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CHAPTER SIX
T H E  R E C K O N I N G
SHADOW’S TALE
 

 

AUGUST 22ND, 2045  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Shadow woke with a start, again. Gnad, she thought, why is this happening to me again?

It had been many years since she’d thought about them. It all seemed so archaic now.

"The Way of the Ninja," she mused. Slipping out of the covers, she walked to the bathroom and said, "Lights on." She smiled as she turned on the water by pushing a button on the wall. I used to do that, she thought. It was fun. Looking up for a moment, Shadow looked at her own face. She was never one to be vain, but at age 48, she thought she still looked great. Her husband of twelve years, Mark, certainly shared her opinion.

Shadow put her face in the spouting water and rubbed her hands on her face, as if trying to wash away the memories.

She was asleep when it happened.

She remembered the anxiousness of her dad, Casey Jones, babysitting her. He tried everything to get her into bed and go to sleep. But being a typical, stubborn teenager, she wanted to play video games, smoke cigarettes, and ride motorcycles and to tell what anyone thought. Mom April had showed up and Casey gave her a peck on the cheek as he ran out the door with his bag of "equipment." April wasn’t her real mom, but was close enough to one as she could ever want.

How betrayed Shadow had felt once upon a time in the years following the passing of Splinter... betrayed when April finally had the child of her own with Casey she had wanted so bad. Shadow had felt there was little place for her anymore and had never truly gotten over it.

April put Shadow to bed with a story, as she did in those days after she had returned home from Northampton, Massachusetts. She was a teenager and a little old to be being told bedtime stories, yes, but she did not mind... this story, after all, was her childhood favorite. Of how, when she was four, Uncle Mikey saved her from the Italian Mob.

The next morning Shadow walked into the kitchen for breakfast with a sleepy smile on her face. She looked quizzically at her adoptive parents, "What’s the matter?" April looked as though she'd been crying all night and Casey had a drunk look about him.

"Who knew he’d be such a loser?" she thought aloud, though she didn’t mean to. Oh, sure, she loved him as much as any daughter could love their real parent. But when alcohol became more important to him…

"Master Splinter is d-d-d-dead," April cried out, the tears beginning again.

Shadow sat down in a chair and was stunned, "H-h-h-how?"

Casey just looked down, the alcohol starting to work it’s magic.

"Some bad men found the Turtles and found the lair," was all April would tell.

She had been in her teens when she had heard the news about Splinter. The sagely old rat had become something of a secondary father figure to her in the years before his death, tutoring her in Northampton while she explored her many loves of that day and age, motorcycles being one of them.

But the truth... it wasn’t until Casey was put into jail five years later for killing some innocent people by DUI that Shadow had found out the truth of that night from one of the ninja she had been training with. His brother, a Foot Clan member, played a role in what would lead to the death of Master Splinter. It seemed the Clan had signed a contract with a covert government organization called DARPA that gave DARPA the location of the Turtles’ lair. Enraged, Shadow had then gone back home and packed. She said goodbye to April and Casey, who was bailed out by his wife.

Shadow never returned.

"Lights off," Shadow said as she walked out of the bathroom. She went to sit on her bed.

That night Shadow found an abandoned building and donned one of her ninja outfits. She went out, looking for the nearest mob action and knocked out the thugs that were there, leaving one conscious. To take her to the Godfather; to at long last claim her birthright.

Shadow trembled at the thought of how easily she, in her youth, accepted her new "family." She couldn’t begrudge that they were kind to her, as the Godfather was her real life grandfather, Antoine "Tony" Puzorelli. She became her grandfather’s bodyguard and trained the lower level thugs on hand-to-hand combat and how to fight without a gun. Though he never covered firearms, Splinter himself had once taught her much of his ninjitsu in Northampton before she’d lost contact with him entirely.

There was one constant. Going to Mass on Sunday. Somehow that got her into reading a Bible and then later to pray. God took her out of that situation.

Aside from faith, the present day was bright for Shadow, and offered much promise in the days ahead. She started her own dojo. Through a series of events that she could only describe as God’s protection, she was left alone by the Mob and was still enjoying the rewards of a successful business in teaching martial arts.

And she had her daughter. Seven year-old, beautiful Tiffany, already well into elementary school. Ah, but there was more—another child was on the way. Shadow smiled as she laid a hand on her belly. It was still too early for the signs of her pregnancy to be apparent, but soon there would be no mistaking it.

"Maria? You all right in there?"

It was Mark. He didn’t know yet, but she knew she’d have to tell him sooner or later. For now she chose to postpone the news.

Yes, Shadow remembered her past. But now, years later, Shadow had to find the ninja she so long ago knew and loved. Someway, somehow she had to get a closure on this issue; make amends. If she’d heard right about a Turtle being in Chinatown, she suspected it was Leonardo. Shadow grinned at the irony of a ninja, Japanese myth, being in Chinatown.

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