Baby Proof
Age: Eight Months
It happened.
It finally happened.
The worst. Possible. Thing.
It had all happened so suddenly.
About a week ago Splinter was sitting in the living room reading a good book he had scavenged from the library donation bin while his children were playing peacefully on a small rug on the floor. How innocent they had seemed, rocking there on their backs or in some cases sitting upright, a feat he was still very proud of despite the fact that they had learned it little more than a month ago.
But then it happened.
Without Splinter noticing Leonardo had rolled from his back down onto his stomach. An innocent enough move.
But then he put one arm in front of him.
And pushed with one leg.
Splinter's whiskers twitched, almost as if he sensed that his world was about to come crashing down around him.
He looked down from his book…
And there, right before his eyes, was Leonardo crawling across the floor. Technically it was more of a commando crawl than a traditional crawl, but still.
Splinter's eyes had lit up. His son's first crawl! How he had beamed with pride at such a beautiful, shining moment of triumph for his child!
But then the light was snuffed from his eyes.
And a dark dark dread had taken its place.
Splinter looked to one side of the room where a rusty pipe jutted from the wall.
He looked to the other where his collection of coolers stood stacked in small, precarious towers.
He looked directly towards where Leo was crawling only to see a large pool of water connecting to a massive drainage pipe that led off into an inky, aquatic abyss!
The world seemed to shatter as a chilling truth rocked Splinter to the core.
He lived in a sewer.
And a sewer was anything but baby proof.
Splinter had immediately leapt from his chair and scooped Leonardo up into his arms. While he knew turtles were generally fairly quick to learn how to swim, he in no way wanted to test that out by letting Leonardo go for a dip then and there.
As Splinter stood looking around his horribly unsafe home his whiskers twitched yet again. He turned to see none other than his little Raphael doing what could have been deemed as baby pushups against the floor before sliding a full three inches forward on his belly as if determined not to be outdone by his slightly older sibling.
Splinters eyes had practically bulged out of his head. While the same glow of pride that had gleamed for Leonardo gleamed once again for Raphael, the terror he felt quickly grew so massive that any light it might have given off was sucked away into a black hole of fear.
Before anymore of his children decided to go mobile Splinter scooped all four of them up into his arms and quickly deposited them into their respective cribs. There had been slight protest, but he didn't care.
He quickly exited the room and started making a mental list of everything that needed to be fixed, eliminated, or baby proofed even though that amounted to almost everything in the lair. It would be a lot of work and would take a great deal of material, but it would be done! He was confident that if he worked hard he could have the entire place baby safe in a week.
And now, a week later, Splinter looked around the lair and realized how abundantly stupid he had been.
"Agabubububub." commented Michelangelo from inside a playpen that was basically an upside down, wooden table with a bunch of extra legs nailed on.
Splinter nodded. "You said it."
Splinter looked around the lair at his many pathetic attempts at safety.
Pointy corners? Covered in discarded towels and half used bubble wrap.
Watery abyss to nowhere? Surrounded by a set of broken baby gates lashed together with duct tape.
The only thing he was marginally proud of was the fact that the coolers were no longer in towers, though to be honest all he did was put them on the floor and spread them out.
Splinter sighed. This was sad. Like, really, just sad. He knew these ramshackle solutions were just temporary until he had the time and material to make studier, better options, but still, looking around his horribly disfigured home didn't exactly do much to boost his self-esteem as a parent.
On the bright side the wooden playpen he had built served him extremely well. He had made it from a broken table and bars of discarded wood that he had nailed together and wrapped in old towels and T-shirts to keep the babies from getting splinters.
Sure, it looked like his children were caged animals at a twisted, post-apocalyptic zoo sitting in a pit meant for horrible torture, but it kept them safe. And that's what counted. Right?
"Aaaaaaaaaah!"
He spoke too soon.
Splinter's head snapped towards the playpen where Michelangelo sat screaming bloody murder to the heavens. Splinter immediately picked Michelangelo up, careful not to stab himself on the mismatched wooden bars, and upon a quick inspection, he noticed the tiny turtle was flailing his left hand around as if trying to distance himself from his own appendage. And upon a quick inspection of the hand…
He found a splinter.
Leave it to his youngest to find one of the few places in the rat ninja's perfectly crafted playpen that wasn't protected against splinters.
Splinter quickly ran with Michelangelo to get his first aid kit, but almost the second he left the room another cry pierced the air.
He set down his youngest and ran back to the main room where Leonardo sat crying and holding his hand out.
Okay, so maybe his play pen wasn't as safe as he would have liked, but still two out of four wasn't—
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Just as Splinter went to pick up Leonardo, Raphael started crying also, holding his hand in the air just like his brother.
Splinter stared.
"E tu, Raphael?" asked Splinter dismally.
Note to self: Wooden playpen? Not safe.
Splinter picked up Raphael in his other arm and started to leave when he remembered that Donatello was still trapped in his playpen of horrors.
