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“So to confirm, Angelo, you can feel our ninpo?”
The four turtles, April, Splinter, and Draxum were seated on the floor of the lair. They all sat cross-legged, and their knees were touching, creating a closed circle.
Donnie had posed the question, keeping his promise of asking Mikey about his mystic sense once he had gotten sufficient sleep. He’d called the rest of their family, too, and all were in the circle save for Casey and CJ. The two of them were sitting on the beanbags, watching, because of their lack of ninpo.
Mikey nodded, before closing his eyes and activating his mystic sense so he could describe them. “It’s like—distinct. They all feel distinct. They all make sense for each person. Like, um, mine is kinda fiery, and burn-y, and bright, yours is…uh…glitchy? That sounds really bad, but it’s good, I promise! It feels like machines, but also not really… ugh this is hard,” he said at last, putting his face in his hands and deactivating his mystic sense.
Donnie, to his credit, was still taking notes, even with Mikey’s bad descriptions.
“Can you sense other mystic energies?” Draxum asked.
Mikey closed his eyes again, and spread his mystic sense out again. He could feel Draxum’s power, though it was much less noticeable than the Hamato ninpo.
“I feel you,” he said, with his mystic sense still active. “You feel different. Less.”
He was focusing so much on finding adjectives to describe the feeling that the word was out of his mouth before he thought about it, and his eyes popped open, dispelling his sense.
“I mean—”
Draxum held up a hand. “I take no offense, Michelangelo. I am confident that my power is easily sensed by anything if I am not actively concealing it. Which means that this power stemmed from your ninpo, not from anything mystic.
“However, I have a prediction that considering your growing power, your senses will grow with it.”
“Wait, what?” Raph and Leo said, at the same time that Donnie said, "Growing power?”
Splinter looked at his boys. “He didn’t tell you?”
Leo glared at Draxum while Raph and Donnie simply looked over.
“No. I haven’t. It…slipped my mind.” He seemed to be sweating a little beneath Leo’s gaze.
“Wow, Goat Man, first you drop me off a building, now you keep my little brother’s mystic capabilities a secret? And tell him to keep them a fucking secret?”
“Leo…” Mikey said.
“You’re still on the throwing-you-off-a-roof?” Draxum asked, managing to keep a pretty good poker face even though Mikey could see a bead of sweat drip down his neck. Leo could be intimidating when he wanted to be.
“Oh, fuck yeah I am—”
“Leo,” Raph said at last. “This is about Mikey, not your grudge against Barry. And watch your language.”
Leo huffed and crossed his arms, but shut his mouth and broke his glare on Draxum.
“For those who aren’t aware,” Draxum began, carefully avoiding Leo’s look as he glared sharply at him again as soon as Raph looked away, “Michelangelo’s mystic abilities have been improving and complexifying since we started training. Most notable of those abilities—”
“List every one, Goat Man.”
Draxum held up a hand to Raph, who was winding up to smack Leo in the back of the head. “The hostility is understandable, though…immature, still understandable.” Draxum did not glance at Leo even as the slider stuck his index fingers up at him in an imitation of what those with more fingers could do. “All of the abilities I’ve observed are generating chains made purely out of his ninpo, levitating, lifting things with his ninpo, and creating an incredibly hot fire that can melt most metals with ease, along with the abilities he already has: lengthening the chain of his nunchaku, generating fire, making the nunchaku chains levitate, and throwing things with the aforementioned chain,” he counted on his fingers.
“I can’t lift too many things at once, or things that are too heavy with my ninpo, though,” Mikey said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head under the tails of his mask.
He still remembered the one and only time he tried lifting something heavier than he knew he could. His head felt like it was splitting open for hours after, and the skin of his hands had actually cracked apart, to the point of needing Draxum’s salve. Luckily, most of it was covered by the gloves he always wore.
Raph’s hand landed heavily on the top of his head. “That’s okay, Big Man. You’re doing great.”
Mikey gave him a smile, his tongue sticking out a bit as his head got squished a little into his shell.
“Anyhow,” Draxum said, turning everyone’s attention back to him, “I would like to run some tests.”
“Oh, hell no—” Leo began, but Draxum threw him a glare that actually shut him up.
“The tests will be completely non-invasive. I will simply ask him to deploy his mystic sense twice per day and ask him for any changes in the sensations. It’s not the best experiment, especially since the only base we have to draw from is Michelangelo, and the observations will be qualitative, and not quantitative, but it is better than nothing.”
