Chapter Text
Less than an hour later, Johnny was already back at his apartment and ready to get crafting.
He sat at the kitchen table with a fresh cup of coffee in hand, puzzling over his thrift store haul. He’d lucked out at the first Goodwill he’d gone into. While he hadn’t found the exact costume, he’d managed to scrounge almost everything he needed to make one.
Or everything he thought he needed. He’d been going off memory, and well…
He was so tired he could barely remember his own name, needless to say what a stupid Ninja Turtle looked like. But between the thrift store and the Dollar Tree he’d stopped at (the one on Victory, not the one in Canoga Park) he was pretty sure he had all the necessary pieces.
Now he just had to figure out how to put it all together.
The first thing he’d done when he got home was put on a fresh pot of coffee. He’d bought some at the store that morning, and he was hoping more caffeine would kickstart his stalled brain back into gear. Then, while that was brewing, he’d gone to Robby’s room, where he rummaged through his scattered toys until he finally found one of his Ninja Turtle action figures. He was drawing a blank on their names, but it was the red one with the sai.
Whatever. It would do. They all looked the same, anyway.
It now stood in the center of the table, scowling up at him from between the overflowing shopping bags that littered its surface. Johnny took a sip of his coffee and glowered back. Grimacing at the burnt, bitter aftertaste, he set the cup aside so he could start unpacking the supplies.
He reached for the Dollar Tree sack first. Johnny mentally gave himself a pat on the back for his stroke of genius as he pulled out a two-pack of aluminum roasting pans. The disposable pans really were perfectly suited for this project. They were the right size and shape for a child-sized turtle shell. And, as a bonus, they were also lightweight, so Robby wouldn’t have to lug around a heavy burden on his back all night.
Point, Lawrence.
All he had to do was paint them. As luck would have it, he had several half-empty cans of spray paint stored in the top of the closet, leftovers from various handyman jobs he’d done back during the summer. Johnny got up to retrieve them and added them to the clutter, lining them up on the table in front of him for inspection.
Just as he’d remembered, there was a can of hammered bronze leftover from that ugly old chandelier he’d been hired to restore, along with the dark green he’d used to refinish some horrible old lady’s patio furniture. He also had partial cans of desert sand and black, along with an almost full can of red. With a smirk, Johnny picked up the red paint and gave it a shake. The little ball bearing inside the can made a satisfying clack.
The others had been work expenses, but that? Had been an impulse purchase.
One morning, a few months back, he’d woken up to find the bus stop across the street from his apartment complex had been plastered with LaRusso Auto ads. The bench, the bus shelter, all of it. Daniel LaRusso’s goofy face grinned at him from every available surface. He could even see it from his tiny bedroom window. That smug, wide-mouthed smile, those dark, mocking eyes staring right into his soul. Even worse, the side panel of the stop featured a poster of a life-sized LaRusso, mimicking his winning crane kick.
We Kick the Competition! read the now disgustingly familiar slogan.
Johnny could feel his blood pressure rising dangerously higher every time he was forced to drive past it. As if the inescapable radio ads and TV commercials weren’t already bad enough. But that? That had been a step too far. It was almost as if LaRusso knew where he lived and was waging psychological warfare, specifically targeted just to him.
Which was, admittedly, an insane thought.
So, for the sake of his own health and mental well-being, he’d taken initiative and done something about it.
Of course, he’d had to explain to Robby why the funny car man now had a big, fat, juicy, red ‘hot dog’ in his mouth. And the incriminating paint had been a bitch to get off his hands. But the momentary awkwardness (and the raging hangover he’d had the next morning) had totally been worth it. A week later, the defaced ads been taken down and replaced with ones for some skeevy ambulance chaser, and his peace of mind had been restored.
(Until the even bigger, more obnoxious LaRusso billboard popped up on Ventura a month later, anyway.)
Still, however small and fleeting it had been, he counted it as a victory. Chuckling to himself at the memory, Johnny set the red paint aside and picked up the can of bronze.
It was a paint and primer in one that worked on multiple surfaces and dried to the touch within 30 minutes. He figured he could layer it with the green paint to create a cool looking shell effect.
One that was way more badass than anything you could buy at Spirit-fucking-Halloween.
But the shell was only half of the problem. And the easier half, at that. The harder part had been figuring out the chest plate.
For reasons that’d always been unclear to him, Ninja Turtles had abs. Or maybe it was supposed to be the underside of their shell? There was probably a scientific name for it, and he’d probably slept through that lesson back in high school Biology. Whatever it was called, they looked like abs. Every costume he’d seen that morning had them screen printed on the front. Even Slutty Leonardo.
