Chapter Text
Cold had crept in abruptly.
It was worse than it had been in a long time, mostly because the best generator in the Lair had waited until the second of January to quit working.
The usual method of Splinter figuring out what part they needed out of the manual and then ordering it to April's place had failed because the parts had been superseded twelve times by new, debatably compatible parts before it had been discontinued. But before they gave up on the good generator entirely, Splinter had bundled his sons up in coats witch crackable heat packs in the pockets and sent the three of them to look through the closest scrapyard. Raph had a scrap of paper with all of part specifications scrawled out in bullet points (that Leo and himself had both taken a picture of with their phones for reference) and the three of them were supposed to find engines to break apart until they found something that was close enough.
Splinter had said if they found a new engine or a whole generator they could bring that home, too, but the risk with that was not having any way to test anything until after hauling the thing back. Which was a lot of work for something to fail and none of them had a ton of energy in winter to begin with.
The gaskets Splinter was back home cutting (out of something that may or may not be asbestos but was still definitely the reason the three of them had been shooed off) would really only fit the current engine and if they found anything else it would waste all that work. But, hey! Anything that could power the electric stove top and charge the battery packs would have to do.
It also felt like they'd been searching around the scrapyard for maybe the last eight thousand years.
Raph staying focused, Mikey could mostly understand. He was good at staying focused once he found something to focus on. How Leo was also staying focused was truly baffling.
It wasn't like Mikey didn't know this was important! He did! Really, he did. But knowing he needed to focus was completely different than actually staying focused. And the harder Mikey tried the harder it seemed to be.
The three of them splitting up and kind of been the final nail in Mikey's coffin. Because he tried! He really, really tried and that made it feel so much worse when he felt himself failing.
He'd found a lawn mower with an engine that looked a lot like the one on the generator and Mikey had set to work freeing it. Right up until the cold of the metal he kept touching bit too far under his scales for his fingers to keep working right. Then he had to shove his hands into his pockets and crack a couple heat packs until feeling came back. Once he wasn't on the verge of frostbite or something Mikey could get back to work.
Except.
Except while he was waiting for his fingers to defrost Mikey thought he should move around a bit; both because it would shake the cold faster and because there were suddenly giant silverfish mutants running all over New York and Mikey was pretty sure they were drawn towards anyone trying to mind their own business. Especially if that person's name happened to be Michaelangelo.
He had just meant to walk around the corner to look at one of the motorcycles with a custom paint job. Maybe two. But all the ones he saw were just boring and mono-colored.
The last time he'd been here, though, Mikey had also seen a van with a giant wizard painted on the side. It looked like something that had rolled of the set of a movie from like ... the 1980s? Mikey wasn't sure when van wizards stopped being a thing but it seemed to fit with everything Splinter and movies said about what the 80s were like.
So maybe Mikey had turned a few more corners after that to see if the van was still there. And it was! It was even mostly the same outside of the fact that the hood was up and someone in a purple dress (a saree? Mikey had never seen one in real life before) was bent over the exposed engine with both hands shoved inside the car.
Chunks of engine - Mikey couldn't have identified what they were even if he was close enough to see them properly - were scattered across the frozen ground at the girl's feet. All of them were too big to work in a portable generator engine, though.
Then there was the little detail that the girl was green.
Mikey used his rad ninja skills to freeze completely in place under the shadow of a big pile of cars where he had already been standing.
He hadn't met many human-ish mutants but all the ones he'd met so far had been immediately hostile. Way more than the mutant silverfish or other mutant animals ever seemed to be. Mikey should - he should go find Leo or Raph, right? Before another adult tried to cook and eat him or something.
(Purple girl didn't look like an adult. She was barely any bigger than Mikey himself but some people just stayed short, even after they grew up. Not Mikey, though. He was definitely going to get way taller.)
With a small clatter the girl lifted the entire engine block, now stripped of additional parts, clear out of the van. She held it up in both arms like the only thing giving her trouble was how big it was compared to her instead of the fact that it probably weighed, like ... a lot. Raph had struggled to pick up an entire car engine before and Mikey didn't know how much lighter one would be without all the cylinders and pans and whatever else was usually stuck to an engine, but it probably still weighed at least one full Mikey.
She hefted the engine block up onto one shoulder - the shoulder her saree drape wasn't over - and stepped back from the van, around the loose parts she'd left scattered, and out onto the wider path between the stacks of cars.
Which was when she looked directly at him. Just for a moment, but their eyes met and held contact for just a second. Only for a moment, though. Then her gaze drifted past him and down the path towards where the repoman owner of the yard lived.
That was it. That was the sum to of attention that she paid him.
Which was pretty much on par with how most humans reacted to him but not at all how most other mutants reacted to him.
Even though his face was fully visible and if he was able to see the scales on her face then she had to be able to see the scales on his. And yeah, cosplay and fursuits were really good. It was how he and his brothers got away with pretending they were just wearing make-up all the time. But there was no way to miss the fact that they were both real reptiles.
So what the heck!?
"Uh," he said before he could stop himself and the girl's eyes snapped back to his.
With how close they were Mikey could see she had a red and a blue eye in the same way that he had a yellow and a red eye. Which was cool, Mikey had never met anyone with the same inhuman sort of heterochromia as him.
The girl stared. She was wearing headphone-goggle things with little metal panels sticking out from either earcup. They had rotated up from just sort of sticking out at 90 degrees when Mikey caught her attention but as the eye contact continued the panels slowly rotated backwards around the cup, steadily angling down until the panels were pressed down towards her shoulders.
"...Okay?" She said when Mikey failed to say anything else. "Well ... good talk."
Then she turned so the trailing drape of her saree swished over her skirt.
There wasn't much to see of her torso between the drape (it probably had a name that Mikey didn't know, but the him not knowing was kind of the deciding factor in him not calling it that) and her black crop top thing you were supposed to wear with sarees, but from what Mikey could see her stomach had the same kind of plating as Mikey's. Her back had a familiar hunch and the triangle of 'skin' Mikey saw was visibly a different texture than her skin or plastron.
She was another turtle.
... Or there was a class of lizards that Mikey didn't know about. Which was possible but Mikey was pretty sure that if she had a plastron and a shell then she had to be a turtle. Or an armadillo but those weren't green. Probably? He'd never seen one in person before.
The other mutant was walking away from him. She'd already made it a good few yards, too.
"Hey!" Mikey called and he rushed after her only to come to a quick hault when she turned her head in a sharp, jerking motion and glared at him. "Sorry! But you gotta be careful, there's a human that lives over there."
The girl looked him up and down, then slowly turned so her body was also facing him. She had eyebrows drawn onto her brow ridge and between them was a red bindi (which tracked since she was wearing a saree) except there was a little white line painted on directly under the red dot.
"You're a mutant," she said, "from here."
"... Yeessss?" Mikey said, because it didn't sound like a question but he wasn't sure what else to say.
"Hm. Well. Thank you," she said and she absolutely didn't mean it, "but I'm fine. So ... bye."
And then she turned around and kept walking, still in the direction of the repoman's home.
