It was early. Too early. Splinter had woken far ahead of his usual routine, but had that happened to him on this date for the past 15 years. He always woke early this day, swimming in memories. He thought of it as his personal remembrance day.
The boys called it Mutation Day.
For Splinter, it was a bittersweet occasion, but his sons celebrated it as their birthday. Their joy, and the joys that they had given to him over the years, were the things that made this day dearer to him than he ever thought it could be.
Ah, memory. Like yin and yang, his life was filled and made whole by contradiction. Joy and sorrow made him whole.
A sudden clatter from the kitchen reached Splinter's keen hearing. Who else would be up this early? The noise was soon followed by the sound of off-key humming.
Of course: Michelangelo. He must have gotten up early to make a special meal for Mutation Day. Of all of his sons, Michelangelo was the most full of love for those around him. In his own special way – well, yes, very special – the boy thrived on service to others.
With a surge of affection welling in Splinter's heart, memories of his youngest son began to fill his thoughts.
Ah, Michelangelo. He was the very first turtle that Splinter had chosen. His adorable antics and his tiny size had simply made him irresistibly cute. Even though Splinter had long since ceased calling the boys by their childhood nicknames, he occasionally slipped and called his youngest Mikey.
Michelangelo, fortunately, did not care – or notice. In fact, he had been devastated when Splinter stopped using the diminutive after his name. Though Splinter had explained that it was because the boys were too old for baby-talk now, Michelangelo persisted in the use of "-bo" for at least another year. While the other boys simply dropped the suffix and continued to use their nicknames, Michelangelo insistently used it—especially with Raphael. It infuriated Raphael to no end. Splinter finally stopped intervening, figuring that Michelangelo would eventually tire of being slapped around by his brother.
He didn't.
However, he did hit a phase where suddenly everything he did had to be "cool." He wanted to skateboard because it was cool. He wanted to dance because it was cool. After years of struggling to choose a single weapon, he chose the nunchuks because they were cool. Picking up all of the lingo he could from the old comics and such that Splinter had found for them over the years, he tried to talk like he was cool. He refused to go by Mikey-bo because it was not cool.
Personally, Splinter thought that Michelangelo's use of vernacular was more idiotic than cool, but it was endearing. In fact, "endearing" was a word that defined his youngest son. His bizarre antics and moronic behavior mystified them all. Donatello had said it best: "I think Mikey got the shallow end of the mutagen pool." He had meant it as an insult at the time, but his voice brimmed with genuine love.
Splinter and his three oldest boys did not love Mikey in spite of his idiocy; they loved him because of it.
Nevertheless, Splinter wished that he could help Michelangelo gain a more mature mental and emotional state. While none of his sons were exemplary when it came to maturity, Michelangelo was especially problematic. Patience had never been one of Splinter's virtues, which was rather ironic considering that he was a ninja. Well, he was patient with combat, not with interpersonal skills.
So many times over the past 15 years he had yearned for Tang Shen's presence. She would have been able to civilize the boys in a way he never could. Her energetic nature was exactly what Michelangelo needed from a parent. Splinter was too quiet and solemn to even come close to understanding his youngest, and he knew it.
A sudden clatter from the kitchen jerked Splinter out of his memories. Michelangelo must have dropped a pan.
"Geez Mikey," came a harsh voice from the kitchen. "Could you be any louder out here? And are you humming This Girl is on Fire?"
"So what if I am, Raph?"
Raphael made his voice high-picthed. "I'm Michelangelo. I like girly songs. This turtle's on fire…"
"Cut it out, Raph!"
"This milk is expired…"
"Stop it! I don't like Alicia that much, okay? Geez!"
"Mikey is a liar…"
With that, crashing ensued as Michelangelo yelped.
Raphael.
Splinter filtered out the noises as more memories came to visit him.
Raphael had tested Splinter's patience nearly as much as Michelangelo, but the hot-headed turtle was far cleverer than his brother—sharp tongued and sharp witted, Raphael was usually single-handedly responsible for all of the fighting.
