They forced him to put on a bit more weight for the 2024 version, get some color into his face, add more volume to his hair, and try to look "perkier" instead of giving everyone on school grounds a resting bitch face 24/7 😔
a Pacific Rim and TMNT 2014/16 fusion, introducing budding science sister and her tiny monster brothers. (who won’t be tiny for long.)
@rhi-draws-things provided the illustrations, bless them.
trying a new method of posting stories to tumblr, i think i’ll just add each new installment to this post under the cut of a reblog. have ‘em all together for your reading leisure. enjoy this first one!
April is pretty sure she should have stuck it out at school, and just slept in the nurse’s office.
At least then she would have had an actual bed, rather than be stuck in a hard plastic chair and drowsing while the base’s occupants ran around like kicked ants. Apparently something of the top secret project April knew next to nothing about (hence the ‘top secret’ part of things) had escaped, and everyone had gone zero to sixty in an instant the moment sirens went off.
April had found herself shoved into the nearest staff room, told to lock the door, and not to move until someone came and got her. She’d been expecting that her dad would just look over some documents too important to put off, and then they’d go home so she could sleep off her fever.
No such luck. The sirens outside of her meagrely furnished staff room are still droning, and April is falling asleep despite the awful chair. At least someone lent her a coat at some point, and she’s only shivering a little in the oversized thing.
Her unfinished lunch remains in its baggy near her face, as she leans forward with her cheek pressed to the table. She’d tried to convince herself again to eat, since getting better requires energy, but hasn’t had much luck. It drifts in and out of focus as her eyes get heavier, and giving in, April just lets the fever drag her under into a light nap.
The sirens aren’t enough to keep her awake, or even make her panic longer than the first minute they’d been going. She knows they’re not for a Kaiju attack, and even if they were, she’s inside a military base. There are no active Jaegers here, but there’s some just up the coastline of New York. She’s safe as she could get, outside of a Kaiju shelter.
And, she’s sick. Being sick makes it easier to just not care.
April naps for a period of time she doesn’t remember, and doesn’t rouse again even after the alarms are turned off. She doesn’t notice they have been, and doesn’t know it’s simply because everyone got sick of listening to them while hunting for the escaped subject.
April doesn’t hear the door’s lock be broken from the inside, and doesn’t hear it open and shut with a quiet noise. What she does hear, oddly enough, is the sound of someone messing with her uneaten sandwich.
April blearily opens her eyes, too hot and too cold at the same time, and really annoyed with whatever’s woken her back up to that.
Three claws are sunk into the tip of her sandwich’s baggy, and four wide eyes stare back at her, just over the lip of the table.
The four gold eyes blink at her. April blinks her two blue ones a few times to confirm its real.
She screams.
The owner of the four eyes screams back, and runs away.
April nearly falls out of her chair, scrambling away from the table and the thing with all the coordination possible of a sick individual. She runs into another crappy chair and does fall over, yelping as she goes down.
There’s a dizzying moment, worsened by her illness, in which everything spins in terrible circles. April finally recovers enough to gingerly sit back up; half convinced she’s just had a hallucination.
But, no. That’s definitely a pintsized Kaiju scrabbling around on the linoleum across the room from her.
“Oh my god,” April whispers in horror, and then jumps with a shriek as the creature hisses balefully at her.
She untangles her legs from the chair’s, and manages to get to her feet and press against the wall of the room. April is hyperventilating a little, watching the tiny Kaiju pace and snarl on the other end of their shared space.
It’s between her and the coatracks, where she hung her backpack earlier. Her backpack contains her cellphone, which is what she needs, right this instant, so she can call her dad and the army and if they have one an indoor Jaeger because oh my fucking god, that’s a Kaiju.
A really.
Really.
Small Kaiju.
It’s about the size of an overly large housecat, with a long, strong looking tail whipping around behind it as it paces. Purple spots of bioluminescence follow the length of its body, which cause a bit of nausea to look at when it keeps moving so quickly, and April is still very sick feeling.
The segmented plates on its back almost look like a shell, April thinks distantly. Like a turtle and a dragon and a cattish thing all got mixed together.
It stands up on two legs then, walking perfectly fine like that. April amends and changes the cattish part to lemurish, maybe even humanish. It’s the tail that’s really the tipping point, making the walk ever so slightly abnormal in its gait.
April is very, very dizzy. Oof. Everything is spinning even while she’s still leaning against the wall. Couldn’t the tiny Kaiju have chosen to terrorize her on a day when she wasn’t ill? Is that too much to ask from fate, given that the war was supposed to be over?
