Chapter Text
You were walking through the alleyways of Brooklyn when you noticed him. The turtle with the purple mask. He was on the edge of a rooftops kneeling, the left side of his body facing you.
You made a quick exit back from where you entered, pulling your jacket’s hood above your head.
Since narrowly escaping the kraang lab you've cut and dyed your hair. You tried getting colored contacts but those were pretty expensive and you were trying to save up for your trip. You've at least dressed yourself in heavy, dark clothing, nothing too flashy. The last thing you wanted was to be noticed by anyone, least alone those turtles.
You had seen what they did to your 'siblings', if you could call the other clones that. You weren’t close with them, they didn’t have the ability to be close with anyone. You wish you could have helped but you knew there was nothing you could have done.
-
You were in the vat of mutagen when the intruders came in. There were four of them, turtles. They had shocked expressions on their faces.
You glanced around. Made sense. This was where they kept the majority of the April O'Neil clones. You were more 'refined' than some of the rest, having no outwardly differences between you and the original.
You also had a personality. Which the kraang did not care for but refused to terminate you due to how near perfect you were. Besides, they could easily shut you up. Put a cloth around your mouth and there you go, no more back talk.
One of the turtles passed by your vat, staring right at you. They were wearing a purple mask. You stared right back.
While all the other clones were asleep, having their brain wired through the kraang's telepathy, you were awake and aware. For whatever reason the kraang couldn't control you. So they used you for other experiments instead.
The turtles ended up moving on from your side of the circular room. You noted that the three other turtles also wore masks. Blue, red, and orange.
The alarms went off and the kraang rushed through the doors into the room. They sent out the 'reject april', or 'April Derp' as the turtles called her. You always felt bad for that one. The kraang truly messed her up. You watched as the turtles fought your pseudo sister.
And then you felt it - brain waves similar to yours tore through the room. Derp April was gooified nearly instantly.
The original April was somewhere here.
You d idn't know how you felt about that.
The turtles left the room, were they going after the original?
You waited in silence for a bit. And then the alarms went off, the evac alarms. The vats opened up, releasing you and the rest of the clones.
You were getting your bearings set when the turtles came back, this time with the original. Your siblings swarmed them, doing what they had been programmed to do. You wished you could help them, help them fight whatever conditioning the kraang put them un der, but you knew it would be hopeless.
While the turtles and your siblings were distracted you snuck out. You were able to slip through the opened doors unnoticed, then you ran. You had no idea where the exit would be so you went as far down as you could and threw an office chair through the window. You made the jump down, unharmed thanks to the extra durability you and the other clones had, and ran as far as you could from the building.
You wandered about Brooklyn for a while. It was still dark when you found a 24 hour laundromat. The employee didn't even look up at you when you entered, they had been reading a magazine. There were three people in the laundromat, one was an older woman who was knitting while waiting for her clothes. One was a young woman, who seemed to have fallen asleep. The other was a young man on his phone.
You first made use of the bathroom, and then after careful consideration you stole some clothes out of the sleeping woman's dryer. The clothes were almost room temperature, she must have been sleeping for a while.
You then made your way out and walked to the nearest empty alleyway where you changed out of your white outfit. You had taken a black hood and a pair of leggings. No shoes, but you’ll make sure to get a pair.
After fully changing you finally took a minute to close your eyes and breath. You were out. You were free. The air smelled like garbage but at least it was a whole new smell you got to experience. You opened your eyes and looked up to the sky. You had never seen the sky before in person. You smiled.
-
You had been pretty lucky, you only had one encounter with the kraang and you easily lost them. You had seen the turtles from a distance before, you were constantly on the lookout. Despite your freedom you still felt like a prisoner at times. You wondered if they knew an April clone had escaped.
You hoped not.
But at least you wouldn’t have to worry about that for too long. You almost had enough money for the bus trip.
You stuck your hands in your hoodie’s pocket and took out the worn postcard you’ve been carrying for weeks now. You remember when you found it.
