Title:           Somewhere just beneath the streets of New York City, a strange and hideous creat
Author:          Anonymous
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/Tqp6ccSj
First Edit:      Monday 15th of April 2013 01:09:36 AM CDT
Last Edit:       Monday 15th of April 2013 01:09:36 AM CDT

Somewhere just beneath the streets of New York City, a strange and hideous creature rummaged through a pile of garbage in a chamber lying under a street-side drain. The daylight from outside poured into this chamber through the open drain, as did much trash that was being disposed of irresponsibly by the city’s citizens as it gathered along the wall. The creature’s belly ached from going for days upon days without eating anything, and he could no longer stand the pain of hunger. The survival techniques he had been taught had limits, and if he did not find something edible soon, he wouldn’t have enough strength to move around the dank, dirty sewers that made up his new home.
 
Nowadays, more and more people in New York aren’t being as picky about eating their food, and less of it is being thrown away. Lesser still make it to the sewers, and fewer than that can be safely ingested, even with his new found tolerance for rancid meat and moldy bread. The creature clawed and sniffed through the waste. It had not always been this way. Once, he had everything. A clan. A home. A wife who loved him and only him. A bright future where the skills he had learned from the greatest shadow warriors in Japan would allow him to be limited only by what he could imagine for his future family and himself.
 
But it was taken away, all too quickly. His clan turned against him. His house and any belongings he couldn’t carry in his pockets were burned to a cinder. His beautiful Tang Shen slain by a man who allowed himself to be driven by jealousy and rage to madness. He couldn’t save her, or anything else, that day, except for himself. He was forced to flee for his very life, leave behind all that he knew or cared about in a country that he could no longer show his face in. He couldn’t avenge his beloved then, but he still had a future. A chance to start over, to honor her memory by not throwing his life away.
 
So the man, then known as Hamato Yoshi, fled to this city on the other side of the world in hopes of forging a new beginning for himself. He hadn’t a single friend, and he could barely speak the language of this land. This city was strange, uncomforting, and often very unkind to him. However, he still persevered, for while he still drew breath and had hope of a better tomorrow, he was never going to give in to the darkness. Memories still clung to him, however, of the companionship and love he once knew, and his loneliness increased as the weeks passed.
He decided to buy a pet so that he could have something to care for, but unfortunately, he only had enough money to buy a quartet of turtles that were snatched up by a little boy before he could purchase them. Defeated, he roamed through the back alleys on his way back to his tiny apartment, eventually coming across four very peculiar individuals in formal suits. He tried to pay them no mind as he attempted to walk by them, but he couldn’t help but notice a small, glowing vial pass between them.
 
The men caught him looking at it and, though he did not provoke or antagonize them, immediately attacked. On instinct, Yoshi swiftly dealt with them, his fighting ability clearly beyond theirs, and dispatched his attackers. However, during the battle, the small vial he had observed shattered, and a thick, greenish liquid spilled onto his hand. It burned like acid, and Yoshi gripped his hand in pain as he tried to scrape it off with his shirt sleeve. The effects of the ooze, however, were incredibly fast. His body contorted and twisted, his body screaming in agony as his nails became claws, his face elongated, his ears expanded, his teeth and hair growing uncontrollably, and sickening, ratlike tail extruded from his lower back.
 
Ever since that fateful encounter, the man once known as Hamato Yoshi was forced to flee once again, leaving behind the surface world as his grotesque new form of a gigantic rat scarred any individual he could have called a friend away, and earned him the fear and ire of dozens of those who he came to for help. The creature silently laid still in the trash heap, tired of rummaging, and listened to the sounds of the streets above as normal people went about their daily lives.
 
He had lost everything now. His humanity was all he had left, and now it was stripped away from him as well, along with any future he may have held hope for. There was an elongated piece of metal near the corner of the dump pile, sharpened along one side. He stared at it curiously for minutes, wondering to himself, “What else is left for me? This is no way to live. Living in the sewers, eating trash to survive, unloved and having no one to love in return. What possible reason should I have to continue?”
 
