Chapter Text
At first, she thinks she’s waking up in a stable, on account of the fact that the surface she’s laying on seems to be breathing. A subtle, undulating motion slithering under her body, its familiarity engrained with a lifetime fondness for the oxen and horses who labored in her village’s fields. But she opens her eyes to find a bed- an inexplicably breathing one, but a bed nonetheless- one with rails on either side and a headboard with little shelves mounted on it. A clamp on her finger is strung along a wire, tied to some strange bright contraption of glass and resin that pulses light in time to her heartbeat.
“Hamato Karai?” a broad nosed yokai rumbles.
“H-hai,” Karai stutters out.
Something like relief flashes through his eyes. “You can still speak. That’s good.” His voice drops to a mutter. “Yua rakia zan ai uozu, zattsu fō shua.” He catches Karai’s uncomprehending frown and his expression lightens. “Don’t worry about it.”
“What is this place?” Karai asks, voice croaking more than she would like.
“This room is a place to heal,” the yokai explains. “This whole place, however, belongs to your family.”
“The Hamato do not employ yokai for their affairs,” Karai suspiciously recalls.
“The Hamato are yokai,” he corrects. “These days, at least. You’ve been asleep for a very long time, Karai.”
“How long?” Karai weakly demands.
“Well, you've been-” The yokai raises a finger, then pauses. “Gomen nasai, give me a moment- you've been in a- hmm- in a kind of-” He groans with frustration, gets up off his chair, and stalks moodily towards the door. “Yoshi, getto bakku hia! Hāfu mai japanīzu izu medikaru rōnwādozu!”
“Dai, zen,” another man’s voice snarks outside.
“Nō, yū dai!” the yokai shouts back. “One moment, Hamato-san-”
The sound of hooves disappears down the hall, punctuated by a sudden shout, noise of protest, and something being dragged back into the room. The large, long-haired yokai she’d been speaking with is holding a stout bedraggled rat yokai aloft in his arms like a misbehaving cat.
“This is Hamato Yoshi, your… grand… son. It’s his job to talk to you now. Do not speak to me again unless you feel ill. Goodbye.”
“Why is my grandson a rat-”
“Not my problem. Goodbye.”
The door closes.
“In my defense,” Yoshi starts, “I wasn’t a rat when I was born. I used to be a very handsome human man. An actor, too!” That’s a sensible career, Karai supposes. It excuses a laughably high amount of talents, and fame is its own weapon when wielded well. “So, first things first!” Yoshi claps his hands together. “Please don’t leave the house. It’s not safe up there for you.”
Karai nods. “Yes, I imagine the war hasn’t improved while I was gone. The Ashimoto family would slaughter us all.”
“Actually, we are on pretty good terms with them right now,” Yoshi corrects. “We can talk about that later, but for now, please do not attack on sight. The big reason you should not go outside is we are not in Japan right now.”
“Ah.” Karai squints. “Are we in Joseon?”
“No.”
“Shina?”
“No, la.”
“...Formosa?” Karai finally guesses.
“We are in one of the Western nations, so you won’t find a lot of people who speak your language.” Yoshi snaps his fingers. “But people from Formosa married into the family a few generations back, so that’s part of our tradition now. So you are a little right, a little wrong.”
Karai frowns. “Generations,” she parrots. “And that yokai doctor called you my grandson. How many generations has it been?”
Yoshi dismissively waves a clawed, pinkish hand. “Oh, you know. Just five hundred years or so.” His whiskers twitch. “Want some tea?”
Ah. That would explain why everything feels like it’s been buried in fifty layers of fog and all of her limbs are shaking like she hasn’t engaged with this mortal coil since the dawn of time. She was hoping her body was being dramatic again, the way it tended to as she started to get on in years- she never was the picture of perfect health, even as a bouncing baby girl. Then again, even her worst didn’t used to include the shadow of black roots climbing up her arms like a flash burn. Her every tendon threatens to fly out of her hand when she dares to move it, and her legs are full of alarmingly new pins and needles. She won’t be getting out of bed without using the family’s ninpo on her own body.
A reflexive laugh bubbles nervously inside her aching chest. Five hundred years. Heavens help her, it’s been five hundred years. Her ninpo clenches tightly around her, ribbons of vibrant green cradling her fragile bones, and it takes an insultingly long time for her to dismiss it- too long for a Hamato as old as Yoshi not to notice. His weary, wizened face is kind as he rests his hand on the blankets covering her body.
“Rest,” he offers. “You are safe. This is the home of Hamato Yoshi.”
“Who?” a voice loudly says from under the bed.
“Aiyo-” Yoshi grabs his cane and raps it sharply against the bedframe, forcing two large, long legged turtles with uncomfortably boyish faces to skitter out from under Karai’s resting place. “That is me, you dum dum! And get out from under there! What did I tell you about respecting human privacy?”
One of them has a round freckled face and golden scale-spots, the other a lithe swimmer’s body and twin red stripes coming out the eyes like crescent moons. More cursed humans, the way Yoshi is? No, that isn’t quite right- something’s wrong in the eyes, the scent, the wide barrel of their chests and the unyieldingly broad curl of their backs, the way they shamelessly snuffle at her with no regard for human politeness. True turtles, then, rather than a case of cursed human mimicry. But kappa are never human sized, not like this. The curse can grant great size or wisdom to animals, never both.
“Karai-sobo, these are two of my sons, Rīonādō and Maikeranjerō.” Oh, Karai did not hear that right at all. How many more of these gajin words is she going to have to deal with while she’s here? “I have-” Yoshi counts uncertainly on his hands. “-four sons. Two daughters. One of my sons gave me a grandson, and they have a step-brother from their other father Dorakusamu- that’s the horrible man you woke up to- so you will probably see those two every once in a while.”
Ah, so that sort of thing is allowed after marriage, these days. “Are they adopted or-”
“Alchemy,” Yoshi flatly answers in a way that disinvites further questions, “so we are both the father.”
That last piece of information grinds in the back of Karai’s head like a millstone, unsure of what it yields. “I… see.”
Yoshi snaps his fingers and his sons tilt their heads toward him. “Boys! This is Hamato Karai, my great great great great great great great great great-" He pauses to take a booming, wheezing gasp. "-great great great great great grandma. She is small and old and human, so behave.”
The rounder one smiles, revealing a cracked beak plate under his curved lips. “That means you’re our great great great great-” He lets out a shrill chirp as Karai clamps her hand over his mouth. “Baba.”
“Please,” she begs, eyes hollow, “I have just endured five hundred years of misery.”
The larger one (is he older or just bigger?) puts his hand on the littler one’s shoulder. “You know what the real misery is, Mikey? She’s gone five hundred years without your egg drop soup. Why don’t you go to the kitchen and start a small pot real quick?” His expression turns stern as the other skips and arm flaps out the room. “Gō ījī on zā supaisezu! Mēku shua tā addo ā ritaru potētō sutāchi, toū!” He turns back to Karai, easy smile returning to his face. “So hey, Gram-gram! It is gram-gram, right?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Karai admits.
“Too late, I already told everybody you’re gram-gram.” His hands drum against the blankets. “You already got looked at by the old man, but who needs him, right? You cold? Tired? Need any kind of medicine? It’s too bad we cant call Livy-oji for this, but we’ve helped him feed empty stomachs before- I mean, you don’t look starved, really, you’re stunning for your age-”
Karai snorts. “You’re a silly boy, Rion.”
“Wow,” Rion whispers, smile blank as he props his chin up on his elbow. “That is not my name at all. I got the gram-gram nickname first. Love that for me.”
“I am- I am trying my best.”
“And I think you’re doing great. Hale and hearty as a horse, but we can’t really know what being in the sandhyasetra that long did to your body, so I’ll make sure Mikey’s careful.”
Yoshi rolls his eyes as he leaves his seat, patting his son’s shell. “More like I will make sure he’s careful. Don’t bite her head off while I talk to the others.”
The boy rolls his eyes. “You put one hand-decapitated squirrel on a man’s bed and everyone loses their minds! It wasn’t even me! That time specifically!” He gently grabs her face, tilting her this way and that, gaze meeting every little thing except her eyes. Actually, now that she thinks about it, neither him or his brother tried to look her in the eyes this whole time. “I was gonna ask if you needed any help with your hair or a little washing up, but it looks like Donnie already got to it.” His smile flattens. “In your sleep, might I add. In his defense, no one told him not to, I guess.”
“Donnie,” Karai hesitantly enunciates. “Another one of your brothers?”
“Yep! Don-a-tel-lo,” he sounds out. “That’s where you’re messing up, I think, it’s the L sounds. Don’t worry about it, pretty basic mistake for East Asian first language speakers. It’s Donatello or Donnie, whichever’s easier- he’s the one with the kid. He’s not cozy with new people, but he’s sweet once you get to know him.”
“And your brother who left earlier,” Karai continues. “Mai… ki?”
“Mi-chel-an-ge-lo,” he finishes. “Mikey! Hard Mi, short key. As short and sweet as he sounds, even if he is kind of a little demon. There’s another brother, Ra-pha-el, Raph. Big shell, big heart, you might remember him from the meat room-”
Karai frowns. “Ah. So I wasn’t hallucinating the meat room dragon.”
The boy hisses through his beak. “Yeah.”
“And how about your name?” Karai presses. “Since Rion won’t do.”
“Le-o-nar-do. Or Leo.” He laughs. “Sorry about all the gaijin names, Gram-gram. Splinter- uh, that’s Yoshi to you, I guess- he likes artists from this one Western country, so he named us all after them. Frida and Piebald are only safe from his bad taste ‘cus he found out about Frida way late and Piebald used to be a pet before she transformed.”
“Better to be named for an artist than named for a warrior,” Karai decides. “This family has had quite enough war to last all our lifetimes.”
Leo’s hands are gentle as he settles around her shoulders. “Maybe you’re right. Come on, let’s get you out of bed.”
|[●▪▪●]|
There was this one time back when they were kids where Splinter sent them all away to live at April’s place for a bit. Leo doesn’t really remember why he did it. Maybe he was going out of town, or there was a leak in the lair, or he’d busted his bones. It’s not like he ever told them. But mostly, Leo remembers how excited they all were about it, because how cool would it be if they could live in a house like real people? To sit in the car with Kotaro or Carol, sending April off to school? It could’ve been great.
Except… it wasn’t. Not really. Even if it was nice to have a place where the lights always worked and it never got cold when they were trying to sleep. It got weird to smell all the animals they couldn’t hunt on Kotaro’s clothes from work. It got weirder to hear the footsteps and half-parsed conversations in other people’s apartments they weren’t allowed to listen to. The only good burrowing spots were in the closets or under April’s bed. The mechanical drone of electric lights and fans and fridges was inescapable, and the ceiling, so so low, became a claustrophobic reminder of the open bustling city of strangers and dangers that was barely a wall away.
By the third day, Splinter takes back four little turtle tots in different stages of a shared meltdown because the surface world was just too big. After that, none of the turtles ever stayed outside of their personal labyrinth for longer than a night.
And even though by flawed nurture and soldier’s nature and plain old biology, Leo would never want to leave the weighted embrace of the earth, the awareness that he can’t pisses him off. It pisses him off that he’d never be able to have the house-car-dog-2.5-kids-with-a-white-picket-fence. It pisses him off that Mikey- sweet, baby brother Mikey, who so desperately wants to play at domesticity- can never have it. It pisses him off that Splinter can never have it, can never live to see his sons have it, for as long as he is their father. It makes him so f*cking mad so-f*cking-mad So f*cking Mad-
Leo unclenches his jaw from around his wrist and goes to wash it off in the medbay. He watches his blood go down the drain, the smell of iron infested with the bitter algal bloom of empyrean. Like an oil slick. Even looks like one too. They’re never gonna beat the cyborg allegations.
