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Whispers in the Dark	By : Ombre_des_dieux Category: +S through Z > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 1780 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nor the characters from it. My rights extend only to this original plot and the original characters herein. This is an homage after a 30-year love affair with the characters. No money was made.

Chapter List
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Going Home
"No, sir... I'm sorry, sir... I can tell you're upset, but you need to slow down. I can't understand what you're saying."
Morgan silently celebrated as her watch sounded the five minute warning signaling the end of her work day, desperate for the reprieve. Despite her earlier calm, today had been a doozy.
"No sir, I'm afraid your policy doesn't cover a woman ramming your SUV in the parking lot with an animated reindeer, justified or not."
The loud squawking of the gentleman on the other end of the line cut her off, demanding to speak with her superior. She smiled, now off the hook for the rest of the evening.
"Of course, sir, let me put you on with him," she said, putting the call on hold.
"Patrick! Another decoration damage report on line four," she yelled to her superior across the room.
She grabbed her coat, in a hurry to get out of this madhouse. Two weeks until Christmas. Her co-workers told her to hang in there, saying afterward things would calm down. The holidays always made the crazies worse for some reason.
She wasn't sure she would last.
Picking up her hat, handbag, and scarf she headed out the door, joining the flow of other employees leaving the building before Patrick could call her back.
She paused when she hit the street to grab a breath of fresh air. Fresh being a relative word in New York. At least the breeze was cold and the press of people out and about thinned to the smaller number who left work, like her, at 10pm.
Satisfied with the crowd, she turned left, walked at a measured pace to the next street then turned North. Two blocks further, crossing carefully with other pedestrians, found her outside the atrium of a large office complex. She ducked inside, bypassing the revolving door and using the handicapped entrance. She strode straight through, past the security guard, and made a beeline for the opposite door.
"Evening Emma," the officer called. "Headed home?"
"Yup," Morgan answered without pausing. "Just stoppin' at the deli on my way."
Morgan hated the name Emma and wished whoever assigned it to her a very soggy Christmas. The opportunity to choose, when Witness Protection deemed it necessary to change hers, had never materialized. Instead, some bureaucrat arbitrarily assigned her one.
Despite her distaste for the new name, she did enjoy this extra layer of protection. The guard at this time of night was undercover FBI. If she replied with the other phrase, "Callin' for Chinese takeout tonight," All hell should break loose and this guy would take her somewhere safe.
At least, that's what she understood. The deli declared everything was status quo, as far as she could tell, so they didn't need to hover so close. Of course, there were probably layers of protection she didn't know about. She hoped so.
It helped that she kept a low profile, staying in a tiny apartment in a semi-normal neighborhood. And hey, if you couldn't hide in a city of 8.4 million people, where could you hide?
Charlie would probably not search for her here. New York was as far away from Los Angeles as she could get and still stay in the U.S. and she recalled how often he ranted with immeasurable disgust about the squalor and filth of this city. He would never willingly came here. She thought he secretly feared the rats, so he always sent his lieutenants instead.
They were easy to avoid, the rats and lieutenants both. The men never went anywhere that wasn't business or pleasure related, so as long as she stayed out of bars, strip joints, and the docks she shouldn't run into any of them.
Rats she actually liked, having kept them as pets most of her childhood. Intelligent and aloof, they wouldn't bother you unless you happened to stumble upon their lair. Then they tended to defend their nests and their young rather violently.
Charlie's other contacts concerned her far more. On occasion, he'd spoken of an entire secret underground network of armed men, assassins, he could call at need. She knew they were based somewhere on the east coast, but not much else. Except she did know their name. They called themselves the Foot.
Morgan shook her head and focused her concentration back on the street in front of her. If she kept getting lost in her thoughts this way she would end up lost in truth. Two more rights, then she unlocked a gate in a chain-link fence and took the alley behind it to the rear of an apartment building.
She pressed the button for 3F and waited.
