Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was the greatest ecological and humanitarian disaster mankind had seen. At 3:48, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, the sky split open over the city of New York, a giant, triangular portal between Earth and Dimension X, miles wide, and globules of mutagen began falling out of it, shimmering brilliant green in the sunlight as Earth’s gravity took hold of them and sent them cascading down on the awed populace. Loud speculation and panicked shouts about another invasion quickly transformed into agonized and terrified screams as thousands of people, animals, plants, and even some inanimate objects mutated.

Just as some began to come to their senses, they had to deal with worse things than mutagen falling into their dimension: traag, kraathatrogons, rocktopi, sword-sharp shards of the crystalline “trees” that tended to explode upon shattering, and other Dimension X horrors.

Those survivors who had looked upward later described seeing a chunk of asteroid with some sort of building on it, a portion of it already up in green flames, before the entire thing exploded in a blinding white flash. The megaportal, mercifully, was taken out by the blast, and the accompanying shockwave never reached the already devastated city; presumably the destruction of the facility also broke whatever generated the massive rift.

The six people who arguably had the most experience with the Kraang, however, were safely underground, and could only watchthe news as the horrifying events above them unfolded. Splinter stood next to his sons, who were clustered around the TV, watching the incident as reports came in. The sixth, April, was pacing back and forth behind them, phone to her ear. “Dad? Ohh… I finally got through… I’m fine, Dad… I’m at the lair with the guys. Are you okay? … Okay, good. Don’t go outside for anything… I’ll be all right here. … Love you, too. Stay safe.”

Leonardo shifted restlessly, and not for the first time, stated, “We should be out there… People are going to need our help!”

Donatello shook his head sorrowfully. “We can’t right now… not without risking secondary or even tertiary mutations, with all the mutagen everywhere… We’re just going to have to wait for the EPF’s cleanup crews to come through first.”

“Well,” Raphael quipped in a subdued sarcasm that said he knew it wasn’t remotely funny, “I guess we’re not freaks anymore. Just faces in the crowd.” He shuddered as what looked like a human-human mutation crossed in front of the camera, shrieking as it stared at hands with an inordinate number of fingers as it shuffled past on five feet. “Icchh… and movie stars, compared to that poor bastard…” He looked down at his phone as it bleeped at him. “Text from Casey… he’s holed up with his team at the rink.”

The camera changed to one following a traag as it lumbered down 5^th Avenue, chasing a cluster of the newly-mutated. Michelangelo clutched his head. “No, no, NO!” he bellowed at the TV. “You don’t run away from a traag in a straight line! You have to go around the back where it can’t see—ugh!” His hand smacked against his face in frustration, then horror as the rock creature vomited lava onto a particularly slow person, who screamed as he was incinerated. “We have to help them! They don’t know what they’re doing out there!” he cried desperately. “If I could just tell people what to do…”

‘"Mikey!” April exclaimed. Once she had his attention, she held her phone out in front of her, shaking it meaningfully. “Call the TV station! They’ll be able to get your information out to everyone immediately!”

“April! That’s brilliant!” Donnie exulted, jumping up to grab his laptop and quickly looking up the number for Mikey. He looked up again once Mikey was dialing, beaming widely and adoringly at their human friend. She grinned back triumphantly, holding his gaze longer than mere friendship dictated.

“Carlos Chiang O’Brien Gambe, bringing you the latest updates on the New York City megarift disaster, as we’re now calling it. An emerging pattern is coming to light: the mutations seem to be linked to creatures the victims last came into contact with.  As you can see, this reporter had a cuddle with his umbrella cockatoo, Chiquita, before becoming a victim of the mutagen rain on his way to the studio.

“Once again, we want to reiterate: please move inside and stay inside to avoid both contact with the extraterrestrial creatures and the mutagenic substance which is coating much of the city. Evacuation crews will come to transport you to a safe area. The Earth Protection Force is working at a breakneck pace to put together a cleanup effort and are asking for any volunteers who have experience handling hazardous materials to please contact the number on your screen; don’t try to go to them; they’ll come to you.

“Aid is already flooding in from all around New England, with more states organizing to mobilize as we speak. The National Guard has been dispatched, but are having some trouble with some of their tanks refusing to cooperate after coming into contact with the mutagenic substance. Apparently the vehicles do not feel they get enough respect, because no one ever says—“ The reporter paused, pressing his earpiece closer to his ear. “What was that?” he mumbled, then addressed the camera once again, cocking his head to be able to look into it properly. “And now, apparently we have a caller on the line with some crucial advice about the extraterrestrial life… What’s your name, caller?”

“Michelangelo. That’s a good look for you, Carlos!” Someone in the background yelled, “Mikey!” angrily. “Right, sorry… So, first off… the Traag, the big rock dudes that puke lava, and their twin brothers, Granitor, the ones with the fire breath… You wanna run behind them and stay out of sight. If you run in front of them, they’ll follow you; but if they can’t see you, they’ll forget you’re there after, like, a minute, and wander off. Then there’s the Click-clacks… the swirling metal ball things. They’ll ignore you if they can’t hear you, so if you see them coming, just hold real still. Let’s see… then there’s the rocktopus… rocktopi…”

The reporter led the caller with a question. “Michelangelo, how did you come upon this information?”

“Oh, I, uh… spent a few months in Dimension X, fighting for my life against this kind of stuff. NOT an ideal tourist destination, lemme tell you…” Mikey chuckled. “Now, the Kraathatrogons… that’s the big worms… they’re pretty docile if you just leave ‘em alone. You can climb up on ‘em and steer them around by their antennas. They’re also where the Kraang get the mutagen from.”

“Like the mutagen that fell from the portal?”

“Yeah, exactly!”

“Michelangelo, what else can you tell us about this mutagen? Is there any way to reverse its effects?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely! My brother Donnie came up with a retromutagen a while ago…”

The cockatoo on the screen was stunned into a moment of silence. “So… your brother… could possibly cure all the mutations in the city?”

“I… um…” Mikey paused, muffling the phone with one hand and calling over his shoulder for his brother. “Donnie?!”

Don took the phone as Mikey passed it off to him. “Donatello here…”

“Donatello, Carlos Chiang O’Brien Gambe, Channel 6 News. Your brother says you can make a retromutagen that could cure all the recent mutants?”

Donatello thought for a moment, smacking his tongue as his mouth went suddenly dry. “Well… potentially, yes. If any of the kraathatrogons survived the fall into our dimension, they could produce enough mutagen for me to process into retromutagen… Especially if I had access to more centrifuges… that would cut down on the time it took me to make retromutagen with my one little centrifuge by approximately three point five times… With a little help, I might be able to develop the first batch in as little as three weeks!”

Amid his excitement, Don remembered the crucial ingredient the retromutagen hinged on and he looked up to April. She met his glance and nodded once. She was such a giving soul; anything she could do to help another person, she’d do willingly. It was only one of myriad things he loved about her. He sighed, staring at her, helplessly smitten.

Carlos called his attention back to the matter at hand. “Don, we’re going to put you in contact with the EPF and the Center for Disease Control, and get you everything you need to make that retromutagen. We’re gonna cut to a break and when we get back, we’ll talk more with Michelangelo about the extraterrestrial threats we’re facing.” The news anchor waited until the cameras were off before adding, “Kid, if you can do what you say can, you’re gonna be a hero to a lot of people.”

Chapter Text

“We’re coming to pick you up. Where do you live?”

In the end, Donatello had told the EPF officer that they were in the sewers, and agreed to meet them at a specific manhole in the Chinatown area, about two miles from the lair… just in case.

He’d agreed to come if they could guarantee against any mutagen contamination in the area, particularly due to the fact that human clothes, and more importantly shoes, didn’t fit him.

April stood next to him as they listened to the street above being cleansed with high-pressure sprayers. Droplets of water dripped down from around the manhole they were waiting at, any mutagen in them diluted down to harmless levels.

She didn’t strictly need to be there, but had insisted on coming with him, in case he needed her there right away, or so she said. She would have been safer at the lair, or even at the O’Neils’ apartment, but Don figured she would be safe enough coming with them. He was more likely to be mutated than she was, since she had both immunity and clothing over him. Mikey had even quizzed them about what to do with each of the Dimension X monsters to be sure they knew what to do in case they were attacked, and on top of that, a highly specialized branch of the army was escorting them.

Even so, Don’s stomach was doing flip-flops. He had a bad feeling about this, somehow. It wasn’t the exposure to humans, or that they’d fought with the EPF in the past… He opened the messenger bag that contained a copy of all his notes and some of his devices he figured might come in handy, like his mutagen tracker and ooze-specs, flipping through it to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. Everything seemed to be in order, though, so he snapped it closed again and drummed his fingers against it.

April picked up on his trepidation. “What is it, D?” she asked, suddenly anxious as well. “Do you think we can’t trust them?”

Donnie shook his head, eyes on the manhole above them. “No, I think they’re okay… it’s something else… but I don’t know what…”

April closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. “You’re right… something’s up there.”

“Let’s just hope we can get out of here before we attract its attention…” he said as the manhole cover shifted and scraped open. She made for the ladder, but he pulled her back. “Normally I’d say ‘ladies first,’ but let me go up first this time.” She acquiesced silently, stepping back from the rungs.

He stuck his head out above ground cautiously, to see four EPF guardsmen with automatic weapons ringing the manhole, but thankfully, the guns weren’t pointed at him… they were pointed outward, guarding his exit point. Otherwise, the city looked completely abandoned. This area must have already been evacuated. “Donatello Hamato?” one of them asked. Donatello nodded and took the hand proffered, shaking it firmly as he stepped up onto the asphalt. An introduction didn’t seem forthcoming, but he caught the name on the man’s uniform: Z. Kokopoulos. His mind filed the information away for later. It probably wasn’t important. He turned and crouched, holding a hand out to help April up. Kokopoulos looked a bit startled at the presence of the human girl, even more than seeing the mutant turtle, in fact, but didn’t address the point, instead shaking what looked like a can of spray paint. “Your feet, Mr. Hamato,” he said, aiming the spigot toward the ground.

“What’s this?” Don queried as spatters of black glop coated the tops of his feet.

“Spray-on silicon-rubber. A temporary barrier between you and the mutagen, until they can fit you with proper shoes. And the lab sent this…” he unfolded a long lab coat that he’d had draped over one shoulder, “…for a little extra coverage.”

Don nodded, rather impressed, shrugging the coat into place. He wasn’t able to button it properly, but at least it covered his carapace and arms. He turned a foot over for the soldier to spray the bottom of it, repeating the motion with the other.

Looking around, he was a bit disappointed to see an open-backed, canvas-covered transport truck waiting for them. Given the blotches of radioactive-green everywhere he looked, he would have preferred something much less open to ride in.

“Miss, your feet? Your ankles…” the soldier prompted April, who was similarly gazing around at the mutagen on everything outside of a ten-foot radius of them.

“Miss, if the mutagen comes in contact with any—“

“I’m immune,” she stated shortly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Kokopoulos nodded with sudden understanding and waved toward the truck, where two more soldiers in the back dropped the tailgate for April and Donnie to get in. The turtle and his companion leapt in with effortless ninjutsu grace, earning impressed stares from the troopers. The man they had spoken with climbed into the cab as the motor started, the rest of the troops climbing awkwardly into the back of the vehicle. Don took in the four men as best he could, given that he could only see their mouths beneath their helmets: two Caucasian, one olive-skinned, one a very dark brown: F. Carson, R. Jimenez, R. Sachs, E. Davis.

As he settled in his seat, side by side with April, she stared out the open back. Without taking her eyes from whatever she was staring at, she reached behind her to tap him urgently. “Donnie… the trees are moving!”

Don followed her gaze to a small stand of firs in a little park down the road. They weren’t swaying, the way trees would in a high wind… one bent unnaturally horizontally out of the little grove, as if being pulled down by its tip. The ground shook and the transport vehicle bounced on its shocks. He saw the trunk of a tree suddenly uproot itself from the ground, the roots looking more like… talons? It came down with another earth-shaking impact, followed by another as the creature moved into the open on a pair of tree trunks and gave a grating call. It unfurled two branches like wings, covered with boughs of green needles. The treetop came down, cocking in several different directions like a curious bird.

“It sees us…” Don murmured in a sing-song tone.

“How can it see us?” the soldier next to him, Sachs, whispered back. “It doesn’t have any eyes!”

April put a hand to her temple, closing her eyes. “Oh, it sees us all right… and it thinks we’re worms! Go, go!” she shouted to the driver.

“Wait, just because you’re scared of—“

“She read its mind!” Don interrupted. “Just do what she says and go!”

The truck sped up, but the giant mutant stomped after them, keeping pace with them as it clomped after them on its huge tree-trunk legs. It flapped its branches, trying to take to the air, but its weight wouldn’t allow it to leave the ground. Donnie was reminded of a picture he’d seen of an elephant bird.

He was suddenly shoved out of his seat toward the truck’s cab by one of the soldiers as all four in the back of the transport positioned themselves, crouching to aim their weapons at the mutant, coordinated though they’d never received an order. “We’ve got a mutant following Mr. Hamato’s escort,” Carson said calmly into his walkie-talkie.

“Protect the civilians with your lives!” the troops’ radios squawked. “You are authorized to take any and all measures to ensure their safety!”

“Open fire!” Kokopoulos hollered back at them from the passenger seat. Don and April clapped their hands to their heads as the rat-a-tat of four machine guns filled the air. Tufts of needles shed from the branches behind the tree-bird, bullets dug into the thick trunks, but didn’t seem to even faze it.

“No effect!” one of the men yelled.

“Aim for the head!” another bellowed.

“It doesn’t have a head, Roy!” Davis barked.

“No, but it’s got a mouth!” Roy yelled back, aiming and firing at the birdlike beak as it opened with a loud caw.

Don thumped a hand against the cab. “We’ve gotta go faster!”

“She’s topped out!” the driver hollered back. “These things ain’t made for speed—POTHOLE!” The turtle and his companion were jostled out of their seats as the truck bounced wildly through a massive crater in the middle of the street. While still trying to maintain its speed, it lost much of its momentum. Two of the troops in the back were thrown off their feet. The tree mutant, unhindered by the obstacle, jumped at them, and with a peck, grabbed the soldier on the right, who screamed as he was skewered and then devoured.

“Jesus!” cried Davis, who’d been next to him.

The troops tried grenades next, but the creature managed to dodge and leap over the explosions, barely singeing its branches.

April looked anxiously up at Donnie. “There’s gotta be something we can do!”

He scanned all around the vehicle, his eyes settling on the canvas above them. “The canopy!” he yelled to her, drawing his bo and unsheathing the naginata blade at its end. “Maybe we can blind it, or trip it up!”

April caught his meaning and whipped her tessen out, slashing all but the corners of the fabric as Don did the same on the opposite side. The tree, not satisfied with its meal, continued pursuing them. The ninja pair cut the lines tying two corners of the canvas loose, then positioned themselves by the rear corners, the big rectangle of material flapping over their heads as the creature approached again. Their timing had to be perfect for it to work…

“On three!" April shouted to him. “One!”

“Two!” Don called back.

Neither of them yelled three as they slashed through the ropes at the same time. The canvas sailed out behind them, straight into the mutant’s treetop face. It screeched, thrashing its branch-wings around ineffectively as the transport pulled far ahead and around a corner.

“Yes!” Donnie shouted, slapping hands with April as they resumed their seats, but their triuph was quickly overshadowed by the stunned silence of the soldiers.

“It ate Jimenez…” Sachs whimpered. “ATE him!” The black man, Carson, threw a consoling arm around his shoulders, but didn’t have time to deliver any words of comfort as the transport suddenly rolled to a stop, paused, then began backing up at speed.

“What’s going on?” April asked nervously.

Don looked around the vehicle’s cab, to be nearly roasted by a stream of blue flame. “Granitor!” he screamed to the rest as he scrambled away from the side.

“Anyone have any grenades back there?!” a frightened voice hollered back to them from the cab.

“Negative!” Davis hollered back, speaking for the rest.

“Then we are seriously boned here!”

Donnie opened his satchel, hurriedly rummaging through it for anything that might help them, but came up empty. He swore under his breath. Then he turned his head and his eyes lit upon one of the high-pressure pump sprayers the troop had used to clean the street with. He grabbed the tank and started climbing on top of the cab.

Carson saw him and grabbed the rim of his carapace to stop him. “We s’posed to be protecting you! I got this!”

“Can you stand on a moving vehicle and still aim a stream of water?”

The man gave him an optimistic smile. “Maybe!”

Don rolled his eyes. “Well, I definitely can, so leave it to me!”

Carson’s smile evaporated, replaced with a more stern and stubborn look. “No. Everything hinges on you!”

“No, it doesn’t. It hinges on her,” he said evenly, nodding toward April. “Everything about the retromutagen is in my notes, but it’s her blood we need.” Without waiting for further argument, Don jumped up on top of the cab. He expected to slide, but the silicon coating on his feet stopped his momentum immediately… gripping so much that Don nearly tripped at the sudden stop. “Oh, I am liking this stuff!” he crowed, grabbing the spray nozzle and aiming it at the granitor’s flaming mouth.

He shot true, the fire in its mouth sputtering and steaming, but not quite going out. The granitor seemed to pause and take a breath, afterward opening its mouth and belching another stream of fire at the reversing truck.

“Shit… this guy’s a bigger hothead than Raph!” Donnie muttered to himself, spraying it in the mouth again. The stream of water weakened and died, the tank empty. Don gave an annoyed huff at the tank’s betrayal and chucked it at the granitor’s face. It did nothing to stop the rock monster, but the clang it made on impact was satisfying.

It only occurred to Don that they were heading back toward Chinatown when they cleared the corner they’d originally turned, and a raucous “KAAA!!” greeted them. Don’s jaw dropped. The tree-bird’s beak speared down at him, puncturing the roof of the cab just as he flipped out of its path and into the bed of the truck. The soldiers in the cab both screamed, but the driver kept it together enough to round the corner and put the truck into gear.

Sachs dove on top of April as the beak came down again, but its attention seemed to be on its original target. Donnie quickly tucked into his shell, as the mutant tree seized him in its beak, lifting him 20 feet in the air. Not finding the meaty tidbit it wanted, it began knocking his shell against the ground, trying to crack him open like a nut. The impacts hurt, jarring his internal organs, but he was safe; luckily the mutant only tried slamming his lab-coat-covered carapace into the road and not his exposed plastron.

He suddenly heard April shouting, “Hey! Hey, you! Here, birdie, birdie, birdie!”, followed by the voices of the soldiers whooping at it as well.

Don grimaced. “April, no…!” Didn’t she understand?! She shouldn’t be putting herself at further risk!

The bird-tree gave up on trying to break him open, seeing as there was more tender prey to be had. It was about to peck at the transport truck again when the granitor caught sight of it, grappled its wing-branches and barfed blue fire on it. The tree flailed and tried to claw and peck its way free from the rock giant as it readily caught fire.

Donnie leapt to his feet, popping out of his shell, and ran, leaping into the truck bed. “Go, go, go!” he shouted, and the truck roared around the corner of the next block. He quickly shucked off the contaminated lab coat and threw it off the back of the transport. It fluttered in the breeze behind them.

April was by his side as soon as he flopped down in his seat. “Are you all right??”

“I’ve had better days,” he admitted, his insides sore. He set his hands on her shoulders. “Why the heck did you do that?!”

She sounded miffed. “Why else would I have done it?! To save you!”

“I’m not the important one here! Thousands of people need you alive and well, April! If you die, there won’t be a cure for any of them! You can’t put yourself at risk like that!”

“They need you too, Donnie!” she snapped back at him. “You’re the only mutagen expert in the world! What if something went wrong, and you weren’t there to solve the problem? You’re the only one who would know what to do!” She hugged his arm to her, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “We can’t afford to lose you either…”

Don sighed and pulled her into a full embrace, nuzzling his beak into her hair and planting a gentle kiss there.

The rest of the ride passed in uneventful, somber silence. The transport stopped outside a large lab facility. The EPF soldiers climbed out of the vehicle ahead of April and Don, offering help down. April accepted the assistance out of politeness, but Don actually needed the help, his insides aching from the ordeal. Kokopoulos and the driver, whose name was S. Reed, Don noted, joined Carson, Sachs and Davis in front of the turtle and kunoichi.

“Mr. Hamato, Ms. O’Neil, it’s been our honor to escort you.” Kokopoulos lifted his hand in salute, and the other four men followed suit.

Don, not knowing if it was polite for a civilian to return a salute or not, gave a low, respectful bow instead, and April did likewise. “Thank you very much, gentlemen,” Don said reverently. “I’m very sorry about your friend, the one that… didn’t make it?” His tone suggested he was searching for a name, which Kokopoulos provided, releasing the men from their formal salute.

“Jimenez. Ralberto Jimenez. “

“He’ll be remembered,” April stated, stepping forward to shake hands with each of them.

“Shit luck, that,” Sachs mumbled. “He’d just made it back from his tour of duty in Afghanistan.”

Don and April both winced. “That’s horrible…” April said sadly. “And it’s so unfair!”

Carson gave her a nod. “That’s army life for you. You put your life on the line to keep other people safe. Jimenez knew it, just like we all do. The sacrifice of the one for the good of the many. If you’dda asked him, he’d've probably said he’d do it all again. Maybe not the gettin’ eaten part,” he grimaced morosely and shook Don’s hand. “You fought good back there, both of ya. You some kinda ninja or somethin’?”

“Or somethin’,” Don echoed back with an ironic smirk.