After a quick moment of thought, Splinter reached down and set Donatello outside the playpen on a small rug. It was hard enough carrying two flailing babies, and since Donatello had yet to learn to crawl leaving him on the rug for a moment was still a safe bet.
Without stopping to doubt his decision Splinter ran with a struggling Leonardo and Raphael towards the crib room where he had left Michelangelo screaming his head off. Oh, what a disaster this had turned out to be!
And as Splinter lamented his horrible situation, little baby Donatello stared across the room towards the small labyrinth created by the rows upon rows of coolers Splinter had set on the floor, a curious look in his eyes.
Splinter sighed with relief as he left the crib room.
On the bad side, it had taken him half an hour to get the splinters out of Michelangelo and Leonardo's fingers and almost another half-hour to calm them down. On the less bad side, it turned out Raphael didn't actually have a splinter in his finger. Apparently, he just wanted the attention.
As Splinter allowed himself to breathe for the first time that day, he thanked the Heavens that at least one of his children hadn't given him grief today. No unauthorized crawling. No splinters. No crying. Yes, out of all four of his tiny turtles, there had been one who was truly a pinnacle of safety and good behavior. None other than his little—
Splinter stopped as he saw that the rug where he had left Donatello was completely empty.
The traitor.
Splinter frantically looked around the room.
"Donatello!" he shouted. "Donatello!"
Splinter dashed about the lair checking everywhere he could think of that a baby could have gotten. Which was a wide selection considering the surprisingly open floor plan.
After a couple minutes of searching the noble rat ninja was practically pulling his whiskers out. Where could he be!
Splinter checked over by the coolers. He had already checked there twice, but he had nowhere else to look!
As he shifted the coolers around for the third time that day, he stopped dead.
There, hidden from sight behind one of the coolers, was a small, baby sized hole in the wall.
Splinter dropped to his knees in front of the hole.
No.
It couldn't be.
There was no way that his son, his sweet Donatello, had gone in there, right? No possible way that he would have wandered into what stood out as the absolute, worst possible place he could have gone, right?!
"Bababababab…"
The soft baby babble echoing from somewhere inside the hole answered his question all too clearly.
…
Yep.
That confirmed it.
Splinter's children were out to get him.
One day when they were bigger they would turn, assassinate him, and take over the Hamato clan. Not with knives or swords. Noooo, that would be too merciful for his children. No, instead they would assassinate him by making him worry to death! And it would work too because they were halfway to succeeding right now!
Splinter got on his stomach and stuck his head in the hole as far as it would go. He looked around, thankful that his rat mutation gave him an extra boost of night vision, and noticed that the inside of hole was actually a large pipe that had apparently fallen to disuse.
After just a moment of searching he saw Donatello a few feet down the pipe, crawling up on his hands and knees as he got further and further away from Splinter's grasp.
"Donatello!" shouted Splinter, quickly noticing that the pipe had a rather strong echo.
Donatello turned to look at him and sat down.
"Donatellooooo." said Splinter in his most soothing daddy voice. "Come to Daddy, Donatello. Come to Daddy."
Donatello smiled.
And then promptly proceeded to crawl down a side tunnel out of sight.
"No! Donatello! Get back here this instant! Donatello!"
Splinter tried to push his way into the far too small hole as best he could, hoping perhaps his mutation came with some sort of rat bone compression ability or rat shrinking ability he had yet to discover.
Sadly, it did not.
He pulled himself out of the hole and ran along the kitchen wall, his ears perked up to hear even the slightest noise on the other side.
Faintly, ever so faintly, he could hear tiny hands and knees scooting along the pipe, but it was quickly growing fainter.
Splinter had to think fast.
He dashed through the lair, following the sound as best he could.
The sound disappeared.
Splinter dashed even faster through the lair, his ears straining. Oh, why couldn't it have been Michelangelo?! Yes, that sounded horrible, and Splinter practically smacked himself the moment he thought it, but with Michelangelo's constant baby babble he would probably have been able to track him even without mutant hearing. His quieter son, Donatello, however, was proving to be much more difficult.
Just as Splinter entered the second of the lair's two bathrooms he picked up the sound of Donatello scurrying through the pipes. The room had originally been the women's bathroom back when the lair had served as a subway relay station, but Splinter hoped to eventually convert it into a place for actually taking baths while leaving the other bathroom activities to what had once been the men's room.
Neither of the bathrooms had running water though, and though that was normally a bit of a burden at the moment Splinter was extremely grateful for it since that meant that hopefully there wouldn't be any water in the pipes to sweep little Donatello away into wherever it was this abandoned pipe lead to.
Splinter looked around, trying to find where in the bathroom the sound was coming from. It didn't take him long however to figure out that the sound wasn't in the walls anymore, but above him.
Splinter looked up at the ceiling where the sound of tiny hands and knees echoed faintly.
