Electric Youth (Part Four Of The Sunshine Child), a ninja turtles fanfic

Electric Youth (Part Four of "The Sunshine Child")

It was a dangerous display
A beautiful storm
A flash in the atmosphere
And then you were gone
A deadly device
Your electric embrace
Surrounded and swallowed me alive
Now I'm not the same

Strike me down before you burn away
Nothing that can save me
I'm so strung out on the static in my veins
Even when it all comes crashing to the ground
Will you still get me high
Strike me down before you burn away
Like lightning in the sky (lightning in the sky)
Like lightning in the sky (lightning in the sky)

You are a violent design
A perfect attack
A flawless moment in time
I'll never get back
The friction you make
The release you create
You are my one and only way
My way of escape

Like lightning in the sky
Like lightning in the sky

-Devour The Day, "Lightning In The Sky" ("This song is about the power a moment can have in your life" – Blake Allison)

It had could have been different, in a moment, in that span of a few seconds.

" No! Wait a second, guys, wait! WAIT! BISHOP, NO, NOT YET, LISTEN TO ME!"

And Utrom Bishop had paused. He had paused just long enough to see the electricity suck back into Michelangelo's skin like water into sand.

Panting, Mikey had kept his hands raised, pleading, words stumbling over each other. "Just…just gimme a while, please. Look. Give the cannon to Donnie, okay? We-we'll keep it in the lair, and if I start to overload we'll use it, just please please don't drain me right now, please, what if we still need these powers, come on…!"

And something apparently shifted in Utrom Bishop. His robot head twitched. He lowered the energy dampening cannon. "Very well. But you understand I must let the Council know."

" Yeah, sure, tell them whatever! I promise, I'll be good! I'll learn to control it." A massive breath of relief expelled from Mikey's whole being. He was quiet, save for his loud breathing.

Raph had stopped smirking and was staring at his brother, whose eyes were still wide and huge.

Utrom Bishop hefted the large gun into Donnie's hands, eyes narrowed. "Do you trust him?" he asked.

Don blinked. "Well, considering his excitement and his desperate promise to commit to controlling himself, I do trust him. Mikey has matured a lot."

Bishop sighed. "Remember my warning. You do not want to lose him again."

" O-of course not. Never." And Donnie's eyes widened. His fingers tightened against the white weapon, as the Salamdrian commander stepped forward.

Leonardo blinked at his ceiling, crossing his ankles and settling deeper into his pillow. It was still hard to sleep. That had happened. All of that had happened earlier. He could hear the threats of Newtralizer, he could hear Mikey's sudden scream of agony as he was electrified and disintegrated mid-leap…

With a frustrated huff, Leonardo sat up and threw back the covers. Tea, damn it.

It was getting warmer as spring ended but the lair's floor was cool on his bare feet as he walked to the kitchen. Tea.

He was heating the kettle and reaching for one of the calming herbal blends when he heard the scrape of a chair. It wouldn't have alerted him, if not for what sounded like static shock and a whispered "Ow again, damn it."

"Mikey?"

He turned around, and his little brother looked up almost guiltily, his toe still grinding into the floor and his finger still bouncing rapidly on the table countertop – the metal countertop. Leo blinked.

"S-shouldn't you not be doing that?"

"M'tryin to figure out how," Mikey said earnestly. Then Leo understood. Mikey had been randomly touching things, sliding his feet against things, waiting for the static shock to tell him what was safe. But what if nothing was…

Sighing, Leo walked over and gave his brother a one-armed hug. "I'll admit, this is gonna be weird, Mikey. Are you sure you did the right thing in stopping Bishop?"

"Dude, are you even serious right now? Of course. I got this. I mean, I will. Get this. I said I would, didn't I?"

Inwardly, Leo chuckled. Mikey trying to act smooth when everyone knew he wasn't was always adorable. That was one of his real talents, calming down a situation with wit and strange banter until de-escalation.

"Don't laugh at me, Leo, I'm really really trying this time."

Sometimes he forgot just how empathic Mikey now was. "Sorry, little brother, it's just…well, you're my little brother. It's not that I don't believe you'll be fine, I'm just always going to worry about you."

Mikey grinned sleepily and nodded. The water boiled. Leo went and poured his tea.

