Warning! This story contains instances of cursing and violence which may be inappropriate for some readers. This story is voluntarily rated PG for parental guidance.
~Don sat on the curb on the corner of Lexington and 33rd. It was just past noon, and the sky was about as clear as it got in New York. Don wasn’t wearing a disguise, but neither he nor anyone else seemed to find this unusual. On a whim, he stood up and walked along East 33rd. Stopping to wait for the light at the next corner, Don looked up Third Avenue and saw a man in a black trenchcoat, a black hat, and (oddly enough) a green scarf walk out of the Third Avenue Diner and head towards the intersection where Don waited.
The man walked quickly, and soon reached the intersection. Without a glance at Don, he crossed East 33rd and began to walk along it in the same direction Don had been heading. The walk sign lit up and Don found himself compelled to hurry after the strange man. He felt a total absence of thought. Usually his mind would be whirring away, wondering, if nothing else, why no one was looking at the strange green mutant walking among them, and why a man would wear a black trenchcoat on a such a beautiful warm day.
But none of this occurred to Donatello. He acted without knowing why and without really thinking about what he was doing. It all seemed perfectly natural. The man didn’t seem to notice his shadow as he walked past P.S. 116. He paused for a moment and watched the silent front of the school, but quickly tired of the view and moved on. When he reached the next corner, Second Avenue, he made a smart right turn and kept going. Another right turn onto East 32nd, and he had nearly circled the block.
Again, the man stopped. He was now directly behind P.S. 116. In the playground behind the school, a maze of cement and metal equipment, several hundred kids were having lunch recess. Again, for no particular reason, Donatello looked down and checked his wristwatch. 12:10:34. Twelve-ten and thirty-four seconds. The man in the trenchcoat walked over to a red car parked directly behind the school. He got something out of his pocket and fiddled with the car’s trunk until it popped open. He slid a bag off his shoulder which Don hadn’t noticed before. It was a black laptop case with a carrying strap.
The man removed from the bag an object that looked like a laptop computer. He leaned over the trunk and carefully positioned it inside, then zipped up the laptop case and slung the strap over his shoulder. Don didn’t move, just stood watching the man. He noticed quite dispassionately that the man appeared to have positioned the laptop directly above the car’s fuel tank. The man then simply slammed the car trunk shut and walked away down the street. He took a left onto Third Avenue at the Windsor Court Apartments and was gone.
Don went back to looking at his watch as he watched the kids playing out of the corner of his eye. And at exactly 12:12:12, the red car exploded.
Don watched, again dispassionately, as within milliseconds the flames reached the fuel tank. The huge fireball swept through the metal fence and into the playground, charring young bodies and turning twisted metal playground equipment, car parts, and hunks of concrete into shrapnel. The air was filled with the terrified screams of teachers and their young charges. People ran out into the streets at the sound of the explosion. Soon ambulances and fire trucks were pulling up, and emergency workers were putting out the flames and trying to extract small bodies from piles of debris.
Don slowly turned on his heel and walked away, still without a flicker of emotion crossing his face.~