afreakingdork

The leaves were loose around Central Park. It wasn’t due to any particular season. There had been heavy rain the night before. The downpour knocked swaths of mostly green and some yellowing edges down from their perches. They matted with water and concrete to create a ground level paper mache. Instead of drying, the still damp air slicked the sculptures into slime. Kendra walked around them as she looked up at the cloudless sky.

It seemed as though the storm had never been there if you only looked up. To see the wreckage, you had to look for it. It clung to the muddled leaves and damp fairy rings where the sun hadn’t quite sought to clean up its mess. It had been a few weighty days, though the weather only troubled one. Since revealing her accursed virus plan to Mikey, she had given him the time he required. By that agreement, she had done her best to not pester him.

She gave him space even though she might have stared at their text window more than a few times. She thought of the many ways they would come back together, good or bad, despite not wanting to linger. She often laid awake instead of scrolling, just to sit alone with her thoughts. She had never considered herself much of a fixer. When things were broken, her help was one she offered begrudgingly. Typically, she was the only one with the necessary skill set to take care of the problem. It had been part of the reason why she had been so convinced she could be the one to fix this wretched world.

She had been so self-obsessed, it made her sick.

She wouldn’t say she still didn’t think of herself that highly, but she felt more learned than her intelligence ever lent.

She needed others to succeed.

Emotionally.

Physically.

Everything in-between, not that she cared for spirituality, or whatever else that implied.

She walked to Central Park while avoiding the leavings of the storm and entered the green space looking like the epicenter of her trek. Here, where plants proliferated was all sorts of detritus. It had been tossed around and ground workers were still cleaning up. The spill entered opening hours and she milled toward the place Mikey designated they meet when he had called last night just before the storm hit.

It had been a short exchange.

No one asked how the other was.

Pleasantries felt strange.

They planned to meet and the goodbye was just as foreign.

He gave little away.

Kendra hadn’t dwelled on it.

What happened now was out of her control.

Acknowledging and acting on such were usually two different things, but today they were the same.

She was alright with that.

About as alright as melted leaves, but, just as the foliage, the feeling was transient. The worst ad case scenario she ever conjured was loneliness, a feeling she knew well, but continuation. If they were to break up, she would throw herself to that career with renewed knowledge of its pitfalls. She would keep busy, maybe meet someone else a few years from now, but they were formless and inconsequential. She was the one with shape and that felt like all that mattered.

Mikey was near a tree and stuffed into a colorful windbreaker when she saw him. It looked to be from another decade and he appeared as out of place as it was. He was looking skyward with the faintest frown tugging at his lips. He considered the lack of clouds with a sort of disdain as if they were at fault for how he had dressed as opposed to him having not checked the weather before coming up from underground.

“Hey.” She called out.

His registration hit the blue of the sky before her.

There were no names as she approached.

No sweeps of wind or gushes off feet.

She walked up and he turned to face her.

Electric wasn’t the word.

Magnetic seemed closer.

She felt inexplicably drawn to him.

Based on the way she shifted her weight from one foot to the other and he clearly followed, she had a feeling it was the same for him.

She opened her mouth, unsure of for what, but his words came out.

“I’m not angry!”

She froze, agape.

“I’m upset.” He trended against the magnetic field.

She was drawn in the mirrored direction.

“I… I’ve had a lot of time to think, to cool down and I don’t know if I was ever mad… I don’t think I was disappointed. That’s not right either. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how maybe you thought I was and I told myself I would for sure start by telling you that everything’s alright.”

She waited for the conjunction that seemed like it would follow.

“But…!”

There it was.

“I am upset! I’m hurt you didn’t tell me. You were hatching a plot! You were trying to pull off a caper! On Donnie! That that was something that was still happening and, knowing now, it’s hard  not to see that that was obviously what you were so intent on doing those first few dates. That’s why you acted the way you did and, it makes so much sense now, I feel stupid for not noticing.”

Her fingers forced her hand up.