Big, yellow, turtle abs.
The easiest solution would’ve been to just paint a six-pack on the green sweatshirt he’d bought and call it a day. Which is what he would’ve done, if anyone had bothered to give him even 24 hours’ notice. But they didn’t, and now he had only three hours to pull this thing together.
And painted fabric – especially thick, fleece-lined fabric – would take a lot longer than a smooth, non-porous metal pan to dry.
Once he’d realized that plan was out, Johnny had racked his brain for other, better options, only to come up blank. Given enough warning, he probably could’ve made a template and used a heat gun to mold a shell and chest plate out of high-density foam. But that would require both time and brain power he did not currently possess and materials he could not afford.
Crafting one out of cardboard seemed like the next best option. It was certainly the cheapest. He could always dumpster dive for empty boxes that’d been thrown out. But the last thing he wanted was for Robby’s costume to look like actual trash. The kid already got made fun of enough as it was. Besides, cardboard would also get soggy and take too long to dry.
No, what he really needed was something made of a lightweight, hard material. One that would dry down quickly –and that was also dirt cheap. But he was at a loss as to what that might be.
The answer to his problem had finally hit him – almost literally – while he was wandering the aisles at Goodwill. He’d been walking past the small sporting goods section on his way to the front to check out when a loud clatter startled him. He turned around to find that, in his distracted state, he’d accidentally knocked something off a nearby shelf in passing. Johnny had done a double take, then rushed to scoop the piece of equipment up off the floor.
He couldn’t believe his eyes – or his luck. It was a child-sized roost deflector, like the ones motocross riders wore under their jerseys. Made of hard plastic with a thin backing layer of foam for comfort, it was a piece of lightweight body armor designed to give the rider maximum mobility while also protecting their chest and shoulders from loose rocks and flying debris kicked up by the other competitors’ wheels. Dutch used to wear one, back when he still raced, before a bad accident abruptly ended his short-lived motocross career.
From the looks it, the previous owner of the deflector had gotten into more than their fair share of crashes, too. It was pretty dinged up. Apart from the standard assortment of pockmarks and scratches you’d expect to see, the black plastic shell was covered in deeper gouges, as though it’d been dragged along rocky ground. Johnny winced; he’d fallen off his dirt bike a time or two and gotten road rash – it was not fun. There was also a large crack in the sternum, probably from the impact of a rock traveling at high velocity.
How a piece of damaged motocross equipment had ended up on a shelf at Goodwill, Johnny didn’t know. And he didn’t really care. It was exactly what he needed. He’d headed straight for the registers, where he’d managed to haggle the price down to almost nothing. It originally had a $10 tag on it, but he’d successfully argued that the crack in the chest plate compromised the integrity of the armor, making it unsafe for use. It should never have been put on the shelf in the first place. They gave it to him for $5.
Johnny reached across the table for one of the Goodwill sacks and pulled out his prize. The kid who used to own this thing was lucky he’d been wearing it. The thought of a child Robby’s size getting hit square in the chest with a rock large enough to make a crack like that (or riding a dirt bike in the first place, for that matter) sent chills down his spine.
But no matter. He wasn’t trying to shield Robby from flying debris, he was trying to protect him from the ridicule of his peers. And the busted roost deflector could still serve that purpose. Because body armor was way tougher looking than cartoonish, painted on abs. If anything, all its imperfections would only make Robby look more badass, like the Ninja Turtle was battle scarred.
All he had to do was get it painted. Once the pieces had dried enough, he could wire the roasting pan to the back of the chest guard’s harness, and the shell would be complete.
It was a solid plan. A good one, even. For the first time all day, Johnny felt confident that he could make this work. But there wasn’t a second to lose. The paint was fast drying, but it would take at least a couple of coats to get the look he wanted to achieve, and he only had three hours left before he had to pick Robby up from school.
Figuring he could work on the rest of the costume’s accessories while the shell and chest plate were drying, Johnny rounded up the pans, the deflector, the paint, and a stack of old want-ads and headed outside. It had shaped up to be a really nice day. The sun was beating down on the complex’s concrete courtyard, which wasn’t great for his headache, but at least it’s warmth would help the paint dry faster.
After putting down a layer of newspaper outside his door, Johnny knelt down and got to work. The cheap roasting pans he’d bought were made of a shiny silver aluminum and were flimsy as hell. Not wanting the shell to crumple or get punctured every time Robby leaned back or got bumped from behind, he decided to leave them nested for added strength and stability. He used a few drops of Gorilla glue to permanently fix them together, then coated the reinforced shell both inside and out with a thin, even base layer of the bronze paint. Once he was satisfied that all the silver was covered, he moved it to a sheltered corner to dry so he could work on the chest plate.
