Fifteen years before this story's beginning, a man and his newly-purchased pet baby turtles were mutated—changed into a humanoid rat and four humanoid turtles. The man, Hamato Yoshi, raised his adopted sons and trained them in the art of ninjutsu.
Isn't that an interesting way to kickstart a narrative?
Hamato Yoshi named his young Turtles after the great Renaissance masters he had studied in his youth: Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo.
Of course, while their father always used their full names, they gave themselves nicknames. You try getting a three year-old to say 'Michelangelo', and see how far you get.
The youngest Turtle, Mikey, was a nunchuck-wielder with a knack for getting into trouble and annoying his brothers, but he was the self-proclaimed most-adorable one in the group and his brothers—for all of their complaints about his behavior and roughhousing—loved him to bits. He had baby-blue eyes and wore an orange mask with short tails flared up at the back of his head, and he had freckles which he was quite proud of.
The second-youngest, Donnie, was a scientist and a genius by anyone's standards. He had a tendency to ramble and often spoke in technical language his brothers could not understand, and he was often teased for being nerdy and geeky—but he had a snappish side to him, one which reared its head when he was frustrated. The tallest of the brothers, the bo-staff wielder had brown eyes, a gap in his teeth, and wore a purple mask with long tails.
The second-oldest Turtle, Raph, was brash and arrogant. The strongest fighter, he was very protective of his brothers… but he had an odd way of showing it. The sarcastic mutant teen often fought with his siblings, both verbally and physically. The shortest of his brothers, he had bright green eyes, a lightning-shaped crack in his shell, and he wore a red mask with a tattered tail (which he denied was the fault of his pet tortoise, Spike).
The eldest brother, Leo, was the perfect student and a leader in training—but he could be a bit of a nerd when it came to his favorite TV show (Space Heroes, always Space Heroes), and he tried far too hard to be perfect. He had many responsibilities on his shoulders, and he could be teased by his brothers for the stoic attitude he used to hide his doubts and fears. The katana-wielder had dark-blue eyes, and he wore a blue mask.
Hamato Yoshi, going by the name of Master Splinter after he left his old life behind him, raised the Turtles in the sewers of New York City. He allowed them to go onto the surface on their fifteenth Mutation Day, and that was when their adventure began.
They met and befriended April O'Neil, a human girl whose father had been captured by the nefarious Kraang: aliens from another dimension. The Turtles were bound and determined to rescue Dr. Kirby O'Neil and reunite him with his daughter, but it would take time and patience—along with a lot of reconnaissance.
… But in a city filled with millions of people, how could they not be seen whenever they ran across a rooftop or leapt down fire-escapes?
Maybe it was just dumb-luck.
Maybe some people saw them, rubbed their eyes and blinked a few times, then shook their heads and carried on with their days. Who would have believed them, anyway?
But this is not a story about someone who just looked out their window and saw four teenage mutant ninja turtles completely by accident.
Addison J. Tyler wouldn't have seen the Turtles even if she wanted to, couldn't have seen them.
Addison J. Tyler was blind.
/\/\/\/\
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
A hand reached over and slapped the top of the alarm clock, silencing the deafening tone, and a low groan rang out from beneath a mess of blankets.
After a few long moments, the owner of the hand sighed and sat up, allowing for the blankets to slide off as she yawned and stretched before moving her legs and allowing them to hang over the side of the bed. On the floor, her feet slid around carefully until they located a piece of masking tape—the wall of a box—and the girl positioned her feet inside the box before standing up.
The girl walked along a line of masking tape into her bathroom, barely bothering to feel the line as the route was completely routine. She showered, then she wrapped a towel around herself so that she could brush her teeth and her hair before grabbing a hairdryer and brushing her hair into a fluffy, frizzy, messy but dry mass of blonde curls—with scattered stripes of green.
Those stripes did not matter much visually, as far as she was concerned—nothing about her appearance really did, in her opinion... though she did try to take care of herself and appear "presentable", for her guardian's sake if no one else's. Still, she and her hairdresser always maintained them with care.
She slipped a green fabric headband over her head, then she pulled it up over her face to hold her hair back—yet she still reached up and tugged some of her shorter, grown-out, curly bangs free so that they could cross over her forehead and frame her face.