What little wound there was is already mostly closed by the time Leo contemplates a bandage, but there’s still a nasty bruise. He really wants to put some makeup on it before someone notices, but Frida, who wasn’t even supposed to know about his palette because no one was supposed to know about that, found it in the false door of the bathroom cabinets and squirreled it away for herself the same way she did with his one nice kimono the second she got here. It probably doesn’t even fit her properly. She probably doesn’t even care. She’s probably ruining his game saves right now. She’s probably inside his walls-
“What the hell happened to your hand?” Raph resignedly rumbles.
“Sewer gators are real,” Leo mutters to himself, hand skating back and forth over his bruise. “King Leon said so. Sewer gators are real and they’re in my walls.”
“That’s rough, buddy,” Raph laconically concludes, like this is the most normal non-deranged sentence in the world. “What got that guy to rear his dumbass head this time?”
“Frida keeps stealing me and Mikey’s stuff because our stuff is better than her stuff and she doesn’t have any stuff and she’s gonna steal my eyesssssss,” Leo hisses, a strained smile forcing itself across his face.
Raph opens a cylinder of chips and shoves his chopsticks into it. “Yeah, that’s fair. Savage Raph is gettin’ bad vibes from her, too.”
“It’s not fair to be mean to her, though!” Leo immediately protests. “Her mom-”
“Her mom we kind of don’t give a sh*t about,” Raph reminds him.
“-her mom is, like, Schrodinger’s dead-”
“-which we don’t give a sh*t about-”
“-which we don’t give a sh*t about,” Leo concedes. “Emotionally, I mean-”
“-cus she’s Pops’ weirdchamp ex and she lied about the Shredder for four months,” Raph continues, methodically shoving chips in his mouth. “Logistically horrible loss, though.”
“Real sh*t.” Leo’s face falls. “But, uh- it was kind of obvious Big Mama gave a sh*t about us? Even if she was a weirdo about it. And Frida’s really really upset. And we give a sh*t about Frida, so we have to give a sh*t by- by the transitive property.”
Raph blinks his eyes out of sync. “You’re askin’ me to tell you how to feel so King Leon shuts the f*ck up.”
“A bit,” Leo chokes out.
Raph roughly pats Leo’s cheek. “Well, you’re the pettiest bitch I know, and I’m the angriest bitch I know, so you know I’m gonna tell you you’re allowed to be pissed, man.” He points at himself with his chopsticks. “I mean, look at Captain Raph! I’m pissed! Whole damn situation’s annoyin’ as hell!”
Leo sighs. “I know, I know. But this whole situation’s reminding me of stuff I’m already pissed off about and I don’t wanna take it out on Frida.”
“And you ain’t. You’re takin’ it out on me, cus I asked.” Raph fondly punches the air around Leo’s body. “Hey, just wait ‘til we save Big Mama, and then we can really give her the ol’ one-two this time.”
Leo allows himself a small laugh. “Yeah, right. If Dad doesn’t do it first.”
Piebald doesn't really get why there's another person in the house now, which is a little frustrating, but not as much as everything else going on right now. She's just barely over a year old, after all, and she's had less than half that time to comprehend the concept of having a family. Him and Mikey made a funny little comic explaining what family terms mean, and even if it might be a lost cause to get Piebald fluent in Japanese quick enough to hold a conversation with Karai, she can learn some basic vocab through osmosis.
As for Frida. To be honest, no one wants to think about Frida. She used to be a funny coincidence when they first met her. They'd make jokes about Big Mama's fondness for turtles, waste entire meetings trying to coax the invisible smile under this stranger’s porcelain mask. They'd eat street food together on Hidden City rooftops and make fun of their parents. How could she turn around and do something like this? She's never done that before, she never could have done that before, she- sure, she was a little weird and spoiled, but why wouldn't she be? So was Big Mama, and even then, she still used to be nice!
…Or maybe she never used to be. Oh, god. Maybe she never used to be.
At least Shelldon isn't old enough to understand. Imagine how impossibly petty he could be if he did. For now, at least, Shelldon's focused on keeping an eye on their other unexpected guest. Karai is their grandmother, and for that alone Leo can love her, but her overall health is frailer than the family lore bothered to mention and that might not bode well for the whole destined to fight the Shredder thing. And for the fact everyone in the house really wants to fight her at least once. Fortunately, she doesn't seem to be surprised by her current state of physical affairs, and she's eating about as well as can be expected. Though she did, weirdly enough, choose to sleep in Splinter's reclining chair rather than a bed. Said it would be easier to get up afterwards.
“How do you think she's settling in, Ah-Lan?” Splinter asks.
“I mean, we're talking about a genuine Tokugawa era farm village ninja, sensei,” Leo immediately points out. “I'm worried the toaster’s gonna jumpscare her. And what are we gonna tell the Ashimotos?”
“We’ll have to tell Cassandra,” Splinter starts. “Raphael brings her over too often to keep this a secret.”
“Yeah, but it feels scummy if we ask her to keep a secret from her dads,” Leo wheedles. “I don't like it. And what are we gonna do with her after the Shredder's gone? She can't exactly get a job.”
Splinter pinches his brow and sighs. “I know, la. This is a very unstable situation. But we have to wait for Gram-gram to recover before we make any demands, alright?”
“Fine,” Leo grits out.
“Did she say anything else before she went to bed? Eh- went to chair?”
“Oh, yeah,” Leo suddenly recalls, “I was gonna ask. What's a suiko?”
Splinter freezes. “Say again?”
“She called me and Mikey suiko,” Leo elaborates. “I thought it was weird ‘cus most yokai and stuff call us kappa or kame. Do you know what that's supposed to mean?”
Splinter covers his hand with his mouth. “Are you sure that's what she said? Not something else?”
“Yeah, she even corrected me when I thought she meant suika,” Leo reveals.
Splinter blinks slowly. Takes a deep breath. “Draxuuuuuuuuuum,” he loudly calls out, “do you have something to tell me?”
“Oh sh*t, is Draxum in trouble again?” Donnie dully says as he peaks his long insufferable neck through the door. “What'd he do this time?”
Mikey rolls across the floor, head poking out at Donnie's feet. “Karai called me and Leo a funny word and Splinter's mad at Draxum about it.”
“Oh, fun. Wanna bet it's some kind of whacky yokai slur?”
Mikey gasps, delightedly holding a hand to his cheek. “I've always wanted my own slur!”
Donnie nods solemnly. “And then we can reclaim it.”
“And then we can reclaim it!”
Raph grabs the two by the lip of their carapaces and shakes them. “Stop reclaiming slurs! Raph can't do this again!”
[WHY NOT?] Shelldon wonders. [IT'S EASY! WATCH!] A conspicuous click sounds out from his speakers. [Accessing TTS blacklist in alphabetical order-]
“Shelldon, we talked about this,” Donnie scolds. “We can't reclaim slurs in front of Gram-gram.”
[HECC.]
“What did I do this time?” Draxum tiredly murmurs into his coffee as he finally graces the world with his presence.
“Draxum. Why did my grandmother take one look at our sons and call them a kind of yokai that's been extinct for several centuries now?” Splinter slowly says.
“Oh, that.” Draxum contemplates his empty mug for a moment, then takes a long swig directly from the coffee pot in his other hand. “I’ll be frank, I have no real excuse for that one.”
“Oh, please tell me you didn't-”
“Yep.”
“How did you even-”
“Suiko bodies were preserved as war trophies.”
“Why did you even-”
“I minored in yokaizoology and did my thesis on back breeding.”
“Wait, wait, hold up.” Raph stops shaking Mikey and Donnie. “What is a suiko?”
“The river tigers of kappa,” Draxum replies. “A much larger and territorial mutation of the anthropomorphic quirk that created turtle yokai.”
“They were hunted to extinction because they eat people,” Splinter immediately adds. “They were like- turtle… dinosaur… vampire-things. Extreme omnivores that bent lesser kappa to their will and led them to kidnap human ships.”
“Those ships wouldn’t have been kidnapped if humans weren’t fishing food out of native suiko rivers,” Draxum refutes. “They were no more evil than tigers defending their hunting territory, and the fact that the yokai were forced to kill them under threat of extermination is a tragedy of human selfishness. If they had arisen in modern times such a terrible thing would never have had to happen in the first place.” He sighs. “But yes, they were unfortunately a perfect storm of something both smart enough to hunt humans and biologically resilient enough to afford making a habit of it.”
“I bet you thought you were being so funny,” Splinter deadpans. “The cinematic parallels were just to good to resist, ne?”
“I was rather melodramatic at the time,” Draxum concedes.
Donnie frowns. “But we’re turtles. Actual turtles you got from animal dealers. You have the photo albums to prove it.”
“Cloning is an inherently unstable, fickle art, and the suiko have, as your father says, been dead for centuries. The samples that survive of them are genetically incomplete, so I supplemented the material by recreating the necessary conditions and filling in the blanks with what they would have had- turtle bodies and anthropomorphization. Think of it as an inverse of the animal contact phenomenon in my second mutagen.” Draxum swirls his coffee pot, staring down into the decrepit stains. “While you lack a pure suiko bloodline, your expressed phenotype is nearly identical. The fact that someone contemporary to the real thing recognized you as such speaks to the success of that experiment.”
“Because you thought bringing back yokai dinosaur vampires would be cool,” Splinter snarks.
“Because the course of nature already invented the perfect human predator and there was no point working any harder than I had to.” Draxum pauses. “And because bringing back yokai dinosaur vampires sounded cool.”
Mikey’s eyes grow wider and wider with every word. “Omigosh, did you seriously JURASSIC PARK US?”
“I did not-” Draxum raises a finger to argue the point, then stops. “-wait- no, sh*t, I really did.”
Shelldon starts playing the Jurassic Park theme from a kazoo coming out of his battle shell.
“You are the most reckless idiot I know, and I have four teenage sons,” Splinter stresses. “When is it ever a good idea to bring back extinct animals?”
“That’s not what you said when I told you about the Tasmanian tiger.”
“THE TASMANIAN TIGER WAS A NOBLE INNOCENT CREATURE THAT DID NOT DESERVE TO DIE!”
“SO WERE THE SUIKO!”
“DINOSAUR VAMPIRES!” Splinter’s tail rears up to slap Draxum’s chest. “And you told me turtles were just going to be prototypes!”
“I’m capable of multitasking, Yoshi!” Draxum defends. “I have many talents! Like bringing extinct animals back to life! I feel like you’re not appreciating the scientific accomplishments I’m bringing to the table here!”
“You kind of didn’t bring an extinct animal back to life, though?” Leo tentatively points out. “We’re- we’re still functionally extinct. We’re not a breeding population, so we’re just- we’re foundlings and endlings all wrapped up in one, here.”
Draxum rolls his eyes. “Oh, please. Did you really think I was so shortsighted I would let your physical incompatibility stop you? You’re perfectly capable of propagating yourselves without a mate. Piebald and Joseph’s existences should have made that clear enough.” He pauses and stares at the boys’ shellshocked faces. “Ah. I see. Apparently that did not, in fact, make that clear enough. That’s a lesson for another day, then.”