“…I guess you’re the one everyone’s looking for,” April says faintly, mostly to herself. The little Kaiju shrieks and hops away to press against the far wall, pacing and tittering nervously. And it is nervous, April is realizing. If she hadn’t known better, she’d almost think the little thing is as scared as she feels at the moment.
But Kaiju are city destroying titans, not afraid even when a Jaeger is thundering towards them. It wouldn’t make sense for even a tiny one to be afraid of a sick teenage girl.
Oh, but this one really is awfully small. April could probably hold it with one arm if she tried.
April reminds herself to focus. Thoughts like that are for after she’s certain she isn’t going to get mauled.
The little Kaiju is eyeing her, but also- as April notices the break of focus every couple seconds- the table April had been sleeping at.
April looks at the sandwich on the table.
She formulates a plan.
Taking a careful step forwards, April starts to move towards the table. She’s nearly startled backwards all over again when the Kaiju makes a leap towards her, only for it to back off immediately. It’s hissing and spitting, but really, it’s just making a show instead of real threats.
The coatrack is directly above where the Kaiju is pacing. April slowly picks up her sandwich.
“Hey, little… guy,” April settles on the addressment, since it’s better than spawn of world destroyers or the like. “Do you want some food?”
The Kaiju watches her warily, but has stopped shrieking every time she moves. It’s clearly torn between following her and the sandwich at the same time; intent gold eyes boring holes into both.
April opens the bag slowly, and takes out half the sandwich.
“Here… look, its fake bologna and lettuce. Mmm, right? Really tasty, I promise. Fake processed meat is about the same as actual processed meat in nutrients anyway.”
The Kaiju inches forwards in half steps, eyes darting between her face and the treat. April takes a chance and tosses the triangle of food onto the floor in front of it.
The food is snapped up immediately, and in an act of definitely inhuman physiology, the sandwich piece disappears into the Kaiju’s mouth. April sees the hinges of its jawline open wider than a human’s would, or even most animals. She gulps quietly at the rows of sharp teeth it has, which flash as it chews noisily.
It’s looking at her now less with fear, more with curiosity. And it’s moving away from the coatrack. Good. April takes out the other half of the sandwich, and figures she can blame her illness for making her think this next step is a good plan.
“You gotta come and take this one from me, dude,” she tells it softly, holding out the sandwich halve and bending down a little. “C’mon… I’m probably not the one who’s gonna bite anyone here…”
Faster than she thought, the Kaiju approaches her. It moves in cautious steps, but is steadily losing the edge of wariness. By the time it tentatively puts a claw on the bread, its eyes are all on the sandwich, and April can step around it without even a hiss in response.
She makes a hasty beeline for her backpack, digging out her phone frantically and thumbing open the screen. She gets open her text messages, and then slowly comes to a stop, fingers hovering.
Soft and chirrupy noises have taken the place of shrieks and hissing, and April glances behind her.
The little Kaiju is sitting with its legs in a clumsy fold, resembling lotus flower position, and is talking adamantly to itself as it dissects the second sandwich halve. Rather than scarf it down, it’s taking the time to examine and… narrate the pieces of the sandwich.
And, in a way, the sounds aren’t just sounds, but are closer to actual words.
April is truly her father’s daughter, because she immediately thinks amazing, and is there more to discover here?
April looks back into the open mouth of her backpack, seeing her baggy of apple slices inside.
Retrieving them, April creeps back towards the Kaijuling. Baby Kaiju? There have only ever been full grown monstrosities publically documented, nothing about early stages of their growth cycles. There’s no word for this creature yet, and even then. April suspects there’s been meddling with its DNA, since there’s no way anything could evolve to have such a drastic growth period between infant and adult.
Except it’s an alien, so. Earth rules might not apply.
April slowly comes to kneel a cautious distance from the little creature. She opens the baggy, and steels herself from startling as its four eyes whip around to stare at her.
Do Kaiju even like apples?
One way to find out.
April wordlessly holds out a slice of apple. It’s been kept fresh by lemon she’d squeezed onto it yesterday, when she didn’t have a damn fever.
“Want one?” she asks. There’s a pause, and then the Kaiju makes a sound of joyful interest.
Without further prompt or hesitation, it slips over to her on all fours, and sits back up to wrap a small clawed hand around the slice. April watches, fascinated and rapidly losing her own fears, as it nibbles at the snack food.
