Chapter 12 – The Split

"What's wrong?"

Leonardo peered up past the brim of his fedora hat. It was That Sub Place On 9th. "Nothing," he said with a barely disguised grimace.

"Hey, just trust me, okay? This place is the fucking slam. Hey, look!" Raph pulled his hand from his pocket, pleased at the coincidence. "I even got a coupon."

Leo leaned forward and peered down at it with a suspicious frown. "Mike had a coupon just like that."

Raph beamed wickedly. "Won it from him sparring after practice. Free chips. Booyah." He stuffed it back into his pocket and sauntered towards the entrance. Leonardo grinned at his enthusiasm and had no choice then but to shuffle in after him.


"Go away!"

"Renet. Do we have to have a talk about your attitude? I don't care what the grade cards are saying lately. If you can't conduct yourself in a professional manner... Girl, I demand more respect than you've been showing me lately! That, and a full explanation about what's been going on between you and your little green house guest. RENET! Open this door! Do NOT make me put on the booming scaryface of ultimate power, because I'm telling you, I'll do it!"

"Yeah, so?" she croaked "That stupid face of yours stopped being scary my second term! Anyway, Don showed me that movie. Some great mentor! You completely ripped off the whole idea. You deserve to get sued by the people who wrote that Oz Wizard movie."

"Oz-? Ech, never mind! I'll hear no more of your diversions! Renet, you have ten seconds to open this door and tell me everything that's lead up to this latest-"

"I don't KNOW what's going on down there! And I don't care! I called in sick, okay? They already approved it! Go check for yourself and leave me ALONE!"

"Well, there's a relief. I'd hate to tell the council that you were away from your post without an excused leave when one of your patch jobs tore open. So which moron do you have watching the spheres in your place?"

"J-Jonas..."

"Oh, I see. You'll just trust his fate to Jonas, then? You'll send a duster to fetch your troublesome lover and put things right? Or have you just decided to let him unravel enough of the third spiral that we'll have no choice but to send in the Unweavers to deal with him?" Lord Simultaneous gave a low whistle so lacking in concern as to almost sound amused at the situation. "Oy vey, Miss Tilley. It must have been some fight."

Silence followed. The Time Lord knew that his warning had reached her at last.

The quiet was broken by a round of messy nose-blowing and the abrupt scrape of her chair over the worn stone tiles. Her guilded door opened a crack and his young student appeared, looking down at him almost timidly. She was far less lovely with those tear-ruddy and puffy, unpainted eyes, but infinitely more pitiable. Her hair must not have been tended since she'd taken off her head piece, as it now hung frazzled and unkempt past her pale shoulders. She came out several more steps and clutched her robe tighter around her generous frame, peering down at him and plainly miserable.

"About time," the Time Lord grumbled sourly. It wouldn't do to show her sympathy. She was far too coddled already.

"Amber alert?" she confirmed in a small voice. She lifted her gaze to stare up at the lights mounted in the hall behind him.

"Fraid so, dear. They've already petitioned for right of entry. Just a small force. You'd probably know all of this by now if your comm link had been left open, or if you hadn't been sealed in here feeling sorry for yourself for the past three hours."

"I need to... Gah, I'm so not even presentable. Please, Lord S., Just... just give me a moment." She turned away and slipped back into her room, leaving the door ajar and moving towards one of her dressers with increasingly apparent panic. Tossing open one of the middle drawers, she began to dig frantically for enough clean pieces of her overly-complicated, custom-sewn get-up she called uniform. "Crap. Okay. Maybe a few moments..." A flurry of rejected pieces were tossed over her shoulder, vaguely in the direction of her flamboyant pillow pit.

"Rrr! Piles of suck and lame! I could have SWORN I sent this off to be mended! Gah, I totally know did! Here's the stitches. But it must not have been strong enough... tore right open again. Oh my god. Focus. Shoot, crap!" She let her robe fall away and pool on the floor behind her and renewed her efforts, thrashing and flinging the brightly colored fabrics. She was ironically shameless in regards to her own nudity, for all that she could work herself into hysterics over the pride she put into fashion.

He stood watching her for a moment, mostly for the sake of any spybugs or cloaked recorders installed in the nearby vicinity. Lord Simultaneous never missed the opportunity to encourage the unfriendly rumours floating around as to why he had taken on a nimwit like Renet under his direct tutelage. She would garner less attention this way, if they presumed his intentions for her were purely lecherous. His rivals on the council would be less inclined to meddle in her affairs, whether to sabotage or influence her. He gazed at her and only felt an alien rush of paternal pride. Let them underestimate her...

Then again, she was still wasting time tossing out the contents of her dresser. He sighed. She certainly did well enough on her own to encourage the notion.

"How are we doing on time?"

He tugged back the sleeve of his robe to check the first of the many digital watches he wore on that arm. "About four minutes."