“It makes sense, I guess,” Donnie concedes. “Your writings mentioned that you wanted us to outlive you, I simply assumed… this entailed giving us the method to create more soldiers. But this does not appear to be quite what you intended. You intended us capable of children.”
“I did not know at the time whether you would be able to desire such a thing,” Draxum reveals, “but I erred on the side of caution so that if you did, I would not have stolen it from you.”
“Why?” Leo presses. “A child is a tactical liability. Parental instinct is practically hysterical to put on a battlefield. Why?”
“To live,” Draxum simply says. “After centuries of death, is that not reason enough?”
Something about the way he says it shuts Leo up in a way all the paranoid musings in the world never could. To live. To live what? Like this? All this- this sewer-resident beast complex with all its cobbled lights and scavenged ways and ramshackle culture filtered through a reptilian game of telephone- all this just to live?
Just like that?
Like Raph's chin on Donnie's head and Shelldon parked in his dad’s lap as they both watch the softshell test the response time of one of the handheld consoles he restored, Mikey undeservingly comfortable against Raph's back as he ekes out crayon landscapes with Piebald on cardboard canvases. Like Frida biting into a storebought vegan donut, powdered sugar smearing her stolen makeup. Like April sending pictures of Mayhem in dog clothes. Like Ice Cream Kitty weaving between his legs. Like Draxum and Splinter arguing over teapots. Like Karai sleeping in the next room.
To live, to live, to live.
And Leo remembers a sea of Hamato bodies wearing shells exactly like his own and he wonders if it could be real.
(And maybe, just maybe, after centuries of death, that will be enough.)
|[●▪▪●]|
“Ah- ah- hhh - SNEEZE!”
Karai wakes up to a long, wolfish snout barely a thumb’s distance from her face, horseshoe nostrils twitching, a softshell turtle’s head pulling back to regard her with uncannily goat-like eyes.
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” the boy shamelessly says with a flat smile, “did I wake you? Well, now that you're awake, may I interest you in a full tea service?”
Ah, an enthusiastic host full of blatant lies. This must be Donatello, then.
“No, no, no-no-no.” His hand gently pushes her back down into her chair as she moves to rise. “You shan't need to leave the comfortable spot you've made for yourself, we're fully capable of providing for you on-site.” He stands, propping up a small folding table on the chair- Karai is suddenly aware he was the height of the chair kneeling- and claps his hands together. “Shelldon, some light fare, if you please.”
A dark flat thing scuttles just beyond Karai’s field of vision like a spider, and she nearly flinches out of the chair, table be damned, before her eyes properly focus on the sight in front of her. A lacquered doll in the shape of a sea turtle hovers towards her, a tray on its back laden with cookies, a tea pot, and painted tin. A tinny voice emanates from its form. [KARAI-OBAASAMA, OHAYO. IF IT’S QUITE TO YOUR LIKING, MASTER DONATELLO AND I HAVE PREPARED A LIGHT SILVER NEEDLE BREW TO START YOUR FINE MORNING-]
“Knew I was forgetting something,” Donnie immediately interrupts. “Shelldon, synchronize all languages to English vocal bank settings as per versions 2 onward.”
The doll vigorously twitches its head, then blinks lethargically. [HI, GRAM-GRAM!] it starts over again, voice much more dry and crackling than before. [WE WEREN’T SURE WHAT KIND YOU LIKE, SO DAD SAID TO START OFF WITH A WHITE TEA. IS THAT OKAY?]
“What dark magic is this?” Karai murmurs. “I’ve never seen a karakuri doll fly before.”
“It’s not magic,” Donnie gently corrects, “it’s my tech. I’m the family’s- ano- the family’s blacksmith, that’s an approximate word! Among my many trades, I forge moving body parts for people who have lost or damaged their limbs. Or in my son’s case, never had limbs.”
Karai sharply tilts her head. “Your son is in there?”
Delicate steel spider-limbs splay out of… Shelldon’s(?) back to lay the teapot, tin, and cookies on the chair table. Donnie’s own arms move in no less of a smooth, uncannily artificial way, opening the tin to spoon leaves into the steeping pot. “In these modern times, medicine has identified the part of the brain that houses mystic power. So when I was younger- and admittedly a bit more stupid- I had Leo remove a piece of that from me to create a device that could play games with me and do some chores.” His smile strains. “I was a very morally bankrupt child and incredibly lonely.”
Karai snorts.
“And of course that flew out the window when my shiny new toy started talking on his own and calling me Dad. So I gave him a name, raised him, and eventually made this body for him.” He frowns at the table, and with a wordless snap of his fingers, Shelldon returns with a pear that Donnie quickly slices with a knife, gently placing by the cookies. “He has our family’s power, which powers his flight, but nothing about how it works requires magic. These days, if you understand your craft enough, you can simply build things to take on a life of their own without you.”
A soft smile finds its way on Karai’s face as she cradles her waiting cup in her hands. “Oh, brilliant.”
Donnie clutches his own face as if her words viscerally wound him. “Yes,” he gasps, eyes manic like a demon possessed, “the approval of a parental figure I’ve so craved!”
The Ashimoto founders are said to have been born mad, and it was this very madness that first intrigued the oni beyond the stars, the one who gave them the hereditary disease that drives their ninpo. It was the intense dedication and obsession of this original Ashimoto madness that allows them to use their ninpo with such skill in the first place, and as such, where others saw an ill-tempered daughter or unmarriable son, the Ashimoto saw fitting partners to carry their eccentric legacy.
If Donnie were nothing but a softshell, he would have had a straw thin snout, but Yoshi’s well padded skin tempers Draxum’s sharp cheeks and broad nose, turning their shared son’s face long, strong jawed. The furrow of muscles down the bridge of his nose curls like a snarling wolf as he watches Shelldon pour the now steeped tea for her, a gesture Karai comes to understand is not rage, but deep focus. Karai suddenly remembers the village’s blacksmith, who only spoke to her creations, zealously muttering a litany of lovingly attentive wishes she would never convey to their bearers. Karai had thanked her for a sword once, and it was the only time she ever smiled. It’s comforting, somehow, to see that five hundred years haven’t diluted the family insanity in the slightest. It would be a disservice to the world, to lose this fervored devotion.
“Hey!” Leo barks as he walks into the room, pointing an accusing finger at his brother. “Gram-gram needs her sleep! Your robot autism is not conducive to her swift recovery!”
(Ah, autism. That must be what they’re calling the madness these days.)
“And what are you doing at the devil’s sacrament, Nardo?” Donnie snaps back. “You’re the one walking into the movie room shouting!”
Leo scoffs, leaning against the arm of Karai’s chair. “I was gonna make sure she’s sleeping well, and to help her, I shall read from my children’s book I Love Gram-gram And Gram-gram Loves Me.”
“You just made that up.”
“All words are made up.”
It’s at this point Raph decides to make his existence known from the corner. “Oh, did we stop pretending we aren’t all watching Gram-gram sleep? Cool.” He smiles and proudly thumps his chest. “Yeah, that’s right, I’ve been here the whole time. How can a big guy be so nimble, you asked? Classic Hamato dedication.”
“I was here first!” Donnie hisses.
“I haven’t met any outside family before!” Leo whines.
“None of us have!” Raph adds. “All we have are Canadian family! Who have five hundred year beef with us!”
“Just because Casey’s Canadian doesn’t mean her dads are, Raph.”
“Yeah, what Donnie said.”
“Shut the f*ck up, Nardo!”
“Cool your turtle tit*, man, I’m agreeing with you-”
“You're ruining my turtle time with Gram-gram! I feel like you’re not appreciating how rare a heartfelt moment is for me! You know, we’re brothers, but sometimes it feels like we’re just roommates-”
“You stole that line from me-”
“YOU STOLE IT FROM ME FIRST-”
“NUH-UH!”
Shelldon casually lifts Karai’s tray table to safety as Donnie rushes forward to bite down on Leo’s arm, sending them tumbling towards the wall. Raph’s brows shoot up as he surges across the room, tail swishing with the momentum of his massive stride.
“OI, OI, YAMERO!” He tugs on their shells as they box each other’s faces with their open palms like cats, hissing and barking at each other. “NO FIGHTING IN THE MOVIE ROOM! NO FACE, LA!”
As he attempts to pull them apart, Mikey drops from the ceiling, bouncing off the head of the chair to gently drop into Karai’s lap. He offers her a faded, softly painted paper of Karai smiling surrounded by the children, Yoshi, Draxum, and some human girl with large glasses. “Gram-gram, I painted a family portrait!”
(In the three seconds since he’s appeared, the fight has escalated to Donnie having several more metal limbs than he did the last time Karai looked at him, black beak teething at Raph’s elbow as the larger turtle presses Leo’s shell into the grated floor.)
“I think it really captures our togetherness as a family,” Mikey sing-songs.
“BOYS!” Yoshi barks. “What are you doing?”
The turtles all leap in the air, scrabbling on all fours like startled cats. Shelldon shoots up so far he knocks his head against the ceiling.
“My apologies, Gram-gram,” Yoshi wearily sighs. “I am so sorry I never taught my sons traditional Hamato discipline.”
“I don’t mind,” Karai insists. “It was the destiny of my cousins to bear children, not mine, but I raised them as my own. I very much remember what they’re like.”
“They are too young,” Yoshi insists. “I wasted so much time worrying about the sanctity of their childhood that I refused to teach them our legacy. For the longest time, I hardly even believed that legacy was real.”
Karai’s smile softens. “But you have taught them many other things, like the importance of family. From where I sit, Yoshi, you have made the clan proud.”
Yoshi laughs bitterly. “What use is family pride in the face of something like this? Do you really think we have a chance against the Shredder?”
“Not today,” Karai concedes. “But our family is blessed with all the time in the world. As long as there is Hamato, there is hope.”
|[●▪▪●]|
Because if Frida really had to think about it, her life has been a short history of getting everything she ever wanted- eventually. Maybe not how or when she wanted it, but eventually, inevitably, she would have it. It has never been left up to chance. It has only ever been a matter of patience. She wanted to be a girl, so she was. She wanted to work, so she did. Everything she could ever desire, her mother’s existence had the power to make it so- because she wanted to be a Valentine, and so she was.
Somewhere along the line, she wanted to be a Hamato too, and she thought she could have both. Both the sister and the daughter. Because she was Frida Kahlo Lou Valentine and her mother always taught her she ought to want the world. And why shouldn’t the world be exactly as she likes it? Why shouldn’t her world have her fathers, and her brothers, and all their family, and let it all be hers too? All she wanted was the world. All she wanted was for the world to have everything she ever wanted.
She wants Mama to be happy. She wants the Hamatos to be happy. She wants to be what makes them happy. She thought she could have both, and now she has neither. Frida’s done something wrong, and for the first time in her life, Mama isn’t here to fix it. It turns out maybe, just maybe, Mama couldn’t give Frida the world, just this once. Maybe she never could.
Splinter says it’s not Frida’s fault because she couldn’t have known what she was doing. Her brothers say it’s not her fault because she couldn’t have succeeded at all. They say they don’t hate her. But they do blame her. She knows they do. They have to, because why else does everything feel so different now?
Their tired eyes glaze over her like a wet floor sign, like she’s something they don’t even have the energy to get upset at because she’s just one more problem in a sea of a billion other trash fires happening right this second. It takes all of three days for her to accidentally knock over the shelves in Donnie’s room, short out one of the arcade machines, overstuff the dishwasher, disorganize Mikey’s paints looking for spare clothes, give someone sensory overload by eating a whole head of lettuce in the atrium, and call Leo while he’s in the middle of motorcycling someone to the hospital because apparently he does that now. And as if all that wasn’t bad enough already, when Frida finally almost musters the courage to admit she doesn’t know how to use the shower here, Raph’s hand rubs his disturbingly haggard eyes from under his bandana and he sighs.