He tracked the motion. “But it’s also weird because I never thought about us as being fake? In fact, it took two days for me to even think of that as a possibility! What we did, every time we went out, never seemed like it wasn’t real. It was like I got the rest of the context for why you had been struggling, which I had attributed to like ten other things, all of which I never knew at the time either and were also things you had to tell me with time, but also that made me wonder if those things upset me, which, they didn’t, and why that was!?”

A smile tried to catch her so she wrinkled her lips.

“But that’s my family, Kendra.” He looked right into her very being.

The grin was gone and she nodded one studious time.

“My family… who I accepted you had hurt before and I never considered you would try to hurt again. You know I believe in redemption. I don't think anyone should be defined by what they did in the past. I've given chances to people my family have outright told me not to.”

“Right…”

“Kendra.”

She was still looking right at him, but really saw him in that moment.

His windbreaker was loud.

His pants were clean.

His hair was kempt.

He looked as though he had bathed and primped for this very moment.

To be taken seriously in a way he typically thought of as hypocritical, but still acted out regardless.

She fluffed herself up with a shimmy to say she was ready for whatever he thought was this important.

“Don’t you dare think you can ever take advantage of me like this again, got that? Not for them. Not to me.”

His lowered lids punctuated his sharpened pupils.

He pierced her.

He wasn’t having her make a promise.

He was taking an oath himself.

Drawing a very real line.

One that turned over her stomach and punctured the word ‘hot’ in her mind with a skewer.

She wasn’t humiliated for probably the first time by her own proclivities.

She embraced the depravity because her boyfriend, the one whom she had underestimated right from the start, had come his own distance.

Because of her.

Not due to her unsavory antics.

Because of her push for him to prioritize himself.

He had done it with his brothers.

He was doing it with her.

All because they were better together.

She nodded way too long after he had said the sentence, but he didn’t notice.

He nearly collapsed into himself as he went full slack above the waist and lolled like an old push puppet. “Ahh! I feel so light! I’ve felt like all of Raph’s weight sets have been on top of me for the last few days!”

“I don’t know if I’ve slept.”

“Right!?” He whined and forced himself upright. “Can I one-two punch the bad stuff with the good now?”

“You didn’t ask me if I wanted the bad news first.” She chanced the faintest scold.

He paused before his eyes flew to find hers. “I didn’t!”

“I guess the good is all that’s left?”

“No, I’m still upset. I think that’s just going to be there.”

She buttoned her lip in a twitch. “Makes sense…”

“Don’t like… try to make it up to me. That sounds so icky. Just… be you and show me you meant what you said. That you don’t care anymore about doing your virus plan or any vengeance against my brother and… I’ll eventually know it’s true.”

“Show it.” She agreed.

He chanced an almost smile.

“Tell me the good part.” She quelled her racing heart.

“I’m so proud of you!” He hugged her.

He knocked her backward into a 70 degree angle and held her there while her spine protested the bend.

“I’m really glad you told me and the way you did it? Wow! I know how hard spilling your guts is for you and you didn’t deflect once! You told me straight up. You owned that it was bad. You fully accepted how it would go! You also left me alone! No texts and no terror! The Kendra I knew from just a few months or whatever ago who was afraid I would leave? Girl, where is she?! I played the scene over a hundred times and you didn’t even look anxious.”

She squirmed until her mouth was free from his bicep. “I definitely was!”

“Even better!” He squeezed.

She gargled.

“You could have lost me!” He lifted her off the ground.

She could feel her legs again as they dangled. “I had to tell you!”

“Right!?” He tipped the other direction so she was leaning against him instead of smothered. “You risked everything because you knew you had to be honest! Imagine that from Kendra Byerly!”

She had space to stare down at him.

“If we can’t be honest with each other, what’s the point?”

She knew she wasn’t blinking.

“Praise me too! I remember you asking me about our future before. Like, way before. Before you told me.”

“It’s been five days.” She felt herself mouth a timeline she wasn’t currently conscious of.

“Well…”

He made a big show of setting her back on her feet.

Of not letting go.

Of coming down so they were at eye level to say.

“I’d like to talk about it now… if you still want to… too?”