The roost deflector was comprised of two main pieces. There was the chest plate, along with a solid back panel to help protect the rider’s spine. The two were connected by an adjustable, clip-on harness and finished off with a set of protective shoulder caps. There were air vents cut into the center panel of the chest plate for breathability; their placement and the way the plastic was molded made it look like it had a built-in six-pack. Perfect.
Johnny wiped the whole thing down to remove any remaining dirt or debris, then detached all of the plastic parts from the harness and gave them a base coat of dark green paint. He was extra careful to make sure the coverage was nice and even. Once it dried, he would mask off everything but the center panel of the chest piece and go back over that part with a lighter shade for the turtle’s abs. He didn’t have any yellow paint, so the sand color would have to do. From what he could remember, that was closer to the costumes in the original (and superior) 1990 movie, anyway.
Finished with the shell for the time being, Johnny struggled to his feet and went back inside. His whole body was screaming at him to sit down and rest, but he knew if did, he would probably fall right to sleep. He couldn’t afford to risk it, so instead he washed the paint off his hands, guzzled down the rest of his now lukewarm coffee, poured another cup, and dove into the second Goodwill sack.
From it, he pulled out a brand-new with tags forest green sweatshirt and matching pants, along with a pair of scuffed, white leather high tops. He’d spent a grand total of $7 on the lot. The sweats were Robby’s size and would do a better job of keeping him warm when the sun went down than some thin, cheaply made costume. And, as an added bonus, he would be able to wear them well beyond Halloween. The sneakers were a half-size too large for him, but hey, that’s what thick socks were for. He’d grow into them eventually.
Setting the sweats aside for the moment, Johnny took the shoes to the bathroom and did his best to clean them up. Even after scrubbing off all the dirt, they were still pretty scratched. Otherwise, they were in good shape. The soles weren’t too worn and there were no visible holes in the uppers.
The condition of the leather didn’t really matter anyway, considering what he was about to do to them.
After using a hair dryer to make sure the shoes were completely dry, Johnny went back to his car and dug his battered old toolbox out of the trunk. Propping it open in one of the vacant kitchen chairs, he rummaged around until he found a roll of blue painter’s tape, which he used to mask off the outsoles. Once he was sure no paint could leak under the edges, he removed the laces, stuffed the shoes with more newspaper to hold their shape, and took them outside to be painted.
One quick coat later, and the scuffs and scratches barely showed. The dingy white uppers were now a deep, vibrant green that closely matched the color of the sweats. Johnny examined them closely, making sure there were no drips or patchy spots. After a few quick touch-ups he was finally satisfied with the result and set them aside to dry in the sun with the rest of the costume.
Hoping that he could move onto the next stage of painting, he tested the shell’s dryness and found that the pieces were still slightly tacky to the touch. They needed a little more time before he could add a second coat.
By now, Johnny’s brow was beaded with sweat and his back and knees were aching from kneeling on the concrete. His stomach had been rumbling ever since he got home from his shopping excursion, so he decided to go fix himself a quick bite to eat while he waited. He hadn’t had much earlier, just a small breakfast burrito, a hashbrown, and the last couple bites of McGriddle that Robby had been too full to finish. The hunger gnawing at his insides was getting impossible to ignore.
Standing up was getting a little harder each time he had to do it, too. By the time he finally managed to get his feet under him, Johnny thought he might just pass out. His vision tunneled and he had to hold on to the door frame for a minute to keep himself upright. He told himself that it was just the paint fumes getting to him as he waited for the lightheadedness to pass. He should’ve worn his respirator mask. That was all. It was just a stupid mistake. He wouldn’t make it again.
But deep down, he knew that wasn’t it. Or at least not all of it. Grace and Bobby were right. He couldn’t keep going like this. He was burning himself out. He needed to start taking better care of himself. For his son’s sake, if not for his own. While he wasn’t the best dad, he was all Robby had right now.
Something is always better than nothing, Bobby had said.
With that thought in mind, Johnny staggered back into his apartment and headed straight for the kitchen. He spent a good couple of minutes just staring into his refrigerator, trying to decide what to make himself, only to end up tossing a ham and cheese Hot Pocket into the microwave.
He didn’t have the energy for anything more complicated. Right now, he just needed something quick and easy, so he could get back to work.
Something is better than nothing, he repeated to himself like a mantra as he mindlessly watched the turntable inside the microwave spin round and round and round…
Hopefully, Robby would feel the same way when he saw his last-minute costume.