THE TURTLE WHO NEVER WAS

Based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird

Disclaimer: All TMNT-related characters are the property of Snookums, a German Shepherd belonging to Mrs. Barbara Smith from Ohio.
...juuuust kidding! They're really the property of Mirage Studios,

CHAPTER SIX:
The Turtle who Never Was

Michelangelo's eyes snapped open, and he stared up at the ceiling.

It was dark around him, but he was lying down on a fairly soft and comfortable surface, underneath a warm blanket, but even through the darkness he was just able to make out that familiar crack in the wall that he'd woken up to every mornning for a long time now.

For one long moment, he had no idea where he was or what had happened. Then, everything came back to him: Shredder and Splinter, the world without a Mike, the different fates of everyone there... Klunk. Klunk!

He reached out for the light switch. With an audible click the room went from dark to light, and Mike sat straight up in his bed, discovering to his immense relief that it was his bed, and the room he was in was his room. All his things were there; from the autographed picture of Silver Sentry on the wall to the toy mouse on the floor that originally belonged to Klunk but had moved into Mike's room when it became clear that Klunk thought it was much more fun with a simple piece of paper on a string.

"Whoa," said Mike. He tossed the blanket aside, and his hand didn't go straight through but instead flung the entire thing away and across the room, where it spread neatly over the huge pile of Justice Force comics that Mike had promised Splinter he'd tidy up as soon as he felt better.

"I'm back," he said breathlessly. "I exist again! Klunk -- gotta find Klunk!" He jumped out of bed... and then found, to his surprise, that while his feet definitely made a sound against the floor this time, and he was unmistakably solid and tangible, he didn't feel sick anymore. His muscles didn't ache, his head felt clear, and his fever seemed to have vanished.

Huh, he thought. Looks like I just discovered the ultimate cure for the flu -- a trip to another world where you were never born. He paused for a moment, then shook his head. Nah, it'll never catch on. Pushing the thought aside, he rushed out of his room.

The living room was dark as well, but when Mike switched on the light, the first thing he saw was Klunk, lying on the couch and sleeping peacefully. In two seconds flat, Mike was over by the couch and scooped the cat up in his arms. "Klunk! Buddy! You okay? Come to daddy!" he said, holding him close.

"Mrrow?" said Klunk, obviously sleepy and confused as to why his "daddy" was suddenly acting like this.

"I'm the luckiest Turtle in the world to have a cat like you!" said Mike while cuddling him. "I know I don't say this enough, but I love ya, boy! I'm so glad I've got you!"

Klunk didn't seem to have the faintest idea what Mike was talking about, but slowly started to purr as he was being petted.

"What are you doin' out of bed?" said Raphael, stumbling into the living room and looking about as sleepy as Klunk. "Geez, Mikey, what's with you? All day you drive us bonkers with your 'poor me, I'm sick' routine, then ya finally fall asleep, and then when the rest of us try ta get some shut-eye as well, you decide to get up at -- " he glanced at the clock -- "five in the morning to declare your love for the cat?!"

"Raph!" said Mike, turning around to face his brother, still with Klunk in his arms. "You can see me! You know who I am!"

Raph just stared at him. "...Huh?!"

"Raph, you know something?!" said Mike. "You woulda made an awesome Battle Nexus champion!"

"...Huh?!" said Raph again.

"Yeah! You could start a martial arts school for children or something. Oh, and I can give you cooking lessons if ya want!"

"All right. Fine. Whatever. Look, you're sleepwalkin' or hallucinatin' or something." Raph walked up to Mike and gently grabbed his shoulder, turning him around to face his bedroom door. "Why don't ya go back to bed, and we can talk more about, uh, martial arts cooking lessons tomorrow."

"No, you don't understand!" Mike insisted. "I just totally had an 'It's A Wonderful Life' experience! Leo! Don!" he exclaimed as said two emerged from their rooms as well, looking halfway confused and halfway annoyed. "You gotta hear this!"

"What's going on now?" said Leo. "Mike, are you --?"

"You called me Mike!" said Mike. "Don, Raph, you both heard it! He called me Mike!"

"Uh, yeah, how about that," said Raph in what he probably intended to be a soothing voice. "Callin' you by your name and everything. Who'da thunk it? Never saw that one coming at all."

Don turned to Leo. "I think we'd better get Master Splinter," he said. "It appears that Mike's gone cuckoo."

"I dunno why I'm surprised," Raph muttered. "I've been waiting for this moment for years."