She wobbled.

Not on her shoes.

Not in his hold.

Emotionally shook and scorching tears broke free for the first time since before the thought of being honest with Mikey was her only possible next step.

She didn’t sob.

She wasn’t even sure if it was a proper cry.

Her eyes leaked the pent up emotion and sheer relief and she nodded with the intention of burying into him.

“Woah…! Oh!” Mikey moved in time.

Their foreheads slammed together and they both flinched apart.

“Ow!”

“Shit!”

There was a momentary pause where they saw each other through raised limbs.

Ones to nurse the sting.

They both smiled.

They laughed.

“Fuck!” She scrubbed her forehead. “Yes! Obviously, yes!”

“Cool, obvious start would be like: we’re dating, right?”

“Michael… angelo!” She segmented his name in horror.

“I mentioned it! We had this unsaid thing about no labels! That’s kind of my personal way of life too, so…!”

“How can a therapist advocate no labels! Isn’t diagnosis…?” She flailed because the thought of spouting her own therapy speak repulsed her.

“Okay, yes, those help, but I’m talking construct labels here. One’s like intelligence, gender, and success!”

“Oh…” She felt as though several of those had come up organically throughout their relationship.

“Yeah! Like how I don’t like saying mutant. Yeah!”

“Mutant?!” She reached up and thumbed his bump.

He squealed out of her grip and jogged a few steps away while covering his face. “I don’t know! Just ‘cause I’m green doesn’t mean I’m a different species!”

“I am so sure you literally are! You’re a splice of two different species! That makes you a new thing!”

“New!” He pulled a hand away and rotated to point. “You said it! So why am I under the same classification as-!?”

She had a retort on her lips, but there was something about the way he stalled.

It wasn’t on purpose.

He saw something.

Or, more accurately, he was looking at something.

Fixed on it and she had to tip-toe close to him to gauge the direction of which.

“It’s-it’s her...” He spoke before she found out who.

Off the path, across the grass, and quite literally gleaming in the sun was a golden woman.

It was Kendra’s turn to fixate.

The woman’s skin glittered from a fine ray not unlike a statue. If she was one of the living ones, she hadn’t done a good job on her coordinating outfit. Instead of being entirely coated in gold, she had chosen to donned her golden body with something she appeared to have salvaged from some futuristic thrift shop. Her well-loved boots dug divots into the wet grass as she laid over the ground. The rips in her jeans peeled against the blades and her knees formed an anchor point. Strings of chains barely patched a hole where the pockets of her pants should have been and revealed more of that metallic skin. Any modesty her torso required was covered by what appeared to be a skin-tight latex body suit. It’s appearance was only hinted as a small cropped leather jacket acted as a short-sleeved shrug around her shoulders. Wherever she could, she adorned edges and accents with little bits of jewelry. They were rebellious pops that defined her style, nearly as much as the  elaborate and brightly colored piece of cloth wrapped around her head. Despite looking like a human style, something about the way it pressed so cleanly to her cranium made Kendra wonder if this woman had ears or if they were covertly tucked away into her headdress.

The living fixture was staring with all her might at what looked like any other part of the field she was laying in.

“It’s her…” Mikey repeated and trended that direction.

Kendra followed closely.

She had to be more aware because her boyfriend wasn’t.

Running contingencies in case she needed to pull him away or call Leo or Raph, she mentally located her phone among the few other items on her person.

“C’mon big cheese, ya gotta scram…” The woman spoke and her voice sounded like everything.

Kendra dug her nails into Mikey’s windbreaker and it crinkled.

The woman lurched forward in a scramble to protect something that appeared small and threw her head towards the noise.

Kendra saw the way she saw Mikey.

She didn’t.

She appeared to register the space around his person before her vision seemed to adjust.

As if she had to dial in on his existence.

She rose on her arms, but kept the thing on the ground concealed. “Wait… Is that…?”

Mikey slowly brought up a finger to point at himself. 

“You’re a Michelangelo! That’s Jake. I know this…”

Kendra heard Mikey blink since his eyes were so wide.

