"Aaaaaaah, work. Work, work, work, " I, the mighty authoress Anyuna exclaim cheerfully while gazing at the screen of my majic intermnet-web box thingy. Surely I am preparing to finally get around to work. As long as no one calls me Shirley.

"Hroooouuuurrgggh." A gigantic stretch.

"Work... Work... Wwwooooooorrrrrrkkk."

"Doo dee dum."

Apparently not.

"Eh, screw it. Hey, flash movies! ...Tee hee! Crabs!"

As the movie is nearly at its finish and our heroine (that's me) is fully engrossed in the weird and wonderful flash-ness, I unfortunately fail to notice the person behind me.

" Working hard I see."

"Gah!" I spin about to see a widely grinning Michaelangelo. "You scared the crap outta me! What the heck are you doing here?"

He shrugs. "Me and my bros were just wonderin' when you were gonna get round to doing some work. Amy too." He frowns. "Adara too – well three technically – now I think of it."

"Welllll... uh... I'm really busy right now."

He looks over my shoulder at the computer screen. "This is busy?"

"Uh, yes?" I grin sheepishly. "Heh heh. Um, I'm trying to get inspired. That's it! I'm trying to get inspired!" I say, feeling rather proud of that excuse- uh, reason – while not actually believing for a second that Mike will buy it.

"Okaay," he says, one eye ridge raised. "So what are ya doing then?"

"Just watching a few wee movies of flash."

A glint appears in his eyes. "Movies eh?"

"And so I'm – A squirrel. And you're not…" croons the Orange bandanna'd turtle and the authoress (still me), watching Foamy's 'Squirrel Songs' for at least the fourth time.

"Mike, what are you doing? You're supposed to be encouraging her to write, not helping her procrastinate even more!"

The usually cheerful terrapin turns guiltily. "Oh, hi Donny. How's it going? We're just… uh. Getting inspired?"

"It's like this Don," I begin, "I need music to concentrate properly, but because my stereo doesn't work properly, I had to go and find songs on the internet and I got distracted."

"Okay, that sounds reasonable enough," he replies thoughtfully. "Your stereo's not working huh?"

I nod. "Yeah. Hey!" I exclaim, faking as if this has only just occurred to me. "You could fix it for me and then I'd be able to get back to work!"

"I'll do what I can." Don says solemnly, and moved over to the offending appliance.

"That's great… Great. And while we're waiting, we'll just play some playstation."

Don nods distractedly obviously concentrating on finding the right screwdriver to unscrew the back of my stereo.

I grin to myself. "Perfect."

"Okay, that's not the problem. What if… no, it's not that either." Comes the muttering from the other side of the room as Donatello struggles with the stereo of our mighty authoress (Hey look, that's still me!).

The authoress in question was at this time shouting at the top of her lungs. "Left! Left! There! Yes!"

Michaelangelo and I are playing Burnout. Get your minds out of the gutter.

"That crash was awesome! The way you got that bus to rebound and hit the petrol tanker that exploded and took out that minibus… Genius. Sheer genius."

"I am if I do say so myself… and I do," Mike responds.

"I say so too. Let us do a little dance to celebrate!"

And so we boogie… And boogie hard indeed.

Until a bout of hysterical-sounding laughter brings our celebrations to an end.

We turn to see Raph doubled over, clutching his knees, his shoulders shaking. "Leo's gonna have a freakin fit!" he manages to gasp.

"Hey, Raph. Wanna play?" I ask casually.

He stands upright once more, still chuckling. After a brief consideration, he shrugs. "Why the hell not?"

"Okay. That should do it." Don switches on the stereo and is finally rewarded with a blast of music. "Yes!" he exults. Out of the corner of my eye I see him turn it back off and start back over. "Guys, I've finished fixing the stereo," he says. Donnie gets no response from his brothers, and I am too busy trying to think of something else to occupy him. "Guys?" he asks again.

"Wahoo! Take that innocent commuters!" Mikey shouts at full volume. I merely cringe.

Don moves to stand in front of me. "You didn't really need your stereo fixed did you?"

"Uh..." 'Think fast! Think fast!' "Yes?" 'Stupid brain. Why do you have to suck so much?'

Don brings one hand up to rest over his eyes. "Well since it's obvious that we're not going to be able to convince you to get to work, we should at least leave so that we don't distract you further."

"Ah, but Donnie dearest, as a fellow intellectual, you should know better than to persist in fighting a battle that you know you can't win," I state smugly. "Now you just sit right down on the couch like a good boy, or else I'll take Amy away from you… PERMANENTLY."

"Yes ma'am." Don sits down so fast, he practically blurs. It's ever so nice to have obedient males around.

"Good boy," I say, patting him on the arm, "try the game, you never know, you might like it."

"I just can't seem to get that gold medal on this stage." Donny says, frowning ever so slightly.

"Yeah, yeah, we're all heartbroken. Hand it over." Raph cracks his knuckles loudly. "S'my turn."

Donny turns to me. "You know, I didn't think that this game would be any good, but it's actually quite engaging. It takes a surprising amount of timing and skill to get everything."

Ah, how wonderful. An opportunity to be smug. "Now you know that I hate to be smug bu-"

"Ahem!"

