Chapter Text
Lunchtime wasn’t the time to be taking naps, but Mikey was pretty sure he’d never felt this lackluster before. Mondays had a way of sucking out the life force of all students at Eastman High, but today was especially low.
The fact that his cafeteria table was completely empty other than himself didn’t help, either.
So if he leaned his chin on his hand and closed his eyes for two seconds among the bustling noise, no one needed to know! It was like a super secret speed nap. Those were a thing, right?
A minute passed before he felt the lightest tickle of a tug on a lock of his curls and opened his eyes to a sweet, cinnamon sugar-dusted donut in front of him.
“Surprise surprise,” sang the heavenly being that was offering it.
Mikey stared at the donut for a moment to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
Then he looked up at said heavenly being — from his angle, the cafeteria lights directly behind her honey-blond head of hair only added to the effect — and felt the luster running back at full speed like Raph did from Donnie after messing around with his at-home science experiments.
Renet sat down next to him and beamed proudly at his befuddled expression. “Mom and I went to buy some for breakfast today,” she explained. “And after what you told me yesterday and how you had to spend your Thanksgiving, I sort of felt like you needed a pick-me-up.”
Mikey felt his heart warm up. “You’re the best,” he blurted.
Renet grinned. “No, you.”
“No, you.”
“No, you you you!”
Giving up, Mikey bit into his donut and let his taste buds enjoy the ride. Somehow it was even better than the ones at the mill. Maybe it was because Renet had been the one to give it to him?
“Especially,” Renet continued, “You deserve a donut after almost… well. You almost lost against Peter.”
Mikey slowed in his chewing, remembering the way the cold water had felt in the swimming pool, and how the surface had been unreachable. Brushing the scary memory away, he glanced at Renet, and was taken aback at how dark her eyes looked as she stared down her lunch, poking at her mashed potatoes and gravy with a fork.
“I’m fine now,” Mikey promised, his mouth full of donut. “Plus, my brothers were with me.”
With all the poking, Renet’s potatoes looked kind of like some epic hilly kingdom. But just as Mikey was about to point that out, Renet’s fork squished it all as she shoveled a bite into her mouth, looking upset.
“I know, but it shouldn’t have happened, like at all. I don’t… I don’t like the idea of you getting hurt. I really don’t like it!”
Renet stabbed the poor potato kingdom again. Mikey imagined the poor potato subjects running for their potato lives. He was sort of touched by the whole display, but it wasn’t worth getting so worked up about.
“It’s over now,” he pointed out cheerfully, and lifted his gaze from the potato death that was happening in his name and up to his friend. “But thank you for being my knight in shining ar—”
He stilled the moment he saw the first tear welling up.
And his stomach dropped.
He’d made her cry?
“Renet,” Mikey heard himself say, his donut forgotten as he stared at her, heart racing in a newfound panic. He’d never been in this situation before, at least not with people who weren’t in his family. But his brothers rarely ever cried. Usually it was him who was crying and needed a hug. This didn’t even look like it could be hug-solvable. In a quiet voice, he said, “Renet, I’m okay.”
Renet blinked and the tear rolled down her cheek, and she rubbed it away just as quickly as it came.
“I’ve been seeing yokai for longer. I should know how to keep my friends safe,” she said, her voice thick. “But I keep letting you get hurt.”
“What?” Mikey stared at her, completely flabbergasted. “You keep letting me? Renet, unless you secretly control the yokai behind the scenes and are in charge of making sure they don’t come after me, you’re totally nuts.”
Renet frowned. “I’m not!”
“Do you secretly control the yokai, Renet? Are you some kind of regular girl by day, yokai queen by night like in those magical girl animes?”
“That’s not —”
“Do you? Are you?”
“No and no, but —”
“Then stop beating yourself up over that,” Mikey said firmly. He needed Renet to see she was being ridiculous. “Stop feeling so bad, because if my best friend in the whole world is feeling lousy, especially over something like that, then I feel lousy.”
