Notes: The Last of the O-Forms is by James Van Pelt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the proprty of Mirage Studios.

The Last Human

Michelangelo hesitated at the treeline and scanned the field for a long moment. There had been a lot of yelling and screaming a few minutes ago, but the crowd was mostly calm now. He narrowed his eyes and could barely make out the mutant slumped on the grass in the center of the ring. A big one, he decided, probably taller than Casey and its skin looked slick and wet in the dim light. A couple of police officers were examining it and even from his distance, Mike could hear the words "Anderson's kid". Mutababy, then. A lot of people still couldn't bring themselves to smother their kids, no matter what they looked like.

There was a different kind of commotion now, people clamoring and shoving and crying out, but happier sounding than they had been. One guy in the center of the crowd, a middle-aged guy with the look of a used car salesman, was glancing around him with a calculating expression, and clutching a baby girl to his chest.

That was kind of awesome and he risked taking a few more steps so he could get a closer look. Mike hadn't heard of any humans having babies – well, having human babies – in ten years now. Most of them had stopped trying and the ones who did keep on mostly regretted it.

He'd never say it but sometimes he was really, really happy April couldn't have kids.

An old woman was sobbing loudly as she held her arms out to the father and he handed his kid over with a smile. The little girl looked to be about two and scared out of her head by the noise but the woman rocked her and cried a little. She was a cute kid, Mike decided, none of the chubbiness babies used to have back when they were normal, but then meat and milk were pretty rare these days. Her hair was blonde and curly and she sucked her thumb and stared at the old woman with big eyes. Too bad, Mike thought. She was probably the last one.

"Fifty dollars," someone in the crowd called out, a man whose voice was cracking with emotion. "I'll pay you fifty dollars to hold your daughter!"

Others in the crowd started making similar pledges, some of them offering livestock or goods. Others begging. Dad was going to make a lot of money before the night was over.

One of the women at the edge of the crowd glanced back at him and edged a little closer to her husband, but didn't call out.

Michelangelo slipped back into the trees, not in any hurry to test the crowd. After the earlier commotion they might be all worked up. And no telling how they might react about a mutant being near that little girl. Probably they wouldn't have hurt him any, but humans got weird around mutants who could talk and walk upright.

Well, they wouldn't have to deal with it much longer.

The mutants plaguing humanity weren't the Utroms' doing.

At least Donatello said they weren't and no one had any reason to doubt him. Anyway, humans had been screwing up their world for a long time without any outside interference. This was just… well, a more spectacular screw up than normal.

The mutagen got into the water and from the water it got into the soil, the crops, the livestock. It got into people, but that took longer for folks to notice.

Cows started giving birth to things out of monster movies. Dogs and cats gave birth to litters of things that weren't kittens and puppies. Mike remembers seeing newspapers with photographs of 'tigerzelles' and 'crocomouses'. Some of them were like combinations of animals that weren't ever meant to be combined. Some of them weren't like much of anything he'd seen before.

People panicked. It started slow, but it became a plague. The government told people to stay out of lakes and oceans. To filter their drinking water and boil their bath and laundry water. A lot of people thought it was hysteria at first. Television political pundits ranting about how the deformed animals were the result of inbreeding and poor animal husbandry. Letters to the editor about how the government was just making people panic with their ridiculous restrictions.

And then the mutababies started being born.

The farmhouse had been their home for years now. They'd left the city when the rioting started, when the government finally admitted that there hadn't been a single healthy human baby birth recorded in more than eight months. They'd stayed gone because at the time it seemed like staying well out of sight was their best chance. Mutants were on every human's mind and Leo didn't want any of them to suffer the consequences of the fear and panic seizing the population.

Twelve years made a lot of difference. Mutant labor laws and mutant travel laws. Most of the mutants out there were animals, some were monsters, but a fraction of the mutababies were intelligent and human-like in actions, if not appearance. They were the ones who were gonna run the world soon, once the last humans died out, and they were already making plans. Twelve years old, the eldest of them, but they grew faster than the humans did. Faster than he and his brothers had, for that matter, but then, even in a world being overrun by mutants, the four of them were still odd men out.

There were lights on when he got home. He slipped in the kitchen where April was kneading bread dough. "Hey." He thought about mentioning the baby and wondered if it would be insensitive.

"Tell me you didn't go up to that tacky carnival," April said. She had cut her hair a while back, short and even and kind of like the way Karai had worn hers back in the day. It got in her eyes all the time, but it was easier to keep clean she said. She'd cut it back when everyone had still worried about boiling their bathwater.

He shrugged and straddled a chair. "I poked around a bit."

She tossed him a teasing glance. "If they try to make you an attraction, I'll say I told you so."

It was a big fear, once. But it was illegal to keep any mutant capable of speech as a pet or livestock these days. "Nah. Those old things are going out of business anyway. No wonder, when we can wander down to the river and see all the mutants we want."

"They'll be putting humans in carnivals soon enough," April said. If she was kidding she didn't sound like it but she didn't sound mad either. "The last generation will be sideshow attractions."

Maybe. Michelangelo didn't think so. Mutants didn't have the same fascination with humans that the humans had with them. No, he figured in twenty or thirty years that the last generation of humans would be second class citizens, pushed into the shadows the way their fathers and mothers were currently treating the intelligent mutababies. Or worse, they'd be terrorists and murderers, determined to go down fighting against the mutant plague.

"I hate politics," he said.

April folded the dough over on itself and began kneading it all over again. "Tell me about it."

