SAN: MEMOIRS OF A SHREDDER

The Faceless One loomed as a statue over him, the Council of Eight sitting cross-legged on both of his sides and the legendary man’s young daughter, Karai, just behind him. The name of the honored jonin was unknown and unimportant—the mere image of him was enough for anyone, let alone any member of the Foot Clan that knew of the man’s decorated past and ancestry.

"Oroku Saki, you have proven yourself," the Faceless One spoke to Saki, who humbly knelt before the man. "Though you are only eighteen, you are our most cunning assassin and an able leader. Therefore, we have chosen you to go to the United States and head the New York branch of the Foot."

"Your faith in me is well placed, jonin," Saki spoke, standing and bowing. "I will serve the Foot well in America."

The jonin nodded. "That is what I wanted to hear. Go now, young Saki. Do your brethren proud."

When Saki awoke, he remembered he had stretched out on a long concrete bench. The bench was in front of a water fountain, beside the gravel trail of a park. He had been traveling some time now, in search of the truth to his identity. The constant walking, fleeing, wore him out, and he had sat down to rest. Hopefully he had not been out more than a few minutes.

Shaking his head, he got to his feet and stretched his arms. The visions of his past were illuminating, but there was so much he still did not know. An entire lifetime had been torn from his mind. He would have to find the means to regain it or be content to remain an empty shell of the man he used to be but will never know.

Something dawned on him. Something he did not understand, yet knew with uncanny certainty. He did have some ability to find out after all.

Saki sat on the grass under a brushy tree and crossed his legs. He started to relax his body, but allowed his mind to remain alert. Slowly, he slipped into a state of consciousness he somehow knew to be meditation. Apparently, his body was remembering things his mind could not. Inhaling and exhaling in slow succession, a flood of imagery rushed into his mind.

He saw one vision of himself in a business suit, angrily arguing with a disgruntled-looking foreigner.

"With all due respect, Mr. Oroku, there are many ninja in the Japan Foot Clan that feel your lack of contact is a result of your poor handling of its New York branch."

"I have gathered warriors of my own and their training is nearly complete!" Saki exclaimed, anger seeping into his voice. "You can tell them I will have their new branch up and running within days!"

"That is what we want to hear, sir. That is all." With that, the man turned and promptly exited.

A sobbing woman heavy with child started for the door.

"Where are you going?" he snapped behind her.

"Away, Saki! Away from you!"

He grasped her shoulder to pull her back. "What is this? You think you can leave my side so easily, woman?"

"You will not stop me! This lifelong obsession of yours…you care more about vengeance than you do about your me! It’s been many years, Saki. Let Hamato Yoshi be!" she pleaded, then adding in a softer tone, "Do it for me." She placed a hand on her stomach. "For our baby."

"I will not let you deny me my vengeance!" he roared. "I will find Yoshi! He and his whore will pay for what they have done!" He tightened his grip on her arm. "You carry my child, woman! In a month we will be wed at last, we will—"

"No!" she shrieked, pulling her arm free with all the strength she could muster. "If you cannot let go of your hatred, you let go of me! I will not raise our child under your rage!" She opened the door and stood for a moment within the frame. "I’m leaving you to your hate, Saki. If it is all you have in your heart then…then I will have no more part in it."

"You cannot leave, Minya! You will not escape me!"

Despite his words, despite his anger, he made no effort to follow the woman out the door.

"She…she will come back to me. Yes, she has nowhere to go now. Yes… she will return." Clenching his fists, he retired to his meditation chamber. Was there a tear in his eye?

Saki abruptly returned to consciousness. Was he so hateful a person that his lover would flee him so desperately? And the possibility that he was a father…

He had to know more.

He was in a dark room, in front of machinery he could neither identify or place. He was vigilantly forging a steel helmet of some kind, placing and linking the various plates below the central helm before adding a three-pronged crown that was welded along the surface of its top. Cooling it in a bucket of water, then drying it, Saki watched in a mirror as he placed it on his head. It was then that he inserted the final touch: a curved steel mask that covered everything but his eyes. He slipped it beneath the helmet plates, connecting it behind his ears.

