Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT.

Summary: Mia Blake is a stressed out, reformed party girl from a dysfunctional family with too much on her plate. Like school finals, an ex that just refuses to take a hint, and a special needs younger sister that's become obsessed with mutants and monsters. But after a chance encounter with the Turtles, Mia finds herself reluctantly pulled into their dangerous and begins to question. Then everything goes wrong. Set in the 2012 Turtleverse after the first Kraang invasion.

On Edge

01

The last bell of the day had just sounded and sixteen-year-old Mia Blake stood in the hallway of Theodore Roosevelt High School, pretending to listen to what her friends were talking about. She stared at her boyfriend, Troy Evans, silently, trying to figure out how she was going to tell him that she didn't want to be with him anymore. The list of reasons why were endless – he hid his cigarettes in her locker no matter how many times she told him not to, he flirted with other girls, he didn't care about her family, they had nothing in common, and above all else, Mia was tired of getting in trouble because of his recklessness. But all those reasons why she didn't want to be with him after two years were the exact reasons that he would use against her, she knew that. Now, after a week of formulating the perfect break-up strategy, Mia finally knew what to say that would end their relationship once and for all.

"Hello, Earth to Mia!" Troy waved his hand in front of her face, breaking her train of thought.

"Huh – ?" Mia looked up at him, startled. "Yeah?"

The rest of the group laughed at her cluelessness. Troy smiled and shook his head. "Maren is having a party tonight," he said. "There's going to be vodka and stuff. You want to come?"

Mia shook her head. "I have to watch my sister," she said. "You know that."

"Yeah," Troy said, "but you watch her every night. Can't you get a sitter or something?"

Mia laughed in disbelief. Where had he been – had he seen her life lately? "As if we could afford one," she said somewhat bitterly. Her smile faded and she looked up at him. "Look," she added, "could I just talk to you alone for a sec?" She pulled her phone out and checked the time.

Ten minutes left.

"Course you can," Troy said and he led her down the hallway to slightly more deserted part of the school. "What's up?" he asked her, glancing back at their friends.

Mia sighed and said, "Look, I don't know if we should do this anymore – "

"Do what?" Troy said, looking up at her and cutting her off. "Go out – have fun?"

Mia searched his expression, calculating, but she couldn't tell what he was feeling. That was something about Troy that had pulled her in the first time: He was completely unreadable and totally unpredictable. "No," she said after a moment of silence. "No, if you want to go out, that's your business. What I'm talking about is – "

"Is what, Mia?" Troy said, and suddenly she could hear the anger in his voice. See it in his face. The mask was off. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about us, Troy!" Mia said, feeling both aggravated and intimidated by him. She knew she couldn't let that get in the way, though. She had to do this. It had to be done. "I don't think we should try to have a relationship anymore."

Troy shook his head. "Oh, geeze," he groaned in disbelief. "You mean, like, a romantic relationship?"

"I mean, like, any kind of relationship," Mia told him. "I'm tired of pretending to fit in with you and your friends. I don't have anything in common with any of you anymore and I'm tired of the trouble you cause."

"So you're breaking up with me?" Troy asked her. "Because I cause trouble because, you know, you used be something a rule breaker yourself, Mia. You used to be fun, too, you know."

The alarm on Mia's phone went off. It was three-ten. She looked up at him and shrugged. "Yeah, well," she said, "I grew up. That's life." She turned and started to walk away, but by the time she had reached the front steps, Troy had already caught up with her.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," he said and he stepped in front of her, walking backwards down the sunny NYC sidewalk. Mia rolled her eyes. "We've been together too long for me to just give up this easily," he said. "I mean, you can't just break up with me at the first sign of trouble. There has to be another way to fix this."

Mia scoffed and pushed past him. "I've been waiting two years for you to fix things, Troy," she said, looking at him over her shoulder. "Two years. Do you have any idea how long that is for a girl in high school? How not normal that is?" She turned away from him and started off down the sidewalk again. Then she paused and added, "And believe it or not, all you've managed to do is make things worse between us."

