The space traveler

Chapter 5 - Past knocks on the door

Milo was living his best life with his new identity, he had an appartement like home, a lot of friends, coworkers, neighbors, even his boss, everyone seems to be nice to him, the nomad community was very welcoming towards him and he loved his new life.

One day, one of his friends came up to him with the newest gossip he's heard, very eagered to share the scuttlebutt with his dear turtle neighbor, apparently, some new travelers arrived the other day and were staying with an acquaintance of theirs, the travelers seem to be looking for someone, Milo and his friends had fun joking and theorizing about what could the search be about, maybe they're cops looking for a criminal? Maybe they're a family looking for their kid? Who knows, all they knew was that the travelers were caught making a few scenes, like getting in trouble with store employees, getting into a fight, amongs other things, but the stories and rumors spread quickly and would often get mixed up, so it was hard to tell some apart.

After Milo noticed the time, he realized that if he takes much longer he'll be late for work, so Milo excuses himself out and leaves for work, the day goes by as the usual, Milo does his chores as he patiently waited for his boss to find a mission for him, but while he searches a task for Milo, the young boy did some cleaning duties like dusting the shelfs and sweeping the floor, once he was finished, he sat down behind the counter to wait it out, he looked outside with a bored watch and time seemed to slow down a little as he just layed back and enjoyed the moment of calm and solitude, but just as he felt himself drifting off to sleep, a loud thud was heard, he jumped up to check out what happened, finding a child flopped on the floor, it seems like the poor thing tripped over and fell, spilling the drink it was holding all over the floor, as frustrating as it was, Milo stayed calm and walked over to help the small crying child.

Milo - "Hey, buddy. Are you ok?"

Child- "M-my drink..."

Milo - "Oh, that? Don't worry, I'll clean up, where are your parents?"

Child - "I... think I'm lost..."

Milo - "You can stay here until your parents show up, how's that?"

Child - "T-thanks, mister!"

Milo then, helped the kid back on it's feet, dusted him off and sat him down in a chair nearby before heading in to get a mop and clean the little messy puddle from the floor, soon later, the kid's mom showed up to pick up her missing son, the mother thanked Milo deeply and apologized for the inconvenient, leaving the store soon after, as Milo was almost done mopping, he looked around while cleaning, he heard a weird noise from a distance, he saw a few figures dashing by the stablishment and Milo's eyes met with someone else's, they met a pair of emerald green eyes, too familiar to not recognize, Raphael's eyes, he had a second to glance over to the other two figures, revealing to be all of his brothers, flying by at high speed with what seemed to be a jet, or would it be a small rocket?

Anyway, the three silhouettes dashed through in a blink of an eye, Milo, afraid of being caught by his brothers runs back inside and hides in the storage room at the back of the store, where he stays for what felt like hours, he wanted to come out, but he couldn't, not if his brothers are out there, he doesn't know what they'll do, he doesn't know what they want, he doesn't know what they're doing here, all he knows is that the people who abbandoned him and left him to die are, for some reason, back, and they're looking for something or someone, the image Milo had of his brothers is no longer clear to him, judging for what he knows, knew, and went through, they could be good guys, but they also could be selfish and manipulative monsters that will do anything in order of getting what they want and Milo is too insecure to try and find out.

A coworker of Milo come into the room looking for him, she sees him sitting on the floor, retracted into his shell, it was very odd and a bit gross for her since it's the first time she ever saw him do that, with not much of a clue of what to do in this sittuation, she just picks him up and comforts him awkwardly, which to her surprise, actually gets him to come out of his shell, Milo picks himself up from the floor and helps her up as well so they can leave the backroom, as they walked back to the main area of the store, Milo looked around nervously, checking to see if there's any sight of his brothers, gladly, there was none, so he tried to go on with his day normally.

Meanwhile, Leonardo and Donatello are listening to Raphael ramble some nonesense about seeing Michelangelo as a grown up version of himself when they were speeding through the facility earlier today, they obviously don't believe him, Mikey's been missing for a less than 5 months, even if Raph DID saw him, he would definetively not be an adult, it's just stupid, even though... Donnie still doesn't know how severe was the time difference in between Earth and Dimension X, so tecnically, in theory, it could be possible, but he refuses to think that would be the case, like, it's Mikey they're talking about, if something like that happened, he would go out of his way to get back home, why and how would he even get to that space... nomad... hive?... whatever that weird place was, they themselves were only able to get there through their new friend, Fugitoid, an android they befriended during the time Mikey has been missing, so there is no logical explanation of why he could be or even got there, or at least, that's what they thought.