In the tradition of the ninja, something told him.

Saki’s vision became blurred as the real world threatened to absolve him. He forced himself to delve deeper into his subconscious, pushing himself further ahead in time.

He stood in the open doorway of Hamato Yoshi’s apartment, pieces of the obliterated wooden door lying strewn behind him.

A terrified scream came from inside. He stalked inside, following the scream into the living room where he saw the huddled figure of Yoshi’s wife, Tang Shen. He raised his blade-ridden gauntleted arms and swept them sharply at her, cutting diagonal gashes across her chest. Shen twitched violently as she fell to the floor in a splash of blood. He turned to see Hamato Yoshi standing behind him, holding two grocery bags which he immediately dropped.

"Good Lord!" Yoshi gasped. "Who are you?!"

Saki coiled back, poised and ready to release the anger of vengeance he had been waiting to release for so many years, the anger that made him who he was. "I am Oroku Saki!" he announced before he threw himself forward, his wrist-blades outstretched and ready to rend apart the man’s tender flesh.

"Oh no…" was the last thing Hamato Yoshi said before the world turned red.

Saki rose out of his trance again, but once more he pressed his concentration into his past, forcing another vision to surface.

Four turtle demons stood around his fatally wounded body on what appeared to be a rooftop.

The leader, the one they called Leonardo, had given him a mortal wound as he had driven his katana sword through his chest.

"Now…you are beaten," the turtle demon gloated as he lurched to the side.

He respected his opponent’s fighting skill, but he dare not yield. "So…finish…it fools!" Saki challenged, his voice breaking. "I am…helpless…slay me now!"

"We Turtles are not dogs without honor unlike you, Oroku Saki." Leonardo extended one of his swords, handle-first, to Saki. "I will give you one more chance to redeem your honor. Take this katana…and commit seppuku!"

"Never!" he exclaimed at the mention of the Japanese ritual suicide. Reaching beneath his belt he subtly retrieved a small cylinder-shaped object. "If…I must…kill myself…I will take all of you…Turtles…with me! This thermite…grenade…will wipe this rooftop clean of all life…including you!"

Saki got as far as arming the detonator before one of the turtle demons speared him across the jaw with its bo-staff, sending him and his grenade over the rooftop. The deafening sound of the thermite charge going off was the last thing he heard.

That vision was particularly chilling for Saki, he realized as he came out of it. Had he seen his death? He would have to find out more.

Saki was now sitting in a clear plastic tube spanning at least seven feet from top to bottom. He was dimly aware of the uniformed scientists and doctors observing him from the other side.

He could barely move his appendages. Every movement he could make was awkward and painful. Through his distorted vision he was able to peer down at his hands. He recoiled back as he saw movement squirming beneath his skin. Examining more of his body, he saw that in various places throughout his flesh there was more subtle movement. Suddenly, to his terror, a small creature poked its tiny, rounded head through the skin of Saki’s finger.

Worms.

"It worked!" he heard a voice speak.

Saki gasped, returning to full consciousness. What he had seen was horrifying. His revival? Puzzled yet more curious than ever, Saki plunged back into meditation.

He saw himself standing fully clad in his blade-covered armor. The turtle demon who had previously dealt him the mortal wound on the rooftop, Leonardo, was standing before him now.

"Three years ago I saw you die—why do you haunt us?!" Leonardo asked.

"Is that important? Yes…to you, I suppose it is. Long ago, on a rooftop you saw Oroku Saki destroyed—torn to pieces by his own device!" Saki scowled. "You saw me die!" He began approaching the demon, taking off his armor a piece at a time. "But they found me…my people found me…my pieces. The Foot Clan is very resourceful and has knowledge of a great many skills. Some from the time of legends and myth…some from the time of logic and science. Together, all things are possible. Imagine a creature of our Earth—a worm, small, blind, useless. But it eats. And from what it eats, it learns, and adapts its own cell’s structures. Others eat from the same dish, and join together, taking on a completely different form. This colony becomes a different being! Three early experiments you met on your way here. The fourth time they fed on me. They ate, and began to think and act as one, form one structure; one being." He threw off the last piece of armor. "I stood grotesque…alive!" Saki tore off his red torso cloth. "My lust for vengeance, my hatred for you—stronger than before!" With a clank, Saki dropped his helmet to the floor. As Saki reached for his swords, Leonardo went for his own. "But now…the waiting is over."

