Authors Note: I would just like to say I am amazed at how many people are reading this story! Thank you all for being brave enough to read this weird thing that me and my best friend wrote and I'm sorry if its weird as hell. Please hold you applause until the end and let me know if you like the girls enough to want to see more!
At some point Artemis had woken and was standing just inside the door, she'd been watching with mild amusement and when Tracey beat Leo she too had clapped but something was nagging at her. She retrieved her notepad and sat down in Leo's room to try to order her thoughts on paper but she left the door open and when Master Splinter passed the door he was surprised to see her up, he tapped quietly on the door frame and she looked up. "I am surprised to see you up." He said stepping into the room.
She smiled slightly but he saw it was a distracted expression, he shut the door so they could speak privately, he'd long since broken the boys of listening at each others door. "You look troubled, I would think you would be celebrating, All my sons are on their feet and you saved Donatello though his body may never fully recover he is alive because of you."
Artemis stood and offered him the chair but he declined sitting instead on the rumpled bed. She sat down and fiddled with her pen before speaking. "I've been noticing things since we got here. Aside from the obvious strangeness of us even being here in the first place there's our unusual ability to become a mythological creature at will when Bebop and Rocksteady were totally stuck in their anthropomorphic forms and the boys are trapped in their human forms, I mean even with some modification to the ooze the effects shouldn't be so dramatically different from case to case."
Splinter nodded and let her continue. "Then there's that bout with Leo just now."
"You saw that?" He asked mildly surprised, he hadn't known she was awake to see it.
"I saw it, and no offense to Tracey and her ability to learn fast, she should not have been able to beat him. Not after one lesson with only one or two days of practicing. Not even after having learned some fighting skill with Iolaus and Hercules in ancient Greece. The sword is a ridiculously complex weapon to learn, even the boken." She motioned to one of the Katanas above the desk. "And the Katana is even more complex."
"I see your point." He said and waited for her to finish her thoughts.
"Add to that that I was able to trounce Raph even though he was three times my size, had better reach and outweighed me by a lot. He still has all those advantages but I know with a capital K that I could beat him again. But Master Splinter it has been years since I actually sparred with anyone. I haven't kept up my forms, I haven't gone back for more training. Raph should have beaten me in the first five minutes but when we were sparring I just knew how to beat him." She motioned to the notepad. "And it's not just the fighting and the mutations, I was an EMT nearly ten years ago. A lot has changed since I had my training. Some of it will always be the same, sutures, CPR and stuff like that, simple stuff but before I came here I could barely remember how to calculate blood pressure. It had just been so long and I should have been out of practice but it's like I'd learned it all yesterday and I Knew it. Tracey has changed too."
He leaned forward a little. "How so?"
"Tracey is passive. As long as I've known her she avoids conflict, On a number of occasions I had asked her to call out of work for one of our business functions and she always said no, not because it would be irresponsible to but because she didn't want her boss to be mad at her, or she didn't want to get in trouble or yelled at. And her risk of actually getting in trouble at that point was laughably low. Here she's almost as confrontational as I am, she wants to learn how to use a weapon for goddess sake. In our own world that would have been as alien a concept for her as being a pacifist would be for me." Artemis paused and took a breath. "I'm not saying it's a bad change or that I don't know her anymore but it's still a very drastic change and I wonder if some outside force is responsible for it all."
"Outside force, like one of your Gods?" Splinter asked his mind sifting through the details of what she'd told him.
"Maybe, but I can't feel my Gods here, and these changes really started in Greece but I'm more aware of them here. No, I think this has something to do with the Force that sent us here when we were supposed to go back to our own world. Zeus brought us to Ancient Greece and tried to send us home but Someone else intercepted us and sent us here."
Splinter mulled over her words and considered what he knew of them both. He hadn't known Tracey for all the years Artemis had but he had wondered about her skill himself. He could have credited Artemis's medical knowledge as hers by right of study and practice if she hadn't just told him she hadn't practiced it in nearly ten years. The same with her martial arts skills. "Have you noticed any other changes in yourself or Tracey?" He asked.
Artemis shook her head. "Not really, we've always both been the type to be prepared, Tracey would pack the whole house if I let her when we traveled for our business but I'm the type to be a little over prepared too and I'm a survivalist. I spent a lot of time making sure I had the tools and preparations I needed on hand if an emergency cropped up, Tracey picked up a lot of my tricks over the years for that. The only really strange thing is how healthy she's eating right now." She smiled and have a small huff of laughter.
