Only Gordy, Rin, and her sensei are mine …

Yoshi ran on all fours like brown lightning. My sons, I must find my sons! He bolted into the abandoned train station, turned a corner into the room with the tree sapling, and found … his sons.

He stopped and sat up, wide eyed and panting as he stared at them. They were all sleeping. They looked, almost exactly as he'd left them.

He could see them first through and then over the wire frame walls of the pen covered in see-through plastic and tape. He'd taken Rin's advice while improving upon it by adding transparency to the slipperiness she'd suggested would help.

Through the walls they could not climb, he could see four, blurry, green shapes. Upon looking over these walls, he could see their clear, solid, sleeping forms. He even heard breathing and soft snoring.

He sighed in relief and smiled with the beginnings of tears in his eyes. Then he frowned. Rin. She had been bleeding earlier.

He drew back from the pen and stared over his shoulder but thought of all he'd seen and smelled in that room before his panic. Was she alright? Alive? Captured? Did he care?

He paused to listen to the emotions stirring within him for a moment eyes closed to concentrate. Then they snapped open. He "did" care!

In recent months, Rin had been most helpful to them, most considerate, most kind. He'd liked the her he'd come to know since she'd sung the lullabies of his country and told the story of his clan to his four sons. Before … it was hard to combine the her before with the her after just as it had been to combine the fellow tourist he'd first met with the assassin who'd later attacked him and kidnapped Shen. But then, it was hard to put together the Saki he'd splashed pond water upon when they were five, both laughing, with the Saki who'd stabbed his wife to death … even if accidentally … while aiming at him. Saki seemed to have grown worse while Rin had grown better over the years …

The other issue was, what, if anything, was he going to do about all this? He had a responsibility to his sons. Had he any to her?

He looked at his sons in the pen fed on leftover lasagna. She'd brought it from some restaurant on the surface to them earlier. He shut his eyes and sighed to himself.

He owed the new Rin good things even if he owed the old Rin bad. It would be the new Rin he looked for on the surface tonight. But not until it was dark again …

He got the turtles up now. He would have to look for her while they napped again that night. They weren't happy. They cried. But he thought if they could understand, they would agree with him he should look.

. . .

Rin dropped gently, landing on her feet and in a low crouch atop the dumpster. Then she turned, twisting at the waist, to look over her shoulder. She stood, while turning, and cocked her head.

She softened her breathing. Plenty of traffic noise, a barking dog, a blaring TV in the distance. But …

She took a step forward, and another. She then looked down to study the area before her toes. There was a dent in the dumpster's plastic lid right before and over its lip.

She peered over its side. Ah. She thought she knew now what had happened.

As he fell, most of Gordy's body had flown past the dumpster, but at least the lower part of his legs had hit it. Some, but not all, of the impact of his fall had been absorbed by it. The rest of Gordy's body, however, had kept going if slower and with less force. His head had hit the pavement first. Perhaps he'd been trying to tuck and roll, which was the smart thing to do generally, but had had too little space and time to finish doing so. Either way, his body must have built up momentum into a spin, because even the portion of his legs that had landed on the dumpster had flown off to go over his injured head and land flat on the ground, face up, on the pavement that might have just cracked his skull instead of hanging off the dumpster itself.

She jumped off the dumpster to land at the man's side … cautiously. She crouched there too, legs bent and ready to spring up and back at a movement, at a groan … There were none.

"Gordy."

She paused and listened, more traffic, more barking, more TV, nothing moved or stirred from him except … She moved a finger up to her mouth, spit on it, and held it under his nose. There was a slight change of temperature on her skin beneath the thin, black cloth of her glove, after a slight puff left his nostrils to land on it. She then drew her hand back, pulled her glove off carefully, and placed two fingertips, one still moist, to his neck. A heartbeat was detectable there.

She drew her hand back to cradle her chin in its heel and poke a finger into her cheek. Sensei would want her to end it … but sensei was dead herself. Saki would likely advise if not order it, but she wasn't following him anymore either. Yoshi … She helped him, but did she really "serve" him as a master? No.

She raised her eyebrows. She was on her own. That was how she'd decided it should be some months ago, but that presented her with a dilemma.

He really didn't stand much chance anyway. Leaving him alone would be about as bad as killing him right here, maybe worse. She found, though, now she was calmer from making her rational mind force the rest of it to realize the threat was gone, and giving her body orders to calm itself, which in turn further calmed her mind, she had no gut desire to finish killing this broken body.

Gordy wasn't awake hating, or judging, or delighting in her own pain anymore. Everyone was almost childlike at such a point of helplessness, except more and less annoying, because they made no demands like most children could, couldn't tell you with words, or movements what they wanted or even needed. You had to figure that out for yourself. She knew, but she had to decide what, if anything, she was willing to do for him.

. . .

Yoshi waited till dark came to New York City, or as much of it came to it as almost ever did. After letting four, grumpy, tired turtles fall asleep again, and they were glad to do it, (except maybe Raphael) he climbed out into a darker, emptier neighborhood than he'd expected following the blood-trail. There were plenty of shadows for him to hide in. He wondered if this place was chosen with such things in mind by those he was tracking.

The remains of Rin's blood on pavement and metal and concrete, he found easiest to follow. However, the man's scent was traceable as well. Cigarettes, leather, and sweat scents mixed with another blood trail that was not Rin's, but often ran over or alongside it. Her pursuer had also bled.

He tracked them both down a fairly clean and empty alleyway, up a fire escape, and across rooftops. More blood, drops nearly connecting, smaller jumps, Rin had been slowing down here. His heart ached for her. He almost stopped dead at this feeling overtaking him. Had he grown so dependent upon her he'd grown fond of her, or had he truly come to trust her?

His eyes widened, when he saw clear indications of a fight, the blood trails twisting, folding in on each other, mixing, and going over the side and … He looked over himself and froze.

What do you think?

God Bless

ScribeofHeroes