“Yoshi has wasted his life fighting yokai! Saki wasted his life looking for them! I will not let you waste yours!”
“Wasted my life?” Splinter asked. “My life has been wasted on many things but guarding the portal is not one of them. I know all of you were young when the portal closed and you likely don’t remember much from it, but yokai are not enemies. They are not monsters. They are people that need our help because of the deal our ancestors made with them.”
“You sound just like father,” Isao shook his head. “At least father would never take in four kappa.”
Mikey flinched, hiding in Leo’s plastron. Leo wrapped his arms around him, squeezing him close. Splinter’s tail lashed in irritation.
“When I first took them in, they were small turtles that I thought I could rehabilitate and send back out into the world,” Splinter said, voice low. “When we started to mutate, they began talking. Crying when they needed something. They were babies, Isao. You’re suggesting I should have left them in the woods on their own? Children?”
“It was not your duty to care for them,” Isao snapped. “It was irresponsible of you to take in children. You should have given them to the yokai, they would have lived better in the yokai realm, where people would not be afraid.”
Splinter’s hands closed into fists. Keeping the turtles had been a decision that he had made several times, over the course of years. It hadn’t been an easy decision, and so many times he had thought of taking them to the yokai realm and leaving them with someone who would care for them.
He had been so lonely, though.
Synopsis
Yoko sits everyone in the family down for tea so they can calm down and let
Splinter explain himself and what has happened to him. This does not stop him from getting into a heated argument with
Isao, who remains bitter that Yoshi left in the first place.
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