"Thanks so much for coming," said Donatello, for what seemed like the fiftieth time that night, to a couple whose names he had already almost forgot.

Michelangelo saw the couple move away from Donatello, and so began making his way through the crowd towards the door, where Donatello was stationed. Upon reaching him, Michelangelo smiled. "Dude, this is insane."

"No kidding." Donatello scanned the gallery, but being shy of five feet, he had no good way of counting the crowd. "There must be...what? A hundred fifty, two hundred people here?"

"Something like. Good thing I went overboard on making the snacks."

"Yeah, thanks for not listening when I said we didn't need that many." Donatello smiled across the room and returned a wave to someone he recognized but couldn't quite place. "How are we doing on drinks?"

"We're running low, but Leo ran out to get more soda. That should at least keep us going."

"Good," said Donatello. He looked at the crowd again. Quietly, he said, "It's weird, isn't it?"

"What is?"

Donatello looked back at Michelangelo, and gave him a rather quizzical smile. "Oh, nothing. Just the idea that we're having this big party for Splinter now that he isn't here to enjoy it."

A car horn interrupetd Michelangelo's reply. They glanced out the window and, seeing Leonardo's truck pulling up into the loading zone, headed outside.

Michelangelo couldn't help but smile every time he saw the pickup. A few years back, as Leonardo had begun getting work as a substitute teacher, he found himself in desperate need of a vehicle - the first of his brothers to do so. Being on the low end of the pay scale, he looked around for a cheap one, and ended up buying a beat-up pickup from one of Casey Jones' co-workers for a couple hundred bucks. Leonardo got plenty of ribbing from his brothers about the condition of his truck, but he always shrugged it off. As far as he was concerned, it got him to work and home, and that's all he really wanted out of it. The weekend before Leo's birthday last year, however, Donatello asked if he could borrow the truck to "get some things done". Leonardo assumed that meant Donatello was going to help a friend move or something, and since he didn't have anything scheduled that weekend, he had lent him the truck. But when his three brothers brought the truck back late Sunday night, he was absolutely stunned. His brothers had spent all weekend sprucing the truck up: overhauling the engine, replacing the glass, painting it dark blue (Leo's favorite color), putting in new carpet, installing a CD player. Michelangelo had added the final touch - a gun rack for the back window, into which he placed a new ornamental katana that Splinter had picked out for his birthday present. Leonardo still shook his head in wonder every time he got into the truck each morning.

Leonardo rolled down his window and jerked a thumb back towards the bed of the truck. "I'm gonna have to find a place to park. Can you two carry the soda in?"

Michelangelo and Donatello both nodded. "We're on it," added Michelangelo, as they headed towards the back.

A voice stopped them in their tracks. "Hey, you need some help wit dat stuff?"

Turning around, Michelangelo looked up at the half-smiling, seven-foot rhino. "Rocky!" he said. "Good to see you." The mutants clasped hands, and Michelangelo pulled him closer for a quick hug, which Rocky seemed a bit uncomfortable with.

Sensing Rocky's unease, Donatello just smiled at him. "Wow, Rocky, how long has it been?"

Rocky shrugged. "A couple years, mebbe."

Michelangelo said, "Well, we'll catch up in a bit. Could you help us carry some of this soda in?" He indicated the truck bed, which had several plastic bags filled with bottled soda. Rocky reached in and began grabbing them one by one, to which Michelangelo said, "Dude, you don't have to take all of them."

Rocky lifted them up and grinned. "No problem."

Returning the smile, Michelangelo said, "All right then. Let's see if you can forge you a path through this crowd." He and Donatello led Rocky back into the gallery, but they ended up not needing to blaze a trail - everybody quickly gave Rocky wide berth. They walked to the long tables set up in back, where Raphael was swapping out a full tray of hors d'oeurves for an empty one.

"All right, the cavalry's arrived," said Raphael. "How you doin', Rocky?"

Rocky bobbed his head in a rather aimless manner. "Pretty good. Can't complain." He began handing bags of soda to each of the turtles in turn, who removed the bottles and set them out in turn.

"So when do we start the speechin'?" asked Raphael.

Donatello poured himself a drink. "Well, Leonardo's parking the truck right now, but I figure once he's back, we can get started."

Raphael nodded at Michelangelo. "You still gonna lead the charge?"

