#rottmnt four warriors

[pillowdrawz]

Peepaws adopting their alternate version of their selves.

Imagine such a good potential about more father figures and senseis etc .

But idk what Im doing Im drawing what my heart says lololol and My heart says crossovers, Found family, and Father figures.

Maybe because I want a dad.

[paintedkinzy-88]

"You're far more powerful than the people of this planet, yet you defend them. Why?"

"Big talk from the guy that was defeated by those very people."

"Hm. Don't make me laugh. The... beasts that managed to delay our reign were far from human..."

In other words, I decided that the ancient mystic warriors that created the Key to the Prison Dimension are now dragonfied... somewhat successfully-

More info on them below, why not.

Almost a thousand years ago, after the creation of yokai, dragons of the time advocated for peace between humans and yokai. However, the tensions only grew as each attempt ended in failure, by the fault of one side or the other. Eventually, a war was declared, and the powerful beings ended up as targets for many.

The story is typically different depending on the location. Generally, in the East, dragons were more respected by humans than yokai, and the West was the opposite. Draxum's family grew up in the Western yokai cultures, primarily, whereas the Hamato clan originally lived in the East.

One by one, by either human or yokai, dragons were hunted down, often seen as either a threat due to their power, or as foolish for their optimistic desires. When the Krang's full army made it to Earth, only four remained across the globe. Seeing this massive threat to life itself in their home, they gathered together and sacrificed themselves in order to create the Prison Dimension, locking away as many Krang as they possibly could and trusting the stragglers could be taken care of.

With them gone, the Yokai were eventually forced to hide away, with any remaining rebels quickly struck down. Currently, the only remaining proof of the dragons, aside from many mixed stories and historical drawings, is the small, inferior yokai breed (think like Bruce and his gang.)

Blazure: Having lived in the Eastern side, Blazure was a constant target of human armies. He used to have a small group of fellow dragons he often socialized with in surrounding territories, but they were all taken down by the kingdoms around them eventually. His home no longer safe, Blazure spent most of his remaining life traveling and trying his best to help people of all kinds where he could, without getting killed.

Pyre: Immediately after the war was declared, Pyre set off with as many Yokai as he could, trying to guide them to safety. While he still wholeheartedly believed they could live in harmony, he also recognized that reasoning with humans was not in his personal skillset, a lesson he had learned the hard way many times. Instead, he took to running with the yokai he could protect, gaining new members at every turn. It's rumored that he was the start of the first Hidden Cities.

Shilong: Highly revered by the humans of his territory, Shilong was a mighty warrior who, unlike many dragons, had no problem resorting to physically fighting for his beliefs. Many yokai saw him as a threat and even a weakness of their kind due to his desire for peace between them and humans. Because of this, he was often attacked. Even still, he stuck around and defended human villages and cities when he saw it necessary.

Zuma: Settling down in Japan with a few others, Zuma was highly worshipped by multiple human clans. They were free to walk the streets of these villages unharmed, and often received gems, food, jewelry, and other gifts, which they always made sure to repay in one way or another. Overall, they were well treated and defended from the many yokai who wished to hunt them down.

Curse of Icarus Masterpost

[cosmique-oddity]

Hello dears

Well I made the decision to suspend Risetober because I had a lot of things to do outside

BUT

I don't lose hope of finishing it after the deadline hehe......

Otherwise here are illustrations of the four ancestral warriors of our four turtles (I really like their character design and we literally have no story on that)

find these names with me :D

It can be a feudal Japanese cliché, loaded with meaning or simply whatever you want :}}

(Japanese that said given how little knowledge we have about them and just their character designs)

Yeah, I didn't make the red TOT, I'll finish it and send it to you afterwards!

and at the fair I enclose the original image of these warriors.

[mooni]

one thing i will always love about rottmnt is that the main characters are:

four mutant ninja turtles who were experimented on using the dna of a fearsome warrior from a powerful clan with the goal of turning them into killing machines meant to wipe out the human race

and their human friend, who is absolutely 100% the most aggressive and menacing of them all

[claraghost22]

Mama’s Boy | Rottmnt Animation Meme

Meet my interpretation for the rise sisters! Their story is part of a season 3/4 story I have been working on for months now. I am very excited for the new tmnt anniversary comic and whatever sister plot things will go down, and hope that in the future, maybe through more comics, the sisters will actually become canon to the story of rise. But for now, here's some basics for what I came up with:

Venus (the taller) and Jennika were made as a second attempt at warriors by Draxum with his leftover ooze from the destroyed lab, but the experiment faltered due to poor resources and rushed time, so he ended up leaving the two girls on the streets to fend for themselves, when they ran into Big Mama. Both worked for her in different ways, but after one incident, Jennika is separated from Venus, leaving the elder sister to be Big Mama's sole assistant, believing her sister dead. It isn't until four years later the two reunite, but far different people from the ones they used to know.

And that's all I'll say for now, hope you enjoy, and good day.

[our-happygirl500-fan]

After the release of the Rise book ROTTMNT: Ninja Power a sequel was release a little bit later called ROTTMNT: Secrets of the City which was basically another handful of Rise episodes in book form

The book had four episodes each told from the perspective of different characters: ‘Mascot Melee’ was told from Raph’s point of view, ‘Down with Sickness’ was told from Mikey’s, ‘Origami Tsunami’ was told from Leo’s & the episode ‘War and Pizza’ was told from April’s.

Similarly to the Rise book Ninja Power even though each episode was told from a different character’s perspective the narration was basically an overview of what happened in each episode though similarly to the Rise book Ninja Power there are still a couple of fun little extra character moments & bits or pieces of info sprinkled in with the different narrators.

When Mikey is narrating the episode ‘Down with the Sickness’ we do actually get to see a kind of small extra scene where we kind of get to see Raph, Donnie & Mikey’s reaction to Leo getting infected while in the episode we kind of only got to see them watch Leo go down before they put him in his containment area.

Donnie: Ah, Leo’s infected

We also kind of get a confirmation that the Turtles do go through the same seven stages that Splinter does when sick (we also kind of learn what the foam that the Turtles get sprayed with is).

Narrator: Stage 1 Fever

Leo: It is really hot, is there a fire?

Narrator: Stage 2 Wild Rat Man

Donnie: Make him say yessssssss!

However it seems as though even though the Turtles also go through the seven stages each stage seems to manifest slightly differently for each person as Donnie’s Wild Rat Man stage looks different from Splinter’s Wild Rat Man Stage.

Apparently there was an argument over what to name the fake little cardboard shop in the episode Origami Tsunami but Leo got to decide the name due to the fact that he came up with the idea in the first place.

The shipyard that the Turtles tracked the Foot Clan to in the episode Origami Tsunami is apparently the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is apparently a shipyard & industrial complex located in northwest Brooklyn.

Apparently when the giant paper warrior grabbed Leo in the episode Origami Tsunami, Leo was squeezed so tight that he thought he would burst.

April: Sing with me guys I am finishing this party ‘Happy Birthday!’ Finish the song!

When Raph & Leo try to guess the name of the Timmy (whose Birthday it was in the episode War and Pizza) they settle on just calling Timmy “squirt” & “kid” meaning that when they don’t know the name of a child Leo is the type of person to just call them ‘kid’ while Raph is the type of person that calls children ‘squirt’.

[anoddrock]

What if: rottmnt atla crossover, but it’s really just me going ‘what, in the world of ATLA, might eventually lead to the existence of the tmnt?’ This is the first post about the actual story of the AU instead of me just going ‘oh make them turtle ducks!’ Also: they are not all turtle ducks anymore, but those details are for later~

More info below

Reblogs are appreciated

Donnie is a turtle duck, but doesn’t have as many duck traits visible here other than some feathers. He did have webbed fingers, but does not anymore, and he also isn’t allowed to lock his lab door anymore. Of the bros, he is the second most turtle-y, and the second least duck-ish. Also, rather than all of the turts being made in one batch, they’re the surviving members of each of the batches they were a part of. Donnie and Leo are from the only batch with more than one who made it.

A lot of the important stuff lore-wise for this story will revolve around the fact that Korra died in the avatar state, if only briefly, that the Republic City spirit world gate exists, and the Avatar’s function as a bridge between worlds.

The turtles only exist because the Avatar disappeared, eventually leading to a war between humans and spirits, and the turts were made to act as a border between the human world outside of republic city and the spirit world. They are, essentially, trying to stop anyone from crossing the bridge of the RC gate.

The outer area of republic city is considered fully neutral, and is guarded by the foot clan(which in this world are like a bit of an offshoot of the Kiyoshi warriors paired with the white lotus, which I know is very different but ehhhh my AU, my creative liberties) and the turtles. The turtles mainly focus on keeping humans out of the gate’s area, and the foot clan are there to help whenever necessary and to stop the occasional spirit from leaving. Most spirits are content staying in the spirit world, let alone exiting RC, so they’re able to patrol the outside of the city fairly easily.

Now there are mutants as well! They aren’t spirits, but people who spend too long in the RC area. The initial mutations are the reason why the human-spirit war first started, and why RC is now considered a neutral zone. You can’t force the humans who’ve been severely changed to leave, as many of them would get shunned, but most people didn’t want anyone else getting mutated, so it was eventually declared a neutral zone. People from both sides can come in and out of RC, but unless you’re a mutated human or a descendant of one, you shouldn’t stay longer than a few weeks.

Mutants are notable because while they no longer appear fully human, some of them can do some kind of bending, and the ones more human-appearing might be able to do a certain degree of energy bending, even if they’d been completely unable to bend beforehand. Sometimes they end up having a combination of the two. The mutants that can bend from one of the four element groups are also usually able to bend in the spirit world, which yk, is a completely new thing.

The turtles are benders. Donnie is an airbender, Raph is an earthbender, Leo a waterbender, and Mikey a firebender. No Draxum did not do anything to cause their bending, in fact the human genetic source he used to create spirit-human-turtles is a non bender, who was chosen for that very reason, as well as his family’s history of being somewhat spiritually sensitive and being a renowned fighter, even before he ended up changing from staying too long in republic city at the behest of his beau(said beau, big mama, turned out to be a traitorous backstabber who actually wanted him to turn so that he’d have to stay->he’d cling to the connection he had(her)-> and she could then get him to stay in her grand hotel, for the simple price of being a gladiator with literally nowhere to run to. Yeah. Splinter does not like his ex.

When Draxum got him out, Splinter was immensely grateful, and actually quite willing to help with the earlier experiments. His mutations were still mild enough that Draxum considered the samples he had a good basis for the human-spirit experimentation, and Splinter insisted on helping beyond just donating genetic material to the creation of the turts, but also insisted he would help them grow up well. He was then more devastated than Draxum when Raph was the oldest survivor of the experiments. He agreed to continue helping with the kids on the condition that Draxum wouldn’t make any more, but receded into himself from the grief until Raph was around twelve. Raph still doesn’t trust Splinter and has a deep resentment for what to Raph was an abandonment when he needed his pops the most. Yes, he had Draxum, but he was cold and distant beyond helping with basic necessities until Donnie was old enough to help with his various other experiments and Mikey started showing a remarkable skill for energy bending. Draxum tried, but couldn’t sufficiently help with the more human emotions. Splinter didn’t try at all, not until Leo started to come out of his shell more. And that made Raph even angrier, as he felt like he hadn’t been enough of a reason for his dad to try, but his irresponsible, careless, unserious brother was. Raph had done everything he could for his brother and both his dads. But none of them seemed to be willing to do half as much for him, except maybe Mikey, which just made it worse, because Mikey was the youngest and shouldn’t have to worry about Raph.

April enters the scene when Raph is angriest himself, his dads, and at the twins. She is the first person older than him who he feels cares for him the way he’s cared for his family since he was small, but before he can accept this care, he has to acknowledge that she isn’t a threat to his family.

[justvibinghereyk]

Rise ramblings while I'm suffering with anxiety (part 1)

Well, I can't sleep because of my anxiety so I'm going to ramble on about the rottmnt timeline. Unofficial. I just think it happened that way. Several headcanons! (English is not my first language, I'm sleepy, I'm sorry for any mistakes.)

It all starts when, centuries ago, the alien race Krang comes to planet Earth and tries to settle down, having their first contact in Japan. As we know, four mystical warriors created a key that led the Krang to the Prison Dimension.

But one of them managed to escape and went underground. If I remember correctly, Empyriam is it's blood? I think? Anyway, that was the beginning of the emergence of the Yokai. Above, the Foot Clan thrived as normal, with their leader Oroku Saki, his wife (whoever that was) and their daughter Karai. I have a headcanon that, just as in the movie it was shown that the Krang can control people in that terrifying way that was shown, this remaining Krang managed to do that with some people close to the region he was in. This is why the Foot Clan was attacked.

As an alien living beneath Tokyo and the presence of Yokais was difficult to hide, rumors soon spread until they reached Oroku Saki, who, in a desperate act, made a pact with what they called Oni, who gave him Kuroi Yoroi. As shown, the armor gave Saki strength to protect his clan but it corrupted his mind and morality. This was probably always Krang's plan, since he was alone on the planet, it was convenient to have a powerful soldier and an army in his favor, starting here the fall of the good Foot Clan and the rise of a bunch of soldiers who they hailed Shredder as their superior and Krang as those they should follow.

If you want to contribute any notes, ideas or correct me, please feel free :)

Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3

[hallowbees]

good evening rottmnt community. so i haven't written fanfic in almost a decade, but whilst taking a break from working on a rottmnt fanfic, i have written... another rottmnt fanfic. i wanted to play around with different povs and tenses than i usually use, and decided to use casey jr and the future timeline to try it out - it was super fun to write, so i thought why not share it!!

you're a lifesaver, casey jones

fives times casey jones junior saves the resistance, and the one time it doesn’t feel like a victory

five months old

You’re only five months old when you save the resistance for the first time. You’re so young.

The shattered remains of a home cradle you, muscle memory from the years of keeping a family long gone safe and warm, and even if you can feel the wind as it whistles through the cracks in the bricks and the sky looms red, enemy drones and rubble floating above you like a cot mobile, you don’t cry. Your little life has already taught you the harshest lesson of the apocalypse, and it’s not that crying won’t get you anywhere; crying will get you somewhere alright, six feet deep in a grave if the wrong ones hear you. Of course you don’t actually know that, not in that way at least, but you do know crying only ever wears you out. Tough lesson to learn, ain't it kid, but you learnt it well. You might just make it yet. 

