Donatello The Son - Saga of next Generation - Red Turtle
I really thought this little soap opera of my existence was going to be over when Saber Khan hurled me into that light. I didn't have the life- flash-before-my-eyes occurrence that is reported by so many in my position, but I did have a definite I-am-so-fucked feeling. I was helpless, all that ninja training and everything that Uncle Leo tried to instill in us, it didn't help me when Dad was gunned down right in front of me and it didn't help me when a giant mutant lion decided to throw me into a an apparent time-warp.
Now everything's been thrown to the wind. There are cars from the twentieth century here, driving around like new. They don't even have converters anywhere, and there's an actual gas station across the street, the pumps and everything. The sky's weird, the air's weird, the clothes people are wearing are weird, there's that stupid song Chicken and Pie are so into, at least I know we aren't like a hundred years back or something.then again that might be better.
I barely notice William join me in the alley. I wouldn't have noticed at all but he hugged me, and I was obliged to hug him back. I had a flash of how much he cared for me, he probably thought I was dead and he ran in after me. How sweet. The best twin anyone ever had, that's him.
About a minute later our cousin Christopher comes careening through the portal and lands on top of William. At this point I had positioned myself at the alley edge, watching the new world here with out being seen myself. I had never had to hide myself like this, I only knew from my father and uncles stories how humans would react to seeing us here, now. My intention was to quickly ascertain where and when we were, and devise a plan to get out of here. At the same time, I was remembering those talks I had with Dad about time travel; he and Simon thought they were close to accomplishing it. I guess Saber Khan beat them to it.
"Where are-", Chris starts to say, interrupting my concentration and possibly endangering us with his loud voice.
"Shhh!" I snap, and instantly my command is in stereo, William snaps at him from the other side.
I like having a twin. Especially William, he's practicality an extension of me. I'm always the leader, in everything, and he follows. Since before we could walk, in fact I was walking before he was. It's made me a bit egotistical, though. As we grow older, I find myself more and more espousing the theory that the world is about me alone. It is here for me now, and it will die when I do. This is quite nonsense, realistically speaking, but still, even now, it seems as if Saber Khan did this to me, not to William or Christopher. When Dad died, it felt like fate had chosen me to hurt this way, never mind that he's got nine other children beside me, it was me that this was aimed at. Why else would William fall ill right at the time we were suppose to leave, if not to create a rare opportunity for me to be alone on stage when he was murdered, and to have the bullets stop right at my feet.
My intelligence makes me quite egotistical as well. I am so smart that no one else even realizes it. I remember somewhere around preschool, we were still very small but already I could read, and William couldn't. He tried, but he struggled with it, where as I learned almost effortlessly, I saw the word once and knew it. Even then I was smart enough to know I needed to make a choice, either I had to dumb myself down in public or I would have to be separated from him in schools and everything. I chose him; of course, I didn't want to give him up. And he isn't dumb, that's the killer. Williams a genius in his own right, ready to graduate elementary at age twelve, that's pretty good. Thing was, I was better.
Dad was just starting to realize this. A couple weeks before he died, he had me look at some of his notes on his and Simon's time travel theory (and boy am I glad I did), and asked me what I thought. He was testing me, I could tell. This was really advanced stuff here, for most people, and I could read it. In fact we talked about it for a couple hours then, and he was genuinely impressed with my ability. Just me, not William. After that he observed me more closely, and started picking up that, with a lot of our tests and experiments and papers, even our homework, I was always in the lead. At school sometimes we would even switch our identities, so that the teachers would think we had the same brilliance and relationship. We are identical, and its easy to confuse humans anyway, we're all green and bald.
He had, on the trip over, talked to me about my plans for my education. Graduating high school at fourteen, then college. That was the furthest William could go. He wanted us to split up after elementary school, and he wanted me to try my hand at specialized institutions, secret ones that are so good that there are only five or six kids in the whole school. I said I would consider it but I never would. With out William I wouldn't have anything to lead, and I don't think I could ever live like that. I was also a little hurt that he didn't see how important my brother was to me.
I was actually a tiny bit relieved that, when he died, that meant that this would no longer be an issue. In fact William and I revised our plan, unofficially but understood, we decided to go through high school more or less normally. We never discussed our goals since then, I'm afraid to because I don't want him to know what Dad had in mind, or how much this has all affected me.
Course, all bets on high school are off for the moment.
I have, after a few minutes of observing, come to the conclusion that we are definitely in the 2000s and definitely in a major North American city. From my position I can't see any sky-lines, but I can see a giant neon lit up thing a block or so away declaring TIMES SQUARE. This does not bode well.
This is all unproven, this time travel, but so far it definitely seems to work, and if it works the way its suppose than I don't need to worry about destroying all our lives should we meet up with our former ancestors here. It would be very much like them meeting new companions, like Simon was to them. There's even the advantage that maybe they could help us to return and really go after Saber Khan. Thing is, I don't want to meet them. I don't think I could stand it, I mean, what would we say? How would we introduce ourselves?