Troy reached out and grabbed her by the arm, forcing her to pause and face him. They both knew she couldn't get out of his grip. "That's fair enough," he said, nodding. "So just answer me this one question – " She groaned loudly, cutting him. "Just one question, Mia!" he went on, talking over her. He waited until she was silent. "Do you still find me attractive?"

Mia stared at him in disbelief. "What?" she said, laughing. "Are you kidding?"

"No, I'm not kidding," Troy said, scowling. "Now, just shut up and answer me."

"Fine." Mia shrugged. They both knew the answer: If there was one thing Troy had, it was looks. He had big blue eyes and wavy brown hair that framed his square jaw in just the right way at just the right angle. "You're cute, okay?"

"So," Troy said. "You think I'm attractive?"

Mia frowned. "Well, I mean, you're not unattractive –"

"That means you still like me," Troy said, smiling. "And there's no reason for us to break up then. We can work things out." He kissed her on the cheek and ran back inside the school to where their friends.

"Wait!" Mia called after him. "Troy, that's not what that – oh, my god! I'm going to kill him!" But, at the moment, she had other things to worry about.

Mia's six-year-old sister, Clara, was small and mousy-haired like their older sister, Janie, with blue eyes. Right after Clara had been born, their mom had taken off and left the two of them to be raised by their dad who was an abusive drunk with a wrap sheet, while Janie was at school upstate. Mia wasn't much better, either. She was never home, which meant Clara always got the worst of the abuse. Mia just couldn't bring herself to be around place, though. Around him. Mia had only wanted to get away from him and the bad memories their home had offered. Then their dad got arrested for child abuse and petty theft when Clara was three. The two of them spent three days in a foster home together before Janie finally got back to the city. Janie transferred to NYU, but things had never been good between her and Mia. Mia knew Janie resented her because she had managed to avoid the worst of her father's abuse, because of what Clara had gone through, and because now the two of them were stuck raising Clara together with no money, no time, and CPS breathing down their necks. But Clara didn't judge Mia. Unlike Janie, Clara was always silent and forgiving. She didn't know how to hold a grudge. She just wanted to understand their family – what had happened to Daddy? Where was Mommy? Why wasn't Janie her mommy? Mia wanted to make sure she never had to understand.

"Hey, there, Clara," Mia greeted her sister on the front steps of her elementary school. She looked up at her sister's teacher, Ms. Kinsey, who walked her to the door and waited with her every day. "Hey, how was she – she try to wander off again?" Mia tried to keep her voice cheerful, but she was still irritated and shocked with the stunt Troy had pulled. She couldn't believe she had let herself walk into that.

Clara seemed to have only two hobbies: Wandering off – away from school, home, the park, the corner market – and watching trash news. The kind that liked to spread rumors about aliens invading Manhattan and mutant monsters lurking in the sewers. Clara was obsessed with it. Mia thought it was almost normal for kids to be interested in monsters or fairytale creatures of some kind, but no one could seem to tell them why she was constantly wandering away from places. It was one of the reasons why they had to take her to see a child psychiatrist twice a month.

Ms. Kinsey smiled reassuringly and shook her head. "No, Clara was very good today," she said. "I do need you to let your sister know, though, that she needs to come a parent-teacher conference next week. I put a letter about it in Clara's bag, but I know how busy she can be."

Mia nodded, frowning. She may not have been a genius, but she knew enough about school to know that parent-teacher conferences were never good news. "Yeah," she said. "Okay, no problem. Thanks, Ms. Kinsey." She grabbed Clara by the hand and led her down the steps of the school. "Say bye to your teacher, Clara."

Clara turned and waved to Ms. Kinsey silently.

Candy wrappers, water bottles, empty potato chip bags, and a Dollar Store hand-held video game with bad graphics from the 1990s littered the floor of Raphael's darkened bedroom. The walls were decorated with posters of rock bands and action movies. The wall directly above his twin, wooden bed housed a shelf full of spray paint and in the corner of the room was a stereo on an entertainment stand made out of cinder blocks and two-by-fours. Raphael lay on his bed silently, listening to the AC/DC that was blasting from his stereo and nodding his head to the beat. Then his eyes narrowed as they fell on something small and square in the darkness: The tank where Spike – AKA Slash – used to live. Before he had been mutated.

Since that day, Raphael had no one to talk to. He thought about trying to talk to Splinter about his problems, but it wasn't the same as talking to Spike. He could upset Splinter. He could let him down. He couldn't stand the idea of disappointing him.

Maybe he should buy a journal.

"Hey, Raph?"

Raphael looked up to see his older brother Leonardo poking his head inside of the doorway of the room. Raph scowled at him. Leo the leader. What did he want? "Yeah," he said, turning over onto his side so that he faced the wall. "What do you want, Leo?"

"You wanna turn off the music?" Leo asked him. "We're having a meeting in the living room about patrol tonight. You need to be there." He started to leave. Then he paused and added, looking back at him, "Oh, and lose the attitude, okay?"

"Yeah, whatever," Raphael murmured, rolling over as he listened to his brother's fading footsteps. He grabbed the remote to the stereo of the floor and switched it off. "Whatever you say, O great one." Then, climbing out of bed, he threw the remote across the room nonchalantly.

He crossed the room, closing the door behind him, and walked down the hall to the room Leo had so lovingly referred to as the "living room". Raph didn't bother kidding himself, though. They didn't have living room. They actually lived underground in an abandoned subway terminal. Their "living room" was actually a set of four concrete benches set in a sunken pit at the base of the entrance. Raph imagined it was where people would go to wait for the trains back when the place had actually been up and running. They had tried their best to make it cozy and feel like an actual living room with blankets, lots of throw pillows donated by April, a bean bag chair, a tire swing, and even an old television set equipped with a N64 and a set of rabbit ears – how the heck they got a television signal down here, Raphael had no idea. That was Donnie's area of expertise. But it wasn't a living room. It was a pit.

"What is this about us going on patrol tonight?" Raphael said, trying to keep the irritably out of his voice to avoid a fight with Leo or Splinter or whoever. He was just not in the mood right now. He tried his best to sound curious and sat down beside Michelangelo, his youngest brother, on the bench nearest the television. "I thought we were going to lay low after the whole Kraang invasion thing?"

"Well, see, Donnie doesn't seem to think it's such a good idea to leave all those mutagen canisters just lying around the city," Michelangelo filled him in, smiling.

"Especially with the Kraang and the Shredder out looking for them," Leo added. "There's no telling what they might use those canisters for."

"Exactly," Donatello said, nodding as he hauled a quark bulletin board with a map of the city taped to it out of his garage laboratory. The map was decorated with hundreds of red and green thumb tacks. He put the bulletin board in the center of the room and turned to face them. "Now, then," he said. "These thumb tacks represent areas in the city where my mutagen radar picked up on loose canisters of mutagen. The green thumb tacks represent low-risk areas where there are only a few canisters, and the red thumb tacks represent areas with, er –" He paused for a moment, struggling to find the right words. "More than a few."

"So the red areas are our main priority then?" Raphael asked. He turned to his brothers for confirmation. "Right?"

"I don't know," Leo said, shaking his head. "I mean, they're definitely a problem, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to leave any canisters out there just waiting to be found by an unsuspecting human."

"Yeah," Michelangelo said, grinning. "Just think of all the cool new mutations that could happen, though!"

Leo scowled at him. "Sounds like just what we need," he said. "More enemies."

"Yeah," Raphael said, "but you gotta figure it like this: Those red zones mean twice as many as humans are in danger than in the green ones."

There was a moment of silence before Donnie said hesitantly, "That is true and a lot more of the red zones are residential, too." He pointed to an area of the map. "This one here is even in the same school district as April." He looked at Leo. "A lot of people are in danger here, Leo."

"Sometimes," a voice said, and they all turned to see Master Splinter walking towards them, leaning on his staff. "In dark times, we must sacrifice the lives of a few to save many." He came a halt, facing Leo. "I am afraid this may be one of those times."

Raphael nodded in silent agreement with his master. Sometimes he hated being right.

The SpongeBob Squarepants alarm clock that stood on the nightstand that the divided the bedroom Mia shared with Clara read eight-thirty PM exactly. Mia sat on her bed silently, trying to finish her Global History homework. She had finally managed to get Clara to fall asleep ten minutes ago and now she had a mountain of schoolwork to do. And Troy would not stop calling. She shoved her cellphone in the pocket of the hoody she was wearing and scribbled down the answer to the first question. Then she began searching her book for the answer to the next one.

At that exact moment, as if on cue, Mia heard the front of their bedroom apartment open and slam shut. She froze, waiting. "Mia!" Janie shouted from the living room a moment later.

Mia sighed and slammed her textbook shut. She stood up and walked to the ever-messy living room where Clara was asleep on the couch and Janie was in the doorway, scowling. Janie looked like an older version of Clara with mousier hair, bluer eyes, and a cleft in her narrow chin.

"Why isn't Clara in bed?" Janie demanded.

Mia looked at her. "She just fell asleep there after dinner," she said. "I didn't want to move her because I know how long it takes for her to fall asleep again."

"So now I have to wake her up and try to get her to bed?" Janie asked, raising her eyebrows. "Do you realize I have to be in school in an hour?"

"Well, I'm sorry," Mia said, except she actually wasn't. She had done everything Janie had asked her: Helped Clara with her homework, made her dinner, and make sure she got to sleep. Now, she was being yelled at for it and she could feel the anger creeping into her voice. "She was exhausted and I have schoolwork to do. I wasn't about to – "

"Just stop making excuses, okay?" Janie said, pushing past her. She walked over to the couch and began to shake Clara awake gently. "You know, I'm the one working two jobs to take care of you guys and spending my days off taking classes at a school I hate in a city I detest." She looked at her younger sister. "And you don't see me making excuses, do you?"

"Only unless you need a reason to complain about us!" Mia snapped at her angrily. "Maybe you should have just let us rot in foster care. Then your life would be easier, wouldn't it?" She stormed across the room and threw on her sneakers. Then she left, slamming the door behind her.

Mia could hear Janie calling after her as she ran down the stairs to the first floor and out of the grubby, moldy lobby of the apartment building. She could hear Clara's confused, sleepy whimpers – the first sounds she had made in a month. But Mia wasn't turning back. She needed to get out of there if only for a moment. Every day it was the same thing. She did everything she was supposed to and still Janie was mad at her. No matter how she tried to help and make things better, Janie still had not forgiven her.

Mia walked down the sidewalk silently, huffing angrily as she went. Her breath came out in misty, white clouds and as she walked, she realized that the streets were strangely empty. True, she did not live in the greatest neighborhood, but she knew all of the neighbors and they were all good people. She had never even heard of so much as a mugging in this neighborhood. So where was everyone? She thought, looking up and down the street. Then she rounded the corner and that was when she saw them: Four men huddled under the light of a flickering streetlamp in the alley between a low-rise and the corner market. One of them was fat and balding beneath his baseball cap, counting the money in his fist as he turned to leave. The other three were Asian, decorated with matching tattoos. One was a giant with bulging muscles that towered over the other two, the next was shorter with a mustache, and the last was a small, thin man with beady eyes, and a cruel, twisted smile. He was the one holding the canister. By the time Mia had time to register all of this, their eyes had fallen on her.

"She's seen the canister!" the thin man shouted.

It was then that Mia fully realized what was happening and that she should have started running a long time ago. But it was too late now. Her entire body had erupted in goosebumps and she was stuck – completely frozen in place, no matter how hard she tried to force herself to move. Then before she had time to process the moment, she was on the ground in the alley and her head collided with the concrete, filling her eyes with tears as blood began to pool at the base of her skull. Blinking to clear her blurred vision, Mia saw the men standing over her.

