Danny and the Turtles sat on the rooftop of a building, watching the outdoor movie. It was playing the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Friends and couples were sitting together down below watching the movie.
They were watching as the main character of the movie Ferris was standing in the middle of a parade singing.
"I wish I had hair like that / I wish I had period." Donnie and Mikey both said.
"Well, you guys did go bald at a young age, so I don't blame ya." Danny commented.
"Is this what high school is like in real life?" Leo questioned.
"Yeah. You go to high school, you can just hijack a parade whenever you want." Raph answered.
"Can you imagine that?" Mikey wondered.
"That would be cool. To go to school and just have friends and everything." Danny said.
As they all looked down below, they couldn't help but look sad. They had spent their entire lives down in the sewers, they really wanted to know what it was like to be…well in the world above. Just be normal teenagers, go to school, have friends and not have everyone freak out by their appearance or supernatural abilities.
"Maybe one day everyone will love us like everyone loves Ferris Bueller." Raph said hopefully.
"Yeah. Yeah, you know, maybe one day." Leo said. He then sighed and said, "Alright, let's get home."
On that note, they followed Leo and began to make their way home. Leo opened the sewer lid and before any of them entered, they took another glance at the human world, knowing it was going to be until the next grocery run before they could come back up again.
As Mikey entered the sewer, he stopped and noticed Danny was looking at something. He walked up to him and saw he was looking at a little boy. Laughing as his mother threw a Frisbee towards him and he caught it. The little boy giggled and ran up to his mother and they gave each other a big hug.
"Bro….we gotta go." Mikey said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Danny sighed and nodded, before following Mikey to the sewer. The trip home was in silence. Each of them missed the outside would every time they had to leave.
They arrived at a hidden door and opened it to find a make-shift home. Each of them shusing each other, they quietly entered the home and began making their way to the kitchen when suddenly, a light was switched on and sitting on a lounge chair was a middle-aged mutant rat, wearing a white shirt underneath a short pink fighting gei, grey sweatpants and wraps around his feet.
He had a small white goatee-like beard and two small patches of white hair on his head and he wore a pair of glasses.
His name is Splinter and he is practically Danny's and the Turtles father since he adopted them fifteen years ago.
"Boys, where have you been?" Splinter asked with concern. "I've been freaking out!"
"We're sorry dad / Listen… / it was traffic…. / there was this cat….. / it was one thing…. / We had to get a lot of stuff you know…. " They all said at once, coming up with different excuses as to why they came home late.
Splinter however cut them off and asked them suspiciously, "Wait a second. You said you would go shopping, then come right back. Where were you?"
They began to stutter, until Leo finally cracked under pressure and the truth came out, "We're really sorry Splinter! The guys wanted to watch a movie and I tried to talk them out of it."
"LEO!" The others shouted, not believing their brother told Splinter what really happened.
"What! You watched a movie with the humans?! UGH!" Splinter shouted in shock as he got up from his seat.
"You ratted us out!" Mikey whined.
"Hey! Don't use that word that way." Splinter scolded.
"Yeah bro. / it's 2023." They all muttered.
Mikey looked down and apologised, "Sorry dad."
"It wasn't that big a deal! We just watched a movie and came back! We're fine!" Donnie said, trying to get them out of trouble.
"Hmmmm….." Splinter hummed, rubbing his beard before reminding them, "You forgot huh? You don't remember why humans are disgusting monsters? Why they're dangerous? Why they'll tear your half-ghost brother Danny here apart molecule by molecule and then why they're gonna milk the rest of us for our blood?"
"Dad come on! / (They) We don't even have nipples!" They all said at once.
"You know what? I'm gonna tell the story again and this time, I'm telling you the long version." Splinter said with a small chuckle.
Before any of them could protest, Splinter turned to look at the photo of himself with Danny and the Turtles when they were little children.
FLASHBACK 15 YEARS AGO…..