“No, that wasn’t this timeline…” She muttered as her gaze darted. “Not the one you yeeted out of. Not bum rap one either. This chronology has a CJ so it’s still snapping my boss’s cap, but me n’ him been at it like cats and dogs for centuries on that sticky-wicket…!”

She gasped her hands straight over her mouth.

“That means you’re… graffiti kid! Do you remember me? You were the wild style brat that was messing with my tags!”

“It’s you.” Mikey kept his tears in check. “You’re real.”

“Real as  rain!” She seemed to remember something. “Though that’s not happening now, is it?” 

She looked at the cloudless sky.

“I think it’s alright.” She blinked a few times and Kendra couldn’t locate any visible sclera in her dark orbs.

Or a nose.

Her face was as smooth as her skin texture, but she ticked like a clock as she remembered she was speaking to someone and returned to Earth. “Never thought I’d see you again. I’m not sure we’re supposed to.”

“You look just like I remember.” The spell of newness had yet to be broken on him.

“Do I?” She looked down at her shimmering arms. “It’s been… Hm…”

“Twenty years.”

“Twenty-“ The next words out of her mouth were incomprehensible.

Mikey faintly inhaled.

“I’d have to check…!” She squawked as she reached for something, but shifted to scour the ground. “Shaver!? Where’d you go!?”

Mikey ventured forward. “Shaver?”

“The little shrimp!” She scrambled on her hands and knees. “I can’t remember-! The…! Oh, what’s the word earthlings on this side of the axis would use!?”

An alien, Kendra gaped as she realized that was exactly what Renet was. 

“Cat-or-pillar!” She jumped not unlike a cat several feet to the left. “Found him! Right-on! He’s finally almost back to his pad!!”

Mikey watched her lean back on her haunches to give thanks to the skies above. “You’re… watching a caterpillar?”

“Protecting!” She stood, keeping her eyes on an exact spot on the ground and held out her hand where a small, handheld scepter appeared in a glitter of what looked like fine, but shimmering dust. “If I don’t make sure the little dude gets back to his habituations, then the whole Eastern Seaboard will sink next month. A guy with a rake is going to make a big mistake if shorty isn’t back in his crib.”

Kendra’s gaze narrowed as she tried to make sense of the language.

“That rain last night wasn’t right as! Someone did it unnatural like which sent put timeline a little outta whack, but it’s an easy enough fix.”

A city worker neared them with a rake he was using to catch leaves.

The woman pointed at him threateningly. “Don’t cheese-me off, G-man!!”

The man gave them the dull New York acknowledgement before brushing his business elsewhere as whatever this was, wasn’t worth his time.

“Another day, another timeline.” She nodded resolutely before she loosened.

Like there was weight there and it came off her shoulders.

Her job appeared to be done. 

Kendra felt that was far too familiar.

If she wasn’t wrong, then those dark eyes were covering up a world of exhaustion. The kind that usually followed a long shift after serving your last customer. The expression came from  someone who still had to close. All that mopping, prepping, and counting left in the never ending bustle. It wore on golden cheeks before she recalled she had guests. “Since this crisis was averted early, I have a few extra minutes now! How are things going with your art? Are you still tagging?”

Before Kendra realized what was happening, Mikey was gone from her clutches and hugged the woman around her middle.

Her skin and jewelry sparkled in the sun.

Her arms came up with the curvature of an alarmed bird, but she peered down at Mikey with a calm expression.

“I never thought I’d see you again!” He held on harder.

She lightly patted his shell. “It’s alright. I’m here now…”

“I always…” He squeezed one more time before looking up at her. “… wanted to thank you! You taught me so much! I know we only met once, but it meant the world to me! I feel like you taught me everything about graffiti, but also community! I’ve used your advice for years!”

She grew a more affectionate smile. “You know some Michelangelos don’t listen as well as you do. You did good.”

“You talk just like I remember too!” He downright glowed.

“What do you mean?!” She puffed up a little. “I’ve studied your Earth speech patterns for millennia! I’m a right Blockbuster!”

