Cold Fire Rising

Chapter 19

(Author's Note:
And here we come to a rather important reason why this story is so long and taking its time. This chapter his been floating around in my head patiently for quite a while. However, now I can finally cut loose and let all the really fun things begin!)

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Chapter Nineteen

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It was month nine, week two - over six months post-coma. Michelangelo had gotten permission to start walking without assistive devices; crutches, wheelchair. He had an adjustable cane now, white with orange flames, alternating between his right and left hands depending on which leg felt more fatigued. Alone in his room, the showers, and anywhere he wasn't observed, he taught his body to adjust and recondition in ways he realized most martial artists would envy. These acquired disabilities were merging with his natural abilities, boosted by the psionics, and he was almost able to fake sprinting, even. That single in the dojo had been gentle and light and whole-bodied. But it still wasn't enough. He wasn't satisfied. He chose a week that he figured would be easy. Maybe.

Each day for four days, Michelangelo woke early, rode his wheelchair to the simulation room, programmed in the dojo, and waited for his brothers. From Don, to Leo, to Raph, he fought and trained his legs to work with their apparently semi-permanent limitations – the constant soreness in his right leg that felt like deep bruises, the constant weakness in his left leg that felt like tiny burning spasms. Honeycutt kept reassuring them all that, in time, that would all go away. However, the phrase "in time" no longer held much meaning.

With meditation from Leo, therapy from Raph, studying from Don, Mikey managed to find new and highly creative ways to use his legs to new advantages. Too much force and weight no longer worked, so he invented new dance moves, new parkour moves, new gymnast moves, keeping himself more lifted, balanced on hips and balls of the feet with wider spins. He balanced on his hands more often. He incorporated more jujitsu, aikido. In the final session, he managed to knock Raphael completely off-balance with a single mid-air spinning kick to the hip while distracting with an upper body twist. During that match, Donatello kept trying to run in and grab Mikey every time he went down. But after that successful kick, Donnie could only drop his jaw and flail a little.

It didn't last.

It could not last.

It was a mistake.

Once everything was done, and Michelangelo had remained mostly quiet, he proved he was nowhere near ready for anything, nearly collapsing into his chair as the final sparring match ended. They had rushed him to his bedroom to put him to bed and make sure he was hydrated and his vitals were strong. He had desperately requested his own room, barely managing to utter "No, I wnt bedroom... pls... now...no hosp...nooo" before falling into a semi-conscious partial complex seizure lasting three minutes, in which his body knew exactly what to do while his mind was fully elsewhere. He cried out two names: Little Mikey and Neural Mike.

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Michelangelo spent the entire rest of the morning asleep. Leonardo came to check on him shortly after noon. He was shivering in his sleep, which caused Leo to bring in extra blankets and curl himself around Mikey. When a nightmare started, Leo murmured in his brother's ear, tightened his grip, until Mikey relaxed. Leonardo left the bedroom around one in the afternoon, with Michelangelo still deeply asleep. Meditation into his mind remained impossible, thanks to the bizarre Michelangelo-entity that definitely was not Little Mikey nor any of the personality traits they had seen before.

At lunch, when Leo discussed that issue, Donatello perked up. "He mentioned something about his subconscious self when I was giving him a check-up!"