Disclaimer: I don't own the TMNT. They're just staring in my own story. They aren't getting paid and nether am I. I do own however Jeanetta Patterson and Monica Patterson.
And a Thank You goes to Raphs No.1 Girl for beta reading.
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Jeanetta Patterson watched the TV as her mother, Monica Patterson, continued to talk on the phone. She rolled her eyes in annoyance as her mother walked in front of her line of vision and stood there talking. She knew better than to try to interrupt her mother while she was on the phone. She never failed to strike out at her daughter.
When Monica didn't move, Jeanetta clicked the TV off and stood up, heading to her room, but tripped over her left foot and went flying into the cherry hardwood floor. Her hands went out and caught herself before she could bang her jaw into the floor again. Though it didn't save her already busted knee. She left out a yelp before she could help it and earned a glare from her mother.
"Can you make a little more noise please?" he mother snapped sarcastically.
Jeanetta picked herself up and stomped through the apartment. She could hear her mother complaining about kids. She knew she would pay for that little show later, but she couldn't help it. She was getting rather tired of being the scapegoat for her mother's past modeling career.
She went into her room, grabbed her telescope and went outside her window and climbed the stairs to the roof. Her mother would never come out onto the roof - she was too scared of heights - so Jeanetta had reprieve from her mother's watch up there. The sun was just going down but it was still enough of a glare into the telescope, so she set it up to face the other way. It was faced into the lower part of the city, where there were more apartment buildings. She stared at nothing for awhile. She was just about to pull back when she saw movement a few rooftops away. She pressed her eye back into the telescope and stared harder. The figures were fast. They were jumping to and fro, swinging from lines and pipes. She couldn't lock onto any of the figures so she continued to watch them. There were four, she noticed after they slowed down a little.
A bang downstairs sounded as her mother slammed a door. Jeanetta jumped and stood up rubbing her eyes as she sent a glare toward the stairs. She peered back into the telescope and stared back at the figures. They had stopped and were just hanging around on the rooftop. She froze and her jaw dropped when she saw one of them. She adjusted the lens and now she could see them.
Four turtles.
Four anthropoid turtles, each carrying some kind of weapon.
"JEANETTA!"
The shrill voice sliced through Jeanetta and echoed through the alley and over the rooftops to where the…turtles where at. And they heard it as well.
All four turned to stare right across at her.
Jeanetta yelped and jumped back. She quickly glanced back into the telescope. They were gone. She let out a breath of air and stood back up scratching her head. She winced as the siren scream of her mother came up at her. She shrugged it off, picked up the telescope and headed back to the fire escape stairs. Her mother was leaning her head out the window. Monica opened her mouth to yell again when Jeanetta jumped down the last few steps, knowing she should've. She landed on her feet but her clumsiness took over and she slipped and landed on her butt.
Her mother rolled her eyes and didn't wait for Jeanetta to climb to her feet. She reached out and grabbed her daughter by the arm and pulled her inside.
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The figure hovered over the timid middle-aged man. He tried to concentrate on the computer in front of him but he was shaking too much. Finally the figure moved away and the man let out a sigh. He straightened up and let his fingers fly over the keyboard. Many files were pulled up as he accessed the medical records of the nearby hospitals. The search didn't take long. He was looking for a certain blood type. There were many people with the type he was looking for, but they also had to meet a certain criteria. The search gave him over two hundred people. He knew without asking that that was too many. He narrowed the search again and it brought him down to fifty. Again too many. And again. And again. Finally it was down to ten people. The figure came back around and read each of the profiles. It was the last one that caught his attention. He pointed to the screen.
"Her."
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Jeanetta was sitting in the middle of the floor of her bedroom holding her right cheek. It was rather swollen and was throbbing. Her left knee was swollen as well. She rocked back and forth a few more times, not crying. She never cried. Last time she cried was the first time her mother ever hit her. Six years ago. She was sixteen now. A girl of mixed emotions: anger, sadness, joy, calmness - the list went on. At times she had a positive outlook on life, knowing that it can't get worse, other times the sadness would take over and tell her that life wouldn't get any better. Then there were the days where she was just as nice as a kitten, others where she was a psychopath.
She stopped rocking and limped over to her bathroom. Turing the light on she looked in the mirror to see the damage her mother inflicted this time. She grimaced as she poked at the black and blue puffy check. It looked like she had all her teeth pulled in the same day. She shook her head. For a woman that didn't like to lift heavy objects her mother sure could hit.