He certainly had been responsible for their dropping of honorific suffixes and switching to English titles. He found it especially hilarious to call Leonardo "Leonardo-sama," which naturally started friction. Splinter always worried that the two were going to end up seriously hurting each other with their fighting. Splinter had repeatedly told the boys not to use the superlative suffix out of context, and had threatened them on multiple occasions. Naturally, they did not stop—they just stopped using it in front of him.
One day, however, Raphael's bad habits betrayed him. Splinter had reprimanded him for leaving a mess in the dojo, and Raphael responded in a voice dripping with sarcasm, "Well excuse me, Splinter-sama!"
Splinter explicitly said that if he ever heard another honorific used unless it was directly toward a Japanese person, he would personally make sure they could never speak again. The real terror in Raphael's eyes promised that he would comply with Splinter's wishes.
Ah, Raphael. Splinter admired his son's natural inclination toward the fighting skills of ninjutsu. But there was a side to his second oldest son that terrified him.
It was the side in which he saw himself.
He too had been an angry young man, quick to challenges and violence. He had learned all too well the self-destructive nature of anger—and too late.
He prayed that his son would choose a different path—a path of wisdom and patience.
Perhaps that was why Raphael and Leonardo clashed so much. Leonardo naturally exemplified the spiritual and mental qualities of a ninja, even if he did not have Raphael's brute strength. Leonardo already possessed some of the attitudes that Splinter had worked for years to attain.
Leonardo, his eldest, his wisest, his most patient—
"Shut up, you guys! Some of us don't want to be awake this early! If you don't pipe down I am going to skewer you both!"
Well, perhaps not patient immediately after being woken up too early in the morning, but he was patient in general.
"I'd like to see you try, Lame-o-nardo!"
"Yeah! You gonna take us both, Leo?"
"I have two swords for a reason!"
Yelling and crashing ensued.
With a groan, Splinter rolled over to a more comfortable position. Sometimes, he wished that he had mutated into a creature with far less acute hearing.
Perhaps Leonardo was not always exemplary, but he was far more level-headed than the other boys. Donatello, for all his intelligence, was overly excitable. He would often over-think things and get himself too worked up. Michelangelo was all over the map; his head was as level as an exploding volcano. Raphael—well, he was a volcano. A stately mountain prone to erupt at any moment.
Leonardo embodied the way of the ninja. Even before he had mutated, the turtle was fascinated with Splinter. As he grew, he seemed starving for knowledge regarding the ancient art. Splinter could not have been prouder of him.
"O-w-w-w! LEO!"
All right, maybe he could have been.
A new voice joined the fray. "Okay, Leo? I just have to ask: where is the logic in yelling at someone to be quiet and then doubling the decibel output yourself?"
"Yeah, Leo. What Donnie said."
"Shut up, Mikey. You have no idea what I just said."
"I do too!"
"Mikey is a liar…"
"Shut it, Raph!"
"No, all of you shut up! You're going to wake up Splinter!"
"But Leo, that's my point. You came out here to shut them up and you made it even noisier."
"And you're not helping by arguing with me."
"Maybe if you made sense I wouldn't have to argue with you."
"Okay. New plan. I vote we all beat up Donnie so he stops acting like a know-it-all."
"Good plan, Raph."
"Hey!"
Splinter cringed at the following chaos. He briefly considered going out to scream at them, but he found himself drifting off into memories once again.
Donatello.
Splinter deeply loved all of his sons, each for different reasons. But Donatello...well, he did not love him more than his other sons, but felt the love in a more intense way. All of his sons had helped to pull him out of the darkness that had nearly ended his life, but the shy little turtle had been the first to break through to him. Splinter was having conversations with Donatello in both English and Japanese before Michelangelo had even spoken his first complete sentence in either tongue.
Even his name was extremely sentimental. The name of Tang Shen's favorite sculptor reminded Splinter of who he was, who he had been. He had finally gained a semblance of peace about his past, and the name Donatello made it feel as though Tang Shen was there with them in spirit, guiding the whole family through the strangeness of their existence.