"Hi Leo." We chorus in varying tones, ranging all the way from genuinely enthusiastic, through resigned and all the way down to guiltily. I'll leave it up to you, gentle reader to guess which tones belonged to whom.

Leo runs a palm down his face. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he asks, sounding almost as if he were only one moment away from a total mental breakdown.

"It's Burnout. Was' it look like?" Raph grunts, causing me to cringe. That was really smooth. Lets tick him off more - good move! Then, surprising us all, he asks, "You wanna play?"

Leo just blinks for a moment. I think that's all he can manage. "I…what?"

"Do you wanna play?" he repeats, adding, "You going deaf or something?"

Leo finally seems to manage to rustle up some indignation at last. "No I don't want to play!"

Raph nudges Mikey. "See? Told ya he'd be too chicken."

As Leo's bravely mustered indignation flees, I finally click. So Raphie boy was being smooth after all! Wonders upon wonders!

Mike hasn't clicked yet though. "Wha-" He gets nudged again for his trouble.

"Don't you remember?" I pipe up. "We were talking about it just before. About how Leo would never play with us because he'd be too afraid of loosing." Raph and I (that's the Authoress, just in case you'd forgotten) share a little conspiritory glance as Leo splutters.

The previously spluttering terrapin stomps over, clearly pissed. Maybe we pushed to far? "Give me that controller." Ah, no. Just far enough it seems. Wonderbah she exclaimed with great relish. Silently of course - I'm not THAT stupid.

Marvelling at the fact that I've had four wonderful successes so far today, I pick up 'Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul' and remove the bookmark. I'm confident I won't be bothered again for a while and will be able to delve into the psyche of Douglas Adams for a bit.

"This is it Mikey!" crows Raphael. "Say goodbye to ya high score!" Then silence.

And then...

...The air is rent with a scream of inarticulate rage, the likes of which is only usually heard on a battlefield where there are berserkers in attendance.

"!"

Michelangelo has pulled out the controller. The cable is coiled about his left leg, so I wonder if this is merely all an accident. That is, until I see the smug grin on his face. Oh crap. That boy is one dead turtle.

Luckily for Mike, just as Raph lunges at him with a homicidal glint in his eyes, there is a mighty roar of, "BOYS!"

All for of the teenage terrapins cringe, each one of them frozen exactly as they had been when that shocking sound had rent the air. Raphael's fingers still in the act of reaching for his orange-clad brother, the only differences being the guilty expression and the slight slump of his shoulders.

"What is the meaning of this my students?" Splinter says through gritted teeth – and what teeth they are grandma! He goes on, "I sent the four of you here today to help the young miss with her writing, not to keep her from it!"

"Yes. You really should all be ashamed of yourselves," I chime in, to be rewarded with a chorus of outraged spluttering from the subjects of this discussion. Lets see if they can get out of this one. It's so much fun being the horrible, horrible person that I am – ie. the authoress.

Leo is the first to recover his wits. "It's not what you think. She tricked us into..." he begins to protest, but is cut off by his agèd mentor, oh how I love him.

I will hear none of this. Not only have you failed in your task, but now you are attempting to divert the blame onto another? That is unacceptable. Go home! All of you! We will discuss your punishment when I arrive."

The turtles make their way to the door and beyond, grumbling to themselves as they go. Methinks perchance I shouldn't have blamed them for this after all, but I'll make it up to them somehow. It will all work out, I'm sure. Mostly because I'm the one writing this thing and it's easy to be sure of oneself when one is in control of the magical keyboard of wonder.

After the fellas have filed out, Splinter turns to me. "You have my most sinscere appologies for the behaviour of my sons," he says.

"Not a singular worry about it. I probably would've goofed off whether or not they were here anyway, so please don't be too hard on them," I reply, thinking that I should at least attempt to turn the heat off the boys a little.

He smiles. "For you, I will go easy on them this time."

Phew.

"If..." he goes on, the smile turning just a tad smug and holding up a finger, "If you will promise to try and do some of the things that you have been putting off. Never forget, avoidance merely compiles problems."

Damn. Crafty old rat.

I sigh – rather theatrically, I will admit – then shrug. "Fair enough. Alright, you've got yourself a deal."

Splinter nods contendedly and after a quick incline of the head, follows his charges to the exit. I watch the kindly old sage get on his way and after only the breifest of pauses to wonder just what my pet rats would think of him, I sit myself down at my desk with the intention of getting back to work.

Ah, work.

Yes, indeedy-do. Work.

Wwwooooooorrrrrrkkk...

Tum terra tee...

Meh, I'll do it later.

"Attention Duellists! My hair is going to watch some Yugioh Abridged... In America! And that's just super-special-awesome."

Finito

A/N: Greetings and salutations! This marks my first fic post the name change. I decided to change it because I use the moniker Anyuna for everything else now, so it made more sense to streamline - in a manner of speaking. I started this fic in order to help me past a bit of writers' block and, irony of ironies, ended up procrastinating instead of writing it. But I did eventually manage to marshal the energy to get it done and dusted.

For those of you that are hanging out for the 'Once Human' sequel, (if there are any still) it is on the way, I promise you. Cross my heart and eat some pie.

Love, peace and chicken grease
Anyuna