Status: I am a HUGE TMNT fan...I love all the incarnations: original comics, 80s cartoon, Jim Henson movies, 2003 cartoon (personal favourite), current IDW comic run, 2012 cartoon, and the 2014 movie. This is a work reflecting my favourite aspects of each of those. I want to explore their origins while not
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Lake
Japan – 1837
“A ninja is a shadow warrior. The light is his enemy. His power is the darkness.” The two young men sat in rapt attention as they listened to their master.
They did not know his name. He had found each of them when they were young boys. He had first found Oroku Saki when Saki attempted to pick his pockets during a stroll in the village. He took pity upon the poor boy and invited him to have a warm place to stay and a hot meal if he wanted. Saki was too proud to accept immediately. But sure enough a few days later he appeared at the old man’s doorstep with a grateful and wary scowl.
The old man provided him with a place to sleep, clothes to wear, and food to eat. He also gave Saki some rules by which to abide. Saki was not too pleased with this but his survival instinct trumped his stubborn independence. The old man also taught Saki the ninja arts of ninjitsu and bushido. He wanted Saki to be able to defend himself and have a code of honour by which to live. Saki was an adept student who excelled in the physical aspects of ninjitsu.
One day he brought home another young boy a little younger than himself.
“Who is this?” asked the old man with a kindly smile for the young boy he had a feeling would be his newest houseguest.
The new young boy looked down at his feet, too sheepish to raise his tear-streaked face to the old man. Saki nudged him roughly only to receive a scowl from his ninjitsu master.
Saki broke the silence first. “I saved him. I used what you taught me.”
“How exactly did you ‘save’ him?”
“There were a group of boys hitting and kicking him. They were calling him all kinds of nasty names. It was wrong.”
“Oroku Saki, what did you do?” questioned the old man. There was a hint of alarm in his voice. He knew the boy could be unnecessarily violent. Dangerously so.
“I said I saved him,” retorted Saki, annoyed at his master’s alarm.
“How?”
“I used what you taught me. I broke their arms. They won’t hurt anyone else for a long time.”
The old man sighed in relief. This was bad. But it could have been worse. Perhaps he was getting through to Saki even more than he realized. “So what do you propose we do with him?” the old man asked, motioning towards the other young boy.
“He’s an orphan like I am…was.” The old man’s eyes smiled. “We should take him in and you should feed, clothe, and train him like you have with me.”
The old man had already resolved this in his heart. But he was touched to see Saki’s generosity. He gently placed his hand on the new young boy’s shoulder and looked at the superficial cuts on his arms and face.
“You will stay with us and be part of our family, young one. But please first, you must tell me your name.” The old man was met with a blank stare. “Ah, I see you do not speak English. Yet. That too, you will learn as I have taught your young savior here.” The old man asked him again in Japanese.
The feeble reply offered was “Hamato Yoshi.”
#####################################################
Through all the years of training they had never actually learned the old man’s name. They revered him as an incredibly wise and impossibly old man. So they had taken to calling him The Ancient One. The old man had taken a liking to the nickname and never dissuaded them from calling him that.
As they concluded their meditation session, The Ancient One looked upon his two greatest pupils. He had trained hundreds, possibly thousands, of students. But Saki and Yoshi were his two greatest. Saki’s fierce combat skills contrasted Yoshi’s deeply spiritual side very well. As a duo, they could not be defeated by any other two warriors in the Japanese empire. The Ancient One swelled with pride.
“Thank you, master. That was a good session today,” Yoshi said.
Saki looked upon his fellow student with amusement. “Too much meditation. Not enough sword work.” At 24, Saki stood an intimidating six feet nine inches. He was almost 300 pounds and all muscle from head to toe. He had perfectly kept sable hair. His hard features and harsh eyes gave him an almost brutish appearance, belying a sharp intellect.
Yoshi was 22 years old. Although dwarfed by Saki, he was still a large man. He stood six feet two inches and was a little over 200 pounds, with a hard, wiry frame. His precise skill matched Saki’s tremendous strength.
The Ancient One chuckled softly at Saki’s comment. This had been the endless debate between his two pupils. The embodiment of the battle between the physical and spiritual aspects of the ninja’s code. “Swords tomorrow,” said The Ancient One, diffusing the conversation. “You may have the rest of the day to yourselves, my sons.” With that, The Ancient One retired to his meditation chambers.
