For some reason many TMNT stories on Fanfiction are about or reference how much the toaster is broken (usually by Leo). This led me to wonder how exactly the toaster gets broken. This will not be primarily about Leo, but the first few chapters will be. I don't think the chapters will build on each other much, but that may change as I write more of the story. I will try to update this at least once a month, but the frequency depends on how fast I am able to write/edit chapters.
While I wrote this thinking of the 2012 series, you can read it as any incarnation of the turtles you like. There may be some unintended influences from the other TMNT series or from other fanfictions I have read. For the sake of this fanfiction, the 'oldest' is Leo, then Raph, Donnie, and Mikey (in that order). I don't know how any of them can be 'older/younger' than the others, since they turned 15 on the same day, but that's the feeling I got from the show, so that's the way it will be in this fic (of course, that is just their mutation day, their birthdays may be different).
Special thanks go to both of my sisters, who helped me edit this and come up with ideas for it. I would also like to thank Phantom Umbreon and Althea Sirius for beta reading this.
Disclaimer: I do not own TMNT or any of the websites/videos I got ideas from.
Mikey was not feeling well. While Leo felt sorry for his brother, it was something unavoidable that all of them had to deal with at some point in time (The orange masked turtle kind of deserved it this time, since he had insisted on eating month old pizza covered in mayo, both of which had been left out in his room). The katana wielder was grateful for the break in pranks that he usually got when his youngest brother was sick. There was only one problem: he now had to make breakfast.
One of the middle brothers would normally make breakfast when Mikey was sick, but neither of them were able to today. Donnie had started a time sensitive experiment in his lab right before practice, and while it could wait till their training was done, he had to get back to it soon before it caused an explosion. Also, the last time the purple masked turtle had made breakfast when he was in the middle of an experiment, he had accidentally mixed the chemicals he was using with the eggs, thus ruining both breakfast and his experiment. Raph, in one of many fits of rage, had managed to break a door, the TV, the blender, and the cheese phone earlier that week. As a punishment, Master Splinter had assigned him two hours of meditation immediately after training every day for two weeks. By the time either of them was available again it would be closer to lunch than breakfast.
While Leo would not mind skipping breakfast for a day, he was planning on meditating before lunch, and it would be difficult if his stomach was growling the entire time (sure, he could watch Space Heroes now, and meditate later, but that would throw off his routine). Raph and Master Splinter would not be needing breakfast (Their sensei usually made his own, and his red clad brother wouldn't be finished meditating until it was closer to lunch than breakfast). Mikey would most likely want to eat, although nothing was ever certain when the youngest turtle was sick. Donnie should also probably have something prepared for him, since he tended to forget to eat when he was in the middle of one of his experiments.
Now the only question was, what should he make? The only thing he really knew how to make was tea, and he had a feeling neither of his brothers would appreciate having tea for breakfast. He didn't want to try making scrambled eggs. The last time he had tried, he had accidentally mixed the shells in with the eggs, and had somehow undercooked half of them and burned the rest (He also didn't want his breakfast to make his youngest brother feel worse than he already did, especially since he would then have to clean up the resulting mess). They were out of milk, so cold cereal was also out. That left toast.
The toaster didn't seem difficult to operate (of course, the same could be said for making scrambled eggs). All you had to do was pull down on the lever and wait for the toast to pop up again. Although he had never done it himself, he had seen Mikey do it thousands of times. How hard could it be?
He found the bread and butter and placed them on the counter next to the toaster. He got out six slices, two for each of them, and proceeded to butter them. Mikey's had the most butter, since the orange masked turtle always put at least an eighth of a stick of butter on his toast every morning. Leo's and Donnie's only had enough butter to cover the bread. He put his slices of bread into the toaster and waited.
When the toast was done, the butter was melted, and the toast was decent, even if it wasn't as good as when Mikey made it. He put the purple masked turtle's in next, and then took them to the lab as soon as they were done. Donnie, who was in the middle of his experiment, barely acknowledged him when he entered. When asked where he should put the toast, his second youngest brother told him to put it by the computer, and that he would eat it later. Leo complied. He was pretty sure the genius would forget to eat the toast, but he didn't want to push it, so he went back to the kitchen to make his youngest brother's toast. When it was done, he took it to Mikey, and then went back to the kitchen to clean up.
