Hey everyone! Welcome to my first TMNT fanfiction ever! This is an AU inspired by 2012 mostly, but I changed so much this won't be a familiar reading, I promise you ;) I apologise for every mistake you'll find here, english is not my first language and I didn't want to bother people to beta read this, since the last time I did so I involved a lot of people and then I disappeared after the first chapter! Aha aha ah. Warning: this fic contains abuse and other unpleasant stuff, but I promise there're always light at the end of the tunnel.
Peter steadied the little tank in his arms, took a big breath and exited the pet shop. The road was full of people and cars, and he had to summon all his guts to keep going along the road and don't be overwhelmed. It was noon and the huge sidewalks were just packed with people, busy new yorkers with better things to do than spare any attention to a little kid with four turtles in a plastic tank.
He managed to walk past two blocks, before the weight of the tank, the suffocating crowd and the traffic noises began to take a toll on his nerves.
He was already in so much trouble: he skipped school, went to a fairly distant part of town, and purchased the turtles he wanted so much with the money he was supposed to spend on a new backpack. His mother would have his head on a plate before dinner; he really didn't want to add "being lost" to the list of dumb stuff he did today.
Calm down, Pete, he told himself, you're still on the right way… just turn on the left, cross the road and you'll recognise the neighborhood.
He proceeded to do so, but the more he walked, the more the roads looked foreign to him. All around him, more offices and shops instead of houses. He tried to orient himself with the streets names, but he really wasn't sure of what was were- he had never walked around in the Queens alone before, and he had never missed his overprotective mother more than this moment.
His vision started to blurry, and his breath became more shallow the faster he run among the adults. His little arms began to burn for the effort of holding up the plastic tank; it was relatively light, but the water and the turtles inside weighted it down a lot. He didn't want to stop to rest for a bit, though. He feared the more he was staying away from home, the more he would get lost; his panicky eight year old mind found that line of thought perfectly logical.
Then, when the first tears started to roll down his cheeks, he saw it: the red old factory near his school. It wasn't exactly home, but he felt immensely relieved nonetheless.
So relieved, in fact, the he mindlessly began to run across the road, towards his focus.
He didn't see the car that was coming right at him. He didn't see the black TCRI van coming from the other way.
The woman driving the car saw him though, and in a desperate attempt to avoid him sharply turned to the left. The car collided with a loud BANG on the side of the black van, that bended like a straw and turned on itself. The loud screeching noise made Peter turn back, just in time to see a little piece of metal flung at his head. He fell on the asphalt like a ragdoll, unable to move or see. He heard a loud crack near him, and then he felt wetness seeping in his pants and shirt. There it goes the tank, he thought.
After some time -minutes? Hours?, he recognised that the amorph greyness he was staring at was the blue of the sky. He heard some voices, too.
"Are you ok, son?"
"Oh my God..!"
"Stay put, kid, paramedics are on the way"
Paramedics? Ah, the ambulance! I love those! He thought in a haze. The ambulance is so big… and beautiful… wait a second, it could squash my turtles! Paramedics won't notice them, and they'll run them over!
In a surge of panic, he sat up, only to sway to the left and puke his breakfast. He ignored the concerned shouts of the little crowd that surrounded him, and looked around for the turtles. The tank was cracked but mostly intact, devoid of its contents two feet from him. The little red-eared sliders he purchased just a couple hours earlier were wandering around in a puddle of green goo. The strange substance was seeping from the back of the van, and Peter noticed with panic that there was some red in it too, and that liquid was coming from the still crushed car nearby. He noticed there was a quiet weeping coming from it, and he gulped in fear and guilt. Not knowing what to do, he decided to tune it out and focused on retrieving his pets.
He tried to touch as little goo as possible, picking them up one by one with his left hand by their tiny green shells. He put them back in the tank; the water was gone but it was still a safer place than the open road.
He was rubbing his dirty, gooed left hand against his pants when the ambulance finally came.
