Prologue

My name is Leonardo, and fifteen years ago, when I was only five years into my life, I was just an ordinary turtle. However, after a young boy brought me from a shop, he grew tired of me and carelessly threw me into the gutter where I would have died, if not for a rat pulling me to safety. This rat's name was called Splinter, and he chose to take me to somewhere safe in order to look after me when others had carelessly tossed me away. But one day, a mysterious green ooze fell down the storm drain, landing on top of me and my saviour, transforming us into beings with my more human characteristics. I could think, speak and walk as the dreaded humans could, so Splinter became my adoptive father, and I his thankful son.

…

Or at least that was the story I was brought up to believe all my life, right up until a few days ago.

The night my father drew close to death's door, he became delirious, speaking without thinking. He had been ill for a very long time, and I was terrified to lose him – as one would expect from any child. Yet in this delirium, Splinter began to reveal some truths about my past, and that was when I stopped caring and lost my respect for this rat. I watched him die the next day without any emotion.

For fifteen years, he had kept me underground, training me to become a warrior while forcing me to undergo years of physical and mental abuse in order to "toughen my spirit." But that was not what angered me so. It was the fact he had lied about everything. Splinter had told of how he had passed the boy on the street who was lovingly carrying a bowl with some form of animal in, so the rat scared him on purpose, to make him drop the creature. Only there was not just one, there were four turtles. I had three brothers, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo.

There had been a bad storm and a flood of water picked us up, and carried us to the canister which mutated us all – yet before our transformations were complete, the water separated us, and the rat pulled me from the water and onto the broken canister – his only intention being to eat me, but when we awoke in the sewers – I had suffered a trauma of some kind to the head and had fallen very ill, making me forget my past five years of life. This made me the perfect tool for Splinter to craft into a weapon to use against the humans he hated so much.

All I went through was in complete ignorance that I was not alone – the fact I had brothers. So as I left the rat's corpse to rot alone, I swore an oath to find my real family and undo all the wrong that Splinter had taught me about the world above ground.

I am Leonardo, and this is my story.

So here's the start of my new idea. I could not leave this one alone. I have 41 pages of it in my notebook, so thought it a waste if it wasn't put up. I'll update as often as I can!

Read, review, and tell me your thoughts! Any bets on who each turtle ended up with?! :) A mention goes to anyone who guesses right! :P

More questions will come with each chapter! (And each chapter will be MUCH longer than this one!)

LL99 out.