A Father's Lament
Disclaimer: I don't own TMNT; otherwise I wouldn't have to write a stinking disclaimer!
Master Splinter's POV
My sons are gone. After all they have been through in their young lives, they finally fell, murdered by Karai, scion of our sworn enemy, the Shredder. Once again, I have lost my family to the Shredder, only this time, indirectly. Karai was not the true Shredder. The true Shredder was exiled when the Utrom race finally caught him. We thought our problems were over. Wrong. Karai was faster than her adoptive father, but we had thought she had some concept of honor. Wrong again. That mistake cost my sons their lives.
I lost Leonardo first. I will never forget that night. Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael entered the lair, their faces ashen with horror. In their arms they carried Leonardo's broken, bloody form. It turned out that Karai had attacked, in force. According to what Donatello was able to tell me, it was hundreds against just the four of them. Leonardo had faced Karai once again, and would have probably won if the Elite Guard had not come in. So distracted was he between fighting Karai and trying to look after his brothers, he did not see the katana that would rob him of his life.
Satisfied, Karai and her troops left. Apparently, killing Leonardo had been her main goal. She did not care if the others wee still alive, figuring that the turmoil caused by my oldest son's death would be enough to destroy us all. In a way, she was right.
After Leonardo fell, Raphael's outbursts increased, and his restlessness level skyrocketed. He began disappearing for days on end, and none of us would hear from him. When he came back, he always had some new wound to be patched up. He was the next to go.
That night, I lost two sons in one blow. Raphael was not killed by the Foot; his blood stains the hands of the Purple Dragons. He and Michelangelo were topside to fetch something or other, and together because it was not safe to go alone, and they were attacked by the Purple Dragons. Raphael took a bullet for Michelangelo, and my youngest son froze at the sight of his brother's dead body. That made him an easy target, and that was when Michelangelo, my youngest, most innocent son, was taken from me.
Donatello and I waited for them to return, and when they were still gone at 11:00 at night, we set out to find them. It did not take long. The sight was dreadful, and I myself felt rather faint. I believe that the sight of his brothers' dead bodies so soon after Leonardo's death was too much for my logical son, because something in him broke. He became somewhat darker in his moods, and he focused more and more on his training. His gentle nature was vanishing slowly.
Finally, after two or three years of Donatello becoming less and less like himself, my logical son left one night, and never returned. When I went to look for him, I found the Foot clan in chaos. Many were dead, Karai among them. I soon learned that my son Donatello had attacked in the night, and there had been an almost epic battle between himself and Karai. They killed each other. As well as Karai, Donatello took almost two hundred Foot ninja with him that night. I had lost my sons.
As I write this, my hand shakes, and I hope that anyone else who is unfortunate enough to lose their family in this manner can keep the pieces of their broken life together as I failed to do.