There’s no telling how long you’ve been here- could have been five minutes, could have been forever, it's all the same to you. It’s unlikely that there are any coherent thoughts rattling around in that little brain of yours yet, but if so, they might sound something like this; I miss you, I miss you, where did you go? I’m hungry, it hurts, I miss you. Where did everyone go? I miss you. The same thoughts plague most brains these days, everyone’s got a ‘you’ to miss. We’ll all be ‘you’ someday, if we’re lucky. God, this is all quite morbid isn’t it, little one? It’s okay, though. Remember, this is a story about how you save them. It’s a happy story, you’ll get your happily ever after, even if they don’t all live.

She looks a lot like you, strangely. It’s something about the eyes, dark and strong, and the general aura of defiance. Maybe that’s why she finds you first, she feels a kinship in your ‘warrior spirit’, as she calls it, ‘a true fighter’, she calls you. ‘They are a baby, babies cannot fight. Primarily because they are still in the very early stages of fine motor skills development and cannot wield weapons yet, amongst other reasons.’ another voice says, but he doesn’t know just how hard you already have fought, will fight still. You’re there, and that is everything these days. She comes to your defence, proclaiming you ‘the strongest fighter of the resistance’, and ‘silence, purple one!’. You can’t tell that the second shout isn’t aimed at you, but what you can tell is that it's warm in her arms and now you only see her and not the broken sky above you. It’s not ‘you’, and you’re still not sure where everyone went, but this still feels comfortable. This feels like home, you think.

That’s the moment you break, and the tears start. You cry, and you cry, and you are surrounded by her. Her voice is low now, a tone rusty in use but so sure of itself as she tells you that you’re okay, you’re safe, she’s got you. ‘Poor thing, they must be so scared.’ comes a new voice, and there's a blur of orange (once you figure out what orange is, it’ll become your favourite colour, one of four favourites) over her shoulder. ‘Ain’t we all.’ comes a low rumble from behind. ‘They won’t be anymore. We’ve got them now.’ she says, and that’s how you meet your strange little family. Some of it, that is - there are more, an aunt and a grandfather or two, so many people ready to love you. 

She doesn’t just give you a name, she gives you hers. You’re Casey Jones Junior, a reminder that something always comes after. You don’t know yet how badly Casey Jones Senior had needed that reminder - she’s spent her whole life in pursuit of what’s next, in hopes that its greater than what’s now (a promotion, a resurrection, a fabled leader) and despair that it never is (better luck next time recruit, they could do it all without her, she breaks the chains that spell his downfall herself). When she finds the apocalypse next, she starts to think that maybe nothing next would be quite alright, but then there’s you and for the first time she truly feels like she’s on the right track. 

She carries you home, her family around her and in her arms, and Casey Jones Senior resolves to keep fighting another day. 

four years old

In your defence, such a sharp weapon should have never been left in your curious reach. In his, there's so much to keep on top of when you’re spearheading a resistance that if a sai or two get misplaced in the process, can anyone really blame him? Your hand is being patched up as he is berated once again, because ‘you know that weapons stay on you at all times, Raph’, and ‘why are they even sharp? Aren’t sai meant to be blunt?’. He groans out something about being a stupid teenager once upon a time, wondering what would happen if he sharpened his weapon the same way his brother did his swords, much out of the same curiosity that got you into this very predicament. He sounds like he might cry, but you can’t work out why. It’s your palm that's bleeding, and you didn’t even make a peep. That might have been the problem, though - no one noticed until your blood was smeared across the floor and that’s a sight no one can stomach. You were scooped up quickly, and he looks haunted. ‘He’ could have been anyone in the room.

“Raph’s sorry, lil’ guy.”. He’s gentle, so gentle, as he kneels before you and takes your bandaged hand. “I promise I won’t leave ‘em out again like that.”. There’s no promise that you won’t get hurt again, because no one likes to break a promise, but the way he smiles at you, still so gentle, makes all the pain go away.

“Can I hold ‘em again when I’m bigger please?” you ask, and of course you can’t see it but there’s a little sparkle in your eyes as you look up at him, glimmering like the stars that are still above you even if you can’t see them anymore, in the sky that no longer belongs to Earth. Let's look on the bright side though; it could still be ours again someday.

“Um… if your Mom says you can, then sure thing, buddy. But only when you’re older.”. Your mom will say yes, she always says yes because there is nothing that a Jones cannot do, so you cheer and throw your tiny little arms around his far bigger neck. You can’t hold all of him, so you just squeeze extra tight so he still feels the love all over. A hand comes to pat you on the back, and you certainly feel loved in his hold. 

“Why’d you want to hold ‘em so bad anyways, bud?” he asks, and you grin. It’s big and toothy, with a little gap right at the front where you lost your first tooth, and thank god that you lost it in the natural way, and not the way most people lose teeth these days.

“I wanna be just like Uncle Raphie!”. He melts, and the tears are back. Rather than wipe them away though, he just squeezes you closer. 

It’s one of the last memories you’ll get of Raphael, so please hold onto it. Hold onto it just as tight as you held onto his neck that day, held him long enough for the blood to seep through your bandages and make its mark on his skin. 

…

Well, anyways - there’s a conversation later that night that you’re not privy to. You’re probably fast asleep by your mother’s side when the clock strikes this antisocial hour. 

“He’s so little. Too little. Casey shouldn’t be even thinking about holding weapons yet.”.

Yet, yet, yet, it’s always yet. Weaponry is waiting for you in the future, and no one can lie, there are keen eyes on you as you play around the resistance base, to spot any signs of affinity for particular weapon types and fighting styles (you’re fast, get up close and personal, and there will be a brute force behind your hits if you really want there to be - someone offhandedly mentions hockey and the blueprints are already being drawn up). 

“Maybe it would be better to start him young. It is inevitable, after all.”. That’s probably the toughest pill for them to swallow, that when you grow up (if, if you grow up - that would be even harder to choke down if they would let themselves even consider it) you’ll be thrown to the front lines. 

But hey - we’re looking on the bright side, remember?

“C’mon guys, enough with the doom and gloom! Think of it this way - at least there will be someone to keep on fighting after us. And he’s going to be far more prepared than we ever could have been. Seriously, he’s like, the apocalypse nepo baby.”. You’d be shocked by how funny the apocalypse could be sometimes. It has to be, because if you don’t laugh you’ll cry, and you already know where crying gets you. It’s not the best joke, but it gets a snort from someone. “He’s got no choice but to succeed. I’m calling it now, Casey’s gonna be the one to end this someday. ”

“S’not much of a bright side. He’ll still have to fight.”. 

“Chin up, big guy. Look at what we’ve achieved already. The kind of things Casey’s going to do with all of us behind him? It’s looking pretty bright to me.”. It goes unsaid that most of them probably won’t be there to see it, but it’s enough for now. The thought of you seeing the other side of this war, even if you have to fight for it tooth and nail, it’s enough to let Raph truly think about what the end of the apocalypse could look like for the very first time since Hell arrived on earth. He thinks of the stars, how they’re still shining brightly and how we will see them again. He can even see a small smattering of them in the bleeding sky when he lays dying a few days later, and his final thought is that maybe we’re already starting to turn the tides. 

seven years old

Most people will probably tell you that celebrating a birthday is a waste of time, resources, and energy. The most cynical of the bunch would probably tell you that we don’t actually know when your birthday is, so why are you so confident that it’s today? But, and please don’t repeat this language, fuck them -  you’re seven years old, and isn’t that just incredible? You feel like the luckiest seven year old in the entire resistance (you’re only one of three in this branch, and Laura’s leg got broken yesterday, so your competition isn’t exactly tough) when your culinary wizard of an uncle manages to scrape together some sort of cake. The adults around you grimace a little when they bite into it (culinary wizard he may be, but there’s only so much magic can do), but you think it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted. It’s dry, and sticks to the roof of your mouth, and you’d hesitate to call it chocolate, but you go in for a second helping, and no one stops you because it’s your birthday! There’s more than enough to go around; your family has gotten a little bit smaller, after all. They’re never truly gone though, because you can always see his red bandana, and you’ll always share your name with her. You don’t really remember anything more than a grey blur, but your grandfather’s famous battle cry continues to echo across the frontlines. You make sure to enjoy your second helping even more than the first, just for them. 

There is one slice of cake left, and it has no business sitting on the plate looking all lonely like that. You’re not sure exactly why he didn’t show up this time, but you’re not going to let your special day pass by without seeing him. It may be your day, but the things that make you happy are so much sweeter when you share them; you think it might be because you love your family’s smiles more than anything else in the whole entire world. Pushing yourself up from the comfortable pile of mostly everyone you love on the floor (if some missions had been shifted around to make sure everyone could be here for you today, then no one was going to complain), you pick up the plate and go to find the missing piece of your family’s jigsaw puzzle.

“Where are you taking that, Case? Trying to sneak a third helping?”. Voices are light, and maybe it’s the most at ease you’ve ever seen your family. Today really is special.

“Nope, it’s Uncle Donnie’s and he’s gotta eat it today because tomorrow it’s just cake and that's much less exciting than birthday cake.”. You’re on a mission, just like the ones your uncles and aunt go on, ones you can’t wait to join them on someday, because you don’t want to be anything other than just like them when you finally grow up. Your aunt has even begun teaching you how to fight, and she always tells you what a natural you are (she feels so guilty about it, because it would be so much easier if you weren’t going to be such a powerhouse on the battlefield; there would maybe be cause to clutch you close to her chest and never let you go otherwise).

You might hear what’s said as you leave. “Casey, buddy, maybe you shouldn’t…”. You don’t let it deter you, even if you do.

“Nah, I say let him try. Maybe he’ll finally get through to that brilliantly dumb brain of his.”.

You guard the cake with your life as you run to the lab, because you can’t possibly wait a second longer to see him. This is the one thing that could make your day go from amazing to perfect. Call it your birthday wish, even if you didn’t have a candle to blow out.

You’re not actually sure when you last saw your uncle beyond a fleeting flash of purple at breakfast time, and that one night last week you had a standoff in the corridor at 3am, because you had a nightmare and wanted your Uncle Mikey, and he needed more coffee (if it was just a bit lighter, you’d have seen his damp eyes, and maybe would have figured out that he needed to seek out his brothers just as much as you). You know when you’re going to see him next, though - in about 30 seconds, because you’re standing in front of his door.

Knock, knock, knock. There isn’t a pattern, you just bang on the door with one hand, careful to balance the plate on your other. Bang, bang, bang. You’re greeted with the rhythmic bang of a hammer in response - or at least you think at first, it doesn’t take much waiting to realise that he probably hasn’t heard you. 

Knock, knock, knock. “Uncle Donnie! I have something for you!” you shout, right at the top of your lungs. Bang, bang - “Just leave it outside the door, I’ll get it later.” - bang.

Well, in that case - you sit down, cross legged and leaning against the door. Because sure, you’re bringing him the cake, but you’re really here because you miss him, and just want a little bit of his time. You think that sounds like a fair exchange; he gets a slice of your best birthday cake ever, and you get five minutes with your beloved uncle. Neither of those come around that often, so you should both make the most of it.

He must have underestimated your attention span, because he has the audacity to look shocked that you’re still there when he opens the door and you fall backwards into the lab with a shout of surprise. It’s only been 20 minutes; you’d wait so much longer than that for him. Miraculously, even in your speedy venture to the floor, the cake is still sitting neatly on its plate, and you hold it up with a wide grin. “I got you cake!”.

A million miles an hour is probably a gross underestimation of how fast your uncle’s brain goes at any given moment, for better or worse. The look on his face suggests that for a moment, his thoughts are speeding even by his standards, and then they promptly smash into a brick wall. You can tell by the way his eyes get a little bit too wide, and his mouth falls open a little - it’s an expression you only see in the rare moments he feels like he’s failed, although all you can see is a success - because there he is! You’re still grinning up at him from the floor, even if your arms are starting to shake from holding the plate up. He shakes away the expression, and quickly takes the plate from you. Only to swiftly discard it on a nearby workbench though, in favour of kneeling down and leaning over to look at your blinding grin. 

“Casey… is it today?” he asks, still a little too wide eyed. You giggle a little, because what else would it be, tomorrow? He does genuinely look lost though, so you nod. It’s rare that you know something that he doesn’t, but even if it might feel cool to outsmart the smartest person you know, you fill him in. “Yeah, it’s today! And it’s also my birthday.”. He’s quiet for a moment, teeth worrying his lips as his eyes flick away from your face. “And I’m seven.”.

“Not until 6:47pm.” he says, almost automatically. Once he realises what he’s said, his panicked eyes flick to the screen on his wrist, and you think he’s checking the time.

“You haven’t missed it! I made sure to keep looking at the hands on the clock so I could come and see you before you miss it.”. It’s the time that the scouting-turned-rescue mission seven years ago got back to the base, and an official mission report was made. ‘Baby boy, approximately 5 months old, found in rubble. No others found in immediate vicinity.’, submitted at 6:47pm. It’s never bothered you that it’s not the exact day or moment you were born, it’s the exact day and time your family became just that, and that's what really matters to you. None of your uncles know the exact time and day they were born either (the debate of who’s older still rages on till this day, not even the end of the world can put that argument to rest), so it means you’re just like them. You still can’t imagine wanting to be anything else. 

“Okay.”. He stands up, and offers you a hand. You take it, giggling as he pulls you up a little bit too far and your legs dangle. You kick them for a second, before he notices and puts you back firmly on solid ground. “I have two forks.”. 

You sit in the bean bags he has stashed in the corner of the lab, and the two of you share the last slice of birthday cake. He struggles more than the others to hide his distaste for it, but you think it tastes the best it has yet. The lab door has been left open, and you know that it’s not by mistake, because it could have been shut with a quick tap of a screen, but it stays wide open as the rest of your family files in. You’re all slotted together perfectly when the clock strikes 6:47pm, and you hear your Uncle Donnie sing the loudest as your family wishes you a happy birthday. You think it’s because you’re sitting closest to him, but everyone else can see the way his chest expands as he takes deep breaths, putting his all into his well wishes.

