I don't own any of the villains, either. You can have the Mary Sues.
The Mary Sue AuditionsDarius Dunne shifted his considerable bulk in the small theater seat. The auditions had been going on all morning and his backside, among other things, was beginning to tire of it. His fellow villains had insisted that they could help him, that they had a foolproof plan to destroy those horrible turtles, and so he had journeyed all this way with the prospect of hiring one of these "Mary Sue" creatures. But after sitting for several hours and viewing multiple prospective Marys, he was beginning to think he had made a mistake.
"Forgive me, gentleman – and lady," he said, adding a nod to Karai, "but I still don't quite see how one of these – females – could possibly destroy the turtles."
"It's an observable phenomena," Bishop explained. "The turtles meet a one of these women and wham! – one or more of them instantly falls in love with her. They suddenly get weak, forget who they are, form a barbershop quartet, become two dimensional and act out of character; once that happens, they become easy pickings."
"Like shooting fish in a barrel!" Stockman said gleefully.
"But," said Dunne, "if I understand correctly, the turtles have supposedly encountered Mary Sue after Mary Sue, and yet they are still alive and well in your continuity."
Bishop glanced around at his colleagues, his expression questioning. After they all gave him slight nods, he once again addressed Dunne. "Well, I'll tell what we're gonna do. We were holding these in reserve for our own use, but as a special offer we'll present them to you. The reason that other Mary Sues did not effectively destroy those freaks is because we – their worst enemies – did not have a hand in their creation. But now, I offer you special edition Mary Sues of our own design, guaranteed to entrap and weaken the turtles! You, Daimyo's son – er, do you have an actual name?"
"Uh," said the Daimyo's son uncertainly.
"Never mind. Go tell the Marys we want to see the special editions next." The Daimyo's son darted backstage
"These will really be the top of the line models." Bishop said to Dunne as they waited. When the Daimyo's son returned and took his seat, a young woman stepped onstage and into the pool of illumination cast from the single overhead light. Bishop smiled in satisfaction. "Ah, it looks like my project will be up first."
The young woman on stage peered into the darkened theater with her best TV spokes model smile. "Whom am I auditioning for, please?"
"That is not your concern!" Shredder shot back harshly.
"All will be made clear if you make the final callback." Bishop told her. " For now, just state your name and requisite traumatic back story."
The girl squared her shoulders and cocked her hip, adopting a tough, cynical expression. "Yeah, my name's Opal. My mother named me that because of my strange but beautiful violet eyes. But my parents died when I was just two years old when our house caught on fire. They said it was my fault, that I knocked over a candle when everyone was asleep." She covered her face in her hands for a moment and let out an anguished cry. "I killed my parents! …. So anyway, they sent me to this orphanage where they all hated me because I was so smart and stuck up for myself and everyone was jealous. The woman who ran the orphanage sold me to a secret geisha house in the city when I was 16, but they kicked me out because I was too much of a trouble maker, and anyway they only wanted the most beautiful girls, and my cheekbones are too high for true beauty. So I ended up peddling fish and sexual favors down at the docks, and that's when-"
"Cheekbones too high?" Dunne broke in, turning to Bishop with puzzled expression.
"What does that even look like?" Shredder wondered.
The Daimyo's son thoughtfully stroked his goatee and squinted into the distance. "I'm trying to picture it…"
"She looks fine to me," Stockman said.
Karai merely rolled her eyes.
"It's standard procedure with protagonists of this sort," Bishop explained. "In an attempt to make the heroine seem more real and accessible she is given a physical flaw that doesn't really mar her attractiveness, like cheekbones too high or a mouth that's too generous or hair that's too curly…" He regarded the five sets of eyes blinking at him skeptically. "I researched it thoroughly!"
"Hey!" Opal suddenly called out. "Excuse me, is my acting bothering your interrupting?"
"Patience, miss," said Dunne. "We're assessing your suitability. You may continue in a moment."
"Hey, I'm not here just to wait around and serve you! Are you such a big jerk to all women, or am I just special?"
Dunne looked at her in confusion. "I beg you pardon?"
"You'll be begging a lot more than that if you keep getting in my face!"
"What? That doesn't even make sense!"
"Try switching you brain on," she shot back, "then I'd make more sense."
"Why…you…" Dunne sputtered.
"Look out, you got your mouth hanging open. You better shut it or you'll let all the flies out!"
Dunne turned to Bishop in exasperation. "How am I supposed to work with this?"
"You know what your problem is?" Opal said to Dunne. "You're so uptight! You know, all work and no play makes you a…a…big fat guy. Ha!"
"Sorry, Mr. Dunne," said Bishop, a bit contritely. "I've conditioned her to be a spitfire. Raphael in particular can't resist this type."
