CHAPTER TWO
TWO MONTHS AGO
The alarm clock buzzed loudly, awakening April O'Neil from her slumber.
She pulled her hands out of the bed sheets, her eyes half closed, and blindly scouted for the clock. When she finally got a hold of it, she raised high above her head and dropped it to the ground with an almighty thud.
She rose out of the bed and rubbed her eyes gently, taking in the rancid smell of body odour and rank sewage. She opened her eyes to find herself graced with a heap of unsorted beds and half-eaten bowls of cereal.
Nearby, the loud hum of music and loud howls of laughter from a canned TV audience emitting from the television signalled all she needed to know.
There was doubt about it.
The Turtles were up.
And the unenviable responsibility of clearing up the cesspool that was their sleeping quarters had fallen to her.
She could march down the corridor, enter the living area, switch off the television, and berate the guys for not clearing up after themselves, but she figured, in her head, that getting the beds cleaned and the mess cleared was just as active an exercise for her as an active morning period of training was for them.
And after all the training she had done at the crack of dawn yesterday, she found it a much more manageable way to while away the minutes.
A moment to fold up and redress the sheets, followed by a dash of sweeping with a nearby broom, and the sleeping quarters looked good as new.
Examining herself and despairing slightly at another sight, April slipped a pair of pink fuzzy slippers and picked up a bowl of cereal, and, after emptying its contents in the bin, she headed to the kitchen to pour herself a fresh packet.
She did so, refusing to take milk as she didn't trust the Turtles to have picked up a fresh container, and munched down as she walked into the living area, where a source of great joy to her was lazily sprawled on the sofa, his right hand dangling off of it, his left hand holding the remote control, and his head staring up at the lights. He began adjusting the volume on the television, not happy with the pitch.
April beamed affectionately as her best friend of seventeen years, and boyfriend of six months, Michelangelo, continued to be predictably and unapologetically indecisive.
"Morning" she said as she approached him, bending over to kiss him on the top of his head. Michelangelo gently dropped the remote and stroked April's hair gently, "How'd I do last night dudedette?" he asked.
"Well the good news is you didn't snore , first time in three months where that didn't occur" she said, "So top marks for that...BUT."
"But what?" Michelangelo said
April reached down to something that was sticking to her yellow Night shirt, a number 6 plastered over the front, and peeled off a greasy mound of cheese and chilli Pizza from it, dropping it into Michelangelo's lap.
"You didn't go to bed on an empty stomach" she said.
"It all relates to a dream I had, trust me" Michelangelo said.
"Really now?" April said, her arms folded.
"Absolutely, I dreamt I was looking through the fridge, and only found one slice of the cheese and chilli special left, I realized I needed to give it shelter from the long cold nights it was enduring, so I brought it to the warmest recesses I could hope to venture to, and it enjoyed it's last few moments of existence in my capable hands"
"Sounds so literal, a real dream come true" April replied sarcastically.
"Well you should know all about that babe, you've been a reality for this long" Michelangelo said, raising his head up from the edge of the sofa and kissing his girl tenderly on the lips.
After a few moments, the two stopped, and Michelangelo moved up to allow April room to sit down
"So you want to do some warm-up fist fight routines after you're done with breakfast?" Michelangelo asked.
"No time Mike, this is my working week remember?" April said, "I've got to be down at Channel Six in under an hour, we're covering a major scientific development supervised by Professor Kim Sagan of the Augmented Particle Energies division. He's conducting some kind of experiment today"
"Dudette, I don't cruise down the science lane., you want to get into detail on stuff like that, you ought to date Donatello" Michelangelo replied. April nudged him with an elbow
"Jerk" she said, "I'll let Donatello know you gave us your blessing when I see him"
"Hey, I wasn't serious" Michelangelo said, slightly panicking.
April giggled.
"Relax honey, Donnie's going to be on hand for the experiment, he's bringing Irma along with him"
"That's alright then, wouldn't want to think a turtle known for innovation was replacing a turtle known for sheer sensation in your daily routine" Michelangelo said
"The day Donatello ever dates me is the day you guys delight thousands on Nickelodeon" April remarked. as she put down the bowl.
After another passionate embrace, she swiftly got up and did a couple of morning stretches, before kicking off her slippers and wrapping both arms around her nightshirt, gently pulling it over her head. She tossed the greasy shirt over Michelangelo and walked over to a clothes hamper, pulling out a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and her brown jacket.
Normally she'd wear her trademark channel six jumpsuit, but it was currently indisposed, as Michelangelo breaking the washing machine led him to have the astounding brainstorm of dunking the suit in the Hudson river.
Not what one might call a thorough scrub.
As April walked back through the tunnel to get changed, Michelangelo tossed her discarded shirt away, got off the sofa and opted to go into the kitchen to get a snack. In doing so, he walked by Leonardo, who was eating a lettuce-ridden sandwich.
"Hey bro, how's the Sensei?" Michelangelo asked
"He's still meditating, it's taking him longer than normal to stir from it, something is distressing him greatly...but he'd want us to start training as usual, we start in five minutes " Leonardo said.
