It has been a quiet night for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Michaelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and Leonardo have gathered around the old television set in the living room; laying back after a long day of crime fighting and enjoying a marathon of The Twilight Zone on the ScyFy channel. Or, were they? There is a peculiar scent and a light gray haze hanging in the air above the turtles' heads.
"Why the hell is it called ScyFy now?" Raphael suddenly asks, interrupting a commercial of some man with a strong British accent advertising some revolutionary cookware of some sort.
Michaelangelo is quick to respond, pecking the white bundle of herbs in his right hand into the nearby ashtray. "I don't know, man, and as long as they keep up with the awesome monster movies, I don't care what they call it."
Raphael hits Michaelangelo on the back of the head. Then, the doorbell rings as if on cue.
"Since when did we have a doorbell, and why would we need one if we're living in a sewer?" Raphael questions,
without diverting his attention from the flickering screen.
"You're just full of questions today, Raph." Leonardo comments, also without looking away from the screen and with a joint drooping out of his mouth.
Raph glares at him for an instant but for whatever reason decides not to act on his violent urges for a change. It could either be because Leo was the only turtle on the team who could potentially kick his ass or because the blue bandana-browed bastard was just out of Raph's reach. In any case, I shouldn't waste to psychoanalyze a mutated adolescent reptillian martial artist - especially one with Raphael's temper.
"Is somebody going to get that?" The disembodied voice of master Splinter yells from the bathroom where, judging by the sound of bubbling sewer water in the pipes overhead, he was taking his monthly shower. You can take my word for it that a shower in the sewer system of New York City is just as disgusting as it sounds.
"It"s probably the pizza we ordered earlier." Donatello says, setting the remote control down on the couch.
Leonardo slaps his forehead. "I totally forgot about that. Didn't we say that it was just a prank call? That there's no way they would deliver to the sewers?"
"Maybe it's the Foot Clan!" Michaelangelo pipes in.
The doorbell rings a second time, prompting the four turtles to rise at once and creep toward the front door.
"Whoever it is, we weren't planning on having any company." Raphael barks, drawing his weapons. The other turtles follow suit.
"I'm like, here to deliver a pizza. One-five-seven, 'the sewers' avenue, right?" The visitor says.
The turtles exchange disbelieving glances.
"Dudes, that sounded like a chick." Michaelangelo so elegantly states the obvious, and what was of course on the minds
of the other three turtles; stoned off their asses and horny as hell.
Cautiously they open the door and peek to see who it is, just to make sure it wasn't just Baxter Stockman operating a voice manipulator module or something
equally stupid. To their combined delight, they see a skinny brunette with short hair and a small pony tail holding a stuffed pizza jacket marked
by a logo featuring a grinning Italiano.
"You guys really like your pizza, huh?" She stops once she gets a good look at the turtles, looking about as surprised as you'd expect
somebody to be seeing four sentient, bipedal turtles wearing headbands in various different colors.
"Five supreme pizzas with extra anchovies?" Leonardo asks, barely able to restrain his eagerness at the prospect. She nods, although it
was apparent by the way she cocks her head and puckers her mouth that the thought was markedly less appetizing to her.
Raphael nudges Leonardo in the armpit. "I'm guessing you've got a secret stash somewhere, 'cuz I'm not gonna pay for this."
Leonardo tilts his head toward Raphael behind him, and whispers something that the pizza delivery girl could not hear.
"What's up?" The delivery girl asks.
"We can't pay for it right now, because our master has the money and he's in the shower, sooo..." Leonardo trails off, scratching his head.
The girl blinks, and shrugs. Her eyes wander and, craning her neck to look into the room beyond the turtles, she spots the television. Her eyes light
up. "What is that I see, in pristine black and white?" She exclaims in a singsong voice, then pushing the pizza jacket into Donatello's chest and nudging
past them, entering the turtles' living room.
"Oh shit, it's The Twilight Zone." The girl shouts excitedly and collapses unto the couch. "I used to watch this all the time."
"Is that you, April?" Splinter calls from the bathroom, making the girl jump.
"No, it's the pizza!" Raphael yells back. He slides a box out of the jacket and takes it to the couch with him, sitting at one corner of the couch so
that the brunette is in the middle.
Raphael opens the box and the delivery girl takes a long grateful whiff of the supreme pizza with extra anchovies. "Well this is my last delivery
for the night." She retrieves a slice, glaring at the petty silver fish that decorated it. "But uhh, you guys can have the anchovies." She adds with a smile.
Leonardo takes a seat on the couch at the other side of the girl. "Hey what's your name, anyway?" He asks, propping his feet up on the coffee table.
"Sam." Is her response, while she carefully plucks each fish from her slice, dropping each into the box with a thud. "Geez, why is it so smokey in here?
Did you guys burn something?"
Sam, glancing around the room, upon the two dressers to either end of the couch and atop the dresser next to the television set, she spots the half-burned
white bundles poking out of ashtrays.
Michaelangelo squeezes into the couch between her and Leonardo. "You want a puff, baby?" He pokes his joint at her but she seems reluctant to take it.
"Come on, Mikey, she's still technically on the job." Donatello starts, pausing briefly to take a hit. "You could get her fired."
