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afreakingdork · 17 days ago

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Attempted Execute of Non-Executable Memory - Chapter 8

RotTMNT Michelangelo x Kendra

@shardkn1ght totally crushed my vision for Kendra and April through the ages in this week's chapter art!

Rated: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings/Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Revenge, Falling In Love, Love, Romance, Dating, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Love Confessions, Human/Turtle Relationships (TMNT), Step-Parents, Neglect, First Kiss, First Generation Immigrant Kids, Acculturation, Loss/Removal of Cultural Identity, Incarceration, Prison Time, I flesh Out Kendra’s Character, Character Exploration, Character Study, I Give Kendra a Backstory

Synopsis: After hitting the lowest of lows, Kendra has carved out a simple life for herself. She’s content enough to live this way until opportunity walks through her place of employment in the form of an orange turtle mutant. She just needs to get close enough to him to plant a virus in his infuriating brother’s servers, but will she be infected long the way?

Also available on Ao3

First 🧡 Previous

“And left!” Mikey chirped as he immediately leaned that direction.

April scrambled after him. “Hey! Woah!”

He realized then he forgot that they were mirrored.

That sort of thing always mixed him up.

“I mean right!” He corrected, still in motion to lift the bulky air conditioning unit away from where the street was sectioned off.

“Break! Break!” April groaned.

He did need to send a follow up text. “Alright. Just past here?”

“Yeah! Hurry!” She shuffled forward with obvious strain.

Her grip slipped a few times, but they made it behind the barriers before they set the AC down. April collapsed with her torso against it and caught her breath. Mikey pulled out his phone and opened up his messaging window.

Special K: ETA?

Mikey: Just picked it up!

Mikey: En Route!

Special K: That’s not an ETA

Mikey: Expert Turtle Acrobatics is my specialty 🥷

Special K: 👊🏽

Mikey: 😵

Special K: 💪🏽

Mikey: 🏆

Special K: ❌

Mikey: ❓

Special K: 👑

Mikey: 👑👑👑🔥🔥🔥

“There it is again.”

“Hm?” Mikey was still staring fondly at the many tiny pictograms.

“That look.”

“What look?” He absently wondered if Kendra had forgotten about the arrival time thing.

He could calculate it.

He didn’t really want to.

“That look!” April was right in front of him and slapped his phone down.

He knew the maneuver well and, while he lost temporary grip, he immediately switched his hold. When she moved to steal his device, she had nowhere near the leverage and he slipped free. He immediately spun around and locked his phone while she tried her best to climb over his shoulders to get it. A few people huffed at their sidewalk wrestling, but Mikey broke free by dropping his center of gravity and popped up a few feet away. “Oh!”

April was already rolling her eyes.

“The look reserved for my girlfriend?!” Mikey squeezed the last word dry.

April gagged. “Yeah, that one.”

“I can’t help it.” He bobbed and opened his phone again. “I got the cutest one in the world.”

“Uh huh and that’s exactly where we’re going…” April walked back over to the AC unit and inspected it.

There it was again.

The dismissal.

This general attitude towards his partnership had been happening since about his fourth date. It was odd how it coincided with his relationship. While he still wasn’t sure exactly how, there had been a shift at the science museum. Where his families’ doubts grew, he had become more assured of his place with Kendra. Dating her was an upward trend where each outing continued to build. It was stoked flames as he himself felt the transition. Those first flickers of infatuation were igniting into something more.

He rarely questioned his own actions, but he had some awareness. He knew his history. He knew that when someone piqued his interest, his instinct was to glue himself to them. High off the excitement of a new person, he was often enamored to a fault and burnt out just as fast. Either he or they realized there wasn’t much past that initial contact high and any interaction after fizzled out. It wasn’t exclusive to relationships and Mikey had long grown used to that. From people to hobbies to even snack foods, he would sing praises to whoever would listen until inevitably he would fall off and move on to the next object.

He knew this.

Kendra had not fallen into that category.

As far as history taught him, he had long passed that point of fatigue and yet there was an endless list of things he still wanted to know about her.

It wasn’t limited to things so simple as the troubled family life she only alluded to.

He wanted to know more about her tech days.

He wanted to see her coding in action.

He wanted to see that fire that was still smoldering burn once again.

He wanted to see that unhinged laugh of hers.

He wanted to see the way she looked at him, raw and unencumbered.

From there things got more trivial, but the list rolled on for so long that there was no rolling it up. In his mind, it was too big to be a scroll and was now more of a room where a printer had gone rogue. The machine beeped with those old dot matrix sound effects that he sometimes fell asleep to. Page after page exceeded the stack and he had no hope of locating any one scenario. They would come to him in blips, much like a sliding printer head. As soon as they were etched, they were facts that then disappeared into the ever growing pile.

Much like his estimated time of arrival, the task of looking further was something he didn’t want to bother with. It wasn’t out of laziness, but instead assurance. He inherently knew that everything he wanted to watch her do would come in time. That was the feeling their fourth date had brought; he was along for the ride and couldn’t wait to see where she would go.

She was nothing but alluring in his eyes.

It was everything about her.

