TMNT, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Splinter, Prof Stockman, Agent Bishop, and the Foot © Viacom
Original Characters, story © RenaRoo (formerly Turtlefreak121)

A Baby Brother
Chapter Two: Wanderer

There is an accepted lonesomeness that one expects when he casts himself into the streets, a vagabond and wanderer. The knowledgeable ones do not anticipate any human kindness, but relish in it when they find it.

He was only two, and had not made plausibly fatal decision to be strewn out into society on his own. Yet he was no foolish child.

The only true kindness he had ever found in the world had been from his poor brother, the very one that flashed across his memories each time he shut his eyes. He was but two and yet could completely understand that the moment he watched the dogs tear into his brother's flesh, he was gone. He was not coming back.

No more than a toddler, miraculously recovered from a four story fall it seemed, he was walking the streets with no concept of how to get food or shelter for himself.

Curious about the new world he had fell into, he walked about, fancying the warmth coming from a reddish glow not far off. He was so tired. So hungry. Recovering from his fall had taken so very much out of him.

It was then that he happened upon the source of the warm, red glow, and stood face to face with the two men who had created it out of a round barrel.

Men were scary things. He had seen the terrible things they could do to small children like himself: the recent murder of his brother being only the most recent. He knew that they could hurt him and he knew that they could feed him.

Cautiously, he kept his distance.

The men stared at him. They looked very different from the orderlies which had been in every man-filled memory of the toddler's life. They seemed crooked in their backs and rather than the crisp white uniforms the child had always seen they wore drooping, stingy clothes with holes and stains and faded colors. Their chins were not boxy and shaven but hidden deep beneath layers of fuzz with protruding lips stuck in the middle.

These men also stunk. Everything stunk in this world. Smells which had never entered the child's nostrils now engulfed him and he had to cover it quickly so as the stench of filth and body odor did not overcome him.

There were not many different smells in the facilities he had grown up in.

The men were almost as confused as the child was and looked to one another before looking back to him. The shorter of the two leaned toward the other and and began talking gruffly.

"That's one of them again, ain't it?"

"Haven't seen them get out in a'while, now ain't we?"

Upon hearing the muttering of words, the child shook in horror. Men and Women who he had seen all his life spoke. They never spoke to him directly or to his brother but they spoke to each other. He did not like it when they spoke to one another.

"Kinda short this time."

"He new?"

"I tell ya what he is. He'a bleedin'. That'a what he is."

"I think he's hungry."

It usually meant he was in trouble.

"Well'a give him some food."

Just as the young child had turned to run again in fear for his life, he heard that word. Oh, that wonderful word. He might not have known how to speak, but he knew that godly word and how it felt so good when the orderlies said it right before mealtime.

These guys were finally speaking his language.

By the time he achingly moved himself back to his former position, he could see it. This ugly, dirt colored hand covered in the tattered remains of a glove held out the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. A Reece's cup half eaten.

With great speed, he lunged at the offering hand and felt his heart patter in his chest. It had been nearly two days since his last meal and he was about to make this one last.

Wearing only the wide-eyed wonder of a child, he graciously clamored at the opportunity to eat. Grabbing with tiny fingers at the food, he snatched it from the other hand and began shoving it into his mouth. Oh, how it tasted so good.

He plopped onto his naked rear on the cold street and savored each taste of chocolate in his mouth. It was so much better than even the top of the corn-feed he had been fed like an animal his entire life.

"I think'a ya were right."

"He'sa cold. Look a' this naked bum. Give him ya coat."

"It's the only one 'a got."

"Fine, a'll give him mine."

The child sucked on his tongue for the melted chocolate caught in its every groove and closed his eyes so tightly.

In his mind, his brother was sitting in front of him. They grinned contently at each other, both free and safe, as they sucked on their own half-eaten treats. His brother was there and it was all he needed in the world.

The child opened his eyes as he felt something heavy cover his shoulders and he looked up to see the second person in the world to ever give him kindness: a man with a fuzzy face. He then looked to the coat which wrapped around his shoulders.

Suddenly, the child began to cry and howl. He did not know why.

Donatello found that the clicking of a tick-tock-clock was strange and mysterious. At times its melody was completely soothing to him. Other times it was just another case of white noise.

As he sat there and stared at his computer screen, silently praying that his older brothers did not kill one another, it was maddening.

When Leonardo made his way across the Lair with a scowl burned into his face, it was both relieving and anxiety-inducing. Relieving in the prospect that at least one of his brothers survived another famous altercation. Anxiety-inducing in the fact that, at least for another night, Raphael was not accepting the new family order.

The divide was terrorizing to Donatello. He knew that it, more than anything else, would lead to a future where there was no family, no way to pick up the pieces. He knew that it was possibly one of the most devastating things that could happen to them all.