His thoughts were interrupted as heard a small, high-pitched wail coming from one of the water pipes connected to this chamber. Perking his ears up to try and perceive the sound better, he realized that it was getting louder. He sat up from his spot in the garbage and crawled over to the entrance of the water pipe and peered inside, and saw nothing but darkness over the small stream that was pouring out of the large pipe and cascading on to the floor below. The wails were still gaining volume, however, and now he could swear that there were more wails of different pitches alongside it. As he continued to wait, something finally came into view. It was a hand-woven whicker basket, floating along the stream inside the drain as the pained cries of whoever laid within echoed throughout the chamber.
 
The basket was nearing the edge of the pipe, prepared to fall and spill its contents on to the chamber floor below when the rat creature quickly extended his hand and caught the basket by its handle, pulling it down safely to the trash pile beside him. Inside the large basket was a damp, off-blue blanket, with several moving lumps underneath it as the crying intensified. Ignoring the damage they were doing to his ears, the gigantic rat once known as Hamato Yoshi reached down one of his claws to pick up the blanket and peer inside. At first, he could only think of his disgust at whatever deprived human being could possibly leave infants alone in the sewers like this, but his mind soon raced to other thoughts as he lifted up the cover.
 
Inside were six small, quivering, crying creatures. They clearly had hooves, tails, and other horse-like features, so they could have possibly passed for foals. However, their coats and manes ranged across a spectrum of colors (particularly the blue one, whose mane was a spectrum of colors in of itself), and certain proportions of their bodies were incorrect of a normal baby horse. What were even more disturbing were the tiny horns protruding from the foreheads of the purple and white ones, as well as the tiny set of feathered wings attached to the back of the blue and yellow ones. Their voices, too, were unnatural. They sounded human in tone, nothing like the average noises a foal should make.
 
The rat could only stare at them with confusion in his eyes, unsure of what could have possibly leaded to such beings existing in the first place, never mind being lost in the sewer pipes. Could they be victims of the same mutagenic slime that had transformed him? What were they doing down here? Where did they come from? As he continued to ponder his thoughts on what to make of these weird beings, one of the foals, a pink one with a rose-colored mane, opened her eyes to stare at him in return. Her crying ceased, mouth simply agape at the sight of the gigantic, monstrous rat that stood before her. She turned her head on its side at the rat, seemingly gauging him.
 
The rat was slightly amused by her antics, chuckling under his breath as she studied him. “Trust me, little one. You are not so normal looking, either,” he responded.  At this, the pink foal began to giggle, and the other foals began to stop crying as well, taking an opportunity to meet their rescuer. One however, refused to halt her wails. The yellow winged foal did not seem to calm down along with the others, so the rat extended a claw to try and pet her mane in an attempt to soothe her. She shuddered at his touch and inched away from him, as the rat sighed and looked down at the others.
 
Suddenly, a noise distracted the rat as something hit the drain pipe above him. He turned up to look at what made the sound and saw an apple, fully intact and fairly clean, bounce off the side of the drain-hole and fall towards the garbage. The rat did not want this meal sullied, however, as he nimbly jumped off the ground towards the wall, running along it until he leaped off towards the falling food. He outstretched his arm and skillfully pulled the apple out of the air, flipping himself around to land squarely on his hind legs. The noise of a conversation above filled the chamber.
 
“You fucking moron, you made me drop my lunch!”
“Ah, cry me a river.”
“You better fucking pay me for that!”
 
