But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind
And I just grew
Tangled up in blue
Angela's tutor called a couple hours ago to see if they'd heard anything.
That's the last call they've gotten.
Maureen gets up and picks up Angela's prayerbook. She'd figured once Angela got home,
she'd be running late...
"Not that many more months," Mike says softly.
"Yeah." If she lives so long...
"You know what I'd give to be there..."
She sits back down, puts her arms around him. "I know, Mike. She knows too..."
"You shoulda found somebody who coulda been there for her--"
"You have been. You have been..."
He smiles bitterly. "Watching Don's TV broadcasts doesn't count."
"Mike--"
"She only becomes bat mitzvah once, Maureen. And there's no way I'm ever
gonna be there to see it..."
"Shh," Isamu whispers. "One more door..." He presses his thumb to a panel, and
they hear a soft click.
Carlos grabs the handles of his tonfa a little more tightly, just in case.
Isamu pushes the door open, and they spill out into the cool fall air.
"Fweedon," Carlos says with relish.
"C'mon," Isamu tells them. "I gotta get you away from the compound."
Don goes out on the fire escape, lights a cigarette, watches the smoke drift across the
alley. Scott called a couple days ago; just to see how Don was doing, he said, he'd
noticed it was around the time he'd lost Byron...doesn't seem like a year.
He's put some of Byron's paintings up in the apartment, when they finally started making
him feel better rather than worse... went out for an interview the other night, in 'costume'
of course, it had started out all right but... well, it went the way they always went. He'd
seen the article already:
Q. So why didn't you sell the source code, rather than making it freely available--
A. You know, we've answered this question so many times... I'm surprised anyone's still
asking it. Look, LINUX was a freely available code. We just made a consumer-friendly
desktop that ran on LINUX.
Q. But you could have been a millionaire.
A. Probably. But that wasn't what I wanted. And it wasn't what my partner wanted. I
mean, LINUX was there. It was like the air, anyone who wanted to breathe in could have
it... we'd just have been selling, I don't know, rarefied air. It's an absurd
question....
Of course, all the other comments, and questions, and everything that came before it had
been deleted...Oh, well. Half the planet already thought I was an arrogant
bastard...
He knocks some ash off on the railing, raises the cigarette to his lips again.
Hey, I saw that article... Scott's picked up a little bit of a Southern accent in the
years in New Mexico; Don kind of likes it.
Oh, yeah, real flattering, wasn't it?
You could tell the guy was an asshole.
You're just tryin' to make me feel better.
Well, yeah. But honestly, Don...
Dad? Who ya talkin' to?
A friend of mine, Ben. Ya wanna say hi?
Sure.
This is Uncle Mike's brother Don.
So he's my uncle too?
Sure, Don said. Howya doin'?
Don stubs the cigarette out on the ashtray he keeps on the platform.
Scott had told the kid not to tell Chris about it. "You know how Pop gets
sometimes..."
"Yeah," Don says to himself. "I remember."
Raph comes out, stands beside his brother. "You okay?"
Don nods.
"You're gettin' tired."
"I'm okay."
"Why don't you and Leo switch? Somebody's gotta stay at the apartment... and Leo's
probably pretty fresh by now."
"Yeah, sure... don't suppose I could talk you into switching with Leo, and I'd switch with
Mike..."
"I can't stay in the apartment, Don. I can't."
"All right." Don puts an arm around his brother. "I'll try the Net, too... don't know as it'll
help, but it's worth a try."
"Okay, you should be safe from here..."
Carlos looks back at Isamu. "Yu com wif us."
"No," Isamu says. "I can't, my mom--"
Angela asks, "You don't want to see your father?"
"She's gonna be terrified if she can't find me, she's always been..."
"Mu nuncl til haf yor pifur..."
Isamu looks helplessly at Angela.
"Leo," she says sadly. "He still carries your picture around..." She looks up into his
eyes.
"If she can't find me, I don't know what she'll do--"
"How we can tell him we found you and..."
He closes his eyes, and she can see the tears glistening at the edges of his eyelids. "I want
to see him," he says, "you can't imagine how much..."
"Come on," she says. "Come home."
"I--"
"I wov neven tell im yu hit me."
Isamu opens his eyes and looks at his cousin, cocks an eyebrow. "Promise?"
"Pwomis."
Isamu turns away from them, looks out from the alley to the city street. The last time he
was late from school, he thought his mother was going to have a heart attack...
I think you'd like it. I hope you'd like it. Maybe someday we can go there,
huh?
I'm here, Father... I'm here.
"So," he asks, "which way do we go?"
They're so excited to be bringing him back they never notice the figures moving in the
shadows...
"Hon?"
"'Mokay."
"You sure?"
"Yeah...just my stomach. 'S nothin'."
"If it's not better in the morning--"
"I ain't callin' the doctor. Those kids on the ground floor all got 'flu, I probably caught it
fixin' the sink..."
"Still."