Chapter Text

Kokopoulos—Major Kokopoulos, as they learned—led April and Don through a large complex, some of which was being constructed before their very eyes. They passed a large corral containing a couple dozen kraathatrogons, one being coaxed out of a horse trailer with a head of lettuce as they arrived. A man and a woman in lab coats were taking measurements of one of the animal's mutagen glands.

"They're getting measurements for milking attachments," Major Kokopoulos explained. "The safest way to extract the mutagen is to take it by machine. A dairy milker will be brought in as soon as the correct-size suction tubes are manufactured. We're putting in a rush order, of course, but we're expecting them by the end of the week." Don nodded approvingly. Collecting mutagen wasn't something you wanted to do by hand, certainly.

Kokopoulos motioned and they moved on to the largest building of the complex. "This was a pharmaceutical manufacturer," he told the pair as they stepped into an elevator, "so it's already got much of the equipment you required. More is being brought in by the CDC as we speak."

As the elevator doors slid open on the third floor, Don's face lit up, and not just from the brightness of the fluorescent-lit room. He gave April the excited squeal of a kid in a candy shop and practically danced into the room on his toes to examine all the equipment presented to him.

"Ohhh, boy," April quipped at the major, "you found Donnie's kryptonite…"

Don couldn't move fast enough, darting from place to place to see everything. Rows of incubators stood against the walls. Work stations with centrifuges and hot plates filled the room. Cabinets of every kind of glass instrument. Chemical showers. A pristine work environment the likes of which he'd never known. He was in Scientific Heaven.

He turned shiningly ecstatic eyes on April, then grabbed her hands and happy-danced around in a circle with her. "Imagine how much mutagen I could refine, just in this one row!" he said in an awed tone. "With every centrifuge in this room functioning, I could have enough mutagen refined and ready to go into the incubators within a week!"

Kokopoulos chuckled. "There are four more floors above us set up just the same," he told them.

Don's eyes bugged out. "That's… That's three hundred and fifty centrifuges… An even hundred incubators… a couple thousand Erlenmeyer flasks…" A look of doubt came over his face. "I can't handle that much on my own…"

The major rocked on his feet with a smile. "You won't have to. Your staff will be taking care of most of the work, with your supervision."

"S… Staff?" Don blinked, shocked. Well, he should have expected that he wouldn't have to do everything himself, he thought in hindsight.

Kokopoulos nodded. "You'll have three hundred of the country's top medical doctors and pharmaceutical techs under you. And, before you panic," he added, seeing the anxious expression that was quickly taking over Don's face, "Drs. Rockwell and Yellowhair have volunteered to act as your personal assistants."

"Rockwell…" Don blinked, maybe less than pleasantly surprised. "Wait, Rockwell actually volunteered to work under me? Willingly?"

"Yes, asked for it specifically. I gather there's some history between you?" the major queried.

"He's not exactly my favorite person in the world," Don replied archly.

April took his arm in both of her hands. "You can put up with him for a couple weeks, can't you, Donnie?" she coaxed. "For the sake of all the people who were mutated? They're more important than you two squabbling about who has the superior brain."

"Indeed," a voice hailed from the elevator behind them as it opened and the chimp in question ambled out, dressed professionally in a white lab coat. "Now is not the time for petty competitiveness, not when so many need our help."

With a sigh, Don bolstered his patience. "You're right. We've got bigger fish to fry. But I'm still curious as to why—"

"—why I volunteered to work under you?"

Don flinched as Rockwell finished his sentence for him. "Stop that."

"Hmm, sorry," the chimp replied, not sounding apologetic in the least. "It's become a bit of a habit. As to your question, you may have developed the formula for the retromutagen, but I daresay you haven't had the resources to refine your method, nor have you ever had to present your methods to a large audience, or had to run a lab on this scale, correct?" he asked, looking smugly like of course he was.

Donatello treated him to a flat glare, but had to concede the point. It wasn't as if he'd had opportunities to share any of his findings; living in the sewers, the general populace thinking he was a monster, his family, April and Casey being the only ones he could tell about his discoveries whether they had an interest in what he said or not…

"Consider it a leg-up into the scientific community, and a bit of guidance through the finer points," Rockwell continued. "And as to the nagging doubt in the back of your mind there, no, I won't be attempting to steal the formula from your head and present it as my own or otherwise try to sabotage you. That wouldn't reflect well on either of us, and quite frankly, it doesn't do to have you distracted by it either. Or by anything else, for that matter," he added, a bit sourly, aiming a look at April, but then softening and greeting her as well. "Hello, my dear… no offense meant to you, but you do take up an astonishing amount of his brain activity…" He paused, eyeing her forehead for a moment. "Ah, I see it's mutual. Love is truly blind," he said in a somewhat disapproving tone that caused April to redden in the cheeks and return a resentful look at him, but he went on without so much as an acknowledgement. "As much as we need the antigen in your blood, I would request that you not distract Donatello too very much."

"I've always helped Donnie in his lab before," she protested, a bit defensive.

The chimpanzee gave her a patronizing smile and a pat on the shoulder. "Of course you have, and no doubt you've done a lovely job, but right now, we need Donatello to have one hundred percent of his head in the game."

"Fine," she assented with a huff. "I can have my blood drawn, and then I'll go home, and be out of everyone's way."

April wasn't expecting the expression of fierce rage that appeared on the ape's face. "Are you joking?! After what it took to get you here?! You were attacked twice! A man lost his life, making sure that you and Donatello arrived here safely, and you'd risk repeating that whole fiasco again on the same day, only to go home again?! Absolutely not! Out of the question!"

"But you just said—"

"I said not to be a distraction, not 'throw yourself back to the wolves'!" he yelled, eyes bulging at her. Calming himself, he eased off, but shook his head in frustration. "Do you not know how essential you are?! The number of people mutated—just humans, not animals or cars or what have you—is in the hundreds of thousands, nearing one million, and that number is only rising as more reports roll in. Even though a single drop of your blood is enough to create a flask of retromutagen, the single pint we can take from you within safe levels, perhaps half a pint more if we push it, will only stretch so far… Do you understand me? A single blood-draw from you will not be enough, no matter how much we refine Don's formula. The goose won't lay another golden egg if it's dead. Your wellbeing is critical to every mutant in this city, as well as their families and loved ones. You must remain safe, at any cost."

April nodded, taking in the gravity of the situation, and looked up at Don for a bit of reassurance. "Whatever it takes. I'll stay. For Jimenez."

Kokopoulos held up a finger to interject. "Doctor, are you sure this is the best place for Miss O'Neil, so close to the 'Freak Show?'"

" 'Freak Show?' " Donnie asked apprehensively.

Rockwell nodded to the major, ignoring the turtle. "Perhaps not my first choice, but better here where the dangerous mutants are contained and there are armed guards, than in the city full of threats around every corner."

"What's the 'Freak Show'?!" Don and April demanded as one voice.

Major Kokopoulos held out his hands, palms down, in a calming gesture. "It's the next stop on the tour. If we're finished here, shall we proceed?"

"Actually, if you'd head up to the seventh floor first," Rockwell requested. "Dr. Yellowhair can do the blood-draw for us, and we can begin analysis on Miss O'Neil's unique attributes. She's been absolutely dying to meet you," the chimp chuckled fondly as he herded them all into the elevator. "As a hematologist, she's been really quite thrilled at the sudden influx of unique study specimens available to her. Not to mention, we can get April's blood before you go see the insane caged mutants… best not to have all our eggs in one basket, so to speak." The elevator door opened and Rockwell led them down a short hallway to a smaller, more private laboratory. "Charlene," he called, "our esteemed guests have arrived!"

There was a slight clinking of vials from an adjoining room, and in a moment, a middle-aged Native American woman emerged. Don noticed immediately, as she bounded over to them, that her name was a misnomer: her hair wasn't the least bit yellow, but coarse and black, bound by a wrap of white yarn in a strange sort of bun at the back of her head. The moment her eyes landed on Don, she let out a pleased, laughing squeal as though she was greeting long-lost family. "Oh my gosh! It so good to meet you! Tyler's told me so much about you… " She grabbed Don's three-fingered hand with glee, shaking it like she'd just met a rock star. "I can't believe I get to work with the creator of the retromutagen formula! Still, I would have thought you'd have used it on yourself…"

Don grinned. "Oh… No, I'm a turtle to begin with… No retromutagen for me, or I'd just revert into a little terrarium pet."

Dr. Yellowhair blinked, taken aback. "…or Dr. Rockwell, then…?"

Rockwell shook his head. "No… Like our young colleague here, I find the mutagenic enhancements to be… overall, a definite improvement, despite extra body hair and the occasional craving for bananas. It's a trade-off I can live with… certainly now that the mutants of New York no longer have to hide." He turned, shifting the focus of the conversation to April. "And this, of course, is Miss April O'Neil, the girl whose immunity will fuel this entire project," he said as the two women shook hands. "Do you mind doing the draw for us now, Charlene?"

"Oh, sure thing!" But before ushering April into the next room, she turned to Donnie. "Mr. Hamato, would you mind if I collected a sample of your blood as well? I'm doing a little side project, analyzing the blood of varied types of mutants… I'd like to get as wide a spectrum as I can…"

Don perked up. "Of course! That sounds like it'd be a fascinating project… Maybe we could compare notes sometime when all this is over." He didn't miss the disgruntled look April threw his way. "What?" he whispered to her, but she stuck her nose in the air and looked away.

"Nothing."

In the end, April had insisted on giving the extra half pint of blood. "The more retromutagen you can make, the sooner all those people will get to go home to their families." Don gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. If anyone knew how the million families in New York affected by mutation felt—having a family member turn into a mutant, possibly one that no longer thought like a human being— it was April.

"How long before I can donate again?" she asked Dr. Yellowhair as the woman pressed a square of gauze to the puncture wound and taped it to the girl's arm.

"Fifty days, bare minimum. Then we'll check and see if your blood levels are high enough. Meantime, be sure to eat lots of red meat, and I'm prescribing you an iron supplement to build up your red cell count again." The woman handed her a purple lollipop and an apple.

April looked fairly stricken. "Fifty days! I really have to stay here a month and a half?"

"Or longer," Rockwell chipped in, "depending on how fast your blood regenerates and how thin we can spread this over the first batch… Then we'll have to see if that produces enough… We may need a third draw from you then. Or more, but hopefully it won't come to that."

The girl's jaw dropped. "Three months?! You want me to stay here for three months?! Or more?! But… My dad… School… I…"

"Does she really need to be here, on site, the whole time?" Donnie asked, backing her up.

Rockwell sighed, seeming to dislike the proposition as much as the rest of them. "In this city? I'm afraid so… Any number of things could happen out there, with the number of mutants just coming to term with their mutations, the alien threats… She could be hit by a bus, or knifed by a mugger, for goodness sake. Unlikely as any of those things may be, if Miss O'Neil stays here under protective custody, the chances of any of those things happening to her are significantly reduced. Do you agree?"

Donatello said nothing, but turned toward April, in case he needed to urge her to stay.

She looked pensive and stunned. "It's like I'm being put in a cage…"

"Your father and your friends will be able to visit," Kokopoulos assured with a sideways nod toward Donnie. "Tutors will keep you up on your schoolwork. You'll have the run of the grounds the EPF is occupying, and anything you have want of, we'll bring to you post-haste. We may be putting you in a cage—we're well-aware of that—but we'll do our best to see that it's a gilded one. Your protection is paramount, but we do want to make sure your stay is a comfortable one."

April wilted, seeing no way out of the long confinement, but Don stepped forward and tilted her chin up to look at him. "Hey, it'll be okay… I'm staying on-site too, for the whole project. I'll be busy in the lab during the day, but I'll be around in the evenings."

She sighed and put an arm around the side of his shell, resignedly leaning her head against his chest. "I guess it won't be so bad, then…"

a/n: Sorry for the wait on this, guys!  I've been trying, and failing, to keep my chapters short for this story.  I actually chopped this one roughly in half... but I'm being ebil and holding the other half back (so I have a buffer while I scratch out something for an ABC challenge. ;D )  Expect more in 2wks or so!  Love you all, love hearing from you!

Chapter Text

The major motioned toward the exit. “If you’re both feeling well enough, shall we proceed?”

With Don agreeing to meet with Dr. Rockwell and Dr. Yellowhair the next day to begin work on refining the retromutagen formula, Kokopoulos escorted the two of them several blocks, past abandoned office buildings and a mini-mall, its parking lot occupied by nondescript government trailers, set up as barracks. A restaurant in the mall seemed to be active, serving as mess hall. They crossed a large field, half of it likewise occupied by trailers and came to a large, gray structure. They heard it long before they saw it; animalistic as well as human-sounding howls, shrieks and wails carried to them from the building.

“Was this an animal shelter?” Donnie asked as they approached, noting a large fenced-off lawn.

“It is,” Kokopoulos confirmed. “We’re approaching it from the side; otherwise you’d be able to see the sign out front. This is our Dangerous Mutant Containment Facility, referred to affectionately as the Freak Show. This is one of about fifty such facilities we’ve commandeered around the city; kennels, prisons, and hospital wards, where we can contain and monitor some of the more difficult mutants… Some of them became unpredictable, aggressive, violent or insane after their exposure to the mutagen; some simply lost their sentience, becoming more animal than human.”

“Like my dad,” April put in. “Donnie cured him, but he was a giant mutant bat for a couple of months.”

The major nodded in a familiar sort of acknowledgement and continued. “Some have a personal vendetta against humans. And some have gained… attributes… that are harmful to themselves or those around them.” He grasped the door handle, turning back toward them. “It gets a little loud from here on out,” he warned as he opened the door and ushered them inside. A pair of men inside stood to order. The major granted at-ease at once.

The din was incredible. The entire place was in a continual uproar. Don didn’t think he’d be heard even if he shouted. He tapped the major on the shoulder and pointed toward the men’s weapons.

“Tranquilizers,” Kokopoulos shouted though the cacophony. “In case of escape.”

Just then a loud pop carried to them through the screeches and growls. A guard ushered a middle-aged man and woman around the corner, toward the door. The woman was sobbing uncontrollably; her husband had an arm wrapped around her in a consoling manner. “Brandon! Brandon!” the woman wailed, her words muted under the noise as they left for the more peaceful outside.

The guard looked to Kokopoulos. “Sir, had to dart #14. He became extremely aggressive and started lunging at his visitors. Cracked the glass a little bit.”

At April and Don’s alarmed looks, Kokopoulos shook his head. “Nothing to worry about. Those walls are inch-thick bullet-proof glass. Nothing’s getting out.” The major nodded to the guard. “Be sure to file an incident report on it.”

April moved to the first pen. It was solid concrete on three sides and the floor. The fourth, outward-facing wall was the thick Plexiglas the major had mentioned, with several holes bored through it and a small, hinged pass-through at the bottom. A mutant dragonfly was inside, hammering itself senseless against the walls. She pressed a hand against the glass, putting her fingers to her temple. Don couldn’t hear her, but watched her lips move, and she smiled serenely despite the chaos around her. The dragonfly-man stopped battering itself against the walls of its cell and hovered, lowering itself—himself— slowly to the floor. April’s smile widened as the mutant walked over to her, slowly and calmly, and rested its head against the glass in front of her. She nodded and said something else to it, then moved on to the next pen and repeated the process there with a cat mutant, who ceased its yowling and sat cross-legged on the floor, yellow lantern eyes following her in a placid stare.

As April proceeded down the row, calming the mutants on one side, then the other, the din around them lessened, and Kokopoulos leaned over to Donatello. “How is she doing this?”

Don grinned back, heart full of pride for his companion. “Oh, it’s just this thing she does… Sort of a telepathic connection, along with her natural gentleness.” The man nodded, looking on with astonished curiosity as April rounded the corner at the end of the row and moved on to the next.

It took her the better part of an hour to visit each and every cell, spending more time on some, less on others. Even the sedated “Brandon,” who seemed to be mutated with a Rottweiler, received a few calming words and thoughts from her. He sighed and relaxed further in his doped state. Even mutants she hadn’t reached yet began to settle down, the calmness of the others pervading the containment facility, the scents in the air changing. Even the stunned guards began to look relieved as the atmosphere of the place became more comfortable; serene, even. They could clearly hear the conversation between the girl and the occupant of the last cell.

“I didn’t mean to bite anybody… I’m not a bad dog!”

“It’s all right… everything is fine now. You were just confused and scared, weren’t you?”

“Yeah… yeah… confused and scared. I’m not a bad dog, am I?”

“No, I’m sure you’re a very good dog under normal circumstances. You just had a bad scare. Everything’s fine now, right?”

“I’m a good dog!” the mutant repeated after her, trying to stick a handlike paw through one of the air holes in the plexiglass to reach her. “Can we play with the ball now? Play with the ball?”

April gave the dog-mutant a sad look. “Not right now, Moose. Maybe later. Why don’t you have a nap?”

“A nap! I will have a nap!” The giant dog wagged his tail and tried to make sense of lying down with a half-human body.

Heading over to Donnie and the major, she breathed a sigh of exhausted relief. Donnie gave her a pleased hug. Major Kokopoulos shook her hand. “That was amazing!”

“Just doing what I can to help,” April said modestly, toeing the concrete.

“If you don’t mind, Miss O’Neil, there’s one more mutant I’d like you to try to calm down for us…”

“Sure… I mean, as long as it’s one more and not fifty… I’m a little drained…”

Kokopoulos motioned for them to follow as he led them through the compound to a smaller set of pens on the opposite side of the building. “This is the quarantine section… This is where we keep Isaiah. He… needs the privacy. You’ll see…” He moved to a cell in the middle of the row.

It looked like a solitary confinement cell, with a small window at the top and a pass-through barely wide enough to fit a bowl through at the bottom. As Kokopoulos opened the window, a voice from the little room yelled, “No! Stop! Too many voices! Too many!!”, followed by what sounded like a small hail of objects against the door. Kokopoulos pulled his head away from the window just in time to be missed by a high-velocity Lego brick.

“Might be best to keep a hand over you face…” he said, glancing over to April. “All yours.”

The whimpering continued as April stepped up to look through the little window. Inside crouched a boy of about eleven, clutching his head in pain. Small things floated and orbited around him at different speeds: Legos, paper clips, dice, game pieces, a ballpoint pen, pieces of tile, small rocks, pistachio shells. He lifted his eyes to April for a moment, and she understood at once.   She looked back to Donatello and the major. “Could you two maybe step back against the far wall? Especially you, Donnie… you’re kind of overloading him.”

Don blinked at her for a moment, then caught on. “Oh! Right…” He shuffled back to lean against the wall, the major following his lead, looking on cautiously.

The exchange between them was largely silent, with April occasionally nodding or shaking her head, once or twice humming an assent.   Everything seemed to be going all right, until Isaiah’s moaning suddenly escalated once more, and April suddenly ducked beneath the window as the hail of detritus hammered it again, the pen, a die, and a few of the pistachio shells sailing out through the window and clattering against the opposite wall.

“I’m sorry!!” the boy yelled, and the window slammed itself shut and bolted without human hands touching it. Major Kokopoulos advanced, but April wordlessly waved him back, resting her head against the wall for a few minutes more before joining the soldier and the turtle again and silently motioning them out of the room. Once outside, she explained, “He can hear every thought of every person and every mutant in this place. Mostly it’s just jumbled noise, but it’s so loud to him that he can’t stand it… plus he’s got other powers that he can’t understand and can’t control, like the telekinesis. Closer proximity makes it worse, it seems like; the walls do nothing. And when he’s annoyed at people—not necessarily even the person he’s talking to—He can’t help it, but that’s when he ends up throwing everything around him at them.”

“He seemed to have calmed down considerably when you started… er… communicating with him, though,” Kokopoulos commented. “And then locked himself away after he threw everything at you…”

April nodded. “Well, I can kind of relate… I don’t always have mastery over my powers either, and they can be scary… and he’s afraid of hurting someone, since he can’t control it. I showed him some of the meditation techniques Master Splinter taught me… Hopefully that will help him hold out until the retromutagen is finished. He can’t wait… he really wants to go home.” She cast a glance at the rows of mutants in their cells as they walked back toward the side door they’d entered from. “They all do… oh…” She stumbled, trying to keep her feet beneath her as a dizzy spell hit. As she lost her balance and pitched toward the floor, Donnie was there to catch her.

“S… sorry,” she muttered weakly. “Guess I’m a little worn out…”

“You’re hypoglycemic,” Donnie chided warmly, reaching into his belt for the sucker he’d pocketed and handing it to her, then scooped her up under her legs. “You gave more blood than you should’ve, and then we walked all the way over here, and you decided to play therapist to 51 mutants… Eat that,” he commanded, pointing a finger from around her shoulder at the lollipop.

“I can walk!” she protested loudly, though she immediately felt another wave of dizziness come over her. She obediently pulled the wrapper off the sucker and stuck it grumpily in her mouth.

Don chuckled at her. “No, you cant… you call that walking?”

She huffed an exhausted sigh. “Okay, I guess you’re right…”

Kokopoulos pulled out his phone and held it to his ear. “Sachs? Bring a GP around by the Freak Show, would you?”

Don immediately protested. “We could walk…”

The major gave him an incredulous look. “Carrying her?”

Donnie gave a boastful snort. “I’ve had to carry an engine block by myself two miles. This little flower…” he said, tossing April in the air slightly so that she gave a startled squeak, “…weighs nothing.”

“Even so, it’s been a long day for all of us, and I daresay you could use a hot meal and a bed.”

Neither of them could deny that those would be welcome, and accepted the ride to the barracks. “We’re putting you in the on-site VIP housing instead of the hotel where most of the out-of-town doctors and staff are staying, but we hadn’t planned for accommodations for Miss O’Neil…” the major explained as they pulled alongside a double-wide trailer, surrounded by a few cookie-cutter duplicates. “There’s a queen-size bed, but if you’d prefer, I’ll send Carson over with an extra cot, and arrange for separate housing in the morning...”