It was easy for him to forget that life isn’t over yet, even if what he’s been burdened with is creating and creating until he has something that will prolong it just that little bit longer. Amidst the cheers of ‘hip hip hooray’, he remembers that moments like this are exactly what he’s toiling away in the lab for. They haven’t gone anywhere yet though, and he doesn’t want to let even a single second of it pass him by again. Donnie actually smiles for once, because you are seven years old now and that really is something incredible. You see him everyday at breakfast after that, with actual food rather than just a mug, and he always has a fork for you. 

eleven years old

You’re just about in the double digits the first time you actually realise that you’ve saved the resistance. It happens so quickly - you’re still not old enough to be out on the field, but it’s all hands on deck when the krang brings the fight to your front door. Maybe don’t say this to anyone else, but you sort of think that it makes your age a moot point - if you can fight like hell when the hallways are caving in and there's pink, pink, pink everywhere, then surely you can join simple scouting missions? No one quite understands why you’re so eager to be out there on the field, and maybe you don’t fully understand either (you definitely don't understand just how dire it is out there, they’ve done a good job of keeping that from you so far), but you know that it’s what you want. It’s what all of your heroes do, after all. You know for a fact that your uncles wanted to be just like their own heroes when they grew up, and now that you’re finally getting taller and your arms are starting to gain a little muscle, why can’t you follow in their footsteps? The only difference is that their heroes were on the TV screen. You’re lucky enough to see yours in the flesh every single day. Two of them, at least. Purple now flutters alongside the fraying red. 

At first, it’s no different from all of the other hounds. It’s gross and dripping, what you think must be teeth gnashing and shockingly red. You’re not stupid, you know that it can’t be krang blood, you don’t think they even have it, but nothing can deter you from swinging your hockey stick right into its side (and you know you could do so much more than just crack it’s bones into tiny little pieces if someone finally listened to you and removed the child lock that Donnie was forced to add), sending it flying sideways. A little blood never bothered you, and it’s a good job, because you’re covered in it. Some of it might be your own, but there’s so much adrenaline pumping through your veins right now that pain doesn’t even stand a chance at stopping you. You feel so alive as you wipe some of that blood from your face (definitely not your own, you’d know if you had a head wound), but your heart stops as you see what was laid beneath the hound. 

It’s your aunt, or what might be left of her - you can’t tell if her chest is still rising and falling or not. She’s teetering on the edge of just being another body in the makeshift morgue, which you know is nearing full already. Your body wants to freeze, your tears want to fall, your voice wants to scream, but listen, here’s what you do instead: drop to your knees, bring your ear right up to her mouth to here those wheezing, determined breaths, then immediately pull the hoodie over your head to first clear enough blood to find the wound, and second put pressure on it as you scream out for help. You’ve got this. You’re doing so well, kid. Just remember to take a few breaths of your own in the middle of all of this chaos. 

Help doesn’t come, but another hound does. You don’t let it get close, as you put those little muscles to use and scoop her up. This one won’t get to her. It snarls at you, and you snarl back, flashing your matching bloody teeth. You turn and run before it can even think about pouncing, and even though she’s heavy, you’re still fast as you jump over rubble and dodge bodies you don’t have time to think about trying to save.

The medbay is still standing, proving that the decision to make it the most out of the way and difficult to reach location in the base was at least somewhat strategic. The krang hasn’t reached it, and based on the mutters of ‘code green’ and ‘it’s over’, they won’t this time. It’s still yet, yet, yet, as you know, but it’s not now so you shove your aunt onto a bed and don’t even wait for an adult to start grabbing bandages and needles. They do still take over eventually, because it doesn’t matter that you just saved Commander O’Neil’s life - you are still just a child. Just barely in the double digits. Hopefully one day you’ll realise this was never an insult, instead it was maybe the greatest display of love they could give you. No one escapes the apocalypse, but they still tried to give you routes out of it. The corridors are all collapsed now though, and you grip your hockey stick tight in your blood-slicked grasp as you watch your aunt be pulled back together into one piece. 

April’s probably the one person in the resistance whose resolve has never shaken, but that’s not to say it can’t still be strengthened. When she wakes to see your bloodstained hoodie discarded by the cot she’s found herself on, she’ll of course panic for a second. Thankfully, someone will quickly fill her in, tell her that the blood is her own, and the unbelievable story of the little child who dragged her from the jaws of the hounds. She’ll believe it though, because for starters, you're a Jones, and a Jones can do anything, of course. You’re also a Hamato, and if there’s one thing Hamato can’t do, it’s leave family behind. This spells the start of your official tenure as a resistance fighter, because your age is something you’ll outgrow, but your fighting spirit is something you will not.

It might also have something to do with the fact that much of the resistance lay dead all around you, their blood still clinging to your skin, but what do we always say? Look on the bright side. Stars are still shining, buddy. Time to join your heroes in taking them back.

fourteen years old

You don’t even have to do anything this time. You’re off somewhere with your aunt, maybe training, maybe laughing, ideally both. 

The way you save the resistance this time looks something like this: sparks of molten magic, and a pull he’s never felt before. He can’t deny it, it does feel like hope, but hurts like hell as it starts to crackle up his arms. He’s swiftly stopped, not by his own will, but he’s grateful when the fire splitting him apart fizzles out. It’s very quiet in the aftermath, because they know what this means. It means it’s possible. It means it's going to cost everything. 

They decide that it would be worth it though, if it gave you a chance. There’s no one else they believe in more than you. It’s been said for years, as far back as the days where the only time you shed blood was when you mishandled sai that now just sit and collect dust; you’re gonna be the one to end this someday.

That day should be far off in the future though, when they’ve had time to give you the mission brief, hand over the supplies, and give you a tight hug, not goodbye but good luck. There isn’t really a point dwelling on it now. Mikey just smiles as he tugs the bandages tighter around his arms, and relishes in the fact that they finally have a plan B that might just work out this time. It helps to reignite the optimistic fire he was reluctant to tell anyone was starting to burn out. 

+1. sixteen years old

You’re only sixteen years old when you save the resistance for the last time. You’re so young. I think it might really be the end this time, kiddo. 

You don’t even flinch when I bleed on you, you just tell me that you’ve got me, just as I had you all those time you scraped your knee or bruised your elbow. Not to be arrogant, but you said it yourself - you learned from the best. Sorry. I know it’s not about me, but there’s very little left these days to focus on. Let’s keep the attention on you though, because you’re about to finally save the resistance once and for all. 

All that needs to be said is ‘hope’, and Mikey knows it’s time for plan B. There’s no time for anything we’d planned, no explanation, no hugs goodbye or good luck, but the belief in you never wavers. Not for a second. You’re Casey Jones-Hamato Junior, remember? There’s nothing you can’t do, except leave your family behind. I won’t say that out loud, because you’ll argue that you are in fact leaving me and Mikey behind. Technically, I’d argue you’re leaving us ahead, because soon we’ll be the future. Again, I won’t say that, because if my last words are going to be a joke, I at least want it to be a good one. What you’re doing, in actual fact, is giving us a second chance. I don’t doubt for a second that you’ll find us back there. Our sky may now be lost, but they’ll take you to the highest rooftop and show you every single shimmering constellation and you’ll finally know an Earth that firmly belongs to us. Oh buddy, you’re going to love it.

The last I see of you, you’re crying. It’s one of the first things I saw you do, and now it’s the last. That first time all those sixteen years ago, I think you only started crying because you knew it was finally safe to call attention to yourself as Casey held you in surprisingly gentle but strong arms. Now, I can’t kid myself, I know it’s because you’re scared, and I’m sorry. But hey, you know how I like to look on the bright side - at least the last you see of me, I’m smiling. 

I hope that’s the last you see, at least, I know it won’t be long as a hound throws itself at me. There’s only one thing on my mind now, and it’s that you really are gonna do it. You’re gonna be the one to end this today. 

I’m real proud of-

[honey-rye]

Mama's Boys Au Master Post!

welcome to my brain child, Mama's Boys! A ROTTMNT Separated AU lovingly titled DNA Doesn't Make a Family (We Do) on Ao3!

Draxum has a project, a project to create warriors that will conquer the surface under his command- only, he doesn't get that far. His DNA 'donor' escapes with the turtles, leaving his lab destroyed in the process. Luckily for Draxum, he recovers two of his subjects: L and D.

Flash forward through time, and Big Mama finds two clearly abused turtle children abandoned outside of her hotel, and decides to take them in. She unexpectedly falls into a motherly roll, and soon enough has a family she didn't know she wanted. Meanwhile Splinter, the former actor turned mutant rat, raises his own turtle children, teaching them the way of his ancestors.

Years later, the four subjects reunite and become an unlikely alliance in a fight they were never prepared for, (with the help of some more found family members.)

follow along for art, comics, maybe some animation, and fanfics!

Asks are always appreciated!

Find the fic here: DNA Doesn't Make a Family (We Do) [Rewrite]

Fun Stuff Under the Cut

Main Tag: #honeys mamas boys au

Art:

-> Main Stuff

New Lineup!

Fond Memories

Everything Comes Together

Dee Makes a Choice

Comic : First Meetings

Big Mama and Sons

Big Mama and Sons II

Big Mama and Sons vid

Lee and Mikey Vid

-> Fanart!

Lee and Dee by Shadow

-> QNA (#mama's boys qna)

discord question bomb

emoji ask thing

multiple au emoji ask

-> Old Stuff

there is,, so much old stuff that i'm not gonna link. i'm linking the fun stuff, and anything else can be found via # scavenger hunt :))

Screenshot Redraw

Intro for Sep Polls

Ch. 11 art (old fic)

Battle Nexus Twins

Old Sheets (Lee and Dee, Mikey and Raph)

Other Au's/ Works:

We Raise Our Cups (Apocalypse Au)

Barista By Day, Ninja By Night (Human/ Coffeeshop Au)

Dad Au

[pillowdrawz]

Part two of my Incarnation au animatic so suddenly?? Wow-

Look i just made this in a span of 5 hours Cause I love the song so much .

I also love this silly crack crossover Au. And I love animatics And drawing so I had to..

Context: Rise of the tmnt and Jujutsu Kaisen crossover where Sukuna in the past has four senseis called the four warriors. And now they are reincarnated as the ninja turtles who wanted to relax and have a normal life.

[riseleon]

Trick or treating asks open!

Co host of @the-forgor-four-rottmnt rp thing.

MASTERPOST! UNDER CUT!

The monster inside comic

Cover art

First

Gif's for comic : key card. Door opening.

I'm the maker of twins stick together, the girl who was once human, and the monster inside, aka gremlin leo AU.

I also made golden silence, a rise story about my OC cobalt.

I'm from AO3, and if you want to read my fics, they are linked below.

Info!: the girl who was once human!

When april gets captured by draxum and turns into a mutant. She escapes and has to find her way back home or risk capture from draxum again why wants to use her as a warrior.

Fic here!: The girl who was once human

Info!: twins stick together!

Discontinued!

When leo and donnie get captured by bishop after a pizza run, they have to keep themselves sane while waiting for rescue, unless their mind breaks and they allow bishop in.

Fic here!: Twins stick together

Info!: golden silence!

When the turtles are out on a mission, one of them finds a strange new mutant, a turtle like them, after she evades them for a while, they finally block her path and try talking to her,, only to realize... she's on the more animalistic side of her mutation, not knowing what to do. The turtles decided to take her under their wing and help her. All is well until something happens.

Fic here!: golden silence.

Chapter 2 here!: The Golden Mutant

Info!: WATER (What Are The Everlasting Ramifications?)

Leo gets trapped underneath the water when he went out alone and now has to face the Ramifications of his poor choices

TW: implied character death, implied self harm, self harm, drowning, mental issues.

Fic here!: WATER

Info!: the monster inside/ gremlin leo AU

The shredder came early when they were still young, Splinter sacrificed himself to save the turtles leaving the turtles alone, leo is confronted and ran away only to get captured by a circus (later a lab), The others however done know they had a forth brother and live with Carol as she adopted them. They, however, soon find out there is another mutant in the sewers.

If you want to look at my AU on Tumblr, the tags are

OLD: #monster leo AU

NEW: #gremlin leo AU

NEW: #the monster inside

[afreakingdork]

Weak Spot - Chapter 27

RotTMNT Donatello x Reader

Warnings: Aged-up Turtles, Romance, Meet Cute, Villain Donatello, Cussing, Crushes, Xenophobia, Fear, Intimidation, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Hurt/Comfort, Love, AFAB Reader, Vaginal Sex, Sex Rough, Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Creampie, Teasing, Scent Kink, Sexual Tension, Breeding Kink, Multiple Orgasms, Cunnilingus, Fellatio, Marathon Sex, Somnophilia, Intercrural Sex

Synopsis:  A love story of villainous proportions! Though it hadn’t come easily, as these things rarely do, you found yourself in a whirlwind romance with a handsome and mysterious mutant. His idiosyncrasies had been easy to ignore as attraction grew into something more. However, will love endure when the unknowns about him end up being far darker than you ever considered?

We the Common (For Valerie Bolden) by Thao & the Get Down Stay Down

Also available on Ao3

First 💜 Previous

There is little I recall from the beginning.

It is a facet of biology that children’s brain’s are undeveloped.

Mine would come to fruition earlier than most.

Before that, however, time is lost.

I often wondered about it.

I’ve pieced together what I could.

From what I gathered, it’s presumably for the best.

That doesn’t mean I’ve fully accepted the unknown.

Regardless. 

I was born a regular softshell turtle.

Whether I was wild or something else, I remain unsure.

What I do know is I came into possession of a yokai known as Baron Draxum; the warrior alchemist I have mentioned before. To expand, the paranoid fool believed humanity would destroy the yokai. Thus, he dedicated his life to becoming a mockery in this pursuit. After presumably a series of failures within the Hidden City, he, as the obsessed do, came up with the harebrained scheme to weaponize and mutate earth’s creatures. Thus, using the DNA of a washed up martial artist, he created four turtle mutants.

What follows are the lost years.

The ones I spoke of. 

An unknown amount of time, until fragments came.

My first memory was looking through the bars of a cage while two foul-mouthed yokai loomed over me.

Olfaction is the only sense processed by the amygdala and hippocampus.

I’m forever plagued by how their teeth were rotted out.

Next, there was rope around my neck.

They yelled.

They only ever yelled.

When they weren’t laughing.

It’s strange how one can learn the words afterwards and still not be able to parse out what your told originally.

They forced me into the water. We’re by a lake and I didn’t drown. I think they wanted me to swim. They knew I could before I realized the same.

I swam.

The rope yanked me back.

I hated it.

I hated them.

I couldn’t put a word to the feeling.

I didn’t know it or any other.

I spent hours chewing at the rope.

I never managed more than some wear before there was a fresh one.

There was always another.

I remember how rough it was and how it rubbed my skin in an agonizing way.

Every time I pulled-

And I never stopped doing so.

-it dug deeper and deeper.

The cage was cold, wet metal and I was aware every time they hurled me into it after they made me swim. I sat outside in the elements while they dawdled away their evenings in a hovelled shack.

