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There were many unofficial rules of the apocalypse, but of them all, there were three that were arguably the most important.
Rule number one: Don't stop to rest. The Krang don't stop, don't pause, don't need to catch their breath—they don't have lungs, really, and have near-infinite stamina. If you were being pursued by one, your only real hope was to keep going. Outrun them, outsmart them. Do not stop.
Rule number two: Don't take unnecessary risks. Unnecessary risks were how you died in this world. It went without explaining, really, but here's an explanation anyway: Krang do not offer leeway. Krang do not give you one more chance. If you fuck up, you die, and you probably take down your entire group with you. The result of a failed risk would be a painful, slow death, followed by your corpse being puppeted around and slowly drained of nutrients until your skin unraveled.
Rule number three: Don't help strangers. Disheartening as it may be, you never knew who might be carrying Krang in their flesh—and by the time you got close enough to check, you'd be in danger. This rule correlated with rule two. Helping strangers was a risk. A stupid one, with deadly consequences.
Somehow, Cassandra managed to break all three rules in one fell swoop.
Her legs had turned to jelly half a mile ago, her lungs felt like they were torn to shreds, and her heartbeat thundered so loud in her ears that she couldn't hear her own footsteps anymore. Last she'd checked, there had been a cluster of Krang Zombies on her tail, dripping with pink fleshy sludge and staring at her with green-yellow eyes. Commander O'Neil did what she did best—commanded--and at her word the group fled, as fast as they could. A particularly fast Krang Zombie had gone for Cassandra, and she'd dutifully split from the group to lead it away. A part of her regretted this, but she knew she'd helped them by doing so. Take a piece of the danger away, tempt it with a singular target.
She knew if she ran any longer she'd pass out, so without another thought, she darted into a crumbling alleyway and threw herself behind a dumpster, sucking air in through her teeth as quietly as she could. Krang were drawn to sound more than anything—followed by sight, which was why she wore clothes that were colored dark magenta and dull, dirty orange, to blend in with her surroundings. Luckily a Krang's sense of smell was shit, because she'd gotten a shallow gash on her shin, and was half-drenched in sweat. It wasn't a pretty mix of salt and iron, and she might have wrinkled her nose if she had the energy to spare.
If Raphael were here, he would have made a joke about her exercise stink being worse than his.
Her heart gave a sharp pang at the thought—though it could have also been from all the running. Raphael had been lost only a month ago, and his death was fresh on everybody's minds. Donatello had barely left his lab since. Leonardo refused to look anybody in the eye. Michelangelo's hands had yet to stop trembling. Commander O'Neil hardly spoke unless she was barking orders.
Casey-
Casey missed him.
Ordinarily she'd loathe to admit she gave half a shit about anybody, but Raphael had been her friend. In the three months between the Shredder's defeat and the Krang's invasion, they had even been best friends, teaming up to rid their beloved city of crime. They were like-minded in a lot of ways, and complete opposites in others. They spoke with their fists, lived off the simplicity of a good battle, yet Raphael's heart had always been soft, where Casey's was made of steel. He could be gentle, if needed, to carry his little brothers to sleep, or pet a stray cat, or wrap a blanket around an exhausted Splinter's shoulders. Casey tried to carry April to bed once, and ended up hauling her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Any animal she tried to pet usually scampered away after the first attempt, when she ended up accidentally yanking their fur. She tossed a blanket onto Leonardo once and he fell off his stool, because apparently it was weighted and she hadn't noticed.
She wasn't ashamed of her roughness, nor was she envious of his softness, but the fact stood that he was, in fact, soft . Gentle in places that Cassandra was not. Perhaps that was why he died. Saving his brothers. Taking the brunt of an explosion that was meant for someone else.
A thin cry startled Casey out of her thoughts.
Immediately, she was on full alert—a sound like that almost always meant Krang— but she realized very quickly that the sound was coming from right next to her. Inside the dumpster, to be exact, echoing and hollow. She had mostly caught her breath at this point, so on shaky legs, she stood and lifted the plastic lid.
