Chapter Text
You, despite what all the adults in your life told you, were not an angry kid. Sure, there may have been a time or two where you got extremely passionate over something deemed “not a big deal”, but for the most part, you thought your childhood was smooth sailing.
Until you got in a fistfight at space camp, the summer after sixth grade.
To be fair, he hit back. And he fought dirty.
Donatello Hamato freaking bit you, after all. The scar on your left shoulder reminded you that he had a tooth gap almost as big as his ego. You remembered the human-yokai shot series that came afterwards particularly well.
Cobbled together from what you could remember and what your parents’ memories filled in, the fight started as a minor disagreement. Donatello was the kid who always had his hand raised for every question posed to the group by the camp leader. You had a quiet respect for him before this moment, because he seemed like he really knew his stuff.
But, Donatello, who you hadn’t spoken to during the first month of camp, piped up at the lunch table that day with the most incredibly wrong fact you’d ever heard.
It all went downhill from there.
To set the scene, you sat elbow to elbow with every other snot-nosed, nerd kid sent to the camp to get socialized and to touch grass (well, space) by their parents. Other kids were having normal, friendly discussions about the color of the next spacesuit (white, duh) or what happened if you left the ISS with no air supply (death, obviously).
You hadn’t really made any friends at camp, but things were norminal (yes, nominal + normal) until Donatello opened his big mouth and ruined your day.
“Pluto isn’t a planet anymore,” he said, accompanied by a whistle from the chasm between his two front teeth. His glasses were almost bigger than his face and strapped to his head with a bungee cord in the back.
You looked around and realized he was talking to you specifically. He must’ve noticed the Pluto pin on the collar of your jean jacket.
He sat across from you at the picnic table and apprehensively picked through the provided PB&J (mostly J) sandwich, like he hadn’t just said the most insane thing that you’d ever heard.
Your pre-pubescent brain was disturbed. Shaken. You lived your life by several absolutes. Such as:
- The Earth revolved around the sun.
- Space was completely silent.
- There were nine planets in your solar system.
This was earth shattering for you. If there were now eight planets, what did that mean for every other science fact that you knew by heart? Were those all waiting to be proven wrong, too? What was even holding your body together? Not science?
Oh god. What if it was all magic. Magic and wishes and good luck.
In short, your brain fried itself and you had a bit of an existential crisis/meltdown. What middle schooler didn’t have those?
“What? That’s not true,” you said back to him, mid-chew through your own lunch. The jelly had oozed out over your fingers and you tried to brush it off on a napkin. Your hands were sticky now, but that was the least of your problems.
“Is too. The International Astronomical Union said so,” replied Donatello, very matter-of-factly. He took a long sip of his juice-box, even though it was near empty. The sound was obnoxious. Like him.
“There’s been nine planets in our solar system for almost eighty years,” you muttered, completely horrified. You clasped your hands to your cheeks and your forehead wrinkled.
“Not anymore,” he said. He acted a little too glad about that for your liking.
“But, isn't the IAU just made up of astronomers?” You asked. The rest of your sandwich was dropped down on the paper plate in front of you.
Somehow, you knew you might need both of your hands for this conversation.
“Well, actually, scientists are in the IAU too,” he huffed and folded his arms over his plastron. The thick eyebrows drawn on his purple bandana were scrunched together and his mouth was a tight line on green skin.
“But,” he dragged out. “Only astronomers voted on the new planet resolutions.”
You found out later that less than five percent of astronomers voted, in fact. Your behavioral counselor told you that you needed to let that go.
“Well, actually, this is stupid,” you shot back, louder. You were internally panicking but you couldn’t let it show. Otherwise, he’d win.
Tiny sets of eyes started to accumulate on the two of you. The human kid on your left noticeably scooted as far away as their seat would allow and pulled their milk carton with them. On your right, the yokai child asked to go to the bathroom, but you had a feeling they didn’t really need to go. Cowards.
Donatello held up an index finger and a smug expression. “Not stupid. Pluto is missing the third IUA resolution to be considered a planet.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” You asked. Your heartbeats rushed in your ears and your palms were clammy.
“It doesn’t clear the neighborhood. The mass of Pluto is less than the combined mass of everything else in its orbit,” he sneered back to you. “It’s a dwarf planet now.”
Your stomach dropped. The PB&J did not settle well as it passed through your digestive system.
“Well, it wasn’t a problem until some astronomers decided it was,” you countered, with an extra helping of snark.
“They’re professional astronomers!” It was the first time you’d ever heard Donatello raise his voice, but you were surprised at how loud it was. So was the rest of the cafeteria. Very quickly, the chatter on either side of you died down to low whispers.
Then, Donatello said something that pushed you over the edge. Turns out that middle schoolers were some of the pettiest people alive. Particularly this one.
“You’re only mad because you’re tiny, like Pluto,” he said, barely audible over the ambient noise in the room. Time paused for a second.
You weren’t really proud of the next part.