"Hey," Mikey said, "can you put a tea bag in a mug for me, since you're there? With regular water? Actually, make it cold."

Leo raised an eyeridge. "Okaay…"

He brought the mugs to the table and handed Mikey the cold, barely seeping tea. Mikey clutched it with both hands and stared at it. Slowly, a trickle of light blue electricity emerged from the skin of his hands and crawled toward his fingertips. Leo watched, fascinated. The static jumped from Mikey's fingers to the porcelain, wrapped around it, and if Leo had blinked he would have missed the steam rising.

"Well," he said, "That's one way to practice."

"It worked!" The grin Mikey gave him could have lit the room. "I did it! YES!" Happily, he sipped his tea, feet swinging, and Leo laughed.

Little things like this, he realized. Little tiny things like heating up a mug of water, not huge incredible things like…like battling an elecrokinetic reptile man or blowing up bits of a bug alien spaceship. Or creating a force field to hold back an explosion inside of a damaged bug alien spaceship. If he weren't living electricity, he wouldn't even be here.

That was the other thing. And no matter how many times Raph and April and Karai had gone over it, Leo still wasn't sure. There had been a visible surge in electrical energy from all over the alley, they said, and then it all just…gathered and coalesced and…BOOM. And then there had been a Mikey from the ground up, from the skeleton up, screaming into existence and suddenly ready to run, like a newborn wild creature. There had been no fatigue, no confusion, just there and whole as if he had never been gone. That was what Donnie had been mumbling about on the way back to the lair, after dropping Mona Lisa and Karai off at the Mutanimals' warehouse. Granted, Don himself had been in such shock over Mikey making such a grand entrance that he had somehow forgotten Mikey was alive (had brought himself back to life?) and couldn't stop shaking his head while they waited for Raphael to say goodbye to Y'Gythgba (and it wasn't like he wouldn't see her again, but then Leo remembered how Karai had nudged him). It didn't make sense, none of it made sense, April had reached out to Mikey had had to pull back as if electrocuted, she could barely sense him under the crackling strangeness and the darkness of it all.

"Leo, yours is getting cold," and he blinked, remembering to drink his tea while watching Mikey stim and fidget and carefully spin his mug while murmuring, "I did it, I'm the best, I'm awesome" under his breath.

It was giving Leo room to think. The way he could move. The sheer ability to turn into energy and move in a blink, was that going to cause problems? It had saved him when he jumped from Dregg's exploding ship. But was it costing him anything? Could he be in pain? April had said that Bishop's warning of a burn out killing Mikey seemed extremely serious, but how well did Bishop know the turtles' mutations or Newtralizer's powers? And this was Michelangelo they were talking about. He had lived through some bizarre things. And, Leo mused, he had this odd talent for…attracting weirdness. He was just good at supernatural things. The demodragon seal, for one, they still hadn't figured that out. Kavaxas may have been woefully out of touch by assuming the seal couldn't be fixed (and with chewing gum for that matter) but perhaps Mikey just…had that aura. And it made sense, Leo decided, since after Splinter's death Mikey had gotten spiritually very powerful, enough to become nearly telepathic. This, though, was nothing like that. This was physical actual energy. And it still affected Mikey; he had still had to avoid being shocked by Newtralizer. Donnie said he was going to test that; could Mikey eventually absorb external electric shocks, did he create his own energy or did he draw it from the environment, and where in his brain did he instinctively control his energy. Leo had filtered out the longer words, already exhausted.

And now he just couldn't sleep, and now he was watching Mikey play with raw electricity like a toy, and—

"Mikey, what are you doing?"

Leo nearly inhaled tea and looked up.

Donatello was standing at the table, arms folded. Mikey had apparently been playing with the water, literally playing with it, Leo watched as plumes of steam danced across the table. Mikey's face had the frozen whoops face of a child caught with a cookie. A grin stretched across his face, his eyes still wide and innocent as he looked up at Donnie.

"Heeeey, Dee. How's it going?"

"Michael…" and Leo immediately ducked his head so he wouldn't laugh; Don only used that form of their little brother's name when he was really irritated, "…what did I tell you when we got home earlier?"

