I own nothing, but Mayu. I hope you've enjoyed this differing take on a well-known story from 2012. I think it only had one more chapter to go.

Splinter

Mayu and I had been walking together underground for over an hour. Since we met on the rooftop, I hadn't heard any sounds like those of the Kraang, their screeches, or the whirrs and squeaks of their mechanical bodies. Indeed, the scents of sewage and sound of water dropping, the latter sometimes used as torture, were both soothing to me now.

I could hear it in her footsteps and see by her barely visible movements in the deep shadows we moved through that her gait was stiff for the kunoichi I knew. I took this time of calm to ask her, "How are you?"

She sighed. "My muscles are sore and burning. The Kraang electrocuted me several times. Overall that seemed to have a lot less permanent effect than I expected."

I sighed. "I'm sorry …"

"For what? This was all my fault."

My ears twitched. I heard a growl in my own voice as I replied. "How?"

I saw her head turn but felt more than saw her eyes squinting up at me. "I convinced 'you' to let the boys go up with me tonight. You wouldn't have stood for it if I hadn't."

I turned my face away. I "had" been angry about that … But … "You made good points. And now … our world is apparently in danger. This means they … 'we' are too. I'd rather have us involved to fight back than swept away in the Kraang's plan unknowing like ants before a hose. I would like to believe we could have hidden here safely from them and their plots without risking anything or anyone by facing them, but … I don't know if we could have long avoided the Kraang even here depending upon their plans."

"Not if they succeed in changing the whole planet to suit themselves as they told me they are committed to doing before the torture started up."

I stopped, turned, and stared at her even as she walked haltingly on past me. Only my head turned to follow her back with my gaze. "That' is their plan?"

She answered without turning back. "That's what 'Kraang Prime' told me. 'Miss O'Neil is needed for study so they can finish their plan to mutate the earth into their new version of Dimension X, their home.' What's wrong with the 'original' Dimension X, well, Kraang Prime got testy when I asked."

I began to stride forward again thinking about all this. Mayu was now only a few strides ahead of me. I was already catching up. This had me worried for her a smaller crisis to shield my mind from a gigantic one. "How different do you think their dimension is?"

"I don't know. Considering what their blue … whatever it is, does to us … I'm not going to shrug my shoulders at their plan."

"Indeed …" I intoned feeling a slight air current through the fur covering my head, my neck, my arms … My attention was caught away from this by her next words, however.

"I'd still rather not have involved our sons, though."

I swiveled my head to face her, since I was now beside her again. I trained both my eyes and ears upon her form. "Do you think you could have handled the situation on your own?"

She slumped. "To tell the truth … no. I might not even have stumbled upon the situation if I hadn't been showing them around up there tonight." A chocking chuckle bubbled up from her throat. I pictured her face smiling up at the ceiling of the railway tunnel in the darkness enveloping us. "You should have seen them Splinter. I led them up to an old neighborhood, with fading billboards, moldering brick, and an overcast sky. They stared open mouthed at it all like … like they saw purple mountains majesty. They said we were holding out on them … Before all this alien madness went down, they were … happy … up there."

I looked down. Emotions struggled within me: anger my warnings were not heeded by my family, anger I had held them back for so long aimed at myself, anger at the Kraang for making it necessary when they were babies to hide my sons down here (though humans might have eventually made that necessary too), anger at myself for not doing more to avoid this fate for us altogether. Confusion followed this last reaction. If I had "not" followed one of the Kraang to their meeting place and been mutated along with our turtles there, they would be very old, ordinary turtles by now. I almost twitched as I looked back to the woman walking in jerky, pained motions beside me.

Would "she" have even spared me if she'd found a human widower, last of the Hamato ninja clan, hiding with four pet turtles in a tiny apartment instead of a rat-mutant hiding in New York's forgotten train tunnels with four mutant baby turtles?

"What are you thinking about?"

I stiffened in surprise. After all she'd been through, Mayu could still sense if not 'what' I was thinking that I was doing so deeply with such accuracy? "Are you sure you are as tired and sore and tortured as you claimed to be?"

"Pretty sure … Tell me before we come into hearing-range of the lair. I doubt our boys and the strangers will still be up, but you never know …"

"I was thinking of the odd tangle our lives have been. How we got here of all places and situations."

She teased me. "Odd tangle, or intricate weaving?"

I smiled and teased gently back. "We'll see."

. . .

Mayu

Without hinting anything I could sense beforehand, Splinter picked me up at the waist and lifted me over the turnstiles when I got to them. I was mad, but silent about it. Instead of even glancing back at him, I strode on to the living room area to look into the sunken part before the TV and … There they were.

