"And after some more talk we agreed that the wisdom of rats had been grossly overrated, being in fact no greater than that of men."

~Joseph Conrad, "Youth"

1988

It had been a long time since Splinter had needed to forage for himself.

Of course, it did not take a great deal of skill for a rat to forage successfully in this paved paradise. New York City was very different from rural Japan, but Splinter quickly learned to search the sidewalks and trash cans for discarded morsels.

In the early days, he also tried to beg food from humans. It seemed that humans like his Master Yoshi were few and far between, though; his efforts were only ever met with stomping feet and hurled objects.

Nor did the other rats accept his company. Perhaps he was too domesticated. Perhaps his torn ear made him appear weak, a liability to any colony he tried to join. Either way, he found himself perpetually alone. It was springtime, and his hormones drove him to seek a mate, but no female would allow him to approach.

Perhaps it was this combination - of being well-fed but lonely - that caused him to do what he did.

It was late spring, or early summer. Many years later, thinking back on that pivotal event, he would conclude it must have been June. He was in strange underground passages that he had discovered. They were far too large to be the burrow of any creature, and they ran with stinking water, but they were safe, and the barred grilles in the ceiling reminded him vaguely of his cage in his Master Yoshi's home.

The place was a cacophony of foul smells. To get a little fresh air, and to get away from the damp, he had climbed up metal pipes until he was crouched in a sliver of sunlight just below one of the grilles. He was dozing there, when sudden noises – not necessarily louder than those that humans constantly made in this busy place, but different – snapped him into wakefulness.

He peered up through the grate, trying to match the scene before him with the sounds to which he had grown accustomed these past few months. A large vehicle had just screeched to a halt, sitting angled across the street, whereas normally the huge machines moved in carefully parallel rows. A crowd of people was standing near the oddly-placed vehicle, shouting. At the edge of the crowd, a young boy was staring straight at Splinter, an expression of horror on his face.

But no – it was not Splinter that horrified him. It was not Splinter he was looking at. It was several small objects that a moment later plummeted past Splinter, splashing him with water as they skidded by – objects that a moment ago, the boy had been holding.

Startled by the water, fearful of the boy's gaze, Splinter turned and leapt down from the pipes. Behind him, something else fell, hitting the ground with a sharp crash.

He probably should have run, but something about the boy's concern for the fate of the objects caused him to pause and turn around, to try to see what they were. He was startled again to see that the water below the grate was glowing bright green, and in the next breath he caught a strange, new smell emanating from the shiny patch.

Cautiously, against his better judgment, Splinter moved closer. Yes, the strange objects were in the green water – and so was a scatter of broken glass, and a substance he had never encountered before.

He crawled closer again, and saw that the objects were not objects – they were creatures, small animals, moving slowly after their sudden fall. They were roughly the size and shape of a young rat, but encased in tough armor.

Splinter had encountered such creatures, long ago. Normally found near clean water, they were easy to catch but difficult to eat.

He took another few steps. The creatures did not appear to have been hurt by the fall, and seemed to have no fear of him. One even turned to regard him curiously. For a moment, he met its gaze.

And that was when he knew: he was not going to abandon them.

Instead, in a strange and clumsy parody of what Tang Shen had done for him, he gathered the creatures into a confined space. He brought them food. He found it endearing, rather than disgusting, when one of the creatures gave a surprisingly vigorous shake, spattering him with the strange green liquid.

He fell asleep with them that night, and in the morning, everything was different.

Splinter awoke to find a long, thick tail curled in front of his eyes.

His first thought was that a cat must have crept up on him while he slept. His first action was to attack. But the tail moved when he did, hurt when he bit it. Alarmed by these unexpected results, he tried to retreat into a crevice to take stock of the situation, only to discover that he could not fit in the narrow space.

He froze, terrified. He listened and could not hear any movement, though this did not mean a predator was not waiting to strike.

Long moments passed. Finally, he risked a look over his shoulder, peering down the dark tunnel.

Nothing was there.

He looked down, and at first could not make sense of what he was seeing. Slowly, the image resolved: the tail belonged to him. His body was much larger than it had been yesterday, and his toes were bizarrely distended.

He was starving.

He looked at the small creatures. They made no noise, but judging from their appearance and behavior, they were in similar straits.

Splinter sat back on his haunches and tried to solve this problem. He could not imagine what had happened. One thing he knew for sure was that food was more important than companionship at the moment, and he considered eating the armored animals.

This was an appealing idea. It would save him from needing to go out and forage, as well as eliminating the issue of what the green creatures themselves would eat.

Creeping forward on lengthened appendages, he sniffed at the nearest of the creatures. Almost immediately, he drew back. It had the stink of the green liquid on it. As a rat he could consume nearly anything without consequence, but instinct told him he should not try to eat this.

It took him many hours to gather his courage, but eventually, driven by hunger, he went out.

He was not the only one afraid of his new body. Humans shrieked at the merest glimpse of him. Rats turned and ran at his approach. Even a cat fled when they unexpectedly encountered each other.

This was an advantage. So was his newfound ability to lift the lids of garbage cans. Though it took more food to fill his belly, he also could carry more back to his den, to feed to the water creatures and store for later.

