Chapter 7

He'd told them that he was going out for a movie. Alone. That, and his nervousness, might have raised an eye ridge or two, but recent things considered, no one doubted his need to escape. However, despite the conviction with which he'd left the lair, doubt had hit Michelangelo hard as soon as he'd reached the surface. Now, although he'd been here for almost an hour, unwisely exposing himself to cold, it seemed impossible to will himself forward or backward. Either would be a colossal surrender.

Leo's promise, he finally reminded himself. Not mine. Steeling himself, he shook some warmth into his limbs, and made his way towards the back door of the building. It was unmarked but he knew where it led. He ignored the security keypad and pass card reader, and instead stepped back, looked straight into the security camera and threw a pebble at the lens. Then- he could not believe he was doing this- he waved.

Nothing happened for several minutes. He waited, glancing around furtively at the mostly empty parking lot, suppressing his instinctive fear of being so exposed. Just as disappointment and relief had begun to well inside him, he heard the click of the door being unlocked. Hesitantly, he pulled on it and it opened. He stepped inside. Too late to turn back now. He walked down the hallway and into Saito Doshida's office.

"Michelangelo, am I right?" Doshida said. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet propped up on the side drawer, looking through a file folder balanced on his lap.

Mike nodded, a little surprised. "You know our names."

"I'd be a fool not to have done my homework on your family." Doshida set the folder aside and regarded Michelangelo with a disconcertingly studious gaze. "So you do wear clothes."

Mike glanced down at his extra-large maroon ski jacket and shrugged. "Yeah, now you see why we avoid it. A turtle stuffed into a parka isn't exactly art of invisibility material, you know? Besides, the color selection at the Goodwill drop-off is terrible." Cut it out, he warned himself. Get what you came for, don't talk too much.

Doshida's lips curled in something that might have been amusement. "I think I prefer talking to you over your brothers. So far you haven't flung any weapons at me."

"I wasn't planning to." He felt as though the next words materialized in his mouth and did not come from him at all. "I came to take you up on your offer."

"Just you."

"That's right."

Doshida squinted at him skeptically. "Tell me more."

"I want a... short-term arrangement. Just enough to earn my fee."

"That being...?"

Michelangelo handed the man a piece of folded paper. Doshida opened it and his eyebrows lifted as he smiled faintly. Mike felt a stab of loathing- for the man behind the desk, and for himself, for what he was doing.

Doshida refolded the paper and set it down. "It's a lot."

"Can you get that much?"

A thoughtful silence. "I believe so."

Mike silently let out a breath. "Okay, then. What would you have me do?"

Doshida leaned back in his chair. "Three assignments, over the next three months. You'll get the brief on each job ahead of time. No obligations after three months."

Mike nodded. "I want to be paid in advance."

Surely he expected the condition, but Doshida paused as if he were considering it carefully. "Then what assurance would I have that you'll see this through?"

Michelangelo opened his hands in a gesture of sincerity. "I won't back out of an agreement I've made."

Doshida narrowed his eyes knowingly. "You are here alone."

The man was too perceptive. Michelangelo swallowed, feeling weak inside. "You have my word," he said. "On the honor of my family."

Doshida scrutinized him for another second, then nodded. "That's one thing I don't doubt. Fine. You'll receive half of your payment as soon as I can get it, and the rest once you've finished the last assignment." He seemed satisfied. "Acceptable?"

"No assassinations." I won't kill for you. Not again, not ever.

"If you say so." Doshida picked up his phone and started dialing.

"What are you doing?"

"Arranging for you to meet your team. Assuming you can start tonight."

"My... my team?"

"All the operatives in Agete have assigned strike teams."

"Uh-uh, no, I don't think so," Michelangelo said quickly. "This is meant to be, like, a solo turtle gig. I don't need a team. I don't want anyone else involved. In fact, since it's only for a few months, it doesn't make sense for you to bring any of your people into this." He gestured vehemently. "Look, put the phone down."

Doshida depressed the cradle switch but held onto the receiver. "Virtually every assignment is handled by a strike team. It's how we operate around here."

"That's not what I had in mind."

"Then I'm afraid this won't work."

They regarded each other across the desk. The stalemate stretched into a minute, and Michelangelo realized, with a sinking feeling, that he was not in a good negotiating position.

But it was Doshida who sighed and leaned forward. "The strike teams are one of the biggest differences between the Rising Hand and a traditionally hierarchical ninja clan. Each team has a mix of skills and experiences, and by keeping the teams intact over the course of many missions, they become far more effective. I learned that valuable lesson years ago, watching you and your brothers in your war against the Foot." Doshida paused to take in Mike's stunned expression. "So you of all people should appreciate why I insist on this. By the way, that's your first assignment. To train the team."

Michelangelo was dumbfounded. "Train them? In what?"

"In whatever you think they need to work together as a capable ninja squad."

This thing is going off the rails, Mike thought, desperately thinking of how to salvage the situation. "I've never trained anyone," he said, "and I won't exactly fit in. So this wouldn't be the best way to use one of the three assignments I've agreed to."

"On the contrary," Doshida replied, "your expertise is far more valuable to me than any one mission. My terms are firm."

He could turn around and walk out the way he came in, and pretend this conversation never happened. But he knew, by his reaction to the thought, that he couldn't do that. Doshida's conditions had thrown him for a loop, but then again, he had feared signing up for something illegal or immoral; three months of private lessons for a small group of Rising Hand ninjas couldn't be so bad. "You realize," he said, "my brothers and I were raised together. It's not like I can teach a team to be anything like that in three months."

"I know."

Michelangelo chewed the inside of his cheek. This is so totally messed up. "Okay," he said.