“Oh, uh… we can stay together,” April told him. “We’re… kind of used to it… but the extra cot…” she turned a querying eye to Donnie.

“…would probably for the best,” the turtle decided. April gave him a rather guarded look, but nodded to the major.

Kokopoulos nodded in return, leading them up the steps. “This should meet all your needs, but if it doesn’t, if there’s anything you need, you can ask any of the men to bring it for you. There’s a cooktop and a oven-microwave combo if you want to cook, or you can just eat at the mess hall.” He went on to point out all of the obvious furnishings in the trailer: a couch, TV, a dinner table with four chairs, an empty bookcase, and in one of the back rooms, a large desk and a worktable with a rolling chair. “Dr. Rockwell figured you would appreciate your own private work-space.”

Don snorted. “It’s like he knows me!”

Dinner arrived then: three large Styrofoam boxes full of shredded barbecue pork, baked beans, and potato salad, delivered by a random soldier. The major thanked him, then shook hands with Don and April, and departed, wishing them a pleasant evening and a nice meal. Shortly after, Carson arrived with a camp cot and set it up in the empty spare bedroom for them. He likewise shook hands with both of them again as he left, a broad smile on his face.

“It’s… so weird…” Donnie remarked as Carson jogged back to the barracks.

“What?” April looked up at him.

“No one runs and screams when they see me… There’s so many mutants in the public eye of the city, no one even reacts to one more…”

April gave a little chuckle. “You complaining?”

He smiled back at her. “Far from it… it’s just… sudden, I guess. One day, it’s ‘Eek! A monster! Shoot it down and ship it to a research facility!’ and the next, it’s ‘You’re a cool guy, turns out you’re a person too! Let me shake your hand!’” He stared out into the street, musing, shaking his head slightly as the stars glittered down at them. “And what’d it take? More mutagen…”

She nodded. “There’s so many mutants out there now… The EPF guys have probably seen the best and worst of them… A talking turtle probably ranks pretty low on the weirdness scale.” She chuckled again, taking hold of his hand. “Donnie, you’re normal!”

Don quirked a brow at her. “Normal?! You call this normal?” he laughed bemusedly.

“You and the guys and Splinter, the Mutanimals… even Shredder’s henchmutants… you’re not just weird anomalies anymore… An eighth of the population of New York City is mutants now; you’re part of a minority group!”

Donnie snorted as he considered this with amusement. “So, what, now they’re gonna call us Mutant-Americans?”

“Maybe. But just think… you guys don’t have to hide any more! You can actually go out during the day, go grocery shopping, see a movie while it’s still in the theater…“

“…shop for new parts instead of raiding the junkyard,” Donnie put in, picking up her enthusiasm.

“Mikey could go clubbing!”

“Oh, no! Do we really want to unleash that on the world?!” They both broke into peals of laughter.

“Leo could run his own dojo!” April continued fantasizing.

“And Raph could… get… brought up on assault charges… Oh dear! I can’t—” he laughed so hard he couldn’t catch his breath, April joining him. “Can you imagine what—what would happen if he actually went to prison?!”

“He’d be having the time of his life, picking fights every hour, on the hour, enjoying the all-you-can-beat buffet…”

“He’d either land himself in Solitary by the first day, or he’d be running the place!” Donnie guffawed.

“What about you?” April asked merrily, heartily enjoying their speculation. “Go to college? Earn about a thousand degrees in your first semester?”

Don sighed. “If I could… but where would I get the money?”

April quirked her head at him. “Donnie, you could get full-ride scholarships for any college in the world! The Ivy Leagues would be climbing all over themselves to get you! Especially after saving everyone…”

“But then… I’d have to leave you behind… and I’d miss you too much…”

She rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “They could put us in married housing…” She gauged his reaction to her words from the corner of her eye.

Donnie was predictably dumbstruck for a moment, a wide crescent of a smile spreading slowly across his face. “Married…” he realized. “We could get married!”

“…when we’re old enough,” April added, eyes twinkling at him.

Donnie’s eyes sparkled in return. “April,” he gasped, taking both of her hands in his as he fumbled for words, “would you like to…? I mean, when we can, you really want to—“

At that moment, Don’s T-Phone let out its jaunty series of tones. Donnie rolled his eyes in irritation. “Wonderful timing as always, Leo…” he muttered, as he hit the answer button and wandered inside to lounge on the couch while he talked.

“Hi, Leo… No, I’m not going to be home tonight. No… Matter of fact, they think its too risky for us to travel back and forth, so I’ll be staying here for the whole duration. … Actually, no; we were attacked by a tree that mutated with a crow and ended up eating one of the guys escorting us, and then we came face to face with an oncoming Granitor.… What—Leo? Oh, hi, Mikey… no, I didn’t name it this time… Mikey, it ate someone right in front of us… is this really the best— Yeah, like a dinosaur, uh-huh, with big tree-trunk legs… Okay, yes, it’s a good name. Okay… Yes, I’ll tell April. Put Leo back on… Hi… No, we’re stuck here; we can’t risk April. …Three months, at least. … I know that, but there’s nothing I can do, they need me here… Yeah, I’ll keep my training up as much as I can. … Right, will do. … ‘course I will, don’t I always? … Okay. Say hi to Raph and Sensei for me. Oh, and Leo? … When the EPF gives the all-clear, make sure Raph knows that assault and battery are jailable crimes. Haha, ‘kay, bye!”

He terminated the call, and sat waiting for April to finish talking to her dad, having decided to call him while Donnie was on the phone with his brothers. As she paced the living area, she staggered suddenly, still woozy from the blood-loss. Donatello leapt to his feet to catch her if she went down again, but she managed to make her way to the sofa and plunk down on it. “Right… Love you, Dad! Bye! …Okay, I will! Bye!... Bye!” She rolled her eyes at Donnie. “BYE, Dad.”

Donnie caught her eye as she hung up. “How’d your dad take it?”

“About as well as can be expected. He’s not happy about it, and he’ll be ready to come spring me at a moment’s notice…. How’s Leo?”

“Oh, annoyed, but I think he’ll manage without me. Mikey’s named our mutant the Tree-Rex, ‘cause it was a tree and nearly wrecked us.”

“Pffff…” came April’s response, followed by a huge yawn, which she tried to stifle with a hand. “Uff… I’m so tired…”

“We’ve had a long day,” Don remarked, becoming distracted by the silicone on his legs. He began peeling pieces off. “This stuff is useful, but it sure doesn’t breathe well… Doesn’t hold together when you try to take if off either… I was hoping I might be able to reuse it as boots if it held together. Maybe I can refine the silicon formula a little if I…” He looked up, thinking April was nodding at his idea. Actually, she was just nodding off, head dropping slightly each time before she jerked it back up, unfocussed eyes widening for a second as she tried to pull herself back to wakefulness, only to slide closed again. He smiled, watching her drowse-and-rouse pattern, then thought better of letting her get a crick in her neck and gently shook her knee. “Hey…”

Her eyelids fluttered open and she inhaled deeply. “Oh… Sorry, Donnie… What were you saying?”

He gave her a doting grin. “We should go to sleep.”

April sat up a bit straighter. “You don’t have to go to bed just because I’m tired…”

“I’ve got to be bright-eyed and bushy-scaled in the morning too, or Rockwell will just have one more thing to lord over me.”

She gave him a knowing smirk. “Guess were both calling it a night, then—Ohh, shoot…” She stomped a foot.

“What?”

“I don’t have any overnight stuff… I don’t even have a change of clothes! I wasn’t planning on staying here!”

“Ah. Well, we could call the Major, or one of the soldiers… they won’t mind—“

“No…” April interrupted, “I don’t want to send them to their deaths, going out at night in all this to find me a nightshirt and a toothbrush. I’ll just sleep in my shirt, and ask them to pick up some things for me in the morning.” She headed toward the bedroom and emerged a moment later with a pillow in her hands and a blanket over her shoulder. “G’night, Donnie!”

Don gave her a look of condescension. “What’re you doing? I’ll take the cot…”

“You need the better night’s sleep; you take the bed.”

“You totally exhausted yourself today; you’re not getting a crummy night’s sleep on an uncomfortable little cot on top of that!”

“And your shell won’t even hardly fit on that thing!” She curled a fist at him in determination.

“April, take the bed, please!” Donnie insisted.

“No, you!”

“No, you!”

“YOU!”

The two glowered at each other for a moment, then both broke into giggles. Donatello eventually sighed, “Or, we could be mature about it and share the bed…”

She bit her lip for a moment. “All right…” she agreed, carrying the bedding back to the bedroom and replacing it on the bed.

“And I promise to be a perfect gentleman,” he told her as he followed.

“You had better be, because the bra is coming off.”

Don’s jaw dropped and his eyes goggled. “I—What?!?” He tried to hold to his claim of gentlemanliness and turn away, but somehow found his eyes magnetized to her as she reached around her back, then wriggled one arm, then the other into her shirt and back out again, pulling the offending garment from the neck of her shirt.

“Ta-daa!” she waved the white object in front of him tauntingly.

He blinked at her. “How did you…? Nevermind, this is probably something men just aren’t supposed to know…”

She chuckled at him, undoing the button of her shorts and letting them fall around her ankles. She still had her black leggings on underneath, but Don was afraid more was about to come off. He immediately leapt onto the far side of the bed and pulled the covers over himself, emitting a few rushed and very fake snores.

“Don’t worry, Cassanova, the rest is staying on,” April teased, sliding between the sheets and turning off the bedside lamp. “Good night, Donnie,” she sighed contentedly.

“Good night, sweetheart,” he whispered back.

He tried to settle himself in to sleep, but his impending conversation with Rockwell and Dr. Yellowhair in the morning about refining the retromutagen-manufacturing process butted itself to the forefront of his mind. He hated to admit it, but he was nervous. And, competing with that thought, he was sharing a bed with the girl he loved for the first time, and was hyper-aware of April’s presence, determined not to do anything weird or awkward. He pointedly turned his thoughts back to his retromutagen methods and started making a mental list of suggestions for refining the process, and was down to bullet-point #4 when the girl next to him rolled over and curled against his shell and legs, making him nearly jump out of his shell.

Of course… he thought, my shell takes up so much room… I must not have left her enough space. He scooted closer to the edge of the bed. Moments later, though, he felt her cuddle up to him again. He repeated the process, giving her as much of the bed as he could, but soon she was up against him again. He couldn’t sleep like this, balanced on the edge of his carapace. “I’ll just go sleep on the cot…” he mumbled to himself sitting up.

“Donnie…” April murmured, “…come back! I just wanted to snuggle with you a little!”

Don rolled his eyes at himself for being an idiot and got back into the bed, facing her this time. She smiled and rolled over to curl up against his plastron. He reached a finger out and booped her nose with it. “You are supposed to not be a distraction!”

She giggled. “And you are not on the clock until tomorrow.”

He gave a conceding little sigh. “I suppose you have a point there…” he said, wrapping his arms tighter around her and stole a little kiss from the side of her mouth. She turned and stole it back, lips lingering on his a bit longer.

Nervous thoughts banished, and April in his arms, Donnie sunk into a peaceful, undisturbed sleep.

a/n:  Next time we'll see what the rest of the guys are up to, and hopefully by then, I'll have some cover art up for this story!

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, bookmarked, or left kudos!

Chapter Text

Brave New World

“The important thing to remember is that they’re people… They may look horrible and scary and be able to do strange things, some of them may not act human anymore, but what everyone has to remember is that these are our own. These are the citizens of New York City. Now, more than ever, we need to come together. Now more than ever, we have to remember that it’s not the cover of the book we need to focus on or judge by, but rather, to paraphrase the words of a very wise man, by the content of their character. Those who have mutated, humans, animals, other forms of life—we are one. We are New York.”

The screen switched back to a view of the Channel 6 news desk with the white cockatoo mutant seated behind it. “The mayor’s recent speech, targeted at all New Yorkers, is being received well by the public, earning a whopping 83% approval rating.”

Raphael, planted firmly on the bench in front of the TV, scoffed. “Yeah? Where was this speech 16 years ago?!”

Meanwhile, the news anchor droned on about the coordinated mutagen cleanup effort by the National Guard, fire services, and Earth Protection Force. “After three weeks of confinement and evacuation, word came yesterday that it is now safe for area inhabitants to return to their homes, and local streets are once again traversable—”

“Yes!” Raph, who had been stricken with a major case of cabin fever since the quarantine, leapt to his feet with a triumphant fist-pump.

“—but we remind citizens that there may be mutagen remaining that the cleanup crews may have missed, especially in high areas, such as rooftops and fire escapes—“

“Awwwh!” the turtle groaned in defeat, arms dropping to his sides. He plunked back down on the bench that served as their couch.

“—so if you run across any, please report it to your local fire department immediately; do not touch or attempt to clean up the mutagen yourself,” the anchor went on. “Area businesses are opening their doors as we speak, and the Big Apple already seems to be getting back into the normal swing of things. We go now to Joan Grody, who is out at Times Square this fabulous, sunny Monday morning to speak with some of the recently-mutated. Joan?”

The image went to a split-screen, then focused solely on a stern-looking Grody. A yellow-green slime mutant was eagerly waving at the camera from behind her. “Good morning, Carlos! I’m down here at Times Square to get an idea of just how much life has changed for some people since the mega-rift incident.” She shifted her attention to the slime creature, who seemed thrilled at the attention. “Sir, aside of the obvious, how would you say that changing into… erm… this… has affected you?”

The mutant swiped a blobby appendage toward the microphone Grody was holding, intent on grabbing it for itself. Joan, not wanting to come in contact with the disgusting ooze, let go and allowed the mic to fall into the blob’s ‘hand’, where it immediately dissolved down to the wire, which fell at the journalist’s feet. She tracked its progress with her eyes, as did the mutant, looking forlorn. The reporter then stared back into the camera with a rather lost look and a twitching eye as the boom mic dropped into the shot to pick up her somewhat muted words. “… And there you have it. Back to you, Carlos.”

“Rrrrright… We’ll check back with Joan in a little while, when she’s got a new mic.” The cockatoo mutant angled an eye at the camera. “But meanwhile… Mutant turtle scientist Donatello Hamato, along with Doctors Tyler Rockwell and Charlene Yellowhair, have announced the completion of their refinement of the retromutagen formula, to produce a batch of roughly 35,000 doses of a vaccine that will cure mutation…”

Raphael smirked at the TV, but there was a certain amount of pride in it. “Hey, Leo, Master Splinter! Don’s on TV!” he shouted toward the dojo. His brother and father hustled in to watch as Donnie appeared on screen, standing at a podium, with Rockwell by his side, and a slough of reporters holding out microphones at him.

“At this point, we believe we will have enough retromutagen to de-mutate all the victims of the Megarift incident within three months. At this point, we have stretched our formula as far as we can without diluting its effectiveness. We fear that any further dilution would cause only partial retro-mutations, which may be as bad or worse than primary or secondary mutations. And, speaking of, we are not sure how the retromutagen will react with subjects who have sustained multiple mutations, and will require volunteers with double- or triple-mutations for blood samples for Dr. Yellowhair to begin analysis on.”

Don paused, seeming to take a question by a nearly inaudible reporter, though the question seemed to be about when the retromutagen would be available.

“Our team is working on the vaccines as we speak, and should have them ready within days. The most dire victims—those who are most likely to harm themselves or others due to their mutations—will receive the retromutagen first, after which, the rest will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.“

As Donnie pointed to another member of the press, she asked, “Why the intermittent release of the vaccine? Is there a reason it can’t all be released to the public now?”

“Yes,” he replied, “the active catalyst in the retromutagen, the part that provides the immunity and thus instigates the de-mutation, is the blood of one very extraordinary young lady whose blood contains…”

Raph interrupted the report with, “Ohh, look at him blushiiinnnggg!”

Leo sniggered in response. “She’s still his weak spot…”

“What, three weeks, and you think that would have changed any?” his brother snorted back at him.

Leo sighed. “I wonder how he and Mikey are doing?”

“…so if anyone believes they have had prior contact with the Kraang and may have a similar immunity, please, please contact us for testing.”

The screen cut away from the interview, back to the news desk. “To get your name or the name of a mutated family member or friend on the list for the retromutagen vaccine, be sure to contact the Earth Protection Force at the number and email on your screen… With an estimated 1.2 million mutants now in the city, the list for retromutagen recipients is bound to fill up fast, so don’t delay…”

Raph clicked the power button on the remote and stood, wordlessly making a bid for the lair’s exit, only to be halted by Leo’s call of, “And where are you going?”

“Topside, of course,” the red-banded brother replied with an eyeroll declaring that that ought to be obvious. “We’ve been cooped up down here for three weeks! We can walk the streets in broad daylight now! I don’t know about you, but I’m going out!”

“Raph, wait…” Leo sighed in an impatient tone. Raphael spun in his tracks, gnashing his teeth at his brother, but was calmed by his next words. “We’ll both go. As long as it’s all right with you, Sensei?” Leo said, turning querying eyes on his rat-mutant father.

Splinter nodded. “It is. In fact, I may accompany you. It has been a long time since I have been able to walk the streets above unhindered by shame and without causing fear.”

Leo smiled brightly. “That’s great! Isn’t that great, Raph?”

Raphael hid a sour look behind an accommodating grin, his independence suddenly stifled by the notion of parental supervision. “Uh, yeah! That’s… peachy…”

Raph and Leo hung back, letting Master Splinter lead as they walked leisurely down the crowded street. The residents of the area seemed to be out en masse, both celebrating their freedom from confinement and gawking at the plethora of mutants roaming among them. Traffic in the streets was at a standstill, yet there was little aggravated honking. Splinter walked with slow, confident strides and a straight back, seeming not to notice all of the eyes on himself and his sons, his walking stick clicking on the pavement. But the two turtles shared a feeling of unease, unused to allowing themselves to be seen. For as keen as Raph had been to come topside, so many humans, so many people staring at them, had unsettled him greatly. Ducking into an alley would provide no asylum in the daylight for a ninja, and their usual high, unoccupied route of the rooftops was currently off-limits. He began mentally beating himself up for not waiting until dark to go out. Splinter’s calm confidence bolstered him up a bit, but he was too on-edge to relax. By the look of it, Leo felt similar, not cowering, exactly, but keeping close to their father and looking meeker than usual.

“I used to bring my kimono to this laundry,” Splinter pointed out as they passed a dry cleaner’s and tailor’s with a line of waiting mutant creatures that stretched around the corner. As they passed the entrance, they saw why… A sign in the window boldly touted: CUSTOM TAILORING WHILE YOU WAIT, MUTANTS 75% DISCOUNT!!! A few shops further down, the rat mutant motioned toward a coffee shop. “This was once an ice cream parlor. I had hoped to treat you both,” he sighed.

“I’m sure there’s one somewhere nearby, Sensei,” Leo assured him. Splinter nodded and they moved on, Splinter continuing to reminisce about what various stores had previously been, until they reached a vacant one, and the ninjutsu master abruptly stopped, a shocked look crossing his features. He peered through the glass into the dusty-looking, empty shop.

“Sensei?” Leo queried, slightly worried by their father’s stunned look.

Splinter swallowed, seeming to be finding his breath. “This…” he started, “this was the pet shop, where…” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

Understanding hit Raphael with a jolt. “…where you bought us.” He exchanged a look with Leo, then looked back up to his father, who nodded twice in affirmation.

Leo blinked, now likewise stunned. “Then…” he began, then dashed around the corner. Raph ran after his blue-banded brother immediately, while their father followed sedately behind as they turned into a foreboding and heavily-shaded back alley. Leonardo took a couple of steps in, Raphael following, then both of them freezing in place. They had all been past this alley dozens of times… hundreds, even. Now, though… They could practically hear the mechanical voices of the Kraang, the shattering of glass, the shrieks of a man as he mutated into a rat…

Raph stared around him, awed. “You gettin’ a weird sense of déjà vu here, bro?” he asked.

Leo only nodded. “This is where… this is where we all… mutated! Look there…” he pointed to the manhole, where their father must have made his escape with his newly adopted and mutated pets into the sewers.

“Yes,” Splinter murmured from behind them. “This is where our life together began.”

“I wish Mikey and Donnie could see this…” Leo said, gaping, turning in a slow circle, as if memorizing a panoramic view of the alley.

“We’ll show ‘em later,” Raph muttered, doing the same.

“I know… I just wish they were here with us now.”     

Down the alley, a door opened and a bald man with a thin moustache stepped out with a pair of garbage bags, breaking the spell over the mutants with the bang of a dumpster lid. For a moment, they stood staring at one another, wide-eyed. The man’s blinking expression didn’t change, but he spread the fingers of one hand and gave a small, timid wave. Splinter raised a hand and nodded in greeting. Leo likewise held a hand up, stunned at the small gesture of acceptance.

“Come,” Splinter said quietly, turning away. “I believe we have much to reflect on.”

The park was not far, and, to Master Splinter’s great joy, there was an ice-cream cart present. The vendor, a bird mutant himself, scooped up their requested flavors as all of them tried to ignore the nearby altercation between a cart driver and his now mutated horse: “I’ve been pullin’ for seven years… Why don’t you pull an’ I’ll drive?!”

They followed the most immediate path into the park, encountering only a woman jogger, who gave them an extremely wide berth as she passed. Raphael snorted, and Leo sighed and shook his head. “Guess we can’t expect everyone to accept mutants straight out the gate,” Raph grumbled, “Even with all the good press…”

“People have always feared what they do not understand,” Splinter said with the hint of a sigh as he left the pathway and sat on the grass beside a small, moss-covered carved stone arch with a ball on top, one of several in the field. Leo joined him in lotus position. “Change, for some, is frightening at first, but over time, like snow in the spring, its presence will melt away, until one would never know there was once ice over the flowers.” He glanced around, and chuckled to himself. “…until one sees through the distance of years.”

