Mar 7
Ways to Wear a Bandana as a Top
Let's pretend there's no eye holes 😂
Another banger from @birdsnout and inspired by jinxesbraid's big brain timebomb piece
Don't worry, she got her own memento in the end~
seen from Russia
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seen from China
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Hungary
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Canada
seen from Canada
seen from Canada
seen from Spain
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Serbia
Ways to Wear a Bandana as a Top
Let's pretend there's no eye holes 😂
Another banger from @birdsnout and inspired by jinxesbraid's big brain timebomb piece
Don't worry, she got her own memento in the end~
Good morning! Blueberries #mashkey on me mind cos I'm craving some #kenkey badly 🤔😌😉. Well it #friyay so why not ... we'll see 🙄😎. #fbf #breakfastsmoothie
Absolutely over the moon to have gotten a piece from @newcrownedsaeraphimartplace They're style and level of detail sending me straight to space!
"You've got a smudge! Let me-!"
Art by the incredible Flan_b00 and inspired by this OC piece of theirs. I jumped the moment they opened commissions! 💖💖💖
Wah! I'm so obsessed with Kendra and Sunita's dynamic! There's just something about a mean girl and a girl's girl!!
Attempted Execute of Non-Executable Memory - Chapter 36
RotTMNT Michelangelo x Kendra
Are y'all looking!? Ya'll BETTER be looking at this AMAZING chapter art by @shardkn1ight! They went so extra above and beyond! I'm still in awe!
Rated: Teen and Up Audiences
Warnings/Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Romance, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Human/Turtle Relationships (TMNT), I Flesh Out Kendra’s Character, Character Study, I Give Kendra a Backstory, Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Childhood Trauma, Fake/Pretend Turned Real Relationships, First Generation Immigrant Kid Problems, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chaos Soulmates, They’re the Same Flavor of Unhinged and I Swear it Works, Shared Trauma Shared Goals Shared Bed, Mutually Assured Character Development, Happy Ending, Drug Use
Synopsis: Years have passed since Kendra hit the lowest of lows. It only took a couple of prison stints, but she’s carved out a simple existence that keeps her from repeating past mistakes. Plan goes according to boring plan until divine inspiration walks in using the form of one specific orange coded mutant. Kendra only needs to get close enough to him to plant a virus in his infuriating brother’s servers, but will she be infected along the way?
Also available on Ao3
I gotta shout out @tmntxthings for this one because I might have taken some of her inspiration word for word, but that really goes to show the kind of collaboration we got going on. These works are made in an echo chamber! They're labors of love and togetherness!
First 🧡 Previous
“Here.” Kendra slid the briefcase across the wrought iron table.
It was comical despite the humor of the object having long worn off. To her it was simply the containment system now that housed the laptop. Days of working with said machine had just about broken her, but awareness percolated now that she was out of her apartment. Her brain was aerated by the trip, which made her fully aware that she was making what looked like an illicit transaction out in the open.
Jeremy’s gaping jaw said he saw the same.
He quickly shuffled the case over to his person. “Got it!”
“Right.” She sat down across from him.
He had ordered her a cup of the water she preferred, but today she stared at it.
She needed to leave.
She could feel Jeremy staring.
At her.
Through her.
What was so obvious about the case must be etched into her skin.
“So…” He cleared his throat. “The next part is I look over your work and then you get your payment. That still good?”
“Go ahead.”
“I was actually thinking we’d catch up. I ordered-!”
“You’ll check it now.” She could feel the creak of her pupils moving to his.
“Check…” He patted the suit case. “Check your code now? Like right now?”
She didn’t move.
He searched her for some shred of validity, like a parking pass would spew out from between her lips. “That would take a few hours.”
“You’ll check it now.” She added new emphasis and her neck clicked as her head tipped to one side.
He inhaled deeply with measured horror at the prospect.
“Two cornetto sandwiches!" An employee chirped by their tableside with two plates.
“T-thank you…!” Jeremy tried to make room as if there was anything blocking her from setting down the food.
He had ordered this for her too. “You should get started.”
“Really need that money, huh?” He exchanged the briefcase with the plate and clung to a steaming pastry instead.
“No.” She did.
Things had been tight since she had been put on leave from the café.
“You just need to check it right now.”
“Okay.” He started with hesitation before something snagged and he actually let go to say, “Okay.”
The sandwich was set to one side.
The laptop was extracted from the case.
He opened it and began his review.
Kendra stared at him for the first half. Watching the crow’s feet around his eyes as they scanned the code. The pinch there had been enhanced by years but was premeditated. While he hadn’t needed glasses proper, irritation due to blue light hit him all the way back in his teens. His GUNNARs were one form of combat, but the squint remained. He did it then and he did it now, the exchange was the interim drew the study on his skin.
What was highlighted on hers again?
She felt like she hadn’t looked in a mirror in ages. Those balancing scales of wrinkles were the same. She had been facing down a version of herself for almost two weeks now. The thought of having to confront another, even a current reflection felt like too much to surmount. She even avoided the glint in Jeremy’s eye for a similar reason. She didn’t want to see a shred of herself and, in exchange, she watched the man work.
He should have had some kind of shame.
He didn’t.
He let her watch and he worked as if he wasn’t being spied on.
Why couldn’t she do the same?
Why was she tormented by the thought of Mikey when he wasn’t there the same as when he was?
Jeremy had that edge.
Jeremy had always been foolish.
Jeremy always had faith in his work while within the confines of his limits.
He took action.
He closed gaps.
He created wealth from both advantage and exploitation.
Good and bad.
Within the confines of his system.
One that oppressed him and those like him.
She stared down at her ham and cheese that had gone by some absurdly posh surname.
She poked at it.
Too much cheese.
Too much arugula.
Her fingers were oily when they came away.
She picked up the cornetto and took a bite.
It was fine.
It tasted fine.
Each chew zapped her energy.
Drained her.
She felt her jaw open and take in more.
Sustenance.
It agreed and disagreed with her.
Her stomach percolated.
She drank the triple filtered water.
It went down clean.
She ate more.
Her belly quelled.
Was it the food or having had food?
Mikey was right that she wasn’t eating properly.
It was an issue that stretched long before this coding debacle.
When she was with him she did, when she wasn’t she did not.
That reliance loomed over her.
Omnipotent.
Watched more closely than Jeremy, of whom she had forgotten she was meant to be monitoring. He looked even more relaxed and she had to squint at him. He had the sandwich in one hand and he chewed genially as he continued to check her work. Her tongue clicked and he predictably looked right at her. She turned her cheek on instinct and felt daggers of humiliation when he chuffed fondly. She might have turned on him had he not made some kind of hand signal and spoken first, “You want something sweet? We gotta balance right?”
The never ending allure came from when they were kids.
Something salty.
Something sweet.
A good day found both amounts fulfilled within Horus’ scale.
For Jeremy.
She never cared too much for sweet.
Balance was good.
What did she know?
The thought was so sharp she winced. “Yeah, get me…”
Her fingers twitched.
“Whatever.”
He hummed and the door opened.
The wave of his hand had flagged down an employee.
“Mind bringing us out some muffins? You can put them on my tab.”
“Sure thing.” The employee laughed. “Hard at work?”
She gathered the plates.
“I’ve seen you two a few times now.”
“Oh this?” Jeremy toed the briefcase he had put by his feet before he poured forward as if to block the laptop. “We’re just old friends catching up.”
The woman bobbed as if the situation Jeremy was alluding to made some grand sort of sense. “My apologies!”
He winked. “Appreciate your discretion.”
She tittered as she left.
“Normies always loved feeling like they were in a spy game.” He returned to the screen.
Kendra stared after the woman. “They loved calling the police too.”
“Unless we posed as janitors.”
“Like that was ever believable.”
“Yeah, a certain shorty made it tough.”