"Well, I wish you wouldn't put it that way," said Michelangelo, smirking. "But yeah, I'll go first." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Leonardo re-enter the gallery. He pointed to the stage with a questioning look, and Leonardo nodded fiercely. "OK, that's the sign I've been waiting for."

"Good luck, Mikey," said Donatello, and Raphael gave him a thumbs-up.

Michelangelo smiled at his brothers, then began making his way to the back of the gallery. He leapt up onto the makeshift stage, waved his arms and loudly said, "Excuse me? Everybody?" When the chatter died down, Michelangelo smiled and began speaking loudly. "First off, can everybody hear me OK?" There were scattered "yeahs" and lots of nodding heads, so he went on. "Great. For those who don't know me, or those who can't tell us apart, my name is Michelangelo. First off, I just want to...wow, just want to thank everybody for coming here tonight. We knew that Splinter...or Hamato Yoshi, if that's the name you knew him by...had touched a lot of lives over the years, but seeing this many people here - it's kind of overwhelming. Thanks for coming, everyone." Raphael started clapping, the other turtles joined in, and soon everybody was applauding.

When that died down, Michelangelo continued, "Since Splinter meant so much to so many people, we'd love it if you could...tell us about it. If you've got a story about Splinter you'd be willing to share, we'd love it if you'd come up here and tell us." He smiled a bit crookedly. "Like I said, I honestly wasn't expecting quite this many people, so we didn't even consider getting a microphone or anything. So you'll kinda have to talk loud. But please, don't let that keep you from coming up. We'd rather hear a quiet story than no story at all." Glancing down and taking a breath, Michelangelo added, "Since I'm up here and all, I'll get things started. Um, obviously Splinter made me who I am. At the most basic level, without his DNA, I wouldn't have mutated and become a sentient being. Had he not stuck around after the mutation, I would've probably starved or something. But that's just the basics - Splinter's influence goes way beyond that. He did an amazing job raising four kids all on his own. And best of all, I think, he knew how to let us be ourselves." Michelangelo crossed his arms and smiled a bit. "I don't know if my brothers even know this, but one of the scariest times of my life was back in high school, my senior year." Nodding at his brothers, he said, "My brother Donatello was already in college, and Leonardo was looking at which colleges he might want to go to. But I wasn't really sure I even wanted to go to college. I wanted to cook, and so I was thinking I wanted to go to culinary school. But I was terrified at telling Splinter that. I figured he went through all this work to get us into high school, and since my grades were pretty good, I thought he would expect me to go on to college."

Michelangelo looked rather serious as he continued. "The first few months of senior year were pretty tense. There was this big unanswered question I was completely avoiding, and finally, Splinter asked if I had given any thought to which college I wanted to attend. I sort of hemmed and hawed a bit, then I sort of blurted out that I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to go to culinary school." He paused and continued, a bit softer, which made those in the back strain to hear him. "I thought he'd be crushed, y'know, but he wasn't, really. He was just kind of surprised. He asked why I had never told him that, and I said because i was afraid he'd be disappointed in me. When he heard that, he smiled and told me, 'Nothing would disappoint me more than to learn that you did not do what you wished to do with your life, particularly had you done so solely because you thought you were doing what I wanted.'" Michelangelo, saying Splinter's words, got a bit choked up, and he stopped to let the feeling subside. Finally, he smiled a bit and said, "The next day, we started looking at culinary schools for me. Now I'm sous-chef at Piastra, and I'm the happiest mutant in New York."

There was a smattering of laughter and applause, and Michelangelo grinned. "Thanks," he said. "Um, we don't really have any set way of doing this, so if anybody has a story to share, please come on up."

One by one, people came up to speak. Michelangelo knew most of the stories, but some were brand-new to him. As they went on, he grew more and more surprised how many people had been affected by Splinter, and, even more so, how many were willing to talk about it in front of such a large group of people. Friends, acquaintances, and total strangers - it seemed like everyone had something to say.

At last, after Rocky stepped away from the stage, there appeared to be a pause. Nobody else stepped up, so Michelangelo nodded towards the one person who had yet to speak. Leonardo slowly walked to the center of the stage and faced everybody.

