A/N Hi there! Thanks for clicking on my story! I hope you enjoy. I'm relatively new to the Ninja Turtle fandom. I mean sure, I watched the movies (once, a long time ago) and a few random episodes of the 2003 series during it's original run, enough to know who's who and what not, but my love for Sean Astin (Samwise!) and Rob Paulsen(Pinky!) and Greg Cipes(Beast Boy!) sparked enough interest to check out the 2012 series a few weeks ago and I gotta say, despite my reservations I was quickly hooked!
This is my first Ninja Turtles fanfiction. I hope I got the character's voices right. Oh and Ninja Turtles aren't mine.
Without further ado, enjoy!
Chapter One
It had been a few days since the whole fiasco with Chris Bradford pretending to be Mikey's friend. It was clear that the betrayal hurt the youngest member of the mutant family, who just wanted to make friends with humans, but after a few sincere words from Raph, it didn't take long for Mikey to return to being his normal fun-loving self.
"That's one thing I admire about you Mikey," Leo had told him that night, shortly after Mikey 'unfriended' Chris Bradford, "you don't let things affect you too much."
"Yeah well, he obviously wasn't worth it," Mikey had replied, looking at Raph with a grin, his brother's encouraging words helping to lift his spirits. His feelings were still hurt, but he didn't need someone like him when he had his brothers and he had April's friendship.
And for the most part, Mikey didn't allow the pain of betrayal to affect him too much. But days later the ache was still there, and when he was alone it throbbed. He didn't want to face that feeling so he did what anyone would do, avoided being alone. Alone time wasn't exactly his style anyway. Sooner or later he'd be completely over it, but not yet. So Time and the company of his family was all he'd need.
"Hey Donnie," Mikey asked as everyone was lounging around waiting for nightfall so they could go out for patrol, "can I borrow your laptop?"
"Sure Mikey," Donnie said absently while he tinkered with…something…no one really knew quite what he was working on and asking him only made it that much more of a mystery. Without looking up he started to hand it to Mikey but stopped suddenly, realizing what he was doing. "Wait a minute, what are you planning to do with it exactly?"
"Oh, don't be so paranoid Donnie," Mikey rolled his eyes, "I just want check out my MyFace page and see if anyone's accepted my friend requests."
Raph overheard this and paused the game he and Leo were playing, "Aw don't tell me you're still looking to make human friends! Haven't you learned anything?"
"Of course I have," Mikey frowned, accepting the laptop from a reluctant Donnie and sitting himself on the couch next to him, "That's why this time I'm being smart about it."
Raph chuckled, "You? Smart? That'll be the day."
Mikey, channeling Raph reached to smack him upside the head but Raph anticipated it and ducked, successfully smacking his younger brother instead, "Hey!" Mikey protested, "No fair!"
With that Raphael broke out into laughter, "Oh come on! I'm sure a dodo has a higher IQ than you!"
"Quit it Raph!" Mikey frowned, grabbing the laptop and moving to sit in a different spot, away from his bullying brother.
"Hey, what's the matter with you? I was only joking!" Raph exclaimed, surprised that Mikey gave up so quickly. It wasn't like him to get pouty so quickly as teasing each other was their thing. Mikey shot him a look and if Raph didn't know better, he'd say he had struck a nerve with his younger brother.
"You are being careful, right Mikey?" Leo asked from his spot on the other side of Raph, game controller in hand.
Mikey nodded, "Yeah. I learned my lesson. I just want some friends, but I know that meeting people in real life is a bad idea. Not that it matters. No one's accepted my friend requests anyway." He sighed dejectedly as he closed the laptop shut. Aware of three concerned sets of eyes on him he grinned to deflect their sympathies, "Oh well. No big deal, right? Who needs friends when I have awesome brothers right here? And Raph too of course."
