True Forces Chapter 12
April was not at all sure what she thought she was doing. Her mind was filled with thoughts of Casey Jones, out there by the barn and up against Tatsu-The-Killer-Ninja and God alone knew how many other Foot Clan types with a single goal in mind - that being to do Casey Jones in permanently. She had Don's bo up, and she ran, not bothering to dodge puddles or mud slicks as she raced for the barn, a one-time haven of peace and privacy, all those many years and summers ago when life had been simple -
It astounded her that she saw none of their enemies. She had no idea how many Shredder had brought, but the number would have been fairly substantial - Shredder always stacked the odds in his own favor.
It had never done him any good, not to date. Maybe Leo and Casey got a bunch of them. She wasn't counting on it, but her hopes rose some, when she saw Raphael squaring off against Shredder and Leo climbing to his knees nearby. Raph and Shredder were one on one, and there wasn't anyone trying to sneak up on Leo while he was down, no one watching from the sidelines.
She kept running, passing that battlefield, looking for Casey, somewhere in the vicinity of the barn. It was dark, when there wasn't lightning, and that fitful and brilliant illumination functioned only to keep her night vision at bay. She rounded the front of the barn and stopped, just long enough to listen through the rumble of thunder and identify the sounds of a fight coming from inside.
Her heart was pounding. How am I ever gonna see those guys in the black? There's no lights that work out here! But then again - they won't see me coming either. And I know this barn, and so does Casey, he's been working around out here with Don...
Surprise, Splinter had said, would be her advantage.
There were things here Casey could use as weapons, old gardening tools, rakes and hoes and the like, and besides that a pile of solid oak and maple branches, cut and trimmed, which Don had collected and prepped and put in here to age and dry properly, intending to manufacture a half a dozen or so new bo. Casey would remember. Casey was an improvisational wizard, and he had a mean streak to boot.
But Tatsu had tangled with him before, knew better what to expect from Casey Jones, and Tatsu had skills and experience and a sincere desire to kill that Casey would be hard pressed to deal with -
April slipped inside the barn, scanned the darkened area and found a couple of Foot poised with their backs turned to the door and the sudden attack she launched at them with the bo. They both went down, taken unaware by the sneak assault that had Donatello's training and a flood of her own adrenaline behind it. Hit 'em once, hit 'em hard. She would remember to thank Don for the advice. Hopefully they were down for the count.
She turned her attention into the depths of the barn. Her eyes were adjusting and she found the motion she was looking for just as Tatsu dealt out a kick that sent Casey slamming back against the side of a horse stall. Casey lost breath with a grunt, slipped groundwards a few inches, and he caught Tatsu's foot when the follow through kick came, pulling it out from under his opponent and bringing Tatsu down to the ground with him as he did so. They grappled and rolled, only for the moment it took Tatsu to find leverage enough to flip Casey over, and slam him to the floorboards, judo-style this time, taking more breath out of him, rattling bones and bruising flesh with the force of it.
Tatsu knew all about hitting hard too.
Danny had told them how he'd once accidentally killed a kid, bare-handed, with a single blow.
They were both bruised and battered - Casey had a trickle of blood running down the left side of his face, leaking from a cut above that eye. Tatsu bore a dark smudge across the opposite cheek. They had both scored points, but Tatsu's had counted more -
Casey was moving slowly, stunned, trying to crawl aside as Tatsu climbed to his own feet, readying another attack. April moved.
"Hai!" she yelled, and hit Tatsu behind the knees with the lower end of the bo, taking his feet out from under him again. She vaulted and spun, brought the opposite end sweeping down to strike the side of his head while he was still falling.
She wasn't quick enough. Tatsu was faster and more experienced and blocked the downward sweep with one arm as he took her legs out from under her with a slashing kick. She hit the floorboards jarring hard herself - she rolled, Donatello-taught reflex again, and got out of the way of the chopping blow that came next.
Panic occurred to her - she was outmatched, beyond doubt. She still had the bo, and rolled with it another yard before even attempting to come to her feet and get it up. She did, with a firm double-handed grip that still proved pointless.
Tatsu got both of his hands onto the weapon too, and yanked it from her tightened fingers, flinging her sidelong into the boards of another stall. Pain shot through her shoulder - it felt as if she had just about dislocated it - April pivoted, putting her back to the stall as Tatsu growled at a guttural, triumphant noise that brought the fine hairs at the nape of her neck up with a cold tingle. He sounded rather like one of the Turtles, but the sound frightened her in a way that the Turtles never had.
There was no real reason at all for the Foot Clan to preserve her life - Tatsu was hardly in the mood to negotiate either.
Donatello's bo was up again, in the hands of a skilled and knowledgeable enemy this time, and there was nowhere for April to go to avoid the lethal swing that Tatsu was about to make with it.
Casey Jones intercepted it with a violent body check.
"That's my babe, Tinkerbell!" he yelled, taking Tatsu down to wrestle with a ferocity she'd never seen out of Casey before.
April scrambled out of the way, with her mind racing. Goddammit, I just gave Tatsu a weapon where the hell did Don stash those other ones if I can get one to Casey then maybe -
Maybe Casey could have a chance. And she could pick one out for herself and make it two against one, but she couldn't recall what had happened to that stack of unfinished weaponry, where had - the loft!
She went for the ladder, started up it with her shoulder joint protesting the climb. But it was so damn dark! She crawled, feeling her way around, growing desperation driving her incautiously across the rotting boards - there were gaps, and weak points, and she didn't know where they all were. Her pantyhose were in tatters, her knees were full of slivers. She had broken several nails and hardly noticed before she finally found what she was looking for.
Her hand hit the pile of wooden bo and sent them rolling across the dusty loft.
