Chapter Text
Yoshi weaves seamlessly from alley to alley, flying across the roads on silent feet and hiding in the shadows of the streetlamps, the bundle of precious babbling cargo tightly secured to his chest by a makeshift baby-sling fashioned up with clean sheets left outside to dry by some unsuspecting soul.
It’s the middle of the night in New York City, and for being a place that supposedly never sleeps, it’s actually blissfully silent for once; the few commuters that do find themselves speed-walking or driving to their destinations take no notice of Yoshi, just as intended. If it were even up to Yoshi, he wouldn’t have left the crumbling safety of the empty water tower he’d taken refuge in in the first place, because being actively hunted down by a species of aliens isn’t exactly what he’d consider a fun, safe activity. He’s never been a materialistic person, more so after his mutation into an overgrown rat, so he finds no need to go around searching for things to compensate for the lack of comfort in his life, and generally only taking small portable items such as clothes and blankets and the odd trinket whenever he can – essentially, anything else that couldn’t be put inside of a bag had no value to him.
But alas, with a growing baby on top of himself to keep fed, Yoshi begrudgingly recognizes there’s no working around going outside to scavenge for food as often as he can. Beggars can’t be choosers, after all. But he draws the line at leaving the little mutated turtle alone, dangerous as it may be to carry him around outside.
(He’s already failed the other three, buried beneath the dirt in a waterlogged shoebox. He will not lay to rest a fourth.)
Fortunately enough, the city’s garbage is always full to the brim with thrown-away food, no matter how relatively fresh it is. If it weren’t a good thing for Yoshi, he would despair about such waste, but as it is, he can’t bring himself to complain too much. Still, he is always careful when picking out the cleanest scraps of leftovers, lest he makes himself or the little one sick when medicine isn’t exactly available to him anymore.
Yoshi slips into an alleyway. Mindful not to jostle the sling, he shrugs off his backpack and lowers it on the ground near the trashcans, and gets to work on procuring their week’s fill of nutrients in the lamest self-service drive-through of all time.
“What are we feeling today, chiisana ko?” Yoshi peers down at the small turtle laying comfortably on his chest, busy sucking on his thumb and staring at Yoshi with beady black eyes. Yoshi nods, not skipping a beat and carrying on their one-sided conversation. “Yes, I know you are rather fond of the pepperoni, but perhaps more vegetables would do us good.”
The little mutant babbles around his finger, letting out chirps that sound almost indignant, and Yoshi chuckles with mirth, gently rubbing the top of the tot’s head with a knuckle. “No need for mutiny, now. There is still plenty of it left back home.”
Home, what a funny word. Yoshi doesn’t think he’s had a home to call his own ever since his beloved Shen and their dear daughter Miwa left him. Even then, his family had been his home, and no other place that Yoshi went to (whether back in Japan or an overly pricey apartment building in New York) could ever amount to that rightful feeling of belonging.
And so maybe home doesn’t have the same connotations it once did, the last threads of his past life cut loose by a freak accident resulting in the accidental acquisition of a baby borne of the same substance that mutated him into an animal; but Yoshi is starting to think that maybe not all hope for a relatively normal life is lost, so long as he can keep this last cut of sunshine preserved.
Yoshi sighs, shaking his head and getting back to work. This corner of the city proved to be fruitful, as he finds quite the generous amount of baked goods – perks of dumpster diving near a bakery, he supposes – and he’s almost done picking through the third trashcan when he hears the telltale sound of mechanical whirring fast approaching. In one swift move, Yoshi kicks the bag behind the trashcan and slinks further down the alley where the shadows of the buildings will be sure to keep him obscured, hands hovering over the sling in case they need to make a run for it.
He looks upwards just as the flying scouting droid glides over the lip of the adjacent building and looms right above the alley in search of its target, only moving on after what feels like an eternity.
“Kuso,” Yoshi curses under his breath once he’s positive the alien machinery is out of earshot, and the little turtle delightfully parrots back something that sounds suspiciously like the same word. Despite himself, Yoshi feels the tenseness in his body recede just slightly, as it always happens whenever the child does something particularly endearing. “No no, little one,” he says, lightly flicking his finger on the turtle’s tiny beak. “You know we do no repeat bad words.”
