Joys of being a (mutant) mother

Teenage mutant ninja turtles (2012)

It was summer and many people were gathered at the local park to have picnics while the children played on the equipment or in the small water park at the centre, however many children weren't in the water park or playing on the equipment, instead they were gathered around a teenage girl making bubbles. The girl in question had a smile on her face as she used her biggest bubble wand to create a huge bubble that was soon popped by the children that scrambled after it, she then created dozens of bubbles from one of her bubble blowers which the children started trying to pop by running through them.

"Bubbles!" shouted some of the younger children in joy, which made the girl smile more.

"Can I have a go?" one of the children asked.

"Of course." The girl said in the soft tone she used when around children.

The girl crouched down and took a plastic cup out of a packet of them and filled it with some bubble solution, she then handed it to the child along with a bubble blower made to look like a shell. The girl handed out a few more cups of bubble solution along with various bubble blowers and wands to the children who asked.

"So, what's your name?" the girl asked the young boy she was teaching how to use the big bubble wand.

"Eric." The boy replied shyly.

"Please to meet you, Eric, my name's Jenny."

Jenny handed the bubble wand to the boy for him to try and make his own big bubbles and then sat down on the bench behind her with her smile still on her face. She loved to play with children, making them happy made her happy, and she had always been a kind and caring person; she was determined to become a teacher because it seemed to like the perfect career opportunity for her.

After an hour or two Jenny emptied the dregs of her bubble bottle into the cup of the child in front of her.

"That's it, kids, I'm all out." Jenny announced to the children around her. "No more refills."

Twenty minutes later all of the bubble solution had been used up, Jenny gathered up her bubble wands and blowers while discarding the plastic cups and bottle into a nearby recycling bin.

"See yah, kids!" Jenny called as she left. "I'll be back tomorrow with more bubbles if the weather's still good.

After waving goodbye and calling on some parents to get their children to stop clinging to her arms and to give her back her bag, she left. Jenny gave a sigh as she began walking home, as she did she passed through a field and something glowing caught her eye, walking over to it she saw it was a canister filled with some glowing green liquid.

"What the…?" Jenny questioned, picking it up to examine it.

Jenny had no clue as to what it was, so she placed it in her bag with the intention of looking up what it was on the internet, she then carried on her way home.

A minute or two after Jenny had picked up the canister two men dressed in black suits arrived in the same place she had found it.

"That which is Krang swears that the mutagen was that which is here." One of them said in a robotic voice.

"Well the mutagen is not that which is here, is that which is Krang sure it was that which is here?" The other asked in the exact same voice.

"That which is Krang is certain. Though the mutagen could have could be that which is not here and be that which is there, or that which is there." The first pointed to many parts of the field.

"That which is Krang is, what the Earthlings call, an idiot. That which is Krang and that which is also Krang will continue looking. Why is the mutagen even in that which is in this place?"

The two men walked off, searching the ground for something.

When Jenny got home is was quiet, her parents were camping up in the lakes and her brother was staying with some friends until they got back, so she had the house to herself providing she phoned her parents at least once a day to assure them that she was fine. She shrugged her bag off of her shoulders and placed it on her bed, rubbing at her shoulders as soon as the weight was gone, the canister along with everything she usually brought to the park with her caused her bag to be heavy. She then unpacked her bag, bringing out her bubble blowers and wands to wash while putting the canister on her desk, not noticing how close to the edge it was. After Jenny had put her things in the kitchen to wash she came back to her room and began untying her shoe laces, unintentionally knocking her desk as she did so, with the knock against the desk the canister fell off of it and onto the stone part of her floor that was in front of her fireplace, on contact the canister shattered and the green liquid ended up splattered all over Jenny.

"Ah!" Jenny cried out as the liquid hit her. "Gross!"

As Jenny got up to go to the bathroom to clean herself up she began feeling dizzy and stumbled around, then she began to ache all over and groaned in pain, finally her vision went black and she collapsed on the floor. As she was unconscious her body began to change, she grew and ripped through her clothes and gained extra appendages.

Jenny groaned as she woke up, she hurt all over and she didn't know how long she'd been unconscious. When she tried to stand she found her limbs hard to control and her centre of balance off, when she brought her hands in front of her to push off of the floor it wasn't her hands she saw, they were blue with claws on the end of long fingers.

