My lovely friend frandayam wanted to see an AU in which Tang Shen chose Saki and fled to New York with the baby, and Yoshi became the vengeful one. This is that AU.

Here, Miwa grew up in New York and goes to April's school, and she was the one with April when the Kraang attacked (as in "Rise of the Turtles").

Possibly more to come on this story, as I get more ideas.

"... so they took April!" Miwa finished.

"The... the pink creatures?" her mother said, looking baffled.

"Yes! The ones that jumped out of the men in suits! I know this sounds ridiculous, but that wasn't even the weirdest!"

"Then what was?" her father asked.

They were still listening to her, at least; they hadn't told her she was crazy or obviously making things up. That was the whole reason she'd come home. She should have gone to the police, probably—she'd thought about it, once she was alone on the street, but she'd run home instead. The cops would never have believed her story, and they probably would have thought she was on drugs or something. She'd run, and taken a chance on her parents—Dad was the kind of person who could handle anything, no matter how strange, Miwa was sure of it, and Mom would at least listen—so here she was.

She took a deep breath. "There were these... things that appeared out of nowhere and tried to fight the men. They couldn't beat them, but it seemed like they were trying to protect us. They were like some kind of... yokai." Searching for a description, she settled on that word from her childhood legends.

Both of her parents stiffened. "That's absurd," her father said.

"I know it is!" Miwa cried. "But they were green and loud and... and they fought with traditional weapons, so I don't know what else to call them!"

Her father frowned. Her mother was looking down, so her long hair shaded her face. "Where are they now?" her father finally asked.

"I don't know! They disappeared. What can you expect from yokai?"

"Whatever you saw, it cannot be spirits," her father said in a tone that allowed no disagreement.

Miwa sighed and changed tack. "What do I do now? What about April?" They weren't especially close friends, she hadn't really known April until this year, but that didn't mean she could just sit by knowing she'd been kidnapped.

"You will have to talk to the police," her mother murmured. Her hands were knotted together.

Her father nodded. "Yes. The girl is missing, and her father will inform the police, and he knows she was with you. There will be questions. But say nothing about these green creatures, or the pink ones, either. She was taken by men in suits, that is all."

Miwa stared at her father, stern and implacable, and then at her mother, her head down and her brow furrowed. There was something wrong here, but then the whole night had been wrong, so... "Okay."

Later, after she'd answered all the cops' questions, she could hear her parents arguing in their bedroom. In Japanese, as if she couldn't understand. She crept closer to the door, as quietly as she could, to hear more:

"... what have you been telling her, Shen?"

"Nothing! Stories, when she was small! It doesn't mean anything!"

"Doesn't it?" Her father's voice dropped too low for a moment, then rose again: "... right before everything changed!"

"It still... it still doesn't mean anything! Miwa said the creatures were protecting them..."

Her father murmured something else she couldn't quite catch. Her mother replied, "He wouldn't. He's not that kind of man."

"Wouldn't he? Any man might want revenge, after he lost everything he had. I would!"

"He's not you, Saki!"

Miwa crept away, her heart pounding, not sure if she wanted to know what her parents were talking about.

#

Bo, shurikens, grappling hook, shuko spikes for climbing. Infrared scanners, to help him find the stolen girl. An experimental device that would set off a short-range EMP; Donatello didn't know what kind of technology to expect, but it had to run on some kind of electricity, didn't it?

Of course, that still left the problem of finding her in the first place, but if he could track down the van—

"Donnie. What are you doing?"

He flinched, hunched protectively over his gear, and shot a glance back over his shoulder. Leonardo stood in the doorway with arms crossed.

Bad situational awareness, Donatello. He'd have to do better than that if he wanted to do the kidnapping victim any good, especially on his own. "Nothing."

Leo said nothing, but radiated a cloud of disapproval. He was obviously not leaving until he had an answer. Donnie fidgeted with the leather strap crossing his chest and tried to come up with some kind of excuse. "Look, it's not that big a deal, it's just—"

"You were planning on going after the girl, weren't you?"