"Bah!" The Daimyo's son suddenly interjected. "You don't want Raphael. You want to destroy Leonardo first." He started rocking gently, back and forth in his seat. "Yesss. We aaall want to destroy Leonardo."
Dunne eyed him anxiously for a moment before turning his attention back to Bishop. "Actually, I rather find the orange one most irritating. He's just so - immature."
"Well, you could use her to create a love triangle!" Bishop suggested. "She'll work in multiple situations. She's the classic Mary Sue model."
"I'm a classic!" Opal echoed proudly.
Dunne considered the young woman on stage. "You do have spunk, Opal."
"That's my name, don't wear it out!"
"I hate spunk."
"Oh yeah?" she cried. "What are you going to do about? Just because you're some kind of bad evil guy you think you can go around being a big jerk all the time! Well guess what? I'm not-"
"No, no, Mr. Bishop," Dunne said. "I'm sorry. She won't do. I just can't imagine making the journey back to my time with that obnoxious harpy in tow."
But the prospective Mary Sue wasn't ready to give up yet. "What's the matter, can't take the heat? Maybe you just never had anyone stand up to you before. Maybe you need-"
"Thank you". Shredder said, holding up a hand and cutting her off. "Very nice. That will do."
Opal broke out into a big hostess smile. "Do I get the part?"
"We'll call you."
Opal left the pool of light on the bare stage and another young woman stepped in. The brain, hunk of spinal column, and single eyeball in a jar that made up the entirety of Baxter Stockman began to bounce excitedly in its liquid. "Mine is up next. Wait'll you see this!"
"Please state your name and requisite traumatic back story," Shredder said.
"Well, my full name is Amethyst, but my friends call me Ami…that's Ami with an 'i'. I was just an ordinary girl, finishing my last year in high school and looking forward to college because everyone in high school was jealous of me because I was too smart and too pretty and I always made them look like fools when they tried to pick on me." A shadow of sadness crossed her face. "And then my life changed…Baxter Stockman kidnapped me and performed genetic experiments on me…on my reproductive parts…and now I can never have children…I can just…sniff…lay eggs." She gazed mournfully into the audience. "And then…when I try to sit on them…you know…sniff…they break."
Stockman eagerly leaned his eyeball as far as he could in Dunne's direction. "Huh? Huh? How about that?"
"Er," Dunne tried to find words. "That is very – creative – I must say."
"Damn straight. That uppity little purple one who thinks he's so smart would go nuts trying to fix her up. He couldn't resist! Not that he could ever undo my genius."
"I wouldn't mind undoing Donatello," Dunne muttered darkly. "That one thinks too much."
"No, no!" cried the Daimyo's son to no one in particular. "Not Donatello. Leonardooooo…"
"But I try to look on the bright side," continued Amethyst/Ami, "because I have spunk."
Dunne started rubbing the space between his eyes. He was beginning to develop a headache. "Not another one."
"Stockman didn't know I know ninjitsu, and I escaped from his lab –"
"Huh?" Stockman said. "I didn't program you to say that."
"I know," Amethyst/Ami replied, "I was improvising. I think this should be a collaborative effort. After all, what's more important, a dusty old script or the creative impulse of the artist? As I was saying, I learned to fight from my uncle who ran a ninja studio in New York –"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Shredder said, holding up a hand. "I'm confused. Are you saying that your uncle was a master of ninjitsu, and that he ran a dojo?"
"Isn't that what I just said?" she replied saucily. "But he didn't run a dojo, he ran a ninja studio."
"Oh, no." Stockman groaned.
Shredder had the measure of her now, but he continued his questioning just to toy with her. "Were you…somehow adopted into an old Japanese family?"
"No, duh."
"But you say you learned the ancient, highly secretive, and expressly Japanese art of ninjitsu from your family."
"Uh-huh."
"But…you're Caucasian."
"You take that back!"
It was too much for Stockman. He exploded in exasperation, his eyeball jerking agitatedly about on the end of its optic nerve. "He means you're a white girl! Look, the secrets of ninjitsu are passed on only to clan members. I can count on one hand – well, if I had a hand I could count on it – the number of Westerners who even claim to have been taught ninjitsu, and half of them are full of hooey anyway, and – Look, just stick to the script!"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Stockman," said Dunne, "I don't think she would work out. It's all just too – implausible."
"Thank you," Bishop told the girl. "That will be all."
"Wait!" she protested. "You haven't heard me sing yet. They say I have a voice like an angel. Listen…and IIIIIIIIIIIIeeeeIIIIIIIIIIII, will always – love yoooooou, Oh-oh I-I-I – will always love –"
"Forget it!" Stockman cried. "Go, just go! Gad dang Mary Sue going off book and ruining all my hard work." His gray matter splooshed dejectedly against the side of the jar. "I can't work with these people."
