I don't think… I've ever written the Next Mutation's universe? Which is…. surprising for me. Because I think I've written almost every Ninja Turtle continuity at least once other than the Bay movies. But I mean. C'mon. Who can blame me there. Regardless, I wrote Next Mutation for Sapphic September bc well… Vam Mi was…. a fundamental experience for me let's say.
Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and related characters © Viacom/Saban
story © RenaRoo
A Piece of Home
February in New York was much different than it was in China. Not because of the snow or bitter cold, not even because of the city's skyscrapers and numerous nights dotting against the sky.
It was different because in New York, most of the city had already had its new year a month ago. But for her, and for only a small slice of the great city, the New Year had just begun.
And a new year, hopefully, brought with it new changes.
She held the scroll in her hand as she silently crossed the alleys and hid amongst the loud and rambunctious crowd around here. There were paper lanterns and large decorated dragons being lifted overhead as she tightened her overcoat and drew down her hat more. It was nerve wracking, hiding in plain sight, but as much as it was against the instincts her father had instilled in her, it was very much a trick of the ninja as Venus had learned it.
There were a few times where vendors' items or the excited screams of children running around in traditional garb with sparklers caught her eye, but she kept herself going, kept herself moving more and more until she at last reached the destination on the scroll which had been left for her so near her new family's home.
To be sure, she opened the scroll and looked at the scrawled on address, then to the number on the building she had reached. A small and dimly lit restaurant in the outskirts of Chinatown.
A certain trap for her.
One more time, Venus considered her actions, looking back to the crowds celebrating, toward the streets and alleys which had led her to her destination, toward the home her new family was no doubt happily resting in. But it was not enough to deter her.
There was more than the Chinese New Year that Venus missed about her home. She missed the love and sanctity she felt from her father and shinobi master. He left her his teachings, which she cherished, and he left her his responsibilities, which she accepted dutifully as any daughter would.
Looking ahead again, Venus grew a far more serious expression before letting herself into the seemingly closed restaurant.
Her heart was pounding within her terrapin chest, but she steadied her breathing and continued to walk into the establishment. When she reached a counter where an elderly woman in an apron sat, looking down at a crossword puzzle, Venus hesitated.
"Excuse me… Someone is expecting me," Venus tried to express.
The woman did not look up or say anything, continuing to etch on the crossword pad with her red pen.
Venus wasn't the most familiar with her new country, but she was willing to suppose that this was abnormal behavior. Even in New York. She began to reach for the elderly woman when she heard a clap from the back of the restaurant that stirred her from her thoughts and action.
In command of the clap, several low level lights of the establishment grew brighter, and in doing so revealed a face that Venus had honestly thought she would never see again.
"Vam Mi," Venus said almost breathlessly. "I don't know who of my master's enemies I expected… but it was not you."
"Your other enemies must not be much cause for concern then, for you to come alone and so ill prepared, little shinobi," the vampire said, smiling more to show off her sharp teeth than to reveal any hint of kindness. "Please, come sit. It's a new year. And I would like to discuss many things with you. Many… new possibilities."
Though caught off guard, Venus was quick to focus her qi and send the energy flowing to her hands, forming a small but bright orb of concentrated energy right before her own chest. She was nervous and she was not taking any chances. Especially with someone who was as nearly devastating to her new family as Vam Mi had been.
"You qi is not impressive to me, little shinobi, or have you forgotten your own heritage's lore?" Vam Mi taunted, leaning forward in her seat at the back of the restaurant. "Chinese vampires devour qi. Though if you are offering me a snack in celebration of the New Year, I won't decline it."
"I have not forgotten my heritage or its lore, Vam Mi," Venus said defiantly before using one hand to balance the energy she had gathered and then the other to remove the scroll which Vam Mi herself had sent to her. Using her own qi, she then traced against its surface, enchanting the parchment and spelling out a vampiric charm onto it.
That, at least, got the ancient vampire's attention. "Your skills have grown sharper since last we met."
"Since last we met, my family and I stopped the Dragon Lord himself," Venus informed her. "I'm older and wiser, Vam Mi. I did not come here alone because of over confidence. I came here because any old threat of mine is beneath my brothers."
"Obviously, you mean to say it's beneath you," Vam Mi said. She then waved to the table before her, the simple gesture lighting the large number of candles before her and showing the large array of Chinese sweets and desserts that Venus had not seen the like of since leaving her native home. "I urge you, though. Put down your penchant for squabble and join me for a new year." Her eyes glowed an electric red, dangerous and stunning. "I insist."
Despite herself, Venus felt her qi diminish, the orb of energy dissipating. But she refused to lose grip on her new charm, even as her body grew rigid and still, her feet sliding across the restaurant's floor toward Vam Mi and stopping just by the chair.
Shocked at the vampire's abilities, Venus looked over Vam Mi.
"You are not the only one to have grown in our separation," Vam Mi said dangerously before drinking from her glass of wine. "Please. Sit."
Just to be sure that Vam Mi had not taken control of her body again, Venus defiantly stood just long enough to get her bearings together, then she quietly took her seat.
Van Mi smiled around her glass. "I was half expecting you to attempt to attach that note to my head or otherwise go for the attack. It would have been your master's plot. You're far more reasonable than he was."
"Or less wise," Venus said defensively.
"Well, there is always that option as well," Vam Mi said nonchalantly, reaching over to a sweet cake as she put her wine aside. "I assure you, these are all real, all authentic. Come. Celebrate the New Year with me."
Venus did not let her guard down, her hands clutching into fists as she rested them on her thighs. "What did you invite me here for, Vam Mi?"
The vampire looked at her as if she was utterly dull. "I already explained that."