"Thaaat I wasn't allowed to perform any electricity tricks and I was supposed to wake you up if I felt like my powers were overloading and I needed a release?"

Really? Leo frowned. He didn't remember that conversation.

"And what are you doing?"

"Yeah, but, Leo started making tea and…"

"Leo, can't you sleep?" And Donnie turned worried eyes to Leo, who straightened and looked nonchalant as he could. "Actually, I couldn't sleep. Too wired up from what happened today."

"Heh," Mikey giggled under his breath. "Wired. Heh." And Leo rolled his eyes, even as he smiled. Well, it was true.

"You wanna see wired, I was wired, I was wired like a boss and it-"

"Mikey…" and Donnie sounded like a disgruntled yet resigned parent.

"Sorry, Dee, I couldn't help it." And Mikey sounded exactly like a chastised, actually apologetic, hyperactive child. Leo inwardly slapped himself; he was obviously loopy.

"And I decided to make tea," Leo said, as if he were a hand slapping against the table ending whatever standoff between parent child. "And I heard Mikey, uh, experimenting with his powers. He asked if I could put a teabag in cold water, and then he heated it up. And he was really proud of himself, Donnie, I-"

"Wow, actually, that sounds awesome," Don interjected. He sat down. "I wouldn't mind seeing that."

"Really?" Mikey's smile turned megawatt. Ugh, puns, Leo thought, there will be an overabundance of energy puns in this house forever. He smiled to himself. It would be worth it if they really did find a way to control Mikey's powers.

Raphael stumbled through the curtain, yawning. "Has this meeting of the insomnaics' club come to order or what?"

Mike smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Raph. Um, my electrical powers woke me up so I wound up heating tea."

Raphael blinked owlishly. "Oh."

"We're about to see it again," Leo added. Raph sat down and folded his arms on the table.

Donatello got up and filled another, larger, ceramic mug with cold water, adding a new tea bag. He put it in front of Mikey, who rubbed his hands, tongue stuck out the side of his mouth. Mikey placed his hands on the sides and frowned. Electricity sprang from his fingers and the water nearly boiled. Donnie's eyes became wider than wide. Raph scraped his stool back and swore.

Startled, Mikey slammed his hands on the metal table, and the table rocked back and forth for a few seconds. With a shout, Donnie grabbed Mikey's arms and yanked him back. Mikey merely blinked and stared up at him.

"Mikey, go back to bed," Don said, with a light tremble in his voice.

Still staring, Mikey said, "I'm not tired anymore, though."

"Okay," Don said, "my lab, then." And he pulled Mikey up and dragged him out of the kitchen.

Exchanging glances, Leo and Raph followed.

Nobody went back to sleep. The next several hours were spent in the lab. Michelangelo sat on a padded mattress, manipulating various objects containing metal, wearing the infamous EEG helmet, as Donatello measured data and collected whatever findings he needed. His russet eyes were constantly huge, his teeth caught against his lower lip.

At some point, the door warped inward.

At some point, a hammer went flying.

At some point, a table fell apart and reassembled in mid-air.

At some point, a chair spun around and hit the ceiling.

"Okay, you can stop now," Donatello said hoarsely.

Mikey was quiet, pouting a little.

"Mikey?" Raph asked, scowling in what they all knew was concern. "You okay?"

"Mm-hmm." Mikey was looking at his hands, which were crackling blue static between each other. "Feels a little too much."

Raph's brow furrowed. But Donnie jumped and grabbed Mikey's upper arm, pulling him toward the lab's sink. He turned on the water and plugged the sink, letting the water fill halfway. "Empty it into here. Like a discharge. Understand?"

Mikey nodded. "Getting…getting rid of the overload." He placed his hands into the water and breathed out. The water bubbled for a few seconds as static shock danced across it.

Raphael tip-toed over and looked into the sink. "That's, uh, scary. Will Mike always need to be around water?"

Donnie shook his head. "The ground works too. The air. If we're inside he can use the pool. Good thing water's everywhere around down here, right?"

"Well," Leo looked around, "sewer water."

"Why don't I invent a kind of arm brace that can help you control the amount of static charge you release?" Don said to Mikey. Mikey looked at his arms, then at his brother, with a wide, wide grin. "You're the best, Dee!"

