#cardinal rules

Mikey’s POV

Mikey had recently concluded that living off warm, half-melted food in a tank was not optimal sustenance.

Don’t get him wrong, Mikey was overjoyed to have any food, given that the entire kitchen was barren, but only so much could be done with fruit snacks, pop tarts, and granola bars. He had a sinking feeling that with another meal, somebody might puke, and he wouldn’t blame them. Meals were always after training, anyway.

“What’s on the menu t’night, Miguel?” Leo asked, sheathing his twin katana and stretching on his tiptoes.

“If you say anything involving fruit snacks for the next month, I swear—” Casey Senior growled.

“Well, we don’t not have fruit snacks?”

Casey Senior grumbled, and Donnie’s mouth became a line.

“I’m getting fast food!” April decided and stuck her bat into her bag, zipping it up and slinging one strap over her shoulder.

“Yay, April!” Leo cheered and raised an arm, still holding one of his swords, into the air.

“Anyone got a request?”

“Anywhere but Wendy’s,” Donnie grumbled.

“Starbucks.”

“We’re not getting JUST Starbucks!” April groaned. “I’ll just raid Fred Meyers. Text me if you want anything specific.”

“No cold stuff unless you can buy a cooler!” Splinter reminded her.

April gave a thumbs-up as she stuck her phone in her pocket. “Be back in forty-five minutes, tops. If I’m not, then I’m probably dying.”

“April!”

“It’s a joke!” she reassured as she ascended the stairs to the outside world.

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By April's return, Donnie was konked out on the couch, battle shell discarded on the ground next to him.

The small spines on his shell were finally uncompressed and puffed out a bit, no longer flattened to the rest of his shell. Soft snores occasionally came from the vicinity, face twitching slightly as Mikey undid his mask, removed his goggles, and set them aside.

“Yeah, baby!” Mikey cheered quietly with a giant grin as he saw April’s bags.

“Everyone say ‘Thank you, April,’” Splinter instructed them from where he was rifling through what little they did have.

A chorus of ‘thank you April’s rang around the room, and she put the bags down on the remnants of a broken table with a soft thud.

“Yo, Dee! Donnie. Wake up, bro,” Leo muttered, poking their purple brother insistently until the soft snores turned to a singular grunt.

“Nardo.”

“April brought food.”

“Finally! Some good news!”

“You’re welcome, Dee!” April called, cupping a hand around her mouth.

“Yes, yes, thank you, and such,” Donnie muttered, not quietly as he stood, and April could tell that he noticed his apparent lack of accessories but decided to let it be in the meantime.

The group leaned in to inspect April’s relatively simple wares and, save for microwaveable pizzas and breakfast burritos, much of the ‘grab-and-go’ variety. But, such was life.

“Reluctant sigh. Who knew that carbonated beverages could taste so good,” Donnie hummed as he downed one, in a move that Mikey thought was highly uncharacteristic for him.

“I did,” Leo retorted. “And so did anyone with taste, bro.”

Donnie gave him a sharp glare and bonked him on the head with the can before dropping it into a haphazardly labeled ‘recicling’ bag.

“This bag says ‘resi-clean’. Recycling is spelled with a ‘y’, dumdums.”

Raph gave Donnie a light glare in return, and with a black marker, crossed out the offending phrase, and wrote ‘ryclicling’.

“What? No! Instead of the ‘i’, not the ‘e’!”

“Oh, come on! You gotta give Raph something to work with, Dee!” Raph explained, and Mkey couldn’t help but giggle as he crossed out ‘ryclicling’, replacing it with ‘reciclyng’.

“THE OTHER ‘I’!”

“THEN YOU GOTTA TELL RAPH THAT!” Raph shouted back, sweat pooling on his forehead.

“UNLESS SPECIFIED, IT’S ALWAYS THE FIRST LETTER!”

Donnie and Raph gave each other equal looks of frustration and desperation, and Raph finally crossed it out, writing ‘recycling.’

“Oh, thank Pizza Supreme in the Sky.”

Ignoring his brothers, Mikey rifled through April’s bags, which, aside from real food, included three air mattresses, Pez dispensers, and parts of a bed set. Mikey took some paper plates from another of April’s bags.