It was also a similarity between their world and the world he desperately wished they would avoid. He wished nothing more than to avoid the reality like the one he had been sent to nearly five years beforehand.

They were already much too close to it considering the physical state of their master.

Once Leonardo disappeared into their father's room, Michelangelo appeared by Don's desk; as expected.

"You really need to talk to Master Splinter if it's bothering you so much," Mike stated immediately, as if, in the silence, he had been reading Donatello's mind.

"I never said it was bothering me that he made Leo the new master," Don responded. "It's bothering Raph. That's what's bothering me."

"Yeah, so you should probably go talk to him."

Life was so simple in the eyes of Michelangelo. Don could only sigh and remind himself that it was not how reality dictated things. Rarely were things ever simple.

Looking seriously to his brother, Donatello frowned, "There's not anything Master Splinter can do now to correct Raph's bad moods, Mikey. We have to just hope that Raph brightens up and comes to terms with it on his own. I mean ... that's a possible outcome. It certainly isn't impossible."

"Yeah, I'm sure that Raph is just aching to get back here and apologize to Leo for being a douche. Totally in character for him," Mike responded with a roll of his eyes. "I mean, Master Splinter might be missing his leg, but he can still haul ass. He hauled ass even when it had just been cut off."

Don simply stared at his brother until reason settled back in the excitable Michelangelo's mind and he quieted himself out of respect for what Master Splinter did for them.

"How do you think Leo is as a master so far, anyway? You never mention it," Mike added quickly with a small attempt at subterfuge.

Shaking his head, Don shrugged. "I think that it's probably rude of a student to talk about their master behind their back, even if that master is eldest brother by name alone."

Sniffing some, Mike sat on Don's desk to further irritate him. "Cute, Don. Personally, I think that we spend too much time meditating. He spent almost three years from home, y'know? If you think about it all together. First when he went to Japan to train with the Ancient One, and then when he traveled around the world to study. Why can't he teach us what he's learned from that stuff?"

Don frowned and looked back at the computer screen. "Because those are things you do, not learn."

He stooped over the creature and sneered at the bloody mess it had left.

"Dammit," he muttered before standing up, the genetically altered hounds whimpering at the detected anger in their master. He turned to them, eying their blood soaked faces before shaking his head and glaring at his partner.

"Shit, man," the slack jawed colleague finally breathed before bringing a hand to his forehead. "You think it's dead?"

With a scowl on his face, the other merely faced his partner and snapped, "What do you think? Why didn't you call your mutts off of them sooner? Do you have any idea how much trouble we're going to be in? I mean, shit ..."

"Are you sure the other one wasn't outside? I mean, it was shoved through the window," the lesser of the two men began to fumble his words. "Surely to God it couldn't have survived that fall. It was beastly."

"Don't you know anything?" the orderly hissed before standing up, wiping the blood on his hands off on his clean, white pants. "These are supposed to be the new super soldiers the army's making. Supposedly they can withstand almost anything. It was long gone by the time I got downstairs." He gnashed his teeth and glared at his colleague. "I was hoping that you'd not be such a dumbass and at least keep this one alive."

The dogs whimpered again.

"I tried, man. The dogs ... I guess they liked what they tasted."

He waited for a moment, staring at the man as if he was expecting a recanting of his excuse. When it did not come, he growled lowly and shoved him aside as he walked through the hallway. His eyes narrowed as he made his way to the elevator.

As he reached into the scrub pants he was wearing, the remaining orderly watched him curiously.

"Parker, what are you doing?" he asked.

Stepping into the elevator and turning to face the other, Parker narrowed his eyes, pulling out the gun he had hidden in his pants and loading it. "I'm getting back N-three-nineteen. The doctor's already going to be riding our asses on this one, I'm not about to let it get any worse."

"So you're going to just kill it?" he asked as the doors began to close. "After all that you just said to me about this one?"

"No," Parker replied, the doors almost closing and obstructing their views. "I'm going to make it wish it were dead."

There was a certain coldness in the air that did not so much as strike Raphael as odd for the city's night, but it caused him to wonder. With all the hustle and bustle of the city taking place down below him, did something feel truly awry?

He could not tell.

As he sat on his haunches, far above the dirty streets of a long forgotten neighborhood, Raphael could not help but feel a sense of condescension.

How could people live this way?

If even a single person left their roost, it was quickly and dishelved, with their eyes constantly concerned with what was over their shoulders. They were almost afraid to look forward and see something they were not supposed to.

That or they were penniless and drunk, wondering how others came to see them as another stutter-spoken fool instead of the person they were.

Something was wrong tonight, and Raph would be damned if he did not figure out what it was.

Then, as if a rare bone had been thrown to him, he watched as two men, cleanly dressed in white, sticking out like sore thumbs in the darkness of the neighborhood, made their ways through the trashy streets. They were panicked until they came sprinting toward the alley across the street from Raphael.

...

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End Chapter Two

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