“Which hasn’t been open since I was a kid.” He clucked and finally released.

“Wait, I didn’t think another bomb had dropped on these lands yet?!” She appeared to look around like she could see whatever she was referring to.

She glimpsed Kendra.

Or rather, saw her in that same unfocused way she had seen Mikey.

The woman appeared to click through optometrist lenses before finally seeing the Kendra in front of her come into focus. “Oh! Hello! You’ve got yourself quite the moll, Mikey! I don’t think any of you have met any of me! You don’t have the glottis to pronounce my given name, but an approximation with your terrestrial vocal cords would be Renet Tilley. It’s nice to meet you! I’m a timestress.”

Mikey laughed approximately two times before he quacked a, “What?”

“Oh, right… I never told you. Sometimes I gotta hang loosey goosey with my meetings. I’m not supposed to announce myself because it can have time repercussions and that’s the whole job, isn’t it!?” The tenor shift at the end of her sentence seemed to indicate a joke, but all Kendra heard was verbal bile.

“I don’t understand…” Mikey truly didn’t.

“She’s a time traveling alien.” Kendra explained.

“That’s not-!” Mikey giggled before looking at Renet who gave Kendra a single impressed nod. “You’re a what?!”

“I’m somehow the normal one about this…” Kendra sent him a warring expression as she fought her own sanity.

She had prepared for a million eventualities today.

Not whatever Renet was.

The tizzy of her relationship status had drained the rest of her emotional breadth. What was left was cold intellect and, despite science’s current say in the time travel department, there was a relatively universal agreement that Earth was not alone in its existence. If monsters or yokai or whatever myths and legends were all based on facts as much as humans spliced with animals, how could there not be a time traveling alien?

Kendra was trying to keep the love of her life, not expend energy fighting some weird fact such as that.

Mikey wafted towards Kendra like a loose plastic bag. “My mentor was an alien… the whole time…”

“Are you really surprised?”

“No, it’s really cool, actually. I just thought me and you were going to make up and now this is happening.” His form caught hers and he wrapped around her.

“Make up?” Renet parroted.

“You have no idea…” Kendra stopped herself from saying just how much she agreed.

Mikey looked.

It was a moot point.

“Did I interrupt a post-spat necking?” Renet asked quietly with a finger to her lips.

Kendra didn’t even know what to do with that phrasing so she ignored it. “Kind of.”

“You know…” Renet checked that scepter she had.

To Kendra it looked unchanged.

“I still have that time.” Renet scanned the ground, then a tree. “My catter-pillar is safe, so are the Atlantic ocean landmasses, so you can bend my ear, if you want!”

“Do you even…?” An earlier question percolated.

“Yes!” Mikey leapt in place. “Kendra! Imagine all the cool future wisdom we’ll get from her!!”

“She can’t even figure out what century to speak in…” Kendra murmured to him.

Renet spoke in another tongue before tilting her head cutely. “Right?”

Kendra stared at her and whatever alien mathematics she kept spouting. 

“We’ll tell you everything!” Mikey pulled Kendra in one hand and caught Renet’s arm in the other.

Mikey made his way over to a bench all while giving a manic abridged version of his and Kendra’ relationship as a whole. Renet gasped appropriately and seemed enraptured with the tale. She burped little phrases about the intricacies of human interaction and always had some anecdote about how the Hamato had disrupted various timelines. By the time two of them, Renet and Mikey, were seated, with Kendra lingering in standby, Renet seemingly had heard everything she needed to. “Do you mind if I check something?”

The question was for Kendra. 

Mikey looked back and forth between the women in excitement.

“I… guess…?” Kendra wasn’t as sure.

Renet stood, scepter in hand, and waved it over Kendra.

That extremely fine dust, which Kendra now seemed to recognize as sand, sprinkled ever so slightly out of what was obviously an hourglass. A little landed on her shirt and she pinched it up to roll its weathered grains between her fingers. It was incredibly soft and smooth, like it would disappear into her skin, given the chance. The concept of the sandman was on her mind as Renet removed her wand with that unfocused look.