Splinter stood paralyzed for a moment, just listening. Truth be told now that he had found Donatello he had no idea what to do! He couldn't very well tear down the ceiling.
…Or could he.
Splinter dashed from the room, praying that Donatello would still be in the bathroom by the time he got back.
He sprinted across the lair until he got to the dojo. It was pretty sparse as far as dojos went, basically a few rugs on the floor next to the chests of ninja equipment he had smuggled in from his previous "human days" apartment, but it served its purpose all the same.
Splinter ran to one of the chests and dug around for a moment until he pulled out what he was looking for: A large, metal mace! Big enough that only the strongest warriors could wield it properly.
With mace in hand he dashed back to the bathroom and perked his ears up to listen for his child.
Silence.
"Aaah!"
Splinter's eye shot wide.
That was a cry! Coming from beyond the back wall of the bathroom!
What kind of cry was it? A joyful cry? A scared cry? An "I just got bitten by a poisonous spider and only have three minutes to live" cry?!
Splinter didn't care.
"Donatello!"
Splinter reeled back and SMASHED the mace against the bathroom back wall taking out a sizeable chunk of concrete. He did this again and again, his arms burning as he broke through stone and mortar, but the wall was too thick.
He quickly changed tactics.
Once again he sprinted from the bathroom, across the lair, over the turnstiles, and out into the subway tunnels.
Splinter had lived in these tunnels for eight months now. He knew exactly which tunnels would take him to the other side of the wall, and he was determined to get there before any more danger could befall his child.
After a minute of pure, Olympian caliber sprinting Splinter arrive on the other side of the wall.
And there in front of him stood a tunnel lined on every single wall with pipes.
Big pipes, small pipes, all around him pipes!
"Donatello!"
Silence.
Splinter didn't have time to wait for a reply. Immediately, he began bashing every pipe he came to, hoping beyond hope that one of them would contain his Donatello while also hoping he didn't end up smashing his own child in the process.
The trained ninja part of him said that using an ancient and honorable ninja weapon to bash sewer pipes was disrespectful, but that part was quickly drop kicked in the throat by the parent side of him that screamed "SAVE BABY AT ALL COSTS!"
For what seemed like an hour Splinter destroyed pipe after pipe, causing clean water and sewer water alike to rain down in every direction.
Eventually Splinter had to stop for breath, his arms limp noodles hanging at his sides.
Wherever his son was it wasn't here.
Splinter perked his ears up in the air, but he could hear nothing over the sound of water raining down in every direction.
Slowly, a dark hopelessness set in. What if he never found Donatello? What if his child was lost forever, doomed to wander the sewers until some dread sewer gator swallowed him up?
Splinter shook his head.
No!
He refused to give up! He would search all night for as many nights as it took until he found his son, even if he had to tear down every wall and pipe in the sewer to do it.
Splinter picked up the mace and ran as best he could back towards the lair. Perhaps Donatello had turned back before Splinter had made it to the other side of the wall. It was a slim hope, he knew, but it was all he had.
After minutes of painful, strained running through tunnels, Splinter arrived back at the lair—
And there, lying right on the rug where he had originally laid, was Donatello, completely safe and sound, joyfully sucking his fingers, oblivious to Splinter and everything else.
CLUNK!
Splinter dropped the mace to the floor, a weary joy filling every part of him.
Slowly, Splinter, covered in filth and muck, trudged across the lair to where Donatello lay on the rug.
He dropped to his knees, unable to form words or comprehend anything except that his child was safe.
Splinter sat there for a good minute, staring at his child as if he were the most precious thing in the world.
Eventually Donatello noticed Splinter staring and looked up at him with a smile. He held the hand he wasn't sucking out the Splinter, something clutched in his tiny fist.
Splinter looked down.
And there, in his son's hand, was a tiny mouse-shaped cat toy, covered in filth.
Splinter gingerly took the toy from his son's hand, unable to process how to respond.
"For me?" asked Splinter, half in awe and half in delirium.
Donatello burped before he continued sucking his fingers.
Splinter stared at the toy.
He was tired.
He was dirty.
He smelled like the inside of a compost heap.
And he was sure the pipes he destroyed were going to have massive repercussions for whatever humans lived above them.
But somehow, someway, in whatever twisted logic he was currently being influenced by, this little toy, this small gift from his child, made everything he went through all worthwhile.
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
A trio of cries suddenly rang out from the other room.
The traitors.
Author's Note: Hi hi Happy People, and welcome to Chapter Twelve! This is definitely the first baby chapter we've had in a while which is awesome! I mean who doesn't love seeing the little, baby Turtles being cute and causing mayhem?
Thank you all so hyper much for reading, and a special Birthday shout out to my awesome Momma and my wonderful Bro Bro whose birthdays were/are within a three month time period of the posting of this chapter! LOVE YOU MOMMA AND BRO BRO!
Let me know what you thought of this latest chapter, and, as always, have a hyper happy day! LOVE YOU GUYS!