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1.
“Ahhh, you smell that April?” Donnie took a deep breath. “That is the scent of science just waiting to be made!”
“Or it could be the new metal smell,” the girl commented as she poked at the gears and bolts in the shop.
“Science!” He eagerly grabbed a handful of metal contraptions.
“Alright there Bill Nye, take it easy before we get kicked out of another town,” she chuckled. The two were just out and about shopping in the Gozo Bozo Mall for both clothes and anything science related. It was no Hidden City, but the mall was a pretty cool yokai spot to be and sometimes the best things are found in the out of places no one thinks of first.
“Jokes on you, Bill Nye is an accredited genius that deserves all the hype he is given,” he turned his back towards the shiny (and potentially explosive) chemicals. “It’s like Christmas and a science fair had a beautiful beautiful enriching baby and now I can purchase these legally!”
April held back a smile as she remembered walking into Donnie's lab and finding him hacking into billionaires' accounts when she was ten. At first she had a moral dilemma, but that thought lasted one solid half hour cause fuck capitalism, her baby brothers need it a lot more than them greedy bloodsuckers.
(It didn’t hurt when Dee purchased her a brand new gaming system with it, she could endure her mother's suspicious stares and questions.)
Instead, she drew her attention away from her turtle brother and it traveled to a red fox and a bunny wearing a red cloak, with some eye-catching green eye marks, pair talking animatedly or rather the fox was as the other was nodding every once in a while. Then April noticed cute glowing beads at the end of the fox tail that reminded her of an amalgamation of crushed up dandelion petals and vomit that gave birth to a deformed baby color.
She wanted it.
“Sorry for cutting in but quick question,” she slid in close, “where’d you get those beads from?”
“These?” The fox paused and brought her tail closer.
“Yeah! Those are incredible and I want one,” the last time she said ugly cute, she got shouted at for an hour about the character's lore and history. She will never diss someone's anime character again.
“Thanks, I got these at Swarms of Charms at the corner of BrookMane.”
“That place near the floating fishes in the giant bubbles?”
“The same one.”
“Cool! Thanks for the help!” The human smiled.
“No problem,” the fox then tilted her head. “Have you been here before?”
“Huh? No, this is my first time.”
“Weird, I feel like I know you from somewhere.”
April, whose biggest presence in a yokai realm was the magic town she and Donnie got kicked out from, laughed nervously. “Hahaha! Nope! Not me! I have never met you before!”
“Are you sure?” The fox leaned in closer. “I really feel like I know you from somewhere.
“Nope! Not in the slightest!”
“How about you back off you idle minded simpleton,” Donnie drawled out as he watched the amusing scene.
“Simple?!” The yokai switch focuses from the human to the turtle real quick. “I am not simple! You overgrown kappa!”
“Oh contraire Vulpes vulpes Linn, judging by your lack of beautiful tech, I can see that you have yet to comprehend the artistic and significant beauty of the scientific world.”
“Excuse me?!”
“Donnie, what have we talked about assuming,” April harshly whispered.
“I was merely assisting you with this ruffian,” he whispered back, but that wasn’t soft enough for a certain pair of ears.
“That’s funny coming from someone who looks like they should be behind bars for mental insanity,” the bunny stepped forward as he gave the turtle a once over. “Or that’s what I would have said if I thought you were smart enough.”
April swore she heard Dee's neck snap with how quickly he turned to the rabbit.
“Excuse me?” He thinly said as if he was a big bad supervillain that just heard his army got taken down by a child.
“Your excuse, but unfortunately I can’t excuse your poor manners or lack of a brain,” he dug the insult in.
“What?!” It was only by the laws and April, having a firm grip on him, that he hasn’t thoroughly eradicated this buffoon.
“I’m sorry, am I going too slow for you? It’s not my fault your a simple minded fool that can’t keep up,” the rabbit smirked.
April had to drag Donnie out of the store before the turtle could leap from his spot and wrap his hands around the bunny's neck.
“Let me go April! I need to teach that buffoon of an overgrown Tetrapoda a lesson! Me a Dum Dum?! I’ll teach him!”
“No Donnie! Down! We can’t get kicked out of another town!”
“Mark my words, I’ll make sure he ever regrets meeting me! He will rue it!”
“Enough with the supervillain monologue.”
“You know you didn’t have to say all that,” the fox said to her rabbit friend as they watched the entire thing.