“Sensei?” Leo asked.

“I would come here often to meditate. The trees,” the ninja master smiled, “have all grown. Sixteen years ago, this birch was a mere sapling; that stump, a towering willow.”

Raphael remained standing, eyes fixing on his sensei and brother, then looking back up the path from where they’d just come. He groaned.

Leo opened one eye at him. “Raph? You gonna join us?”

The red-masked turtle scoffed. “Three weeks cooped up in the lair… we can finally walk around in broad daylight, and you wanna sit some more?! No way. I’m going back to look around… see you guys back at the lair.”

“Raph!” Leo called after him in a plaintive tone as the turtle took off down the path at a good clip. Shaking his head, Leo let out a groan echoing his brother’s. “I’d… better go with him…”

Splinter nodded. “Go. I will meet you at home this evening.”

Leo caught up with his brother back on the street. Raph snorted as his older brother fell in step with him. “Done so soon? That’s gotta be a record…”

“Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you,” the blue-clad turtle fired back.

Raphael rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to follow me around like you’re your brothers’ keeper, ya know. If you wanna go meditate with Sensei, go meditate.”

“No… you’re right. I’ve meditated enough over the past three weeks… Now’s a good time to get out for a change.”

“Wait, you got bored of meditating?!” Raph jabbed a finger into Leo’s plastron. “Who are you, and what have you done with my stupid, boring brother?” Leo laughed as the two of them joined the throng of people and mutants and barely-moving cars once more. They passed a Siamese cat mutant, who greeted them with high-fives, then were waved to enthusiastically by a pair of people in fursuits: a yellow armadillo and a pale-blue wolf, apparently out for Anthro solidarity.

“This is… really weird,” Raph stated.

Leo cocked an eye at him. “Being out during the day, being surrounded by other mutants, or the fact that no one’s panicking at the sight of any of us?”

“All of it! I don’t know whether to mingle or dive down the nearest manhole!” He gave a contented sigh, planted his fists on his hips, and smiled broadly. “It’s a brave new world, Leo, and it’s a good time to be a mutant!”

“Oh, is it?” a flat voice behind him grumped. “You would know, wouldn’t you, frog, since you seem to like turning people into hideous freaks like yourself?!”

Raph’s good mood vanished, and he visibly drooped. “Aw, no… not him…”

Leo blinked, turning toward the voice. “Spider Bytez?”

“Don’t you call me that, you dumb lizard!” the spider mutant snarled, waving a pudgy finger in the turtle’s face. “I had a normal name, and a normal life before you jerks came along and ruined it!”

“You know there’s a cure now, right?” Raph said with a proud smirk. “In fact, it’s our brother Donnie that’s heading up production.”

Spider Bytez leveled his many eyes at the turtle in red. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did know that, smart guy. And I would have called in to get my name on the list too,” he said with a haughty, sardonic edge, “if someone hadn’t destroyed my freaking phone!”

“Guess you shouldda thought of that before you tried to blackmail us with it, huh?”

“Raph, don’t antagonize him,” Leo warned.

The spider mutant huffed, looking away in a way that was almost apologetic. Almost. “Look, you frogs did me a solid, getting me away from those crazy brain aliens…”

Raph broke in. “D’ya mean the first time, or the second?”

Spider Bytez scowled, and Leo gave an exasperated, “Raph!” turning to glare at his brother.

“What?!” Raph snapped in return. “This asshole made his own bed, er… web, now he has to lay in it!”

“Does the word ‘diplomacy’ mean anything to you?!”

The red-banded turtle shrugged, an smug and amused grin plastered on his face. “No. I’m not the one who memorized that stupid Space Heroes show.”

Leo sputtered. “Th…that has nothing to do with it!”

“ ’Space Heroes,’ huh?’ the spider grunted. “Good show. Look, Kermit, I’m willing to let the whole phone thing drop, and all the money you lost me… IF,” he said, crossing his arms, “you can get me on that waiting list.”

The turtles both blinked at him in disbelief, then looked to each other to verify that that was what each other had heard as well. “Is… that it?” Leo dared to ask.

“That’s it,” Spider Bytez replied.

Leo pulled his T-phone from his belt, flipping the screen open. “Well, then… I can just look up the EPF hotline, and…”

“BUT!” Spider Bytez interrupted.

“I knew there was gonna be a ‘but’!” Raph grumbled, rolling his eyes.

“…I want to be on the A-list… the first batch that goes out to the public. I’ve been a mutant way longer than the rest of these schmucks anyway. Should be ‘first screwed, first served’, am I right?”

“Wh…what?” Leo gawked. “We don’t have any control over that!”

“You said your brother was in charge of makin’ the stuff, you can get some for me through him.”

Leo’s mouth formed a hard line and he breathed a long sigh though his nose. He turned away to phone Donatello in private. Raph leaned in toward his brother, out of the spider mutant’s hearing, and mumbled, “Why’re we doin’ this? We don’t owe this guy anything, and even if we don’t make good on the deal, what’s he gonna do about it?”

“Aside of potentially spitting blobs of acid at us in a crowded public place?” Leo muttered in return. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Now, shh!” He punched a couple buttons on his phone and held the device to his ear, tuning Raph out in order to speak to Donnie.

Given that making small-talk with Spider Bytez or listening in on Leo’s conversation were his other options, Raph turned away from the aggravating mutant, and the giant spider as well, opting instead to lean against a pillar behind him. He looked out across the mass of slow-moving traffic, and the humans and mutants weaving their way though it. A flicker of bright green caught his eye, and before he could even question what he’d seen, a voice carried to him from across the street: “Bros! Bros!!”

Raph straightened up. His first instinct was to scan for a smattering of orange in the crowd, but found none. Instead, leaping from car to car to get closer as fast as possible, came the youngest brother, a black EPF helmet with a dark visor obscuring his eyes. All of Raphael’s gruff demeanor deserted him. He broke into a wide, beaming grin at seeing Michelangelo. “MIKEY!!” The young sea-green turtle bounded into his brother’s arms, where Raph enfolded him in a brief but joyful hug.

“I missed you guys so much!” Mikey whimpered, clinging to Raph long after the older turtle had loosed his grip on his younger brother. “Did you miss me too?”

Raph feigned his usual annoyance for Mikey for a moment before cracking a smile and slapping his sibling on the shell a few times before putting him in a headlock. “…Yeah. We did. What’s with this?” Raph said, knocking on the helmet. “Trying for the Darth Vader look?”

Mikey laughed, slipping out of his brother’s grasp. “Nahhh… this is my uniform!”

Raph quirked a brow at him. “Your uniform?”

“Yeah, so people can tell I’m working with the Earth Protection Force and stuff. I’m on the job!” Michelangelo tipped the visor up, his orange mask and blue eyes shining out from beneath it. “None of the rest of it would fit,” he added sourly. His eye slowly shifted toward his left, and he gulped. “Uhhh… Raph? Spider Bytez…” he noted nervously.

“ ‘s alright, Mike. We’re just… negotiating a deal with ‘im.”

Leo turned, clasping his phone shut, and was drawn into an enthused little-brother hug as well. He chuckled. “Hi, Mikey! How’s life with the EPF treating you?”

“It’s great! I’ve made so many friends, you wouldn’t believe it! And there’s this mess hall, where they’ll serve you all you can eat of all kinds of stuff, so I can eat pizza ‘til I explode! Isn’t that neat?! Oh, and then—”

“ ‘Scuse me, hate to break up the frog family reunion and all, but I’d like my life back! Can he get it for me or not?” the spider said, tapping a foot impatiently.

Leo tried not to wince too much. “Don doesn’t have that kind of access to the retromutagen, or who gets put on the list, I’m afraid… The government’s keeping it under lock and key…”

“What?! Then I guess I don’t have any choice but to sue you bunch of newts for all you’re worth!” (The spider mutant paid no attention when a human woman behind him helpfully pointed out, “Um… They’re turtles…”) “If you don’t get me on the top of that list and get me back to normal, I’m calling my lawyer to sue your slimy green scales off! …as soon as I get a phone!”

Raph mockingly slapped his hands to his cheeks. “Oh no, Leo! They’re gonna repossess our moldy couch and the VCR! You won’t be able to watch that stupid show anymore!”

“Not Super Robo Mecha Force!” Mikey gasped.

“No, lame brain, the other one.”

“NOT CROGNARD!!” the orange-banded turtle shrieked. “Wait… what list is he talking about?”

Leo nodded toward the spider. “He wants us to get him A-listed for the retromutagen distribution but Donnie doesn’t have any way of doing that…”

Mikey paused a moment, letting Leo’s words sink in. “Ohh, is that all? No problemo!”

Both of Mikey’s older siblings blinked at him. “…What?” Leo finally asked.

The young turtle puffed his chest out. “Dudes… Who’s got two green thumbs and is on list duty?? …This turtle!” he flaunted, pointing both thumbs at his plastron. “My EPF buds and I are working the area today, signing mutants up for Donnie’s vaccine. Oh, and…” he bent forward, the three mutants around him all leaning in to hear him as he added conspiratorially, “don’t tell anyone, but EPF soldiers get one slot on the first list for family or friends.” He straightened back up. “I was thinking of maybe hooking Mondo up, or giving it to one of the other EPFfers for their families, but…” He shrugged. “Spider Byt—“

“That is NOT my NAME!” the arachnid hollered.

“Well… what is your name?” Mikey asked. “ ’cause I’m gonna need to put that on the form anyway…”

“It’s Vic. Victor Snyder. With a y.”

“Well, all right! Come with me, Snyder Bytez!” Michelangelo motioned, snapping his visor back down. “Step into my parlor,” he said, waving a hand toward the large, black EPF truck, parked across the street, “and we’ll get you all set up.” He turned backward as he crossed the street, waving to his family as the spider mutant followed him. “See you later, bros! Love you!”

Leo and Raph both stood looking slack-jawed. After their moment of stunned silence, Leo turned to his brother. “Did… did we get dropped to B-Team standing, and no one told us?”

“I’m just glad he didn’t trot out the Tur-fly-tle getup to lure in the giant spider,” Raph shrugged.

“You know how much he hates being bait. Let’s get going, Maggot Boy,” Leo teased.

“Don’t start!” the hothead warned, shaking a finger at him. “Mikey with responsibility, though… what’s the world coming to?”

“Brave new world, you said?”

Before Raphael had a chance to retort, he heard someone behind him call, “Yo, Raph!” Casey skidded up next to him on his skates.

“Casey!” the red-banded turtle greeted the teen with a fist-bump.

“ ‘sup, Leo?” Jones greeted, looking around him. “Where’s everybody else?”

“Off being important, doing what they can for the crisis,” Leonardo sighed downheartedly.

“How about you? How was being cooped up at the ice rink?”

Casey gave one of his wide, gap-toothed grins. “It was awesome! We had to bust into the vending machines or risk starvation!”

Raph eyed his friend with heavy scrutiny. “Didn’t they get you out of there, like, before midnight?”

Casey shrugged his shoulders casually, eyes closed. “Eh. We couldn’t’ve known we’d be rescued before the mini-donuts ran out!” He nudged Raphel with an elbow, changing the subject entirely. “You gotta see what some of the Purple Dragons got turned into! Must’ve been Kung Pao Chicken night!”

The red-banded turtle laughed cruelly. “Well, they were always trying to make… a few bucks!”

Casey guffawed. “They’re makin’ quite a few now… but it’s nothin’ to crow about!” The three roared with laughter.

“Sounds like they’re getting a little egg-zasperated,” Leo added. “…from running afowl of trouble?”

“Nice, Leo!” Casey gasped out, clutching his sides. Recovering for a couple breaths, he then resumed with, “I guess now they’re a bunch of cock-a-doodle dudes!” which sent everyone into peals of laughter again.

Raph wiped a tear from his eye, tapping Casey’s arm with the back of his hand. “Let’s go… I gotta see this in person!”

“Yeah-ha-ha! Let’s go roast some chickens!” The two of them took off at a dash through the crowds, still laughing heartily, leaving a flabbergasted Leo behind.

“RA—nrgh….” the blue-banded leader started to call after his hot-tempered brother, then cut himself off, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort of trying to chase Raphael down. Leo had the notion that Raph needed the chance to get out and run off some of his pent-up energy anyway, especially after weeks of confinement underground. It was a theory of Leo’s that his volatile brother at times had just as much energy as Mikey, but held it all in rather than expressing himself as the youngest did. The lack of freedom forced him to bottle it up, which made him bitter, and the bitterness showed as violent rage at his worst, and biting snark at his mildest.

Leo glanced around himself, alone, and sighed. Even the EPF van had moved on. “…And then there was one.” He found himself wandering, searching for a purpose. What good was being a leader with no team?

At that moment the universe found him a purpose, as a hulking bull mutant crashed his way out of an electronics store, arms full of merchandise, the shop’s alarm going off behind him. With a mean laugh, the bull tossed people out of his way with his horns. A man slapped against the brick facing of a building, a woman thrown into traffic, where she landed, rolling over the hood of a car. A mutant hamster lay bleeding from being gored in the chest.

“Oh, you did not just…” Leonardo reacted immediately, stepping into the bull’s path, whipping one of his ninjaken out of its sheath over his head and pointing it at the oncoming mutant. “Hold it… right there…” he warned, eyes narrowing.

The bull apparently took it as some kind of joke. “What is this? Get outta my way!”

“I hope you got a receipt for those,” Leo quipped, “ ‘cause you’re gonna need to take them back. Right. Now.”

“Oh, you think you can stop me, Shelly?”

“You can’t just take things without paying for them. Go give them back, and be on your way.”

“Who’s gonna make me, you, with your little pig-sticker? Newsflash, slowpoke, might makes right. And I got the might, right here!” the bull snorted, letting the flatscreens and speakers he was toting fall to the pavement. Leo winced slightly as something shattered, but didn’t budge.

“Might doesn’t make right; it enforces it,” he replied coolly.

“Says the guy enforcing it with a sword!”

Leo heard the phrase, “He’s got a sword!” echoing in murmurs through the crowd around him. “TWO swords!” someone else said, starting another stir. Muttered discussion began about whether or not mutants could be trusted with weapons, what with starting fights in the streets and the like.

He reached back over his shoulder, replacing the ninjaken in its sheath. “I don’t need my swords to fight you,” he said evenly, with a proud toss of his head. Some of the bystanders oohed.

“Oh, I’m gonna flatten you into a manhole cover, ya fuckin’ green bean!” The huge mutant bellowed, charging Leo head-on, but the turtle was out of his sight in a blur, delivering powerful, precise single-finger jabs to pressure-points on the bull’s neck, back, one side and both knees. The mutant’s face contorted as his body did likewise, curling up in agony. He came down like a ton of bricks, with Leo standing untouched on top of him.

“…And that’s how you make ground beef,” he announced to no one in particular, though the crowd around him went up in a roar of applause and laughter. Workers from the robbed store came out and retrieved the stolen goods, thanking the turtle, while Leo slipped down off the bull-man, seated himself in front of his snout and proceeded to lecture him on why power also meant having responsibility. The cops finally arrived fifteen minutes later , followed by an ambulance to cart the perpetrator off to a holding cell… and possibly a chiropractor.

As the circle of onlookers dispersed, Leo felt eyes on him, firm and fixed, but not with ill intent. He turned to face whoever was staring at him.

It was a duck. A very plain, brown-mottled duck.

Wearing glasses.

Chapter Text

Flower Powers

Raphael and Casey ran through the crowds on their way to mock the fate of the Purple Dragons members, not looking back at the dismayed or angered shouts of New Yorkers as their route took them over the roofs of cars to avoid the congestion in the streets.  They had gone a few blocks toward the Dragons’ usual stomping grounds when a weak cry caught Raph’s attention, the call for help triggering something in his protective nature.  He skidded to a halt on his heels.  “Case… Hold  up, man…”

As the human teen stopped and backtracked to Raphael’s position, he caught the plea as well: the voice that of a late-middle-aged woman with a thick Queens accent.  “Help! …Somebahdy… Anybahhdy… Please, help…”

“Down there!” he decided, pointing down the nearby alleyway.

“We hear you!  We’re coming!” Raph called back.  “Where are you?”

“Heeah!  Ovah heeah!”  The two traced the sound to the corner of a building, where the asphalt had crumbled enough to expose a little patch of earth beneath it.  Rooted in it lay a wilted-looking mutant daisy.  “Wuatah, please… So thusty…”

Raph knelt down beside the flower mutant, picking up the limp little body to support her, and looked back to Casey.  “You go… I’ll stay here with her.”  Casey nodded in understanding and rushed back out of the alley, running back the way they’d come to the nearest mini-mart, and returned in a moment with a large cup of cool, clear water.  He began pouring it slowly on the white daisy’s head.  She began spluttering.  Raph tipped the cup up, stopping the flow.  “Plants drink from the roots, dumbass!”

“Oh, right.  Uh… I knew that,” the boy muttered, shifting the cup lower and pouring into the dirt.  The daisy gave a relieved sigh, both from the cool water soaking into her roots and from her sudden shower ceasing.  “Ahh.  Thank you, boys.  That’s much bettah.”  She fell silent for a moment, concentrating on drinking.  After a few minutes, she was able to pull herself fully upright to her full foot-and-a-half height, looking much healthier.  “Thank Gawd you came alawng.  I thawt I was done foah…”  She wiped one of her two leaves across her face dramatically.  “I haven’t had any wuatah since that little sprinkle middle’a last week!  I cawled and cawled, but nobahdy evah came!  I nevah even saw anybahdy payss this way… loike the whole woald just disappeahhed!”

“Well, that’s no wonder,” Raph quipped with an eyeroll.  “Everybody’s been inside since the whole mutagen Megarift disaster.  Whole city was quarantined for three weeks.  Less people outside, less people getting mutated.” 

“What?  The what?!”

Casey looked over to his friend.  “If she was here from the start, she probably hasn’t heard about anything that’s happened.”

“Awl I know is, I was woaking alowng the street out theah, then something wet hits me, everything hurts like the buhjesezus… next thing I know, I’m a goddamn daisy… I had tah crawl around fuh houahs, looking fuh some soil, until I finally found some ovah heah… Do you have any oydeah how paved ovah every damn thing in this city is??  I think I gawt lucky just foinding this spawt!”  She shook her head and leaves about.  “Nothing makes sense anymoah… It’s loike a noightmeah, but I can’t seem ta wake up!”

“Hate to break it to ya, but it’s no dream,” Casey explained.  “There was this big portal that opened over the city from another dimension, and mutagen started falling out of it… it sort of half-turns you into whatever you last touched.”

She gaped at him for a moment, then nodded.  “That explains it.  Moy sistah gave me a new pawt of daisies foah my buhthday—she gives me one every yeeah, an’ every yeeah I manage to kill ‘em, finicky things!  I was carryin’ ‘em and had just brushed some dirt off ‘em when that stuff hit me.  Go figyah… I’m terrible with flowahs, an’ now I am one…  Bayd kahma comin’ back tah boyte me.”  She drooped a bit.  “Proabably goanna suffah and doy just loike awl the plants I’ve killed ovah the yeeahs…  Look at me, I’m stuck heah… Can’t even take keah a’ moyself…”

“We’re not gonna let that happen, er…” Raph paused, realizing he didn’t know her name yet. 

“Shasta,” she filled in, extending a leaf for him to shake.

“Like the flower?” Casey realized. 

The daisy rolled her eyes.  “No, genius, loyke the soda-pawp… Of coase loyke the flowah!”

Raph grinned, acknowledging the inborn pique of a true New Yorker in her.  “I’m Raphael.”  He jerked his head toward his friend.  “He’s Casey Jones.”

“Pleashah ta make yoah acquaintance,” Shasta replied, a little tersely, mind on her problem.  “I don’t suppose you boys could do me a fayvah and get me outta heah?”

Casey folded his arms and tapped his chin.  “Think we could transplant her?”

The turtle ninja considered.  “Should be able to… Might have to break some more of this asphalt here, just in case… I don’t wanna cut any of her roots by accident, and who knows how far out they might’ve spread in three weeks?  I can maybe break up the soil with my sai a bit, but getting all the way around her…”

“Didn’t we pass a hardware store a little ways back?” Casey asked, and Raph gave him an approving nod.

“We’re gonna need a shovel, a big flower pot, and some potting soil.”

“On it!”  Casey popped his skates on and zoomed around the corner.

Raph, in the meantime, drew his sai from his belt, giving them a practiced little spin as he regarded the cracking pavement.  “Eh, this shouldn’t be too hard,” he stated, plunging them into the asphalt with one hand and then the next, while Shasta looked on, with anxious cries of, “Be keahful!  Yoah gonna huht yoahself!  Oh deah…”

“What, this?” he smiled back.  “This is nothin’.  I was built for breakin’ shit!”

“Watch ya language, young man,” the daisy chastised with a pointing leaf.  “So, this happened tah you too, three weeks ago?”

“Me?  Nah… Me an’ my brothers have been around a lot longer.”  Tossing chunks of busted asphalt to the side, the turtle smirked to himself with an amused little noise.  “Funny, all these years, we expected anyone who saw us would scream and run away, like nothing in the world could be weirder than a giant humanoid turtle.  Gotta say, you’re taking this pretty well, actually.”