Saki watched with fascination as he saw himself battle the turtle demon in an intense sword fight, neither of them gaining any significant advantage over the other as they fought.

That is, until they ran at each other, katanas outstretched. Saki and Leonardo leapt through the air. Leonardo landed on the opposite side in one piece.

Saki did not.

Darkness.

Saki had the feeling he had reached the end of his hectic memory. Such lucid visions he had seen, of rebirth and death twofold…green-skinned demons…

What kind of man had he been?

Saki swallowed. Did he really want to know?

He had seen the shrouded assortment of memories, yet they did not connect with him. He was still just observing another man’s memoirs, not unlike anyone would watch a movie. From what he had seen in his mind’s eye, Saki had been a vengeful spirit, one of great anger; anger that had once been directed toward Hamato Yoshi but had eventually become transferred upon the four strange turtle beings that had managed to execute him twice.

The strange man he had met in the marketplace the day before…he had started to say that he could help him regain his memory before his brother intervened. Whatever Saki truly was, his family clearly did not want any part of.

But he could not deny his soul, could he? No matter who he was, who he had been, what right did his family have to forsake him his true self?

Saki gathered his thoughts and continued down the trail.

A rustling in the bushes stopped him dead in his tracks.

A figure identical to the one he had seen in the marketplace revealed himself, leaping from the trees and landing in front of him.

As before, the figure bowed. "My master, I knew you were not lost."

"You are with…the Foot Clan?" Saki asked. He was more than a little wary.

"Hai! One of those still left that have been faithfully awaiting your return. We thought you lost over a year ago after something of an…incident."

"What incident?"

"An encounter with your brother and his friends," the Foot Soldier explained. "Your scientists had secretly manufactured another body through our advanced method of cloning—"

"Worms," Saki muttered.

"For your first cloning, yes, but not this time, my master. The worms we used after your first death consumed the entirety of your remains to clone you, so there was nothing for new worms to feed on after your second death. We needed a new method."

"Then…"

"The clone you are was grown through traditional cloning, and as with all normal clones, was grown mindless. With your approval, we created this new body in the event of a situation such as the one that occurred atop your headquarters in New York."

"But why clone me if I do not even have my memories?"

"I am not well versed in the science of your resurrection, master, but I will tell you what I know. When the Foot Clan in New York split up into factions and began fighting for dominance, our faction remained loyal to you, and kept the truth about the new body a secret. Your brother and his friends had spies placed through our organization…security is not what it used to be before your death…when the body was completed, they killed the scientists and stole the body. The scientists only had time to imbue you with the Japanese language, which would be necessary before they could do a full brain memory download into the body. How they did this, I cannot say, but Dr. Tachi may be able to explain. Nevertheless, the primary download was interrupted twenty-percent in the process, leaving the body in a temporary coma." The Soldier looked eagerly to Saki. "If you will accompany me to New York we can complete the download for you. You can be whole again, master."

"I can…regain what I lost?"

"You will be the Shredder once more, great warrior and leader of the New York Foot Clan." The Soldier faltered, then went on, "One has tried to take your place, the one they call Raphael from the Turtle clan, but it was only to meet his own ends. We need you."

"The Shredder…" Saki spoke the alias with that familiar sense of déjà vu.

"We were proud to serve under you. You taught and led us well. But all is not as it was in New York. A new leader has usurped what was rightfully yours. Your disciples need you." The Foot Soldier gazed hopefully at him. "Will you come with me?"

Oroku Saki, the Shredder. What kind of man was he? He still did not have a complete answer.

For a moment he thought of his family, his mother and younger brother Heitchi, of their efforts to prevent the very thing this Soldier was offering. He would return to them and tell them what he had done. Everything would be as it was. They would see they were wrong to hide this from him.

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