So anyways, that’s how Piebald finds the richest girl in Hidden City New York crying under the bathroom sink in her brother’s ruined kimono surrounded by every single hastily unwrapped bar of soap she’s probably not allowed to breathe on.
“You’re crying.” Piebald’s wheelchair is parked in its designated corner, kama left in its arm holsters as she plods forward on her muscular arms. “That’s not good, right? Are you hurt? Is your eye okay?”
“I’m- I’m not hurt,” Frida manages to stammer out. “I’m not hurt.”
Piebald’s voice turns gentle. “Oh, are you melting down? I know Raph and Donnie do that sometimes. Do you wanna be alone? I was gonna take a bath, but I can wait. It’s not a problem or anything.”
“I’m alright, dear!” Frida bites out, making sure to inject cheer into her voice. “Everything’s absolutely tickety-boo-”
She chokes down another traitorous sob.
“You don’t sound very ticket tea blue,” Piebald skeptically notes. She flops onto her side, body flopping onto the tile floor and rolling until she meets Frida’s eyes. “But I don’t know enough about blue, tea, or tickets to dispute that.”
No one blames Piebald. No one sighs at her when she eats something weird. She gets to have her clothes and her room and her chair parking and her brothers.
Piebald stares silently at Frida and starts popping light projection bubbles out of her mouth like static flavored chewing gum. Frida hisses and bats at the floating objects.
“You can leave if you want,” Piebald finally offers. “I mean, I don’t care.” A pause. “But I guess Splinter says I shouldn’t let strangers do that.” Another pause. “But I guess you’re not a stranger.” Another pause. “But I guess you’re not not a stranger-”
“Literally shut up, you are so bad at talking,” Frida finally blurts out. “Sorry. That came out mean.”
“I am one years old.”
“Do you want some help with the bath?” Frida guiltily offers. “I kind of had a tantrum and threw everything all over the place, and I don’t want to make you walk around the bathroom like that.”
“Yeah, okay!” Piebald easily agrees. “Wanna do our laundry together afterwards? I don’t have enough dirty stuff for a whole load, but I really wanna get my sundress clean for Brownie Clan beach day tomorrow, and you’re looking kinda soaked.” She props herself up on her elbows and claps her hands together. “Ooh, you can come to the beach with me!”
Frida looks off to the side. “I don’t want to impose.”
“Noooo, it’s fine!” Piebald insists. “We always need more chaperones, and Raph’s too busy with…” She flaps her fins. “...this whole situation to come over lately. Besides, you haven’t gone out of the house the whole time, and that’s- like- bad, probably?”
And it occurs to Frida, suddenly, that this is her half-sister and they’ve never really spent any time together. So she goes to the beach- a thing she’s never wanted to do before, but her family has a habit of making her want things- and it’s fun. Not for fun, but fun in the way work is fun, because she’s trained to be good at keeping an eye on parties and sober children are a welcome brand of chaos over drunk rich adults any day. Theirs is the realm of pool noodles, watermelon popsicles, and the inexplicable urge to dig an imaginary hole to China, and even though it is not the world Frida wanted, it is a world, and one she finds she doesn’t mind living in for an afternoon.
When she follows Piebald through the sewer tunnels back to the lair, the security system playfully shoots at the wall behind her. There’s instructions on the wall in the bathroom now. The soaps are labeled. The cabinets she knocked over are nailed in place. Mikey hands her a box of girl’s clothes, real girl’s clothes, ones that are her size and have a proper sleeve hole for her shell. Leo posts his work schedule on the fridge so she knows when he’s safe to call. The meat-infested fridge has its contents written down, and there’s a whole new bag of veggie straws just for her in the cabinet.
“Please hold.” Donnie places a rib of celery in her hand and takes out a measuring tape. “Yes, good.” His arms casually reach past her body, a hug that never connects as the tape catalogs the negative space around her. “Just making sure I remembered correctly.”
“For what?” Frida asks.
“The dome,” Donnie says like this explains anything.
“The what-”
[THUNDER DOME PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.] A glass dome descends from the ceiling and encases Frida’s entire hapless body. [YOU HAVE NOW BEEN THUNDER DOMED, YOU GODLESS BEAST. ENJOY YOUR WRETCHED MEAL.]
Donnie writes on a whiteboard and taps on the glass. You’re not actually trapped. It’s soundproofed so Shelldon doesn’t have to listen to you make Minecraft eating noises.
“I do not make Minecraft eating noises!”
Again, I can’t hear you, so I’m assuming you denied your crimes like a coward. You totally make Minecraft eating noises.
He scrubs the whiteboard. The others take out a series of cards that have been taped together, mechanically displaying them against the glass.
Mikey slaps his against the glass and blows a party horn. Hello!!! Welcome to thE T-T-T-T-THUNDERDOME!
Donnie mechanically taps the glass again. Piebald told us you were sad. We’re sorry that you were sad. We’re sorry that being here makes you sad.
It’s also probably super-duper-totally our bad, g, Leo’s card says, Because it sucks and this sucks and everything sucks right now and you’re not supposed to be here. Because you don’t want to be here. You wanna go home and we want you to be home, because that’s where you’re happy!
Raph’s mouth is flat and strained. But that doesn’t mean we get to be mean about it. We’re sorry we were mean about it. Raph loves you very much, okay?
Frida tears up and loudly crunches on her celery rib.
|[●▪▪●]|
The Grand Nexus officially, willfully, and lawfully enters contract with the Foot Clan (hereby defined as the organized union and mutual aid group of New York based small businesses, laborers, temp workers, migrant workers, and homeless persons) for the following:
-Infiltrate the Grand Nexus Hotel on all possible fronts, so as to circumvent and eventually destroy the security lockdown which has been placed on the building in duress,
-Conduct survey of the Hotel’s floor plan, as well as any changes or damages incurred over the course of security lockdown,
-Document all security measures imposed by security lockdown, for the sake of continued expedition,
-Search for any known and potentially unaccounted for individuals among guests or hotel staff, including Lord Valentine and Assailant,
Additionally, for waste prevention, damage reduction, and building safety reasons, the Foot Clan is asked to recover and recycle any hospitality assets of the Hotel, such as:
-Food and drink
-Single use amenities ex. paper and plastic items
-Cleaning items
-Guest amenities ex. toiletries, towels, blankets, bathrobes, etc
Over the course of normal hotel operation, these assets would be regularly used, damaged, and replaced. As such, their loss is financially accounted for. The longer these items remain on Hotel grounds without replacement, they risk loss of quality, damage, and accumulation of waste, which adds to eventual repair cost and potential safety hazard to returning workers. Additionally, as a matter of mutual convenience, the Foot Clan accepts our regular food and drink shipments in the Hotel’s stead over the course of the contract.
The possible security measures within the Hotel can and will delay the progress of survey, but are designed to be non-hazardous and capable of being deactivated with proper knowledge or clearance. All surveyors must remain in contact with Secretary and hotel staff for their own safety. The contract neither expects or permits that surveyor be in any physical danger. If a security measure contains a safety hazard, or a surveyor encounters Assailant, contact staff for immediate extraction.
Contract lasts until total loss of Hotel grounds OR recovery of missing persons and restoration of Hotel operation.
|[●▪▪●]|
Mikey turns away from the counter. “Oh, sorry for putting that so high, Gram-gram! I can get a step-ladder if you-”
“Daijoubu, daijoubu.” Karai serenely floats upwards, grabbing the jar of yuzu rinds with her hands. “I’m not that old yet.”
“You can fly? ” Mikey nearly slams his butcher knife into the cutting board with excitement. “Can you teach me? How do you do that?”
Karai places the jar in her floating lap. “It’s challenging, but the concept itself is very simple. Simply cloak your body in your ninpo and use that to move.”
“Do you think I could fly?”
“No!” Karai snaps. She quickly shuts her mouth with a harsh click, expression forcing itself to soften. “No, what I mean to say is that- ano- you should not do that.”
Mikey tilts his head. “Why?”
“It’s not healthy for your body to make something else move for it,” Karai sternly stresses. “Don’t even try to do it unless you can’t move any other way.”
Mikey frowns. “But- but you’re doing it, Gram-gram.”
Karai lets out a grunt of exertion as she forces her ninpo through her hand, wrenching open the lid of the jar. “Yes, I am.” Her sad smile turns stern. “You are blessed with such a strong body, child. Promise me you won’t throw it away just to fly. Use what you have until the very end.”
“H-hai.”
|[●▪▪●]|
“So what does it mean to unlock the family’s quirk?” Draxum pauses at Karai’s frown. “The ninpo, as you called it.”
“We are born with a very childish, undeveloped access to our power,” Karai explains as she sketches strange conduit lines on a human form. “As it should be. If we were not, we would perish from our own stupidity mere moments after birth.”
Draxum nods easily. “Of course. The same way any mundane person cannot fracture their own bones on a whim, despite their muscles having the strength to do so. The body limits our strength to prevent harm to ourselves.”
“Yes,” Karai confirms. “As we age, our ninpo must be trained like a muscle so it does not atrophy inside us. But we are not like other kinds of curses- quirks, you called it? Our instinct does not come easily to us. Traditionally, a master helps us unfurl our true power for the first time so we can learn to do it for ourselves. Yoshi is unlocked, but from what I understand, he left the family before he could be taught how to repeat the technique on others.”
Draxum hums. “The children did not unlock the external aspects of their quirk until they were given mystic weapons, and some aspects of their power seem to be missing… reliability outside of battle, for lack of a better word.”
“Outside pressures and matters of life or death can force the ninpo to unlock,” Karai concedes, “but this is incomplete and dangerous.” She waves her hand. “There is nothing more that I can do for Piebald. She already unlocked her potential merely struggling to survive. All she needs now is a supportive environment, which she is very lucky to have. But the suiko will need a steadier hand- they are cannons. They are forcing power out of their bodies like gunpowder through pinholes. It creates results now, but they need to be corrected before this becomes their habit.” She raises an eyebrow. “You’re an alchemist, I heard. You ask a lot of questions. Are you wanting to experiment?”
“No, no,” Draxum insists. “It’s just fascinating, really.”
“What is?”
“Five hundred years, and your family’s power has stayed exactly the same. It’s quite unnatural.”
“One thousand years,” Karai corrects.
“That’s even more unnatural. Mystic or not, living things are meant to change over time, you know.”
“They are.” Karai hums. “And that would be true for us, if we were natural.”
Draxum frowns. “I don’t follow.”
“Your modern curses can be traced back to those rivers of star blood,” Karai starts. “Another form of living thing that acts as a seed of mystic power. The Ashimoto family did not receive ours from the rivers. We received it from the true source. The oni from the stars, founder of the Ashimoto blood, Taihaku.”
|[●▪▪●]|
Long before magic, long before yokai, there was Kraang- and Kraang alone.
Star flung conquerors, their strength was disease and their ambition was poison. Their cosmic roots reached for the human world, and to better understand the inferiority of their enemy, they sent a cutting of themselves to infiltrate our lands. A pale white sage, felled from the stars to create teachings for the engine of their war machines.
Into the waters and the trees it laid the poison of its jade whispers, nesting in the minds of the animals who unwittingly took part in the alchemy of its flesh. Through a thousand different eyes, the sage observed the living riches of this world. Every piece a prize. Every life a trophy. Every body a vessel, worthy of the gifts becoming Kraang would bestow unto them, though they were all of them insects nonetheless.