The argument between the two humans continued as the rat quickly grew bored of their exchange and looked again at the basket with the foals. They were all looking at him, having completely stopped their weeping, and small smiles could be seen across the face of all but the yellow one as they waved their tiny legs in the air, apparently very much impressed by the rat’s display. The rat crawled back over to them, and using his razor-sharp fingernails proceeded to cut off pieces of the apple. He gave each foal a tiny share, which they immediately accepted graciously and began to nibble on. The yellow one was still fearful of the rat as he handed her piece to her, but slowly conceded as she felt her stomach grumble. The rat once again tried to pet the foal, and this time she did not shudder at his touch. As he receded his hand to allow the foal to enjoy her food, it scraped across the bottom of the basket’s handle, and a sharp piece of loose wood lodged itself into his hand. He pulled back his hand quickly in pain, and pulled out the sharp chip of whicker. “Damn splinter…” he hissed.
 
The purple foal, one of the horned ones, looked up at him as he rubbed out the stinging in his hand, her mouth still full of apple crumbs. She opened her mouth, spewing bits of her meal all over the side of the basket as she spoke.
 
“Splin…ter.”
 
He was completely unprepared for that. The rat let go of his hand in shock and looked back down at the little foal, wondering if he had simply gone insane from the weeks of isolation. She began to laugh as she repeated herself. “Splinter!” The rat could hardly contain himself. They spoke. These creatures were intelligent. Clearly infantile, but they were so much more than mere little ponies. The rat’s brain was trying to process all the information he had received in the few short minutes since he had saved these fascinating children. He thought of what to do with them, about trying to give them to someone on the surface who could care for them better than he could down here. But who in this city could he trust to keep them safe? The city above them, along with the rest of this world, is a sad and selfish place. Giving them to the wrong people could mean their end, and the rat wasn’t ready to allow anything to take away the chances for happiness these foals still had.
 
He remembered back to what he thought about before. How he had nothing left, no reason for him to keep going. He was wrong. He had his knowledge. He had skills and abilities that he had been trained for, that he could train other for in turn. And most importantly, he had someone who needed those skills. Those who needed his help. He reached down and grabbed the purple foal, lifting her out of the basket. She did not fear his grasp, and accepted him with open hooves as he placed his claws around her and brought her to the ground beside him.
 
The rat looked at the other foals, who stared at him with a look of content on their faces, and then back down to the purple foal on the floor. “I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t hear the first part of that sentence.” He chuckled, but then solemnly said, “I have failed before. I had someone who needed me to protect her, and I could not. I swore to myself that I would go on. I promised on her behalf that I would not give in to despair, and that if there was reason for me to draw breath, I would.” He extended a hand and placed it on the purple foals’ head. “I swear to you all that I will not fail you. From this day forth, I will be the protector you need. This world can be dark, frightening, and all too often unkind to new things. Even dangerous. We are different from them, and their world can never be ours.” The purple foal’s smile slowly faded.
 
“But we have each other. I am here for you, my children, now and always. I will give all of you the skills you need to survive. I will give you everything I have learned, so that you will be prepared to face that dark world one day.” He reached into the junk beside them, and pulled out a long, thin strip of cloth. “I will teach you the art of invisibility, so that no one who wishes to harm you can find you. I will show you the styles of the martial arts, so that you can defend yourself from the ones that can.” He pierced two holes in the cloth with his nails. “You will learn the codes of honor and morality, so that you will never fall to the same vices that I allowed to consume those I have cared for in the past. You will be raised as I was, in the ways…” He paused as he kneeled down to wrap the cloth around the foal’s head, positioning the holes over her eyes. He finished, “…of the ninja.”
 
The smile returned to the foal’s face, as she shook her hooves in the air once more, shouting, “Splinter! Splinter!” The other foals began to laugh happily as they started to crawl out of the basket on their own and make their way towards the rat and their friend. Out of the corner of his eye, the rat noticed another oddity in the trash pile. A thick book had been completely thrown out, despite being mostly intact. He reached over and pulled it out, seeing that it was a book covering a subject he had great fascination for: the great artists of the Renaissance. He looked back down at his new students, and a genuine smile graced the rat’s face for the first time since he fled his old home. “But first, I think you could all use a name.”