She picked them up, as many as she found inside arm's reach, and went for the edge of the loft with them, bringing the battle into view from the high vantage.
The fight was all in Tatsu's favor. He kicked Casey backward again, landing the blow in the pit of Casey's stomach and leaving him writhing on the boards. Tatsu straightened, recovered the bo that he'd lost at some point and approached Casey with it again, his own shoulders heaving with the effort he'd put into taking Casey down.
Her eyes widened in horror. This time, Tatsu would kill -
What would the Turtles do?
Jump.
It was something she'd done from the loft a thousand times, and never been afraid - loft jumping into a haystack with her cousins while her grandparents had been working elsewhere had been a favorite pastime. But there were no playful cousins and no haystacks this time, nothing to cushion such a leap except for...except for Tatsu himself-
April gathered herself into a crouch, kept one bo and sent the rest clattering over the edge to distract her target.
Tatsu spun at the disturbance, took a half second to identify the source. She used that half second, and launched herself from the loft's edge with the bo held between her two outstretched arms. "Banzai!" she screamed. "Casey!"
The horizontal length of bo caught Tatsu under the chin as his head came up. Her falling weight took him right down to the boards. Her knees drove into his abdomen on impact and his skull hit the floor with a crack. April let go of the bo and somersaulted past Tatsu's head with the momentum, coming to an awkward sliding halt not too far from Casey. Her shoulder was afire as she clambered to her feet again, expecting another hostile attack. But Tatsu wasn't moving. Sprawled on his back, he lay immobile where she'd left him. It took a minute for the fact to register, that she had actually stopped him.
She staggered over to Casey, fell to her knees and hauled him up into a relieved embrace. He was blinking at her and at Tatsu's stilled form. He must have seen what she'd done.
"Didn't know you were an escape artist or an acrobat babe - " he managed to say. "What circus did you pick up all this stuff from?"
"One with the same sideshow you've been working," she replied, reaching up to touch the bloodied cut on his forehead. "We've gotta start using a net though, I think."
He smiled at her, and pulled her down into a kiss. "Gonna get you a kissing booth instead."
He never quit. She was still panting, trying to catch her breath. "You got yourself a deal, Mister. But the circus ain't over yet." She let Casey pull her to her feet, and she recovered Donatello's bo.
Casey picked up a couple of the others, checked to see if Tatsu was still breathing. She was relieved to find she hadn't actually killed him, deadly dangerous enemy or not. The very idea appalled her.
"Got a hard head, Tinkerbell does," Casey commented. "Let's get outta here, babe. Gotta find out what Shredder's up to."
"Fighting with Raph, that's what he was up to a few minutes ago." April felt another chill run down her spine. Raphael was dealing with Shredder alone. "Com'on!"
All of the Turtles together had not been able to defeat Shredder the last time they'd done battle.
It wasn't over yet.
~o~
The area around the side of the barn was wet, as everywhere was wet after the downpour, but it was even more slick because it was mud and not just grass along that particular wall.
That was where Raphael found the battle, Leonardo and Shredder locked in mortal combat, reliving a scene that they had enacted before on a New York City rooftop. It had rained that night too. But there hadn't been the lightning as there was now, illuminating the combat with macabre, stroboscopic effect. The mud was a liability.
Raph was there in time to see Leo's footing go amiss, a slippage in the mire that brought Shredder's bo into hard contact with the back of Leo's skull, stunning his brother to his knees, sending him groundwards.
"Shredder!" Raphael screamed his enemy's name as he hurtled across the unkempt lawn, closing the distance fast but having to distract the killing blow that Shredder was preparing to send after the crippling one.
It worked.
Shredder's eyes jerked up at the impossibility of Raphael's presence outside the farmhouse, his gaze wide with hatred and surprise. There was fear there as well. Fear that if Raph was out here, then just maybe Splinter was too.
The lethal stab downwards was redirected at the last instant into a block meant to deflect Raphael's hell-bent charge. But Raphael didn't stop, he didn't even slow down and Shredder was bowled backward into the mud as the enraged Turtle collided with him.
One of Raph's sai was locked onto the bo. Shredder grappled with him, a moment's wrestle that brought Raphael's face close to the faceplate.
"Guess who?" he hissed at his enemy, using the same dangerously soft tone with which Shredder had greeted him only a short while ago down by the pond. He rolled off his opponent, wary of the blades adorning every limb, the spines a simultaneous defensive barrier and offensive weapon.
It didn't take Shredder any longer to find his own feet. He set himself again to fight, and Raph could see the fierce hatred burning in the eyes that watched him.
Raph remembered his own rage, for Leo, for Mike, for everything that Shredder had ever done to them and to their friends, but most especially for Megan. He understood then, just what Splinter had been talking about.
The glowering rage in Shredder's eyes confirmed it. Anger, turned inwards, was an unconquerable enemy...if turned outwards, then what?
'As you increase, his arsenal,' Splinter had said. That and 'It is unwise to anger Raphael -'
Splinter had taught and trained them to listen. Trusted them to be listening when he spoke. Raphael had heard him, Raphael understood.
He had spent the last year putting his anger under control. He had thought, until now, that he had learned to leash it because it was a detriment, and loss of the control would only lead him to mistakes, possibly lethal ones. He had learned to control the anger, he could channel it now. Channel it outwards-
Splinter had loosed him from the discipline, given him a weapon powerful enough to counter whatever emotional forces Shredder was tapping. 'Remember your anger - '
He let it go, that anger more than enough to match whatever was driving Shredder, and he snarled in response to the vicious gaze. He had noted the fearful reaction that Splinter had aroused with his own hissing, and Raph wasn't at all adverse to employing the same tactic to unnerve this antagonist.