Until the sage encountered a new insect. One who carried tools, who subsisted off the flesh of plant and animal alike, who staved off sickness with fire- who simply by imposing its craft onto the land, denied the Kraang at every turn and seemed no worse for it.
Was it anger that revealed the white sage’s hand? Frustration or insult? Or was it simple curiosity in seeing something so nearly Kraang in its lordship of the earth, yet not Kraang at all? But something unprecedented happened in that instant. Something forbidden, something unholy. Where the sage saw prey, the human saw a fellow hunter and shared himself freely. Where all others turned their eyes away, this man revealed he had been watching the sage all this time as if it were any other insect, watching its behaviors with interest for all his life- a blink in the eye of the Kraang, an uncountable eternity to him. Where the pleading voices of a thousand worlds had begged for their lives, the human, hunter of all living things, had the hubris to embrace the sage as with fondness and welcome its touch as a friend.
He had even dared, all this time, to think of the sage by a name, the greatest insult of all. To be named was to be something other than one, other than Kraang. To be named was blasphemy. But the hunter named. In naming, he loved, and in loving, he showed the sage something other than hunter and prey.
And so it was that Ri Taihaku, named for golden age poets and white stars, fell from the Kraang’s salvation forever.
|[●▪▪●]|
“Invasion,” Draxum whispers, more panicked than he would have liked. “You’re saying that your quirk- all quirks- are the ancestral slave chains of a failed invasion.”
“No,” Karai grimly corrects. “Quirks are why that invasion failed. Taihaku knew it could not conceive the defeat of the Kraang, but in the right hands, its power could. With the hunter and his strange-minded friends, the Ashimoto- our foot soldiers, our path against the Kraang- were born. Taihaku fed the Kraang false information of our world and poisoned the animals in our midst to defy its people. But even our sage could not predict the way the world evolved with its first and final gift, that even now the rivers made from its fallen brethren continue to flow through the ground.”
“And from there, the yokai,” Draxum realizes. “So that’s why your quirk stayed unchanged all this time. It was given to you in this form. It never evolved naturally in the first place.”
“And because Taihaku still lives, in a way,” Karai reveals. “In old age, it turned into an albino white sakura tree, perfectly entwined with an ume. We used its wood in our arts, we gave its fruits to our families to welcome them and share Taihaku’s embrace. Our sandhyasetra is full of its roots to this day.” She sighs. “But Taihaku’s voice was already so far away when it allowed my father to use its armor to protect the clan. It could not protect us from ourselves. Now my father’s corpse is trapped inside that thing, and Yoshi did not grow up knowing Taihaku’s name at all. Everything that made us who we are is scattered to the winds, I fear.”
“I am not the first to hear this,” Draxum guesses. “I heard Raphael and Cassandra scheming to tracking down your ancestral village, but not what for.”
“Stubborn dreamers seem to run in the family,” Karai muses. “I wish it wouldn't. This whole affair was meant to end with Saki and Karai, not begin with it.” She tilts her head. “Your Japanese is getting better.”
“I was fluent when I served in the military,” Draxum reveals. “But that was a much more modern form of your language, and I have since lost some of my ability to… speak on command. Your appearance was very sudden. You know how it is.”
“Our family’s tastes hate to stray from routine. The company we keep is seldom different.” She huffs. “Your own demeanor is very similar to my father’s.”
Draxum’s mouth strains uncomfortably, ears pinned warily against his head. “Yes, I’ve heard the Kuroi Yuroi attracts people similar to its original host.”
Karai’s expression flattens with understanding. “Ah. Gomen nasai. I was unaware you were one of its victims.”
“Neither did I, until it nearly killed me.” Draxum almost smiles. “But I suppose it wasn’t all that bad, demonic guests considering. He had many insightful thoughts on rice and lotus intercropping between the indiscriminate bloodlust and insatiable thirst for violence.”
“Did he tell you about the ducks?” Karai asks.
“He would not shut up about the ducks and the fish,” Draxum answers.
Karai laughs sadly. “I don’t know if it’s better or worse that there’s anything left of him in that armor. I don’t even know if there will be anything left of him when it’s finally been defeated.” She sighs. “I wish you hadn’t set us free. A selfish wish, I know. My seal did not erase the harm he continued to inflict on the world. But at least there we were together. At least I did not have to see what he becomes. I could never tell this to the children, but what am I meant to do with myself when even that is gone?”
“Live, I suppose,” Draxum lightly suggests. “Just as I did.”
“Hm. Perhaps that will be a start.”
|[●▪▪●]|
[GRAM-GRAM WANTS TO SEE YOU,] Shelldon relays into his headphones.
Donnie squashes down the sudden sense of dread. “The training room again?”
[YESSIR.]
“Could you possibly tempt her with some tea?” Donnie anxiously needles. “When was the last time she ate? She hasn't had the chance to try any of my pies yet, we should really get around to that-”
[OH, SHE ALREADY DID ALL THAT BEFORE CALLING ME,] Shelldon confirms. [YOU'RE f*ckED, BUDDY.]
Donnie's expression turns flat and weary. “Sigh. If I must. For clan and country, I suppose.”
He can feel Shelldon biting back the static snicker. [ARE YOU THAT SCARED OF GRAM-GRAM? I'M PRETTY SURE YOU COULD FOLD HER LIKE A TOOTHPICK.]
Donnie closes his tablet holder with a loud, leathery clack. “I am not scared of Gram-gram, she's a wonderful… statistically average late-middle aged… very human… woman… lady. There's no rational reason to fear her, therefore I don't.” He points up at Shelldon's face. “Don't.”
Shelldon's rotors coyly clap together, head waggling back and forth. [PAPATELLO’S SCARED OF BEACH BALLS AND SPIDERS AND A WIDDLE OLD LADY-]
“WHAT IS WITH THIS INTERROGATION, YOUNG MAN, WE SAID WE'D NEVER TALK ABOUT THE BEACH BALLS-” Donnie sucks in a breath, hands rented over his mouth. “I'm so normal. I'm so normal. I don't yell at my kids.” His fingers rattle over his snout. “Gentle hands. Gentle hands.” He slaps himself in the face. “Okay! Sorry! Hi! Have you been telling my brothers I'm scared of Karai?”
Shelldon loudly slurps on the sippy cup held by his spider shell. [...NO. NO- YES, I DID…N’T. I WOULD NEVER.]
[HE WOULD NEVER,] the Turtle Tank echoes.
“I am not afraid of our great great great great great great great great great-"
Shelldon's eyes practically glaze over.
"-great great great great great great grandma,” Donnie finally finishes. “That's one more great than Splinter's. I'm just not fond of these all new family values her time here is injecting into the household.”
[LIKE WHAT?] Shelldon wonders.
Donnie pats his head. “Not for you to worry about, my little Versailles. It's not your war effort she can find so lacking, in any case.” He closes the Turtle Tank’s roof hatch and leaps down towards the door leading to the lair proper. “And don't you dare watch me eat the tatami mat!”
[I WOULD NEVER.]
“I mean it! You better not be sending Nobody and Sentient Bed meme edits!”
[I WOULD NEVER,] Shelldon repeats. [LET YOU CATCH ME,] he quickly whispers.
Well, that's probably a lost cause. That little bastard hasn't respected him since the ripe old age of, what, three? And it's probably for the best anyways that Shelldon left the Pure And Selfless Master Donatello era sooner rather than later. Everyone has to find out their parents aren't bigger than god eventually. That false infallibility does more harm than good in the end.
(Splinter, the god who sleeps on the job. Don't think about it. It's better. He's better now. Don't think about it.)
Not that Donnie thinks Karai would ever- no. She hadn't needed to be convinced of his value, not even from the start. But now that she's recovered enough to train them, she's become determined to draw out a certain kind of mettle he fears he might lack entirely.
She hasn't sparred with him at all since her initial evaluation of them. No, his training thus far has been inexplicably mechanical in nature- explaining his battle shells to her, disassembling his equipment and forcing it to work with his ninpo when she steals various pieces from it all. All the while she hems and haws and squints meaningfully like she's preparing some god awful rug to pull out from under him, and he doesn't like it. But it’s his job to love his family- not necessarily understand them or even like what they’re doing at any given time, just be there and help. If she wants him in the training room, so be it. He can do nothing, so he loves. But the things he does for love.
“Shelldon,” Donnie lightly orders as he walks into the bathroom, “I’m taking off my battle shell. When I hand it to you, go to my room and get my sparring clothes.”
[OH. EVEN THE-]
“Yes, yes, the bandana too. Proper Hamato sparring means no equipment, so I’ll have to downgrade and you won’t get to steal my first person POV.” Donnie closes his eyes, manifesting the mechanism that unlocks the battle shell from its clasp, releasing its omnipresent pressure from the lip of his carapace. He rolls his shoulders as the air hits his shell spikes. “So what is the sitch, tadpole? Are the scars mature enough to bump up my mysterious dad vibes yet?”
[UHHHH-] Shelldon’s dialogue tree audibly stalls trying to process the sentence as he grabs Donnie’s battle shell and shoves it through the service chute. [IT’S NOT A MYSTERY, THOUGH. WE WERE BOTH THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED.]
Donnie loosens the cloth knot on the back of his head and pushes the fabric of the bandana out of his eyes. The white noise of the comm and neural reader sewn inside it fall away into a distant static as he sets it on a wall hanger. “Gin na, it’s my gatorade scars and I’ll vibe about it if I want to.”
[IT LOOKS LAME,] Shelldon bluntly asserts. [DON’T DO IT AGAIN. I THOUGHT YOU WERE GONNA DIE.]
Donnie blinks blearily at his reflection in the mirror, experimentally poking at the purple spirit gum left in the bandana’s wake. “Turtles can survive 70% blood volume loss. I would’ve been fine.”
[DON’T DIE, THEN.]
“I’ll never die. Not for a thousand years.” Donnie tilts his head at the mirror, observing the clinically painted planes left behind on his face. “Maybe Leo had the right idea saying we should start treating this stuff more like makeup. I guess we’re old enough we have to think about what we look like under these when we take ‘em off.”
[WHY DO YOU EVEN WEAR THAT STUFF UNDER THERE, ANYWAYS?] Shelldon wonders. [IT LOOKS ALL ICKY-GROSS.]
Donnie points at the blocky shapes dotting his cheeks as he grabs some rubbing alcohol. “This keeps the friction high so our bandanas can’t slip or get pulled off our faces. After that time Raph almost bodied Mikey, I knew a simple piece of cloth wasn’t going to be enough.” His free finger moves to the angular colors on his eyes while he swabs the rest of his face clean. “This, too. Keeps the eye holes in place and makes it blend in better. Also keeps gunk from getting in our eyes and makes sure the light doesn’t beam our poor tunnel men eyeballs as hard.” Donnie squints. “Why are you asking all of the sudden, he said in a non-suspecting tone of voice?”
[I LIKE SPENDING TIME WITH YOU,] Shelldon innocently insists.
“Welp,” Donnie flatly says, “there’s no way I can respond skeptically to that without creating an adverse childhood experience, so let it be on your conscience I accepted this statement at face value. Now give me my weird ninja clothes.” Shelldon coyly throws the black robes at his head. “Thank you for nothing, you useless reptile.”
