...
Come to the fight, to the hope, to the freedom
Everything starts with someone believing
Someone with faith and heart
That is bound with truth
–"My Salvation," by Econoline Crush
ENTER CASEY JONES
Michelangelo winced as he carefully removed the tiny, black ball of fluff, claws and rage from his shell while his brothers laughed hysterically. He let the cat drop gently to the littered alley floor and watched her bolt from them along with his hopes and dreams of bridging the gap between mutants and humans. 'Mittens' had left him a few scratches as a parting gift, but Michelangelo didn't hold it against her. The cat had been happy enough to be petted and snuggled by him until her owner had spazzed out.
What did I do wrong? he wondered to himself. He had made sure to be as friendly and non-threatening as possible, and was even trying to return the dude's cat. Sure, he looked different, but not everyone could be so shallow.
He was sure there were people out there that would accept them if they only made the effort. Master Splinter had taught them how to move about the city in secrecy from a young age, warning them against interacting with anyone. For the most part, they heeded their Master's words on the dangers of being discovered, but over the years there had been times when it had been impossible for them to not interfere in human society. It turned out that some people could be pretty horrible to their own kind, and neither he, Leonardo, nor Donatello would turn a blind eye to it if they could help.
Michelangelo had always longed to reach out to some of the people they had aided; the ones whose startled double-takes held more curiosity than fear, or who uttered thanks to the shadows at their unseen saviors. April befriending them had emboldened him to the possibilities of connecting to others, but so far, it wasn't working out very well for him.
"I just need to find someone that I have more in common with," Michelangelo insisted stubbornly as his brother's giggling subsided. A nearby billboard caught his eye and his face lit up with a smile once more. "Like Chris Bradford!" he said, pointing excitedly.
Leonardo stared back at him dubiously. "Chris Bradford, the celebrity, with a chain of dojos across the country?"
"Yeah! We have tons in common," Michelangelo replied confidently.
Leonardo and Donatello exchanged that look, the one that meant they were going to dismiss whatever he was saying as nonsense. Undaunted, he looked back up at the billboard of his idol to reaffirm that Bradford was currently in New York. He instead noticed the silhouette of a man on the rooftop holding what appeared to be a hockey stick. In a blink, he was gone.
"Guys? Did you see that?" Michelangelo asked quietly.
"What?" Donatello asked, him and Leonardo instantly at attention.
"I saw somebody on the roof."
A clunk from the nearest fire escape put them on all edge.
Leonardo moved swiftly to Michelangelo's side. "Kraang?" he asked under his breath.
Michelangelo shook his head.
A small, black object shot out of the darkness from behind a dumpster. Michelangelo felt himself being tugged out of it's trajectory by Leonardo even as he began to dodge it himself. The projectile whizzed by his head and smacked the brick wall behind them, resulting in a loud pop and a burst of smoke.
Despite the brief moment of confusion, all three of them had their weapons at the ready as Hell's goaltender rushed them at high speed on rollerblades. He clashed with Donatello first, hockey stick against bo.
"I knew the rumors were true!" the guy proclaimed, his voice slightly muffled by his hockey mask. "Weird freaks running around the city."
"Well isn't that the pot calling the kettle black," Donatello quipped, looking more irritated than anything else as he easily thwarted his attacker. "What the heck are you supposed to be?"
"The name is Casey Jones, and this is my neighborhood. Now, what have you done to him?"
Donatello cocked his head in confusion. "Done to whom?" he asked, then rapped Casey's knuckles with his bo.
Casey hissed in pain and withdrew his hand, cradling it to his chest reflexively. Donatello tore the hockey stick from his one-handed grip and tossed it a few feet away, cornering him against the rusted out dumpster.
Still at Michelangelo's side, Leonardo snickered and sheathed his katanas. "He's just some vigilante."
"I suggest you leave," Donatello warned sternly.
"I suggest you answer my question," Casey rebutted, his gloved hand shooting towards Donatello. The glove hid a makeshift taser, and suddenly Donatello cried out and fell to the ground.
Leonardo growled. "You did not just do that." Eyes narrowed, he lunged for Casey.
Michelangelo bounded over to Donatello, who was already coming around. He helped Donatello to his feet and had him lean on the dumpster, then turned his attention to what kind of pummeling his other bro was giving this supposed vigilante.
