A/N: Just another reload, pay it no mind.
37. Epilogue
Tuesday, February 12Because of recent events, I've decided to keep a record of some sort. A journal if you will. It's not like me to let my thoughts wander but if we ever do have children, I'd like them to know of these things.
It has been two months to the day when we defeated Tiquae and the Black Dragon on top of the Foot headquarters. Constant reminders of that battle still prick at my consciousness with unrelenting insistence, Raph's long, white, knotted scar on his right thigh being one of them. I feel a great sense of pity for Master Splinter. Sensei been suffering ever since his tail was shortened about two feet by the Black Dragon's teeth, and it seems some of his dignity has gone with that piece of his flesh. I can still catch Mikey glance in mirth at the foot-long, hairless pink stump that is Splinter's tail.
Don seems to be the only one of us hit harder than Splinter. He's in no physical pain, but the mental sorrow of losing Saesha is quite visible in his amethyst eyes each day. When we got home and he woke up, he was devastated. I think that Saesha was the only friend who actually knew him inside and out. We're all sad the dragons were turned into gemstone figurines the height of a pen. Keilah's (a.k.a. Aireilei) pearlish one stands by a stone pillar to the right of the front door. Her bow is strung, raised, an arrow nocked, her lips parted in a cocky smile. Her wings are outstretched and her tail is curved up behind her back. Ever since she came back full dragon…well, it's hard to express our feelings for that perky kid. Every time Mikey's eyes lock with her unmoving piercing gaze, he gets a haunted look on his face and itches at the scar where she accidentally shot him. I can sometimes spot him fingering the clear arrowhead on a chain around his neck.
Out of all of us, Raph was closest to Aireilei (a.k.a. Keilah). He doesn't show the emotional heartbreak we know he has bottled up somewhere inside that hard shell of his and disguises it was random spurts of "beat-the-ever-loving-tar-out-of-the-sandbag" and other things like "Cooking with Mikey". I've found that Raph has a knack for gingersnap cookies and barbecued steak. Of course, it was only with Mike's guidance that he prepared edible food. Chopping cow meat simply lets him blow off steam and it gives us a great Texas style meal to feast upon. Gingersnap cookies, however, came about as a mystery. He makes them every week now, so we never run out.
The last reminders of our adventures are the dragon parts themselves. We all still have our oddly colored eyes: Raph with blood red, I with bright green, Don with what Mikey calls "amethyst attacked by streaks of silver", and his own, what he affectionately dubs "mellow yellow". Our ears and tails have more uses now that ever before. Time and time again they've helped us during patrols against Purple Dragons and the like. Mikey's learned how to use his tail to press buttons on Don's keyboard when he isn't looking. Raph constantly whips the punching back mercilessly with his and Don's found his is quite useful for closing the door on unwanted guests (i.e. Mikey). The bony fan on the tip on mine gives be a sense of pride, even though most of the torment I get as a leader now stems from it.
The dragons Kiyo, Saesha, Rijinn, and Iwansi are all stationed in their respective rooms. I placed Kiyo's Peridot figure by my pillow, as it makes me feel secure (my teddy bear of sorts, if you will). He's perched upon a stump, standing on his hind legs. His forelegs are stretched out in front of him, controlling a whirlwind before the stump. When last I saw Rijinn, he was reared up and spitting flames out of a Garnet mouth (at least that's what Don says its name is. I'm not an expert on minerals and such). Iwansi, her figurine made out of Citrine, is depicted with her trademark tuft of fluff (it looks like something out of Dragonball Z) hanging over her right eye. Her other eye is brimming with Mikey-like mischief. Being able to cloak herself, she's pictured as half-disappeared already, like she's in the middle of becoming invisible. Strangely, once touched by warm hands, she reappears all the way. Saesha, whose amethyst statue I have not seen since the day we came home from the Foot headquarters, is simply sitting on her haunches with eerie glowing eyes.