She reached up, feeling the piercings in her ears and checking to make sure that they were not lost. She had two piercings in each lobe, as well as a daith piercing and a cartilage piercing in her left ear. The lower lobe piercings had silver hoops, the upper lobe piercings had green roses, the daith piercing was a simple ring, and the cartilage piercing was a green gem. Again, they did not matter—but she wanted them anyway, so there they were.
With these, she put on a necklace which consisted of a black cord holding a silver pendant shaped like a pair of spectacles with devil horns. She added bracelets with silver beads, white beads, and black hematite beads as well as corded bracelets with silver pendants in various shapes: a set of scales, an X, a spoked wheel, and an arrow on one wrist with a spiderweb, a crescent moon, a pair of crossed swords, and a firework on the other. She ran her finger over the spectacles, the web, and the scales, nodding once.
She ran a hand over her face, frowning as she felt around for anything amiss, then she carefully applied some light coverup to try and cover anything she felt or did not feel. After this, she sighed and lowered her hand before grabbing a case on the edge of her sink.
She opened it, then she took a deep breath.
Over each of her pale green eyes, she carefully placed a contact lens which made them appear vivid. She blinked them into place, then she offered herself a grim smile.
It was time to start the day.
After the girl left the bathroom, she returned to her room and followed her tape-path to her dresser, where she carefully felt Braille labels on the exterior before opening a drawer. Inside were several articles of clothing with tags on them.
The words on the tags were written in Braille, and the girl ran her fingers over them as she went from drawer to drawer, picking out her clothing based on the descriptions.
In the end, she selected a pair of black jeans, a black t-shirt with the image of a black and white moon dripping with ink, and a green and black-plaid flannel. She put these on, rolling the sleeves of the flannel up to just above her elbows, then she sat on her bed to pull in white socks and black combat-boots.
Standing up again, the girl ran her hands through her wild hair once more, frowning. "Maybe I should've gone with the braid, today…" After a moment, she shrugged. "Meh."
With that, she nodded to herself before leaving the highly-undecorated room, casually slinging a black backpack over her shoulder.
This had been Addison Tyler's routine for as long as she could remember.
Growing up with her Uncle Nick as her mentor and support-system made it easier—as for the first few years of her life, he guided her through everything as she grew accustomed to a world without sight. Up until the age of four, she had been able to see. As time went on, he created signs and paths so she could be more independent and walk on her own, before she had finally memorized every corner of their carefully-organized apartment.
Little things, like the tape paths and drawer-labels, lingered for Addison to go over out of habit or as a means of reassurance or grounding… or sentiment, even…
Addison had grown up with her uncle because her parents—rich, social, aloof—could not be bothered to raise their blind daughter, so Nicholas Tyler took over.
Nick Tyler, her father's younger brother, could have been the cliche negligent guardian—but he wasn't. If anything, he was TOO doting and TOO considerate… and Addison just loved him to bits for it, and she would not trade the relationship she had with him for anything.
Nick, while excitable and hardly the studious sort, had read every book and watched every film and consulted every doctor. He had also taken care to cultivate his charge as not just a blind person in an evolving world but as -well- a kid. He read her books when she was young, before he could build a Braille library (because she was still learning herself)—and he let her listen to shows, movies, and music to stimulate her senses and just have fun.
Nick raised his niece to be not only competent but imaginative—and as she got older, her lack of sight made her have to learn how to depend on all of her other senses to compensate. They did not become more-powerful as a result of her blindness, that was just some weird TV bullshit meant to turn blind people into super-heroes at the cost of real representation—but she would argue that she had learned how to use them and rely upon them in ways most people could not.
Her sense of hearing was invaluable; she used it like radar, allowing herself to move through unfamiliar environments and avoid people, streets, and machines. She learned how to sense vibrations beneath her feet and through her hands, using them to tell where moving objects were relative to herself—like Toph in Avatar: the Last Airbender, her uncle said, though not nearly as reliable.
It turned out, there were lots of ways to "see" without eyes. Addison once listened to a documentary about a man who used echolocation, but she wasn't ready to try that one just yet. Hearing how every other sound bounced off the walls around her and trying to locate its source was already a chore enough at time without adding her own voice to the mix.
Her navigation was hardly perfect. She kept a collapsible cane on her person just in case she got too anxious about terrain, and her uncle had finally put his foot down and put in a request for a guide-dog—and they were waiting to hear back after her consultation.
She would have to be paired and trained, of course… And a dog on a harness would hardly be conspicuous; "the game" would be up, that easily.