"Oooh, crap-crapcrap!" She whirled away from him to renew her efforts. He fought the urge not to keep checking his watches. Finally she finally reappeared in the frame of the door.

So she hadn't bothered with tights, and wore several very bright colors instead of just one. Otherwise she looked exactly like her usual ridiculous self. He didn't see the need for making such a huge deal, but gave her ensemble an absent-minded nod of approval. "Yeah, sure. You look radiant. Now can we book it, eh?"

"Ready, Lord S.!"

He tried his best to look dubious instead of concerned as he demanded, "Are you really sick?"

"No." Her sniffle made his heart lurch, in spite of everything. "But I am having a super bad day."

"Noted. However, you've decided to be my little trooper and show up for work anyway, yes?"

"Yes, sir."

He cocked an eyebrow encouragingly. "And just how do we plan to do this?"

"By the book," she said softly, looking up through her wet lashes to flash him a glass-fragile smile. "One hundred percent, totally."

"And this book… you will be so good as to actually bring it along with you this time? Maybe even – ehh, open it up and check it now and then, hmm?"

She reached into a pocket sewn into the lip of her thigh-high boots, pulling out a slim silver device and flipping the display open. "It's converted into a Pee-Def!"

Third Earth tech. The work of her troublesome turtleboy shmuck, no doubt. He bit his tongue to keep from lecturing her.

Renet flipped the gadget closed with a tiny 'click'. "Time?" she asked again, knowing he would never tell her exactly.

"Less than twenty seconds."

She gave a tremulous smile, blew him a kiss, and disappeared.

He glanced down at his watch and waited.

One one-thousand.

Two one-thousand.

The stability alert flashing on the wall panel nearby dropped from amber to green.

Lord Simultaneous exhaled slowly and ticked a smile. "Good girl."


"There's no use consoling me," Mike sighed. His shell cell was open and balanced on his plastron in front of him. Sprawled out with his shell on the couch cushions and his feet propped up on the armrest, he was playing DS and talking to Gelica at the same time, multi-tasking like a champ. "My brothers are officially the biggest jerkwads of all time. Maybe not the biggest. I mean, there's Napoleon and Hitler and Saddam Hussein and the Shredder and Simon from that American Idol shit you insist on watching, right? But after all of those guys… there's my brothers. Especially if they don't bring me back any lunch."

He frowned, both at what Gelica was saying and the fact that Link had just died again. "What? No, not that brother. Forget all of that. That was what, last week? Nah, Donnie's the one brother who's NOT on my shit list right now. He's just – I don't know. He's in trouble or something. Well, yeah, I guess he's supposed to be in there telling on the other two. But… I dunno. Something's happened. It's just this vibe I keep getting. Whatever's going on in there, it's nothing good."


"Donatello." Splinter gazed down at his kneeling son, his eyes wide and stricken, watching him. "Why do you hide from me? Why…?"

If the turtle had looked up in that moment, he would have seen such alarm and dismay written on his father's face. But he did not look up, and only heard the disappointment. Huddled in on himself, he tucked his mouth against the rim of his plastron, busy fighting the urge to 'pull into his shell'. Such a ridiculous urge, when they could not! And yet his body still ached to do it, every time he cried. Every time he truly cowered in mortal fear. Now, surely, he had reason for both...

The alarm. He could hear it sounding. That awful solemn tolling...

"I only want to help you. What did I swear to you last night? You can tell me anything – anything!"

He knew that awful bell. This clock, this countdown – it had become a sound of doom to him. One wrong step and it would get louder. The pace of it would climb, until it became a clamoring cacophony. Until… "No!" His eyes flashed up to his father, freshly washed with terror.

"Oh, my son…" Splinter's face beneath his whiskers was positively grey. "You've given me this look before."

"What? No!"

"Yes! I have seen this face on you. In nightmares, maybe… no! I have seen this look on your face before. I feel it!"

"No!" the terrapin gasped, recoiling from his father's grasping claws. All around him, the bells began to strike like thunder. "No, please master! No!" Don couldn't help it. He pulled in, locking his arms around himself. He was rocking now, quaking in fear.

"Do not leave us again! Wherever it is that you go. My so—"

"No, no, no…" Donatello dug his knuckles into his eyes, but it was too late.

With ice-cold certainty, he knew that time was standing still.


Leonardo dropped into the booth opposite Raph and began to pry the plastic top off his overpriced box of salad. After a moment he looked up defensively. "What?"

Raph seemed to realize that he had been staring in dismay at Leo's order. He shook his head and looked down.

Leo blew out a sigh and reached for his plastic bag of non-biodegradable cutlery. His words held the drone of a pre-composed speech. "It's my decision, Raph. You don't have to follow my ideals, or even like them. But if I—"

"I don't like it," Raph interrupted gruffly, right before stuffing his sub into his mouth and taking a huge bite. Then he continued, "Wah' know wha?"

