Chapter 65: The Winchester Boys
The four turtles stopped a respectful distance from Rango and waited.
Which was, he noted, more situational awareness than the Foot Clan enforcers had demonstrated, and they'd arrived through a sewer.
The leader — blue mask, twin katana, the posture of someone who had been doing this long enough that readiness was just his resting state — raised one hand, palm out.
"We're not with them," he said, nodding at the rhinoceros one in the corner. "Different situation entirely."
"I can see that," Rango said.
"We heard there was an incident at the museum. We came to help. Got here late, which—" a slight pause — "apparently wasn't necessary."
Rango looked at the four of them. At the weapons — katana, sai, bo staff, nunchaku — and the way they held them, which was the way people hold tools they've used long enough to forget they're holding them.
He looked at the rhinoceros one.
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," the rhinoceros one said, with the specific exhaustion of someone who has been professionally opposed to something for years and found it more tiring than dramatic. "They fight us a lot."
"I gathered," Rango said.
Ted, from the information desk, was watching the four turtles with the expression of a man who had decided to suspend his standard frameworks and simply observe. It was one of Ted's better qualities — the ability to set aside the catalog and just look.
"Sit down," Rango said. "All of you. I'll get coffee."
Twenty minutes later, the museum's back office held Rango, Ted, four large turtles, and the rhinoceros one — the boar one was zip-tied to a radiator in the foyer and had fallen asleep, which Rango respected — arranged around the worktable with coffee and the specific atmosphere of a debrief that nobody had planned.
The blue-masked one — Leonardo, he'd said, when Rango asked directly — had explained the Foot Clan's interest in the component with the concise efficiency of someone who'd been tracking this particular problem for weeks.
"Shredder's been collecting the three parts of the Technodrome initiator for eight months," he said. "This is the second piece. He has the first. The third is—" a glance at his brothers — "we don't know where the third is yet."
"What does it actually do?" Rango asked.
"Opens a portal," the purple-masked one said — Donatello, the one with the staff and the laptop that had appeared from somewhere during the coffee retrieval. He had the focused, slightly distracted energy of someone who lived primarily in their own analysis. "Specifically a dimensional gateway for an alien fleet that Shredder made contact with. They provide him technology and support. He provides them—" a pause — "a landing zone."
"So it's not exactly a world-ending weapon," Rango said.
"It's more of a welcome mat," the orange-masked one — Michelangelo — said cheerfully. "For things that would end the world."
"The distinction matters less than you'd think," Leonardo said.
Rango looked at the blueprint. At the aviation hall, where the component was still in its case with its rocket debris, provenance unclear card.
"I'll give it to you," he said.
The turtles looked at each other.
"Just like that?" the red-masked one — Raphael, who had said the least and watched the most — said.
"Keeping it here isn't making anyone safer. You're the ones tracking the other pieces, which means you're the ones who should have all three in one place so they can't be assembled." Rango shrugged. "Basic logistics."
Raphael looked at him for a moment with the assessing attention of someone recalibrating a prior estimate.
"Most people," he said, "need more convincing than that."
"Most people don't work nights at this museum," Rango said.
Ted made a sound that was almost a laugh.
The component handoff took ten minutes. Donatello wrapped it in three layers of the materials he'd produced from his pack, catalogued it against the other piece's specifications, and confirmed the fit with the focused satisfaction of someone solving a problem they'd been working on for a while.
While this was happening, Leonardo stood beside Rango near the aviation hall entrance.
"There's something else," Leonardo said.
"I assumed."
"Our master sent us. Not just because of the component." He looked at the hall — at the exhibits, at the low light, at the particular quality of the museum after hours that Rango had stopped noticing and guests always noticed immediately. "His granddaughter. Anya. She told him what happened in Connecticut."
"Rest stop," Rango said. "Werewolf in the tree line. We handled it."
"She told him that too." A pause. "Master Splinter doesn't forget debts. He wanted us to say that directly, in person, rather than through — intermediaries."