She mustered some form of a glare at him.
“We could have stashed you in the mop bucket.”
“Talk about shoving me into a trash can. Try it. Try just mentioning your ridiculous plan from twelve years ago and see how it goes now.”
“I’m going to guess that it’d be pretty similar to how it went back then.”
“Say it.”
“Black eye.” He had a smile to him regardless.
“Shove me in a trash can then.” She snarled.
“I didn’t say it. I said it once. I’m not dumb enough to say it again.” He gestured to the screen with his chin.
She quieted.
Warm muffins were brought out.
Thanks were passed.
Kendra picked her muffin apart instead of eating it normally.
She was full.
Her stomach had shrunk or her appetite had shriveled.
It was one or both.
Same as always.
She rubbed an eye.
Fresh drinks were brought through.
Jeremy continued his review.
She drifted and wondered idly not what Mikey was doing, but that he was doing something patently like him. He was caught up in some half-baked scheme that he had no hand in cooking up. The greater universe stirred Michelangelo’s pot and he was a lump of carrot spun around. He helplessly stayed afloat while he was steamed from below and did nothing as he grew mushy.
He put carrots on the gado-gado.
She had yelled at him for it.
Who cared?
She certainly didn’t.
She was no purist.
She was a fool.
“This looks great.”
Cruel as ever.
“It really does, chief.” He turned the laptop to her.
She looked listlessly.
“I’m really impressed with what you corrected here. You could have rewritten this whole section, but you preserved it.”
“Simplifying the function made more sense. It was faster to reduce duplication.”
“By referencing the index.”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He sat back. “Great.”
She gave a bare nod.
“So, what were you thinking? Want direct deposit and I set you up with a 1099-NEC?”
“Cash.”
He chuckled with his whole body. “Cash and I give you the rest of it?”
“Rest of what?”
“The code.” He pulled up the briefcase to put the laptop back in.
She held still in an empty churn of her thoughts before she eyed him.
“You think I wasn’t going to do a trial run?” He clicked the tabs and disappeared behind the dark wall of the case. “I know you too well, Kendra.”
She resisted crushing his fingers by slamming the lid down. “All that talk of-of trust! How I was the only one-!?”
His gaze lifted up so she could see him.
Her breath heaved with fury.
“Can’t both be true?”
For Mikey, it was.
The psychic damage from the thought caused her to flinch.
He watched all too closely.
“Though something else happened to you that I still haven’t quite figured out.”
“Cash and we’re done.” She bit the air.
“Maybe I fucked with the power dynamic.”
“Jeremy.”
“You know I was worried that would be a thing. With you having been my boss, in a manner of speaking, but then I thought that might also be part of the test, but then you show up here looking like-”
She inhaled her threat and it lifted her from her chair.
“I mean even when we pulled all nighters you didn’t look like this. Now, obviously, we were teenagers, but-”
“Like what.”
Her words were so caustic it cut right through him.
She stared him down.
He animated with a blink, saw he wasn’t actually injured, and reviewed her a second time. “Say again?”
“What.” Her tone was flat. “Do I look like?”
It was his turn to run through his periphery, looking for the candid cameras.
In her half-raised position, she leaned forward and craned a hand to the table so she could present herself.
“You’re serious.”
“When am I not?”
“You and appearance are kinda… hand in hand.”
“Just shut up and tell me.”
He inhaled so much the whites of his eyes ballooned. “Well… Don’t shoot the messenger, but…! You look like shit. Like you haven’t slept, eaten, or drank anything in days. You definitely did not shower, not ‘cause of some smell, but ‘cause your hair is limp and greasy as hell.”
Her gaze dropped to the table.
He knew when enough was enough and stayed quiet.
She reached up and tapped her scalp.
He was right.
Her hair was sad and heavy.
Dry at the ends.
She hadn’t showered.
That much was true.
She hadn’t done much of anything.
The cornetto sandwich she had eaten sat heavy in her stomach.
Water layered the debris it was by now.
Stuffed down with muffin.
She sank back into her chair with enough weight that it chipped the sidewalk. “I… hurt Mikey.”
She felt the aura of his astonishment.
She screwed her eyes shut. “I… went… No, I did it by doing this…”
His person tipped to see her better.
She drew further into herself. “I’m there. I’m in the code, just like you are. We’re fucking ghosts, Jeremy. It’s… hard. Having to confront that and I… I went right back to- Like I was back then. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The attitude. The shit. I lashed out at him because I was fighting… My demons? Fuck! It’s just code, but it felt like…”
“Like it had hands?”
“It always did, didn’t it?” She tossed her head the opposite way and smothered her eyes with an arm. “What is wrong with me?”
He hummed.
“Rhetorical.”
“I wasn’t really going to answer. It depends on who you ask. I thought you were awesome. We were all mean. There’s perspective and what you do with it.”
She let herself breathe.
“It’s a good a time as any to say me and Donnie kept in touch.”
Her oxygen was sucked clean out of her.
“Didn’t think I’d ever be able to tell you that, but here we are. You feeling bad about hurting Othello Von Ryan’s brother, that means something. You feeling bad about your past does, too. You want to be different, but this work… it sounds like it’s a trigger for you. There’s no shame. I had a weird time doing the STEM after everything that went down, but it was what I was good at and I knew it was innocent. I was the one that was guilty.”
Her arm slid enough that she glimpsed him and poured molten lava into the look.
He twitched and avoided her gaze. “I threw out the Donatello ref in good faith. We legit didn’t talk much. We’ve fallen off lately, but it was new graphic card this and discount on said cards that, but the man is in his family unit. That’s why we used him against his bros. He’s mentioned Mikey. All his brothers really. Usually while complaining, but with Mikey it was a little different.”
“He attracts brainiacs.”
That caught Jeremy off guard and he studied the air.
“Doesn’t matter. Get to the point.”
“The point… is… less of a point and maybe more of a question… Did you guys break up?”
She hesitated as she barely remembered their arguments. “I… don’t think so.”
“Then you’re probably good.”
“You’ve never even talked to him.” She fell forward so her forearms hit the table. “Unless you have another bosom buddy you want to reveal here.”
“Mutual love of technology. Connections, Kendra. That’s how I get work, but not what I’m saying.” He addressed her by mirroring her pose. “Straight up, no, I do not talk to Michelangelo on the DL. When he came up, once in a blue moon with Donnie, it would be about how he helped settle the score with Leo or how he smoothed things over with Raph. He sounded and probably is reasonable to a fault. He’s understanding and always chooses the talking it out road. I’m sure he’ll hear you out and I don’t even know the guy, but I do know he’s really important to you. I mean… can we acknowledge the elephant in the room?”
“I’m emotional and shit because of his infection.”
“Not… how… I was going to say it.”
“But?”
Jeremy made a face as if it was hopeless. “I didn’t think I’d talk to Kendra Byerly again in this lifetime unless it was a plea deal for one of our unnoticed crimes.”
She grimaced so hard her nose pinched.
“‘Specially not a Kendra who feels so guilty she doesn’t take care of her hair.”
“I’m so fucked!” She screamed upward.
“Are you though…?”
“Not about him! It’s me, stupid! You’re exactly right! He gave me these… feelings! Now, I am weak and I will forever be squishy and soft because he believed in me like it was his job! Do you know how humiliating that is?”
“Most people are usually stoked about finding the loves of their lives.”
“L-l-lo-!!” She quacked.
“Oh?” Jeremy lit up. “Not there yet? How many months has it been?”
She opened her mouth, but didn’t know their anniversary date.
He understood immediately and grew more smarmy.
“Long enough, but not long enough for that!”
“Man, you are tsun to the max.”
“No more! You’re giving me the cash now, Shipp!!!” She banged the table.
“Hold on!” He chuckled. “I gotta pay here first!”
“I’m following you so you don’t get any bright ideas.”
