I am so sorry guys I was trying to get this uploaded faster and it just didn't happen. I am really bad I know. I've had quite a bit going on in my free time the last couple weeks and it has just eaten up my time. So I knew I had to get this chapter up today. A bit shorter but I will try to make up for that in the next chapter. But lots of Mikey in this one like I promise. But is he the same turtle? Thanks again to those who review. I work really hard on this for you guys. Have a great rest of the weekend and week guys.
Chapter 13
Could his life possibly get any stranger? He had no idea what to make of all this, first those men in the black pajamas and then giant turtles! He was even more shocked when he found out he looked just like them. And then there was the giant rat! He'd been completely confused when he'd woken up down here, in the "lair" or something like that. He thought he'd been alone at first but then he'd seen a slender figure shift next to him. He'd called out for her, thinking it was Melinda. Wanting to make sure those men in the black pajamas hadn't hurt her. But when she'd reached over and turned on the light – it hadn't been Melinda at all.
This girl looked nothing like Melinda. With her long straight brown hair, and heart shaped face with deep emerald colored eyes. Her eyes had been filled with concern for something, or someone. He wasn't sure if it was for him or not but he had no idea who she was, what she wanted from him, or why she had brought him down here and he'd panicked, trying to scramble away from her, nearly falling off the bed, but then a clawed paw had touched his shoulder making him jump and yelp in fright and surprise. He'd turned and his eyes had widened in absolute shock when he'd seen the rat.
This was too much! He had to be dreaming. Or dead. That was it – those black pajama clad men had killed him and he was dead. Or he was dreaming, and it had to be the most bizarre dream he could've ever imagined. Who dreamed of giant rats? Especially giant rats that stood on two legs and wore robes?
"Calm down, Mikey, we aren't going to hurt you," the voice was soft, warm and confused? His eyes had snapped back to the girl who was still sitting next to him, she was leaning forward now, a few strands of her brown hair had fallen over her shoulder and trailed down her front. She held a glass of water in front of him. "Drink this."
He took it from her, drinking from it deeply, keeping his eyes on them both warily.
"How do you feel my son?"
The water spat out of his mouth in a fountain as he choked, hitting himself in the chest as he tried to suck in air to his wheezing lungs. Son?!
The girl had quietly grabbed a towel and cleaned up the water. He'd wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stopping a dribble of water from running off his chin.
The rat had frowned, his long bald pink tail twitching as his fingers had tightened on his shoulder. He'd tried to shake him off. It felt funny having those sharp claws just touching the surface of his skin. The rat seemed to sense his sense of unease and removed his hand. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he been holding in relief. Grateful that he was no longer being touched.
The girl was frowning and looking at the rat, then at him questioningly. The rat's whiskers had twitched a little and his black eyes had locked onto him, penetrating him with a dark gaze that made him really uncomfortable. He didn't like it. He didn't like being stared at. He felt like a bug under a microscope that someone was about to squash.
"Mikey, are you alright?"
Thinking the girl was talking to the rat he'd looked at the rat questioningly. The rat had looked at him in concern, his clawed hand tightening on a walking stick that he hadn't noticed before. His black eyes seemed to be searching for something, though he wasn't sure what. He'd looked away, uncomfortable with the rat's stare and looked back at the girl, but she was looking at him the same way. He looked at her surprised.
"Why are you staring at me like that?"
Her green eyes had shot up to the rat and back. "Mikey?"
He'd frowned. He was getting angry, and confused. "Who is Mikey?"
Michelangelo rolled over sitting up in the soft bed. Last night had been a hard night, confusing and strained. He rubbed his temple. Mikey – his name was Mikey and everyone here seemed to know him. So how come he didn't know any of them?
It hadn't been too long after he'd demanded to know who "Mikey" was that the girl's head had whipped around. "They're back… I'd better warn them, Master Splinter."
The rat had merely nodded, his eyes still on him. Mikey had shifted uncomfortably getting more and more uncomfortable with the rat's stare.
He'd heard hushed and strained voices outside this room, and then much to his surprise, a giant turtle had come in carrying Melinda.
"NO!" He'd tried to get up but the rat, much stronger than he appeared had pushed him back to the mattress.
"You must not get in the way, my son."
Melinda was pale, and still, her eyes closed and her clothes soaked in blood. What had happened to her? Why did she look like someone had put her in a blender? She looked awful. One of her legs was sprawled at an unnatural angle, her breathing sounded like she was trying to breathe through a clogged straw. Her golden blond curls were matted and clung to her damp shirt. It looked like someone had hit her in the face with a brick.
