. We can't, Leo, we have to leave alone. By ourselves. Not with them, never with them!"
For countless eternities the world sank into a paranoid darkness, the depths of the slimy ocean, the impenetrable lost vacuum of space. Yet when he blinked and darted his eyes around, every piece of his memory seems to click themselves together, one-by-one. "Wait, Karai!" Her shoulders were soft and small as his human hands grasped them and the moment her gemstone eyes existed again as the world had risen- "Karai! I've got the best news ever..."
You look at me, Hamato Karai, you look at the very depths of my eyes.
"... Splinter's your father." He didn't dare break the eternal lock of their gazes, he didn't even think about it. He didn't dare to. For her. For sensei. For the team. For what she used to be. For what Shredder had stolen from her. For what will change her life forever. "Hamato Yoshi. He's your true father. Not Shredder. Shredder took you ever since you were born- he's been lying to you!"
Before he knew it he enveloped her petite, black-gloved hands in his, squeezing them tight, pulling them back, making sure her and the universe knew- but still didn't dare to break his gaze. "Please. Please believe me. You must feel so lonely right now- but we- me and my brothers- we're your family! Please come back with us, you'll be safe there and-" Some foolish segment of his brain faltered a bit and more words rolled out. "Well- not actually your family- since Splinter's not actually our father and we just call him that- our father was a turtle- but we're like a family! We can-"
"No!" The blatant, vicious, sudden arrow of her ricocheting protest tore right through his heart, wide into a gash that would never ever heal and exploded into a swirling infinity of watery pieces with only. One. Shot. "It's either me or them, Leonardo." For each and every word a fatal, glinting head of the malicious beasts of a weapon stabbed through the desperate pieces so excruciatingly, so blatantly, that he had no internal tears left to cry, no more muscles to power. Until there was no more heart left to ache. And the arrows came- again and again and again and again until forever- "Come with me!"
"You have a choice."
Before anything in the galaxy made sense the words he never thought of a millisecond ago rocketed out of his inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling curved lips. All the same, the only thing steady was the link of their inevitable gaze. If a single soul, watching or not, had a stupid thought that he was going to move his orbs even a millimetre away, they'd be goddamned. "You always have a choice." Because he couldn't stop thinking about her. Not when she had left a half-hearted yet genuine compliment on the concrete roof for him to affectionately feed on when they first met. Even less when he'd found out, or thought, that she'd been the daughter of his father's vengeful enemy, the Shredder. "And that choice is never too late." If it were possible, even less, down to Mikey's IQ, when the veils were ripped apart to expose that she could be more important to him than anyone had ever imagined. "Not ever."
Clouds of crude perplexity hugged the dove-white margins of her fox-like eyes. A record of a memory of Splinter played independently inside the caved back of his mind, flimsy and faintly glitching as if it were an old projector. 'A kunoichi's greatest weapon is manipulation.' In spite of Karai's unexpected yet blinding rays of glistening charm, he damn well made sure that she wasn't going to toy him with fake emotions again.
"I'll take you to my team," he decided, metal pieces portraying future predictions clinking into pieces inside Leo's solidifying mind. After all, his team wouldn't turn their heads to a lost girl inside the trees and mountains of old Japan, not even grudging Raphael. When they arrived, Leo would briskly explain that Karai was Splinter's child and they would all travel to save Splinter together. As simple as that. "Come on." He stifled a subtle pull, flicking his head sideways back to camp. Around his friends and family, she would be safe. Unhurt. "We're burning daylight."
Beneath her downturned head, Leo was ambushed by a ruthless stab of stupefaction. Right there, right then, a tingling sensation whispering with ominously slithered up and down the ninja's spine... up... and down... "It is you who has the real choice." A real choice? "You either stay with me or abandon me for them." Shards smouldering with hate roared out of her eyes which sent the act of blinking into suspension. Such anger. Such fury. Such isolation. Aside from the fact that Karai was always like that, the question to why she didn't want to join the team was impossible to even search for. "Please, would you really just leave me here, Leo?"
"No! I'd never!" He didn't even need to require a brain for the answer. Only the smallest, most mild thought of leaving Karai here forever set his pummelling rush of blood aflame with sticky guilt. He'd never forgive himself, not even after the day he would die. If she was just left here, there would be no family reunion. Splinter would be devastated. Shredder would only grow more spiteful. Here, random clans would find Karai sooner or later only to figure that she didn't even belong in this land.
Strangely, a lightning bolt of confusion struck him right in the centre of his pivoting brain without warning.
"Hey..." The single word which seeped out was oblivious to all the clicking together his mind was piecing. "How do you know it was me..." He wavered his hands upward, gaunt and pale, to cast his capacious gaze upon them while prostration seared through every vein in his human body. How? Why wasn't she even surprised? "... If I've turned into a person?"
A spiralling sensation of heat, purely instinctive, invaded Leonardo's cheeks without permission at her unforeseen reply. "Don't you know?" Her purr floated through his ears with delight, rebelliously commanding a new wave of warmth to run free. Stop it, stop that! "I'd recognise you, Leo, anywhere, in anything."
"Uh, okay." His reply was automated as the whole assets of the world seemed to aimlessly glitch for a moment which deemed uncontrollable. "That's sweet. But aside from that,-" you really didn't think he would've broken his gaze, did you? "-come with us, Karai, you know that I can't leave my brothers."
Man, there's got to be another way to persuade her. There's got to be. But how? She, the more beautiful, more elegant, more tranquil, more illuminate, more happy girl, was Karai. Karai doesn't agree with anybody else but Karai. Yet there's still got to- "All you care about are you precious bunch of brothers!' The pelt of his spine spiked in an instant for her hiss brimmed with scorching indignation. "They can all fend for themselves! Only if it's for a few minutes..." Leo's mind was oscillating left and right and everywhere once more- that was so unlike her- the fierce, self-assured kunoichi that had nearly demanded his death the other day... begging? "...or just a short while in general... please come back with me to my cave..."