After the phone call, she was there in less than ten minutes. Even from a distance, she saw him seated on the back of the ambulance, and came running for him.
"Peter! Oh my God, PETER!" the high pitched scream of his mother was the most beautiful and the most terrible sound in the world, both at the same time. His guilt for everything that happened crushed him, but he figured out his punishment wouldn't be that harsh if he managed to look as pityful as he felt. And maybe more hurt than he actually was.
The middle aged woman embraced him, tightly.
"Don't do this never again. Never again, do you hear me? Oh my God. Oh my.."
"I'm… I'm sorry, mom." he said, before his throat became clogged with a sob.
"Excuse me, are you Peter's mother?" asked a young woman, dressed in a paramedic uniform.
"Yes, that's me." the older woman sheepishly replied. She released her son and straightened herself.
"Well, looks like your son suffered a light concussion, and I suggest he should be taken to the ER for a quick check up. I also need your insurance datas…"
"Yes, yes, of course… Could you please give me a moment?"
"Oh, sure!" smiled the younger woman, then she approached her colleagues, who were still working around one of the van's drivers.
Peter's mom refocused on her son, and crouched in front of him. Now she was a little bit calmer, and for the first time she noticed the broken tank that rested besides his son. Her eyes widened in shock.
"Those turtles… are you kidding me?!" she whispered-shouted. Peter flinched.
"How many times did I tell you we cannot keep those? HOW MANY?!" the last words she shouted for real. Peter began to cry quietly.
"I- I know, mom, I just… I thought I could…" he stammered.
"No, you didn't think! You didn't think at all! And now look what happened!" she wildly gestured to the wreckage around them. "And all of this because you wanted some stupid turtles!"
"Mom… please…"
"Don't! We'll discuss this with dad. And those…" she pointed to the little, dirty turtles, "Those are getting back where they came from!"
"No mom! Please!" Peter cried, but she was deaf to his plea.
"I'm taking them back today, as soon as we're done here. Am I clear?" she asked, coldly. He nodded sadly, scratching his left hand and wrist.
After several hours spent in the ER, Peter was officially dismissed by a doctor. His mother was still angry, and still very determined to return the little pets he was still carrying around. They went straight to the pet store, and his mother convinced the shop owner to take the turtles back, even if she had to bend at their "No refunds!" policy. As they exited the shop, she muttered to herself: "That man's a criminal... it's just irresponsible selling pets to the first kid who slams money on his counter! What an ass...assin of innocent creatures."
Peter didn't understand his mother jabs. The man looked like a hero to him: he didn't ask questions, he gave him four turtles at the price of three. He also had a cool eagle tattoo on the neck. What a legend.
He didn't noticed the tired woman with a little kid that entered the shop after they left. While he and his mother walked down the road, he felt the hitch on his left hand and forearm worsening, and scratched with renewed vigor. After a while, his mother noticed.
"What's wrong? You're gonna bleed if you keep scratching yourself this way."
"But it… it hurts, mom." he whined. The woman stopped in her tracks and bent down to look closely at the bare arm he was showing her. For a moment, she thought that the dimming light of the day was pulling a prank on her eyes, because she saw her son's arm littered in little, smoth, green scales.
Hamato Yoshi was a homeless man. He had a home, and a wife, and a daughter once. He lost everything. So he came to New York, in search of a New Beginning. After three years, he found out that keeping a job with his rampaging depression was an impossible feat, so he just gave up. Living in the sewers felt much more fitting to him, a hollow shell of who he once was. He had even found a nice and not so smelly place to live in, an abandoned metro station. He felt apatic, but content.
Today was a weird day. While he was in the tunnels, searching for discarded goods of any kind, he heard the loud noise of a car accident above his head. He also saw a little of what happened through the holes of a nearby drain grate. He couldn't do much, and when he saw the ambulance coming, he took a deep relieved breath. He then went back home, careful to sidestep that strange green ooze that dripped inside the drain.
That stuff could have been toxic.