Well, enough of my solitary thoughts, its time to link up with the others. I think we're going to have clue Chris in very slowly, he's not very bright.
A glance at William's newspaper confirms my presumption; it is a New York Times discussing impending war in the middle east with Bush as president. There were more than one Bush, but its probably the 2000 one. The New York Times is, or was, a national paper, but I'm pretty sure this is New York. A glance at Chris confirms that he has no idea what is going on. He's staring at a plane in the sky. True those don't fly around like they used to, but its not like they're totally unheard of.
"We're in big trouble", I tell him.
"Yep", William agrees.
"Why? Where are we?" Chris asks, incredulously.
"We are", I begin, think better of it, and sit him down in the alley, "We are about fifty years in the past, in North America, probably in New York."
He thinks for a while. William and I patiently wait.
"Does that mean that our parents are here?" He asks finally.
"Our fathers at least. None of our mothers are from here."
"Most of our Moms aren't even born yet", William points out.
"Okay, but our fathers are here. And our grandfather, he was a great ninja. So we can get them to help us. It's a fight against evil, right? And if we get back with them-"
"NO FUCKING WAY!" William snapped. This was a reflection of my thinking but not quite the way I was going to express it.
"What? Why not? We need help and they're here to give it. We'd even have uncle Don-oh."
He finally saw at least maybe one thing wrong with the plan, that maybe we don't want to meet up with our dead father.
"Yeah", William said, "That'd be great, wouldn't it? Us and Dad, just like we used to be, except here he's probably younger than we are. And wouldn't that kind of fuck up the time-space continuum, or something? What's your Dad going to say when we bring this crew back? What about his seeing his dad, Splinter? He'll probably have a heart attack, just like we will when we see our Dad, if we see him which we better not!"
William and I were both known for our quietness, so this outburst was startling.
"Let's keep quieter", I suggested, aware of the human eyes all around us, and what would happen if they see us.
"Right", William agreed.
"Okay, I'm sorry guys. Its just, I want to get back there and I want to defeat this guy", Chris explained, and I saw a glimpse of the hero in him, "How do you propose we go about this?"
"We should stay above ground", William insisted, "Because they lived in the sewers back then."
"But how do we stay out of sight of the humans?", Chris asked.
Good, the boy has sense yet.
"Well, we could just climb above the buildings, or find a chapel or something to camp in until-"
A shadow came over us. It landed in the back of the alley.
"Hi! Couldn't help noticing you from the roof up there. My name's Michelangelo. What's yours?"
Crap.
I really thought this little soap opera of my existence was going to be over when Saber Khan hurled me into that light. I didn't have the life- flash-before-my-eyes occurrence that is reported by so many in my position, but I did have a definite I-am-so-fucked feeling. I was helpless, all that ninja training and everything that Uncle Leo tried to instill in us, it didn't help me when Dad was gunned down right in front of me and it didn't help me when a giant mutant lion decided to throw me into a an apparent time-warp.
Now everything's been thrown to the wind. There are cars from the twentieth century here, driving around like new. They don't even have converters anywhere, and there's an actual gas station across the street, the pumps and everything. The sky's weird, the air's weird, the clothes people are wearing are weird, there's that stupid song Chicken and Pie are so into, at least I know we aren't like a hundred years back or something.then again that might be better.
I barely notice William join me in the alley. I wouldn't have noticed at all but he hugged me, and I was obliged to hug him back. I had a flash of how much he cared for me, he probably thought I was dead and he ran in after me. How sweet. The best twin anyone ever had, that's him.
About a minute later our cousin Christopher comes careening through the portal and lands on top of William. At this point I had positioned myself at the alley edge, watching the new world here with out being seen myself. I had never had to hide myself like this, I only knew from my father and uncles stories how humans would react to seeing us here, now. My intention was to quickly ascertain where and when we were, and devise a plan to get out of here. At the same time, I was remembering those talks I had with Dad about time travel; he and Simon thought they were close to accomplishing it. I guess Saber Khan beat them to it.
"Where are-", Chris starts to say, interrupting my concentration and possibly endangering us with his loud voice.
"Shhh!" I snap, and instantly my command is in stereo, William snaps at him from the other side.
I like having a twin. Especially William, he's practicality an extension of me. I'm always the leader, in everything, and he follows. Since before we could walk, in fact I was walking before he was. It's made me a bit egotistical, though. As we grow older, I find myself more and more espousing the theory that the world is about me alone. It is here for me now, and it will die when I do. This is quite nonsense, realistically speaking, but still, even now, it seems as if Saber Khan did this to me, not to William or Christopher. When Dad died, it felt like fate had chosen me to hurt this way, never mind that he's got nine other children beside me, it was me that this was aimed at. Why else would William fall ill right at the time we were suppose to leave, if not to create a rare opportunity for me to be alone on stage when he was murdered, and to have the bullets stop right at my feet.