She acted with the dazzle of untamed fire. She was brilliantly savage and her consumption burned in directions he could rarely guess. While, in some ways, she was still painfully predictable, he felt like that was some old script. A part of her had long decided how she needed to be and that was what she tried to recreate. He craved the moments she broke free to be her true self. There would be a moment, he was sure of it, when she realized her lines had long changed.

He would be there to watch.

She was his favorite program and the recent development of her hair was a pivotal plot point.

Her heart, her very being, was opening up.

Her progress was a triumph.

Mikey guessed this was how stock brokers or whoever felt. Getting in on the ground floor and watching your investment grow must have been the only appeal as he loathed the rest of the money hungry system. Wall Street was otherwise unnatural as there was no shortchanging or manipulation that could rival Kendra’s natural evolution. There was no lowest point for her to be bought at. Instead, she metamorphosed. Just like a butterfly, she needed time to grow. Any inbetween stages were marked by cocoons of stasis necessary to make the change.

As much as he hated staying still, he related to that. He thought of his own growth as something without a cap. The way his interest usually fluctuated was his body's personal way of making him pause. Whenever his focus in one thing would wane, he would switch to something else. The world was an experience and the only things that captured his mind fully were the raw fields that similarly had no end.

Cooking.

Art

Kendra.

You let dough rest.

You let paint dry.

You let people come into their own.

That was the point of rest.

That was Kendra.

His girlfriend.

The one his family didn’t think was real.

He had gotten lost in mooning over his teal terror and returned to find April looking for better handholds on the used AC unit. The saying ‘get a grip’ was manifesting right in front of his eyes and he watched on. Self-control had never been much of a Hamato tradition. He was just as much a party to that, but it always felt like they considered his lack thereof a step further than their own.

He was rarely taken seriously.

Instead of starting small, it started when he was small. Though he and his brothers were all mutated at the same time, they still had a cascade of ages. Mikey brought up the generational rear and earned the title of little brother by simply existing. No matter what he did, the decree was made and shaped the rest of their viewpoints.

He might not have helped the matter.

When it benefited him, he used it. When it was a detriment, he fought against it. He was both allowed to get away with all he wanted while also being some kind of forced liability. He was considered childish and put in his brother’s charge. They saw him as smaller both in stature and mind long past the point where it was necessary. His achievements were undermined because others reached them first and even when he superseded them in something, it was treated as peanuts in comparison.

He prided himself on his self-awareness. He knew flighty attitude well, but they considered him a flight risk. He saw diminishing interest as a time for transition, but they viewed him as a revolving door. People, activities, and objects entered one way and were spun round back out. Yet another age old vestige, grudges had kicked up from the holidays. Presents had been purchased for things Mikey liked earlier in the year, but by the time they were passed out, he had often moved on. The bitterness continued to crop up until it was ultimately unsustainable.

From then on, no matter how much he threw himself into anything, he was written off preemptively. It was assumed that nothing would stick when it came to Michelangelo. In a way, he was reduced to small talk. He was always up to something so there would always be a new topic of conversation. His forthcoming attitude meant you could get the latest from the source and the littlest brother was considered a thing of little mystery.

Just like with his place in the family, the designation came with positives and negatives. On one hand, he was even more free than his baby of the family status had ever afforded him. It was nearly expected so there was no judgement whatsoever when he gave something up. Alternatively, his growing expertise was considered vague at best so even when he clearly knew how to do something, he wasn’t even asked for his help.

He was written off.

As was his current partner.

The worst part was he understood why. He had long let his supposed flippant attitude fester. He let the others believe that of him because it was easy. It served him more than it damaged so he let it go. It meant that when he went on his first date, as he had many others, there was little fanfare. Mikey said he was going on a date, so he was in their eyes. Then after said date when Mikey challenged himself to perform better on the next, his distraction meant he hadn’t filled the others than. The third date came around after that and consumed even more of his attention. Popped questions of what he was up to ranged over those few weeks and thus the family moved on.

It wasn’t out of the norm to pool his chef friend contacts, get his suit pressed, perfect his pizza Margherita recipe, scout a museum security rotation, and plan a birthday party for someone he had never met back to back.

That might have been a typical month in Mikey’s date book.

Kendra was not.

He also might have forgotten to mention her.

He blamed his and Kendra’s learning curve instead of any one person.

While he casually mentioned his first date, he had failed to mention the others. Instead, conversation had been around stealing slices of pizza or what sort of theme he wanted the party to be. He had been so engrossed in the acts that lead him to his date, that the fact that they were dates slipped his mind. When he rushed an explanation after realizing he needed Donnie’s help with the security system, he was met with upbraiding.

“Tell me if I understand this correctly: you wish to break into this specific museum after hours, which is somehow related to a surprise party, but the guest of honor is not this date that you are suddenly going on while all of this occurs at the same time?”

The dissidence had left Mikey stunned.

“Sure, he spoke as a completely trusting brother. You’ve done this all for a totally real date and not so you can go out and break into this Frick collection for whatever it is you are up to this time.”

It stung.

Mikey’s first reaction was to protest.

To rant.

To yell.

He didn’t.

He did none of those things.

He asked if Donnie would still make the bug.

Donnie agreed while asking what exactly it was at the Frick that was catching his attention this time.

Mikey didn’t bother with a response.

Donnie didn’t press it and, in fact, appeared smug.

Why?

