Disclaimer; I do not own TMNT!

Chapter 9: After The Rain, The Ground Is Harder.

After that I never swung the blade directly at Splinter, the side or near his feet, herding him. But never at him. He talked to me about it, said training accidents were very common. That brought about a whole other can of worms with it.

Christmas passed just like the last one. We 'wrapped' the gifts in color coded ribbons and told the boys that Santa had brought them while they were sleeping for being good. Don asked me if they'd really been good, since they had snuck out twice, and I told him that Santa didn't mind little mistakes. And that's what it was, so long as no one got hurt. A little mistake.

After Christmas came New Year's, and we announced that the boys would begin their training in the morning. Not as early as me or Splinter, mind you, but earlier than they were usually up.

"We gets to be ninjas!" Mikey shouted, running around the table with his orange mask on. I was getting tired just watching him. Strange thing was I didn't remember putting any sugar in his dinner.

"We getta train like you and master Splinter?" Leo beamed, looking like he wanted to join his younger brother.

"That's right." I chuckle, giving him a little noogie.

"We're gonna kick Shell!" Raph vowed, pumping his tiny fist in the air. I felt myself freeze, time seemed to slow down and I just heard the echoes bounce into eternity. Kick shell. Kick shell. Kick shell.

Training accidents are very common. They were going to have their own weapons after they mastered the basics. What sort of weapons? Blades?

They would spar against eachother, not me or Splinter. We could dodge their blows easily, redirect any stray weapon harmlessly. They couldn't. What if Raph got too enthusiastic? What if Donnie slipped? Training accidents are very common.

But what was I going to do? Tell them no, sorry, I changed my mind? That wasn't going to cut it. And Splinter would want to know why, and then he'd argue that they had to learn, to protect themselves from the surface.

So time sped back up and I smiled and reassured Don that it was just about hard work and warned Mikey that he'd have to get up early. I shoved the maternal worry deep down, imagining a trunk in my mind just like the recently unlocked one in the living room. I shoved inside all my doubts and threw away the key.

It wasn't healthy, don't get me wrong. I knew I'd have to deal with the very real possibility that one of my children might get seriously hurt. I had to take that fear and make it work for me, make it motivate me, not rule me. I am a lioness and nothing is going to hurt my cubs!

I remembered the early days of learning High Hells, and I remembered sore ankles and many frustrated groans when his cane tapped me, correcting a stance. In comparison, the ease the kids took to walking without a whisper was amazing. Three days.

Three days was all it took for them to use it with effectiveness. A month to use it as though it were second nature. Their rate of progress was amazing.

I say three days and a month, but I don't really mean them. We couldn't train everyday. They were little kids, and as soon as it was clear we had no intention of teaching them complicated katas just yet, they lost interest.

So we'd do a couple days, then they'd taper off. They didn't like waking up early, they were sore, they were bored. They had no shortage of things to whine about and I lacked the patience to deal with any of it. I swear Splinter must be a saint or something. Some days I had to leave the dojo because their constant complaining wore at my ears. He just took it all in stride, or rapped them on the heads when they whined too hard.

So really with us constantly skipping a week at a time, it took three actual months before Splinter was satisfied and we could start on the Way of The Losing End Of A Fight. Seeing them land flat on their shells proved very entertaining. It was good stress relief too, although I noticed I had to strain a bit to throw Raph over my shoulder. He was thicker than his brothers, but it was all muscle.

They had an innate advantage on this step of their ninjutsu training. Their shells could absorb most of the impact and for the most part they didn't even come away with bruises. I considered this so unfair I began ambushing them after hours too. Unfortunately it was a lot less satisfying than I had hoped.

It made me violently sick to see how fast they were progressing. So I began upping my own training. I called this next step, The Way of Screwing With Gravity. As you can probably guess from the title, it put a lot of emphasis on not being on the ground.

I spaced out meter high poles, enough that I'd have to leap instead of step. I went through various katas, kicks, punches, guards, sweeps. Then I leapt for a pole just out of reach. For a single second I was in the air, doing what must have been a fairly impressive split kick. And then that second ended, and I was trying to regain my balance on the pole. I must have done a fairly impressive impression of a drunk flightless bird.

I crashed to the mats, and felt very glad that we had them, though they could stand to be a bit thicker. I pushed myself up, fixed the poles I had knocked down, climbed back up, and tried again. I tried all through my individual time while the kids were busy doing their chores. In a few minutes I knew the tv would turn on, and then Splinter would arrive for our match.

"Are you prepared?" He asked, already starting to bow. I return the respectful gesture before answering.