"That's right you don't need…hey!" Raphael exclaimed in protest once he realized the backhanded insult and everyone else broke into laughter. "Why you little…" he grabbed the nearest object, the TV remote and whipped it at Mikey's head. Mikey dodged it easily and it smashed against the wall, breaking into pieces.
"Nice going Knucklehead, you broke the remote!" Raph accused lightly.
"Nuh-uh, I wasn't the one who threw it!"
"You coulda caught it!"
"Guys, will you quit it?" Leo asked, "It's not a big deal. Donnie, can you fix it?"
Donnie grinned, "Can I fix it? Are you kidding me? Do turtles have shells? Leo, by the time I'm done with it it'll never break again and will be able to control not just the TV but anything in the lair! Actually that's a great idea! Maybe a universal remote could come in handy…"
"And the one with the remote shall have all the power!" Mikey gave an evil laugh as he bent down to start picking the pieces up. "Dibs!"
Leo looked at the youngest brother blankly and without looking up said, "Just fix it, Donnie. There's no need to turn it into a super universal remote. It's bad enough fighting over the one thing that controls the TV, but a remote that controls everything?"
The four turtles paused, all imagining what could happen if there was one remote to rule them all. None of the scenarios they imagined ended well. Well, Mikey imagined all the pranks he could pull with such a device and really liked the idea until his imagination conjured up an image of all three of his brothers attacking him at once to get it back. Oh yeah, that would definitely happen and it wouldn't be pretty.
"You gotta point," Donnie sighed, clearly disappointed. He was kinda hoping for a challenge. Mikey handed him the pieces of the broken remote and Mikey caught a hint of mischief in his technogeeky brother's eyes that quickly faded but Mikey knew that look and he flashed his brother an equally mischievous smile.
Donnie rolled his eyes and slapped Mikey lightly upside the head and took the pieces, eyeing them over carefully. He quickly fiddled with it and before you could say "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle" he was tossing it back to Leo. "Here, good as new."
"Amazing," Leo marvelled before he and Raphael returned to their game.
After a beat Donnie returned to whatever it was he was working on and Mikey opened up Donnie's laptop and looked again to see if he made any new friends. Nothing. No one wanted to be his friend, even online. He sighed. An ad for Chris Bradford's Martial Art's Dojo "Save 25% to sign up! Limited Time Only!" popped up on the screen and Mikey frowned at the reminder of his failure. And here he was doing such a good job at trying to forget about the whole thing! Well, almost a good job. He was after all still hoping to make a new friend.
Sighing Mikey closed the laptop and looked around feeling bored and utterly alone despite the fact his brothers were all nearby.
Donnie was busy concentrating on his latest thingamajig invention, he had already annoyed him a few times asking about it, Leo and Raph were immersed in their game. Mikey saw that it was a racing game and he grinned, flopping down on the couch beside Leo, "I play the winner?"
"Forget it Mikey," Raph rolled his eyes and focused his attention back on the game.
Leo was slightly more patient, "Maybe. But it'll be dark soon, we'll be leaving for patrol in an hour and I want to do a bit of training before we go."
"Oh, I get it! You guys afraid I'd kick your butts?" Mikey challenged with a wide grin, he looked at the screen, "Woah! Leo turn left! Turn left! Watch out for that tree!" He winced as Leo's car crashed into said pixelated tree and Raph's car whizzed past.
Raph started to laugh and Leo glared dangerously at their annoying little brother as he paused the game, "Don't you have something better to do?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know, anything!"
Mikey frowned for a moment and then brightened as he was struck with an idea, "Hey Raph…"
"No," Raph said immediately, shooting down whatever idea Mikey came up with, "We don't care what you do, but annoy someone else."
"You know I'm beginning to think you guys don't want to hang out with me," Mikey pouted, folding his arms.
"Aw gee, you think? What was your first clue genius?" Raph asked.