Everything halted as Leo blinked. "Cave?" Cave?
The dynamic contrast between her effulgent features illuminated with pleading and such faith against his: a flickering dubiety and meer puzzlement, burned- as if it were a head-to-head clash, pushing and pushing to determine who would be the one to persevere, and-
"Cave?"
That voice wasn't Karai. Deep. Jaggy. And when Leo saw him he couldn't believe it.
The exact second the red-streaked ninja had literally just spawned into thin air behind him Leo flashed around and Raph was going to see her- going to see her- so he leaned his elbow and stretched as far as he could onto a nearby tree to cover her and smiled.
The entire sky was shaking with wailing agitation as Leonardo's brother lifted an eyebrow- yes! He probably didn't see her! Well, not yet- "Talking to yourself again, chief?"
All the blue-masked ninja could manage under the furiously frantic sky was a contorted, dumb laugh bubbling out of his clenched throat like a total idiot. Yet he had no choice but to stall him. Stall Raph. "Ha, talk to myself... Ha, when do I ever talk to myself?"
Raph smirked while he plucked leaves off a twig enclosed in his thick hands with the exception of any hesitation. "Hmm... I wonder..." Leonardo held his breath as he battled the climbing urge to sneak a glance backward at Karai desperately. "All the times when you said: 'you got this, Captain Leo,' which was yesterday right before the portal, the day before when we were competing about who would eat pizza the fastest, last week..."
A tingling tide of a sentiment lapped Leo's whole body up and down as he spluttered. "I didn't even know you kept track of that." Sure, maybe Captain Ryan from the best show, Space Heroes, was the coolest and most awesome character that ever lived, and maybe Leo wanted to be like his idol... but that was besides the point. If he somehow blew Karai's cover, everything would go wrong. "Hey, uh," he coughed as the sky trembled once more. "Did you... hear something... before?" To check things was the best way to make sure you were in the clear.
"Hear something like what?" Solemness slipped under the scratchy fabric of Raphael's tone.
Really? The sky cooled down with a grin. He didn't hear her at all? "Oh, I don't know, like a... high-pitched voice?"
The taste of sweet, miraculous relief bathed itself on the tip of Leo's tongue- the wonderful blanket of oblivious confusion cloaked itself around Raph as the ninja pondered, gaze upwards. Best save ever. "A high-pitched voice? Come to think of it, the last high-pitched voice I've heard was yours, saying something about a random cave. And don't lean against the tree like that if you want your back to break."
Abrupt claws of irritation hooked Leo's shoulders as Raph arched another eyebrow- his half-hearted 'really?' look. "Hey- my voice is not high." It was just then that the annoyance flickered, flashing into fierce beams of gratitude, igniting the sea of his head and searing through his heart. His feral brother, who had despised Karai the most, hadn't even heard her. "By the way, don't pull any more crazy stunts on Hanzo."
The dawning memory of April's frets hardened the blue-masked ninja's orbs. And she was right back then, Hanzo wouldn't have helped them if he weren't a noble warrior. Although Raph probably wouldn't listen, he continued for the slight possibility of it. "You do know he's just here to help-"
"To be fair, there's something about that stranger-" Raph swivelled around and headed through the glistening green crystals of shrubs and leaves towards camp. Away from Karai. Leo had done it. He had hidden her well even though he nearly hadn't which would've meant he was absolutely done for.
Yet, he still hadn't.
And he wouldn't give up on her cocky decision so easily. Not by a long shot.
The complaintive droning of his shorter brother was endless as Leonardo's heavy, dazed human legs exercised to catch up. "I don't trust the guy," the redhead went on, wavering his slitted optics around the lucid, happy blue painting of the vast sky as if a thousand thoughts were revolving through his mind. Raph never thought, nor hated something by this amount. Especially not when he looked like he was solving the quantum theory in his head. "Think about it. He's like an eel dipped in grease, swimming around in motor oil." What a description. "Dirty. Slippery. Basically Karai with no social skills."
The two dubious soles of Leo's vision solidified. "You're saying her name like she's bad."
Once again, perplexity intruded into his brother's scorched tone as Leo's gaze pummelled back to his proceeding and receding twin pale boots. "Isn't she?" There was a stupid, predictable pause of thought by his clueless sibling. Probably about how Leo still had feelings for her after all this time or lovey-dovey stuff like that. "You still have feelings for her after all this time, feeling lovey-dovey and stuff like that?"
"Whatever." Calm down, Captain Leo, stop thinking about her, stop it. Yet, to Leo's absolute astonishment, the love for her was... fading, diminishing, as if something, something that binded the core of his heart and soul, was loosening...
Only as far as it could.
Finally succeeding in heaving the charming parasite out of the confines of his mind (although it would inevitably return), the blue-streaked ninja's eyes were ambushed by the shattering glare of the vindictive king of a sun, glowering down at him above. The clock was ticking here, as Leo hardly listened to Raph's back talking after a preparation from morning, in New York City where sensei was probably searching his endless galaxy of a mind while meditating, and the travelling of Savanti Romero's gauntlet which would take five days and no less to finish Splinter and his home clan once and for all, no drawbacks. The clock was ticking. Everywhere. Every moment. It was unescapable.
So Leonardo glared back at the fluoresce sun, as hard as he ever could. Fought fire with fire. Because it was a race. A race between the sun and his unwavering little human five foot seven body.
And when he had failed the forced goal earlier, angled his head around to catch the tiniest, last blessed glance of the enchantingly bizarre mistress on the rock, could he even feel surprised once more?
Karai was gone.262Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUvpybaseKT
