Hi friends. It's been a while since this story was active, and you might be wondering why it is now.

Honestly, when I first wrote this in 2015, I was too young, stupid and inexperienced to be writing anything of this nature. I mishandled this very sensitive content, and it made a lot of people - myself included, looking back - uncomfortable. I've always meant to touch it up and fix things, but it's been one of those awkward, cringeworthy things you can never bring yourself to do, because you know you made a mistake. However, now I'm a lil' pseudo-adult off to university next month, I've decided it's time I own up to and sort this.

Chapters 6, 10 and 18 have all had specific scenes edited to make them more appropriate. I've brought the rating back down to T now in light of these changes, but if you've read the whole story and believe it should be M, or have found any other problematic content, please let me know so I can do better. I will say, I have no desire to edit the whole thing for technical accuracy, but I want to be correct in how I'm handling these themes.

I am also not going to go back and change all the times I referred to myself as "CeCe", although I will clarify that was an alterego I used for myself at the time and no longer bother with.

Thank you,

~ MusicRocks807

PS. There is also a little bonus content included below so I'm not entirely cheating the system with this message, by the way. It's the first chapter of a post-Serpent Hunt fic I never actually developed, but the concept for it inspired Angel and Karai's friendship/dynamic in this story :) I was spot-on predicting another canon friendship though!

The dark streets of New York City were practically desolate. Crystalline shapes grew from any surface at every angle, reflecting the hopelessness of the city in their pinkish sheen. Buildings were becoming run-down memories of NYC's glory days. Before it happened. Before they arrived. Before the invasion succeeded.

In one grotty back-alley, a petite figure darted into the shadows. She struggled to remain silent, but her lucky bracelet clinked and her shoes released dull, quiet thumps when she moved. Seeing the silhouettes loom over her again, she bit her lip and tucked herself away behind a lopsided dumpster. Her muscles tensed, and she held her breath, locked in place.

They approached steadily and calmly, laser guns almost purring as they charged up. Fear trickled down her spine, but she held her position as the robots marched past. The creatures were scarily synchronized in their movements, and even creepier up close than the girl could've imagined. She'd had a few near-misses with them, but never quite this near, so she had never had the opportunity to see them in this detail before. Robotic bodies controlled by squishy brain things in their stomach. Ew.

And to think, she thought her brother was making it up when she first read about mutants and freaks in his journal. Boy, had she ever been wrong.

Thankfully, the aliens paraded onwards, oblivious to the little escapee crouching in the darkness. Remembering the advice she had been given, she counted slowly to ten in her head prior to slipping out of her hiding spot and sprinting. She leapt into the air and clambered up to the top of a building, using the crystal spikes as hand and foot holds. Once atop the building, she checked around her and ran the width of the roof. Hoping she had enough momentum, the girl flung herself to the next rooftop, landing hard on her knees. When no crimson stained her jeans, she assumed there were no open wounds and continued, ignoring the pain pulsing beneath her skin. She repeated the process several times, slightly improving with each landing. Then, she slipped down a fire escape and folded herself through a shattered window of the adjacent building.

The floor was one large room, filled with upturned arcade machines and odd objects the place's occupants had gathered. A semi-circle counter with a broken sign saying Token Redeems hanging from one hinge was littered with items too, but one stood out to the girl. Her hand curled around a leather-bound journal with Jones scrawled on the front, the left-handed writing predictably smudged.

"Angel."

She turned to the gruff voice, internally proud that she hadn't jumped this time. "Hey. Almost thought I was alone here for a sec."

"Sorry to disappoint," remarked her companion, a smirk in his voice.

Angel chuckled to herself, stroking the cover of the notebook with her thumb. "Not disappointed at all. I'm just about sick of being alone."

A hand clamped roughly down on her shoulder. Angel looked up at the mutated turtle, amazed that she no longer found him frightening to view. "Thanks, Slash."

Slash, for all his spikes and muscles and trash-talk, actually managed a smile that could be considered kind. "Don't mention it, kid. Find anything interesting out there?"

"Not really." She shrugged. "I got chased by a ton of Kraang-bots, though. Got away without a scratch."

"Yeah? Then what's with the rips?" He asked, gesturing to the tears across the knees of her jeans.

Angel crossed her arms stubbornly. "'Kay, a few scratches. No biggie."

The turtle rubbed his fist into the crown of her head firmly, grinning at her as she wriggled free. "I hate you!" she shouted through her laughter. She swung a couple of solid hits into her mutant companion, but he clasped her little frame between his muscular arms to restrain her.

"Alright, hush up, slugger," he whispered. "Don't want any of 'em hearing us, do we?"

"No." Angel shoved out of his hold and sank down onto one of the broken machines. "Hey, anyone else in?"

"You know Murakami doesn't leave. Kurtzman's upstairs-"

"Working on a new conspiracy theory?"