"Where is the guy?" Casey asked angrily, now armed with a baseball bat.
Leonardo caught the bat in midair as it came towards him, pulling Casey forward for a face full of knee pad. The hockey mask slipped away, revealing their assailant's young and painted face.
"Whoa, whoa, Leo," Michelangelo steadied Leonardo's ready fist. "Donnie's fine. Let him go, he's confused."
Forcefully shoving Casey away so that he fell onto his butt on the grimy cement, Leonardo chucked the baseball bat to the ground next to Casey's feet in disgust and went over to Donatello.
Michelangelo had to give credit where credit was due; this guy was fearless and still trying to brawl. He picked up the bat and came at Michelangelo without hesitation.
"Dude, quit it, we don't want to hurt you," Michelangelo said.
Leonardo harrumphed and Donatello raised a finger wearily and said, "Well, actually..."
"Who are you looking for?" Michelangelo asked, doing little more than deflecting his swings.
"The man who was screaming for help. What did you do to him?"
"Nothing! I tried to return his cat and he freaked out on me. He's not hurt or anything, he's in his apartment."
Casey still had his bat at the ready but stopped his assault, eyeing Michelangelo suspiciously.
Slowly bending to pick up the mask that had clattered to the ground, Michelangelo held it out as a peace offering.
Casey snatched it back, looking undecided about what to believe now that his world included giant, talking turtles.
Just as it seemed like everyone could calm down and go home, the alley was silently taken over by about a dozen black-clad ninjas. None of them moved, a threatening tableau surrounding the masked vigilante and three mutants.
"Ninjas, in New York?" Donatello muttered in surprise. "Other than us?"
"Wicked," Casey said under his breath.
"Sure, human ninjas are cool, but mutant turtle ninjas are automatically evil," Michelangelo whispered back sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
A single shuriken whistled through the air towards Donatello, embedding into his bo only inches from his face. He gritted his teeth. "I've had just about enough for today!"
With that, the alley broke out into utter chaos. The mysterious ninja were armed with either katanas or spears, but Michelangelo decided on his nunchaku for defense. He could tell by their scent and the exhalations of their efforts that they were human, and while he was not prepared to be run through with a sword any time soon, he also didn't want to seriously hurt them. It was clear from the glimpses he got of his brothers fighting that they had the same idea. They had already been attacked tonight over a misunderstanding, so it seemed cruel to maim first and ask questions later.
When Michelangelo heard Casey's protest of, "Hey! I'm not even with these guys!" he couldn't help but chuckle. A spear-wielding ninja was giving Casey a hard time, and Michelangelo swung by to deliver a well-placed smack to the base of the guys skull, just hard enough to drop him.
Despite being so outnumbered, half of the ninja were quickly subdued. Leonardo seemed keen to take over the fight with the remainder, a confident smile on his face. Michelangelo watched Leonardo block and parry their weapons with his blades while avoiding actually slicing anyone with the precise and effortless grace unique to him.
Like a video game on easy, Michelangelo thought to himself.
Except someone else then dropped into the alley, and it was clear that this was the boss fight. Clad mostly in red and wearing some armor, including a metal helmet, he was an imposing figure, partially because of his size, and partially because he had giant spikes on his shoulders.
Boss-man went for Leonardo straight away with a bare-knuckled punch to the face that sent him reeling back in surprise. Then he spun on Casey, who just happened to be standing the closest, slamming him into the brick wall with a rib-crushing roundhouse kick.
Switching to his kusurigama, Michelangelo rushed him with Donatello at his side. Donatello reached him first, but was instantly disarmed and swept aside brutally with his own bo.
Determined, Michelangelo threw the weighted end of the chain, snagging the forearm that held his brother's weapon. He hauled back with all of his strength, jolting the man's arm forward roughly. He dropped the bo and grabbed the chain with both hands, yanking Michelangelo off balance and snout-first into a fist.
"Ugh, I can't believe there are more of you," a deep voice rumbled from within the mask.
Still dazed, Michelangelo felt his own chain snake around his neck and tighten. Heart beating frantically, he struggled to his feet and tried to pull back some slack for himself as his breath was abruptly cut off.