The sun was shining, people were walking up and down the streets and rubbish was being thrown in a nearby dumpster. As usual, inside the dumpster were all kinds of pests that feed off the abandoned leftovers of food thrown away by humans.
"I was a young rat in my twenties. I was so cute! I was on top of the world…."
Some of these pests were rats. One particular brown haired rat gave a small smile and wave at one of the other rats, but the rat just screeched and then ran off.
"No! I was the bottom of the world! It was terrible! Nobody liked me. I had no friends."
And it was true. No matter where Splinter went or who he met, whether it racoon, other rats and even humans, he was chased away, hit and thrown with objects and in the worst case scenario, almost killed.
"Dogs didn't like me. Racoons didn't like me….but you know who hated me the most? Humans! I had one friend. He was a cockroach. We got along very well. His name was Kevin."
Splinter offered his food to Kevin, until a human foot came down and squashed the poor bug.
"And then I ate him. But one day, everything changed….."
Rain and thunder could be heard from up above as Splinter crawled into the sewers. He stopped when he noticed something bright, green and glowing in the corner. He looked over an old hot dog to see four baby turtles, covered in the strange glowing ooze that seemed to have come from the broken glass canister near them.
The baby turtle noticed Splinter and began coming towards him. Splinter pulled the food away from the turtles and then growled at it. The turtle however showed no fear and instead of running away, it nuzzled against his leg.
Nervously Splinter patted the turtle on the head, finally after a few moments, he relaxed and saw the turtle meant no harm.
"You were the first things I met, that didn't want to kill me or eat me. I couldn't just leave you there. You was covered in this ooze that someone dumped in the sewers."
Splinter bought the turtles to another part of the sewer and during the travelling, the ooze got on his hand and suddenly, his body absorbed it. He suddenly began to feel pain as his body began to change.
He stopped screaming once the transformation was complete and now standing in the sewers was no longer an ordinary rat, but a huge mutant rat and running around were now small mutant toddler turtles.
"Whatever this ooze was, it transformed us. Because I was older, I became older rat man. You guys was babies, so you stayed baby turtle creatures. If you think about that, it couldn't make more sense, but we weren't the only ones in the sewer that day."
As Splinter continued to be in slight shock at what happened, he heard a noise that night. He followed the noise to another part of the sewer and watched as a lid opened. A female figure jumped down inside, her blue hazmat suit was ripped at the legs and she had a ragged brown jacket on with a hood.
Splinter watched as she pulled the hood down to reveal her brown hair. She looked down at the bundle in her arms and hugged it tight.
"It was the first time I had ever seen a human willingly come down in the sewers and I watched as she placed you Danny, her small precious baby boy down and leave, but not in abandonment….but for protection."
"Danny my sweet little boy. Never forget this, you are mine. No matter what they may call you, or how strong your powers may grow, you will always be my son and I will love you no matter what." The woman said and then gently placed the bundle down.
Splinter watched as she climbed back out of the sewers. He went over and looked down at the bundle, showing it was a baby boy with black hair. He wondered, what was happening to the woman that she would choose to leave this baby behind.
Deciding to check it out, he climbed up the ladder, opening the lid of the sewer a little bit he watched as the woman ran off, being chased by several men.
"Where is it? Where's the baby Fenton?!" One of the men shouted.
"He's safe….far from you!" The woman shouted and then ran off.
Splinter watched as they ran round the corner and suddenly….
BLAST! ARGHHHHHHHH! NOOOO!
Splinter quickly closed the lid and climbed down the ladder, breathing heavily in complete shock. He just watched humans kill this woman.
He heard the sound of whining and looked down at the baby once again. He picked up the baby and suddenly, a glowing ring surrounded the baby and transformed his hair white, causing the rat mutant to almost drop him in shock. The ring appeared again and this time, changed the baby back to normal.
"It was then I realised that woman was your mother and she had placed you in the sewers to protect you from whoever was chasing her and it was also when we discovered about your powers. I couldn't leave you there, so I took you back to the turtles and they instantly liked you. It was weird, but we became a family."