“I couldn’t just let him insult you like that,” the bunny shrugged.
“It wasn’t even that bad,” she rolled her eyes. “You know if you keep this up, karma's gonna get you.”
“Oh please, I bet I’ll never see that turtle again,” he snorted. “Now come on, you were talking about a new hacking chip?”
2.
Mikey rolled the onion in hand, before smiling at the right texture and placing it in his bag. He found out very quickly that to check if a yokai food item was not rotten, it relied mostly on touch and feeling rather than smell like the human world.
“This would do nicely with the stew,” he happily hummed and continued on his way. It was getting cold and they needed the extra pick me up warmth else they would go into brumation.
(It was not a fun time when they found out Leo had the lowest body temperature when they were unable to wake him up in the middle of a movie when he was eight.)
The youngest turtle continued on his way, stopping by each stall whenever something caught his eye, but his eyes did catch something else as he sees a yokai as big as his eldest brother, looking strangely at a rectangle tomato (not sphere or even oval?! The soil in the yokai realm is certainly strange and if they weren’t living in the sewers he would totally grow some) in one hand and a square tomato in another.
“Having some trouble?” Mikey went up to the rhino.
“Huh? No, just trying to figure out which one my friend wanted,” he spared a look at the shorter teen.
“What are they making?”
“Just some pasta?”
“Ooo, what kind? Are they going for a classic? Cherry tomato? Basil? Scarpetta?” He rapidly list some out but got a blank look in return.
“Umm, I dunno it’s just pasta,” he muttered feeling slightly embarrassed at his lack of knowledge.
Luckily, Mikey picked up on that and swung it back around real quick, and plucked out the rectangle tomato from his hand. “No worries, if you want tomatoes for pasta then I suggest the square ones, the other one is what I commonly use for pizza.”
“Thanks,” the rhino breathed a sigh of relief and collected a few more. “I was already iffy about the seeds, so I didn’t want to mess this up.”
“Seeds?”
“Yeah, my friend likes to add seeds to his pasta.” The yokai will never comprehend his friend's taste, but he can’t say anything, he likes to order bananas in his brownies from the bakery.
“Excuse me?” Mikey thinly said as if he misheard the travesty of a perfectly good dish ruined.
“Yeah, he likes to put them in when the pasta is boiling for the flavor, well after he breaks the spaghetti first,” the rhino hummed.
“He what?” That’s practically rule number one! You don’t break spaghetti! That’s an insult to the culture itself and the food!
“You got everything?” Another voice was heard and the two saw a bunny walking toward them holding a basket full of food.
“Pretty much,” the taller yokai nodded. “Had some trouble with the tomato.”
“Eh, so long as it doesn’t feel slimy and bumpy it’s practically the same thing,” he shrugged, unknowingly making the turtle's body twitch.
“If you say so,” the rhino turned to Mikey and slightly bowed. “Thanks for the help though.”
“It was my pleasure,” he weakly smiled, then he looked at the newcomer. “I assume you're the one cooking?”
“You guessed correctly, thanks for helping out my friend,” he gave a small nod to him. “He’s an absolute mess in the kitchen.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“You burned cereal.”
“And? Maybe I liked the crunchy flavor.”
Micheal snorted at the familiar interactions he has with Donnie. He only trusts Leon with his kitchen over Raph and the only reason is that his blue masked brother actually can follow the recipe (and the only reason for that was because Mikey realized he could and threaten him with the promise of eternal pain if he doesn’t do it correctly) unlike the eldest that tends to try to simplify it. He had to put a stop to Raph asking their genius brother into making an oven that goes up to 4,000,000 degrees and Dee was actually thinking about making it and Leo was egging him on!
‘See he isn’t too bad, everyone has their own taste,’ the turtle breathed in and beat down the chef instincts within him. “So just a weird off hand question, but what is your favorite kind of toppings on pizza?”
“Pickles.”
And there he could hear his heart shatter into millions of pieces.
“Anyways it was a pleasure talking to you, let’s go before Chizu rips our heads off.” The bunny walked off without looking back to see the utter devastation he left upon the poor turtle.
“I know, I feel your pain,” the rhino patted his shoulder before following quickly after him.
Mikey stood in that space for ten minutes, frozen at the audacity of the bunny-no the heathen words.
