Chapter 32
Leonardo was no stranger to the sensation of warped time. In battle, a moment could happen in slow motion; in meditation, half an hour might disappear. The last two hours had been a strange amalgam, wherein each minute passed excruciatingly slowly, but then, suddenly, time was up.
He was led out into the courtyard by the same four guards. It had been so many days since he had been outside that the air seemed especially cool and crisp, the light nuanced and beautiful, the distant city sounds like birdsong.
He would not have long to enjoy it.
Kan and about a dozen of his most senior soldiers were waiting. Many more Foot were standing some distance away, eager spectators respecting some invisible arena fence. One of Kan's men stepped forward with a black lacquer tray, upon which lay a wickedly sharp, long dagger.
He looked down at the tray- the promise of a relatively quick death and mercy for his family, being served to him like cold tea. He found himself wondering just how difficult it would be to cut through his own plastron. Would it be better to draw the blade through the flexible groove between the lower plates, or to employ the acceptable alternative of opening an artery in his neck?
Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet Kan's. "No."
It wasn't that he was afraid, or that he didn't want, more than anything, to save his family. It was imagining them here, watching, as horrified and betrayed as he would be in their place. Raphael screaming at him in the eternity of the afterlife, if any existed: How could you? Die like a sheep without putting up a fight?
They lived every day knowing they might see each other killed in battle; that they could handle. This they could not.
Kan's expression hardened into a mask. "As you wish." He motioned away the tray and four Foot ninja advanced, drawing weapons. It seemed like overkill for the execution of one unarmed offender, but clearly the jonin was taking no chances.
This, Leonardo promised Kan with his eyes, won't be over quickly.
He thought of his father, and his brothers, and then, nothing but quiet readiness.
A shout rose up from somewhere near the gate. Kan halted his men with a hand as a junior sentry came running up, nearly tripping over himself as tried to stop, bow, and speak at the same time. "Kan-jonin. Karera wa kokodesu. San'nin wa kochira."
They are here. The other three are here.
And then, Raphael's voice, the loud, angry timbre like sweet music to Leonardo's ears, carrying above the heads of the assembled ninja. "Where is he?"
Kan turned and strode towards the gate, motioning for it to be opened. The Foot soldiers parted, falling back to either side, until Leonardo could see across the length of the courtyard to where his brothers stood in the entryway.
As Kan approached, Raphael said, almost too quietly to be heard, but his mouth visibly forming the words, "God help you if-"
Michelangelo saw over Kan's shoulder and grasped Raphael's arm. He and Donatello followed Mike's gaze, and all three of their faces filled with such naked relief that Leonardo felt the great wave of it roll over him, crashing on top of his own.
Without taking his eyes off Leo, Raphael stepped to one side and prodded forward the figure of Saito Doshida. There was a sharp hiss of breath from many mouths, and the murmur of voices, until Kan held up a hand for silence. The Foot leader stopped in front of the three turtles and their captive. Leonardo could only see Kan's back, but he heard his words.
"So. You were successful, after all."
"Surprised?" Raphael drew the word out with a sneer.
Saito Doshida looked almost shrunken, his jaw swollen, his badly rumpled navy blue suit and pinstripe tie ridiculously out of place in a courtyard full of black-garbed ninja. Standing right behind him was a woman Leo had seen before and recognized as Saito's lieutenant, Tami.
Kan took a step forward and Raphael said, "Not so fast." He darted his eyes back to Leo, who walked across the courtyard, the Foot turning their heads to watch him, but none stopping him, until he passed Kan and stood next to Donatello, who reached up and gripped tightly the top rim of his shell, as if confirm he was really there and to hold him in place.
"My katana," Leo requested.
At a word from Kan, a Foot soldier hurried off.
Saito Doshida watched all this with what appeared to be mild interest. Now he bowed deeply and said, "Kan Masataro, Jonin-san. Watashi wa anata no jihi de gozen." It appears I am in your mercy. "Although," he glanced at the turtles and continued in Japanese, "I am surprised to find the Foot relying on their old enemies to do what they cannot."
Kan did not return the bow but narrowed his eyes in disdain. "Uragirimono." Traitor. "Inu." Dog. "You will finally account for betraying your family and clan."
Doshida's face twitched, betraying, for a moment, emotion that seemed foreign to it. Real fear. A tremble entered his voice as he dropped his gaze to the stones beneath his feet. "As you well know, Jonin-san, I do not have the fortitude for seppuku. I ask only, in the presence of these witnesses, for a swift and immediate death."
Behind him, Tami gave a small suppressed sob.
"That would be more than you deserve."
"I humbly ask you to consider the otherwise long and honorable Foot Clan lineage of the Doshida family, of which I am the only descendant son."
The Foot soldier that Kan had sent away returned with Leonardo's katana and scabbards. He handed them over hesitatingly and Leonardo strapped them on in seconds.
"Let's get outta here," Raphael said, taking several steps backwards, pulling Don and Leo with him, but none of them managing to go any further, as riveted by the scene before them as everyone else in the courtyard. Mike stayed rooted in place, unable to tear his eyes from Tami and Doshida.
"So be it," Kan said. The surrounding Foot Soldiers hastily cleared a space around their leader and Doshida.