Having so much of a day left to themselves and their own devices was a rarity for the pair. But they never wasted these opportunities. They decided to go to the forest at the outskirts of the village. Unbeknownst to The Ancient One, his two favourite students occasionally engaged in some vigilante work when they had the opportunity. They considered themselves defenders of the weak. This forest had been the staging point of a half dozen raids over the last two months.
Led by Saki, the two young men made their way through the village to the edge of the forest. They received, and in some cases returned, amorous glances from several young women of the village on the way to their destination. Neither man had thought much about love. Their focus was consumed by their training.
They stopped at the edge of the forest, examining the greenery. “Have you ever been in this forest before?” Yoshi asked Saki.
“No. Yes. When I was a small child, I believe.” He drew his katana and slashed through a few low-hanging branches as he advanced into the forest. Yoshi followed warily. After a half hour of wading through the forest’s sea of green they came upon a small camp in a clearing. There were a few cloths spread on the ground, some food, and the ashes of an old fire. There were also bags of valuables spread around: small mounds of gold and other forms of currency. There were also expensive garments crumpled up in piles around the camp.
“I think this is what we’ve been looking for,” Yoshi observed. “What now?”
“We wait,” Saki replied, a fierce determination edging his voice. They waited for over two hours. Saki was patient, relishing the return of the thieves. Yoshi waited anxiously. Time passed slowly, hanging in the air. Yoshi was only calmed by Saki’s seeming serenity.
Then they heard the sound of laughter. It was obvious a group of men were approaching through the forest. They were loud and obnoxious. Saki remained kneeling in the center of the camp, his lone katana still in his sheath across his back. Yoshi stood up, drew his sword, and looked at his friend next to him. Saki’s eyes remained closed.
Five men sporting swords emerged into the clearing. They were all over six feet tall, ranging in muscularity from very much so to grotesquely so. They all stopped short when they spotted the two young ninja.
“What the h-?” one man started to say in Japanese. He never got to finish his question because Saki lunged at him, drawing his sword. He put it through the man’s chest. He drew it back out and looked at the other four men.
All four lunged at him at the same time. Saki fought as well as he could, parrying many blows. But within a minute of fighting, Saki had cuts on his arms and shoulders and was bleeding from his left cheek, just below the eye.
By this time, though, Yoshi had stepped in to assist his friend. He was not pleased about Saki having killed the first man but he was not willing to stand by while his friend was killed. Yoshi’s skill was too great for any single one of the men. And even against two of them, they could not keep up.
Yoshi managed to disarm both men and then use the hilt of his katana to incapacitate them. He did not have the taste for blood that Saki did. Meanwhile, Saki had relied more on his tremendous strength than his skills as a ninja. This did not serve him well, as his two opponents were also very strong.
Saki was bleeding heavily from a wound to his head and was incapable of raising his right arm. He was defending himself with his katana in his left hand. He delivered a well-placed kick to the chest of one man, knocking him down. Just then, he spun on his heels and sliced across the chest of the other man. Saki raised his knee into the man’s face rendering him unconscious. Saki raised his sword to drive it through the man’s fallen form.
“No!” Yoshi yelled. He was standing over the last man’s unconscious form. He had knocked him out. “He is defeated. Leave him. It is not honourable to strike a defenseless man.”
“These vagrants deserve no mercy. They are without honour and deserve to be shown none.”
“Do not sacrifice your own sense of honour for these men. He who lives without honour shall end without honour.”
“Exactly,” replied Saki. He raised his sword to deliver the killing blow. Before he could do so, however, he went limp and passed out.
“Saki!” cried Yoshi, rushing to his side. “Saki! Wake up! Get up!” As Yoshi started to panic, he quickly did some breathing exercises to calm down. “I have to help him,” he said. Yoshi picked up Saki’s massive form and slung him over his shoulder. In his distressed state, he had forgotten which direction he’d come from and headed off the wrong way.
After a few minutes, Yoshi was exhausted. He was breathing heavily and suffering from terrible thirst. At that moment, he broke through a few branches and came upon a shimmering lake. The lake had an unusually blue hue. He could feel the coolness of the water despite the harsh sun overhead.