"Now," said the thin guy, who seemed to be the leader of this gang. "We're gonna make you forget whatever it is you saw." And he pulled a small, thin sledgehammer out of his pocket.

Raphael pulled out of a back-flip and landed silently on the roof of a building with six jet black chimneys that pierced the night sky and a billboard that deemed the building the Dandelion Bread Factory. A few feet away from him, Leonardo was talking quietly with Donatello, who was trying to use his mutagen radar to get a more accurate reading on the location of any canisters in the area. Michelangelo was roof jumping the series of buildings a couple hundred yards behind them, performing elaborate tricks and flips mid-air while humming the theme to Mission Impossible with all the silence of a freight train.

Raphael sighed and wandered over to the edge of the roof, rolling his eyes as Mikey pulled out of a corkscrew and – finally – landed on the roof of the bakery. "Hey, Mikey," he said. "I thought we were supposed to be ninjas, not ballerinas?" He sat down on the ledge overlooking the street below.

Mikey skidded a halt and looked at him, smiling coolly. "Pfft!" he scoffed."Don't let my mad skills get to you, bro. 'Sides, don't you know the ladies love a fella that can throw down on the dance floor?"

"Too bad you're a turtle then," Raph replied in a murmur too quiet for anyone to hear.

As if any of them would ever get girlfriends, he thought, fixing his gaze on the blinking red light of a helicopter somewhere high above them. He thought of the way Donnie looked at April – the way he had looked at her since the first time he had laid eyes on her. At first, it had been fun to watch and to make fun of him, but over time, it just gotten more and more painful to see. Especially now that it was so obvious that April did not feel the same way about his brother. Of course, no one had the heart to tell Donnie that. Not even Raphael, but he wasn't stupid, either. He was sort of glad he would never have to worry about that sort of thing. He didn't need that kind of drama in his life.

"Alright, guys," Leonardo said, breaking his train of thought. "Donnie's got a lock on a canister just a few streets east from here –"

"So what are we standing here for?" Raphael said, jumping to his feet. "Let's get going!"

He pushed past his brothers and leapt off the bakery, heading east. The others were behind him as he ran across the roof of the neighboring appliance store. Immediately, he felt better. No matter how much Splinter or Leo or anyone stressed that these trips up to the surface world weren't for fun, but running across these roofs was one of the few times when Raphael felt like he could forget about everything. But it didn't make him happy, exactly, because he knew what he was actually here to do. It just made him feel content. At ease.

"Raphael!" Leo grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around sharply as they landed on the roof an apartment building.

"What?" Raph spat at him. "What the heck are you stopping me for?"

"Well, if you had been listening," Donatello said quickly, panting slightly. "You would know that the canister we're looking for is right around –"

He was cut off then by an ear-shattering scream.

Mia lay on the ground, curled up into the fetal position. This was the one thing she knew about fighting: Curl up into a ball and you should be okay. But she wasn't okay. The hammer came down over and over again, landing each time with a sickening thud. She could feel blood running down her face and seeping through her shirt. Then another man kicked her in the abdomen. Then the other punched her in the face. Every part of her ached.

Then for a split second, everything stopped and she found herself on her hands and knees, coughing. Trying to catch her breath and just process everything. Then the hammer slammed her back into the concrete floor of the alley. A small voice inside of her head told Mia she didn't have a chance. She never had a chance. This was New York City. Something like this was bound to happen eventually, but that couldn't be true, could it?

Mia had lived in this neighborhood for years. The people in the building right beside her had babysat Clara for two years back when she had been in middle school. That was the worst part – she was so close to home, so close to her family. She knew she could get away if she just ran hard enough. In that instant, adrenaline flooded her veins and she jumped to her feet. She managed to dodge a blow from the sledgehammer and then elbowed the giant in the face as he tried to grab her. Then she took off running down the alley.