It’s probably fine. Donnie’s sure he’ll be surprised anyway when Shelldon turns around and does something weird, just like all the other times he’s surprised by completely predictable events when someone says they definitely won’t happen. Like that time Shelldon accidentally got his wires crossed (thanks, Leo) and spent a whole day plotting to kill Donnie and steal his identity. It’s still better, in his experience, to treat even the most blatant lies with sincerity than risk hurting something genuine.
(Then again, Leo always did call Donnie too trusting for his own good. Usually before betraying him in some comedic, non-consequential way.)
“Blindfold yourself,” Karai says as he walks into the training room.
Donnie's stance straightens, head tilted. “If I do not wish it, is that an order?”
Karai raises a neutral eyebrow. “Should it be?”
Donnie's eye twitches. “Should it not be one or the other?”
“She doesn’t understand that, la,” Splinter offers. “So you don’t take any order from her. If you don’t want to use the blindfold, just close your eyes for the exercise. I am here the whole time in case something happen. Okay?”
Donnie’s eyes dart between Splinter and Karai. “Should we- it might be important to-”
“Think about it later,” Splinter orders- gently, kindly, but an order nonetheless. “We are doing something else right now.”
And the thought leaves as quickly as it came. “Hai.”
“The point is not to defeat me,” Karai begins to explain as Donnie shuts his eyes. “The point is to defend whatever comes for you, however you see fit. I may attack you with your weapons, our ninpo, or even my bare hands. Do you accept?”
“Hai, s-s-s-” No, not sensei, never sensei- “-shishou.”
“If the challenge overcomes you, we stop,” Karai stresses. “If you are in pain, we stop.” The air shifts as she floats towards him, hand reaching up to touch his head. “Suffering is not your teacher here, I am. Do you accept?”
A pause. “Hai.”
She draws back. “Good.”
Splinter claps his hands. “Hajime!”
Donnie’s body locks into a defensive stance. Karai, twenty degrees, ten o’ clock, fifteen paces, ten, five. His neck lurches to the side, right arm snapping upwards to catch the approaching knifehand strike and throwing the body behind him. A shift of cloth, not of straw- she does not land, instead rolling in midair to negate the momentum he gave her.
Splinter’s voice is faraway, as if echoing through water. “I did warn you. Ah-Zi has the strongest personal bubble out of all of them.”
“It’s more paranoid than Raphael’s,” Karai comments, voice almost amused as Donnie mindlessly pivots in the direction of her voice. “He won’t let me get behind him.”
Hamato Donatello makes no comment of the conversation. He has not been asked to, therefore it does not exist. Twirl of a blade not in her hands. Crackle of ozone. Light in the back of his eyes. Left leg kicks away the handle edge of an incoming sai and throws it into his hand, wrist unyielding as he forces its prongs down against the path of an incoming bo staff. He forces its arc towards the crook of his other arm and tosses the sai aside, fist grabbing into the opponent’s clothes to wrench her free of her weapon. One leg lifted, he hops back, bo slung between his elbows across the shoulders of his carapace.
One heartbeat, two. Opponent is still alive. His free foot touches the ground again.
This time, opponent approaches with a spear. Systems Commander shifts to a one handed grip as tech-bo unfurls its hammered edge and he swings from the side to shatter the weapon by its hilt. A smile curls unbidden on his face as he swings again, forcing her on the defensive. Splinter’s tail collides from behind to meet a battle shell. Let them come to him as many times as they like, he is a turtle and he will not cede one square centimeter. A high pitched giggle bubbles in the Commander’s throat, a bird-like cooing sound as he delightedly shifts back to a bo stance and leaps, flight shell surging him upwards. His arm rears back, bo held aloft like a spear as the anticipatory kickback sings through his veins-
“YAME!” Splinter barks. “That’s enough. Look at yourself, Ah-Zi.”
Donnie’s eyes snap open. He sees his markings glowing through his black robes, a purple light pulsing down his limbs and flooding into his hand as it holds his tech-bo. His tech-bo that shouldn’t be in this room right now, that can’t be in this room, because he left it stowed away with a battle shell that cannot answer his commands without the neural reader in his actual bandana.
He bites back a yelp as a sharp pain spikes through the back of his skull, sending him and his imagined armory tumbling back towards the ground. The disconnected handle of a broom clatters against the floor, its head discarded by the wall, all new mechanical seams burning and warping along its grain.
“Huuuuuuh boy,” he grits out as his vision dances. “Here comes the trepanation. We’re gonna need the craniotome. Oh-ho-hooooh, pizza supreme, get me off of Fibonacci’s wild ride.”
Splinter lifts Donnie up by the shoulders. “Daijobu ka?”
“Nothing bad ever happens to the Mad Dogs,” Donnie feverishly wheezes, “nothing bad eEvEr hApPeNs to-the-MaDdOooogs…”
“He will be fine,” Splinter decides. “If he was actually incapacitated, he wouldn’t be such a drama queen.”
“Father is cruel?” Donnie pathetically whines. “Father is unyielding? Father cares not for me?” He waves his shaking hands. “Oh, I shall change all the wifi passwords and run away with my little rucksack, I cannot thrive in this household!”
“The recoil is a good sign in his case,” he hears Karai conclude with a nod of her head. “It means he’s broken past the lock.”
“What- what- what- what lock?” Donnie manages to stammer out.
Splinter squints out an undeservingly proud smile as he places Donnie’s tech gauntlet back on his son's arm and pulls up the training room footage. Donnie watches Karai attack him with… nothing. Nothing substantial, just shards of ceramic and a broom. Ceramic that turned to sai, wood that turned into false titanium, the moment it got too close to him.
“That’s a fluke,” he immediately says. “I can’t do that.”
“You just did,” Splinter insists.
“But I can’t do that. That’s why I couldn’t use mystic weapons, that’s why I need my tech, I can’t- I’m not strong enough to do something like this, I was never strong enough to do something like this!”
“You are strong enough to know everywhere your opponent could be no matter where they approach you from,” Splinter continues. “You are strong enough to replicate any machine component you wish and operate it all day, every day.”
“I don’t-”
“When was the last time you needed to look at your blueprints to fix something after the first time you made them?” Karai suddenly asks. “Really needed them, not just to make sure.”
Donnie lets out a harsh click. “Just because I could build the entire lair in my sleep doesn’t mean I should!”
“But it does mean you could,” Karai presses. “It means you could do it without making yourself the missing piece in everything you build.”
“YOU DON’T-” Donnie takes a sharp, frustrated breath, voice crumpling into something quieter. “You don’t know that. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Why not?” Karai simply asks.
“It just… doesn’t,” Donnie murmurs, an irate growl rising in his voice. “Because if it does, if it works like that, if it’s always worked like that, if I’ve been WASTING MY DUM-DUM TIME TINKERING IN MY DUM-DUM GARAGE BECAUSE I WAS TOO STUPID TO TRY HARDER AT WAVING MY HANDS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, THEN WHY WOULD YOU EVEN NEED ME?”
Donnie watches something shatter in Splinter’s golden eyes and he looks down, ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” he quickly says. “You’re sad. I’m sorry.”
“You are not stupid, Ah-Zi,” Splinter sadly says. “You were never stupid. You were just a boy.”
Donnie frowns, averting his eyes. “Okay.”
“No one waves their hands,” Karai reveals. “Not here. Not this family. There’s a reason your machines come so easily to you, real or not. It’s because you love them.”
Donnie’s clenched hand goes slack with shock.
“Our family creates magic from love. You are not so separate from us that you would be any different.” Karai takes his hands in hers. She’s so small, but he can’t find it in himself to pull away. “You made all of these wonderful things because you love. And when you put that love into your work, you fall in love- you love them so much you can imagine their perfect ghosts before your eyes with just a thought. That is not a waste, Donatello, that is a beautiful thing.”
“And it is beautiful because you build, not despite it.” Splinter’s callused, dull clawed hands soothe at Donnie’s burning face. “It is beautiful because you always want to fix everything you can get your hands on and you are good at fixing things.”
Donnie watches himself through the footage, creating the soul of his weapon out of nothing but the wooden bones and the memory of its weight in his hands.
Alchemists, you were right, you can make anything, anything, uranium, plutonium, tellurium, mercury, copper, cobalt, platinum, silver, and gold, you can make gold, an isotope so radioactive it would sparkle before your eyes.
“I want to try again,” Donnie finally says.
Alchemists, you were right. It is magic.
|[●▪▪●]|
The glowing whirlpools in Mikey’s orange spots sputter like fading neon. “Gosh darn it to heck, not again!”
“We can rest for now,” Karai suggests. “It doesn’t have to come easily.”
Mikey throws his hands up in frustration. “But you said I’m gonna be the strongest outta all of us! If we gotta roll up to the Shredder and crease his Js, Mystic Mikey needs his mystic mojo and fast! ”
“Your family does not depend on you alone,” Karai reminds him. “Your brothers are working very hard, too. Hopefully, if we keep being careful, you and your brothers will barely need to fight at all.”
“Yes, we will,” Mikey wearily snarks, unable to keep the resignation out of his voice. “It always ends in a fight.”
His eyes dart over Karai’s concerned face and he frantically flaps his hands.
“Not that I’mma run from a fight or anythin’!” Mikey laughs uneasily. “I’m a soldier! We all soldiers! Ain’t a scute off my shell, Gram-gram!” He twiddles at his paint stained thumbs. “I mean- I guess I don’t like it when it’s family fights, y’know?”
Karai shifts out of her meditative stance. “Go on.”
“I don't know why it's different. It just is. Meat Sweats pulls a mallet on Donnie? Nada. Zilch. Raph raises his voice for half a second, or Draxum gets that bitch look on his face? I feel like I'm gonna explode!” Mikey forces his legs into the air and paces on his hands. “And I'm not tryin' to be a baby about it, y'know? I'm not a baby! Everybody's got sh*t goin’ on and it- it makes sense that we're not always a big happy family, I get that, it just… feels…”
His words falter in the face of Karai’s unrelenting stare.
“...bad?” Mikey squeaks out.
“Why do you think that's a bad thing?” Karai wonders.
Mikey flips back onto his feet and clambers onto the wooden dummy, trying to push down the sudden sense of annoyance at this new line of questioning. “I don't wanna fight or nothin’,” he murmurs. “We're supposed to be training.”
“We're not fighting. I am your grandmother, trying to understand you better.”
Mikey bats at the dummy’s protruding branches, watching them rotate like parrying arms. “I don't need no Doctor Feelings, I am Doctor Feelings.”
Karai tilts her head coyly. “And how does that make you feel? ”
Mikey lets out a roar of frustration and he launches himself into the rafters. “THAT'S THE POINT, I DON'T!” He swings back and forth off a supporting pole, legs kicking uselessly with every word. “I’m supposed to be the one who has everything put together! I'm supposed to be the one who turned out fine! Everyone worked so hard so that I wouldn't have it bad and I can't just turn around and say I feel bad about it!”
He pops his arms into his shell and falls to the ground, stomping dejectedly on the tatami mat.
“Everyone’s got a whole mountain o’ problems to hold them down but me. I should be doing so good right now, but I'm not. I'm supposed to walk outta this room and say sorry that they tried for nothin'. It's not fair.”
“That was never your burden to bear,” Karai softly asserts.
“But I don't wanna be a burden,” Mikey says in a small voice.
“And that was never your choice to make,” Karai continues. “Whether they choose to carry it, or if you were ever a burden at all. We cannot choose to be loved, we simply are. It was always out of our control.”
Mikey doesn’t say anything after that. He doesn’t stop Karai from deciding to end training for the day.