Renet’s nose wrinkled and she looked at him, the barest hints of a smile on her lips.
“Fine,” she said with a huff. Her eyes were looking drier now. “But next time you do anything yokai-related, you like, have to tell me. Okay? Even if you think I’m busy talking to Jennika and Lita. Even if you get the weird idea that somehow I’ll be mad at you, which is looney balooney stuff, by the way.”
Mikey grinned sheepishly. “It’s a deal.”
He took another bite of his donut and spotted Sav sitting a few tables away, talking to some friends. Renet followed his gaze.
“Oh, that’s strange,” Renet said. “Woody’s not with him. I thought they were buddies.”
“I don’t think Woody wants to be buddies with anyone after what happened with Peter,” Mikey pointed out. He knew he’d want to spend some time enjoying not being fused with a seventy-year-old spirit of a four-year-old.
Man, sometimes the supernatural was super weird.
Renet nodded seriously. “I can’t imagine letting someone possess me like that. All for what, a mask that can turn yokai to stone? What would a person our age want with a weapon like that, anyway?”
Weapon, Mikey echoed in his mind. It suddenly made everything seem so much more serious, so out of their jurisdiction as a couple of teenagers.
Just as he started to wonder what kind of person Woody even was to begin with, a hand slammed down at the table and he almost choked on the last bit of donut.
“Michelangelo Hamato,” Fong growled, his eyes ablaze behind a brand new pair of glasses.
“Oh, hi Fong,” Mikey said happily, nonchalantly finishing his lunch and standing up to stay on the exact opposite side of the table. “How are the new specs? You’re looking pretty sharp.”
Dramatically, Fong used his index finger to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “They’re amazing. Quite great, actually. My grandparents let me pick out the frames on Saturday.” He took a few steps clockwise around the table towards Mikey.
“Cool, cool, so glad to hear it,” Mikey said, moving in the same way as Fong in order to keep the distance.
Renet glanced between them both, looking perplexed at the different moods radiating off the two boys acting like predator and prey. She continued eating, seeming mildly entertained.
“It was only after this morning that I found out,” Fong said, moving counter-clockwise.
Mikey also moved counterclockwise. “Oh?”
Fong pointed a finger at him. “Wipe that innocent look off your face, you heathen! Who said you needed to pay me back?”
Mikey screamed, unintentionally comical, as Fong leapt across the cafeteria table, but when he spun around to bolt, someone bigger and stronger than him captured him in an attack-hug. People in the cafeteria were starting to stare at the commotion.
“Bradford, let go!” Mikey hollered.
“Answer the question, or face the Fong,” Bradford said with no less theatricality than usual, his arms squishing Mikey like a noodle. His face was scrunched up in serious concentration. “Do you wish to face the Fong, Mikey?”
“I do not wish to face the Fong!”
“I thought it was really cool of you to pay him for his glasses,” Xever said, appearing from behind Bradford. He raised a fist up, but Mikey couldn’t really bump it because he was being held hostage. “Respect.”
“Thanks. I mean, I was the one who broke them,” Mikey said.
Fong made a strangled noise. “You didn’t — it was an accident! And it was really my fault for getting too close to the creek in the first place. But I didn’t want you to — I didn’t expect or want you to give me the money.”
Mikey felt a little embarrassed at all the eyes on him, but it wasn’t crushing. Over the weekend after he’d ‘fessed up to Leo about what had happened, Leo had contacted Fong’s grandparents to electronically transfer some money. And Mikey had written a little apology note with a smiley face and felt a million times better. Righting his wrongs felt good, apparently. Which was very cool.
“If it’s any consolation, I wanted to,” Mikey told Fong as Bradford continued to cut off his circulation. “I stepped on them, Fong.”
Fong faltered. “You wanted to?”
“I wanted to.”
Fong stared at him for a few moments. Then he sighed. “Release the heathen, Bradford.”
Bradford complied, and Mikey let out a sigh as he sunk back into his seat besides Renet, who was giggling behind a hand.
