Uh.
Hey fandom. I'm back.
So if any of you read Danny Phantom and/or Randy Cunningham: Ninth Grade Ninja fanfiction, you'll probably be aware that I did this same drabble set for each of those fandoms as well. I just...I kept thinking about the Turtles for some of them and...well, third time's the charm.
Again, this is just a little ten-part drabble series. I don't own this set of "Rules for Being Human", nor do I own the Turtles or any other recognizable properties. I'm just doing this for my enjoyment. I hope all of you enjoy it as well.
Still Human
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.
Hamato Yoshi was human, once upon a time.
He had enjoyed his life as a normal man, living with his wonderful Tang Shen and beginning a family with her in the form of their daughter, Miwa. Their only concern was Oroku Saki – who began calling himself Shredder – as his jealousy burned as a vengeful inferno, intent on breaking Yoshi and stealing Shen for himself.
It was all in vain, of course. Yoshi had escaped his clutches, and Shen was the one to fall instead. (He didn't learn about Shredder's consolation prize – Miwa, Karai – until fifteen long years later.)
In order to conceal himself, Hamato Yoshi moved stealthily to America. The great, bustling city of New York became his home, and within a month he was settled, living a quiet life in the city that never slept.
Until, of course, he decided to buy a few turtles. (Tang Shen had loved wildlife, her favorite animals being turtles, cats, and, inexplicably, rats.) Four little turtles, innocently wandering around their bowl in the pet shop, recently hatched and ready to start a new life as his companions in the lonely life he now lived.
But he'd chosen to follow the strange man (the Kraang). And the consequences burned.
He'd dropped the glass transport aquarium for the turtles in the fight that had ensued, and in a quick retaliation he had lashed out at the man holding a strange canister. It clattered to the ground and the glass broke on the hard concrete, in tandem with the glass of the aquarium.
Light, and then pain, exploded behind Yoshi's eyes.
He could faintly hear the men retreating as he collapsed to the ground, pain flooding every synapse in his body. He was aware of his entire body changing; the fur erupting everywhere, a tail elongating from seemingly nowhere, his entire face being rearranged into a muzzle – a rat.
It was over as quickly as it had begun (or had it been hours since it had started? He couldn't tell) and then he was aware of four other presences, four little creatures groaning with aches.
He looked up, eyes still adjusting, and went still at the sight of the pet turtles he had purchased. No longer could he consider them pets, he supposed; intelligent, self-aware eyes stared back at him, more human than when this situation began.
(Did that make him less human, saying that? What could he consider himself, now?)
Hamato Yoshi, he decided, died for good that night. As he took the little turtles and raised them as his sons (like he would have raised Miwa), scavenging for food and supplies in order to survive, the man Yoshi once was faded into light background noise as Splinter the rat took the lead in how to live this new life.