Shasta reached forward to pet his hand with a leaf.  “Sweethawt, yoah helping’ me!  I don’t keah if yah a tuhtle oah a tarantula oah a can ah tomatah soup… yah savin’ my loife!”  She looked down toward her roots.  “Nawt that running would be much of an awption at this junctchah.…”  She paused, looking around surreptitiously.  “Though between you an’ me, I’m glad yah nawt the tarantula.  Hahrrible things!  Awl legs an’ heah…”

Raph yawned, patting his mouth as he did.  He slid his shell down the wall of the building beside the little mutant plant.  Funny, he hadn’t even felt tired before.  “Saw this guy we know earlier… We call him Spider Bytez…  He got turned into a mutant spider, though he just kinda came out looking like a ball of ugly… legs coming out the top of his head, spits acid…  Honestly, might be an improvement on his looks from before, though…” 

He found himself rambling, then falling into a doze as Shasta replied softly, the peace and warmth in the alley overtaking him. 

His eyes snapped open as his friend shook him awake.  “Dude, wake up, ya freakin’ slacker!  You gonna make me repot the flower lady by myself?”

“Muh…” Raph groaned, taking a deep breath as he tried to regain full consciousness.

Casey stared down at him.  “What, did you guys get high while I was gone or something?”

“We knew a mutant weed…” he said blearily as the human teen helped him to his feet.  “Wonder what’d happen if we smoked him?” he giggled.

Glaring, Casey slapped his cheeks a couple of times.  He was less than gentle about it.  “What is wrong with you?!  And the hell is all this yellow dust on you?” 

“Eh?”  The turtle brushed his shoulder, then looked at the golden specks strewn over his hand.  He sniffed at the substance, then sneezed, wrinkling his beak.  “Pollen?”  He shook his head, trying to clear the urge to fall back asleep.

The little flower looked aghast.  “Was that from me?  Oh deah… Rapahel, honey, awh you alloygic?”

“No, I’m… I’m good,” he replied, snapping out of it.  Getting to his feet, he looked over the shopping cart of things Casey had brought as the young man pulled the shovel out of it.  Casey carefully broke the soil around the plant mutant, only earning one loud a complaint from Shasta when he got a little too close and cut a root-tip.  Raph then used his sai to lever her out of the hole and Casey helped lift her into the 20” pot and pack it with the potting soil. 

But once Shasta had been settled in and given another drink of water (just the roots this time), they found themselves at a loss.  The boys looked at the now-potted daisy.  “Now what do we do with her?” Casey pondered, packing a little extra dirt around her for good measure.

Raphael gave a noncommittal grunt, tossing the shovel into the cart and then lifting the heavy, full pot in after it.  “Well, we can’t just leave her here…”

“You boys have done quoite enough… I can’t even begin ta thank ya!  But I think I can handle moyself from heeah.  Look…”  Using her leaves, the Queens flower managed to take hold of the shovel leaning against her pot, maneuvering it through the bars of the shopping cart until the handle touched the ground.  Leaning as far as she could and grasping just below the shovel blade, she managed to lever the cart forward a few inches, then she tilted the handle to another angle and pushed herself along again.  The two teens looked on skeptically as she inched along.  “Look at me go, I’m loike a little gawndoliah!  Owh solow mioh…” 

Casey snickered to himself at her caterwauling.  Raph just rolled his eyes.  “Shasta, where do you think you’re going, exactly?”

“Moy sistah’s place, a’coase.  She dasn’t live too fawh from heeah.”

“How far exactly?” Raph queried.

“Abaout a moyle, offa Foaty-foath.”  They watched the cart scoot three inches, then another three, as the little flower groaned, pushing her hardest.  Raph turned to Casey, shaking his head, and the two began a muted conversation, not noticing the flower-powered shopping wagon beginning to pick up speed on a slight incline.  Surprised by the sudden speed she was attaining, Shasta let out a startled gasp and tried to brake with the shovel, which was torn out of her weak grip by the cart’s momentum, then let out a yell for help as her wagon canted to the side and her pot slid around in the basket, crashing against its side and tipping it further.

Casey reacted with a little yelp, leaped two steps and took hold of the cart’s handle before it could tip any further down the driveway.  “Ya alright there, Shasta?”

The daisy gave a relieved huff, a few tiny white petals drifting down around her as she shook herself.  “Foine… Thank you, Casey,” she said resignedly.  “Boys, I’m afraid Auntie Shasta’s gonna hafta impinge upawn yah hawspitality fuh a little loangah…”

It took longer than Raphael had thought it would to reach the brownstone apartment building Shasta directed them to… He wasn’t used to traveling on crowded daytime streets, especially not with a shopping cart in tow, and he was realizing the turtles’ usual route across the rooftops was much more efficient as the crow flies, or as the ninja leapt.  But, with the roofs posing more risk than usual and not particularly wanting to have to carry the heavy clay pot and its occupant three quarters of a mile, the slow route it was.

Nevertheless, the trio finally reached the specified building in about 45 minutes.  Raph leaned down and lifted the daisy mutant and her pot from the basket while Casey steered the cart around to the side of the brownstone’s steps.  Then they entered the building, taking the stairs to the third floor. 

“Three-oh-three, that’s her,” Shasta pointed out with one leaf. 

The turtle started to step forward, but Casey blocked him with an arm.  “Maybe I better go first… just in case.  She might react better to a human being instead of a turtle and a talking houseplant… No offense, Shasta.”

“None taken,” Shasta replied lightly as Casey knocked on the door.  A few moments later, he tried again.  No answer.

“Noahmally she’s home this toyme a’ day…” the daisy mused, concern in her voice.

“Here, let me…”  The turtle passed Shasta’s pot over to the human teen and pulled  his lockpicks from his belt.  Within a few seconds, he had popped the lock open. 

“Raphael, honey, you awh one handy tuhtle ta know!”

The red-banded turtle threw a smirk her way.  “All turtles know how to pick locks.  It’s part of our natural skill set.”

“Go awhn…”  the daisy flapped a leaf at him.  He swung the door open, peeking inside and seeing no one in the immediate area: a kitchen with a pass-through and a living room setup.  Half-closed blinds let a little indirect midday light in, but seemed to indicate that no one was home.  He waved Casey and Shasta into the dim room.

Shasta had no qualms about stealth.  “ESTELLE!” she shrilled at a pitch and volume that had Raph’s panicked eardrums trying to vacate his skull.  Casey, too, winced, not expecting such harsh sound to come from the little flower.  “Estelle, awh you home?!”

Another moment of silence followed, and Casey decided, “Think we can count that as a ‘no.’”   He set her pot down on the coffee table as he began poking around while Raph did a quick check of the bedroom, bath, hallway linen closet, and a second bedroom that was being used as a sewing room.  Casey meanwhile moved to the kitchen, possibly looking to raid the fridge.  He opened it, then hastily slammed it closed again, coughing and waving a hand in front of his nose.  “Man… Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a while.”

“Like about three weeks, ‘a while’?” Raph called back.

“Yeah,” the teen nodded morosely.  “You alright, Shasta?”

The daisy’s eyes were locked on a wilted houseplant at the other end of the table she’d been set on.  Raph could practically read her thoughts.  “Case,” he muttered, and once he had his friend’s attention, looked toward Shasta and  then jerked his head toward the hallway while he blocked the flower mutant’s view with his shell.

“Right.”  Catching on quick, Casey took Shasta away from the flopped-over plant while Raph carefully examined it.

 After prodding the limp leaves a bit, Raph let out a relieved breath.  “It’s okay… it’s not h—it’s not a mutant,” he quickly amended.

“Oh thank Gawd,” Shasta’s voice carried back as the boy returned with her.  She regarded the plant again as she was set down, but clearly her thoughts were on her missing sibling.  “I was counting awn hah bein’ heeah so she could take keah ah me…”

“Any other ideas where she’d be?” Raph asked, and the flower pondered.

“Befoah I left, she was kvetching that she had tah retuhn some shoes.  If she went out royt aftah I left… She’dda been cauwt in that mutagen rain thingie too…  Theah’s no telling wheah she could be…”

“Or what,” Casey added.  Raph whapped his arm.  “Ow!  What?”

“Don’t make me beat some sensitivity into you!”

A sob from Shasta stopped any sensitivity training in progress, as both boys looked over to her.  “I just don’t know what ta do…” she said, choking up.  “She’s the only family I had heeah… awl the rest ‘a the family is eithah in Washington state oah Awkansaw…  Hell, I can’t even take keah’a moyself in moy own home loike this!  What am I gonna do?”

“Don’t worry, Shasta,” Raph called.  “We’ll figure something out.”  He stepped into the kitchen, motioning for Casey to follow.  “What do we do here?”

“You’re asking me??  You gonna take her to the lair?  Maybe Splinter’s bonsai could use some company…”

The turtle shook his head emphatically.  “Splinter’d have my shell!  We can’t just bring every random mutant we meet to the lair… we’ve got enemies that could and would torture the location out of them or use them to bait us out.”

“Yeah,” the teen agreed.  “I’ve been on the receiving end of that a time or two.”

“Could you put her up?”

Casey looked dubious.  “I guess… but…”

“But what?”

“Joneskitty kinda likes to sit on our houseplants until they break…”

Raph grimaced and let out an annoyed sigh.  “Keep one of them in your room with the door closed, then!”

“Dude, that cat can freakin’ teleport into a closed room.  She’s sneaky… I’m surprised you’re not related, the way she ninjas around!  She’ll find a way in or just storm the gates when I go in or out!  At least Ice Cream Kitty tends to stay in the freezer.”

The turtle groaned.  “All right… I guess we go ask Master Splinter.”  The two reemerged from the kitchen.  “You get her, I’ll relock the door.”

“Right.  Let’s go, Shasta.”

The flower looked up at him with concern.  “Wheah to?” she said as she was carried out.

“We’re gonna check with Raph’s dad to see if you can stay with them.  Chateau le Jones ain’t the most houseplant-friendly.”

“Muchly appreciated… theah’s nawt a whole lawt I could do ta defend moyself loike this, ya know,” she replied as Raph finished locking up and slipped his picks back in his belt.  Once at the bottom of the stairs, Raphael retrieved the shopping cart and Shasta was placed in the basket again.  When the cart was wheeled back onto the sidewalk, the turtle steering it turned north.

“Whoa, whoa, Raph… you lose your bearings?  The lair’s back this way…” Casey corrected, pointing south.

“Eh, you’re not wrong,” Raphael conceded with a for-all-I-care shrug, and kept going.

“But…?” Casey prompted.

Raph smirked at his friend.  “Master Splinter’s out, meditating in Central Park.  First time he’s been able to come above ground in daylight for sixteen years, you think he’s gonna miss the opportunity?  Leo probably went back to join him after we left.”

“Masteh?  I thawt ya said he was ya fawthah!”  The daisy bent herself around to shoot a curious and somewhat concerned look at the turtle.  “’Masteh’ sounds like yoah a slave, oah something’.  Oah a pet.”  Her eyes suddenly widened as Raph’s expression scrunched up.  “Oh, honey, I’m sahrry… I didn’t mean nothing’ buy it…”

The red-banded turtle gave a heavy exhale.  “ ’s fine, Shasta.  It’s just… that’s the second time today I’ve been reminded without the mutagen, I’d‘ve been nothing but a little terrarium turt.”  He schooled his face to a more even expression and turned his eyes back to the street.  “But our father raised us as children, not pets.  When your pets mutate and start crying like human children, that’s not just something you can easily ignore,” he said, the smirk creeping into his voice.  “But we call him Master Splinter, because he’s a master of ninjutsu.  From age five, we started our ninjutsu training.  He said that if we were gonna study under him, we had to show respect for him at all times, so we all started calling him Master or Sensei pretty much full time.  Well, Donnie’s got a gap in his teeth and had trouble saying either for a couple years … came out more like ‘Maft-ther Thplinter’ and ‘Thenthei’ when he said it.”

Casey snickered beside him, chocking that tidbit up as anti-Donnie ammo for later.  “Nice!  I can’t wait to—”  But he never got to say what he couldn’t wait to.  At that instant, a large, mangy, but panicked-looking shepherd mutant came stumbling backward and sideways into Shasta’s chariot from the intersecting street.  Shasta slid across the cart’s bottom with a dismayed yell, and Casey immediately leapt in to keep it upright as the mutant continued his fall against it.  The dog cowered, throwing a hand up to shield himself, and not a moment too soon, as the business end of a broom came down at his face repeatedly.

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa!” Raph interceded, catching the broom handle in a sai before too many strikes had been delivered.  He looked up into the enraged eyes of a Middle-Eastern shopkeeper, and meeting aggression with aggression, put on his most defiant look… the one he usually saved for Leo when the leader was being an intolerable, smug ass.

“Filthy mutant!” the man shouted, pointing at the scrawny dog, hardly acknowledging the fact he was talking to a giant turtle.  “He steal from my store!  He not pay!  Shoplifter!”

The dog continued to shrink against the shopping cart, trembling in fear, its ears back.  “Lo siento… lo siento, por favor…  Necessitamos la comida…”

“He says they need the food,” Casey translated, causing Raph to blink at him.

“You know Spanish?”

Casey gave a shrug that was all gangly arms.  “Took a couple semesters for my fallback plan.  Gotta know the lingo if you’re gonna chase bounty heads cross-borders.”  He looked down at the whimpering shepherd, and the few items it cradled in the arm it wasn’t using to fend away any oncoming blows: two cans of tuna, one of beans, a small box of dogfood, a sack of dog biscuits.

“We speak Eenglish in this country!” the shopkeeper spat at the dog mutant in the meantime, trying to yank his broom from Raph’s grip.  But the ninja was having none of it, whipping the handle away from the man and snapping the flimsy plastic handle over his knee.  He fixed a threatening glare on him, lower jaw jutting.  The man took a step back, intimidated, but still railing about his lost goods.

“He take them!  He no pay!  You want, you pay!  Stupid, filthy—”

“ENOUGH!!” Shasta shrieked angrily, stunning the man to silence.  Up until this point, he had not even noticed her, but she was certainly making herself known now.  “This city’s been toined upsoyde down, people’s loyves been ruined, animals suddenly gettin’ human intelligence and you think they know awl sosoyety’s ins an’ outs?!  Wheah the hell is a dawg sapposed ta get money, ya Neandahthawl?!  You oughtta be ashamed ‘a yoahself… He’s stealin’ food, ya insensitive schmuck!  People awh stawvin’ in the streets out heah, an’ yoah warried about bein’ out seven fifty foah some Kibbles an’ Bits?!  Fuh the love a’ Gawd… Shame… awn… you!”

“Shasta!” Raph exclaimed, trying to chastise, but coming off as impressed instead.  The little flower-lady really knew how to turn up the drama!  She seemed pretty proud of her little tirade too, her stem bent slightly back as she crossed her leaves defiantly.

The shopkeep scowled, looking as if he was about to start in again when Casey pulled his wallet and yanked a few rumpled bills from it, throwing them at the man’s face and stalking away.  “Choke on it.  Cheap bastard…”  The man scowled at him, hesitating to pick up the money, as accepting it would also be accepting the insult, but did as soon as he thought none of them were looking and retreated wordlessly and sulkily into his corner grocery.

Raph glanced around, noting the troublesome mutant had slipped away during Shasta’s lecture.  But he hadn’t gotten far, crouched meekly, tail tucked, ears down, and shivering, huddling up against the wall of an alley across the street with his small cache of food in his arms.  The turtle shifted his eyes sideways to his friend.  “He’s not eating it.”

Casey replied without meeting Raph’s eyes, also watching the shepherd.  “He said, ‘we need it.’  He’s takin’ it back to someone else.” 

“Not right now, he isn’t…”  Sure enough, it seemed that rather than going anywhere, the dog was waiting for a panic attack to subside after his bad encounter.

A look of concern fell over the flower-mutant’s face.  “Casey, take me ovah tah him, wouldja?”

“You sure, Shasta?” the teen asked as he lifted her out of the cart once again.  The flower bobbed her head once resolutely in response, and Casey obediently carried her toward the terrified mutant.

She motioned for Casey to lower her down, and when she found she couldn’t lean far enough, he also angled the pot a bit so she could reach the mongrel’s head with her leaves.  The dog didn’t seem to like his space invaded, baring his teeth at the intruders, but began to calm as Shasta spoke in a soothing tone, even if he couldn’t understand her language.  “Theah, theah, honey… everything’s gonna be awl right now… Don’t you warry.  That’s a good dawg.  Yes.”

The mutant’s whines tapered off, becoming sighs instead.  His body began to relax, the tension leaving his limbs as he responded to Shasta’s words.  His eyes even glazed a bit, looking like he was about to fall asleep. 

Raph looked on, suddenly noting the yellow specks on the black fur of the scrawny dog’s shoulders.  Then he noticed some drifting down from Shasta’s petals as she shook her head, emphasizing her calming words.  “It’s her pollen!” he declared. 

“Moy what?!” she exclaimed.

“That’s what had me so knocked out earlier!  It must work like some kind of soporific or something…”

“Sopo-what, now?” Casey queried.  “That’s a Nerdatello word if I ever heard one.”

“Like, uh… something that makes you calm or sleepy.  Like warm milk.”

“Oy can do that?” Shasta asked, disbelieving.

Casey grinned back at her.  “Congrats, Shasta!  You’ve got a freaky mutant power!”

“Huh,” grinned the daisy.  “How d’ya loike that?”

The dog mutant shook himself and sat up a bit, slightly pulling out of his pollen-induced stupor.  “Amigos, gracias.  Venid conmigo, por favor,” he said, gathering his small bounty.  He gave a sideways nod toward the street.  “Vamos!” he called and beckoned encouragingly when the confused group didn’t move.

“He, uh… he wants us to come with him.”

“Debemos ayudarnos unos a otros.  Ustedes me ayudasteis.  Déjame hacer lo mismo,” the dog grinned, wagging its tail.

Casey looked dubious.  “I… didn’t catch all that… it’s a bit above my level… but I think…  We helped him, so he wants to do something for us now.”

Raph rolled his eyes.  “Alright… What’s one more detour?”  Casey settled Shasta in her cart again, and the trio set off, following their new acquaintance. 

“Hey, uh, amigo!” Casey hollered toward the leading mutant.  “Como se llama?”

The shepherd spun around, walking backward to answer him.  “Poquito!”

The teen scrunched his brows together.  “Poquito?” he mused to himself.  “Who calls a guy that big ‘Poquito’?!”

Chapter Text

What the Duck

The blue-banded turtle stared down at the little speckled and bespectacled female mallard before him. She pushed her glasses up higher on her beak, gazing up at him.

“I saw you fight,” she said at long last, in the nasal voice one would expect from a duck according to cartoons everywhere. It was hard to guess her age because of it, but there was a definite shyness to her tone. “How you took that bull-mutant down with no weapons and stopped him from robbing the store just by poking him. It was… really great.”

“Oh, um… thanks!” he responded.

“If you could do that, why the swords?”

Leo sighed knowingly. “Sometimes people need a little… incentive to do what’s right. Sometimes they’re to defend against attackers. Sometimes they’re to stop people from harming others. ” He smirked. “And I like some chopped vegetables now and then.”

The mallard made no response at his jibe, but tilted her head curiously. “Did you ever kill anyone?”

The turtle shook his head. “My code of honor, the way of Bushido, forbids the taking of a life in all but the most dire of circumstances.”

“Whoa,” said the awed duck, pinning her as much younger than he’d previously thought. Then he thought he might be mistaken when she said, “I need a bodyguard.”

He blinked at her. “A bodyguard?”

She looked away, casting a glance over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t be able to pay very much… I only get five dollars a week for allowance, but I’ve got a lot saved up, and have some savings bonds… so maybe that’s enough to have you around part of the day, for a little while, at least…”

“Whoawhoa… wait…” Leo said. “Why do you need a bodyguard?!” He took a seat on the curb beside her.

The duck… well, ducked. Her voice dropped to just above a whisper, and she seemed ashamed when she said, “There’s some kids who like to bully me…”

“Bully you?” the turtle leader echoed, eyes opening in shock, then narrowing in anger at the thought. “How do they bully you?”

Mallard girl shifted uneasily from foot to foot as she answered lowly. “They steal my stuff, they wreck my homework, they call me names and sometimes they follow me around and throw rocks at me… Try to break my glasses…”

Leo looked aghast. “And don’t you have anyone to help you? Your parents, or teachers…?”

She shook her head. “Mom’s tried to talk to the school, but they don’t do anything. The kids that gang up on me, maybe they get talked to, but that’s all the school ever does. My teachers kind of look out for me, but they can’t be there all the time or before or after school. Even if I’m the one getting bullied, the school blames it on me… like if I didn’t stick my neck out— If I’d stand up for myself—“ She huffed, frustratedly shaking her feathers out. “One time, they threw some of my books in the toilets, and we had to pay for them. And those books are expensive! Seventy-five dollars, used! And Mom can barely make rent as it is and she works two jobs.”

“And… your dad?” Leo prompted, not expecting a good response, but also not expecting the reaction she did give.

The duck exhaled angrily out her beak. “Do we h-have to t-t-talk about this?”

He could tell from the stammering and hitching breaths that she was on the verge of tears, trying desperately to hold them back, to not show weakness… He patted her shoulders lightly. “No. Not if you don’t want to.”

She took another couple of deep breaths to calm down enough to continue. “School’s cancelled for now, but it’s not gonna be forever, and then what?”