He led them to the café doors. “Swapping out the data on the laptop will take me a few days. You wanna talk to Mikey during that time and then see if you wanna go round two?”
She was quiet as she followed.
He paid and continued the secret agent ruse with the employee while Kendra glowered at the flowers.
In the three times she had been here, this was her first time coming inside.
It smelled of coffee and hydrangeas.
She wasn’t sure she liked it.
“Think about it?” Jeremy’s voice told her it was time to go.
“Pay me and we’ll see.”
“ATM and you’ll think about it.” He waved for her as he exited.
She lingered as she left and looked over pastel blooms.
There were mostly blues, but a few butter yellows.
She looked long into them before catching up with her old friend.
-
“You came!” Kendra threw the door open with a little too much gusto.
Mikey stood there looking uncomfortable. She had opened the door before he knocked and his hand was still awkwardly extended. She was watching through the peephole and having seen him, it just made sense to address the fact.
The last 24 hours had been strange.
Kendra had hovered over Jeremy a little too closely as he tried to get an ATM to deposit a wad of cash. They once again conjured the image of a dirty deal which led to the two of them being escorted into the bank. Their transaction was evaluated and it took a series of prickly responses before it was deemed to be legitimate enough. Kendra had her money in hand and that should have been the end of it, but Jeremy asked her if she wanted to get pizza.
Long gone were the days where he could drive them to the coast with his mom’s station wagon.
They instead picked the closest greenery to sit by while the both ate separate slices.
They reminisced and also talked.
Mostly about Kendra’s relationship with technology, not that it led anywhere in particular. The conversation more followed how she felt about it previously. She had no idea how little Jeremy understood about her in the final days. On paper, she knew she hadn’t really kept up with him, but her retreat seemed more stark in his eyes. He lost his best friend, club mates, and pretty much the entirety of his self image since it was equally tied up in the Purple Dragons. Where Jase was an annoying helicopter in her home, Jeremy lived separately and, when she became a literal shut-in, she had inadvertently shut him out.
He listened as she explained her reasoning for releasing those files.
He said little when she bristled at his and Jase’s choice in colleges.
He apologized simply when she mentioned he hadn’t written her in jail.
She knew why and didn’t fault him. Some things were like that. Jeremy had gone on his own journey to find his better self, outside of the confines of high school. He seemed to be of the mind that she was doing that same thing.
Only now.
Over a decade later.
She felt stunted, but he assured her she wasn’t. He got a little preachy and she poked fun at him having had too much therapy. He clearly leaned into the mind of her maybe needing some of her own, but her resistance made him drop it. They sat for a long time in silence after that. He didn’t hound her current fears and they watched people of all walks stride by. The sun soon dipped low along with pedestrians and it was time to part.
They said goodbye.
They would meet again.
She liked Jeremy.
He really was a good friend.
He also was far too close to her.
Knew her too well, but not through time.
Because he had gone through exactly what she had, just on a lesser scale.
The real difference was how they handled stress.
Jeremy, to nearly his own detriment, didn’t hold his anger in. Where Jase popped a socket, Jeremy had always been in STEM due to honest love of the field. He geeked out and was appropriately ridiculed, but he owned even that. He accepted all that was thrown at him and waited to strike like an opportunistic bear. Humble and dawdling most of the time, he was just as lethal of a predator. He just knew better when to gore and feed oneself without self-destructing.
Kendra had lost the plot.
When she got home, she pulled out the bullet of a thumb drive to remind herself.
It had been stowed in that damned white clutch from her first date with Mikey.
A place where he would never think to look and within an object she refused to use again.
She spent hours looking at it and going through all that had happened since she’d hatched that fateful scheme. Her life had expanded exponentially since and she had exactly one man to thank. Michelangelo, as much as he drove her crazy, was a fantastic friend and partner. He was caring, motivating, and dealt with all manner of shit. He was there for her even while he was going through his own self-actualizing and she wasn’t sure what she had done for him in return other than blow up in his face at his apparent menace.
That wasn’t true.
She didn’t really think he was at fault.
He was just a frustrating aggravator of her overinflated ego.
He looked her in the eye and told her to be humble without those exact words.
He challenged her.
He was impossibly important.
She had blamed him.
She stowed the thumb drive back in the clutch and went to shower.
She washed herself and her mind clean until the water ran cold.
She felt lively as the cold nipped her skin into a towel.
She treated her hair and sat wrapped up for a long time.
She awoke with a start still sitting on the toilet.
Her hair care was finished.
She dressed in warm and worn pajamas.
She slept.
The next morning she washed her face.
Ate a small breakfast.
Texted Mikey to come over.
She had no plan.
She wouldn’t delude herself.
The extent was to apologize and that was it.
Anxiety caught her when he eventually agreed.
It stretched out long as he had to set a time for when.
It baffled her how he could be busy, but she knew that to be an errant emotion.
She needed to fix this now.
The possibility that she might not be able to reared its head.
When he was on his way, she paced.
What would she do without him?
He had been integral to her growth and wormed his way into her sanity.
Moving forward without his hand to guide her looked both like a lonely future and one where she no longer had a path.
He meant too much.
She spied through the peephole.
Caught him before he could knock.
Stared him down now in probably a bit of a wreck, though she knew her hair was at least set back to a healthy state.
“I… did!” He quacked. “I said I was going to…”
“Right! Come in!” She got out of the way.
“Kendra, about your text…”
“Needing to talk!” She laughed. “That’s a scary one, right? I told you it wasn’t scary though, right!?”
“You… did…” He hobbled forward.
She rushed behind him to close the door.
“Yeah… Well…”
“I’m sorry!”
He had barely turned to track her.
“I was an ass. I… wasn’t myself… or I was, but I was caught up in my own bullshit. Jeremy said, I saw Jeremy by the way, that all of this has been trauma so that’s called what, an ‘event,’ right? I looked it up and I could get one of those. It’s done, by the way. That’s why I saw Jeremy. I got paid. Job done. It’s done.”
“That’s…” He didn’t seem sure how to label his reaction.
“It’s good!” She told him and approached a little too quickly.
He shuddered as she invaded his space.
“Super good and it won’t happen again and I’ve apologized and you’re here!”
“I… That is a lot…”
“So much, but do we really need to talk about that?!” She put her hands on his arm.
His body flinched away.
“U-Unless you want to! We totally can then! This is for both of us, right?!” She laughed.
Loud.
Awkward.
At a pitch to fill the space, until it cracked.
Mikey released a thin sound of his own.
She pushed him on sliding feet down the hall, further into her apartment.
“Let’s get comfortable and we can figure it out!”
“Uh!”
“The cushions! You know?! The ones you got me for the table you got me in this apartment that… I guess April technically got me, but you brought April here, so-!”
With her insistence he eventually cleared the kitchen, entered the living room, but he felt like he turned into tree bark along the way.
His stiff form flaked off as she released him.
Peeling wood spoke of disease.
She dropped to her knees and fluffed a cushion. “I talked to Jeremy! I told you that, but when I talked to him I realized a lot, you know?”
He took in the room as if it was new. “You keep saying that…”
“Well… you know! I’m just saying what you know. Reiterating. That’s important for remembering which is important for our talk! You wanted to talk, didn’t you?”
“Saying it differently doesn’t really…”
“It’s just with Jeremy, I realized how much you mean to me and I want you to know that.”
“I hear you, Kendra.”
“That you mean a lot to me and maybe I can’t say exactly how, which is like, ‘wow! Kendra has another hang up! Surprise, surprise,’ but then you would know! You went through all those dates. So, again, you know!” She guffawed again.
He grimaced.
“You know what a bitch I was and how I really took you for granted!”
“Hey, do you maybe think… we should stop for a second…?”
“What for? You haven’t even sat on your cushion yet!”
“Your cushion.”
“Yours! I mean you got it!”