Bishop stood up and stretched. "Well gentlemen, and lady, I suggest we take a short break for lunch and reconvene in half an hour. Agreed?"
Lunch for Karai meant a late breakfast in a small diner near the theater. What with helping her father run his businesses both legitimate and illegitimate, and the duties involved in being jonin of the clan proper, she had been too busy in the morning to eat. Nor was she particularly hungry now, but she felt she needed to put some kind of fuel in her body. She sat in a booth by herself with a bowl of cold cereal, trying to organize the rest of her day. She sighed irritably. Personally, she didn't think anything productive would result from these auditions. They were merely eating into time that she really didn't have to spare.
Karai leaned her head tiredly in her hand and gave herself a moment to rest, stirring her spoon idly around in her bowl and sending the couple of dozen cheerios skimming across the surface of the milk. As they slowed and settled, a cluster of them united to form the shape of a nearly perfect 'L'. Hmm, how curious. She began nudging the other cheerios about with the back of her spoon, carefully forming more letters. Her brow furrowed in concentration. 'E's were tricky. "Eeeeeeee," she murmured softly as she painstakingly completed the letter and encouraged it float beside the 'L'. So intent was she on her task that, trained ninja though she was, she did not notice when another person sat down across from her.
"Oooooooo."
"Karai."
"Gah!"
She scooped up some of the damning cheerios in a panic and shoved them into her mouth. The combination of gasping in shock and trying to bolt down food at the same time proved unfortunate. Some of the cereal shot down her windpipe and then abruptly changed direction as she choked and coughed, spewing out of her mouth to spatter across the table. And the Shredder.
"Sorry, father," she gasped. "Ate too fast. I was cough really hungry."
"Indeed," he replied, picking a piece of soggy cheerio off his cheek. "Well, if you're finished, we are about to resume the auditions."
"Yes, I'm finished." Karai dropped some money on the table and together they left the diner. As they crossed the street, she watched her father from the corner of her eye a bit nervously. He walked in silence, and seemed to be thinking something over. Something serious.
"Karai –"
"I care nothing for Leonardo! Destroy him!"
"What?"
"What?"
"Er, I was about to tell you that I scheduled a meeting with the president of JDSU, and I require your presence there."
"Oh. Yes. Of course, father."
The Shredder looked at her closely. "Are you feeling well? You look feverish."
"Yes, I'm fine," she answered quickly. "Just a bit of – indigestion. I think I ate too fast."
"My name in Serenity, and my audition will be a performance art piece depicting my courtship with my soulmate Raphael, presented through mime and interpretive yoga."
"Okaaaay," Bishop replied dubiously to the woman on stage. "Proceed."
After watching in silence a few moments, the Daimyo's son turned away in disgust. "Bah! Another one for Raphael. We must destroy Leonardo!"
"You know," Dunne said to him, "You really have an unhealthy obsession with Leonardo."
"My obsession is not unhealthy! I mean – I don't have an unhealthy obsession!"
"Come now," said Shredder. "Even I think you have an unhealthy obsession."
"You think – " the Daimyo's son's eyebrows shot up incredulously. "Oh, hello Mr. Pot, I'm Kettle."
"I am hardly obsessive," Shredder said indignantly.
"Uh, Father…" Karai broke in, her voice concerned.
"Nooooo, you're not obsessive," said the Daimyo's son. "You only got go non-obsessively pissy that you sent your entire clan after him that time."
"Gentlemen, please," said Karai. "You should see…"
"I'm thorough," said Shredder.
"You're obsessed," said the Daimyo's son.
"I crush my enemies!"
"You think about him night and day."
"Someone stop her!" cried Karai.
All eyes turned to Karai, whose jaw was dropped in speechless horror, and then to what Karai was watching on stage. Their own jaws followed suit.
Bishop was the first to find his voice. "Good god, woman! What are you doing? Get up! Get your clothes on! No one wants to see that!"
"But I was just enacting the moment when we first acknowledged our passion for each and had wild animal sex on the –"
"I don't care. This audition is over."
"But I haven't gotten to the best part! When Raph and I have wonderful healing sex after he has to fight Leo when he almost raped me –"
"Hold it," said Karai, standing up. "When who almost did what?" Her voice had gone so ominously glacial that the men on either side of her began to edge nervously away.
"When Leo nearly raped me. Because he was in love with me, too, and he couldn't bear to think that I loved another. And he didn't think Raph deserved me. So he went all dark and broody - you know, like he did that one time – until his anger and resentment finally took over."
"Not that I want to defend my enemy," Shredder remarked, "but he went all dark and broody because he felt he had failed his family and almost led them to their deaths, not because of some chit of a girl."
"Oh, but I had a little talk with him about that," Serenity replied brightly, "and made it all better. Now he only gets dark and broody over me. I was his breath of sunlit air, the first person he felt anything for since that witch Karai betrayed him."
