Standard obligatory 'Not mine' disclaimer here.
This is the second story in a trillogy involving the Turtles and the four Guardians of the Gates of Heaven. In the first story, they met two of the guardians...the dragon and the tiger...and rescued them from the clutches of the Foot and defeated a demon bent on controlling the guardians, the Beast Courts, Heaven, and ultimately Earth. It was a hard battle but they won. Leo came to terms with his love for the dragon guardian, while the tiger made a good sparring partner for Raph. There was a very slight Gargoyles cameo as well. This is the continuation of that story....
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES – The Fall of the Future
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prelude ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- part 1 -
Cookies should not be black.
That was the conclusion Kiah had come to reach. She frowned at the tray before her, as if the tray was somehow at fault for what lie upon its charred surface. She was positive that cookies should have a nice 'cookie' color. What that color was, was open for debate. Perhaps a golden-brown or a rich toasty yellow, but not black.
Definitely not black.
The chocolate chips were supposed to be black, and possibly raisins too, but there should definitely be a distinctive color difference between the chips and the dough. She'd learned this fundamental truth over the past few days.
Kiah removed the tray from the oven. There shouldn't be smoke either; or was that steam? No, no definitely smoke. It was with a heavy heart and a sigh that she pushed them off the tray onto a plate piled high with similar charcoal-like cookie shaped objects. "How does Mikey make it look so easy?"
The cookies were just one attempt in a string of several to try to make up for the events of the past few months with her new turtle friends. Despite a vigorous, yet futile, struggle to convince her that they didn't blame her for the events that happened within Sevarius' building, Kiah remained on her personal crusade. Yesterday it had been apple pie, the night before that, pot-roast. It was a string of aggressive attacks.
A string of aggressive failures.
The boys had been polite enough on the first night. None of them had said anything, and even tried to stomach the shoe leather called pot roast. They had quickly made excuses to leave. The next night, only Leo, Splinter and a sympathetic Donatello had remained available at mealtime. Raph had 'business' with Casey and Mikey decided it was a good time to practice the ninja art of invisibility.
Leo, being Kiah's 'special other' was stuck. That night, he'd proven his diligence with Splinter's mind-over-body lessons as he forced most of the dessert past his teeth…if only so it could sit in his stomach like an iron brick.
Master Splinter was a rat. Granted, he was a highly intelligent, master ninja with a palate as refined as his taste in culture and an upright, walking talking mutant…but a rat nonetheless. Splinter nibbled on the ruined foods with all the charm and grace of someone sampling fine wine. His only tell was that his tail twitched sporadically with every swallow.
Kind-hearted Donatello couldn't stand to see Leo and Splinter take the brunt of the damage, so he'd nobly stayed behind as well. He wasn't certain he could do it a third night however.
It was an almost-wish that something would attack the city. Tricertons, monsters, Purple Dragons, Foot Ninja, insane clowns...anything almost seemed better then the battle of the gag-reflex they faced at dinnertime again.
Raph had laughed at the irony. During the time when Kiah had lost her memory she wasn't a half bad as a cook, as long as she stuck with traditional Japanese food. Once her memory had returned, it was as if the returning memories had destroyed everything learned anew. Suggesting that Leo hit her in the head again had earned him a reproachful glare from Master Splinter, and a snarl from his brother in blue.
Anyway, Kiah thought, these cookies looked MUCH better than the pie did, and they didn't smell of sulfur like the pot roast, so her hopes were high. They looked like hockey pucks though, but cookies and pucks had a lot in common. Both were round, small...and black. Maybe after tonight she could try something harder…like lasagna. Besides, Leo seemed to like her cooking.
A bright light made her look up. Intense light drowned out the outline of the kitchen doorway and she had to avert her gaze. She could hear a strange buzz as well. Her interest piqued, she headed towards the living room and the sound. The guys were probably trying out one of Mikey's new video games. Then, as she came around the corner to the main room, the light and the sound suddenly vanished.
Kiah blinked a few times. The lair was quiet other then the soft mumbling of the television. Even Splinter was gone. She looked around for a moment before she went back to the kitchen. The boys had disappeared before without warning, but they always came back. She'd just finish the cookies, and wait.
