It was no secret in the Lair that Donatello was building something on four wheels. The first hint was that he made a lot of noise working on it in his lab. The second was that he had been bragging about it and showing it off for months, in between yelling at Mikey to stop touching it. Passive-aggressive and manipulative as the young genius may have been, he was not subtle about his work. And so it was never quite as earth-shattering as he always seemed to think, when he officially revealed a new project.
Leonardo always appreciated the nerd's enthusiasm, though. Donnie was so high-strung, so prone to sudden mood swings, that it was good to see him just plain happy for a change. Leo was always careful to say something nice about his brother's latest creation - though he rarely understood anything beyond its external appearance - since to do otherwise was likely to send Don into a fit of anger. Leo was sure Don didn't deserve that, after the long hours and intense mental effort he invested in projects he obviously thought were important.
And when Donnie revealed this one, Leo was genuinely impressed.
"I call it - the Shellraiser!" Don shouted, as he swept away an enormous tarp to reveal what they had all already seen.
"Whoooooaaaaa," Mike said, and Don basked in the adoration.
"So now do we get to drive it?" Raph asked, completely ruining Don's moment of triumph.
"No," Don said, kicking the crumpled-up tarp away and levelling a contemptuous look at Raph, as though this were the dumbest question ever. "Now you get to learn how to drive it." He opened the driver's door, allowed his brothers to approach the gleaming machine - though not quite to within touching distance - and pointed to something that Leo could not see very clearly from that far away. "All right," Don said. "To start the engine -"
"Donnie, wait a minute." Leo held up his hand, causing Don to sigh, straighten up, and make his why-are-you-interrupting-me-now face. "Why are you teaching us how to drive?"
Don tilted his head uncertainly, indicating he thought the question had at least some merit. "What do you mean, Leo?"
"I mean," Leo said, "what makes you think you're qualified to give driving lessons?"
"Well, I did build the Shellraiser," Don replied, emphasizing the name and giving the huge vehicle an affectionate pat on the dashboard.
"I know, and it's great," Leo said quickly, trusting that the motorized jumble of gizmos and gadgets was, in fact, great. "But that makes you qualified to teach auto mechanics, not driver's ed."
"Who else do you think should teach it?" Don asked. "It's not like any of us have much driving experience."
"That's not true," Leo said.
"Is it true, Sensei?" Michelangelo asked, his eyes huge and sparkling. "Did you really have - a driver's license?"
Splinter hummed thoughtfully, stroking his beard before replying. "Many years ago. In Japan."
"What's it like?" Raphael asked.
"Not as exciting as you might think," Splinter said, in a tone that implied the conversation was already over.
"I mean driving," Raphael said. "Not having a license."
"Yes, that is what I am talking about," Splinter said. "Unless you intend to be an auto racer - which is not going to happen," he added swiftly, as Raphael's eyes lit up, "driving is about following the rules and being considerate to other users of the road."
"But that's boring!" Raphael complained.
"Exactly as I said," Splinter repeated once more. Sometimes his boys were too caught up in their own dreams to listen well. "Now, if all of you are going to insist on driving Donatello's invention, I will teach you how to do so safely. But there will be no speeding, no off-roading, no shenanigans of any kind!"
"Hai, Sensei," the boys chorused, but it was clear that all the joy had just been drained from this fascinating new circumstance.
Driving education commenced the next morning. Despite constant interruptions from Donatello to explain some point of automotive engineering, or simply to call attention to the fine craftsmanship of the Shellraiser and his own extraordinary talent in having created it, Splinter methodically taught his sons how to operate a motor vehicle. Day by day, they covered the accelerator and brake pedal, steering, signals, parallel parking, defensive driving, when and how to yield the right of way, and other important topics.
Leonardo listened alertly, Donatello scrambled to pretend he already knew everything Splinter was saying, Raphael regularly expressed his frustration that the privilege of driving came with the responsibility of following a long list of traffic laws, and Michelangelo was forever asking "What does this button do?", an inquiry Splinter could not answer, since no automobile he had ever encountered before had had such a button.