The two combatants closed. Raphael kept himself between Shredder and Leo, and drew the battle away when Shredder finally engaged him, heading toward the barn, putting the obstacle of a solid wall at Shredder's back and reducing his options. They fought silently. Gone was the small talk that Shredder had given them in other battles, both the compliments and the insults.
To kill was the only goal they shared in the hostility.
Something was different. Raphael found he was able, easily, to counter every move that Shredder made, blocking and striking with a fluidity that he didn't stop to question. He didn't tire, found strength and speed without looking for it and the anger...the anger just grew -
Finally, Raph managed a kick that sent his foe crashing back into the side of the barn. Raph got both sailocked onto the boagain. Like lightning, he twisted them, each in an opposing direction, and the rotational energy tore the bo from Shredder's hands.
The maneuver cost him. Just as Leo had a few moments before, he lost his footing on the slick ground. He stumbled forward, and used the additional momentum to drive his head into Shredder's abdomen. Shredder lost breath, but used that proximity to bring one knee up in a motion meant to eviscerate him with the blades of the shin guard. Had Raph been human it would have worked, but the high-tech armour was pitted against that which one hundred and seventy million years of natural evolution had provided for Raphael, and the shell prevailed.
Raph took some damage, as the blades penetrated the surface of his belly plates, cutting a number of shallow grooves there that served only to enrage him further.
He dropped one sai,freeing his hand to catch Shredder's left wrist as his opponent prepared a slice to his throat, and he began to crush it. Shredder's eyes reflected the pain of the grip, but his right arm was up, high and moving into the arc of another blow that would bring the long blades of that gauntlet straight down and into his throat from another angle entirely. Withdrawal into his shell was no defence from that; the blades, point-on, would likewise penetrate his skull, driven as they were from the higher, preferred offensive position.
Raph saw it coming and met the descending fist with a sai, his sole defence from the inferior vantage there on his knees.
The weapons struck, a direct head-on collision of force and a metallic shrilling, plain steel and exotic alloy grating to draw sparks as Raph's sai caught the double blades, halting their deadly descent. The twin lengths were seized between the triple prongs of the sai, and the contest was instantly transformed into one of brute strength between the two limbs wielding the locked weaponry.
Raphael's fury translated into power. He pushed Shredder's arm back incrementally, at the same time increasing the pressure he was exerting on Shredder's other wrist. He was growling, his voice rising steadily. Then Raph let loose with a howl of rage, drowning the agonized cry that escaped Shredder when the left wrist gave and the bones there slipped their tendons, disabling that limb entirely.
Shredder's body jerked once and went limp, and the sai slammed the right arm backward, the force in the sudden freedom of motion sufficient to drive the sai deep into the barnboard and pin the double blades there, embedding them lengthwise deep into the wood between the prongs.
Shredder was pegged to the wall.
Raphael had never felt so powerful.
His senses were alive, on some hitherto unknown, unsuspected level. He was high on the triumph, drinking up the power as it coursed wildly through him, potent and voracious.
Nothing could stop him.
Raphael threw himself back, evading further anticipated kicks from the shin guards, turning and scooping up the sai he'd had to drop to break Shredder's wrist, taking several wide strides and spinning again, intent now on taking Shredder out permanently. Taking him out, now, while he was still pinned against the wall and unable to escape -
Shredder was sinking into shock, but read the intent in Raphael's eyes and doubled his efforts to pry the gauntlet loose. He did not have time.
Raphael's arm came over hard and fast with the sai in throwing position and just about to leave his fingers when someone tackled him sidelong, taking him down into the wet grass in a skidding tangle of limbs.
"Raph! No!" Megan screamed.
Megan? Megan?!
Rage overturned into confusion, then sprang back to fury. Raphael threw Meg over onto the ground, sought his feet again, Shredder still his immediate goal, before he could escape, before he could -
Raph was stopped there on his knees as Meg came clawing after him, one hand locking fingers onto the leather of his waistband, and the other hand clamping onto the upper rim of his carapace, pulling him backwards -
He saw that Leo was up on his feet and holding Shredder in place now, with one katana pressed to the throat exposed under the lower edge of the faceplate - a completely unasked for and unwanted intervention in his kill...
No. Leo wouldn't dare -
The fury detonated, went in all directions.
It was the worst possible kind of betrayal. Shredder was his! He would break Meg's arm if she didn't let go and Leo had just better get out of the way or -
But Leo was standing off slightly to one side - he could still toss the dagger, he could still -
His shoulders were heaving with pent rage. He had the saiup again. Megan let go of his carapace and dragged instead at his arm, spoiling his aim for a second time...
"No, Raph! Stop!" She shouted again. "It's over! Put it down!"
"Why?" he raged back at her, tossing off the hand that was holding his throw in check, and spinning to tear her other hand from his waistband and twist it up brutally. "Dammit Meg! I could have killed him by now!"
What was she doing?! He would end it, end it now and forever, kill Shredder and - just who did she think he was going to do it for!?
"Raph!" Her eyes were full of alarm "Listen to yourself! Raph!" There was pain reflected there too. She was no match for him. He was dominant here, and the realization fed the voracious power. Raph tightened his grip, because her meddling was no less heinous a betrayal than Leo's and he wanted to break -
"I could have killed him!" Raphael was shaking, had nowhere for the rage to go. He wanted to shatter something, wanted to give in to that raw need for destruction, did not want to be stopped, the victory was his, they were not going to take it from him, they were not -
"And gone down to his level?! Snap out of it, Raph! You're not a killer! That's not you, Raph! Stop it!" She fought to free her arm, could not, and she started to pound at his chest plates with the other hand clenched into a fist. "It would have been murder!"
