Undiscovered Power
~
They all moved upstairs out of the basement, in fear of any stray germs from them could infect the recovering Raph, and where the frozen Donny could warm up by the fire after being down in the cold basement. He brought his drink upstairs with him, and took up Mikey's place by the crackling fire. Mikey and Leo sat on the navy couch, sharing the throw rug, and Prida sat in the single chair, watching them.
"Anything exiting to tell us then?" Mikey asked in a quiet, but totally Mikey tone. "What we missed out on?" He was thinking along the lines of school. Man how he missed being ordinary ( - well, almost -) and annoying the Math teacher.
"How about we start from the beginning," Donny suggested softly. "Like . . . what happened to you after the truck exploded, and the car?"
Prida shifted her gaze from his face, which was half bathed in the fire glow, to the floor between them.
"Well, I know what happened to you," she told them. "Raph told me you managed to escape from the burning truck and down into a manhole . . ."
"Yeah, Casey saved us," Mikey said quietly. His normal voice tone was lost at the minute.
Prida nodded. "I saw the truck explode, and just after it seems you saw me get blasted from the car explosion, and I was told something from the car landed on me, and you thought I had died . . ."
All three brothers nodded slowly.
Prida glanced at each of them before continuing. "I was taken into hospital, where the doctors spent three hours trying to save me," she glanced at their faces again before looking back to the floor. It seemed easier to look at it while she was speaking. "I fell into a coma after they put me in Intensive Care, and I was predicted never to wake up. The coma lasted for five days . . . and then, the weird thing," she spoke like she was reminding herself rather than telling her friends, "was that I sort of half woke up from it, but in a sense I was still asleep . . . my sister said I had some sort of fit, but I can remember it so clearly." A distant painful frown creased her smooth forehead slightly, and her voice became softer. "I remember feeling like I was being ripped from something, and I saw blackness, but I could feel pain . . . and I couldn't move, I couldn't tell anyone I was in agony. My back was so painful from the burns, and the rest of me was just pain . . . I could hear voices every now and again, and Mai said I was crying in my sleep . . . it was weird, and it lasted for four days before I woke up properly. No one had thought I was going to, and I woke up to the pain of losing you guys. I really wanted to fall back into the deep coma . . ."
Prida glanced up from the floor to her friends' faces. They were all identical, showing sad sympathy for her. It was, now she had finished and thought about it, a horrible way to nearly die.
They didn't speak for a while, and the only sound was of the dying thunder and the crackling fire. The three brothers didn't know what to say after a story like that, and all felt a guilty pang for the easy escape they had from death. Because of them, their friend had been in a painful coma and they felt at complete blame for her pain. They had all noticed the pendant that hung around her neck as their eyes strayed to it, and were confirmed it was the same symbol as those on the artifact. It seemed really weird.
"I'm really sorry," Leo whispered after a few seconds in which they stared at her, and she stared at the floor near Donny.
"Don't be," she said quietly, earnestly.
They shared another few seconds in silence, and then Donny spoke up.
"How did you and Raph find each other?" He asked, almost in his normal tone.
Prida opened her mouth to say something but found the answer amusing, and so she smiled and said with a tilt of her head, "I ran into him . . . literally, in my sister's car. He ran straight across in front of me and I knocked him down. My sister's gonna ask where that dint came from."
All three turtles chuckled softly, and Mikey said with a small, gently smirk on his face, "I bet you were shocked to see you had run down a mutant turtle."
Prida's faded smile returned as she uttered a quiet, short laugh, as the turtle brothers smiled, knowing what her laugh had meant.
"Where is your sister?" Leo asked, bringing up the absence of Mai.
"She's on her honeymoon with Korey," Prida replied. "She's probably in England now, she had been in Egypt for five says, she'll be back in another four."
The guys were slightly surprised to find their friend's sister had married her boyfriend, but then those two had been a great couple and it was not so surprising after second thoughts. They felt they had missed out on a lot, because Mai and Korey had both been nice to them when they had been human.
