Purple.
Donatello was drowned in purple. The undying, supernatural tides of time were pulling at every cell of his light skin, relentlessly throwing him in a circle round and round. It felt like being sucked down a drain. A scream shot out of Donnie's mouth. Scatters of sparks as hot as lava stung his human face, and Leo, Raph, Renet, and dear April's yells of fear flying with unified his. Only Mikey was laughing.
The vibrant abyss of the time portal was all Donatello could practically see, until there was a flash. A smash. And a crash.
Before the brunette knew it the purple poofed out of existence as simple as that that and the blue sky stabbed into his eyes, coiling above him just before his knees met the god-given green grass below. He couldn't believe it. Magical portals were actually real? They actually battled against the laws of physics?
But there were bigger things to notice. Contently, the pain in his body eased away as he escalated to his two feet as if he had never done that in eternities. "I'm standing!" Donatello hailed. "Finally! I can stand-"
The immensely heavy bodies slamming onto his back abolished his quick celebration. The purple ninja groaned as Mikey, April, and Renet weighed on top of him like the bad luck of being crushed from an avanlanche- well not April, that sweet princess was probably as light as a feather.
All of them let out weary murmurs of apology to Donnie as they managed to wobbly stand, still dazed by the portal-flying. After Donnie continued to pick himself up, it struck the ninja with the shimmering golden petals of sun and the lively singing plants and trees that this was not New York.
Not New York at all. Possibly the opposite.
Everything from under the soles of his feet to the endless beauty of the sky above made his brain melt in a way that was totally awesome.
Was there a time where the world, at that very moment, truly be at peace? Donnie glided his red-brown gaze over the landscapes around him, receiving waves of awe in return; except fear of disturbing the ethereal scene kept the lanky boy quiet.
The works of nature all busily but in a flowing manner seemed to communicate with one another. In their language the leaves on the bushes swayed and the flowers on trees bloomed one by one with a rippling effect. The glistening small stream that cut in between the synchronised green dance was divided into sections, each going their own path. The water reflected the sunlight. But on top of all that, there was a single bee. The small striped creature made an incessant, buzzing sound that calmed Donnie's ears. His eyes following it, the bee travelled from flower to flower.
It must've been tired. The mystical bug moved slower and slower after travelling through the maze of just green. It lived for itself to work each day continuously until its rarely-acknowledged death. But still, behind that, each small move was delicate and careful. It took care of nature too and enhanced its population and health by doing so. When-
"I guess this is Ancient Japan. We'd better get going." The voice of Leonardo disturbed Donnie's trip in the clouds. "Renet, where's Emperor Hinata?"
Renet unfolded her yellow-tinged map with a snap. "Well, right now where I teleported you guys, I guess he should be around..." She pointed to a far distance beyond the lush undergrowth and on a flat, vulnerable moor. The whole team drew in a sharp inhale of horror. "There."
Battle. Blood. Blades. Chaos.
Donatello's earlier trance for the gorgeous scenery now seemed so deceiving, so mere as he truly witnessed the dark side of life. A crowd of armoured warriors- samurai, that covered the whole open land through the trees and beyond were brutally killing each other- dark blood sprouting every inch of the innocent grass with each slice to the head, stab to the chest and cuts to the eyes.
Even from kilometres away, their bloodcurdling screams still rode along the winds and writhed into Donnie and his friends' ears, bringing the samurais' pain with them. The peaceful undergrowth the ninjas hesitated in, at that moment, seemed non-existent to the killing festival the soldiers labelled as 'honourable.'
"My eyes!" Mikey cried, instantly whipping away to avoid witnessing the horrid scene any longer. "We just arrived at ancient Japan and then we see that!"
Raph the redhead grimaced. "Even I wouldn't want to fight in that hell."
A spiralling flock of memories from when Donnie was studying history struck the brunette's head. "This was the usual for the Sengoku period," he spilled information aloud. "Since Japan was split into so many sections, between fourteen-sixty-seven and sixteen-fifteen, clans fought against each other all the time for land and power when the feudal system collapsed."
Strangely, nobody interrupted him midway this time unlike for all his life. They were all to struck with terror, letting their enormous gazes sink into the bloody anarchy.
Leonardo stepped forward, his voice lined with hard authority yet unable to ebb away the sadness pulsing within. "What are we waiting for then, team? Let's go to rescue Emperor Hinata, since Donnie probably knows what he looks like."
I do. Donnatello, Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Renet and April's legs worked, heaving boulders of stored energy into use, thundering off to the desired yet foul destination. "Yeah, Leo, if the emperor's even alive by now," Raph muttered broodingly under his breath beside Donnie. The gap-toothed teenager gulped.
The coursing of the silky breeze tickled their sides satisfyingly, almost trying to be supportive, alas failing when they couldn't get the wretched gory images out of their heads.