I make an entirely new paragraph for Bima because she is unusually unique in that she was rejected from a carrier. After all, a dragon cannot house a dragon. She's pictured as an aquamarine mischief-maker, her body supported twisting through imagined water by a strand of seaweed. Bima's smiling wickedly, her eyes ridges raised suggestively. It is always fun to look into her mocking gaze and be insulted. Raph's yelled at the gemstone dragon several times already, demanding what the shell she's laughing at. Splinter lovingly placed her beside Aireilei's statue, and sometimes places sticks of incense by the two fast friends to lighten the mood.
Oh, and I've forgotten something exceedingly important. Casey and April (wouldn't you guess it) are getting married this very week in our Lair (after, of course, we manage to get all the muckety muck out of the Lair, since the floor is covered with rocks of all sizes)! Casey proposed to her about a month after we got back from 'The Battle' as it's called nowadays. The two are madly in love with each other, it's plain to see. Splinter volunteered (actually, we turtles sort of nudged him into it) to be the pastor for the small wedding service. Mikey requested that the dragons be present at the wedding. Ah, but where is my mind? The wedding is planned three days from now, on Friday. Guess who's Casey's best man? You guessed it: Raph. He's none too happy about having to wear a tux (he claims he'll look like a complete moron with red eyes, ears, and a tail poking out in all directions) but neither are the rest of us. The only time we've ever worn clothes was when Angel seduced us into rescuing Casey from Hun. Sensei looked positively mortified when he saw the robe he'd be wearing, which, coupled with the fact that he has a tail that's only a foot long, made Mikey start busting a gut.
Then came the question: Who are the bridesmaids going to be? We have an abundance of male, mutant ninja turtles for the job of groomsmen but we don't exactly have the female variety. Our only choice was to ask Angel, who happily obliged on one condition: that she be included in our nightly patrols. I began to protest, as I wasn't about to let her endanger her life, but she gave me a glare that plainly said "What'll it be? Torment for the rest of your miserable days or patrol? It's your choice." Am I right in saying that patrol is a better choice of preserving my sanity than torment? If anyone, particularly Mikey, finds and reads this journal, I'll be mocked for life by my loving siblings..
Speaking of patrols (I came in rather late with this subject), Foot activity has ceased altogether. I'm beginning to think that Tiquae wasn't lying when he said he disposed of Him. When I say Him, I mean Saki, of course. Don told me the other day all he knew about that man's (Tiquae; I'm getting a tad mixed up) plan to kill the Shredder was pure genius in a madman sort of way. Donnie's not promoting that kind of behavior but I was curious. Not wary, but curious. I suppose after recent months I've let my guard down. Anyway. Tiquae had an "all nuts, bolts, and gears" sort of mind. It worked like programmed, magnificent, and flawless machinery. I never had even a remote clue of how He (sorry, Tiquae) did it until Don explained it. From what Donnie'd gathered, Tiquae had projected holographic images of us turtles in Central Park to attract the PDs and Hun. This was while we were hunting feverishly for Kiyo, mind you. His bait worked like a charm, drawing the desired quarry to the spot in a matter of thirty minutes. Sorry, Mikey exaggeration. More like ten to five minutes. Then it was just a simple matter of beating the everlasting lights out of the PDs (short for Purple Dragons), darting Hun with poison, trucking the body out to some remote place, and burning it. I swear it makes me shudder to think of such inhumanity.
Baxter Stockman was disposed of in a planned "accident" in his lab when one of his machines malfunctioned, so to speak. It blew the doc's brains out, killing him instantly. Literally. The guy was only a brain so – oh, never mind. Dr. Chaplin mourned the death of his role model for about one hour before being whipped back in line by a grumbling, irritated Saki. After Chaplin's death in freak accident when one of his experiments went haywire, killing him in the process, Saki got suspicious. Not surprising, since the alien was highly paranoid and much my displeasure it saved his guts many a time. Without much time before an enraged Saki would chop him to bits, Tiquae planted and blew up a small bomb in Saki's main room. Small enough to go unnoticed by the public and big enough to blow open Saki's exosuit. The Utrom had crawled out only to be hacked to death by Tiquae's katana. This was only a few hours before he came and captured Raph in Japan. I shall purge my mind of this subject, since it's making me sick.