The youngest asked.

Was it that unbelievable?

He guessed, in a way, it was.

He sort of still didn’t.

How was this abnormal for him?

Donnie had said as much.

Why was the unbelievable part the apparently tacked on date?

He went leagues for other people.

He did so all the time.

The surprise party for some nobody wasn’t scoffed at.

Romance was.

It made him feel small.

Juvenile.

He thought of Kendra and all the times she had threatened to walk away.

He had almost assumed she would.

He wouldn’t have blamed her.

She didn’t take him seriously.

No one else did.

Except she might have.

With official dates four and six out of the way and the informal fifth thrown in, she had begun to show interest.

She texted him first.

It was something small and seemingly innocuous.

It showed care.

She made sure he got home.

She demanded to know how he was.

His phone lit up with the message saying she hadn’t forgotten.

The ETA.

He looked it up.

That was his meaningful act.

Ripping the band aid off those activities he would rather avoid.

She probably didn’t know they existed.

He sent over the walking distance and a remark that there was construction.

She sent back a thumbs up.

She was waiting.

“We going?” April stretched her neck in preparation to carry that AC unit again.

It was after Donnie had passed off the USB drive with the security system hack on it that Mikey decided not naming Kendra was purposeful. His girlfriend was for him and him alone. He had never thought much of her past association with the family and nothing about that had changed. He may have originally forgotten by accident, but for now he was petty enough to keep her to himself for the sake of it.

His silence was his stasis.

His relationship was blooming in the process.

When the time was right, he would approach them all with hard evidence of his ongoing affection.

He didn’t account for the fact that dating kept him busy.

He was out of the lair more.

Their dates were less elaborate.

His updates grew vague as he kept the source a secret.

It was Leo who noticed first.

“Hey, Mike! You know, I think you said you were dating someone, a lady friend, but I don’t think I caught the name of that girlfriend of yours.”

Leo literally chewed on the sentence as he had a bowl of cereal.

The others, even dad, were around as this moment was staged for some grand reveal.

As if they could catch the most stubborn among them off guard.

“Oh my girlfriend? My wonderful, amazing girlfriend? The one who enjoys my time and opinions?” Mikey fluttered his lashes.

“Yeah.” Leo leveled with him.

The doubt was all too evident.

“That one.”

“Oh, you know…” Mikey stood, left, and never finished his sentence.

He left them all in suspense.

Attention ramped up after that.

His phone was stolen in an attempt to see exactly who he was messaging.

He fought conversational hijinks that rivaled Looney Tunes sketches.

His whereabouts were almost scanned which revealed he had mistakenly rubbed his tracker obsolete at an unknown point.

Dodging blow darts to get a new one embedded had been a fun change.

Regular family stuff.

He never budged.

They were forced to give up.

They unanimously relegated his interest to something dropped as a cover for their failure.

They decided he had nothing to hide.

The trickster youngest was pulling a prank.

Either Mikey wasn’t interested in this person enough to name them or they didn’t exist.

Either way, they weren’t memorable.

They were wrong.

They were so wrong that Mikey relished it.

He would shove his awesome long term relationship in all their faces.

A baby that couldn’t handle romance no more; he would flaunt his mature partner prowess.

The unserious little brother would be the most committed.

No.

Mikey soothed his thoughts.

It wasn’t like that.

He liked Kendra.

He really did.

He wouldn’t gamify his feelings for her.

They would take their natural course and proving his family wrong on all accounts was a funny cherry on top.

Except, April was here.

She was the odd outlier.

Like the rest, she had joined the same hive mind mentality that there was no girlfriend. She, however, had not given up when he hadn’t given a name. She hadn’t been there the morning of Leo’s prompting, but she was in the family pipeline. The moment she knew, she had a sense that the omission was a sign. Mikey must have had a track record he had forgotten about because she accused him of being better at coming up with faux personas. That he neglected to make one spoke of something larger.

Her oldest sister powers were terrifying.

She had seen him asking about ACs on the message boards because she had been the one to teach him about them.

She was always finding these incredible deals for her apartment.

It was something they did special.

They went antiquing in the modern sense.

She knew instantly that he had no need for an air conditioner and threw herself into the mix. There was no asking, April O’Neil was getting him an air conditioner. She brokered the deal, got him a good unit for bottom dollar, and then made sure she was the present liaison for getting the machine. Right when she should have left it to him, she offered to help him carry it, which was comically unnecessary, but there was no telling April “no” at that point.

She was going to see where this AC was going.

Mikey couldn’t tell Kendra.

She would hate him for it, but this felt like the end of some kind of line.

If he did tell Kendra, she would surely flee the premises. If that happened then Mikey would lead April to a seemingly empty unit. He could see everything going a few ways after that, but April’s sleuth skills would suss out the culprit eventually. Either way, Kendra’s identity was going to be revealed.

He knew, if given the options, his girl would want to go down swinging if that was the case.

She would be found on her terms.

He would take the hit.

In time, she’d understand.

Besides, he only really knew that she was aware of Donnie and that the rest of his family didn’t seem to register to her. She had never told him not to mention her to them so it should have been fair game. At the same time, she recently pointed out that he hadn’t talked much about his family. Then, as far back as he could recall, no one in his family had mentioned Kendra in literal years.