“For the record,” Bradford said to Mikey, “I didn’t want to go after you — but Fong thought he’d made you feel bad enough to give him money. Like some kind of mafia overlord. But don’t worry, Fong, I would join your mafia if you started one.”
“Please don’t joke about organized crime,” Xever and Fong said in unison, and Mikey got the impression that this was not the first time Bradford had joked about organized crime.
Mikey couldn’t believe his ears. They weren’t… mad at him? “I thought you guys would never talk to me again.”
Fong sat down across from Mikey and Renet, and Bradford and Xever joined him on either side. “I thought you would never talk to me again. I came off kind of rude, I think. I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t,” Mikey expressed, shocked at how these events were turning. He’d been so sure everybody hated him.
“Yeah, well. I thought I was. And thank you for the glasses.”
Renet sniffed dramatically, and they all looked at her. “This is so beautiful,” she joked.
“I think you’re beautiful,” Bradford blurted, staring at her.
The awkward silence that followed was broken quickly by someone else walking up to their table — short, white hair in braids. Lita.
She cleared her throat loudly to interrupt them, as if she weren’t already the focus of their group.
“Hi, Lita,” Mikey greeted with a little wave.
Lita didn’t reply. Instead she gave Renet a pointed stare.
I guess I’m not a literal angel anymore to her, Mikey thought, but found that the thought didn’t sting at all.
“Hey Renet, so I just wanted to let you know that Jason and I are sitting over there, if you wanted to join us,” Lita said. She looked over at Fong, Bradford, and Xever. “And if you three want to join too, we have room.”
Mikey didn’t miss the way he went completely uninvited. When he peered a few tables away, he saw Jason sitting with a few other people. The moment he made eye contact, though, the other boy just gave him a dead-on unfriendly stare.
Uncomfortable, Mikey returned his eyeballs to his lunch.
Oh, well. Can’t have it all.
“Thanks! But I’m good right here,” Renet replied unflinchingly. “Sort of want to sit with Mikey.”
“Same here,” Fong, Xever, and Bradford chimed in, and Mikey suddenly couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
Lita nodded, looking a little confused.
“Oh, and that reminds me,” Renet said, before Lita could walk away. “For our new assignment in English for Romeo and Juliet, do you want to join our group? Mikey and I are working together.”
“Yeah. Yeah, actually,” Lita said, and she looked flustered now. “I needed a group. Um, Mikey? You’re okay with that?”
Mikey nodded. “Sure. Your ideas are always pretty cool.”
Any remaining coldness vanished from Lita’s attitude towards him, and she slowly smiled. “Thanks. Uh… I better go back to my table. Jason’s still… ”
Lita seemed to think better of whatever it was she’d been about to say. Shaking her head as if to backtrack, she waved goodbye and left.
Mikey was glad Jennika wasn’t in the same lunch period. Otherwise, he’d be feeling some serious frost.
“They’ll get over themselves,” Xever said sagely, as if reading Mikey’s mind. Then, immaturely, he stole one of Fong’s fries.
“And if they can’t, they’re just going to have to suck it,” Bradford agreed, also stealing one of Fong’s fries.
“Hey! Don’t you two have class to be at right now?” Fong asked. “Stop skipping whenever you feel like it!”
“Fine. Glad that we’re all friends again, there’s nothing like getting shooed away by a buddy,” Xever said, and pulled Bradford along. “See you later, crocodiles.”
“In a while, alligator,” Mikey chirped back.
Renet giggled, and Fong rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
Mikey didn’t expect there to be any other drama, now that he knew what everybody felt. But apparently not everything was resolved, because as he met Renet at her locker at the end of the day, he felt eyes on him that weren’t from Renet.
“How did your biology report go?” Renet asked, her head in her locker as she pulled out her things to put in her backpack for home.
“Pretty good,” Mikey said, showing off his solid B. Suricata suricatta for the win. “You?”
