DICLAIMER: I delcare that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are not mine…I'm just borrowing them for a spell, making no money from it, blah blah woof woof…
As far as I can tell, there hasn't been alot of fic done on the Keno character from the second installmnent of the TMNT trilogy...so after watching it one night, I plucked up the shiny new idea, (which I have notoriuos habits of starting but not really finishing), and said... Well, what the heck!
So tell me what you think...
Hello…hi.
Ummm… My name is….
No. That won't work. The less you know about me the better. But a first name won't hurt much…Not anymore, anyway.
My name is Keno.
Fairly unoriginal, as my parents named me after an estranged great great uncle that now sells tyres at a warehouse in Oregon. I met him once when I was twelve. All I remember of that encounter was squirming in a metal chair while he and his buddies tried teaching me the fine details of cheating at Poker. I do, however, clearly remember my parents expressions when they came home to find money piled on the table, while I held the deck to deal the next round.
The cigar smoke took weeks to vanish entirely from the house- my uncle left shortly after that, and not much was spoken of him since.
A shame really- he was the only relative that wasn't entirely hung up on tradition and pretence. Growing up around that was…oppressive.
Don't get me wrong; I love my family, but I've always set out to choose my own path. Rebelling when they sent me to one obscure Japanese in-law after another; skipping out on Sundays when my school-friends were at church, instead my father dragging me to the local temple.
Then there were the martial arts lessons. They started shortly after my junior year of high school. By that point fights were regular at my house, and deep down I felt a little guilty for causing the friction between them.
Of course, I was the quintessential nerd- I enjoyed class, and it didn't occur to me to hide the fact. You gotta love that naivety…
The jocks would wait for me, every morning, without fail, at the school entrance. And every morning, without fail, no matter how I tried to avoid them, I would get punched. A lot.
After two weeks of coming home with black eyes and cut lips, my parents drew the line, and after the biggest argument up to that point, enrolled me into the local dojo.
The first few weekends of that, were a lot like the morning beat-ups at school. Then one afternoon, my sparring partner accidentally grazed my cheek with an off punch. And I went nuts… After the class ended, my Instructor pulled me aside.
I listened; he said I needed more control, that I needed to apply myself for myself, not for my parents or anyone else. For the first time, an adult was taking to me, not at me, or for me. And so, I did.
Three more weeks of paying attention sent me to the top ranks of the class, and my parents, unavoidably were bursting with pride. And they backed off, as I promised to keep it up; and to this day, I have.
The other happy development came one evening early June; on my way home, a group of jocks found me- figured they'd get in some extra bullying before football practise.
I sent every one of them to the hospital. After that, the bullying stopped- not right away, but to my delight, slowly, it fizzled down. By July, I was known throughout the school as 'Defender to the Nerds'.
I guess that's where my whole 'hero' complex started. I mean, I'm no Peter Parker by any stretch of the imagination, but I wasn't a nerd anymore either. Trying to figure out the in-between led me into plenty of fights, some good, others, not so much.
So when I was delivering pizza one night, and I saw some guys in stocking masks loading boxes into the back of a van, I did what seemed a good idea at the time.
However, despite my reputation in high school, nothing prepared me for a fifty on one confrontation. I threw a couple of kicks, roundhouses, and managed to take out three or four of the thugs, before I realised I was waaayyyy over my head.
Luckily for me, a real group of heroes took the group, myself included, by surprise. You may have heard the urban legends about them…
It was then I found out what it really means to be a hero.
Too bad fate wasn't through with me yet…