She had been in prison for most of that time, but that was far from the point.

The confusing branching pathways of who knew or felt about who was too tedious for Mikey.

He stuck with facts.

Kendra hated Donnie.

Kendra had gone to school with April.

Ergo, April had known Kendra the longest.

Even if they were just classmates, they might have a reunion.

That was wishful thinking, he thought, as he picked up the AC.

“Hey! Let me get my side!” April chased him.

He leveled with her. “April.”

She looked him in the eye through her glasses.

“We both know I can carry this. Without help. Like carrying a loaf of bread.”

She opened her mouth.

“Hup!” His brow ridge shot high as he wasn’t done.

She waited.

“I get what you’re doing. We’re going. You’re going to meet her soon.”

Her head tilted.

“12 minutes actually. I just looked up the ETA.”

“Uh huh…”

He gave her a look that said he was done with the charade and turned to walk.

She fell in line beside him. “I can’t tell if she’s good to you from what you described.”

“From what you actually listened to.” He corrected.

“It’s crazy, right?!” She threw him a frazzled glance that begged him to understand.

He didn’t and relayed that.

“C’mon!” She threw her hands up. “Okay, maybe you haven’t done something this elaborate before, but your acting skills are totally dependent!”

“It’s the classes.”

“No, it’s whenever you want! Either the guilt consumes you or you can look a man dead in the eye and ruin his entire business just because you weren’t a big fan.”

“How many times-?!”

“How about all the times you snuck out?”

“I wonder why!?” Mikey’s eyes rolled to insinuate her current reaction as the norm.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying!”

“April!”

“What?!”

“Because of this! Because of exactly this! Because when I said I wanted to try skydiving, Raph was suddenly my partner, threw off the balance of the plane, and he couldn’t even jump because he was so scared, but that’s because he was terrified that me, me, the guy who can also make his own portals, sans metal by the way, was going to, I don’t know, hit the ground somehow?!”

“One in every a thousand-”

“-Parachutes don’t open and how do you know that?! Who said that a million times beforehand?!”

April looked away.

“That’s Raph! Leo tried to keep me from one of those Battle Nexus competitions because it was rigged! I knew it was! That’s why I joined! The prize was some of Draxum’s old lab equipment! I was getting it back! I was cheating too!”

She was caught on a whine.

“Donnie gets a pass because he was right about the ammonia bleach situation, but don’t think you’re not there too!”

“Mikey-” She tried to bargain.

“’You need a spotter BASE jumping.’ ‘There’s two seats in the go-kart, why don’t I come with you?’ ‘Who else is going to see if you fall out of the canoe?!’”

She grimaced.

“Look, I get it. You all love me and I love you, but I get tired of being dismissed. It feels like you don’t see how much I carry. I shouldn’t have to prove that I’m more than a baby. I am. I grew up just like the rest of you and you’d think at some point you would let me do the thing I’ve already done.”

She was quiet.

He wanted to say more, but he left it there.

They were getting close and he needed to maneuver to that back alley.

He refused to look it up and his eyes darted to recollect where they had gone a week or so ago.

“You know…”

He glanced at his sister.

“Out of everyone, I’m the one who lied about the person they were dating.”

“H-huh!?” He was already looking, but his head whipped further and pieces of the AC clattered in his jostle.

“Yeah. That guy at the station wasn’t… really a reporter.”

“Huh?! Who!?”

“He was an editor. He had asked me out a dozen times and I always said no and then he was there for me after the studio told me to quit my latest story, you know the one about the musician, and I don’t know…”

Mikey wasn’t sure how many more sounds he had to convey before she realized he actually had no idea what she was talking about.

“He was so gross and we went out like five times! He was textbook creepy., but man is it a boost to the ego. I used him and it ended badly, but, yeah… I talked up someone that wasn’t real.”

Mikey gaped before he thinned out the line of his lips.

April finally looked at him and similarly went slack as she placed his look. “No idea what I’m talking about?”

“Nuh uh!”

“It was a few months ago!”

“Before or after I met my girlfriend?”

“Boy!” She released the unit to noogie him.

His legs bowed like a frog to keep from dropping the machine. “Ack!”

“She better be something because otherwise you got no excuse for not paying attention to anything else!”

“Maybe I could sense you were lying so I tuned it out!”

“You-!” She threatened once before disengaging to mess up his hair.

Mikey bemoaned the action, but got upright. “We gotta turn around here.”

“Where?” April recovered just as fast.

“Like…” The streets looked a little too similar, but he knew he was close to the community garden because the smell of manure was in the air. “Here!”

He ducked in the first turn and April was forced behind him.

Mikey ended up winding them around two apartment buildings before he finally found the fire escape that was burned into his mind. “This is it!”

“Uh, Mikey.”

“Mhm.” He looked up and then down before putting the AC on the ground.

“We passed the front door.”

“Yeah.” He jumped to pull down the ladder.

“It was back there.”

“Yup.” He gestured for her to go first.

“You know I think she’s real, but this isn’t helping…”

“Gonna be honest. I don’t know what’s up with the apartment thing. You can’t get inside from… inside.”

“What?”

“Yeah.” He gestured for her to climb again.

She took the first rung. “What are you saying? There’s gonna be a door up here?”