Leo looked around as if the answer would be somewhere in the general vicinity. Since he had never been to school, he had no idea ‘then what’. “I… uh…”

“Well, look at me! I’m a damned duck! Like I wasn’t enough to make fun of before! They’ll probably try to pull my feathers out. “ She sighed, then mumbled, “Not like I can even lift one of those 75-dollar books like this…” She pulled a wing in front of her face to glare at it. “Maybe I won’t even go back… Just ditch my glasses and go swim around Lake Belvedere with all the other stupid ducks and eat bread crusts the old people throw… At least I wouldn’t have to worry about bullies then…”

Leonardo scowled. “Now, that’s enough! You’re not going to spend your life in a pond, pretending to be an animal when you’re perfectly mentally capable. You’ll be able to go to school, and I’ll be around to make sure nothing happens to you.”

“You’ll really help me then?” she asked cautiously, almost waiting for Leo to immediately go back on his word. “How much? Just to escort me to and from school, and maybe between classes…?”

Leo paused, deliberating. A young girl, mutated, bullied, clearly from a disadvantaged, single-parent family, and willing to pay out of her own pocket for his protection… He didn’t want to charge her anything, but she stopped him, pointing a wing-tip at his beak. “If I’m paying you, it’s like we have a contract… I know you’re not going to go back on me or anything.”

He blinked at her. This was one shrewd kid. “All right, then,” he agreed. “How about…ten cents an hour?”

Her eyes went wide. “…I…” she started, sounding overwhelmed with emotion once again.

“Fine, then, six cents,” Leo haggled down.

“…But…” she choked out. “You can’t…”

“Five cents, and that’s my final offer.” He crossed his arms and stuck his nose in the air, quite firm on the point. He cracked an eye to smirk down at her, then offered his hand for her to shake as she bewilderedly accepted, nodding. She set her wing in his hand, shaking it as well as she could manage with a bunch of feathers. “Leonardo Hamato, ninja bodyguard, at your service.” She looked about to return her name, then closed her beak, blushing and turning away. He wasn’t letting it go, though. “And, you are?” She looked even more abashed, practically hiding between her wings. “Come on, I should know who I’m working for, shouldn’t I?” he encouraged softly.

She mumbled something so low he had to have her repeat it, but she eventually spoke up loud enough for him to hear. “Esther… Esther Maddoc.”

“Nice to meet you, Esther,” he said, and the little mallard let out a soft groan, making him frown. “What is it? You don’t like your name?”

“No. I hate it!”

“I think it’s a fine name,” Leo said, guiding her to the stoop of a nearby brownstone, where they sat together. “But more important is why you don’t like it.”

Esther wasted no time in answering. “‘Esther’ is an old lady name. It’s ugly, and they make fun of me for it. They call me ‘Es-turd’ or ‘Es-nerd.’ And Maddoc…” She gave an aggravated sigh. “Now it’s only going to be ‘Mad Duck’ all the time…”

A puff of breath left Leo’s lips in appreciation of the girl’s situation, and he shook his head. “Alright… what would you like to be called instead? Maybe we can give you a nickname that isn’t ‘Mad Duck’ or ‘Es-turd’…” After a moment of thought, she looked back up to him and shrugged. Leo gave a small grunt. “Shame my brother Mikey isn’t here… He’s the naming genius of the family.” He paused to rack his brain. “We could go with just the first letter… Sometimes we call Donnie ‘D’ for short.”

The duck shook her head. “ ’E’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it…”

Leo pondered for another moment, tapping knuckle against his lip. “They call me ‘Leo’… maybe just a shortening, or something with the beginning…”

“Just sounds like another letter.”

“Es… es… aes…” he said, playing with the sound. “… Aes… Ace? How about Ace?”

She brightened. “I like it.”

Leo nodded. “Ace, it is! Nice to meet you, Ace!” he re-greeted warmly, offering his hand again. She laughed dorkily and played along, shaking it again.

She let out a relieved sort of sigh. “So now what do we do?”

He mulled it over for a moment, rubbing his chin. “Presumably, anything you want. I can’t be the one telling you where to go and what to do.” She withered a bit, having hoped for a better suggestion from him. “How about you take me around all the places you usually go, so I can get a lay of the land?”

She heartily agreed, and showed him the route she took to and from school, then to a hobby and craft shop, where she picked out a model kit for a B-17 Flying Fortress and a book detailing how to make 20 kinds of paper airplanes. “I wanted these for a long time,” she explained, “but I was saving my money for a bodyguard. But since you’re so cheap—well, I don’t mean cheap but…” she stammered and trailed off.

“…cost effective?” he supplied, and she became more chipper.

“Yeah! –now I can afford them.”

“You like planes, huh?”

She gave an enthused nod back. “Love them. Anything that flies. I collect feathers too—I’d found a pretty one with a blue stripe on it just before the Megarift happened… I thought it was maybe from something awesome, but, uh…” She lifted her wings to glare at them. “…just a common duck feather, apparently.” She quickly shifted tack, brushing the box of the model with her feather tips. “Aeronautics is really cool. I want to be a pilot someday… well, if they’ll let me, if I can get my eyes fixed. And, ya know… have hands. Have you ever been to the Air and Space Museum?” Leo shook his head and huh-uhed quietly, letting her go on about the topic she seemed to be getting a lot of enjoyment out of as they paid and exited with the turtle ninja carrying her purchases… it was the most open and exuberant he’d seen her. “They have this flight simulator there… I can do a perfect takeoff and landing on it!”

“My brother Donnie built us a blimp,” he mentioned, watching her eyes light up. “Maybe when the whole mutant thing cools down a little and he comes home, we can show it to you.”

“Really?!” she squealed. “That would be SO COOL!” She inadvertently backed into someone as she threw her wings out in excitement. Turning to apologize, she froze, and all enthusiasm immediately drained out of her.

The boy turned and eyed her, popping a grape in his mouth from the bunch in his hand. Dawning recognition crossed his face when he caught sight of her glasses, as did a wicked sneer. “Es-turd?” he grinned, spitting as he spoke. “Well, look at you! ”

Ace backed away from him until she bumped up against Leonardo’s leg. “M…Martín…”

“D’ those come out?” he said, bending down and making to pinch one of her feathers. “D’they hurt?” She squeaked and made an awkward waddle-trip-fall behind Leo, while Martín came face to face with himself, reflected in the blade of a very sharp sword. He straightened up, looking into the unflinching face of the turtle wielding it.

“Martín, is it?” Leo said in an unamused tone. “We haven’t met yet. I’m Esther—Ace’s—bodyguard.”

“B-bodyguard?” the boy echoed, nearly choking on his food. Then he put on a braver face. “Es-turd can’t afford a bodyguard!”

“I can so,” she retorted meekly. He took a step toward her, and she stepped back. Leo barred his way as he made to grab at her again. The kid looked up at him critically.

“You’re not a real bodyguard. Read bodyguards have guns. Not swords. Swords are lame. You can’t shoot anybody with a sword!”

Ace gasped and took another step backward, looking through her feathered fingers, apparently fearing bloodshed. Leo, though raising a brow in annoyance, remained in his self-assured posture. “Guns are the weapons of a coward. It’s much more… personable to trade steel with your opponent face to face.”

But, the kid pressed on, trying to discredit him. “They’re fake!”

“Oh? And how many swords have you seen?”

“Well… a lot, on TV…”

Leo eyed him coolly. “Perhaps a demonstration is in order.” He reached for the boy’s grapes. “May I?”

Martín gave a short nod. Leo plucked a single grape from the bunch and tossed it in the air, then whipped both ninjaken from their scabbards, whirling them around in a graceful dance, and caught the grape on the flat of one blade. It held its shape for a second, then fell apart into twelve segments. Both kids “Whoa!”-ed in awe. He offered the sliced fruit first to his charge, who pecked a number of pieces up in her beak, then to Martín, who only stared, probably more concerned with the blade’s edge pointed toward him.

“See? He’s awesome.” Ace puffed out her feathers with pride, but withered with Martín’s next statement.

“Whatever she’s paying you, I can pay you double if you come work for me.”

Because ten cents an hour is such a step up from five… Leo thought to himself with the barest of eyerolls. Miami beachhouse, here I come. The turtle bodyguard picked the remaining grape from his blade and popped it in his mouth, wiping the blade clean on the tail of his mask and resheathing it behind him. He regarded Ace’s crestfallen but resigned visage from the corner of his eye. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

“Well, what is it? Ten dollars an hour? Fifteen? Whatever it is, I can offer more!”

“I’m sure you can, but that’s irrelevant. Ace and I have a contract.”

The kid’s face scrunched up piggishly. “Break it… I bet you will if I give you enough, and I can, too!”

He could feel Ace’s tense, tenuous gaze up at him. He caught her eye for a second, his firm, warm look lending her a bit of confidence. “…which is something I’d do if I had no sense of honor, but you seem to have mistaken me for someone with little or none.” A muted “Ooohh!” issued from behind his leg.

Martín spent the next minute opening and closing his mouth as he searched for a retort, but it was clear he was coming up empty. Leo bent over him, leaning into the boy’s space, icy glare full of steadfast intimidation. “I suggest you leave.” He left the unspoken threat hang over the boy’s head.

The bully backed off several paces, then turned and walked stiffly away, snarling after him, “Yeah, well… you just go have your fun with Plane Jane then…”

Leo humphed, watching the little coward go.

Ace reveled in the moment, but her triumph waned quickly. “He’ll go tell the others, you know,” she warned. “One of them on their own is bad enough, but all six of them in a pack…”

Leo couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped him, even though the duck stared incredulously up at him. “Six…” he muttered, trying but unable to hold back the grin. He thought of the armies of Foot soldiers and robots they’d had to go up against, whole squadrons at a time, thirty or more per turtle, and then he considered the eminent threat of six whole junior high school bullies, against himself. Laughable, indeed. How the mighty had fallen…

But he looked down to meet Ace’s fearful eyes. She was scared of these other kids, perhaps even more than she had been originally, as small and vulnerable as she now was. It was a big problem in her world, one she’d sought help and protection to solve. His help. And he couldn’t discredit her quite legitimate fears. Perhaps there was something else he could do for her, though.

“Hey, Ace,” he said, picking up her items again, “why don’t we go somewhere quiet? Somewhere you’re comfortable.”

The mallard thought for a second, and nodded. “Our front stoop is pretty nice….”

The pair sat on the steps of a red brick apartment complex. Leo allowed Ace to settle before explaining, “As your new bodyguard, I will, of course, protect you whenever I am around. But there will be times when I can’t be there.”

“I understand that,” the mallard mutant replied. “So, you want me to stay inside when you’re not around?” she anticipated.

Leonardo shook his head. “Not as such. You shouldn’t have to be afraid to go out on your own, but there’s some things I’d like to teach you, if you’d like to learn, so that you’ll be able to defend yourself. Up for it?”

The duck gasped and tottered over to him, throwing her wings around his arm in an approximation of a hug. “Leo, you are the best!” she squealed.

“All right, then… Let’s start with the first thing I learned as a ninja: meditation.” He moved into position, describing his posture. “Sit cross-legged, back straight, hands turned upward and resting on your knees, eyes closed… Clear your mind of all intruding thoughts. This is how we center ourselves, to find a sense of…”

He heard a muffled “Wak!” beside him, and the shuffling of feathers against the concrete. Cracking an eye open, he watched her topple over on her rump, throwing a wing out to catch herself, as she attempted to cross a backbent pair of non-humanoid legs that was clearly not suited for sitting in lotus position.

“…balance.” It was hard not to feel sorry for her, but he pushed that out of his thoughts and wiped the touch of pity off of his expression. “Er… Sit in a way that’s comfortable for you,” he instructed instead. “Not so comfortable you’ll fall asleep… Maintain an alert posture.”

Esther sat with her feet beneath her and her neck straight, put her wings out in front of her and turned the outer tips up, approximating Leo’s pose as much as she could. She maintained this pose for half a minute before canting to the side and having to rebalance herself on a wing and straighten her glasses.

Leo let out a slight sigh, not loud enough for Ace to hear. He pinched his chin between his thumb and forefinger. Any idea Leo had had of teaching her martial arts flew out the window like a duck heading south for the winter. Her body simply wasn’t designed for it. Surely there were other skills he could teach her than how to fight, but he’d have to dig deep for them. How did one teach confidence? How had Master Splinter instilled it in them

This wasn’t going to be easy…

Chapter Text

Of Rats and Women

Splinter sat meditating, allowing the atmosphere of the park seep into his soul in a way he hadn’t experienced in sixteen years. His senses remained alert and aware of his environment, always prepared for an unforeseen attack. He assumed, though, that chances for such were slim. Shredder knew nothing of his or his sons’ outing, certainly would not think to look for him in Central Park, likely would not be out searching for anything during daylight hours, and if he was, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles; there were so many varied mutants across New York now, one couldn’t swing a nunchaku without hitting three.

Even while in deep concentration, he could read the intent of each passerby. He occasionally felt curious eyes on him, though certainly a rat mutant in a kimono was not the most shocking thing anyone had seen today. Some, like the leery jogger from earlier, veered away from him, as if the very presence of a mutant was somehow a threat. As his sons would put it, As if. Most spared him a glance or none at all, going about their leisure within the tiny slice of nature. He could mark it on the edge of his awareness, whether a person’s gait faltered at the sight of him, shuffled awkwardly to the far side of the path, or kept going without pause. He contemplated what each’s reaction would be if he opened his eyes, pinned them with his gaze as they passed, how much more threatening they would find him.

His ears picked up the sound of light, steady footfalls; a speedwalker, likely a woman, by the lightness of the gait. An unsteadiness on her right side indicated some stiffness in a hip or knee, possibly due to aging. He felt her eyes on him. She slowed.

She stopped.

Curious himself, the rat opened his eyes, slowly, so as not to startle her. His gaze was greeted by hazel eyes, iron-gray hair framing her face. He drew up slightly in shock; he recognized her, though from sight only. Her hair had been pure black then, and smile lines now creased her eyes and cheeks.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I’m terribly sorry! I didn’t mean to disturb you… I just…”

Splinter shook his head. “No disturbance at all, madam.”

“May I join you?”

“Please,” he nodded. “I would welcome the company.”

She moved onto the grass to sit beside him. “It’s just that I wondered if… “ She flapped a hand, looking flustered. “No, I’m certainly just being silly.”

He gave her a knowing grin. “The only silly question is one unasked,” he stated, only to then think of his youngest… Sensei, if the sun was green, would people get a teal instead of a tan? He sighed briefly to himself. Sometimes there was no answering Michelangelo’s “creative” questions.

“Well, in that case, how can I not?” she chuckled. “A long while back, years ago, when I would jog this path, I would see a troubled-looking Asian gentleman in a burgundy kimono, sitting here to meditate. Then, one day, I came to realize, he simply wasn’t there anymore. And nowadays, with all of this mutant business… Well… I happen upon a quite striking giant rat, wearing a very familiar kimono.”

Splinter let out a laugh. “You have quite a memory! I remember you as well. Indeed, that was myself, many years ago. Having lost all I held dear in Japan, I emigrated to America. One day, I decided to purchase some pets to fill the void in my life, four baby turtles. I happened to follow some suspicious-acting men down an alley, where I was splashed by mutagen….”

“You mean to say you were mutated all those years ago?”

“Correct.”

“And the Megarift disaster… it’s just the same thing happening all over again?”

“Yes, on a much larger, more devastating scale. My sons, my turtles, have had many encounters in trying to stop these aliens, head-on. We have never seen the Kraang attempt such a scattershot attack, and due to the facility on the other side of the portal exploding, I believe the Megarift to be accidental, a disaster for them as well, though no less devastating than one of the Kraang’s actual attacks.”

The woman snapped her fingers, making a connection. “Your sons are the turtles that were on the news, aren’t they? The other world expert, and the scientist working on the retromutagen cure… The… Homotos?”

“Hamatos, yes. Michelangelo and Donatello jumped in to offer their expertise at once. They make me quite proud.”

“Indeed they should,” his companion acknowledged. “Please pass on my appreciation for what they are doing.”

Splinter bowed his head to her graciously. “I shall, thank you. Who shall I say it is from?”

She offered a gentle hand to shake. “Diana Wyznewski.”

“I am Hamato Yoshi,” he said, clasping her hand in both of his own, “though my sons know me as Splinter.”

“Pleased to meet you. Nice to finally be able to put a name to a familiar… well, perhaps ‘face’ isn’t the right word in this instance, but… person?”

A low chuckle escaped him. “Yes, it is difficult to know how to address such things, is it not? The familiar terms do not necessarily fit such bizarre circumstances, when the outside of a person has changed, but the inside remains largely the same.”

She raised a finger in thought. “A new jacket, on a favorite book,” she quipped.

“Well said!”

Their chat went on for quite a while, speaking of his daughter, and of her children and grandchildren, her deceased husband, the good times, the hard times, the plots of soap operas both happened to enjoy and speculation on the fates of certain characters. After nearly an hour, he looked up, noting that dusk was upon them. “It grows late… I have kept you from your walk.”

She laughed melodiously and patted his hand. “Don’t be silly… I can walk any day; it’s not every day you meet an old acquaintance. Though, true… the park isn’t exactly the safest place to be after dark, and I should get going.”

“If you would feel more comfortable with an escort, I would be happy to walk with you.”

“I’d be quite grateful for it. You can’t be too careful around here… I’ve taken self-defense courses, too, you know, and kick-boxing, when I was a bit more spry.”

“Truly?” Splinter commented with earnest interest.

“Oh yes… watch out, or I’ll do sixteen reps of knee-lifts at you,” she threatened with a laugh, demonstrating one, awkwardly slow.

“No, no,” Splinter chortled, waving his paws in defense, “I yield!”

“Thank goodness,” she sighed. “I don’t think my hip could have actually taken that. In any case, while I’m sure I could defend myself if I had to, it’s always best to avoid getting oneself into situations where you can be attacked in the first place, and dark as it’s getting, I’m glad for the company. Safety in numbers. That’s the best defense, they say.”

Outside of her notice, Splinter whipped the switchblade out of the hand of the young thug coming up on his right with his tail, caught it in the hand he held against his back, and tossed it far into the trimmed gorse underbrush on the opposite side of the path. “Quite so,” he replied, walking stick crunching in the dirt of the path.

The disarmed youth, stunned and befuddled, decided it was best to retreat via a separate path.

Given her extra protection, Diana decided to forego the two subway stops to her apartment, instead enjoying a restful pace with Splinter. Even so, they reached the building much too soon for her liking. The rat gentleman intrigued and amused her, and they seemed to share a number of interests in common.

“Well, this is it; home sweet home,” she announced as they climbed the entryway steps together. “Would you care to come in for a cup of tea?”

“Tea, you say?” The rat’s ears perked with interest.

She paused with a gasp. “Oh, wait… that was rather stereotypical to offer a Japanese man, wasn’t it? My apologies…”

Splinter rumbled a laugh. “If there is tea, it is a stereotype I will happily stoop to.”

She ushered him in, bustled to the kitchen to set the electric kettle on, then hopped upstairs for a quick change out of her exercise outfit. She returned a moment later with the pot of hot water and a box of assorted teas. Splinter took quite a while picking through the variety, eventually settling on a bag of ginger ginseng to drop into his awaiting fancy teacup.

“Found one you like at last?” she teased him lightly.

He nodded. “It is an embarrassment of riches… Such variety is not often within our reach, living underground, and only recently able to interact with those on the surface.”

“A bit of luck for you, then, that the Megarift happened.”

“There is that,” he agreed. “Though it feels… strange… For the past sixteen years, my only interaction was with my sons, until last year, when they began going topside. Since then, the number of friends we have met has doubled, tripled our connections. And today, suddenly the entire world is once again available to me. Yet, things have changed over sixteen years… I am no longer certain of my place: if it is here, in this world of humans and mutants together, or if I am best off retreating back to the solitude of our home, remaining comfortably isolated.”

She contemplated for a moment. “Like the silly unasked question, you’ll never know unless you give it a try, will you?”

“This is true,” he granted her. “Similar to the time Alec left for Meso-America, but had to leave a pregnant Christine behind.”

“But then Christine found herself drawn into the dubious Hand gang…”

“…whereupon through rooting through the gang’s files, she found out that Jesse was…”

“…actually Alec’s long-lost fraternal twin!” they chorused, then laughed together.

Their easy conversation continued through another two cups of tea. Splinter sighed, checking the clock and rising. “It grows late… I am expected at home. Alas, today’s foray has made me miss today’s installment of ‘As My Children Turn the World.’”

“Oh… There’s a rerun coming up at nine… Would you like to watch it with me?”

The rat paused to consider, stroking his chin. With Michelangelo and Donatello staying at their respective jobs, and Leonardo and Raphael likely out enjoying their newly attained freedom, Splinter assumed his two eldest would not be home until past midnight. “I suppose I will not be missed if I stay one more hour,” he decided with a bare hint of a grin, and joined her before the television.

Chapter Text

Desk Jockey

Clickety. Click-clack. Clickety. Click-clack. Clickety.

“Mike, would you stop with the pen already?”

Click-clack.

“Oh! Sorry, Charlie.”

“I told you, not Charlie.”

Mikey looked up at the grunt next to him, sitting at a similar table, decked out in the black EPF uniform, slowly running through the alphabet until the slime-mutant before him let out a blurp when he reached T. The man wrote down the letter, then started the alphabet again, working through an extremely complicated, long, and unpredictable Czech name.

“You got it, Chaz-ma-taz.”

The young man rolled his eyes. “Anything but ‘Chaz-ma-taz,’ Mike. … G… H… ”

“You kidding? Chaz-ma-taz is bangin’!”

The other tried to stifle a giggle. “Yeah, it’d be a great stripper name… I’ll save it for my other job.”

Mikey laughed that off, slightly uncomfortably, as he filled out the form in front of him for the next mutant in his own line, who thankfully didn’t have nearly as complicated a case as his work-mate, and the next applicant stepped forward.

