It was Friday night. Anna had already headed out; she was going to be away the entire weekend. Kelsey hadn't been by in over a month. It crossed my mind that I might need to look into getting a new roommate. I didn't mind her absence, but at this rate she would probably be moving in with her boyfriend any day now.
I had just finished lugging my repair supplies to the apartment. As I had checked out at the store I had realized that there was absolutely no way I was walking back with all this equipment. Taking a cab had helped, but it was still a struggle getting it all up to my place. An absolutely frustrating struggle because wasn't I supposed to have some sort of super strength? Apparently it was an intermittent power which was the most irritating part of this whole experience. So I had gritted my teeth and dragged the heavy bags down the hallway. Thank goodness for elevators, the stairs might have been the death of me.
However, I had now straightened myself up and spread everything that I needed for the window out in the floor. I squinted at the repair videos I pulled up on my phone as I sat cross legged on the floor, surrounded by my supplies. I had a basic idea about the repair job, but I was getting a little ahead of myself. I rolled myself to my feet and took a look at the damaged area. I should probably start with removing the actual window.
The residual tape and plastic was easy enough to remove. Luckily it was a clear, if cool, evening. No rain to worry about this time. I grasped the edge of the window and pulled, gently wiggling it to remove it from the dry wall. It was slow going.
"Need a hand?"
I flinched at the sudden voice and the window I was holding jerked to the side. It seemed just as firmly stuck as before so I released it and turned around to look at Michelangelo. I held a hand over my still fast beating heart. "Oh my gosh, you can't sneak up on me like that!" Despite the surprise, I couldn't help the bubbling happiness that rose up through my chest. I tilted my head to the side. "How did you get in here anyways?"
He flashed a grin. "Wicked ninja skills of course!"
I placed my hands on my hips and gave him a look.
"Orrr your window was unlocked," he admitted. "So what's your plan here?" he asked, eyeing the jumbled of items surrounding me.
"I'm trying to get this stupid window out of the stupid wall," I muttered. Perhaps I was more irritated by this than I had thought. I wiggled the window again to demonstrate it's refusal to move.
"Some superhero you are," Mikey joked. "I thought you were supposed to have super strength or something."
"Ha! Join the club." I glared at the window, giving it one last tug. It moved more this time. Actually it came out of the wall in one smooth motion regardless of the remaining drywall and metal sill that stood in it's way. I winced at the high pitched shieking of the futilely protesting metal. That sharp sort of pins and needles feeling that you get when your leg falls asleep was running through my hands and up my arms.
The section of the wall that had been dislodged by the window crumbled to the ground.
"If you wanted to prove me wrong you could have just said so, you didn't have to destroy your wall some more," Mikey said, surveying the newest damage. "Although I can see why you needed my help. I guess you don't know your own strength." He grinned.
I rolled my eyes and set the window down. "Ba-dum ching," I responded dryly, making the motions for the drum and cymbal with my hands. He chuckled at that and I felt a strange feeling in my chest that I quickly brushed off.
The most involved part of fixing everything was repairing the wall. The sill was, remarkably, still salvageable and the window was still able to fit back into place once all the right pieces were moved into the correct position. I wasn't even going to attempt to fix the actual glass, it was only cracked a little after all and I felt like there was enough a challenge with all of this here already.
Everything was drying now, apparently I just needed to let it set and then sand off the excess, according to my good friend the internet.
I looked over our repair job with a critical eye. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it would do. I brushed off the dust that had settled all over my clothing and my stomach growled. Fairly audibly in fact. I glanced at the time to see that more time had passed than I realized.
"Are you hungry?" I asked. "I do believe I had promised you pizza." From the look on Mikey's face, I needn't have bothered asking.
"Hungry for pizza? Always!"
"Come on, live a little," Mikey wheedled.
"Um, no thanks. I absolutely do not want any part of sausage, anchovy, and bell pepper pizza."
You would think that ordering pizza would be a quick and easy task. Once upon a time I thought that as well. And then I was introduced to Michelangelo and his increasingly creative topping combinations. For every simple two or three topping pizza I suggested, Mikey had his own 7 topping one in reserve. Eventually I remembered that split topping pizza existed. Mikey looked almost as offended about my peperoni and olive decision as I did about his final choice of a barbeque chicken, bacon, pineapple, and jalapeno monstrosity. With extra cheese, of course.
"You need to start drawing or something," I said after I called in the order. "Find some other creative outlet instead of forcing your latest pizza invention upon your poor unsuspecting victims."