Leo smiled warmly and Raph smirked. "Okay," Raph said, "well, I'm hungry. Go make us breakfast, Mikey, we might as well get on with the day."

"It is six in the morning, anyway," Leo added, "training will start after we've digested and warmed up."

"Splinter Junior," Raph muttered, heading back out to the living area.

Don and Mike continued to perform tests and measurements. The day might have gone on simply, if Don hadn't gotten a call from Utrom Bishop. By the time they met at an abandoned military complex after sunset, Leo and Mikey had been loudly expressing concerns regarding psychic sensitivities, that there was a strange energy everywhere.

April was there, arms folded as she stared at Rook, who looked embarrassed. She watched the turtles run up. "You feel it too," she said, looking at the blue-eyed turtles. Mikey just bobbed his head, eyes wide and worried.

"It's definitely transdimensional," Rook said, looking down at her tablet. "Something is trying to break through, using Earth's electromagnetic forces.

Leo glanced upward. Next to him, Mikey's body was trembling so hard that Leo couldn't help but reach for his hand. A tiny tiny shock went through him, nothing more than a tickle, and he sensed Mikey's spirit cushioning his mind and his body against those shocks. He acknowledged it and squeezed his little brother's sweaty hand. Mikey didn't squeeze back. Leo looked at him. Mikey's gaze was fixed on some part of the sky and his eyes were dilated.

"Oh," Leo whispered. "Oh no…" and he quickly wrapped his arms around his brother, murmuring.

Everyone turned to them, and Don and Raph growled and joined him, embracing Mikey as he shook. Donnie began to count the seconds out loud.

"Please explain," Bishop said flatly.

"He's having a seizure," April said, almost snapping at him.

Thirty-eight seconds later, Mikey whimpered loudly and slumped in Raph's embrace, panting and sweating. "S-saw…I-I s-saw…"

"Sshhh, little brother," Leo murmured. "You're okay. Take a minute. We've got you."

Tears were gathering in Mikey's eyes. This was normal. "I saw s-something…i-in the s-sky…'s gonna a-at-tack…"

Leo and Don nuzzled against his face while Raph embraced him more tightly from behind. "Deep breaths," Leo said.

Mikey did so. "El-electromagne-magnetic f-field. The en-energy. Th-they're gonna f-feed on it."

"Ohhh," Rook moaned. "Those aliens. Yeah, we've encountered them. They don't have a name, so we just call them The Drainers."

"How dangerous are they?" Raph snarled.

"To Earth? Not as much as they could be. Your planet's electromagnetic fields are very powerful and they're not used to so much. It could overwhelm and overload them."

Bishop lowered his glasses and stared pointedly. "How is young Michelangelo doing, anyway?"

"He's just fine," Donatello said, eyes narrowing. "I've already found a few ways to help him control how much energy he outputs and how much he takes in. Yes, I still have that cannon in my lab. No, I don't feel we need to use it any time soon."

The turtles separated, Raph still keeping an arm around Mike, who was breathing slowly. They watched tiny blue sparks travel around his body and sink into his skin. Raph wasn't affected. He noticed this and gave Bishop a smug smirk. "See, Bishop? His sparks aren't hurting me."

Bishop just raised an eyebrow.

"Perhaps," Don added, "his new spiritual abilities are helping the process. He's become extremely empathic on a psychic level. He knows his mind. He knows our minds, too. He can sense us and even exert a psychic empathic force that cushions our minds protectively. He can even communicate mentally in a way. Would you like a demonstration, Bishop?"

The smirk on April's face widened a little.

Mikey was already grinning, eyes flashing. "Never did this with an Utrom, anyway."

Bishop's eyes narrowed.

Mikey glared at him.

A thick static energy hung in the air between them.

After several minutes, Mikey inhaled and shook his head rapidly. "You alien brains are weird. You're all images and words."

"But are you okay?" Raph asked, tightening his embrace.

"Yeah. Just a little headache this time. I just…can't get any feeling, you know?"

"You mean like emotion?"

"Yeah, that."

Bishop pushed his dark glasses back up. "Are you satisfied?"

Michelangelo just nodded.