"Ah!" Jenny cried out as she jerked up, the hands following. "What's going on?"

She then put a clawed hand to her mouth when her voice was impaired by her teeth feeling bigger, running her tongue along them she found them sharp. Leaning back she found it weighed down by something and when she turned her head she caught sight of something blue. Jenny finally decided to crawl over to her full-length mirror and see what happened to her, was she did she let out a horrified scream.

Staring back at her was a creature that was twice as big as she was, with blue skin, clawed hands and feet, sharp teeth, black reptile eyes with no iris, holes with ridges around them either side of her head instead of ears, long black hair, a set of blue bat-like wings coming from her back, a long blue tail coming from behind her, and she had no clothes on.

The creature moved the same way Jenny did, and a quick look at herself confirmed that the creature was Jenny.

"What happened to me?" Jenny cried, staring at her face in the mirror.

It took a while for Jenny to calm down and accept that she was some sort of blue lizard-lady with wings, after that she worked out that she had torn off her clothes with her sudden growth and that nothing she had would fit her any longer, so she had to fashion her bedding into something to cover herself with. Jenny then remembered the canister.

"This must have been what changed me." Jenny said as she looked as the broken canister, whatever had been in it was gone, maybe she had absorbed it all when she changed. "What am I going to do, I'm a freak." She sobbed into her hands, mindful of her claws. "I need to call someone."

Jenny slowly got to her feet to go to the living room to get the phone, it took her a long time to get there as her new body caused her to need to lean forward because of her tail and wings and she could only walk on the balls of her feet, she eventually managed to get the phone but paused when she went to dial a number.

"Who do I call?" she asked herself.

Jenny's parents were camping in the lakes so they'd take a while to get home, she was also afraid of how they'd react, she wasn't going to call her brother because they didn't have the best of relationships at the moment, so it'd have to be one of her friends; but who? Going over her list of friends she finally settled on the one she trusted the most, Elizabeth Brown, the girl was always so open minded so hopefully she's let Jenny explain before screaming about a monster. Jenny dialled in the number and waited.

"Hello?" someone asked as the phone was picked up, it was Elizabeth.

"Ellie, thank god." Jenny said, using her friend's nick-name.

"Jen, what's wrong, you sound weird."

"Something's happened to me and I need help."

"What happened? Are you alright?"

"I got covered with the green stuff I found and it's changed me. Listen, it's too hard for me to explain over the phone, just come over and see."

Jenny hung up with her nerves on edge and hoped that Elizabeth would come. Ten minutes later she heard a knock at the door.

"Jen?" Elizabeth called out.

"The door's unlocked, come in." Jenny called out, bracing for what her friend's reaction would be upon finding her.

She heard the door open as her friend entered the house.

"I'm in here!" Jenny called.

Elizabeth walked into the living room and froze when she saw Jenny.

"Hi, Ellie." Jenny said weakly with a small wave.

"Jen?" Elizabeth questioned.

"It's me."

"What happened to you?"

"I…I don't know. I got splashed with some green liquid from this canister I found and blacked out; when I woke up I was like this."

"Green liquid?"

Jenny got up and walked to her room with Elizabeth following behind her, aside from keeping a few feet away from Jenny at all times she had already come to terms with her friend's new appearance, accepting things easily was one of the benefits of being Elizabeth.

"That stuff." Jenny pointed to the ooze on her bedroom floor.

Elizabeth went to touch it but Jenny grabbed her arm.

"Don't!" she hissed. "What if it changes you too?"

"Owe!" Elizabeth exclaimed, yanking her arm out of Jenny's grasp and rubbing where her hands had been. "Watch your grip."

"Sorry."

"This is something straight out of a 80's movie. A canister of ooze turned you into a dragon lady."

"Well, it happened, and it's taking my all not to be freaking out right now. I can't live my life like this, I look like a freak!"

"Maybe the change isn't permanent, maybe you can change back."

"Maybe, but if I can change back when will it happen? My parents are due back in two days and if I'm seen like this something bad will happen, not everyone is accepting as you. By the way, you've been a bit to accepting of this."