He nodded to the ladder again.

She shook her head as she climbed.

He tucked the unit under his arm, made sure he had a good grip, leapt up to a dumpster first for the momentum, and jumped to the landing.

He landed right next to April and saw her staring at the entry to Kendra’s apartment.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” April’s head cocked. “Why though…?”

She caught the knob.

Mikey waffled as his hands were full.

“Wait! Don’t just walk in-!”

“22 minutes!” Kendra threw the door open and April was knocked clean out of the way.

Mikey stood with his jaw dropped far enough down that it was practically sitting on top of the AC.

“Woah…” Kendra stood a little straighter at the sight of the machine. “That doesn’t look half bad…”

Mikey’s lips flapped wordlessly.

“Did you test it?” Kendra walked over and got her hands on the unit to examine it.

April’s fingers appeared like an omen around the door frame.

Mikey squeaked.

“That’s a no.” Kendra sighed. “We’ll test it inside. I have some tools for when my power goes out.”

Kendra rotated slowly and Mikey shifted the weight of the unit in horror.

April flung the door forward and, as if on instinct, Kendra caught it.

The two stared at each other for a long moment.

Mikey felt the AC slipping in his grip.

“KENDRA!!!” April screamed.

“O’Neil!?” Kendra reared. “You’re just as loud as I remember… Ugh.”

“What are you doing here?!” April smashed her palm into the door so it flew out of Kendra’s grip and slammed shut.

“I live here.” Kendra dropped her weight to one unamused side. “Doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

“Me?! Me?!”

“Yes, you.” Kendra yanked her door open a crack. “What are you? Trespassing? Why are you up here?”

April sent the question toward Mikey who only shook his head. “Miss broke into Nakamura Corp!?”

“Oh! Great catching up with you! Find someone else’s stoop to haunt!” Kendra grabbed one of Mikey’s arms. “Come on.”

“No way! Nuh uh!” April caught his other elbow.

“What are you doing?” Kendra looked ready to strike.

“Not letting my dumb-dumb little brother make a huge mistake!”

“Little…?” Kendra mouthed before looking at Mikey. “One of these days you’re going to draw me a family tree! Your lineage makes no sense!!”

Mikey shook his head.

Kendra was about to speak again when April yanked him with all her strength.

He almost lost the unit, but hoisted it up at the last second.

The weight of it sent him in April’s direction where she clawed to pull his mask so she could hiss into where his ear should be. “Kendra?! Kendra Byerly!? You are not telling me that Kendra, the evil Kendra, the Kendra that went to prison and was never seen from again, is your girlfriend?!”

Only Mikey had a view of said woman.

She didn’t look surprised.

She didn’t look wounded.

She looked numb.

She had that same dull gaze that he had seen at the coffee shop.

He hadn’t seen that in a while.

Not since she started openly talking to him and her fiery side came out.

Whatever this was.

Whatever she thought now.

He didn’t want to know.

He never wanted her to look like this again.

Mikey shifted his pupils to April.

She hummed loudly as if she was waiting for a response.

He let his own icy exterior fall in place.

Except his was honed by meditation.

A way to access the wily nature of his power to its best extent.

The moment he was calm, he accessed the molten flame in his core. It beat back against him before it agreed to work alongside. His eyes opened and he phased out of April’s grip.Kendra watched with a gawk and stepped aside when he looked toward her door. He entered long enough to set the AC down inside by the window it would soon inhabit before he turned to leave.

He gave Kendra a sharp nod that he had this.

She blinked a few times before she returned a single bob that deferred to him.

“April.” Mikey addressed once he could see her again.

Said woman was clearly furious he had pulled mystic rank on her.

“Let’s talk.”

“Oh, we’re gonna talk!” She puffed up.

Kendra went inside and Mikey ushered April a few steps away.

“What were you thinking!? Do you realize-!?”

“I think you should leave.”

April’s mouth snapped shut.

Mikey waited and hoped she would agree.

“Me?” April pointed at herself. “You think I should leave?”

“You’re way out of line.”

Her pupil scorched with a flash of green energy. “I know you’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

Her brows pinched and the mystic flame was snuffed out as she was clearly unsettled.

This wasn’t how he usually put his foot down.

If anything, when he decided against something, he mentally checked out.

He rarely faced it.

He would ditch whatever didn’t serve him, but this was far unlike dealing with mutant prejudice.

This was his girlfriend.

This was his family.

“I’ll be honest. You’re being rude.”

April popped a few unfinished vowels.

“She’s not a villain. She hasn’t done anything bad in years. You said so yourself.”

“Mikey-!”

“Draxum.”

“H-he was on the run! You basically forced him-!”

“Big Mama.”

“She d-didn’t really go good as much as she kinda laid off the overlord-”

“Casey.” He got in her face.

A single bead of sweat rolled down April’s temple.

“Want me to go on?”

“She’s not like them…!”

“No, she’s not.” Mikey backed off.

They were at a stalemate.

Mikey didn’t like timing things.

If anything, clocks were set so he could forget.

If he could avoid counting he would.

He set a mental timer.

If April didn’t give up in two minutes, then he knew this was a lost cause.

She was the one amongst them that had believed in him the most.

How were the others going to react?

