Rating: K
Words: 549
Author's Note: It has been so long since I have written on this challenge! Eventually, I will getting them all done, promise. This drabble takes place before the start of Season 3, because I began to wonder what might have happened to Master Splinter while the turtles were up north. I think that some humans were still trying to live normally, even during the Kraang invasion, but the appearance of a giant rat would still be terrifying. Enjoy! *Thanks to those who let me know that this wasn't readable before... Hopefully it's better now!
The world was wrong. So very very wrong. Everything was danger. Everything was frightening. He could no longer determine up from down, left from right, right from wrong. He could no no longer clear his head. There was no escape from the pain except retreating farther into his broken mind.
The rat, who had been called Splinter, who had once been a man named Hamato Yoshi, sniffed at a scrap of newspaper in the gutter, covered with grease from an order of French fries. His stomach was so empty that he devoured the paper before his rational mind could stop him. It did not whet his appetite and the rat craved more.
His reason was going. He had to remember… He was Hamato Yoshi. He was a man, not an animal. He had to remember his loved ones; the anchors to his humanity. His sons. His daughter, his wife. He had to…
A delicious smell and the sounds of footsteps and laughter above him abruptly silenced the reason and his baser instincts rose within him. Food. His mind and his stomach screamed for them, and no amount of reasoning could pull him back to himself. He had to have it. The temptation was too strong to resist.
The street was dark except for a flickering streetlight overhead. No one else was around, save for a man and woman, walking arm in arm away from him up a cracked sidewalk. The delectable smell was issuing from a plastic sack in the man's hand. The rat's mouth watered as his eyes followed the sway of the bag from the humans' stride. The danger was minimal, and his hunger was fierce. If he waited for too long, the food would be gone.
The couple did not hear him approach until he was right upon them. He sprung in front of them, arched his back and snapped his jaws at them. They screamed and clutched each other tightly as the rat, who had once been a man, hissed at them, baring his yellowed teeth. The plastic bag fell ignominiously from the man's hand and the rat attacked it at once. The humans shrieked in terror and fled into the night, leaving the rat to tear at the containers of rice and chicken. The rat did not care. They were of no more use to him.
Slowly, as the food filled his belly, his sense of reason returned. He swallowed a the mouthful of cardboard and gravy covered rice before looking down at himself. He was naked, covered in filth and trembling violently. How had he fallen so far? Where was the humanity that he had been so proud of?
Licking a dribble of gravy from his nose, Splinter limped back into the shadows, ashamed by the spectacle he had made of himself. He curled up into a ball and tried to sleep, but the sleep was elusive.
He was no longer a man, it seemed. Only a rat.
"Oh Shen…" he whispered softly, hugging himself and rocking on his haunches in a comforting cadence. There was nothing more that he could do except hide from the harsh world where he no longer belonged, and mourn for Tang Shen, for Miwa, for his sons, and for Hamato Yoshi. All casualties of a nonsensical war.