Splinter now having a afro haircut, wearing a shirt and pants placed on some music and began dancing with his new sons. It took a few months, but they turned the sewer into a home. Splinter raised Danny and the Turtles as if they were his own sons. He washed, played and fed them. He even let them sleep with him when they had nightmares.
A year later as they were walking through the sewers, Splinter stopped and noticed Danny and the Turtles looking at the hatch above, wondering about the world above.
"You were obsessed with the human world, so one day I decided to give it a shot."
Climbing out of the sewers for the first time in a year was incredible for them to say the least. Holding them close, Splinter took Danny and the Turtles into the open street. Everything seemed to be going great and they were amazed by the sights, colours and the music around them.
Their outing to the surface world seemed to be a success so far, until Splinter accidentally bumped into a woman and as soon as she saw them all, she began to shout, "OH MY GOD! IT'S A RAT MAN!"
"It's not a rat man. It's just a bad Mickey Mouse costume." One human said and touched Splinter's ears, but then stopped when he felt that they were real.
The human screamed and suddenly all the humans began to get angry and throw things at them all as they shouted, "MUTANT RAT! KILL IT! / SAVE THE BOY! / IT'S GONNA EAT THAT BOY!"
Danny suddenly began to cry and out of his mouth, came a powerful sonic type of scream that knocked down some of the people. Once they recovered, they began to scream, "DEMON BOY! / KILL THE MUTANTS AND THE DEMON!"
Splinter quickly gathered all his sons and headed right back to the sewers.
"That day, I promised to lever let you get hurt, ever again. I needed to find a way to unlock the secrets of ninjustu. How to turn a body into a weapon of death and I found it."
Using all resources he could find from videos, books and everything, Splinter taught himself, Danny and the Turtles ninjustu. Years had passed and it was hard and bitter work, but the results were worth it. Thanks to ninjustu, Danny had discovered how to control his ghost powers better and he and his brothers now had a way to protecting themselves from the world above.
FLASHBACK ENDS
"We thought we need the human world, but we only needed each other. That's why I'm so strict, you know? You boys are all I got and you're all I'll ever have." Splinter finished.
"You don't know that." Mikey said.
"I do! You know other mutants my age? It's a really small pool." Splinter said. "There's no app to meet other mutant ladies. Trust me, I check every day."
"Okay….but dad how do we even know my mother was killed that day?" Danny suddenly came right out and asked.
Splinter sighed sadly and said, "Daniel, from what I saw and heard, there is no way she survived that night. I'm really sorry son, all I can do now is protect you and your brothers."
They all nodded. Splinter sighed and then said, "Look, I really didn't want to do this. No leaving the sewer for a month."
"Seriously?" Raph protested.
"I made up my mind." Splinter said.
Raph slammed his fists on the table and said before heading off, "This sucks!"
Danny was the next to leave, "Thanks a lot Leo."
Mikey and Donnie then left as the purple masked wearing turtle asked, "Was it worth it Mr Leader?"
Later that night, each of the boys laid in their beds looking at their phone screens. Mikey then asked, "Hey guys, if we weren't monsters that were shunned by society and could actually do what we wanted, what would you guys do?'
"I mean, if I'm being honest, I'd just be normal. You know?" Donnie was the first to answer.
"Yeah, like go to high school." Raph added.
"Get a girlfriend. Go to prom." Leo added.
"Same here. Make some friends and….I don't know….figure out….." Danny began to say but then stopped.
"What actually happened to your mum?" Mikey guessed.
Danny nodded and then said, "You guys are my family. Heck, you're the best brothers someone can ask for but…..I need to get out there and find my answers you know?"
"Totally bro. I feel the same. I got to get out of the sewers. I like you guys and all, but I simply cannot live a happy life knowing that your faces are the last things I'm gonna see before I die." Raph said.
"Well, it's never gonna happen guys so let's stop talking about it okay?" Leo said.
Following Leo's advice, there was nothing but silence as they all went to sleep for the night.