Sorry it's late (But hey, I never gave a set time to update chapters either, so I'm sort of on time, in a way.) Been busy doing things. So here you go, :)
As much Donatello honored his adopted father, Master splinter, he could be a little harsh to him and his brothers.
He was currently in the Hashi; surrounded by his younger brothers was balancing on one leg, his body downwards, and face almost touching the ground. He could see the dirt particles and the small cracks in the mat that was placed on the floor. His glasses were slipping, one millimeter at a time, every minute. He thought of when his glasses fell, which would be in a number of seconds that he calculated quickly in his head. He was balancing a system of a carton of eggs, and balanced spoons on his back. The system was elaborate—something that his father would have done specifically to him. His arms were spread out, to try and hold some balance for himself.
Leonardo was next to him. Sweat was dripping down his head profusely. His eyes were still and sharp, focusing on the task. He was holding three plates on each arm, balancing medium sized stones on every plate. His body was shaking lightly, the plates Leo was holding trembled from his arms. He was standing on a surfboard that was placed on top of a large, round, metal bowl. Occasionally, the board would make him spin.
Across from Leonardo was Michelangelo. He felt better than Leo was doing. However, it was still an exasperating task to do. Balancing on a spinning chair, holding himself up with his arms and sticking his legs up was easy enough, it was balancing a tray holding a blown up beach-ball with your feet on the tips of your toes was aggravating. Sweat rolled down his face on the chair, indicating exhaustion. On the other side of Leo was Raphael.
Raphael looked tired, but he was stubborn. Raphael would not let the Hashi defeat him; he would definitely not be the first to break. Not yet. His legs were crisscrossed, balancing on his feet. He was knitting with yellow yarn. He had already created a long, thick, sweater. He was now he was making a trail of scarf that never seemed to end.
Each one of them was tired and silently yearned to let go of everything and stop.
Splinter walked in the room, circling the turtles, making sure that they wouldn't break very soon. He kept a wary eye on the boys, adjusting little things the balance everything more on their situations/elaborate challenges. He stroked his beard and spoke up,
"3 hours in the Hashi so far. Are you sure you don't want to tell me why you were all gone again?"
The turtles looked at each other. They all looked at Donnie for a couple seconds, then at Leo. Leo looked at them, eyes rolled and widened. His brothers always looked up to him in times of need, it seemed heroic to the others (To Mikey and Donnie, probably not Raph) but it really was annoying usually, because they all expected him to solve everything.
Silently speaking in his head, he said,
Why me?
Leo then sighed and looked at master splinter and spoke,
"Sorry sensei… we went out again and stopped—"Splinter held up a hand and cut him off.
"I watched the news, I saw what happened. I also saw footage from a PHONE that was on the news channel." Splinter spoke, emphasizing his point.
Michelangelo spoke up with a slightly shaking voice.
"But sensei, why did you ask us what happened when you know what already happened?"
Splinter whipped his legs with his tail in response. Mikey's eyes widened in fear that he and everything would collapse, but then he gave a grunt, a "whoa," and rebalanced everything quickly.
"Because," He looked at Mikey,
"I wanted to know what YOU thought YOU were doing."
Leo gulped and then spoke, "Sensei, we were rescuing a high school from another foot-clan attack," For a moment, he was going to tell sensei about the encounter with Jen. He knew that he should tell his father, but he was afraid that his brothers would have to face further punishments. "And we defeated them, for now. They'll be back nonetheless somewhere else, and of course, we'll be ready." He tried his best to hide what he had left out with confidence.
Splinter looked at Leonardo hesitantly; he seemed to waver on Leo's story. He would usually tell more things in detail.
To change the subject, and out of curiosity, Donnie looked surprised and said concerned and asked,
"There was footage?"
Sensei whipped his head to look at Donatello. "Yes, there was footage. 4 seconds, but you didn't cover your tracks enough. You should have wiped the servers of that video, why didn't you? You always do that when it is that big of a situation, what happened?" Splinter asked Donnie hastily and angrily.
The boys looked around at each other, their palms were all sweating. Mikey's mouth dropped open; Leo was searching for some words to say in his head to apologize to splinter. If many people saw a good look at them, the secret that they've been keeping from the world for years would be exploited, for good.
Leo was just going to open his mouth to say something, but he closed it.
Splinter was pacing back and forth, stroking his beard and mumbling. He spoke up, saying,
"Luckily, it wasn't footage on you boys, just a soldier being…defeated."
The turtles had a slight look of relief, although they relaxed for a second, which unbalanced their positions for a second, making them focus again. Splinter looked angry, but then he relaxed and smiled. Not necessarily a nice smile, more of a…up to something smile.
Splinter looked at the boys.
"You are free to go,"
They all gave their own silent sighs of reliefs. Donnie and Leo looked at each other, they saw splinters look.
"But,"
They all tensed.
He held up the sticker that was given to Donnie.
", what is this?"
Donnie gulped. He looked at Leo for some 'Please help me' Eyes. Leo raised his brow, as in
'You're on your own.'
Mikey dropped all of his things and caught them. He sat down on the chair and leaned back a bit. He raised his eyebrows at him to say, 'Good luck bro'
Donnie took in a breath and started to explain.