In the end, he told them the entire story.

It took the better part of an hour, but Mike discovered that he had their attentions for the most of it -- particularly Splinter was paying rapt attention, even shushing Raph, Don and Leo on the few occasions when they tried to interrupt.

"And then, I realized I was back in my own bed," Mike finished, "and after having seen Klunk die in that other world I just knew I had to go and check if he was okay. Which, thankfully, he was." He gazed fondly at the cat who had curled up next to him and fallen asleep again. "And then Raph came and was sarcastic, and, well, you know the rest. So... that's the story!"

There was a long moment of silence.

"Well," Leo finally said. "That's some dream, all right."

"It wasn't a dream!" said Mike, feeling a little insulted. "It was too real to be a dream! I don't know if I was in an alternate world, or the world really changed, or what exactly happened, but it wasn't a dream!"

"Get real, Mike," said Raph. "It was a freaky dream that your flu left you as a farewell present."

"Probably brought forward by the fact that you felt poorly treated and unwanted before you fell asleep," Don supplied.

"Which you really shouldn't," Leo added. "I'm sorry if we hurt your feelings, Mike, but you had been getting on our nerves all day. It doesn't mean we don't want you around! No point in letting a silly little dream --"

"It wasn't a dream," Mike repeated stubbornly.

"Yes, it was," said Leo. "There's no other explanation for it, and you know why? Because there's no possible way there's a world out there where you don't exist and this family is better off for it. Mike, we need you! All right, maybe you bug the shell out of us sometimes -- or a lot of times -- but, come on! Which of us can say that he doesn't occasionally get on the nerves of everyone else?"

"Yeah, take Leo, for instance," Raph said with a smirk. "He keeps playin' teacher's pet and nags everyone half ta death at least once a day."

"And Raph keeps flying off the deep end and going off on his own and endangering us all," Leo shot back, though without much bite to it.

"And I tend to lock myself away with my inventions and research and computers and ignore everyone else," said Don peaceably. "If it hadn't been for you, Mike, I'd probably never even have left my lab. You're the one who keeps dragging me out of there and forcing me to socialize -- and at the end of the day, I have to admit that usually I'm happier for it."

"Right," said Leo seriously. "If it hadn't been for you, we'd all have just given up on each other a long time ago, and just gone our different ways. So will you please admit that it was all just a stupid dream and couldn't possibly have happened?"

Mike opened his mouth to repeat that it hadn't been a dream, when Splinter placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Please leave us alone for a while, my sons," said the rat, looking at the other three Turtles. "Try to go back to sleep. We will talk more in the morning."

"Technically, it is the morning now," said Don, glancing at the clock, which had now just passed six AM.

"Hey, since we've been sittin' here and listenin' ta Mike's story for almost an hour," said Raph, "does that mean we get to skip the nine o'clock morning practice? Just askin'," he added hurriedly at Splinter's look.

Leo stood up without a word and left for his room. Of course, Mike thought, Leo usually got up around this time, so he was clearly just pretending to go back to bed so that Mike and Splinter could talk in private. It was a nice gesture, if wholly transparent, and Raph and Don quickly followed suit, raising themselves and retreating to their own rooms.

Mike waited until the room was silent, save for the soft purring of Klunk, before speaking again. "Master Splinter, I really don't think it was a dream."

"Perhaps it was not," said Splinter. "It may have been that your spirit crossed over to a different world, or it may have been a vivid illusion. It may even have been that the world temporarily did change, although I am less certain of that. I cannot recall any of it happening, at least. But I do not think it matters all that much. No matter where the spirit counterparts of Shredder and myself came from -- be it some other realm or simply your own subconscious -- they still had something important to tell you."

"'Everyone matter, for worse or for better,' huh?"

"That is one way of putting it," said Splinter, obviously not getting the reference to Kermit the Frog. "But I do not think you quite see all the ways this was shown to you. Examine the story you told us a little further. Does nothing trike you as peculiar there?"

"Ya mean apart from Stockman being a good guy, or Raph cooking, or --"

"Nothing so specific, Michelangelo." Splinter's look was serious. "What I was thinking about was the situation of our family. Even though your brothers in that reality were making the best of their lives, they did lack something very important that you and your brothers do have, and always have had. Leonardo even touched upon the subject when he was trying to concvince you that it was a dream, though I doubt he actually realized all the implications."

"What are you talking about, Master?" said Mike.

