Lighting Up the Dark (TMNT 2k12 Fanfic)

Chapter One

May's POV

I groggily opened my eyes, almost tempted to beg for five more minutes. I forced my aching muscles into a sitting position, using my hand to rub one of my eyes. When I moved it away, I saw a dark red streak on my skin, and immediately knew it was blood. I felt my forehead, where I almost winced as my fingers brushed over a deep cut that resided there. I looked around, my eyes widening as I saw the scene of a completely destroyed New York City.

Buildings were in ruins, still falling and crumbling as a few remaining fires burned, lapping lowly as their lives began to diminish. Everything, the streets, the fallen telephone poles, street lamps, and overturned cars, were all covered in a thick blanket of pale gray ash, and the air was thick with smog and airborne particles of soot. Pieces of building were scattered everywhere, and I could see bodies partially hidden under larger piles of the heavy material.

I quickly looked around for someone, very near and dear to my heart, who I'd known for my entire life. My eyes landed on my younger sister, Kai, who was laying on her back with one of her arms limp next to her head and the other lain across her stomach. Her short, spiky, usually jet black hair was caked with the dust that covered everything, and I couldn't see the red streak she had in it anymore. I crawled over to her, brushing a piece of bang out of her eye, hoping she wasn't dead.

"Kai?" I whispered, and her eyelids fluttered open, revealing her electric green eyes that complimented my electric blue, which I hid behind a pair of large "nerd" glasses and clad in dark blue eyeliner and super lush lash mascara. Her small amount of makeup had been smeared down her face, giving the impression that she had been crying, though Kai rarely cried.

"May?" she asked, and I nodded. "Are we dead?"

"No," I answered. "At least I don't think so. And I don't hope so, either." She nodded, an I helped her sit up. A bit of ash fell off of her chest, and her black tee shirt was torn up a little. I stood up, putting on my bravado for my little sister even though I had a horrible case of vertigo, and reached my hand out to help her up. She took it and I pulled her up, looking her up and down, from the now-tan hair to the too big khaki-colored cargo pants she insisted on wearing, to make sure she was okay. She had some scratches on her arms, and she had some blood drizzling from her right temple. After I had checked her out, I ran my fingers through the long side of my hair (I had one side buzzed like Skrillex), which was stiff and coarse from the soot and what I was guessing was sweat. My own, charcoal gray, skin tight jeans had become a shade lighter, and my usually blood red tee that read 'Classified' diagonally across the chest in black, rock-looking letters was now was a dark pink. I doubted that the purple that dyed the shaved side of my head and the piece of bang that always hung over my right eye was visible. My high, buckled, combat looking boots were no longer their usual dull black, but scuffed and gray. I bent down and rubbed some of the soot off with my thumb, revealing the color it used to be.

I stood back up straight and looked at Kai.

"May, are we the only people still alive?" Kai asked me, her voice more like a breath, and I glanced at the scanner on my arm. It was supposed to find any human life within a fifty mile radius, and I frowned.

"I don't know Kai," I replied, toying around with the scanner. What did it really matter? We were shut ins. No one liked us at school, and the only friends I really had were Kai and people I'd met on Xbox live and tumblr. We were orphans; we had lived in the old house that our father had grown up in, before he and Mom had both died from lung cancer (they were smokers). It had no mortgage on it, and I had toyed around with the computer and the bill companies so we didn't need to pay the electricity bills, so all we really needed was money for food. I worked part time at Hot Topic and the movie theater, and Kai worked at the piercing shop in across the mall from Hot Topic full time. In the end, it was just enough to get us through, and our lives weren't TOO horrible.