"That's my guess. As for Scales, haven't seen her since yesterday."

"Quit calling her Scales," instructed Angel absently. "And what d'ya mean, you haven't seen her? Hasn't she come back?"

"No," he replied with an eye roll, "otherwise I'd have seen her, wouldn't I?" At the frown on her face, he added, "I went out looking for her a couple hours ago, and Leather's been out there searching since I came back."

Angel huffed, folding her arms. "Geez, you sound concerned…"

Slash clapped her harshly on the back. "You know Scales, kid. She'll be fine."

"Why do you keep calling her Scales? You know it annoys her," chuckled Angel.

"Because it's his way of showing his affection for me," remarked a mildly amused, if slightly stilted, voice.

A lithe-figured young woman slipped through the same window Angel had entered earlier, lifting some rickety boards over the open space.

"Miwa!" shrieked Angel, dashing over to hug her. Miwa's skin was rough and scaled (hence the nickname) which meant she wasn't the best person to hold, but at that point Angel wouldn't have cared even if she wasn't used to it.

Miwa wrapped her arms around the girl and smiled. "Hey, Angel." She glanced up at the mutant turtle across the room and inclined her head to him. "Slash."

"Scales," he responded in turn. "And stop kiddin' yourself with that affection junk. It isn't like we're boyfriend and girlfriend."

"Of course not." She smiled slyly. "I never said the affection was returned."

Slash rolled his eyes. "You know, Leather's out there trying to find you."

She tilted her head. "Why?"

"'Cause we were worried about you," Angel chimed in. "You'd been gone for ages!"

"I had a little run-in with an old friend of mine," she said mysteriously, before sighing. "Okay, I'll go find Leather, then."

"Nah." Slash grabbed her shoulder, guiding her away from the window. "I'll go, you stay here. Knowing you, it'll be another week or so until ya get back."

"I was gone for a day, Slash," Miwa called to him as he exited the building. Angel tugged at her sleeve and she smiled at her. "Hey, I might have some good news for you."

"Huh, that'd be a nice change," the child mused jokingly. "What kind of good news?"

Miwa didn't answer, instead crossing to where Angel had left her brother's notebook. She opened it up and flipped through a few pages. "This journal – it mentions mutant turtles, right?"

"Yeah. Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Mikey. They're your brothers, aren't they?" inquired Angel.

"Sort of, yes. They were the old friends I saw today," she explained.

"Really?" Angel ran over. "I thought you said you'd searched the city for them?"

"I did, but that was months ago, Angel; wherever they went, they came back." She hesitated before adding, "And… I have a theory that Casey might be with them."

Her clear brown eyes were as wide as saucers. "Casey? Casey as in, my Casey?"

As Angel yanked the notebook from her hands, like it held the answers to all of her questions, Karai offered a smirk. "I doubt there's more than one skating across the city in a hockey mask."

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go find 'em!" Angel took the time to place the journal onto the counter again, but saved none of that gentleness for seizing Miwa's arm. Her purple pigtails swayed into her face as she bounced on the spot. "Come on, come on! You know where they are, right? Are they waiting for us?"

With no visible effort, Miwa freed herself from the restraint. She stretched her arms over her head, stepping easily around Angel to move towards a machine laying on its side. They weren't the most comfortable things, but if you curled up enough and kept a blanket under you, they were okay to sleep atop. This time, Miwa sprawled herself out fully as she lay, the only thing betraying her exhaustion.

"We can't go right now, Angel," she said simply.

"If you tell me where they are, I'll go a-and you can rest!" Angel suggested eagerly. "In fact, Slash has only just left, I bet I could catch up with him and he could take-"

"Angel." Miwa pushed herself upright again. "Not right now. The Kraang are on alert for us all, and the Foot are watching out for me. I took so long to come home because I was captured."

Angel didn't know much about the Foot, but she knew enough for her toes to curl in her sneakers. "Oh."

"Yeah." One arm over her emerald eyes, Miwa curled up on the machine. "I told Leo "Comet". He's smart enough to know that means the Comet Arcade. The best thing we can do for now is get some rest, okay?"

"Okay," Angel agreed, as every muscle in her body buzzed with the urge to anything but rest.

Usually, Angel hated when Miwa was tired. The transformations really took it out of her, as did maintaining her human form in the first place, so the young woman spent a lot more time resting than the rest of their ragtag team. The others accepted it because she proved herself valuable in other regards (and they all had a soft spot for the same group of turtles), but it left Angel without the objectively coolest friend she'd ever made way too often.

Today though, it was ideal. Miwa was out within minutes of getting cozy, so with Murakami and Kurtzman still scheming upstairs, there was nobody there to see Angel slip out of the window again. The journal was tucked under her arm, in case she needed help figuring out where Casey and his friends had gone, but she was pretty confident she could do it. The others would never even notice she was gone.