Reports of the event were not greatly exaggerated. You remembered standing up, jumping across the table, and tackling Donatello to the ground with a battle cry. Why? Well, you know why. Pluto was just demoted to a dwarf planet and this turtle boy insulted your height and your precious (not dwarf) planet in one go.
In hindsight, puberty might’ve hit you earlier than you thought.
Donatello yelled when the two of you fell to the ground, him carapace first. Someone screamed and plenty of kids yelled for the camp counselors. The room erupted in a roar as you waged a fight with your newly branded nemesis.
You pulled your hand back and punched him with a closed fist. You were, in fact, bold enough to hit a kid with glasses.
You had never hit someone before.
The impact of his cheekbone on your knuckles really freaking hurt and you couldn’t shake off the pain that blossomed. Your hands were trembling from the adrenaline and you took heavy breaths as you both came to terms with what transpired. He stared at you, glasses crooked and one of the lenses cracked.
You thought that’d be the end of it.
He did not agree.
Donatello, being only two inches taller than you, had a lot more strength than you’d expect from a fellow ex-sixth grader. He grappled with you across the cheap tile floor and you swore that he hissed at you in the process. He slapped you back, clear across the bridge of your nose. In kind, you kneed him in the plastron, which hurt you more than him, then returned the slap. The rough surface of his shell tore through your knees.
Your fist reared up for another punch when he bit you on the shoulder. Hard. His teeth dug in, but you weren’t going to give him the satisfaction of crying like a little kid.
There wasn’t much blood, but the amount that was there dribbled down your collar bone and stained your NASA shirt. He froze and for a brief moment, you stopped fighting him.
You registered that there was now a perfect imprint of Donatello Hamato’s dental set forever embedded on your skin. If anyone wanted to, they could now measure the distance between his two front teeth using your shoulder and a ruler.
His hand started to loosen on your wrist. Donatello seemed a little guilty. At least, based on the proximity of his fake eyebrows relative to one another. He opened his mouth to apologize (according to your and his parents). You thought he was going back for another one.
Then, as any completely deranged and cornered kid would do, you bit him back. Harder.
He tasted terrible. You supposed it could’ve been worse, given that he was a fellow nerdy kid. Hygiene at that camp was somewhat lacking.
Above you, he looked completely stunned. Shocked, even. Donatello was never at a loss for words during the lessons, but at this current moment in time, he didn’t have anything to say.
Two camp counselors pulled you apart and dragged you to opposite ends of the cafeteria. The nurse’s office put an end to the bleeding and sent you through the standard shot series for possible yokai bacterial infection. He likely got the opposite version. They were extremely painful and had to be administered on each hip.
Honestly? It would’ve been better if he’d had rabies.
You were put in timeout, which you were a bit old for, but no one ever bit another kid in the history of space camp. Turned towards the corner of the room, eyes forward, hands at your sides, no talking. They kept you separated from Donatello and for a pretty good reason.
Your parents came to get you the next day and somehow, that kicked off a whole round of psychological evaluations and book purchases for problematic children. Behavioral counseling was another part of your routine until high school. The story of you fighting Donatello at camp became a story recited at each Christmas gathering, year after year.
Middle school blipped by without any further biting incidents. High school was a grind. You worked your butt off to score within the top ten kids in your graduating class. Unlike most people, you knew exactly what you wanted to do post-college and you were determined to get there.
You wanted to send people to space. That desire hadn’t changed. You needed a bachelor’s, industry experience, then a master’s and/or a PhD. EastLaird had the best program in the country for a focus in aerospace and student-led clubs to go along with it. Rockets, CubeSats, experienced professors, and academic rivalry. What more could you want?
After five agonizing months after submitting an application, a huge packet in the mail showed up. You got in. You were headed to New York City. One of your relatives posted a dumb congrats message on social media that referenced your status as the problem child of the family and their surprise that you hadn’t become a miscreant. Apparently, it was a shock for a lot of people.
And after all this time, you still occasionally thought about Donatello Hamato. How could you not? You carried his dumb mouth etched into your shoulder. The skin had never healed over quite right and lighter pockets of scarring marked the location of each tooth.
But, you never bothered to scour social media for him or find out what he was up to. You’d left that part of your past in the counselor’s office with all of the weird emotion puppets and complex feelings that were left unresolved from the Pluto fight. Even if your family couldn’t, you’d let the whole thing go.
College was going to be a fresh start. New friends, new roommate, new city.
You settled into your dorm. Went to orientation. Gossiped with your roommate.
Imagine your surprise when you found that one Donatello Hamato took a seat beside you on the first day of Intro to Engineering Design and didn’t say a singular word. Not one. He didn’t even look your direction.
Gone were the huge glasses and the gap between his teeth. Mismatched goggles sat on top of his bandana. Still purple. The markings across his shoulders during his youth were now prominent along the underside of his chin. He was more than two inches taller than you this time around and his scrawny kid arms had vanished.
In short: you’d probably lose a physical fight with him if you had another go around.
But, this space pond wasn’t big enough for the both of you. Someone needed to leave and you guaranteed that it was going to be him.
This was not going to be a good year.