"Trust," said Splinter. "Being able to trust one's family members not only to be there for one, but also being able to trust them to do the right thing, to handle themselves. I do not know the alternate Leonardo, the one who trapped you, but his actions as you described them seemed to be rooted in a basic lack of trust in others. Since he learned of your presence in the manner he did, my guess is that the Leonardo in that reality has taken it upon himself to 'keep an eye' on his brothers, obviously without their knowledge."

"He was spying on them?"

"Effectively, yes." Splinter met Michelangelo's eyes. "Without you to act as a catalyst between him, Raphael and Donatello, I believe that the Leonardo of that reality was not able to get close enough to his brothers that he ever learned to completely trust them. I do not think it was a coincidence that your brothers, in this alternate reality, did not appear together, as a team. They were not a team, not in the way you and your brothers are."

"But.. they were doing really well apart," said Mike.

"They had their successes, but they also had their fair share of failures," said Splinter. "Even if they were not as immediately obvious to you. I wonder what the real story behind April O'Neil was, for instance. Leonardo was clearly not telling you everything."

Mike nodded slowly. The other Leo had said mainly that some Utrom had "discovered" that April was a latent psionicist, and that other Utroms had taught her to unlock her potential, but he hadn't explained the different hair or the tattoos. There had only been a vague sensation that something deeply unpleasant had taken place... What had really happened there? He might never know for sure.

"And there was Silver Sentry, and Klunk..." he mused, comforting himself a little by giving the purring cat an extra few scratches behind the ears. "Yeah. All in all, I wouldn't swap. Still feeling a little guilty about Stockman and Leatherhead, though. Y'know, it's kinda weird, but when those two spirits came to take me to that other world, I sorta thought it would be like in all those movies. You know, when the guy finds out that everything is much worse without him."

"That is hardly realistic," said Splinter. "I doubt you would find anyone in this world, or any other, who has not made his fair share of bad decisions or suffered his share of bad luck that affected others in a negative way. We cannot change the past. We can, however, change the future."

"Yeah," said Mike, suddenly remembering an extra detail from the Mike-less reality. "That was more or less exactly what the alternate Stockman said too! He said he'd made a lot of mistakes in the past, but that all he could do was to try avoiding making the same mistakes in the future."

Splinter nodded.

"Okay," said Mike, suddenly feeling much more cheerful. "If he could manage that, then so can I! There were tons of stuff in that other reality that were better than here, but now that I've seen it, I got the ideas, and I can help others out realizing their potential! That idea of a martial arts school was good, for example, I could see if there's any way I could do something similar in this reality! I could talk to Angel, and hear what she thinks? Uh, what do you think?"

"You are not to invite a whole group of human teenagers down here, Michelangelo," said Splinter firmly. "However, I see nothing wrong with providing a somewhat more wholesome alternative to the Purple Dragons and other street gangs."

"Cool! I'll have to think some more about that. Maybe Raph would like to help, and maybe I can talk to April and Casey, and Donny could... uh, Master Splinter?"

"Yes?"

"Did you just wink?"

"Wink?"

"It just looked like you were winking to someone."

Splinter chuckled. "I believe I told you, in that other world, that the invisible becomes plain if you know how and where to look. Whatever else changed between the two realities, this has not. See for yourself."

Mike glanced around the room, not quite sure what he was looking for, but then he could make out... it was hard to say exactly how it happened, but all of a sudden he could have sworn he saw the faint forms of the spirits Splinter and Shredder, both waving to him before they vanished.

On a slightly different plane, unseen and unheard by almost everyone but still capable of seeing and hearing everything around them, two spirits returned the physical Splinter's wink and took an extra moment to wave to Michelangelo as he, just for a moment, managed to see them clearly.

There was a definite look of confusion on the Turtle's face, but also a sense of joy and triumph as he waved back.

"And of course, he hasn't so much as realized that he has made the choice," said Shredder, as the two spirits turned and walked out of the Lair. "He probably still thinks that the choice he was to make was whether he was to live or die."

"It is as it should be," said Splinter. "He chose well, as I knew he would."

You do realize," said Shredder, not without a hint of amusement in his voice, "that we are still talking to each other as if we were two different persons, even if there is no-one present to uphold the deception for?"

"Indeed," said Splinter. "In my -- well, in our defense, this 'appearing as two separate beings' deception can be difficult to let go of, once you get used to it."

