End of the longest frigging prologue ever written.
This is just where the story starts.
There was nothing remarkable about Don at first glance. Nothing to say that he was different from other child.
Then again, there had never been anything different about Leonardo.
He was thin, but that was typical of the children Yoshi worked with. They tended to be neglected in some way, and that neglect was at the heart of the behavior that got them sent to him. Sullen, as most were, but Yoshi saw intelligence in his slate gray eyes.
Once the social worker had introduced him and left the two alone, Yoshi asked the boy the same question he always asked new children.
"Why are you here?"
Usually the boys would say something harsh in response, something to tell Yoshi right away that they didn't want to be there and resented being sent.
Don thought about the question.
He skipped the usual instant responses - 'because Prentiss is a bitch', some said about their social worker, or 'I didn't have no choice'.
Don answered slowly, and he answered the question he knew was intended, not settling for the easy, defiant answer. "I'm getting in trouble more, and they don't know how to fix me."
Yoshi was delighted by the answer, though of course he didn't let it show. He took Don by the shoulder and led him into the back, to meet Leonardo and listen to the usual talk Yoshi gave about what they would be doing while he was there.
No sparks lit the air when Leo met Don. Leo was solemn, and Don was thoughtful, and they gave each other that searching look that children always gave on meeting other children their age, and Leo stuck out his hand.
Don shook and then Leo was out of his mind. He looked around the inside of the dojo, wide-eyed. Yoshi could tell that those eyes saw most everything, not just the weapons and training pads the boys usually focused on. Don saw the candles, the certificates on the walls, the painted characters.
Yoshi let him look minutes longer than he let most boys, and then sat him down to begin their lessons.
In their first lesson, Yoshi pinpointed what Don's problem stemmed from. Every single word Yoshi spoke, every fact about the meditations they would try and the history behind them, was devoured by the boy. Absorbed entirely. Thought about. Questioned with intelligence.
The boy was starved for knowledge.
As good a problem as Yoshi could ever have wished. Here was a boy who was restless, angry, because the way some families starved their children physically he felt starved mentally. He hungered to know things, to understand the world. He asked questions of everything, and when Yoshi had him try and guess the answers his guesses were as good as any an educated adult might offer.
Don was a perfect student. If he was distracted easily, Yoshi forgave him - Leonardo might have been awed by the arts Yoshi taught, but Don's mind wanted more. Wanted everything. He would interrupt a session with a sudden question about some fact he heard on TV and had to know more about.
He was fostered with a family who actually seemed to care for him, and when his sessions with Yoshi worked so effectively to soothe his sullen anger, the family let him keep attending even when he had to start charging his usual fees.
Leo and Don seemed to get along. Leo was intimidated by a lot of the boys - they were hard and knew too many things about a world Yoshi protected his son from. But Don knew about everything, and he and Leo could share stories nonstop when Don's foster parents were late in getting him, as they almost always were.
One day Yoshi sat in his dojo, preparing to take on his next ward, when Leo came in from the front wide-eyed and excited.
"Father!"
"Don has left?"
"His parents got him." Leo was vibrating, which was odd for the quiet boy. "Father!"
Yoshi regarded him, amused, and when Leo dutifully held back from speaking about whatever excited him, Yoshi nodded his approval.
"Father, Don's had the dream too!"
"The dream?" Yoshi studied his son. "Your dream?"
Leo nodded, eyes round. "The exact same thing! He told me before I even could say anything about it!"
Leo had had the same odd dream since he was old enough to tell his father about them. He described it uncertainly, though he had words for everything else he'd ever talked about.
"It's like I'm looking at the world, but my mind works differently. I see things less clearly, but I can feel them more. I don't know, it's strange. It's like trying to talk about the world but suddenly only knowing four or five words. I see and understand things differently."
Like an animal. Yoshi had dreams himself of the old days, before the change. But his life had been long and full before that day. The turtles had been infants, yet it seemed they - Leonardo at least - retained some subconscious memory of life before their own change.
So this news, this discovery that young Don had experienced the same thing, was a jarring hope for an old man who longed to amend a mistake he'd made years ago, surrendering children only he could have understood.
He had to ask Don about the dreams, to see how similar they truly were.
But first, he had a new child to meet.
Michael was a surprise as much as Don had been. Also unlike most of the foster children he worked with, Mike was a tall, smiling, bright-eyed boy. Yoshi didn't at all mind dealing with someone who didn't see him as a punishment, but he couldn't figure out at first why Mike would be sent to him for behavioral lessons.
He laughed a lot, and if his focus didn't lend itself towards meditation Yoshi didn't mind it so much. Children came into their enlightenments in their own ways.
Mike joked and smiled, looked on everything with bright, optimistic eyes.
Yoshi called Miss Prentiss, at a loss for what he was supposed to be teaching a boy who seemed better adjusted than any he'd ever taught.
"He's been sent to ten different families, Yoshi. Look at him - he's gorgeous. Every rich couple in New York who wants to adopt zooms in on him like he's a magnet and they're metal. But they always bring him back. They say he's wonderful most of the time, but when he's not, he's absolutely horrible."
