> Monster In The Shadows > by TheGathering > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Expect The Unexpected > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was a quiet evening at the Foot Clan’s headquarters in Japan one October day. Nothing out of the ordinary was occurring, so naturally, people slacked off on the job, and began to left exploitable gaps in security of the building. It was as if fate was cursing the Foot Clan that evening. A exploitable route to the Shredder to deliver a message now existed. From a forest nearby, a pair of violet eyes stared from the dark, tangled undergrowth and gleamed with malice and intent. Like a predator striking at its prey, it first fell upon the hapless remaining guards, beating them savagely while holding his hand over their mouths to silence them. Their ninjutsu skills were good, but with the dark magic and sword skills the assailant had, it didn’t matter. One by one, they were all defeated. Like a shadow, the intruder slipped into the building. Cloaking its own shadow, it made its way into the security room, and like the guards, savagely beat the people in their to the point of being rendered unconscious. There were a few that put a good, albeit muffled fight due to him using his black magic to place a sound muffler spell on the door, but they were outmatched, disarmed, and beaten. The groans and moans of the beaten, disarmed ninjas was like music to his ears. The savage intruder then proceeded to disable the cameras, before placing a tape recorder with the sounds of normal security work going on before turning it on and slipping out underneath the door as a shadow once more. It slowly wandered down the halls, cloaking whenever anyone turned into the hall it was wandering down, and randomly slipped into random rooms, seeing if there was anything of value. In one room, it came across a class of foot ninja being taught by an instructor. Quietly moving a desk to block the outward turning door from the outside and then fusing it to the wall with magic, he then placed an illusion spell to disguise the desk, a sound spell that mimic’d the sounds of what was going inside the room before he struck, and a sound muffling spell to make sure no one would hear what was going on. Creeping outside, he also made sure to fuse all the windows together and cast a spell to make the windows unbreakable and also pitch black on the outside, which would not be visible from the inside. That done, he slipped into the room, manifested into human form, and immediately targeted the instructor, brutally beating him senseless and leaving him with both his arms and legs broken, lying on the ground in pain. He then proceeded to bash around all of the students one by one, having no mercy on them. The murder-less massacre continued for a solid 20 minutes as each ninja was defeated and savagely beaten by various methods, then left on the ground unconscious or in agony. It was an extremely lopsided fight that none of them were prepared for. Morphing back into a shadow, the intruder found its way into Chris Bradford’s quarters. Bradford, although surprised, fought back against his attacker, but eventually, like all others before him, he was no match for the teen sized monster assailant that overpowered and then this time, overkill beat him straight to unconscious. It was the sight and sound of Bradford’s beaten and unconscious body being hurled through the broken-open door and landing on the ground with a thud that alerted Shredder to the unwanted visitor. “Bradford?! Who did this to you?!” Shredder yelled in shock and anger. His question was answered, not by Bradford, but from a voice he had never heard before. “I did, Oroku Saki.” The aforementioned person gasped, because no one who fought the Foot Clan since he had taken over it knew of his true name. “Who are you?! Show yourself, barbarian!” Out of the shadows by the broken door stepped out a teenaged boy, about 5’ 10” tall, with what looked like dirty blonde hair and violet eyes, something that immediately alerted Shredder to the possibility that this teen wasn’t normal. Then again, it appeared that this teen had beaten Bradford to an unconscious bloody pulp, so he almost certainly wasn’t human. Then, there was his outfit. Sitting on top of his dirty blonde hair was a black kangaroo cowboy hat, followed downward by a white and red striped mask that covered most of his face except for his eyes, nose, and mouth, with a pair of glasses in front of the mask. In his left hand, he had a gauntlet similar to the one used by the 2003 Utrom Shredder and in his right hand he held a bloody metal baseball bat. The rest of his appearance closely resembled an actor portraying the Phantom Of The Opera. With his pale skin and skinny frame, it seemed to reinforce what Shredder was already guessing. It didn’t take long before Shredder stated the obvious. “You are not human, are you?” The psychopathic teenager that stood before him chuckled. “You are correct, Oroku Saki. I am not human.” “Then what are you? And why do you attack the Foot Clan?” “As to who or ‘what’ I am, Saki, the answer will reveal itself at a later date. For why I attack the Foot Clan, let’s just say I’m here to give you a clue and a warning.” “Hmm?” Saki paused, interested in what the teen had to say. “For the whereabouts of your old enemy, look no further than the east coast of New York. However, should you go there, be advised that a group of great importance will soon be in the area and I shall collect from it. Do anything to the group, and consider your Foot Clan the same state as Bradford.” He laughed maniacally before he disappeared into thin air right in front of Saki, leaving the Shredder confused and astonished at what he had heard and seen.