"Fine," Mikey huffed, trying not to let the situation hurt his feelings. He knew Raph didn't truly mean anything by it, and Mikey had been bugging them on and off all day with various pranks and stuff so a part of him totally understood why they were all sick of him. Pranking always helped get his mind off the more serious things he didn't want to deal with. But it did hurt nonetheless, and mostly because of recent events with Bradford. His betrayal really struck a nerve, and the fact that no one wanted to befriend him or hang out with him only made things worse. "I'm going to go skateboarding."
"OK," Leo said, "but make sure you're back in an hour. We gotta patrol tonight."
"Sure thing boss!" Mikey exclaimed with a mock salute, a big smile on his face. "See you later dudes!" With quickness and agility he had his board and was gone from the lair in no time at all, laughing the whole time.
The best thing about living in a sewer was the awesome places one could go to do some serious skateboarding moves. Mikey was quite sure that if he weren't a turtle forced to live in the sewer away from humans who, as he well learned, only thought of him and his kind as freaks, he was pretty sure that he could give Tony Hawk a run for his money. He would so totally be a world famous skateboarding champion in no time if he could.
He decided to go to his favorite spot to board, an abandoned subway tunnel that was blocked off from the rest of the subway system and only found via the sewers through a secret passage Mikey found when he was a little kid. It was several blocks away from the lair, a fair distance, but it didn't seem too far travelling by skateboard.
But as he made his way to his spot, he could hear a noise up above through the manhole, a noise that put him on alert. A girl's scream. The bark of a dog. He stopped and kicked his board into an upright position and grabbed it, flipping it over to strap to his back.
The girl screamed again but it was muffled. It seemed a little more distant now.
Mikey climbed the ladder and carefully lifted the cover to see what was going on. The dog barked again but was cut off abruptly as it yelped in pain. He looked towards the noise and saw a golden retriever crash into a pile of garbage bags outside a dumpster. A man had just kicked the poor thing. Mikey growled lowly in anger, but what really got his blood boiling was the sight of four more men advancing on a young girl about his age.
"No, please!" she cried as they shoved her to the ground, one of the men straddled her body and placed one hand on her mouth and another on his belt, the skirt of her dressed was pulled up and she was sobbing.
"Aren't you a pretty thing," he hissed wickedly in a tone that made Mikey sick. He leaned forward his mouth going to the nape of her neck, hand moving from her mouth to grab her chest, his other hand still reaching to remove his belt.
"No! Please! Leave me alone! No! Someone help me! Ple—!" she was cut off by one of the other men, shoving a piece of cloth in her mouth to quiet her.
Mikey had enough. He knew that the others would probably have a fit if he went to the surface and revealed himself to more humans. They had enough to deal with with the Kraang and mutants and now an army of ninjas who work for Master Splinter's nemesis Shredder, but he wasn't about to let an innocent girl...no, Leo, Raph, Donnie and Sensei would risk exposure to help others. They would understand. He jumped out of the sewer and tossed the manhole cover like a discus and knocked one of the five men down. "Leave her alone!" he shouted angrily, twirling his nunchucks ready to fight.
He half expected them to run at the sight, especially since one of the men was now lying semi-conscious on the ground, probably nursing broken ribs by now, but instead the others merely laughed, "What the fuck? Is the circus in town? Hey buddy, Halloween's in October dumbass!" one of them called. They all turned to him and produced weapons of their own. Brass knuckles, chains, a switchblade, a baseball bat…oh and two of them were armed with guns. Great.
"Get lost! Leave her alone!" Mikey hissed.
"What are you going to do you little Freakshow? You gonna stop us?"
"Yep, if I have to," Mikey's eyes were hard. Mikey was usually slow to anger, but they kicked a dog and were about to…to do something sickening…to an innocent girl, and if that didn't downright piss him off, nothing would.
"Then bring it!" the one he determined was the leader said, reaching one hand out, wiggling his fingers to egg him on as he raised a baseball bat with the other.
"I don't know though, four against one? That's hardly a fair fight," Mikey taunted, "Tell you what, I'll go easy on you."
