Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Places ❯ 8 ( Chapter 8 )

Part 8

Feinting towards Raph, Leo instead ducked his punch and tackled Michelangelo, throwing both of them to the ground, but Leo's fall was cushioned and Mike had the breath knocked out of him. Leo dodged right and narrowly avoided Donatello's bo, backflipping further down into the main room. Raphael followed, his sais flashing in the light. Leonardo winced as the glare hit his eyes and backed away again.

"It doesn't have to be like this," Raph said. His slashes weren't aimed to hit, only drive back. "I don't wanna fight you!"

"Could of fooled me," Leo said. He backed into the wall and his hands scrabbled along the wall, and out of luck he grabbed his old sheaths, empty but still heavy. He hurled them at Raphael and darted towards him, heading for his legs.

Raphael veered left to dodge but couldn't react in time as Leo rushed forward. He stepped back, thinking his brother meant to break his legs, but instead Leo halted and swept him off his feet. As he landed hard on his back, Leo moved past him as quick as a shadow, attacking Donatello.

He had to stay out of the reach of that bo. Solid oak, Donatello's staff was heavy enough to shatter bones and Don was fast enough to whip it 180 degrees without pausing. It whistled through the air as his brother put more and more strength into his swings, growing frustrated as he couldn't hit him. Every time he struck, Leo had already moved out of the way.

The staff swung in a powerful arc towards Leo's head, too powerful as Donatello missed and the force of his swing sent him off balance, stumbling to the right. Leonardo kicked his wrist, knocking the staff out of his hands. Before it hit the ground, Leo had bent and grabbed it, jabbing Don in the chest. His brother fell backwards so Leo didn't see the nunchuck whipping towards him until he could barely block it, catching the end with the staff. The crack of wood echoed through the lair, and Leo looked into Mike's eyes. All the laughter and levity had gone out of them, leaving him intent on bringing his sibling down. That Mike had turned on him didn't surprise him. That it hurt, did.

But Felix was waiting.

Leonardo drove forward, taking a hit on his upper arm as he knocked the staff against Mike's head, then his leg, his knee, his arm, raining blows down as fast as he could. The staff started to blur as Mike cried out, turning away and falling to his knees. Without a break, Leo jammed the staff backward, missing Raphael behind him but using the position to smack Raph's side, then wrist. With a turn of his arm, he spun the staff, striking the top of Raph's head, and flicked it sideways, hitting Donatello's shoulder. As they winced, he knelt again and used all of his strength to drag the bo in a circle above the ground, knocking them over again.

He stood amongst his fallen brothers, not even breathing hard. He sighed and tossed the staff on the floor, listening to it roll away. The flow, the ecstasy, the rhythm of the fight, none of it in this. He felt no elation in victory, no heady rush without blood or screams. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, breathing deep.

"Did it give you pleasure," he asked the air, "to watch me defeat them?"

"No."

Leo glanced over his shoulder at the rat in the doorway. Tail tip flipping, Splinter leaned on a cane and watched him. "Then why didn't you help them?"

"I had hoped you would not make that necessary." Splinter stepped closer, stopping in arm's reach of his oldest son. "I thought I could trust you that much. Have you really changed so much?"

"I haven't changed at all." Leo turned and looked down at his master. "You trained me to kill. You taught me how to take life."

"Only when needed," Splinter shook his head, "only to defend yourself."

"Have bullets become less lethal while I was gone?" Leo's hands flexed, eager to take up his swords. "Have knives lost their edge?"

"So much blood you shed--"

A bitter laugh as Leo stared at him in amazement. "Again with the blood? Is that all that upset you? Would you feel better if I'd snapped their necks instead? They'd still be dead. Why do you make me fight but never let me kill? I study war but you never let me wage war. Are our lives worth less than theirs?"

"Leonardo, we cannot make ourselves executioners. Your studies are to help you avoid death on either side."

Leo closed his eyes and looked down. The relief from the light bolstered him. "It is criminal," he recited, "to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the victim of constant attack." He looked back at his master. "I've studied more than war. Military history is all of history."

"And what has history taught you?" Splinter said, tightening his grip on his cane.

"Two things," Leo said. "Whether death is evil depends on who's telling the story."

"And the second?"

"That you're stalling so that they'll recover and help stop me." Leo took a step forward, using it to leap as Splinter swung his cane towards his face. He narrowly missed the edge and landed behind him, rolling under the next swipe and standing straight. "Use Raphael from now on. I'm done listening to you."

"Leonardo, three months of constant fighting has traumatized your mind," Splinter said, holding his hand out. "Let us help you."

Leo backed away as if he were a viper. "Raphael can carry the weight from now on. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of bearing it all. I'm sick of you!" His hand went back and grabbed the hilt of his sword, drawing it out. Splinter froze as a drop of liquid glittered in the light and fell to the floor. There was no doubt as to what it was. He backed away, raising his cane in defense. Leo's sword slashed past him and cut through the exposed wiring along the wall. There was a flash and then the lair went dark.

At first Splinter wondered why he'd done that. They all knew how to fight in the dark, this was hardly an advantage for him. Then the fight started again, and he blocked a swing to his face. Wood cracked again, and he realized Leonardo must have retrieved Donatello's staff. He blocked another hit, then another, and then they came too fast to block. The hit that took him down was not as powerful as it could have been, only knocking him off balance rather than breaking bone. He heard other hits in the darkness and Raphael grunting in pain. He must have tried to attack his brother as the lights came down.

"Dammit, Leo, what the hell--?" Raph cried out again.

