Chapter Text
It had started out innocent enough. She was just curious. She was looking for ways to fill her endless nights and be productive. She wanted to learn some Japanese and martial arts…and she was curious. She didn’t grow up watching tv and had time to kill, so she started watching them…
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Mikey: “Donnie, is it working? Did she find them?”…
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It made sense, she was a child of the ninety’s after-all, so why not get to know the icons of her era, but how she actually made the connection from wanting to learn martial arts and Japanese to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles she never quiet remembered.
She spent her evenings at the local martial arts studio, her nights off at the outdoor gym at the base, and her days sleeping—ah the life of mid shift worker! These were quiet days. She enjoyed the solitude of the night because it allowed her to train in privacy, but she felt the loneliness too. Sitting on the top bar of the ninja warrior course, feeling the gentle night breeze cool her perspiration, she felt an ache inside, a longing for something that felt just out of reach riding on the moon beams…
The children’s cartoon seemed to fill that ache, watching their silly antics, hero-ing adventures, and most of all witnessing their brotherly love and connection with each other. Before she knew it, every spare moment of her packed routine was dedicated to watching an episode or two. Between work, marital arts classes, and attempting to teach herself Japanese, she didn’t sit still long. And the ideals of the turtles challenged herself to do even more, to become better skilled, just as they had. Oh, she knew they weren’t real and that she could never actually become a ninja, but their drive inspired her! So surely there was no harm in letting herself get sucked into their fantasy world…
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Mikey: “How do you know it’s working?”
Donnie: “Because, Michelangelo, I’ve been tracking her screen time. It’s going to work…It has to.”
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How was he supposed to know that it was going to end up like this? It wasn’t his fault. He had to look out for the best interest of his brothers after all. He had to be selfish. It wasn’t his fault.