Nestled in the metal cradle, between a crumbling wooden box and some slimy plastic, there was a human baby.
And it was crying.
“ Shh!” She hissed. “You'll kill us both, you idiot!”
The baby didn't listen. Instead, it continued to cry.
Without thinking, Cassandra scooped up the infant in one arm and jabbed her cleanest finger near its mouth, allowing it to clumsily bite on. It gave an unhappy whine when it found no sustenance from this, but at least it had stopped shrieking. She grimaced down at it. Weren't you supposed to support infant's heads?
As she saw it now, she had two decent options. Option one: Put the baby back in the dumpster and run. It was cruel, maybe, knowing its cries would be a beacon to any nearby Krang, but it was certainly the smartest choice. Allowing it to draw attention to itself would take the heat off Cassandra, allowing her a clean exit back to her group. It would also, of course, lead to a very painful death for the infant—first, it would be infected by the Krang parasite, then, finding that the body was incapable of doing much of anything besides scream and flail, it would be devoured for nutrients. Almost certainly while it was still alive. It would be agonizing, but again, the smartest choice.
The second option was certainly the kindest—unsheathe the knife she keeps strapped to her boot and end the child herself. It would be fast, and if she did it right, it would be painless. The infant would die before it realized what was happening, and it would be spared from a lifetime of pain and fear. Before the Krang, killing a child was an idea that Cassandra would have recoiled at, but now, her hand twitched towards her ankle at the thought. Swift, quiet, painless. If she was feeling particularly generous, she could even take the body with her and bury it somewhere. Let the earth take its nutrients, instead of the aliens.
There was a third option, too. But it was stupid.
So, so fucking stupid.
But it drifted across her mind.
Option three: take the child with her. Let it live. Let it grow. Give it food and warmth and a name. Raise it and let it survive through a world that wanted nothing more than to kill it. Let it become its own person, only for the Krang to take that away one day.
It wasn't just stupid, it was selfish. Because Cassandra knew she wouldn't sleep at night if she killed it, or left it behind, and she barely got any sleep as it was. It was selfish because she knew this kid would one day be taken—by disease or injury or starvation, if it was lucky, and by the Krang if it wasn't. She knew this, and she was one of the few that had a hope for the future. A wavering, fragile, stubborn hope, but a hope nonetheless. And when she looked down at the filthy, hungry thing in her arms, that's what she saw reflected in its dark brown eyes. Hope.
Cassandra Jones was not gentle, or soft, or kind.
But she was stubborn.
- - -
“ I found an infant,” She barked pointlessly to Leonardo when she had returned to base, the child still held in one arm. “In a dumpster.”
“ I can... see that.” Leonardo looked down at the thing. He was a creature created to be a weapon, and in his adult years it showed more than ever—he was one of the tallest people at base, second only to Donatello, and his shoulders were broad and scarred, eyes tired and sad but still sharp. His beak was twisted into a frown.
“ Listen, I'm not-” he sighed and looked away. “Casey, I'm not saying you should have left it, but do you really think it's smart to-”
“ It is mine.” She snapped, forcefully. Leonardo was her superior, and so it was rare for her to go against his wishes, but this time she stood her ground. “It will be my responsibility.”
Leonardo stared at the infant for a moment more.
The infant gurgled.
“ Sure,” the turtle caved finally, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “Yeah. Uh, see if Todd has anything for it to eat, he'd probably be the guy to go to for that. Or Mikey, maybe.”
“ Yes sir.”
Despite the suggestion, she sought out Michelangelo first. Todd was too chipper for her tastes, and too touchy—she had a sneaking suspicion that he'd want to hold the child, and for some reason the thought turned her stomach. Michelangelo, luckily, did manage to find something for the baby to eat. A crate of powdered formula—there were so few children at base, so few children at all , that they more or less assumed it would eventually go to waste, but now it had a use. Good. Food shouldn't go to waste, these days.
“ It's not even expired!” Michelangelo announced cheerfully as his glowing-yellow hands worked to heat up the water.