"I'm fine, baby." Casey gets into bed, nestles against her back. "Just need some
sleep."
"Dad?"
He turns to look at the boy. "Go back to sleep, son."
"What's going on?"
"Nothing. Go back to sleep."
"Dad, I know--"
"It's nothing that concerns you, Keishi. Go back to sleep."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Raph... Raph, come over here." Leo's voice sounds strained, even over the walkie-
talkie.
"Where are you?"
"You know where the Iron Fist is?"
"Yeah."
"How far are you from it?"
"Half a block west."
"I'm right behind the building... you better see this."
Don hangs the phone up. Well, he thinks, trying to console himself,
they're not in the morgues... not yet anyway...
He sits down on the futon, takes another swallow of tea. See, this is why kids are
nothing but a big old pain in the ass... pretty soon they'll be dating, and--
A knock at the door, and he almost runs to it, stops himself. "Who is it?"
"Donatello?"
He pauses for a second, and the voice sinks in. He jerks the door open, pulls her in by the
arm, gets her up against the wall, the bo at her neck. "Where the hell are
they?"
"I don't know," she says, putting up no resistance, meeting his eyes.
"Wrong answer, Karai..."
"They found Isamu and chased him to our headquarters--"
"Our?"
"The...the organization I'm with now."
"Heard you were yakuza--" he pulls at her shirt, sees the blaze of color. "Shit. Weren't
they tryin' to kill you?"
"They were trying to kill the head of the Japanese Foot," she says. "Which I haven't been
for a very long time."
"So you just held onto them? What the hell were you trying to--"
"We didn't know who they were--"
"Who did you think they were?"
"We thought they were chasing my son. We thought they killed one of
my wakashu before we finally got them under control..."
"They--"
"The girl broke his neck."
"Which?"
"The girl--" she frowns at him. "There was a girl and a boy. She was blonde..."
Fuck.
The pressure suddenly releases from her neck, and Don paces nervously to the window.
His hands move automatically to his belt, but he stops himself. "Only two?"
"Yes."
"And you don't even know where they are."
She shakes her head. "I think my son helped them to escape-- I was hoping they would
be here..."
He puts one hand to his forehead, takes a deep breath. "If I could even begin to trust
you..."
"Don, I've never lied to you--"
"I know," he snaps. "You've saved that privilege for my brother."
Leo's kneeling on the ground, staring silently at the patches of dried blood in the
alleyway.
"Leo?"
"Raph--" Leo looks dazed. "Raph, I talked to Don and he's gonna check the hospitals
again..."
"What-- geez, helluva fight here, wasn't it..."
Leo lifts his hand up, and Raph sees the metal flashing in the light of the streetlamp.
"No--"
"I'm sorry, Raph..."
Raph takes the broken weapon out of his brother's hands. "You find a track?"
"Nothing." He stands up, puts his arm around his brother. "We'll find 'em, Raph..."
"Nothing?" His voice is turning dangerous.
"It looks... it looks like ninja."
"We have a truce..." Raph's fingers are curled so tightly around the sai its edges
are cutting into his hands.
"We have a truce with New York," Leo says, an edge in his voice. "Not Japan."
"April, I'm sorry to wake you up...but..."
"What's going on?" She looks behind Don...a woman?
"This... this is Karai, she used..."
"I remember," April says. "What's going on?"
"So she's at April's?"
"I couldn't think of anything else to do with her," Don says, clearly at a loss. "I mean, I
sure as hell didn't want Leo to..." He leans back against the hallway.
"Yeah," Mike says. "You know, back a couple years ago, I got Maureen some Chanel...
heh, wrote 'Classy perfume for a classy lady' or somethin' silly like that on the tag...
anyway, I got her the perfume, and she wore it, like the next night when we were all
gettin' together for somethin'. And Leo was like, 'oh, Chanel.' Guess she used to
wear it... and I guess, the look on his face... she didn't wear it again after that. Not if she
thought he was gonna be around..."
Don shakes his head. "I don't know, Mike. I just don't know how he's gonna handle it...
if he's gonna handle it..."
"I don't either," Mike says. "Not gonna be pretty, no matter what."
"What's not gonna be pretty?" Raph asks, frowning. Leo's standing just behind him.
Mike and Don exchange glances.
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah," April says, "she's been fine, but..."
"But what?"
"You never warned me how old she was," she hisses.
"We told you she was old enough to be his mother..."
"I didn't think you meant it, I figured she was like my age... she's got grey hair, for
cryin' out loud..."
"I know that. I don't know why she ever slept with him... don't know what the hell she
thought of him..."
"She must have thought something."
"Yeah. Convenient fuck, I guess..."
"You think she would've kept that baby if he hadn't meant anything to her?" Her
whisper's turned harsh.
"I..."
"She had no idea what that kid would turn out like...I mean, if he'd been green,
what would the Foot have done?"
"I..." Don looks at April, barely comprehending the words. "I never..."