Earlier
Mikey was looking down at his brother talking to Jen. More like grinning so hard that it seemed that it would stick to his face forever. He was giggling and snickering too.
"Oh man," He whispered to himself.
He could tell that his brother was slightly nervous. Donnie had his hand on the back of his head, a trait that he did when he couldn't conjure up words to say. It was a little more than unusual, since Donnie almost always would know what to say at all times. It could get annoying at some times and places, like last week, Donnie would not stop talking about the configuration theory about the micro-bots in the Big Hero 6, April showed them the trailer. He was pretty interested in it all, and none of them could wait to see the movie, even Raph.
But Donnie seemed to be lost at words. Mikey snickered, not necessarily teasingly, mostly in hysterics. It seemed that Donnie had a little crush.
Mikey turned to his oldest brother and pointed down, smiling for an indication. He raised his eyebrows twice. Leonardo had his arms crossed; he rolled his eyes and looked over. His eyes widened a bit as he noticed what was going on. As Donnie was handing the backpack through the window, he looked up and met at Leonardo's gaze for a second while giving the backpack to Jen. Mikey leaned over the edge of the building and gave Donatello double thumbs up and winked. Leo pulled Mikey back, and you could hear a small "Ow!"
Leo looked over at Donnie. Mikey came back with a "Hah" and Leo slapped him upside the head.
Leo inhaled and spoke loudly to Donatello, "Donnie! Let's go!"
Donatello looked up and said something to Jen. Then he climbed up the fire escape to his brothers.
Donnie first turned to Mikey, and before he could open his mouth and say anything, Donnie said,
"Hush." Donnie looked down at the sticker that Jen gave him. In right-slanted handwriting, the numbers 555-468-2324 were written in dark purple pen. The sticker had smears of dark jean material still stuck to it. It was slightly curled from being ripped off of her pants so quickly.
"Ooooooooooooooooooh!" Mikey said
"Did she give you a note? Did she give you her NUMBER?!"
Before the turtles could gather around and look at the sticker, Donnie started running off the rooftop, while speaking to his brothers,
"Come on let's go!"
Raph, Mikey, and Leo looked at each other. They all shrugged and ran with Donnie, jumping off. As they jumped off of the first building, Michelangelo was talking to Donnie.
"So!" He shouted, doing a somersault in the air and landing perfectly. He began to run again with his brothers.
"Jen is pretty attractive, huh Donnie? Eh?" Mikey emphasized the word, 'pretty'. Raph snickered at his brother, flipping over and jumping. Mikey started laughing a little, but then spoke again.
"No but seriously she's like, a cute,"
He jumped and flipped.
", and hot,"
He dodged a chimney.
", nerd."
Leonardo looked over at Donnie as they were jumping.
"So Jen gave you her phone number?" he questioned his younger brother, curious, with a hint of tease. Leo smiled and raised his eyes, then gave a small laugh.
Donnie felt his face flush; he ignored Leonardo and kept running.
All of them are teasing me now, but hey, who was the one who got the number?
Donnie thought in his head.
"No, Jane, I'm fine."
Jen took out the package of mac and cheese from her kitchen cupboard and ripped it open, taking out the cheese package and poured the noodles into the boiling water on the stove. She took a wooden spoon from a container with another wooden spoon, an egg whisk, a regular whisk, and other long kitchen utensils.
"Are you sure? I'm glad I skipped school today, but since its Friday I can come over or you can come over so we can be girls and talk about our feelings and stuff." Jane spoke on the other end of the phone.
Jen set a timer for nine minutes on her microwave and stirred the noodles well in the pot.
"Jane, I want to stay home for now and relax and sit around in my big shirt and eat mac and cheese and cuddle with Sif, okay?"
Sif, who was a sleek blackish brownish cat, meowed in response.
Jen raised her eyes back and sipped on her 'Always be yourself unless you can be batman then always be batman' Mug. She sipped on some delicious hot chocolate.
Hot choclety milk, she thought ((A/N: you know the meme, right?))
Jen took the phone from her ear and placed it on the countertop, putting Jane on speaker.
"Sorry what was that you said? I just put you on speaker." Jen went to the fridge and pulled out some celery, placed it on a cutting board and began slicing the celery into shorter stalks.
"Great. So, as I was bitching on about, because I am a bitch, if you aren't going to come here then I'll just go there because it seems to me that you need someone to relax with, even if you won't admit it out loud. You've had a lot of stress lately, not just the incident, but didn't you study really hard for that test in Mr. Potsoys that you took yesterday and didn't you also fuck'n SLAY it?"
Jen slid over to her backpack, which was still on the floor where she dropped it earlier. She opened it and took out her comic, 'Deadpool kills Deadpool #1-4' flipped to the page that she left off at and began to read again. She jumped up and sat on the counter.
"Yeah, I got the only four in the class. Everyone else got threes, three pt. 5s, I think. God, I really don't like the ol' gut but for some strange reason, no matter what I do, he still likes me. I'll get good grades without effort but I'll do something like draw on the desk and he still likes me."
"Have you tried throwing things across the room?"