Elizabeth looked bashful as she fiddled with her hands. "Well, I may have already come across the ooze before and found something near it."

Elizabeth reached into her bag and pulled something out and showed it to Jenny, it was about the size of a tennis ball and covered in fur that was a lighter shade of blue than she was, it had two big and round black eyes, a big mouth with a fang poking out one side, a set of four spikes either side of it that could be ears, and two long green rodent-like tails coming from behind it with were intertwined with each other. Jenny couldn't help but compare it to a cute collectable toy fad.

"What is it?" Jenny asked, examining it.

"I have no idea." Elizabeth said. "Cute though, isn't he."

Elizabeth brought it up to her face and nuzzled it with her cheek, it gave a purring sound in response.

"I call him Puck."

"When did you get him?"

"A few days ago, I've not mentioned him until now because I was afraid he'd get taken away, and he's become so attached to me."

As if to prove her point Puck jumped out of her hand and onto her shoulder, nuzzling her neck.

"Hey, that tickles."

"So this ooze changes things, me into this and Puck from whatever he was in the first place. I wonder who made it and how much of it there is, there's got to be more than two canisters if they can just be easily lost."

"Yeah, while you're working it out, I'll clean up this ooze and then we should get to work of getting you some better clothes."

Elizabeth left and quickly returned with a mop and bucket and covered head to toe in layers of clothing, she carefully picked up the glass and then mopped up the ooze, she then went to bury everything in the back garden. The two girls, and Puck, then set to work on getting some clothes for Jenny to wear, luckily for Jenny her mum had been quiet large before going on a diet and had never bothered to get rid of all of her big clothes, so Elizabeth fished them out of the attic. The clothes were short but were wide enough for Jenny to fit into them.

"That should do until some proper clothes for your size." Elizabeth said, stroking Puck behind one of his ear-spikes.

"I doubt there are shops that are going to sell clothes my size." Jenny said.

"We'll have to order them from a tailor then, how do you think those with gigantism or performers who wear stilts get clothes."

"But won't that cost a lot; custom made clothes can't be cheap."

"Well, the only other option would be to make our own, and I'm not the best at sewing."

Jenny groaned. "This is a nightmare."

"Could be worse."

"How?"

There was a knock at the door.

"Fuck me." Jenny said, face-palming.

"I'll get it." Elizabeth said, getting up.

Elizabeth went to the door and opened it. "Hello?" she asked.

In front of her stood two men in suits.

"We have come to this place for a canister that which is you or those who live here may have picked up." One said in a robotic voice.

Elizabeth slammed the door shut and locked it, she then ran upstairs to Jenny's room.

"Jen, there's some weird men outside looking for the canister, they spoke in this weird way and sounded like robots!" she yelled.

Both girls then heard the front door being kicked open.

"Correction, they're inside the house."

"What do we do?" Jenny asked desperately. "I can't hide anywhere. Maybe they just really want the canister back."

Elizabeth looked out the bedroom door and ducked back in just in time to avoid getting hit by a laser.

"Whatever they want they're not friendly." She said. "Listen, hide behind the door and when they come through jump them."

Jenny hid behind the door in time for them men to come through, seeing only Elizabeth in sight they aimed their guns at her.

"That which is you will now hand over the canister." One of them said.

"I don't have it, it broke, I buried the remains." Elizabeth said.

"If the canister broke there should have been a mutation."

The men saw movement behind them and turned around to see Jenny looking angrily at them.

"That which are Krang are in trouble." One said before Jenny struck them both.

Jenny and Elizabeth gasped when they saw that Jenny had ripped the skin of the men, but instead of blood they saw they were actually robots underneath. The robots pointed their guns at Jenny and she acted on instinct, she attacked the robots until they no longer moved.

"What the hell is going on?" Elizabeth asked, looking at the broken robots while hugging Puck close to her for comfort.

"I don't know. But they were after that canister I found, what if more come for it, and we saw that they weren't afraid to use violent force. I need to leave." Jenny determined.

"What?" Elizabeth cried out.

"Well, I'm a freak and more of these robots could be after me, what if you or my family gets hurt all because I picked up that canister?"