Donnie flinched, and Leo sighed. "You know Sensei wouldn't approve. She's not part of the mission, not like the other one."

"I know," Donnie said softly. They'd been sent out on a simple mission—just surveillance, on the dark-haired girl Sensei was so concerned with. Follow, watch, report back. That was all. The red-haired girl was only the other one's friend. They didn't have any orders concerning her. But then the two girls had been attacked, so he and his brothers had launched themselves into the fray, and there was no logic to only protecting one, was there? And the redhead- Donnie remembered how her blue eyes looked, how she'd been about to take his hand, and he couldn't stand that she'd been snatched away right in that moment, when he was distracted for a split second. "But you didn't see her face, Leo! She was scared, and she was looking to us—to me—to help her, and there's no one else to help her!" He took in the expression on Leo's face and gulped. "But it's okay, I don't... I don't want to get the rest of you in trouble, so if you could maybe..." Donnie hesitated. If only it had been Mikey who'd found him. Leo was so serious, so competitive, so obedient to Sensei's orders. He decided to try anyway. "... not... tell him you saw me?" He tried to smile.

Leo stared at him, and Donnie wished he could shrivel in place. "Don't be ridiculous," Leo said abruptly. "It's too risky to go alone."

Now it was Donnie's turn to stare, not sure he'd heard Leo right. "What?"

Mikey popped up from the shadows behind Leo. "You didn't really think we'd let you go alone, right, bro?"

This, Donnie hadn't expected. "Are- are you serious?"

"Duh," said Raph, scowling but there. "Now come on, if you wanna rescue the girl, you're wasting time."

"We're a team," Mikey said, and Donnie smiled, incredulous. They were a team, they'd been trained that way, but they were a team following Sensei's orders.

"So what was your plan?" Leo asked.

#

Splinter waited.

It had not been difficult to determine that his four students had left, and a simple educated guess as to where they had gone: to rescue the girl, no doubt, Miwa's friend. A task better suited to the police.

His ears flattened as he heard entirely too much whispering and shuffling. He reached out to turn on the lights.

His four pupils froze in place, looking for all the world like guilty teenagers. Splinter felt a twinge at that, thinking of the pictures he'd seen of Miwa; and, after all, they were teenagers, of a sort.

This, however, was not the time to war with himself, again, about whether these were his sons or his students.

"What is the meaning of this?" he asked sternly. "Where have you been?"

All four of them began talking at once, an incoherent mass of sound. Splinter cleared his throat, and they fell silent. "One at a time," he said.

Three sets of eyes turned to Donatello. He reddened and ducked his head, but began without stammering, the way Splinter had taught them to give reports. Good.

"We set out to rescue Miwa's friend, Sensei."

He stopped, and shrank under Splinter's gaze, eyes falling to the floor. Splinter waited for a moment before prompting: "And did you succeed in your mission?"

"We did," Donatello said, with a wary glance at him.

Splinter nodded. "Report, then."

They started, then, one at a time, describing how they had tracked the kidnapper's van, questioned the man, infiltrated the facility where the girl was held. A successful enough mission, though rashly undertaken. Each of the four supplied details, and Splinter's whiskers twitched as they spoke of the creatures—alien beings, they insisted—who had kidnapped this girl, for their own inscrutable reasons. Not a chore for the police, perhaps, after all, and it was not as if he had no sympathy for the girl's plight. And yet.

"So you revealed yourself to a criminal, these aliens, and this young woman," he said.

They all tensed, and Leonardo said, "We did, Sensei."

"She needed our help," Donatello said, without allowing Splinter to ask another question. "No one else was going to help her, Sensei, there wasn't time, and she needed—she was counting on us."

Splinter looked into the earnest brown eyes. The others were all trying not to stare, heads bowed respectfully, but their eyes cutting toward Splinter and their tallest brother.

Why was it he was not surprised to find Donatello defiant?