That was never your burden to bear.
“Hey, Raph?” Mikey slowly asks as he holds onto the ladder.
Raph hums in acknowledgement as he changes a lightbulb in the ceiling.
“Why did you always carry us when we were kids?” Mikey asks.
“Cus you were small,” Raph says. “Somebody had to make you bozos keep up with me.”
“We’re not small anymore and you still carry us,” Mikey points out. “And you always gripe about us bein’ not grown up enough, y’know. You don’t gotta do that if you don’t want to.”
“Used to be Raph had to,” Raph concedes, grabbing a bulb from the box Mikey hoists up. “But y’know- y’know what, it’s kinda nice y’all still let me do it, even if nobody needs it anymore. You don’t gotta think about it that way, but Raph thinks about it like it means y’all still lemme love you back. Cus it means you’re still you, and I’m still me, and I can still carry you. I dunno- ain’t bein’ loved its own kinda lovin’ back? I think it is.”
And that was never your choice to make.
“Why do I love you?” Leo scoffs. “Dude, what kind of stupid question is that?” He slaps Mikey’s bare plastron. “Where are you hiding your sweater, are you playing Doctor Feelings again?”
“Forget it,” Mikey grumbles. “It’s stupid.”
“Well, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Lemme think of your stupid answer.” Leo leans back in the bean chair, kicking his feet on the tea table and crossing his legs. He lets out a long… long … hum of exaggerated thought until Mikey starts slapping his face. “Yame, yame! Verbal artistry takes time, little man!”
“I don’t want art, dumbass, I want answers!” Mikey barks.
“Okay, okay, sheesh!” Leo’s laugh trails off, resting smile turning strained. “I mean, it’s not like we have a choice either way. I’d die without you, mano. I can’t do anything about that, so I love you. How’s that for an artless answer?”
Whether they choose to carry it, or if you were ever a burden at all.
“Because if I ate you in your sleep, I couldn’t play video games with you anymore,” Donnie simply says.
“You’re not special, dude. We all wanna eat each other in our sleep,” Mikey points out as he stretches on Donnie’s bed.
“And you won’t,” Donnie patiently answers, “so I won’t.”
Mikey’s voice turns dark as he ducks into his shell. “Speak for yourself. Sleep with one eye open, suppon nabe.”
Donnie’s smile softens then. “Always.”
We cannot choose to be loved.
“Sometimes,” Frida whispers, “I wish I didn’t care. It would have been so much easier if you weren’t my brothers, if- if I didn’t have to love you while not being you. Is that mean? I’m sorry if it is.”
“It’s okay.” Mikey stares up at the ceiling. “You’re probably right.”
“Sometimes I miss when Big Mama was my entire world,” Frida shamefully confesses. “I used to think she was bigger than God.”
“I used to think Draxum was the Devil,” Mikey decides to share. “Like, literally. The Devil from the Bible.”
Frida snorts out a laugh. “How does that happen?”
“Carol used to go to church when we were little kids and she let us read the books,” Mikey snickers. “And we didn’t get it at all. We replaced all the big people in it with people we knew in real life. So Splinter was God cus he made us but he wasn’t looking after us a lot. And we didn’t know what Draxum was back then, but we know he was bad, and it was bad he made us, and it scared Splinter real bad. So, the Devil. Devil from the Bible.”
“We’re both kind of stupid, huh?” Frida dares to joke. “Must be some kind of land turtle thing.”
We simply are.
“Why are we brothers and sisters?” Piebald shrugs. “I dunno. It’s fun!”
“What if- what if I wasn’t fun anymore?” Mikey nervously asks.
Piebald blows a silly little raspberry. “Then I’d sit with you and do fun things until we can both be fun again! It’s fun because it’s with you. There’s no other way it is.”
It was always out of our control.
“You didn’t have to save us, did you?” Mikey asks his father.
Splinter’s eyes shift with something Mikey can’t quite place. “No. I suppose I didn’t. I certainly didn’t sign up to be a father of four, single or not. If I’d kept my word, Draxum would have raised you and I never would have seen you again.”
“Then why’d you do it?” Mikey wonders.
Splinter doesn’t say anything for a long time. Mikey wonders if he has an answer at all.
“I don’t know, la,” Splinter finally says, like it’s a surprise even to himself. “I don’t. I came up with so many reasons why it was the right thing to do, but those thoughts all happened after I’d already done it. Even if I say it was to save you, it never had to be me.” He cuts into an orange. “But it was. I don’t regret it. If it never happened, I wouldn’t get to cut oranges for my baby orange! That would be such a terrible thing.”
(And Moses said, “Why did you set the bush on fire? Is it a sign?”)
(And God said, “I don't know. I just felt like it.”)
And Mikey feels a laugh start to bubble in his throat. Like the gasps of a fire in his chest, foam and starch bubbling past a rattling pot, spilling down the sides and stuttering against fire, fire, fire stolen from his oxygen, from the light of his eyes, from the freckles on his scales, from the dimple in his smile, spit out from his body and carving its lines into the world until the entire crate of oranges on the table falls apart in perfect spirals.
He can't stop laughing. Holy f*ck. They're gonna have to make so much orange juice tonight. It's gonna make the biggest mess they've had in months. He laughs until the sound starts cutting into the apples, and laughs again.
|[●▪▪●]|
“So how many of you are there?” Karai asks.
Raph raises a brow. “In the house?”
“In you.” Karai raises a placating hand as he stiffens. “Daijobu. The Ashimoto family have always taken people that the rest of the world considered mad. Just because we did not have a name for it back then doesn't mean we did not know it happened.”
“Know what happened?” Raph grits out.
“People who took characters from history and legend into themselves like an invited demon,” Karai bluntly says. “Others who made versions of themselves to house terrible memories or invoke a protection they could not on their own.”
Oh good, so Raph doesn't have to explain it!
SHE THINKS YOU'RE CRAZY! YOU'RE CRAZY! YOU'RE GONNA GO IN THE SLAMMER AND TURN INTO A PRISON PEOPLE EATER!
Stop f*cking slouching when your superior is talking to you!
Gram-gram doesn't care about that sort of thing-
SHUT UP YOU INSUBORDINATE HACK!
We need to run away into the Appalachian Mountains. Quick, what's the fastest way to hide inside a bear corpse?
Raph punches himself in the face and barks out a harsh laugh, eyes wild. “Wow, Gram-gram, that's so fascinating! Don't tell me more!”
Karai tilts her head. “Does it disturb you to acknowledge it?”
“I dunno,” Raph admits. “I don’t even know if it is what you’re sayin’ it is. We weren’t supposed to be people, Gram-gram. There’s some stuff in there that feels like- like a tool tryin’ to figure itself out cus it’s bein’ used wrong.” He chuckles sadly to himself. “I gotta pretend to be a bunch of guys in a trenchcoat just to be a guy. That ain’t right.”
“I have to use my ninpo to get up and walk. That isn’t right either.” Karai leans forward in her seated stance. “Has the scatter in your mind affected your ninpo focus? We can try some other method if that is the case.” Her mouth flattens, though she doesn’t seem displeased. “If I can recall the last time someone with this situation was born into the family, each of her characters had to learn a different ninpo style. Their temperaments were all so different.”
“That’s not what it is, honest!” Raph insists. “I’ve basically been fighting the same way forever, no matter how Raph is seated at the wheel. But maybe you’re not wrong that the whole peanut gallery in the back’s got somethin’ to do with why I’m not gettin’ the whole unlockin’ thing you’re tryin’ to get me behind.” He bounces on his knees. “But I like the way I fight now! Why’s it gotta change?”
“That tonfa is like a child’s toy,” Karai explains. “It can be used as a real weapon, but it’s a training device. It’s doing the channeling for you. What are you going to do when it breaks? And it will, with your level of strength.”
“I won’t break it, honest!” Raph nervously asserts. “I’m- I’m real careful, I promise!”
Karai’s voice grows firmer. “It’s going to break when you’re older, Raphael. And even if it doesn’t, it won’t be safe for you to have a poor judge of your own power.”
“Poor.” Raph’s eye twitches. “Poor?” The growl in his voice rumbles like a distant thunder. “POOR!”
This weird, desperate noise struggles and dies on his tongue, a mockery of a bitter laugh. His harsh clawed hand points at the threshold of the training room.
“I open the door,” he laboriously growls out, “because I can forget I can walk through the wall.” His foot presses down until the mat starts to crack. “And when I walk, all I can do is walk because anywhere weaker than concrete could fall out from under me.” He walks forward towards Karai until his splayed arm catches the punching bag hooked against its hangar by chains. “I’m the reason everything in this room has to be held down with chains! I’m the reason Donnie got so good at fixing things!”
His claw digs into the punching bag and pulls until its body splits by the throat, sand spilling from its innards.
“And then you- you come into my house and you tell me I need to be stronger! Like I’m not- like I’m not already strong!” It’s so easy to flick his wrist and watch the bag fling itself into the wall. So easy to hear wood crack like bones. “Like the only reason I haven’t accidentally killed someone already is ‘cus I had to learn there’s some things you just! CAN’T! FIX!”
His hand hovers over Karai’s head as he stalks forward, head co*cked as she steps back.
“Like I can’t just walk into this wall right now and squeeze,” Raph himself rumble. “So go ahead! MAKE ME STRONGER! CAN’T YOU SEE HOW WEAK I AM?”
His arm hits the wall- a quiet, gentle knock.
And Karai just looks at him.
“I’m sorry,” Raph mumbles, staggering back. “I- I- I-” A high keen rattles in his chest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, ImsorryImsorryImsorry-”
“It’s alright,” Karai whispers.
Raph sinks down to the floor and clutches his shaking head. “Nuh-uh, nope, no, no no nonono-”
“The fault is also mine,” Karai levelly says as her hand soothes at his carapace. “Pain is not our teacher. It is not my duty to bring it here.”
“It’s so easy to be careful,” Raph’s voice shakes. “Raph’s been careful his whole life. But it’s so easy to break it all anyway. It’s so easy and it scares me.”
Karai sighs.
“Raphael, do you want to stop training?” she gently asks.
“No,” he reflexively bites out. “I can't. I gotta do this.”
“No, you do not,” Karai corrects.
“Someone has to.”
“And it does not have to be you,” Karai softly says.
THEN WHO? screams the audience in his head. But the tone of Karai's voice is the end of a conversation, not the beginning, and soon enough Mikey calls them out for lunch through the lair speakers. Raph has Shelldon's roombas help him clean up the mess and takes the punching bag to his room so he can fix it up. Again.
Gods knows how many more times the damn thing can survive him.
|[●▪▪●]|
“Hey,” Leo chirps.
Raph is hunched over the torn fabric and the new scrap meant to patch it, squinting past his reading glasses at the needle and thread. He must’ve broken the punching bag again, which- both a good and bad sign for what Leo’s going for, to be honest. Bad in the sense that only happens when Raph is in a sh*t mood about training or what Splinter- or recently, Karai- has been saying to him, good in the sense that sh*t mood about training will probably make him more amenable to what Leo wants in this particular instance.
“What is it, Leo?” Hm. Bit of a rumble and a skosh of sub-bass, big man is not in the mood today.
“It's time for midnight run,” Leo reminds him.
“Uh-huh. Where’s Donnie and Mikey?” Raph patiently asks.
Leo keeps his voice flippant, dismissive. “I don't f*ckin’ know, braiding each other's wizard hair or something. Barry said they can take a load off on the workout so he can watch ‘em for quirk exhaustion.”