"Always." With that it's on like Donkey Kong. He darts forward, trying to get in range while my ring rips out of my hand, I'm trying to brain him. I swing it in an arch to follow him, using about one/third of it to chase him while my right hands brings out the other one/third to his other side to cut him off. That leaves just one narrow area for him to reach me, and I'm waiting.

Kicks and flips, use my tail to block his. The whisper of cloth and the whistle of his cane in the air. Duck under his swing, which isn't easy since he's so short, and pop back up with an uppercut aimed for his jaw. He flips back to avoid it, acting more like a leaf on the wind than a ninety pound rat.

Now I'm the one chasing, trying to get him tangled in the cord and hit him with the ring at the same time that I'm advancing and he's retreating. My thighs protest when I try for the butterfly kick and miss by miles. My ring is flying into my hand and I absently twirl it on three feet of cord again, trying to work out a strategy.

I told you that me and Splinter are pretty even in the fights. We're learning more or less at the same pace and spend the same amount of time mastering most of the same things. I even mentioned that I have a few advantages, like height and weight. Well now it's a little less even.

And by a little less, of course I mean a gap about the width of the Great Canyon. Even though I'm sixteen, almost seventeen now, even I get bored of doing ninjutsu everyday. So I haven't been practicing as much as I really should. I grew complascent and only did the mandatory two sessions.

As for Splinter, sometimes it seemed his entire existence was training. I guess if I were a rat man too I would take it more seriously, but I can hide what I am. He can't. So when I go topside I'm visible, and I even draw attention to myself. When he's topside, I doubt anyone knows he's there at all.

So he's improved, a lot. Enough that when he charges me again I don't have time to herd him, I have to step backwards to dodge his blows. I try to curl around the force, use it like a bag in the wind to move myself. I grab his arm in a hold that used to win our fights, but he wriggles out of it like some kind of contortionist, performing things I had only just begun attempting.

He jumps about a meter in the air, up and over my head, bounces off the back of my shoulder, and sends me stumbling forward. I whip around, throwing my blade out and totally forgetting what happened when I hurt him. I don't even come close though, he's already moved. In the two seconds it took for me to whip around he had moved to my left, safely out of the way.

Cord is more flexible than chain, and to a certain extent I can manipulate it beyond simply swinging it in an arch. I can make loops and waves go through it to fling at my target. Splinter wasn't just a target though, unlike the nice training dummy I used for these techniques, he moved.

Up and over what should have been a strong blow, wrenching the weapon from my hands to leave me with only hand to hand when he got close and personal. I duck under his high kicks and throw a feint, trying to move him so I can pick up my weapon again. He isn't fooled and I turn the feint into a light blow, that's all I have time for.

And then his hands flash forward in a blur and I'm flat on my back. I just blink at the cieling. Where did all the pretty lights come from?

"Are you alright, Leola?" He asked, offering me his hand. I accept but wince when I realise I must have pulled something in that frantic whip earlier. My wrist is sore.

We bow to each other, my fists clasped and back stinging as a reminder. I didn't know exactly what he'd done, but it had hurt and I had little intention of coming under fire of it a second time. I started making dinner, fried chicked tonight, and thought over the match. Splinter drank tea at the table and the kids were watching cartoons. The hero hour from the sound of things. Mike loved Silver Sentry.

It was warmer weather now, and Splinter or I began checking the lake out at night to see how often people walked by. It was high time the boys learn how to swim, and I couldn't exactly take them to professional lessons. So nighttime sessions would have to do. Although they'd probably be even less eagre to train in the mornings afterward.

That first trip shed decades off my lifespan. The boys were practically bouncing off the walls and making so much noise I was sure that someone had to hear, had to turn their heads and see my sons and scream. I shushed them at least a dozen times with little affect and I gave up, only looking and praying that we could pass unnoticed with our flimsy disguise.

The boys were dressed in scavenged clothes and caps and gloves. Heavy enough that it restricted their movement, and thus their ability to run, but hopefully enough that the casual glance might not notice anything strange. Even Splinter was dressed for the occasion, in a trench coat and a fedora hat that made him look like a mafia member in Italy.

It was late when we started out, and I was sure that every person had to have noticed how strange we were. They had to see the green skin and fur! It was so obvious!

Like I said, that first trip shed decades. And I had far too many nightmares to pretend we were on a casual stroll.

The park was empty, and I stood watch while Splinter and the boys shed their clothes. He led them to the water, let them play and splash as they were unable to do in our shower. Two in the morning and all was well.

They'd been forced to take a nice long nap earlier so they could stay awake for the lesson. If nothing else, the cold water definitely woke them up. I didn't envy them the swim. I was perfectly fine here on dry land, thank you very much.

