It turns out that the Statue of Liberty is actually a Weeping Angel, it’s just so big that it’s always been visible to someone. Now, with the smoke filling New York, it’s gone unobserved for the first time.
ive spent a stupid amount of time recently thinking about a rottmnt au where circumstances allow splinter to figure out a way to get cloaking 'brooches' for himself and his children when they are still lil, giving him a chance to raise them as 'normal' kids. (normal kids who are genetically engineered mutant turtles, actually, and they're, like, SO good at sports, dude.)
surely nothing can break this idyllic illusion of a life that splinter has built. definitely nothing that rhymes with daron braxum.
i can only imagine this would work if the threat of both draxum and big mama were neutralized. i think in this universe, draxum's life of crime caught up to him much sooner than it does in canon, and he's imprisoned for his unethical experimentation when the turtles are still little-- raph maybe around six or seven, mikey around four or five. once splinter learns of this, he pulls every string he possibly can to 1) get cloaking crystals for himself and his family 2) cut a deal with big mama to ensure his children's safety.
after spending about a week or two in the sewers fucking drilling the cover story into the children's heads ("remember, mikey, what do you do if people start asking you too many questions?" "CRY!" "good boy!") he very nervously brings them up to the surface, armed with an elaborate story to explain his disappearance and new children and a shitton of forged documents. there was so much fucking paperwork, christ. (also, it turns out the blue one is biologically female? but he does not have the mental space to deal with that so they all just keep calling him leo, and he's totally fine with that. so.)
and he collects ALLLLLLL the royalties, babey.
(the kids are kids, and definitely slip up occasionally or do... weird shit. but, luckily, since they're small children, people pretty much just chalk it up as "oh, these kids have such wild imaginations.")
eventually, enough time passes that the brothers just kinda... forget that they were ever actually turtle mutants who lived in the sewers. coz, like, that's crazy, right? they're pretty sure they just imagined all that stuff. they weren't turtles, they were PRETENDING to be turtles... and people give them weird looks sometimes when they bring it up, so they don't.
overall, they THRIVE on the surface, to no one's surprise. they are, in fact, secretly genetically engineered super soldiers, actually. and they are crazy good at, like. so many things. especially martial arts! they compete at a national level on the regular, in addition to a shit ton of other extracurriculars (ballet, art, basketball, and cooking for mikey, swimming, basketball, gymnastics, and theatre for leo, dance, gymnastics, and swimming for donnie, not even to mention all his academic stuff, basketball, wrestling, and swimming for raph...)
Leaving behind empty packages. The only way we can report an item being stolen if we didn’t see the crime with our own eyes is by finding an empty package. If there’s no empty package, it’s very easy to chalk it up to a slightly incorrect inventory. Our inventory is often very incorrect.
Seeing someone lurking around the store for a long period of time not actively engaging in items. It’s suspicious. You know that feeling you get when you see people just loitering around? Similar feeling when you see someone just casually looking at products without really picking up anything to actually buy. Retail employees are bored and WILL follow you around and check the sections you’ve been lurking in.
Looking at items with a big bag/backpack. If you’re really interested in some items and you have a big bag, retail employees are going to watch you leave and then immediately swarm to the items you were looking at.
Being too engaged in products. Maybe you aren’t stealing but it might throw up a red flag. Also interacting with employees an irregular amount. Once again maybe not stealing but we’ll remember you more if you talk to us often. I feel like this should be obvious but you never know.
Anyway, feel free to reblog this to let your followers know what stealing looks like! I’m mostly harping on the first point here. Also please remember it is a federal crime to tamper with security devices and you will be in MORE trouble for doing that than actually stealing sometimes. Not that any of you are stealing of course.
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