Sorry to all you ATTWE fans out there (please tell me there are more than just five of you…) for the long delay, but I've managed to re-immerse myself in AHM, due to help from two good friends. Once again, a shout out to missylynn99 and aliengirl13! And to answer your question Guest, referring to your suggested pairings, no romances are planned for this story, but Spike-Slash could make an appearance if you like. Also, a pet for Fay will be included, and, with your approval, I would like to name the little animal after you. So I would love it if you reviewed specifying what type of animal you would like Fay to have and what name you would like for it, whether it be your own or something else you generate.
Also, I don't know if this is obvious or not, but this story takes place before Mikey gets Shellacne, due to Baxter having the mutagen collar around his neck, being forced to work for Karai/Shredder, and Dogpound being double mutated into Rahzar. With all that aside, on to the chapter!
Fay sat dazedly on the concrete ground for a solid minute before Leonara decided to abandon her for other things, deeming she needed time to collect herself after her first battle…or something. Reluctantly she grabbed the firework-prone laptop and sent a video chat to none other than Baxter Stockman. She absentmindedly blotted a bloody spot on her denim jacket while the slow piece-of-crap computer loaded.
Just when Lea was seriously considering punching the stupid computer's screen because she had seen that little blue loading flower thing make its rotation one too many times, the face of an African American man appeared on the screen. "Leonara!" he exclaimed happily, "So great to see you! Did your plan work? Did you capture the turtles? Oh, you must tell me EVERYTHING!"
Lea mentally rolled her eyes and answered stoically, "Yes. No. In that order. And call me Lea."
"What?! How did you fail to capture the turtles?! You are my ninja huntresses! You were MADE for this!" Baxter cried.
Lea's eyes narrowed. In a brilliant show of Raph-style anger, she snarled, "I don't know, Dad! I don't know how we failed. One minute we were totally fine, and then the next Raph runs off to battle Fay and WHOOSH! Prisoner escapes, turtles bail, and everything falls into chaos! I know we're your special little weapon gals and we were specially made to hunt these guys and all, but y'know what? We did fail. We did everything right, not a chain out of place, not a shuriken misthrown. We didn't do anything wrong. It wasn't us that failed. Guess who it was? The person who sent us out here without even a single clue to find our prey, without a single USEFUL bit of knowledge about what we were up against! Who cares if their sensei is named after a green tomato-eating dinosaur?! It wasn't us that failed, Daddy dearest, it was you." And with that, she slammed the laptop screen shut, not even bothering to shut down the video chat.
Stockman sat stunned in front of his computer screen. HE had failed? Impossible! It was THEM who had failed! Heck, it was probably Leonara herself who had botched her plan, and that was why she was so cross with him. That and that darned Leo hung onto every word his sensei said. Now why couldn't he have a daughter like THAT? Instead of voicing his thoughts, he screamed, "Misthrown isn't even a real word!"
Mere moments later, the four females had arrived forlornly (and angrily in Lea's case) at Baxter's old lab, home sweet home to the group in green.
"Lea told me. It's alright. Everyone botches their first mission." Baxter comforted, "I mean, look at me! I'm practically, no wait, I AM an evil GENIUS and those four turtles escaped from ME! Multiple times!"
"You lie. You don't care." Fay thought, still angry at herself for somehow scaring Mikey away, "You probably just don't want your 'weapons of mass destruction' getting discouraged." Immediately she regretted ever thinking such venomous and un-pacifistic thoughts and was glad no one else could hear them. "Yeesh. If this is what I really act like I can see why Mikey was scared." She added, "And I dare call myself a pacifist."
"But don't worry! I got an idea after Lea said that you were meant to 'hunt' the turtles. Plus her whole 'use Mikey as bait' thing." Stockman declared, "Maybe THAT'S where our problem is. Turtles, mutant or not, aren't inherently hunters, or huntresses. So, I was thinking, maybe you guys could be used as bait. FIGHTING bait."
"Proceed." Mika declared warily, unsure of where her father was heading with this notion.
"Here. Let me show you something." Baxter stated. He led the quartet into a room covered in computer screens, the same room from which he had viewed the M.O.U.S.E.R.S as they robbed innocent New Yorkers. He keyed in a long complicated code on an oversized keyboard, one that every accent, symbol, and graphic known to man. The screens changed from the shadowy dark room that the mousers' cameras showed to a long black and white tube with a dizzying optical illusion. Translucent red axes swung from knobs on a nonexistent-seeming ceiling, and metallic orbs with blade rings reminiscent of Saturn jetted about the room.