"He'll catch you!" Mikey called after her, trying to impress the urgency of the possibility. All of the new mutants he'd met so far had just turned within the last month or two but they had all already figured out the new danger their former species now had. Mikey couldn't fathom living in a world without the constant awareness that getting scrutinized too hard could land him and his family tagged and sent to a lab, but he suspected maybe that reality hadn't hit for purple girl just yet.
And Mikey didn't feel the same intense desire to be a hero as Raph did. Raph was special that way. Mikey's biggest brother was kinder than anyone else in the whole world and while Mikey didn't have the same instinctive drive to protect and save the whole world like Raph he did want to help the people directly in front of him. And it seemed like purple girl was about to do something stupid and might need a ninja assist in the near future.
Mikey looked back over his shoulder where Raph and Leo had gone to investigate different corners of the yard. If he went to get one of them then the girl might encounter the human before he had the time to get back.
After a beat he started to follow after the girl, but he only made it a few sets before she stopped dead and turned to glare at him again.
"Why are you following me?"
"There's a human over there," Mikey reiterated. For the sake of clarity he pointed in the direction she had been heading for.
The girl rolled her eyes in the single most exaggerated fashion than Mikey had ever seen. "The closest solid wall is that way," she said as she pointed back over her shoulder with the thumb of her free hand. "You can hide from it but I'm going this way."
And then she turned and kept walking, this time even faster than before. Mikey waited just a little longer before he started to follow her again. She twitched her head when he did, like she was thinking about turning to glare again before deciding she would just keep ignoring him.
She was so quiet it was uncanny. It reminded him of how Splinter moved sometimes when he had rat flu or when his 'dad sense' alerted him to the fact that Mikey was doing something he had explicitly been told not to do.
Like when he was five and tried to sneak the sugar coated medicine he thought was candy.
(The hem of her saree was just high enough for Mikey to see flashes of her ankles and the double silver and gold anklets she had just above either foot. The little clink of metal jewelry with every step was practically the only noise she made as she walked.)
The silence didn't make Mikey any less convinced she was going to get spotted and then get shot or something as she walked right up to the repoman's house. Shop? Garage? It was all three of those so Mikey wasn't sure what it was supposed to be called.
The purple girl didn't go right up to the front door to knock on it but she did everything short of that. Because she walked up to one of the windowless garage doors where you couldn't seen from the entry way and immediately started making noise. More noise than she had the entire walk over. After the silence it was jarring and it felt impossibly loud, even though she was still relatively quiet.
Mikey inched closer while she wasn't paying attention to him; not wanting to crowd her but equally unwilling to be in the direct line of sight from the door where a human might appear to investigate at any moment.
At least this time the girl seemed unbothered about Mikey's approach even though she must have noticed.
With some awkward movement that involved a lot of leaning to keep the engine block in place, she reached around to her throat and pulled off one of her necklaces. Not either of the immediately apparent ones - heavy bands of gold medallions linked with silver and ruby beads fairly close to her throat. No, the necklace she went for was on a plain cord with a pendant that looked a lot like a pocket watch - a necklace that had previously been hidden behind the top of her plastron.
The cord was looped around itself but a few twists and it was long enough for the girl to hold it out to the garage door at a full arm extension.
Immediately, the watch-thing started to make a little whirring click sound, and when the girl moved it across the the metal garage door it left a glowing trail of pinkish-purple behind. It looked a lot like painting with the liquid from a glowstick, except there wasn't any drip trails being left behind.
She drew a big circle with an arrow in the center pointed up and an 'n' at the very top. It didn't click that it was a hyper simplified compass until she retracted her hand and clicked open her pocket watch. One that was actually a pocket compass with the needle pointed directly forward even though they were definitely facing south east. Then the needle started spinning; both the one on the compass and the one on the crude drawing.
"Woah," Mikey breathed. He had no idea what she'd just done but it looked really cool. The girl didn't pay any attention to him, she just looped her compass back around her neck and hid the cord under one of her flashier necklaces. Very deliberately, Mikey couldn't help but notice.
And okay. So. Mikey really had just meant to tail her for a little while. Because she was going towards the repoman's house and the guy sounded scary even without Mikey ever seeing him. The girl was wearing a long dress and big, shiny jewelry and didn't look particularly equipped to run for it if she was spotted. He just hadn't expected her to go and do something cool and catch his undivided attention. Mikey had just about forgotten where they were and why he was on edge until a familiar stranger's voice almost had him jump out of his shell.
"Hey!" The repoman called out from somewhere behind them instead of the door to his home like Mikey had anticipated. "What'd'ya punks think you're doing!?"
"We gotta go!" He told the girl, who was now ignoring both him and the repoman as the arrow of her drawn compass slowed to a stop pointing down. Mikey reached out and snagged her by the trailing drape of her saree just as she stepped forward and -
And Mikey stumbled when she kept walking straight past where the wall should have stopped her, and as he stumbled it felt like gravity got heavier. Color burst and expanded into a whirl of pinkish-purple around him - around both of them - and suddenly Mikey was falling.
He screamed and the suddenly-rushing wind around them stole his voice away.
It didn't feel like he was falling for very long but it was still long enough for Mikey to loose track of where purple girl was in relation to him as he flailed and pinwheeled his arms in empty space.
And then suddenly he was landing heavily, still on his feet by pure, dumb luck.
Not for very long, mind.
Mikey didn't get time to register much beyond being somewhere very different than he had been before and it being much warmer before the first toe of his right foot exploded in a burst of white pain.
He yelped and flinched, hoping back on one foot. There was a whistle of displaced air before something cracked across his kneecap and a foot slammed heavily into the center of his chest.
The world spun and Mikey was on his shell, staring up at the roof of a cave far, far overhead.
Then the purple girl was standing over him, eyes stretched wide and sharp fangs bared at him. The engine block had been dropped in favor of a dark purple bō that was currently pointed directly under his chin. "You," she spat down at him. He heard a soft click before something sharp was against his throat, so close he felt it scrape against his scales we he swallowed. "Followed me. Why?"
"Woah!" Mikey yelped as she pressed her bō in just a little closer, and Mikey could feel the spearhead press far enough in that he could cut his own throat if he moved the wrong way by even a hair. "Look, chica, I just wanted to help before the human saw you! Things have been crazy lately!"
"Don't need help," she snapped.
"Well I know that now!"
The girl stared down at him for a moment longer, and Mikey was pretty sure she was debating slitting his throat. Like, actually cutting his throat, too. No one had ever looked at him the way she was before now and it looked dangerous in a way that Mikey didn't recognize.
Finally, though, the girl retracted her arm and spun her bō with another satisfying whistling noise. She brought it to a quick stop against one shoulder with an arm casually draped over the maybe-metal-maybe-wood bō staff.
The end that had been pointed at his throat was a wicked looking hooked gold blade. It looked even sharper than it had felt. Mikey brought a hand up to his throat and felt a thin line where scale had been cut, only just enough for a little blood to start beading where the skin tugged with movement, and held it as he sat up.