Mikey wasn’t ready to think about that and checked his hands.

He hadn’t picked up any grease from the AC and rubbed the side of his face.

How did so little activity make him so tired?

He cleaned around his eye and heard April sigh.

“Is she… good?”

She couldn’t look at him, but the fact that she asked was a good sign. “No.”

April’s gaze shot up.

“She’s not bad. I don’t like labels.”

“Right…” April faltered and continued to obviously think.

Mikey scratched his arm.

“Is she good to you?” She tried again.

Mikey cracked tentative smile. “She’s feisty.”

She waited.

“She’s protective. Good…? Who knows, but I like her.”

“You’re not making a great case.”

“I shouldn’t have to.” He flashed her a sharp look.

April wilted a little.

He was getting close to 100.

April shuffled in place.

Mikey glanced at where Kendra hadn’t closed the door.

She was listening.

He didn’t blame her.

“The Kendra I knew… was uppity.” April spoke softly. “She was a huge jerk who thought she was better than everyone else and treated everyone else like dirt.”

That sounded right, but Mikey stayed silent.

“If she treats you like that…” April’s chest rose with vitriol.

There were instances, but Mikey never saw it as that simple.

He put his foot down when Kendra crossed the line.

She respected the boundaries that he set.

“I don’t know!” April’s arms fell to her sides. “She wasn’t… She wasn’t always like that! We were friends once. When we were young. Then when all the popularity stuff came in… I don’t know. She changed. We didn’t talk much after that. She acted like she never knew me.”

Mikey examined her.

“I don’t want her to do that to you. I don’t want anyone to do that to you. I… Man, we just talked about this whole not letting you figure things out for yourself, didn’t we?”

“Yep!”

“Or… Not like that. Not trusting you to… I don’t know! You never failed at any of those things. You never fell when you rock climbed. You did jump out of that plane. You didn’t use mysticism to get out of it when your canoe got stuck. You… You…!”

Mikey softened.

April’s eyes shined behind her lenses. “You did a really good job growing up.”

“I had good role models…” Mikey smiled.

“Come here, you!” She slung an arm around him.

“April…”

“No, I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m letting my past get in the way. Who knows what’s changed!? I’m different. I was insecure back then. I thought I had no place.”

“Now look at you.”

“Now look at me! Youngest Pulitzer prize winner!” She gleamed.

“Yeah!”

“Okay! Apology tour!” April steered him around and didn’t let go.

He hobbled in his headlock as she went over to the door and kicked it further open.

“Kendra!”

Kendra looked up from where she had opened up the AC unit and was surrounded by parts. “O’Neil. Again.”

“I was a jerk.”

Kendra shrugged.

“No, seriously.”

Kendra sent April a dry look.

“Yeah… I deserve that.” April let Mikey go.

He rubbed his throat.

He caught Kendra checking him over before her gaze flew back to the other woman.

April leveled with her. “Look. We don’t have the best history. Heck, neither of us had it easy. When my pops left and your mom died, I don’t know… I thought maybe you of all people would understand-”

Kendra stood with a clatter of parts.

April and Mikey both blinked.

“Don’t…!” Kendra’s hand quaked around a screwdriver. “Just… don’t.”

“Oh…” The sound leaked out of April.

“This doesn’t have to be a thing.” Kendra wrangled her wrist to point between them. “I’m dating your brother or whatever. We don’t have to be friends. It’s fine.”

April twitched.

Mikey squeezed around her. “Family by clan status, by the way! Not blood.”

Kendra was clearly wary of taking her eye off April. “Which one was that again? The Nick-po?”

“Ninpo!” Mikey clucked.

“You got powers too?” Kendra studied April.

“You know!” April tried to wave it off. “Just like a bat I can summon. Some spell stuff. Increased agility from being possessed. That… whole… thing…”

Kendra absently nodded.

The awkward silence seeped into Mikey’s very bones. “April tested the AC unit!”

“So it does work?” Kendra’s attention finally parted. “But I plugged it in and-”

She clicked her tongue once before moving to kick the wall beside an outlet as hard as she could.

“Damn breaker flipped!”

“Want me to flip it?” Mikey wondered.

“None of us can get to it. I have a bypass…” She reached for a flyer about some long gone blowout sale flyer that was taped to the wall and lifted it to reveal a cleanly carved hole. “Line pliers.”

Mikey knew what those were from assisting Donnie and ducked to get them.

He passed them off and she reached into the hole to pull out a cord. “Cheap ass-!”

The moment the pliers dove into the wire they sparked.

April bumped into the door frame.

“There.” Kendra let her tool fall straight to the ground and stopped just shy of plugging the AC in. “Oh wait…”

She rounded the unit on her knees and put pieces of it back together.

Mikey watched on with rapt attention as she worked and eventually tightened a final screw before she finally connected cord to oulet.

It hummed to life.

“There we go! Sounds like it did at the old lady’s house.” Mikey beamed.

“She kick the bucket?” Kendra asked.

“Oh yeah, left everything behind.”

“Estate sales.” Kendra shook her head.

“Right? Best place for a deal!”

“You’re going to leave it like that?!” April squawked suddenly.

“Uh… no?” Kendra’s head lolled where she was still squatting. “We’ll install it in the wall.”