"I mean the real reason," Venus said flatly.
Vam Mi hummed, lacing her fingers together and resting her chin on them. "Did you notice anything about the note I sent you?"
"It was hard not to notice something addressed to me in Chinese," Venus answered.
"Addressed to you," Vam Mi repeated.
"That is what I said," Venus snapped haughtily.
"What you?" Van Mi pressed.
"What do you mean what me? It was addressed to me. You wanted me here," Venus replied in frustration before pausing. She looked down to her clutched fist, slowly uncurling it and letting the note scroll out once more. Beneath the bright white qi letters the note still was there. And it was addressed to her. Specifically to her. "You used my name. My… You used Mei Pieh Chi. No one here uses it."
"Even though it is your true name," Vam Mi said, almost denoting sympathy.
"It is easier for the people here to use names Westernized," Venus excused. "It is my attempt to help others."
"It's your attempt to forget your culture," Vam Mi argued. "Or does your new family address you by your true name? It is not difficult to say. No more than Hamato Yoshi or Oroku Saki."
Venus opened her mouth to argue, but she found that she couldn't. instead, her mouth closed and she lowered her chin, glancing off from Vam Mi as she swallowed tightly. "I don't understand what you want with me."
"I want to end this war between myself and your dynasty of shinobi warriors," Vam Mi said simply enough. "And I wished for someone similarly displaced in this foreign land to join me in the relative misery of a very un-Chinese Chinese New Year."
"You simply don't want me to hunt you?" Venus demanded. "Even though it is my master's responsibility handed down to me by his death?"
"You make it sound like it's difficult," Vam Mi joked. "I find doing nothing to be the easiest request someone can give you."
"You're a vampire," Venus uttered, her words fuzzy in her confusion.
"And you are a turtle," Vam Mi replied. "I see nothing inherent in those natures to force us to continue a feud so intimately between us. Especially since, as I suspect by how you attempted to do away with me with your new family, you aren't interested in the arcane practice of ripping the beating heart from my chest and burying my body away from it." She smirked. "You don't seem, to me, like the type, Mei Pieh Chi."
"But you survive by devouring the life force of others," Venus reminded her like Vam Mi didn't already know. "By neglecting my duty what I do is take the blood of your next victim on my own hands."
"Not necessarily, not if you hear my truce all the way through," the vampire continued, getting up and nearing Venus.
The turtle's heart began to beat faster, her hands clutched into fists once more. But again, she couldn't make herself move, only watch as she was approached by Vam Mi.
"You, my shinobi, are full of qi, more than even your master before you. I can feel it growing even now," Vam Mi explained, stopping behind Venus and delicately tracing her fingers over Venus' shoulders. "You are such a unique creature, so plentiful in your life force… And as a shinobi you are trained to grow and harness that energy with every day. If you were to come with me, if you were to join me, I could eat of your qi more than enough to survive, and your life would be no lesser for it."
"And be bound to you?" Venus demanded. "That is no life."
"It is when I give you what the others cannot offer," she said, spinning Venus' chair around to face her, she was leaning in, so close that Venus could feel her sweet breath across her beak. "I can give you the world you knew again. I can let you be Mei Pieh Chi again."
For a moment, Venus' heart beat faster, and by the way Vam Mi's ruby red lips pressed together to form a dark smile, Venus knew the vampire could tell.
"The idea thrills you," Vam Mi said softly. "And you feel you have nothing left here with your new family who cannot call you by your true name now that your master's greatest foe is dealt with. You need purpose. I offer you that purpose."
"You offer my soul's enslavement," Venus corrected her.
"Refusing me, you offer my heart's imprisonment," Vam Mi answered. "We are forced into this arbitration by forces we did not start ourselves, Mei Pieh. I am offering us a way to finish it in ways that had never been tried by those before us."
It took almost all of her concentration and will, but Venus managed to look down. As she suspected, the qi she had used to charm the scroll had dulled and extinguished. Vam Mi approached her not only for this intimate speech but in order to continue draining her of her life-force.
"I'm more powerful than you," Venus tried desperately.
"I know," Vam Mi answered, eyes still shining. "That is why I want to keep you." She leaned in closer. "And I believe you have allowed me to get this far because a part of you agrees with what I say. A part of you is interested in receiving my offer. And, maybe, you want to be kept, too."
"And if my answer is no, Vam Mi?" Venus asked. "If it's no but I also won't take your heart either?"
Vam Mi looked off, nodding her head. "Oh, dear beautiful turtle of power, we are only here right now because my heart's imprisonment I fear, but you capturing it? It has already happened."
Venus' eyes widened with surprise, her heart pounded.
Van Mi's sharp teeth presented themselves again and she leaned in, grazing them across the skin of Venus' neck before stopping at the curve of her chin, then coming up to look into Venus' eyes as she gently kissed her lips. "Think of my offer, Mei Pieh Chi. As I have showed you tonight, I can feast from you without hurting you. Without killing you. And I can offer you many, many things you want in return."
She backed away and headed toward the back of the restaurant, strutting for Venus as she did so. "Meet me here again in a few nights if you want more desserts. Oh." She stopped and looked over her shoulder, smiling darkly at Venus. "And Happy New Year."
To Venus' amazement, the vampire disappeared into a mist, and suddenly, Venus had full control of herself again. She breathed deeply, slamming her hands on the table just as the lights dimmed again and the candles went out.
The old woman etched on her crossword puzzle without a word of acknowledgement.
Venus wasted no time, she got to her feet, grabbed some desserts, then raced out of the establishment, her lips still stinging with the shock of the kiss even as she made a point of disappearing into Chinatown's crowded streets, beneath the paper lanterns and loud, colorful decorations of the night.