Book One In The Ahh-Ness Of Things Series: April & Donnie were once inseparable, but now almost six years have passed since she left NYC. What if April O'Neil could set the record straight, once & for all! The only girl down enough to chill with the...
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Watching Donatello now, as much as his brother's struggled to understand him, as much grief as they gave him growing up, for his inability to express himself without it seeming painful for him; they had to respect his skill in moments like this. I knew it as ki ken tai ichi; a merged spirit within the movements of his body, the focus of his thoughts, & the control of his weapon. Something Master Splinter had always tried to instill in him, to get him out of just his head.
They didn't see his focus at any other time. They couldn't see what he saw in the world around them; all of the moving parts. Just as Raphael had poked at him before, to them he was seemingly only centered when he had something useful in his hands, be it a tool or a sharp stick. This made him hard to read. He kind of expected you to just get what he was thinking & forget he hadn't given you any context. I knew him better than that, at least I used to. I knew he was overly focused & his center of mental gravity revolved around taking it all in. Like all of it. Taking stock in all the details to such an extent that everyone just saw a daydreaming density. I knew, that follow-the-girl look in his eyes & the way he used to smile & tilt his head as if he heard the sweetest music when I spoke, meant he was absorbing every word. He was highly focused. So much so that the rest of the world simply fell away altogether when something was complex enough to hold his attention. Manipulating an opponent with a weapon was complex enough. Most of the time. He wasn't off in lala land, he was counting your steps, listening to your breathing, watching the bead of sweat that gave away your bluff. If anything, he lacked focus on his own physicality. I'd never seen someone so capable, regularly walk into door frames & trip over his own feet. He gave up & just accepted his brothers saw him as a klutz. Most of the time.
My mind was racing. He was staring at me, that same far off look as before that had made me want to look away from him. I still couldn't put it together. I could walk around inside his head while he was practicing cuts; I could see the night of Oroku Saki's death, through his memories. I imagined he went there to that night unwillingly in his concentration, like a sort of trigger when he couldn't express his anger or feelings of being trapped by his circumstances. I could hear him describing the way his new attraction for Noni made him feel. Yet I couldn't decipher the angry, sorrowful glare that fell on me from across the room.
I snapped out of it when I realized he & everyone else was waiting for me to practice with him. I didn't want to stand up, I felt my heartbeat in my bare feet as I stepped towards him. I could hardly breathe as the tingling sensation of caution swam from my chest to my head.
I stopped in front of him, he was leaning on the naginata like a walking stick. I smirked somewhere in the recesses of my mind; Master Splinter always despised when you leaned on your staffs like that. He'd catch you off guard & kick it out from under you. The sight of this stately figure colliding with Newton's Law onto the floorboards, was always comical. That memory made me feel a little better. Klutz.