Of course, it had to be done. Addison was getting older, she would soon leave the familiar walls of her school, and she could not be expected to live with her uncle forever. She needed her independence, to be able to leave the system they had set up and grow into her own person—as a blind individual, for that was pure fact.
But for now, Addison would enjoy the world she and Nick had created—inside and outside of the apartment they lived in, a world carefully constructed in order to maintain a lie.
"Hey, Addie!" Nick's voice greeted from the kitchen.
She could tell that he was near the kitchen counter from where his voice had originated from, and she could smell the strong stench of whatever protein-powder-laced concoction he had whipped up to drink that morning alongside whatever he was cooking. Bacon, she thought—and from the sharp sting in her nose, it was getting just a bit too crispy.
Typical.
…
Nick Tyler was, in fact, sitting at the kitchen counter and eating his breakfast with a green smoothie (filled with protein powder and God only knew what else).
He looked like someone who should be surfing waves in California, not raising a fifteen year-old girl in New York City. He had messy sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, and wore a white t-shirt shirt with the image of a sun setting over an ocean at the center, a wrinkled and short-sleeved blue collared-shirt thrown on over the t-shirt, khaki shorts, and brown sandals. His skin was tan, and the younger man looked to be in his mid-thirties at the most.
He was too young to be her guardian, always had been.
…
"Hey, Nick." Addison smiled fondly.
The stool squeaked against the floor as the man stood and tousled his niece's hair, a grin in his voice. "Ready to take on the day?"
"Let's just see if I can survive breakfast, first." Addison snorted, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. She had a pretty good idea as to where her uncle was, so she was able to 'look' him straight in the face at the very least. "What poisonous concoction did you cook up for us today, my intrepid chef of an uncle?"
"Ouch. I'm hurt, really." Nick chuckled, walking over to the stove. "I've got bacon and omelets!"
"So…" Addison tilted her head. "Charcoal with a side of salmonella-slime?"
"You know it!"
/\
After breakfast, Nick drove Addison to her school in a yellow and black Camaro like the one that "played" Bumblebee in the Transformers movies. He was very proud of it.
Addison had once joked bitterly that with money like that possessed by the Tyler family, her parents should have found some way to cope with having a blind daughter.
She never made that joke again. It ached too much, like salt in a wound.
But in all honestly, she could not care less about the parents who had abandoned her. She loved living with her uncle, and she wanted for almost nothing.
Nick had worried for his niece's safety in her youth, so he found several self-defense trainers who had no problem with training a blind pupil. His niece had grown into a strong practitioner of kick-boxing and ninjutsu, which only helped to further hone her use of her senses.
'By the time you're ready to go out on your own, you'll be ready for anything,' Nick had told her time and time again, and she was willing to believe him.
When they arrived at the high-school, Addison got out of the car.
Her uncle had connections; he always claimed that they were through old friends from school, and he left it there. That was how "the game" had been maintained.
Over summer breaks over the years, her schools had let her walk about the schools and memorize safe ways to get from class to class. She would sit through classes by day, then go over her Braille textbooks at night alongside doing homework. She was typically excused from writing notes, and she typed on a computer at home to answer assigned questions that Nick would read off for her and compose essays for prompts she researched in her personal library and on accessible web-sources with a pair of headphones on.
Her teachers figured that notes were negligible, so long as she continued passing the tests with flying colors. Of course, those tests would be written in messy print, but it was neat enough to be decipherable—she had learned tricks to keep her written words in as straight of lines as possible and to keep the paper positioned well to avoid most mistakes.
None of Addison's friends or classmates knew that she was blind. If anything, they thought she was clumsy and a tad bit shy because she rarely "looked" them in the eye.
Addison felt some guilt from that, and many times considered telling them the truth. However, she always talked herself out of it in the end; it was better to maintain one big lie than to have them treat her differently because of something everyone (in a society that had a long way to go, regarding its views towards those who were different) would always see as a weakness, as a reason to coddle her or leave.
She wanted a normal childhood, with normal friends and normal teenage problems. Her parents did not want anything to do with her once she lost her sight, and she couldn't take that risk with anyone else—not until she was older and had no choice.
Whenever she spoke like that, she could tell that her uncle looked at her.
…
She just could not see his forlorn expression, or the glare he'd cast at the ground from the reminder of what his brother and his wife had done with their child.
…
Addison carefully followed the paved pathway up to the school, entering through the usual doors and walking to the locker that was right inside at the top of the stairs. She felt for her special padlock and pressed the buttons in their specific order, opening her locker and gathering her normal books.