"Sooooo," Prida said, "what have you been doing all these months?" She wanted the casual topics backs, conversations schoolmates would start; she wanted to avoid the sad side of it.
"Missing you?" Mikey said, and then a smile curled on his lips. "Well we've been trying to get the old life back again, serious training and stuff, looking out for Shred Head."
Donny spoke quickly after Mikey had stopped. "Prida, you don't happen to be, er, missing anything of yours, do you? Say, something triangular with a purple crystal in the center, missing for a while?"
Prida frowned and shook her head. "No, why?"
"Ever seen anything like I described?" He persisted.
Again Prida shook her head, and watched Donny.
"Hmmm," Donny murmured, watching the floor while chewing his lip. He looked up at Prida. "Never mind, nothing important." What a lie, he believed it to be mega important, but he just didn't want to explain to Prida what they had found out over the past few days right there.
Their conversations became slower and soon stopped altogether when Prida saw they had dropped to sleep. She too was tired, and after only a few seconds she had closed her eyes and drifted off as well, her slumber dreamless and relaxing for the first time in months.
It was only an hour later when Mikey woke up, and realized that he had dropped to sleep as he looked around the room and saw his two brothers were asleep as well as Prida. The fire was still burning warmly, though slightly less strong, and the thunder and lightning had finished altogether. The night was now dark, quiet and peaceful, and the atmosphere in the Valantine house was the happiest and relaxed it had been in months.
Mikey unfolded his legs and rolled off the couch with tired limbs. He walked out of the room and towards the basement door. With heavy, but quiet footsteps he descended the steps and made his way around to the bed that held his brother, where he laid down, curled up in-between Raph and the wall, leaning on his brother's shell, and fell back asleep.
Back in the living room it was nearly another hour before Leo awoke and found Mikey was not among them in the room. Donny stirred on the floor next to the dying fire, but he did not open his eyes, and Leo glanced from him to Prida slouched down in the single chair. He could only guess where Mikey had gone to, and he made his way to the basement, making his way silently down it to find his brother was indeed with his other brother.
Leo didn't know how long he stood there for, thoughts invading his head, but he heard the quiet creak of the staircase behind him, and half turned to see both Donny and Prida, heavy eyelids, walking down the steps. It appeared they too knew where the other two had disappeared.
"Mikey really did miss him," Leo said, smiling as he turned back to look at his brother in orange, who was sleeping peacefully, his cheek pressed against his hand which was leaning on Raph's plastron.
Prida and Donny let out small, quiet chuckles, and they all perked up a bit as Raph stirred on the bed, his head rolled over to face them, and his eyes opened. They saw Leo first, and then took in Donny and Prida behind him. He found his body was burning still, but he concentrated his exhausted mind on his brother and his friend.
Raph managed a smile, and said in a hoarse voice, "Guys, this is Prida; she's not dead."
They all chuckled and moved over to Raph, who was smothered in hugs from Leo and Donny, while Prida stepped back, smiling. They were all together again. Raph looked very tired, with his eyelids half open and his slow movements as he hugged his brothers back. Leo was smiling widely, and Donny was grinning. Mikey was still asleep on the bed on Raph, who noticed him and gave him a fond pat on the head. Raph looked at the drip taped into his hand and then placed his other hand on his burning forehead. It felt less hotter than before, and he knew Donny had probably acted Doctor.
"God, Raph we missed you," Leo said finally, kneeled down right next to him.
Raph looked past Leo and Don to Prida and said, "You got the phone number right then?"
She smiled. "Yeah, I dialed one of the numbers wrong first time and didn't realize." She held up her hand, trying to read the ink that had run from the raindrops earlier. "You should go back to school and learn how to write."
They all chuckled, and at that point Mikey groaned and lifted his head from his hands on Raph's stomach and opened his eyes tiredly. He blinked a few times before he noticed Leo, Donny and Prida were staring at him, and then he noticed Raph and his mouth opened to say something, but instead he grinned and threw himself at Raph in a rib-crushing hug.