Karai turned to her fellow villains. "No one wants to destroy Leonardo more than I do, but even I can't stomach any more of this nonsense."
"Well," Serenity put in, "he probably wouldn't have tried to rape me if he hadn't started hallucinating that I was Karai."
"WHAT!?"
"Because I beat him in a ninjitsu match and it embarrassed him. And it all came to a head. All the jealousy, unrequited desire, betrayal, resentment, loneliness'…he was really mad at Karai, not me, see? He just lost control…Get it? The one who's always in control…finally snapping and losing it?" She regarded all the faces, ranging from uncomprehending to furious, staring back at her. She stamped her foot impatiently. "You people don't know anything about character development."
"Who sponsored her for these auditions?" Karai demanded.
The other villains glanced at one another, shrugging. "Not me." "Wasn't me." "Me either."
"How did you get in here?" Dunne asked her suspiciously.
"Uh…"
"Young woman, did you crash these auditions?"
Serenity held her chin high. "So what if I did? I don't need a sponsor. I'm Raphael's soulmate. We were meant to be."
"Call security." Shredder snapped.
"No, please," said Karai. "Allow me, father."
"Don't you mess with me," cried Serenity as Karai strode purposefully to the stage. "I defeated Leo! I went to ninja summer camp for eight years. Hi-ya…eep!"
"This is the real world," snarled Karai as she twisted the Mary Sue's arm tightly behind her back. She hustled Serenity off the stage, the other woman protesting loudly until her voice faded gradually into the wings. "Get your hands off me, you smelly witch! You can't fight fate! Me and Raph 4 eva…!"
"Hey! Hey, Karai!" Bishop called after them. " Don't stain the floor with her; I want my security deposit back on this place!" He though for a moment then added. "Or the walls!"
"So who's next?" the Daimyo's son asked.
"The next one is my creation, said Shredder as yet another young woman walked out onstage. " I picked a particularly attractive one."
"Please state you name and requisite traumatic back story," Bishop said wearily.
"My name is Monet, and I was once a great musician. I was a concert pianist; they said I played so beautifully it made the angels weep." Tears suddenly sprang into her bright orbs. "But that was before…before I refused to play a concert for the Shredder because he's an evil bad guy…before he kidnapped me…before he took my thumbs." She held up her hands, displaying a missing digit on either one.
"Ooo," said Bishop, "I like that. Traumatic, disturbing, yet not over the top."
"I thank you," Shredder replied, bowing. "I've always been a great admirer of you work as well."
"Really? You flatter me."
Darius Dunne suddenly stood up. "Gentlemen, I've seen enough."
"You mean you'll hire my Mary Sue?" queried Shredder.
"No, I mean this is absurd. I appreciate all your efforts, but quite honestly, I don't see how any of this nonsense could ever really destroy the cursed turtles. You're living in a dream world"
The other villains began to protest his departure. "Wait!" "I assure you-" "You haven't seen mine yet!" "Don't go!"
"No, I've taken up enough of your time, and you have certainly taken up more than enough of mine. Enjoy your fool's paradise, gentlemen, I'll find my own way to destroy them." With that, Dunne ponderously shuffled his way out of the theater. The remaining villains looked at one another in consternation,
"So what are we going to do with all these Marys?" the Daimyo's son finally asked.
Bishop shrugged. "Put them to use, I suppose."
Put them to use. Shredder considered the forlorn young woman on the stage. She really was beautiful. In fact, she was the most beautifulest thing he ever saw. She was so beautiful and so pure it could make even a man like him want to be good enough for her. "Hmmm, perhaps I should amend my ways."
"What did you just say?" Bishop said, narrowing his eyes.
"I didn't say anything."
"Yes, you did. You just muttered something about amending your ways." Bishop's eyes flew open in terror as it suddenly dawned on him. "Oh, no..she's…she's getting to you."
"Nonsense!" Shredder scoffed. "What do I care for her long golden tresses or her limpid orbs the color of a summer storm with their innocent yet seductive gaze?"
"Everybody get away from him!" Bishop screamed. "He's going out of character!" The villains frantically tried to put some distance between themselves and Shredder, sprinting down the aisles and scrambling madly over the back of the seats.
"I didn't know it was catching!" cried Stockman.
"It's on me!" Bishop wailed. "Mary Sue bacteria crawling all over me!"
"Ah! Get it off! Get it off!" the Daimyo's son screamed, clawing at his arms as he ran.
"Fools," Shredder spat contemptuously as his panicked colleagues deserted the theater. His eyes met the eyes of Monet, those innocent eyes whose depths reflected layers of hidden sadness. She understood him! He would make himself good enough for her! He was sure he had her confiscated thumbs pack away on ice somewhere. He'd give them back right away! "Yes, my lady," he said adoringly. "My love. My…
pwecious."