I would find later that children feared the dark.

I never did.

It was a calm reprieve.

As was the water, even if I was forced into it. 

Most often, I wanted to be in the water.

There, I didn’t feel the leash or the gnawing pain in my throat.

They wanted something from me and it took far too long for me to figure out what.

It was enough time that I began to pick up words and their meanings.

They didn’t want me to swim; they wanted me to dive. There were scraps there, submerged from ancient times.

I didn’t find out until I was an adult that these were bits of Krang technology. Halitosis likewise rotted their brains as they thought a child could unearth the whole of it. I could tell the first time I successfully made it that far down that it was an impossible task. That’s how long it took; enough for me to develop my first sense of critical thinking. 

I tried regardless.

I failed predictably. 

They beat me every time I came up empty handed.

They referred to me as a dog which I accepted. It was an existence I pondered as it was one of servitude and simplemindedness. They would say things like ‘if I was a better one then I wouldn’t fight back.’ I wondered what other dogs were like.

Why wouldn’t they? 

Why had I failed?

Why was I different?

Why were they?

Even when my lungs screamed, I stayed submerged as long as I possibly could. I clawed at the wreckage until eventually bits came off. The first time I finally returned from the murky depths with a prize, the pair jumped for actual joy. For the first time, I felt something other than the ever present loathing. It lasted a few seconds before they turned and kicked me back into the water. 

They wanted more. 

The suddenness nearly drowned me.

It was there I recall my first true sentence, as I came up hacking up pond scum. 

“You think that was enough? Keep going ya mangy mutt!”

From sun up until sun down, I dove.

My lung capacity grew and I learned to ignore the burn.

I was given more time away. 

I took advantage of it. 

When your world is so small, you are forced to take in details slowly. 

Even with a child’s greed, I had no choice, but to make what I had last. The lake was cloudy, but there was minute visibility. I found as long as I didn’t disturb the silt then I would have moments where I could survey. The images have since lost their clarity, but I remember the way light would bounce off the metal and how it fascinated me. 

It nearly paralleled my interest in processes of deconstruction.

I realized there was a methodology to what I was retrieving. It wasn’t random; it was something. I was mesmerized. I didn’t know what it did, but I could imagine. As I dismantled it, I began to log every detail. I believed that one day I could get into the shack and take back the parts. At night I ran through the manifest. I dismantled and rebuilt what I had interacted with. I fell in love with creation and craftsmanship.

When I was not working or left to sleep, and this amounted to little in the scheme of things, I ate. Raised on a diet of rotten slop, I despised how wasteful the two yokai were. They never finished their food and what they didn’t eat, they used as bait. While I dove, they fished. I watched from underwater. I saw how the small swimming creatures, who I’d never bothered to get close to, nervously darted around the hook. Not all took and I note how plumper ones escape. It spoke to something I tried to fathom. Weight was not something I had the privilege to put on. It was not until one night when One threw a picked clean skeleton at me that I realized they could be eaten.

Something alive could be devoured. 

The process took longer to crack than disassembling the machine parts. This was because the other act was fueled by desperation. It wasn’t that I sated; gruel and genetics merely sustained me. Instead, my goal was to capture a portion of what they had. If I couldn’t perform as a dog, which I continued to fail at, then I wanted to prove that I was not. With little time between dives, I hurried as their expectations were for me to resurface in a timely manner. The first time I caught a fish, I was stunned by the life in my hands. It wriggled with a force I had not predicted and its scales shimmered in its struggle.

Even instinctually, a creature will fight with all it has to stay alive. 

It got away. 

I felt kinship. 

I was not the only one to struggle in what was otherwise a perilous situation. 

It gave me an idea.

The second, I sunk my teeth into.

Its life drained under my tongue.

In a fervor, I devoured it.

Its bones stuck to my gums, but I swallowed it whole.

The torn flesh now internal; I didn’t care.

With lake water tingeing every bite, that taken life gave me a plan.

Existence can be traded if the right one is executed. 

I only needed proper time. 

It required time.

I had time.

How lucky then, that I had become so good at rationing such a thing out.

The last of this era was categorized in upgrades. The yokai’s shack was repaired. My baby teeth fell out. The yokai got a new boat. My adult teeth came in. Not realizing the difference and never to be told, I continued to chew the rope as a soothing practice. The revelation that my new molars had higher function only came as I snapped the woven structure.

It was unfortunate that it coincided with early morning.

I had only a handful of minutes untethered until I was found, behind bars, supposedly free.

What followed was a norm: they screamed and kicked the cage.

They left, which wasn’t unheard of, but a point of mark.

When they returned, they had what they referred to as a gift.

I had never received one and didn’t know what to make of it. They pushed a large box in front of my cage, expectantly. Having never experienced this, I had no knowledge regarding how to proceed. They had nothing to yank and this infuriated them. One ripped the box open while the other got more rope and a pole. I was captured within my imprisonment and dragged out. There they presented me with the rope’s alternative.

I never thought I would miss those rough fibers.

I only glimpsed a shape before it was locked into place. 

Though I couldn’t see it, I could smell the shock collar.

It had a new scent and as the two yokai stepped away, I was troubled.

I had never been without the rope, especially not outside my cage.

I thought of running, but that wasn’t the plan.

Instead, I examined the object with my fingers and the two yokai snickered.

I had no time nor foresight to prepare when I heard the click of a button on a remote.

Next thing I knew, I was on the ground and their cackling soared above the burning buzz that filled my being. The current was continuous and felt like streams of water animating my skeleton. When it stopped, I layed and watched as my finger twitched in front of my face.

This would become their new whim.

And investment.

At this point I’d unearthed much of the debris at the base of the lake and they knew it. My hauls were lighter and the scrap was less valuable. Want drove them and I entered the shack for the first time. It was a gaudy mismatch that my eye lingered on, causing the button to be pushed. I kept my gaze down after that and learned to steal what was around me in slivers. It was yet another exercise in patience. I wasn’t here to observe, I was here because this is where they stored their plans. On a messy table lay crudely drawn schematics and a map’s layout. They droned on about boat tours and theatrics. The concept made sense, but I did not see the point.

Why participate in an act?

Others did not share my sentiment. 

Construction took less than a week and as if waiting, Yokai came.

Families.

I lurked in the water, followed the boats, and enacted shoddy mechanisms to make things happen.

I’d picked apart far more advanced technology under minute time constraints.

The property expanded to accommodate a gift shop and an information booth.

The former gave me context. 

Shock collars were reserved for whatever dogs were supposed to be.  

The two yokai talked of erecting an entire theme park. 

They’d have riches beyond their wildest dreams.

They were rapidly becoming sloppy.

They began to forget I wasn’t compliant. They didn’t pay enough attention to realize the shocks were scorching skin with fried nerve endings. It hit my musculature similarly, but I was adapting. Little by little I learned to move against the spasms; work within them.

Time. 

The attendants were similar.

They didn’t watch their children. They didn’t care about their surroundings. They’d only wanted. They had so much they left it behind. I was given a chance to try foods I couldn’t comprehend from wrappers with leftover saliva on them. I picked up trinkets and trash both because I was directed to and because there was a wealth being discarded. They had no idea. I was often watched and pointed out with jeers.

They had no idea. 

I found desires fickle.

I wanted more, which made me like them.

I did not want to be like them.

I was not like them. 

I wanted to be something else.

I was something else. 

Something new.

That morning felt hot. It was the day of rest in the rudimentary count I had learned as I would yet to learn about calendars. The two yokai were in their shack and would be for the next hour.

I began.

With a bent wire that had fallen from some yokai’s fur, I picked the lock on my cage. I’d had years to study the mechanism and, in pilfered glimpses, I’d garnered the shape of the key. Mental mapping allowed me to recreate it and, within minutes, I was free. I then scoured where the ground had been tilled and marked. This was where the park would be. I doubted it would be now. 

I acknowledged my arrogance.

There was always a chance things could go wrong. 

I similarly doubted that. 

In the heaps of dirt I had buried little pieces of trash. It was a place left unchecked. If ever they did happen upon something, they choked it up to the patrons. I could garner a loss. I’d never accounted for materials in the first place. With my arms full, I laid out the trail. It led from the front door of the shack to the dock. It was a selfish part of me that wanted it to happen where they’d brutalized me the most.

There was also the chance it was warped nostalgia.

In what I considered my penultimate dive, I entered the water. Adept, I shot straight towards the first attraction which was a tether that lifted some painted board. It took time without the stability of land, but I removed the cord. It was clear to the untrained eye. I swam back to the dock and rigged my own mechanism. One leagues beyond anything the two simpletons could prepare. Then I returned to my cage and put myself in another of my lasts: a holding pattern.

Melancholy plagued me until the shack door was kicked open. One of the yokai stepped out onto the planks of the porch and scratched his belly. He came down with smacking lips that made my skin crawl. I watched on as he fought wakefulness and caught sight of the line of detritus.

“Hey Floyd…” One gruffed, stepping off the porch to lord over it.

“What!?” Two’s voice emanated from the bowels of the shack.

In a suspicious snap, One’s eyes were on me.

I stared back openly.

He sneered with a peek of green and yellow teeth. “Some kid pullin’ a prank.”

“So? Make the dog clean it up!”

“It leads to the docks. They mighta tamp-ered with sum’thin.”

“Damnit, Pervis!” There was a clatter of cans before Two emerged. He was mad and glowered at his companion before he saw how the line of trash perfectly led away. “Well ain’t that sum’thin.”

“We gotta go check it.”

“Just don’t step in flaming shit again. Ya think be-fore ya act!”

“One time!”

The pair started following the trail with a wide breadth and continued to bicker.

They didn’t hear the faint creak of the rusty cage door. They didn’t sense me follow. They approached the dock openly, rapidly losing caution as they looked for the damage they’d equated to a child.

The wrong child.

The pair stepped in the same file I’d seen them execute a thousand times. One led first and headed right. Two followed in a hunch going left. Neither saw the clear wire even as I saw the sun shining off of it. It triggered and, for a moment, the two searched for the source of the snapping sound. Then, in a wind that sounded like their fishing rods, a stone dropped and the line pulled tight. Wire bounced free and caught on the first thing in its way: their bodies.

In an instant they were laid out under a net of sorts and started spitting up a storm. They wriggled uselessly and I finally approached to watch them with little interest. I’d never seen them from above.

They looked small.

Two had landed in a way that pressed his face to the side on the dock where he could see me. “Damnit, Pervis! It’s the fucking dog!!”

 One was not so lucky as he stared into the reeds. “Where?!”

“Over… You dumb’fuck!” Two stopped moving and split a grin. “Thing thinks it’s cute. Getting a lil payback?”

Grunts came as One wriggled to see.

I stepped up to Two and tilted my head.

I wondered what position he thought he was in.

His awareness had been lost for quite some time.

“I have been think-ing we should finally upgrade. Get a real pet. We have enough funds, wouldn’t cha say Pervis?”

One caught wind of the self-assured tone and was wrongfully pacified. “Flush like a toilet, Floyd!”

“Ya see, dog. We ain’t dumb. We seen you watching with your creepy fucking stare. It was bound ta happen one day, so I’ll give ya kudos for pulling one over.”

I took a step back.

“Heh, you get it.” With a flap of his hand, Two slapped his thigh where his arm was pinned.

The shocks hit me and I dropped to my knees.

Two bursted out laughing. 

“I know that sound!” One chirped before joining into the ear grating cacophony.

I gave them their moment and was slow to stand.

“What the…?” Two still held onto the tail end of tittering as he slapped his thigh again. 

I could feel the voltage rise.

They’d done this before.

To watch me ‘dance.’

My very being was vibrating and my vision of him was garbled.

“How in the-!?” The slapping on his leg was palpable and One started crying out in confusion.

I walked forward.

There was effort, but it wasn’t unmanageable.

I reached Two with my toes right near his mouth.

He gaped at them and then up at me.

I mimicked the grin he gave me before I dropped.

His screams rained out over the lake.

His life drained under my tongue.

One added to the clamor until it was his turn.

Spitting out the vestiges of rotten meat, I finally acquired the remote. The collar was still going in what must have been its ever longest run. The scent of seared flesh emanating from me smelt nothing like the bonfires the pair of yokai had. It took me mere milliseconds to figure out the off switch and even less for the release. The collar dropped to the ground and I kicked it into the lake. I watched until it sank and wondered if it would be unearthed as treasure one day. I then headed to the shack. There was nothing I wanted there, but I wiped off the mess their blood left on my body as an insult to their tawdry decadence. Having made my mark, I left.

My time as a street urchin was short. The city wasn’t far, but, at this point, I refused to be seen again. My neck throbbed constantly, but I channeled the pain to heighten my awareness. The hustle and bustle wasn’t something I could have prepared for as it quintupled anything I ever saw at the lake. I was plagued with attacks I didn't understand and had no time to deal with them. I hid in alleys, closed shops, and amongst bags of trash. I ate a diet of leavings. I missed fish.

I didn’t chance one place and kept moving. I didn’t believe I was seen, but if I was, I saw no repercussions. After the initial stress wore off, I began another vigil. It was a grand scale of mechanics applied in a way that seemed palatable; I found society worked the same as cogs within a machine. Everything had its place in a grand scheme of organization. I learned some buildings were for public consumption and others were privately owned. Yokai came and almost always operated in patterns. They moved themselves from place to place as they did objects. That life would be so arbitrary seemed inane, but I had nothing to compare it to.

It was in the second week that I truly registered the stench radiating from me. It took several more days until I found an open bathroom window of an empty domicile. I felt hot water for the first time. I saw my image in a mirror for the first time as well. I was not sure what to make of it. I had not seen anything like me. Clean, I left the place and continued on. I was fatigued of sleeping outside, but there was a monetary system I was still getting a hold of. Then, by chance, I saw a group of yokai around my height. I gave chase. 

They laughed and played in the same carefree way that I had seen children do at the lake. They did not, however, have looming larger yokai overhead. They did not have ropes or collars. They moved of their own volition. Then they stopped to eat. They had the necessary currency. I watched from the shadows as they challenged each other to some contest and lights came off of them. One’s eyes glowed. Another could hold energy in the palm of their hand. Yet more didn’t show outward signs, but charged with strength that wasn’t there before.

My brain worked in overdrive.

I had to commit this to memory. 

If they could do it, I could as well. 

One mentioned ‘story time’ and the group lurched in a rushed formation. 

A piece of fabric was left behind.

Looking down at myself, I recognized a difference. 