Over the next several weeks, Splinter patiently guided the boys through daily classroom instruction, during which period the Shellraiser did not move from its spot in Donatello's lab. The first time he turned the key in the ignition, teenage excitement rose to a fever pitch. But he only explained the lights on the dashboard and the perils of dry steering, and then turned the engine off again.
The wheels of the Shellraiser continued to not turn until each son had passed an oral examination on the basic functioning of the vehicle and the rules of the road, as they pertained to New York City. Only then did Splinter allow any actual driving.
Donatello insisted on going first. He had, after all, built the Shellraiser. Raphael beat him in a fistfight for the privilege, but Splinter upheld the younger Turtle's logic, granting him the honor of rolling the Shellraiser off the showroom floor, so to speak.
(Donatello panicked a little when Splinter used those terms. What if he put a scratch on his baby? He was an inexperienced driver. Maybe someone else should go first. When he looked at the choices, though - Leonardo nervous, Raphael grinding one fist into the opposite palm, Michelangelo literally bouncing off the walls - he quickly backtracked and accepted his father's offer.)
(Odd that the brilliant boy didn't seem to consider the option of allowing Splinter to drive the Shellraiser first.)
With excruciating overcaution, Donatello eased his foot onto the gas pedal and piloted the behemoth out into the sewers. Guided by Splinter in the passenger seat - who was alarmed to suddenly realize the vehicle was not equipped with a second brake - he dutifully trundled along the course that had been laid out.
Then each of the other boys did the same. At the end of the exercise, none of them had anything to say. There was no comparing notes on a life-changing experience, no enthusiastic whooping. Just quiet acceptance that this milestone, this rite of passage, was not really as momentous as young people always seemed to believe.
Splinter had rarely seen his sons in such low spirits - not when the pantry was empty at the end of a long winter, not when a battle ended unfavorably, not when they watched the finale of a favorite cartoon and realized there would be no more new episodes to look forward to.
It was disheartening, to say the least. And it made Splinter wonder whether something had gone deeply wrong in his own life.
Over these fifteen years of isolation and hardship, he had thought often of his life as a man. He had always been impetuous. Fatherhood had changed that in him - well, mostly - but it had been too late, and the legacy of his rash actions had caught up with him.
It had even been on a whim that he had bought the four baby turtles, though he had no regrets about that. He shuddered to think what it would have been like, to live alone as a half-rat, half-human monster. His sons had not only brought him companionship and joy, not only given him a purpose beyond sustaining his own wretched existence - remembering no life other than the one they had now, they had taught him much about living gracefully on the edges of civilization, on the margin between animal and human. He did not think he would have survived without them.
Sometimes he wondered about how he had repaid them. The mere fact that they had been with him when he encountered the mutagen had irrevocably changed their lives, had granted them opportunities far beyond the usual horizons of a pet shop turtle. They had known love and family. They had been given an education and access to pop culture. They were capable ninja, and each had discovered and used individual talents. Surely they had lives better than those they would have experienced if Yoshi had not adopted them on that fateful day.
On the other hand, was their home in the sewers not merely a larger, more complex cage than a terrarium? Was their daily life not harsher and more difficult than paddling around a shallow pool, basking beneath a lamp, and gulping down food placed right before their noses? And was Splinter not the warden who enforced this imprisonment, and made it more difficult yet through constant strenuous training, and forbade his sons to truly exercise their gifts in this world?
If the young Turtles - boundlessly energetic, endlessly optimistic, always making the best of the only life they knew - were so constricted and beaten down by Splinter's rules, what were the challenging conditions, amplified by his paranoia and his exacting standards, doing to himself?
It had been so long since he had truly made a reckless decision. Sometimes, his activities felt so repetitive and mechanical that he doubted whether he were still alive at all.
One night, after the boys had gone to bed, Splinter went to Donatello's lab.
Turned on the light.
And just looked at the Shellraiser.