The kid was starving, which was to be expected. Fuck knew how long it had been left in that dumpster, probably as a distraction so its parents could escape. A curl of anger swelled in her chest at the thought, though Cassandra wasn't sure why—she'd almost done the same thing, after all.
“ They'll need a name,” Michelangelo suggested as he showed her how to properly cradle its head.
That was true. Any warrior worth their salt needed a good name—a powerful name, one with enough strength to send their enemies trembling at the sound of it, to wear like a badge onto a battlefield. The infant would need a name. Maybe one day the Krang wouldn't take it away from it.
“ Casey Jones,” she announced.
Michelangelo blinked up at her with his black-brown glimmering with a mix of exasperation and amusement. “Junior?”
Casey Jones Senior nodded. “Junior.”
With Commander O'Neil once again proving to be the bravest of them all and changing Junior's filthy diaper, he was proven to be a baby boy. He did look a little like Cassandra, though he couldn't have been more than a few months of age, so that was bound to change. His eyes were dark, only a bit darker than hers, and his wispy hair was the same shade of shiny black, and equally greasy. Perhaps his chin was a bit sharper, and his skin was mottled with a few more birthmarks, but otherwise she could have been his biological mother.
Mother. Hmm.
“ Come on, Stinker,” she snapped to the child, the playful name rolling off her tongue like an ocean wave. “Let's find you some clothes.”
- - -
Junior's first steps were taken running.
It had been perhaps a year since Casey had found him in that dumpster. Since then, she'd taken shorter, safer missions—food retrieval and location scouting, rather than labor camp raids. O'Neil and the Turtles took the place of his caretakers in her absence, with the occasional help of Todd or the Baron. It was on one of her longer stretches of her time at base that she witnessed it—Junior was crawling, then he was standing with both hands against the wall, then he was running towards her, each socked foot stumbling over the other.
She dropped to her knees immediately to catch him as he fell, so the impact was met with squishy flesh and giggles instead of a bruised knee and twenty minutes of crying. She was struck dumb at the sudden pride that welled inside her—not necessarily unfamiliar, at this point, but so overpowering that her vocal chords felt stuck, like they were coated in molasses.
“ Ah!” Junior exclaimed gleefully, held upright under the armpits and looking up at her with adoration in his eyes. Her throat spasmed, and a sharp grin twisted onto her face. He still didn't talk, but his nonsense sounds always managed to strike something in her chest—like flaming arrows. Maybe he'd be a good marksman one day.
“ Good job, Stinker.” She bent over to press her lips against his forehead and blow a wet raspberry. The child cackled with delight.
She let him use her hands as a balance as he slowly lowered himself to the floor, falling on his butt with a quiet thump . He simply chose to crawl away from there, probably headed off to find something in their room to shove in his mouth.
Cassandra watched him go with the smile aching on her face. Her room had become their room. Meal times for one had become meal times for two. Sleeping at night was still a restless affair, woken from the cries of a hungry child, but now she slept on her back with a bundle of warmth nestled under her arm, or sometimes on her stomach, on the floor, dozed off from watching the kid peacefully play. More often than not, those times, she'd wake up to two spit-soaked hands patting her cheeks.
Junior didn't have many toys, not as many as a baby should have, but his favorite was a stuffed bear. One with more rips than not, missing one button eye, with a red bandana around its neck.
It had been Raphael's. Michelangelo said that he would have wanted CJ to have it.
Casey watched her son shove a clump of lint in his mouth and thinks maybe he took after his uncle that he never knew.
- - -
It was Cassandra's first multiple-day mission since she'd found an infant in a dumpster, and she realized with a pang in her heart that she missed him.
She realized this long ago, of course, but it's only now that the dull pain strikes fresh—now, as she watched O'Neil press the record button on her comm bracelet and drop into a crouch.
“ This is Commander O'Neil,” she said with a grin, eyes facing forward at a very familiar height. “Reporting for bedtime duty.”