Renet groaned and raised her own graded assignment. C+. “I messed up on my diagrams. I guess they were too messy, even though I chose my subject to be starfish. That’s like, the easiest organism to draw!” She peered into his report and let out an impressed whistle. “How do you draw meerkats so realistically?”
Mikey opened his mouth to respond, but the feeling of the eyes was back, and this time, with footsteps coming up behind him. He whipped around and flinched at the sight of Woody. Renet inhaled sharply.
“Hi?” they both said to the new company at the same time, equal parts surprised and on-guard.
“Mikey. Renet.” Woody looked each of them in the eye, then looked away. He seemed to make an effort not to shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he spoke. “Um. Hey.”
“Howdy,” Mikey greeted gingerly. “How, uh, how are you feeling?”
Woody nodded quickly, saying, “Good. Good. A lot… better.”
Silence fell between them. Renet busied herself with packing up her backpack, zipping up the pockets and checking twice, like she didn’t know how many pockets there were. Mikey put his biology report into his bag with great care, like it was someone’s birth certificate.
“Okay,” Woody sighed. “I’m not going to bite. I know you guys have the sight, you know that I have the sight. We can get past that by now, right?”
Mikey and Renet looked at each other and then back at Woody.
“We can get past the fact that you can see yokai. Or, I mean, supernaturals,” Renet said, taking the lead bravely. “But I can’t get past the fact that Mikey almost died last week. Because of something you did.”
Woody’s cheeks darkened. His hands moved to his pockets before he seemingly caught himself in the middle of the habit and stilled them by his side.
“Yes. That did happen. It was an accident. And… I’m sorry. Really, truly sorry.” Woody sighed, his body loosening as he spoke. His words became less stressed and for the first time, Mikey thought he was seeing the real side of the boy, not the wall around him. “I’m so sorry you almost… I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Mikey said, mainly because he was in a forgiving kind of mood. “I’m sorry I called you awful.”
Woody winced. “I probably deserved it. Sorry for what I said to you in there, too. About you being a fake people pleaser.”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
“Who doesn’t have a brain.”
“Okay.”
“Did I call you a bad word, too?”
“No?”
“Oh, then that was just in my head, I guess. So I don’t have to apologize for that.”
“That’s… great to know,” Mikey said, and tried not to wonder what bad word he’d been mentally called.
A beat of silence passed between them, and Mikey felt a growing sense of awkward building now that they’d gotten the big stuff out of the way. Woody wasn’t exactly his friend, and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be. But he didn’t want Woody to just walk away now that they’d finally had a normal conversation — or as close to normal as they’d gotten.
“Why didn’t Peter kill me?” Mikey asked after a moment of all three of them standing in the empty hallway together. “I mean… when you were possessed, did you guys like… share a brain?”
Woody scratched his head. “Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve never been possessed before. It was like someone was controlling my body and I felt more like a shadow than anything else. We didn’t share a brain.”
“Oh.”
“But I felt his feelings,” Woody explained further, moving over to sit down on the bench across the lockers. “I was feeling what he was feeling the entire time, along with my own emotions. Sometimes it was hard to tell whose was whose. When we were in the pool, I felt something in him change. I don’t know why, but… if I had to guess, it was probably because of Renet’s voice message to you. About how you stand up for what’s fair.”
Renet’s eyes widened. “You think he just had a change of heart?”
“I don’t know,” Woody admitted. “Supernaturals aren’t people.”
But ghosts were once alive, Mikey thought. And if Woody was able to feel Peter’s feelings, I wonder if Peter was able to feel Woody’s.
In any case, it wasn’t like they could ask Peter. In the hand mirror over the weekend, Peter had disappeared from the reflection. For a scary moment, Mikey had thought that he’d escaped somehow, but then he’d remembered that Peter’s ability allowed him to travel through reflections. Without making a deal with a human, he couldn’t get out of the reflective world.
A weird place for a ghost to reside, but hey, it was the way of the yokai.
