Jones Apartment

The **apartment of the Jones family** is a recurring location in *Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden*. Physically the same Brooklyn, New York City location as the Jones apartment in Mirage TMNT Volume 2 and Image TMNT Volume 3, the entire building was previously owned by Casey Jones' mother Mrs. Jones and is where Casey grew up. Though *MNT Gaiden* takes place in an alternate universe that branches off sometime during Volume 1, in both universes the building is sold to April O'Neil, who moves in with Casey and Shadow Jones in the top-floor apartment where they form a Jones family household. But in the *MNT Gaiden* universe, April's surrogate brother Michelangelo Hamato also lives there with them with his own bedroom in the same apartment.

## Description

The Jones family do not rent their top-floor apartment, as April O'Neil owns the entire building as the landlady. As such, the building contains other apartments whose tenants pay their rent to April. Since the Jones and Hamato families have been joined as one extended family with the turtles and April functioning as brothers and sister, the other Hamato brothers are free to climb the building's fire escape and come and go through the apartment's window as they please.

The apartment's layout has not been exhaustively described, but it has been shown to include:

* A common room, with a living room, kitchen and dining area. During Christmas, there is also a Christmas tree.
* A full bathroom.
* Michelangelo Hamato's bedroom.
* Shadow Jones' bedroom.
* April and Casey's room(s) have not yet been shown.

The apartment has hardwood flooring, shown cracking during a scene in Chapter 8: *The Cowards*.

## History

In the *MNT Gaiden* universe, April O'Neil bought the apartment building in more or less the same way her Mirage counterpart acquired it—Casey Jones' mother Mrs. Jones sold it to April, which April bought with inheritance money after the death of her human father Mr. O'Neil. But Michelangelo Hamato was already living with April, and when Mrs. Jones vacated the top floor apartment, April and Mikey moved there. By the time April and Casey were married, Casey and his stepdaughter Shadow Jones were also living there.

According to Chapter 3: *Broken Brotherhood - Burden from "Back Then"*, April, Casey, Shadow and Uncle Mikey lived together as a family household for the better part of 16 years, including virtually all of Shadow's life. It is in this apartment that Mikey wrote most of his published novels under the pen name Mikael Buonarotti. And every Christmas, Raphael and Donatello would join them for their annual Christmas party—usually the *only* time during the year when all three estranged Hamato brothers spent any real time together.

In Chapter 17: *Between Cops and Ninjas*, with the arrival of Leonardo Hamato after a 17-year absence, Mikey makes a decision to move out of the Jones Apartment and into Raphael Hamato's Lair so that he, Raph, Renoir and Leo can live together. Mikey leaves behind his bedroom's desktop computer, which in Chapter 23: *Following the Leader* April refashions into an operations workstation to help remotely coordinate the Hamato family's missions via Shell Cell.

As a refuge of both the Jones and Hamato families, and with Shadow already a surrogate big sister to Renoir's sister Carole Amherst, the Jones Apartment has become a safe environment for Renoir and Carole to visit with one another.

## Security

Though generally a safe refuge for the Hamato brothers and Renoir, the Jones Apartment has the disadvantage of not being a secret location, making it vulnerable to any faction that knows of the Jones family's relation to the Hamato Clan. April and Casey had only resumed public lives in New York City because the threat of Oroku Saki had finally been eliminated during the Return to New York arc, and the Shredder's Foot Elites were believed annihilated after the City at War arc. In reality, Eikichi Gotoh secretly survived that incident and retained knowledge of the Jones family's secret, but their apartment didn't truly become unsafe until Eikichi marked Michelangelo Hamato for death for the compromising details he published in his final novel, *On the Trails of Purple Dragons*.

In Chapter 12: *...The Crimson Christmas*, Eikichi's renegade NYC Foot Clan forces deliver a kidnapping letter by shuriken directly through Mikey's bedroom window. Eikichi is defeated in Chapter 15: *And So the Pages Turn...*, and Karai's Foot Clan secretly detains Eikichi and the remainder of his NYC Foot Ninja.

In Chapter 23: *Following the Leader*, Eikichi escapes custody, and Leonardo (secretly Karai's second-in-command of the Foot Clan) informs the rest of his family that Eikichi is once again at large. Knowing the apartment is again vulnerable, April summons Donatello Hamato to protect her and Shadow while Casey and the other Hamato brothers are away. This proves to be a misjudgment on April's part, as Donnie has long been secretly hostile to most of the Jones family and harbors a possessive unrequited love for April.

## Trivia

* While the apartment appears to have a fairly consistent interior layout, **Tigerfog** did not design a floor plan in advance, and the features of the apartment developed gradually as the story needed them. The layout is original to *MNT Gaiden*, and does not share the layout of the same apartment as shown in Volume 2 or 3.