“The wall that just shot out sparks?!”

Kendra’s brow lifted.

“If the breaker tripped then you got a short! You can’t plug an AC into that!”

“I have a fix.” Kendra gestured to the hole.

“Yeah, live wires are exposed in your-!” April looked out.

Kendra clearly bristled.

Mikey realized then that, of course, she hadn’t been expecting company outside of him.

It wasn’t like her place was dirty, but her bed was unmade.

She had some clothes that had missed their hamper and a few messy products were spilled out around her vanity.

“In your…? Is this a bedroom…?” April looked out of place. “What is this?”

“My home.” Kendra shot upright. “Not up to your standards?!”

“It’s just…”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

“Say it!”

“I don’t know!”

“Come on, April! We both know what you wanna say! Just like we both know why you ended up alone!”

April immediately puffed up with indignity.

“Oh, poor widdle April. Barf!” Kendra gagged and rounded Mikey to get to her. “You know why kids thought you were weird?! It’s not some random act like you like to think!”

“Kendra, you got a lot of nerve-!”

“It’s because you did this! You ran your big mouth and hurt everyone’s feelings! You had no idea how not to speak your mind or when to stop sticking your nose in other people's business! That’s probably why you became a journalist! So you could televise all the crap you thought and dress it up like pretty little think pieces.”

April inhaled in a way that was charged with green smoke.

“Talon Perisinsky!” Kendra swiveled her torso toward Mikey. “Second grade! He was in gymnastics and moving to the next grade with us! The incoming class was too large and someone told the next teacher on graduation night that Talon could probably go to the Olympics if he stopped getting into so much trouble!”

“That-!” April hissed.

“He went to the other class and eventually dropped out!”

“Was that…? April…?” Mikey mouthed.

“That’s not-!” April pleaded.

“Drew Weatherford!” Kendra spun back around. “Third grade! He was coming to class super early and you walked in one day, with your friends, with only him in the room, and yelled about how bad it smelled!”

“Ken-!”

“Crazy how his dad lost his pier job and their water was off, he was coming to school early to wash up in the sinks, and because of you he earned the nickname Trash Boat!”

“How could I-!?”

“Heather Alvares!” Kendra stomped forward.

April was trapped both in and out of the apartment.

“You wanna talk about parents who left, huh April!? Let’s talk!! When her mom dipped and she was with her grandparents who couldn’t brush that hair of hers, who was it!? Who!? Who told Taylor Martin, certified grade A bitch from birth! She had it hard enough! She transferred in mid-semester and there you were! She told you in confidence! So why, why, was it that Taylor found out?!”

April could only shake her head.

“And you didn’t get the same treatment! No! No one dared call you the fucking tattletale, loud mouth you were because the moment they did, they would be on your immediate shit list! They were terrified of your ‘weird’ sense. That way you always sniffed out people who were trying to lay low! You always brought attention to them when no one wanted that! So yeah, April, go ahead. Tell me my apartment sucks shit because I already know! You think I don’t?! You think I want to live here?! You think I wanna smell burning electrical wires when I charge my phone?! Maybe think for once in your life about where those reporter skills got you!!!”

April was deathly still.

Only her pupil moved to Mikey.

Mikey’s expression wore weakly because he knew what she was thinking.

Everything Kendra said was true.

He knew exactly why.

April has met him and his brothers in a similar way.

The boys had snuck up to a roof to play basketball and she had burst out of nowhere with accusations about how she finally caught the people sneaking on the court. They had tried to run, but she had seen them. A human saw them for what they were. She yelled her head off about how they weren’t people, they were criminal turtles, and they had been forced to tackle her to make her stop.

“And that’s…” Kendra clearly lost steam. “… just what I remember. There were a ton more. So, sorry, if I wanted to get away from you. I was trying to build my own reputation. I was dealing with my own crap-!”

Her voice hitched on tears and she audibly swallowed it down.

“I-I-! I just… couldn’t be humiliated at school too. Not so late in middle school. Not after what happened. Not when it was happening at home-!”

Kendra threw a hand out to stop herself.

She took a single breath.

Mikey chanced getting closer.

She shot him a wounded look before wrapping an arm around herself.

Mikey leaned against her back in case she wanted to move away.

She didn’t.

Her weight slightly shifted into him.

The smallest amount.

Fragile and he held it with care.

“But I did… leave you without explanation, so… sorry… about that…” Kendra cleared her throat.

April creaked against the door frame.

“That… sucks… especially with what happened with your dad… I’m sorry.” Kendra glanced at Mikey again.

He bowed his head ever so slightly.

She sucked in a deeper breath and let it out. “Didn’t mean to scream at your sister. Not a great reintroduction.”

“Nah, not really, but you two got history and that wasn’t even in the top ten worst impressions I’ve had.” He pecked her cheek.

“That’s gotta be some kind of list.”

“Oh sure…”

April took her glasses off.

The two stopped to watch her.

Mikey gave Kendra a squeeze as he prepared to release.

She stood straighter to give him leave.

April spoke before he could move. “Is that… true?”

Even Kendra knew better than to respond.

April’s eyes darted as she looked up for a response.

“We…” Mikey started and was a little too loud so he tempered himself. “We grew to love it. You could always count on April to tell it to you straight!”