There was a building behind the girl, up a winding cliff. Weirdly round with plants growing out of it and a metal spire stuck out at the very top. They were at the base of the path up, between two pillars each capped with cool-colored fire. Mikey couldn't distinguish it much further than that before he stood up and looked around.
(His legs felt a little unsteady and his heart was beating too fast. It was making Mikey a bit dizzy but he didn't really want to think about that.)
The cliff they were on was above a massive forest and there, riding over the trees a way away, was a massive city that couldn't possibly be New York. Not least of all because there were giant monsters flying up and around the skyscrapers. Cave-roof-scrapers?
"Where are we?" He asked.
"My house. Go away."
When he looked back at her he saw she had backed away when he wasn't paying attention and was standing on the other side of the burning pillars.
She was still glaring at him like she was a moment from lunging at him to slit his throat for real, and when Mikey stepped forward she took a half step back.
"Wait, but no like for real, where are we?" Mikey asked again as he gestured at the city behind him. Not without taking his eyes off her this time because she might retreat further while he wasn't looking. "What city is that? How did we get here? My brothers-"
Oh pizza supreme, his brothers.
Mikey cut himself off and frantically pat down his coat until he found his phone. They were underground, he was pretty sure. What with the cave ceiling and all. Their phones never worked in the lair he had to check.
The girl scoffed as soon as she saw his phone. And not in like, a normal way. And that was coming from Mikey.
Because she literally said "scoff" out loud instead of actually doing it.
"That won't work here. If it makes you feel better your vital trackers should still be active."
"Vital trackers?"
"Yes. Now leave."
"I don't have any vital trackers?" Mikey thought this was some kind of freaky fantasy world but maybe he was in a sci-fi instead? Maybe that had been a 'beam me up' kind of situation before with the portal?
The girl stared at him blankly outside of a twitch in one of her drawn on eyebrows and a slow rotation of her headphone panels so they were back at their resting position.
"... Okay? Sorry your family doesn't love you? But that's not my problem. Go away."
"Say what!? My family loves me! What's your damage, girl?"
Something about that made the girl wrinkle her - it didn't look like she had a beak the way Mikey and his brothers did so much as she had a snout. "If they can't be bothered to check if your heart hasn't stopped then no, they don't."
She sounded so confident that she wasn't the one saying something deranged that Mikey stared at her gobsmacked. Which she must have taken as an agreement because she nodded firmly.
The head of her spear folded down into a simple cap for her bō before her bō collapsed entirely into something only just too long to fit easily in her hand. The other cap was silver, reminiscent of the anklets she wore. Apparently she had an affinity for mixed metals.
The bō went stuck under the drape of her saree, somewhere up against the lower back half of her shell. Then she stepped forward and picked her engine block off the ground with a small grunt of effort.
"Look - listen - can you send me back before they completely freak? Please?"
"No." She put the engine back on her shoulder, "can't."
"Just do the thing from before!"
"Oh titan, look!" She turned on him and glared as she brought her free hand up to the closed pocket watch looking thing still hanging around her neck. "I don't have a key, dumb-dumb, I have a compass. I can't open a way back to the surface."
"Then how do I get back!?"
"Not! My! Problem! Now, go away!"
She turned around and started storming up the winding path to her ... house? Nevermind that. Why was she being such a jerk!?
Mikey looked back at the brightly colored city behind him. He wanted to explore it. Critically, he wanted to explore it with his brothers. As much as his attention jumped and tried to avoid staying anywhere he wanted to keep it he didn't think his brain would let him forget how much trouble he might be in if his brothers noticed he was gone and then told Splinter about it.
The girl was halfway up the path and power-walking when Mikey looked back and he had to run to catch up before she could get a locked door between them.
"Wait! Can you at least tell me how to get back?"
"Use a portal. They're all over the place," she said without stopping. Without looking back, even though she had to know Mikey was on her heels.
"Oh come on! That doesn't help at all!"
She was just about at the door so Mikey ran for it, darting around her on the side holding the engine because Raph's reaction time was delayed on the side he was carrying something heavy so it would make sense if hers was too. Mikey slid between her and the door, his arms outstretched and weight precariously balanced on one leg.
"You dragged me here, chica! And I'll annoy you until you show me how to get back!"
The girl looked surprised. Probably? Her eyes went wide again but the last time she'd done that it had been when she literally had a knife to his throat. So.
"Okay," she said with a low rattle. It kind of reminded Mikey of a feral cat. "How about instead of that, you-"
Her face shuttered in the exact same moment as the door behind Mikey swung in and left him suddenly unsupported. For the second time Mikey fell back and landed on his shell.
"Junior! Oh, woah, hello. Who's this?" Someone new said. A weird black thing with glowing red eyes was suddenly peering down at him. Then another one circled overhead as the first flew out of sight.
Mikey sat up as the second one buzzed over him and saw that the twiggy one had landed on the girl (Junior, apparently)'s shoulder. She had gone completely rigid and her hostility had melted away in favor of a deer-in-headlights stare. She looked mortified.
The twiggy one gasped and put a little claw against his cheek. "Is this a new friend? Did you make a new friend?"
"Uh. Um," she said faintly. The round one circled around like he wanted to land on her other shoulder, but when he saw it was occupied by the engine block he took to hovering by her side, his little wings beating furiously.
"That's adorable!"
"Did you meet through Sunita?"
"Oh, did this one follow you home too? That's a pretty efficient way to make friends, actually."
"Did you meet at the Library?"
"You want snacks? I -"
"We."
"- can make snacks!"
The two of them chattered back and forth rapidly while Junior looked more and more like she wanted to die. For the first time she wasn't arguing about how much she wanted him to go away and Mikey might not know many people but he still knew people.
Obviously, these were her weird demon dads and they'd been pushing her to make friends. Ignoring the demons and turtle mutant thing, Mikey had seen multiple Disney channel original movies with this exact premise. Usually a horse would show up at some point.
... Was Mikey the horse?
Nevermind that.
Because Mikey was a kind and benevolent turtle of the people, he rolled his weight back along his shell then popped back up to his feet. "Hi! I'm Mikey. I'm from New York and got here by accident so Junior said she'd help me get back."
If looks could kill Mikey would have dropped dead on the spot when Junior's eyes snapped up to his face.
"Really?" One of her dads asked skeptically. Which was fair because that skepticism was extremely warranted.
"Awwww, Donnie! That's so sweet of you!" Her other dad said.
Donnie Junior. Okay. Got it.
"Uh-huh," she said through grit teeth, "me. Being sweet. Yes. Definitely. I didn't try to shatter his kneecap or break his foot at all."
Dubious dad looked more dubious. Excited dad looked thrilled.
"I just. Have to put this down," Donnie said as her arm tightened around the engine block she was still carrying. "Then I'm 'helping' him get back to New York."
A chill went down Mikey's spine at the way she said that but he kept his face set in his brightest and most innocent 'Leo or Raph or dad did it, not me' smile. Donnie wasn't falling for it.
She rolled her shoulder and turned her head so she could bonk the side of twiggy demon's head with her own.
"It's fine. Can keep an eye on him. Don't need snacks."
