Chapter Text
“Angel? Why aren’t you doing your homework?”
Mikey blinked and looked away from the window where he had been watching cars and people pass by to look up at his mother. “Huh?”
“Your homework.” Shen tapped the paper on the table. Her eight-year-old son stared back at her, blank-faced, before startling as he realized what she was talking about.
“Oh!” Mikey pouted as he stared down at his math homework. “Well, I was working on it, but then I heard a noise outside so I looked out the window and then I saw the ice cream truck drive by and I started thinking about what flavor I wanted and then I saw a lady walking four dogs and they were huge and—”
“Mikey, darling, take a breath.”
Mikey paused to heave in a breath. “Sorry, Mama. I was trying to do it! Honest!”
“I believe you.” Shen’s brow furrowed as she watched her son. She had been homeschooling him for the last three years while Miwa went to public school, and she had noticed a pattern emerging within the last few months. Mikey had always struggled with his learning, but he was getting more and more distracted while doing his schoolwork, and she could see this in other areas as well. Shen privately trained Mikey as well as Miwa in how to defend themselves, and she found that Mikey would get distracted and wander off to make faces in the wall mirror or mess with the wall of training weapons.
Shen sat down beside him and took a look at the worksheet. “Math is pretty boring, huh?”
Mikey propped his chin in his hand and pushed his pencil around on the table with a sigh. “Yeah…”
Shen thought for a moment. “…What’s your favorite show right now?”
Mikey’s eyes immediately lit up, and he pushed his hands into the table to lean closer to his mother. “Danny Phantom! Mimi and me wanna be superheroes like him!”
“You would make a great team! So, Danny captures ghosts in that thermos, right?” Mikey nodded. “So, let’s say that a thermos can only hold 12 ghosts. If he had 12 thermoses, how many ghosts could he capture?”
Mikey looked up in thought, tongue sticking out as he concentrated. “Mm… 144?”
“Correct!” Shen and Mikey beamed at each other, and Mikey kicked his feet, pleased with himself. “Why don’t you write that down?”
“‘Kay!” Mikey wrote the number under the 12x12 problem on his worksheet.
“Now, if 36 ghosts were haunting Danny’s town, but they were spread out equally over four buildings—”
“What buildings?”
“Hmm…” Shen wasn’t bothered by Mikey’s interruption and decided to roll with it. “They’re haunting the mall, the movie theater, the school, and the zoo.”
“The zoo’s not a building!” Mikey giggled.
“Four places,” Shen corrected herself. “If they were spread out equally over four places, how many ghosts haunt each place?”
“Um, nine?”
“Yes!” Shen raised her hand for a high five, which Mikey eagerly met. “You’re very smart!”
“Really? But usually it’s really hard!”
“That’s because it wasn’t very interesting to you, so your brain wanted to focus on other things. So, we just need to make the work something you want to think about.”
“Like Danny Phantom!”
“Exactly.” Shen grinned. “Now, let’s finish this worksheet and then you can help me make lunch.”
“Yes!”
Once Shen figured out that she needed to tweak how Michelangelo learned, he flourished. She would use his favorite shows, the comics he read—anything that she noticed that grabbed her son’s attention. Mikey loved helping her cook and bake in the kitchen, so she slowed down to teach him measurements and what would happen if he put too much or too little of an ingredient in a recipe. She trained her children using high-energy games to keep her son’s focus with the added bonus that Miwa would have fun too.
Every time he learned something new about cooking or got a good grade back for his school assignments, her son was ecstatic. He had to run a few laps around the apartment just to get the initial energy out, and he would spend the rest of the day with a huge smile on his face. Shen found herself sharing his enthusiasm, as did Miwa.
Michelangelo had been devastated when he first found out that he would not be going to school with his big sister. He had heard so many stories from her and had wanted to have all the experiences she had, but Shen was wary to send him somewhere she could not protect him. That moment at the park five years ago still haunted her, and that had just involved a handful of kids and some parents. It would only take a bully or close-minded teacher for Mikey’s mutant status to be exposed, and then it would be all over for her family.
It was just too risky for Mikey to go to school.
She had still been wracked with guilt when her son cried. She had promised to give Mikey as normal a life as she could, but sometimes she thought she was failing.
When Miwa would come home from school, Michelangelo used to run up and ask her how her day had been and what she had done at school. Miwa always complied, sympathizing with her brother—even if she thought he was lucky to not have to go to school—and would regale him with the activities she did in class and gossip about the other kids. Mikey always listened, enthralled by a world he couldn’t be a part of.
Once Shen changed Mikey’s routine, however, the tables flipped. When Miwa came home from school now, her son would run up to his sister to show his good grade or tell her what he and their mother had done that day or share whatever treat they baked. Miwa, bless her, would ooh and ahh over whatever her brother was telling her and praise him when she could get a word in.
Shen had noticed a change in Miwa after that day in the park. Even after finding a new playground to go to, Miwa never left Mikey’s side, making sure that he was happy and safe from any potential bullies or overly curious children. It was almost like having a bodyguard, and Shen’s heart broke that her daughter felt that she needed to protect her brother so closely.