"Relax, bro. If we're going to keep her waiting, we might as well make it fun."
The sound of bubbling sewer water overhead suddenly subsides, signalling the summation of Splinter's shit shower.
Donatello looks lazily to the other members of the team for support. Raphael is picking something out of the crevices of his shell. Leonardo is scratching his chin, watching the screen intently. He decides to drop the issue, deigning instead for another puff of the joint.
Sam bites her lip, and her eyes remain fixed on the half burned bundle of herbs still being dangled in front of her face.
"Come on, Sam, I guarantee you it'll blow your mind." Michaelangelo implores her - a distant, dazed look in his eyes. "Just like it did mine."
On TV, a monochrome 'alien', or rather, an actor wearing a hairband fixed with a pair of 'antennae' clearly crafted out of bent pieces of cheap wire is discussing the
implications of Earth receiving extraterrestrial visitors. Sam herself was at this point beginning to feel like she had crash landed on an alien planet.
Sam shrugs slightly. She comes off as nervous now, in contrast to her earlier outgoing nature; her voice has quieted down to nothing more than a barely discernable whisper.
"No, I think I'll just take the money and be on my way. It's kind of late and I still have to drive home, you know." From the corner of her eye she glances at the alarm clock precariously perched atop the television set. It's already 8.
Before anything else could be said on the matter, a towering, bipedal rat emerges from around the corner. Splinter, at the great height of six feet was an imposing figure to behold - even wearing nothing but a white towel wrapped around his waist and one wrapped around his head turban style and his grey fur still moppy from being in the shower. An awkward silence fills the room, as Splinter's gaze shifts sharply between the turtles and Sam.
"Who is this?" Splinter asks with more than a hint of obvious irritation.
"We have some pizza, that needs paying for."
Splinter raises an eyebrow.
...
Detective Strider and Sargeant Egbert of the Rainbow Falls PD emerge from the Rainbow Falls City Sewers with a man they managed to find not far from where the body was located by a maintainance worker.
Said man was sitting in a puddle of sewage and having a conversation with himself about skateboards, pizza and the Beastie Boys. Once back on the surface, the officers take a deep,
long breath of the Brooklyn smog (God, it smelled something fierce down there), and shove to the ground the rotten bastard who made them have to wade through a tunnel of shit to grab him. The man from the sewers seems totally oblivious to everything, and continues his nonsensical rant even despite a broken, bloody nose recieved during the previous scuffle.
"I wish we could have gotten him to ditch the costume. It stinks." Egbert orders him, and yanks the perp back to his feet by the scruff of his cloth outer garment. And yeah, sure it was a costume, but what the hell kind of costume was this? It was so thoroughly soaked in sewage and clotted by years of mildew that it really exercised your gag reflex just to be in the guy's presence.
"He looks like a frigging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle." Detective Dave Strider says, thus answering my question. Egbert squints his eyes. "It's some weird cartoon my kid used to watch."
"Hey, shut up already!" Egbert shouts, interrupting the perp's diatribe on his favorite episodes of Baywatch with a swift knee to the back of the neck. He grunts and stops for a minute, but then goes on again as if nothing happened.
Detective Rose Lalonde approaches the two, after her discussion with an EMT technician. "She was beaten by a blunt object repeatedly and then dropped off in the sewers." She glances at the man in the weird costume. "Is this the man that maintainance officer witnessed at the scene?"
"Yeah, but he's not carrying any I.D." Strider snaps, looking down at the costumed looney as though he were some bothersome insect. "Probably homeless, which would coincide with the other assaults." He removes a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and lights one up. "Makes me wonder why they haven't already sent a SWAT team down there to shake these boys up."
"Definitely the weirdest case we've ever worked." Lalonde interjects, and Strider nods in agreement. A combined twelve years on the force was still not enough to prepare them for these shenanigans.
Egbert's eyes glow up, when he suddenly remembers something. "Oh yeah, here's something that might make you guys happy." He says, then hands a pair of nunchuks over to Lalonde.
"He had these bad boys on him."
She deftly analyzes the nunchucks, then reveals to Strider the traces of blood featured on its wooden surface. "This type of blunt weapon is consistent with many of the victim's bruises."
"Many? So not all?" Strider asks, flicking off some bits of the burned tobacco and wrapping paper.
"There were also cuts, from what I could see. We'll have to wait for a proper examination."
"Or an autopsy." Egbert and Lalonder cut their eyes at him. "She looked pretty banged up, just sayin'."
"It's hard to believe that this crazy sonofabitch is capable of such a thing." Egbert adds with a mournful look on his face. His inexperience was evident, compared to the star homicide detectives - they knew exactly what the crazies were capable of.
Detective Lalonde, Sargeant Egbert and Detective Strider look down at the babbling perp again - could this deranged lunatic be the break in the infamous New York City sewer murders they'd been looking for? In any case, they were too late for the victim. As they dwell on the violent details of the case, the ambulance dispatched to the scene of the crime is speeding off to the Rainbow Falls General Hospital emergency room. It carries a thin, pretty brunette who is now struggling for her life. Her name is Sam Manson.