Chasing Diamond (A TMNT fanfiction)

Chapter 2: The Name Is Whisper

The moon had replaced the sun. The smaller, duller sphere was beginning its climb through the sky, the clouds that had been so evident during daytime now faint shapes in the sky. Some glowed slightly at the edges when they crossed the moon.

Ivy was curled up at Diamond's side, her head placed on her paws as she snoozed lightly, enjoying the heat her owner was giving off. Diamond had sat down. She was in her sleeping bag for the warmth it offered while she read a book.

The book wasn't anything too special. It was called 'Wonder', a long chapter book, the main character a boy with a deformed face facing the challenges his life threw at him, including attending a school for the first time in his life. Diamond loved the world and characters the writer was creating by merely putting pen to paper, and the four short lines that served as a blurb was enough to make her fall in love with the book each time she read them.

August was the name of the deformed boy. For most new people who looked at him, their first thought was that he was ugly and to look away. He drooled but he couldn't help it- it was the deformed face. He went to school for the first time in his life, and he made a few friends, but most people took one look, couldn't help but stare, and once they'd looked away they tried not to look again. At the end, several things were resolved. It was a great book that had a great balance of imagination and reality- which meant August's face stayed deformed. But really, Diamond had come to be fond of the fictional character, and was relieved nothing changed with his appearance. In several ways, Diamond wished the book could somehow suck her and Ivy inside.

They were similar in a way. He had a deformed face, she had an odd personality, one Diamond felt that, in a way, it had also been forced into being a deformed one. It was the personality of someone who'd barely survived the hungry jaws of a tsunami, seen people washed away by the same force in-front of her very eyes. It was the personality of someone who'd sucked it up and pulled herself together sooner than most others to help the people 'running' the tsunami shelter in Ofunato, and had kept her emotions tucked away to help kids far younger than herself pull through the shock. She'd seen her brother die right in-front of her, just a minute after he'd told her Ivy was now hers and asked her to go to New York for him. Even so, she kept her emotions bottled up to help others. She'd strained herself mentally and even physically for the well being of others. The elemental teenager's personality was one that had been forced to grow up too fast, from a loving teenage girl learning all the opportunities her life was offering to a mature woman who could care for herself and others at the same time within just a few hours. And even with the one and a half years that had passed since the disaster, it still hurt.

She was just grateful she hadn't had to go from a baby to a mature adult right off the bat, and she was pretty sure there were a few of them out there. Somewhere.

How Diamond had got the book 'Wonder' was simple. She'd walked into a second hand store that she visited often (Since most things for sale there were cheap), grabbed a book or two, paid and walked out. She'd never regretted her decisions to buy books from second hand shops. Mainly because books were her main form of entertainment-she didn't have nearly enough money to buy any sort of device, let alone the cost to keep it running or even just a place to charge it.

Everything was peaceful-for a few minutes at least. Ivy's head suddenly shot up as a yowl of alarm left her mouth. Diamond was confused for a split second-had she had a bad dream or anything? But when the yowl of alarm turned to terror in less than half a second, Diamond knew something was wrong. She followed Ivy's gaze and gasped, flicking her hand out to catch the lethal object aimed at Ivy's body with the air element.