As much as Mikey would love to know what demons ate as snacks he really needed to get back as soon as possible. So when Donnie walked in he went trotting after her, leaving her two demon dads behind at the door.
Plus, if he attempted to delay her so he could see the demon kitchen she might ditch him again regardless of how excited her dads were.
The inside of her house was huge. Ominous and dim, but also like something out of Jupiter Jim with some plants growing out of walls. Mikey ooh'd and aww'd as she led him down a set of stairs.
"You live here?"
"Obviously." She glared back at him and drew her lips back over her teeth. "You can't live here. It's mine."
"I-" Mikey was surprised enough that he stumbled mid step. "What? I don't want to live here, I already have a home. In New York." In the sewers but a home was his home.
"That's, y'know, why I need to get back to New York."
Donnie made a weird, hitching kind of noise then huffed as she went back to her storming.
Mikey hurried after her and shot a look over his shoulder to make sure her dads weren't following. Then he whispered, "don't worry. I won't say anything to your dads."
"My ..." Donnie stopped and Mikey almost walked into her before she stared at him in open confusion. She didn't look murderous but she did look like she was still maybe thinking about throwing him off the cliff her house was on.
"Do you mean Huginn and Muninn?"
"Is that who those demon guys were?"
"They're pygmy gargoyles, not demons. And no, they're not my dads. They're Huginn and Muninn."
"Oh. Well, I won't tell them anything anyway."
She tilted her head again, and one of her dangly earrings was long enough to brush her shoulder with how far she turned it.
Like she had before in the scrapyard Donnie turned her body around to face him, too. "Yes. I know you won't?" She said like it hadn't occurred to her that he might not.
Totally an only child.
Then she asked, "you called me 'chica' before. Why?"
"Uhhhh ... cause you didn't tell me your name before? And I needed something to call you."
"You called me 'girl' before, too."
"Yeah? Cause chica means girl." He thought. Mikey didn't actually know Spanish, and he didn't pretend to like Leo did.
Donnie scrunched her snout and her painted eyebrows knitted together. "I'm not a girl," he (apparently?) said.
"Oh. Oh! Sorry, I just thought your dress was, like. A girl thing?"
"I'm not a girl," he??? said with a coiling little hiss. "I'm not anything. Call me a boy but I'm a she and a they. That's it. Okay?"
Mikey was ... vaguely aware of gender being more than just the two things. It came up sometimes in the older movies Splinter watched with them sometimes, but only ever as a joke where the guy in skirt got a laugh track.
So it probably wasn't great, but what came out of Mikey's mouth was, "That - that's allowed?"
"Wh- no? Yes? What do you-?" Donnie slapped her free hand to her forehead as a low hiss rumbled up from her - their? - throat. It was still going strong as they dragged their hand down their face, pulling at their features into something that looked briefly ridiculous.
"Sorry, I wasn't trying to be mean or anything," Mikey said in a rush. One of the drawn on eyebrows went up and suddenly those seemed a lot less silly and a lot more helpful. Their expression remained otherwise flat and entirely unreadable. "I just thought you had to, you know, be one or the other. I didn't know you could do both."
"Exaggerated groan," Donnie said flatly, "obviously you can be both. But, once again, I'm not both. I'm neither. I'm not any of them." She suddenly snapped her jaws then pulled her lips back in a snarl. "Did you grow up under a rock? Are humans just stupid? It's not that complicated!"
"I'm not a human! And also I didn't know!"
"How!? Ugh, no, whatever. I don't care. Fuck me, titan."
Mikey balked for a half second as Donnie rubbed her temple. For how much she touched her face she had managed to avoid touching and smudging any of the makeup above or around her eyes. Their eyes? Mikey wasn't sure if the pronoun thing was a fifty-fifty split but he'd been thinking of her as a 'she' for a while so did he need to use 'they' for a while to even everything out?
Then one of Donnie's headphone panel things rotated up and they opened their eyes. They stared over his head like they were considering something before they made careful eye contact.
(Her heterochromia was so cool! Raph and April had brown eyes while Leo had black eyes. And Splinter's eyes were yellow but they were both the same natural shade of gold. Not like Mikey's own yellow eye at all.)
"You weren't human? You used to be a normal turtle?"
"Uh. I mean, I think so?" It wasn't like he could remember that part of his life but that was what his dad had always said.
"Hmmm." Donnie leaned back and bowed out their back in a way that was deeply unsettling for someone with a shell. "Almost like real living insects carrying mutagen is an inferior option to mechanical insects. If only someone could have foreseen this totally predictably outcome and pointed that out beforehand. What if that? Anyway. Do you know if there's other animal mutants?"
Mikey leaned back when she leaned forward to get into his face. But his back wasn't as squishy so he had to take a step back.
"Uh ... there's the silverfish? Those are everywhere. We started calling them silverfish but I don't know if they, like, started as silverfish but they're all silvery and bugs that can't fly so they're probably silverfish."
"Hmmmmm," Donnie hummed. Then her eyes sharpened. "This requires further investigation."
Mikey grinned and pointed to himself. "Hey, what if me and my brothers and April show you all the silverfish and you show us this cool magic city you live next to."
In a hard stop Donnie's headphone panels rotated down and back towards their shoulders and their expression shuttered.
"...Anyway," they said. Then they kept walking and Mikey had to trot to keep up with them as Donnie reached the massive spooky double door at the end of the hall.
They moved the engine block so they were holding it with both hands before she pushed a door open with her shoulder and revealed an actual, real life armory.
And because Donnie apparently just got to live here they breezed past while Mikey looked around with huge eyes.
The nunchucks he had been using since forever had got banged up pretty bad in a fight. The wood of one of them had been split and the weapon was now only being held together by duct tape. That was problem with fighting using weapons that were like, a billion years old and had spent the last decade in the New York sewer system with patchy temperature control.
He stared, mystified, at all of the everything before a loud screech of metal like a garage door being opened by hand instead of by remote made him jump and Mikey hurried along after Donnie into a weird ... garage? It was full of a mix of scrapyard machinery but there was also, like, an old time-y forge. Actually. The room seemed split about halfway between medieval smithy and modern day auto shop. And it was ... really hot, actually. Hot enough for Mikey to unzip his coat and tie the arms around his waist for some relief.
"Woah ... did you make all the swords out there?"
Donnie huffed as she sat the engine on a long table, the last in a line of twelve. "No. My Appā makes weapons. I make bombs."
"...Isn't a bomb a weapon?"
"Only if you use it to hurt people." Which was an insane thing to say, because Mikey didn't know what else you would use a bomb for.
Donnie brushed her hands together like they were wiping something off before they stretched. And their shell bent so far back that Mikey was reassessing his "that's a turtle" guess. Armadillos had scales and shells too, right?
"Okay, Micky-"
"Mikey."
"- it's time for you to get the fuck out of my house."
Jeeze, this guy cursed a lot. Even in movies only one person got to say the f-word in the whole run time, and Donnie had said 'fuck' like ... eight times in the last half hour. Her not-dads didn't even seem to mind! What-
Mikey's eyes widened as his wandering eye passed over a gutted generator. "Oh!" He cried as he went for his phone, and completely missed the way Donnie flinched away from him.
