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familyofpaladins · 1 year ago

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The Pizza Game (Chp 5)

Chapter 5: Donatello Leaves a Message

Ao3 Link

<<Chapter 1 | <Chapter 4 | X | Chapter 6>

Summary: April, Leo, and Mikey receive a message from the late Donnie. Words: 2231

Being the Leader of a resistance was hard. Of course there was the fighting and patrols, but honestly that was the easiest part. The hardest parts were the strategy meetings, the negotiations of supplies between the different scattered groups of resistance fighters and people just trying to survive, both Human and Yokai.

Having Mutant little brothers be a bridge to the Yokai had helped April O’Neil immensely in dealing with the different groups. They were all charismatic in their own way and people (human and non) would listen to them. She could assign tasks and the brothers would help delegate.

Donnie in particular had been a significant help with the particulars of scheduling meetings and making the most logical use of supplies to which areas. But he was very rarely allowed to actually be in any the meetings. He was far too blunt and easily offended if anyone questioned his Logical and Correct thinking. So he didn’t attend the meetings, but he helped her plan them.

He was gone now. Had been for a little over a year now.

You would think that would make the planning harder. But Donnie, brilliant, ever the planner and overthinker Donnie, had made preparations in the case of his death. He had systems of systems connected to anything and everything that he had built and alerts and backups for each. Some were already in place even before, like the security system and Krangazoid trackers. They already used it to get notifications for intruders and movements of the bigger krang hordes.

But now there were additional alerts. Alerts for maintenance of his machines with detailed instructions of how to fix possible problems. He had made an algorithm for plan making for such things as where to move to if the Krang got too close to the base, or how to shift them away from the more populated areas of the resistance.

All of these new alerts used the same alert/communication system that Donatello had established long ago.

The alerts/communications had a five-level triage system. The naming of which had been hotly debated during its creation. (Even now, depending on who was talking about it, would use different names.)

There was Level 5 (REALLY REALLY (Two Reallys) IMPORTANT): EMERGENCY which would only be for things like “The Krang are breaking into the base GET OUT NOW”.

Level 4 (Really Important): WARNING. Used for things that needed immediate attention, like broken security systems, and enemies approaching the base, or a neighbor base was in trouble.

Level 3 (Important): CAUTION. Things that needed attention soon but could wait until a patrol was over (broken heating systems, upcoming meetings between resistance factions).

Level 2 (Sort of Important): NOTICE. Things that were important but could be dealt with within a couple weeks such as Patrol Schedules, Inventory Notifications, Location Changes, and supply requests.

Level 1 (Not So Important): GENERAL. General messages. This was generally used for post-mission/patrol reports, but could also include personal messages of important dates (birthdays, days without attack). Pretty much anything that could potentially be ignored and not be a problem went into Level 1.

Each level alert could also be amended with locations of where the alert needed to read from and a category. Most common categories were: Kraang, Base[X], Supply [weapons/food/medical], Security, Maintenance, Reports, and Personal.

Yes, there was still the occasional Donnie Code that required 3 code books to figure out, but he had simplified a lot of it down.

Anyone in the resistance could use the alert system to report to each other, but almost all of the automated ones came from Donatello’s systems.

Since Donnie had died, there were also more… personal alerts and notifications. Time and dates were always a little difficult to keep track of when everyday was an abysmal landscape, but Donnie had kept track. So, every once in a while, April got a notification for someone’s birthday or that it had been 13 years since she was promoted to Commander.

The automated alert that April had received just that morning was only level 2, but didn’t have a category attached to it. She could see that alert had also been sent to Leo and Mikey as well.

April frowned. That could mean a lot of things.

It was level 2, so nothing too important or dangerous (hopefully). But it was also to the Commander and two of the top Generals of the Resistance. So that could mean it was something to do with moving krang hordes or possibly something with one of the other resistance bases. But it wasn’t an alert From the other bases, so that means if it IS about the other bases, it’s something that Donnie’s prediction models picked up. That could be either really good or really bad.

Another thing about the alert was that it had a placement of Donnie’s Lab.

Normally (if there was a normal anymore) that meant it had something to do with some project or research of Donnie’s. But it’d been about a year since his death. She thought they had taken care of all those kinds of things.

If it wasn’t any of those things, that left: personal. She looked at the date (when did it get to be November?) and tried to recall if it had any significance. No birthdays. No death dates, because every day was a death date for someone (but she still remembered the ones of those closest to her). She couldn’t recall it being a Victory day either.

She just didn’t know.

April didn’t like not knowing.

“Keep making that face and you’re going to end up with a Raph-chasm”. Years of living in the apocalypse kept her from screaming at the sudden voice, but it also made her fling her bat at it too.

Michelangelo’s years of skills allowed him to catch the weapon while Leonardo had already ducked out of the way.

“HAMATO LEONARDO DON’T YOU DARE SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!”

Leo chuckled as he plucked the floating bat out of the air and handed it back to her, “But we’re Ninjas! Sneaking is part of the gig!”

“Don’t sass me Little Brother, or I WILL hit you with this bat!” she threatened as she took back her familiar weapon. Leo still had a smirk on his face but held up his hands in surrender.

“I’m not going to get a Raph-chasm. You’re the one who’s trying to copy his look”, she pointed at the prosthetic arm with her bat.

Leo huffed a laugh in concession, while she turned to the other turtle, “Mikey! It feels like I haven’t seen you in forever!” They hugged fiercely.

