Chapter Text
Don’t eat stuff off the ground.
It was Rule Numero Uno for scavenging, though the word made Mike’s skin crawl. Like they were vultures or something; but when he said as much, Leo shook his head quizzically. “It’s just a word. By definition, it’s what we’re doing, and - put that down,” he had gestured to the pizza box in Mike’s hand. “You know that’s not safe.”
“I know.” Open containers were a major no-no. As were bulging cans, anything with mayo, deli-counter stuff. Sell-by dates were flexible, and expiry, depending on the thing, how cold it was this time of year, yadda yadda... Mike was sure Donnie had it all written down somewhere.
Yeah, scavenging required some pretty strict rules to keep everyone from dying of dysentery.
Mike looked down at the box with a forlorn sigh. Twelve years old, and he’d only tasted fresh pizza, real New York brick oven pizza, eight times. That was less than once a year. That was barely enough to remember the taste, nevermind form an opinion on it more than just at least I’m not hungry anymore.
They lived in the flipping Big Apple, pizza capital of the US of A. Italian joints were, like, every two blocks in this section of Manhattan. There was even a pizza place twelve steps from the Lair’s south exit; every time they went on a - forget it, this was a forage, like squirrels, not a scavenge - on a forage, he could smell it, that fresh cheese, the rich sauce, that bready, pillowy, crispy -
And now he was hungry. Again.
“Mikey.” Leo called sharply, but then - his face softened from his perma-crease. “Come help me with this?”
Resolutely, Mike set the box aside and vaulted over the top of the bin to join Leo. His brother was working the splits to keep his legs out of the mess of bags: Mike copied him - woah, thighs working a stretch, this was gonna double as leg day, for real -
Leo called for his attention again, shaking the duffel and insulated bags at him. Grabbing the straps, Mike hauled them over his shoulder - forty pounds? like, forty-five, at least? - and wondered if this counted as resistance training?
If he bounced his toes a little, did that - wait, Leo was saying something. Mike looked down at the weird basketballs in his brother’s hands. They were lime green, swirly and spiky and just - yeeesh. “Looks radioactive,” he said dubiously.
“It’s broccoli. Ro-me-sco,” Leo read, turning the little rubber tag around the bottom of the - yeah, Mike was not putting a label on what that looked like, no way, no how - and gave it a sniff. “It’s okay.”
“Nuh-uh.” Mike angled the bag out of his reach, protesting. “It’s neon.”
“It’s supposed to be that way.” But that frown didn’t match the confidence in his voice. “We’ll check with Dad. Now stop screwing around.” Into the duffel it went, with a dozen of its brethren.
He didn’t care if it gave them superpowers, Mike was not eating that. But their duffels were full now, with a bag of sprouty onions, bruised apples and spotty bananas, alien broccoli, and zero pizzas.
Dad took them home through the shadows, cutting a path through alleys that were mostly gravel and black. For a few minutes, he let Mike take point, him and Leo following behind, and - peeking around a corner, Mike could see a green space.
It was a park. Empty and gated up, and through the hedges, he could just make out the shape of a swingset.
He was the leader right now. He could just… go. Just take them there. He could say it was a shortcut. Fenced in, shadowed and hedged, it was far enough from prying eyes - just for a few minutes, they could -
“Michelangelo.”
Busted.
Dad put his paw on Mike’s shoulder, his voice brimming with a soft sympathy that made Mike feel better and worse all at once. “Another time, perhaps.”
Which meant Never.
He knew the world was an unfair place. But… man, sometimes Mike wished it could be unfair in his favour. Just once.
Then it was his brother’s turn to be line leader and trailblazer until they reached the sewers. They were on the South side, the pizza side; Mike held his breath on the way down to keep his stomach from answering the siren’s song of deliciousness with its empty garbling.
Next to the manhole, there was a bright little square of white. It looked like a bead - that might be cool, he could string it onto one of his chains or -
“Mikey, hurry up!”
He pocketed it in a sweep as he closed the manhole behind him. And for real, he forgot all about it until training.
They were doing two-on-ones, which usually meant one-man-out: this time it was him. He paced up and down the galley as Raph and Leo tried to outmaneuver Donnie. He’d just worked the kinks out of his new legs - he’d shot up three inches this month, and man, anybody who mentioned all his pants were now capris was in for a glare to end all glares - and now he was making those guys work for every strike.
He’d had to work for blocks, against him and Raph. Man, that reach was gonna be a problem - maybe he could have Donnie stand on his shoulders; on tiptoe he just might be able to get high enough they could hang a basketball hoop over the -
Naw, probably not. They’d need to find a basketball hoop, first. Something tossed, not too broken, something they could fix up. Old and used.
Everything they had was old and used. Old weapons, old beds, old food -
A little voice told him that wasn’t exactly fair. ’Cause they always got new clothes at Christmas and birthdays, and books and toys and stuff. Dad never said where he’d find the underoos and socks, still in the package, but they never had holes in them or black marks across the scanner codes or anything to say they were, like, wrong or something.
And shoes. Dad made a point to always make sure stuff fit their feet just right. He’d still take tracings of their feet to… wherever, but… man, there was nothing greater than that, then shoes fresh out the box, pants without holes in the pockets.
Mike shoved his hands into his pockets just to check they were still good when his fingers rediscovered the bead. Only it wasn’t a bead. Blunted at the edges, the little square was - curled in a waxy little wrapper. Examining it closer, Mike noted the colour, the scent - was this a candy?
Don’t eat stuff off the ground.
But it wasn’t technically on the ground, though, yeah? It’d been snug in its tidy little wrapper. And it was dry. Unblemished under the paper. It was probably fine.
And it was so pretty. Shiny like fruit, like cherries or something, only - chemically? Like, fake cherry? Cherry-adjacent?
Without another thought, he popped it in his mouth.
Bad move. Bad move, flip flipping flippers, it smelled like cherry, but the taste was - ugh, it was like gasoline and sugar with an aftertaste like red. Yeeesh. This was, like, the worst candy he’d ever had. And the only.
And it was bad.
Mike felt betrayed.
For real, people liked this stuff? This was what Halloween was all about? This stuff? ’Cause if so, he was gonna have to rethink -
“Michelangelo.” Dad’s not-so-gentle-reminder voice. He must have been calling a couple of times by now.
Flip, it was too late to spit it out now.
If he swallowed it, would it melt his insides? ’Cause it kinda seemed like it could do that, going by taste - would it melt his tongue? It didn’t feel like it was -
“At the ready!”
Leo’s tonfa knocked his arm before Mike could even pick his off the ground. “Hey, give me a sec -”
“At the ready means at the ready,” he answered with another strike. Softer, but chiding.
Donnie’s strike knocked just at his knee. If that had been a blade - but they weren’t allowed to have sharp things -
Frustrated, Mike grabbed for his own tonfa and sprang back, just out of reach. He felt the pull in his thighs at the move, but it was a distant second to the pull of sweet on his tongue.
It was getting better, kind of? The gasoline thing was… not awful now, just annoying, and the sweet was… yeah, okay, he could get behind this.
There was a weird little dimple in the middle of the square. His tongue kept working over it as he moved and blocked, ducked and spun, advanced, sprang back, strike, strike, strike. Only rough part was breathing through his mouth - each pull of air down his throat was like not-cherry winter gasoline -
The thing had dissolved completely by the time two-by-twos rolled around. If not for the burn in his thighs, Mike could have sworn no time had passed at all.
That... that was some powerful stuff.