Yoshi needed water and he figured it could do Saki some good. Maybe he could even tend to some of Saki’s wounds. He placed Saki’s body in the shallow water at the edge of the lake as he lapped the water into his mouth. He had a strange tingly feeling in his body as the water went down. The water seemed to do more than quench his thirst. It seemed to quench a thirst in his soul.
He realized half-fascinated and half in horror that the cuts and scars on his body were disappearing. “What is happening to me?” Before wasting too much time, he cupped the lake water into his hands and poured it down Saki’s throat. Saki’s improvement was almost immediate. The wound on his head began to close and stopped bleeding. So did the other cuts on his body.
Saki, who had previously been unconscious, groaned and began to shift. He rolled over on his stomach and pushed himself up. “What did you do to me?” he asked Yoshi. He stood up and waved his right arm above his head. Suddenly, Saki had an idea. “Give me your sword,” he commanded Yoshi.
After a moment of puzzlement, Yoshi cautiously handed Saki his sword. Saki proceeded to drive the blade through his chest. Yoshi cried out and ran over to Saki, bewildered. Saki pushed him back with one hand and then pulled the sword out of his chest.
“Aaaahhhhh!” he cried out. “Mmmmph…that hurts.” Saki had fallen to one knee, in obvious pain. However, quite astonishingly, he was alive and well. This new wound didn’t heal like the other ones, but it wasn’t fatal as it should have been.
“Why did you do that?” Yoshi asked astonished that Saki survived. “What were you thinking?”
“I’ve heard of this lake. Lake Tengu. I thought it was a myth, a legend. It was said that the waters of the Lake of Tengu had the power to grant immortality. I remember the stories from when I was a small child.” Saki’s voice took on a wistful tone. “I never thought it actually existed.”
When Saki turned to look at Yoshi, Yoshi noticed Saki’s eyes had taken on a cold, hard look. His irises looked darker than usual, almost sable. It scared Yoshi, especially when Saki smiled.
#####################################################
Later that evening, as Yoshi slept Saki set the forest ablaze. He burned it to the ground. Every last tree. The lake was scorched out of existence. Saki did all of this only after having forged a new sword, tempering the steel with the waters of the lake.
“A ninja is a shadow warrior. The light is his enemy. His power is the darkness.” The two young men sat in rapt attention as they listened to their master.
They did not know his name. He had found each of them when they were young boys. He had first found Oroku Saki when Saki attempted to pick his pockets during a stroll in the village. He took pity upon the poor boy and invited him to have a warm place to stay and a hot meal if he wanted. Saki was too proud to accept immediately. But sure enough a few days later he appeared at the old man’s doorstep with a grateful and wary scowl.
The old man provided him with a place to sleep, clothes to wear, and food to eat. He also gave Saki some rules by which to abide. Saki was not too pleased with this but his survival instinct trumped his stubborn independence. The old man also taught Saki the ninja arts of ninjitsu and bushido. He wanted Saki to be able to defend himself and have a code of honour by which to live. Saki was an adept student who excelled in the physical aspects of ninjitsu.
One day he brought home another young boy a little younger than himself.
“Who is this?” asked the old man with a kindly smile for the young boy he had a feeling would be his newest houseguest.
The new young boy looked down at his feet, too sheepish to raise his tear-streaked face to the old man. Saki nudged him roughly only to receive a scowl from his ninjitsu master.
Saki broke the silence first. “I saved him. I used what you taught me.”
“How exactly did you ‘save’ him?”
“There were a group of boys hitting and kicking him. They were calling him all kinds of nasty names. It was wrong.”
“Oroku Saki, what did you do?” questioned the old man. There was a hint of alarm in his voice. He knew the boy could be unnecessarily violent. Dangerously so.
“I said I saved him,” retorted Saki, annoyed at his master’s alarm.
“How?”
“I used what you taught me. I broke their arms. They won’t hurt anyone else for a long time.”
The old man sighed in relief. This was bad. But it could have been worse. Perhaps he was getting through to Saki even more than he realized. “So what do you propose we do with him?” the old man asked, motioning towards the other young boy.