"What? What 'oh'?" They demanded as Mikey pulled up the specs for the oil pan and busted crankshaft.
"I need - our generator broke and dad told us to go find parts," Mikey explained as he turned his phone to show Donnie the screen. They leaned away from him with a warning rattle noise, but their eyes still locked in on the screen. "Do you have these? We need them real, real, real bad."
Donnie blinked, screwed up their snout, then looked past the screen to Mikey's face.
"That engine won't work in a generator. It isn't strong enough."
"I mean, it does. It has for years."
"Is ... is it a portable generator?"
"Yeah!"
"And it powers ...?"
"Dunno. Mostly everything I guess."
Donnie's face went a little slack and their headphone panels did little wiggles before tipping back down towards their shoulders. "Titan," they muttered, "fucking unbelievable." They stepped back away from him and rubbed their temple like they had a headache coming on. Mikey lowered his phone and cocked his head to one side as he tried to figure out what was going on.
It was probably only a couple seconds before Donnie nodded their head and straightened up.
"Okay. That's pathetic. I'm helping you because that's pathetic, this isn't me being friendly." They managed to make their voice lower and they bared their fangs, mean mugging Mikey like a movie bad guy.
"Hey!"
"Shut up," Donnie snapped back as they waved one hand in the air like they could literally cut off what Mikey was saying. "And don't touch anything. I'll find your parts but if you touch anything then you can't have them."
They stared at him for a second, and Mikey pressed his beak closed.
That seemed to satisfy Donnie enough that she slowly eased back a few steps and gave gave him an even more pointed glare before they finally turned and lightly walked deeper into the auto shop, navigating it with a familiar ease.
And Mikey wanted to follow, to see if Donnie really had a room half filled with busted engines when they apparently lived in a world full of magic - but Donnie was all sorts of on edge and he wasn't entirely convinced they were bluffing with their threats.
They stopped to peer at a large shelf of random parts and they picked something up - the oil pan, maybe? - and tucked it under their arm before they moved on to a larger collection of parts closer to the forge part of the room where a cool, half-assembled robot thing was slouched against the wall.
Donnie shifted the part under their arm so it was better pinned in place and they touched the chest of the robot with their free hand. They traced circular pattern on the chest of the robot and that pattern lingered in a trail of bright purple until the last line connected, at which point there was a hiss like steam bring released and its chest opened up.
Without even a little bit of hesitation Donnie reached in to where its guts would be and fiddled around with a lot of annoyed little clicks until they re-emerged with a crankshaft. One Donnie rolled in her hand and scrutinized for a moment before their glare shifted back to Mikey and they pulled their lips back over their teeth in something that was very close to and yet very much not a smile.
When they came back - stormed back, really - Mikey wanted to lean back and away from the sudden uptick in anger. But she had the parts he'd asked for, so ...
"Here," Donnie said as they practically shoved the parts into Mikey's chest. They withdrew before Mikey fully had the chance to grab it and he was left fumbling as Donnie stepped back and immediately started messing with their skirt, folding it up and tucking it into her belt until it was short enough that it didn't even completely cover their thighs. Donnie made a small, relieved noise and shook out their legs like they'd been taped together instead of just under a skirt.
Immediately, tension seemed to spill out from Donnie. They stayed stiff and tense, clearly uncomfortable with Mikey's presence, but they didn't seem to be on the jittery verge of trying to break his knees again.
Which was... weird. But most of what Donnie had done so far was objectively pretty weird. At least this weird didn't involve them being threatening.
"Uhhh ..." Mikey shuffled the parts in his arms, trying to find a way to hold two very large and very clunky parts comfortably. "Are you, like. Good?"
And then Donnie was looking at him like Mikey was the weird one.
"Ethically?" They asked in a slow, carefully measured tone.
"What? No, like, I meant are you, y'know, emotionally good? Cause you did the whole-" Mikey almost dropped the crankshaft when he forgot about it long enough to try and point at the skirt of their saree, so instead he stuck out one leg and shook it, hoping Donnie would get his meaning. "And got less angry."
Donnie screwed up their snout and blinked at him like Mikey was a weird bug and not a turtle asking a perfectly valid question. "Of course I'm 'good'," she said, but as they spoke Donnie started pleating the drape of their saree so it just hung off their shoulder instead of covering most of an arm.
"I just don't like things covering my scales. And it isn't as cold down here as the surface."
And ... that was fair. Even outside of Donnie's house the temperature in wherever they were had been comfortable enough that Mikey probably hadn't needed his coat. Which, now that Mikey thought about it, was maybe something he should be worried about? Was it not winter where he was?
"Hey, yeah! How come it isn't cold in ... wherever we are?"
"The Hidden City is in pocket dimension that's mostly physically under New York City. It's got independent weather from the surface otherwise things would get real messed up at the natural portals," Donnie said blandly. They fiddled with their belt a little longer without actually doing anything. We're they avoiding looking at him or something? Without the hostile edge their voice was uncertain and almost small in a way that already didn't fit with the mental image Mikey had started to form about who Donnie was.
He also had a ton of questions about the pocket dimension thing and about Donnie's house and about the weird cryptic thing they said about the things suddenly mutating around New York. But then they made a weird jerking motion with their head and they started shifting their weight from leg to leg in a way that made their double anklets clink more than they had even while actually walking.
"You - uh, there's a natural exit close to the scrapyard. Or, well, a couple blocks away from there. It's kind of hard to get through but the only natural portal I can think of that we - you - would fit through in Manhattan is the gross dumpster one." Donnie stopped and squinted at him like he was a calf they were planning to slaughter. Then they asked, "you are able to get back on your own from the surface, right?"
"Uh, yeah! I got my mad ninja skills, baby!" To emphasize his point Mikey jumped from one foot to the other and threw a smoke bomb at his feet. It was colored with powdered sidewalk chalk, making the burst of talcum powder and flour a washed out blue as it pooled pathetically around his feet.
So.
Leo was a liar and Mikey was going to put a foot through his shell.
Donnie didn't look impressed and honestly this time it was fair.
"Riiiiiight," she drawled as she stood taller and put her hands on her hips. "You're a ninja?" As if to punctuate her question Donnie tilted her head, and one of her earrings clacked softly against her headphones.
"Yeah! Wait, why you gotta say it like that?"
"You're bright orange and love to scream."
"Hey! The most famous ninja ever was bright orange and loud!"
"If he's famous then he's a bad ninja, dumb-dumb."
And the audacity! After everything Naruto went through! Besides, Lou Jitsu dressed flashy and he was like, the best real world martial artist ever. Instead of argue those points, because someone who lived in a magic cave probably didn't know about Lou Jitsu or Naruto, Mikey pointed out, "yeah? Well you wear purple and like a billion pieces of jewelry. So you're a worse ninja than me!"
"I'm not a ninja. I don't want to be a ninja," Donnie said, "ninjas are lame."
Mikey was pretty sure he went into shock at that. Ninjas being rad was like, one of the five things Leo and Splinter consistently agreed on! April wanted to be a ninja and she was the coolest person Mikey knew!