“Protein bars and dried fruit, as the world intended!”

Mikey smiled to himself and arranged a relatively nutritious plate for each of them. Or as nutritious as one could get with protein bars and dried fruit. Contrary to April’s apparent beliefs, they were not as the world intended.

Though, he realized it might be safer for Casey Junior. The guy sometimes could have taken better to actual food as he did to non-perishables like beans or butter. Mikey had no idea how half a stick of butter was less toxic for his stomach than an excellent old-fashioned PB&J., And Mikey was pretty sure he wasn’t allergic either!

“Say, what’s with the air mattresses in the other bags, Apes?” Leo asked conversationally, and April carefully chewed her dried banana slice before answering.

“Figured that since Mike and Junior still don’t have rooms, they might need somewhere to sleep. You feel me?”

“Touche. Alright, let’s think. Who do we have to house?” Leo asked.

“There’s us four, plus dad, that’s five. I haven’t had time to forge documents for Junior yet, so six,” Donnie rattled off.

“I’m moving back in with my mom until my campus is back on dorms,” April said.

“I am still in my human apartment above you,” Draxum supplied.

“I don’t have a permanent residence,” Casey Senior admitted.

“Well,” April began. “Know what’s great about the apocalypse?” Without waiting for a reply, she continued. “The housing market opens up like movie theaters in summer, and prices are about as much as I paid for all this! There’s an apartment a few doors down from me that I’m pretty sure you could get your paws on.”

“You’ve got papers, right?” Donnie asked the ex-Foot General.

“I was born legally if that’s what you mean. The Foot legally gave each recruit an apartment room.”

“First legal thing they ever did, huh? Regardless, that will do.”

Splinter managed to look pensive while eating a bag of Cheetos. “So the six of us remain, yes?”

Donnie nodded. “And with four rooms between us.”

“Well, who’s got the biggest rooms?” Raph asked, and Donnie typed on his wrist computer as he munched on a protein bar.

“The three of us have rooms about the same size,” Donnie explained, gesturing to himself, Raph, and Leo. “We haven’t unpacked everything, so most places are fair game.”

“Either of you got a preference?” Leo asked, and Casey Junior shrugged.

“I can just set one up in the living room; you don’t have to—” he began but was cut off.

“Nope, nope, nope, nope. We are not couch surfers in this house, Future Boy,” Splinter shook his head adamantly, and Casey put his hands up in defense.

“Ooh! Can I room with you, Dee?” Mikey asked, jumping at the opportunity.

“I suppose so, Angelo.”

“Ouch,” Leo smirked, and Mikey stuck his tongue out.

“I still love you, Leo!”

“Yeah, yeah, ditto.” Turning to Junior, he asked, “You got a preference between me and Raph?”

“I don’t mind,” the human said, if not a little sheepishly.

“Cool. I’m stealing you, in that case. You good with that, Raph?”

Raph gave a thumbs-up. “Raph’s all good!”

“How much sleep are any of them going to be getting?” April asked Casey Senior in a hushed tone.

“By the looks of them? Very little.”

“I take offense to that!” Mikey called, and April chuckled.

“You’ll survive, Mike. Eat your canned peaches.”

Leo’s POV

Leo watched Cassandra and Baron Draxum as they watched April as she nearly submerged herself in a duffle bag. She seemingly found what she had been looking for and straightened her glasses.

“All that for a measly shoe?” Baron Draxum inquired, and April nodded.

“It’s a good shoe! Don’t you two have any packing up to do?”

“We do not live here.”

“Huh. Guess not! Well, let’s go! Grab those bags?”

Cassandra shrugged and took two plastic bags, regaining her footing as April nearly dragged her like a corpse down the corridor.

Meanwhile, Leo made a mental note: blowing up two air mattresses should be done after taking them into any room — particularly a room with a narrow doorway.

Well. Better late than never.

“Okay, turn them the long way… Back up… And run at ’em!”

Mikey and Casey Junior took off at a sprint.

“We can just portal them in,” Leo said, throwing his hands up in disbelief.

“Yeah, but this is still better!” Mikey said as he and Casey rammed their mattresses; they passed the threshold. “Yeah, baby! That’s how we do!”