“For you.”
“For me, yeah, but I’m giving acknowledgements.”
Mikey knelt right down in front of her. “Kendra, this is reading a lot like a spiral.”
“Right.” She hiccupped. “It… would seem like that, but we haven’t talked yet. I just need to get the words out!”
He nodded slowly as if waiting.
She stared at him.
Maybe she should have pre-planned this conversation.
She didn’t know what else to say.
She had already blurted out the poignant bits.
He wasn’t reacting positively.
She needed to try harder.
Show him.
She hugged him.
Suddenly and tightly.
He went completely tense in her grip.
She squeezed him harder.
She could channel it.
His hugs were good.
Hers could be better.
She would show him.
Demonstrate his importance.
So he wouldn’t leave.
Like everyone else.
Her eyes snapped open.
Mikey’s arms flexed to give him some space.
She loosened.
“Kendra, I’m… going to be honest.”
“You… Aren’t you always?” She was still holding on.
He looked down at where she had him pinned. “I try to be…”
“But not always!” She broke away. “Duh!”
She smacked her head.
“The bitch basics! I haven’t forgotten! You’re important too and-!”
“Stop! Saying! I’m! Important!” He wove with each word.
She opened her mouth, but he jammed a finger into it.
“Okay. Real talk! This… sucks! I don’t know what this big Jeremy talk did, but I think his advice must suck because this isn’t you!”
“Exactly!”
He reared.
“It’s not me because this is me! I’m the me you showed me to be! The normal me is a cold bitch who gets in her own way, but I’m here trying so I don’t fuck this up!”
“That’s not-!” His head shook.
“No! See! I get it now! I saw it in the code. I just have to cut that part of myself off. Kill it! Finally! So it isn’t looming over my head anymore! It’s ego death, isn’t that great!?”
“No!”
“No, it is! If I just do this then I won’t always have me looming over my head. I can finally be free to be me and you know what I want?!”
“I’m afraid to ask!”
“You!” She put the slightest bit of weight forward and he tumbled over.
She stalked his form. “Do you know what you did to me at the club?”
“That-! Huh!?”
“You touched me.”
One hand landed by his hip.
“In a way I’ve never been touched before.”
Another slammed down by his waist.
“You did it before that.”
Her knee dropped between his legs.
“That dance at The Frick.”
Her other leg climbed his thigh.
“After my interview with those damn tights.”
She trapped his head and her hair cascaded around her.
“I didn’t know how to need before-”
“OKAY!”
She winced at the blowback.
She then rose with a squawk as he picked her clean up into the air away from him. “We’re not doing this.”
“Hey!”
“No! You-you-!” He set her aside and sat up.
She tried to speak, but he blocked her.
“All this-this-this… whatever this is! It’s… too much!!”
She stared.
He looked close to crying. “Look I… I’m glad you apologized! I really wanted one, but everything else… I don’t need to know like this! I don’t… want you to kill part of yourself. What are you saying? It’s like you don’t know what I know because I’m pretty sure I’ve been telling you this whole damn time how I love you for exactly who you are!”
Her fingers curled.
“Remember!? How far you’ll go!? That’s what I want to see! That’s what I’ve always followed you for! You’re always so interesting and, yeah, there’s the empathy factor we talked about, but you know what I’ve been thinking about the whole time we’ve been apart?”
She didn’t have a chance to mouth anything.
“That maybe you were right and I accidentally did to you or you did to me, I’m still not super clear on that part, with saying no! I may have told you no, but I don’t think I did it in the right way and I think that I also may have accidentally kept you all to myself because I kinda… sorta… Well, keeping you from my family is like yeah, they’ll all blow up and that’s uncomfortable and that’s part of the empathy thing, but also I’m selfish! I wanted you all to myself, but you… you were already all by yourself and what did I do!? I kept you that way! I brought you select members of my family, but did it in a way that you wouldn’t really connect with them! It was always on my terms! April came by because I slipped up always going to her for marketplace finds, but I didn’t even consider your past! We saw Raph because I made that promise to him without thinking about you. Sunita, she’s like family adjacent, but that was on my terms for my ‘no’ practice! I never once asked you to meet my family because I genuinely wanted you to! I didn’t!”
She felt her bottom finally hit the floor.
“So, yeah! When you blamed me for the coding stuff, I was mad because you did it so wrong and thank you for your apology, seriously, but as soon as I started thinking about it, of course you were mad! I did get in the way! Actively! I decided you needed food. I didn’t let you just work even though you had told me a thousand times you were scared of tech stuff. I walked out on you when I know, for a fact, that you have issues being left alone! Real life trust issues!”
She didn’t even think she had blinked.
“And on top of all that! This!” He threw his hands out at her. “I can’t even fault you for this reaction! We stopped talking so like, obviously you were going to hit a point, thanks Jeremy, where you realized that without me, what do you have?! It would probably feel like you have no one! So, yeah! I would freak out too! I’ve literally watched Raph do exactly this! He goes full savage if we leave him alone! I have first hand experience with separation anxiety and I was making sure you got it and then seeing it, experiencing it, you know, you want to know what I just felt!?”
She dumbly nodded.
“Scared!!!”
She kept doing so.
“Scared because that is so much pressure and I can’t-! I can’t take it! I can’t be the only one in your corner. I can’t be the only one rooting for you! I can’t handle all that! I know that’s warped as hell because that is what I thought I wanted, I made sure of it. I hung out with you all the time. I wanted to spend all my time with you. I wanted to message you and be in your face and your space, but when you bring me into yours… I… What?! I blew up at your family! I made you the other in the place where you had your biggest othering! Time and time again, and I’ve had time to think about it, I just kept realizing how scary that was and, here I am, knowing all that, and I’m just scared of you being like that!”
Her hands came up to tent over her lips.
“Wow!” He fell over. “That is a crazy tidal wave of emotion especially when I went through my own trauma of keeping my family together! What is wrong with me!? You are so right about the contradictions! I don’t just see it! I’m living it! All the time!”
He screamed.
Not loud.
Not percussive.
A soft release.
A horror that didn’t have depth only because it went so deep it now barely penetrated the surface.
He went numb from having felt too much.
She watched him.
His limp form.
His closed eyes.
He looked exhausted.
Like she was, she guessed.
She had just taken Jeremey’s word for it.
She hadn’t looked in a mirror until today.
Mikey.
Her Mikey.
She couldn’t help but think fondly.
He was right in some ways, she guessed.
She didn’t know much about him wanting to isolate her.
That part was new.
He was also way off base.
He never did anything malicious to her.
All his supposed manipulative actions were circumstantial at best and his dumb conscience at worst.
She doubted he was anywhere near as bad as he said.
She almost wanted to laugh.
Not at him, though he was ridiculously dramatic.
At this.
All of this.
At herself, for being so smitten that she trusted a man so much that he could tell her to her face that he manipulated her and she could say, in her truest heart, that she knew he hadn’t.
At him, for collapsing after all that like he had been the one fighting his own demons when they had both conjured fictional versions of their own.
At everything.
This broken world.
Their friends that shaped them.
Their families that stunted them.
Down to the moment she was conceived and he was dunked in some ooze vat.
Kendra laughed at her mom.
The exalted woman who would absolutely laugh at her for overreacting. She could picture her perfectly in her favorite slacks. They had the deepest pockets and always a little hard candy, just in case. She was there, in her apartment and reviewed the pair of them with crinkled lips. She sputtered on chuckles as she lured her darling daughter in to say, “Aduh, kepalamu itu kebanyakan otak, Nak. Hal kecil saja bisa kamu pikirkan sampai jadi skripsi.”
“What does that mean, mama?”
Mikey’s head tilted at the sound.
“’Your brain is always running a marathon, Nak. Can it take a little walk sometimes?’”
He hummed one curious note.