"Say what!?"
Donnie recoiled like he'd hit them and slapped a hand over one of the ear covers on their headphones just as the panels rotated all the way down. "Ow-ww," they hissed in an overly dramatic way that Mikey was very familiar with. And very suddenly the weird, patchy mental image Mikey had of them clarified into the realization that oh, they're like this because we're the same age. Game recognize game and all that.
Donnie pat the side of their own head with their palm a few times before they glared at him again. And even though it had the same heat as before Mikey didn't feel particularly unnerved. He was pretty sure that's what Raph looked like to a lot of the mutants that attacked them. And Donnie wasn't big but they hissed and snarled and showed the wicked curve of their fangs at the slightest provocation. That made up for her relatively small and slight build, he thought. Being unpredictable could be just as dangerous as being big.
She probably wasn't actually as malicious as she seemed!
And true to Mikey's assessment, Donnie just seemed a bit put out when he failed to react to their stare. They looked kind of like they'd taken a bite out of a lemon before they straightened up and turned their snarl into a sneer. It looked weirdly natural on their face with the way their three scars cutting across one side of their face tugged on their lips.
"Okay. Well. Time to get out of my house." Donnie paused for a moment before they stuck out their chin and brushed past him, clearly expecting him to follow. And, well. As confident as he now was that Donnie was bluffing about the knee breaking thing he was pretty sure they might actually try and ditch him again if he got on their nerves too bad.
Now more than ever Donnie power-walked through the halls of her house back to the front door, eager to get him out of her hair. Their legs weren't even that much longer than Mikey's! Maybe an inch or two! Mikey didn't get how they were so quick.
She only paused at the door for long enough to yell, "Huginn! Muninn! Gonna walk Mikey home, be back soon!" They slammed the door shut before either of Donnie's not-dads (uncles?) could reply.
And then Mikey was truly alone again with the kid who had threatened to hurt him before they went and actually helped him. They were kind of mean but Mikey was pretty sure they were still good. They kind of reminded him of Leo when he was in a particularly bad mood.
"Soooooo..." Mikey started. Donnie groaned and threw their head back at the same time in a way that was immediately familiar and made Mikey grin.
They reached behind their back and retrieved their collapsed staff, and twirled it easily on one hand as it extended from less than a foot to something closer to five. It made an incredibly satisfying wo-woosh noise through the rotation, and the gold and silver end caps seemed to melt into one another colors before the staff came to a sudden stop.
"I, uh. I've never done this with another person before," Donnie said. "But this'll probably work?" Which didn't instill a ton of confidence. Neither did the fact that Donnie grimaced before doing a jerky nod that made the goggles part of their headphones fall over their face. "You hold on to those parts, I'm not going back if you drop one."
"What?"
The end of their staff near their feet - the silver one, not the gold end that turned into a spear head - seemed to unfurl with a series of clunks until Donnie had a giant hammer-thing. Glittering in the same silver as the end cap and emblazoned with a logo made of two overlapping D's.
Donnie set one foot on the top of the hammer so the inside of their foot was pressed against the base of their bō.
They snagged the front strap of the harness Mikey wore across his chest with one hand. That was really the only warning Mikey got.
The end of Donnie's hammer burst with purple light and turned into a freaking rocket. Mikey screamed, and he genuinely couldn't have said if it was fear or delight winning out as Donnie shot forward off the side of the cliff, dragging Mikey with them.
If it was compatible to anything, it was like getting thrown by Raph, except it just kept going at a speed that brought tears to his eyes. It was all he could do to tighten his arms around the oil pan and crankshaft his family needed as his body helplessly ragdolled over the underground forest. Mikey was pretty sure he caught a glimpse of giant mushrooms and a whole town as they sailed past. It wasn't until they were at the edge of the forest and about thirty feet lower in the air that Donnie tried to stop.
Tried, in that Donnie clearly knew what to do in order to come to a sudden stop but they failed to account for the additional weight of Mikey. When Donnie stopped Mikey didn't, and Donnie hadn't let him go.
He kept going like a pendulum. And as he swung past her Donnie yelped and was turned upside-down before both of them fell out of the air like stones.
Mikey's immediate instinct was to hide in his shell - but the parts. He didn't have time to really think it through, he just clutched them to his plastron and flailed in the air, trying to angle himself that he didn't land in a tree but did land on his feet. Which mostly worked. He landed on his feet on the forest floor and his knees buckled immediately, but that just meant he stuck the landing then sat down.
Donnie wasn't so lucky. Not even a second after Mikey landed Donnie hit the ground by landing flat on her plastron with a resounding thud and a cut off shout. A moment later her staff landed mallet side down not even an inch from one of her arms.
Nearby birds took off with loud, panicked cries. From what Mikey saw at a glance they looked like turkeys with snakes for tails.
And then Mikey was left panting in a silent forest next to a worryingly still Donnie. It wasn't any further than falling from the top of the atrium he lived in down to the bottom, and for how many pine needles were currently stabbing his legs the landing had been relatively soft. Physically, he would have a bruise that would probably be healed by the time he 'went to bed'. At least he hoped so. Otherwise Three might notice and worry instead of listening to all the crazy stuff that had happened today already.
"And ow," Donnie said into the dirt, voice so muffled that Mikey could barely hear them over his own thundering heart. But then they continued to remain face down and unmoving.
They were still long enough that it bordered on getting concerning again.
"Uh. Donnie?" Mikey asked tentatively.
That got another groan out of them before Donnie lifted up their head high enough to spit out a leaf. "It's fine. Just think I need to apologize to Muninn. And probably Huginn."
They didn't elaborate on what they meant by that. Instead, Donnie gingerly pushed up into a sitting position and rubbed at their jaw. She glared up at the sky (ceiling? Mikey didn't know what to call the air between the top and bottom of the cave but sky seemed right-ish) like it was at fault for them falling.
"Are the parts okay?"
"Oh! Uh ..." Mikey scrambled slightly to check over both of them. "I think so, yeah."
"Okay. Good."
Donnie pushed her goggles back up to the top of her head and uncovered slightly swollen, definitely bruised eyes. Man, he hoped she healed as fast as him and his brothers. That looked like it could get nasty real quick.
She didn't seem particularly bothered about it. She just stood up with the help of their bō-hammer-thing before she picked it up and the hammer folded back in until it was a silver end cap. Then Donnie twirled the staff with practiced ease and it collapsed back into itself before she slid it back behind the curve of her shell. They hadn't even been looking at what they'd been doing, and didn't seem to be aware that they'd been doing anything cool. Which meant it was actually cool instead of just showboat-y almost cool.
"Okay. Okay." Donnie said. Mumbled, really, "I wanted to walk from here anyway. Okay."
She rubbed her jaw again, this time actually moving it like she was testing if the joints were still in place. Mikey popped back up to his own feet and immediately winced. They hadn't really hurt before but now his knee and toe where Donnie had hit him were starting to ache after the additional force of their fall.
"So ... where next?"
