Before: A TMNT Fan-Fiction (Part One- Edited Edition)

Chapter Ten

People in this world can be predictable.

When a person stubs their toe, it's common for the sound of curses to follow close behind. When a team loses a game, it's likely that they'll receive some words of criticism from their coach. A drought runs through farmland; farmers get angry because their crops are dying and their profits plummet. At such a basic level as this, it isn't very difficult to assume how a certain person would respond to these incidents.

But after spending her entire life with her mother, Echo never would've predicted she'd leave her daughter behind.

'What do I do? What do I do?' She thought to herself over and over as she clutched her cellphone in her hands, so tight that her knuckles turned white. The struggle to breathe was growing more and more intense with each passing second. Yeah, she'd wanted to stay in New York with April but not like this, definitely not like this.

'Inhale... Exhale... Inhale... Exhale...'

It took a minute to calm herself down, but she knew there was no turning back. Despite the circumstances, Amanda always did things for a reason; she brought them all the way across the Pacific when she was five for a reason. Was this a curve-ball? Definitely, but her mother had kept her alive for this long; there was no reason not to trust her now.

Get rid of your phone as soon as you can...

That really sucked, considering she'd only had this new smart-phone for a month. It had been her mom's way of softening the blow when she told Echo they'd be moving. "This way it'll be easier to keep in touch with April. It's always good to have an upgrade," Amanda had told her. Guess she technically didn't need the upgrade anymore.

Scanning the lab for something solid, she caught sight of a hammer on Donnie's work-table and deemed it worthy of this task: destroying her cell. With sweaty palms, Echo grabbed the handle and set her phone on the floor, then glanced over at the doorway to make sure it was fully sealed before demolishing the communication device.

Don't go back to school...

That would be a bigger issue; there was no way Kirby was going to let that happen when they rescued him. Which was something Echo was happy about since she'd go stir-crazy if she was locked up twenty-four seven with nothing to do but worry about her mom. But if the danger was as serious as her mother said...

There wasn't much she could recall about her years in Japan; everything before her time in New York was a blurry haze of fragmented memories. Some of the good were the sensation of a sparring mat beneath her bare feet as she trained, the smell of steamed rice and a man's cologne, pleasant evenings in front of a fireplace on her mother's lap. But then there was the sound of muffled shouting, the aches of her head and bones as her father continued to push her to her limits in the dojo, the wondering of what she'd done wrong as the man she looked up to gradually grew colder and colder toward his child, and a single sentence:

"You're an abomination."

Years later, those words still struck a chord in her heart that sent a shock of agony from her core to the rest of her body.

Echo couldn't remember her exact age when he watched her spar that fateful day. Her mom always said she was a late bloomer when it came to her training, always being a step behind her older sister. But it was that final fight against her sibling that hammered the last nail in the coffin. She couldn't have been more than five years old.

It was less than twelve hours later that Echo was pulled from her tear-filled sleep and whisked away by her mother, never to see her father again.

At least that's what she hoped for. Now that he was in the States, there was no telling if that dream would hold steady for much longer.

Echo sat down on the floor and pressed her back against the wall, her eyes finding the broken shards of her phone and staying there, mesmerized numbly by the carnage she'd created. She didn't know how much time had passed as she sat there with her knees pulled up to her chest, focused on nothing but her steady breaths and the pieces of glass scattered across the smooth pavement. But it felt like mere seconds before the lab door slid open and a curious Michelangelo peeked his head into the room.