Now, when he had taken the last two pieces of toast out of the toaster, the blue clad turtle had noticed that some of the butter seemed to be missing. He did not think much of it at the time, since butter melts and he figured the bread had just absorbed it. However, when he was putting the toaster away, he found out what had actually happened. It had gotten all over the inside of the toaster.
Leo didn't know a lot about toasters, but he was pretty sure that having that much butter on the inside of the toaster was a bad thing. He also knew that if he just left it like that, one of his brothers was sure to notice. When they eventually found out who had done it (and they would find out), he would never hear the end of it. He also knew that if it was like any of the other electronics in the lair, it would probably break if it came in contact with too much water, and then Donnie would have to fix it. He had already broken the microwave earlier that week (how was he supposed to know that Mikey had dropped a metal fork in the tomato soup he was trying to heat up?). He did not want to find out how the second youngest turtle would react if he broke something else, so he decided that the best course of action would be to ask his genius brother how to get the butter out. He picked up the toaster and walked across the lair to the lab.
The oldest turtle knew it was a bad idea to interrupt Donnie when he was in the middle of an experiment, especially when one was approaching him with something they had broken. Everyone in the family still remembered what had happened the last time the orange masked turtle had done so.
Mikey had been watching one of his oldest brother's Space Heroes DVDs without permission. He had somehow soaked the DVD player in orange juice, and the device was refusing to eject the disc. The youngest turtle didn't want to find out how the blue clad leader would react when he learned that Mikey had been watching Leo's DVDs, so he decided to ask his mechanically inclined brother for help.
When Mikey had initially asked Donnie to fix the DVD player, the bo wielder had said that he would do it later. He was in the middle of a very delicate procedure involving the Shellraiser, and he wanted to finish it before moving onto something else. His younger brother, fearing the wrath of Leo, had started badgering him to fix it right away. This caused the purple clad turtle to use the welding torch on the wrong component, thus ruining the part he was working with.
Donnie did not normally get angry, even when his brothers ruined what he was working on. He got aggravated and annoyed, yes, but not angry. This time was different. It had taken him months in the junkyard to find the specific part he needed. When he had finally found it, he had spent at least two weeks fixing it so that he could use it on the Shellraiser. After that, it had taken even longer for him to decide where exactly he wanted to put it. Now all that work was wasted. He had no idea when he would be able to find another part that was anything like what he needed. In a rare fit of rage, he turned toward his younger brother and shouted for him to get out of his lab immediately.
Mikey could tell that Donnie was furious, and he decided that he didn't want to be in the same room as his purple clad brother at the moment. He whipped around and tried to flee, but he tripped over a cord and fell on the ground by the genius turtle's desk. The DVD player he had been holding flew across the floor of the lab, and his older brother's laptop, which was connected to the cord, fell onto him. The orange masked turtle had tried to stop his fall by grabbing the desk, but he had placed his hand on a large blueprint of the Shellraiser that Donnie had been looking at. The young scientist had been using some beakers with chemicals in them to keep the blueprint flat, and when Mikey grabbed the blueprint, both it and the chemicals came down on top of him. Most of them fell on the back of his shell, head, legs, and arms, but random splotches had also gotten onto the front of him.
Donnie, who was now more concerned than angry, ran over to his orange masked brother to see if he was okay. After helping Mikey up, he told his younger brother to take a shower while he made sure none of the chemicals would have any side effects. Thankfully, there was only one. He had been studying luminescence, and thus had been creating different solutions that glowed in the dark. He was trying to make them glow different colors, and had succeeded in creating blue, purple, pink, green, and grey. While the orange clad turtle had taken a shower almost immediately, some of the residue from the chemicals still remained. Unfortunately for Mikey, this residue interfered with his ability to go topside.
Mutant ninja turtles who only went out at night, while not exactly easy to hide (especially when Raph and Mikey got in an argument), were at least somewhat stealthy. While some humans had seen them, most of New York was still not aware they existed. This most certainly would have changed if Mikey had been allowed to leave the lair during the week following the accident. Even a ninjutsu master would have a difficult time concealing himself if he was a mutant turtle that was glowing multiple colors. The youngest turtle had been forced to stay home until the chemicals wore off.