“Well, you did something, that’s for sure,” Leo muttered and helped Casey up.

“Something cool!” Mikey corrected.

“Sure, Mike.”

As it happened, both mattresses had made it around halfway to the unoccupied area of the car.

“Hey, if it works, it works!” April said, and Leo turned to her. The human looked amused, and a bag slung over her shoulder. Cassandra stood next to her with a few old store bags.

“Are you guys heading out?”

“Yeah, we’ll be back tomorrow. Try not to drive each other crazy?”

“No promises!”

As Leo returned to his room, Casey successfully pushed the mattress to the open part of his room.

“Yeah, we should have inflated those after getting them in the room,” he said, more to himself than to Casey.

“Is here okay?” Casey asked, and Leo looked up.

He’d gotten the tall, thin side of the mattress on the ground, with enough space between it and Leo’s more defined space that there was a decent walkway.

“Stamp of approval!”

Casey lowered the mattress down and put his mask on it. Leo looked at the barren area pensively.

“We should probably decorate, y’know?”

“Huh?”

“You’re living here, yeah? Decorate your space, make it a place you want to be in; you feel me?”

“Uh… Sort of?”

“You’ll get it eventually. We’ll grab and work off the stuff you saved from your other room. Dad’s always got a spare Lou Jitsu poster or action figure here or there.”

Casey frowned like it was a never-before-considered novelty to him. Which, Leo remembered as he half dragged the guy out, it probably was.

Casey’s pile of things, stuffed in a bag marked with his name (which had been crossed out at least three times. Raph was many things, but he was not a good speller) was much smaller than the others, containing a few things blankets, some spare clothes that April had dug up for him a few weeks after the invasion, and some books that Donnie had given him as a “housewarming gift.”

“Take this, and sort out where you want your stuff. You know Lou Jitsu, right?”

“Wasn’t he Master Splinter?”

“More like Dad was him. But yeah. I’m pretty sure Cassandra’s a fan, too. I’ll dig up some old merchandise, and we’ll stick it up, m’kay?”

“‘Merch’?”

Leo gave him a look of shock. “Merch. Memorabilia. Posters and stuff?” No reaction. Leo groaned and rubbed the area where his nose would have been if he had been a human. “When you like a book, TV show, video game, movie, or whatever, you get stuff from that thing. I’ll show you.”

He led Casey back to their room and pointed at his ‘Mad Dogs’ flag and Jupiter Jim figure. “This stuff! That’s merch. Mikey and Donnie made our awesome Mad Dogs flag, and we definitely didn’t scam a guy at JJ Con to let us get JJ figures for cheap!”

“Cool,” Casey breathed and studied them from a distance with interest as Leo perused a spare box.

“C’mon, I swear we head one in here,” he muttered, before pulling something out of it. “Here we go!” He handed two flags to Casey. “Your very own Hamato and Mad Dogs flags!”

He accepted the flags and unfolded them. One was the same flag that Leo had pointed out to him, and the other had a black backdrop with the green Hamato symbol emblazoned on it.

“Woah… Thank you!” Casey exclaimed, and Leo grinned, eyebrows raising at his tone shift.

“Cool, huh? Come on, we’ll hang them up.”

Even after the invasion, Leo wasn’t too sure where Casey fit into their gaggle of weirdos, and he was fairly sure it was a mutual feeling. But dammit if he wouldn’t try to make it work.

It would work out — a bit of Mikey’s undying optimism, his own devil-may-care commentary, Raph’s worrying, Donnie’s weirdly helpful cynicism, and whatever the others had, and there was no way it wouldn’t.

It had only taken a half-meal and what Mikey would have called a ‘bonding moment’ with Casey to get Leo feeling like he could have fought the entire Battle Nexus again, and win.

So, walking alongside the newest addition to their family, as if he had read Leo’s thoughts, (and maybe he had, it wouldn’t have surprised Leo in the slightest) Casey smiled wearily, and determinedly looked at the wall as he held out a fist.

“Well, would you look at that?” Leo smirked. “We’re making progress with you!” He met the gesture, bumping his fist against Casey’s, and blew it into an open palm.

Casey made a soft, exaggerated explosion noise, and Leo could only chuckle.

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