The man rebuffed Donatello's charge, but it left him distracted enough that Leonardo was able to cut through the taut chain and release Michelangelo, who gasped for air thankfully and pulled the rest of the chain from around his neck.
The alley suddenly lit up in red and blue and everyone froze. It seemed none of them wanted to risk discovery by the police, and without a backwards glance the strange man and his pack of ninjas were gone.
Leonardo motioned for them to likewise disappear, but Michelangelo lingered a moment longer.
The human vigilante, Casey, was splayed out on the filthy ground, unconscious. The sharp scent of blood made Michelangelo's mind up on the spot. He scooped Casey up and beat a hasty retreat from the flashlight beams that pried into the alley.
ooooooooooooooo
The first thing Casey saw when he woke up was the IV in his hand. He squinted down at it in confusion, then at the blue cotton blanket his hand rested on. He groaned as he realized he was in the hospital, then cussed loudly when he tried to sit up and a bolt of pain shot through his chest.
The sound caught the attention of a nurse passing by his doorway.
"Ah, you're awake," she said, entering the room.
"How did I get here?" Casey asked.
"You were found laying outside the ER entrance. Your injuries indicate that you may have been attacked. Would you like me to call in a police officer to speak with you?"
"No," he said quickly, the strange events of the night coming back to him.
The nurse looked concerned, like she maybe thought he was the one that had been up to no good, and he really, really didn't want to be questioned by the cops right now.
"I didn't see them," he added gently. "The cops won't be able to do anything."
She pursed her lips and nodded, her expression a little less suspicious as he tried his best to look harmless and pathetic. Her pager beeped and she flitted off into the hallway, leaving him to settle into the least painful position and rest in misery. Left to his own devices, too sore to sleep and without any distractions, his mind quickly turned to the downward spiral that was his existence.
Not that his life had ever been perfect, but things had really surged into one giant shit-storm lately, and the catalyst for all of it had been one chance encounter with the Purple Dragons a few months back. That fateful night, he had happened upon a woman being mugged in the narrow laneway behind his apartment building by three guys. Being fresh off of hockey practice, he'd had his stick with him and thought standing up to them while brandishing it would be enough to scare them off. The tatted up Dragons turned on him instead, putting up far more of a fight than Casey had expected. He was no pushover; none of the punks walked away unscathed, that's for sure, but they'd also left their mark on him. Bruises aside, one of them had taken a cheap shot at his knee.
The pain and swelling had been bad enough that he could barely put weight on it for a week, and he'd had to take some time off from school and hockey to recover. That had meant more time at home with his old man, whom he generally avoided like the plague. With Casey laid up and injured, his dad had at least kept from lashing out at him physically for a while, but his regular bilious, drunken rants were inescapable.
Once he was back on his feet, Casey had kept his knee wrapped for hockey and managed to catch the eye of a state league scout. He'd jumped at the opportunity to try out for a semi-pro team, his dreams of making his passion a career brighter than ever until his physical, where it was discovered that his knee injury was actually a partial ACL tear. The recruiter had called it a 'ticking time bomb', and had turned a deaf ear to Casey's desperate insistence that he was fine and could still play.
The Midtown Ice Rink, a place where he'd once felt the most at home, had suddenly become a shrine to broken dreams and the futility of his life. He'd quit his team and barely went to school. He'd spent a lot of time on the run-down rooftop patio of his apartment building in solitude, sneaking the odd beer up from his dad's endless supply, writing in his journal and feeling generally sorry for himself. All the while, that familiar current of anger had flowed just beneath the surface, and being pissed off had seemed more proactive than the depression, so he'd clung to that, nurtured it even.
His entire future had been destroyed the moment he'd tried to help someone, but he didn't regret it. No, he'd been at the receiving end of too much injustice to ignore it or make excuses as to why it wasn't his problem. Too many teachers and coaches had overlooked the bruises left by his father over the years, assuming they were the results of sports or his scrappy schoolyard behavior.
It was that line of thought that had led him to his most recent epiphany: Maybe it was time he stopped overlooking the crime and suffering all around him.
In that moment, Casey Jones had been reborn. He'd watched as five cop cars screamed down the street from his roof and set down his unfinished beer in the wake of flashing red and blue lights, inspired. There were gangsters, scumbags and freaks all over his city, preying on people and ruining their lives just as his had been and worse. Crime had risen sharply the past year, and obviously the police couldn't keep up. Energized with purpose, Casey had felt in his very heart and soul that if he was better prepared this time, he could help people.