"Evening Emma," came out of the wall speaker and Morgan grimaced.
"Hi," she said. "Time for bed. Want to buzz me in?"
Code again. "Time for bed" meant she planned to stay in tonight and not go out again. Deciding to go out after this checkpoint, required leaving a phone message on a machine somewhere.
The buzzer sounded and she opened the door. She marched straight past the lower apartments, made a right, and exited the side door at the end of the long hall. Back outside, she kicked piles of dirty snow on the curb and walked more slowly up another two blocks.
Still a block away from her actual apartment building, she froze on the sidewalk.
Someone was watching her. She couldn't locate the watcher, but the hair standing up on the back of her neck said they were pretty close. Listening intently to the sounds around her, she began cataloging the traffic.
Two cars owned by residents who avoided the potholes, a cab speeding through way too fast, and an undercover car creeping by, were the only vehicles on the street. The undercover paused next to her but she waved them on.
No people flanked her on the sidewalk, so she chalked it up to a fit of nerves and continued on, knowing the undercover would circle the block a couple of times before heading out.
She reached her apartment building, entered the foyer and stamped the snow off her boots on the rug provided. Running her hands over the mailboxes, she counted from the right until she found hers and unlocked it. The envelopes contained credit offers and bills, but it made her feel a little more normal to get mail here. Like she might actually be a person conducting her life instead of one hiding from it.
"Evening Emma,"
She sighed at the name, but smiled and nodded in a friendly manner at the old timer sitting behind the desk. He wasn't a doorman, as such, but one of the downstairs tenants who couldn't seem to stay inside his own apartment. He hated being all cooped up inside with no one to talk to so he sat out most evenings to greet the others as they came in from work.
He knew them all by sight and it offered another small measure of protection that he would mention if anyone strange came in today. Such a gossip could never resist telling the world whenever someone new stopped by, even a different delivery boy.
When he didn't pipe up with any news about his day, she figured everything was a-ok and passed by him to climb the five flights up to her tiny studio. Panting a little with the effort of climbing all those stairs, Morgan finally arrived at the door of her home.
At least with this many stairs in my life I'll never need a gym membership.
She paused outside her door and turned her head toward the window at the end of the hall. A soft clang from the fire escape caught her attention. Concern furrowed her brow, but she shook it off and entered her apartment
Morgan, you are jumping at everything tonight. It was probably a cat.
She had reason enough to be jumpy but really. Five months now in New York, with all these ridiculous safety precautions, checkpoints, and code words. She couldn't get any safer unless they confined her in some windowless room under 24-hour guard. Not that they hadn't suggested it, but she put her foot down.
Living like a prisoner, shaking in fear somewhere while Charlie lived like a king was not how she wanted to spend her time. She didn't care if she was the star witness against him. She, Morgan Alexandra Jennings, was going to do something with her life. Even if it was annoying, complicated, and extremely frustrating to do so.

Raphael balanced on the fancy, black, wrought iron fire escape of an older, but not too rundown, red-brick tenement building and peered through the tinted window of the hallway, now thoroughly intrigued with his quarry. He had been right about her second shift work and easily located her by the dark red scarf when she exited with the others.
This should have been a quick errand. Follow the angel until she caught a cab or entered one of the many nearby apartment complexes, then call it a day. She had started up the street normally enough and he ghosted along above her on the rooftops.
A couple of streets over she confused him by ducking into an office building.
What could she want there at this late hour?
Luckily the glass ceiling of the atrium allowed him to keep track of her as she crossed through the brightly light space, her worn clothing out of place in the modern entryway. She exchanged a few words with a security guard and passed right on through to the other side of the block.
Huh. Must be a short cut.
Quickening her pace, she headed up the street and made two right turns, putting her back on the same block she just left, negating the shortcut through the office building.
Where the hell was she trying to go? Was the girl lost?
She didn't seem to be. She walked with her head up, purpose in her stride, and didn't stop to check any street signs. This was odd behavior, not natural for a native of the city or a tourist.