The whole world blurred past Donatello's vision. Except of course the perilous, gruesome war on his right- a red bathtub poisoning the once-perfect green underfoot- was clear to Donnie's optics. And, that of course also included April 'O Neil, the lazy yet brilliant sun caressing and complimenting her fiery red hair at the same time. He glanced at the girl racing beside him, making his heart swell.
Jesus. This girl.
He loved her vibrant, soft hair, the playful wind making it dance, her yellow band holding it still by the perfect amount. He loved her adorable big puppy eyes, the gentle tone of yellow on her shirt, the style of her brown boots. He loved... Donnie trailed off seeing as she had intentionally veered away to Renet's direction to escape his stare. Was his mooning too obvious? Shame flushed into his cheeks. What an embarrassment you are, Donnatello.
They traced the shelter of the dense undergrowth as close as they could get to the clash. The only thing that interrupted the two areas was a large, glistening gully in between.
"Hey, ow, your elbow's poking my arm," Mikey whined at Donnie as the whole group, whole human group (he still couldn't get over it that fact), huddled and peered through thick bushes, catching as much of the open battle as they could. And searching where the Emperor was.
Irritation pricked Donnie's spine. Stupid brother. The day when Mikey was born, all he did was be a big doofus, messing up Donnie's inventions and forcing his family to eat moss and slime every day. "Well, your dirty hair is in my face!"
"Oh no, you didn't just insult my hair-"
Raph slapped the dumb blonde ninja's shoulder, scoffing. "A bird's nest is living inside your hair."
"Quiet!" April hissed, although that was usually Leo's line. The leader said it twenty-seven times a day. Taking in the awkward atmosphere, it seemed everyone had realised Leo had seemed a little... out of it lately. A little far away.
With a mess of yellow hair intruding a part of his vision and a knee from Leonardo jabbing up his arm, Donnie squinted through green leaves and blinding rays of sunlight to unjumble the complex scene of battle.
Samurai whose armour were painted with black were outnumbering the opposing side whose colours were a dark, drab green. Admist the crowded pandemonium, blood spraying here and there until it evaporated into a cloak of red mist, a green samurai took off his helmet calmly. Donnie winced with worry. Was that guy an idiot? What we he even doing?
The purple-masked ninja whose eyes flurried in astonishment stuck the binoculars from a large pocket to the front of his eyes. When he put the lenses on, it was like rendering a Youtube video from the most rubbish quality ever and switching it to four-k.
The man without the helmet, although still alive, was kneeling down on the blood-sodden crying grass. His eyebrows began to furrow, lips pursed.
Tears.
The man cried. There it was, a corpse that looked like his son, sprawled in a ruckus of twisted arms and merciless gashes of red, in front of his father, helmet off, armour broken into pieces, but chest piece still hugging on, still bobbing up and down,
The son wasn't dead. He was breathing. He was alive.
His father's throbbing heart seemed to joyously flood with realisation at the same pace as Donnie. With a cry of joy, the older man hoisted his arms under the boy who was soon about to be saved. The samurai ground his teeth from the strenuous weight and his face thundered with countless emotions: alarm, impatience, effort, exhaustion, will, sadness, happiness, tenacity, fear, love, hope, hope, hope.
Just as it looked like every part of the father's body was about to snap in half, he trudged to a sheltered rock and propped his son up against it. Yes. That's it. That's it. His son was going to survive. Both of them were. Both-
Sunlight glistened on the enemy katanas beside them.
Donnie looked away.
The brunette attempted to pull himself together, yet still breathing harshly, heartbeat ticking off like a broken metronome.
"Donnie, what can you see through the binoculars?" Leo's voice startled the slim ninja.
After a few heartbeats, Donnie confirmed, "I can't see any Emperor, and I know what he looks like through my history sites."
Renet suddenly sounded apologetic to Donatello's right, near Leo. "Oh, sorry, I messed up. The emperor isn't in any of those clans. He's in the Hamato Clan, on the other side of my map."
"The other side of your map? So we watched this whole bloody, horrible battle for nothing?" April's features flamed.
"Thanks a lot, Renet," Raph shared April's flames of fury. "My gut was going to explode from grossness and now we have to travel a million kilometres to get to the 'correct side'."
Mikey's voice rang. It was probably going to be a super dumb question. "Hey, isn't the Hamato clan Splinter's clan? Hamato Yoshi?"
Holy chalupa. Donnie took the brief assumption back. Mikey was right. A dose of guilt poisoned the taller brother's veins when it hit him that everybody was too shocked about the cursed memory of the bloody battle living in their minds to think about anything else.