His first forays into vigilantism had so far been rather hit or miss as far as action went. Unless he wanted to wade hip-deep into known criminal hang-outs and get himself shot, most of his nights were spent in waiting. Listening for that cry for help or alarm to go off as he navigated neighborhoods in the shadows, getting a feel for the city's hot spots and trouble areas. His greatest asset in the few confrontations he'd had was the element of surprise. The more unexpected, unorthodox and unpredictable he was, the quicker the resolution and the better the outcome.
Being stuck in the hospital was already making him crazy. Casey sighed, glancing at the clock. It would be dark soon. He should be out there, trying to get to the bottom of the fact that there were ninjas running around New York with mutant turtles, or shaking up the Purple Dragons, or even keeping an eye on that liquor store that kept getting robbed. Anything but just laying there like a useless louse and running up a hospital tab he couldn't afford.
A doctor came by to inform him that he was under observation, and had suffered two hairline fractures on his ribs. He had also required eight stitches just under his collar bone on the left side for what appeared to be a stab wound. She asked him a few questions, looked at his chart, scribbled in a few notes and then put something in his IV, finally leaving him alone once more.
As the painkiller made it's way through his bloodstream he was able to breathe a little easier. His earlier anxiety about needing to be on the street eased up, along with the bitterness at being alone. Casey didn't spend much time at home, but he was fairly certain that his dad hadn't been to their apartment in at least four days. In trying to track him down, the last location he could reliably peg him at was the dingy little bar down the street that he'd liked to frequent with off-track betting. On more than one occasion, he had told Casey that if he ever "won big on the ponies," he would be on the first plane to Vegas and never return. Of course his dad talked a lot of shit, and Casey had never taken very much of it seriously, until he found the courage to search his dad's room and discovered most of his clothes were missing.
Mind clouded, he stared up at the blank ceiling. Disassociated from the pain, both physical and emotional, the near-certainty that his dad had abandoned him, just as his mother had abandoned them both eight years ago, just didn't have the same sting to it.
He must have drifted off, because the next time he opened his eyes the room was dark and it was relatively quiet beyond his closed door. Still in a haze, he squinted at the window in his room as it moved and twisted, suddenly concerned about just how stoned he must be. Then the shadows shifted, and a silhouette emerged that closed in on his bedside. Startled, he flailed as he realized someone had just broken into his room, the sudden movement making him gasp in pain.
"Hey, hey, it's alright," a voice said soothingly. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."
Casey's eyes widened in surprise as they adjusted to the dim light. "You're the turtle!" he blurted.
"Well, yeah," it responded, grinning. "The name is Michelangelo."
"What are you?"
"Only the awesomest mutant ninja in town," he said with a wink.
"You brought me here, didn't you?" Casey asked.
Michelangelo nodded. "I also have all of your stuff at our lair. It didn't seem like a good idea to leave you out in front of the hospital in all that padding and armed with sporting goods. I'll give them back when you are out, don't worry. Leo said you probably wouldn't want me to hang around, so April gave me her phone number to give to you. Call it when you are out and she will arrange a place for you to pick it all up. Donnie's been working on phones for us but they aren't ready yet, so it'll have to be April's for now. She's our only human friend, by the way. Well, I'm online friends with Chris Bradford now too, so I'm sure I can go say to hi to him soon. I'm so happy he accepted me, that guy is my hero! It doesn't seem like most other people want to give us a chance, just look at the guy with the cat! But if it wasn't for him, we never would have got to fight with you, and that was kind of cool."
Casey blinked, his brain overwhelmed as it attempted to follow the turtle's winding road of logic. "Thanks?"
"Here's the number," Michelangelo said as he handed Casey a scrap of paper.
Casey took it and and tried to clear the fog enough to say something intelligible. "I'm sorry I assumed you were the bad guys."
Michelangelo shrugged it off, like it was so commonplace it didn't bear mentioning, which made Casey feel even worse.
"It's okay. I'll leave you alone now," he said, returning to the window.
"Fighting with you was pretty cool. If you ever need some back-up, let me know."
Michelangelo smiled broadly. "Are we friends now?"
"Yeah, we're friends."