It took Yoshi a while to see that side of Mike. He taught him basic lessons, introduced him to Leo as he did all the boys. Leo adored Mike, Yoshi saw easily. Something about the bright, friendly boy drew out Leo's own neglected childlike side. He always asked if Mike would be by that day, even on days when his best friend, Don, was coming.
But one day Prentiss dropped off a different boy. Red-faced, breathing hard, tense and wound. She left him with apologies to Yoshi, but he waved them off. There was no way to get to the heart of trouble if he never saw Mike in a bad mood.
Bad mood. It became an understatement for what Mike was that day. He couldn't speak in full sentences. His eyes darted around in constant movement. He was nothing of the smiling boy he usually was.
Yoshi, because talking wasn't working, turned Mike loose on the training bags.
Mike fought, punched, yelled. Struck so hard, for so long, that he ended up coated in sweat, hoarse, nearly hyperventilating.
Yoshi watched, silent, letting him beat the bag until he was exhausted. Troubled by this boy suddenly in a real, deep way. Anger like that had deep wells, and to be able to cover it so well, so often, by such happiness…
His problems were real, and Yoshi had neglected him by treating him so far as a pleasant child who didn't require much work at all.
When Mike's punches finally slowed, and his contorted face began to relax, Yoshi looked away to see Leo in the doorway, watching.
Yoshi went to his son instantly.
Leo was wide-eyed watching his favorite new playmate lash out, but Yoshi should have known better than to worry about Leo understanding.
Leo looked at his father, but moved into the dojo past him as Mike finally slumped against the wall, panting, exhausted.
Leo went to Mike without fear. He crouched beside the usually smiling boy.
Yoshi heard his words and was stunned.
"When you dream," Leo asked him seriously, "the world seems different, doesn't it?"
Mike nodded without even looking at him.
Whatever Leo saw in that fit of rage that seemed familiar he didn't tell Yoshi. Whether he had recognized something familiar in Mike before and just chose that moment to ask him about it, he never said.
Yoshi didn't pry. If Mike was one of those lost babies of his then it was only right the boys be allowed their connection without a lot of prying.
If Mike was one of his babies, Yoshi had even more need to get to the bottom of his problems.
He never spoke to the boys of what he thought. Leo had no idea his own origins, and to explain to these troubled children that they began their lives in a pet store rather than a hospital would be cruel.
Leonardo would probably take it as a lesson. A metaphor of some kind that he didn't understand.
Mike didn't talk about his rages. He slumped that day on the floor of the dojo, and Leo sat with him for a while. They didn't talk after Leo's soft question. Yoshi waited for Mike to stir, and sent him to shower in the back.
When Mike returned from his shower, he was smiling and bright-eyed. He acted as if his earlier mood never happened, even seeming confused when Yoshi asked him about it.
Trouble. Yoshi saw the real danger in the boy's mind, and feared at it.
He called Prentiss and asked if she wouldn't switch Mike's days to match the days Don came. Instinct told him that Don's sullen intelligence, Mike's deep rages, and Leo's too-adult mind could all be helped by each other's presence.
He thought that it might have been his own wishful thinking. Seeing his turtles in the eyes of normal children. But there was no doubting that the boys had a connection, even if it was one that only they themselves understood.
At first Rafael seemed to be typical of the delinquent children Yoshi saw most often, if a concentrated version.
He was small, undernourished, black-eyed and black-haired. His hands were fists most of the time.
A pretty usual story, Prentiss told Yoshi. He was adopted by a couple who already had a brood of foster children. They slipped through the cracks of the overburdened child welfare office, taking on kids for the checks that were sent. Neglected, hungry, dirty, too many children were given to them and treated as cash registers for government funding.
They weren't sent to school, rather learning occasional random lessons from the 'parents' - who barely spoke English and only taught their children Spanish. The couple was exposed when one of their older children went to a neighbor begging for food for his brothers.
Sent back into the system when he was five, Rafael was already trouble. He was disobedient, angry. He came back from more than one family bruised, and more than one family claimed that he was impossible to deal with without using force.
A childhood starved and neglected kept him small - at nine he could have passed for seven - and like a great many small, abused children, Rafael overcompensated with anger and force.
Leo had wandered into the dojo during Rafael's first session, and though Rafael had shown no interest in the lesson Yoshi tried to teach he jumped up the moment another boy came in, yelling about how this was his time and his lesson. He cursed in English, in Spanish. He took up one of the shoes Yoshi had ordered him to take off and threw it.
Not an unusual boy, unfortunately. Rafael was as close to normal as Yoshi was sent.
But there was something about the boy that utterly fascinated Yoshi. His mood was so black so constantly that the sheer energy it took to maintain it was a wonder. Rafael never sulked when he could shout. Never sat in a funk when he could stomp about and cause havoc.
The first thing about Rafael that struck Yoshi as different was that he hesitated to use the bag.