Donatello, as smart as he was, hadn't yet figured out a way to do live holograms—at least not reliably. No, those kinds of messages were best left pre-recorded, more as sentimental things to send your family than actual important information. Sentimental, easy-to-carry things were important these days, when you could lose somebody in the blink of an eye. Casey had a few recordings of Junior in her own bracelet, though he didn't do much more in them than babble nonsense or wave the ratty arm of his bear. O'Neil had taken to sending Junior a message most nights, telling him to sleep well and look after the others for her. If the kid was lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) he would outlive the Commander by years and years, and one day look back at all the old messages she sent. It was an honorable mission, what she did. Casey leaned against the cave wall and watched, while the rest of their squadron politely lower the volume of their conversation.
“ Now, I want you to tell Mr. Bear goodnight for me too, okay?” O'Neil asked, pausing for a moment as if to allow an answer. “Good. You look after Leo and Donnie for me, m'kay? And don't go bribing Mikey for treats again.”
Nah, fuck that. Somebody's gotta teach her kid right, and even though Casey never got the hang of sending messages herself, damn it if she wouldn't hijack someone else's.
She barged forward with a simple order to move, ignoring the complaints and shouldering the Commander out of the way until she was certain she was being recorded, then moved her gaze towards the bracelet, set on a boulder at about CJ's height. Cassandra let her arms fall into a cross and scowled, though anyone who knew her would be able to tell it was just for show.
“ Kid, it's Mom.” She said bluntly. “Don't listen to O'Neil. Give Leonardo as much shit as you can. I want to come home and find him in tears, got it? Tears . Milk Michelangelo for as much candy as you can. Kick the Baron in the shins if you see him.”
O'Neil gave her a scolding look from the sidelines, but there was no heat in it. “Really, Cass?”
Casey's face twitched, but she added reluctantly: “Eat your vegetables. Over and out.”
She marched off-camera, the longing, anxious churn in her stomach settled for now. Commander O'Neil could finish the message if she wanted, or cut it there, but Casey had said her piece. Hopefully it would reach him within the hour. She could imagine it—the kid set sturdily in Leonardo's lap, the lower half of his face buried in his bear, watching the flickering blue film play. She was told that he was always clingy when she left, which, while a little sad, knowing how often people left and didn't come back in this world, gave her a little glow of pride. She'd be back in a few days, if she had to rip Krang Prime apart with her bare hands, and then she'd blow the most disgusting raspberry she could onto his forehead, and he'd tap the head of his bear until she did the same to it. He still didn't talk much, but that was fine. He knew to stay quiet. He was smart.
Cassandra gritted her teeth at the thought of her son and promised herself she'd fight with twice the ferocity tomorrow.
- - -
CJ's first brush with death occurred when he was five years old.
It was quite frankly a miracle that it had taken so long—a miracle that Cassandra held tight in her fist like a rosary, with a silent prayer of 'thank you, thank you, one more day, please' as she watched the kid grow. He knew about the horrors of the world, she couldn't possibly hope to hide them, but he didn't have to know them. Not personally, at least. He didn't have to lose anyone he was close to, or clean the blood off someone's face. When Cassandra came home from a mission injured, she put a bandage over the gore before going to their room—he shouldn't have to see that kind of thing, not as long as she could put it off.
This time, she came home from a mission injured and ran for their room like the world was on fire.
It was, in a way—Cassandra's world was on fire because the base had been found. The sewer, the place the Turtles had been raised and the place that they hid for many years, had been uncovered. The ceiling of the atrium was torn open, and the walls were crawling with pink, pink, pink . Eyes blinked at her from every corner, teeth gnashed at her ankles as she ran, but she had no time to spare from them, because Junior was in their room, and she wasn't with him .
When she found their door smashed down, her heart almost stopped, but the sight awaiting her was almost worse than the horrible ideas she had half-cooked up—Leonardo was strewn on the floor, one arm and leg raised, the others braced on the ground. In his lower arm, there was CJ, huddled close and shrieking, with fat tears rolling down his cheeks. In his upper arm, and draped across his legs, there was a Krang Dog—which resembled a dog in the same way that a jaguar resembled a housecat. Its steel-flesh jaws were clamped down over Leonardo's arm, its talons scrabbling over his plastron with a sound like ripping cardboard. Blood was spraying as the Dog shook its head. Onto the floor, onto Leonardo, onto CJ.