"Behold, the new and improved Maze of DOOM!" Stockman shouted with a maniacal laugh.
"Uh…Daddy, I don't like this idea." Fay decreed meekly.
"You'll be just fine, sweetheart." Baxter answered, trying to fit a green bald cap on his daughter's head. He had to search five New York costume shops to find them, but he had found a pair of caps that matched his two youngest's skin tone to a T, or at least close enough that in the dark, no one could tell the difference. Plus he had bought ones for Elle and Mika, for future uses.
"But what if…" Fay trailed off. She had barely stopped herself from asking, "But what if I hurt them?" That would've had resulted in some suspicions on her father's part, and while she wouldn't say he was a GENIUS, he certainly was intelligent.
Stockman misread her reluctance and put his palms against her cheeks in what he assumed was a fatherly gesture. Not that he'd ever received a fatherly gesture of any sort from HIS dad. "Shshshshshsh." He said, "Don't worry about a thing. It's not your fault that darned turtle escaped. You and your sisters will get 'em this time, I guarantee it."
Fay resisted a look of confusion threatening to spread across her face. "Go with the flow." She thought. She put on a look of relief and nodded slowly, greatly messing up Baxter, who was trying very hard to pin her mass of curls so that they would fit naturally under the cap.
He wound her ponytail around her head so that the crown of her head looked like the end of a rolled-up rug, but the bald cap couldn't hide the thickness. He unwound the long strand of hair and tried winding it around her forehead in one wide ring, but she just ended up looking as if her head was a green version of the planet Saturn. Frustrated, Stockman undid the red bow that held her ponytail in place. He looked down at her hair and groaned. Without the ponytail to hold it up, her hair reached the same point as her wrists if she held her arms straight. He flipped the long curly heap of hair over Fay's eyes and continued folding her hair until she had a small chocolate-colored pile on her head that threatened to tip over with the slightest twitch.
Baxter sighed loudly. "What is the hold-up?" Leonara asked, appearing from behind. He turned to face her, trusting Fay to balance her follicular mound. The sight of his youngest brought a slight snarl to his face. Of course, all of HER hair fit perfectly under the bald cap. From the neck up she was a picturesque model of Leo Hamato. All she needed was to ditch that jacket, grab a pair of katana, and swap attitudes with a mutant angel.
"My hair is too long for this." Fay answered, balancing her hair as perfectly as if she were a princess with a stack of books on her head.
Lea snorted, "Um…DUH. Did anyone else think of this beforehand? I KNEW you were never going to get all that hair in that hat!"
Baxter narrowed his eyes. He had barely known his daughter for a day and already she had rubbed him the wrong way more times than any of the original turtles ever had. "Oh yeah, if you're so brilliant, why didn't you TELL us this wasn't going to work?"
The young turtle laughed loudly and declared, "Well, that would've hardly been fun, now would it?" She chuckled again and added, "But you know, there IS a simple solution. Any true GENIUS, evil or not, would have figured it out."
"And what would that be?" Baxter asked.
In answer, she strolled over to the plastic bag Baxter had brought home from the costume shop. She plucked another pair of green bald caps out of the bag and waved them at him. "Just give one of these to Elle or Robo-Queen over there and swap them with Fay. Preferably not the Duchess Roboto."
Stockman glowered at Lea. "I hate it when you're right." He snarled. He snatched the caps out of her hand and shoved the one matching Elle's skin tone into the blonde's grasp.
Leonara laughed and decreed, "That explains why you're so hateful all the time."
Lea didn't notice Fay's look of horror and rage in her direction. The poor brunette was too naïve for her own good; she didn't understand how someone could be so knowingly mean to their own FATHER. It just wasn't…RIGHT!
She puzzled over this while she tied her hair back in its signature bow. As she was doing so, Mika strolled over to her and declared, "It gives the impression of being that it is presently you and me, Rafayela."
"This is going to be a loooong night." Fay thought.
"Mick, I don't know about this." Fay mumbled nervously, watching the quartet of turtles from around a corner.
"It will be effortless, Rafayela." Mikelanjela responded, "The entirety of what we necessitate to do is generate a beguiling diversion to ensnare the terrapins to the rendezvous. Once at the aforementioned tryst, Vicar will contend with the residual."