That's when all hell broke loose.
"Booyakasha!" Mikey cried out, leaping into the air into a backflip and a well place kick in the chest sent one of them to the ground as the other three advanced at once. He recovered fairly quickly though, and even the one he knocked down with the manhole cover was starting to come around.
The gang wasn't as good as the Foot ninjas, far from it, but they knew how to handle their weapons, they knew how to fight well. Mikey was good, but he wasn't as good as his brothers, and without them to watch his back, his confidence tended to falter, affecting his abilities. But he had been trained in Ninjitsu since he was a little kid and he was far more advanced than these guys, so despite his weaknesses working against him, he still had the upper hand.
For the most part he was able to hold his own. For the most part.
Mikey might not be as skilled or as disciplined at Ninjitsu as his brothers, but he was fast and agile, and had a raw athletic talent that made up for it. But nothing in his training prepared him for what was about to happen.
He took a heavy blow with the bat to his stomach, and Mr. Brass Knuckles delivered a mean right hook to his face, causing stars to explode in his vision. He backflipped to dodge their relentless attacks, but the two blows had him dazed and winded and he landed completely wrong on uneven ground. Pain shot up through his leg as his knee twisted in a way that it shouldn't and he collapsed to the ground.
That was about the time the fight began to fall apart.
They advanced on him all at once, and Mikey swept his good leg out, knocking them off balance and then he leapt to his feet, only to falter when his knee gave out. He pushed himself into another flip, leaping over their heads, swinging his nunchucks at them, getting in a few good hits in before his feet even touched the ground. He was careful this time to not put his weight on his injured leg, and backflippped again landing with a roll to get as much distance away from them as he could.
He really wished his brothers were there. The pain in his knee was bad, but adrenaline and training helped him block it enough to keep fighting, but he needed back up. He wasn't sure how long he could keep it up because while he could deal with the pain, for now at least, his leg was refusing to cooperate and support his weight which made it difficult to stay on his feet, let alone fight.
He swung his kusarigama towards a fire escape, the chain wrapping securely around the cold metal and he pulled himself into the air, swinging like Tarzan to knock his foes down. He managed to knock two of them but the others dodged him. He kicked off the brick wall with his good leg to go another round, but a shot cracked through the air and a white hot pain unlike anything he ever experienced in his life burned through his shoulder and he let go, unceremoniously landing on the ground in a heap.
For a second his vision wavered and nothing made sense anymore, nothing existed but this new, excruciating pain. He slumped to the cold ground, instinctively grasping his wounded shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers. His eyes drifted closed and despite being on solid ground he felt like he was falling.
Focus Mikey, focus! He inwardly screamed at himself. Focusing had never been his forte, he had always been so easily distracted much to the chagrin of Master Splinter and his brothers. But he liked to think that in life or death situations he was great at coming through at the last minute to focus on whatever he needed to do to keep himself and his brothers alive. But this time he was alone, and there was no one to back him up. He needed to focus.
He could feel himself slipping into unconsciousness, but he couldn't do that. He needed to focus and stay awake, he needed to keep fighting. The girl and her dog needed him. His brothers…they needed him and they weren't there to protect him and the girl if he were to pass out.
Mustering as much strength as he could, he slowly opened his eyes.
Only to find himself looking down the barrel of a gun.
Focus, Mikey, focus…stay awake…gotta move…
It was the guy he had knocked down with the manhole cover. One hand clutching his injured side, the other taking aim between his eyes.
Come on Mikey, focus, get up… get up or you're dead…focus... stay awake…gotta move…gotta…
Despite his efforts, Mikey's eyes slid shut as pain and darkness wrapped their fingers around him, pulling him into unconsciousness.
Sorry about the cliffie! I guess I should warn you that I can be kinda evil that way. Thanks for taking the time to read. Please, let me know what you think! It would make me, and my muse so very happy.