Summary:
Donnie has always dreamed of creating his own family with four sons and four daughters, raising them with the support of a like-minded companion.
He gets his chance when he meets a broken divorcee, called Gale, who's spent her best years raising children for her extended family, and has now been cast aside by her relatives.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Turtles or any characters you recognise. Eastman, Laird, and Nickelodeon etc own them. I'm doing this for fun and not making any money off it. Please don't sue me :). My OC's belong to me; don't take them without asking please.
Any similarity between my characters and real people in purely coincidental and unintentional. I may have been inspired at some point by real people, but this is fiction, so I've exaggerated their characteristics to suit my story!
Warnings: This story contains violence, strong language, abuse, and may contain sensitive subjects (including possibly sexual situations). If easily offended by these, please don't read. People with PTSD should read this with caution as some situations might be triggering.
A/N: These are mostly 2K14 Turtles with other bits thrown in as the mood takes me. In 2019 the Turtles are 22 (Leo), 21 (Raph & Donnie), & 20 (Mikey) respectively. This story has quite a few flashbacks (in italics) so please bear with me. I'm assuming that Mikey was 15 in 2014. In my head-cannon, the middle brother's are twins; this is because different versions put these two in different order.
Any unfamiliar terms will be at the bottom of each page along with any translations.
000
*Flashback (April 1st 2008)*
"Donnie, you need to fix the Toaster!" A nine-year-old Mikey whined, as he swung the badly battered contraption carelessly in one hand.
"What happened to it this time?" A ten-year-old Donatello patiently asked, carefully pushing his battered glasses higher on his face.
"Leo tried to get his poptart out, but the poptart got stuck, and so Leo used his katana to get it out, but the toaster gave him an owie, so now Leo is getting made better by Sensei, but the toaster is all broken," Mikey prattled, as he tossed the broken toaster haphazardly at Donatello.
"Did Raph try to 'help' Leo get the poptart out too?" Donatello quietly muttered to himself sarcastically, as he inspected the telltale signs of angry Sai marks, piercing the already dented steel of the toaster's sides.
"We need it back for breakfast tomorrow. Bye!" Mikey happily bounded out of the 'lab corner' of the lair, having done his duty.
Donatello spent the rest of the day carefully disassembling the toaster, straightening and carefully re-welding the damaged metal exterior, before stripping the electronic components, and assessing the parts he needed to get from the junkyard. He carefully wrote a list of the necessary items, before took the list to Sensei to get permission to accompany him to retrieve the parts.
Master Splinter gave his son a piercing look, before agreeing to allow his son to accompany him to the junkyard.
000
The trip to the junkyard was uneventful, with Donnie remembering to take some pizza crusts for the junkyard dogs. He'd learn after his first junkyard trip, always to have a little food with him for the junkyard dogs, that's if he wanted to remain unmolested by them.
Once the dogs were bribed, Donnie quickly gathered the necessary components, before he heard a weak cry coming from inside a broken microwave oven. He signalled to Master Splinter, who inspected the oven, only to be deeply shocked by the discovery of a newborn infant, complete with afterbirth, inside.
"Give me your cloak my son, I need to wrap the little one in it," Master Splinter commanded Donatello, as he ordered his son to carefully open the appliance so he could retrieve the baby.
"Why did they put a baby in the microwave?" A bewildered Donatello asked, carefully watching how his father collected the infant.
"I do not know, my son. But we must take the infant with haste to the hospital if he is to survive," Master Splinter replied.
The pair quickly slipped through the shadows to the nearest hospital. Donatello wrote a little note for the hospital staff at his father's request and they left the baby wrapped in Donatello's ragged grey cloak.
The note read,
"To the hospital staff. I found little baby "Bruce" in a broken microwave oven. Please look after him, and find him some nice parents, with kind brothers and sisters to live with."