Fay gave a small huff at her sister's stoic robotic-ness. Sure, Mika was so brilliant that she made Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, and Steven Hawking mixed look about as intelligent as a quartet of rocks, and that's offending rocks everywhere. But did she really have to speak like…well, like THAT? Seriously, even C3PO didn't talk like that!
"So, what do have planned in terms of a 'beguiling diversion'?" Fay asked her sister, who was watching the team of turtles like a class-A stalker.
"I suppose a succession of equivocating maneuvers would be sufficient to magnetize the attentiveness of vigilant ninja." She replied quickly, making it that much harder to understand.
"Really? You think sneaking around is going to catch their attention?" Fay asked doubtfully, "Isn't sneaking around supposed to do the OPPOSITE?"
"They are ninja. Ninja are exceedingly keen and perceptive." Mika stated, "Our endeavors at discreteness will indubitably provoke their qualms."
"If you say so." Fay chirped, "So, once we 'indubitably provoke their qualms', we lead them to…'the rendezvous'?"
"Correct." Mika replied, "Be certain to operate in disclosure."
"Act surprised." Fay repeated, "Got it." With that, she darted up a fire escape and zipped across the roof, making sure to slap her feet loudly on the rock. Ducking behind a billboard for Boboco Cola, she frowned when a pair of eyes matching Elle's glanced in her direction. "Dang it! Why do they have to be so observant?" she thought, "Look away! It's for your own good!"
Fay didn't even have to turn around to know Mika had run behind her; she sounded like a herd of mutant cow-ephants. All four of the male turtles, even Mikey, looked up at Mika, who was doing a poor job of hiding behind a satellite dish. Fay took a deep breath and ran past the dish, only to suddenly feel a hard shove against her side. The second she realized her sister had shoved her, she plummeted off the edge of the building.
Fay's high piercing scream echoed three streets down, but no one seemed to pay attention to the humanoid turtle falling through the air. That is, except for the other four humanoid turtles standing on the sidewalk. The brunette hit a conveniently placed awning and smacked plastron-first against the sidewalk. Fay moaned and glanced up to see eight eyes peering down at her; an unfazed mahogany pair, a surprised sapphire pair, an angry emerald pair, and an aquamarine pair of hurt recognition. She chuckled nervously before shouting, "RUN MIKA!"
The carrot-headed turtle jumped off the roof onto a mattress and sprinted away, leaving her younger sister in the dust. Fay let out a glass-shattering shriek that forced the males to cover their sensitive ear holes. She flipped to her feet and took off, crying, "Don't leave me with them! They'll shred me!"
Leo didn't protest as his brothers took off after the two girls without his instruction. He wanted to get to the bottom of this, and the best way to get somewhere is to trick someone into leading you there.
Meanwhile, Lea and Elle hid in a shadowed alleyway by a warehouse, spying on one claret mechanical-legged fish and one ocher muscled dog.
"Okay, so what do I do with this little thing?" Lea whispered to the laptop, closed to muffle the sound and conceal the glow of the screen.
"You hook the mouthpiece to the inside of your cheek on the side of whichever ear you hear the worst with." Baxter explained, "Then press the button on the side, and it should activate immediately.
Leonara adjusted her decoy mask, picked up one of the devices, and slid the green metallic clip onto the side of her mouth. "Okay, but I don't know how this is gonna…" she said, pressing the button on the device, "…make a difference." She froze and Elle stifled a yelp. The last three words of her sentence had come out in the voice of Leo. "What the…" she muttered, sounding exactly like the turtle in blue.
"AAH!" Elle screamed, "LEA HELP! THE MEAN TURTLE MAN FOUND ME! AAAAAAAAHHH!"
"Shhh!" Lea exclaimed, checking to make sure Fishface and Dogpound hadn't heard, which somehow they hadn't. "Elle, it's me, Lea!" she whispered, "Daddy made this thing that makes my voice sound like the guy turtle's, to trick the bad dog and fish people."
"Cool!" Elle cried, "Let me try!"
"SHHH!"
"Let me try!" Elle whispered, snatching up the second mouthpiece.
Elle studied the little object. It looked like a pink oblong bug eye with a green slide clip from a microscope stuck to the back. She slid the little clip on her left cheek and sang, "Do Re Mi Fa Sol…Hey, I still sound like me!"
"You put it on backwards you knucklehead." Lea declared, ripping off the device and jamming it back on with the orb inside Elle's mouth, "I don't know what Dad was thinking when he assigned you to play the smart one."