Rahael was on the bottom. Donnie draped over his shell. Michelangelo was splayed over him and sucking his thumb. A girl with red hair lay across the opposite couch. A man had his head pillowed in his arms on the arm of said couch above and beside her feet. Like the man, Leo had his chin like pillowed in his own crossed arms facing over the back of the other couch, so he's have seen us if his eyes had been open. None of them moved except to breathe. I grinned.

Splinter, however, frowned. "They have not left a couch for us."

I shrugged and winced immediately after. Splinter took my hand and began to guide me to the dojo. "Come with me."

I glanced back at the turtles and O'Neil's. "I think we should …"

"You first."

I shut my mouth. He had that firm tone. He dragged me to the dojo with all its colorful mats on the floor and sat me down without letting go of my wrist. Then he began to run, no dig his fingers into my forearm as if trying to make a furrow in my flesh. I squinted in pain but held still. It needed to be done.

I had pushed, and pushed and pushed my muscles constricting them, bunching them, pulling them up to their limits. I had known this was coming. My boys and the O'Neils probably needed it too. Splinter must need it, but he'd insisted I go first. Well, I had been out the longest …

. . .

Splinter

I watched her as I got her muscles back into working order before she fell asleep. It used to be eerie to me how her face showed no pain whenever I did this. I knew this hurt. Father used to do it for Saki and me before … before Saki betrayed us … Now, she did wince and grimace a bit though not as much as Saki and I had. Father did not wish us to be overly open with our weaknesses. He was mainly concerned we held still throughout the process though. Saki and I were more motivated to be stoic by staring at each other getting this treatment from father. Perhaps this was why father did not push us more. We had always had each other to push us … until we did not …

Mayu however, it was like nothing was happening at first, which made me wonder what else she had been through at her sensei's hands. Now, she showed a little pain, and it was strangely relieving. I began with her right hand and arm, then her left, her shoulder blades, and back and feet up her legs to her knees. She did her thighs herself. Then we went out to our sons.

She went over to Leonardo and picked up his wrist beginning the process more carefully with him than I had with her. I had three other sons to lend my skill to. Yet, I paused to watch. After a particularly deep dig into his forearm with her thumb Leonardo's eyelids fluttered open. Instead of grimacing, he smiled at her. "Mom …"

She smiled back, wearily, but it was a smile. "Hi Honey, I'm back. Don't worry anymore, okay?"

His smile fell away. His eyes creased into slits. Then he slowly raised a weary, sore arm of his own. He winced as he moved it and grabbed onto her forearm in return giving it a squeeze. Then his smile came back wider, but his voice came out hoarse. "You're real …"

She smiled back as if her heart were not breaking, but I knew her better. She answered in the same light-hearted tone. "Yep. Now go back to sleep." He sighed and let his arm fall back to his side but continued to leave his eyes open slits and winced a bit as she continued to loosen his tight muscles before finally falling asleep near the end of her treatment of his overwrought body. I had already begun on Michelangelo's, and he slept throughout all of it, though a few times during parts I knew had to be painful, his limb jerked away even as he snored on. I next began on Donatello as Mayu moved on to Raphael. Donatello's face creased in pain, and he mumbled at times. Once he rolled over, but like Michelangelo, he did not awaken. Raphael neither awoke nor failed to fight back. Instead of jerking out of her grip the limb she worked on, in his sleep, Raphael's free limbs lashed out at her. If she worked on his left arm, his right attempted a punch in her direction when she dug deeply. The same happened with the opposite leg kicking out at her once she reached them. Finally, we went on to the O'Neils.

April whined, winced, and turned her head when Mayu dug deeply to relieve the tension in the girls more tender, smaller, and greatly overworked muscles. Much the same thing happened as I worked on Mr. O'Neil. While April sometimes whimpered, "No, Mom," he sometimes whispered the name of his wife. Both reactions caused my heart to clench. When we were through with everyone else, Mayu smirked up at me. "Now, it's your turn."

I shook my head. "You are too tired."

She glared at me. "Sit down."

I sat.

She started with my fingers, went up to my palms, wrists, forearm, upper arm, shoulders, sometime working on my back though, she slumped and snored. I smiled, carefully slipped out from under her, we were on the rug between couches, and laid her down taking a pillow Michelangelo had abandoned in his sleep get-away from my hands, which had caused him to entirely crawl off Donatello's back. I slipped this under her head, went to her room, and brought back her comforter throwing it over her. Then I went to my own quarters in the dojo and brought back my mat and blanket before laying it out between my family and the turnstiles dividing us from the empty train tunnel beyond. No one else was getting to my family tonight.

God Bless

ScribeofHeroes