Hi friends! This is my first story I've ever written, so bear with me here. It might be a little out of character, but I guess you can just count that as me being an amateur writer. This is loosely based on concepts from both the 2003 and 2012 cartoons, so interpret it however you want for the most part. I know that I did name Charlotte after myself, but I chose the name because it references the novel Charlotte's Web, given that Charlotte is a spider, after all, and I thought it would be only fitting. Anyways, I've wasted enough time up here as is, let's move on to the story.
"Uh, Leo, what is that thing?" Raphael asked, baffled by the small octopedal figure before them.
"I'm... not entirely sure?" The older turtle replied, hesitantly backing away from the strange being as it stepped up onto two legs unsteadily. "It looks like it presents as female? But other than that, I really don't know what else to say."
The little girl cocked her head to the side slightly and blinked all eight of her muddy brown eyes. "Est-ce que vous parlez français?" She asked, her six arms clasping behind her back as she stepped towards the pair, leaned forward ever so slightly.
Raph quickly seized Leo's shoulders and whispered to him. "Do you have any idea what that... thing meant?" He hissed, holding on far too tightly.
"Currently! No!" He replied, throwing his brother's hands off of him. "But, something tells me Don can figure this out," he held out his hand to the arachnoid-presenting child, shaking slightly. "It's okay, just... come with us, will you?"
The spider smiled widely at the offer, and quickly took his hand with her upper left hand, giggling softly. Leo swallowed his fear, beginning to lead her along through the dark, damp sewer.
"Should we give it a name?" Raph asked, expressing his disgust at the little figure marching along blissfully. "We can't just call it 'kid', can we?"
"Let's just call her Arachne for now, alright? I'm sure we'll figure out her real name later, but that'll have to do for now," he replied, continuing along, refusing to look back at her, for fear of her turning into something much less innocent than a little girl.
"Arachne it is, then..." he said, setting a silence over them as 'Arachne's' footsteps slowly diverged into skips as they kept walking for what felt like Leo to be hours, but was, in reality, less than ten minutes.
When the pair arrived back at base, with Arachne in tow, they found things still and quiet, hinting to the turtles that their dear brother Michaelangelo was either elsewhere or sleeping, however, the latter was more likely. There was a gentle tapping of computer keys lingering in the air, and Leo quickly escorted Arachne to the couch, lifting her up easily and plopping her down on the old upholstery.
"Wait here, Arachne, okay?" he said, patting her head softly, and following his touch, it slumped off to one side in a curious gaze. Leo sighed and pulled Raph over by the wrist. "Please watch her. I'll be right back."
"Wait, you're leaving me with this thing?" Raph asked, taken aback by his brother's request.
Leo rubbed his temple slowly. "I can't leave her alone, now can I?" He asked rhetorically, shaking his head. "Just make sure she doesn't cause any trouble. Please."
Raph conceded with a grimace, and turned to Arachne, forcing a smile. "Heya, kid. How are ya?" He asked as if he were being held at gunpoint. Before he could really register it, Leo was gone and he was left to deal with the sweet looking girl alone. She smiled up at him wordlessly, her little legs swinging back and forth at a moderate pace, gently bopping against the couch on each backstroke. her three smaller sets of eyes along her cheeks closed as she peered happily up at the turtle with her remaining two larger ones.
"Play any sports?" He asked her, trying to calm the atmosphere between them and to hopefully lessen his anxiety towards the mute spider child. She blinked at him a few times with her primary eyes, making strong eye contact the whole time. Despite being silent as a shadow, she expressed great social confidence and comfort with her new surroundings, as if she had known them her whole life.
"Yeah, she said something to us earlier, but it must have been in a different language." Leo's voice echoed as Donatello trailed him into the foyer. "Here, see if you can understand anything she says, if she wants to talk at all."
The purple-clad turtle's face lit up as he saw Arachne's six closed eyes, and he quickly secured a place sitting on his knees directly in front of her. "Oh, my! Well look at you, aren't you just the cutest little thing!" He gasped, mesmerized by her strange shape and composure. "Do you have a name?"
"We call her Arachne right now, but like I said, we can't figure out what she's saying," Leo interrupted. "I think she was speaking in German or something."
"No, it was Spanish, for sure!" Raph argued, crossing his arms. "...Or maybe Italian?"
Arachne giggled to herself. "Est-ce que tu parles français?" She asked him, her head cocked to the side unnaturally, and all eight of her eyes now open.
