Chapter Text
If you asked Hamato Yoshi what he regretted most in his entire life, he wouldn't give you a straight answer.
Maybe he'd tell you it was when he met Big Mama, and fell in love.
Or when his burrito fell that one handsome day.
But in truth, it was that day. When he was mutated into this... thing. Though that was only one of the reasons he still couldn't get proper any sleep. It wasn't even the main one, no. This one kept him up at night, rolling, writhing, waking up in a cold sweat. It kept him thinking all throughout the late hours of the night, up to the earliest crack of dawn. Never losing its grip on him, constantly whispering in the back of his head, never leaving his side.
Every time he would close his eyes the memory would play like a broken record.
He remembered it like it was yesterday. The building began to crumble, and as he freed all the other mutants in their cages his eyes catch the four turtles trying to gain their balance. Made with his DNA.
He steps forwards to help them — take responsibility for them — but gasps as an explosion of blue fire blinds him, and when he regains his senses, instead of seeing the baby turtles, there was only a huge piece of the ceiling in their place... squashing them. He could... see one of the legs poking out, red smeared all over...
His eyes go wide, and he steps back, covering his mouth with his hand. Those innocent ones... dead.
They were gone... because of him. Because he was too late.
That day, he had run like a coward, not even giving the young ones a proper burial, leaving shame and regret to follow right behind his newly acquired tail.
He finds a way home, back to New York, but in his new form, he could no longer return to normalcy.
So off to the sewers he went, where a rat like him deserves to be. Making a little home for himself with scrapped parts of furnishings that drifted through the sewage lines; a whole lair of them in fact! He had even found a working TV, and even managed to get signal down here.
But the place was huge, too big for just one person.
He offhandedly wonders what he would've done if he had been able to save those poor turtles. And yet, he was too much of a coward to try and look for another way.
He knows that Baron Draxum is looking for him, and so must be Big Mama, so he stays hidden, away from the Hidden City. Away from his mistakes, and from his past.
Like a rat from a cat, hiding in the shadows.
Splinter sighs, settling into his chair, letting his regrets drown him as he numbly watches his broken television through the static, barely working — barely hanging on, just like him.