He stared at her, had scarcely heard, but something about the word 'murder' slowed him down, made him take note of the naked fear in her eyes. That wasn't the way she'd looked at him before, not what had been there, not for - not for him...
Raph rose slowly to his feet, suddenly cast her off roughly into the grass and backed away uncertainly. He kept staring at Megan as chilling doubt crept up his spine.
He spun then, fell back onto his knees, and drove the sai into the rain-soaked earth double- handed, venting the fury and drawing in one great racking breath that became a sob on exhalation.
"No!" he moaned, realizing, knowing, to the very depths of his soul what he had just about done. The knowledge eroded the sense of power, dissolved it abruptly and plunged him from that great height into a cold, empty abyss. Murder.
Murder.
What he'd wanted to do. Wanted, with a passion that he now couldn't in any way deny.
No, no, no...
"Meg, it'll never end...never!" It was despair now, as deep as the rage had been powerful.
He'd wanted to hurt Meg -
And she had seen it, knew now what he was at the core and it was nothing better than what was pegged to the wall over there and -
Meg came down behind him, let her arms go around his shaking, heaving shoulders and whispered his name close to his ear, repeating it over and over until he calmed some. It was the same song he'd heard earlier, back on the dock -
"You come back to me, Raph!" Her voice was shaking, cracked. "You...you just come back and you stay with me!" Her whole frame was trembling to the bone, every muscle every bit as shaky as her voice. "Love you, Raph," she whispered finally.
Very possibly it was the only thing that would have gotten through to him.
Raphael let his head turn, had to look at her, had to see it in her eyes. How could she possibly still be feeling anything like what he'd seen earlier? How could -
But it was there, it was under the tears she was blinking back, it was there...
"Meg -" he breathed her name out weakly.
Her hand came up, touching at his nose again, that oh-so-gentle gossamer contact, tangible and real. "I love you," she whispered again.
He came up off his knees and wrapped his arms around her, not caring a damn for witnesses. Raphael lost himself in the embrace, sank back into the timeless, suspended place where he was safe from the world and the events that had been battering at him with such violence. He took the shelter she provided, while some other part of his mind sorted and re-organized the events and his priorities inside the framework that included Megan McLaine. And when they had both stopped shaking, he took a deep breath and looked over to where Leo was still holding Shredder at sword-point.
"Hey, Leo-" he said, gaze straying back to Meg's face, and his tone one of casual disinterest.
"Yeah?" Leo answered.
"He's all yours, Leo." Raphael told him. "I've got too many more important things to do."
Just let Shredder think about that one for awhile...
~o~
Leonardo had never quite lost consciousness after the last blow from Shredder had sent him down into the mud and the grass...his head had spun and it had taken a seemingly long while for him to gain his feet again. When he did, it had been to find Raphael engaged with Shredder in his place and radiating a palpable killing rage on every level that touched his senses -
He had never seen Raph fight like that before, never felt that sort of heat, not like now -
Raphael meant to kill.
He had intended to get in there, to help Raph out, thinking that between the two of them there just might have been some slim chance of defeating their enemy - a task that all four of them together hadn't been able to accomplish last year. Shredder had been that good, and he still was. And yet, there was Raphael, taking Shredder on single-handed and holding his own...
And he found that frightening. Leo began to worry, for reasons that he couldn't define.
April and Casey had appeared from somewhere around the front of the barn, April with Don's bo in hand and a triumphant look on her face. They'd hurried over to where Leo was standing, watching the battle.
"We'd better be ready to get out of here in a hurry," Leo told them urgently once they were close enough. "We don't know if there's any more of them around...get the guys and Splinter into the van!"
"Got it." Casey said. "Raph's okay? Doesn't need any help?" They both had noted the demonic combat, could hardly have failed to.
April's eyes were wide with alarm.
"No. No, he's okay - get going!" He was more and more aware of the heat coming Raphael, and urgency began to beat at him too...there was hazard here, a danger for Raph that Raph wasn't aware of. "Get the van!"
They went, picking up on the urgency in his voice, with a few backward glances of apprehension. Megan McLaine came racing out, passing them outbound a second later.
She was breathless, and stopped, staring at the fight as well. "Splinter says we can't let him kill Shredder!" she panted. "He can't!" She repeated what Splinter had told her.
Then Leo understood fully. He became more alarmed himself, the danger that he'd suspected clearer than ever.
"If we can..." he murmured. "I'll handle Shredder. You get in Raph's way...be careful, make damn sure he sees it's you. And Meg - "
She looked at him, tearing her eyes away from the fight.
"Tell him...you tell him what he needs to hear."
Leo remembered the campfire, knew what it was going to take to get through. He readied his katana. They both waited, shifting anxiously into closer positions, until Raph had immobilized Shredder, pegging him to the wall with one sai.
And Raph turned, about to fall into the trap -
Megan moved - she tackled Raphael, spoiling the lethal toss Raph had been about to make with his remaining sai...
Leo took himself and his katana over to Shredder, and put one of his blades to the vulnerable throat, keeping well clear of the shin guards.
"You can relax now, Shredhead." Leo told him, as the struggle to release the double blades ceased. "Raphael isn't going to kill you..."
He let the statement trail, let Shredder wonder just whether or not he would. He waited, listening to the shouting from behind him, felt it as the killing fire subsided, quenched in deep depression...
Good girl! She's turned him...
He'd been close, Raph had been.
Close to taking that first step that would have put him on the path to becoming something of Shredder's kind.
Megan reached up and touched Raph's nose. He envied Raph that attention, envied the feelings that Raph was giving over to now - Leo watched from the corner of his eye as Raphael turned and moved back toward the farmhouse with Megan, putting one arm around her shoulders as if it truly belonged there. He was thinking that just maybe it really did.