Zap. A repeated lightning bolt of realisation struck Donatello, bristling his hair. "Renet, you said that Savanti Romero's going to destroy Emperor Hinata's whole clan, right?" When the future girl nodded gingerly, his words raced on. "That means he's going to destroy our father, Master Splinter's, Clan."
Donatello slowly lifted his chin from facing the pastel green ground, instead rotating his head to face every single one os his brothers and teammates. Every single one. This was much more sinister than he had thought. "That means if Savanti destroys the Hamato Clan-"
"-Sensei would've never existed," Leo breathed. Then again the supposed leader stared off into space, pale and brimming with a strange aloofness Donnie couldn't put his finger on.
April's voice chimed on the left of Donnie. She was doing her fierce girl voice which the shy ninja liked. "We can't just sit here." She hesitated nervously. "Without Splinter, there wouldn't be you guys. And without you guys, I would've been taken by the Kraang. The whole world would've been destroyed! We have to act, now."
Raphael rudely shot the girl a piercing hawk-like glare. "Slow down, crazy, slow down. First..." He stomped to Renet. "...How do we know you're not lying? You take us through a weird portal which goes against science then we wake up in a completely new wonderland. How do we know you didn't drug and carry us here like the TV Octopus Game, or if we're hallucinating by some weird potion right now?"
Uh oh. There came trouble.
Instand red, hot laser beams scorched the grass to a crisp under Mikey's furious blue eyes. He charged over and stood protectively in front of his future-future girlfriend. "Raph, are you even listening to yourself? And you say my cheeseman conspiracies are ridiculous! Renet is-"
"-Your girlfriend you just met!" Raph shot up onto his two black boots that shined under dappled sun rays filtering through dancing leaves. "We know!"
Leo struggled to gain control, eyes panicked under his black hair in line to the leader's eyebrows. "Guys, sit down, you might be seen-"
The same burning lasers shot out of Raph's bold green globes and sizzled halfway between Mikey's. "If you hadn't begged for Leo to do everything that weirdo time-traveller said, we wouldn't be in this mess right now!"
"This is for your own good too, you know." Renet's soft whimper was barely audible through the 'team's' storm of heated bicker, accusing another of this and that. "It really is the Hamato Clan that we're going to be saving."
Through the chaos, a sudden flicker of a shadow might've rustled the leaves on a far away tree- something too big to be an animal, yet too far to examine its ominous features up close. It was only Donnie who noticed it, everyone yelling their eyes out near him. He squinted.
The... thing was on the other side of the gully close to the war, its figure poising itself on a tree that grew up to the sky so high no man on the battlefield would know it existed.
Donatello picked up his binoculars half-coated with loose grass, and the advanced lenses transported him right to the branches on the steady brown tree. Gotcha. The gap-tooth smirked with pleasure as he caught another... ninja(?) peeking out through the dense swan of leaves, nailing his almost-black gaze down onto the battling samurai. Through the piece of lovely technology, Donnie could make out the stranger's odd white hair, his facial expression hidden as a dark grey cloak covered and flowed to his collarbone. The rest of his body was hidden in the tree. The foreign ninja must've been spying on the fight. Donnie shivered. But who for?
The white-haired man's orbs were still boring down into the mess of the moor, unmoving and focused, just like Leo watching Space Heroes, except with a hundred times more contempt in his eyes.
And then he looked up.
Looked up through the rustling leaves and sky.
Looked up to the bush.
Looked right at Donnatello.
The stranger couldn't see him. No way. Couldn't he? Not without binoculars like Donnie's and the purple ninja didn't see any on the man, and knew there wasn't anything like them in Ancient Japan. It had to be. The stranger couldn't see him.
But as if the grey ninja had superpowers, the eye-man raised his cloaked arm and pointed, pointed in directly at Donnie, as if the purple ninja was sitting across the table from him. Frick. The guy was crazy. Why was he pointing at him? Who in the name of psychology points to a random person they don't even know? And with emitting such a sinister feeling?
"I'm here worrying for my team, but you all don't ever listen to me!" Raph was still bickering in the background for what appeared to be centuries. Doesn't that meathead get bored of arguing? All he ever did through his sixteen years of life was argue like a big baby, raging so hard on the arcade games we had back in the sewer that he almost snapped the machines in half. "Yet you all listen to Mikey-"
"Guys!" Donnie's frantic voice barged in, finger fiddling so he could zoom in even more through the specs. The stranger was still pointing, as static as a stature. Actually, too much like a statue it seemed a bit creepy. "I see another ninja! He's spying on the fight too!"
Donnie'd thought they'd listen to him because hey, it was actually important, but no, they kept clamouring on and on and on and on.