Leo, Donny and Prida smiled as Raph made a joking gagging noise, and Mikey pulled away, still grinning.
"Mike, don't kill me," Raph said in a half choked voice. "I think I've only just escaped death once." His voice was still not his at its strongest.
Everyone chuckled at this, and Mikey beamed at Donny, and Leo glanced at his brother with a smile.
Prida shoved her hands in her pockets and said to Raph, "Hungry? Bet you are, you only had cereal the other day; I can make you something."
Raph looked up. "Starved, but I'll get it, I can't stand being in bed any longer," he said as he pulled the sheets off him and started to move his stiff legs off the bed and to the floor. But Donny stopped him.
"I think it's best if you stayed in bed for another day," he explained hastily. "You still have a high temperature." And before Raph could protest he stood up and looked at Prida behind him. "C'mon, I'll see what you've got in food wise that he can have." And with a smiling glance at Raph, Prida turned with the brother in purple and disappeared upstairs.
"The doctor has spoken," Mikey boomed in a deep voice, and then cracked into a grin as he took the sheets off him and pulled them back over his brother, helping him back into bed. Leo got up and sat on the edge as Raph lay down with a small scowl on his face. He felt the slightest bit annoyed that Donny was now restricting him to a diet, but he was still happy to see his brothers, and how they immediately started looking after him. Not many people had three brothers, and hardly anyone had a brother like Donny.
To keep Raph's mind off everything that annoyed him, Leo started explaining how they had missed him and how they searched everywhere for him, and when Casey found Raph's fedora, and they thought the worst, or they thought he had been aiming for April's but hadn't got there. In a few minutes Prida and Donny returned and Raph was handed a bowl of vegetable soup, not something he would have chosen after having eaten nothing but a bowl of cereal for four days. Prida then started to explain how she was panicking while having no one to help her look after her reptilian friend, and how she phoned the doctor and the vet. Having had hardly anything to say, Raph had drifted to sleep again, and it was ten minutes later when everyone stopped talking and noticed. They decided to leave him and moved upstairs, into the kitchen where Prida made them something to eat, since they were all hungry.
"Do you get to eat much down in the sewers?" She asked, as she opened cupboards and brought out plates. She began making them French toast and a whole fried breakfast, even though it was early morning. She was not the best cook, and so Mikey helped her, doing something he loved he didn't mind making his own breakfast.
"Well, we gather what we can and store it in our kitchen," Leo explained, taking a bite out of his toast as the eggs were sizzling away in the frying pan on the electric cooker. He and Donny were sat on the high stools with the counter in front of them. It was a cool kitchen, fairly big, with a counter running around most of the wall, and a small cutting table in the center of one half of the kitchen where the counter Leo and Don were sat on jutted out, half separating it from the rest of the kitchen.
"We have to scavenge for money," Donny said, a slightly different tone in his voice than usual. "And buy what we can with that, it's not much, but at least it's something." Then he saw Prida's face, and he said quickly, "But you wouldn't believe what some people drop outta their wallets."
"Well," she said with a smile, tuning back to the frying pan, "You'll always be welcome here if you're ever hungry, or, for any reason at all."
"Yeah, we know," Mikey smiled, brushing past her to get another plate. He already knew his way around almost. He filled the plate he had taken from the cupboard with fried food, and handed it to Leo, who passed it to Donny, and then took the next one Mikey had done. Mike had only just finished dishing up a plate for Prida when the doorbell rang, and everyone froze. From in this part of the kitchen, the front door could bee seen clearly, and whoever was at the front door could see into the kitchen.
Prida dropped the fork she was just about to use to dish something up, and said in a slightly hurried voice, "Could you guys, hide . . . ?" But she turned around to see they had disappeared, and she raised an eyebrow. "Wow." Then she half walked, half ran to the door, unlocked the bolts, turned the key and opened the door a foot. She let out an irritated sigh, and said, "Tooks, what are you doing here so early?"
He didn't have his usual greeting smile on his face, instead it was a curious one, and he frowned slightly at her tone, looking behind her into the hallway and through to the kitchen.
