ADAPTING

October, 1977

YOSHI:

My body felt strange.

I realized that something was wrong before I was even fully conscious. I opened my eyes slowly and for a moment considered that I might be blind. I could see nothing. But then, there was no light in the room. I closed my eyes again and lay still for a moment. I was alive. The fire in my veins had died. But not before it had run its course. What had it done to me?

I clenched my fist gently, and felt pain at my fingertips. It was not intense; more like an old wound that is disturbed again. I was not bleeding. A dull ache reverberated through my body, but I was not paralyzed. My jaw hurt fiercely and I tasted blood. I ran my tongue over the backs of my teeth and received a shock. The entire formation of my jaw was different. It was... longer somehow. More pointed. I opened my mouth, then closed it again, then ran my tongue over the jagged edges of my teeth. They were sharp, perhaps like a dog's.

I heard a loud noise and tensed. As I did, I could feel the muscles in my body cling to an entirely different bone structure. Well, perhaps not totally different. But it felt strangely foreign to me. All was silent again. There was another loud noise- like a scraping. But the room was pitch black. I could not see anything.

I took a deep breath in and felt my lungs expand fully and contract again. My memory of the past few... what? Minutes? Hours? How long had I been unconscious? At any rate, I remembered what had happened. But beyond that, memories were fuzzy. They came into focus slowly as I began to move my arms and legs.

Gradually, I sat up. Holding my head up was strangely difficult. I shuddered to think of why. What did I look like? I felt so stiff and lifeless in this body; would I ever be able to move freely again? I reached up slowly and grabbed the edge of the table. As I stood, I felt as if I were learning to walk again. I was unsteady, and I fell, unable to hold myself up with my arms alone. Every muscle in my body hurt. I felt weak and helpless, but strength was returning. Perhaps if I just waited here a moment...

I rested against the leg of the table, slipping in and out of consciousness. I was not sure how long I stayed there, but it must have been many hours. Only the noises awoke me, and I wondered what they could be. Sometimes a scrape; sometimes a crack- like a rock being thrown against the wall.

Finally, I managed to pull myself to my feet. I ran my fingers over the tabletop in search of the matches, and stopped as a deafeningly loud hiss came from in front of me. I froze, but there was no sound. My hand resting on the table, I suddenly realized that I could not feel it. Only my fingertips were against the wood, but I felt nothing against them except for a slight pressure. I raised my hand and pressed my fingertips into the palm of my other hand. I felt sharp points, like claws coming out of my fingers.

Another hiss resounded loudly in my ears, though more softly than the first. I froze as I connected the sound to my surroundings. I brushed my hands together and heard the same noise. That loud noise was my doing! I stopped for a moment, then pressed my hand against the tabletop. Another hiss as my hand smoothed over the surface. It was as if my hearing were amplified a thousand times over.

I quickly evaluated my other senses. I could not see, and the table felt no different under my touch. My tongue had tasted blood, which seemed no different than any other time I had encountered it. But my sense of smell was more acute. I suddenly realized how much more acute it was as I took in the world around me. I could separate the scents, and identify each one as if it were right in front of me. The acidic, burning smell was strong, as was the smell of... what was that? In my mind, I knew; but it was almost too much to accept. I could smell blood. My own blood, perhaps. Another scent I was unfamiliar with came across my nose. No, it was several scents. One... two... three... four... five... six of them. I pushed my curiosity aside and reached for the matches.

I wanted to light the oil lamp, but I found a candle more easily accessible. My fingers did not want to do what my brain told them to, much of the time. When I finally lit the match, I saw why. I nearly dropped the flame in surprise. My hand was covered in fur. Thick claws protruded from my fingertips. What had happened to me?

In shock, I lit the candle. The room was suddenly illuminated. My vision flickered between color and black and white, finally deciding on a colored image. I turned slowly to the mirror on the wall, and froze as I stared at the figure I saw.

It was not me. It could not be me. It was inhuman! I stared at the mirror for a long time, an unidentifiable rage building inside of me. Suddenly, my arm lashed out, fist smashing through the glass. It shattered into a million tiny fragments, burying many of them in the skin beneath my fur. I screamed in frustration as angry tears burned the backs of my eyes. My vision flickered again and lost its color.