It showed in their training too. Shen still refused to train them to the degree that Yoshi and Saki had been trained—she wanted them to be children, not ninjas—but they would know how to thoroughly defend themselves by the time they were adults. Miwa took it very seriously, both in her beginner classes as well as her private lessons with her mother and brother.
“Mikey!” Miwa admonished as she dragged her brother away from the foam nunchucks he was eyeing on the weapons rack. It was late afternoon, and the dojo was closed for the day with the blinds down, hiding its occupants from anyone walking by. “We gotta pay attention!”
Mikey pouted. “But—”
“Wait a moment, Miwa.”
Both children paused as they watched their mother approach the weapons. She eyed them thoughtfully before heading to the back. “Stay right there. I’ll be right back.”
The siblings eyed each other, silently asking if they knew what was going on before simultaneously shrugging. Mikey wandered back off towards the mirrors to see himself do a handstand. Miwa rolled her eyes but followed him—she wanted to practice her handstand too.
A few minutes later, they heard their mother’s footsteps signaling her return to the dojo. They each fell backward onto their feet and turned to face Shen, who was standing by the weapons rack with a smile.
“Come here, children.”
Miwa grabbed Michelangelo’s hand as they walked together up to their mother. It was a force of habit so that he would not run off as he often did when they were out and about. They stood attentively in front of their mother, though Mikey was already beginning to shift on his feet as excitement built towards whatever his mama had planned.
“My children, there is still much to learn if you want to be able to fight back against your opponents, but I think it is time to take it to the next step. There is a high chance that they will fight back with more than their body, so it will be important for you to know how to fight with a weapon.”
Shen faced Miwa first. “Miwa, my daughter. When you were a baby, your father planned to give you your very own tessen before training you to be a kunoichi. I was unable to retrieve it after the fire, but it would be a great honor to your father to learn the weapon. We will practice with a safer fan for now, but know that one day you will wield a tessen. Your spirit is strong, and you will guide the winds just as you guide your whirlwind of a brother.” She sent a wink towards her son.
Miwa stared reverently as her mother handed her a blue paper fan covered in small white flowers. “Thank you, Mama,” she said, still looking at the tessen. “It’s really pretty.”
“Fitting for a beautiful girl.” Shen turned to Michelangelo and handed him the foam nunchucks he had been eyeing earlier. “My angel, you are a force to be reckoned with—a wild card that can catch even the most seasoned warrior off guard. Only the most creative and talented of minds can wield the nunchuck expertly, and so I bestow it to you.”
Mikey was a copy of Miwa, admiring his new weapon. He swelled with pride at his mama’s words, and he wanted nothing more than to make her proud. He jumped away from his family, eagerly swinging his nunchucks around, uncaring as they bopped him upside the head. “I’m gonna be the best ninja warrior ever!”
“No, I am!” Miwa called out as she jumped up beside him, waving her fan about. “I’m gonna be the best ninja warrior and then I’ll protect you from all the bad guys!”
“You will protect each other,” Shen said before an argument could break out. “You each have your own strengths, ones that will make you stronger as a team. Your differences do not make one or the other better but equal where it matters.”
“But I’m the big sister!” Miwa insisted. “That means I gotta protect him!”
Shen smiled, kneeling down in front of her daughter to cup her cheek. “As a sister, yes. But as a warrior, you need to work together to protect each other. That is how you survive.”
Mikey popped up beside Miwa and wrapped his arms around her. “Yeah! We’re family, and family protects each other! Like ‘ohana’ from Lilo and Stitch!”
Miwa pursed her lips before looking up at her mother, scrutinizing. “Does that mean you protect us, and we protect you?”
Never. You will never have to protect me if I have anything to say about it.
“Of course, baby.”
“Mimi?”
Miwa rolled over in bed to see Mikey at her side. The two of them still slept in the same room despite their mother offering to clear out her sewing room. Even though they had separate beds, their mother would often find one had migrated to the other’s bed by morning, both curled up around each other. Shen was a little worried about codependency, but for now she just found it adorable.
“Yeah, My-My?” Miwa asked sleepily. She lifted her blanket up for Mikey, and her brother eagerly climbed in and snuggled up to her.
“Did you mean it earlier? About protecting me?”
“Yeah. You’re my little brother, so it’s my job. That’s what big sisters do.”
“Is that why you’re always listening when I talk even if it’s for a really long time? ‘Cause on TV big sisters get annoyed by little brothers.”
Miwa frowned and pulled Mikey closer, wrapping an arm around him. “I don’t get annoyed—well not a lot. It makes you happy, which makes me happy. I don’t want you to be sad because you can’t go to school or see stuff like I can.”
Mikey was silent for a moment, contemplating her words. “Thanks, Mimi.”
The room fell into silence. It went on long enough that Miwa thought Mikey had fallen asleep until he spoke up again.
“If that’s what big sisters do, what do little brothers do?”
“Hm…” Miwa looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “They’re happy and nice, and sometimes they’re a little annoying, but they love their big sisters. It’s just us and Mama, so we gotta protect each other, but I protect you more ‘cause I’m older.”
“That doesn’t sound very fair.”
“S’not supposed to be, but that’s okay. I don’t mind.”
Mikey smiled sleepily and cuddled closer. “You’re the best big sister, Miwa. I’m really happy you’re my sister.”
“I’m happy Mama found you, Mikey.”