Shredder was staring after them in mute disbelief.
"Mind your own business, Canhead!" An increased pressure from Leo's katana brought Shredder's attention back to the Turtle that had as much, or more cause than enough to cut his throat. Leo turned his mind to the question of just what to do with Shredder, now that he finally had him cornered.
And as helpless as once Leo had been, under other circumstances. He decided to ask.
"What should I do with you now, Shredder?"
Shredder answered through teeth that were still clenched with pain. But there was contempt in the tone. "You are a fool, Leonardo, and asking fool questions."
"Am I?" Leo leaned forward, putting a bit more pressure behind the katana. "I wouldn't push it, Shredder. I'm not like Raphael."
"No. You are a fool Leonardo, but he is twice the fool for having listened to that girl - Raphael was going to solve all your problems for you, mutant. She was fool enough to stop that. And what he said will now be true - it will never end, mutant. Never."
"Won't it?" Leonardo dropped the katana that was at Shredder's throat and took one wide step back. He raised both swords and spun on one foot, letting the blades fly toward Shredder in a deadly arc. Shredder's eyes widened, seeing his own demise in the motion -
At the last instant Leo flicked the wrist holding the first katana up and caught Shredder's helmet under the rim, pulling it off his head just as the second katana came slicing after the first. Leo lunged, reversed the sword and let the hilt crash into Shredder's skull -
Shredder crumpled, and dangled unconscious from the gauntlet that was still embedded in the side of the barn.
"So there, Shredhead." Leonardo nodded to himself in satisfaction. He reached over and pulled Raph's saifrom the wall, let Shredder slip into the mud at his feet. Then he bent and picked up the helmet, deciding that he had earned a souvenir.
He felt almost as good as Raph.
~o~
The rain had begun again.
It was a warm, steady precipitation now, accompanied by only an odd flash of lightning and a distant murmur of thunder. It was one last indignity to cap the events that had finally left him lying in a mud-puddle, soaked to the skin, disoriented and racked with pain from a variety of injuries.
Shredder was beyond rage, or had thought so, until he'd realized that the mutant had made off with his helmet and face mask, adding insult to the injuries that the other one had dealt out.
The rain had brought him back to his senses, such as they were, and had done the same for a small number of his Foot. Those had found him there, still sitting in the mud, as he had tried to loosen the gauntlet and forearm guard that were strangling his circulation around the broken or dislocated wrist. He gave them the instructions they had come seeking, in a calm, level voice, told them to find Tatsu, told them to find the rest of their comrades. The battle was over...it was time to tally up the losses...
There was a sizable lump throbbing just behind his right ear. That pain was secondary to the smouldering fire washing through his left arm from shoulder to fingertips - a fire that flared up to a bright blaze when he finally managed to unsnap the gauntlet and restore some circulation to the limb. The sudden rush of blood punctuated that fire with hot, stabbing needles that were followed by nausea and dizziness. It was going to mean a cast and a sling.
The rage he'd felt at the loss of the helmet had evaporated quickly. They were still fools, those mutants, all of them, even the Rat. They did not know how to follow through, or they lacked the stomach for it...they left their most dangerous enemies alive. They did not know how to solve their problems, or they were unwilling to, even when the answers were given to them. He did not understand that. Of the lot, Raphael was perhaps the only one that he did understand, because that mutant alone had behaved in a manner that was in some measure comprehensible.
Fools, he thought again, and could only be glad of it, because fools that they were, they had left him alive, and therefore, with further opportunity to pursue the matter...it had not been a lie, what he'd told Leonardo. Raphael had been correct. It would never end.
Not until either he, or they were quite dead.
Shredder eventually picked himself up and made his way to the porch of the farmhouse. It seemed an unreasonably long distance from the side of the barn. More of his Foot were conscious now, more were stirring, groaning with their own aches and injuries. A number had been tranquilized, and would sleep for some time yet. Tatsu had been located, and was still among the unconscious...the lump behind his own ear paled in comparison with the bloodied welt across the back of Tatsu's skull. He hoped it was not too serious - he would need Tatsu, in the coming vendetta, and aside from the need for an ally, he wanted Tatsu there too.
There were few people that he counted as friends, and Tatsu was foremost among them. The hood, it seemed, had learned some foolishness from his mutant friends - Tatsu had been left behind alive too. Casey had also obviously learned a few things about fighting as well.
Because Tatsu was not an adversary easily taken down. Certainly not as easily as that Marshall boy had to have been...
The youth was there on the porch with some of his injured comrades, nursing an aching head with his brow dropped onto his knees. Shredder approached that twin, with a horrid suspicion forming in the back of his mind. His good hand shot down to the pocket, finding the keys still there and buried in a handful of mud.
Still -
The twin looked up when his boots stopped there in front of him, and then he levered himself upright with his back against the wall. The motion was unsteady...the boy was every bit as disoriented as he was feeling himself. There was a livid bruise at the boy's hairline - the skin had not been broken, there would be no scars to negate his value as an identical twin - he attempted an apologetic bow. "Master Shredder - I -"
"Sit down," he told the youth. "Trevor." He tested the suspicion...there just might have been time for the youth to have betrayed them all - he knew where their individual strengths and talents lay.
The boy blinked at him. His eyes were not dilating properly. The disorientation and the nausea were not feigned. It was a real concussion, not a ruse to mislead.
"Devon," the twin corrected him in a whisper. "I'm Devon, Master Shredder - " His knees slipped, and he went slowly back down to the porch boards. "It jumped," he said. "The Rat...it jumped, like a kangaroo - " The boy closed his eyes. "It was so fast - Master, I - "
That sounded like truth. The boy was frightened, stammering out the explanation. He had threatened him, after all. "Silence," he told the Marshall boy. "It no longer matters."