She stopped in front of an alley with a gate, adjusted her red scarf around her face and withdrew a large silver key from her pocket. A short tan-colored apartment block squatted at the end of the narrow path, but he wanted to make sure this was, indeed, the place before he left her because something strange was going on.
This quiet, lovely, girl with the unusual route home aroused his curiosity.
She stopped at an old, green door and rang the buzzer. Odd, if she lived here, wouldn't she have a key? He drew closer and strained his ears to hear what was said three stories below.
"Evening Emma,"
A mechanical voice came out of the box on the wall.
Emma... that name doesn't really fit her.
"Hi," she replied in a hushed tone. "Time for bed, you wanna buzz me in?"
She lives with someone. Of course she does. A woman like her wouldn't lack for companionship. Well, at least I made sure she got home ok.
The door buzzed and she hurried inside.
Best to call it a night and head for the nearest manhole.
The sound of another door caught his attention and he sprinted to the side of the building, peering down into the alley.
What the... She's leavin' again?
The brown side door slammed shut as she walked up the street with the same purposeful stride, although she stopped here and there to kick at some dirty, yellowish piles of snow.
What the hell is going on here?
Two blocks further and he got careless. Before he'd kept a careful distance, checking her position only occasionally. Now, afraid he'd lose her on her circuitous route, he stared a hole in the back of her head.
She noticed. She stood stock still in the middle of the sidewalk under a streetlamp for a few minutes, her dark silhouette shivering in the cold. He felt bad about that. She might still be moving and warm if it hadn't been for him.
Several cars and a classic yellow NYC cab passed her before a small red vehicle slowed. He eyed it intently from the rooftop and prepared to move. If whoever that was tried to grab her they were going to get a huge surprise. But eventually, the car glided on.
Finally, she started moving at a slower pace up the block and entered the front of an older apartment complex. He sprinted to the building and did a quick circuit of the roof line, checking for side and back doors, but she didn't emerge again.
She must live here. Now he had to find the floor.
Why, he didn't know, but he felt a pressing need to determine exactly which one she lived on. A handy fire escape offered a view into the halls and he leapt over the edge to the top level. Floor number five. She came up the stairs, dragging her feet on the builder's beige carpet, as he landed.
Unfortunately, she heard him.
Man, the girl has good ears.
She narrowed her eyes toward the window but didn't move to investigate. Finally, she turned the key and let herself into apartment 5C. The moment she disappeared, he peered down the hall again.
No one else in sight.
He grabbed his phone and shot a few stills through the window, making sure to cover the stairs and the number on her door. Next, he marked the building's location on his GPS.
Partly this was training. Always cautious, always scouting, a ninja had to be intimately familiar with his surroundings; a mutated ninja turtle, doubly so. However, this particular case was more along the lines of instinct. A deeper, internal prompting required he learn more.
With nothing else to glean from the fire escape, he climbed back to the roof and strode rapidly to the side of the building her window faced. No fire escape graced this side, but the beauty of New York for someone with his skills was there were always other vantage points.
The next building over was taller than hers and under extensive repair. It boasted scaffolding covered with mesh and offered an excellent view of her floor plus the benefit of concealment. Less than a minute later he settled himself comfortably in front of the apartment she occupied.
He wasn't surprised to find her place contained only one room. Most of the larger apartments in this area would be far out of reach for someone in her pay grade.
He couldn't tell much more, as she glided up to the window and closed the blinds. Flushing as red as his mask, he turned away quickly as her silhouette began to undress, her shadowy hands grasping the edge of her shirt to pull it over her head.
He wasn't there to intrude on her privacy. In fact, he wasn't sure why he was there at all. She had, after all, reached home safely and despite her strange route, seemed about as normal as anyone in this insane town.
Disconcerted by the amount of time he'd spent following one regular girl this evening, he spun on his foot and launched himself up to the next level.
It was long past time he was going home.
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Whispers in the Dark