“Chaz-ma-taz is so awesome, though! It rhymes with itself and everything! And then when you get frustrated about something, I can say, ‘Don’t has a spaz, Chaz-ma-taz!’”

‘Chaz-ma-taz’ snorted. “For here, I’m gonna need something a little more… professional.”

The turtle looked through the visor of his helmet, aghast. “Professional?!”

He’d happily jumped in with the EPF to offer his expertise on all the Dimension X monsters that had spilled through the Megarift portal. He’d helped the soldiers deal with Traag, and Rocktopuses, and shards of Ka-Blammo-trees without setting them off, Kraathatragons and Winkumblinkums, Click-Clacks and Granitors and... Dimension X was his thing, and he was awesome-socks at it. (He would totally wear awesome-socks if they fit turtle feet.) After all the major threats had been taken care of, Mikey had decided to stay on with the crew, and help out where he could. He helped with some heavy lifting, worked with a team to corral some wild, mental mutants, but after that, there was very little left in his wicked cool ninja skill set that was needed. So he got put on list duty. And desk duty.

Desk duty was definitely not his thing. Nobody wanted to be friends, no one wanted to chat… they just wanted to get their name on the list for retromutagen distribution and go.

And now he was confronted with the “P-word.”

His companion shot him some serious side-eye. “You know, Mikey, you’re gonna have to maintain a professional attitude, or they’re gonna kick you out.”

The terrapin let out a groan at the idea. He wanted to be part of something important… he really did! Here was finally a chance to prove to his brothers that he wasn’t just a goof-up, that he was good at something besides pizza and pranks and wicked skateboard grinding.

Professional-ness it was, then, he sighed.

…Professional-ness was so boring…

He filled out another form, clicked his pen a few times as the next mutant shuffled forward, and turned back toward his neighbor.

“How ‘bout… Mmmh… Chuck! Or Chuckie!”

Possibly-Chuck-slash-Chuckie nodded. “Chuck, then. Don’t nickname me after the cursed doll, though... Now shh! … V …V? All right. A… B…”

“Chuck it is!” Mikey declared, then turned back to his own line of applicants, to fill out another form. And another. And another.

After a while, even the constant stream of mutant oddities became commonplace and dull. Yet another cat mutant. A snake. A blackbird. A bug. Yawn.

He was still due to be here for another five and a half hours, and he was so bored he wasn’t even looking up anymore, leaning so far down on his desk his head was practically invisible, retracted inside its own helmet-shell.

“Last name.” It wasn’t even a question anymore, just a flat statement.

The applicant hesitated, but Mikey didn’t feel the inclination to look up.

“Bradford,” it said raspily, at long length.

“First name.”

“Christopher.”

Christopher was a long name; it took Mikey a while to fill the letters in to the boxes. He clicked his pen.

Bradford, Christopher. Interesting. Something familiar about that resonated in his mind… Bradford Christopher… Bradford Christo—

His eyes moved upward from the paper as puzzle pieces in his head clicked together, and he found himself staring at a desiccated muzzle and yellow eyes.

“Whoa!” he cried, on his feet with one nunchuck drawn behind his head before his wooden chair hit the floor with a resounding smack. The adrenaline flooding his system had him breathing hard already as his highly-trained body prepared him to fight.

Rahzar… didn’t attack. “Michelangelo,” a gruff voice acknowledged. Mikey could only stare.

Shaking his head, he gave a growling sigh. From his left, a familiar red, fanged fish face emerged. “I told you we should have stayed in the other line,” it quipped in its Brazilian accent.

“Naw, this one was moving way faster. You want speed? I know speed. Ee-hee!” objected the warthog mutant behind him, followed by one from the rhino after him.

“What is up-hold? Line is moving like Yenisei River in winter!”

“And nobody noticed the turtle working this desk?!” their canine leader snarled back at them.

“Well…” Fishface started, “there is a cute little fish mutant two lines over. I suppose you could say she… cod my eye.”

“Don’t look at us, dawg—I mean, wolf. You want someone to keep an eye out, have Stockman pick something in the animal kingdom that ain’t particularly known for they bad eyesight!”

“Da,” Rocksteady agreed. “Maybe next time ve get… moose and… skvirrel!”

Rahzar whirled on Bebop. “Does that fancy visor of yours do nothing?”

“It does plenty,” the warthog said, removing the eyewear and spinning it in one hand. “Heat signatures, ultraviolet, super-zoom…” He flipped it in the air, caught it in his opposite hand and set it back across his eyes. “What it can’t do is see to the front of a line in a gymnasium chock full of mutants!”

The necrotic wolf growled in irritation and turned back toward Michelangelo, still frozen in fear and confusion. Behind him and out of his sight, Bebop took his visor off again, turned it over, and set it back on his face, right-side up.

“What are you guys doing here?” Mikey finally managed to ask. Bradford slammed his claws on the desk, the sheer force making it creak.

“What do you think we’re here for, the swimsuit competition?!”

The turtle turned his head, keeping his eyes firmly locked on the Foot mutants. “Chuuuuck? Do we have a swimsuit competition??”

“Mikey!” Chuck hissed, and Mikey shifted his gaze to him. “Professionalism!” he mouthed silently.

“But, they’re…!”

His colleague motioned with his eyes toward the upended chair, and Mikey sighed in resignation. He pocketed his nunchuck, picked the chair up, reseated himself, and nested his fingers before him on the desk. He had a job, and he was honor-bound to carry it out, even toward his enemies. With a flat but pleasant look, he asked calmly, “How can I help you?”

“The retromutagen list,” the werewolf ground out through his teeth. “We want on it!”

“Of course, of course. Last name?”

“We went through this part already!” he snapped, utterly done with the theatrics.

Mikey kept deadpanning him. He’d had years of experience outlasting Raph at this sort of game; he could definitely, and would, keep it up if it needled his enemy.

“Residence? I know that one, if it’s still the old church on Crescent Street… Emergency contact information… Should I put down The Shredder, or would he prefer Oroku Saki?”

Bradford hesitated and looked away. It was such an odd thing for the cocksure mutant to do, Mikey also paused, flipping up the shield of his visor. “He… he knows you’re signing up to get demutated, doesn’t he? He sent you over here, right?”

After another long silence, the horrific mutant crossed his arms and turned as far away from Michelangelo as he could without completely turning his back on him. “No. Put down Xever Montes.”

“Not me! I do not want to be your emergency babysitter!”

“Steranko, then! I don’t care… Just… anyone but the Shredder.”

Mikey gaped at him. “You’re seriously going behind the Shredder’s back on this??”

Rahzar fully turned away at that, nose exaggeratedly high in the air, and said nothing. Fishface filled the silence for him. “Shredder doesn’t care if we are mutants or not; he will find the best use for us whatever our form. But…” he sighed, “Stockman has not exactly been forthcoming with any progress on a cure for us. We are not even certain if Shredder is simply leaving Stockman to his devices, or purposefully withholding the retromutagen from us.”

“Definitively for us,” Rocksteady added, indicating his partner with one plate-sized hand. “Mutation vas punishment for failing at job.”

Mikey blinked at the rhino mutant. “Dude… that’s harsh.”

“You ain’t whistlin’ Dixie, turtle. “Big S an’ me, we’re supposed to be independent mercenaries, dig? And it’s hard to find a gig when everybody turns tail and runs at the sight of ya. The atmosphere’s changed a little but… ya know… I miss my own face, looking in the mirror, you feelin’ me?”

The ninja nodded. “I can totally imagine. Don’t worry… This is confidential information. If Shredder hears anything, it won’t be from me. We’ll get you guys on the list as soon as I’m finished with Rad Brad here…”

Rahzar made a sour face at the nickname, but tapped his claws on the form, directing Mikey’s attention back to it. The sooner it was filled out, the sooner they could get out of here and end the whole awkward encounter. “I miss being an international martial arts superstar…”

Mikey nodded, a feeling of nostalgia running through him. “I miss it too. You were awesome before you turned into a jerk who was trying to kill us all the time.”

Bradford glared, then shrugged and looked away. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one…”

Mikey clicked his pen again and got to writing.

“Now, one last detail… The three of you can get retromutated, no problemo…” he said, nodding to Fishface, Bebop, and Rocksteady, “but Don and Dr. Rockwell are still sorting out double and more mutations, so Rad Brad, you’re on a separate list, and it’s probably going to take longer. They’re looking for volunteers for study, though. The more they have, the bigger the chance they’ll be able to find a way to retromutate you with no weird side-effects. Would you like to sign up?”

The wolf snorted with annoyance, still refusing to make any further eye contact. “Sure… whatever…”

“Initial here; sign and date here… And, we’re all done, Rahzar… I mean, Mister Bradford. Here’s your copy of the document. You’ll be informed when to show up for blood tests and retromutagen distribution, and you can sign up with the website at the bottom for updates about progress on the retromutagen for multiple mutations. Thank you for trusting the EPF with all your retromutagen needs.”

The necrotic mutant stood to the side, head cocked in an odd expression at him, while Michelangelo started on Fishface’s form.

“Montes. No, with an S. At the end, not the beginning!”

Mikey looked up to see Rahzar still staring at him curiously. “Something else I can help you with?”

Rahzar gave a chuckle that sounded like he was gargling rocks, but seemed to grin slightly. “Maturity… that’s what’s different about you. You’re a good kid, Michelangelo. Maybe if we weren’t enemies, we could be friends.”

“Maybe someday we won’t be, and we can,” Mikey grinned back. “Give me a buzz when you stop being evil!”

“Xever… With an X, not a Z! And a V, not an F! Look, just let me…”

After the group of Foot mutants were gone, Chuck motioned to Mikey. “Good job there, man. You really stepped up. Very professional.”

“Thanks!” he beamed. He did feel proud of himself, dealing with four of his mortal enemies face to face. Wait until Leo heard! He went to click his pen in victory and found it missing. “Aw, man! One of those guys stole my pen!” He growled lowly. “So evil!”

Chuck handed him one of his. Mike accepted it thankfully, but soon realized it was just a plain stick pen, not the clicky kind. He groaned, starting to tap out a rhythm with it on his desk instead as his next case stepped up to the table.

Before long, his neighbor tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, let’s go take a break.”

Mikey rose and followed him gladly, helping himself to two sodas in the break room.

“Hey, Mike, are you free tonight?”

“Yeah, I guess… why?”

“A bunch of us are going clubbing tonight when we’re done here… You wanna come? I mean… Can turtles dance?”

“’Can turtles dance?’ Pff… Shell yeah! I’ll dance circles around you!” He swigged from both cans at the same time. “Unless it’s a squaredance. Then I’ll dance squares around you.”

Chuck laughed. “’Shell yeah.’”

“Come on, that’s an old one!”

“Mikey, you crack me up! You coming, then?”

“Dude, I’m so there! This is gonna the awesomest night!”

Chuck grinned at Mikey’s enthusiasm. “You’re really fired up about this.”

Mikey shrugged. “I’ve always wanted to go clubbing!”

“Never gone before?”

Mikey shrugged. “Mutant turtle, bro. New opportunities just popped up for me!”

“Oh. Right. Well, in that case, let’s make it a night to remember! You’re gonna love it!”

“Aw yeah, boooiiiii!”

Chapter Text

El Jéfe

“Naow,” Shasta chided, pointing a leaf at each of the brawlers in turn.  “I’m very disappointed in awl of you!

One of the mob groaned in pain.  Raphael sniffed, stemming a bleeding nose by pinching the bridge of his beak.  “Sorry, Shasta.”

The meeting with Poquito’s pack had not gone well.  The lanky dog mutant had presented the scavenged goods to the pack’s pregnant bitch… apparently a faux pas in canine-mutant etiquette as the Alpha apparent, a scarred, drooling bulldog, seemed to take offense and ordered the other two members of the pack to teach their less-muscled companion a lesson, one involving fists and clawing and biting.  The dogs all definitely showed to be fighters, probably part of a dog-fighting ring pre-mutation, evident in the numerous scars on the canines, the docked or shredded ears, the viciousness in which they attacked the low dog on the totem pole.  Poquito did not seem to fit with this group, barely putting up any defenses as he was beaten and bitten by his so-called compatriots as he tried to show his belly; hard to accomplish in a humanoid body.

Raph and Casey, who had been spoiling for a fight since that morning, eagerly jumped into the fray to defend their submissive new friend, smacking the attackers with hockey stick and the butts of sais.  Seeing the odds turn, the bulldog leader jumped in as well, with only the potted flower mutant and the pregnant female staying out of the fight… though in Shasta’s case, from her piercing complaints, not by choice.

The meek bitch stepped over to comfort the clearly agitated daisy, who, through much shrilling and pointing of leaves, managed to convey the need to have her pot carried nearer to the ongoing brawl.

After a few minutes of wafting pollen over the fight, she managed to subdue the crowd of ruffians, and all simply stood there looking stunned, rubbing at forming bruises or licking their wounds, all of them looking worse for wear. 

“You awl know bettah!  Foighting loike that isn’t ganna sawlve anything!” the flower mutant lectured, pot held by the female dog, who let out the occasional nervous whimper, emphasizing Shasta’s distress.  “Ya gotta tawk yoah prawblems aout oah youah nevah ganna get anywheah!”

Casey, cradling an apparently rattled cranium, did his best to translate for the Spanish-speaking dogs.  The pitbull with the lopped ears seemed too stunned to take in what was being said, but the other, a chow, nodded vigorously.  “Si, si!”  The bulldog Alpha grunted skeptically, ignoring the daisy’s advice.

Poquito spoke up, pausing from nursing a nasty series of scratches across his belly.  “Lupita necessita comida.  Tiene cachorros.  Tiene hambre.  No comida, no perritos.”

The bulldog snarled at him and grabbed Lupita by an arm to drag her away. “Hey, hey, hey!  You cut that out right now!” Raph demanded, cracking the bully’s knuckles with one of his weapons.  The pack leader dropped the female’s arm, glowering at the turtle and growling lowly, but not willing to engage further, and motioned to his pack to take their leave.  Lupita retreated behind Raphael. The pitt followed unquestioningly, the chow looked more dubious, sizing up both factions, and looking unsure about his choice as he followed the bulldog.

What remained of the fighting dog pack had nearly rounded the corner when a loud cheer carried to them all.  A single voice said something, and another cheer went up.

“What wazzat?”  Not waiting for speculated answers, he started toward the source of the noise at a fast clip, with the rest of his group following, Shasta being handed off to Poquito, who also took Lupita’s hand, towing her along.  The fighting dogs, taking a cue from them, also followed.

Only a few blocks away, they ran into the source: a massive crowd of mutants occupying  a pair of basketball courts, gathered around a stack of wooden pallets, serving as a dais for a lean orange tabby cat mutant who was speaking fervently to the crowd.

“…Who thinks they hold power over us animals? The humans! But aren’t we stronger than them?!  Faster runners, stronger fighters, better swimmers, masters of the air!” the speaker said, pointing to examples of each, then looking at a slime bobbing enthusiastically up and down and dissolving part of the makeshift dais as it did.  “And… er… burning their way through… stuff! They hold power over us?!”

“NO!” the crowd shouted back, except for the blob, who went blurp! instead.

Raphael side-eyed the crowd.  “This can’t be good.  Shasta, you up for doin’ a little crowd control?”

“I think I see wheah ya going with this, Raphael, hahney, an’ I’m awl foar it!” the daisy said conspiratorially and started preening her petals in preparation. 

“Case, you mind?”

“No problem,” the teen heaved as he took the heavy pot from Poquito’s arms.  He grinned back at Raph.  “She kinda reminds me of my nana!”

Casey started out, but his turtle friend tapped his arm. “They seem pretty hostile toward humans.  Put your mask down.  Maybe they’ll think you’re a monkey or somethin’.”

“Monkey?!” Casey scowled, affronted by the remark, but did as told as he was shooed off and Shasta likewise beckoned for him to carry her in a certain direction.

Raph made to push into the crowd when a voice behind him asked, “Y nosotros, jéfe?”

He turned back toward the two anxious dogs.  “Erm…” He had no idea what Poquito had just said; he didn’t know a word of Spanish.  “Stay here,” he said, motioning with flat hands toward the ground.  “Stay.”

“Ste?” the shepherd repeated, cocking his head to one side.  Lupita said something to him in a barrage of Spanish Raph had no hope of following, but also pointed to the ground, so he figured the message got through.  “O, stee!  Si!” he said, and the female likewise gave a nod. With that sorted, Raph began wending his way through the masses as the cat continued.

“The land belonged to animals, but then the humans came, more and more of them, putting down their roads for their cars and big boxes to live in!”  Raph cringed a bit at the description; the cat had a point there, though it was way oversimplified.  He pushed his way between two mutants to edge closer.  “We animals were forced further and further from our homes, our territories!  The humans took more and more, until they had taken it all, and then we animals were forced to live among them, on their hard, hot, stinking asphalt, and in their stone boxes, because we had no power!  But are we powerless now, my friends?!”

“NO!” shouted the crowd, except the stunned-looking back quarter, which coincidentally contained Casey and Shasta.

“It’s too sahnny heah! I’m ganna get sahnbuhnt and droy ap!” Shasta’s shrill voice carried. “Take me ovah theah, wheah it’s shady!”  Raph snorted to himself with a grin. The little daisy’s complaints were perfect cover for Casey to keep circulating through the crowd with Shasta’s pot.  She was a sharp one... He wondered if Splinter might even want to train her as a kunoichi.  Well, as long as she had someone to carry her. “It’s too cold ovah heah, oy’m ganna freeze moy leaves awf! Take me back ovah theah in the sun!”

“So, friends, we must ask ourselves, if we are more powerful than these mere humans, why are we not their masters?  They pretend to be strong, but are we not truly stronger?”

This time, only a small cluster of mutants cheered, and then looked confused, as no one in the surrounding crowd joined.  The cat looked miffed at losing his audience’s interest, and stepped up his rhetorical game.  “And that’s why we should attack the humans!  Take their buildings and homes and food for ourselves!  They are powerless to stop us!”

“YEAH!!!” the partially reviving crowd roared.

Raph shouldered his way through to the front, always having had a real problem with authority, especially when he could see said authority doing something wrong.  As the cheer died off, he shouted at the cat, “NO, no… That’s a really bad idea!” 

“Wha—Why do you say this, my friend?  Together, we have the power to—”

“No, you don’t,” Raph insisted, stepping up onto the platform to glare the cat in the eye.  “Ya know why?  Because humans have guns, and guns have bullets, lots and lots of bullets!  You charge in there, you might take them by surprise now, you might take some of their homes and offices at first, but they’ll be back, with even more weapons to hurt and kill you with, because humans do not just put up with losing their stuff.”

“We have superior numbers, and we have better reaction time than them!  They are so weak!  We will kill them all!  There will be no one to take it back!”

Raph snarled, “There’s more humans out there than you can imagine.  They are not going to let mass murder go unpunished.  You think there’s a lot of humans here now?  If you start killing them, every human in the world is gonna be on your ass, all seven billion of ‘em.  All of our asses, because they’re not gonna check to see if we’re good or bad, they’ll just wipe us off the face of the map.  No place to hide. You may be big, tough mutants, but you ain’t nothin’ against assault weapons, tanks, air strikes, gas bombs…”

The tabby looked unsure of himself, but refused to concede, even as a …monkey?... carrying a plant mutant in a pot and two mutant dogs joined the terrapin.  “You cannot know that! I have been here since the first day!  I have been to the edge of the land and back!”

Raph and Casey turned the direction of the cat’s pointing, clearly inland, rather than toward the Atlantic.  “Does… Does he mean the Hudson?”

Casey guffawed.  “Oh, man!  He thinks Manhattan is the whole world!”

The tabby raised his voice in a desperate bid to hold onto his authority.  “As eldest, I claim right as leader of this clan!”

“What kind of leader is that?  The kind that’s about to send a ton of new mutants on a suicide run?! Then you just end up with no one to lead!  It’s stupid!  Worst. Plan. Ever.”

“I am eldest!” the cat screeched, the fur on its back standing up and his back arching, making him look hunchbacked rather than intimidating. “I was mutated on the first day!  I have been a mutant the whole of three weeks!  I have the most experience of anyone in this clan!”

Casey coughed, hiding a laugh.  “Erghhem…Weak…”

Raph made no attempt to hide his laugher.  “Three weeks?!  Ha ha, oh, man…And you think you know how to deal with humans?!  Well, that’s a cat for ya!”

The cat, bearing its fangs, demanded haughtily, “Well—How many weeks have you?!”

“Weeks?!  Dude, I’ve been a mutant for sixteen years!”

He received an odd look from the feline.  “What is that in weeks?”

Casey guffawed. “He doesn’t even know what a year is!”

Raphael’s laughter ebbed enough to take the question seriously.  “Well, there’s fifty-two weeks in a year… times ten is five hundred twenty…”

“Six toymes two is twelve, and then ten toymes two is twenty…”

“… and then half of that is two hundred and fifty, two hundred and sixty…”

“…So that’d make it seven hundred and eighty… Plus one.”

“It’s not plus one, it’s plus another fifty-two for the year in weeks…”

“…carry the one, and—would you boys keep it down?!  Oy can’t add awl this ap in moy head with awl yoah yelling! I’m ganna hafta stawt awl ovah!”

“… and then two hundred sixty plus seven hundred and eighty…  wait, is that right?”

“…that gives us… Nine hundred forty-five!”

“…Seven hundred eighty-one!”

“…Eight handred noyntey foah!”

Raphael blinked at their differing totals, sighed, and turned back to the tabby, pushing away the annoyance of math.  “A-anyway, a lot.  So I sure as shell know a few more things than you about living in this city.”

The charismatic cat, left speechless, bowed his head and backed away with a growl of disgrace.