“He’s an orphan like I am…was.” The old man’s eyes smiled. “We should take him in and you should feed, clothe, and train him like you have with me.”
The old man had already resolved this in his heart. But he was touched to see Saki’s generosity. He gently placed his hand on the new young boy’s shoulder and looked at the superficial cuts on his arms and face.
“You will stay with us and be part of our family, young one. But please first, you must tell me your name.” The old man was met with a blank stare. “Ah, I see you do not speak English. Yet. That too, you will learn as I have taught your young savior here.” The old man asked him again in Japanese.
The feeble reply offered was “Hamato Yoshi.”
#####################################################
Through all the years of training they had never actually learned the old man’s name. They revered him as an incredibly wise and impossibly old man. So they had taken to calling him The Ancient One. The old man had taken a liking to the nickname and never dissuaded them from calling him that.
As they concluded their meditation session, The Ancient One looked upon his two greatest pupils. He had trained hundreds, possibly thousands, of students. But Saki and Yoshi were his two greatest. Saki’s fierce combat skills contrasted Yoshi’s deeply spiritual side very well. As a duo, they could not be defeated by any other two warriors in the Japanese empire. The Ancient One swelled with pride.
“Thank you, master. That was a good session today,” Yoshi said.
Saki looked upon his fellow student with amusement. “Too much meditation. Not enough sword work.” At 24, Saki stood an intimidating six feet nine inches. He was almost 300 pounds and all muscle from head to toe. He had perfectly kept sable hair. His hard features and harsh eyes gave him an almost brutish appearance, belying a sharp intellect.
Yoshi was 22 years old. Although dwarfed by Saki, he was still a large man. He stood six feet two inches and was a little over 200 pounds, with a hard, wiry frame. His precise skill matched Saki’s tremendous strength.
The Ancient One chuckled softly at Saki’s comment. This had been the endless debate between his two pupils. The embodiment of the battle between the physical and spiritual aspects of the ninja’s code. “Swords tomorrow,” said The Ancient One, diffusing the conversation. “You may have the rest of the day to yourselves, my sons.” With that, The Ancient One retired to his meditation chambers.
Having so much of a day left to themselves and their own devices was a rarity for the pair. But they never wasted these opportunities. They decided to go to the forest at the outskirts of the village. Unbeknownst to The Ancient One, his two favourite students occasionally engaged in some vigilante work when they had the opportunity. They considered themselves defenders of the weak. This forest had been the staging point of a half dozen raids over the last two months.
Led by Saki, the two young men made their way through the village to the edge of the forest. They received, and in some cases returned, amorous glances from several young women of the village on the way to their destination. Neither man had thought much about love. Their focus was consumed by their training.
They stopped at the edge of the forest, examining the greenery. “Have you ever been in this forest before?” Yoshi asked Saki.
“No. Yes. When I was a small child, I believe.” He drew his katana and slashed through a few low-hanging branches as he advanced into the forest. Yoshi followed warily. After a half hour of wading through the forest’s sea of green they came upon a small camp in a clearing. There were a few cloths spread on the ground, some food, and the ashes of an old fire. There were also bags of valuables spread around: small mounds of gold and other forms of currency. There were also expensive garments crumpled up in piles around the camp.
“I think this is what we’ve been looking for,” Yoshi observed. “What now?”
“We wait,” Saki replied, a fierce determination edging his voice. They waited for over two hours. Saki was patient, relishing the return of the thieves. Yoshi waited anxiously. Time passed slowly, hanging in the air. Yoshi was only calmed by Saki’s seeming serenity.
Then they heard the sound of laughter. It was obvious a group of men were approaching through the forest. They were loud and obnoxious. Saki remained kneeling in the center of the camp, his lone katana still in his sheath across his back. Yoshi stood up, drew his sword, and looked at his friend next to him. Saki’s eyes remained closed.
Five men sporting swords emerged into the clearing. They were all over six feet tall, ranging in muscularity from very much so to grotesquely so. They all stopped short when they spotted the two young ninja.
“What the h-?” one man started to say in Japanese. He never got to finish his question because Saki lunged at him, drawing his sword. He put it through the man’s chest. He drew it back out and looked at the other four men.