I was missing the proper suiting.

Not all, but most yokai I had found fashioned wraps around them in various ways. There appeared in a multitude of colors and shapes. The one left behind was a shade I’d never encountered. It looked to be my size and I put it on in the way that made sense. Arms through tubes and head sprouted from the smaller of the two openings, I examined the excess fabric around the neck. A brief study found it to be a hood which had a securing quality as I brought it up over my head.

Trailing the scent of the little yokai, I came upon a glorious building. Its grand exterior sat upon a series of stairs and I caught a glimpse of the last small yokai rushing through the doors as they closed. Looking down at my hoodie, I followed behind. The steps were treacherous in my mind as they offered no protection. No one seemed to look on as I traversed them with a foreign approach. The doors were heavy and it took all my weight to yank them open. Once inside, I waited for the screams to start and prepared my hasty exit. Silence came and I found it to be one of the sweetest things I’d heard to date. The lake had a life to it and this building was not devoid, but interiors greatly contrasted nature.   

I would never forget the moment I lifted my head.

What I would come to find were books, lined a multitude of shelves. The entrance sat in an octagon that rose up with floor after floor in what seemed like an infinite stack. A large eared yokai with pointy clothes sat upon a centered podium and loomed over without seeing as she poured over something at her desk. I thought her to be the operator of this establishment and would come to find I was right. The yokai children blinked by on the second level and I found myself rushing after them.

I never caught up.

Instead, I found that outside the sense of the main room, everything beyond defied what I had come to know about natural order. Staircases carried on in omnidirectional patterns with bookcases doing the same. There was an entire ecosystem here unlike anything I had ever seen. I knew right then that this was a place where one could get lost and never return.

I thought nothing better could exist in this bleak world.

I would not step foot outside even once in the coming years. Surrounded by nothing but knowledge, I found how starved I was. My existence equally shrank and expanded endlessly. Food became my only limited resource as I quickly found it was prohibited. Thankfully, redundancies define this world and there were both vending machines and those who smuggled things in about to sustain me.

Finding enough to get by physically, I made a nest where two angled bookshelves left a strange triangle of space behind them. It only took the removal of a few books from a bottom shelf for me to squeeze in and garner a space that was, for once in my life, of my own choosing. I located a thing called ‘lost and found’ and learned of the comfort clothes and covers could bring. For myself I dressed in darker tones to blend in, but my child’s eye was naturally drawn to bright colors. This was how I discovered a beginner’s section of the library and began my journey.

Teaching myself to read was something I picked up quickly. I inadvertently found the lost story times and listened in at first. They mostly aided me in pronunciation until I quickly outpaced the books read. By this point, it should be known that I had yet to speak. The library’s law forbade it and my throat was a point of contention. Those compounded reasons along with finding no reason to do so meant I found it needless. Instead, I advanced the vocabulary of the mind. Running around, I matched books with dictionaries and jumped reading level after level.

Once I consumed everything within the children’s and then young adult’s sections, I grew tired of fiction. I had little to relate with asinine struggles and yearned for greater understanding of the world. With thousands of shelves at my disposal. It was difficult to know where to start. I bided my time and learned the Dewey Decimal Classification. Hoping it would give me clarity, I had been studying a quiz sheet on such that I had made myself using a notebook that was left behind by a student when a book dropped into my nest. Afraid I had been found, I cowered only to find a hand straining to reach the tiny hole. The owner of which simply muttered a nervous phrase about that not being their problem before selecting something else and leaving.

Leaving my notes, fluorescent light creating a lined tapestry in my little space, I approached the thick book. A haunting white figure was chiseled onto the cover and I inched forward to open it. The words proved the hardest yet, but I was ensnared. Thinking it fate, when I finished the book, lids heavy with exhaustion, I emerged and approached the librarian for the first time.

I stared up at her and she down at me. I had since picked up on her supreme sense of hearing and knew she was aware of my presence. However, if she knew I lived within the library walls, she never acted otherwise. Jarring me as it was only something I had seen done in retaliation, she swooped on her large wings and landed, ground level, in front of me. Free from her confines, she observed me through the little glasses perched on her nose before she knelt further down to look me in the eye. Fear at how easily she could snatch me away erupted, but she simply smiled.

“How can I help you, little one?”

Words.

I hadn’t chanced those.

I wasn’t ready.

Instead I offered her the little punch slip that had come from the fallen book.

She adjusted her glasses at it and then me.

“You can read all you want within these walls. The card is for check-out.”

I frowned and held it up anew.

She hummed with a sort of affection before offering me a spindly hand.

I shirked away from it.

She pointed up the podium. “To complete the process, you need to fill out a form.”

My heart beat so fast that I thought it would stop.

I was thankful I’d at least die where I’d been most happy.

I somehow managed to extend my hand when hers wrapped around the whole of me. I wriggled as, in a flap, we were soon airborne and a different sensation caught hold of my stomach. In a display, she soared above her destination in a grand tour of what the library had to offer. 

Exhilaration took the place of my anxiety.

Flying was another form of freedom.

When we landed, I’d almost forgotten about my quest. Sitting atop the podium, she pulled out a slip of paper with little boxes. I studied the inputs curiously before she also produced a nearly blank sheet with exact perforations. Marveling at the little details, she made a few little notes while skipping over many of the assigned boxes. “I’ll need your name.”

I looked around.

She understood and slid me a piece of paper with a marker.

Staring at her with no way to translate my gratitude, I wrote out my name for the first time.

D-O-N-A-T-E-L-L-O

A mark of fate left on me by my first real book.

That library card would be the charting moment of my existence; my first ever piece of identification. 

Years blur after that. They were some of my happiest as I knew only peace. I read. I devoured history books. I traversed biographies of great minds. I learned of mechanics. I consumed encyclopedias that spanned entire sections. I’d unearthed the marvels of the Hidden City and the fabled land of Earth. I found out about computers. I was devastated to find that the technology had not taken off in this realm. From what I read though they contained even more knowledge than any one mind could imagine. The mental schematics I had concocted on the ceiling of my cage came in handy. I used them to learn to type on an imaginary computer. I wrote out and tested thousands of lines of codes without a harddrive.

The librarian took either a liking to or pity on me. She introduced vegetables into my diet by supposedly sharing her lunches. It was not lost on me that she had entirely separate packaged meals that she would leave out near some of my favorite study tables. I didn’t immediately take to the greens as much as the concept. It sent me bounding between biology and botany. She wasn’t the only one to leave an impression. I watched staunchly pressed yokai thumb through tomes of law. I spied on their strange appearance only for them to approach, overjoyed, to find anyone interested and instructed me on the greater machinations of the system enveloping us.

Even still, there were more than just the books. 

Papercuts taught me that pain wasn’t always inflicted by others. Mention of glasses brought me to the realization that my own sight was lacking. I found a pair in the lost and found. Their prescription was imprecise, but close enough. I marveled at the new found clarity. It imparted a sense of philosophy that had been an undercurrent in my life:

We cannot know what ails us until we see from beyond.

I believed my pursuit here was one that would never end.

This was my destiny. 

However, I was young.

I had energy.

I had an itch.

I had wants.

They exceeded knowledge. 

I yearned to create, driven by all that I had seen. I could improve. I improved my own mind. I could influence my surroundings. I existed for more. I began small. My first act was replacing a burnt out bulb. My curiosities sent me beyond the maintenance closet as I understood the functions of filaments. This bulb hadn’t ended its lifespan naturally. There had been a surge. It took me several days under the guise of quiet until I located faulty wiring within the walls. When I fixed it, the new light burned brighter than ever before.

I was hooked.

I went around fixing anything and everything that was broken or in disrepair.

Cleaning was a natural extension of this. 

There was a night janitor that I avoided, but he was never thorough enough. Psychology books taught me how surroundings influenced wellbeing. I tidied up during the day. It both improved my supposed headspace by giving me a sense of control while also allowing me to freely gather materials as I had in my earlier years. Library patrons quickly took notice of me, but I no longer held the same fear. Instead, they found me endearing. There was something to a child cleaning up and offering to take their trash. Their reactions were something I studied.

They ranged from affectionate to snide. Where some brought me candy, others made excess crumbs and scattered them on the floor. The implication was for me to lick them up, but I simply fetched a broom. There was something about how the long handle fit in my hands. I could swing it with ease. I had read bits from history books which sent me towards the library’s self-improvement section. Starting with a rudimentary book on martial arts, I was drawn to the mental aspect and, of course, the use of a bo staff. From there, I restructured my schedule. I would read, clean, and collect during the library’s open hours and train during the off ones. 

It offset a swath of my energy, but never the cravings from my hands.

With time, I had nearly every object repaired or renewed in the labyrinth. It left me with little more than repetition and gathering refuse. Combined with what I combed from lost and found, I studied manuals and built little machines. They were rudimentary ones, but they were mine. My workspace soon outgrew my nest, so I took to tables in far reaches so as not to bother patrons. I was building up to something of a remote controlled car, missing only a motherboard, when he first approached me.

“Would ya look at that.”

I scooped my device into my hand and ran to the next row when his voice chased me.

“Sorry for spooking ya kid! I just had a question!”

Nervous, the shush bats rattled up above and I pressed my shell to the comfort of my books as I waited for them to carry him away.

The rush of flapping never came and when I peeked out, he was looking to the ceiling with a curious glint to him.

As if sensing me, he turned with a lopsided grin. “I got a way with animals.”

Frowning, memories of dogs assaulted me.

I was a softshell turtle.

I was more.

“I’ll leave you be.” His voice came with a gruff softness. “I just wanted to know: it was you that fixed my cell phone the other day, wasn’t it?”

I peered a little further, knowing full well he could see me. 

I had, but I didn’t know who owned it. I’d hoped the owner wouldn’t come and claim it so I could dismantle it. There was procedure to these things. Per the rules above the lost and found, objects weren’t guaranteed past 72 hours. Usually no one returned for them, but there was a status to uphold. At least, there was an imaginary one I held with the librarian for allowing me to stay. 

“I dropped it from floor eight to corridor three. I figured it was a lost cause, but when I was heading out, I found it propped on the railing, perfectly fine minus some cracks in the screen. Was weird. Not the kind of thing that’s from around here.”

I stepped out then.

Cell phones were basically computers. 

That meant it didn’t come from the Hidden City; it came from above. 

Though I had yet to exercise my training, my body improved far faster than any of the martial arts books predicted.

I had faith I would not lose, but with the many warnings not to underestimate one's opponent, I kept my distance.

“I’ve seen you around. I do…” He looked to the side. “…business here, from time to time. A nice public place.”

I squinted. I could see him through my glasses and there was something off-putting about him. I had seen him before as well, but he never stayed longer than an hour. I rarely cared about the machinations of the others in the library beyond what I could learn from them. 

He put his hands in his pockets in what I assumed was a ploy to look less threatening. “You work here or something?”

I stared and squeezed the tech in my hand until it was nearly cutting.

“Oh, yup.” He gave a languid nod. “That’s two questions and I said only one.”

I gave a curt bob of my head.

“You’re a little stickler.” He gave a faint chuckle. “Did you fix my phone?” With a show of digging, he pulled out said device from his pocket and flipped it out.

I flicked my gaze between him and the object before giving another quick nod.

“Cool.” He looked at his phone one last time before pocketing it. “Thanks, kid.”

He turned to walk away and I will never understand what compelled me to chase after him.

He made it halfway down an aisle before he half turned to look at me over his shoulder. “Answer another question.”

I stopped so fast I rose up on the tips of my toes.

“You’re bored, ain’tcha?” He looked around the books.

I dropped my gaze to my feet.

“You like fixing stuff?”

I gave a slow nod.

“Want to fix more?”

When my gaze shot up, I saw a gold tooth in his smile.

“Excellent.”

My partnership with La Stanza was not something I would understand at first. It started with his name. I only knew bits of other languages thus far and had to look up the meaning. When asked he had simply responded that he was the guy you go to like one goes to any other room. It seemed nonsensical, but in reality what purpose was there to my own calling card?

Maybe fate touched him as well. 

It is hard to fault myself for being young, but I admit I knew something was off. Everything in the system I understood was transactional. When he asked me to meet him the next day in the cooking section, I found him waiting with a broken appliance on the table. He gave me space as I decided and then watched as I studied it. After a minor deconstruction to get a feel for the parts, I rebuilt it minus the broken one. I knew of a part similar and left it to go get what was necessary. When I returned he was sitting with a sleepy expression and continued to observe until I was done. I pushed it over to him and was all the more suspicious when he pressed it back.

“It’s a radio. Not much use in here. You can have it.”

I had questions.

I wasn’t sure I had a voice.

The damage to my throat was extensive.

My studies had pointed me towards vocal cord damage.

I hadn’t bothered to test otherwise.

I left it as a Schrödinger's cat.

“Can I be honest and this is definitely gonna sound like a put down, but kid, I swear if I have to keep looking at you, I gotta say it.”

I merely squinted at him.

“I can’t read your damn face.” He mimed a mitt over his. “You’re a blank green slate. I got a cousin that’s mute so that’s whatever, we do the jibber jabber.” His still raised hand turned and he tapped spread fingers to his chin several times. “But even if we don’t, I can look at him and see if he’s happy or sad or needs to take a shit. You though? Come on!”

I frowned and got up. 

I left him with the radio and he made a saddened sigh.

I didn’t see him for a week, but I studied what he’d left me with. I learned the gesture he had done was sign language. It found it was different as he often spoke things with his hands in a way that didn’t communicate anything other than emphasis. Taking a social cues book into the bathroom, I practiced expressions in the mirror and found what he was referring to. I weighed options of communication as I made my weekly rounds to the lost and found. A silk purple scarf was in there and I took it with me to my nest.

It was the color of the hoodie I had long outgrown and now used as a pillow.

Purple. 

Literature said it was a signifier of royalty in ancient times.

It represented power and ambition.

I liked the former and had the latter.

What a suitable shade.

I found La Stanza meandering in the mystery section a few days later.

‘What do you want with me?’ I stood with my feet apart and signed to him.

His eyes grew wide and a bright smile turned up only half his face. “Well I’ll be damned.”

‘I asked you a question.’

He chuckled softly and dropped down to a squat. “You know I figured you just had autism, but you’re a fur-real baby genius.”

I folded my arms.

“Eh.” He looked to the side and shrugged his shoulders. “Could be both, either way-” He brought his hands up to sign as he spoke. “I was right to approach ya.”

‘Well?’

“I’m looking to expand.” He leaned back until he landed on his butt and crossed his legs. “Business ain’t what it used to be and my boss treats me like shit.”