"Hmm," he said, stroking his beard. They had disobeyed, defied their orders. They had concerned themselves with something that was none of their affair, and risked themselves and their secrecy to do it. They had fought together, admirably enough—Splinter had not missed that they had all gone, although Donatello was the spokesperson. Unusual, and pointing to him as the instigator, as well. "You took a grave risk, and disobeyed me. You know you are not to go out except at my order."

Four sets of eyes fell toward the floor, and four sets of shoulders stiffened. "See that it does not happen again," he said, and watched four heads jerk in surprise. "You will report to the dojo for your training as usual, in—" He glanced at the clock. "—four hours. You will not leave without my permission again. Nor will you contact this young woman—"

"April," Donatello said softly. "Her name is April."

"—you will not contact this April again."

"Hai, Sensei," they said, but Splinter knew, even then, that it would not be so simple.

#

Saki taught his classes at Bradford's dojo with less attentiveness than usual. It did not matter, really. These were dilettantes, young men who cared more about pride and "fitness" than about the art. Such men would never have been allowed into the dojo of the clan, in his youth. But they had money, and paid for the lessons they drifted in and out of, and their money put a roof over Tang Shen and Miwa's heads, so.

But his mind was elsewhere, thinking of kidnappers and green creatures who could not possibly be spirits out of folk tales, and once his classes were done for the day, Saki avoided Bradford and headed down the street.

He found the man he sought in his usual dive. "Xever."

"Saki, my friend!" The Brazilian's smile arced white across his face, and he waved to a chair. "Take a seat. What can I do for you?"

Saki took his chair. He had done a job or two for Xever, jobs that Tang Shen did not need to know about. Xever owed him a favor. And Xever had his ear to the ground. If anyone knew what was going on in this city, it was he. "I've heard some curious rumors lately."

Xever tilted his head. "Oh?"

He left Miwa out of it, as best he could. He told the rest of it, more or less.

Xever took a puff on his cigarette. "Suits. Yes. I don't know about these green costumes you mention, but I hear about this odd crew in suits. There's a man who works for them. Snake. I'll ask some questions."

"One more thing," Saki said. "Have you heard the name... Hamato?"

"Our past catches up with us, no?" Xever's smile was sharp. "I have not heard that name, but I shall ask."

"Or Splinter," Saki said, thinking back to the boyhood nicknames they'd given each other.

Xever breathed in the cloying smoke. "If I have anything, I shall let you know."

"Do that," Saki said. He would keep his family safe, whatever might come.

#

Alone in the house, with Miwa at school and Saki out, Tang Shen had time yet before she must report to her own job at Murakami-san's. She sought out the flat box in her drawer, the one hidden under bras and underwear and stockings, where Saki would never look. She drew it out and hesitated before opening it, thinking of what Miwa had said.

Yokai. Once, she would never have believed such things were anything more than legends. But that was before she became involved in the affairs of the last of the ninja clans. And she had thought, hoped, that she and Saki had left all of that behind when they left Japan. New York was modern and foreign and up-to-date, and no place for myths and folk tales.

But her daughter did not lie—or at least Tang Shen did not know why she might lie about something like this—and Shen herself remembered the yokai. They had frightened her at first, inhuman forms leaping out of the shadows, but then they had spoken, and seemed no more than boys. Strange boys, to be sure, with their green skin and shells and noseless faces, but not so strange, for all of that. They had talked to her and eaten her food and held her baby.

And they had spoken to her of Yoshi, and she had chosen Saki.

The truth was, she loved them both, but the more she loved them, the less they loved each other, and Saki was the one who seemed more willing to change, more willing to leave their dojo and their spirit-steeped forests behind.

Slowly, she opened the box and looked at the photos inside. Herself and Yoshi and baby Miwa. Yoshi and Saki, smiling at each other like brothers instead of rivals. After so much time, Yoshi's face had grown blurred in her memory. The pictures brought him back to life.

They were his yokai, were they not? Or at least, tied to him somehow? But after so long, Shen didn't understand. "What did you do?" she whispered to the photographs.

Yoshi smiled up at her from the photograph, but did not answer.