And in all honesty, Mikey wasn’t exactly eager to sit down and talk to Peter over a cup of tea after everything that had happened.
“I also should apologize for not introducing myself to you guys sooner,” Woody said with a shrug. “I really didn’t want to associate with you two, or the tall one that plays hockey.”
“Oh, you mean Casey,” Renet said. “Yeah, our first encounter wasn’t the best with you. You wanted to banish us into the yokai pocket dimension.”
Mikey let out a laugh. “I remember that. Who were your friends? Dopey, Dumbo, and Grunt? They were great. And by great, I mean scary. I was scared.”
“They’re all part of the Miyamoto Clan, which I’ve been suspended from temporarily because of my actions,” Woody said stiffly. “But no, that’s not what I meant? I don’t really care about first impressions.” He shrugged, eying Mikey and Renet. “I just didn’t get what was so great about you guys that always had Lord Simultaneous impressed, so I stayed away because… ego, I guess. But before you get a big head, I still don’t get it. The both of you just make dumb jokes and let yourselves get picked on by Sav, who doesn’t even have the sight.”
Mikey kind of wanted Woody to stop saying ‘the sight’. It sounded super dramatic for no reason.
“Lord Simultaneous?” Renet repeated.
Mikey shared a look with her. They both knew next to nothing about this mysterious person that went by the moniker ‘Lord Simultaneous’ — just that he was some kind of powerful alchemist dude who wasn’t much better than Yuuki Miyamoto. They both seemed to have ‘hurt yokai’ on their to-do lists.
But as for whatever the heck Woody was talking about, Mikey had lost the plot.
Woody pointed at them aggressively. “You don’t even have abilities! I figured it must be because you’re close to him, but he’s not the type to give empty compliments. I mean, just look at Sav. Wouldn’t he be the ‘golden child’ if that were true? I’ve observed Sav, he does not get attention from him.”
“What are you… talking about?” Renet asked, her eyebrows scrunching together.
“Oh, thank goodness because I thought I was the only one,” Mikey whispered to her.
“I’m getting there. Listen, I really didn’t want to come to you guys to ask what’s so special about you, but at this point I have to. Lord Simultaneous was the one who wanted me to get your guys’ tutelage in getting the mask in the first place,” Woody said flatly, putting air quotes around the word ‘tutelage’. “So here I am, swallowing whatever pride I have left.”
“Lord Simultaneous sent you to get the mask,” Mikey said, this new information coming as a surprise.
“So he’s the one that wants a weapon like that,” Renet said in a whisper to him. “Wonder why?”
“I’m guessing not for self-defense,” Mikey whispered back.
“So.” Woody stood up and leveled them with a defeated look. “What did the two of you do that impressed him so much? And what can you teach me?”
Mikey didn’t even know if Woody knew that they had no idea what he was going on about.
“Impressing Lord Simultaneous?” Mikey repeated faintly. “Honestly, Woody, I’m a little creeped out that he even knows our names.”
Confusion flickered over Woody’s face, as if he were finally starting to get on the same wavelength as them. “What?”
“You probably have us mixed up with some other people,” Renet said. Her voice was loaded with doubt, like she was trying to understand why Woody looked so certain in the first place. “I don’t know how we could have impressed a man we’ve never even met.”
“Never even met?” Woody frowned, his eyes looking between them. “You’re joking, right?”
Mikey and Renet shook their heads.
“I— he never told you? Guys,” Woody said, “Lord Simultaneous is just a stage name.”
“Thank goodness,” Mikey joked.
“No, I’m trying to say that you both know him. I know you both know him.”
At Mikey and Renet’s continued confused silence, Woody ran his hands through his hair, as if trying to get over some shock himself before blinking rapidly and just saying it. But with his next words, Mikey's stomach dropped away in shock and he had to re-evaluate every single interaction he'd had with this person. Renet, for her part, went as pale as a sheet.
“Guys, it’s Simon. Simon Savanti is Lord Simultaneous. And I think he’s been watching you this whole time.”