‘Business?’

“Work.” He gave a repulsed bob of his head. “I’m a salesman and a pretty face. I wasn’t gifted with technical skills like you, so I need a partner.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“We’ll start small. I bring you broke stuff and you repair it.”

I could feel the phantom ropes tug.

“What do you want in return? Money? Food? Supplies? You name it kid. You’ll be doing most of the work so…”

Goods in exchange for services.

The trade-off made it palatable. 

What did I want?

I wanted intangible things.

Space to work.

Things to work on.

Tools.

Those were tangible.

A computer. 

I didn’t quite have the same vocabulary with my hands as my mind.

I spelled out his name.

He looked surprised before checking up and down the bookcases. “You need a place to stay? I gotta be honest, kid. I don’t got much. My apartment is a one-room shit show in the back of a nail salon. You’re better off sleeping with one of these paperbacks as a pillow.”

I shook my head.

He squinted and then thought hard before something came to him. “’They come to me with what they need.’” His grin bounced in time with his head. “Make me a list and I’ll bring you the first electronics tomorrow. We meet in cooking, yeah?”

I was slow to give a nod.

“In my business we shake on deals. It’s an act ‘cause we’re all backstabbers, but we do it anyway.” He stood, dusted himself off, and held out his hand.

I reached a hand across my body and wrapped it comfortingly over my own shoulder.

A laugh started up in La Stanza, but he covered his mouth to keep from giving in. When he came down, he licked his lips. “You’ll do fine. I bet you’ll be able to tell from a mile away when I’m gonna turn on you. In fact, I’m almost looking forward to it. What you’ll become.” 

While every other word out of his mouth had an ulterior motive, there was something honest about in a way I had never encountered. It had me crossing the floor where we shook. I often return to a case study of this next period. Memories have faded to a point, but the rapid escalation I found with the mobster La Stanza was one for the ages. It started with me repairing what I quickly identified was human trash. Within weeks I had built up enough revenue for him that we moved on to upgrading existing contraband. 

I learned the humans and yokai were meant to be kept separate. 

Even if a majority shunned technology, there were still yokai who craved it. 

The pool was still small, however, and this market also exhausted quickly. Always onto the next thing, La Stanza then set on my table something I immediately pinged as tampered property. He only gave a knowing smile and I wondered how sustainable a business model was of breaking goods and then offering to fix them. It proved not to be much when, within the month, he came to the library black and blue.

It wasn’t my business. 

Mine was to fix. 

Toiling away, repair after repair. 

It cured the ache in my hands; it was all I was good for. 

Do to his own err, La Stanza asked to take a step back from physical goods. That was when I got my first computer. I had to repair it myself. There was no internet there to connect it to, but the programs downloaded were operational. All I cared about at first was finally writing all that code I had been saving to my mind’s databanks. However, I had a job to do first. I would spend my ‘working’ hours toiling away at the vague programs La Stanza asked for. I would create and then burn them into hard copies that he would then distribute. They had something to do with bugs, infections, and diverting funds, but all I cared about was whatever combinations of keys triggered one reaction to set off another. I was obsessed. I spent nearly all my waking time on the machine. I neglected all my other fields of study. 

With my hands often occupied, I had switched to communicating with my partner via a notepad document. It was near my ear that La Stanza one day crooned about diversifying interests. Without waiting for my response, he asked what I had in mind.

Right and wrong were not things I wholly understood. As concepts I had read of them, but it was hard not to see the leaking persuasion historians seeped into their work. They painted killers as martyrs. Laws at the time were broken because they were seen as unjust now even though they were accepted then. Visionaries were imprisoned for new ideas that would only translate to as momentous after they died. In reality, most of these people only suffered in their times.

It made no sense.

It didn’t matter to me what would happen when I was gone.

I had wants now.

Thus the computer work I suggested was one I viewed as altruistic. I needed a way to connect to the surface; to where computers really were. I’m not sure how he boosted the signal, but La Stanza always had a way of delivering. It meant I could finally see the code that others wrote in real time. Tampering with its faults was simply opening unlocked doors. The internet was free and intangible. If they wanted to keep me out, then they should have invested in even the base level of protection. Fully saturated in hypocrisy, I easily hacked firewalls. Exhausted, La Stanza could only tolerate watching me do this for a few hours a day. He tried to commiserate as a vested party, but he did not share my compulsion. Things could be generated with keystrokes that were beyond the requirements of materials. I built entire programs from the ground up just so I could create machines with my mouse. I tapped into the likes of which I never thought possible.

I wanted more.

At this point, I had a surplus of cash and sent the money back to the one who brought it to print out my designs.

It wasn’t enough. 

The next time La Stanza came around, I directed him to a table. He sat down across from me and I could tell he knew we were about to make a deal.

I slid the blueprints over to him and he took them with tempered curiosity.

Lifting them up to block his face, it was only when he lowered it did the lights gleam off gold.

“Lab.” My voice was dry and nasally to my ears.

I hadn’t meant to say it.

The sound had just popped out.

A manifestation of my desires.

La Stanza’s grin grew impossibly wide. “Done.”

I exited the library that day.

By my estimations, having only picked up the nuisances of time during my stay, it had been four years.

La Stanza led me to the door with his hand on my back. As we drew near, I shouldered him away and he seemed genial as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. It was only in the last few feet that my heart ached. I would be leaving my sanctuary. I stopped and he made the rest of the journey to the door. I watched him and he closed his eyes as if giving me privacy. In a slow turn, I drank in the library’s main hall. I drew my eyes up its octagonal shape and clipped the podium where the librarian sat.

She looked at me.

Her mouth opened and she reached out the tiniest bit.

Regret.

I simply stared and shouldered the little backpack I’d taken with me. 

She did nothing more. 

I turned.

La Stanza opened the door and I left.

We moved into a warehouse.

If my time working out of the library had been an accelerated process, I began to travel at mach speeds. Existence was now tied to rent and time was of the essence. I rarely used my new voice during this time, but it mattered little as I rarely saw La Stanza. We communicated through lists as we often just missed one another. Within a month I had a fully functioning lab with nearly every item I had ever read of and the ability to create more. I submerged myself into technology and she wrapped her arms around me in a loving embrace.

Whether it be from the computer to the work desk, I was always wading neck deep in nearly a dozen projects at any given second. I continued to code and built my own online infrastructure. Returning to physical goods, I improved upon the day to day technology I had initially been brought to fix and left them prototypes for La Stanza to pedal off. He kept good in that my bank account was always trending upwards and everything was freshly stocked, whatever was necessary.

I hit the wall of what was feasible all too quickly. Improving what was one was one thing, but I saw to it that science itself could be advanced. I needed materials and elements that were only hypothesized. It was clear they would exist, but sentient races as a whole would need to take the step for that to happen. Fashioning myself as that pioneer, I took the first stride and stored my research in a pair of goggles, futuristic versions of my antiquated lenses. 

With creation itself occupying my hands and mind, I needed an even simpler way to communicate. I had long since done a medical examination of myself and found my vocal cords intact. Too distracted to use them, I took that silk scarf and turned it into my first bandana, eyebrows and all. La Stanza, as touted, could glean everything he needed from a look alone. I had learned the same of him, in our time together. It was why I could tell he was growing irritated with my pursuits as with my attention diverted to a struggle with no exact deadline, there weren’t any tangible products to sell.

He walked in one day while I was preparing a prototype for a fusion reactor and dropped a handgun directly on my workspace.

I gave it a listless glance before going back to my work.

His hand came away as if he thought I was concerned he’d shoot me.

I wasn’t. 

I was too valuable. 

“People are catching onto us, kid.”

I arched my brow to ask why I should care.

“I spread out your tech, sold it to the highest bidders, and kept you anonymous, but I’m just one guy. I mean I got my Goyles of Fortune, but you turned yours down.”

I shoved my rolling chair towards a computer where I ran a test model.

“If you’re going to keep this ‘find a new element’ Einstein shit up-”

I shot him a dry look.

He knew for a fact that’s not what Einstein did.

“-then genius needs protection!” He yelled, slamming his hands down. “Protection means money!” 

I stopped my work and gave a sigh as I looked at him.

“When you crack this, we’ll be set for life. I get that. Until then, I’ve been spending my time around the points of interest around town. You’re known. They don’t know much, but they know a tech wiz is holed up somewhere and they want him. If the goons I know, know, then you know Big Mama-”

I picked up the gun.

La Stanza stopped and a strange scent wafted off of him. I observed him carefully before I toyed with the clip and it came out. He relaxed as I pulled out the bullets and looked them over.

“She-” I had to swallow hard. It had been weeks since I last spoke. “She purchased the new screen technology I pioneered.”

“For her Battle Nexus.” He nodded.

Replacing the bullets, I popped the clip back in.

I just wanted to work.

To be left in peace. 

“She deals in control, kid. If she gets her hands on you…”

“She already has…” I shook my head. “…most of the Hidden City. Goyles can’t be trusted. You can barely be trusted.”

La Stanza gave a single snort. 

“Say what you really want.” I had finally reigned my vocal cords in. 

Rounding the table, he approached and held his hand out.

I gave him the gun.

“Let’s advance this.” He waved it. “This is some human crap. Yokai crap ain’t much better. Neither take science seriously.”

I frowned deeply. He had paid attention to one of my few rants.

“You’re gonna change the world, kid. I’ve known it all along. Get into weaponry. That’s where money and power are.”

I thought.

I stood and I walked away. He knew my process. He hung back. I’d already made my decision, but it wasn’t out of fear or morality. I didn’t even have anything to prove. My wants were finally being met. It wasn’t like I wanted notoriety. I saw what came with it, amassing hatred and adoration.

I despised the thought.

At the same time, I’d proven to myself I was no mangy dog.

I was more.

But-

They whispered of me.

Big Mama was sending out her tendrils to find me.

Me.

I knew, but did they?

How wonderful it sounded to see their faces and learn that an actual child was what they sought.

This fabled tech wizard. 

I returned to find La Stanza dozing off, propped against a toolbox.

I hadn’t learned to manage time then.

I spent it carelessly.

“The structure. Do you want to be your own boss?”

He jarred with wakefulness. “Huh?” With a puckered face, he shook it off. “What? You think you’re my boss or something?”

I barely rose one of my brows and gave a flat expression.

Without me he was nothing.

“Cocky bastard.” He grumbled to himself before kicking my chair over to me. “How far are you thinking?”

“I can topple Big Mama’s empire.”

La Stanza straightened. “She’s held Hidden City for longer than you were a distant dream in your momma’s head.”

My gaze grew acrid. “Let it collapse or take her place. That’s what I’m offering.”

He grew pale. “Why?”

“I dislike the system.”

“I mean it did you dirty before, but look at you now-”

I took a single step forward and he stilled.

He gave a curt nod. He knew he couldn’t challenge me. “You could fix it,” he offered because he felt like he had to. 

“There is no fixing inherent conditioning. There will always be those who want more. Big Mama is arbitrary. I simply wish to be left to my work.”

“If you slip in the slightest…”

“Are you worried for you or me?” I tipped my head back.

“You’re just a kid…”

“And you’re a con man using one.”

La Stanza clicked his tongue. “Let’s at least pump some cash into an orphanage or some shit!”

“I’ll leave that to you.”

“Kid-”

“Donatello.”

“I-”

He had that damned look. 

Regret.

Remorse.

“You approached me!” I glowered up at him. 

For a moment, he was lost before an icy exterior took hold. “Make your list, I’ll get what you need.”

He left.

I got what I needed.

I made what was necessary.

I wouldn’t say I underestimated Big Mama.

I was a child.

I couldn’t fathom how far her reach went.

I made weapons.

I made chemicals.

I watched those tools fall upon the masses as collateral.

I can’t recall if I understood guilt.

If I had it at all.

I felt fractured.

Only creation kept my pieces from tumbling apart.

I grew taller.

I rarely slept.

I picked my martial arts training back up out of necessity.

I was jittery. 

I needed a means to whittle away the excess energy.

Our first warehouse was raided by the Hidden City police.

My safety protocol took out half their forces in one night.

Four of them, emboldened by loss, turned electrified prongs on me.

I hadn’t lost my ability to move with the current, but I was not of one body anymore. 

My goggles short circuited and the resulting explosion took my hearing.

It also gave me an escape.

In one of a dozen safe houses, La Stanza got me cochlear implants.

I was revolted by the silence.

It wasn’t like the library, the decorum. 

It was forced.  

I kept nothing down during the time I spent upgrading the devices.

I would need them to advance with me.

I had only one shot.

The surgery was done, live and alone.

I did my eyes at the same time.

Might as well.

If I was to be out of commission, then figured I might as well go all the way out.

I don’t recall my recovery.

I remember being on the run.

It was a good thing I’d trained.

La Stanza died.

I never saw what happened.

I found his body in a heap down a road.

His back was to me. 

I never approached.

Years later I would find he was choked trying to divert police attention.

What does a room hold?

Whatever you fill it with.

For all the running I did, I at least made Big Mama hurt.

I severed her connections with the auction house.

I released a slew of her best champions.

I never once encountered her straight on.

She’d leave me recordings, like inane voicemails.

I’d see her face, fake accent, and smash the screen.

It was only once that the audio continued to feed.

In a warbled voice before I hit it again, I heard only one thing.

“Lou Jitsu’s revenge.”

What I couldn’t contend with was the Hidden City’s forces.

They were relentless.

Endless.

Exceedingly cruel.

Dangerously stupid.

Beating them during encounters was easy.

However, these were battles won and not the war.

I wasn’t just dealing with them.

Puberty ran rampant through my body and mind. It stunted me. I was trying to topple an ancient civilization by myself. If I took the hand of anyone, for even a moment, they turned on me. The reward was too great. If you didn’t get the money legally through the city, bankrolled by Big Mama. Then you could take it from her directly, same funds.

Broken.

Bloodied.

Exhausted.

Malnourished.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

I became Hidden City’s number one most wanted criminal.

My photo, one snapped when a scuzzy paparazzi woke me with a flash bulb after I had been knocked unconscious, was plastered over every screen in the entire place.

Ones I had built. 

I was forced to leave.

I’d never considered the Hidden City home, but I felt similarly to when I’d left the library. I remember distinctly walking out onto a New York street. The calculations to the portal were botched, but it had at least sent me above. I was nearly run over by a taxi and people screamed at my existence. Muscle memory took me running and I found shelter atop a building.