They were kind of at the edge of the woods in the opposite direction to the big city he'd seen and they were a ways past the town Mikey had caught a glimpse of as they hurdled past. Actually, they were pretty close to the edge of the cavern this whole place was in.
Just ahead was a massive, sickly yellow-green wall of stone. It was lumpy and sunken like it was buckling under the weight of all of New York City and also The Ocean just above them.
And oh pizza supreme, Mikey shouldn't have thought of that. The sheer weight of everything above them was ... could stone collapse under its own weight like that? A lot of ghost hunting shows talked about collapsed mines and stuff but Mikey wasn't actually sure if that was something that just happened, or if caves and caverns and mines where all basically the same thing. Maybe caves were way more stable?
"Hey, dumb-dumb, are you listening?" Donnie demanded, suddenly inches away from his face. Mikey jerked back a step and tightened his grip on the parts.
"Woah! Personal space, chico!" Mikey cried and Donnie bared her teeth at him.
"I knew it! Why did you ask me something then not listen to the answer?"
Heat rushed up to Mikey's face and he shrunk back into his shell just a little. It wasn't like he was trying not to pay attention. And it had been so long since Mikey had met someone new that he'd kind of forgotten that it was frustrating that his head was always running a mile a minute in a thousand different directions all at once. He didn't know how to explain it and despite his ... everything ... Mikey felt self conscious in a way he wasn't used to. He didn't know what to do about it.
"Sorry?" He tried. Donnie leaned back and did an over exaggerated eye roll that involved their entire head.
"Whatever. Just. There's a path to the surface here and I said it's mine so you can't tell anyone about it."
"What, no one else know about it?"
"Appā an' Huginn and Muninn know about it but they have different paths they take. And most of Witchtown knows but they never go to the surface. So it's mine." Mikey nodded, because he had been paying attention this time and Donnie seemed to accept it as an answer. "Good. Then come on."
Donnie turned on their heel without waiting for a response and took off walking at the same just slightly too fast speed. Were they doing it on purpose? But they didn't seem to be paying nearly enough attention to him to realize he wasn't keeping up well.
At some point while he hadn't been paying attention earlier Donnie had folded the drape part of their saree into their belt so it was flush against their shell and the trailing end wasn't any longer than where they had rolled up their skirt. The reason for the change quickly became apparent when Donnie ducked into a cave in the wall, the entrance so low both she and Mikey had to double over to squeeze through.
The cavern they entered was cramped and pitch black after the immediate ring of light at the entrance. Mikey stopped but Donnie vanished into the darkness and Mikey heard faint scarping sounds and the soft clink of her anklets and bracelets moving with every step as they walked deeper into the darkness.
He didn't know how she was seeing anything; the darkness right in front of him felt like a solid wall.
"Donnie?" He asked and the small noises stopped. "I can't see anything."
Complete silence followed. It was eerie, even as hard as Mikey listened he couldn't hear the shift of fabric or the sound of breathing. He would have thought Donnie had abandoned him before the blackest black Mikey had ever seen in his life had it not been for the three-fingered hand that suddenly stretched out towards him. The rest of Donnie remained cloaked in shadow and, for the first time, Mikey noticed that along with all the rings they were wearing Donnie had gold caps on every finger that took the shape of massive, wicked looking hooked claws.
And despite knowing it had to be Donnie, Mikey still screamed and jumped back as Donnie jerked backwards into the darkness.
"What? Why are you screaming!?" Donnie shouted over him.
"What do you mean, why am I screaming!? You were trying to scare me!"
Donnie emerged from the dark with their goggles flipped down and a snarl on their face. "No, you fucking moron, I'm trying to help you," she spat before her hand shot out to grab the belt across his chest again.
Mikey was dragged forward despite his indignant shout of protest and automatic attempt to kick Donnie's shins before the claws of her other hand were against his forehead. "Knock it off! Hold still or I'll claw out your eyes."
That wasn't something that really instilled a lot of confidence but since there was a claw pressed between his eyes, just over his mask Mikey made the wise decision to go still. Donnie had, after all, already almost cut his throat.
"Thank you," Donnie said tersely.
Donnie's fingers started moving, tracing something on his forehead. He felt the claw pressing down hard enough to indent his skin without breaking it and there were tiny flickers of purple not quite bright enough for Mikey to be sure they were really there. It felt like Donnie was drawing a circle with some weird patterns inside of and crossing through it for just a few seconds before the space in front of Mikey lit up with brilliant pale yellow.
When Mikey jerked his head back the light followed like he was wearing it. Like a headlight except it was coming from whatever Donnie had done.
Donnie stepped back from him and flexed her fingers. It did something that made her talons retracted back into simple jewelry with embedded little purple stones.
"Wh- s- can you do magic!?"
And for some reason that also got a sneer. "Scoff! It's glyphwork. I'm not a witch. I didn't cast a spell or whatever on you. It'll break once you wipe it off."
Which certainly sounded like magic to Mikey but he didn't know enough about it to argue semantics. So he landed on, "well, whatever you did it's rad."
And then it was Donnie's turn to look wrong-footed. Mikey couldn't see their eyes but with the way their face twitched he was pretty sure they had stopped looking at him. "Oh." Donnie shifted their weight and scratched their jaw before making a little throat clearing noise. "Well. Um. Surface. This way."
Donnie jerked their head towards the back of the little cave and Mikey saw what looked like a spot where the ceiling had collapsed. It took him a moment to realize that there was actually an opening in the wall like a chimney. And now that he was paying attention Mikey could catch the faint smell of cars under the musty cave stink.
Mikey balked but Donnie had apparently decided that her light trick meant everything was fine now and she was quick to vanish into the creepy tunnel. And the only option he really had for getting back to his brothers was to take a deep breath and steel his nerves before he followed.
It was miserable.
Everything was slightly damp to just the degree that it felt dangerously slippery and the path was steep enough that Mikey, who was decently skilled at climbing buildings, actually struggled a few times. Enough that Donnie stopped and turned back to help him out. Mostly by grabbing his shell and bodily hauling him across a difficult patch but it was still helping without being asked. So Mikey was pretty sure he was right about Donnie actually being good.
It was silent beyond Mikey's panting and his struggling to keep up. Donnie was frighteningly quiet again and Mikey only occasionally caught the faint click of her jewelry. And while Mikey was pretty sure Donnie was just good at being quiet it felt like the cave was a living thing that was eating all the sound that existed within it. Mikey had a creeping dread that if he said anything it wouldn't make it any further than the edge of his beak before it was deafened. It was creepy.
Mikey expected the cave to end at some kind of creepy, dilapidated graveyard or something. He didn't know where that would be but it felt right that it would be the case. What he didn't expect was that the way out would be a perfectly normal door. Off white with peeling paint and the word EXIT in red just at eye level. Which was maybe the most eerie thing the cave could have ended at outside of like, maybe a pile of bones?
The sight of it made Mikey freeze but Donnie didn't seem to notice. They kept walking and threw it open without a care in the world, revealing the parking lot behind a target. It was so bright outside that Mikey was momentarily blinded before he was seized by a sudden, intense wave of claustrophobia. The weight of the tunnel was crushing and he surged forward, bowling past Donnie and out into open, freezing air.
