Hey! I can't believe how much time it's been since I've posted something on here. As for my past readers, I'm really sorry for delaying my other stories for so long. For my new readers who don't care about that, I'm sorry for blabbing on. This is my first TMNT fanfic, so no flames, please! Enjoy!
p.s. This takes place a while after Slash and Destroy. I promise there will be no tcest or weird shippings. Just brotherly fluff at the end.
Disclaimer: If I owned the turtles, Donnie and April would be fully canon and would've had an abundance of children right now. Yeah, I don't own anything except for my own ideas.
It seemed like an ordinary day in the lair. Raph was kicking and lightly jabbing his sais into the practice dummy in the living room, more so rehearsing and editing his attack patterns. Thank God Leo isn't watching me, he thought, going over fighting motions is his thing, not mine. In front of me, Leo was mindlessly flipping through channels as there was nothing good to watch during prime time. Donnie was most certainly cooped up in his lab doing who knows what, and the youngest was apparently nowhere to be seen, most likely up to something pretty mischievous and stupid that would end up with him in deep trouble.
Which, unfortunately, also lead to an uncomfortable amount of silence.
"Hey, um, Raph?" Donnie called from his workplace, "I need some space on my desk here and this, um, empty canister of mutagen is no use to me. Do you want it or not?"
"And why should I care?" Raph asked.
"It's, um, the empty canister from which Spike... yeah." He had no need to continue.
"What? I thought it was in my room!" He raged.
"Well, yeah, about that, I needed a few more drops of mutagen to fill up another beaker and that was all we had left in the house yesterday. Sorry."
Raph marched up to Donnie and raised his fist. "How many times to I have to tell you people to STAY OUT OF MY ROOM?!"
Not at all intimidated by his big brother's threatening pose, he held up the broken canister. "Again I'll ask, do you want it or not?" Raph grunted and yanked the canister out of his hand.
On his way upstairs, Leo stopped him for a brief second. "Um, Raph, do you know what's Mikey's up to?" He asked without taking his attention from the blinking TV.
The red-banded turtle sighed, pissed at the same old question somebody just had to ask everyday. "You know I have an endless amount of responses for that, but for now I'm just gonna go with 'I don't know and I don't care.'"
"Meow."
"Oh, what do you want now, you stupid cat?!" He retorted to the hideous furball whom he had almost tripped over.
Besides pizza and skateboarding, and also being a total pest, Klunk was the only thing that mattered to Mikey, and the pet trailed him almost everywhere he went in the lair. So Raph was a little confused as to why the cat was roaming freely like it owned the place without his owner around. This either meant the knucklehead was lurking around or Mikey was just being careless.
"Hmmph..." Leo pondered the same way he always did when he felt something awfully out of place. "I don't know, I haven't seen him for more than 2 hours. Could you go check on him?"
"Ugh. you worry too much sometimes, Fearless." The truth was, though, Raph was starting to worry about him, too. Instead of taking back what he said, he proposed: "Do you wanna watch a movie?" He lifted a finger before Leo could open his mouth, "I'm gonna go get a movie for you to watch. You stay right here, kay?"
Leo was left dumbfounded at his unusual generous offer, but stayed put nonetheless. As the leader and the eldest of his 3 brothers, who were all (sort of) highly skilled ninjas under the training of their sensei- but yet still mutant teenagers who were constantly getting into trouble- it wasn't his fault if he was a bit concerned about his brothers' whereabouts. Of course Raph understood his pain, maybe not like Leo did, since it was Leo'spain, but the responsibility of looking after each other was a big burden and he hated it. Of course, he didn't mind it at all, he had a big brother and two little brothers to protect that he deeply loved and cared about and Raph was proud of it. He would do anything for them. But, well... it's hard sometimes!
All that pressure...
"Don?" Leo asked as he saw the genius once again leave his work to brew some coffee. 'Go easy on Raph whenever you mention Spike. It's... still kind of a touchy subject for him."
"I know," Donnie grabbed a mug and poured the liquid in. (A/N lol that was some fast brewing huh?) "But that happened months ago! Isn't he supposed to be the tough guy?"
"Well, yeah... I suppose." Raph was the tough one, but he also had a tender heart. He knew his younger brothers were pretty heedless to Raph's situation and insisted on pushing his buttons, so Leo just kept to himself. Besides, everyone needed a mask to hide from time to time. He knew this pretty well from experience.
"I hope you know what you're doing." Donnie turned to him as he hurried back to work, mug in hand.
"Don't worry. Let's just hope Mikey doesn't mess this up." They both grinned.