She raised her eyes to the mirror and stared back into her own eyes. With her long, wavy blue black tresses and her light creamy flesh with a splash of freckles across her petite, but finely sculpted face, which brought out the deep sensuous green eyes that could only be Jeanetta Patterson.
Though, that is what she wished she looked like.
Instead, she had plain brown black hair that rarely stayed in any style. She had no freckles across her skin which held a tint of the brown that her unknown father had passed on to her and her eyes consisted of the right being bright amber and the left bright green.
Ever since she was a child, Jeanetta was mercilessly at the hands of her mother and her mother's cruel friends. She was brushed aside because of her eyes. Because of her clumsiness. Her mother had been the envy of the catwalk in her younger days and again many more years after Jeanetta's birth. But now age and childbirth had caught up to her and she was on the sidelines watching her 'girls'. She was still a high rate agent that put her in the spot light, but nothing could beat the way she would saunter down the aisle in some of the world's most beautiful clothes. When Jeanetta was born she was shocked because of her eyes, but that was brushed to the side. Monica could get her contacts when she was of age. And the fun one could have by putting her own living doll through the endless beauty pageants. But at age six it was shattered. Jeanetta was allergic to every brand of contacts they fitted her with. And what made it worse was Jeanetta was clumsy. Too clumsy. She was always falling and tripping.
Her mother had slipped into a depression and sent Jeanetta away to boarding schools. But they sent her right back when she kept falling over everything and getting into fights. Finally her mother got her a private teacher and made her stay home a lot. True, she never wanted for the material things. But they did her no use. What she wanted was freedom. Mental freedom and the freedom to move around without falling or tripping over everything. But, she worked with what she had. She had made a little area up on the roof where her mother dared not go, she would sneak out and wander through the streets.
She came back to earth when her mother yelled for her. Jeanetta sighed and turned walking right into the wall. She groaned and rubbed her nose as she flicked the light off. She made it to the living room in one piece and stared at her mother.
A frown was on her face, but that wasn't new. Jeanetta had been a wiseass once and pointed out that most of her wrinkles came from her frowning at her.
Her mother had slapped her so hard that day that Jeanetta had seen stars, and then she had rushed to the plastic surgeon.
Her mother had no wrinkles.
Biting back a sigh, she put on an emotionless face and sat down on the couch, facing her mother. Her mother studied her thoroughly and wrinkled her nose as she gazed at the swollen cheek. She refused to look Jeanetta in the eyes.
She waited to see if Jeanetta was going to open her mouth and spout out sarcasm. She didn't. She sat there, the epitome of meekness, sitting there and keeping silent, much like a "good" daughter should.
Nodding, Monica merely pushed her long blond hair out of her face. "Jeanetta," her mom began, her blue eyes staring past Jeanetta. "You should know that I've been working with Alice Grren and Mariana Pottower. Well, both of them have been offered an opening to appear in Modeling Angels Model Management in Paris and…"
"You have to go but I can't." Jeanetta spoke up before she could stop herself.
Slap!
Her mother's hand came in contact with her left cheek this time. Jeanetta refused to cup her now red cheek.
"Do not finish my sentences! Of course you can't go. You will stay here where you belong." Monica screeched. She then calmed down and walked to the black and white marble bar and picked up a small glass filled with amber liquid and took a dainty sip. "I will leave tomorrow at noon. I'll be gone for a couple of weeks. I'll have a weekly delivery of groceries brought here. And stay in the apartment. Go up to the nasty roof if you must but stay inside!" Another sip.
"You can go now."
Jeanetta rose to go back to her room.
"And take care of your face! It's bad enough that your klutziness scars up the rest of your body."
Jeanetta mumbled a reply and made it to her room without tripping. Two weeks! She was free for two weeks. She could wander all she liked without having to hurry home.
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Noon the next day rolled around slowly as Jeanetta waited impatiently for her mother to leave. Jeanetta sat with her legs folded up under her on the couch. Her mother was going over her final check list. She stood by the door a tall thin beautiful goddess in a pale baby blue sexy business suit that brought out her blue eyes. Her soft blond hair was pulled up in a French twist with curls hanging down her back.
She looked up from digging in her purse and her eyes turned icy as she glared at her daughter. "Remember what I said. Stay inside!" with those loving parting words she was out the door to catch her cab to the airport.
Jeanetta listened. She stayed where she was for a total of ten minutes, before she shot up off the couch, tripped over her feet and was out the door.