Punching the bag was an early exercise for new kids. All of them loved it. These children, whether happy or sad or angry, were all helpless in their lives. Their future was always uncertain, always out of their control. Each of them jumped on the chance to lash out, to hit at something that gave them the rare feeling of being in control.
Rafael was different. He wanted nothing to do with the bag. Not from any hesitance to use violence - that was more than obvious. Not from any lack of anger. Anger seemed to be all that kept the slight boy moving.
Yoshi tried more than once to get Rafael to hit the bag. So much could be told from how a boy performed that simple exercise. Leonardo hit with precision, worrying about footwork and how he held his fists. Too precise to be violent.
Don was fascinated by the process of it. He seemed to take it as a chance to teach himself more about his own body and what he might be capable of.
Mike went two ways. Either he was in his usual cheery mood and he took it as a sport, twirling and crying out like any boy who watched too many kung fu movies, or he was in his rare black moods and simply launched at the bag until one of them surrendered.
It told Yoshi a lot about each boy. Rafael's refusal to even use it was a puzzle that made the boy stand out among more than a handful of equally angry, defiant delinquents.
Whatever it was, he had to figure it out fast. Prentiss told him outright that Rafael was close to going into detention. He was too violent. No one wanted the boy, and children in the state home feared him. He stole, he lied. He was vicious, she said. Yoshi was his last chance.
He sat the boy down after a couple of completely unsuccessful sessions and asked why he wouldn't use it.
Rafael just shrugged, braced, like a boy who was used to being hit for refusing adults what they wanted of him.
"You'll hit the other children, though you know you'll be punished. Why not take your anger out on something you're allowed to strike against?"
Rafael looked at him with dark eyes and answered finally in his lightly Spanish-touched accent. "Just because you're allowed to hit something doesn't mean you should."
An odd profundity to come from a child like him, and Yoshi was caught by it. "Why do you suppose you shouldn't?"
"Bag can't hit back."
Simple answer, but it told Yoshi a great many things about the boy.
Rafael was angry, but though he considered everything a fitting target for his anger he refused to attack something that couldn't fight back. He understood the injustice of someone beating something just because they could.
Abuse was common in foster homes. Too common. Common enough to make Prentiss a hard woman before her thirtieth birthday, and to send Yoshi into occasional spirals of depression for the frequency of the bruises he saw on the bodies and minds of his children.
Mike, he thought, was abused. If not currently than in the past. Enough to put something dark into his subconscious that had to bubble over now and then.
But Yoshi's job was to deal with their anger, to keep them out of further trouble. He was frustratingly powerless to heal the other factors in their lives.
Yoshi had no suspicions that Rafael was one of his children. Perhaps his accent or the Spanish that flavored his words shut Yoshi's mind to the option. Whatever it was, when Yoshi first saw to it that Mike and Rafael came at the same time, he was hoping that they might understand each other based on anger alone.
And they did, but in no way he predicted.
Rafael threw his usual fit that another child was taking Yoshi's attention from him - though he resented the lessons and never tried hard to learn - and he came at Mike yelling.
Mike, smiling and as pacifying as ever, tried talking to him. Impossible with Rafael, so Mike tried to ignore him.
Then Rafael hit some sensitive spot with his words, or his small fists, and Yoshi for the first time saw Mike's mood change.
Mike got very still, and his eyes went blank. His face, so expressive and animated, hardened into the mindless rage he had come in with once or twice.
He flew at Rafael the way he attacked the bag.
They fought.
Yoshi made no attempt to stop it. He stood back and made sure they didn't cause any serious injuries, but from the start it was apparent that though they didn't pull any punches they were hardly hurting each other as badly as they could have.
They ended up scratched, bleeding, tired, rolling around the mat unwilling to surrender.
Rafael came out on top, because Mike's anger was temporary. A flare to Rafael's slow-burning candle.
But Rafael didn't top him with any childish smugness. There was no victory in him when he rolled to his feet and held out a hand to Mike.
The two of them recognized something in each other; that was clear. But just what became apparent when Leo, stirred by the sounds of fighting, came down from their small upstairs apartment and watched.
Mike was the one who spoke, though, directing sudden smiling words to the angry, small boy who was so close to being abandoned to delinquent homes and prisons.
"You see it too, don't you? At night. You see a different world."
Rafael stared at him, for maybe the first time not responding instantly with anger or belligerence. "I don't know what I see," he said finally.
And Yoshi had his boys back.
There could be no doubt, not once they had all four been introduced and they spent an hour simply talking in half-sentences about the dreams they shared that no one else had ever understood.
Fate, he reflected as he sat and watched and listened. Fate had brought them back. Fate had led them into a system, hurt them in different ways, and returned them to their first father for healing.
But they weren't his children anymore. None but Leonardo belonged to him, and to keep the others - and he fully intended to keep them in some way, to let them be brothers again in whatever way he could - would be a challenge.
Don had a foster family of his own. Mike was running out of time with him - the city only sent the boys to him for so long. Rafael was in danger of being put into detention.
He had work to do to keep them together. But the miracle had been finding them at all. After that, anything seemed possible.