"No," she says sharply. "You never do. Because you're men, and you're callous and
you're stupid, and...oh, forget it." She spins around and slams back into the
apartment, leaving Don to stare at the door.
"What the fuck was that all about?" he asks it.
"I don't know," Don says. "I mean, she admitted she kidnapped 'em, that should
count for something..."
Raph frowns. "Only two, though."
"Ookami must've caught up with 'em at some point. She had no clue another one even
existed... still doesn't."
"So what's she say about that contract?" Mike asks, carefully avoiding Leo's eyes.
"Says Satoru did it... she'd lost control of the Foot by then. And we know she was out not
too long after Leo left..."
"I don't know," Leo says, his voice careful, controlled. "I don't know what choices we
have, if we have any choices at all. You all know... you know I'd give anything to see
Isamu again. You know my judgement where she's concerned is... questionable at best.
I'm not qualified to make this decision. But I'm not sure we have any decision to
make."
"Seems like I've heard that somewhere before," Raph says bitterly.
Don looks over at his brother. "Seems like we're coming to the same conclusion."
"I had no idea how young he was," Karai says. "I mean... they were seventeen when I
met them... and we hunted down those ninjas like dogs... only nineteen when..."
"When Isamu was born," April finishes.
Karai shakes her head. "I was crazy...nineteen... a child..."
Casey lurches in. "April, we're outa--"
"I wish you'd go to the doctor," she says.
"'S just the flu."
"They told you--"
"It's the flu, April."
"Could be your heart," April says.
Casey shakes his head, turns around, heads back to the bedroom. "Women... paranoid...
anyway, we're outa Tylenol."
April sighs, leans her head against the back of her hand. Karai watches him retreat. He's
ashen, almost grey; that's a bad sign.
"He's had high blood pressure for years now," April says quietly.
"I could knock him out and help you drag him to the hospital," Karai offers.
"That would go over well."
"There's no way they can be any angrier at me," she says cynically.
"He'll be all right," April says, mostly to herself. "I just worry."
"Mom?"
"Raven," April says, standing up. "You're up early..."
"Who's that lady?"
"This is Karai," April says. "She was an old friend of your Uncle Leo's..."
Raven squints at her. "Isamu's mother?"
"Yes," Karai says. "Isamu's mother."
"Okay." The Bitch from Hell, she's heard her dad call her... what's she doing
here?
"We have... a little bit of a problem," April says, knowing she doesn't dare lie to her.
"Like what?"
"Like we haven't seen Carlos, or Ookami, or Angela, since yesterday." The shock on her
daughter's face is enough to convince April that she hasn't gotten any covert
communications from them. "I'm sure they'll be fine, honey. It's just... well, we're
starting to get worried."
"I'll get Shadow, we can go out with Dad--"
"Your dad's sick. And if you think I'm letting either of you girls out of my sight
until we figure out what's going on, you've got another thing coming."
"Mom--"
"That's final. And don't try sneaking out the back like you did last time, either.
Don made me that alarm, remember?"
"Mom!"
April stands her ground, and Raven stomps back to her room.
Karai chuckles softly.
April turns to her. "I'm sorry, I--"
"I'm going through the same thing with mine," she assures her.
April sits back down at the kitchen table. "Do you want any more coffee?"
She shakes her head. "No, I'm fine. Thank you... your hospitality has been more than
generous."
"You know--" she probably shouldn't say this... "I can't believe... how... how
normal you are. I figured you'd spit nails or eat bullets for breakfast or
something...."
"Only on weekends," Karai says, and they find themselves laughing.
Leo frowns at his brother. "What?"
"I think..." Don frowns. "Sounds like they're laughing in there."
"No way," Raph says. "I mean..."
Leo says drily, "she did have a certain charisma..."
Don knocks, and April says, "come on in."
They're sitting at the kitchen table, watching the first rays of the sunrise. April turns to
Don, catches his eyes. "Well?"
"Karai," he says. "Are you coming?"
"Whenever you're ready," she says, her eyes fixed on the sky.
"Anybody know what time it is?"
"Think it's morning," Isamu says. "Either that or they're turnin' lights on over
there..."
"Okay, so it's morning... think they'll do something with us now?"
Carlos shrugs his shoulders and the shackles hum with electricity. He frowns.
"I think they're waiting for my mother to come looking for me," Isamu explains.
"So they can kill her?"
"So they can kill us both."
"But--"
"You realize they weren't New York Foot."
"Yeah," Ookami says, surprising them both. "You can tell."
Carlos' frown deepens. "Mow?"
"They move different," she says. "And the costumes aren't the same."
"You're smart," Isamu tells her admiringly.
"I know."
"So," Angela asks. "Who are they?"
"The Japanese Foot Clan," Isamu says dully. "Headed by my brother."
"Who wants you dead."
"Yeah."
"So basically," Angela says, looking straight ahead, "we're fucked."
"Yeah."