“That’s not what it means.” Kendra dry sobbed a single time.
Her mom had been far more eloquent in her mother tongue than English, but she hadn’t passed it on.
There was a lot that had been lost from her time.
Kendra was still finding it and would keep doing so.
She was still alive, after all.
“We’re dumb as shit.” She told Mikey.
He tried to right himself, but the curve of his shell rocked him out of balance.
She crawled over.
He fawned.
“Knock it off.” She offered her hand.
He reviewed it.
Looked at her.
Gently grasped it.
She pulled him upright before checking their connection. “Something my mom used to say. Basically, we both went nuclear.”
“But Kendra, I-”
She kissed his cheek in a swift peck.
She also retreated just as fast to address him openly. “You’re as full of shit as me.”
“You were totally justified in-!”
“No.”
“But-”
“No.” She made her open mouth obvious.
“Then-”
“No.” She stared him down with a growing smile.
“I’m sensing a pattern.”
“Yeah?”
He evaluated with pressed lids before he nodded slowly.
“Yeah.” She joined him.
“So…? What… now…?”
She breathed in and exhaled.
He followed suit.
“Wanna break up?”
He grunted. “No!”
“Me either.” Her head tipped as if it was helpless.
“But we just revealed some major damage.”
“Weird how that happens.”
“Seemed like overnight.”
“It definitely wasn’t.”
“I had my own talk track on why it wasn’t!”
“Did you make a PowerPoint?”
“I made two, but neither of them were finished because I forgot which had what info, then I realized I duplicated the slides and at that point I had like fifty plus in each and it was a lost cause so I decided to wing it.”
“So did I…” She felt the light in her eyes die.
“That was you… improvising?” His teeth appeared in a frown.
“Eat shit.”
“Not inviting you to open mic.”
“No, I’ll just let you embarrass yourself at a TED Talk.”
“This is why I exclusively don’t talk to people named Ted. They can be tapped at any moment.”
“That-!”
He fully believed whatever insanity he just spouted.
“Tracks.” She shook her head.
“Should we…?”
“Break up?”
“How can you say it so easily!?”
“You told me you loved me!”
“Eugh! I hoped you hadn’t noticed that!”
“Look!” She turned toward him.
He addressed her fully.
“I don’t know what to do here, but we both still want to be together, right?”
“Right.”
“Then…” She sighed. “We figure… that out. That… can be enough. It is for tons of cretins who basically just clone and feed all day while thinking they're happy.”
“But…”
“But?”
“We… we were happy… weren’t we?”
She stared at him openly.
He returned the gaze.
“On three.”
He nodded once. “One.”
“Two.”
“Yes.”
“Duh.”
Mikey exhaled so hard he looked like he might gag.
She watched him sympathetically.
She absolutely felt like vomiting.
“Then, we tackle it. One thing at a time… like we always do.”
He clearly had an anxious edge.
“And we’ll dismantle shit because I do think you’re mostly wrong and you… wait, you didn’t think what I did was wrong! How I treated you! You thought it was comeuppance for isolating me!”
“I said I thought you were too mean.” He corrected with a raised finger.
“True, but also that doesn't mean you deserve it so part wrong.”
“Huh!?”
“We need to untangle it. All of it and I… Jeremy has another job.”
“He… does…? Wait, did you say that? Are you… going to take it…?” He was fearful.
So was she. “I think… I need to. I need to do this again… This is like… what would your shrink license call it?
“I need a hint.”
“When you do something again to like, address it.”
“Immersion therapy…?” He tried.
“Yeah.”
“That’s usually done in a controlled way.”
“That’s how I did it…?”
He was a bit shifty. “Not even a little.”
“Then I’ll do it right… Will you… help me?”
He went on high alert. “But wouldn’t I-!?”
“Conflict of interest, I know, but again, I think you’re way off base and we’ll figure out why. Use all your PowerPoint time and channel it better. If I’m too much for you, what can I do to fix it?”
He openly thought.
“We don’t have to figure this out right now.”
“We have time.”
“Do we?”
He softened before looking at her. “I think we do.”
“Me too.”
🧡 NEXT 🧡
My darling betas @tmntxthings and @unrestrainedhotsoup always work double time and I can't thank them enough!
When I tell you that we are entering Kendra's cat era in AENEM...
Huge thanks to fleurashdesign who got the muscles just like I hoped 🙏
Based on this
"How did your first date go?"
Kendra likes to pretend that date went a little differently 🤭
Once again, @birdsnout draws the most amazing work!!
Inspired by this cover that was making its rounds!
Attempted Execute of Non-Executable Memory - Chapter 41
RotTMNT Michelangelo x Kendra
@shardkn1ight breaks it down panel by panel in this week's chapter art!
Rated: Teen and Up Audiences
Warnings/Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Romance, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Human/Turtle Relationships (TMNT), I Flesh Out Kendra’s Character, Character Study, I Give Kendra a Backstory, Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Childhood Trauma, Fake/Pretend Turned Real Relationships, First Generation Immigrant Kid Problems, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chaos Soulmates, They’re the Same Flavor of Unhinged and I Swear it Works, Shared Trauma Shared Goals Shared Bed, Mutually Assured Character Development, Happy Ending, Drug Use
Synopsis: Years have passed since Kendra hit the lowest of lows. It only took a couple of prison stints, but she’s carved out a simple existence that keeps her from repeating past mistakes. Plan goes according to boring plan until divine inspiration walks in using the form of one specific orange coded mutant. Kendra only needs to get close enough to him to plant a virus in his infuriating brother’s servers, but will she be infected along the way?
Also available on Ao3
First 🧡 Previous
A little spoon hung out of the corner of Leo’s mouth. “And then I says to the guy, I say: ‘you’re ordering a turkey sandwich and you want it with roast beef?’”
Kendra’s brows went up as she took a minuscule bite.
“’Yeah, I want the turkey, but no turkey and add roast beef!’” Leo’s arms went up sending his gelato skyward. “Then, my guy, order the roast beef!!! It’s literally the same sandwich! All the same toppings! This man is picking chocolate chips out of the dough and saying it’s different from sugar cookies! Does he want the eau de chompipe!? Stop messing with the damn sandwiches!”
Mikey’s cup dropped in his hand. “Leo, chocolate chip cookie dough isn’t even close to sugar cookie dough. The brown sugar for one-!”
“The amount of times I’ve been asked to make a latte, but add chocolate.” Kendra huffed.
Leo had tried to take a bite and swallowed with his whole body to point. “When mocha is right there!?”
Kendra nodded. “I had to ring someone up for extra syrup because she was so sure that mocha wasn’t what she wanted.”
“Insane!!” Leo griped to the clouds.
“Leo didn’t even work there!” Mikey pouted into his cup stuffed with a litany of flavors. “He knocked out the guy who did and covered for him for like one order.”
Kendra bumped her boyfriend lightly.
He grouched.
She smiled at him regardless and he seemed to feel it.
“That’s enough. It was enough, wasn’t it?” Leo looked to Kendra for support.
“Any food service is enough.” She agreed.
“This is the way!” Leo walked them to a boutique table and took a woven chair. “I killed that one RB sandwich though.”
“Did you put the turkey on and take it off though?” She chided.
Leo whined an incomprehensible string and fought his backpack.
Kendra studied the display between bites, mostly because she couldn’t picture the blue brother as a backpack guy. She knew those. They were mobile folk. Set in city, the type that fastened the straps and held them on the subway. They often left their abode for hours on end and worked multiple jobs. She had never seen a single one ever actually retrieve anything from their backpacks, but they always had them, ready and waiting.
Mikey dutifully isolated his multiple flavors for individual tastes before going back through to create a flow chart of how each one then paired.
She let her single choice melt on her tongue as Leo finally wrangled the bag off his shell and into his lap.
“You ready?” Leo looked at her while holding it as if he could unveil what was inside from underneath a cloche.
