TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES:
A DRY SPOT IN THE OCEAN
WRITTEN BY ZARIUS
DISCLAIMER: TMNT and all related characters are properties of Nickelodeon.
April O'Neil warned herself months ago not to get involved with the Turtles. The instant she met them, the voice in her head warned her to hide. Hide because the monsters were there. The ones that would come out from under your bed and inflict terrible things on her family.
Those thoughts were put to rest when the creatures vowed to rescue her father from even uglier creatures after he was taken by them.
They fulfilled their promise. It took them months, and they had sacrificed many things, undertaken many hardships, even broken a friendship, but they succeeded. Father and daughter reunited.
Then everything they built and shared, their world, their trust, was all shattered by their carelessness.
And now she hated them.
Hating them was what caused so many evenings curled up by the fire, staring blankly into the flickering, dancing flames, matching the heat before her gaze with the rage pent up in her heart. She replayed the fateful spillage of mutagen over and over again in her head, replayed the admission of guilt from the Turtles, drowned out their pleas for understanding and their vows of redemption. She didn't want to hear them.
She just wanted them to disappear
She had lost it all. An adventure of a lifetime, and the one rock she could lean on the most in her darkest hours, of which this was chiefly among.
Not one voice could shake her from her convictions.
...And then, one voice rang out across her thoughts, as if to directly challenge that perspective.
April closed her eyes and, rather than entertain the notion of another small tear mourning the loss of the world as she knew it, she opted to embrace the voice that dared rise up against her present desires, she found herself in a swirling black wispy void, with several beautiful and all too familiar red-headed women circling her atop a long honeycomb of platforms. A bright light immersed her
" I think it's time we had a little chat don't you think?" said a collected and bashful voice. April turned around.
Meeting her face to face was someone wearing the most peculiar yellow jumpsuit
"Where am I?"
"Hard to say...if I knew the same thing, I'd have one hell of a story"
"What does that mean?" April asked
"Oh you don't know...I'm a reporter for Channel Six" the woman replied, "April O'Neil at your service"
"That's my name" the younger April replied, raising an eyebrow in slight curiosity
"I reckoned so, the person who let me in here has the same name too" the older April responded.
April looked up at the honeycomb. Several of the women looked down at her, some did not take well to her at all and refused to even glimpse upon her, instead taking the time to chat amongst themselves
"Where exactly are we? Who are those people? " the younger April spoke, becoming a little unsettled by the swirling black wisps around her
"We don't have to remain enclosed within a blank slate, I reckon you can imagine us anywhere, just close your eyes and concentrate" April said
The young teenager shut your eyes tight. Before long, an image was conjured forth in her mind, a warm modestly accommodating lair within the underbelly of the sewer networks beneath Manhattan.
April gazed upon her surroundings and cringed.
"No, turn it off, turn it off" she bellowed
"Why? This is home to me" the older April said
"No, it's their home, I don't want any part of it" April replied
"An O'Neil not wanting any part of a hub like this?" the older April said, surprised
"It belongs to freaks I don't ever want to see again...they took my father away from me" cried the youth
"I can't imagine the Turtles doing something like that"
"It was an accident, or so they claim" April replied.
"Then you should have faith in them telling you the truth" the reporter said, walking over to the troubled teen and cradling her.
"They don't care...I heard the insincerity in his voice"
"Who's voice?"
"Mikey's' " April replied
"Oh it'd have to be him wouldn't it?" said the older April, smiling comfortably to himself, "He's always putting his foot in it"
"He was so...care-free about it, that's what angered me the most...like this sort of thing can be so easily fixable. It's a matter of life and death for the people it's affected"
"It's a bit out of character for you to blame them isn't it?" asked the older April
"I disagree, I don't think it's out of character for me at all...I had just gotten my dad back from those Kraang things and thanks to a blunder that's all on their shoulders, he's become something as bad as those monsters could ever be, he's gone beyond my reach, beyond my comprehension..."
"So what do you reckon you gain out of blaming them for things? If I know the guys as well as I do, they'll do everything they can to pull your dad out of this mess"
"You can't just fix problems like this...this isn't a cartoon or a fairy tale, there are real impossibilities, you can't just wave a magic wand and make it all better...and if that sort of deal can go down, if they do save my dad, they might as well invent the cure for cancer next. I can't believe in that sort of detail"
"I don't think they're capable of that kind of perfection either, but they never give up in trying to make a positive outcome count. Sometimes we O'Neil's can get carried away by our emotions and our selfishness, in minor or major ways, but we're always convinced by the end of our journeys to appreciate the friendships and families we've acquired in our long life spent with who we love"
"Are you speaking from your own experience, or speaking for those twisted sisters up there?" the young April said, pointing to the honeycomb, "You're wasting your time anyway, you, ALL of you" she added, yelling out to the honeycomb out in the heavens, "Wherever this is, and whoever you are, you're not in my shoes or my world, so let me live however I want to in it"
The older April seemed hurt by her comments
"Mikey was right...girls at your age really are impossible..." she said, and, letting the younger April go, she stood up and began to walk out of the illuminated light. As she did, the sewer lair surrounding them began to break apart and dismantle.
"What happens to me now? Where are you going?" the youth asked
"Back to my world, back to my way of doing things, it's worked out pretty well for me so far, you'll probably just dismiss me as a dream, just as I will you...but somewhere in a neat and tidy portion of my sub-conscious, I'll hear the echo of this conversation, and it'll inspire me to be a better person, because a part of me figures that's what all those girls up there are...I can feel their thoughts and feelings resonate all around me, can't you?"
"I'm...not prepared to" the young April replied, her head lowering in stubborn shame.
"They were made better people because of who they kept their faith in...be it their fathers, be it their sisters, or be it their...Turtles. Right now you're just a dry spot in this ocean of us, but in time, the tide will come in for you...by season's end, you might be willing to listen to me next time, and when that happens...you'll be my feature story"
April slipped back into the shadows, and as she did, the younger April snapped her eyes open, once again confronted with the flicker of fire.
She got up and went to the kitchen to have a drink. Her period of over thinking had made her quite thirsty.
She would continue to feel the way she felt, she didn't want to listen to this other April's voice of perceived reason, not when the world she inhabited was so unreasonable to begin with. There would be time for such sensations, a time, and an age, for as long as her father remained out there, unsafe, hard to predict, and in danger of being discovered.
All the fault of her so-called 'friends'
And, as a result of her inability to move out of the way in time, her own fault as well
So many people to blame, perhaps she should start first and foremost with herself
And somewhere in the back of her mind, in a place she likely wouldn't touch until the day she died of old age, the echoes of the conversations between the other Aprils assembled in the honeycomb grew louder
"She's young, she'll understand in time" came one voice
"She's a disgrace to other April's across the spectrum" came another
"I certainly was never drawn that way" came another
"Who knows what kind of person she'll be warped into by her creators" said another
As she went to bed, April O'Neil was subconsciously aware her self-assessment, her own hand-picked day of judgement, awaited her
Only the passage of the season to come would determine the verdict.
THE END...FOR NOW