It would be difficult to blame the boy, when every single one of his warriors, and Tatsu, and he himself had also gone down at mutant hands.
"There will be another time," he added, after that. "It is not over yet."
It was only just the beginning...
~o~
He had missed it.
He had slept through it, in fact.
Michelangelo had complained bitterly when he'd finally found out that he'd missed the entire thing. It had come as a huge surprise to come to and find himself back in the den in New York, when he had, at last memory, been putting down marshmallows around the campfire...
Leo had told him to shut up, and he'd done it, hearing the tone, and seeing that Raphael was incredibly upset about something. Raphael had gone all quiet and introspective again. Megan was spending a lot of time with him, equally quiet and defending Raph from any and all approach. Splinter had finally gone and shut himself away with Raph for awhile, had had a long talk or delivered a lengthy lecture or doled out a great deal of advice. Maybe all of the above. Everyone was short-tempered and snappy. Raphael had emerged from behind the closed doors, still moody and brooding, and Megan had dragged his brother out of the den to take him off somewhere else for another private chat.
His own throat hurt, and no one seemed particularly interested. Michelangelo went sullenly quiet himself, and had finally given up asking what had happened because it was obvious that nobody was going to tell him. He had no sooner come to that conclusion when Splinter came along to dislodge him from his comfortable corner, announcing that he wished to speak to them all...
And after that, it still took another half-hour for their Master to get going at it - Splinter had to settle himself, before sinking into a lengthy meditation, something he normally did whenever he slipped into tale-telling mode.
But Mike finally lost patience with it. "So what's the matter with Raph?" he asked. "What happened and how did - "
"Patience, Michelangelo." Splinter interrupted him. "I am about to begin. It is a long tale."
"Com'on - I just wanna know what happened!" he complained again.
"Then you will have to listen." Splinter told him with extreme calm. "Raphael has had an experience that I would have spared him if at all possible, but which I had little choice but to drive him toward. It was a risk that I took, and one for which Raphael almost had to pay the price. I owe your brother a profound apology for that, among other things. He has been, we have all been, very, very lucky." Those statements did nothing to enlighten anyone, unless it was Leonardo, whose head had tilted for an instant and then moved to nod briefly.
"You have all heard me say, many times," Splinter went on. "That anger turned inwards in an unconquerable enemy. You have all heard me say that, and it is true. We have lived with it for some time now."
"Raph?" Mike piped up, always the only one to interrupt Splinter's stories.
"No, Michelangelo, I am not talking about your brother. I am talking about Oroku Saki."
"He's mad at everything."
"Yes, that is true. But mostly he is angry with himself. Oroku Saki - "
"But Master Splin - "
"Michelangelo!"
Mike ducked the swat that Leo made at him only to back into the one that Don launched from the other side. Each was accompanied by an annoyed exclamation. Both the "Shut it!" and the "Can it up, Mikie!" had been simultaneous with Splinter's warning.
"Okay!" he responded quickly. "I'm shut up already!"
Splinter sighed and went on into the quiet that followed. "Oroku Saki fell victim to his own anger, many, many years ago. It has changed the course of his own life, and that of so many others around him, both those who are his allies and his victims. Saki is an unhappy man, and I suspect he always has been. Yoshi and Shen discussed it, a number of times...Saki's childhood and youth were hard, and Shen always pitied him for that." Splinter paused to breathe deeply, and glanced at him, but Mike held his tongue.
"Oroku Saki is the youngest son of an ancient family, a family at the very core of The Foot Clan, which itself is very ancient, and demanding in its codes of honour."
"Honour?" Leonardo snorted, startling Mike, because Leo never interrupted.
"Honour?" Mike repeated the word.
"Among thieves." Donatello elbowed him. "Shut up."
Splinter smiled at the reference. "Honour among thieves. Yes, there is truth in that also. Thieves and assassins though they be, the ninja of The Foot Clan are bound nonetheless amongst themselves by very strict codes of conduct, and Saki no less than the rest. Expectations were high for the sons of the Clan. Still, Saki met and surpassed them...he was, and still is, a very gifted individual. It is just as well that he was youngest - else he might well be Clan Master by now, and his sphere of influence one of global proportions. Here in New York, his powers are limited locally."
"How do you know that?" Leo asked.
Splinter shrugged. "Certain references that I overheard last year while in Shredder's custody. Things that only make sense in particular contexts. To some extent I am guessing in that. But we are discussing Shredder's past, not his present. There was a time, you know, that Yoshi and Saki were very good friends. They were rivals in many martial arts competitions, but they respected one another and often practiced together. They were extraordinarily well matched, and they both benefited from that, honing their skills as they could not have done against opponents less practised. Yoshi, I think, was the first true friend that Saki had ever had, and that only made it so much more painful for the both of them when Tang Shen came into the picture. Especially painful, because it was Saki that introduced them, and Saki that had been dating her first."
"Yoshi stole his girl?" Mike sat up very straight. This wasn't something they'd heard before.
"Stole - " Splinter repeated "- is a very strong term, though doubtless Saki saw it that way. Hearts very seldom do as one wills, you should all know that by now...it is the basis for so many of the books and movies and television you all watch. And lately, it has been under your very noses. Yoshi and Shen fell in love, that is all, and it hurt them both because of the pain it caused Saki. Saki too, had been in love and he had thought that Shen loved him in return. I do not think that he had known much love in his life, and what he'd felt for Shen had been overwhelming. He could only view her preference for Yoshi as a betrayal, and a very deep one. Yoshi's acceptance of the girl was just as bad. He challenged Yoshi for her, more than once, but Yoshi managed to put him off for a time."