"What do you mean?" Splinter asked.
"I used to tease her all the time about her eating habits, she ate like a teenage boy. I've seen her eat 6 Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers from Wendy's in one sitting, she can eat two foot long hot dogs in one sitting and her food pyramid has Cheese and Mayo as their own food groups. I'm the healthy eater between us but here she's actually eating the same way I do which is healthy and frequent, I used to get on to her about her habit of only eating once a day 'Your body is a machine, it needs fuel' all that stuff. In Greece it wasn't a surprise since they didn't have fast food joints but here…." She shrugged. "I don't know if it's connected but…" She trailed off.
Splinter nodded. "You have thought of many valid points but you haven't expressed your real concern." He prompted and she blinked in surprise.
"You're right…" She took a breath and looked down at the pen in her hands ordering her thoughts before she spoke. "What happens if we start to rely on this and it vanishes at a crucial moment? I practice magic but one thing I've always been very careful to do is not to rely on it, it's one of the things that always bugs me about super religious types, christian or pagan, they'll rely on the power to the exclusion of the mundane and then they freak out when it fails them. I use magic to augment what I can already do but I always learn the mundane application first. What if the Magic that's letting Tracey be a super swordswoman fails when she's in the middle of a critical fight? We don't even know what or who is giving us these abilities or for what reason but it's not us." She hesitated for a moment then finished her thought. "And on the flipside of the coin, what happens if these changes are permanent? What does that mean for us in the future?"
Splinter looked down at his cane for a few minutes then spoke slowly. "You are in a situation I have never found myself in, or imagined myself in. For all my wisdom I have seen considerably less of the world that you. My concern has been for teaching my sons and enlightening myself, but if there is anything I can be sure of it is that you will not let any lasting harm come to you or Tracey and that you will find answers. You have a sharp and seeking mind."
He stood up and patted her shoulder. She smiled slightly. "Thanks Splinter, would you mind keeping this to yourself? Tracey likes her newfound skills and I don't want to shake her confidence in herself. I just needed to think through this conundrum."
"Of course." Splinter smiled and left the room. Artemis looked at her notes then carefully removed the pages and pulling out a bowl and a pack of matches she set them on fire and let the ashes curl in the bowl before she tossed the remains in the toilet and flushed them away.
She went into the living room and plopped down next to Tracey smiling. "So I heard you beat Leo."
"Hey sleepy head." Tracey replies with a smile and poking her in the nose before tapping her own. "I hope you're well rested and yeah I beat Leo... unless he let me win, but you should have seen it! I didn't know who was going to pass out from exhaustion first." She laughed and pushed matted hair out of her face with another smile.
"I could have sworn it would have been me because he's gone through so much training with Master Splinter... He ha, I still need lots of practice, but I think I'm getting the hang of the Boken swords now. If I can get to the point where my hands don't go numb then I'll be happy." She stated, flexing her hands in front of her face before turning herself bodily on the couch. "I'll have to grab a shower here in a minute, but in the next day or so we should take the boys topside. Master Splinter figured that we should wait until Donnie has had a few days to regain his strength and I think you should take some time to rest too, you haven't slept well since you started watching over Donnie and I need you at a hundred percent so we can figure out our next move from here."
Artemis looked over at Donnie who was typing away on his laptop, he was still laying on the couch pillows behind his head and neck and a heavy blanket draped over his torso and legs. "He's recovering faster than I expected. By tomorrow he'll be strong enough, and I'll have had a full night's sleep. Casey has to go back to work tonight and I don't want any of you patrolling tonight."
She watched Mikey trying to balance on his hoverboard sans shell and Raph was tapeing his knuckles before he started working the punching bag. Leo was in the kitchen cutting veggies and despite being in human form they all looked much as they had before. They knew themselves and their skills and they were adjusting. Tracey noticed Artemis studying the boys and glanced over each of them in turn with a smile. "I know what you're thinking my dear and you're right, they do seem to be adjusting well right now. I just worry that they'll grow to like their human bodies and forget who they really are. They're turtles for a reason and though we and they can't see that reason yet for themselves, it will show itself in due time." She said in a low whisper before standing up and stretching upward. "Well it's shower time and then time to eat!"
Artemis watched her go then turned her attention back to the boys, after a few minutes she got up and went to help Leo cook, he smiled at her and she smiled back before taking over cutting up the meat. For a few minutes she felt as if everything were normal again and she held that feeling close to her, she had the instinctive feeling something was going to go very wrong.