Chapter Text
Baron Draxum had never really been outside the hidden city before. Well, he had been there once, but that was years ago, and it hadn’t ended well. He was about 2 miles outside of New York City, and he would have never even remotely considered going near the humans if he didn’t have a goal. Draxum was going to create super soldiers to take down those wretched humans, and had decided the perfect animal to mutate to achieve his goal would be turtles. Semi-aquatic little creatures with built in armor, nature’s tanks if you will.
Draxum had already found a young alligator snapper, a violent little turtle that seemed very strong, and an ornate box turtle, a nibble little creature that seemed younger than the snapper. He had decided to only mutate a few at first, as a test run before he made more. Of course, there was always the possibility that his little experiment would kill the human warrior he had, but he could always find another, so Draxum deemed it a necessary sacrifice.
He had decided two was enough to start out with, and started heading back. He was crossing by a small pond when he heard it. A low, threatening hiss. Now, Draxum had done research on turtles before he set out into the human world, but he had never heard of anything sounding like that. He had heard that softshell turtles tended to be very aggressive and hiss quite a lot but, is the hiss supposed to sound double?
He looked around and when he finally spotted it he was a little surprised. Sitting there, at the edge of the pond, was a softshell turtle hissing at him. A spiny softshell by the looks of it, if his research is correct. But the thing about this turtle was that it had polycephaly, two heads. As it was a softshell and therefore lacking the natural defence that had him picking turtles in the first place, he had at first decided to just ignore it and let it succumb to natural selection.
But as he looked at it, Draxum realized something. It was healthy, a two-headed turtle in the wild was alive and healthy, which was certainly an anomaly. Most animals that develop with two heads in the wild die off pretty quickly, as having multiple heads fighting for control over one body is less than ideal for survival. But this one was healthy, so it must be strong. After a bit more consideration, Draxum picked up the softshell and put it into his bucket with the rest of them. He did not, however, get it into that bucket without getting matching bite marks on either side of his hand.
==========
Hamato Yoshi sat quietly in his cell, not moving, not fighting, simply meditating, something he hadn’t done since he took on the stage name of Lou Jitsu. His capture had left about an hour and a half ago to gather what he referred to as ‘soldier catalysts,’ leaving him alone with his thoughts and his little pet rat. At some point he had gotten bored and started playing with the rat, and had consequently gotten bitten by it. He let out a small squeal of pain at the little nip, and that’s when he heard the door open, announcing the return of his capture.
Baron Draxum was what the sheep-goat man said his name was, (at least he thinks that’s what it was, Yoshi wasn’t paying much attention), and as the Baron began making his way towards him, he noticed that very generic looking metal bucket that was…hissing? There was a very loud hissing coming from it and it seemed very threatening like it was a snake or something. Was his capture gonna turn him into a snake?
Yoshi got his answer a few seconds later when the Baron began putting the turtles, (turtles? Why turtles?), into a few smaller cages beside his. As he, very carefully, put the final one in the cage on Yoshi’s far left next to the big spiky snappy one, he saw it. The two-headed hissing little creature that was trying to bite through the Baron’s gloves, and it looked like it was somewhat succeeding.
“Hello there, human warrior,” the Baron began, finally addressing Yoshi as he took off the thick leather gloves he had seemingly been wearing to avoid getting bitten by the strange hissing one, “We shall be running another little experiment today. Although I do suppose I must warn you, it will hurt.” Oh so now you give a warning, Yoshi thought to himself, Couldn't have warned me any of the other times?
He glared at the Baron as he began connecting a few power cords (or whatever those tubes were) to different machines around the magic-science hybrid lab. He then double checked everything before he filled a fuel tank adjacent thing with some kind of green ooze. The Baron then walked over to a switch on one side of the lab, and looked directly at Yoshi.
The Baron smiled a too-wide smile as he then spoke, “I thank you for your service, you have been of great use to me, human.” The Baron all but hissed out that last word, and pulled the switch down. And all of a sudden, Yoshi felt as though he had begun being torn apart. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t breath, couldn’t think, it was all just pain. He thought he might be screaming, but had no way of telling over the searing hot pain that felt like it was boiling the blood out of his veins.