Now, Yoshi is faced with two options: he can either try to sneak his way past the droid, and hope it doesn’t somehow manage to track him down back to their home, or take it down now and run the risk of potential backup taking notice of him. Either way there’s no guarantee Yoshi will be able to completely avoid it, not with the kind of technology these scouting machines seem to possess – and he would know, considering they have been right on his heels this whole time no matter what he does to shake them off.
Having made up his mind, Yoshi lets out a soft breath and carefully unties the sling from around his back, walking back on silent feet to where he hid his bag. He gently lowers the little turtle down beside it, nestled between the trashcans and hidden from view. Immediately, the small mutant starts whining at the lack of contact, tears welling up in his eyes that just about break Yoshi’s heart.
“I am sorry, himawari, but you have to stay here,” Yoshi says, wishing he had more time to properly soothe his protégé. “I will be back for you very soon, I promise. I only need to take care of something first.”
As if understanding Yoshi’s words, the little turtle sniffs, quieting down, although almost petulantly. Still, when he makes grabby hands, Yoshi offers him his index finger to hold and squeeze, finding he simply cannot refuse the silent request for comfort – and he’s so tiny it’s terrifying, the way Yoshi can hold him literally in the palm of one hand. He has to protect him, even if it means leaving him behind for a few excruciating minutes.
Yoshi reluctantly stands, edging his way towards the fire escape and not straying his eyes away from the mutant as he goes, making sure to keep him in sight for as long as possible.
Only when he has reached the ladder leading to the fire escape does he turn away, sighing heavily and trusting that his little companion won’t decide to crawl someplace else, like he’s already done countless times before right from under Yoshi’s nose.
With a final glance towards the hiding spot, Yoshi finally starts climbing up the stairs, ears always peeled for any signs of movements from the scouting droid and intent on making this detour last as little as possible.
In the end, Yoshi considers himself lucky it ended up taking less than ten minutes to track down and silently destroy the alien droid, with no signs of backup coming in any time soon. Some of its fluids spilled and stained Yoshi’s robes, which he knows from previous experience that it will be a pain in the rear to clean, but fortunately none of it got on his fur.
By the time he’s slinking down the fire escape and into the alley, Yoshi feels like he’s aged twenty years. At this point, he’s more than eager to collect his belongings, cradle the little turtle close to his chest, and go back to their home so he can take a much needed nap.
He belatedly notices, as he approaches the hiding spot, that the alleyway is completely devoid of any noise – and normally that would be far from being a problem, just not with a toddler left to his own devices for more than two seconds and with a pair of iron lungs to boot. The only way Yoshi’s young charge would be silent is if he found something to chew on, and even then he’d still find a way to be loud.
So it’s with a stone-like heavy weight settled on his stomach that Yoshi peeks over the trashcans and discovers that the tiny mutant is, indeed, missing.
Immediately, his mind goes into overdrive, trying to assess what might have happened – did his child make noise and was subsequently found and taken by the men in suits hunting them down? Could it be that he managed to crawl far away and fast enough that no one actually saw him, only to be run over by a car? What if he’s still around here, somehow hurt and unconscious, and Yoshi has no way of finding him?
He’s going to be sick. This is exactly what he feared by leaving his child alone, the one thing he didn’t want to happen once again.
(The crash of glass upon coming into contact with solid ground hits his ears. Small puddles of blood form around his mutated body, oozing out of three smaller corpses, broken and bent and unsalvageable.)
(Yoshi refuses to bury a fourth.)
Before he can properly panic and go absolutely feral tearing this city apart until it spits his child out, however, he spots a small figure, about the same height as his protégé, innocuously peeking around the corner of the mouth of the alleyway.
The coil that had taken residence around Yoshi’s heart loosens some, though he knows it won’t go away completely until he has his arms secured protectively around his child. By the Gods, it’s moments like these that really cement it in Yoshi’s brain that he’s a rat, now, unforgivably poised to always strike first ask questions later at a moment's notice if he ever feels like he’s being pushed in a corner.
It takes no time at all for him to reach the entrance of the alley, ready to deliver the lecture of the century even if he knows the toddler won’t understand a word of it, though by the time he gets there, the figure has already moved on to the other side of the street, seemingly teleporting towards another alley nestled between two apartment buildings.