He looked directly at Mikey. “Do you remember what the energy of the people in this room feels like?”
Mikey closed his eyes, touching his fingers together in imitation of a meditation pose, and spread his senses out.
Him, Raph, Leo, Donnie, April, Splinter…he could feel Draxum’s, but it was a little more muted, and finally, the not-cold emptiness of Casey and CJ.
“Yes,” he responded to Draxum, still sensing his family’s energies.
“Good,” the warrior alchemist responded.
His brothers’ and sister’s energies increased in size, though not quite in intensity.
“Does it feel any different now?”
“They feel bigger.”
“Yes. Your siblings, other than the two humans on the beanbags, have summoned their weapons. Now—” Suddenly, his senses filled with energy.
“It’s stronger,” he said. He was pretty sure he heard someone typing, though whether it was Donnie or Draxum, he didn’t know.
“You’re doing great, Orange,” he heard Splinter say. He felt a light hand on his shoulder.
“Can I try tracking someone around the lair?”
There was a surprised pause, before Draxum said, “Yes. Who?”
“You.”
Another surprised pause.
“Are you sure, Angelo? With the fact that his energy is less noticeable to you, it might strain your abilities,” Donnie said.
Mikey shook his head. “I can do it. I wanna try.”
The energies shifted a little before Draxum’s energy got physically taller.
“We can try.”
Draxum left the room, and Donnie took over in the questioning.
About every half a minute, he’d ask Mikey where the warrior alchemist was. He’d answer, and Donnie would say, “That’s correct,” before letting Mikey focus again.
As Draxum got further, Mikey needed to focus harder. But Donnie would keep on asking questions, and he’d keep on answering them.
Then Donnie stopped asking questions.
Mikey thought it was kind of weird, but figured he’d ask more eventually, so he just focused on tracking Draxum through the lair.
His head hurt as he kept on focusing on his second father, simultaneously tracking his movements and matching the movements to his mind-map of the lair.
It got to the point where it felt like his head was splitting apart, and he almost deactivated his senses.
Almost.
He was strong. He was a few months away from sixteen, old enough that he could start doing hard things, old enough that he shouldn’t be leaning on his brothers or dads anymore.
He powered through the pain.
Draxum was nearing the edge of what they’d claimed as their lair.
“—es! Mikes?” There was an incredibly obvious edge of worry to the speaker’s voice, indicating that they’d been calling his name quite a few times. He was pretty sure it was April.
“Yeah?” he managed, then wrinkled his face when it made his head throb, then quickly relaxed his face when it felt like it was cracking apart.
“Deactivate your sense, Orange,” Splinter said gently, and blessedly, quietly.
“I can do it,” he gritted through his teeth.
“Mikey, please…” Raph pleaded.
His tone was heartbreaking.
Mikey finally deactivated his sense, and found that his jaw hurt like he was grinding his teeth together. His head felt like it was splitting apart, he felt a little nauseous, and when he slowly opened his eyes, they throbbed with pain. He looked down at his hands, which had cracked fissures spreading up his arms. Blood oozed from some of the deeper ones, not unlike when he cracked open a hole between dimensions. Just less severe.
Shit.
He looked up at his siblings, who had broken the closed circle and were now huddled around him, worry clear on their faces.
Donnie pulled a mirror out of his battleshell and showed it to Mikey. He saw that there were now cracks spreading around his eyes, fracturing the orange spots on his face.
“Oh, shit,” he vocalized, which made pain burst through his skull. He brought a cracked hand up to gingerly touch the cracks, earning a sting of pain on his face. “Oooooooh, shiiiiiiit,” he breathed, as he looked closer and saw that there were even thin cracks on the whites of his eyeballs. “Fuck.”
He looked back up at his family.
And then he passed out.
* * * * *
Donnie should’ve known that as soon as Mikey’s bright orange markings on his limbs and face started glowing, he should’ve stopped him.
But he was still responding to his questions, still telling the softshell where Draxum was and being completely and impressively accurate.
He only started worrying when he stopped answering his questions and the glow started intensifying.
The worry was compounded further when light shone through the tiny opening of his little brother’s closed eyelids.
Then he was full-on panicking when cracks split the skin around his eyes and on his hands apart.
He was lunging forward to shake Mikey awake before he could think. That was a mistake, because as soon as he touched Mikey’s shoulder, the feedback was immense . There was a quick moment where he felt like his skull was about to pop like fucked up popcorn before he took his hand away and the pain disappeared.