"Good." Doshida lifted his hand off the phone and redialed. "Tami, can you come over here?" He hung up the phone and stood up. "If you'll excuse me." He walked past Mike and exited his office, closing the door behind him and leaving the turtle alone.

Mike let out a long breath and turned in a slow circle. The movie he'd told his family he was going to see would be ending soon. They wouldn't worry at first- the streets were quiet, he wouldn't look for trouble, and he knew how to handle the cold- but they might wonder.

The door opened again and Saito Doshida walked in with a woman trailing close behind him. He must have already spoken to her because, although her eyes widened in amazement and fascination, she wasn't startled to see Michelangelo. Her face was small, attractive and racially ambiguous- part-Asian? part-Hispanic?- and made even more so by the fact that her short hair was dyed a wild shade of blue. She wore a snug-fitting leather jacket and jeans on a frame that was toned and slender without being thin.

"This is Tami," Doshida said. "I've explained our agreement to her, and she will take you from here."

"Hello," Michelangelo said.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him and turned with a beckoning jerk of her blue head. Mike glanced at Doshida, then followed her out of the office. He glimpsed the set of throwing knives sheathed on the ninja utility belt she wore underneath her leather jacket.

"So," he said, "are you on the team I'm supposed to be working with?"

She cast him a sidelong look and nodded.

"Not much of a talker, huh? That's okay. I wouldn't talk to strange green men either if I were you."

They climbed a set of stairs to the second floor, reaching a hallway with windows on the left side overlooking the open training area that Mike had seen the first time he had been here. The right side had several closed doors with keypad locks. Tami stopped in front of one of them and turned to face Michelangelo.

"Doshida-san must know what he's doing," she said. "But I've heard about you...turtles, and so has every ninja in the city. So watch yourself." She paused meaningfully. "'Cause we'll be watching you." On that welcoming note, she punched a code into the keypad and pushed open the door.

The space Michelangelo stepped into consisted of two connected rooms. In the first, a man was sitting on a sofa with his feet propped up on the coffee table. Another man was standing near the back wall near the mini-fridge. A bag of Doritos lay open near the television, which was frozen on pause in the middle of a video game. Through the doorway on the far side of the room, a third man was hunched over one of the laptops that sat on a large work desk. Maps and lists were tacked to the wall-to-ceiling magnetic whiteboards.

"Whoa. Dorm room meets war room," Michelangelo thought, then realized he'd voiced it aloud. Every head turned, and the room fell silent. Mike found himself, for once, uncomfortable at being the center of attention.

The man standing by the wall came forward. Mike's first thought was that he looked like a character out of an action flick - buzz cut, square jaw and dark sunglasses. The sleeveless shirt he wore over black jeans showed off the tattoos on his arms- twin cobras coiled around large, muscled biceps. "What is this?" he drawled.

"Our newest addition," Tami said.

"No freakin' way!" The man in the other room, a wiry, fidgety fellow with curls of disheveled hair poking out from under a well-worn ball cap, leapt up from his computer and rushed over, stopping just a few feet away from Michelangelo and staring, open-mouthed, as if he wanted to poke him to determine if he was a CGI image. "So these guys are actually real!"

"Of course they're real." The man on the sofa rose to his feet and Michelangelo blinked in surprise. It was the teenager he'd seen outside the club months ago, the same one he'd fought last year, who'd now twice led him to the Rising Hand. Tonight he was wearing a black t-shirt and camouflage pants, the tips of his short, spiky hair highlighted orange, a wary look of recognition on his boyishly smooth face. "I've seen them before."

An uncertain silence followed and Mike seized it by holding his hand out to the young man. "Mike. I'm your diversity candidate." The teen eyed the green three-fingered hand as if worried it would grab him. Mike added good-naturedly, "Don't worry, I'm not contagious."

Reluctantly, with an air of forced assertiveness, as if compelled to prove he wasn't afraid, the teen shook Mike's hand. "Ren."

"I like the hair." Mike looked from Ren to Tami. "You guys have got a kind of team look going. Wish I could try something new, 'cause green scalp gets kind of old, you know?" He turned to the other two men. "What're your names?"

The man who'd been at the computer gaped at him. "Simon."

The man with the sunglasses folded his arms.

"Everyone calls him Snake," Tami said.

"Like a code name? What came first, the name or the tattoos?"

"The name." Snake's voice was low and gravelly, bringing to mind a crocodile rather than a snake. "From my military days."

"From one escaped military experiment to another, then." Mike brought his hand up in a mock salute.

Snake remained expressionless behind his mirrored sunglasses. "You're some kind of joker, turtle."

"It's worse when I'm nervous." Mike looked to Tami. "So, uh, help the new guy out. How do things work around here?"

"How about you tell us what you're doing here in the first place," Snake said. "We hear you've got your own kind. So what's your game?"

Michelangelo faced the man and took a small, firm step forward. "Hey, we've all got our own reasons for being here. We don't need to question each other's. I'll do my part; I'm not here to mess with anyone."

He guessed by their expressions that they were reconciling his disarming manner with the battle stories they'd heard. For a second, Michelangelo felt terrified. He was not supposed to be doing this- recklessly exposing himself and interacting with humans, much less soliciting their trust. He shoved the terror into the back of his mind and shut the door on it.

"So what is your part?" Snake asked with obvious skepticism.

"Your boss wants me to teach you guys to work together." He looked around the circle of guarded faces and shrugged. "Look, I know I'm a giant talking turtle, you've no reason to trust me, and you've probably heard some things about my family that you wouldn't want to repeat to my face. But I'm here for three months and I happen to have a lot of, I guess, 'team player' experience."

Snake gave a dubious huff as Tami, Ren and Simon exchanged glances.

Tami said, "We'll start tomorrow, then."