He told Donnie about the baby girl, mostly because he knew it would intrigue his older brother, but also because he thought it might be something worth knowing. Knowledge was currency these days, especially in the circles they traveled.

Donatello and Leonardo exchanged a glance when he told them about it and he didn't miss the disgusted expression they shared when he told them about the dad taking money. Raph just shook his head. "People never get tired of freakshows," he said. "Even when they're the freaks."

Donnie was caught up on the idea of a human baby, as Mike had known he'd be. "I suppose there could be someone with an immunity to the mutagen," he said thoughtfully. "I've never heard of it, but it's not impossible. Drugs affect different people different ways, after all."

"Or it means that the mutagen had a finite shelflife," Raphael said quietly. "It's breaking down in their systems or in the environment. Might be humans are going to start having babies all over the place someday soon."

"There's a whole generation just getting old enough to hit puberty, too," Leonardo said. "Maybe growing up with the mutagen makes a difference?"

They were quiet for a long minute and Mike was sure they were all thinking the same thing. He wasn't proud of it, but he'd almost be disappointed if it turns out he was right.

"Or it could be a giant fluke," Raph said.

"I'd like to see the baby," Donatello said.

So the used-car salesman was named Trevin and he was actually the owner of the carnival. Dr. Trevin's Traveling Zoological Extravaganza, proclaimed a banner hanging on the side of a trailer. See Nature's Oddities. Educational! Exciting! It was all faded cloth and chipped paint. It looked even less impressive in the middle of night than it had by daylight the previous afternoon, when they scouted the area.

The four of them had spread out, watching the carnival from all sides, staying hidden and just observing the crowds and employees. Trevin had drawn a huge crowd as word of his daughter spread among the townspeople, and Mike spent nine long hours watching crying women and trembling men take their place in line to see the "Last O-Form Girl Child!" The little girl seemed pretty well-behaved and spent a lot of time casting increasingly upset and desperate glances at her father.

Something about the kid twigged Mikey's nerves, but he couldn't say what. It might've just been because she was human. It might've been because he felt sorry for her. If she was just a fluke, then she'd always be the last, the only. She was going to grow up like this, Mike realized, a little dully. And if the humans didn't make her a freak, they'd make her into something to be worshipped.

Her father never left her side the whole time, so Mike was willing to give the guy credit for that. The way some of the women in particular clutched at the baby, you'd think they were planning to make a run for it.

Caprice, Mike reminded himself. Her name was Caprice. Donatello's voice in his ear was dry as he recited the definitions of the word. Quirk. Fad. Whim. Mike wondered if her dad didn't like her very much or if he just had a bad vocabulary.

The crowds didn't want to leave even as it started to get dark. People didn't go out at night much anymore, not considering all the mutants in the woods and rivers, but the lure of the baby girl was strong enough to make them linger. Finally the carnival employees and the local police began to herd them away and Trevin promised loudly that they'd stay at least another day so everyone could come and see.

"I don't like this guy," Raphael said flatly and Mike nodded in silent agreement. Trevin was slick and fawning in front of the crowds, and he occasionally gave Caprice short, angry glances when no one else was looking. Like he was afraid she was going to do or say something to ruin it for him.

They waited well into the night, after the crowds had left and the police and carnival employees had packed up for the night. Trevin and his daughter were asleep in the cab of the big truck with the banner on the side. Mike had peered in earlier and seen two small bunks set up behind the seats. A couple of the carnival hands were walking around, keeping a sort of watch. They hadn't the night before, Mike was pretty sure, which meant that Trevin had at least realized someone might try to kidnap his daughter. Or the money he made showing her off. It didn't matter to them, the guards were looking for townspeople and river mutants, not ninjas, and he and his brothers slipped past them easily enough.

Both windows were rolled all the way down and covered with screens to keep the bugs out. Mike carefully removed the screen from the passenger side window, working quickly and quietly. Leo climbed onto the door and risked peering inside. Mike held his breath and waited, hoping Trevin didn't sleep with a gun under his pillow. Leo gathered the baby into his arms and slipped away from the truck in an instant without a single sound.

Caprice looked up at them with wide, scared eyes and when she opened her mouth to cry, or scream, Donatello said, quietly, "You're not human at all, are you?"

She closed her mouth and stared at them. Then she pushed at Leo till he set her down.

Donatello helped her back into the cab and into her bunk before her father even noticed she was gone. Raph and Mike replace the screen and the four of them slip back into the trees toward the farmhouse.

"The last human," Raph said tiredly. "Jesus."

Mike didn't say anything. He knew what they were thinking because it was what he was thinking. For a day they'd thought the humans might be making a recovery. And for a day, they'd all been very, very worried.

But Caprice was almost twelve years old. And smart, too, if the way she kept up with the questions Donatello gave her was any indication. Smart enough to hold her own against his genius bro, but small enough that she had to do what her father wanted. A mutababy doomed to spend the next few years sucking her thumb and being passed from one sobbing grandma to another.

It couldn't last forever. Donatello had said as much, quietly, in a voice that made Mike watch him thoughtfully. Leo was still their big brother, but Don was mostly the one who called the shots now that they lived and walked above ground and he was the one who would drag them and their kind into the future. Mutants who met Donatello respected him and listened to him and, slowly, began to follow him. He wasn't going to overthrow the human government. But when it fell on its own, Mike knew, Don already had a plan to replace it.

The last human, Mike thought, echoing Raph's earlier words. And she was one of them.

April and Casey had left a light on for them in the kitchen. Mike smelled fresh bread and wondered why he didn't feel more guilty.

c&c is always appreciated