His companions fell upon what he brought them, thrusting their heads at it and tearing off chunks with their beaks. When everything was gone, they stopped moving, and fell asleep where they were.

The next day, he knew what they were called. Kame. Turtles.

They had grown again, and by comparing to an old tin can lying some way down the tunnel, he determined that he had as well.

Aside from that brief foray in search of a reference point, he did not go out. Instead, in between trying to sleep off a strange fatigue, he observed the turtles.

They were not active like rats, preferring to remain still most of the time. They especially liked to remain still in the patch of sunlight streaming down from the grille above their hiding place. Splinter sensed that they were young, though he could not determine whether they were male or female. Anyway, it made little difference to him.

Nor did he care that he could not distinguish one from another. It was difficult for him even to comprehend exactly how many there were.

After dark, he made one more excursion. Returning to the place where the turtles had fallen, he gathered up all the fragments of glass from the object that had come after them, and brought them back to his den.

He did not know why he did this, only that it seemed very important.

The days after that were a blur of changes, of which Splinter would later remember almost nothing. He must have foraged, for he did not starve, but afterwards he had no recollection of where he had gone or whom he had encountered.

Sometime during this period, he learned three things.

First, it was no longer comfortable or efficient for him to walk on all fours. From now on, he would need to go about on his hind legs, as humans did.

Second, by prodding the turtles into a line and looking carefully at each one in turn, he was able to determine that there were four of them. The scent of the green liquid still lingered, but beneath it he could detect the distinct individual scent of each animal. He memorized these scents, and it was by this token that he would know his four small companions.

Third, there were tokens in his mind of a completely different type. In the past, objects in his environment had always been matched to images or smells in his memory. Now, suddenly, things were associated with sounds: the complex and intricate sounds made by Master Yoshi and his family. Just as the turtles were kame, he himself was nezumi, and the undrinkable water near his home was mizu. These tokens themselves, he suddenly knew one day, were kotoba: words.

It was to them that most of his thoughts and time would be devoted as he came to grips with his new life.

The turtles were not well.

Ill rats tended to become lethargic and disinclined to move. Turtles were like that all the time, so it was not easy for Splinter to tell that his companions were sick. But, he did not imagine it was normal for healthy turtles to vomit their food.

Each day, he went out. He brought back food, and nesting materials, and new words. He repeated the words to himself, in his mind, as he watched the turtles eat. Then he arranged the materials - bedsheets, newspapers, feathers - and watched the turtles rest. And then he watched the turtles vomit, backing away from the partially-digested food to lie in hungry misery.

He sniffed each of them carefully, but he could not smell any disease. He did not understand why they were behaving in this way.

He began to observe humans more closely. Some carried food in bags, and he did not know where it came from. Others foraged in much the way he did, climbing into large trash cans and climbing out again with food clutched in their hands.

These humans resembled men to whom his Master Yoshi had always been particularly kind.

Watching from hidden positions, Splinter saw that these men often chose food wrapped in a type of inedible film - plastic. He had usually avoided such food in the past, but now he began to collect it and carry it home.

The food, once extracted from its scent-blocking wrappings, smelled very fresh. He offered it to the turtles.

They stopped vomiting.

So, he learned, turtles were not like rats. They could not tolerate spoiled food. They could not keep themselves warm on chilly nights. They did not move quickly and they were indifferent to the multitude of smells that wafted through their home.

As their health improved, Splinter began to notice that each turtle had its own unique patterns of behavior. At first, he associated each personality with the scent-token he had memorized. But, as his mind filled with words, he felt compelled to give each turtle a name.

One turtle always watched him alertly, as he watched it back. It was this turtle whose movements had first been identifiable as imitations of Splinter's own. The realization that he was being mimicked startled Splinter. He did not know what it might mean, but he remembered how Master Yoshi had reacted when he had first noticed his pet performing rat-ninjutsu in his cage.

The movements that Splinter had made, the movements he saw his master practicing every day, were called renshuu. This was the name that he gave to the first turtle.

The second turtle reminded him less of Yoshi than of his master's brother, Mashimi. "Okorippoi!" the Dai-Sensei often exclaimed, when Mashimi had acted out of anger or impetuousness. Splinter thought of this frustrated cry frequently, when he observed the behavior of the largest turtle. This one snapped at the others, stole their food, and stubbornly refused to approach its furry caretaker, even on the coldest nights. Okorippoi would be a fitting name for it.

The third turtle was the most active. Rather than quietly watching, it crawled to Splinter at every opportunity. It seemed to enjoy when Splinter ran a finger over its head and down its shell, as his Master Yoshi had done for him. It especially loved to seize any food within reach, closing its eyes and chomping down with apparent delight. Splinter named this one Miso, after a food that his family had often eaten together.

The fourth turtle was a mystery to Splinter. Even after he learned to provide fresh food to his companions, this one remained sickly and weak. It fouled the nest often, rarely moved, and would not interact with the others. Splinter did not know what was wrong with it, though he thought it must be in pain. He named it Gekkei Keiren - a phrase Tang Shen had murmured sometimes, when she placed a hand on her stomach and smelled of female hormones.

He did not know what to call them collectively. Perhaps the best word was kazoku.

A family.