Donatello had been the first to rescue him, when Splinter was weaker than he had ever been before in his life. His brilliant son would never know how much those first words did to save his life.
They had become the center of his world. Splinter had never loved anyone as deeply as his four adopted sons—except, perhaps, Tang Shen and Miwa. He would die a thousand times over to keep them safe, to keep them from meeting the fate his wife and daughter did.
But they were becoming men. Practically every Mutation Day for the past fifteen years they would ask him if they could go up to the surface. He had always said no. However, not a few weeks before today he had tested them, dressed as Sojobo's tengu. They had passed. Soon, he would have to release his grip on them and let them live their own lives.
In his heart, his wished that he could once again fit them all into a cardboard box and keep them in his grasp forever. He chuckled at the thought. Even then, however, Donatello would have figured a way out.
Finally, the crashing became so intense that Splinter could no longer be still. He rose from his bed and headed to the kitchen to yell at them—if they were lucky. If not…he grabbed his staff just in case.
"Happy Mutation Day!" shouted Michelangelo.
"Happy Mutation Day!" Leonardo, Raphael, and Donatello chorused in reply.
"Ah yes," Splinter said. "Fifteen years ago today, our lives changed forever, and we became the unlikeliest of families."
"Tell us the story, Master Splinter!" Michelangelo begged.
"Michelangelo, I have already told it many times."
"Please? Plea-ea-ease?"
"Please!" cut in Raphael, clapping his hand over Michelangelo's mouth. "It's the only way to shut Mikey up!" *
"Very well." As Splinter launched into the familiar narrative, he found himself dreading the inevitable question. He wondered if he should tell them just how much they meant to him, how he had been reborn when the turtles came into his life. Instead, he simply took the canister he had saved from so long ago and held it up. "It was the mysterious contents of this canister, that in a way, gave birth to us all."
Michelangelo snatched the broken glass container and hugged it. "Mom," he said lovingly.
Splinter shared a simultaneous blink of disbelief with his other three sons, and then suddenly, it came.
Trying to sound casual, Leonardo spoke up. "So, Master Splinter…now that we are fifteen, don't you think it's time we go up to the surface?"
No. Absolutely not. I can't ever let anything happen to you. You are my world. You are my life. You are all I have. You saved me and I will never let you go.
On the other hand, you are getting older…perhaps soon…
"Yes.
"And no."
The boys put up a huge fuss. Donatello tried to out-logic him. Raphael groaned and Mikey pouted. Then, Leonardo spoke again.
"Sensei, I know you are trying to protect us…"
Of course I'm trying to protect you, Leo-bo. Raph-bo. Donnie-bo. Mikey-bo. My sons, my little sons.
"…but we can't live our whole lives down here."
The words echoed inside of Splinter's head. What kind of life was he giving them, anyway, by keeping them trapped down in the sewers? They deserved better…
But how could he let them go?
He looked up at his sons. All four of them gazed at him with pleading in their eyes.
At that, he could no longer resist them. "You may go. Tonight."
There they stood, armed and ready to venture out into the world. Katanas and sai, bo-staff and nunchuks, bravery and fierceness and intelligence and heart all stood before him. His sons. And he was letting them go.
He could not contain the bursts of parental advice that gushed out of his mouth, even though he could see that the turtles were fed up with him. He even told them to use the bathroom first—he had forgotten his boys were becoming men and could take care of themselves. But New York restrooms were certainly worthy of caution.
"SENSEI!" his sons shouted at him.
With a sigh, Splinter said, "Good luck, my sons."
As the boys cheered and ran out of the lair, Splinter could not stop himself. "Look both ways before crossing the street!"
They ignored him. In their absence, he felt deflated.
Good luck, my sons.
My sons.
My everything.
The End
I hope you enjoyed this story! Be sure to check out my other fanfics! If you like my writing style, you might also like my original novel which is published. Check out my profile bio for more info.