"I'm not a knucklehead!" the voice of Donnie whisper-shouted, "Oh my Gosh I sound like a guy!"
Lea facepalmed. Maybe it would've been easier just to teach Mika to speak normally and act stupid.
"Remember Elle, you can't draw your weapons." Leonara told the blonde-who-looked-bald, "If Dogpound and Fishface see your different weapons, plus the fact that you're shorter and way dumber than Donnie, they might suspect something, and we can't have them suspecting something."
"Yep, and I'm supposed to call you Leo and you're supposed to call me Donnie." Elle recited.
"Wow." Lea thought, "The dumb blonde actually got it right." "Let's go." She said aloud.
The pair snuck through the shadows until they were right behind the two tall mutants. Lea kicked the dog in the calf and shouted, "Hey Dogpound! Wanna play?!"
The dog face-planted on the concrete and growled. His teammate started laughing uncontrollably. "Stop laughing and help me, Xever!" Dogpound shouted.
"I don't think he can help you." Elle declared, "He fell on the ground from laughing too hard."
Dogpound snarled and leaped to his feet. "Why I oughta…" he thundered, chasing after the girls.
"What do we do now Lea…O!? Lee-uh-oh!" Elle exclaimed, "What do we do now, Leeuhoh?"
"We run, Dawn-uh-nee." Leonara answered, trying to cover the blonde's screw-up.
Dogpound didn't notice. He was too furious with Lea/Leo for tripping him. And Fishface was too busy trying not to fall over, still laughing at his colleague.
Fay dashed away from the four turtles, weaving in and out of alleys, pretending that she WANTED to escape. The male turtles suspected nothing. She cursed herself for acting so well.
Soon she saw the large abandoned storehouse where Stockman had set up his maze 'of doom!' Mika wove in front of her and darted in the storeroom.
"Hey, this place looks familiar." Donnie declared.
"Less talking, more chasing down my evil clone." Raph answered.
Fay's heart clenched in her chest when she heard Raph call her his 'evil clone'. "I'm so sorry." She whispered before ducking into the warehouse.
She headed for a seemingly random circle of crates in the center of the floor, with a few gaps in the ring. She vaulted over a crate and rolled until her shell hit a box. Mika was perched on a crate a few cases away. Fay nodded at her; so far so good. Now Lea and Elle had to live up to their end of the bargain.
Raph cleared the crate barrier and landed feet away from Fay, his eyes two green flames. His brothers followed suit, but kept behind him, as if they knew they should stay out of whatever was going to happen.
The red-banded turtle took a few deep breaths and asked in a shaky voice, "What. Are. You?"
Fay glanced back at him with pure terror in her eyes. Squeakily, she whispered back, "I'm one of you. I swear."
Before he could respond, Lea darted into the circle through a gap and balanced on the crate behind Fay. "Piece of cake!" she declared in Leo's voice.
"How the…what the…what?" Leo muttered detachedly. He stared at his duplicate uncomprehendingly and repeated Raph's question with a slight tweak, "Who. Are. You?"
"AAH! LE-UH-OH! I THINK WE MADE THE DOG MAN MAD!" Elle screamed in Donnie's voice. She tripped over a crate in her panic, only to pick her self back up and run into a support beam.
"What is going on here?" Donnie mumbled, staring at Elle.
Dogpound and Fishface lumbered into the circle, the latter still burdened with a fading case of the giggles. "You." Dogpound growled at Leo.
"Him!" Leo shouted, pointing at Lea.
"Me." Leonara declared, one hand in the air in a gesture of recognition.
"Two?" Fishface asked in his clipped Brazilian accent.
"What the heck is going on?!" Elle screamed.
"You know what's going on." Lea declared.
"Oh yeah." Elle said. Lea facepalmed.
Suddenly, black and white walls shot up out of the ground and snapped into the ceiling. "Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the…" Baxter's voice echoed.
Leo interrupted him with a loud groan. "You have GOT to be kidding me."
"The Maze of Doom? AGAIN?" Mikey whimpered.
"Could you really not come up with anything better?" Raph asked.
"Am I the only one who has not forgotten that our evil twins are RIGHT THERE?!" Donnie shouted.
"What?! Where?!" Elle exclaimed, glancing over both shoulders.
"He's talking about you, Elle." Lea moaned.
"Oh yeah." Elle replied, removing the voice-modifying device, "Right."
"A voice modifier?" Donnie asked.
"Yup." Elle chirped, taking off her bald cap, "Lea has one too."