All of this, just for the sake of appearances…
"Hey, Addie!" A voice greeted.
Addison smiled, turning to the sound. "Hey, Apes!" She raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Ready for that big Trig test?"
"As if!" The other girl responded. The energy in her voice seemed forced. "You?"
Addie snorted, leaning against the locker beside her own as she hugged her books. "Aren't I always?"
"Unfortunately." The other girl paused and let out a yawn, and Addison furrowed her brow and tilted her head. "… I had an essay to write, so I was up almost all night."
"Ah." Addison raised an eyebrow again. "What class was it for?"
The other girl sighed. "History."
"… Apes, I'm gonna be gentle about this because you're clearly delirious," Addison stated, her face set in a solid deadpan. "We're in the same history course. If you're gonna lie, lie better—please."
"Ah." The other girl sounded like she was cringing. "Excellent point."
"I know," Addison told her, grinning, then she frowned. "Hm. April, were you… out looking for your dad, again?"
The girl Addison was speaking to, April O'Neil, was currently living with her aunt—but not because her parents had left her, as was Addison's case. Her mother had died years ago, and her father had gone missing. Addison and Nick had helped her hang up posters for Dr. Kirby O'Neil—and Nick had reached out to his contacts, but no one had heard anything yet.
"No, I-…" April took a deep breath. "I promised you I wouldn't do that alone."
Addison nodded. "Especially since you weirdly still refuse to use that defense-class coupon I got you and there are some cases where you can't rely on mace, a taser, a defense keychain-"
"I know-"
"A knife-"
"Addie." April snorted, then she paused. "Do you just… regularly carry all of that stuff?"
"And more. This is NYC, and I'm not an animal," Addison remarked shamelessly. "And apparently, I've gotta watch your back too."
April huffed. "… Well, I guess I'm starting to see the perks of training and weapons, now." She shifted, leaning against a locker to face Addison as she spoke. "Last night, I-… I was out with some friends, okay? That's it."
"Gasp! And you didn't invite moi?" Addison gestured to her chest, feigning a hurt expression and obviously joking. "You wound me!"
"Heh." April let out a weak laugh. "Addie, I would've—but these friends of mine, they're… homeschooled, and shy. I'm not sure how well you guys would get along, you know?"
"… Are these your 'secret friends'?" Addison asked, smirking, and April went quiet. "Apes, you're hardly the master of espionage. I know you're sneaking texts, and I hear you talking on the phone and acting like you don't want anyone to hear you during lunch. Spill."
"I-I-… Well, I-!" The bell rang. "Whoo. Saved by the bell."
"Oh, I don't think so," Addison insisted, placing her books into her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. "Apes, you're always exhausted and it's gonna take a toll on you. I think I might wanna have a word with these guys."
"Oh, that's not-"
Addison crossed her arms. "After school, you will be spilling the beans. I want to meet these secret-friends."
"N-Not a good idea!" April stammered out a refusal, and Addison's concern only increased. This girl's father had gone missing, she didn't need to be hanging with a bad crowd on top of it all. "They're very asocial, and they don't like strangers, and-"
"And they're who my friend is running with on the streets of New York," Addison stated, her eyes narrowing, then she frowned. "I wanna make sure you're being safe."
"… We better get to class," April said, trying to change the subject.
Addison blinked, then she sighed. "Okay, okay... But this isn't over, April."
"I know," the other girl admitted quietly, and then she was gone.
Ever have a ten year-old hyperfixation come back with a vengeance and decide to completely rewrite a series with your more mature (and possibly jaded) outlook on life?
Just me, then? Okay!
Lots of edits here with additional research. Like, an eternity of research. That was fun.
...
The original idea was to take the trope I saw of having a blind character meet the Turtles and turn it on its head by actually creating a complex and capable character whose blindness was actually written realistically.
I also intended for it to be a commentary on ableism and the strides a person may take within a society to conform to expectations rather than be shoved aside or treated like a burden when they really should be accepted and society should take strides to ensure that no one is infantilized or left behind in order to make this world safe and accessible for all.
I had big ambitions, when I was fifteen.
I'm twenty-one, now—and I want to do this better.
...
But I think I managed to deal with a lot of the issues I ran into with this story, way back when.
Let's see how it goes.
I only own my OCs. Please read, review, check out my other stories, etc. Thanks! :)