“Your root is as full of branches as anyone else…” Renet remarked to the space around them. “Good, bad, other existences, ones where you’re family to the turtles, others where you’ve never met, and lineages that grant you a vastly different names.”

Kendra felt herself breathe in some of the dust and, with it, she swore she saw herself segment. 

The different versions Renet talked about ghosted around her. 

Quantum mechanics must have been yet another scientific concept that was supposedly true. 

Before her brain could process the segments, her immune system kicked in and eradicated the sand, leaving her alone in Central Park.

“That’s fun. You’ve had dalliances with all the brothers in a lot different ways. The one where you were with Raphael was cute. It must be difficult when you have so much or not so much trouble with those Donatellos.”

“Kendra!” Mikey popped. “How could you!?”

“What!?” Kendra felt dizzy before something seemed to hit her over the head. “What do you mean ‘not so much trouble’ with that purple fu-?!”

Renet tittered and turned to Mikey. “You’re upset with Kendra? What about me?! After what we had! I thought it was special!”

Mikey paled.

Kendra stared.

Mikey’s lips flapped. “W-wait…!”

Renet exploded with laughter.

The other party watched her.

“Sorry, sorry!” She wiped a dry eye. “It can be so fun to razz you tri-dimensioners!”

“Gonna pretend I never heard any of that…” Kendra shook herself free of the ick.

“What do you see when you look at us?” Mikey swallowed hard to keep going.

“Possibilities.” Renet winked. “Here and now. Then and soon. Before and next! It’s amazing.”

Mikey tried to imagine it and it showed in awe on his face.

“Obviously, I can’t say what’s in store for you two, you aren’t in my book of business, but I bet you’ll be righteous no matter what you decide.” Renet went on.

“Feel like you could give us a hint…” Mikey grouched.

“Aw, I gave you one already, didn’t I? I taught you about graffiti and I earned myself quite the earful from my boss for just that!”

“Your boss?” He asked.

“Oh, yeah!” Renet crossed her legs and the weight made her leg bounce. “Lord Simultaneous hasn’t let up in thousands of years. He still sees me as an inexperienced timestress. Old man, I’ve been doing this for how long!?”

That familiar feeling was back and so Kendra asked, “Is being a timestress a job… or the type of alien you are?”

Renet’s face said the question was one she didn’t understand on an ideological level. “You humans introduce yourself as your professions, do you not?”

Irma didn’t. “I guess, but how would you see it?”

There was a flicker of something on Renet’s face. “Hm.”

Mikey sensed something was there and watched carefully.

Renet gave the faintest laugh as if she were nostalgic. “Both, huh…?”

“You tell me.” Kendra folded her arms.

Renet looked her over fondly. “I was a denizen of the 79th Level. My parents sent me to be a timestress hoping it would scare me straight.”

“Alien prison school.” Mikey spoke like he understood.

“Alien prison job.” Renet corrected.

Mikey nodded regardless.

“Why didn’t you quit?” Kendra asked.

“I found out I was always a timestress. What was I supposed to do?”

“Give them the middle finger.”

“Quit harder.”

Renet looked between both responses and leaned back to look at the sky again. “I always liked Michelangelos and it seems like I should have looked for more Kendras.”

They weren’t sure what to say.

“For my first few thousand years, I felt like that, like quitting. I messed up a lot. I either didn’t want to do the work or I’d screw up. I had this crummy uniform and everything was so rigid.” She picked at the front of that body suit. “It was hard and I was miserable, but I kept trying. Over and over again. As the problems got bigger or the ways I broke the timeline got worse…”

There was a sobering shift in the energy around them.

“I had seen the downfall of dozens… if not hundreds of civilizations by then. Ones… I had to make sure still happened. There was always the excuse that there were timelines to preserve. I would watch people die because their deaths were the only way the right thing could happen the way it’s supposed to happen. Again and again… I… I…”

Mikey put a hand on her arm.

She looked at him.

His eyes were soulful.