Leo stared across the table dubiously, waiting for him to go on. After a moment it became clear that Raph wanted an answer out loud, so he quirked his lips wryly and intoned, "Go on and tell me. But I should warn you, whatever point you're about to make here, it's going to be hard for me to take it seriously."

"Yeah?" Raph's eyes flashed with new offense. "Wah zat?"

"Well," Leo explained, punctuating the word with a soft pop of cellophane before extracting his knife and fork, "there's an awful lot of sauce on your chin, for one thing."

Raph relaxed and flashed a grin. "Then lemme take care of that for ya'. Cause this is serious, all right?" He made a show of scrubbing his chin with the heel of his palm. This didn't really take care of the problem so much as smear it around.

Leo considered handing his brother a napkin but decided to let it slide. "Okay. So what's the problem?"

His large hands gestured emphatically. "Sciccano's triple-layer meat lovers pie! That's what I'm talkin' about. You and me! We always – " His voice cracked with true regret, right in the middle of his boisterous delivery. Then it was back to friendly, gruff-natured grumbling. "You and me useta destroy those things..."

Leonardo's smile softened at his unexpected sincerity. "Two or three, if we had the cash."

"Easy!" Raph agreed. "And Don and Mikey… I can't share a pizza with those clowns! They got no regularity. Always wantin' somethin' different, askin' for crazy mushrooms, or - or alfredo sauce…"

"You say that like it's a dirty word," Leo laughed.

"On a pizza?" Raph sneered as he hefted the meatball sub for a second bite. "Fucking should be."


"Donnie…"

A gentle hand was shaking him.

It was her perfume that finally broke through to him. "Everything's totally better now, Donnie." she was saying. He pulled out of his huddle, his face ashen. She reached to help him, but he quickly scrabbled to his feet on his own.

"Better?" he repeated. His heart was still hammering. The bells, they had just stopped.

"Yeah, I fixed it. No sweat."

"By yourself?" The rush of adrenaline, and perhaps standing up so quickly, had left him feeling light-headed. He didn't notice when her eyes narrowed. He was taking in her mismatched clothes, utterly confused by them. For as long as he'd known her, Renet had always been an 'every hair in its place' kind of girl. "Ren—what on earth are you wearing?"

She drew back a fist and punched him in the face.

It didn't really hurt, but still he staggered backwards in surprise. All at once he saw her angry, bloodshot eyes. Understanding struck him harder than any punch from her ever could. She had been crying. Oh, no…

"Asshole!" she huffed, rubbing her fist bitterly.

"Last night," he realized slowly. "You were listening in on us."

"Like I had a CHOICE, right? Cause you have such a killer track record when it comes to little these heart-to-hearts with Splinter. Oooh… Donnie, I cannot even LOOK at you right now! We have won the right to reset. You can take back up to thirty-two seconds. You have ten minutes to prepare for re-entry, it had better be flawless, and if you have anything else to say to me you can just talk to the hand because I am SO GONE!"

Donatello didn't dare dismantle what little calm he had mustered by trying to apologize now. "You know I won't need that much time," he called after her, shame-faced.

It was true.

"It's just so embarrassing," he was explaining softly, precisely four minutes later – or twenty-two seconds ago, depending on the clock.

"I only want to help you. What did I swear to you last night? You can tell me anything – anything!"

"Father. You felt it, when I came back just now. Didn't you?" He looked up at Splinter earnestly through a fresh blur of tears. "I've always figured… that you could probably feel it."

"Yes," Splinter faltered. "I felt – something. Though I have never been certain. Never enough to speak of it."

"Well, now I'm telling you. Okay? You can be certain," he explained, speaking carefully. "Whatever you were feeling, you were probably right! I have been leaving." Like always, he wanted desperately not to lie. Every word was technically true. "Not just at night. At the most random times, and I haven't told anyone. I'm so sorry, father. Even just a moment ago, right in the middle of our counsel - I had to leave. I had no choice. I had to speak with Ren."

"And – you know, the more I think about it, they're right. Everything they've been saying about me – everything they're going to say. Being smart doesn't necessarily make me a good teacher, sensei. It's too much pressure. I'm not assertive by nature, and whenever I try to be, I only come off as nagging and petulant. I've been so distracted, throughout the whole lesson. I have NOT fulfilled my duty to you, and I'm no longer sure that I can! The more I'm made to try, the more seriously I doubt my ability to teach them anything. Especially not whatever it is I am supposed to have learned, from – from my so-called experience…" All of this, at least, he could say in a low voice of passion. Truer words were never spoken.

But Splinter cut him off with a shake of his head. "Donatello. Why did you leave our counsel? What happened?"

"Oh." Donatello's shoulders slunk back a little. After a moment's delay, he responded, "Renet overheard my whole 'girlfriend' dilemma. And now she's solving that problem for me by, you know - breaking up with me."

True enough, anyway, he thought sadly, looking down at the floor.