-
You had been dumpster diving for some ‘new’ clothes and for a bite to eat. You moved some trash out of the way when the postcard caught your eyes. It was a picture of sunrise on the beach. On the bottom it read Cape Cod.
There was something about this picture. Sure, you’d seen sunrises before living in New York City for the past few weeks but…this was…this felt different.
‘Cape Cod, huh? That’s in Massachusetts…not crazy far,’ you thought to yourself. It was at this time you decided to leave New York. Why not? Nothing was really keeping you here. You started to make plans in your head, going to Massachusetts, after that maybe going to other New England states. You had the whole world you could explore!
‘Wait, no. Not the whole world. Not like I can get onto a plane without an id or passport,’ you reminded yourself. Okay whatever, you could stick with North America and South America.
That was at your most excited. Until a couple of weeks after when you realized that you might not have enough time to visit all the places you wanted to visit.
It started with some numbness in your hands and feet. At first you chalked it up to your limbs falling asleep and typical pins and needles. But then you had some difficulties picking up small objects with your fingers. After dropping the same gift card to your favorite coffee place that you had ‘found’ 5 times in a row you realized. Your fine motor skills were going.
You had heard Kraang talk about clone degeneration. It was hard to tell at first which clones would suffer from it. If they had obvious physical deformities that was a good sign, but even the clones who had no physical differences could suffer from it. And you were. You were suffering from it.
You gave yourself a good 10 minutes of an emotional breakdown - anger, sadness, fear all rolled into one episode of crying and throwing shit you had found in the alley. You punched the cold brick walls so hard you knuckles were scraped up.
Unfair. UNFAIR. You had just started making plans for the future and now -
Now you didn’t even have a future.
You started to feel lightheaded and slid down from where you were standing to sit on the cold hard ground. Oh, boy. That was a lot of extreme feelings in a short amount of time. You hugged your knees and took some deep breaths. In and out.
The rational part of your brain was trying to push through.
‘Okay, so you can’t do it all. Fine. Pick one to do for now and then see how you feel. You don’t even know how long you have left.’
You nodded to yourself. It's true. Okay.
You picked yourself off of the ground and took the postcard you had stuck in your pocket.
‘This one. This one will be my main focus for now. I want to watch the sunrise from a beach in Cape Cod.’
-
You had your back turned now, moving away from the purple one. You tried to relax your tense body, deep breaths in and out. He didn’t see you, you were fine.
You kept your breath steady as you walked away.
You only needed a few more bucks for the bus fair to Cape Cod. With no job you had to rely on pickpocketing, which you weren’t always happy with doing, or finding loose change in your dumpster diving spots. You had been on your way to one of those coin to cash exchange machines. You had found a bunch recently and hoped this was it.
Your body started to feel less tense.
There was another one of those machines at the grocery store east of where you were. You could just head to that one instead, avoid that purple turtle.
Your body felt hot. You hope you were on the verge of a fever. That would be the worst luck. You took your hood off to let the night air cool you off. You didn't realize doing this was a mistake.
“April! Dude, did you dye your hair?”
A flash of green and orange appeared in front of you. You startled away and nearly fell on your ass.
A green three fingered hand shot out to grab your arm.
“Oh sorry! Didn’t mean to scare ya! Hey, did you cut your hair too? It looks good on you!”
It was the orange turtle from the TCRI. Shit. What do you…do you pretend to be April? What should-
“I was on my way to Murakami’s to grab some pizza gyōza. You wanna come?”
He looked at you expectantly. He had big blue eyes and a kind smile on his face.
Screw it. Let your instincts take over. That’s always a good option, right?
“Um..,” ugh, your voice. You had been trying to change the pitch of your voice so you wouldn’t sound like the original.
You had finally found the pitch you were happy with so hearing your ‘normal’ voice come out was strange.
“Uh," you started again, "Who's April?” You said sheepishly.
And then you rushed past him.
Good job instincts. What was even the point.