"You don't get it, do you?" Leo swung the staff with all his strength, managing to send Raph rolling on the ground. "You have to concentrate to fight in the dark. But for me, this is home."

Splinter rubbed the back of his head as a bruise swelled. Leonardo was far too accurate in the dark to be using the methods Splinter taught. The dim glow of the televisions on standby, the faint light from Donatello's aquarium upstairs, was that really all the light Leonardo needed, or could even stand?

For several seconds the lair was silent. He heard Donatello grumbling as he headed to the television center, splashing through the stream that he couldn't see. Then a lamp came on, and other lights soon followed until the lair was lit again.

One of them, Michelangelo, helped him to his feet. Raphael was on his hands and knees, pushing himself up. Donatello leaned against one of the support columns, holding his head and wincing. Leonardo was gone.

"Damn," Raph hissed, "I can't believe how fast he is."

"I couldn't even touch him," Don said, sitting down on the circular ledge. "And then when he got my staff..."

"Donnie," Raph said, "can you still--?"

"Already checking." Donatello had his tracking device out and a little green dot blinked on the screen. "Yup. He still doesn't know about it. Question is, do we want to go after him?"

"And get thrashed again?" Mike asked, helping Splinter into a chair. "No way, man. I didn't like the first course, I'm not asking for seconds."

"But you were not 'thrashed'," Splinter said. "Look at yourselves. For all your bruises, are any of them truly painful?"

The three of them considered, looking themselves over. No cuts, no scrapes, only small bruises and a few friction burns.

"He did not use his swords," Splinter said. "Only a staff. He held himself back."

"Wait a second," Raph said, deep in thought. "The last time I fought him, it was the same. Really fast, but also pretty light. And the white claws, those were all quick strikes."

Mike grimaced. "You looked? Geez, Raph..."

"What I mean is, he only used his swords. He didn't try punching or kicking. And he wasn't even scratched. With all those bullets flying, he had to be moving pretty fast."

"So," Don said. "He's fast, we already know that."

"I think I understand your meaning," Splinter said. "He must be fast because that is all he has. He may have held back in regard to his swords, but he had no choice in holding back his strength. He is not as strong as he once was."

"Really?" Mike asked. "How come?"

"Doesn't matter right now. We can wear him down," Raph said. "If he has to keep moving, the three of us can bring him down."

"Enough," Splinter said. "He has a head start already. Go and bring him back." He put his hand on Raphael's arm before he could follow his brothers out and said in a low voice, for him only, "but you must beware his swords. I believe they are poisoned."

"What?" Raph's eyes widened. "Aw man..."

"Keep your brothers safe," Splinter said. "I know it is hard, but you must do it."

"I know, master. I will." With a final nod, Raphael ran after his brothers and caught up, vanishing with them into the sewers.

Left behind to wait for Casey and April, Splinter rose from his chair and made his way up to their rooms, passing by Donatello's room, glowing with strange experiments, then Raphael's, cluttered like a personal gym, and then into Leonardo's, nearly empty but for a few tables and shelves. The only decorations were displays of ancient weaponry and banners, paper lanterns and...he spotted the table in the back, left open with a few pages slipping out.

He crossed the room and knelt before it, gathering up sketch after sketch. There must have been dozens. He gazed on them less in admiration for the skill that rendered them and more in amazement. Leonardo had never shown any interest in art, never voiced an appreciation of the paintings and sculptures April sold. Hidden amongst the shop's odds and ends, she had several local artists in her supply and replicas of masters from all over the world. If Leonardo had ever stopped to look, they'd never seen him.

Each sketch was done in black pencil, but they varied in rendering. He could tell the earliest ones by their amateurish approach, but as he progressed, he saw improvement, begiinning with basic exercises in perspective and composition and moving through his family, their few friends. One by one he examined them, for the first time seeing the world the way Leonardo saw it. Halfway through, he noticed the art books nestled in the table corner and took them out, opening them and flipping through the pages.

Several were dog-eared with notes in the margins, Leonardo's favorites he assumed, and even after the cursory glance at the sketches, he recognized some of the styles used. The blood on the slicing sword came from Gentileschi's Judith. Donatello looking up as if startled from his workbench was Zurbaran's St. Francis. April and Casey asleep in bed together, but lying as if they could never get close enough. A page number on the sketch gave him Kokoshka's Bride of the Wind, with all the agitation of the oil paint rendered in pencil. Donatello's Mary Magdalene, and he dug out one of the sketches of Lady Liberty, shown just as angular as the saint.

Picasso's Guernica. Bosch's Hell. Splinter frowned. Michelangelo's Last Judgment. There were no peaceful works chosen, no landscapes or Rococo women. No portraits without shadows, no smiles without hidden meaning, and the sketches were the same. Manhattan's skyline was wounded and bleeding, lady liberty righteous and burning. After just a look at these selections, he wondered if his Leonardo would paint a Mona Lisa with an angry glare. Angry, all of it. A terrible thought gripped him, and he flipped quickly through the sketches, through dark outlines of the family, and when he didn't find it he looked back inside the table. He found himself buried underneath the poison.

His portrait glared out of sfumato shadows with all the malevolence of Goya's Cronos, as if he were in the process of devouring his sons.

Splinter leaned back and let the page slip from his hand. Leonardo had said he hadn't changed. Then what was this now? Anger let free? That couldn't be all of it, he reasoned, there had been no rage in his voice when they first spoke, no cruelty in his conversations with his brothers. What had changed in those first couple of days?

Weight.

"Leonardo," he whispered, "what have we done to you?"

TBC...