"Get her!" Mia heard the leader of the gang yell.

Then Mia heard the sound of gunshots exploding off the walls of the ally, and the sensation was instantaneous: She fell to the ground immediately as fire was set to her calf. Her body rocked with pain as blood and tears streamed down her face. Her breath came out in sharp, short, choked sobs that sent pain shooting through her chest. The adrenaline was gone now. All she felt now was white-hot, searing pain as she became aware of the gangsters drawing nearer.

Then, suddenly, an angry, ear-splitting scream filled the air, and the ally was flooded with black smoke.

Raphael hit the floor of the alley and ran at Fong, the leader of the Purple Dragons. He knew Leo would want to take him out, but he didn't care. He grabbed Fong by the arm and threw him against the wall of the ally, causing him to drop the sledgehammer. He was vaguely aware of the sound of the canister clattering to the floor, but he wasn't thinking. He had lost the control the second he had seen that gun – that gun one of Fong's thugs had pulled on an innocent girl. He hit him over and over again.

"Raphael!" Leonardo shouted, grabbing him by the wrist. "Calm down – we have the canister!"

Raphael paused and then he realized that Fong was on the floor of the ally, bloody and whimpering. He looked from Fong to Leo and back again. Leo held the canister, which was cracked slightly, in his left hand. He looked up and down the ally. The other Dragons had gotten away and the smoke from Donnie's smoke bomb had long since cleared.

Still panting, Raphael nodded, and turned. Then he froze as his eyes fell on the girl the Dragons had been attacking and he felt dread flood his stomach. She lay on the ground in a crumpled heap. Her long black hair fell in messy curtains over her ivory face. Her expression was made unreadable by the rivers of blood and tears that flowed down her face.

Without thinking, Raphael found himself moving towards her. "Kid," he said and he was shocked by the urgency he heard in his voice. "Kid, are you alright?" He edged closer to her and his eyes wandered to her hands, which she had curled into claws and wrapped around the bullet wound in her leg.

Her eyes snapped on him then huge, brown, wild with pain and agony. Then her gaze wandered to his brothers.

"Raphael!" Leonardo said. "We can't help her – she needs a doctor!"

Raphael ignored him and moved closer to her, his fingers reaching out to touch her. He knew then they could help her. "Kid," he said again. "Are you alright?"

Her eyes snapped back to him. "D-don't touch me!" she shrieked, shrinking away from him. She clung closer to the wall of the ally. "Don't, please...!" Her voice broke off in a sob.

It was then that it hit him: She was afraid of him. Of course, she was. He was a mutant turtle. A monster. To her, he was just as scary as the Purple Dragons.

"Hey, you guys," Michelangelo called from the top of the low-rise apartment building directly beside them. "We need to go. The cops are coming!" The sound of sirens filled the air.

Leo walked over to him. "Raphael," he said sternly. "We need to go now. Listen to me – we cannot help her."

Donatello nodded from his place on the fire escape. "Leo's right, Raph," he said. "She's too badly wounded – she needs a doctor."

Raphael ignored them. Instead, he took the T-phone from his belt silently and dropped it at the girl's feet. "If you ever need anything, call us," he said. "We won't hurt you. We're the good guys, kid."

Then he turned and leapt up the fire escape in three, perfectly executed jumps. He stepped onto the roof of the lowrise and walked away.

A/N: First of all, if you made it all the way to this Author's Note, then I would like to say thank you for sticking with me to the end of my first chapter. I would also like to ask you to stick with me until the end of the entire fanfiction. I understand that a lot of the members of this fandom do not enjoy reading about OCs and may not agree with the direction I am planning on taking this fic in, but I am writing this as a personal challenge to myself. I feel that this is grey area in TMNT universe that has not be explored nearly enough, and I have decided to explore to better myself as a writer and I'd love to hear some feedback from my fellow fans or critics on the characters I am introducing to the universe and to the events taking place in the story. If you're willing to do that, thank you in advance.
And thanks again, if you read all the way to this way.