“That monster!” He practically hissed to himself as he accidentally squished the tomato in hand. The red juices that slowly dripped down his hands reminded him of the blood that he will spill if he ever sees that heretic again.
“Umm, are you gonna pay for that?” The grocer quietly piped up, but was quelled by the murderous look in the mutant eyes. “Nevermind!”
3.
“Ugh, I can’t believe that they are still selling Jupiter Jim comics,” Raph heard it before he saw them.
The eldest turtle was just trying to hang out in the human mall since it was cosplay day and he could comfortably go out as the Lizardoid, the giant space lizard that Jupiter Jim befriended in the 45th episode and was the sole reason for him and the crew safety from the exploding volcano. He just added some extra green horns on his head and some more textural design makeup, courtesy of his youngest brother, and he was almost a spitting image.
He had ventured into the comic shop and was going over some of the comics he, or his brothers, didn't have when he heard that sentence.
“Really? It’s just a cartoon show,” the female voice drawled, well what he could tell from his view from the corner of his eyes.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t be right,” the other insisted. “Who even reads this garbage these days?”
“You're just mad that Jupiter Jim rivals your Space Heroes show.”
“No, I don’t! Nothing can compare to that masterpiece, especially not this knockoff,” he hotly said.
Now usually Raph doesn’t like to get involved, but he can not let this blasphemy keep happening. “Hahaha, sorry to be rude, but actually it was Jupiter Jim that came out first then Space Heroes came soon after.”
“Only because the production crew ‘suddenly’ lost the second to final draft and somehow Jupiter Jim came out with a similar plot line soon after,” the person (who was cosplaying as a bunny in an astronaut suit and usually he would compliment it, but not when his show is being desecrated like this) spat out. “If that ain’t suspicious I don’t know what is?”
“Well it’s not their fault that the better show came out first,” Raph countered.
“But Space Heroes premier was set before your stupid show and suddenly Jupiter Jim decides to release there’s early. I smell sabotage,” he shot back.
“That doesn't mean that Space Heroes is better than Jupiter Jim. We had better graphics than that trash that was shown!” The turtle was getting heated up, he would not let anyone disparage on makes fun of the best t.v show ever.
“Space Heroes had a better plot line.”
“No it doesn’t! There were so many plot holes that were left, unlike Jupiter Jim that makes sure no loose ends get left behind.”
“You're seriously having a nerd argument right now,” the cat cosplayer deadpanned.
“Well, at least Captain Ryan wasn’t a sellout like Stupider Jim!”
“Gasp! You take that back!”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she sighed.
“I said what I said! He is a wannabe that is past his prime!”
“Says the one whose main character is so cringy that even babies get secondhand embarrassment!”
“Those are some fighting words!” The bunny cracked his knuckles.
“Bring it,” the turtle huffed.
Neither one was able to follow through on their acts of violence as they both got kicked out of the store in the end.
“Can you not insult someone show,” the cat rolled her eyes as she followed behind her stomping rabbit friend.
“Maybe if he wasn’t wrong,” he spat out.
“Raph does not like him, not one bit,” the turtle growled as he stormed off in another direction. Maybe spending some time at Build-A-Plushy will calm him down.
(He, in fact, did calm down with the aid of a mutant green cow with too many legs in his arms, but the simmering ire he had towards the rabbit did not fade in the slightest.)
4. (+1)
“No one was expecting that Jei would frame us like this,” the snow white yokai said as he and his friends all hid in the alleyway. “But we need to see this through, there is too much on the line already. We’ve been through worse shit before, we can get through this.”
It was already bad enough that they were getting framed by a corrupt CEO due to their nosiness, but no one could stop after they saw the plans for all those prisoners. They may be misfits in their own way, but not a single one of them would ever let that kind of shit slide.
“Can’t be worse than the time we graffiti the upper echelon of the rich bastard houses,” the fox snickered along with everyone else. He remembered that it was his feline friend's idea, but the rest of them were on board and it soon turned into a competition on who could hit the most houses first.
Good times.
“Man, I would pay to see that.”
Usagi instantly shot in front of the group at the unfamiliar voice. He had his katana at the ready and was not afraid to slice someone to pieces to give his friends time to flee.
“Who are-” the words got stuck in his throat as his shocked viridian eyes met curious sapphire ones of an ethereal beauty gazing down upon them. He had not seen many turtles in his time, but this blue masked one was a vision beyond words.
Yuichi Usagi was in love at first sight.