I spun and grabbed the rack beside me, spilling weapons across the mat on the floor. A table on the other side of me split in half as I attacked it with my forearm. A glass sitting on it fell and shattered. Blinded by fury, I threw the chairs around the table to the side, and reached for the oil lamp in the center of it. It hit the wall above the makeshift sink and exploded with a loud crash. My hand fell to the next available object, but my eyes caught it before I could let go.

Sakura.

I breathed hard as memories and new realizations came over me simultaneously. It was over. Any hopes I had possessed of seeing her again were dashed to a million pieces. My hand trembled around the glass figurine, and with a cry of rage I flung it across the room. It hit the wall and tinkled to the ground.

My eyes came to rest on a new and drastically unfamiliar sight. I was not alone in this room. Four sets of wide eyes watched me in fear. The turtles had been mutated just like I was. But into what? They were still turtles, but they looked almost like children. They were not infants. If they had been human, I would have guessed them to be no less than two years old. But they did not speak, did not cry or attempt to walk. They watched me, and otherwise did not move. What were they? Were they children? Were they no more than strangely mutated animals?

My fury subsided as I watched their confused, frightened expressions. No animal I had ever seen was so articulate with their expression. I heaved a few breaths, still trembling, and closed my eyes. This was no dream, and to pray that it was one was foolish and pointless. I had to accept this, and quickly. I did not want to offend these new friends, as they may be the only ones I would have contact with for the rest of my life.

I regained my composure slowly, and looked back at the four turtles, huddled in a corner of the room. How was I to communicate with them? Surely I had already frightened them. What was the best way to mend the damage I could not change? Food, perhaps. Whether they were more human or animal, they would have to eat. And both children and my pets looked to me for food. But what did they eat? Surely I could not feed them raw hamburger anymore. I did not know what to give them. For that matter, I did not have a great deal of food available right now.

On the kitchen table was the box of pizza I had brought home. I had not touched it, with all that had happened. Would they eat that? I picked it up and walked over to them, unsteady on my feet. All four of them shrank back, and I heard a slight whimper come from one of them. It sounded like a scream to my ears. They had vocal chords of some sort. I set the pizza on the floor a few feet in front of them, and opened the box. I backed away, waiting to see how they would react. They looked at me, then at the food, then at each other. After a moment of tense silence, one of them pulled away from the huddle.

He stayed low to the ground, his eyes on me, as he crawled to the pizza. They were not children. Not entirely, anyway. It was an animalistic intelligence that he used, warning me to stay away. He approached the box and his eyes shifted to its contents. He studied it for a minute, tilting his head slightly, then pulled his legs underneath him and sat up like a child would, suddenly disinterested in me.

He reached into the box and poked at the pizza, then raised his fingers to his lips. I considered speaking, but feared I might frighten him. So I remained quiet, and watched as one of his brothers crawled over to him, looking more curious than intimidated. Soon all four of them were around the box, and they began to pull the pizza apart. One of them looked up and saw me watching. He ducked his head down instantly, until only his eyes remained above his shell.

I laughed quietly at his display of shyness. They were more intelligent. In their previous state, they would not have even acknowledged my looking at them, unless I was reaching toward them. Nor would they have acknowledged my voice. But now all four of them were looking at me. I froze, and waited to see what they would do. I was not sure whether I expected them to drag their food into a corner, or crawl over to where I was standing. They did neither. They only watched me.

The shy one slowly raised his head again, and looked down at his messy hands. Another turned and looked at the shattered glass on the floor, then at me. His face was marked by a look of confusion. It was amazing, how they displayed such emotion. Surely they were more than mere animals.

As the others went back to eating, the one who had first approached the box now turned away from it. He crawled over to me on his hands and knees, then stopped and turned to sit a few feet in front of me. He was covered in pizza sauce up to his elbows. I knelt slowly, and he watched me. His face showed fear, but he did not move. "Do not be afraid," I whispered.