Leo stared at his 'evil twin' suspiciously, as if he had caught on. "Thank you, Elle." Leonara snarled, ripping the clip off her cheek and cutting herself, "And just when I was starting to have fun with it."
She plucked the cap off her head and demanded, "Somebody PLEASE get me my jacket!" At her demand, the cerulean denim drifted down from the roof, as well as Elle's choker and hat. "Thank you!" Lea shouted, sliding her ponytail holder out from under her wrist wrap and tying up her hair. She caught the falling jacket and shrugged it on, shaking her head. "Alright Dexter, what do we have to do?"
"Not you too!" Stockman cried. He groaned and the microphone squeaked as he shouted, "BAXTER. STOCKMAN!"
Elle covered her ears and screeched, "Okay Daddy! We get it! WE GET IT!"
"Daddy?" Dogpound snarled, staring up at the unseen sky, "What have you been up to, Stockman?"
Baxter laughed maniacally and exclaimed, "Oh my, I forgot! You haven't met my daughters yet! How rude of me!"
"Daughters?" Xever asked, "What is this madness?"
"Xever, Bradford, I would like you to meet my daughters." Baxter's voice boomed proudly over the loudspeaker, "Mikelanjela."
"Greetings and salutations, Sirs Canine and Maritime." Mika chirped.
"Baxter, I think your daughter has a screw loose." Dogpound declared.
"Hush!" Baxter exclaimed, "Donitellia."
"Hi!" the blonde cried, waving at Dogpound as if she had never been scared of him.
"Leonara." Stockman declared.
"Call me Lea or you lose one of your fishy fins, Nemo." She snarled.
Fishface eyed her suspiciously and took a step back. Then he grinned. "I like that one." He decreed.
"And last but not least, Rafayela." Stockman announced.
Fay waved slightly at the newcomers before curling back into a ball and staring at the ground.
"Does that one have a stomachache?" Dogpound asked, "Because I would not like to be covered in turtle barf."
"I'm fine, Mr. Bradford." Fay stated without looking up, "I just wish I was somewhere else. ANYWHERE else."
Dogpound gave the girl an odd look, but before he could respond, the section of the floor under the boy turtles, as well as him and Xever, disintegrated and they plummeted into nothingness. A loud thump echoed up from the bottom.
Lea burst out laughing and nearly fell off the edge herself, and even Elle had to stifle a giggle fit. "Are you okay?!" Fay cried over the side.
"Could be better!" Donnie's voice answered.
"Dang it!" Lea exclaimed, "They didn't die!"
Fay stared at her. "Well aren't you just a little ray of sunshine?" she said sarcastically.
"Sunshine's out, sister. It's shadow that's in." Lea replied, shoving her older sister as she passed by. The second she neared the precipice, white stairs shot out of the wall, spiraling downward. "Thank 'ya kindly." She said before climbing downward.
"Yay! Stairs!" Elle cried, taking the steps two at a time.
"Elle, be care…!" Fay shouted. A high pitched scream echoed up the stairwell, followed by a slightly lower yelp and two deep thuds. "…ful."
Mika sighed and walked down the steps. Fay touched the first step with her toe, but suddenly fell back and scooted away from the stairs until her shell touched the wall. A little patch of wall adjacent from her flooded away and a screen emerged. Baxter's face appeared, looking slightly concerned. "Are you alright, Fay?" he asked, "Your sisters are already downstairs fighting."
"Of course that's all you care about." She thought aloud, "Fighting and killing and beating people up."
"What?" Stockman answered, looking scared. Fay saw the fear flit across his face, as if he were frightened of the non-violent thought.
"Oh, did I say that out loud?" Fay asked with a nervous chuckle, "Never mind that. I'll be going now." She stood up and strolled towards the stairs.
"Fay, is there something you want to tell me?" Baxter asked.
The brunette froze, breathed a sigh, and turned on her heel so she was facing the screen again. It was a good thing that she had; otherwise she would have noticed her sisters sneaking back up the stairs, with the original turtles in tow. "Daddy," she declared fearfully, "I'm a pacifist."
I didn't mention this up top, but I am planning a Hunger Games fanfic with 48 Tributes, and I am allowed other Fanfictioners and guests to create a Tribute. Listed on my profile are the Tributes that have already been claimed. Please review or PM me with your Tribute's name, District, age (ages 6-12 and 18-25; don't ask, explain later), personality, appearance, and anything else you think I might need to know. One Tribute per person please. Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor. ;)