Saito was turning a nauseous shade of yellow. "Please... just a couple minutes..." Slowly, carefully, as though trying to draw out every last remaining second available to him, he took off his suit jacket, folded it and set it down on the ground. He removed his gold cufflinks and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He loosened his tie and took it off, then unbuttoned the stiff collar, pulling it down to expose his neck.
Tami was weeping silently now. Doshida said, "Goodbye Tami," in a voice that might have been regretful, or tender, or nothing at all. Then he stepped forward and lowered himself to his knees.
Mike reached out a hand to stop her, but Tami stumbled towards Saito and dropped down next to him, asking to share his fate.
"No," Mike whispered. Raphael put an arm out to keep him from interfering, but there was no need. Mike didn't move at all, as if he couldn't.
Kan drew his sword, and perhaps it was the glint of the blade's edge, or the rasp of it leaving its scabbard, but Doshida lost his nerve completely. He fell forward onto his stomach, hands extended. "Please Jonin-san, jihi o kakeru!" To everyone's shock, he crawled forward and grasped Kan's feet. "Show mercy!"
The Foot leader pulled his feet away, his mouth twisted in a grimace of deepest disgust. "Sit up! You humiliate yourself!" He raised his katana.
The blade never came down. Poised at the apex of its swing, it froze, locked in place by hands, arms, a body and legs that suddenly belonged not to Kan Masataro, but to some statue in his perfect likeness.
Saito Doshida was the only one who moved. He stood up, and before anyone could put two thoughts together, he plucked the sword from Kan's immobile fingers and laid the flat of the blade on the man's shoulder, edge against his neck. "Who is humiliated now, Kan?" Then in a loud voice, "Foot ninja! Whichever one of you that moves will be responsible for the death of your jonin!"
Raphael formed each word separately: "What the hell?"
"His cufflinks," Donatello breathed.
Leonardo followed Don's gaze down to Kan's feet. Two gold buttons glinted from above the rim of the man's black tabi shoes, the hidden needles pinned through the fabric and into the flesh of the pressure point behind his ankles.
"The neurotoxin won't kill you, Kan," Doshida said amiably. "That would be letting you off the hook too easily, don't you think? Your paralysis is temporary- you'll be quite free to cut your own belly within an hour." Although his body remained comically immobilized in the posture of gripping a katana hilt that was no longer in his hands, the Foot leader's eyes ignited with fury and hatred. Unperturbed, and without shifting his hold on the sword against Kan's neck, Doshida pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket and handed it back to Tami, who overcame her awestruck gaping enough to take it and start punching in a number.
Raphael blinked hard, unable to believe what he was seeing, then snapped a look over to Leonardo, who read his thoughts in an instant. We can take them both out.
"Listen first," Saito called out, as if he'd also just heard Raphael's thoughts, though he addressed the indecisively shifting Foot Soldiers. "Tonight, I will leave New York for good. And I will take any of you who wish to join me." He let the first murmur of surprise, indignation and confusion ripple through the ranks before raising his voice above it. "I was once a Foot Solider like you. But all this-" he swept out his arm, "belongs in the past! There is a future, for people like us, for ninja." He turned his head, including the turtles as he spoke now. "I'm done with squabbles over street territory, with laws and press scrutiny, with pointless clan vendettas. There's more money to be made elsewhere- not just in this country, but South America, Eastern Europe- places with great untapped demand for ninja skills. Wherever there's intrigue and violence, there will be work for us. Have your city then. Or-" and his challenge traveled across the crowd, "come with me."
No one moved. Then one Foot Soldier stepped forward, approaching Doshida with a short bow. He pulled off his mask, revealing the face of a young man, no older than twenty-five. Another followed him, and another, until there were over half a dozen black-clad young men standing next to the jonin of the Rising Hand, in his partly unbuttoned white dress shirt and navy pants. The remaining Foot Clan stared at them, and then one whispered word rose up, taken up by row after row of Foot, echoing like a chanted curse: traitors.
All his brothers' eyes were on him. They were four strong; they could get through Doshida's small, new retinue and cut him down, and then Kan as well, defenseless as a wax sculpture, before they were set upon by Foot. Leonardo felt the courtyard pulse with the promise of bloodshed. Outside the gate, there was the sudden squealing of many tires on gravel.
"We leave. Now."
Both Michelangelo and Raphael hesitated, but when Leo and Don fell back into position, the force of ingrained training moved them. They broke into flanking pairs, retreating through the entryway of the compound, aiming for cover on either side, just as the doors of two black SUVs swung open in full view of the Foot courtyard, a contingent of men with handguns and rifles piling out of the vehicles before they had even stopped moving.
"We're going. No one move!" Doshida declared, his voice carrying all the way out to the turtles as they sped through the trees, across the grounds, converging again as a group of four, well away from the compound. Looking back, they could see, from a distance, Doshida and Tami and their new recruits, walking out of the gates and to the cars, their armed men backing up behind them, keeping their sights trained on the Foot. Michelangelo's eyes followed the spot of blue hair as it disappeared through a car door, they stayed on the SUV as it roared back down the path, into the street, and away, and finally, they dropped to the ground, closing briefly as he sighed, nodding.
Raphael said, "You think you made the right call?"
Leonardo looked back at the compound, then out at the glitter of the city. "It's not our war," he said. "We already won back our clan." He reached for them, and his brothers pulled him into a fierce embrace.