When the first slice is gone, and the little Kaiju is licking its approximation of lips with its pointed tongue, it holds out its hands and makes grabbing gestures and coos impatiently.
“Say please,” April says automatically, and realizes it’s because the behaviors remind her strikingly of a small child.
It stares at her, looking annoyed. April is stunned quietly that it can express annoyance, and not just want or fear something.
“Say please?” she requests again, experimentally.
“Sss… say p’ease?”
April’s mouth falls open, a taking a sharp breath in.
“Say p’ease?” the Kaiju repeats, high voiced and unpracticed. Mimicking her, but not perfectly, missing the harder to pronounce part of a new word, like a child would.
Like a child would.
April hands over the next apple slice, and manages to mumble, “Yeah, that’s right. Say please. Good job.”
“Good job,” repeats back the Kaiju, nearly chirping it, and bites the new slice in half happily. April is still processing her shock as it shifts closer to her, pressing against her leg with its little ones and making grabby gestures again.
“Say p’ease,” it says with confidence, tail flicking against the floor in anticipation.
“…you’re very smart, aren’t you?” April says to it.
The little Kaiju coos and only has eyes for the apple slices. April hands another one over as requested. This time is a little different, though, as it catches her hand with its own free one. She holds perfectly still as it multitasks nibbling the fruit, and examining her pale pink palms and darker skin everywhere else.
April is not particularly afraid, she finds, watching the creature pick at her short finger nails with its wicked little claws.
“Say p’ease, good job,” it pronounces, apparently done with the examination. It grabs for the bag in April’s right hand, and April holds it away on instinct.
“No,” she tells it. It starts to sit up, reaching for it. “No,” April repeats, more firmly. “You ask nicely if you want more. Say please.”
The Kaiju’s face screws up in a pout, its big eyes squinting in annoyance. Its tail lashes for a moment, and then it says in a distinctly put upon voice, “Say p’ease?”
Purely and clearly, that’s the voice of a fed up toddler not getting what they want, and going along because it’s the only way to get it.
April finds herself fighting a smile, and laughing a little. He looks so cute, so frustrated like that.
“Okay, you can have another, now,” she informs him, and gives another piece of apple to the Kaiju. He takes it, but manages to look sulky about it.
April’s knees are starting to cramp like this, and she shifts into a lotus position like her Kaiju friend. She moves away from him to do so, trying to avoid disturbing him with her careful movements, but is surprised when he moves right back next to her once she’s settled.
And then climbs into her lap, fearless and curious about the jacket she’s got on, and the chance to get more apples sooner. April is a little uncomfortable having a mouthful of sharp incisors and hands tipped in claws so close to her vitals, but that’s tempered by the excited tittering the Kaiju makes, picking at the undone zipper of her jacket.
He’s so curious about everything, now that he’s not scared out of his mind. It’s almost like the time April held a large parrot, when a conservationist moved into the apartment next to her and her dad- the huge bird had been noisy and curious, and just enough of a discomfort near her face it’d been a thrill to hold him.
It’s like that, right now, combined with the time she held a baby of a colleague her dad has. Exciting and a little scary, and part of her is worried she’ll upset things if she moves wrong.
April stifles a sound of pain as the Kaiju discovers her coils and tugs on a fistful. She teaches him again about the word no.
It’s only after he’s settled comfortably into her lap, chewing on the last of slices of apple, that April remembers she should probably call someone about this.
It’s made a little harder than usual to text, since somebody has decided the thing he wants most in the world is now her phone.
She’s still trying to explain that no, he can’t have it, and that tapping it rapidly with his claws is just going to scratch the screen- “Pads, you use the pads of your fingers,”- when the door is all but kicked off its hinges behind them.
“There it is!” someone bellows, and April’s little Kaiju friend loses his cool.
The winding tail wrapped loosely around her arm is switched to her stomach, and April is treated to the feeling of being strangled around the midriff and claw tips nearly puncturing her jacket’s fabric.
“Ow, no, hey,” she says, as she gets unsteadily off the ground and backs hastily away from the door. She pats uselessly at the hard ridges of his back. “Dude, hey, I need to- breathe and stuff- ow-”
“Ms. O’Neil, stop moving!” commands the soldier, and oh joy, he’s got a gun. April thinks it’s a tranq gun, and neither it nor he and the other soldiers pouring in are doing anything to calm things down.
“April!” yells her dad, fighting his way through the clog of bodies in the doorway. His eyes are wide with fear as he catches sight of the Kaiju wrapped around his daughter, and looks about ready to throw up.