No one was entering from what I could see. No cameras hiding, no hobos sleeping on a bench, which made sense. The nights were warmer, definitely, but not warm enough to abandon alleys that could block some of the wind just yet. Another month and they'd be out here, but for now we were uninterrupted.

We didn't have floaties or life jackets. But Splinter and I were keeping an eye on them as they explored the water. Turtles are semi-aquatic, at least some of them were, and the way the kids took to the waves made me wonder again what species they had been originally. I searched my memory but there was nothing, no defining marks that could spell out the name. Not that I would have recognized such a sign, I'm no expert on reptiles.

Mikey took to it the easiest, which he did to everything that didn't require him to sit and think. He had a lot of problems remembering what orders numbers came in, until I showed him how to play jacks. Then he started catching up and surpassing Leo and Raph in maths class. Not Donnie, learning things from the book was where he thrived, but Mike could learn something once he was able to move and do it.

I suspected he had a mild case of ADHD, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. As far as I knew it was used to describe kids who'd rather being on the playground than curled up with a good book.

Behind him came Leo, then Raph, then Don. That had been the way with the ninjutsu lessons too. Mikey was naturally talented in the athletic department, but because he was talented he didn't see much point in continued practice of the same thing. That's why it was so hard to get him to walk with the High Hells method, he didn't see why he had to be able to do it all the time after he did it in practice.

Leo was different. He wasn't amazingly talents, but he practiced and that kept him even with Mike. Even now I saw him doing the doggie paddel again although Mike had only gone through the motions before skipping straight to the back stroke. He had mastered the walking method first, and used it all the time, even when he thought he was alone.

Raph wasn't doing too badly, but there was the unmistakable knowledge that he didn't want to do this. I could see him getting angry and frustrated while his brothers figured it out and he was stuck still trying not to flail out of control when he couldn't touch the bottom anymore. He would get it, once he calmed down and started thinking of it more like a game and less like a challenge.

Don, he didn't leave the shallows. He walked to his tiny waist and splashed a bit, but he didn't want to get in the water. Splinter noticed and talked to him, promising he was safe and that he was there to catch him. It wasn't that Don was scared though, and it wasn't that he wasn't interested.

I wasn't sure what it was, so when he got out while everyone else was getting to the deeper parts, I did one more check that we were alone before I stepped down and took a seat beside him.

"Hey Donnie, want to talk?" I asked, smiling and trying to throw out motherly vibes. It's harder than it seems. How do moms make it look so easy?

"The water's cold." He grumbled, rubbing goose bumps out of his legs. I gave him his purple towel and then pulled him onto my lap. It was easy to forget that the boys were cold blooded, they were affected by temperature. Getting too cold might put them into hibernation. Or something similar at least.

"Better?" I questioned, hugging him tight so he could share my body heat. Our home had a heater, which we would all converge on in the early morning hours.

"Uh-huh." He nodded, snuggling deeper. I checked out that we were alone, all safe. Splinter was trying to stop Raph from drowning Mikey.

"...I'm sleepy, can I sleep now?" Something was off about the way he said it, but I let him, holding him and watching for anyone trying to intrude on my family.

Don didn't say things like 'uh-huh' and 'sleepy'. He said 'yes' and 'tired'. I frowned and tried to figure out why that bothered me. He was a kid, and kids said things like that. I said things like that.

Except this was my genius son who hated bad grammar and loved reading and learning new words. And that stuck to me for the rest of the hour we were there before we slunk off with exhausted children in tow.

Splinter and I indulged them by sleeping with them that night, letting them have our body heat after the cold waters. I usually had Raph hugging me at night, or Mikey. Tonight though Don stuck to me like glue, and I had a feeling he was trying to draw more than just warmth from me.

Body warmth didn't always cut it though, and by morning it was obvious we had three budding cases of the flu. Worse, Splinter was one of the ones to fall sick. Raph and Mikey had a fever too, and I put them all together in the boy's room on the queen mattress to stop Don and Leo from getting sick too.

We didn't have enough medicine to treat them all, and they needed to constantly be drinking water and there had to be at least two buckets by the bed. It wasn't enough. I had to go topside, and find some more medicine. Except money was a bit of a problem, since I had gone grocery shopping just last week I was running pretty low. Street performing didn't bring in much.

We got through times of hunger before though, during our early days. Got through that visit to Japan with the stalker bone ghost. And that was scary. They had even helped me personally get through Felix, helped me realize that being lonely wasn't a good enough excuse to be around guys like him.

Funny thing about hard times, you think there's no possible way to get through them, but you keep trying anyway. Because that's your friend who's sick, your children hurting. So you wait for the storm to pass and then you pound pavement.