Master Splinter could not yet read English, having learnt the language of Japanese from the laboratory staff at Sacks Labs. So, he was forced to rely on Donatello to write any English language correspondence to the human world. This gave Donatello some liberty as to what he could write on the note.
Donatello was pretty fluent and literate in Japanese, English, Spanish, Mandarin, and French. He also had a passing familiarity with Arabic, Farsi, and he was currently trying to master German.
Once they had made sure that the hospital staff had collected "Bruce", they made their way back to the lair, via a few restaurant dumpsters to collect dinner.
000
Once Donatello got home, he had to endure the usual rough housing and constant mockery that came with being the 'geek' of the family. Several other things had been broken through the day, which he found dumped in 'Donatello's Lab' corner without explanation.
Fed up with the un-ending workload, and complete lack of appreciation from his brothers Donatello, decided there and then that he would be moving out as soon as he had a suitable alternative place to live. While he worked for the rest of the evening on repairing the broken items, he plotted how he could become fully independent of his family for survival.
000
April 1st 2019
Donatello carefully wiped his damp glasses after he had turned off his laptop for the evening. He'd been watching a YouTube video of Bruce Addington's 11th Birthday Party.
Donnie had long ago hacked the hospital records, to track down the little baby he'd found in the microwave. He considered himself the 'Hogoshā' of every baby that he had saved from infanticide.
He never told his brother's or his father about this, choosing to use his extensive skills with the World Wide Web to earn enough money to buy these orphaned children little gifts on their 'Finding-day' and Christmas.
Social media made it easier for him to keep track of the older children, though he still did patrol's around the city to check up on the others.
More than once, he'd needed to rescue one of 'his children' from badly chosen foster parents, who were treating them unkindly. Most of the time though, they had been 'adopted out', to good people, and he had quite a number of virtual photo albums of their lives.
He'd also been working on his plans to move out of home, that he'd begun on the day he'd found Bruce.
Realising that eventually his brothers would also need lairs of their own eventually, he located an area of the sewers that could eventually be turned into a mutant 'village' of sorts, allowing each of the brothers to live independently, while being close enough to continue training together as a clan.
He'd carefully arranged the city records to prevent them ever being worked on by the city sanitation workers, and over the years he had worked to create five rough spaces that would eventually become their adult homes.
He'd finished at sixteen, the huge security network and utility network needed to support his vision. At seventeen, he'd completed the necessary excavation and creation of secret entries into each lair. Despite his increased workload at eighteen, which had set back his plans, he'd managed to complete the structure and decoration of his clan's future homes by the age of nineteen.
Last year he had focused his efforts on furnishing each lair with the basics. He could now move out at any convenient time, he was just waiting for the appropriate timing.
His family still didn't know about his plans, which was just the way he liked it. He'd discovered long ago, that what his family didn't know they couldn't disrupt by their unpredictable choices and disruptive decisions.
A quick glance at the monitor of the lair told him that the others were preparing to go on patrol. Donnie quickly suited up; after making sure his 'foundling rescue kit' was discretely hidden amongst his equipment.
000
Donnie left his lab, just as Leo was coming to get him. "Any interesting activity topside?" Leo asked, sheathing his katana.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual gang activity and petty crime." Donnie checked the charge on his shell cell, before following his brother's out of the lair.
000
A/N: I chose "Bruce" after Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk) as the baby was found in a microwave oven, which emits radiation. Not quite the same, but I think a child Donatello would have made the connection.
Yes, Donnie is stalking these kids, but unless they are in trouble, he lets them live their lives ignorant of his existence. While this might seem slightly creepy from some points of view, but he sees himself as their godparent of sorts. After 11 years, he probably has about fifty kids to watch over.
Donnie typically gives them something small worth less than $5 a year. With the babies and toddlers, he usually bribes/blackmails Raphael into knitting little hats or mittens for Christmas. A couple of decorated pencils or a small much needed exercise book might be gifts for older children as he can buy these in bulk when they are cheap, and hide them in his lab until they are needed.