"Jenny, think about this."

"What's your suggestion then?"

Elizabeth didn't know what to do, this was a sort of situation she thought impossible.

"Look, get some rest, we'll figure this out once we have clear heads."

Elizabeth forced Jenny to take a rest on her bed; she had to curl up to fit because of how tall she was. Neither girl noticed the brain-like things that crawled out and away from the robots.

A few hours later Jenny and Elizabeth had packed a camping bag full of everything that Jenny would be taking with her.

"I still can't believe I'm helping you with this." Elizabeth said. "Where would you even go?"

"Anywhere but here." Jenny answered, checking she had everything she would need; the weight of the bag would no longer be a problem since her new form came with better strength.

The two waited until dark before sneaking out of the house, they continued until they left the city.

"Alright, I guess this is goodbye." Jenny said.

Both girls cried as they hugged each other.

"Don't say goodbye," Elizabeth said. "Because that would mean we could never see each other again, and I don't want that to happen. I wish I could send Puck with you, so you wouldn't have to be alone."

"He's yours, I couldn't take him away from you." Jenny said with a shake of her head.

The two waved at each other as Jenny took off running.

(6 months later)

Jenny could hardly remember how she ended up in New York, she vaguely remembered hiding out on a boat but she had been sick at the time so she didn't know much more. After arriving in New York she had gone into the sewers since she couldn't just camp out on the streets, after a few hours of searching she had come across an abandoned subway station, the only way to get into it was through the sewers since the train tracks were blocked off, she guessed she was lucky that she didn't have to stay in the actual sewers. It took a while to tidy up her new home but she eventually managed it, but she eventually ran into the problem of food and water, she had packed plenty and had been rationing it but it had still gone and she had to venture out into the city to get supplies.

Jenny was currently on a supply run, jumping from building to building in hopes of spotting a delivery truck that she could steal from so she didn't have to dig through the garbage like a bum to find something. As she was about to jump over an alley she spotted something, the same robots she had destroyed 6 months ago, one of them was about to hand a canister of ooze identical to the one she found to the other when the squeaking of a rat caught their attention, a man stood at one end of the alley holding a glass bowl containing four baby turtles.

"Go no further; this place is a place where you are not allowed to be in this place." One said as they approached the man and two more came up behind him. "We have seen in this place by you so this is not a place to be left by you."

But when the man was attacked he fought them off, in the process the canister was dropped and broken along with the bowl containing the baby turtles, the turtles and man ended up getting hit by the ooze. Jenny watched in horror as the man was turned into a giant rat and the turtles into a cross between humans and turtles that were the size of babies. Jenny decided that it was time for her to help out; she volleyed over the edge of the building and dropped into the alley effortlessly, with all her strength she continued to fight the robot-men until they retreated.

"Come on, we need to get out of here, they could come back or we could be spotted." Jenny said as she turned to the former-man.

"What?" he asked, looking at Jenny, then himself, then the four former-turtles.

"Listen, I'm like you, but you can have your panic attack when we're somewhere safer." Jenny left no room for arguments.

Jenny looked around and found a cardboard box, picking it up she gathered it all four baby turtles, who were all whimpering.

"There, there, little ones." Jenny said softly to them, rocking the box a little in an attempt to calm them down.

With one arm balancing the box of turtles she used her spare hand to grab the fury wrist of the rat-man and pull him along behind her, they eventually reached the storm drain she used to access the sewers since her size prevented her from using a man-hole, once they reached her home she set the box down and turned to the man.

"I guess this has been quite a shock, I know it was for me." Jenny said.

"Yes, it is." He replied.

From his accent Jenny guessed that the man was Japanese.

"I don't really know many details but what I do know is that ooze mutates living creatures like it did to us and those men we fought are the ones who handle it. It apparently doesn't go away because I've been stuck like this for six months now."

The man just kept looking at himself.

"I'm Jenny, what's your name?" Jenny asked.

"Hamato Yoshi."

Jenny remembered that the Japanese said their family names first when introducing themselves so his first name would be Yoshi.

Jenny dragged a mattress she had found over to where Yoshi was and set him down on it, she then got a pile of blankets and put them in the box for the turtles. The turtles in question started reaching out towards her and Jenny couldn't help but scoop them all up and cuddle them close to her.