“I didn’t realize we were exchanging presents.” She mentioned lazily. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“This is not for you.” He clipped.
Her nose twitched with amusement. “What did you bring for show and tell then, kiddy boy?”
He was unaffected and shoved his hand into the bag to play coy, “For show and tell, I’ve brought…!!”
A large spiral bound sketchbook emerged and it was hard not to notice how Mikey immediately stiffened.
“Mike and I-!”
“You put it in your bag!? It’s been in your bag this whole time!?” Mikey screeched.
“Huh? Well-?”
“The bag I saw you fling at several walls! The one you dropped between buildings last night!?”
Leo looked around then back. “Yes…?”
Mikey flung himself like he was going to snatch up the book, but switched angles at the last second.
Kendra barely had enough time to slide her gelato across the table where Leo expertly caught it.
Mikey grabbed her by the upper arms. “You are my heart’s GPS! Lead me to sense! Make this!!!” He gestured toward his brother. “Make sense!”
“I don’t know what it is?” She told him evenly.
He feigned a weep against her.
“What is it?” She asked Leo with a loll of her head.
“Me and Mikey are working on a new comic…” Leo clearly had tempered his expectations since his big reveal was robbed from him. “Yay…!”
Her brow and lips immediately dropped.
He slid her ice cream back over to her, but kept it a safe distance away from Mikey. “We talked long and hard about what happened and I pitched switching roles. I’m drawing, spreading, lettering, coloring, and Mike’s doing the story!”
That brought her brows up. “That… could work.”
“Except…” Leo’s lids widened as he looked over his brother. “He’s kinda been like that about how I’m doing stuff.”
“He’s a mess!” Mikey complained. “He doesn’t respect his tools at all! He leaves them everywhere! He’s drawing in a spiral bound! He put it in his backpack! His backpack, Kendra!!”
Age old wisdom said that was how many of her elementary school notebooks had gotten bent out of shape. “How dare he.”
“I knew you’d get it!!” He clung to her.
His head bumped hers and she chanced delicately placing her chin against him.
He settled in a long groan.
“There, there…” She snuck a hand out to retrieve her cup. “So is stressing him out is working how you thought?”
“The stress thing is new…!” Leo appraised his brother before bringing the sketchbook back to look over. “My plan was supposed to have me taking over the labor. See what it was like to not be the dashing Tom Sawyer and live a while like the gullible Huck Finn!”
“Written on the ceiling.” Mikey sniveled.
“You’ve never read either book.” Kendra just knew.
“That obvious?” Leo beamed her a smile. “Let’s just say I got the Sparkle Notes.”
“That’s not even what those are called.” She managed to get a spoonful.
“Isn’t it?” He looked over his person for his phone.
“Besides him not respecting the craft, what do you think, poor lost lamb?” Kendra reviewed her boyfriend.
“Is that a pet name?” He peeked at her.
“It’s what the Widow Douglas called Huck.”
“Who?” Mikey squinted.
“Nevermind. You called me a GPS.” She jostled her form to signify she needed space.
He gave it to her. “You lead the way…”
“Barf.” Leo said noncommittally as he exchanged the sketchbook for his dripping cup. “Dang. Look what your mushyness did.”
“You haven’t even seen real spicy!” Mikey grumbled.
“I’m getting napkins. Napkin?” He looked at Mikey.
His brother turned his beak up.
“Napkin?” Leo asked Kendra.
“One.” She nodded.
“Napkins! Get ‘em while they’re dry and brown!” Leo walked away as he chanted something similar.
“How is it, really?” She asked as soon as Leo was out of earshot.
Mikey leaned against the table in a way that allowed him to both lick his dripping ice cream and thumb pages of the notebook. “It’s going really good. It’s always hard to tell if Lee is serious or not.”
She hummed lightly to say she was listening.
“He did do the storyboarding, but I keep waiting for the nib to drop. Like the time’ll come where he’s figured out a way to make me do it instead or have me take over or even just stop. I wouldn’t put it past him to commission something that looks like his work, just to get out of it, ya know?”
She was quiet.
“Pen nib.” He sensed the correction she needed. “Saying that made more sense than something about a shoe dropping. We’re not talking about shoes. This isn’t ballet.”
“Those are…”
“Slippers.” He agreed. “Or pointe shoes… It depends on what you’re doing.”
“Right.”
“The tools are important.”
“Is he borrowing yours?” She swiped her spoon through melting cream.
“No, he-! Huh…” Mikey seemed to only just then realize. “He bought his own stuff. Pretty good stuff actually. Blackwing pencils. Some pretty good screen tones. We decided on black and white since color was going to be a whole other thing.”
“Leo said he was coloring.”
“He meant the cover. Just that.”
She eyed him.
“It should be just that!” Mikey stressed.
She looked away and back.
Mikey fell face first into the table.
“Your gelato.”
“Let it melt like my dreams.”
“You’re being extra dramatic.”
“It’s him!” He pointed back towards the shop.
Kendra chanced a look over her shoulder and saw Leo schmoozing with an employee.
“He’s testing me.”
Leo never noticed the eyes on him so she turned back around. “You think?”
“Don’t you?” He peered at her in a half turn.
“I don’t know.” She really didn’t.
His lower lip pushed up his top. “You do.”
“He’s your brother.”
“But you two-!?” Mikey made a ball with his hands, but didn’t connect the two hemispheres. “You have this weird connection.”
“You and Sunita.” She felt the need to point out. “Who’s using weird, right now?”
“Just tell it to me straight. Hot blue poker straight to my soul.”
“Is that a pet name?”
“I don’t know!!”
“I think he’s being sincere and that’s throwing you off because he isn’t usually.”
Mikey blinked straight up into a sitting position. “Huh.”
“This was his idea. He bought his own shit. He’s carrying it around with him, it sounds like, everywhere he goes. He wanted to show his work off. I think you being dramatic about him is an extra kick.”
“The spice.” He nodded. “Lee did always like watching me work.”
“The way you bite your tongue when you’re focused?” Kendra’s head tipped to one affectionate side.
“I do that?” He leaned in.
“Sometimes.”
“Well, imagine me days into a masterpiece, covered in paint. I do the final sweep with my brush and say, ‘it’s done!’”
“What is it?” She asked as if she were there.
He mimed turning a canvas. “My muse.”
“Wow, where did I get that horse?” She dropped her jaw in jest.
“Same place I got those extensions. By the way, my place is a mess.”
His room, she clammed up.
“I do take care of my tools, but in the moment…!”
“It gets like mine!” She rushed out.
He started to eye her, but the drape of a napkin separated them.
“Your bib!”
Kendra snatched it from him so fast the corner tore off and stayed in his finger.
Leo comically used the tiny fleck to dot his oozing bowl before he used the rest of his fistful to actually wipe it clean. “Did you need to talk to a man about a horse? I swear I got a horse guy.”
“That’s a centaur.” Kendra had a feeling.
“Kinnara if you want to call on divine inspiration.” Mikey nodded in time.
“Is that a thing?” She asked.
“It always is.” He answered with a faraway gaze.
Leo seemed to gawk. “No, it was a centaur. Kendra got it. Zules, remember Mike?”
“I thought he was half tiger…?”
“No, that was-!”
“Tell me about your story.” Kendra interjected as she cleaned out the bottom of her cup.
“Yes!” Leo dove to get his backpack, but over correcting as the sketchbook had been left out on the table. “Oh man, this is so good. So Jupiter Jim-! Oh, wait! Mikey should tell it! He wrote it!”
Mikey looked as if a spotlight clicked on over his head and he had not been prepared to bask in it. “Uh…”
“Story time!” Leo flipped around so the first page of a roughly drawn comic was front and center.
His elbows clunked on the table as he held up in demonstration for Kendra.