And as they vanished from the sight even of the keen eye and perceptions of Splinter, his spirit counterpart and the spirit counterpart of Shredder merged together to become one single spirit. For a moment, this spirit looked like a bizarre mix of rat and man, but then it changed, took on other and definitely more turtle-like qualities.

The spirit took flight, moving up through the ground and to the surface, where the sun had risen and New York was getting ready for a new day. The turtle spirit looked wistfully at the cars and people moving about before flying further up, above the highest rooftops and up in the clouds.

"I have done what I could," it said to itself in a decidedly female voice. "It will be up to Michelangelo now. Hopefully Master Splinter will manage to temper his enthusiasm enough that he does not try to do too much, in too short a time span.... and that he will not make the same mistakes I did."

Once upon a time, in a reality very much like this one, the Turtle named Mei Pieh Chi and affectionately nicknamed Venus de Milo, had temporarily been a part of a team of Ninja Turtles, sister to the other Turtles and the only female mutant turtle in existence.

It had only lasted for a short time. She had been part of a flux of reality, a "freak of fate," if such a term could be used, and it didn't take long before reality had realized its mistake and erased her. She had never existed and would never exist, and as a result, reality had... changed.

Only through sheer force of will had Venus managed to hang on to some minor form of being, continuing on as a wandering spirit, a non-corporal being without a world, a home, or even a proper body to call her own.

She could still, however, make a difference, put her mark on the world, even if it was in small ways.

Venus allowed herself a small smile. Even back in her own world, when she had existed, she had always secretly thought that Michelangelo was the Turtle with the most potential -- potential he kept wasting because he was too lazy, too irresponsible, too flighty to make good use of it. Venus had always been able to see -- and even more so, since she became a wandering spirit and began travelling between worlds -- that inside the immature and childish goofball there lived a person -- a caring, compassionate, creative and talented person -- who really did have the power to change the world around him, if he would just assert himself a little more.

Sometimes he just needed a little push in the right direction, or to get some perspective on things.

And if she had managed to give him that... then she had managed to make a difference, despite never having really existed at all. Sometimes all it took would be a subtle (or not) guiding hand...

Nodding to herself with some feeling of satisfaction, Venus picked up speed and flew higher and higher until the world vanished below her.

THE (ever-lovin', blue-eyed) END!

Author's notes: And we're done! For those of you who don't remember, Venus de Milo was a character in the Ninja Turtles: Next Mutation live-action TV show from 1997. Fans did not take well to her, and after Next Mutation ended (it only lasted for one season) she was eventually declaired non-canonical, her existence was retconned away and all references to her were dropped from all official sources.

ll answer the question before anyone thinks of asking it: Why didn't Venus appear as herself in front of Mike? Why this Splinter/Shredder act?

Well, for one thing -- think about how Mike acted around Venus in Next Mutation: constantly hitting on and flirting with her. Venus here was trying to prove a point, but she would have had a harder time doing so if Mike had kept calling her "babe" and "mutant hottie." (I actually don't think he would have, since the Michelangelo of the 2003 cartoon is hardly the "horny teenager" his Next Mutation counterpart was, but Venus didn't want to take any risks.)

For another thing, the "Shredder" act was done deliberately to provoke a reaction; look at how it's "Shredder's" trash-talking on Klunk that finally snaps Mike out of his funk and gets him to take a firm stand. In fact, looking at the things "Shredder" says in that scene, and everywhere else in the fic, a lot of it doesn't hold up to closer examination. Look at his speech after the "Silver Sentry" scene: One moment, he says that Silver Sentry made a big difference before and after the adventure with the mind-control bugs, but then the next moment he goes on to say that most of the people the superhero rescued afterwards didn't matter in the last. Come on, either Silver Sentry did make a difference, or he didn't! But "Shredder" was just out to provoke, and the statements didn't need to make any sense as long as they had their desired effect.

But of course, if Shredder had been the only "guide" on the alternate reality trip, it couldn't realistically have played out the way it did. A second spirit was needed -- one that would be there to be supportive and make sure to point out some important things that Mike might have missed otherwise. Hence, the "Splinter" identity.

No, I don't know where Venus learned to do all that. Let's just say she's been a spirit for a long time and has worked out how to do a lot of neat things.

Final note: In case you, like Splinter, missed the obvious reference: "Everyone matters, for worse or for better" was what Kermit the Frog sang in his own It's A Wonderful Life-spoof, It's A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie.

And that's it for this story.