She smiled like she knew him. “I didn’t get why it was up to us to decide what was right and I went rogue in a lot of ways. When I felt like the injustice was too much, I tried to stick it to the man. I’ve trained many versions of you, Mikey. You are always up to destroy the status quo or a pizza.”

Mikey clearly agreed with the sentiment.

“I became really jaded. All that control. I was controlling others. Simultaneous was controlling me. Our people were made to control time. For what purpose?”

Kendra held herself a little tighter.

Renet saw it with that sparkle in her voided vision. “And then one day, as I watched someone get sacrificed into a volcano, I saw a rare plant. You might call it a flower here, but there was something about that organism growing in soil that had been and would again erupt and be destroyed and there was this man. Not watching the execution, but that plant as well and I could just feel why. He had this horror in front of him, but there was beauty too. Why did it struggle to grow, here of all places? Only to be torn apart over and over again and for what? To just exist and be there for a moment? Would I be there because I wanted to or would I be there in spite of everything?”

Mikey looked at Kendra.

She shared a glance with him.

He was the one that saw versions of her.

“I chose beauty.” Renet’s voice was a monologue. “He did too. That man later returned home and sketched the plant. It meant something to us. Enough to put into another medium. There were other ways to express what I was feeling and I chose that. I chose moments like these and what I did have control over: myself.”

Kendra swallowed a lump.

“I do the work and I do a little extra good where I can. I protest what I can’t. Sometimes, I get my way and sometimes, I shouldn’t. I took control of my looks and my attitude and I like myself. I chose love and found an alright balance for myself and this existence."

“You deserve a vacation!” Kendra’s throat was a little too raw.

“Wouldn’t that be groovy?!” Renet giggled like a wind chime. “I hear Thalassia Prime is the bee’s knees this time of year!”

The name flipped forward from the pages of a biology book and Kendra mouthed, “Turtle grass…?”

“Turtle what?” Mikey, of course, heard.

An old-timey alarm clock buzzed.

Renet checked the very air. “Lit! Cattish-pilter is officially safe and the Eastern Seaboard is saved! I’ve got my next job lined up so I’m gonna have to skedaddle!”

“What?! So soon!?” Mikey followed Renet as she stood.

“You’re a cutie as always, Michelangelo.” Renet looked him over and smoothly transitioned her gaze to Kendra.

This time Kendra got to see the full expression of that hint Renet kept dropping.

All of this conversation had been disguised.

It sounded true.

Maybe it was.

It also didn’t matter.

It was all a coded message.

One for her.

For them.

Renet’s take on their relationship and even Kendra’s supposed occupation.

This was probably what she had done with Mikey when he was young.

All while telling him about graffiti.

Kendra felt it then, what Mikey probably had when she told him the truth.

It was hard sometimes to know.

It didn’t always make you mad, sometimes you were just upset. 

It was necessary to move forward.

Sometimes, there was nothing you could do, but carry on.

Kendra walked forward and stared up at Renet.

Renet saw Kendra as if she were a twinkling star.

Kendra hugged her.

Mikey sucked in air audibly and gasped. “Renet!! Kendra never does that!!!”

Renet hugged her back, without hesitation. “You’ve got this, my little blue flame.”

For a moment, it felt like a thousand versions of her had a second of peace.

They then broke apart as aligned planets eventually kept turning and Kendra let go.

Mikey got an actual hug as well and another pat on the shell.

Renet departed this plane with a wave and the shining dust she left behind was swept away by a too well timed gust.

Or maybe one right on schedule, Kendra thought as she watched the sand disperse.

They both stared.

“Think I was dreaming that time?” Mikey wondered eventually.

Kendra pinched him.

“Ow!” Mikey grabbed his arm.

Kendra smirked.

He lit up as his devious self. “My turn!”

“What?! No!” Kendra jumped back into a readied stance.

“We gotta be sure!!” Mikey sent out his thumb and equivalent forefinger at the ready.

“Not in your life!”

“The one with you?” He cooed.

“Not if you pinch me.” She pointed sternly.

He looked at his claw.

She held firm.

“I think you’ll still take me!” He shot at her and she had to flee while screaming for him to stop.

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