"I wanted to see how you were," he said, inviting himself in and stopping in the hallway, eyes glancing around as if he knew something had been changed and couldn't put his finger on it. "And to see why you hadn't been in school the whole week, and a whole load of other questions but you can answer that one first." He turned around to her as she closed the door, nervousness in her eyes.
"School?" Prida said in a slightly high voice. She had forgotten about that completely! "I, er, was feeling really bad, remember? I felt real sick, but don't worry, I'm feeling better now." She could almost imagine the guys' faces as they recognized Tooks' voice.
Jo Took watched her with his curious smile and one eyebrow lowered. "Okaaay," he said. "Well, you missed quite a bit."
She nodded just to show she was paying attention, and hoped he would go when he saw she was fine. But she saw his eyes flicked down to the left of her feet, and with a horrible jolt realized a second before she looked down also that there were three trench coats in a pile, still damp.
"Whose are they?" He asked, his head still looking down in the direction of the coats, but his eyes looked back up at her.
Prida's head snapped back to his face and she had a nervous smile on her face, but one that seemed to be hiding something. It was falsely sweet.
"Korey's," she said, really hoping he wouldn't ask any more questions.
He frowned, looking back down at them. "They're wet though."
Prida blinked and opened her mouth. It was two seconds later when she finally said, "I put them outside yesterday to, er, air off coz they stank, but it chucked it down with rain."
"Korey has three coats?"
Man what was this, interrogation? "Well, one's Mai's. Jeeze, some people can have more than one coat, To – er – Jo."
He looked at her and pressed his lips together in a thoughtful way. He turned from her and glanced in the kitchen. He started telling her what she had missed in school and what announcements had been made by the Principle while he walked into the room and up to Leo's plate. Prida followed close behind.
"Is there something else?" She asked impatiently. "It's just you seem to be inspecting my house."
He looked up from the plates. "Why are there four plates of food?"
She was getting mad at all these questions, but her heart fluttered with nervousness. "It's, er, breakfast."
"Four plates for you?"
Prida opened her mouth again but she didn't say anything straight away. "No, Roxanne and some others are, er, coming over, I made them breakfast."
Tooks frowned, and glanced at the clock in the kitchen which read 6:50. He looked at the plate next to Leo's. "But they're bites taken from three of them." He didn't seem to be accusing her or suspicious, he just seemed to want to know why, like he thought she was going slightly funny with this cold.
Prida was lost for an answer for this. But she managed to say, "I – er, I'm not the best cook, heh," she acted slightly embarrassed, "so I tried them before I'll give them to Rox and co."
It was odd, but Tooks shrugged and smiled. "Well, how about we make up for the time we didn't see each other at school, huh? Wanna spend the day with me tomorrow? C'mon Pri, I'll take you to the cinema, I'll pay." He grinned, and as handsome as he was, Prida just didn't like that grin of his, whether or not it was just for her. She just wished he'd leave her alone.
"No, sorry Tooks – er, Jo, but I have things to do since Mai's away," she thought up with a stern tone. She thought she saw movement behind Tooks in the living room, but it must have been her eyes.
She managed to pull Tooks to the front door, and as he was speaking she rudely said, "bye" and slammed the door on his face. After a few seconds she sighed and moved back into the kitchen, and a second later Leo and Donny walked in, followed by Mikey.
"Jo Tooks?" Mikey asked, eye ridges high.
Prida gave a one-shoulder shrug and a half, grim smile. "He won't be here for long, he's only across the road because his own room is being redecorated or something."
"He just visits like that?" Leo asked, taking his seat again next to Donny.
Prida nodded. "He's so annoying . . . I can 't believe I completely forgot about school," she thought about that for a second. "Actually I can."
"Stank?" Donny repeated the description she used for their coats. Leo and Mikey looked from him to Prida.
"Hey, he was asking all these questions, I had to come up with something quickly, and you live in a sewer, they're bound to stink."
