Leo and Raph are pretty weird.
Yeah, sure, I'm the oddball of our messed up family, but I think my oldest brothers are weirder than me?
Why, you may ask? My answer: They like to clean. No, wait, they love cleaning. I'm serious! Have you seen their rooms?! Leo's a bigger clean freak than Raph, but just the same! It's so weird! I don't think I've ever seen anything out of place in any of their rooms. Unless it's necessary, nothing is left on the floor. Their rooms are practically spotless, especially considering the fact that we live in the sewers.
Then you look at my room and Donnie's. Donnie's room is messy for a good reason: SCIENCE! Then you look at mine.
Yeah, that's my room. I don't really have a reason for it to be messy except that I like to keep things, and I'm just too lazy to clean it. And I've grown used to it. I never had to properly clean my room. Until that one shell of a day.
Splinter told all of us that as a very special spring cleaning, we would start with our rooms. Now, can you see my problem here? If not...
Are you blind or something?
We all went into our rooms. Leo left his after five minutes -I told you he was a clean freak- and Raph came out five more minutes later. Donnie, who had a "special" way of organizing (which basically means shoving everything useful into drawers in his lab and everything else either under the bed or in his room's drawers), was done in about three hours.
And me? Being the awesome dude I am, I chose to play games and watch TV instead. Well, until my door opened, where I proceeded to act as if I had been cleaning my room the whole time.
"Mikey, you idiot. We know ya weren't doing what you're supposed to do." It was just Raph and Leo. Whatever higher power blessed me this way, I thank you! I will give you my (three month old?) strawberry asparagus pizza for this!
"Oh my gosh, you guys can save my shell right now! Can you dudes clean my room for me? I don't know where to start, really," I tripped over my bean bag in the middle of my sentence, but don't worry, my people! I'm okay! My brothers just glared at me.
"Seriously? You've been in here for six hours and instead of cleaning your room, like you were told to, you were just procrastinating!" Sheesh Leo, now you're making me sound like the bad guy.
"Well, I mean... I haven't really done anything, true. But you guys can finish this mess in an hour, probably! Please?! I don't want Splinter to ground me!" They can't resist the baby eyes. Thankfully, I didn't need to use them.
"Okay, Mikey. We'll do it. But under a few conditions." Raph, thank you for your mercy, bro! "One, you'll have to sleep on the couch. I don't think either one of us wants ya to ruin all our hard work in just one night."
"Two, no pranks of any kind for a whole month." Dang it, Leo! Well, when the one month is over, Dr. Prankenstein is gonna get you good!
"And three!" What? "We get to order what we want on our pizza. So that means-"
"-If we want pepperoni, and just pepperoni-"
"-That's what we're getting." I never knew my brothers could be so cruel! But I was willing to do anything, just so they can clean my room!
"Okay, I agree! Now, please clean this up!"
"Sure, Mikey. But first... Raph?" Suddenly, I was pushed out of my room and my door closed. They could have just told me to get out, at least.
I could hear them talking through my door. Here's what their conversations were:
Raph: I never realized how quickly Mikey's room can get so disgusting.
Leo: Well, he's Mikey. What do you expect? (Leo, I'm so gonna get you after one month.)
Raph: When did he order this?
Leo: What I want to know is where he got this TV from.
Raph: I think he found it in a junkyard and got Donnie to fix it.
Leo: No wonder it works just as well as the other TV.
...
Raph: This is way better than cleaning our own rooms.
Leo: Yeah. How long have we been cleaning his room for? I'm starting to see the floor, thank God.
(Here's a pause. Raphie was probably checking the time on his phone.)
Raph: It's been about twenty three minutes.
Leo: Wow. Hey, you want to try to finish in under an hour?
Raph: Let's do it!
...
And that's about it. I decided to time them. They really were fast. If I were cleaning my room, it would take hours before I could find my floor!
After about twenty minutes, Raph and Leo started to carry boxes so full of junk that I thought that if it fell over, they would suffocate. I looked into my room, and HOLY CHALUPA! It's. So. Beautiful. I think it was even sparkling. I was about to go in when...
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What do you think you're doing?!" Leo's hand gripped my shoulder pretty tight. It actually hurt a bit. "We said to not go into your room!"
"Oh yeah. I guess I forgot." I rubbed the back of my head. He went back into my room and brought out a bucket filled with dirty rags and soapy water. Wait... how did he even bring that into my room?! He wasn't even holding anything when he came in, not even Raph!
See? I told you they were weird. Speaking of "they", Raph came back with some of my really old picture books.
"Mikey, do ya still want these? I was going to burn them, but I need to ask you first." Uh, burn them? Oooookay, I'm not even going to ask.
"I guess you can get rid of them." He smiled. Wow, he really has a twisted mind. He ran off, and a few minutes later, I could smell smoke. Well, I'm definitely going to stop going into his room without permission! Uh... not like I did that before. Shh, you didn't hear a thing!
The next morning, Splinter checked every single one of our rooms. He questioned me why I didn't sleep in my room though. I just said I didn't want to ruin all that hard work. During breakfast, Donnie jumpscared me.
"I saw your room. How did you clean it so well?!"
"Uh, heh heh. A ninja never reveals his secrets!" Phew! I'm safe. Well, at least, until the end of breakfast.
When everyone finished eating, we were all to go to the dojo to begin training. However, Sensei asked for me to stay behind. He was stroking his beard.
"Michelangelo, do you really believe you could have gotten away with not cleaning your own room?" How did he find out?! "Do not be shocked my son. I know for two reasons. One, it is about as clean as Leonardo and Raphael's rooms." Dang it. "And two, they told me." GOSH DARN SNITCHES!
"I'm sorry, Sensei. It was just really hard to do, cleaning my room and all that," I sighed. Here comes the punishment.
Well, if the definition of punishment just changed in that moment. Splinter was chuckling.
"Believe me or not, my son, but I used to be just as messy as you. Even worse, if that is possible." Yoooooooooo! Now I know where I get it from! "But you are still grounded for using your brothers as your personal cleaning servants." Dang it.