Chapter Text
“Hot SOUP!”
Lou Jitsu flew across the screen of the impossibly deep television, his fist and leg outstretched to meet the enemies, already weakened from the ladder attack. Within seconds, they were toppled, Lou Jitsu the clear victor.
“Yes! Hot Soup!” Splinter shook his fist at the T.V., reliving the movie, the best from the hot soup chronicles. It had taken four consecutive weeks of filming in order to capture the complicated fight scene, in which Lou Jitsu had insisted on doing all of his own stunts, including jumping from a flaming car in order to chop at the main villain's henchman. “Take that! Hmpph!”
Splinter settled back into the squishy red chair as commercials came on. “Your taste buds will be satisfied!” , the cheery woman on screen proclaimed. Kanji scrolled on screen, advertising the shipping details, as the woman continued to speak about the candy she was selling.
“DAD! DAD! DAD!” Splinter was pulled out of relaxation by the shouts of his boys running in from the apartment hall, and the thundering of their footsteps.
The door slammed open in the foyer as each boy tried to reach Splinter first, pushing the others out of their way. Donnie leaped forward, his purple hoodie fluttering with the motion as he activated the drone on his back, attempting to fly above the rest through the kitchen. His drone clunked to a stop midair after being punched by his vicious twin, and he fell to the ground.
Leo sidestepped the purple clad body crumpled on the ground, leaping over Donnie’s purple braids and ran forward, convinced he was home free. Just as he was about to reach the doorway to the hall leading into the living room, he felt a hand grab his brown bomber jacket as he was pulled back and tripped by Mikey, who rolled through the doorway to the living room. Leo fell back landing on Donnie and his shattered purple drone.
Raph, still behind the others, ran through the door to the apartment just to be tripped by the pile of twins in the foreway.
“Aww Raph, could you not?” Leo groaned. “I was about to be the first to tell dad about- mphhh!”
Donnie removed his cyber hand from where he had punched Leo. “Not now, Leonardo! I believe I was about to win our little race. Now if you could get off my weak back-”
Raph patted both their heads from where he was laying stomach down on their backs. “I’m sorry little bros, but I think Mikey’s winning. He’s over by Splints already.”
Mikey popped his head up beside Splinter, careful not to obstruct his precious television.
“Dad, I’m the first to tell you! We have a new neighbor!”
Splinter sat up in his chair. How had he not known this? Years ago, he had maken it his duty to constantly know who was moving in and out of the building, just in case. But now, he was blindsighted. Splinter supposed it was good he had the boys to look out for now.
“Eh… good reconnaissance work, Orange.”
Mikey beamed at his brothers in the kitchen, his twists’ charms clinking together as he shook his head in excitement at the praise.
Leo stood up and brushed off his blue bomber jacket, Raph having moved from where he was squishing both of his younger brothers.
“Yeah Dad! And he moved into the apartment above us!”
“Hmm, thank you Blue.” Splinter said, scratching his chin.
Internally splinter was cursing his old age. How could he, Lou Jitsu , the greatest ninja of all time , not know he had a new neighbor?
Donnie peeled his face off the black and white tile ground, also eager for praise from his father. “His name, pápá, is Barry. His only past job (I ran a background check) was at a biology firm.”
He waited a beat for an ‘I’m proud of you, purple’, from his dad, but the parental validation never came, Splinter too preoccupied with his thoughts. Donnie laid his face back down on the cool tile and cried internally at his life.
Splinter was still internally cursing himself. How could he have not known someone was moving in nearby? What if he put his family in danger?!?
Then his stomach growled and he remembered how hungry he was. Eh, anyways, he thought, it was dinner! His anxiety could wait till later!
“Alright boys, let go eat.” He headed in the direction of the small kitchen, thinking.
It probably wasn’t that big a deal, after all, what were the chances this new neighbor spelled more trouble than, say, the O'neils living next door?
And who knows? Maybe Splinter wouldn’t even have to meet their new neighbor.
. .==.- -.==.
It was yet again pizza night, a tri-weekly occurrence in the Hamato household, ever since the boys had first been adopted. The only food they used to be able to all agree on and stomach was pizza, and now, eight years later, their refined palettes only accepted the finest of New York pizza establishments.
Now, per tradition, the family would order four pizzas (one specifically for Raph) and crowd around the dingy kitchen in their apartment to chow down on the heavenly combination of bread and cheese that Lou Tony's Pizza had crafted.
On this particular night however, Splinter was already agitated, only an hour into pizza night. He had ordered the pizza ages ago, after confirming the restaurant in question was still standing (you never know what pizza places had collapsed into sinkholes, so you always had to check), but the pies had yet to be delivered to the apartment.
The older two boys had headed to their rooms, tired of waiting on the pizza, as Mikey and Donnie had headed outside the apartment to engage in vague mischief. Most likely, this would involve Michelangelo doing some sort of bouncy razzmatazz stunt with a skateboard, various springs, and roller blades while Donatello watched from the sidelines, taking notes, calling out warnings about the questionable safety of it all, and definitely Not encouraging him to throw ‘baskEball’ into the mix.
The clinking of a pinball machine could be heard from one of the other boy’s rooms, as Leo tried to beat his own top score at the game. Amongst the yelling and excitement, Raph could be heard giving encouragement in shouts.
Within the comforting chaos of it, paced Splinter. He was already frustrated, having had his favorite movie rerun of the Hot Soup Chronicles (Hot Soup Chronicles III: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Hot) canceled. And now the pizza he had ordered still hadn’t shown up at his home.