"Awe, so cute." She said.

Jenny eventually placed the turtles back in the box and wrapped them in blankets; they fell asleep almost straight away. She then looked over to see that Yoshi seemed to be meditating on the mattress she gave him. With a shrug of her shoulders she unpacked her bag off all the things she found and noted that she had taken the canister from the alley without realising it, though it was empty of the ooze. Jenny looked around and realised she didn't really have anything suitable for babies, so she put her bag back on.

"Hey, Yoshi!"

Yoshi peaked open an eye to look at her.

"I'm going back to the surface to find some things for the babies, will you be okay if I left for an hour or two?"

"I will be fine." Yoshi assured her.

Jenny nodded and left. There were many charity shops and such where people just left their things outside the door for the owners to bring in when they opened up, so Jenny headed towards the ones she knew of in hopes of finding some toys and things for the babies and books on how to take care of children for herself.

(2 months later)

Two months had passed and Jenny found herself sharing her new home with a rat-man and four baby turtles, she had quickly adapted to the roll of mother and took care of the babies along with Yoshi once he had gotten used to his new body. Being a mutant rat Yoshi couldn't live on the surface anymore so he had moved in with Jenny, with the teenage dragon-lady's help he had all his things moved into the train station and took one of the rooms as his own, he had even taken the name of Splinter to signify his new life. Jenny had contemplated changing her name as well but ultimately decided against it.

Jenny had known that being a parent to just one child was hard, but being a parent to four baby mutant turtles was much harder as each was already behaving in their own way; one would throw a huff if he didn't get what he wanted, one always wanted to play, one loved to cause a mess, and the last insisted on clinging to her while pointing at things he wanted to know about despite not knowing words yet. If Splinter hadn't been there Jenny didn't know if she could have coped. From a book on renaissance painters that Splinter had found in a storm drain he and Jenny had agreed on names for the baby turtles as well as the order of age; the oldest was named Leonardo, the second oldest was named Raphael, the second youngest was named Donatello, and the youngest was named Michelangelo.

In between caring for the babies Splinter began to teach Jenny ninjutsu, which was much harder to teach her than if she was still human since her wings and tail had to be taken into consideration. Thankfully Splinter was a fighting master so he quickly adapted the moves he taught her to incorporate her new body, he even made new ones that involved using her tail and wings.

(5 years later)

Jenny sat in the dojo watching Splinter teach her sons ninjutsu. She didn't exactly know when she and Splinter started to think of the turtles as their sons, though the two of them would never be romantically involved, but it was sort of a given considering they were raising them. After her sons had learned to walk and move like humans Splinters had put forward the idea of teaching them ninjutsu, Jenny had been hesitant with the idea but ultimately agreed since her sons would need some form of self-defence if they were ever discovered. As Jenny watched her sons go through their katas she thought about each of them.

Leonardo had taken quickly to his training and was always eager to impress Splinter and Jenny, he was the first to speak (first word being 'Splinter') and walk though not so quick in the reading department, and he always took charge of his brothers. Splinter and Jenny agreed that Leonardo would grow up to be a natural leader.

Raphael was the hardest to control of the brothers and the most temperamental, he loved to hit things and Jenny was sure that if her skin wasn't tougher in her mutated form then she would be covered in bruises from when he would have a tantrum. He was the second to walk but the third to speak (first word being 'mine').

Donatello was the quietest and most well behaved of the brothers, he was also the most intelligent and quickest to learn, Jenny would read with the book on her lap so he could follow the words. He was the third to learn how to walk but the last to speak, he was so far behind his brothers in that area that Jenny had begun to worry that he wouldn't speak at all until Splinter assured her that he was just talking his time, when he did speak his first word Jenny was so happy (his word being mother).

Michelangelo was the most active and loudest of the brothers; as soon as he learned how to walk he was running all around their home along with continuously shouting his first word (fist word being 'play'). What he loved to do most was to grab hold of Jenny's tail and get swung around on it, an activity that his brothers soon joined in on.