And as soon as it had all started, it stopped. It took Yoshi a few seconds to come back to reality, but as he did, he noticed the changes. The log hairless tell swishing behind him slightly, the fur now sprouting out of brand new places on his body, the clawed fingers, the slightly more shitty eyesight. Oh, he thought to himself, I’m a rat. That actually made sense when he thought about it a little bit.
As he slowly cleared his head to try and focus on possibly getting out, he finally registered the room around him. Something had clearly gone wrong as the entire building was slowly collapsing around him. Yoshi looked around the room for an escape route as he stood up, and then he heard it. Heard them. The little chirps coming from the cages around him.
Quickly locating the freshly mutated baby turtles, he grabbed them all as quickly as he could, not wanting them to fall into the evil clutches of that Baron. When he found the third one though, he hesitated. It (they?) looked up at him with two pairs of eyes and a lot of hissing. Its shell didn’t look quite like the others, it looked almost leathery. Soft. But he didn’t have time for that right now. Opting to simply deal with the consequences later, Yoshi quickly picked up the two-headed softshell and ran.
It bit him with twin sets of teeth, but he didn’t find himself caring all that much as he just wanted to get them all out of there. Wanted to get them to safety.
Wanted to keep these innocent little children safe.
==========
It was a cold, rainy night, probably Thursday (probably), and Yoshi was sitting in a box in an alley. He escaped. That had been the easy part. He didn’t think it would be, but it was, and now he was in a box in the rain staring at his three new baby turtle sons trying not to have a panic attack.
Or was it four? He couldn’t decide. The soft shell had two heads so therefore two minds, so technically four. But it only had one body so would it actually be three? Not important, where to go now with the turtles and his new rat form was the important part.
He had no money, no food, and no shelter. Yoshi decided if he had to go anywhere, there needed to be water at the very least. He could steal or scavenge for food and water easy enough, but turtles needed somewhere they could be in the water. At least, Yoshi was pretty sure they did.
As he sat pondering his choices, the spotted little one started crawling towards him. He looked down as he felt the little guy sniff his knee, the slowly nuzzle his head against it before looking up at him. Yoshi smiled back down at the spotted turtle before realizing it.
They needed names. They were basically his children now, he can’t just call them spiky turtle soft shell turtle and spotted turtle their whole lives. Well, technically he could but, he wasn’t going to.
Yoshi gathered them all a little closer to him, and looked at them. Not just making sure they hadn’t wandered off, actually looking at them. The spiky one was the biggest, so Yoshi decided he was the oldest. The spotted one was the smallest, so he was now the youngest. And the soft shell was hissing at him, again.
So what was he going to name them? He could go with something Japenese, but nothing he could think of fit any of them. He thought all American names sounded stupid so he couldn’t go that way with it. What about something European? Yoshi had always enjoyed visiting Europe, it was so pretty there. He especially enjoyed Italy, they had some really cool history and beautiful architecture-
That was it, Italian artists. Italian renaissance artists. Why was that it? No clue, it just felt right. Yoshi surveyed the turtles, deciding which one should be named after who. The spiky one was trying to eat a piece of trash, the spotted one was snuggling him, and the soft shell had backed into a corner hissing at the wall.
“Okay,” Yoshi began, catching all the turtles attention. “You,” he pointed at the spiky one, “Your name will be Rapheal, you got that? Rapheal?” Rapheal made a happy growling noise and stopped trying to eat inedible trash in favor of snuggling the rat man. “And you, tiny one,” Yoshi looked at the spotted one, “Yoy will be Michealangelo, do you like that?” Michealangelo churned happily. One (two, one, two??) left.
As he had been talking to the others, the soft shell and moved closer and its hissing had quieted a little. It was still hissing but it was hiding in a corner anymore, so Yoshi’ll take it as a win. He gave a friendly smile to the two-headed menace and it relaxed a little more, still standing on all four at a cautious distance, but the hissing stopped.
“You will be Donatello and Leonardo,” Yoshi said, pointing first to the right head then the left, smiling as non-threateningly as possible. The two-heads perked up a bit at the names, and very slowly, they beganbcrawling over. They stopped right in front of his left knee and later down, staring up at him.
They clearly weren’t gonna snuggle him like the other two, but at least they were close and quiet now. Yoshi had no plan, no clue where to go or what to do, but he could figure that out later. For now, he would just enjoy the moment he had with his new, strange family.