Her expression somehow fell further.

Kendra turned to send him a bitter glance.

He broke free from her and shot toward his sister.

“Okay! Maybe I didn’t phrase it right, but that’s the thing! We’re all honest to a fault in different ways. Didn’t you-er-Raph! Yeah, Raph! Always tells me that I don’t have tact! I don’t! Look, everyone in this room has made mistakes. We’ve paid for them in different ways. What matters is if you choose to learn from them and how you move forward with that knowledge.”

“I can’t really deal with your LPC thing right now.” April flinched from him.

Mikey whimpered.

“LPC…” Kendra spoke, haunted by the new knowledge.

Mikey didn’t have time for that and continued on. “It’s true though! It just depends on who sees it! The one who really never pulls punches is dad!”

The corner of April’s lip twitched.

“If he doesn’t like something…!”

“You’ll be the first to know…” She responded as more fissures formed in her growing smile.

“Being honest can be good. Having a strong sense of justice is good! Jumping into something without worrying is good! They can also all be bad. It will always depend. The outcome, the people…”

“How many people have I hurt…?” April wondered.

Mikey felt secure enough to touch her arm.

She didn’t startle away and looked up at him.

“How many people did you save?”

Her eyes watered and her lip quivered.

Mikey barely lifted his limbs and she shot forward to hug him.

He gave her a tight squeeze.

She sniffled and lost a few tears.

“Kendra…!”

“Uh… Y-yeah…?” Kendra responded warily.

“I didn’t mean to bring up-“ April squeezed her eyes shut and pulled from Mikey. “I didn’t mean to insult your apartment. I’m… mad they let you rent this. They force you to pay for this. You rent it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We can sue. We just need-”

“No! No, no, no!” Kendra walked over to meet them. “Think! You wanna show growth, then think for a second!”

April stared at her for a second.

“There was no where else I could go.” Kendra offered.

April’s gaze sharpened. “Because you have a record.”

“Yeah!”

“That has to be illegal. They can’t deny you for that!”

“No, the shitty language in New York law books say that a landlord can’t turn down all applicants due to criminal records! It has to be on a case-by-case basis.”

“What…?” April reared away from Mikey.

“Yeah!” Kendra repeated.

“That’s bull.”

“Just don’t turn it into a story. Not only can I live here, but it’s all I can afford so…”

“There is no way this is up to code though!”

“It’s not.”

“What is this? This isn’t even a whole apartment!”

“My neighbor, if you can call them that, tore out walls to make their apartment bigger. They had the money to back it up. This was the leftover space. It didn’t have a shower or toilet. Those were patched into the pipes. The whole thing’s a shit show.”

“And the roaches!” Mikey felt safe enough to add.

April glanced around quickly.

“Don’t worry I scared them off for now. They’ll get me back when I sleep.” Kendra’s soul partially left her body.

Mikey leapt to get it back.

“You don’t even have access to the building.” April pinched the bridge of her nose and noticed her glasses still weren’t there.

She put them back on and, with them, her confidence returned.

“You quoted the New York law.”

“Sure. I had to look it up for when I got out. Plus law books were pretty much all we had to read in prison.”

“And I know the building codes.” April pointed at herself.

“O’Neil, what did I just say about butting in?!”

“I didn’t!” April clapped Kendra on the shoulder.

Kendra looked ready to bite her.

Mikey prepared to intercept.

“But maybe that’s a good thing? I mean, who said anything about you doing anything? That would be bad. We don’t want to mess with what you got going on here, but it sounds like your moneybags neighbor would be real interested to hear about what they’re missing through their barely there wall.”

Kendra blinked.

“How their water pressure sucks. The shorts in the walls…”

Mikey could hear Kendra inhale.

“Roaches.”

Kendra’s eyes lit up.

“Love the new hair color, by the way.” April grinned wide.

Kendra’s hand clamped over April’s and she used it to pull the other woman sideways. “Talk and work! You’re installing the AC!”

“Fine, but I have zero experience!” April sang as she moved to pick up the AC.

Mikey watched on through the bickering and fast paced conversation.

They almost lost the AC out the window twice before it really threatened to escape and he had to teleport outside to save it.

Eventually, they were all lined up and enjoying the cool air the newly operational air conditioner provided.

“Hey, Mikey.” April prompted.

“Hm?” Mikey hummed because talking was too much effort.

“I wanna keep this between us for now.”

“Hmm?” He shifted his inflection.

“Don’t talk like I’m not here.” Kendra complained.

“I’m not. I’m trying not to say how he didn’t tell me about you.” April retorted before awareness hit her and she fell backwards. “Okay, I’m seeing it. Big mouth.”

“And people think I’m the mess.” Kendra chuffed.

“Figured you’d be mad.” April tried.

“Figured you would be too.” Kendra responded.

“True that.” April breathed out. The AC continued to purr contentedness.

🧡 NEXT 🧡

We continue to hit that new year off right with my betas @tmntxthings and @unrestrainedhotsoup

#AENEMfic #rottmnt #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt Michelangelo #rise Michelangelo #Michelangelo hamato #rottmnt mikey #rise mikey #rise kendra #rottmnt kendra #me #fanfiction #my fanfiction #kenkey #rottmnt april #rise april #april o'neil

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