"Hey, Mikey?"
"Yeah RaiyRaiy?" I smiled as I added shading to areas on his face.
"How'd you get that scar on your chin?" I asked without looking up from my work. Leo snorted at my question from his place in his own bed beside me, hands fiddling with a Rubik's Cube.
"A cat attacked me," Mikey said. I choked on a laugh and lifted my pencil off the paper, not trusting myself to draw in this state.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah! Donnie and I were setting up security cameras outside the lair and we found this cat stuck in a rat trap. Donnie disabled the trap and when it got free it pounced on me, then ran off. Man was that cat ever mad! " He ran a thumb over the scar and shrugged. "Makes me look tough though." I nodded in agreement.
"Very." Mikey grinned and leaned across the gap separating the two beds we sat on.
"How's it goin?" I flipped my sketchbook shut before he could see, making him sit back with a pout on his face.
"Why can't I see it?" He whined.
"Because," I said simply, "I'm not finished yet."
"Well when will you be finished?" He asked, flopping onto his back tiredly. I glanced over at Leo and we shared an eye roll.
"I dunno, but I need to see your face," I laughed. He sat up in confusion.
"How come you drew Raph without having to see his face?" I froze, both Mikey's and Leo's eyes falling on me. Feeling a blush creep up my cheeks, I quickly looked down and began to draw again.
"I... I guess because I saw him a lot throughout the day I remembered his face easier."
"Oh... That makes sense." He nodded in agreement. We remained silent for a few minutes, the only sounds being the scratching of my pencil and the clicks of Leo's handheld puzzle.
"Okay," I said at last, causing Mikey to glance up hopefully. I looked down at the drawing in satisfaction, then traded my pencils out for coloured ones. "Now for the eyes." He tilted his head back and groaned.
"When does this end!?" He cried.
"Mikey," Leo chuckled. "This isn't torture, you know. You've been wanting Raiya to draw you forever."
"Yeah, but I didn't think it would take five years," he argued, crossing his arms. I rolled my wrist in an attempt to rid it of building aches and stiffness.
"Don't worry, it won't take much longer to finish. I just need to look at your eyes." I leaned forward to inspect them, only to find them barren of their usual joyful shine.
"How 'bout you tell a story?" I offered. Mikey practically leaped with joy.
"Oh, which one!? There's so many! Do you wanna hear about the time I hid one of Donnie's science books and he couldn't find it for two months? Or about how Raph dared Leo to follow Sensei above ground when we were little? Oh! Or the time when me and Raph tried tattooing Donnie in his sleep!?" He exploded with laughter at that last one, making Leo chuckle and shake his head as well.
"Huh? What about me sleeping?" Donnie asked, looking up from my mother's astronomy book he was reading in his bed.
"Remember when me and Raph tried giving you a tattoo when you were asleep?" Mikey repeated once he'd calmed down.
"That was not funny," he muttered and I grinned.
"Yeah, tell me about your guys' tattoos. How'd you get them?"
"Oh, well Raph dips his torture stick in black ink and stabs us with it a million times. It really hurts and it takes forever," Mikey explained. My jaw dropped and I look up from colouring.
"He what!?"
"Mikey," Leo laughed, "It's not a torture stick. It's a traditional Japanese inking method called tebori irezumi, it literally means hand-carved tattoo. It involves dipping a long stick with a bunch of tiny metal needles on the end into ink and, well jabbing it into your skin a million times. It's really good for increasing pain tolerance," Leo explained, his hands still working on the Rubik's Cube. I relaxed enough to continue my work but grimaced at the thought,
"Why the hell would you ever do that?" It sounds worse than modern tattoo machines. Mikey shrugged happily.
"I wanted a tatt."
"Bugged Sensei about it for months," Leo added.
"Yeah, he finally agreed to let me if one of us learned how to do it the traditional way. So Raph learned cuz he was really bored and was the only one of us who could draw anything better than a stick-man." I grinned.
"Really? Raph can draw?" Why'd he never tell me? Mikey nodded.
"Well not as good as you, but he's not bad. He's good at anything artistic actually, even knitting." My pencil stopped moving in surprise.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah!" Raph can actually knit!? I bursted out laughing, unable to contain it.
"Raph... Raph knits!?" When Mikey nodded vigorously I could only laugh harder. "Wh–why does he knit?" I breathed at last.
"Whenever he gets in trouble Sensei makes him knit, so he had to teach himself how to. And now he's really good at it cuz he gets in trouble all the time," he laughed.
"Really?"
"Yeah, once we were in the ha'shi for so long he almost made a blanket."
"Holy shit, what'd you guys do?" I noticed Leo stiffen, his hands hesitating on his puzzle cube.
"Uh, we stole headphones from somebody above ground," Mikey admitted sheepishly. "But we gave them back! I swear!"
"That doesn't sound bad enough for you guys to be in the ha'shi long enough for Raph to knit a blanket," I said, knowing there was more to the story than Mikey was telling me. Leo sighed and turned toward me to explain.
"The guy we stole them from saw Raph's hand so he freaked out and somehow managed to take a picture, then he called the police but they mustn't have believed him. We thought we were in the clear when he got dragged off by the police, but a few hours later a bunch of Area Fifty-One guys showed up in the sewers trying to find us. Donnie managed to make this serum that confused one of the men and we gave him the headphones and an arm prop we made to look kind of like Raph's arm. We told him that it was just some kid fooling around and he was so out of it he bought it and told the rest of the group and they left. Then Sensei put us in the ha'shi for so long we lost track of time." Mikey nodded as he tugged absentmindedly on his orange mask tails.
"I've been wondering what Raph meant when he said Area Fifty-One guys during that argument," I murmured, finally understanding. "That guy saw you, didn't he?" Mikey winced almost unnoticeably, but I still caught it.
"Yeah, he did. The worst part was he didn't even scream, or call us freaks like the one we stole from did. He just stared at us and kept on saying how we'd be perfect specimens and that the world would finally know real monsters," Leo said quietly. I bit my lip, not knowing what to say or do. So I looked down and quickly finished my work.
"Okay, how does it look?" I asked, holding the drawing up. Mikey's face lit up with joy and he took my sketchbook from me with a gasp.
"This is incredible!" He cried, then thrust it into Leo's face. "Look! It looks just like me!" Then he turned it back to him so he could inspect it closer. "My eyes are so cool!" Then he tackled me in a hug. "Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!" I laughed and hugged him back.
"No problem, Mikey." Jeez, I didn't think he'd get this excited over a drawing. He ran off excitedly to show his other brothers and I couldn't help but grin at his antics. I caught Leo's gaze and he smiled gratefully at me, as if saying thank you as well.
AN: Not really sure how I feel about this chapter.
I legit have no clue how the turtles actually got their tattoos, I just did some really light research on tebori irezumi and thought it was cool so I threw it in here lol. I'm also thinking that a scene with Raph giving Raiya a tattoo would be really funny and I really wanna write it the more I think about it, so that's a possibility. Not soon though, probably like the end of TSS or somewhere in the sequel.
Anyways, please leave me some reviews! Love you guys!