Casey saw red.
With her titanium-bladed hockey stick clutched in her white-knuckled hands, she threw herself feet-first into the shoulder of the Dog, knocking it across the room.
“ GET HIM OUT!” She howled at Leonardo, at the same moment the Dog howled at her.
She didn't look to see if he obeyed—she was too occupied with making sure the Dog's jaws latched around her hockey stick instead of her neck. One lucky claw caught her abdomen even as she locked her elbows, shoving it as far back as she could, but she paid the injury no mind—with a guttural scream of effort, she hauled the Dog onto its back and used the moment it took to right itself to grab the flamespitter from the belt at her waist. Fire was the only way to stop the Krang for longer than a few minutes—and even it wasn't always as useful as it should be. The spitter only had a bit of juice left, and it wasn't much more than a cobbled together spray-can with a battery taped to it to make a spark, but she aimed it directly down the gullet of the Krang Dog and watched with dark satisfaction as it shrieked.
Fire ripped holes into the beast from the inside out, and as it writhed in pain, Cassandra snatched up her hockey stick to run. It would only keep the Dog down for maybe ten minutes, but ten minutes was as good as forever to her, right now.
She followed the least Krang-y path she found, and was rewarded—in the atrium, perched on a dark purple hoverbike with Casey tucked in front of him, Leonardo shouted her name.
She flung herself onto the back of it and didn't bother to ask if anyone else was alright before they took off. Either O'Neil and the other turtles were alive, or they weren't. Cass had bigger priorities right now.
Leonardo wrenched the hoverbike upward at a steep angle and carried them out of the broken roof of the atrium, then down the first street in the first direction he saw. Cassandra wrapped her arms around his middle, using one hand to press down on one of his deeper abdominal wounds, and the other to clutch desperately at CJ's shoulder. The wind clawed at her face.
Time slipped away.
By the time they stopped, the mid-day sun had begun to set, and Leonardo's grip on the handlebars had fallen more than once. Her ears were ringing quietly—either from the air buffeting them or from the adrenaline. Her arms were trembling up to her elbows and her hands were slick with blood.
“ Kid,” she pulled Junior off the bike and set him sturdily on his feet, looking into his eyes to let him know she was serious. “Are you hurt?”
CJ shook his head, lip trembling and eyes watering again, but seemed to be telling the truth. He was drenched in blood too, tacky and drying, but it was almost all Leonardo's.
The turtle himself staggered to his feet for only a moment before falling, and she rushed to catch him under his good arm. He had a small medical pouch around his waist, as always, and once lowering him to the ground and letting him lean against a crumbling brick wall, she pulled out a roll of white gauze.
“ CJ,” she barked. “Find me a clean stick, or something that shape. Something sturdy.”
The kid scrambled to comply. Leonardo, dark eyes glassy, met her gaze.
“ Thank you,” she said simply, roughly. He knew what for.
Junior managed to find a splinter of a two-by-four, about as big around as a quarter. Cass blew the worst of the dirt off it before shoving it between Leonardo's jaws, making sure it was secure. Junior backed up at her order, and she got to work, ignoring the way the mutant shook with muted groans.
First, she checked the injury for any sign of Krang parasite—poking through the flesh of his arm with her hopefully-not-too-filthy hands for a few moments before deeming it clear. Then, she dumped hydrogen peroxide into the gash—for this, she had to mostly pin him down so he wouldn't flail and injure himself further. Something dark stabbed deep into her heart when she caught a glimpse of white bone and torn ligaments inside. It would be a miracle if Leonardo managed to keep this arm.
She wrapped gauze around it as tight as she dared, watching as the fabric quickly soaked up red, then repeated the process with his stomach. Her own wound she treated as more of an afterthought, giving it a quick rinse with water and slapping a few butterfly bandages over it. Stitches would be better, but those would have to wait for someone with steadier hands to come along.
“ Mom?”