Jenny and Splinter loved their sons no matter their faults and how difficult it was to care for them and their sons loved them, they would usually refer to Splinter as father or Sensei and Jenny as haha (which was the Japanese word for mother) or Mama-Dragon.

Jenny had eventually gotten back in contact with Elizabeth when she managed to find a laptop and hack a Wi-Fi signal, her friend told her that her disappearance had been treated as a kidnapping since the front door had been broken down and Elizabeth pretending she knew nothing. When Jenny told Elizabeth about her new family her friend had joked that Jenny would always be a mother regardless of being a mutant, she had then requested to see the four turtles and Splinter. After meeting the turtles Elizabeth had quickly become their auntie Ellie despite never physically meeting, though Elizabeth promised that she would visit New York one day to see them all.

(Ten years later)

Many things had changed and it had started with the turtles' fifteenth mutation-day, before that the only one who ever went to the surface was Jenny and that had gotten rarer over the years, but then her sons had requested to be able to go to the surface as they believed themselves old enough, after contemplation, and some convincing of Jenny's part, Splinter had finally allowed his sons to leave their home. After that things had gotten weirder than usual, the boys had encountered the robot men called the Krang that Jenny and Splinter had encountered all those years ago and rescued a girl (named April) from them, so they got wrapped up in a plan to rescue April's father while becoming friends with her. Then they found out that Splinter's enemy the Shredder was also in New York and had become obsessed with killing Splinter and his family, so the family had to deal with two sets of enemies. Then some of the Shredder's henchmen got mutated from the Krang's ooze making everything more complicated. Jenny was starting to wonder if it was such a good idea to allow her sons to the surface.

Jenny supposed there were good things that came from her sons going to the surface, April turned out to be a very nice girl who started coming to their home to hang out once she got over them being mutants, it was also very obvious that Donatello had a huge crush on her. With April Elizabeth could also send things to Jenny's family since April let them use her address, Elizabeth would send things over for all of them, including April; Elizabeth was finally able to send over the clothes she had made Jenny that would fit her perfectly, the sewing classes she had taken had paid off.

It was Jenny's birthday and for it she was patrolling the city with her sons.

"I admit, it's been a while since I've been to the surface for anything other than supply runs." Jenny said as she stood on a roof top with her sons.

Jenny was wearing one of the dresses that Elizabeth had made for her, it was dark-blue that went down to just above her knee pads, it had a hood that was currently up that covered her eyes, eye holes had been cut in it so it functioned as a mask as well as a hood, the sleeves went just over her hands, and her tail came out from under the dress. Jenny had changed very little in terms of physical appearance over the years, she still looked like a teenager despite being thirty, the only noticeable change would be that she had cut her hair short.

"Well, you've been needing to get out more, mom." Leonardo told her.

"I know. But a ten-foot-something dragon-lady is slightly more noticeable than you four, I'm pretty sure I 've been spotted despite how careful I've been." Jenny replied with a shrug.

"Hello, turtles!" a gruff voice called out.

The brothers turned to see Dogpound and Fishface along with some Foot soldiers on the opposite side of the roof, Jenny had been leaning against behind a wall on the roof so she hadn't been seen. Jenny decided to stay hidden while her sons fought the Foot. The fight ended with the Foot soldiers defeated and the two sides of mutants on either sides of the roof, Dogpound and Fishface near Jenny's hiding place.

"I hear that you've got a mother, you better be careful around her in case we get to her." Dogpound taunted.

The four brothers look at each other before bursting out laughing.

"What's so funny?" Fishface asked angrily.

"The idea…of you…hurting our mother!" Michelangelo laughed out.

"You don't even know what she is." Donatello said.

"Though you're about to find out." Leonardo said, pointing behind them.

The two evil mutants turned around to see that Jenny had been standing behind them, her towering figure dwarfing both of them.

"So, you two are the ones who have been giving my sons trouble?" Jenny growled, cracking her knuckles.

"Why do I have a feeling of impending doom?" Fishface asked.

A few minute later the two evil mutants crashed through the window of the Shredder's hideout when the Shredder was sitting on his throne, both were out cold.

"What is this?" Shredder demanded.

"A reminder to not mess with a mother!" Jenny called out from where she stood at the broken window before jumping out of it and flying away from the Shredder's lair.