Poquito stepped forward, seizing Raph’s hand and held it aloft in victory, pulling Raph up to the very tips of his toes due to their height difference.  “El jéfe!” he shouted, and to Raph’s surprise, the other members of the dog pack echoed the words with vigor, as did several other mutants in the crowd.

Suspicion rose in the ninja’s gullet.  As Poquito set him back on his feet, he looked to his human friend.  “Case… What is ‘el jéfe’?”  It occurred to him that their shepherd companion had called him those words since they’d come to his aid… He’d never bothered to question it.

Someone in the crowd figured it out before Casey could answer.  “Leader!” a voice piped.

“Leader! Leader!” other voices around her began repeating as the blood drained from Raph’s face.  Before long, the whole crowd was chanting, “Leader! Leader!”

Anyone who knew the turtle well, and a giant mutant mushroom, probably thought they knew his greatest fear, and they would tell you that it was cockroaches.  It was true, he had a very visceral phobia of bugs, and roaches in particular.  But they weren’t the thing he was most afraid of.

His mind flashed to an earlier time…

“Raph!  What do we do??”

“Go…go for the head!”

“Oh, no…. No, no, no, no, no, no…”

In panic, he backpedaled off the dais and into Casey, who caught him by the rim of his shell. “Raph… C’mon, man… Everybody’s waiting for you!” he said as the chants of ‘Leader!’ became more demanding.

The turtle shook his head desperately.  “Case… I can’t lead them!  I’m a terrible leader!”

“No you’re not…” the vigilante replied, shoving him back toward the stage. “Go on, get up there!”

“No, really, Case, I can’t do this!” Raph argued, struggling against his friend’s encouraging shoves.  “I’m not a leader! I can’t!”

“Oh, really?” Jones teased, flipping his mask up. “’Cause the way I remember it, you were doing a pretty good job of bossing everyone around at the farmhouse when Leo was out of commission.”

Raph’s mind fought for a rebuttal.  “That…that was just for training!”

“You been leadin’ awlla us around the whole day, Raphael, hahney,” Shasta added as Lupita set her pot on the pallets.  “Listen to yoah Auntie Shasta… I know yoah skeahd roight naow, but yoah nevah ganna know how good ya can be at samthin’ if ya don’t troy!” the flower said sweetly, petting his hand with a leaf.  “It dasn’t have ta be farevah.  But these people need you naow… they don’t have anybaddy else!”

“But…why me??” he bent down to all but whisper to her, barely over the crowd.

She patted his cheek.  “Becawse you spoke up, sweethawt.  Becawse you keahed enaff nawt ta let awl these folks get themselves in a lawt ah trahble!”

“Andale, jéfe!” Poquito encouraged, waving him up to the stage.

“Go, Raph, ya freakin’ idiot!” Casey insisted, giving his shell a kick that forced him to either get back up on the stage or trip over it.  The crowd cheered, then gave a disappointed “AWW!” as he turned and stepped back toward his friends.

“What if I can’t do it, though?!  What if somethin’ goes wrong?”

“We’re right here to back you up,” Casey assured.

“Be brave,” said the little flower, and Raph was so insulted at the insinuation that he wasn’t brave already that he all but charged back onto the dais.  The crowd roared once more.  Raph threw out his arms, calling for silence, and they stilled.

“Listen… I am not always the greatest person.  I’ve got a heck of a temper I’m not always great at keeping control of, and I’ll admit I’m not great at always thinking things through.  But I think right now I have a lot more knowledge about how this world works than all of you mutanimals who were mutated three weeks ago and don’t even know how much of a world there is.”

“Ahem,” Shasta put in, leaves on her stem where her hips would have been.

“…And mu-plants,” Raph amended.

“Machines too!” rasped a motorcycle in the midst of the crowd, popping a wheelie to be seen.

“…And… mu…chanicals, I guess?” he struggled to mash the words together.  “Point is, I may not be great at this, but I’ll do my best to keep you all safe and teach you how to function here.”  He motioned toward the orange tabby, still skulking about the edge of the stage in hopes of taking it back.  “Maybe your friend here will even help me out… What’s your name?”

“Name?” the cat said, cocking his head.

“What’s a name?” a blue jay near the front row asked.

Raph blinked.  “None of you have names?” Getting only a murmured response, he went on.  “A name is your identity, it’s what you’re called, so others know how to address you.”

“A mean lady called me a food-stealing scab… is that my name?” a female voice near the back called.

“No.  There’s a difference between someone calling you something and what you want to call yourself.  F’r instance… my name is Raphael, Hamato Raphael in full.  I’m named after my father’s family name and a famous painter. This is my friend Casey Jones, and Shasta—”

“—Feldstein,” the daisy supplied.

“Shasta Feldstein.  And that’s Poquito, and Lupita.”  Raph’s brow furrowed.  “Wait…How did you two get names?”

After relaying the question in Spanish, Casey translated, “Before the mutagen, he was always the littlest, so they called him ‘very little’.  Lupita, they said, ran like a ‘little wolf.”

“Right.  So how about you, cat-man?  You got something in mind?” he said, turning back to the tabby.

“Um…Cat?”

“Come on, you can do better than that!  You call yourself ‘cat’, and someone yells, ‘Hey, Cat!’, every cat mutant here is gonna answer.  “Right, cats?”

“YO!” replied two dozen Brooklynite cats in unison.

“The point of a name is that it’s something that sets you apart from everybody else.  Sometimes people have the same first name, and we tell them apart from their family name or surname.”

The tabby held up a finger.  “But, how do I know what to call myself?”

“Well… try to find something that suits you… something that describes you or something you’re good at.  Like… you’re orange and white… You could be something like… Marmalade?”

“Uch, no.”

“Tequila Sunrise?”

“What?  No.”

“Tangerine?  Um, what else is orange?  Orangutans… Creamsicles…”

“That!  I like that one!”

“You want to be Creamsicle?” Raph asked, and the cat nodded in confirmation.  “You sure? Once you make your choice, you’re stuck with it.”

“That’s nawt true, Raphael, hahney,” Shasta put in.  “Folks change theah names awl the tyme! When they get married, oah divoased, oah if they don’t loike theah name, oah if theah trans and theah old name dasn’t match who they awh naow…”

Raph had to concede her points.  “Alright, yes… you can change your name… But try to pick one you want to keep the first time, and don’t go changing it all the time, or you’ll just get people confused.”  He turned to the cat again.  “You gonna stick with Creamsicle?”

“Yes.  I shall be Creamsicle henceforth.”

“All right,” the turtle smiled with approval, and held his hand out to shake with the cat.  “Nice to meet you, Creamsicle!  You see?” he said to the amassed mutants.  “It’s that easy.  If you need help, you can ask me or Casey or Shasta.  In fact, once you’ve chosen a name, run it by one of us to make sure it’s appropriate.”

The crowd broke into three clusters, around Raphael in the front, Shasta to the right of the stage where she’s been put, and Casey and Poquito, who moved to the left side to eliminate the congestion, all suddenly swarmed by mutants wanting names.

“Okay, who’s first?” Casey announced, cracking his knuckles.

Poquito pointed to a petite frog mutant at the front of the cluster.  “La rana.”

“I like it!” the frog girl chirped perkily.

Casey looked confused.  “Oh, no, he was just saying that you, ‘the frog’, was first.”

“But I like it!” she replied disappointedly.

“Okay, okay… that’s fine,” the boy backpedaled.  “You can be Larana if you wanna… heh, ‘Larana if you wanna’,” he elbowed Poquito, for confirmation of his cleverness.  The dog gave a compliant grin, not getting the jokey rhyme.  “Ya know, though, if you put a u in there, it’d make it Laurana, like a girl’s name.”

The frog beamed.  “I like that too!”

“All right!  Laurana it is!  Who’s next?”

Shasta had her own technique going.  “You look like a Sheena ta me.  Yoah defanately a Fred, hahney; you look jast loike moy cahsin!  Well… if he was a raccoon.  He awlways had dawk suhcles arownd the oyes, too.  Now, you… oh, you’ve gawt to be a Mawnica.”

Raph put a hand to his eyes, trying not to mimic Leo’s tendency to rub the bridge of his beak when something gave him a headache.  “No, you cannot name yourself Rumphumper…”  He shifted to announcement-voice again out of necessity.  “NO naming yourself after your genitals or sexual exploits!  Keep it classy!  You,” he said to the rabbit in front of him, “go consider something more appropriate!” He rolled his eyes.  “Next!” 

Even though Raph had seen the motorcycle when it announced itself in the middle of the crowd earlier, he was still perplexed when it rolled up riderless and started talking with a gravelly Wolfman Jack voice.  “I’m thinkin’ my name ought to be—”  The chopper produced a series of loud vrooms, brake screeches and a backfire.  “Whaddya think?”

“That was freakin’metal!” Casey volunteered from across the stage.

“Yeah, it was!” Raph agreed, poking a finger in his earhole to help clear the ringing.  “Also really freakin’ loud, though.  And none of us humanoids is gonna be able to say it.  Think ya can take it down a notch?”

The bike turned its front wheel slightly as if it was thinking. Rapahel wasn’t sure where to look at it.  Was its headlight an eye?  Its mouth seemed to be somewhere below that when it asked, “Well, how about just—” and it bucked its front wheel in the air, letting out a smaller vrrrmm!

 The turtle mentally filed his questions about physical logistics of animated motorcycles in the ‘Who Cares?’ folder to instead address the bike.  “How about ‘Rev?’”

The chopper kicked its back tire in the air to let out a loud motor rev and squealed it back tire on the pavement, causing the mutants around it, including Raph, to back off in apprehension, unable to interpret this action until the mu-chanical declared, “Yeah!  I likes that!” It rasped out a few grating laughs.  “Think it’ll get me a date with that cute li’l Kawasaki ‘cross the street?”

Raph looked the direction the bike turned its handlebar, seeing the cycle in question leaning against the side of a building.  “Uh, Rev?  I don’t think that bike is a mutant.  It’s not alive…”

Rev popped an enthusiastic wheelie.  “That means she can’t say no!” it coughed out more laugher, rolling off through the crowd, leaving the turtle in a greasy cloud of exhaust and with a greasier feeling about the inability of an inanimate object to consent.  He coughed, shook his head, ughed, and got back to naming the rest of his charges.  “Next!”

Casey was snickering at Raph’s predicament when he turned back to his own line and nearly fell on his ass, trying to keep from waving his arms forward at a cloud of hovering wasps, instead waving them everywhere else.  “Oh, jeez!” He’d seen some weird stuff in the city, and all sorts of mutants, so he’d built up a tolerance for the bizarrity, but the memory of poking at a hornet hive with his hockey stick and the painful event that followed shoved itself to the forefront of is mind.

“We would like names,” the swarm buzzed, sounding like many synchronized voices.

Recovering himself, the boy took a breath.  “So, like… one for each of you?  ‘Cause that’s gonna take all night…”

The wasps buzzed amongst themselves for a moment.  “A singular name for the swarm will suffice.”

He snapped his fingers.  “That one’s easy, then.  Hive Mind!”

After a moment of deliberation and potentially even a vote, the swarm said, “We find Hive Mind acceptable.”  The crowd widened around them as they buzzed off.  Casey relaxed muscles he didn’t realize had clenched so much in the wasps’ presence.

With the naming process still ongoing, Raph announced, “Once you have a name, introduce yourself to the mutants around you.  Start making friends, ‘cause those are the people who’re gonna be there for you in the coming weeks.  We’re gonna have to rely on one another, look after one another, help each other out, or we’re not gonna make it.  Right, Case?”

“Yeah, man.”  Casey grinned and held up a fist to bump Raph’s, their moment interrupted by a loud growl from the teen’s stomach.  He shot Raph a chagrined grimace.  “Guess it’s gettin’ toward dinnertime, ain’t it?”

“An’ that’s a lawt ‘a mouths ta feed…” Shasta added.

Raph nodded.  “Alright, everybody follow me, I’m gonna show you where you can get a hot meal,” he said and started weaving his way through the crowd to the street beyond.

The balding red-haired man’s eyes bugged a bit as mutants poured around the corner and into the outdoor soup counter line he was working, but only a little.  He’d had plenty of encounters with mutant-kind by this point, and most were easy enough to get along with, but you never knew.  The ones in the forming line seemed cautious, none of them familiar with the process, leery of the humans serving.  But a familiar sharp voice carried over the bustle of the crowd, and that alone put him more at ease.

“You can keep milling around in a group here, but once you get up to the counter, stay in line and wait your turn.  No cutting in front of one another.  And say thank you.  These people are volunteering their time and supplies to help you, and giving you food for free.”  The mutant turtle with the red bandana broke off from the group and came behind the line to give him a clap on the shoulder.  “How’s it going, Kirby?”

“Raphael!  Good to see you.  You, um, brought a few friends, I see?”

Raph gave a shrug.  “Bunch ’a animal mutants.  I’m helpin’ ‘em learn the ropes.  Got a head count of about a hundred twenty… you gonna have enough?”

“Lorraine?” Kirby called to the woman placing rolls on each tray as the varied mutants passed. 

“We may run outta bread, but we’ll have enough for a meal for everyone, if you go a little lean on the soup! I’ma go put on another pot to warm!” she announced and scuttled off into the building behind them.  A man took her place from where he was rolling plasticware in paper napkins.

The next person in line clattered up with a shopping cart, which wasn’t out of the ordinary, given their usual homeless clientele, but the basket contained only a loudly complaining flower mutant in a pot, and the teenage human pushing it waved, giving Kirby a signature gap-mouthed grin.  “Hey, Mr. O’Neil!”

“Casey,” the man greeted gladly, handing across a tray with a half-bowl of soup.  The boy reached for it immediately, only to have Raphael slap a hand over the bowl.  Casey returned an annoyed look.

“Raph!  What the hell, man?! I’m starving!”

The turtle glared back.  “You’ve got food at home.  We gotta make sure all the mutants get fed here.

The boy tossed his hands in the air.  “Fine!  Shasta, you want some soup in your roots?”

“Acchally, I’m nawt awl that hahngry!” the flower stated, surprised at her own revelation.

“You’re a plant, remember?” Raph told her.  “You’ve been doing that photosynthe-thingy all day.”

The flower somehow managed to snap her leaf.  “Yoah right, I hadn’t thawt ‘a that.”

Casey huffed.  “You mighta mentioned that before we stood in line twenty minutes…” 

“Oy’m sahrry, sweethawt. Didn’t occuhr ta me.”

He passed his tray to the next mutant in line.  “Thank you!” Laurana chirped brightly.  Casey grinned back, giving her a pat on the head as she bounced to the bread station.

“Raphael,” Kirby asked as Casey hauled Shasta’s cart out of the way and next to the serving line, “do you have anywhere for all these mutants to sleep?”

Raph winced.  “We’re just gonna have to hunker down in the park until I can find someplace for ‘em all.”

“That won’t do for a permanent solution,” Kirby said.  “Fall will be on us before too long, and it’s going to get cold.”

“I know.  I’m tryin’ ta figure somethin’ out for ‘em.  There’s just so many!”

The man at the end of the counter held a hand up.  “There’s the shelter down on Handel.  They won’t have enough beds for all of these, but it’ll house a good number of ‘em.”

“I can vawlunteah moy apawhtment, and Estelle’s, if she dasn’t show ahp.  She won’t moynd.”

“Thanks, Shasta.  We’ll keep that in mind for a last-ditch solution.”  His thoughts were interrupted by a ladle clanging on the ground, with Kirby backing apprehensively away from a large cloud of wasps hovering in front of the counter.

“The human releases fear pheromone.  Why does it do so?  We do not wish to sting,” the swarm hummed.

Casey jumped in to intervene.  “Whoa, whoa, whoa… it’s okay, Kirby; they’re with us.  Sorry, Hive Mind.  People tend to be spooked by bugs, especially ones with pointy bits.  It’s a human instinct to get away from a swarm of buzzy, stabby things.”

Kirby edged into the doorway.  “I’ll just… fetch a clean ladle…” he stammered and dashed inside, nearly colliding with Lorraine as she brought out another huge pot of soup.

“We…understand,” the wasps buzzed back.  “Perhaps a change of form would be more calming.”

“A what now?”

Hive Mind didn’t answer, but the insects rearranged themselves into a rough silhouette of all but the lower legs of a woman of Lorraine’s rounded build, including her dreadlocks.

The woman chuckled.  “Now that is a fine-lookin’ bunch of bugs, if you ask me!  I always wanted a wasp waist, but this wasn’t quite what I was thinkin’.”

“Shall we alter our form again?” the swarm asked.

She smiled back.  “Honey, you are perfect just the way you are, or any way you want to be.  Honey, bee.  Get it?”

“We… are wasps…” the hive said with an air of confusion.

“That’s all right, sweetie.  We gonna work on that sense of humor, though.  You want bread with your soup?”

“No.  We present our thanks.”

“You’re welcome, baby.”

The silhouette reached down to “grasp” the tray with the bowl of soup.  Casey called out in warning, “Hive Mind, be careful with the—!” but the wasps rearranged themselves, a greater number gathering around then hands of the figure, simultaneously pushing the tray up from the bottom and lifting from the top, carrying it along without problem.  Casey breathed in relief.  “Never mind, they’ve got it.”

Raph clapped him on the shoulder.  “Go on home, get some chow and a good night’s rest.  I’m gonna need your help again first thing in the morning tomorrow.”

“Figured you would.  See you tomorrow!”  The boy popped his skates on and zoomed off past the line of mutants.

He wasn’t gone for a minute before Poquito came dashing up, a distraught look on his face.  “Jéfe!  Jéfe!”  He pointed urgently.  The turtle hurried after him, to where the group had cleared a circle, dinner trays still in hand, around two bird mutants who were pecking and pummeling each other with their wings.

“Hey, hey, hey, HEY!  Stop it!  What is this?!” Raphael demanded, sliding between the two songbirds and popping up between them, shoving them back with a palm to their chests.  This turned out to be too much power against such lightweight, hollow-boned opponents, who were hurled backward into the surrounding crowd, wings flailing.  Soup cups and trays were overturned, their owners hollering in dismay, though both birds managed to right themselves without too much damage.  Raph grimaced.  “Sorry.  You guys, go get you some more soup,” he instructed the mutants who had theirs knocked over, then hauled one bird and then the next together.  “What’s going on?  What’s this about?”

“She stole my name!”

“I didn’t!  He stole mine!”

Both of them went for each other again, even with Raph between them.  He held them apart at arm’s length, but kept being batted with wings.  Tired of feeling like he was inside an angry feather duster, he called sharply for a stop. 

“Look, you can’t be fighting over something as petty as a name!  Which is…?”  he asked the female.

“Robin!” she stated huffily. 

Raph rolled his eyes at the obviousness.  “Of course it is.  And you’re also…?” he queried from the male.

“Robin!” he stated.  “I got it from the flower.”

“And I got mine from the human!”

“I got mine first!”

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“Stop it!” Raph snarled, cutting off the pair of Robins from starting their scuffle again.  “Look… it’s okay for you to both be called Robin, all right?  This isn’t Highlander… never mind.  There’s millions of people in this world.  You think they didn’t reuse names a few hundred-thousand times?  Hell, the place would be in shambles if every Bob Smith decided he was gonna be the only one!”  The robins kept glaring at one another, though the fight had gone out of them.  “If you have to,” Raph told them, “differentiate yourself more.  Choose a nickname.  You could be Rob or Robbie or Bobbie…”

“Fine.  I’ll be Rob,” the male said.

“I’ll be Bobbie,” the female decided.

“If I let you go, you gonna behave yourselves?” Raph asked them, and they nodded and went to their separate sides of the circle, leaving their leader in the middle. 

Raph raised his voice to the whole crowd.  “We can’t afford to be fighting each other!  We are one whole; we don’t have time to be putting out fires over petty squabbles!  We’ve got to help each other, support each other, all right?!  If you’ve got a problem, you come to me or Casey or Shasta!  When you’re done with dinner, let’s head back to the park and bed down.  We’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.  We’re gonna look for places to stay, and start finding out what skills you have, to start looking for jobs, so you can support yourselves.  Get some sleep.”

 Announcement made, Raph went back to monitor the line until it dwindled to nothing, then claimed the last dribble of soup from a recovered Kirby, and a cup of lemonade. He downed both, barely taking the edge off his own hunger, but he and his brothers and father had seen much leaner times, and sometimes, you just needed to shut up and put up.

As he steered Shasta’s cart back toward the park, she said, “I’m very proud ah you, hahney.  Yoah doing such a good joahb foah everybahdy.”

A feeling of accomplishment settled on him, and he smiled to himself, though the comfort was brief.  “What am I doing, Shasta?  I can’t take care of a hundred and twenty mutants!  What do I do if something goes wrong? Aren’t leaders just supposed to know that kind of thing?”

The daisy laughed.  “That’s the big secret about loyf, sweethawt… You can plan and plan, but we’re awl just makin’ it up as we go.”

Raph’s thoughts went to his older brother, and how Leonardo spent so much time studying books on strategizing and meditating and all of his meticulous planning. When the moment came, Leo could come up with a strategy off the top of his head, Raph realized, because his brother could analyze the situation and come up with something on the fly due to all of his background knowledge acting as scaffolding.  Maybe when he got a minute, he’d head back to the Lair and swipe Leo’s copy of The Art of War.  On the other hand, he didn’t think Sun Tzu had much to say about logistics of finding lodgings for mutants who barely knew how buildings worked…

“That’s really insightful, Shasta.  Where’d you learn that?” he asked.

“As a heahdressah, sweetie, ya leahwn awl koinds a’ things fron awl soats a’ people…”