Casey turned to her son just in time to catch him, giving a quiet grunt when one of his elbows jammed into her ribs. He burrowed close to her like he was trying to crawl inside, pointy chin stabbing her collarbone and tears soaking into the neck of her shirt. His little frame trembled with silent sobs—he'd never really grown out of that crybaby phase, but that was fine. He knew when to do it silently, at least. Now was one of those times.
She wiped one of her hands on her cargo pants, cleaning it of most of the blood, before reaching up to run it across his greasy hair. It came down to his shoulder blades now, and it looked like it had been braided earlier that day, but was mostly fallen apart now. Too tired to blow a raspberry, she settled for a firm kiss to the side of his head.
“ Hello, does anyone read? ” Came a staticky voice from Cassandra's arm. “ This is Commander O'Neil. If there are any survivors listening, please respond. Over. ”
Still holding Junior, Casey pressed the button to respond. “This is Cassandra Jones, Casey Jones, and Hamato Leonardo responding. We are injured but alive, and currently out of danger. Over.”
“ Thank fuck ,” O'Neil's voice wheezed. “ Are you in need of extraction? Rendezvous point is Airship Argo. I can send the coordinates. Over ”
“ ...Send the coordinates,” Cassandra decided after a moment. “We'll get there. Over.”
“ Roger that. Over and out. ”
Cassandra allowed herself a precious moment to close her eyes and simply feel her son pressed close to her, inhaling his smoke-ozone-old spice-blood smell. The latter two undoubtedly came from Leonardo, who had managed to reach his good arm out and rest it against Junior's back. His palm nearly fit across the kid's entire rib cage.
It was Casey Jr.'s first brush with death. It would not be his last, and Cassandra knew this.
But she was stubborn. She would do everything she could to make the next reprieve just as long as this one had been.
- - -
It's too soon , Cassandra thought uselessly, hopelessly. Not now. It's too soon. He still needs me .
The blood gushing endlessly from the hole in her stomach did not respond.
The shadows in the empty, crumbling building loomed over her like a murder of jeering crows, waiting for her to succumb, waiting to feast on her flesh. She sent them the middle finger, her hand drenched with red and trembling. They'd have to wait a little longer.
A little longer. Not that much.
Her bracelet still was functioning, if barely. A part of her wanted to set it up to record, to send one last message to CJ. She had a plethora of last words bunched on her tongue like a cluster of grapes, an avalanche of 'I love you's and 'be safe's and 'goodbye's. She had so much she still wanted to tell him, but she couldn't do that. She wouldn't . No child should have to see the last moments of their parent. No boy should have to watch their mother's lifeblood spill onto the dusty floor. Her message the night before would have to suffice—a hasty goodnight, an order to pester Donatello until he pleaded for mercy, a salute. That was probably how he'd remember her, anyway. She wished she'd said more.
A tiny light on her wrist. You have (1) unviewed message .
Blue light flickered to life—it was not a color that would blend in here, and if any Krang came they would find it easily, but that didn't matter. She was almost dead anyway. She wanted to see her son again.
“ Hi Mom ,” the hologram of Junior beamed at her, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “ Uh, just wanted to send you a message- I was in the garden today and the tomato plants are blooming! It's- ” he cut himself off to shake his hands for a moment. “ I'm so excited. I'll show you when you get back, they're really pretty. Michelangelo helped me pollinate them with one of his paintbrushes, too, so we might get fruit. Um, that's it. Love you, bye. ”
For the first time in many years, a tear cut through the dirt on Cassandra Jones's cheek.
She wouldn't get to see if CJ would ever end up taller than her. She wouldn't get to see the tomato flowers he'd worked so hard to grow. She was going to get him his first weapon for his ninth birthday—she'd never see that, either. Somebody, probably Commander O'Neil, if she'd survived where Casey hadn't, would have to tell him. She'd go to his room, and kneel down to get on his level even though she hadn't done that in years, and he would know from the look in her eyes that something was wrong. And he'd cry. And she'd tell him that his mother was never coming back.
“ Love you,” Cassandra whispered like a prayer into the atmosphere, and she could imagine her life breathing out alongside it. A smile twitched onto her face.
“ Love you, Stinker.”