"It's French, you two," Donatello corrected. "Oui. Est-ce que tu parles anglais?"
"'Course I do!" She chimed happily. "I love English!"
Raph groaned in annoyance and collapsed onto the floor. "Jeez, kid, why couldn't you have told us that sooner?" He asked, clearly disgruntled by the misunderstanding.
"When I speak French it's hard for me to speak not French," she explained, smiling widely, closing all of her eyes in blissful ignorance. "But now I speak English!" She laughed with childish abandon and began bobbing her head from side to side in time with the swinging of her legs.
"Will you tell me your name, please?" Leo asked, sitting next to Don on the carpet. "My name's Leonardo, but you can just call me Leo if that's easier for you."
She stopped laughing and beamed down at him. "My name is Charlotte. That's C-H-A-R-," she replied, beginning to count out the letters of her name on her fingers.
"We get it, Charlotte," Raph spat, beginning to walk off, fed up by her childish demeanor. "C-H-A-R-L-O-T-T-E."
"Yeah, that's my name! That's my name! It's French!" She said happily. "What's your name?" She reached out her middle right arm and gently tapped Donatello's head with the strange feathery phalanges that lined her oddly jointed hand.
"I'm Donnie, and you can speak French to me whenever you want." He replied, smiling at the soft touch of her hand.
Her eyes glimmered with delight momentarily, and she threw her six hands in the air. "Yay! I love French!" She laughed. "Where's your name from, Donnie?"
"Well, technically, my full name is Donatello, and it's Italian. You see, I'm named after a famous sculptor from the Renaissance," he explained, speaking with his hands like a true Italian. "Can you say 'Renaissance', Charlotte?"
"Yeah! Re-nai-ssance," she said carefully, taking extra care on every syllable of the large and foreign word. "Do you speak any Italian?"
Donatello smiled up at her excitedly. "I can speak a little, but I'm not very good yet," He told her. "Do you want to learn with me? It's a lot like French, so you shouldn't have too much trouble picking it up."
"Would you really show me?" She asked, her uppermost hands on her cheeks, her fingers carefully placed as to not obstruct her vision. "I like that idea a lot, Donnie!"
Donatello laughed and stood up, gesturing for Charlotte to follow him. "Come on, I can show you some good books in Italian and we can start learning right away," he told her, leading her along towards his workstation. As he was walking the bubbly spider away, he glanced back at Leo, and gave him a reassuring thumbs up and winking in his direction.
As the two disappeared around a corner, Leo let out a sigh and stood himself up. He was infinitely grateful that Don was able to entertain Charlotte with something as simple as learning a new language, and he wondered what caused Don to act the way he did around her. Leo wouldn't have had the slightest clue that he would be the turtle to turn to when it came to kids, but he enjoyed the outcome regardless.
"God, are they gone?" Raph groaned, visibly miffed by Charlotte's sunny attitude. "Honestly, what a shift in that kid."
"I don't think it was necessarily a bad shift," Leo said. "She has a good heart."
"She reminds me too much of Mikey," Raph scoffed, rolling his eyes. "All she does is laugh and bob around, she's so immature."
Leo shook his head slightly, resting his chin on his knuckles. "Well, she probably isn't very old. I bet she'll end up more mature than she seems once she gets comfortable here," he suggested.
"Yeah, like Splinter's gonna give us the green light on keeping a five-year-old spider girl in the lair," Raph countered, smiling to himself. "She doesn't stand a chance here."
Leo sighed and glared at Raphael. "Don't act that way. At least pretend you like her, cause it looks like she gets along really well with Don," he argued, starting to feel vaguely annoyed with his brother. "Besides, you might end up having a soft spot for her and you just don't know it yet. Give Charlotte a little time."
"Whatever," Raph said, turning away and slinking back towards his room. "I just hope she doesn't turn out like a second Mikey."
Leo sighed and headed towards his room. It wasn't any of his business what Raphael thought of Charlotte, anyways.
Aaaah, my very first chapter finally done... I hope it isn't too terrible... If you feel so inclined, I would absolutely love it if you left me a review critiquing my work, because I truly and honestly do want to get better as an author. If you have any questions about the plot and its direction, feel free to PM me, even if it's just a suggestion for what should be done in the future. Well, for now I suppose this is farewell. Thank you so much for reading the horrendous first chapter of my story!