He jumped back and scrambled to get away from me, surprised by the sudden and apparently unfamiliar noise. I lowered my eyes and did not move. For a long time, nothing moved in the room. The three turtles at the pizza box stared at me, unmoving. The fourth, who had approached me, was frozen in place a few feet away. I waited to see if any one of them would move toward me again, but they did not. After a moment of silence, I stood slowly and stepped back. I turned away and set to cleaning the broken glass from the floor.

***

Whatever they were, I immediately knew they would be prone to mischief. The two rooms that I had used for so many years would need to be expanded. For so long, I had needed nothing more than a kitchen, an open area for practice, and a bedroom. But now it was obvious that I would need to remodel.

There was a collapsed tunnel leading from the west wall of the living room. Perhaps there was another room on the other side of it, though I did not know how far it might be. There was also a collapsed archway, like the one leading to my bedroom, on the west wall. Of my large room to the south, I had created two rooms. One had been occupied by Sakura for a short time, and had been unused during her absence. I had not been inside of the room for years. It was separated from mine by a wall of cinderblock that I had built. I knew where to get more of the cement bricks, should I need them. I wasn't sure I would.

For now, I intended to give all four of them a place to sleep in the room Sakura had stayed in. That was not the problem. I was more concerned that they may hurt themselves on the weapons I had stationed in the northeast corner of the living area. I doubted I could move the entire makeshift dojo into my small bedroom. I needed another large room.

I also needed electricity, which was going to be much more difficult to come by. As it stood, I lit the rooms with candles and oil lamps. But those were going to be much more difficult to come by now that I could not be seen in public. And lighting a home with fire was not wise with four young children.

They watched as I cleared away the rubble in the archway, one piece at a time. I watched them as inconspicuously as possible. They seemed to play with each other. I heard them laugh, and make incoherant conversation with noises that sounded almost human. They wandered back to the pizza box every so often, crawling on all fours. But for the most part, they watched me with a strange sort of fascination.

It had been nearly two hours when I finally reached my arm through a small hole I'd created, and felt nothing on the other side of it. I had broken through the wall. Pushing and pulling at the rubble, I created a hole large enough to crawl through, and took a candle with me into the new room.

It was approximately the size of my bedroom. But far more interesting than its size was its contents. I looked around in amazement. A washtub was at the corner of the room. A half-rotted table stood next to it. Boxes were stacked against one wall, and I walked to them. I brushed a thick coating of dust from the surface of one of the boxes. Why were these things here? How long had they been here?

I set the candle down, and opened one of the boxes. It was filled with candles. I stared at its contents for a moment, then moved it aside. The box underneath it had blankets. They were old, and falling apart. I turned away from the boxes and scanned the walls. There was a calendar on the table, and I scanned the dates. It was from 1926, more than fifty years ago, and opened to the month of February.

An oil lamp and a box of matches was nearby. I set the candle down, and lit the lamp. Light flooded the room. I stopped as I saw something against the wall. It was an electrical outlet. There was electricity in this room. At least, there had been at one point. I had no way to test if it still worked.

I moved slowly around the room until I found a doorway. The smell of death invaded my nostrils as I stepped into the room. Light fell over a small bed, covered with fallen debris from the ceiling. I approached cautiously, stepping over sharp rocks. As I reached the edge of the bed, I saw my sense of smell had warned me of from the moment I entered the room. I jumped back in surprise. It was a skeleton. It must have been crushed by the falling debris. Someone had lived here, years before I had.

I gave myself a moment to catch my breath, stepping back. There must have been an earthquake, or some such disaster. It mattered very little fifty-one years later. A part of me wanted to seal this tomb again. I did not know what to do with this body, or this furniture. It was nothing I could use. But the electricity was invaluable, if I could make it work. Perhaps by tracing it, I could find the source and provide such luxury throughout the lair.

I stepped back and looked around the first room again. After a moment of hesitation, I walked to the washtub, and turned the faucet. Air hissed at me for a few seconds as it depressurized. I did not expect it to work. To my surprise, the water ran. It came in spurts first, then in a stream of rust-colored liquid. I watched as it seemed to thin, then ran clear.

I smiled. In the midst of all this, something was going right.