They all laughed and joked about the good times they had at school showing up Tooks, and they finished their breakfast not long later. They were all happy that it was almost like the days four months ago when they were laughing at something.
"We're gonna have to show you to April again," Mikey said as he took Leo's plate his brother was handing him and put them in the sink. Donny had finished a minute before they had, and Prida was still eating.
She smiled. "Yeah, and I'm gonna tell her to get an answering machine. I must have phoned her number more times than the hours she spent at work . . . okay exaggeration," she smiled.
They laughed, and then Leo brought up Master Splinter.
"I think he'll understand the reason we've been gone all night," Donny said. "But we'll have to take Prida down to see him, I'll expect he'd wanna meet you again," he said to Prida.
She smiled, remembering the big, talking rat they called Master and father. It was really odd that four turtles had a rat as a father, and not a turtle, nor did they even have a mother. It sounded strange from another's point of view, but the four brothers were used to it. Prida couldn't imagine what it must have been like for fifteen years having NO friends except your brothers to talk to. But she realized that must make them the closest brothers she had ever met, because they knew the others would always be there for them, as they most probably had in the past. They were their own best friends, so it must have been amazingly new to have gone to high school and make new friends. She bet they hadn't expected to have her as a friend. But to have a difference species as a father must have confused them at some point in their very young lives; and now they could see it no other way.
"Should we leave Raph here and go now?" Mikey asked, eager to get moving and show Splinter their friend alive.
"What? Leave him a note?" Donny frowned. "You think he'd obey if we said 'Gone home to show Prida to Splinter, stay in bed, do not move, and do not follow'?"
Leo snorted as Mikey smiled meekly and shrugged.
"I don't wanna leave him alone here anyway," Prida said. "Not with Tooks calling around every hour. I don't trust him."
"Who does?" Leo said rather coldly, staring into oblivion some point near the cooker. He brightened up. "Anyway, Tooks would get a scare if he saw anything."
They all chuckled, and Mikey asked, "What day is it?"
"Saturday," Donny and Prida said.
"What time is it?"
"Half seven," Leo and Donny said, and everyone grinned.
Mikey smiled but said, "April's should be in, we can take Prida over there, its not far."
Everyone thought about this, and Leo was the one to utter an "Hmm" noise and say, "I dunno . . ."
But Mikey rolled his eyes. "Oh c'mon, Leo! Raph'll be fine – April doesn't even know Prida's alive! And Prida has had to stay in this house four days looking after that slob downstairs, I'm sure she'll wanna get out of the house."
Leo's shoulders dropped and he stared at the ceiling. "Fiiiine," he said with a shadow of a smile on his face.
"Well, I don't expect Raph to be asleep for much longer, so we should leave him a note," Donny said, getting up from his chair and stretching his arms.
"You were against the note," Mikey argued with a smile.
"Well, you'd rather have him grumble at us when we got back for not telling him where we disappeared to?" Donny asked with a cheeky smile. Mikey grumbled in an imitation of their brother for his own use, and everyone laughed. Leo and Mike pulled on their damp coats while Donny went down to the basement and left a note on the bedside table. Prida lent them all baseball caps she managed to find and scarves even though the temperature outside was not that cool, then she just ran upstairs to change out of the clothes she had been wearing since yesterday into normal blue jeans and a plain white and light blue shirt, then she pulled a jacket on over it, stuffed her hands in the pocket and waited for the other three to finish checking their scarves in the mirror in the living room. When they had all covered themselves up, they left out of the front door, and Prida locked it behind her, a wide grin on her face at the thought of meeting, again, someone who she was thought was an aunt to her friends, who thought she was dead. And finally, she was getting out and about with the three brothers as she once had, yet the fact that they were not human did not put them off the slightest, and it made her grin.
~
Done on holiday, lol, that's why there have been no updations, but hey, I'm back, and I'm brown – lol, okay ignore that. I replaced the last chapter, 10, and cut out a few bits so it wasn't so disgusting. Hope you like, there's some annoying news coming up in the next chapter, hopefully it will be done soon. Thanks for your reviews, Turtle Power.