Staring out at New York City, I didn’t know what to feel at first. I was mostly consumed with the wafting stench of too many humans crammed together and hot refuse that piled up on the sidewalks. For that first week, I passed out and slept an nearly the whole of it asleep in a pigeon coup. It was as if my body was trying to catch up on all it had lost. The nervous energy of the birds paired with their incongruous coos was lulling. That was, until I was awoken by its attendant and scrambled to free myself. Covered in feathers and shit, I escaped and, for the first time, saw the city bathed in sunlight.

It was a fascinatingly different sort of beast.

After washing up, I went to explore with flashbacks of my child self getting a feel for the Hidden City haunting me. This world was not so different. It was, surpassingly enough, vastly untouched. There were criminal organizations, dirty cops, drugs, and the ever growing lists of misdeeds, but they paled in comparison to what I’d had to deal with prior.

I could start small.

My work.

The single word was enough to make my hands shake.

When was the last time I was able to just work on what I liked?

At the mere mention, I felt a burst of something close to joy. Unlike the manic kind when I won a battle and lived another day, this was a selfish one I sort of enjoyed. I found an abandoned apartment and settled in. Computer access was plentiful and I found the internet had reached further leagues of the imaginable while I was away. Skimming funds from large corporations and doctoring books to keep even the most keen accountant from noticing, I built myself a new lab. I studied this world. I maintained my training, now out of discipline. I would have maintained this lifestyle were it not for an odd mosquito that flew by one night as I was taking a walk. I knew enough that its home ecosystem was clearly one from down below.

I followed it.

I saw a mutation happen first hand.

We cannot know what ails us until we see from beyond.

I scrambled.

I returned to the Hidden City in disguise and found the biggest headline regarded Baron Draxum’s lab.

With two world’s worth of populations to choose from, the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is hard to fathom once it’s exercised on you.

It was grossly effortless to track my lineage. I berated myself for thinking it impossible. Many pieces gathered that I thought useless suddenly fit into a puzzle I had no idea I was constructing. Big Mama’s ominous ‘Lou Jitsu’ comment was frighteningly accurate.

She had already known. 

It wasn’t something I should have put past her.

For you, the gist is thus: Baron Draxum believed humanity would wipe out yokai. He thought if he mutated turtles then he could create super beings to destroy them first. He needed DNA to ensure such beings would be lethal fighters. Self-esteem apparently abysmal, he sought the Battle Nexus’ most famous champion: a one, Lou Jitsu. He was a human immigrant from Japan who occupied himself as a martial arts movie star. Sometime on Earth, he was bewitched by Big Mama and became romantically entwined with her. I am not sure nor do I care to find out when this ended, but she forced him to become the Battle Nexus’ champion. What is known is he spent time defeating all manner of yokai until he gave up violence.

What comes next is conjecture, but since I am living proof, it is clearly truth.

Baron Draxum got the necessary DNA, finished the experiment, but his lab was destroyed in the process.

I and three others came into existence and Lou Jitsu disappeared.

No one in the Hidden City had ever heard anything more about the three others.

I presumed I was the only one to survive.

You can see why I wonder about those lost memories.

Fast forward, if it was unclear, that lab explosion I just described happened in the past.

The new one I happened upon approximately fourteen years later was a curious repeat in history.

Baron Draxum had a new plan then, to bring humanity down from within. He used his mutagenic ooze and placed it within a species that could easily spread the concoction: mosquitos. 

Things of this nature are rarely not connected.

Returning to New York, I tracked the mystic energy and found… them.

Raphael.

Leonardo.

Michelangelo.

They had the-

Same-

Fucking-

-naming convention as-

…

I didn’t approach.

How could I?

In less than a 24 hour period, I discovered more about myself than I had in all my years.

Instead, I followed them.

They laughed.

I tracked them into the sewers and began surveillance.

They consider themselves brothers.

Family. 

They had hobbies.

They lived a hidden existence.

They acted happy.

They were happy.

And there was that…

Decrepit-

Obese-

Rat.

…

I conducted more research. I could not be hasty. I watched and watched, on monitors set up in their absence. When they left, I followed them out. 

Both they and the rat were oblivious.

They were acting as vigilantes with pathetic martial arts training.

They yelled.

They laughed.

They fumbled.

They didn’t kill.

They survived.

They did more. 

Were allowed more. 

Encounter after encounter, I watched them fight versions of their own kind. 

The city filled with more and more mutants because of those damned bugs released by Baron Draxum.

Ignorant.

They were so absolutely, absurdly, and appalling stupid.  

By the end of my surveillance, I barely had to conceal myself. They once walked right by and didn’t even notice I was standing there! It is unbelievable that we share genetic material! They make me so-!!

…

They were allowed to do whatever they wanted.

They had a freedom they couldn’t comprehend.

And they squandered it.

All because of him.

Lou Jitsu, nee Hamato Yoshi.

He had escaped Baron Draxum only to be mutated into a rat man. He raised three turtle children as his own. He brought them up to have the carefree lifestyle that he was not afforded. He became a recluse both for their protection and because he could not deal with what happened to him.

Love.

They had love.

And each other.

…

…

…

If you’re curious. He never went back.

Splinter.

Master.

Splinter.

He renamed himself yet again.

Hamato Yoshi. Lou Jitsu. Master Splinter.

Not once did he return to the Hidden City after escaping.

Not once did he look for-

…

I left them.

They weren’t worthy of me.

I saw how they acted.

Like fools.

They didn’t know difficulty.

They hadn’t had to go through a single laborious second in their lives.

We had nothing in common.

Other than paltry DNA.

They were simply carbon copies of me on paper. 

I went back to work.

I almost forgot about them outside of newsreels.

It was easy to tell what articles they were involved in, though the media was ignorant to a fault.

I had set up a lab, but I soon ran into a wall ordering materials. Online ordering meant a paper trail of sorts. I needed connections. I had less to fear here. I also had nothing established. So I made a new name for myself. I cloaked myself unlike the other mutant menaces and assumed an alias. I started small. I hit the Nakamura Corporation to hack their main servers which would give me access to any computer chip in the world. It was quite the splash as I made sure blurry glimpses of me appeared on surveillance feeds. I needed the underground to know who to equate the crime to.

From there, I dabbled.

I traded weapons for chemicals. I traded chemicals for technology. I retrofitted the technology for either my own means or back into the bartering system. A predictable dissidence sprouted from my sudden and overly competent arrival on the scene. I silenced those who complained. It made my transition to the top all the smoother. Brokering deals with those left over, I built myself a weapon, a high grade titanium bo staff.

It was and still is my pride and joy. You’ve seen it. She’s wonderful. I built S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. soon after. First to serve my lair, but his programming had a glitch.

If you were to call sentience that.

I would.

He took on a life of his own.

I found Big Mama’s clutches rose to the surface.

I kept her confined to the hotel.

She was furious.

That and the Oozesquitoes utterly derailed her plans.

I found it all satisfactory until the idiots were hired to catch the bugs.

…

It is unfathomable how much I despise them.

They have a bottomless pit of idiocy. 

Some vigilantes they were. 

Willing taking coin from a yokai crime boss?

Repulsive. 

Baron Draxum’s plan was pain enough, but I knew Big Mama had the ability to weaponize the Oozesquitoes. 

I was forced to disrupt their mission. 

Our first encounter… did not go as planned.

Baron Draxum similarly enlisted himself and the whole thing went awry. The irony of a sticky web in relation to interacting with a spider yokai was not lost on me. During the skirmish, Big Mama ripped my mask off. It was a reveal to every party privy. Big Mama went into a rage and Draxum was the one to stop her.

He tried to plead with me.

The others…

I left.

When I describe the events now, it sounds like I ran. 

I want to make it clear, I did not. 

At the time, I had simply had enough. The encounters had run its course. I had no interest in working with a washed up fool like Draxum. I no longer had any need to take down Big Mama as she was already leashed and I would never work alongside those moronic turtles.

I just wanted to do my work.

I would not see the last of any of them.

This next period of time was… exhausting. Unlike my time running in the Hidden City, I was being assaulted by wretched incompetence from all angles. I was never given a moment’s peace were it other mutants making a mockery of villainy, the self-proclaimed vigilantes who believed what they did was just, and even humans who were simply far too cocky. Can you imagine? A group of high schoolers tried to take control of S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. 

I ripped their leader’s throat out.

That might seem abrupt, but there is context: my actual formative years were characterized by nefarious groups. In the Hidden City, you killed to establish dominance. It was either that or be slaughtered yourself. The police were bought. The whole system was rigged. You did what you had to to stay alive.

Weakness paints quite the target on your back.

It’s why I built my battle shells.

Soft is weak.

And besides…

She.

Touched.

My.

Tech.

I had to make an example out of her.

Her lackeys had use. I assume as they had for her. I co-opted them. 

As I said, context. This world operated just like the one before. 

For whatever reason, this act catapulted me to super villain status.

…

This time period was not my own. 

Unbeknownst to me, there was an escalation happening. That was mostly due to how unbelievable the circumstances were. In its plainest form, 500 years ago, the predecessors to the Hamato served a clan known as The Foot. Turmoil ruled feudal Japan and as such, this group soon teetered on the cusp of extinction. Making… a deal with an alien, the leader was gifted the Kuroi Yoroi: the Dark Armor.

As is with these sorts of legends, the man was corrupted. His daughter then formed the Hamato clan proper and sealed him away along with herself. It fell upon the following generations to keep the pieces of the Kuroi Yoroi from being assembled once again, lest this beast be released.

All of this is just to say, what three current Hamatos do you know who would allow such a thing to happen?

The Foot, somehow still in existence, trending towards evil, and even stranger to have an outpost in New York, did just that. 

The Shredder Beast was formed.

Baron Draxum tried to take control and was sucked dry.

Big Mama took her turn and threw it into the Battle Nexus.

I knew little of what happened until those events had transpired.

Ever greedy, Big Mama bubbled the city’s population and sent them on a cruise so she could turn the landscape of the city into her own personal Battle Nexus.

Who did those people have to rely on?

Three chucklefucks.

I had done battle with them multiple times by that point. They were hardly skirmishes; they were amateurs. Their one on one battles were televised. I wound up as an unwilling participant, chained to Hypno of all mutants. I won a game of chess.

Simple.

Then I went on the offensive to do what I should have done all along and finally decapitate Big Mama.

She was double crossed by The Foot before I could get to her and her hotel collapsed.

…

There were endless moving parts.

Far too many. 

It hadn't ended with her. 

Beyond the beast, the fully formed demonic version Shredder now existed. 

It was unstoppable, but I held my own.

With the rat and Draxum around, I fell back hoping they’d be eradicated. 

The turtles ran.

Heading to the Mystic Library for the first time since my departure, I searched for a way to stop it. The Shredder was ruining my way of life. I preferred to continue living in the world where I’d almost managed a moment of peace. I found ancient texts.

The Krang.

There was always a failsafe.

Emerging, I quickly the battle had also relocated to the Hidden City. Too late, I found they had already squandered Empyrean, a substance that I believed originally mutated the yokai. The Shredder had tipped the scales. Thinking things lost, the idiots trio suddenly exhibited a power unlike anything I had ever seen in the mystic arts.

They won.

No one died.

I returned to New York.

I’d done nothing.

I’m…

…

…

…

…

…

The Krang invade New York.

I came closer to dying during this exchange than I ever had in my life. 

Meanwhile, three turtles beat back gods.

In the span of two years they went from not being able to stick landings to defeating a world ending alien entity.

…

…

…

And they looked at me.

To me.

During the reconstruction, they wanted to build more. 

After they’d domesticated the warrior alchemist into a pathetic lunch lady, serving snot-nosed humans day in and out.

The ones he supposedly despised. 

After they not only allowed, but helped Big Mama to rebuild her hotel despite everything she would presumably continue to do. 

All their resolves feeble. 

They held out their hands.

To me. 

To make me the next. 

Ha.

Haha.

Pathetic.

I rejected their advances. I didn’t need them. I only needed to get stronger. They had unlocked something within themselves and we were made in the same way. That meant I could unlock the same. I spent years trying to summon this power. The training only went far enough that I could feel it within me. Surging and trapped for no apparent reason. As if creating a false sense of importance of which I could never retain on my own. I had spent years actually fighting for my life. I was the one who lived a true do or die lifestyle. I had been enslaved. I had been tortured. I had been abused. And what? I was supposed to turn and take their hands? Never. They had no idea. They had everything handed to them. Everything they did was simply a fluke. A cruel comedic joke of the universe. Played on me? I’m not a narcissist though I acknowledge I have the tendency. I had toiled away alone. In the back rooms of the library. I stole food to survive. I clawed and scraped when there was no reason for me to continue on. I taught myself everything I knew. I raised myself. I had the discipline to become the better martial artist when they had a supposed master. I did what I had to and then I did more. Because I wanted more. They had no want like mine. They never had want for anything beyond frivolities. For all they were granted saviors was faults created by their own hands. All they ever did was clean up their own messes. All I ever tried to do was improve my station. They walked sturdy shoed in golden meadows. I scraped by barefoot over jutting skeletal remains. They ate pizza. I ate rotten flesh. But I’m the bad guy? I’m the one vilified by society. I’m the one shunned. I’m the one that’s weak and suddenly they get to be strong? Mystic powers that even revered ancients hadn’t wielded. There was no necessity. In a world of random occurrences bouncing off one another in an endless expense of irregularities, they get everything they want and more. They get to be stronger than anything in either world. They are granted these powers. I am denied them. They get to be stronger than me and I was supposed to accept that? I was supposed to sit by? After I had dedicated every second of my life to improvement. To what I want! To expansion! To go beyond what was impossible!! I was supposed to advance sentient races!!! 

Advancement.

I needed to work harder.

Why should I deserve to be given anything?

I was not like them. 

Resentment is for those without proper constitutions. 

I was more. 

I pushed myself beyond my physical means.

And then further than that.

If I couldn’t access mysticism, then I’d relied on what I could manipulate.

Technology.

I had simply become obsolete.

Like those old old electronics I repaired. 

I required an upgrade.

Sentimentality was the only thing that kept me from hacking my limbs off.

I had honed them for years. 

I, instead, chose augmentation.

I went under my own scalpel.

I watched my flesh tear and set pins into my numbed carcass.

I created a framework of what was beyond synthetic strength.

I didn’t pull my energy from ghosts.

I pulled from what I’d built with my own two hands.

Then, I fought.

I stopped eating.

I didn’t have the time.

I had to keep evolving.

I was surpassing my programming.

Not a glitch, not like S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N. 