I believe I have now exhausted every available subject. Except for the fact that Sensei, even though he's missing the majority of his hairless tail, is cracking down on us for missing at least six weeks of ninjitsu training by encountering the dragons. Fighting with dragon ears has heightened our hearing so it's virtually impossible to sneak up upon us. And our eyes, funny colored thought they are, essentially give us night vision. Move over, Turtle Vision goggles.
Oh yes, and Mikey got his cast off yesterday. I and everyone else feel a renewed sense of respect for broken body parts because of their ability to subdue hyperactive younger siblings. He's been bouncing off the walls ceaselessly ever since yesterday morning and Raph's threatened to break it for him twice now if he doesn't knock the shell off. Isn't brotherly love wonderful? At least, turtle love. It's what we call hard knock love down here in the smelly sewers of the Big Apple.
It's dinnertime now. Another day closer to the wedding and another day lost to the past. Mikey's calling me so I'd better get my shell in gear and get off my bed. It's so hard to put down the pen. I'd probably become a writer were it not for the fact that I'm a five foot, talking turtle with bright green eyes, a tail, and dragon ears. Oh, Mike's fixed ravioli! Call me crazy, but I'm an all-Italian turtle, having lived on almost nothing but pizza for the last fifteen years. Hungry and drooling I go to the kitchen, although I'll probably stub my toe on a rock or something.
Leonardo
11:59 p.m., Tuesday, February 12
It was incredibly quiet in the Lair. All the mutants were in bed and if his brothers could see him at the moment, Raph had Rijinn tucked in his arms, sleeping like a baby. Soft snores echoed from Don's room, where he slept at his desk, the light on. Leo drooled on his pillow, making quiet sounds with his hushed breathing. Splinter was burrowed deep in a heap of blankets, his short tail twitching. And Mikey, sprawled in a nest of sheets, had one leg hanging off his bed.
Unintelligible muttering suddenly started coming from the middle of the Lair. "The things I do for these mutants are insane!" A white-garbed form slowly began forming in the dojo, somewhat displeased about being in the sewers. "Of all the places to settle down, they had to do it in a sewer! It's enough to make me sneeze!" Aireilei began glowing and started floating toward the man. "Although the Elentian pillars are a nice touch." He nodded sourly as he set her down with a soft clunk on the stone floor. "Humph. You should be glad I'm doing this. As it is, I'll be cleaning up your energy signatures for a week!" he grumbled as he pointed to the next subject. Bima rose wobbling and came to rest beside Aireilei.
"And what is with the pile of rubble?" He held out his hand and the Time Scepter appeared with a flash. Grumbling all the while, he raised it and pointed the staff at the rocks strewn all over the Lair. They began to glow and levitated into the air. With finality, the grouchy man motioned them up to the perforated ceiling. The slabs of concrete and rocks slammed up as time reversed, gluing them back together. "Humph! Now I should be able to breathe!"
The cranky man floated silently toward Raph's room, casting a thoughtfully disgusted glance at the sleeping reptile. "Sheesh, you'd think after being through enough battles to sink a ship that they'd grown out of teddy bears!" he scolded, levitating the garnet figure out of Raph's arms. He brought the dragon to the dojo and placed him to the right of Aireilei. "Why I even bother doing this after you fire breathing salamanders almost burnt my library to a crisp is beyond me." He passed through Don's subway car door and spotted the amethyst figure beside the turtle in purple's lamp. "What a place to put a millennium-old dragon! Light stand! Hah!" The man snatched Saesha from the desk, smirking in superiority at the log-like form of Don. He floated back out the door, placing Saesha next to Bima with a snort.
"Who were the other two? Oh yeah, I remember." He caught Bima's mocking glance. "Don't you look at me that way, young lady!" The man traveled to Michelangelo's room, throwing squinting glances at the boy's comics. He finally spotted the Citrine dragon by Mike's right hand. "Geez, at least I'll work off a few pounds out of this gathering thing." Once Iwansi was in his grasp, he swiftly spirited her away to her siblings.