Michelangelo grumbled, knowing he would have to practise without April.
Leonardo made his way to the tunnel up ahead where April was getting changed, and leaned on the wall, continuing to bite into the sandwich.
"Just so you know, Raphael is driving Donatello to the science facility right now, they're just collecting Irma first" Leonardo said.
"Now that's what I call prioritising" April said, "You could easily apply some of that to keep your bedroom from going to the dogs" April's critical voice echoed from the tunnel.
"Sorry April, we don't usually think about the little things when we wake up unless Master Splinter brings it up" Leonardo replied, "We're always so worried about what we're waking up to we just rush into the day"
"I suppose that's a reasonable excuse, keeping up the daily heroics is more important than keeping up appearances
"Speaking of 'keeping things up'...congrats on passing six months with Michelangelo" Leonardo added, "Normally, his interests usually last about five to twenty minutes, this has really brought out the best in both of you"
"Thanks Leonardo" April replied, "I hope you don't mind me crashing here every now and then because of it, I know Mike and I are supposed to be taking it slow, but for me, it's been slow enough, what it taking a decade to 'fess up to him. As long as we get the co-habiting down to an exact science, we should be primed for the next step whenever that comes in a year or two from now"
"I do wonder why it took this long...I thought you were strictly for regular flesh and bone, and that you normally left the extraordinary flirts to Irma" Leonardo pondered
"There was a time where I thought that was what I wanted, that I told myself 'it just wouldn't work out, we're from different worlds', but you know how it goes Leo, sometimes what you want in your head isn't what you feel in your heart. Besides, there's only so many times someone can call you so many cute pet names as Mike did before it begins to rub off. I don't know when my infatuation with him started, maybe it was that time he kept changing between his real form and that of a human. Maybe it was there since the beginning when I read him and the rest of you bedtime stories. All I know was I was in denial for a while after I realized I felt for him in "that way""
"How did you cope?" Leonardo asked, "It must have been hard to keep it bottled up for so long"
"I did a lot of weird things" April replied, emerging from the tunnel fully dressed, gently combing her hair with a partially dirty brush that was lying around and using her free hand to apply lipstick to her lips, "I remember how bad it got when Channel Six was destroyed and you guys got blamed for it. All of a sudden hating Turtles was the "in thing" for the general public again, it was a horrible time to deal with the feelings I had. I imagined headlines like "tough cookie reporter crumbles over freak of nature" in my head and despaired over how it would affect my career, and then my family, my aunt, I began to get bitter, I even started resenting my friendship with you guys, I resented how I felt about Mike. I was ashamed, and angry, at you, at him, at the world, at everyone. Eventually, when the opportunity arose to try and take my frustrations with you guys out in a public way, I readily took it"
"Is that why you turned on us during that whole business with Megavolt? When you even took to aiding the military in hunting us down?" Leonardo asked, "That always felt very out of character to me"
"I regretted it almost as soon as I started accusing you of committing the crimes" April explained, "It didn't take me long to get to the bottom of things and work out you were being framed...I vowed to myself I wouldn't let myself fall victim to that kind of doubt about you again, but I didn't know what else to do at the time...eventually I thought distancing myself from you would be the best solution, but one thing or another always dropped me back into your lap. Whenever it didn't, I felt miserable and unaccomplished where it counted. I was lonely. I needed you guys. More importantly, I needed Mike to know how I felt one day, and I knew the time would come where I could say what was on my mind, and that I trusted him not to freak out about it, all I had to do was wait"
"And in doing so, you mellowed" Leonardo replied. April nodded.
"I knew what I felt, I couldn't shake it, to change was impossible, I had spent so many years being saved, complimented, and entertained by Mike that there was no way I could dismiss my feelings as just that of friendship. He wasn't just a friend, he was my best friend, and he was everything I had longed looked for in someone of my own kind and could never seem to pin down"
"I think you made a brave choice April. We were all worried about you way back then, we've all went through a world of weirdness, where the sky felt just a little red and our hearts were slightly greyer, but by holding onto our convictions, by providing every end of the tunnel with light, we were able to shine again"
A touched April delicately kissed Leonardo on the cheek, "And I hope you keep shining, because all of you are more precious and priceless than diamonds, not just to me, but to the world"
Michelangelo walked back into the living area, brandishing his nun-chucks.
"Come on fearless leader, I need to check these 'chucks" he said
April put her shoes on and grabbed her bag off the floor.
"Honey, tell Donatello I'll be about forty minutes late, it's been days since I was at my apartment, I need to check on it, plus I need to shower down, you may be used to freezing water, but I handle it hot" April said to Michelangelo, who gave her a thumbs up. The two exchanged a parting kiss and April ran out of the lair.
Leonardo turned around, Michelangelo noticed some lipstick on his cheek.
"And where have you been spending your mornings?" he said.
"Nothing to worry about Michelangelo, April was just polishing a diamond" Leonardo replied.