"I'm stupid?" Mikey blinked his blue eyes as if he had never heard the statement before, which was very much false. "No, you're stupid! You like Hawaiian pizza! What kind of stupid poo-head would like that-"
The redhead literally flared up into a walking, burning, and very angry sun. "Oh, shut up. You keep pizza under your bed for three years before eating it up with bugs and all that-"
"Guys!" Donnie hollered, thrashing the entire weight of his homo-sapien body around. All my brothers know is fight, fight, fight, while the stranger is probably getting away. "There's a ninja with grey clothes, white hair and he knows we exist. What if he reports us to his emperor and we get killed?"
There was a gasp from April and frowns from Leo and Renet, eyes pooling with anxiety.
"Let me see for myself." Raph's leaned-back red hair with a little parted tuft at the front streaked pass Donatello, snatching the binoculars out of his hands in an instant. Donnie grunted irritably as he felt himself get shoved to the side, the big ginger baby squinting through the lenses in his original place.
"And that guy was pointing at me even though he was kilometres away," Donnie vented, a swarm of confusion still locked in his chest, buzzing around. "How could he have seen me? It was obvious-"
"What guy?" Raph only used this particular tone when someone was standing on very thin ice. But what for?
"The guy near the war, on the big tree. The biggest tree you've ever seen! It's-"
"I've had enough of this messing around!" Before Donatello could process what his brother meant, the muscular ninja slammed the binoculars onto the ground as anyone did with a cap, stumbling Donnie as he shouldered past his bewildered brother, again seemingly leaving that Raph-y trail of flames scorching the grass behind his two feet. "I'm surrounded by idiots. And I thought Donnie would be smarter than Mikey, but I guess not." Nothing was in the air except for his shrill, discontent voice pursued by his black boots mashing the leaves and twigs underneath.
Donnie didn't waste his time. He whipped out the god-blessed, unbroken piece of technology, narrowing his cinnamon eyes. "I swear, he was there," Donnie breathed as he fidgeted with the notch repeatedly.
What?
He darted the binoculars around to the other surrounding trees, anxiety crying out sweat that trickled down the sides of his forehead, lips pursing with fattening guilt blended with skyrocketing uncertainty.
No way.
The stranger was right there on the tree branch. Right freaking there.
But why wasn't he now?
Softer, more tranquil footsteps compared to Raph's crunched the grass as they ebbed away. The team was probably catching up to the redhead into who who-knows-where.
In an oblivious heartbeat, a shadow towered over him from behind.
"Come on, Donnie." It was Leo. "We have the Hamato Clan to save."
Donnie didn't listen as he narrowed his eyes even further. The stranger was still there, just in a different tree or something. He could swear it. "This other ninja- he was right there-"
"Donnie, we're here to save future Splinter. Who knows how much time before Savanti Romero kills him?" The apprehensive leader paused. "Rescuing our sensei is the top priority we have."
Guilt flooded through Donnie's veins and gathered them up at his hands, ordering them to slide the binoculars into his pockets for respect of the leader they deserved. Still, the brunette crouched, gazing out to the vast blue sky which was peacefully adjoining with the quantities of green mountains and beyond. Blue and green. Yin and Yang. "Leo, I know. Raph is just making things worse."
A sigh infused with grief and knowing exited Leo's curved mouth. "I know. The team..." The shadow behind Donatello slowly crouched down with him. "It's not in a good shape ever since we met Renet, and got transported here, which should be obvious, you know? And I'm aware most of them including you are probably confused why I haven't been much of a leader today, not talking a lot..."
Just as Donnie shot open his mouth to ask why, his brothers hand rested firmly on the taller ninja's shoulder with a... okay effort of a smile if Donnie was being nice. "But don't worry, I've got my head in the game now, D," Leo murmured. "Now let's search for Emperor Hinata."
***
From the day I was born, my father and his brother, Hamato Sato, were raised in the same house. Raised in the same Hamato Clan. Raised with the same mother and father. Raised with the same chores. Raised near the same river they would play in every day. Raised with the same weapons: kusurigama, a swinging weighted chain that slashed with a blade in close combat. Raised with great care and respect with not only their parents, but all the clan. Raised with each other.
So why were they so different?
My father: a great emperor who cared for everybody in the clan with passion.
Hamato Sato: a murderer under his pathetic shogun (second to emperor) mask.
It all unfolded when I found out Hamato Sato was trying to kill my father- he was putting drugs in my father's food every day, bit by bit, to make it seem like he was dying from the disgusting lie of old age. None of the other clan members listened to me when I told them about my conspiracy. Of course, they all trusted Emperor Sato's false face of 'honour' and 'dignity.'
Only I know the truth.
I have to get back before my father gets fully killed. I have to get back to do the same to Hamato Sati which I hate and will never forgive. I have to get back before I live forever with the guilt that I let my father die.
I am Hamato Hanzo, the son of Emperor Hinata. After I get back from my journey of spying, I will finish the traitor off once and for all.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