“Location: some bar….” Leo sent eager eyes toward his brother to pick up the tale.
“Space… bar…” Mikey eased in. “It’s a bar in space.”
Leo’s finger led down the scribbled squares.
“We open on one of JJ’s D-tier foes drinking away another failed planetary caper…”
Kendra was immediately lost as soon as names were introduced. This was clearly based on some kind of universe the two men knew well and she did not. It pegged her as some high level nerd shit considering the sci-fi aspect. She guessed she had one of them mention the title character’s name, but the people Mikey started to bring up seemed to be part of some kind of one-off or extended universe.
His passion was bright even if hers was not. He got into a flow state of explaining in his twisted way. He would lead down one topic line before remembering that something at the end made no sense because he forgot to mention something else. It rounded back for him and she only knew how to keep track because of her time with him. She enjoyed the way he rounded out scenes and thought quietly on how attractive he was; something that seemed both foreign and distant.
She usually didn’t allow such thoughts, even personally, and such dailies had been scarce because they had been endlessly entrenched in distraction lately.
Leo was part of that and his drawings were crude at best. Though his stick figures barely showed emotions, he still put them in as dynamic of poses as possible. It spoke not to skill, but knowledge, something she knew Leo held bouts of. She had a feeling that Sparkle Notes mispronunciation had been less about whether he knew the actual name or not and more because he had a calculated aura to maintain. It was a reflex. One bred on lowering another’s guard by convincing them he was dimwitted which allowed him to either fly by carefree or dupe someone if need be. From his work, she read that he had never drawn more than a scribble in his life, he probably wouldn’t be learning anatomy any time soon, but he still had read a ton of comics which gave him a lengthy basis in which to play up his lackluster ability.
She couldn’t help but move toward Irma in her next thought. It was a logical step from Leonardo as the two appearances were coincidentally tied. Kendra hoped that was about how far the two’s pairing would be, but who knew what would happen with Irma’s thirst. Irma precluded the question of where Kenda would be headed next. The brunette had passed her the gift of career choice, but the nature of which still scared Kendra, even though she was more sure of herself by the day. She wanted Leo’s input, which seemed silly considering the length of time she had known the man, but at the same time, he felt like the only person that would understand what exactly she was asking about.
She appreciated Mikey, but even he had gotten too close for this. She needed that fresh take, the new perspective, the one he had inadvertently introduced her to. It was remarkable how much an outside perspective could expand one’s limited viewpoint. It was more absurd when she considered how far she had gone to keep her field of vision as microscopic as possible.
Mikey headed toward a finale and all the discordant threads suddenly crashed together. Plot lines that seemed like in world myths became tangible and explainable mythos. It lynchpinned the story together and Kendra found herself gaping at the conclusion. It all made sense in the end and with it came a comical one-page epilogue that teased the reader with exactly enough to want more.
“Shit…” She found herself with only one expletive.
Mikey shrank into his shoulders some. “What do you think?”
“That’s amazing.” She pointed at Leo’s notebook. “I don’t say that. It really is. This bit with the walking head here. It looks exactly like Mikey described.”
Mikey turned to Leo with a glow.
Leo returned it before he went to bask in his own. “You think!? I was studying heads in jars, which, why is that a thing? But it really helped me get a feel. I may have snuck into the Smithsonian and they got stuff pickled in there that you never want to see on your bubbie’s shelf!”
“You snuck into a museum?” Kendra’s expression cracked in his direction.
“Yeah? What about it? I didn’t think that would be a deal breaker for you.” Leo checked with Mikey.
The younger brother smoothed the air with an open palm. “Uh, it’s kind of our thing actually.”
“You do not have a monopoly on breaking into museums.” Leo’s lids flattened.
“We kinda do.” Kendra trended to agree.
“That’s totally unfair.” Leo leveled with her. “If anything, it’s our thing. Humans wouldn’t get it! Mutants went years not being able to go anywhere so sneaking around was all we had!”
“We are not playing who’s the most oppressed. I’m brown.” Kendra scoffed.
“We’re green!” Leo
“Alright, try, brown, black, and Asian. That’s a whole team.” She bargained over the either empty or emptying gelato cups.
“Four greens and I’m pretty sure one of the cards in your hand is mixed.” Leo’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh!?” Kendra lit up. “You wanna play the, ‘he’s half white so he’s not Chinese’ card?! How’s that going!? Let’s really get into Jase’s genealogy then, shall we!? We can break it down along with how you all are half human.”
Leo played up a shiver. “Everyone! She said the h-slur!”
Kendra bent her tiny spoon and flicked it with learned precision right at Leo’s face.
He snatched it clean out of the air with lightning fast reflexes. “Ha!”
“Yawn. Do something impressive.” Kendra leaned the attention toward Mikey in an illustration that she had seen all he had to offer and preferred.
Mikey seemed especially quiet, but before she could ask, Leo went, “Well, how about this then!? What did you bring to show and tell today, Kendra?!”
Kendra wobbled up under the same light that had just hit Mikey.
This time her boyfriend betrayed her with, “You know… we did both share something…”
She sent him an incensed look, but he appeared smoothed. “Uh…”
“Could be anything!” Leo preened. “You do have something going on in your life, don’t you!?”
“I…!” She wasn’t sure it was enough.
Leo hummed judgmentally.
“I made… a new friend.” It was old news to Mikey, but Kendra still checked with him.
He nodded appropriately that she had made a good choice.
Leo seemed genuinely disarmed. “Seriously? Not just how I made friends with Trish inside?”
Kendra and Mikey both stared.
“Trish!” Leo threw his hands out to the business they were sitting outside of. “She had a nametag! She made all of our orders! She dealt with Mikey sampling every flavor!”
Kendra’s eyes rolled because despite having done that, Mikey had still gone through reexamining his flavors.
“Not like Trish.” Kendra found herself. “We started off like that, I guess. She pissed me off at my favorite murah-murahan store.”
“I have like ten questions.” Leo’s expression warbled with confusion.
Kendra stared at him with a raised brow.
“Murah-murahan?” He started.
“It’s like… cheap-cheap. Toko murah-murahan. A store of cheap crap.”
“Like the Mario enemy.” Leo nodded sagely.
“Just like the Mario enemy.” Their family resemblance came out as Mikey did exactly the same thing.
“Sure.” Kendra clipped.
“I did not piss Trish off.” Leo pointed out.
Kendra had a feeling that was about all of his questions as hyperbole seemed like his strong suit. “I’m not really interested in the typical Trish’s… temperament, if you haven’t been able to tell by now.”
“Then who’s the lucky lady!?” Leo leaned forward, smarmy.
“You do not want to talk to Irma like that.” Kendra shook her head.
“Like what?” Leo became self-aware and straightened.
“What did she say again?” Kendra looked at Mikey.
“She called herself a flirt flop! It was great!” Mikey chuckled.
“You’re not into tip grabbers like good ole’ Trish? You’re into love hounds?!” Leo appeared betrayed.
“I’m beginning to think Trish is a stand in.”
“Am I getting analyzed again?” Leo’s lashes batted.
“Not even. I was the one who got my ass handed to me when we went for boba.”
“Boba!?” Leo gasped without an ounce of sincerity. “Did you exchange socials too?”
“That is not a thing!” Kendra hissed.
“It’s so serious.” Leo told Mikey.
“Chronic, even.” Mikey agreed.
“You have a friend! Mazel tov!” Leo pretended to throw up confetti. “I always knew you had it in you!”
“I’ve known you all of two-three weeks! You are insufferable. You are all huffing paint full of lead from your sewer home!” Kendra’s head lolled.
Leo snickered. “What’d she do to make an impression on the famous Kendra Byerly?”
“Famous how?”
“The starlet that took our baby boy.” Leo reached across the table.
Mikey rebuffed him to drink what was now a melted milkshake.