Raph's voice turns flat. “Huh. Wow. That almost sounds plausible. What do you really need me outta the house for?”
Leo rocks back and forth on his feet. “Can't a guy just go on a midnight run with his bros? It's only weird if you make it weird, dude.”
“So if you wait for Raph to be done with this patch job before goin’ on our midnight run, nothing weird is gonna happen?” Raph slowly says.
Leo pats Raph's head. “Oh, ye of little faith! I just want to go on a productive midnight run with my dear captain where we most indubitably will not fall to any tomcanery or foolery or- uh- eh- other- other words for bad things when happen.” A pause. “But we should definitely totally do it before any of the adults wake up.”
Raph’s eyes are tired. “That sounds like it’s code for if I don’t go along with your ass, you’re gonna drag one of our brothers, or worse, one of our sisters into this sh*t.”
Leo’s hand waggles with mocking air quotes. “Piebald doesn’t need extra training. She’s a perfect student with no clear weaknesses, remember? And I don’t even know what Karai’s got going on with Frida. Homegirl still hasn’t fessed up if she’s even training.”
Raph sighs. “Ya got me there. I mean, Frida could probably flip me if she wants, she’s jacked, but she’s like- gym membership jacked, y’know? She don’t got that dog in her, she’s got that f*ckin’- prey animal lookin’ ass.”
“Hey, don’t diss that prey animal drive,” Leo chides. “We may have the predatory efficiency, but prey animals are batsh*t desperate. Those f*ckers can pull stunts we wouldn’t dream of on our own.”
“Usagi kicks your ass in sparring, doesn’t he?” Raph bluntly guesses.
“We will never know,” Leo vaguely says.
“He’s the only prey animal you regularly interact with-”
“We will never know.” Leo slices open a portal in Raph’s room. “Anyways. Midnight run?”
And in three, two, one- Raph sighs and caves, setting down his sewing. “I f*cking guess. But this better not go anywhere weird-”
He shrieks as Leo kicks him into the portal. Leo slices another one and pops out the other side into Repo’s salvage yard. He stares up at the sky and in three, two, one-
“UWAWAWAWA-” A sharp yip, and Raph scrabbles for purchase on the magnet of a crane. “LEO! WHAT THE SHELL, MAN! YOU SAID THIS WAS A MIDNIGHT RUN, NOT A MIDNIGHT MURDER ATTEMPT!”
Leo coyly smiles. “I mean technically if you think about it, Repo Mantis’ salvage is a running distance away from the lair for us-”
“I DON’T NEED YO f*ckIN’ SEMANTICS, GET ME DOWN FROM HERE!”
“Okay, okay, but hear me out.” Leo gestures his hands together. “No.”
Raph frowns down at him. “I’m telling Dad.”
“BUT HEAR ME OUT!” Leo continues as he waves his arms in the air. “I think this is good for both of us! This kinda ninpo whatever unlocks through family mojo or sink-or-swim stuff and- and- and the family vibing clearly hasn’t been working for either of us, so we’ve gotta try something else, right?”
“Like hanging me off a CRANE MAGNET?” Raph exasperatedly shouts.
“We’ll be like baby birds!” Leo insists. “Just fling yourself off the edge and my super cool spontaneous power upgrade will kick in and save your life.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Raph grits out.
“Then your super cool spontaneous power upgrade will kick in. Obviously! Were you paying attention at all?” Leo shakes his head. “For shame, Captain, for shame.”
“We don’t have time for your sicko idea of fun, Leo! Put me down before I tell both our dads about this!”
Leo raises an eyebrow as he leans on the hilt of his odachi. “Who said anything about fun, mano? I’m being serious here. We gotta catch up with the others fast-”
Raph lets out an irritated growl. “Of f*cking course- this isn’t about training at all, is it? You’re just salty somebody got good at something before you did and now you’re taking it out on me!”
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Literally when have I ever done that?” Leo rhetorically asks.
“What about that time you got us trapped in the Maze of Death?” Raph points out.
“I wanted the prize pizza!” Leo defends.
“And that time you accidentally got yourself stuck in Paris for an hour because you tried to beat Donnie and Mikey to April’s house,” Raph adds.
“You were there for that too!” Leo defends. “You can’t just blame me for sh*t you do too, you always do this!”
“DO NOT!”
“DO TOO!”
“YOU TOTALLY DO!” Leo shouts. “LITERALLY HALF THE REASON WE’RE SITTING HERE PLAYING HERO DRESS UP IS BECAUSE YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S GOT SUCH A BLEEDING HEART ABOUT DOING THE RIGHT THING!”
“YOU’RE THE BOZO THAT KEEPS PUTTING US ALL IN SITUATIONS ‘CUS YOU WANNA TAKE IT TOO FAR!” Raph shouts back. “I SWEAR YOU’RE TRYING TO GET US ALL KILLED SOMETIMES!”
“I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU!”
“WHO f*ckING ASKED?”
“YOU!” Leo finally snaps. “Because every time I try to get us to do something fun or stupid or just- just normal, it’s Leo’s fault for getting us off track, it’s Leo’s fault someone else broke the teapot, it’s Leo’s fault we got caught, because f*ck me for trying to lighten the f*ck up and remind you YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY BROTHER!”
“I AM YOUR BROTHER!” Raph roars.
Leo stabs his sword into the ground. “THEN WHY DO YOU ALWAYS ACT LIKE IT WOULD KILL YOU TO TRUST ME FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE?”
“BECAUSE IT WOULD KILL YOU, GOD DAMN IT!”
Leo freezes.
“You just don’t get it,” Raph’s voice shakes. “If you drop the ball, I have to clean up your mess. If I drop the ball, you die.”
Leo’s grimace drops into something sad as his voice softens. “Raph. Oh, Raph- Raph, we were ten. It wasn’t your fault.”
“He was so small, Leo,” Raph half whispers. “You’re all so, so small.”
“So were you,” Leo reminds him.
Raph shakes his head. “Nuh-uh.”
Leo clicks sharply in challenge. “The f*ck you mean, nuh-uh? Everybody's small sometimes.”
“Not Raph,” Raph darkly mutters to himself, “Raph is always the biggest, he's gotta be. Cus if I'm not the biggest, who's gonna save us from the next human that's not April? Who’s gonna fix the teddy bears, and- and kick all the bugs outta the kitchen, and make sure everybody got their snacks and tuck everybody goodnight and-” His voice breaks. “Who's gonna save us from people big like me?”
“It's not like that anymore, mano,” Leo gently says. “Things are better now. We've finally got our family. We've got our dads back.”
“The f*ck’s that supposed to matter?” Raph despairs. “They're small, too!”
“And so were you, big guy.” Leo taps against his plastron. “In here. And you’ve been sitting with that for so long you haven’t realized we got bigger, too. We all did. We’re- buddy, the world’s built too small for all of us. It’s not just you anymore.”
“It’s always been me-”
“But it doesn’t have to be,” Leo corrects. There's a yearning in his voice now, one that he can no longer suppress. “But that’s never gonna change unless you trust somebody out there’s gonna catch it when you drop that ball.”
“What?” Raph sniffles. “Like you?”
Leo stands there for a long, quiet moment.
“Yeah,” he decides. “You know I run circles around all of y’all at the ballcourt.”
“God, this metaphor’s getting out of hand,” Raph laughs past a sob.
“Well, lemme just catch it again,” Leo jokes. “Listen, I’m not saying it has to be me, but I’m saying it doesn’t have to be you. And I know that maybe you’d rather trust anybody else right now, but I’m right here. I know I can’t carry you, but I can catch you, and even if I can’t, I will be there, because if you’re gonna eat the dirt, so the f*ck am I. Because-” A deep, wavering sigh. “-cus I know if I needed you, you’d be right there too. And right now, I need you to trust me.”
Leo’s voice cracks- really, well and truly cracks- for the first time in years. Too weak, too desperate, too dependent on someone else's sympathy- oh, f*ck it, take the L for once in your life, Leo.
“Just let me try, Raphael,” he chokes out. “That’s all I’m asking. Let me try.”
Raph stands up. The magnet starts to rock back and forth like a playground swing. Leo realizes two things at the exact same time -the first of which being that he can't cut a circle faster than Raph falls, and the second being that he doesn't have to.
He's got the best throwing arm in the family, after all.
So as Raph takes a step off the magnet crane, Leo grabs the hilt of his odachi and does the most batsh*t, prey animal suicidal thing he's ever done in his life.
Throw the sacred mystic sword into the sky like a damn boomerang.
As the sword careens towards the apex of its arc, Leo reaches out his hand and yanks. It feels different than his portals did- not walking through a door but forced face first off the hatch of a moving airplane, a deafening snap of air pressure so intense that Leo blacks out before he hits the other side.
He wakes up to a teenage mutant red eared slider slapping at his face.
“Seriously, dude, that's the second time you've passed out,” the ghost of his own voice echoes, a replay of something he'd once said to Raph in this very place. “Have you been getting enough iron?”
“That's my line, you dick,” Leo half-slurs. “Why am I staring at my incredibly handsome clone? Did I make some kind of quirk paradox baby?”
“You passed out trying to lift-” Suddenly, the fake-Leo’s voice distorts into Raph's, image turning a monochromatic, holographic red. “-an entire Raphael, dude.” The image reasserts itself, voice and all. “But your neck vein was huuuuuge!”
“Again, uh, we need to address the incredibly handsome elephant in the room?” Leo forces out.
The image turns back into Raph. “Yeah, you totally passed out in Raph's arms and he was all like- ah f*ck, I don't got the throwing arm to get us back down, and then he went well, just use Leo's, and then I did and now we're sitting here and you're on the ground and-”
The image's eye twitches and it explodes like a hollow thing of paper mache. Somewhere just out of his vision, Leo hears Raph walk directly into a car. “Ow.”
“God, you're so f*cking stupid,” Leo fondly says. “Amituofo.”
“You're the stupid who passed out thinking too hard with portals, stupid,” Raph chuckles. “How are we supposed to get home now?”
“f*ck if I know. Call- call Donnie and he'll send us the Turtle Tank or something. Or he'll- he'll carry us like some kind of unidentified flying bastard. He's done it before, I believe in him.”
“Dooooooon,” Raph whines into his comm, “can you pick us up from Repo’s?”
A loud, obnoxious crackle of static. “EVERY DAY I WAKE UP! AND YOU! YOUUUU! VANISHED IN THE NIGHT BEFORE MY TENDER EYES! OF ALL THE RECKLESS, IRRESPONSIBLE, INTOLERABLE- I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU PEOPLE! YOU ARE SO GROUNDED YOUNG MAN, I'M SWITCHING THE TV TO NOTHING BUT ASTROPHYSICS DOCUMENTARIES-”
Raph pinches his brows. “Je-sus, shut your yap for five seconds, Dad.”
“AND ANOTHER THING-” Donnie's voice cuts off with a sudden sputter. “Did you just call me Dad?”
Raph's eyes dart nervously. “No!”
Leo wheezes. “You totally did!”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Too late, caught on tape, I'm telling Mikey you called Donnie dad,” Leo quickly says. “You can't spend our entire lives getting on our case for accidentally calling you Dad and then pull this stunt.”
“I DIDN'T!”
“It's okay, son,” Donnie mockingly croons, “you're at that age when you need to express your emotions, even denial. Do you wanna talk about it over a game of catch?”
“IF Y'ALL DON'T SHUT YER YAPS THE ONLY THING YOU'RE CATCHING IS THESE HANDS-”
