The space traveler

Chapter 6 - Avoiding your problems

After seeing what appeared to be his brothers in the nomad ship, Milo has been a bit frightened about showing his face out in public, if his brothers saw him, they would definitely recognize him, he is older now and he has a small scar on his cheek but no significant changes that would make it any harder to recognize him, Milo knows very well that the other turtles won't react well to his change, they're gonna be shocked, ask so many difficult questions that they'll demand answers to, the mere thought of having to deal with his brothers again after so much time without them, it's so stressful that he gets headaches.

So ever since that episode, he's been wearing a set of casual armor, it's not very practical but does the job of covering himself up and hiding his identity, but his neighbors noticed his strange behavior and rumors starting going around, he felt odd about being in a position like this, it's very uncomfortable to be the center of attentions, specially if it's putting him in a bad light, but it feels better than the chance of being forced to return to Earth, since it's probably what his brothers will try to do if he's found out.

Meanwhile, his brothers have been looking for clues of where he might be, as well as looking for gear pieces to fix Fugitoid's ship that had a system busted during an escapade.

Milo was working at the store, cleaning the shelves behind the cashier when he saw them walk in, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello, they just casually walk inside the store hoping to find the items they need and ask around about Michelangelo's whereabouts, Milo left his coworker to attend them and tried to act as natural as possible, but his anxiety was getting the better of him and he was shaking a bunch, he ran out of options, he was being too obvious, so Milo walked out of there and hid on his manager's office with the excuse of looking for a mission, sadly, his boss had no jobs for him to binge, but he did notice that Milo was and has been acting very weird recently, deciding to use this situation to get the answers out of him, he asked Milo to sit down so they could talk, and since he was too scared to go outside and didn't wanted to be disrespectful to his boss, he sat down in front of him to listen.

The boss questions him about his sudden changes, Milo feels the weight of his past pulling him down and he breaks under the pressure, no longer having the energy to hide himself under the new identity, he can't pretend like nothing from the past happened and he can't hide everything about him for much longer before his friends suspect of the gaps and holes in his stories, so he comes down to it and confesses who he really was, Michelangelo Hamato, a mutant turtle from the planet Earth, his boss demanded an explanation for why he's been going into hiding, Milo explained that the customers he was running away from are actually his brothers, they abbandoned him in a hostile dimension for nearly a year until he managed to escape with the help of some friends, he told him that his brothers were always a bit hard to read and that he's unsure about what they want or what might happen if they find him.

Milo has gone through so much because of them that he grew fear of his own family, driven by the idea that they left him to die at the hands of their enemies, this fear mangled his view of them, viewing most of the bad memories he had of them as proof of their unstability and possible abuse, it became hard for him to tell apart the diference between them just being unintentionaly rude/mean or them being malicious and cruel people, it's been such a long time since he last saw his brothers, so his mind only grew more fuzzy as the years went by, Milo was clearly frightened by their presence alone, so the boss couldn't even begin to imagine the state he would be in if he met them face to face, so he sheltered the boy in his office until the three guys hopefully left.