"Appreciated."
"He also—" Leonardo stopped. Restarted. "He said he watched you move, from what Anya described. He said you have power and speed that you haven't fully learned to use yet. He offered to help with that. His words were: the instrument and the technique are different problems, and this young man has only solved one of them."
Rango was quiet for a moment.
He thought about the fight earlier tonight — the brass knuckles connecting without the supernatural enhancement, working on pure physics and momentum, and how that had been both sufficient and obviously limited. About the entity in Anna's apartment, and how he'd been fast but not precise. About all the places where McQueen's gift had saved him because his own technique hadn't been enough.
"Tell him I'm listening," Rango said.
Leonardo nodded. Once, the way people nod when they're confirming something they expected to hear.
The police arrived at eleven-forty.
The curator arrived at twelve-ten, still in his coat over pajamas, which told Rango the call had come while he was asleep and he'd come directly.
He stood in the foyer and looked at the door — at the frame, at the hardware, at the specific shape of the absence where the door had been — with the expression of a man who has been the custodian of something for a long time and is taking a quiet moment with the damage.
Then he looked at Rango.
"You're okay," he said. First thing. Not the door, not the exhibits.
"Fine," Rango said. "Bruised. Nothing structural."
The curator nodded. Looked at the foyer — at the cases with their shattered glass, at the aviation wing where a display had come apart, at the reproduction amphora that was now an educational exercise in ceramic archaeology.
"The criminals are in custody?"
"Two of them. The rhino took longer than expected. Bulletproof hide."
The curator absorbed this with the practiced equanimity of a man who had been running this particular museum for eleven years and had encountered enough inexplicable things after midnight to have developed a framework for them. "And the component they were after?"
"Secured," Rango said. "With the people best positioned to keep it out of the wrong hands."
The curator looked at him. "Should I ask—"
"Probably not tonight."
"Fair." He put one hand briefly on Rango's shoulder. "You did well. Take two days."
"I'll take one."
"You'll take two, because I need the door replaced and the insurance adjuster needs a statement and both of those things will happen better if you're rested." He said it with the firmness of someone who had learned to give directives that sounded like recommendations. "Go home, Rango."
Nearby, the reporter who'd crawled out of the sewer with the turtles — April O'Neill, she'd introduced herself, Channel 6, with the alert eyes of someone who was processing everything she was seeing and filing it at speed — was talking to one of the uniforms and writing in a notebook and occasionally glancing at Rango with the specific attention of a journalist who has identified the most interesting person in a scene.
"Don't wait for her," Rango said to McQueen, who had materialized at the curb.
McQueen's engine turned over with what Rango had come to recognize as agreement.
They pulled out before the reporter could close the distance.
The drive home was quiet. Ted rode on the dash in the specific stillness of a man who has processed a lot and is letting the processing settle.
Rango drove with one hand and thought about Splinter's observation — the instrument and the technique are different problems — and about April O'Neill's notebook and what she'd eventually publish and whether that was going to be a problem, and about the Foot Clan's warehouse on Lafayette and what it meant that Shredder had piece one and had sent serious muscle after piece two.
And about Emma in Boston, in a white room with a girl who catalogued torture devices and a hand that had its own opinions.
And about Amos saying the math doesn't work about Fiona.
And about the card in his pocket — The Acquisitions Office — which was a different problem, still open.
The city moved around them, its usual indifferent self, the Manhattan grid doing what it did at this hour: emptying out, settling into its overnight register, the yellow of the streetlights making something almost warm out of the December cold.
McQueen turned onto his street.
And then — Rango saw it before he consciously processed it — a car.
A 1967 Chevrolet Impala, black, parked in front of his building with the particular presence of a vehicle that had covered serious distance recently and was resting rather than parked. The engine ticked in the specific rhythm of cooling metal. Road dust on the wheel wells. A crack in the rear passenger window that had been repaired with tape and then survived long enough that the tape had become permanent.
His father had described that car.