Splinter and Raph, along with April, Casey, and CJ, were gathered around Mikey.
“Don’t touch him!” he barked right before he fell onto the floor of the lair, onto his battleshell, reeling from the sudden appearance and disappearance of skull-splitting pain.
Leo was at Donnie’s side at an instant, helping him up.
“What happened, Donnie?” Leo asked, nearly drowned out by the various voices trying to get Mikey out of his trance.
“Feedback,” Donnie managed, his brain still trying to process the pain that felt like it was still there but completely not.
Leo helped him up, and the twins joined the huddle at the same time that Mikey opened his eyes, the glow dispelling.
He slowly opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, which were oozing blood from some of the deeper cracks. He looked back up at his family, confusion obvious on his face. Donnie took a mirror out of his battleshell and held it out to the box turtle.
“Oh shit.” He brought a hand up and gingerly touched the new cracks on his face. “Oooooooh, shiiiiiiit.” He leaned a little closer to the mirror and seemed to notice something. “Fuck.”
He looked back up at his family.
His face obviously signified he was out of his depth.
And then his eyes slipped closed and he listed sideways.
Thankfully, before he cracked his head open on the floor, Raph reflexively caught him.
“Someone call Draxum!” Leo ordered, his voice audible over the ensuing pandemonium. Donnie immediately pulled out his phone and called the warrior alchemist.
As soon as Draxum answered, Donnie yelled, “Get your ass back here!” before hanging up and returning his attention back to Mikey.
Most of the family, save for Raph, had stepped back and were silent. Leo’s index finger was on Mikey’s major artery in his wrist, eyes closed and probably counting the heartbeats.
Leo opened his eyes.
“About fifty-four beats per minute. A little less than average for him, physically he should be fine.”
Everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief.
“But what I’m worried about,” Leo continued, “are his mystic—”
“MICHELANGELO!”
Everyone jumped as Draxum basically slid into the huddle, finding space somewhere so he could get to his favourite turtle.
He would never admit he had a favourite turtle, but everyone knew it was Mikey.
He held what looked to be a pod of something, fumbling with it a little before crushing it directly over Mikey’s face. The box turtle’s bright markings glowed, before fading.
Draxum placed a hand on Mikey’s forehead, closed his eyes, and opened them as he sighed, relieved.
“His mystic abilities are fine, as is his mental state.”
“Great. Physically, he’s also fine,” Leo said, seemingly remembering that Draxum wasn’t there for that.
Draxum nodded.
“Now, we let him rest.”
* * * * *
Mikey opened his eyes to the ceiling of the med bay.
He smelled a familiar herbal scent, and could feel a salve on his face, around his eyes, making them feel cold and just a little numb. He knew it was applied by Draxum, there to help with the cracks. An IV was in his arm, and while he didn’t have any of the basic hospital monitoring devices, he knew there were a few bright stickers all over his body. Microchips built in for monitoring, courtesy of Donnie, and decorated by him to make med bay stays a little less sad. Especially after the Krang.
He turned his head and saw Leo, playing a game on their stolen Switch. Mikey brought a hand up and waved to the slider, glad that his exhaustion was much less severe than what was possible. As he waved, he saw that there were bandages wrapped around his arms and hands.
Leo looked up.
“Hey, Big Man. How’re you feeling?”
“Better than I could be,” Mikey responded with a smile.
“A’ight. Anything of notice? Any pain anywhere in particular?” he asked, getting up, putting down the Switch, and falling into Medic Mode.
“Nope. Draxum’s salve and maybe any drugs you gave me are working great,” he said with a thumbs up.
Leo nodded. “Memory good? What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Seeing the new cracks. Then passin’ out.”
“Good. Let me tell the others. Don’t leave the med bay.”
Mikey cracked a smile.
“That’s your thing.”
Leo returned a smirk, Medic Mode falling away.
“Sure, sure,” he said, before exiting.
After he left, Mikey wanted to test something.
He closed his eyes and activated his sense again, cautiously letting it spread through the lair.
Huh.
He could sense everything mystic. His family, in various places around the lair, including Draxum, some mystic books in their shelf, those ingredients that Mikey asked Leo to get him when he went to the Hidden City, the Hamato scrolls, Draxum’s various medical equipment, some of Donnie’s ninpo-built tech, and more .
He quickly deactivated his sense before he could feel overstimulated. Luckily, nothing was cracking apart again.
He made a mental note to let Draxum know of the increase in ability as soon as he could.