“All the way to Elmhurst!”
“How terrible.” Kendra mocked.
“And how like if you start typing your name in it auto-fills with like fifty articles about how you harmed the precious elite.”
“You haven’t read Mark Twain, but you’re privy to, who would that be? Marx would say something else, so Orwell somehow…?” Kendra connected a visual dot between Mikey and Leo.
“Down with the bougie-was-eez as I’ve always said.”
“No one says that. No one has ever said that.” Kendra stared.
“We’re getting off topic and Mikey knows how I hate talking politics.” Leo shared a tip of his head to his brother.
“Christmas ’09, I’ll never forget.” Mikey agreed.
“You were, what?!” Kendra did some quick math. “Four!?”
“We tried to show how collective action, taking the wrapping from our presents, would show the government, dad, that he shouldn’t keep means to himself, our gifts from us.” Leo continued on.
“Which one of you even…?!” One of her hands went to her T-zone.
“It was Leo.” Mikey didn’t even need to think about it.
“V for Vendetta had swords!” Leo seemed to think that was an iron clad defense.
“I have no idea how I am ever supposed to look your dad in the eye and be civil.” Kendra came away to stare miserably at the table.
“Well…” Mikey started.
Leo picked up his sentence. “You're short but you’re not that short. Everyone sort of looks down on him…”
“How tall is he?” Kendra’s attention rose. “You’re turtles and you all broke at least five feet.”
“At least?!” Leo quacked before he seemed to school himself.
She watched as he brought his hands in, held them at the center of his plastron, and then pushed an invisible weight out.
“‘Their reaction says more about them than it does about me. They have a short fuse and I can be the bigger turtle.’” He spoke a mantra.
Kendra ground out an irritated noise.
His attention popped as if nothing had happened. “Tell me about this friend that ate your ass.”
“Handed her ass!!” Mikey squealed.
“Yup.” Leo pointed at him, but his eyes and face were unchanged. “I heard it. Not great. Let’s keep going.”
Kendra guessed that was fine. “She… read me like you wanted me to do you except I didn’t give consent… or ask… or anything!”
“So she’s nosey.” Leo’s gaze was too focused on her.
“Not really…” Her eyes darted.
“Presumptuous?”
“She’s bold, but… not like that?”
“You’re killing me. Rude?”
“She knew I could take it and that I needed a reality check.”
“Dang, on a first date?”
Kendra made a face that said she agreed despite his annoying persistence of larger context.
“You made a friend.” Leo repeated. “Now what? Big plans? Girl’s night?”
That was a phrase she never even considered could enter her sphere of existence. “No, we’re… figuring it out. I want to see her lizard, but she said that was-”
Leo lit up.
Kendra soured.
He grinned.
She grimaced. “Third… date… stuff…”
“Ha!” Leo pointed at her, but swung his head toward his brother. “You gotta keep a tight leash on this one.”
“Barf.” Mikey mocked him and added a digit down his own throat for emphasis.
Leo waved him off. “Either way! That’s great! You guys have a lot in common?”
“Sort of…? Not really. She’s an inventor, her words. She’s really shit at it. It’s more like our personalities work. She’s got an ego too, but… it works. It’s hard to explain.” She gave him a meaningful look.
Leo took a moment, but she saw a flicker and catch.
He knew what she was getting at and a tip of his lids confirmed.
“And…?” He pressed with that knowledge.
“She…” Kendra sighed “She said I should go into technical project management.”
“What’s that?” Leo looked at Mikey.
Mikey shrugged as he had been told, but still didn’t really get what it was.
“Is it good? It doesn’t seem good.”
“It’s… leading a team.” She exaggerated the same gaze. “A team doing tech work. The thing I’ve been semi-avoiding, but getting back into.”
He was quiet.
“Checking all their work, so coding or building or something. Not really a manager. More like the person in a group project that hijacks everything, but also makes sure you get an A.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Leo turned all the way in his seat.
Kendra followed his eye line.
He gazed at the street.
A few listless people walked by.
On the other side of the road two people appeared to be arguing about a parked car.
He was lying.
She knew it, but not why.
She had seen him understand.
She knew enough about him to know that he should have seen the equivalence between them.
Had she been wrong?
If she second guessed him, what else would she need to?
Irma?
She had made so much progress.
She had seen what happened when she clung to it.
She had massacred Mikey.
Leo wasn’t her boyfriend.
He was her boyfriend’s brother.
A bare thread of in-law status connected them.
She swallowed her worries and was uncharacteristically herself. “Bullshit.”
“Huh?” He seemed absent as he gave her half his gaze.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Don’t think I do.”
“Leader of a team?! Also being part of it?! Having all that responsibility! Wanting them to look up to you!”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“Do you think I’m asking? You can’t give me that! You’re-!”
“I was forced to do all that.” He addressed her with a little more of his face and one of those bright red crescents. “Irma told you. Who’s Irma? She’s not your employer. Isn’t your other friend doing that?”
She stuttered a little.
“Look…” Leo did a smooth rotation back to the table. “I’ll be honest with you since apparently that’s what you don’t want to say you prefer, but I’m not going to give you permission either.”
Her mouth twitched into a frown.
“You don’t need it. If you want my opinion, I don’t know what to say because, again, I have no idea what any of that is. Tech management doesn’t sound like stopping bad guys or living up to expectations or even your destiny.”
Her tongue rolled against her teeth.
“I know how to be me. These suckers-” Leo gestured to Mikey as the collective whole. “-they learned how to be them. We did it all by learning to be us and throwing everything else out. There was no job description that could define what we do. The law gives us vigilante status at best. It made you a felon, so the best I can say to you, to anyone, is to just be yourself.”
Her lips barely parted.
“Minus maybe the crime stuff? Because then it kind of does cross over into our business and is that really who you are? Is that who you want to be? I’m not saying being good is all peaches and cream or melting mango gelato that was really good and I am going to get another cup that I’m like sixty-four percent positive Trish will comp me for, but it feels better? Doesn’t it? Doing a you that doesn’t have to worry about all that?”
Leo gave her a single lingering look to seal in his speech before he made a big effort pushing off the table.
“Ugh! My back! I’m so close to thirty! Is this what the rest of my life looks like?! I hope my metabolism keeps up. I do not want all this gelato going to my hips! I have a figure to keep!”
With that he lazily walked with a played up gait back to the shop.
Kendra stared where he had been until the air blew out of her.
She sank into her seat.
“See what I mean?” Mikey’s gaze felt affectionate against her cheek.
“He’s always like that, huh?”
“But he’s also getting out of work, right? Like he talked his way out of helping you, but…”
“Helped me in the process, but made it my fault somehow?” She looked at Mikey.
“And he’s doing all the comic stuff but the story!?” Sarcasm sounded odd coming off him in this one particular moment.
Kendra chuckled. “Apparently.”
“You gonna apply for that job?”
“There’s not even a job. It’s a career idea. I haven’t even put Jeremy’s thing on a resume.”
Mikey’s hum led somewhere.
She looked to see.
It was sideways and with a pout.
“What?”
“If there’s no job and that’ll take time, does that mean you’re still too busy?”
“For what?” She felt lighter.
“I don’t know, but this-” He glanced toward the ice cream parlor. “-and…”
His pupils rolled as he couldn’t find a suitable direction.
“I need Kendra time. We haven’t gotten into a single shenanigan or run away from anybody in weeks! I’m dying over here!”
“Coming up with pet names…” She saw him clearly.
“It’s a reflex! I’m playing you up in my imagination!”
“How is she?”
“Not nearly as fun!”
“Well… Soon? The next thing we do? Do you want to do it, just us?”
“I’ll check my schedule.”
Her gaze plummeted into a chide.
He smirked.
“Guess which side of the percentile Neon Leon landed on!!!” Leo cheered as he stormed over with a full cup.
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