All four lunged at him at the same time. Saki fought as well as he could, parrying many blows. But within a minute of fighting, Saki had cuts on his arms and shoulders and was bleeding from his left cheek, just below the eye.
By this time, though, Yoshi had stepped in to assist his friend. He was not pleased about Saki having killed the first man but he was not willing to stand by while his friend was killed. Yoshi’s skill was too great for any single one of the men. And even against two of them, they could not keep up.
Yoshi managed to disarm both men and then use the hilt of his katana to incapacitate them. He did not have the taste for blood that Saki did. Meanwhile, Saki had relied more on his tremendous strength than his skills as a ninja. This did not serve him well, as his two opponents were also very strong.
Saki was bleeding heavily from a wound to his head and was incapable of raising his right arm. He was defending himself with his katana in his left hand. He delivered a well-placed kick to the chest of one man, knocking him down. Just then, he spun on his heels and sliced across the chest of the other man. Saki raised his knee into the man’s face rendering him unconscious. Saki raised his sword to drive it through the man’s fallen form.
“No!” Yoshi yelled. He was standing over the last man’s unconscious form. He had knocked him out. “He is defeated. Leave him. It is not honourable to strike a defenseless man.”
“These vagrants deserve no mercy. They are without honour and deserve to be shown none.”
“Do not sacrifice your own sense of honour for these men. He who lives without honour shall end without honour.”
“Exactly,” replied Saki. He raised his sword to deliver the killing blow. Before he could do so, however, he went limp and passed out.
“Saki!” cried Yoshi, rushing to his side. “Saki! Wake up! Get up!” As Yoshi started to panic, he quickly did some breathing exercises to calm down. “I have to help him,” he said. Yoshi picked up Saki’s massive form and slung him over his shoulder. In his distressed state, he had forgotten which direction he’d come from and headed off the wrong way.
After a few minutes, Yoshi was exhausted. He was breathing heavily and suffering from terrible thirst. At that moment, he broke through a few branches and came upon a shimmering lake. The lake had an unusually blue hue. He could feel the coolness of the water despite the harsh sun overhead.
Yoshi needed water and he figured it could do Saki some good. Maybe he could even tend to some of Saki’s wounds. He placed Saki’s body in the shallow water at the edge of the lake as he lapped the water into his mouth. He had a strange tingly feeling in his body as the water went down. The water seemed to do more than quench his thirst. It seemed to quench a thirst in his soul.
He realized half-fascinated and half in horror that the cuts and scars on his body were disappearing. “What is happening to me?” Before wasting too much time, he cupped the lake water into his hands and poured it down Saki’s throat. Saki’s improvement was almost immediate. The wound on his head began to close and stopped bleeding. So did the other cuts on his body.
Saki, who had previously been unconscious, groaned and began to shift. He rolled over on his stomach and pushed himself up. “What did you do to me?” he asked Yoshi. He stood up and waved his right arm above his head. Suddenly, Saki had an idea. “Give me your sword,” he commanded Yoshi.
After a moment of puzzlement, Yoshi cautiously handed Saki his sword. Saki proceeded to drive the blade through his chest. Yoshi cried out and ran over to Saki, bewildered. Saki pushed him back with one hand and then pulled the sword out of his chest.
“Aaaahhhhh!” he cried out. “Mmmmph…that hurts.” Saki had fallen to one knee, in obvious pain. However, quite astonishingly, he was alive and well. This new wound didn’t heal like the other ones, but it wasn’t fatal as it should have been.
“Why did you do that?” Yoshi asked astonished that Saki survived. “What were you thinking?”
“I’ve heard of this lake. Lake Tengu. I thought it was a myth, a legend. It was said that the waters of the Lake of Tengu had the power to grant immortality. I remember the stories from when I was a small child.” Saki’s voice took on a wistful tone. “I never thought it actually existed.”
When Saki turned to look at Yoshi, Yoshi noticed Saki’s eyes had taken on a cold, hard look. His irises looked darker than usual, almost sable. It scared Yoshi, especially when Saki smiled.
#####################################################
Later that evening, as Yoshi slept Saki set the forest ablaze. He burned it to the ground. Every last tree. The lake was scorched out of existence. Saki did all of this only after having forged a new sword, tempering the steel with the waters of the lake.