"He put Shredder off?"
"Saki was not Shredder then, Michelangelo. He was young. They were all very young, and they made mistakes. One of Saki's was in telling Tang Shen of The Foot Clan. He had hoped to impress her with his connections, but he succeeded only in frightening her badly. Shen's mistake was in believing him so completely. America was Shen's idea. Yoshi would have stayed in Japan, and fought Saki for her if necessary, and he might just have won...he loved Shen deeply and his motivations were sufficient. But he changed his mind when she told him of The Foot Clan and Saki's involvement with it. Shen was frightened and that frightened Yoshi as well. He came to believe that in challenging Saki, he risked coming into conflict with the whole of the Clan."
"Would he have?" Donatello asked.
"I do not know. I rather doubt it. Oroku Saki was a younger and less influential member of the Clan. It was, strictly speaking, a personal matter. It figured largely only in Saki's mind. But he had convinced Shen of the danger, and she convinced Yoshi. Distance then seemed to be the best option. They had all been studying English, and the two of them felt that New York was a haven both far enough away and large enough to offer obscurity. For a time, they found peace. But they had both underestimated Saki's response to their escape. He pursued them. And he found them."
"And we know the rest. What's it got to do with Raph?" Mike couldn't help but ask.
Splinter groaned annoyance. "Michelangelo, you do not know the rest and if you did I would not be telling you the story. Unfortunately, Saki found her alone. Things might have gone much differently if Yoshi had been home. She was very frightened."
"He hurt her!?" Terrible things happened to girls found alone sometimes, in those books and movies and television, just like Splinter had said -
"Not at first. You are forgetting, Saki was very much in love with Shen. He begged and pleaded with her to return with him to Japan. He said quite a number of foolish things, but he meant them all the same. He was, for a time, prepared to forgive all, but she spurned him again, and that was when he lost his temper altogether and killed her with a single blow, breaking her neck. It was the event that changed his life, because he had killed the only love that he had ever known and now would never have again."
"And he's been mad at himself and the whole world ever since?" Even Mike could figure that one out. "But what's it got to do with Raph?" He still couldn't put it together, and even Donatello was looking at Splinter with the same question in his eyes.
"You weren't there," Leo said slowly, from just behind him.
Then Leo started to talk and when he was finished Mike was sitting up very straight and wide-eyed.
"Raph gave her those bruises?!" It just didn't sound like Raph. Mike had noticed the discoloration on Megan's forearm, had thought that she'd just taken some rough treatment from The Foot, like the rest of them had. It certainly explained why Raphael was so upset. "Raph did? But I thought - "
"We have all made too many assumptions, Michelangelo. We all assumed ourselves safe, there at the farm. We were proven wrong. We have all been very lucky," Splinter said again. "And none of us luckier than Raphael."
"Is he gonna be okay?" Donatello asked. "He's having anxiety attacks or something - "
Splinter nodded. "Or something... Raphael is strong," he said. "But he has a keen sense of recall and he was in great danger, for a time. He would not thank me for the observation but in some ways he is rather like Shredder. They are both prone to be rash. And they both have quick tempers . Raphael, however, has learned to control his, to some degree. And he is not so self-indulgent as Shredder either. Still, it was power that touched Raphael, and such powers have an allure of their own. Oroku Saki gave into it long ago and it is an addiction that feeds on itself. Power is not something easily given up, once attained."
Michelangelo traded a very worried glance with both of his brothers, but it was Leo that got the question out first.
"Is Raph...is he still in some danger from it?"
Leonardo's eyes were wide with alarm. Leo had been there -
The show of concern touched Splinter and he smiled at them all slowly and with genuine warmth. "No, No he is not, Raphael has tasted power," he said quietly. "But he did not much care for the flavour, I will say it again - your brother has been extraordinarily lucky...he had something far more powerful protecting him. But I believe we have already discussed that once or twice before. And I hope - " Splinter added thoughtfully "- that perhaps you have all learned something valuable from it."
Leo leaned back in his seat, lapsing into one of his own meditative postures, "The true force that binds - " he murmured, and Splinter nodded sagely.
"Hmm. Love conquers all?" Donatello said, bringing a tiny smile to their Master's features.
Then they all looked at him, waiting for his own comment. Leo and Don had already used up the best ones though.
"Michelangelo?" Splinter finally prompted him.
Michelangelo shrugged and sighed. "Well I'm glad it all worked out," he said. "But I still think that there has to be an easier way to get a girl - "
~o~
It was one of the last things that Megan McLaine had left to do - and the girl had been putting it off.
April was in the driver's seat of the van and Megan was there beside her, sitting in the same passenger seat she'd occupied that first day that they'd met. And again, it was very early in the day, just about an hour before sunrise.
The frenzy that had begun at the farm had endured. It had been one mad rush after another, just trying to get away before The Foot began to recover...Casey and Leo had dealt with quite a few, had tied up a number, had tranquilized some more, and the rest had just been knocked unconscious, some of them by her own hand...and they had wanted to be gone themselves, and gone far, before those Foot had come to again. There had been a record dash out to the barn-Casey had gone with Megan to get all of her paperwork and identification, which fortunately, The Foot had not come across in their initial search of the premises; Megan had tucked the papers into an old cookie tin to protect them from rodent predation and the papers had remained safe from The Foot as well as from the barn mice. Casey had come back with a pair of bolt cutters, and freed Splinter of the chains and the manacles, and then taken the cutters to all the other empty restraints, staging the scene so that it wouldn't look as if they'd all been freed by key.