The rip in the sky distracted them, right where Mikey had been staring. It grew, winking and golden, shivering as it dragged a diagonal line along the darkened sky. Mikey let out a strangled whine and flung up his arms as if controlled. Electricity sparked along his entire body and formed a force field, extending around to all of them. It didn't hurt, but they shivered. Hair stood on end, bumps formed along skin.

April breathed deeply, forming her own telekinetic bubble, and moved through thick static to get to Mikey. She exchanged glances with Raph, who looked confused and afraid. Very gently, April touched Mikey's cheek with her fingertips.

"Hey, Mikey," she murmured. "Do you need my help?"

He blinked, turning wet, shining blue eyes to her. His lower lip was trembling. "I…I just wanna protect us…"

Raphael made a choking, growling sound that was thick with tears.

"Okay," April said soothingly. "Okay, that's good. That's great. But why don't we wait and see what these aliens want?"

"They want t-to drain the planet, April! We gotta make sure they don't?"

"Sweetie," and she stroked his face, "You heard Rook. They might not have that power here. I think you can let down your force field. Look. Look, why don't we combine our shields so you're not exerting yourself."

Mikey looked over and Leo, and at Don, who smiled encouragingly. Raph squeezed him and backed away.

Sighing, Mikey took April's hand. They looked up at the rift in the sky, as globs of pure gold energy slipped through and hovered by the hundreds. It looked eerily like a stagnant version of the rain of green mutagen canisters so long ago. Mikey's bizarre empathic-telekinetic cushioning effect slipped over April's skin so she could hardly feel the electrical jolts he was leaking. The electrical power touched her telekinetic power, like a firm handshake, and something locked into place. April found her hand automatically stretching toward the sky. She felt Mikey's mind connect with hers like puzzle pieces, and she smiled.

As one, their psychic voice projected into the atmosphere long and loud enough for their friends to hear. "What are you doing here? What do you want from us?"

A multiple-mind hummed back, "We need your planet's electromagnetic energy as a resource. Are you the defenders of this planet?"

A short pause, and a toothy grin. "Totally, yo. And we ain't letting you leave without a fight, not until you promise to leave us alone and never come back."

A long pause. "Your world's energy is much stronger than we anticipated. It will take a great length of time to drain even a small amount."

"Hmm. A'ight. Tell you what. You can have thiiiis much-" and a massive fiery blue flare of impossible size shot right through the diagonal rip, "and you go away bye bye."

The Drainers seemed to contemplate this.

" This is a large amount of power. We did not expect you Earthlings to be generous, We expected battle."

The Mikey-April force laughed. "That wasn't generous. That was a discount. Next time, we'll rip your heads off. Now get the hell off my planet."

There was a long silence. The hundreds of globules of light moved swiftly back into the rift. The rip in space closed.

Mikey and April released each other's hands and collapsed to the ground.

They woke up tangled in each other, in Michelangelo's bed at the lair. April stirred first, bumping her blue-eye-freckle-twin with her nose. Mikey blinked and mumbled.

They sat up as one.

"Dudette, are you okay?"

"Ugh, my head. I guess we saved the world after all!"

"Well, we did fling them an energy thingie the size of Europe."

"Hence the headaches!"

"C'mon, April, let's head out and annoy our family!"

They burst out into the Pit, where Casey was serving out pizza from Antonio's. Rook was there as well. Donnie, Leo, and Raph looked up, their expressions turning to sheer joy as the rushed the two for hugs.

"You were asleep for two days straight!" Donnie cried.

"Don't scare us like that!" Raph snarled.

"We need to get you guys water and food, pronto," Leo announced.

April and Mike were settled on the couch like precious royalty. Between the two they finished two whole large bottles of Gatorade, three large pepperoni pizzas, a bag of potato chips, a bowl of chocolate candies, three bowls of fruit and vegetables, and two bottles of water. Their favorite movies and shows were shown and blankets and pillows were draped around them.

"Congratulations, ya little world-saver," Raph grinned, fist-bumping Mikey as Donnie slapped April's palm.

Smiling tiredly at each other, the freckled teenagers grasped hands, allowing energies to flow back and forth, and rested their foreheads against each other.

Saving the world was hard hard work, but family was worth everything.