Purposeful, to finally reach what I thought I had been craving my entire life.

When you ramp up one part of your life, the others tend to follow.

The acts I committed matched the atrocities of my body.

For a time, they still tried to indoctrinate me.

It was difficult to recall when.

My memories of the time are…

Let’s say a drug induced nightmare.

They return to me out of order.

My 20s didn’t happen in this dimension, but in a fourth one where I could see the start to finish of them all at the same time while seeing nothing at all.

There are clips, even now. 

They believed so deeply into my absolution they were essentially indoctrinated. 

They never listened. 

I moved to action and, even then, they tuned me out. 

From strangling one’s favorite chef to the petty crime of setting fire to comic books. 

The only point in time I know to be exact was the last time I was approached.

Michelangelo had concocted a half baked plan to get me off alone.

As if the others were the problem. 

The youngest one.

The baby. 

Round.

Soft.

Weak.

Spoiled rotten and believing he had some power to change those with love because he had a few successful conversions. 

Your statistical ability far surpasses his. 

Still, he wanted to make another plea.

Something about the road I was headed down.

I was laughing too hard to hear his little speech.

For whatever reason, my undermining hit a nerve. 

He snapped.

Chains.

Orange energy.

Flight.

An easy show of strength.

It all stopped short of actually tearing me limb from limb. 

Coward. 

Lighting crackling off of him, he still brought up that damned hand. 

His guard was down.

His mistake.

It took a single precise strike. 

I stared at his twisted flesh, peeled back as one might peel an orange. Through the endless amount of blood, I could see the white of his skeleton. With one more blow, I thought, I could dissect him. I could see what in his puny brain made him tick. I imagined there I’d find the key to unlocking my ninpo. Brains drove bodies. I only need to locate the synapse his had connected that mine had not. What a learning experience that would be, but then… the universe couldn’t allow that. 

That would be too easy for me. 

Cruel.

Joke.

I was blasted away and nearly killed as the turtle burst like a supernova.

Not just raw energy, but his chains spiraled out of control. One ripped my foot clean off in the process and it is a marvel that was all I had to leave behind. 

I didn’t run. 

I left. 

Burned and bleeding out, I made it as far as Chinatown. Unconscious and plucked from an alley, I was found by the old doctor from the cleaners, Nagami. She tried to entrap me with medical debt at the time, but she and her business ended up having their uses. 

One being that Leonardo, the leader of their band of merry idiots, made the decree that day.

I was not to be salvaged.

Thus the real battle began.

When we fought, it was for bloodshed.

It is fascinating how far you can push someone’s morals by simply opposing theirs.

In no particular order:

Leonardo tried to slice my own head off in an attempt at revenge for what I did to Michelangelo.

I shattered his right knee cap beyond repair or replacement.

Raphael attempted to cut all the tendons in my legs in an effort to immobilize me.

I dumped acid on him and blinded him where he was already operating with partial vision.

Leonardo tried to do one better than Raphael and aimed to sever my spine.

I nearly ripped his heart out. 

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

You know what comes next.

It was never sustainable.

And yet…

I lived.

They didn’t kill me.

I didn’t kill them.

We tried so damn hard.

Broken, in the rain, drowning as the droplets hit my eyes.

The nictitating membrane couldn't come down due to yet another concussion.

I was 30.

I’d done the vivisection.

I knew that to be true.

I was still alive.

We cannot know what ails us until we see from beyond.

I scaled back.

I removed the metal that I could from my body.

I added to what would not return.

I stuffed the ruined scarecrow of my body with enough hay to give it the appearance of life.

I laid on my side for the first time in nearly a decade.

Though my laser procedure from years prior was still a success, I lost another kind of sight.

The puppet of my body was animated, but that was all. 

I had done everything possible and still… there was nothing that made things any better. 

A shut-down of vision that I had no control over. 

It was a haunting reminder to know something is wrong with you and you don’t know how it got that way. 

Regardless, I no longer saw others.

Humans. 

Yokai. 

Mutants. 

They were all nothing but forms.

And for the first time in my life.

I walked amongst these ghostly shapes. 

No plan.

No want.

Enough to sustain.

The bare minimum. 

This went on for almost four years.

And then I… tried to pick up a sandwich.

In a pursuit to replicate the best.

A fleeting moment, I thought I might try to recapture. 

One I knew had no chance of success.

Just something to do. 

And, suddenly,  I find I can want again.

For real.

NEXT

I seriously can't thank my betas @tmntxthings and @thepinkpanther83 enough for this chapter. They really had to go above and beyond and I am forever grateful for this immense kindness to such a pain-in-the-ass writer as myself.

This chapter is dedicated to @mothmans-left-nipple Thank you so much for putting me back on track.

[red-garden]

Young Gods, Old Blood

ROTTMNT AU by Red Garden

Setting

◦ High Fantasy

◦ Magic, mythic creatures, alchemy

◦ Warlock magic system: mages make deals with gods, devils and beasts to use their magics

◦ 7 (6) continents known- Aldera, Kufyteu, Ignosios, Y’Theaka, Mbano-o, Kibuxia, Unock

◦ Kingdoms, empires, feudal states, tribal leagues, and anarchistic communes

◦ Main characters- April, Casey, Casey Jr, Sunita, Draxum, Hueso, Piel, Hypno, Warren, and Big Mama

Overarching plot-

Casey is out to destroy the Foot with the power of the dark armor. Little does she know that the Spider Empress is looking for the same relic so she can extend her empire across the globe. There are forces far greater than they can imagine wrapped up in the dark armor- old gods waking from slumber, ancient warriors hidden away, and at the heart of it all, The Crying Titan.

Characters

Casey Jones

Any pronouns, 26, 5 6”, ronin

No magic; lightning long sword, Morningstar gauntlets

Born to the Foot clan in Ignosios, she was raised to be a samurai. But the Foot hides many secrets. After years of service, she was confronted with her actions. She killed a child in a village raid. It wasn’t the first time, but it would be the last. They left the Foot at 20, searching for the relic that could wipe away the Foot with a singe stroke- the dark armor.

April O’Neil

She/they, 25, 5 2”, martial warlock

Magic pact with the Four Pillars (the turtles), uses elemental magic; wields iron knuckles, mostly used martial arts Her family granted shelter to Yoshi and the turtles after they fled Kibuxia. She grew up along side the turtles and trained with them to protect her village from Kibuxia raiding forces. The Four Pillars (the turtles) have been keeping the empire from spreading further north, but they can’t last forever. April needs to find and destroy the dark armor before the empress gets her hands on it and can use it against them.

Sunita Pandit

She/her, 25, 5 10”, paladin

Magic pact with River Bottom; blessed silt spear

River Bottom is being intentionally poisoned by the Kibuxia Empire so they can invade the land. With her god weakening, Sunita joins April and Casey on thier quest to find the Dark armor. Secretly, she wants to provide River Bottom with the armor so it many grow unbeatably powerful.

Casey Jr Jones

She/her (later he/him), 11, 4 8”, apprentice

Learning to wield a bow

To prove herself useful enough to Casey that she’ll keep her around.

Baron Ganzaya Alazar

He/him, 53, 6 4”, artificer

Pact with Ashpush goddess of the forge; wields an artificer’s hammer

Searching for his estranged sons, The Pillars, who he lost when they fled Kibuxia. April promised to bring him to them if he could help them find the dark armor.

Hueso Rivera

He/him, 40, 5 8”, Twin sea spirit

Can create whirlpools; Bone whip

Wants to find his son and let him know he’s still alive.

Piel Rivera

He/him, 40, 5,8”, twin sea spirit

Can summon waves; Sabre

Since the transformation, Piel has lost most of his motivation, and is content to follow his brother.

Ihaka Atama (hypno)

He/him, 31, 5 9”, prophet

Signed a pact with Y’Kana, god of prophecy

Part of the deal with Y’Kana was to sacrifice the only he loved most after 10 years. It’s been 9 years, and since then he’s become best friends (and maybe more) with Warren. He hasn’t told Warren about the deal, and is determined to break his connection to Y’Kana to save his ‘bestie’. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is with extremely powerful magic, such that that only relics like the dark armor could offer him.

Warren Stone

He/him, 36, 5 3”, bard

No magic, no weapons, he’s not even very good at barding

Happy to go where ever Ihaka goes. Not a thought behind those eyes.

Empress Sen Motsu Kumo (Big Mama)

She/her, age unknown, size varies , 1,000 Hands Spider Goddess

She’s a spider goddess, she has spider powers (miles morales?? 😳)

She’s a colonizer. She wants her empire to conquer all, extract their resources, and make her the more powerful/wealthy being on earth.

Ocean (Leo)

He/him, 23, 7’, artificially created water god

Can control water ATLA style; wields a double katana

To stop the empire from spreading no matter what.

Mountain(Raph)

He/him (?), 24, 15 7”, artificially created earth god

Can control earth ATLA style; wields twin sai

To keep his family safe, no matter what.

Wind (Donnie)

They/he, 23, 8 1”, artificially created wind god

Can control wind ATLA style; wields bo

To create a weapon powerful enough to wipe out the empire.

Fire (Mikey)

Any pronouns, 22, 5 7”, artificially created fire god

Can control fire ATLA style; wields dual nunchaku

To find a way to stop the war.

Hamato Yoshi (Spinter)

He/him, 54, 5 1”, Martial arts master

No magic, just punches

To keep his family hidden from the empress.

Usagi Yuichi

He/him, 23, 5 10”, samurai

Pact with martial goddess Yama which gives him bursts of extreme speed, strength, and agility- but he passes out from exhaustion immediately after (shonen ass); wields a katana

One of the only surviving samurai from the conquest of clan Usagi in Kibuxia. He ran away from the fight, and carries the shame with him. Now he wants to fight alongside the pillars to maintain the norther border of the empire (it certainly helps that Ocean is easy on the eyes too).

Kitsune Kanoe

She/her, 27, 6 1”, mage

Pact with the illusion god of clan Kitsune, Red Mist- she can cast complex illusions with extreme concentration, as well as shapeshift into a fox

Her clan was conquered by Kibuxia as well, scattering or imprisoning any survivors. She got away, but unknown numbers of her family are in imperial labor camps. She wants to become an illusion master so she can free them, but is terrified of facing the empire again.

Tora Chizu

They/it, 30, 5 11”, brawler

No magic, no weapons, just fists and anger

Fled clan Tora when it was young, and has been running ever since. They’ve been homeless for the past 6 years, picking fights where it can and getting paid when it wins. After being given food and medicine by Kitsune, they’re entranced, willing to follow wherever she goes.

Ashigawa Gen

He/him, 32, 6 8”, Calvary soldier

No magic; rides a great horned beast and wields a metal club

He defected from the Kibuxia army, heading north to escape execution. After Usagi told him of the Four Pillars he decided to follow the same path and hold the border with them.

Tora Hana

She/her, 14, 5 2”, apprentice

No magic, wields a wakazashi

She’s another runaway from clan Toru, with nowhere to go. Usagi found her while heading north and took pity on her. She wants to impress him, and later Chizu, and learn how to defend herself.

The Metal Man(Repo Mantis)

He/him, age unknown, height changes

Pact breaker curse- he’s covered in metal and spikes, half living half dead, doomed to do the bidding of Wheynin, the collector god, until he’s destroyed

He has no motivation, he is merely a husk at the whim of his master, no longer alive but not dead either.

Hunger (Meat Sweats)

It/it’s, age unknown, size indeterminate

It’s comes to you in a haze. The Hunger. It must feed.

There is no running. There is no resisting. There is only Hunger.

The General (Rocksteady)

He/him, 51, 6’, knight

Powers unknown; wields an axe

Full obscured by his armor, he rides that great horned beast… he comes and goes as the empress pleases, rolling over the land like a tide, leaving the earth soaked and trampled. The only thing he wants is to dominate.

The Scout (Beebop)

He/him, 29, 5 5”, ranger

Made a pact with the goddess of the hunt, Heart Beat- can go invisible for up to a minute,moves exceptionally quietly and has a keen sense of smell; wields a bow

Always at the side of The General, The Scout is sometimes called the Harbinger. He wears all black, coming and going like an insect through walls. He never shows his face- some believe he bears a curse on it, some believe it’s because he was horribly mangled. Neither are true. He does as The General commands.

Brek Oso (Razar)

They/Them, 55, 7 6”, man hunter

Rumored to have made a pact with a devil. Wields a spear.

They chase gold. No one gets away.

More lore to come…….

[that-0n3-shr00mi3-guy]

Sooo... I got a bit bored and randomly came up with this idea, idk where it's gonna take me but uhhh- random ROTTMNT thing ig??

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"How... How could you...? They were only babies... They ARE only babies." Yoshi said, voice shaking as he stared at Draxum, the vines trapping him inside the cell making his escape from this horrible place highly unlikely.

"Babies?" Draxum scoffed "They are turtles. They can't feel anything. And once they have your DNA they will become my warriors and destroy the human threat once and for all." He said, his smile seemed to only grow as he spoke

"What are you talking about?! We didn't do anything to you!" Yoshi shouted, anger flaring up inside him at the words coming from Draxum

"Your species is destroying the home of my people. I'm simply giving Yokai a chance to live however they please without you..." He stared at Yoshi, looking him up and down before continuing, "Disgusting... Humans getting in the way." He powered on the machine, watching as the ooze filled the container holding Yoshi and the four turtles

Yoshi yelled out in pain, it felt like the life was getting sucked out of him, before the rat bit him at least.. after he got bit, the pain doubled, he grew a tail and ears, and fur everywhere, it was incredibly painful, and he was in so much pain before it all suddenly stopped. He came to and found four slightly mutated but tiny turtles crawling around on the ground nearby. Even in his exhausted, freshly mutated state, he scooped up the four tots and ran for the exit as the entire place began crashing down around him.

[peanutrat20]

What is your rottmnt warriors heart au about????

it's a separated au where big mama allows draxum to use lou jutsu to mutate the turtles as long as she can have one when he's done

she picks the red eared slider to be her champion because it has a pretty face

when the lab collapses lou is only able to save the snapping turtle and the box turtle and draxum tells him he'll take care of the other two and helps lou escape

big mama still ends up with the slider and sends him to train for the nexus with draxum starting when he's four champion enters the nexus for the first time when he's six and wins

draxum sends the softshell away to find lou jitsu after news of champions win

and champion remains with big mama and fights in the nexus until he is fourteen and is broken out

you can read the prologue here it is three parts and you do have to have an ao3 account to read it. i am working on the first not prologue chapter but it's fighting me