The city was an abomination of poor planning.
From his perch atop a water tower slick with evening condensation, Tiger Claw surveyed Manhattan. Humans built their structures with a baffling fragility, all glass and thin steel, as if daring the wind to knock them over. A proper fortress was hewn from rock or forged from starship hull, built to endure millennia, not a few decades of acid rain and neglect. Below, the yellow rectangles of taxi-cabs crawled through canyons of light, a circuit board shorting out. It was pathetic. And it was his hunting ground.
His ears, swivelling independently, catalogued the night. The distant wail of a siren. The rumble of a subway train deep in the earth’s guts. The rhythmic drip-drip-drip of the tower beneath him. Nothing of consequence. The turtles were quiet tonight, likely gorging themselves on pizza in their subterranean sewer. Fools. Predictability was a terminal illness.
A faint tremor went through his left-most whisker, a nervous tic he’d never quite managed to discipline out of himself. It only ever happened when he thought of the quiet hour. His patrol was not officially over for another fifty-three minutes. But the silence of the city was a thick, cloying blanket. There were no threats here. Not now.
He took one final, sweeping gaze of the skyline, committing the patterns of light to memory. Then he took a step back and launched himself from the tower, a silent, orange-and-black blur against the bruised purple of the sky. He did not need to think about the trajectory. His body knew the geometry of falling and landing. Four rooftops, a fire escape, a stomach-lurching drop into an alley reeking of rotting cabbage and damp cardboard. The entrance was a simple steel door, indistinguishable from a dozen others. It was not locked. It never was. To lock it would be to admit there was something worth protecting inside.
The Foot Clan’s lair was a hive of activity, but this corridor was always empty. It led to the master’s private dojo, and beyond that, to a room no one else had ever seen. Not Karai, not Fishface, not Rahzar. Only him.
He moved down the hallway, his heavy footfalls silenced by years of practice. He pushed open the screen door to the small antechamber. Tatami mats, bare walls save for a single scroll depicting a striking hawk, and a low, black-lacquered table in the center. He knelt, an act that always felt both supplicating and coiled, a predator at rest. He placed his pulse rifle and his flintlock pistol on the mat beside him, the worn metal gleaming in the low light from a paper lantern. And then he waited.
The wait was part of it. The stillness. It was the absolute antithesis of his nature, which screamed for motion, for the hunt, for the clean, decisive arc of a blade. Here, he was simply… present.
It was another seventeen minutes before the far door slid open.
Oroku Saki was not in his armor. He wore only a simple black hakama and uwagi, the fabric doing little to hide the tense lines of his shoulders. The Kuro Kabuto was absent; his scarred face was bare, illuminated by the lantern light. He looked tired, a profound exhaustion that settled deep in the corners of his eyes.
He did not speak. He moved to the table and knelt opposite Tiger Claw, the motion fluid, precise. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing.
“There is grime on your left gauntlet,” Saki said. His voice was not the commanding baritone he used in the throne room. Here, it was lower, a quiet rasp that vibrated in the small space.
Tiger Claw glanced down. A smear of rust-colored dirt marred the otherwise immaculate steel plates protecting his forearm. From the alley, likely. An oversight. He felt a flicker of shame. “My apologies, Master.”
Saki held out a hand. Not in demand, but in invitation. “Give it to me.”
Tiger Claw hesitated for only a second before unlatching the heavy gauntlet. The series of clicks as the mechanisms disengaged were unnervingly loud in the quiet room. He placed it in Saki’s waiting hands.
Saki turned the piece of armor over, his fingers tracing the engraved lines. He produced a soft cloth from a sleeve, and with an intense, focused gentleness, began to wipe the dirt away. His movements were small, economical. Tiger Claw watched his hands. He watched the way the scarred knuckles moved, the deliberate pressure of his thumb. He did not watch his Master’s face.
His gaze drifted to the table. Next to Saki’s knee sat a small, dark object he hadn’t noticed before. A wooden box, no bigger than his fist, carved with an intricate, non-terrestrial pattern of interlocking spirals and sharp, geometric shapes. It wasn't Japanese. It wasn’t of this world at all. He had seen technology from a hundred star systems. This was something else. Something older. He filed the image away. It was not his place to ask.
Shredder finished his task, rubbing the steel until it shone. Then, his grip on the gauntlet shifted. His thumb brushed against the fur of Tiger Claw’s wrist, a fleeting, deliberate touch just below the armor’s edge. Tiger Claw’s whisker twitched, a violent, singular spasm.
Saki’s eyes, dark and unreadable, lifted from the gauntlet to meet his. He withheld everything—the reason for his exhaustion, the origin of the strange box, the thoughts behind his gaze. He simply held Tiger Claw’s weapon, and for a moment, his warrior’s eye.
Then, he set the gauntlet down. The spell was broken.
“You came early,” Saki stated. It was not an accusation.
“The city was quiet,” Tiger Claw replied, his voice a low gravel.
Saki gave a curt, almost imperceptible nod. He pushed the gauntlet back across the table. “Arm yourself.”
The command was soft, but it was still a command. A dismissal. Tiger Claw took the gauntlet. The metal was still warm from Saki’s hands, but it felt impossibly cold as he latched it back onto his arm, the familiar clicks sealing him back inside his own skin.