"Hi," he began, in a voice that was a lot steadier than his brothers were expecting. "My name is Leonardo, and I'm the last of the seemingly unending parade of mutant turtles you'll hear tonight." There was a smattering of laughter, then Leonardo turned more serious. "I'll be honest with you. Splinter's death hit me really hard. I've cried more in the past couple weeks than I have all my life." He paused, then looked up with a small smile on his face. "But as the days went on, and I got a bit more used to Splinter being gone, the feeling of loss and of sadness has died down. Looking around at all of you who came tonight, and hearing your stories...how can I feel sad anymore? I feel grateful, because I got to know someone so special, and I got to know him extremely well. I feel happy, knowing that so many got to know the same special person I did. And I feel inspired. Because it was no accident that he touched so many lives. He did so because he wanted to, and because he tried to." Smiling, he held out his arm to indicate the entire gallery. "Come on, which of us here wouldn't love to have a memorial service like this?" Everyone chuckled at that, and Leonardo went on, "Well, I know what I have to do if I want one." He got down on one knee and said, "Sensei? Goodbye. And thank you. For everything."


Leonardo blinked a few times, then sat up in his futon. Something was nagging at him. Leonardo tried to calm his brain, and let the thought make its way to the front, but it didn't. He put his head back down on his pillow, but sleep was elusive. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had missed something. Giving up on falling asleep for the time being, Leonardo pushed back the quilt, stood up, and put on his plain cotton kimono. He walked down the hall to his kitchen, pulled a glass down from the cabinet, and poured himself some water from the tap. He took a sip, then stood next to the sink, thinking. Finally, he shook his head, sighed, and headed back down the hall, but something made him stop short in front of the spare room.

He stared into the darkness for a bit, then leaned inside and flipped the light switch. Living as simply as he did, Leonardo didn't really have a need for this second, rather small bedroom, so he had converted it into a small dojo. Just barely large enough to get in his daily katana practice. He had criss-crossed white Christmas lights across the ceiling to provide light - sort of a throwback tohis days in the sewers. He hardly looked at his weapon racks, and instead stared at the stack of art supplies that he had been given, which he had piled into the corner. Slowly, he walked into the room and stood staring down at the pile. Paints, brushes, cleaners, and a few canvases already pre-stretched onto frames.

Leonardo thought back tothe quick conversation he had had with Mrs Johnson, Splinter's landlady, when he went to pick up his things. "Such a nice man," she had said. "Very quiet, very helpful. If only all tenants were so thoughtful."

He took another sip of water, then, suddenly, he reached down. He grabbed the cushion he normally sat on to meditate, pulled it closer to the stack, and sat down. He picked up a blank canvas and stared at it in the half-light for a minute, then leaned it up against the wall. Then, moving as if in a dream, he opened the paints and began mixing colors.

Leonardo had tried painting a couple of times in the past. Soon before he had entered high school, he had painted a little, and back when he and Splinter shared the Samuels house alone, he had given it another shot. But Leonardo was always very unhappy with his completed work. The paintings looked blocky and horribly childish next to Splinter's, and despite Splinter's encouragement, he had twice decided that he simply didn't have it in him to paint.

Leonardo wasn't thinking about those aborted attempts at art. He was hardly thinking of anything at all. As he watched the colors change on the pallette, his mind was almost blank, much like it was when he got deeply into his martial arts routines. Once he had mixed a few colors, he looked up at the canvas. Slowly, he selected a brush, dabbed some paint onto it, then applied it to the canvas. A small brush stroke here, a dot of color there. He wasn't even truly sure what he was painting. He just did it, slowly, calmly, almost absently.

Minutes passed, then hours. Still Leonardo painted. He didn't feel sleepy - he didn't feel anything at all, except the need to paint.

Finally, Leonardo paused, brush hovering in mid-air. Slowly, he put the brush down onto the pallet, and picked up the canvas by the edges. He stared at it, almost without recognition.It looked almost nothing like Splinter's work. Most of Splinter's paintings were dreamy and pleasant, if a bit other-worldly. The painting he held was harsher. Colder. Painful. The painting showed a sloped field, with a solitary figure a bit in the distance, its back turned. Tail, ears and kimono were being blown by the wind, and he appeared to be holding his walking stick tightly, as if the wind was biting into him.

For several minutes, Leonard sat staring at his painting. Finally, he put the painting down, stood up and looked out the window. The sun was coming up. Another day was beginning.