The little Kaiju shrieks, lighting up hostile purple again and baring its fangs at the intruders. Immediately the sound of safety catches clicking off are heard, and April throws up a hand. “Guys, stop it! You’re scaring him-!”
A particularly brash soldier strides forwards, arm outstretched and aiming to rip the Kaiju off April forcefully, and the tail around April’s waist comes away in a whip quick slash.
The soldier cries out as a bright red seam of blood appears across his face, and April stares in shock at the long barb abruptly produced from the end of the tail.
“NO!” screams the little Kaiju, slashing its long thin barb in the air in front of them. “NO, NO, NO!”
April hysterically thinks she taught him the word no a little too well.
“Hey- WHOA, okay, everyone just-” April takes a number of steps back from the panicking soldiers and her father, trying to keep people out of stabbing range of the tail barb. “-take a deep breath, okay? I’m fine, it’s cool, just stop freaking him out already.”
There’s a murmur of dissent, soldiers shifting uneasily as they try to find an angle to come at them from, and April hears a quiet hiccup beside her neck.
“No, no, no,” repeats her little friend, words shifting into desperate little growls and keens. He’s pressing close as possible to her, strong little limbs clinging tightly, and he’s trembling as he does.
His tail slashing in the air and bared teeth and brightly lit threat display all say animal, dangerous, monster… but the sobs underneath all that say scared little kid.
She raises her hand to run it down his shell-like back plates, turning her own back to everyone and shielding him. “It’s fine, it’s okay, shhh, calm down, buddy. We’re okay. We’re okay. No knifing anybody with your- tail. Thing. Okay? Just… gotta calm down. Just… shh, kiddo… it’s gonna be alright… you’ll be okay, I got you. You’re safe.”
April feels his tail stop slashing around, and slowly, carefully, come back to curl around her middle. She only feels a brief moment of fear she’ll get stabbed by the thin barb, but no pain comes as the tip curls around to her front.
There’s quiet, rapid conversation behind her, and April casts a glance over her shoulder as a harsher whisper-shout makes her friend stiffen in fear.
“Hey!” she snaps at everyone gathered. “Shut up and go away!” The stunned silence following that is satisfying on a level.
Not the politest thing she’s ever said, but she’s sick and exhausted by the emotional roller coaster and there’s a kid in her arms crying still. Not okay by any account.
Oh god the military made tiny Kaijus that are actually tiny babies and April is literally just some teenager. What the hell is she supposed to do about all this? The minute she lets go of him he’ll probably end up back in a lab- a lab her dad works in, does he know that this kid is a literal kid-?
A hundred terrible scenarios flash across her mind about what might be done to her little friend, and April feels even sicker than she was already.
“…April? Are you alright?”
She looks over her shoulder again, at her carefully approaching father. His dark forehead has sweat sheen to it, and he’s darting glances between her and the Kaiju growling at him.
April shushes him again, and he quiets for the most part. He stills tightens his tail around her, though. Determined to stay, determined to defend.
Oh, but he’s so small, and clearly so young, and god, what even happened to create a creature like this? To create a person like this? A scaly little person with a tail and fangs and bioluminescence, who is terrified out of his mind and only trusts April.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” April finally responds, holding her friend in a gentle hug and wondering if she’s the first person to have ever done so.
“Did it… hurt you anywhere? Can you get it to-”
“He’s not an it,” April says firmly, feeling abruptly and fiercely protective. “He’s a little kid, dad. What the hell?”
What the hell does the military want with him? What the hell can I do to prove he’s a person? What the hell did you do, dad?
“Did you know he can talk?” April asks, angry and sad. “Did you know he learn words after only a few tries? Did you know anything like that about him?”
Her father is quiet for a moment, and then says, “No… no I didn’t. They weren’t supposed to be able to do those things.”
“…well he can,” April says, and hugs her little friend tighter. He makes a soft sound of confusion, and presses his cold flat nose to her neck, huffing in concern.
She takes a deep breath, and looks back again. “How many more?” she asks, uncaring that there’s still a few soldiers lingering in the doorway and clearly not on board with what’s happening.
“…three more,” her dad answers, a look of dread entering his expression. “We made four of them. They were only supposed to be subjects for observation and study. Kaiju on a smaller scale, with the ability to respond to communications and possibly even communicate back. But… it wasn’t supposed to be more than that.”
“What did you do to make him small and smart?” April asks, already knowing the answer.
“…we mixed human DNA into the sequence. It was a choice from above my station, hon, I swear. We didn’t know.”