He pulled McQueen to the curb across the street and sat there for a moment.
Two figures got out of the Impala.
Tall — both of them, different versions of tall. The older one moved with the compact efficiency of someone who had learned, early, that bodies were tools and tools needed maintenance and maintenance was non-negotiable. The younger one had a few inches on his brother and the slightly unfinished quality of someone still growing into his own proportions, all angles not quite resolved.
They turned toward McQueen.
Their faces, in the streetlight, were — familiar. Not from experience. From something older than experience, the specific recognition of family resemblance, features that rhymed with things he saw in the mirror and in photographs and in the way his father had held his jaw when he was thinking.
They were waving.
Actually waving — both of them, with the uncurated enthusiasm of people who had been looking forward to something and had arrived and were not bothering to be cool about it.
Rango sat in McQueen and looked at his cousins.
Dean Winchester was twenty-seven and grinning like he'd found something he'd been looking for.
Sam Winchester was twenty-three and had the eyes of someone who read everything and remembered all of it, and was currently reading Rango the way he probably read everything — completely, immediately, with no part of it going to waste.
Ted appeared on the dash beside Rango.
Looked at the two figures.
Looked at Rango.
"The Impala," Ted said. "That's the car."
"Yeah."
"The one from—"
"Supernatural. Yeah."
"So those are—"
"My cousins."
Ted was quiet for a moment.
"Huh," he said.
Rango opened the door and got out.
Dean crossed the street with the forward momentum of someone who didn't do anything at half speed, stopped two feet away, looked Rango up and down with bright, assessing eyes, and then stuck out his hand.
"Rango Winchester," he said. "Man. You look exactly like Aunt Louise."
"That's what people keep telling me," Rango said, and shook the hand.
Sam arrived a step behind, which Rango noted — always watching, always letting the other person move first, his father's voice coming back across years: youngest one pays the most attention. He shook Rango's hand with both of his, which was not a thing Rango had expected and landed differently for it.
"We heard you were in New York," Sam said. "We've been trying to find you for three weeks."
"Jocelyn told you."
"Jocelyn told us," Dean confirmed. "Also, the story about the apartment on the fortieth floor got around. The hole in the floor specifically." A grin. "That was you."
"That was an entity with teleportation capabilities and a structural integrity problem."
"Same thing." Dean looked at the museum. At the missing door. At the police tape around the entrance. "Did you also do that tonight?"
"Foot Clan," Rango said. "Trying to steal something from the aviation wing."
Dean stared at him.
"It's been a long week," Rango said.
"It's Tuesday," Sam said.
"It's been a long Tuesday."
Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean. The compressed communication of brothers who had been in the same car for long enough that significant conversations happened in the gaps.
"Okay," Dean said, turning back to Rango. "We have a lot to talk about."
"I know."
"The Yellow-Eyed Demon specifically."
"I know."
"And some stuff about your parents that you probably haven't—"
"I know." Rango looked at them both. At his father's nephew, and his father's nephew's younger brother, standing in the street outside his museum at midnight with road dust on their boots and eleven years of gap between the last time they'd seen each other and now. "Come inside. I'll make coffee. The door's missing so it's easy to find the entrance."
Dean looked at the entrance. At the police tape. At the specific aftermath of what had clearly been a significant physical altercation.
"Is that blood on the pavement?" he asked.
"Rhino hide bleeds dark," Rango said. "It's fine."
Dean looked at Sam.
"I like him," Dean said.
"You've known him forty seconds," Sam said.
"I like him," Dean said again, more firmly, and followed Rango inside.
Ted, watching from McQueen's dashboard, looked at the Impala across the street.
Looked at the museum.
Looked at the night ahead, which had the quality of something that was just getting started.
"Back in Ghana," he said, to no one in particular, in the tone of a man closing one chapter of an ongoing complaint and opening the next, "family reunions happened at reasonable hours, with food, and nobody's door was missing."
He paused.
"I'm still glad they're here," he said.
Then he went inside.
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