"Hey, don't knock it 'til you try it. In the end my pizza will surely reign victorious!" He leaned back in his chair. We had moved out of Kelsey's room and over to the small kitchen table. The paper I had used to write down the order for easy reference was covered in rejected and crossed out ideas. Mikey had stolen my pen enough times that I gave up keeping it away from him and grabbed my own. He took the chance to add his own commentary to the list, arrows pointing every which way. "Cheese pizza is not pizza" one read. And next to his order was "The next Pizza Nexus Champion!" ("What does that even mean?" I had asked. "A champion pizza for a champion turtle!" He'd replied. It offered no clarification.) Below a heavily crossed out section was my handwriting, simply stating "NO."
"And while we're waiting," Mikey continued, "We can go through these." He grabbed a bag that I hadn't even noticed that he'd brought and rummaged through it. I peered over his shoulder, curious of what the clicking plastic sounds might be coming from. He pulled out several movies. I didn't have to look at the titles to know the genre, not that I would necessarily recognize them, but I had definitely heard of a few. However, the visuals on the covers gave me enough information.
I scrunched up my face. I suppose I had agreed to this. Don't be a wimp, Mikayla, I told myself. I poked at the movies suspiciously before leafing through them, taking a couple of minutes to read the summaries on the back of each DVD. I glanced back up to Mikey to find him looking at me, although he glanced away as soon as I saw him. He had been uncharacteristically quiet.
I let out a long self-sacrificing sigh. He gave me another look, although this one looked a little concerned. And soon turned to being amused. "I'm mentally preparing myself," I retorted defensively. "I totally get to choose the next movie," I added offhandedly.
"Promise," He replied, saluting, "Scout's honor."
"I...don't think boy scouts salute," I laughed. A burst of something like happiness shot through me. I guess my sporadic wall repair hadn't been that much of a nuisance. But...promises didn't really mean anything here. We were just bantering back and forth. My smile wasn't quite as bright, but for some reason I couldn't fully make it fade away. I turned my attention back to the movie choices. I really had no clue about them.
"Do you have a preference?" I gestured at the stack of horror movies.
He perked up as he leaned over next to me, plucking a few movies out of the pile. "I brought all of these just in case, but these ones would be the best to watch."
The buzz at my door signified the arriving pizza. "Um, surprise me," I called back as I headed over to the door.
Donatello had been noticing Mikey acting a little strangely over the past couple of weeks. It wasn't too unusual for Mikey to work later into the night, and Don knew that some of those times were excuses for Mikey to hang out outside the lair. It was understandable, Donatello himself had been known to extend a project just to get a little space. However, Mikey's occurrences were becoming more frequent. Leo didn't have much ground for protest, Michelangelo was bringing in a fair amount of money with his job and the only other main source of income was Don's own job.
Still, Mikey knew better than to be so obvious about it, especially with tensions running high. There was something going on in the turbulent underworld of New York and it was only a matter of time until the situation came to a breaking point. Try as they might to avoid it, somehow the four turtles always found themselves caught in the hardest path.
Don looked at his shell cell. He didn't usually use the tracking function embedded into each device unless it was an emergency, but he had taken a glance at Mikey's location the last time he was out. The residential area didn't raise any red flags. His fingers tapped rhythmically on the table before creeping towards the phone to check the current location. The same area. Well, that was a little more suspicious.
"What are you doing, Mikey?" He muttered to himself. The purple masked turtle drained his cup of coffee before to walked over to his computer. Michelangelo had been using it fairly frequently lately, and it only took a couple of seconds to bring up the poorly deleted history.
It was all about superheroes.
Not the fictional ones, although wasn't there always a little bit of fiction involved when you reached that level of publicity? At his fingers was a vast array of information about past heroes, their history, current heroes... No mention of anyone that Don had ever heard Mikey talk about before. He hoped that his brother wasn't getting involved with something, not now at least. Those hopes were dashed moments later.
The turtle widened his searched, focusing on the most recent articles. "Redwing Confrontation: Partner, Rival, or Nemisis?" blared the third article. He skimmed the article, but directed his attention to the pictures. All were amateur photos. There were a few different shots of a young woman in a mask and then one shadowy one of her with her hands on her hips, facing another blurry figure. A figure that had a shell.
"Jeez, Mikey," Don groaned. He definitely needed more coffee.
Hello, hello :) Happy Friday! I wanted to say thank you very much to the absolutely amazing lizzybudd and REDpanda. Thank you for your reviews. Enjoy the somewhat longer chapter!
I was excited to see that the month of May brought 50 more visitors and over 100 more views than the month of April, hopefully that means I'm doing something right ;)
This last week I rediscovered my Jamie Lawson CD which has one song that perfectly fits with Mikey and Mikayla's relationship in this story, and one song that definitely fits with the RaphxOC story that is planned in a later story arc. (a to-be-sequel) I actually saw Jamie Lawson open for another band once and his music helped to open a floodgate of plots, inspirations, and ideas that had been trapped deep within my mind.
Anyways, I'd love to hear back from you guys! :D See you next week ;)