• • •

When Akila returned to the lair that evening, her waist-length hair was nearly all gone. She'd never had the confidence to cut her hair short before, but that was before she met the turtles...and before she met Karai. Now, she strut into her home with her head held high, showing off her new pixie cut. It was Raph who saw her first, looking up from his comic as he noticed movement in the corner of his eye. He did a double take before grinning and raising his browbones. "Woah, look at you," he complimented.

Akila beamed. Her eyes then fell to Leo, who was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, quite lost in an episode of Space Heroes. He hadn't even noticed Akila's arrival, which made her smile in amusement. She cleared her throat softly, hoping to gain his attention, but this did not work. Akila looked to Raph and stiffled a laugh as he rolled his eyes at his brother. "Hey Space-Doofus, your girlfriend's back," Raph sighed, throwing his comic at Leo's head.

Leo was immediately snapped out of his trance. He perked up and looked around. "Akila?" He asked happily. When his eyes landed on her, they widened and his cheeks grew pink. "H-hey-" he greeted as a she stumbled to his feet.

Akila laughed lightly and walked over to her boyfriend. "How does it look?"

Leo smiled dreamily and replied smoothly, "it looks good...really good, Ki."

Raph grimanced at the lovey-dovey look in Leo's eyes. "Pretty bold change," he said to Akila, "this have anything to do with Karai?"

"She thought I'd look nice with short hair, like her," Akila replied. Her stomach turned a bit; she hated how easy it had become for her to lie to her friends. And every time one of them mentioned Karai, her heart jumped with anxiety. She needed to tell them.

Noticing the distant look cross Akila's face, Leo asked, "you okay?"

She looked into her boyfriend's ocean eyes. He was completely oblivious to Akila's current situation. He deserved to know the truth, but she didn't want him to have to stress about her having a sister who was still on Shredder's side. Before she had a chance to answer Leo, Donnie came hurtling out of his lab. "Leo! We've got a situation," he quaked.

Leo turned to Donnie with a serious look. "What's going on?"

"One of my alarms was tripped just a minute ago," Donnie explained.

"You sure it wasn't just another pigeon? Like last time?" Raph asked with an unamused expression.

Donnie glared at his red clad brother. "I checked the cameras, too..." He paused for a moment before confirming, "it's the Foot Clan."

At this point, Mikey had also been drawn into the living room by the commotion. "Foot-bots? We can totally take 'em, what are we waiting for?"

Akila's heart began to pump. She was ready for a fight. But a small part of her was nervous that Karai might still be out and about, too. After all, she just left her sister less than an hour ago.

"For once, I have to agree with Mikey," Raph piped in. He got up from his seat and twirled his sais expertly with a crooked grin.

Leo nodded. "Alright, Don, lead the way."

The team of five arrived to their destination quickly, being that it was only a couple of blocks away. But once they reached Donnie's rooftop alarm that had been set off, no one was in sight. Akila looked around, using all of her senses to scan her surroundings. There were no Foot bots in sight.

"Where are they?" Raph wondered aloud, a hint of annoyance in his tone.

Donnie was equally confused. "I..guess they were just passing through."

"But what for?" Leo asked.

Akila was about to suggest that they split up and look around, but her eyes landed on a familiar sight the made her heart drop. Hiding in the shadow of a large satellite dish was the faint outline of her sister, Karai. Their gazes locked for a moment and Akila shook her head slightly, warning Karai to stay put. The older sister wasn't thrilled to have to hide when she could be fighting the turtles, but she cared enough about Akila to respect her judgement. Akila looked away quickly before the turtles could notice her staring. She moved away from Karai and called, "maybe we should go back; it could be a trap."

"'Go back'?" Raph repeated with a bizzare look on his face, "since when does a little challage scare you off?"

"Since I found out I'm still being hunted down by the Shredder," Akila growled back warningly. Raph backed off, recalling how deeply Akila was connected to this war, and how much that probably did scare her.

But the only thing she was truly scared of in this moment was that one of the turtles might possibly spot her sister.

Leo walked over to Akila and hugged her against his side. He gave her a look of empathy and kissed her forehead. "If you think we should go back, then we'll go back," he told her.

"But what about the Foot bots," Mikey asked.

Leo looked from Mikey to Raph and sighed. "The two of you can stay out and search for them, but if something goes wrong, call me immediately," he told them, "I'm taking Akila back home." He turned to Donnie and gave him a questioning look.

"I'll stay out too," Donnie told Leo, "I need to resest this alarm, and while I'm at it, I should probably check the other one's nearby...maybe the Foot bots are looking for our lair."

"Alright, come back as soon as you--" Leo began, but cut himself off when he spotted a glimpse of silver reflecting moonlight on the opposite side of the rooftop. He squinted his eyes. The silver moved.

Akila immediately knew Karai had been spotted. But before she could even react, Leo leapt to action. "Over here!" He called to his brothers. Karai twirled out of here hiding spot while simultaneously whipping out two short swords. Within seconds, the turtles were all attacking. Akila watched for a moment, frozen as she wished this were a dream. But she noticed quickly that Karai had been ill prepared; and against all four turtles, she wasn't going to get out of this easily. Akila was ripped from her trance as she saw one of Raph's sais flying through the air toward her sister.

Jumping forward with all of her energy, Akila was able to make it to Karai just in time to knock the sai out of the air with a kama. She stood between the Foot girl and her friends, who all gave her looks of confusion. Raph was especially blown away. "Akila, what are you doing?!" He shouted in frustrated confusion.

"Took you long enough to intervene," Karai scoffed, "for a second I thought you might actually let them skewer me."

"You know I wouldn't," Akila snapped. Now that the fighting had stopped, she put her kama away and loosened her defensive pose.

But the worst of it had only just begun. Leo stared at his love and the Foot ninja she was protecting. Judging by the look of exhaustion and betrayal in his eyes, Akila knew that he knew. But his voice was not gentle as he spoke. "You must be Karai."