He rubbed his chin. "Alright, where's that last one? Should be somewhere around this smelly place." The diminutive man grumbled for a time before floating up to the second level and peering inside Leo's room, grimacing at the wet puddle on the turtle's pillow. "Ugh, drool! I swear, I'll have to buy you mutants absorbent pillows! Yeesh. 'Least it worked with Renet." He spied Kiyo standing silent watch over his sleeping (and drooling) friend. "I've been looking for you, Kiyo. What a nightmare this has been!" he monologued, dropping considerably fast in his hurry to get his task over with. Once in the dojo again, he dropped Kiyo beside Rijinn, taking his place in front of the six dragons.
He folded his arms crossly, looking at his frozen audience. "Before you all start hopping and bouncing around like crazy, I'll have you know that I lost ten hours of your time trying to find you! Honestly, do you think tracking you down was fun?" He began waving the Time Scepter around to emphasize his point. "Renet wouldn't let me sleep unless I did this! Silly girl saw you in the Orb of Hindsight! I'll have that thing removed from the room if she continues sending me on errands like this!" He sighed, as if he wanted to be done with this at once. "Okay, listen up, kiddies. I'm only going to say this once. Just so that you're not used again by megalomaniacs and supervillains, I'm releasing you on one condition: you're bound to be the mutants' 'pals' forever. Don't you give me that look about pals, I'm nearly through talking with you. And I'll have you know that I'm going straight back to bed when I get back home." Every one of them, still in the same pose, flashed their eyes. "Yeah, well there are going to be slight drawbacks to this, so don't sue."
The Time Scepter began glowing a bright blue hue.
The glow on the Time Scepter connected with Aireilei first. Slowly a change in the statue became recognizable. It grew steadily larger until it was the original height of the white dragon. As if a daze shattered, the dragon collapsed on the floor, unconscious. "Hurmph. So you're out cold. Fine. You'll wake up soon enough. If you ask me, you've been needing forty winks for five hundred years." Next he switched the power flow from the white dragon to the garnet figurine. Unlike Aireilei, Rijinn grew to the height of one foot before falling over, nestled in a nook of Aireilei's tail.
Lord Simultaneous scowled as Rijinn's face grimaced at him. "Don't you blame me, I warned you about drawbacks!" Finally, after five minutes of toil, all six dragons lay in a heap on the floor, each of the five who were once imprisoned in tablets only one foot tall and two feet long. He grunted irritably. "Have a nice life. Sheesh, I need my sleep and Renet asks me to do this? I don't get paid enough for charities. Heck, I don't get paid at all!"
Bima's eyelids fluttered for a second and she smiled up wearily at the glowing man. "Thanks, old guy."
"Yeah, whatever. Just sleep or somethin' until they wake up." Lord Simultaneous waved the Time Scepter around his head once and disappeared all together. The silver blue dragon grinned sleepily and pillowed her head on Saesha's rising and falling belly. Soon, she was out cold.
Leo began to wake gradually. Morning grogginess was never easy to recover from. Parting his jaws in a massive yawn, he stretched, tail curling around a nearby bedpost. His hand happened to connect with his pillow and with some annoyance he noticed that it was soaked in slobber. Wonderful. He stifled another yawn before sitting up and scratching his head and smacking his lips. With a sigh, Leo turned. "Another day, huh Kiyo?" Through half-closed eyes, he searched the room but failed to see a Peridot dragon anywhere in his room. Wait, where was Kiyo? He was usually stationed right by Leo's pillow!
Did I knock him off on accident? Wouldn't put it past him. As a turtle tot, he'd been known to smack Raph in the chin while asleep. Poor guy had bruises for a week. He slid off his loft, landing lightly on the floor in a crouch. His green eyes lit up in the dark. Nope, no sign of a small dragon figurine. Where on Earth could he be?He sighed again, furrowing his brow. Might as well get ready for ninjitsu. The blue-clad turtle stood and padded to his battered nightstand where his bandanna, pads, and sheathed katanas rested. Leo picked up the strip of blue fabric, carefully tying it around his head with the ease of long practice. He smiled as he strapped on his joint pads. Back when they were little, they had the hardest time tying knots. So Splinter had them wear the larger version of bandannas. And even then there were some difficulties. At least, only with Raph.