April sighs, and wonders if any adults even try to remember the stuff science fiction and fantasy taught you about playing god with life.
“I think you did a lot more than make pocket-sized Kaiju, dad,” April says, petting her friend’s plated back as he makes a rumbly little purr against her shoulder.
Her dad lets out a ragged breath. “I’m starting to think that, too.”
April gets to keep holding her little friend- someone who turns out to be Donatello, according to the codename she drew out of a hat two months ago, back in her home apartment with her dad. He’d told her it’s for an upcoming project, and she’d thought the game of pulling famous artists out of a hat was just that. A game.
She named them all, all four of them, however indirectly and unknowingly. They’re only a handful of weeks old now- and already so big and smart, compared to human children- but they’re still so… young. Vulnerable.
April cradles Donatello until he falls asleep, nestled against her and playing with her shoulder length coils. Her father sends the soldiers out of the room, and someone important looking shows up in a uniform with a lot of medals and stripes on it.
April clutches Donatello close, who refuses to relinquish his own desperate clutch, and tries to talk a woman nearly three times her age around to April’s point of view.
It doesn’t work how she wants it to, but there’s room for future debate. More discussions and tests to be conducted, and a chance.
April is going to seize that chance and sink her teeth into it and refuse to let go, much like how Donatello does when he gets the idea to starting biting her hair.
She coaxes him off that idea by heckling her dad into handing over one of the hard candies he’s always got in his pockets. It goes over well, and from the intent expression of her father, and his fellow scientists peering in through the doorway, this is Donatello’s first experience with sugary sweets.
He likes it. A lot. Crunching it between his incisors and asking for more afterwards, using his most polite so far, “Say p’ease?”
April’s dad and his boss nearly fall out of their chairs at that. One of the scientists in the doorway clutches his chest and just about faints. It’s a brief spell of relief from the seriousness of things, and April makes sure Donatello gets the candy he so politely asked for.
Donatello is a little heavy by the time they lead her back to his containment cell, which is a room a little smaller than a child’s would be. And it’s bare of anything but a pet bed and some blankets shoved into a corner.
April feels so, so very bad for peeling her sleeping friend off herself, and gently lowering him to rest in the bed. She covers him up with the blankets, and sees him curl into a little ball underneath.
April is stuck for a moment, just watching the blankets rise and fall with his breathing. She doesn’t know what his future from this point will be like, and that scares the daylights out of her.
It only took about two hours for her to get this attached. God knows what she’ll feel like in another week, or less.
It’s hard to get up and walk out, but the rules are that the tests get done before anything is concrete, and that includes April staying away to not contaminate the procedure.
April is tired, still feverish, and now she’s angrily sad on top of all that. She puts one foot in front of the other, and forces herself to make it home before lying down and passing out from sheer exhaustion.
April has uneasy dreams that night, blurry and unhappy, and continues to until she sees Donatello again, and knows he’s going to be okay. That they all will be, him and his incredible siblings.
The next time she picks up Donatello, April is certain she’d never put him down if she could. Him, or any of the other little Kaiju children. Small, and strange, and so in need of somebody to love them.
Of course, within a few years, she can’t even hope to carry around any of them. By that point, they can lift her, and do so just to show off.
But she doesn’t forget the first time few times, how it felt to have Donnie’s tail coil around her midriff and curl tightly there. How it felt to have Raph’s puppyishly big hands hold onto hers as they walked through the hall. How it felt when Leo would cling to her legs and refuse to let go. How it felt to have Mikey clamber up her back and demand piggyback rides as long as he could get them.
When they’re older, they tend more to pick up April and carry her around. It’s easy, since they double in size within the first two years, and then keep going until they tower over everybody on base.
April never does forget, though. And never wants to.
This beheaded Obi-Wan is even more disturbing than the time they shaved his head for the Rako Hardeen arc. But not more disturbing than when that showed up in real life. 😐
I maintain that the worst, most disturbing thing Star Wars ever did to me when was when they FILMED EWAN GETTING HIS BEAUTIFUL HAIR CHOPPED OFF FOR JEDI TRAINEE HAIR. Like, I almost can’t help but take it PERSONALLY and assume that they were all like “...you know what we should commit to film so that evidence of it will persist forevermore? Ewan getting his fabulous head of glam rocker hair senselessly removed AND TURNED INTO THIS HAIRCUT HA HA HA UNLIMITED POWAH TAKE THAT TEENAGE GIRL WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THIS WILL HAUNT YOU WELL INTO YOUR 30s NOW.”