Donnie had finished that experiment a few weeks ago, so Leo wasn't particularly worried about glowing if he interrupted his second youngest brother. There were, however, many other things that could happen if the purple masked turtle were interrupted that were equally bad, if not worse. With some apprehension, Leo entered the lab. Donnie was on his computer, which usually indicated that he was not working on an experiment. Just in case, the blue clad turtle decided to ask him.
"Hey Donnie, you done with your experiment yet?" he asked.
Luckily for Leo, Donnie had just finished working with the experiment. He was quite pleased with his results and was entering them on his computer.
"What do you want Leo?" he asked. His brothers never came into the lab unless they wanted something.
The eldest turtle, sensing that his brother was in a good mood (or at least a better mood than normal after an interruption), decided to bring up what had happened to the toaster.
"Well, I was making toast, and somehow got butter all over the inside of the toaster."
"What did you do, butter the bread before you toasted it?" the bo wielder asked in a joking manner.
There was a long pause as the blue masked turtle tried to find the best way to answer that question. The silence, however, was enough for Donnie.
"You did, didn't you," he stated, somewhat resigned.
The blue clad leader paused again, before asking, in a quiet voice, "Is there a way to clean it out?"
Donnie instructed Leo how to clean the toaster, and the oldest turtle went back to the kitchen. He filled the sink with water, added some dish soap, and set the toaster on the counter next to the sink. He then pulled out the crumb tray and proceeded to wash the butter off. Since some of the butter had gotten on the outside of the toaster, he decided to wash that next. He balanced the toaster on the edge of the sink, and then used a wet rag to get all the butter off. He had just finished and was about to move the toaster the rest of the way onto the counter when it slipped out of his hands. The toaster fell into the sink, splashing him in the process. He stood still for a couple of seconds before he was able to process this occurrence. As soon as he realized what had happened, he grabbed the toaster from the water.
He really didn't want to tell Donnie that the toaster had fallen into the sink, but he had to. The second youngest brother would find out eventually, and it was better for him to find out sooner rather than later. Leo slowly walked over to the lab, carrying the toaster with him. He peeked around the lab door. His younger brother was still entering data into the computer. The blue clad turtle set the toaster on the floor outside of the lab before entering it.
"Hey, Donnie?" he asked, somewhat apprehensively.
"Yes Leo," Donnie continued typing, not even taking time to look up at his oldest brother.
"Well," the blue masked turtle paused for a second, and then continued. It was best to get these types of things over with. "I think I might have possibly broken the toaster."
That got his second youngest brother's full attention. "What do you mean by 'possibly broken the toaster'? What did you do?" he asked, suspiciously
"Well, I was cleaning it, like you told me to, and I had just finished washing off the outside of it, when it slipped into the sink," Leo explained. He then defensively added, "It was an accident! I swear!"
Donnie just stared at the katana wielder for a minute. Then he facepalmed and muttered something along the lines of "It's always an accident." Then he asked, "Can I take a look at it?"
Hesitantly the eldest turtle retrieved the toaster and brought it over to his purple masked brother. The later examined it for a minute, and then sighed before speaking again.
"If it was just water that had gotten onto the toaster, it might have survived. Unfortunately, the water had grease from the butter mixed into it, probably from when you cleaned off the crumb tray. Even if it dries, it is very likely that the toaster will start a grease fire the next time someone tries to use it." He looked at it for a minute before adding, "It's probably best to just get another toaster."
It was about a month after the toaster incident, and Mikey was making breakfast in the kitchen. Donnie had finally found a toaster in the junkyard, and this was the first time someone was using it. When Leo walked into the kitchen, his youngest brother asked, "Hey bro, want some toast?"
"No, I think I'll just have a smoothie."
"Okay, you want me to make it?"
"No, I think I can make it myself. It can't be that hard, right?"
The blue clad turtle grabbed random fruits from the fridge and prepared them for blending. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to attach the lid properly, and fruit juice started going everywhere. Mikey, who had gone back to making breakfast for the rest of his brothers, suddenly felt something wet hit him in the back of his shell. He turned around and watched in horror as the whole room (and his carefully prepared breakfast) was covered in Leo's smoothie.
I will do my best to make these situations realistic, however it is difficult to find reliable sources on what would happen to a toaster in certain circumstances. I would do my own research, but I don't think my family would react very well if I broke the toaster, and I don't want to buy my own. Thanks for reading, and please review. Feedback will be very much appreciated.