As Raph pretended to go search for a movie, he quickly scanned Mikey's bedroom for any sign of him. Nothing. Ugh, Mikey better have a good reason to scare him like that. When he backed out of the doorway, he nearly fell onto Klunk again.
"MIKEY! YOUR STUPID CAT IS FOLLOWING ME AROUND AGAIN!" No reply. Of course.
"What's taking so long?" Leo teased from the living room.
"Alright, alright, be patient! Geez."
"You're telling me."
"Shut up, I'm the one doing you a favor here!"
"Sheesh, can't you guys keep it down a little?!" A different voice cried from the lab.
"Sorry, D!" Leo shouted back.
Raph crunched down to Klunk's level. "Listen, you pest. I don't care what my little brother thinks about you, but if you bother me like that one more time some really bad things are gonna be comin towards ya, so I suggest you stay away or else."
Mikey better not have been snooping around in my room, he thought. His room was the one place that he kept sacred and was for him only. The only times Raph had ever let his family is was either when he was awfully sick (which rarely happened) or when they were little kids and Mikey would have a bad sleep and stayed with Raph instead. Also, the occasional talk from Master Spliter. Other than that, they were forbidden to enter. So of course the already-cracked-canister shattered into a thousand pieces as it hit the floor when he opened the door and walked into something he was not at all expecting.
It looked like there had been one of Donnie's experiments gone wrong in his very room.
"What the-?!"
Even with the lights on, the room was painted charcoal black.
The whole room had been painted black, all of his items, comics and weapons had been cleared from his room; all that was left remaining was his bed, his empty shelves, and his nightstand.
And in the center of the room, a crumpled leaf with a small bite taken from it.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY ROOM?! MY STUFF?!
Well, he didn't really seem to mind the new color. Actually, it kind of suited him. The rage circulating in him.
On one of his shelves, Raph had went through the trouble of building a little shrine for his dear former pet tortoise Spike. A picture of the happy duo, his little blanket he used to cover Spike in cold winter nights, and a few leaves from which he had been last seen chewing. But now it was gone. Along with everything else. Were they moving or something?
He would kill whoever had done this.
No, one of his family members must have done this. Not that he would consider them as family after this. Why couldn't they understand that he was going through a hard time? His brother knew better than to get under his skin instead of helping him. Well, not that he wished for any comfort, that wasn't how he healed. Instead, he just wanted to be left alone. I bet Mikey was behind this, he thought. He must have snuck into the lab and set up one of Don's exploding prototypes. And surely Leo was part of it, but remained quiet about it.
He felt his knees buckle and stumbled to the floor, where he cupped his hands and lifted the leaf to his face.
"Oh, Spike..." He whispered to it. His face crunched and his eyes were beginning to moisten.
"Why did you have to leave me? You were the only one that understood..." He trailed off.
Am I really- crying? What's wrong with me?!
No, this wasn't like him at all. Why did he even care about a little pathetic shrine anyways?! This was waaay out of character... but at least with the door firmly shut and locked behind him, (he had insisted on putting one, even though someone had figured out how to pick the lock) he knew he was virtually safe from confronting anyone in his current state. Besides, it was almost more than 2 months since Spike grew into Slash and betrayed him. He didn't deserve to be around him or his family. He almost beat his brothers to death right before his eyes!
So why do I still care...?
He had to accept it. Spike was different now. He was gone, nothing more than a distant memory. The pet he once knew and loved was now had transformed into a brute and powerful mutated freak just like that.
Heh, just like me, he chuckled to himself.
If anything, his transformation should have made them closer, not tear them apart.
A soft "Meow" was heard from the hallway as he refocused. Mourning over the loss of Spike would have to wait. Right now, all he seeked was to avenge his pet and himself- and that was meant getting even with the chucklehead behind all this. He had a big gut feeling the other 2 had something to do with, but he wasn't so sure yet. Raph's questions would have to be saved for now. His eyes went from hopeless to burning fiery as he pulled himself together and crunched his fists and cracked his neck. He knew he might regret his temper eventually, but this was what he felt was right.
"Oh, Mikey, you really have made the biggest mistake of your life yet."
Eeek! What's Raph going to do to Mikey?! Who knows?! Oh wait. I do. hehehehe. I hope I haven't disappointed you or wasted your time.. Should I have added more? Feel free to leave any suggestions! I promise, Mikey will be in the next chapter! (He's my favourite character c: ) Spoiler: Raph is going to regret his temper later. Heh I'm think I'm so funny. There will be more serious problems though... Please review! It's my fuel to write/update faster ;)