Leo and Raph had gotten their brothers into the back of the van and reclaimed all of their own weapons. Splinter had disappeared for a moment, had vanished to tie up a loose but very important end with that ringful of keys...
They had explained it all, on the drive back, or some of it. It had bothered April leaving Trevor Marshall behind, even after the explanation, but she supposed that it was better than having the other twin turn up dead somewhere, and she had liked the part about their intention to take The Foot down from the inside. She wished them luck. She would have liked to help them out in that venture.
Something, though, had been seriously wrong with Raphael.
He'd seemed quite himself at first, had kept, moving, muttering obscenities under his breath until everything was done. He had hovered in the back of the van, close to his brothers and close to Megan, who had watched him with a deep concern and a large number of comforting hugs. Splinter too, had been watching Raphael, and eventually the scrutiny had gotten to him, or something had, and Raphael had shaken himself free of Megan and retreated to the furthest back corner of the van. He'd wrapped his arms around his knees and tucked his head into his shell. She had never seen Raphael that upset, and the worry had multiplied when Splinter had demanded that Casey pull over, and he had then taken Raphael off into the bush at the side of the road for a long talk. She had tried to go after them, but Leo wouldn't allow it, and the explanation about Raphael not wanting to have killed Shredder had only satisfied her at the time because she'd been glad enough herself not to have killed Tatsu - it had seemed reasonable.
Still, her instincts told her there was more to it than that, but she hadn't pried it out of any of them yet...not a Turtle, Rat or girl were admitting to whatever it was, and eventually she'd had to put it down to her own imagination, because it wasn't like any of them to keep things from her.
The frenzy hadn't finished there either. The den had been undisturbed. None of the searches, of official or other origin, had ever turned that specific direction but the place needed re-stocking something that Casey and Megan saw to, as her own shoulder had wound up in a sling after a visit to an all-night walk-in medical clinic. Mike and Don recovered, and then there had been one more trip upstate - Casey and Leo had decided they would make one more sweep through the property , as they'd tied up and hidden some of those Foot pretty deeply in the bush, and neither of them had liked the idea that those Foot might not be found. April had checked, and there had been no reports from the local authorities that the farm had been torched, something that she wouldn't have put past Shredder, not after what had happened to her last apartment. Donatello had gone along with them, and they'd all come back a few days later with the majority of their personal belongings, the leftover provisions, most of Don's unfinished bo and all of their hammocks. The Foot had all been gone, had been located by their comrades, or had managed to extricate themselves from their bonds.
The nearly dislocated shoulder had excused April from work for a few days, but those had been spent helping Megan to get her paperwork finished up. The money from a moderately-sized insurance policy was still waiting for her north of the border, in an account that was now legally her own. The arrangements for her chosen courses had been made at a Canadian university, one that wasn't, geographically speaking, very far away, and in fact, much closer than the one she'd originally planned for in the Midwest. Both the bank and the school were things that Megan was fairly certain that Allan Marshall hadn't been aware of, and something too, that she had never seen fit to discuss with the twins. So it wasn't likely that they could inadvertently let it slip while they were still playing dangerous games with The Foot Clan. The money wasn't a fortune, but it was enough to take care of one rather thrifty university student for a few years. April had made a discreet inquiry or two and no one, it seemed, had looked that far afield in their efforts to trace the girl. Megan was very quietly going to close out the account, transfer the funds to another institution and just trust that nobody would try to track it any further than that.
Right now, Megan was in the process of making her good-byes. In couple of days she would be on her way-
This particular farewell though, was likely to be the most painful.
It was the first visit that Megan had made to the cemetery where her parents were buried. At least, it was the first visit since her mother had died...Megan knew the way from the spot where April had parked the van, and had told her she wouldn't get lost.
"I'll come," April had offered. The cemetery wasn't likely to be a favorite haunt for many muggers, but she still didn't like to take chances, even if Casey and the Turtles and Splinter were all out there somewhere, patrolling the premises by prior agreement. Megan's bus was leaving in two days and they weren't willing to start taking unnecessary risks now -
Megan smiled "In a couple of minutes. I won't be long...just give me five?"
It was impossible to say no. "Alright...I'll be along soon then." Five minutes wasn't asking for too much. It. wasn't like the girl was going to break into hysterics or anything...Megan wasn't natured that way. She had already pretty much come to grips with the fact that. her mother was gone, and she had little enough use for pointless sentimental displays. April had talked with Megan, and Splinter had confirmed that she and her mother had parted on good terms - there wasn't much unresolved angst that the girl had to deal with. But the leave-taking wasn't just an empty exercise either.
She remembered her own father, who had passed away just as suddenly - of an aneurism, rather than foul play - and it had still taken some coping...she'd been in university herself then.
She gave Megan the five minutes and then some, locking up the van and following along after at a leisurely pace. It might just have been a lack of preparation at the time, but Allan Marshall had arranged to have his wife buried with her first. husband...or maybe it was something that Melissa Marshall herself had requested. Megan McLaine was standing close to the double grave with her back turned and her shoulders slumped. April approached slowly, not to disturb the girl. But Megan straightened as she neared and raised a hand, maybe to wipe away a tear or two.
"Megan..." April began. "Are you alright?" she asked quietly.
"Oh, April - " Megan's voice cracked as she turned, but it wasn't with grief. Megan was smiling, even through the tears. "How could I not be - look!" Megan pulled her in closer, sweeping one arm toward the area near their feet.
It was hard not to be moved...it was so wonderful to have friends. And even more wonderful yet, because there could be such special friends, no matter how they had come about.
Megan had brought along a modest bouquet of flowers to leave behind and she had already placed them on the grave -
- right in the midst of the five large bunches of wildflowers that had already been placed there first...
~o~