My intelligence makes me quite egotistical as well. I am so smart that no one else even realizes it. I remember somewhere around preschool, we were still very small but already I could read, and William couldn't. He tried, but he struggled with it, where as I learned almost effortlessly, I saw the word once and knew it. Even then I was smart enough to know I needed to make a choice, either I had to dumb myself down in public or I would have to be separated from him in schools and everything. I chose him; of course, I didn't want to give him up. And he isn't dumb, that's the killer. Williams a genius in his own right, ready to graduate elementary at age twelve, that's pretty good. Thing was, I was better.
Dad was just starting to realize this. A couple weeks before he died, he had me look at some of his notes on his and Simon's time travel theory (and boy am I glad I did), and asked me what I thought. He was testing me, I could tell. This was really advanced stuff here, for most people, and I could read it. In fact we talked about it for a couple hours then, and he was genuinely impressed with my ability. Just me, not William. After that he observed me more closely, and started picking up that, with a lot of our tests and experiments and papers, even our homework, I was always in the lead. At school sometimes we would even switch our identities, so that the teachers would think we had the same brilliance and relationship. We are identical, and its easy to confuse humans anyway, we're all green and bald.
He had, on the trip over, talked to me about my plans for my education. Graduating high school at fourteen, then college. That was the furthest William could go. He wanted us to split up after elementary school, and he wanted me to try my hand at specialized institutions, secret ones that are so good that there are only five or six kids in the whole school. I said I would consider it but I never would. With out William I wouldn't have anything to lead, and I don't think I could ever live like that. I was also a little hurt that he didn't see how important my brother was to me.
I was actually a tiny bit relieved that, when he died, that meant that this would no longer be an issue. In fact William and I revised our plan, unofficially but understood, we decided to go through high school more or less normally. We never discussed our goals since then, I'm afraid to because I don't want him to know what Dad had in mind, or how much this has all affected me.
Course, all bets on high school are off for the moment.
I have, after a few minutes of observing, come to the conclusion that we are definitely in the 2000s and definitely in a major North American city. From my position I can't see any sky-lines, but I can see a giant neon lit up thing a block or so away declaring TIMES SQUARE. This does not bode well.
This is all unproven, this time travel, but so far it definitely seems to work, and if it works the way its suppose than I don't need to worry about destroying all our lives should we meet up with our former ancestors here. It would be very much like them meeting new companions, like Simon was to them. There's even the advantage that maybe they could help us to return and really go after Saber Khan. Thing is, I don't want to meet them. I don't think I could stand it, I mean, what would we say? How would we introduce ourselves?
Well, enough of my solitary thoughts, its time to link up with the others. I think we're going to have clue Chris in very slowly, he's not very bright.
A glance at William's newspaper confirms my presumption; it is a New York Times discussing impending war in the middle east with Bush as president. There were more than one Bush, but its probably the 2000 one. The New York Times is, or was, a national paper, but I'm pretty sure this is New York. A glance at Chris confirms that he has no idea what is going on. He's staring at a plane in the sky. True those don't fly around like they used to, but its not like they're totally unheard of.
"We're in big trouble", I tell him.
"Yep", William agrees.
"Why? Where are we?" Chris asks, incredulously.
"We are", I begin, think better of it, and sit him down in the alley, "We are about fifty years in the past, in North America, probably in New York."
He thinks for a while. William and I patiently wait.
"Does that mean that our parents are here?" He asks finally.
"Our fathers at least. None of our mothers are from here."
"Most of our Moms aren't even born yet", William points out.
"Okay, but our fathers are here. And our grandfather, he was a great ninja. So we can get them to help us. It's a fight against evil, right? And if we get back with them-"
"NO FUCKING WAY!" William snapped. This was a reflection of my thinking but not quite the way I was going to express it.
"What? Why not? We need help and they're here to give it. We'd even have uncle Don-oh."
He finally saw at least maybe one thing wrong with the plan, that maybe we don't want to meet up with our dead father.
"Yeah", William said, "That'd be great, wouldn't it? Us and Dad, just like we used to be, except here he's probably younger than we are. And wouldn't that kind of fuck up the time-space continuum, or something? What's your Dad going to say when we bring this crew back? What about his seeing his dad, Splinter? He'll probably have a heart attack, just like we will when we see our Dad, if we see him which we better not!"
William and I were both known for our quietness, so this outburst was startling.
"Let's keep quieter", I suggested, aware of the human eyes all around us, and what would happen if they see us.
"Right", William agreed.
"Okay, I'm sorry guys. Its just, I want to get back there and I want to defeat this guy", Chris explained, and I saw a glimpse of the hero in him, "How do you propose we go about this?"
"We should stay above ground", William insisted, "Because they lived in the sewers back then."
"But how do we stay out of sight of the humans?", Chris asked.
Good, the boy has sense yet.
"Well, we could just climb above the buildings, or find a chapel or something to camp in until-"
A shadow came over us. It landed in the back of the alley.
"Hi! Couldn't help noticing you from the roof up there. My name's Michelangelo. What's yours?"
Crap.