Part 31: epilogue

"strike hard and fade away, without a trace" - Splinter

Years passed. Saki was dead, come back as three deformed mutations of himself, then died again. Karai led the Foot clan, bringing them to something of a cease fire and an uneasy truce. And the Purple Dragons ultimately lost the gang wars, broken and absorbed by the more fearsome Jet Crowns.

Fearsome to other gangs.

A spray of gunfire peppered the side of the alley, blasting off pieces of concrete and steel and dropping the handful of die-hard Purple Dragons to the ground. As the shooter came forward, holding a machine gun in either arm, the streetlight exploded glass and sparks, turning everyone into black silhouettes.

"Seriously," Michelangelo said, landing on top of the two guns and boxing the shooter's ears hard enough that he felt the eardrums rupture. "Jet Crowns? What's that even mean?"

He did a sommersault off the flailing body, roundhousing another shooter on the way down.

"It's not like they have tiny little jetpacks on 'em," he said, pulling off the girl's jacket and showing off the back design. "It's just a boring ol' crown."

A staff swept through the air, smacking several men in a row, spilling them across the alley on top of dead Purple Dragons.

"Jet means black," Donatello sighed with the air of having explained it before. "They're black crowns—"

"That's so boring!" Michelangelo tossed the jacket aside and looked down the alley at his brother. "Hey, you almost done over there?"

"Just...a...sec!"

Raphael cursed under his breath, dodging the switchblades aimed at his face. Three crowns lay at his feet but two more charged at him with short, sharp thrusts—and then one suddenly had a throwing star in his knee, which gave Raphael enough of an opening to put a sai through his chest.

The steel stuck in the man's ribs, and Raphael had to bring his foot up to kick the man off. As he pulled his sai free, the splash of blood and the body dropping to the ground were the only sound in the alley.

The second knife user turned and ran.

"Hey!" Raphael cursed again, stepping over the body. "I wouldn't run if I was—"

There was a flash of light on steel, and then the Jet Crown stopped, fell to his knees and collapsed.

"Well," Raphael sighed. "Not like I didn't warn 'im."

"So that's like what?" Michelangelo asked, coming closer. "Two hundred of 'em by now?"

"Two-fifteen," Donatello said. "Not much of a dent in them yet."

"We're still just getting their attention," Raphael said over his shoulder, more interested in the space where the last Jet Crown had fallen. "Hey! The fight's done. You stay put!"

"I'm tired of just getting their attention," Michelangelo said, following Raphael through the alley. "I wanna take out a whole bunch of them all at once. They have that warehouse on the docks, right? Can't we just drop it though the dock into the ocean?"

Donatello shot him a look. "You want the list of reasons why that's a lousy idea alphabetized or bullet point?"

Raphael stopped at the last gangster's corpse, then looked up at the fire escape above them. His eyes had to adjust even more—there was no light out here save for the dim glow from an apartment several floors up—until he spotted Leonardo sitting on the lowest railing, his blooded sword in an easy grip, watching them quietly. At Raphael's look, he glanced away at the far wall.

"He was running," Raphael said.

"Didn't drop the knife," Leonardo said, half-shrugging. "Or the gun in his waistband."

Raphael huffed. No arguing on that point. Gangbangers only got to run if they dropped everything and weren't just retreating to safety.

"Let's head home," Raphael said, giving one last glance at the alley behind them. "We made our point. Turf wars means everyone winds up dead."

"Or that they need to bring more men," Leonardo said, sheathing his sword. He slid off the fire escape and landed beside him. "And more guns."

"You're just pissed I spotted ya," Raphael said, grinning as Leonardo glared at him.

But it was only a glare, and only for a moment. Leonardo knew he had himself to blame, refusing to blacken his swords while he searched for properly dark steel. He'd broken his last pair on Saki's armor.

"I wasn't trying that hard," Leonardo said. "Fight was over anyway."

They rarely argued anymore. Raphael had grown a head taller, possibly a head broader, and leadership lay on his shoulders naturally, finally used to trusting his siblings to fight well, the same as they trusted Leonardo to always have their back.

"We'll hit 'em in a couple days," Raphael said. "They need time to feel their numbers going down, get a little desperate. Then we hit their warehouse."

"Head on?" Michelangelo asked.

"A couple of Don's incendiaries dropped on 'em first," Raphael said. "Burn the place down around them. Maybe rob 'em blind. Y'know, soften 'em up."

Leonardo had fallen silent. Raphael glanced at him again, making sure he hadn't faded back into the darker shadows beside them. His brother winced and rotated his shoulder, rubbing the old scar on his arm.

Sometimes Raphael wondered how life would have been different if Leonardo hadn't destroyed his sense of balance, hadn't relinquished control to him.

At home, after he'd gone a couple rounds with the punching bag to settle his thoughts, Raphael went looking in on his siblings. Stepping into Donatello's lab was always a little awkward. Ever since he flushed the thing that used to be Timothy, Donatello didn't trust him around his living test subjects, but Raphael had felt in his heart that thing had to go. Even Splinter and Leonardo had backed him up. Donatello being upset with him was a small price to pay for Donatello no longer bearing up under the impossible task of bringing back that annoying wannabe.

Michelangelo had curled up on the floor in front of the televisions, snatching precious time with his favorite video game, Spinning Geisha Miracle. Their constant training left him little time to hurl painted wooden tops at countless yokai enemy, but a good fight left him so hyper that a heavy blanket and some chips and a dancing geisha screaming out her attacks helped relax his nerves.

And in the dojo, sitting before the dozens of candles, Leonardo meditated, although the way he kept worrying at his arm belied how he was clearly not at ease.

"I'm not hiding," Leonardo said before Raphael could.

Raphael wordlessly reached over and put his hand on his brother's shoulder, pushing down lightly on a pressure point and rolling his palm over the joint. Leonardo stiffened, then breathed out as the pain released.

"Didn't say ya were," Raphael said. "Y'know, if it's getting bad again, you can just come ask me. I don't want you suffering in silence."

"...it's not that bad," Leonardo said. "Just pulls now and then."

Raphael held his brother's arm out, turned it over gently, then worked his fingertips along the jagged scar, now faded and only slightly raised. Leonardo hissed but bore up under the pain, and after several minutes, the muscle finally began to relax.

"It's 'cause you get so damn tense," Raphael said. "You need more time letting it rest."

Leonardo rolled his eyes. "It can rest when I'm asleep. You up to helping me work it out?"

Raphael scoffed even as he got to his feet. "Don't run crying to Splinter when I mop the floor with ya."

"As if," Leonardo said, standing and allowing his old injuries to pull him to one side, already beginning the slow circling that usually led to him vanishing. "You won't even see me put you down."

Raphael didn't let him see his smile. Even a year ago, this would have been impossible. Balance was slow to return to his sibling, but even slower was the pride that had been crushed out of him. Only after being ordered to kill Saki again, that Raphael believed only a master of stealth could kill another ninja master, had Leonardo begun to feel like a full member of the family once more.

And if Leonardo still couldn't land a jump without going sideways, then he caught himself on one hand and more easily dodged attacks. If his scars took him one way, he no longer resisted, following different paths in battle, all angles instead of straight lines. And as they fought, Raphael learned to find him no matter how hard he hid, and Leonardo learned to accept being found and dragged back into the light.

If they had thought about it, they might have given it a name.

Wasuremono.

Pain, fear and shame...all left behind.

end