Thanks for waiting for chapter 4, you guys, and for the reviews! I give MAJOR props and thanks to Kallasilya for agreeing to beta-read for my sorry butt. So many things could have gone awry without her!
Disclaimer: Somehow, even after all these fics and thousands upon thousands of words, I still have no ownership of my favorite fandom.
Michelangelo: San Diego
The sun slowly sank into the west over the city of San Diego, casting a fiery orange glow over the streets and into the clouds. Engine sputtering loudly, a brightly painted van drew to a stop at a red light. Leaning against his window with a bored sigh, the driver tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, observing the dull blinking of the green WALK sign.
If someone had asked Michelangelo, before the death of their sensei, where he saw himself and his brothers in the future, San Diego certainly wouldn't have been the first place to cross his mind. In fact, before Master Splinter's death and the events that followed, he would easily have answered New York and left it at that: with everyone alive, happy and together, still out on the streets kicking bad-guy ass and getting smacked over the head with a cane during morning training.
Of course, things never really went the way he'd planned. Namely the parts where his entire family was alive and, well, together. Sometimes he still found it hard to believe everything that had happened and where he'd ended up. Once in a while he found himself to be surprised, stopping suddenly and looking around wondering if this was really the way things were going to be. Then he would recover his senses enough to remind himself not to live in the past or succumb to the powers of the great What-If. He would shake it off, right himself, and keep moving forward with a determination that his father would have praised.
Still… As the traffic light changed from red to green, causing the DON'T WALK sign to buzz brightly and allowing the beat-up vehicle to clamber back into motion, he wondered why he'd left the lair in the first place.
It wasn't like he didn't love his brothers. For that matter, it wasn't as though he hadn't loved New York. If he were honest with himself, he knew he'd probably end up going back someday. Which really only left him with a stronger desire to answer himself. In the end, most of his reasoning rested with Raph, for being the first to break off.
Mikey wasn't sure whether he was angry with his brother for doing so. There had been a period of several months where he'd started to think that maybe the four of them would be able to get through Master Splinter's death relatively intact, or even a little bit stronger than they'd been already. Things could never be the same, but a precarious equilibrium had been set up and maintained successfully. Or it had been, until Raphael left and brought even more focus onto the serious changes that had been going down.
Michelangelo could say with the utmost honesty that he'd tried his hardest to keep things going and balanced. And he'd even managed it for a while. In the end, though, he hadn't been able to ignore the little everythings and nothings that were telling him how his life would always be different, and so he'd left, setting a course for California because he'd always wanted to see it. After several years of wandering the state and deciding to settle in San Diego to take the edge off his homesickness for New York, he no longer recalled whatever novelty had led him there. At this point, it was a state like any other and a roof over his head.
And with the revival of the increasingly popular Cowabunga Carl, he was standing on his own two feet, completely independent. Allowing a sharp smile to slide over his face as he brought the van to a screeching halt in the back lot he used for personal parking, Mikey decided that he liked the feeling that accompanied looking after himself. He didn't have to explain his every action, didn't have to worry about accidentally stepping on his brothers' toes or getting someone aggravated: all he needed to do was make sure that his milk hadn't expired.
So far, he'd managed to do an outstanding job of it.
The manhole-cover fell back into place with a loud scraping noise, causing him to wince at the sheer levels of non-stealth he was employing. Way to be ninja-esque. He hit the sewers with a familiar ease, feet automatically turning towards his usual route home and churning up the water lapping around his ankles. His beak wrinkled slightly as he breathed, protesting at the smell of California sewers. Apparently it took a lifetime's worth of conditioning to be able to properly ignore raw, rank stench. Part of him wished that Donnie might have warned him about that, or maybe Leo, since he was the one with the most experience in foreign sewers.
As it was, the orange-clad turtle dutifully stayed his course, hoping that his nostrils were gaining some kind of resistance in the process. While approaching the proverbial home stretch and very seriously pondering the merits of investing in nose plugs, Mikey paused in mid-step, tilting his head to the side with narrowed eyes. Concealed in the darkness ahead, roughly around the location of his front door, voices were drifting, holding a quiet conversation.
"Do you really think this is it?"
"Well…it certainly resembles his descriptions."
"You said that the last time we stopped, and that turned out to be a dead end."
"Will you just relax? I'm sure this is the place, okay?"
Utilizing his previously instilled ninja skills, Michelangelo leapt onto a nearby pipe, crawling forward cautiously until he hovered over the general area the voices had been drifting from. He held in a plaintive sigh. It figured that the day after he'd finished decorating to his satisfaction, somebody decided to get curious and wander through the sewers, managing to break into his humble abode. What was it about California that drew forth the weirdest parts of people? The turtle dropped heavily into the ankle-deep water below, nunchucks out and whirring as he prepared to face down the intruders.
"Okay, dudes," he started warningly. "I'll give ya thirty seconds to drop whatever you took and get the shell outta here before I open a can of ninja whoop-ass. And trust me, these babies pack a lot more punch than the foam ones."
There were two startled gasps and a loud splash as somebody jumped backwards. For a few moments, only the faint sound of running water could be heard then:
"Give a turtle a heart attack, why don't you, Mikey?" A flashlight flickered to life, casting everyone's features into sharp relief. Mikey's face split into an unmistakable grin as he belted his weapons and stepped forward.
"Donnie! Leo! What the shell are you guys doing here?"
Okay, that's the end of our chapter! Questions, comments, reviews...? Just let me know what you think ^-^