Alarm bells start going in the back of Yoshi’s head; as far as he knows, the turtle tot couldn’t walk by himself yet, barely having mastered the art of crawling around, and even if he did somehow learn how to stand on his own two feet in the last thirty minutes, there’s no way he could be that fast. But reason rarely listens to paternal relief, and Yoshi is too overwhelmed by the need to make sure he is safe and uninjured to realize there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the figure is moving, like a shadow that only shifts at every blink.
Yoshi moves quickly, always being mindful of potential stragglers taking notice of a giant mutated rat desperately scrambling about; this time, when Yoshi reaches the spot, he finds the figure standing further in the alley, like it’s making sure it is still being followed and beckoning him inside.
He’s a lot closer to it now, but the figure is still completely obscured by the shadows of the building it is standing next to, making it impossible to discern any other feature, though Yoshi can see one of its arms raised and pointing at a cluster of cardboard boxes that had been carelessly tossed aside. Yoshi considers calling out – and not for the first time thinks he really ought to give a proper name to his child to call him by – but before he can open his mouth, the figure has already disappeared from his sight, almost like it was never even there to begin with.
Yoshi furrows his brows, nose twitching in slight alarm. He walks further down the path, pondering whether he’s truly gone insane and started having hallucinations of dead children’s spirits, of all things. He gets to the boxes just as a childlike giggle full of unrestrained glee reaches his ears, and Yoshi peers inside one of the overturned boxes to find his tiny child playing around with a thick wooden stick.
The last of the fear that had stubbornly refused to leave his mind evaporates like mist almost immediately, and Yoshi kneels down, finally able to actually breathe and not feel like he’s seconds from passing out from lack of oxygen.
“You are in so much trouble, musuko,” Yoshi finds himself saying, the familial title slipping his lips with no thought – clearly, trying to keep himself at an emotional distance from this little creature served absolutely nothing. Taking notice of the mutant rat at once, the little turtle starts waving excitedly the wooden stick, chirruping a mile a minute and unperturbed by the events that trespassed.
Yoshi chuckles, gently picking up his child and cradling him in the crook of his arm. “Careful now, little one,” he says softly, prying the stick away from his little fingers after getting whacked in the face with it a few times for good measure. “You could get a splinter with that.”
The little mutant grabs a fistful of Yoshi’s robes in his hand with little to no regard for the stains on the cloth, turning owlish black eyes up and staring at Yoshi like he has any reason to be in awe of the man. Then he smiles, a big, happy thing that puts the sun to shame, and between delighted chirps he says, “Sp’ner!”
Yoshi blinks, taken aback for but a second, and then he’s chortling, bringing up his arms to nuzzle his child. “So young, and you have yet to cease to amaze me,” he says, gently bumping his snout against the little turtle’s chest and patiently allowing the tot to grab his whiskers. “Though I do wish you did not have to surprise me by giving me heart attacks. I think we both can do without those, yes?”
The only response he gets is some more adorable baby babbling, but that was to be expected.
Yoshi exhales, exasperatedly shaking his head and smile never leaving his face. This whole experience has left him completely frazzled, all of his nerves feeling shot and like they’re never going to allow him to forget the excruciating dread he felt today, imprinting the terror all over his brain like some awful mental stamp.
He has calmed down some, though cuddling his son close is certainly helping loads, and he still has to go back to retrieve his abandoned bag from the other alley, left behind in his blind panic as he was running around like a headless chicken; most importantly, he needs to come up with some other way to handle future situations where Yoshi might need to leave his child behind for his own safety, because clearly he can not be trusted to be left by himself for more than a few minutes. And for however brief the terrifying experience lasted, he still refuses to even entertain the idea of leaving the toddler by himself back at the water tower they call home, considering the tracking technology their enemy has.
For now, though, Yoshi takes a moment to recollect himself, standing up from the ground and simply enjoying the bundle of warmth from within his arms.
“Let us go home, himawari,” he says eventually, pulling up his hood to conceal his features and making the walk back to the street, all but ready to finally claim that well deserved nap.
(He doesn’t notice the three broken and bloodied spirits standing near the cardboard boxes, staring at his retreating back with observant, beady eyes.)