“April! MMmm yeah I guess being leaders of a resistance keeps us all pretty busy.”

It had been about at least a month, she thinks, since she was in the same room with him. Kept busy by recon missions and patrols and battles and meetings and more meetings and uuuggggh. You’d have thought the apocalypse would have put an end to business meetings, and yet here she was.

She hugged him a little tighter, trying to savor the familial moment.

“Hey hey hey now! What am I, chopped liver? Where’s my hug?” Leo complained.

“Right here you big baby,” April rolled her eyes but she held an arm open for the blue turtle. “Speaking of babies, where’s the kid?”

“Me and Casey just got off patrol a bit ago. Kid is exhausted so I told him to go ahead and go to bed.” Leo answered while still wrapping them in a hug and she basked in the warmth of it for a moment

This was nice.

Nice things can’t last too long though. There were things to be done.

April sighed as she released the hug. “As much as I love this, we all have things to do. You guys here for the Alert?”

They both turned serious and Leo nodded his head in confirmation.

“Yeah, we were just going to check on it. You have any idea what it’s about?” Mikey asked as they began to finish the walk to the lab.

“I was hoping you guys would know.”

They were in front of the door now.

“Guess we’re all about to find out together then.” Leo stated, taking a breath and opened the door.

She half expected the room to be dusty. It had been a while since she had been in the lab. But with the regular maintenance checks and Donnie’s own cleaning robots, the place was as clean as ever. She could almost imagine that Donnie was just around the corner, entranced in some new project of his. It pained her heart to know that that would never happen again.

“Okay Dee, what’s the haps?” She said quietly to herself as she pulled up the alert.

A holographic projection of Donnie appeared before the three of them. Her eyes stung at the image of her friend.

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today.”

April scoffed, and heard Leo and Mikey do much the same, a smile tugging at her lips. So it was Donnie being dramatic. She didn’t know what it was about yet, but some of the tension left her shoulders.

“If you are seeing this, it means it has been 389 days since I died.” April scowled along with Mikey while Leo raised an eyebrow in a where-is-this-going kind of way.

“And if you’re seeing this and that’s not true,” the hologram Donnie (HoloDon?) continued, “then stop snooping through my files right now!”

HoloDon paused for a moment, supposedly to let snoopers back out of the file.

“Still here? Very well. As you all know I am the most gracious of winners and losers, never been upset ever-“

“HA” Leo scoffed a laugh, and April smiled with him at the blatant lie.

“- But I shall not let even Death stop me from winning.”

Where on Earth was he going with this?

“So, as 390 days is my record, I shall make sure that you do not break said record by reminding you of PIZZA!”

April shook her head rapidly in disbelief.

He… he really left a message, about THAT? She was speechless.

She turned to look at Leo and Mikey, both of their jaws were dropped.

“And in order to keep my record henceforth,” HoloDon continued, “I will remind you at random intervals of anywhere between 20 and 389 days, about pizza, so that I win For. Ever! MUHAHAHAHA” HoloDon cackled.

“I can’t believe this. I can’t- I’m gonna kill him.” Leo finally stated. Mikey turned to look at his brother incredulously but his face was still frozen in its shocked state. “I don’t care that he’s already dead, I’m going to bring him back and kill them again. That ASSHOLE oh my gawd!” Leo continued his hysterical rant.

April wasn’t sure if he was truly pissed or just acting dramatically at being out done by a dead man. Knowing her brother, it was probably both.

Mikey had started shaking so hard, April wasn’t sure if he was crying or laughing. April finally heard him gasp in a breath of air before shouting “Winner is supposed to get the first slice! That jerk can’t even eat it! He just wanted to have the glory all to himself” he threw his hands in the air in dramatic indignation.

At their reactions April finally cracked and started to laugh. It started with a snort, and before she knew it, she was having to sit down on the floor she was laughing so hard.

Despite their grumpiness, the two turtles began to chuckle with her and soon they were all roaring with laughter.

After several minutes of almost calming themselves down, another would snort a laugh again and set them off.

They finally calmed down enough for April to say “I can’t believe he did that! Actually, what am I saying, of course he did that”

“Oh I needed that,” Mikey sighed.

“What, a pizza reminder?” Leo asked with a smirk.

“NO,” Mikey smacked his arm, though there was no strength behind it “I needed a good laugh”

April couldn’t help but agree with him. It had been a long time since she had laughed that hard and that long. She wondered if Donatello knew that was how they’d react to the message.

“Hmmm, do you think that’s why he really did it?” April asked.

Mikey blinked at her, and Leo looked to the ceiling in thought.

“It could be, I wouldn’t put it past him,” Leo finally said after a moment. “But I also think he wanted to win and wasn’t about to let something as trivial as death stop him.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Donald,” Mikey agreed with a chuckle.

“It was nice to hear his voice again. Where he sounds like HIM instead of the all robotic alert voice.” April said quietly after a moment.

“Yeah it is,” Mikey agreed, his eyes shone wetly.

“Even if it was him being a giant jerk,” Leo huffed with a laugh.

“Gotta admit though, I don’t think I’ll mind getting the stupid notification again.” April said.

Both brothers agreed with her.

Over the course of the next 548 days they heard Donnie remind them of pizza two more times.

Then the Krang found their base, and the computers hosting Donatello’s alerts and algorithms were destroyed.

:'3

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