When he had finished adjusting his belt and katana scabbards, he scanned his room one more time for Kiyo before pouncing out the door, right on top of Raph.
"What the shell? Leo, get offa me!"
"Oh. Sorry Raph."
He muttered as Leo picked himself up, "Geez, come to ask a guy a question and ya get flattened! Leo, you're paranoid."
Leo shrugged and helped his brother up. "Sorry, Raph, I really didn't see you," he apologized.
Raph glared as he brushed himself off. "What are ya, blind? Them eyes give ya night vision!"
"Hey, knock it off." An awkward silence followed. Leo scuffed his foot. "What exactly were you doing up this early?"
Raph scowled. "Rijinn went missing. I remember going to sleep with him right by me but…"
"Really? You too?" Leo scratched his chin. "Hm, this is odd…" He looked around the lower level of the Lair but stopped short. "Say, didn't we used to have a whole bunch of rocks down there?"
Raph's ears perked up. "Yeah, you're right." They both hopped down, landing lightly on the clean floor. Leo bent down and ran his finger along the stones, and showed it to his brother with a shrug. "No dust?"
A loud roar split the blackness: "ATTACK!!!"
Something large flattened Raph to the floor while Leo dodged several smaller enemies. He retreated until his heels were at the edge of the river water. Then one of the things tackled him, knocking him into the water and submerging completely. The icy cold liquid forced the breath out of his lungs. All he could see were bubbles.
Then something grabbed his arm and he was able to breathe. "Okay, what in shell is going on—"
The thing dragged him to the surface. "Sheesh, after I give you a bath and save your life…" it grumbled as Leo sputtered. "Hey, watch where you're spitting that stuff, Leo!" He felt like he'd been struck in the stomach.
"Bima?"
"Yuppers, who else did you think it was?" Leo crawled out of the water as the dragon pounded his shell.
"How come you're so—"
"Little?" she finished with disgust. "It was his fault."
Leo grinned as the sapphire eyes connected with his green ones. "Well, no matter. I'm just glad to see you again!"
The little dragon hopped down and padded off. "Before you burst into tears, oh sir frog, there's someone who'd like to have a long talk with you." Green eyes peered out from the darkness.
"Hey Leo," Kiyo said shyly.
Raph squirmed under his opponent's weight, snarling threats and promises. "Get offa me, ya creepoid, unless ya wanna get stabbed by my trusty Sai!" he growled.
"How can you when your arms are pinned beneath you?" it said smugly. He let his indignity smolder for a while before it finally got off of him. Then he got up, turned and tackled it to the floor.
"Gotcha!"
"Raph, get off," she growled in mock anger.
"Not yet, you little – wait," he stopped, suspicion evident in his voice. "Aireilei?"
"Yes, Prince Charming?"
"You're alive? But how?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
Raph felt his cheeks burning as an awkward silence took place. "Aireilei, did you say that you loved me the night of the battle?"
Her periwinkle eyes sparkled. "Maybe."
Suddenly, bright red firelight flared as Rijinn howled, "I knew it!"
Leo saw Mikey's groggy form tumble out of his room only to be tackled by an invisible ball of energy. "C'mon, Mike, wake up!" Iwansi blew smoke up his nostrils, setting the turtle off coughing.
"Iwansi? That you?" he asked.
"Who else can become invisible, smart one?"
Mikey grinned. "A ninja in the shadows."
Don jerked awake at his workbench as he heard a triumphant, "I knew it!" split the air.
"What in tarnation?" he grumbled, yawning.
"Don? You awake?" a small voice inquired.
"Wha?"
Something slightly sharp rested against his shin. "Please wake up, I want to speak with you." He looked down into deep amethyst eyes.
"Okay, now I'm seeing things!" Don muttered.
The lithe form hopped gracefully onto his lap and reared up. "Can a dream do this?" A scaly muzzle nudged his beak as it finally dawned on him.
"Saesha…" He enveloped her in a tight hug.
"We're home, Donnie. We're home."