Icey slush covered his feet and he shivered against the slightest breeze, but he was under the sky and not twenty billion tons of stone. He took a deep breath and couldn't tell if it was the sudden cold or the loss of adrenaline making him tremble.
There was a clunk of a heavy metal door swinging shut and Mikey whirled around but Donnie was still there. Leaned between two doors, one that looked like an emergency exit while the other was plain but covered in do not enter warnings. That was the one that lead down into the cave.
And Donnie was staring at him. Their goggles were up again and their panel things were rotated up and forward as she stared at him with her head tipped quizzical to the side. Their mouth was flat instead of pulled into a sneer but their painted eyebrows were furrowed like they did whenever Donnie was sneering. It didn't fit their face but Mikey thought they actually looked kind of concerned.
He licked his beak even though his tongue felt dry before he asked in what he hoped was a normal voice, "if someone opens the door from this side does it lead back to that cave or into target?"
Maybe the nicest thing Donnie had done so far was ignore the little tremor in his voice. Because they were good but they had also been kind of mean so far.
"Yeah. But the door has an alarm for the store that goes off of you start to open it. So humans probably don't."
"And the creepy pit probably doesn't help," Mikey said with a nervous chuckle.
Donnie blinked slowly at him before they bumped against the wall behind them and stood upright. Their face was unreadable again as they walked up to him and Mikey held still as reached out for his forehead. This time Donnie scrubbed at where they'd drawn on his forehead with the side of their hand until the circle of brighter light on Donnie's face went out.
Then she looked him over with a critical eye before they reached some kind of conclusion.
"Alright. Well. Repo's Scrapyard is two a blocks that way," Donnie said as they pointed over his head, "go straight to the post office then turn right." And yeah, Mikey knew that. He was pretty sure he'd run over most of Manhattan by rooftop at one point or another. But it was actually, genuinely nice of Donnie to try and give him directions. Then Donnie brought a hand up to their throat and they curled their fingers around their compass. Mikey shifted the parts so they were balanced in one arm instead of two.
"Um. Hope things work out? So. Bye forever, I guess."
"Wait, hey!" Mikey stepped forward and grabbed her upper arm, then was saved from having the heel of her foot planted directly into his throat by ducking his head into his shell before Donnie finished the arc of their kick.
"Don't fucking touch me," Donnie hissed. Probably? It was something like that but the animalistic spitting made their words hard to parse.
"Sorry!" Mikey popped his head back up out of his shell. Donnie didn't try to kick him again but they really looked like they wanted to. She was still in a posture that could go offensive in the blink of an eye and they were glaring but they also hadn't ditched him. So Mikey pressed on with, "we should meet up again! Like, tomorrow? I'll bring my brothers, too."
Leo could be about as petty as Donnie had been so they would either get along or really, really wouldn't. Also Mikey was pretty sure it was impossible not to like Raph. But the suggestion seemed to make Donnie even tenser.
"Why would I want to do that?" They asked. Mikey beamed and Donnie looked like they thought he was about to pull put a knife and stab them.
"Well, 'cause your gargoyle buddies were like, really excited about you having friends. And I bet they'd be disappointed if they never heard about me again." Mikey knew exactly what he was doing and he didn't really feel bad about it. Not if he got what he wanted. Even if Donnie looked weirdly hurt. "And also I know where you live so I can just show up there."
"I can tell Huginn and Muninn not to let you in."
"But wouldn't that make them really sad?"
Donnie opened her mouth. Then shut it with a click. They stared and made a little stressed noise before they landed on, "you're a bastard."
Mikey raised his chin and tried to look unimpressed. Predictably, Donnie's unwillingness to disappoint their probably-uncles outweighed everything else. Just like it had when they were guilted into letting him into their home.
"Fine," she finally bit out, "I'll meet you at Repo's Scrapyard this time tomorrow. If you're late then I'll leave without meeting your dumb-dumb brothers."
They scowled when Mikey whooped and jumped in place. "Alright! Awesome! See you tomorrow, Dee!"
Donnie mouthed Dee like it was a sour candy but Mikey didn't stick around for a critique on the nickname. If his brothers got too worried they would never go for meeting up with a stranger so he needed to run back as fast as possible.
Despite how everything since meeting Donnie felt like it had been lightening fast it turned out Mikey had been gone for more than two hours.
Fortunately, his brothers only started looking for him twenty minutes before he showed up and he managed to convince them he'd hidden when he heard the human owner of the scrapyard and had started to doze off because it was so cold until he heard Leo shout his name. Then he showed them the parts Donnie had given him and his 'brief' vanishing act was forgiven.
It had been a continued whirlwind after that as Raph and their dad fixed the engine and got it working again while Leo helped him try and defrost cold cuts so they could eat dinner. Since they didn't have a charge in any of the battery packs they ended up assembling frozen sandwiches, wrapping them in tinfoil, then sticking them on one of the big white box things on the top of like every building that was always producing a ton of heat. None of them got hot enough to count as a grilled cheese or a panini but they had enough for all of them to eat until they weren't hungry.
And finally, finally it was time for bed. And for the nightly séance.
Mikey had gotten pretty good at it in the years since he started and he had it down so well he could do it in his sleep. If he did say so himself.
He always faced the curtain covering the entrance to his room so no one could sneak in and spy on him and set up a mirror against the wall next to it.
He'd heard that people could see distorted faced in mirrors and between the dim light of the candle he always had burning in front of it and Mikey's own jumpy mind he was pretty sure he had actually seen Three. Not properly because it never stayed when he looked directly at it but he knew he saw a faint green figure imposed over his own reflection. One that was slight and always seemed to be wearing a robe of some kind. Mikey thought that must have been why Three looked so tall even though he'd been three when he died.
Then Mikey set up his ouija board between himself and the candle before he held up his string and guitar pick pendulum over the center of the board.
He centered himself, trying to settle into the meditation techniques his dad had explained. He never really got the hang of it but he was close and that was good enough.
After a few minutes Mikey opened his eyes again and saw the faint green outline in the mirror. Even his own orange spots shimmered weakly in the candlelight, bracketing the reflection of his dead brother.
"Hey, Three," Mikey whispered.
Three never really seemed able to do more than a few words at a time and it seemed to waver how well it worked (and Mikey was pretty sure how well he could communicate related directly to how much focus and energy Mikey had at the end of a given day), but there was one thing he said no matter what. The ghost in the mirror reached out and touched the reflection of the pendulum and the pendulum Mikey held began to swing, following the the movements of Three's hand at a slight delay. And slowly Three began to speak in the only words they had, pausing between each group of letters.
"HELLO MIKEY
HOW ARE YOU"?
Mikey beamed at his brothers reflection. "I'm great. But, Three, you're not gonna believe what happened to me today." He would have to sleep soon and he had to figure out what he would tell Raph and Leo to get them out of the lair tomorrow, but Mikey couldn't just not tell Three. He was pretty sure his dead brother was stuck haunting just the lair and it felt cruel to not tell him everything that his living brothers and himself got up to.