"A couple times, I try to seem like I did it, because it is KIND of fun to act like you didn't do it. I don't think he can detect any sarcasm at all. Anyway, he doesn't realize it's really me. At first, I thought he knew I actually did it and just waved it off, but when I thought about it, and did it again, I realized that he wasn't joking, he really didn't know it was me."
"He is getting really old. He still believes that it isn't time for him to retire yet; he's had the chance, you know, when he turned 64, but now he is 73 and he still thinks that he's 40. Probably a 40 year old that moves slower than a turtle in friggin' molasses, but 40."
The timer went off and Jen went to turn it off. She stirred the noodles and turned off the stove. She went and grabbed a strainer while Jane was talking.
"Hey I've got to go, I'm going to go eat and watch some Netflix now. I'll probably some doctor who, which will surely make me cry. Timer went off."
"Yeah, I've noticed that. Yo, I gotta go, take care of yourself."
Jen took the handle on the stove pot and poured the water and noodles into the strainer that was in the sink.
"Bye. Don't you dare come over and I mean it."
Jen could hear Jane laughing. "I won't come over, I promise. See ya." She hung up.
Jen sighed and picked up the phone, turning it off. She put it on the kitchen table and returned to the kitchen and stirred all of the ingredients into the mac and cheese. She took a spoon and scooped some noodles into a bowl that was next to Jen. She set the bowl on the table and took the remote from the couch and turned on the TV. She went on to Netflix and turned on some mythbusters instead. She felt like watching some explosions and science.
She put all of the ingredients in the mac& cheese and watched while stirring.
"Don't try anything that you're about to see, at home." , said the TV.
"We're what you call 'experts'."
Jen got herself a bowl, scooped in some noodles, and sat down next to Sif on the kitchen table. Sif mewed.
*After Donatello explained to splinter what happened, that they met Jen.*
Splinter had furrowed brows and was stroking his beard and listening contently.
"…And then we took her to her apartment, and she gave me—er us, her phone number in case anything else would happen." Donatello finished.
"Or because my charismatic looks swooned her and she couldn't resist." Mikey said proudly. Raphael shoved him off the couch they were sitting on.
"You could never swoon anyone for your life, lil brother." Raph said in his rough voice, teasing his brother.
"Not true," Mikey replied. "If Jennifer Lawrence was here, right now, I bet I could win her, she likes humor, and hey, I'm a humorous guy." He jumped back on the couch and propped his legs on the coffee table in front of him and put his arms behind his head, smiling.
Donatello finished his explanation to sensei, which was nodding and stroking his beard.
"And then we went back here." Donatello completed, with a short smile and sigh.
They all prepared for the worst from sensei. Leonardo had his head down, but his eyes were looking around the room, biting his lip.
Sensei, however did not become furious and force them to return to the hashi, instead he still sat, stroking his beard. He looked around at the boys, his eyes furrowed at first. Then he got up. All of them straightened up, instead of Mikey, who wasn't paying attention. Raphael nudged his Mikey, who "Ow'ed" in response. Splinter took in a breath, in which they all held theirs.
He was chuckling.
"You never learn, do you? Remember when you first met April, I told you to bring her to me because you had met her, which was enough danger to her already."
He walked around slowly. Raphael spoke up
"But that was when Shredder was out there, he hasn't shown himself in a couple of years," Leonardo interrupted him,
"But there was another footclan attack today, he may not had shown himself, but he's gonna do it sooner or later. We must always be prepared."
Raphael scowled. ", which is why we should be out there looking for him instead of waiting this thing out!" He said to Leonardo.
"Whoa guys come on, you've had this same argument for the past two years, I think it's time to drop it.." Mikey said sarcastically.
Sensei held up his hand and silenced the boys. They all looked at him with wide eyes, awaiting orders.
"Bring Jen here to me." He said. The boys stood up and bowed to him. "You need not all go," He said. He turned to Raphael and Michelangelo. He then turned to Leonardo and Donatello.
"You two bring Jen."
Leonardo closed his fists together and bowed.
"Yes sensei," Leonardo and Donatello said simultaneously. They started to head out. Splinter turned back to Raphael and Michelangelo.
"You two stay here, if you can, I would like you to bring April here too." They bowed, Michelangelo double raised his eyebrows at Raphael, who elbowed him again and grunted. Mikey smiled,
"Woo! I'll go call angel-cakes and let her know were on our way—"Raphael was still going.
"Great, let her know I'll be there in 10."
Mikey stood dumbfounded. "Hey! You don't know if she's off work right now!"
Raphael turned around and said to Mikey,
"Its 7:00 dumbass, she gets off at 5:30." Michelangelo stood.
"Oh, right on. I'll still, uh, call. Let her know we're coming." He jogged and pulled out his cellphone that Donnie had made for him, and all the others, including April.
I wonder if Jen becomes a part of us, if Donnie'll make another for her.
He thought to himself.
Guess we'll just have to see. She's cute.
He smiled and then called April, while picking up the pace with Raph as they headed out of the sewer.
Soooo….. that was long. Took me a while, but here was a nice thick chapter. I'll probably have the next one in a weekish
See ya then!