Splinter wasn’t necessarily in the practice of leaving his apartment, especially since “Lou Jistu sightings” had been trending lately, but he was about to storm the pizza parlor and demand to know what had happened to his pizza. He began to call the boys back inside and to the kitchen to plan the pizza takeover when his doorbell rang with what must have been the pizza guy.
Splinter was distracted, hurrying to grab his twenty dollars and get the pizza quickly, especially since Leo and Raph were waiting in the living room for the pizza, and he wanted to avoid a pizza riot. (The last time a pizza riot had occurred, Splinter had had to buy a brand new fridge to account for the damages. Splinter still shuddered to think about what had happened to that little old lady.)
The short man flung the door open and craned his neck behind him, calling out.
“Blue! Red! The pizza is here for Pizza night! Come quick or else I will eat all of your pizza ~ “
In a flash Leo slid into the kitchen, using his socks to keep sliding on the tile, until he hit the kitchen door frame.
“Woah, pops! That is so not cool! That’s our pizza and- “
He paused, looking at the man who was delivering the pizza.
Splinter hadn’t paid much attention to the man at the door, other than his ridiculous height. At 4’7, Splinter’s head hardly came up to above the man’s chest.
(Not that Splinter was looking at the man's pecs. Well, he had a very broad chest, so Splinter noticed, but he wasn’t staring or anything! Nope, he was just briefly admiring the man’s assets, which to be quite fair, were directly at Splinter’s eye level. To not look at them would seem weird, not that he was! He just had a limited view of the guy!! … Which happened to include a perfect view of his very big chest.)
Leo began speaking again, but to an entirely new person, the pizza guy.
“Woah, Barry, I thought you were a scientist, like a cool warrior alchemist or something, not a pizza deliverer?”
The man sighed, and began speaking.
His voice was scarily familiar to Splinter. All of his nerves felt like they had been set on fire and then doused in ice water, vibrating in fear and shock. But- it couldn’t be!
“I am not a pizza deliverer, Leonardo. The real pizza imbecile delivered this to the wrong apartment.” Splinter looked up, past the man’s ridiculous muscle and at his face, hoping it wasn’t who he thought .
Pizza guy rolled his eyes. “And please, my name isn’t Barry, it’s-”
“DRAXUM?!?”
Baron Draxum looked down at Splinter with wide eyes, mouth open like a fish floundering for air. He recognized that voice, remembered the tone from their arguments all those years ago. It was shock, an almost ill sense of misguided betrayal that still colored Lou Jitsu’s voice when speaking about Draxum.
“I- Lou?” Draxum squinted, studying the shorter man’s features. He hadn’t equated the small man in front of him with the action star he knew thirteen years ago, but then again, he hadn’t been looking. It was quite obvious now, his gray dusted long hair grown out in thirteen years, his deep black eyes, his cute pointy nose. Lou had grown a beard, reaching to the top of his chest. Draxum was suddenly hit with what he had missed in the thirteen years away. He hadn’t gotten to see the man in front of him age, hadn’t gotten to see him as he probably reached milestone after milestone in his career. He hadn’t been there for Lou .
“Lou...” He paused for a millisecond. He would call him what he remembered, the name he had whispered throughout the divorce, the name he spoke to the walls of empty house when he had left with the boys. “No, Yoshi , I-”
The mention of his real name snapped Splinter back into reality. Away from the memories of Draxum; the good, the bad. But unlike Draxum, he wasn’t feeling sentimental about the man in front of him, no matter how nice his chest looked. The last time he had seen the scientist was when he was attempting to experiment on Splinter and their sons, when Splinter had taken the boys and left to find a new life away from their other father. Splinter’s disorientation hardened into rage, like cold punches that he was ready to throw.
“You don’t get to call me Yoshi, Draxum. Get out of my apartment or I will force you out.”
Behind him, Leo’s eyes widened as he looked back and forth between the two, most likely trying to figure out what a Nintendo lizard (? Dragon? Leo had never actually figured out what species Yoshi was?) had to do with his Pops.
“Wait, Lou! Let me explain, I never thought I’d get to see you again-” Spinter cut him off by half closing the door on him (stopping when the wood hit his chest, which he couldn’t help but admire.) Looking back behind Draxum, Splinter saw his two youngest sons standing in the hall, looking confused at what was going down, and Splinter felt his blood boil. He had wanted to harm his children, his boys.
“NO! You made your choice thirteen years ago! You don’t get to come back here to me and get to know our- no, MY boys! You don’t get to waltz into MY LIFE like nothing ever happened! I raised them! NOT YOU, DRAXUM! YOU! WEREN'T! HERE!”
With that final statement, Splinter put two hands on Draxum’s ever familiar chest and pushed hard, making him unbalanced, more in surprise than brute force. As Draxum stumbled away from the door, Splinter grabbed Donnie’s and Mikey’s wrists and pulled them into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. He locked the door and took a deep breath, turning around to where four pairs of eyes blinked at him.
“Grab a slice of pizza,” he grumbled, gesturing to the vague area where the pizza boxes were put. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Splinter shuffled off to the living room where he slouched down into his chair, the door shut behind him. He was so tired. The ancient TV in front of him flickered to life, showing one of his last movies before Lou Jitsu had gotten privately divorced and fell off the map to become Splinter. His eyes fluttered, and he fell asleep into a nap, exhausted and burdened with memories he’d long since tried to suppress.
“Hot souuppp!”