The turtle working over her had ignore him and the rat, working frantically over her. Mikey hadn't even noticed the other girl coming in and grabbing some medical supplies before hurrying out again. She didn't come back for nearly an hour, and when she did she helped the purple masked turtle with the girl.
Mikey had watched until his eyes were too tired to stay open and then they'd closed against his will.
But this wasn't the room he'd fallen asleep in. This room was very different. The bed more comfortable, his head propped up by several pillows, toys and comic books were everywhere, empty pizza boxes, empty soda cups, and candy wrappers were scattered all over the floor. Whoever lived here needed to learn how to clean their room. Stretching his toes he felt something wet and squishy touch it. Making a face he pulled the blanket off only to discover a stashed piece of pizza at the end of the bed.
"Blech," he muttered grabbing the crust between two fingers as if it would come alive and bite him, he pulled the cheesy goo off his toes and dropped that and the pizza into the trash. What kind of person, or turtle, kept pizza in the bed? Wiping his toes on the floor he took another look around. But the room seemed to be nothing but garbage and comic books. There was a small desk on the other side of the room with a small lamp resting on it, but the rest of it was in total disarray, covered with scattered papers and half drawn pictures. Curious as to what the messy owner of this room would draw, and careful not to step in any of the scattered garbage or slippery comic books, he made his way to the desk.
Picking up a notepad and flipping through the pages, he quickly discovered that whoever had drawn these really liked some character named the "Turtle Titan". Whoever he was. But he seemed to be the hero in all of these always grinning triumphantly and beaming with his hands on his hips, his cape waving in the wind. Weird.
He put the pad back on the desk top and thumbed through a few of the loose pages there on the desk, but those all had the same theme. Comic book heroes with the Turtle Titan right in the middle of the action.
A soft knock at the door had him dropping the papers. He didn't want to look like he was snooping. The door opened a crack and the blue masked turtle looked inside, then pushed the door open all the way seeing that he was awake.
"Hey, you're awake."
Not quite sure if he was supposed to say something to this obvious statement or not Mikey just blinked, staring at him.
"Um… breakfast is ready, if you're hungry."
"Oh…um ok, thanks, um… what's your name again?"
The other turtle's face fell obviously disappointed though he quickly tried to mask that as he gave him a sympathetic smile. "Leonardo. You can call me Leo."
"Uh… ok Leonardo. I'll be down in a minute."
The blue masked turtle, Leonardo, nodded and left without another word.
Mikey didn't move from where he sat. It felt weird to go down and join those turtles for a meal. They might know him but he had no idea who they were, or why they knew him. He wasn't sure if he really liked this "Mikey" that they all seemed so anxious to help him remember. If all he did was lay around and read boring comic books and eat junk food while leaving garbage all over the place he wasn't sure if he wanted that turtle back. Or why they would either.
Deciding it best not to go down and disappoint them with the turtle he wasn't, he instead began to clean up the disgusting room, piling up all the comic books in the corner to be thrown away later, while gathering all the garbage, leftover food, and boxes into a large bag.
"He coming down, Leo?"
Leo sat down next to Raph and across from Donatello. Elizabeth had Akemi on her lap, and was trying to get her to eat some fresh strawberries and orange slices but Akemi had gotten rather picky lately and had refused to eat most fruit.
"No! No! No!" Akemi shoved Elizabeth's hand away forcefully pushing her bottom lip out in a pout. "Cucky!"
"Akemi, eat your breakfast," Elizabeth said with a frown.
Akemi slapped her hand and the orange slice flew behind Don just before he leaned back, the result was a squished orange slice and orange juice running down his shell. Elizabeth's cheeks reddened. But Don didn't seem to have noticed. He was sipping his coffee and staring at Leo waiting for an answer.
Leo sighed as he went to get the tea kettle, now whistling, from the stove for his tea. "He said he was, but he might've just been saying that to humor me."
"Give him time, let his mind heal, guys. It's not going to happen overnight. Just being down here with you will help, back home with his family where things are familiar, or were familiar to him. Anything could trigger his memory. But we don't want to push him too far with it either, that could do more damage than good."
"Elizabeth is right, my sons. While it is hard, patience often wields great rewards." Splinter looked at Leonardo as he put a cup of tea in front of him and thanked him with a simple nod. "For now we must support your brother and hope that his memory will return on its own."
"What 'bout dis Melinda girl?" Raph asked with a frown as he reached for the plate of sausages.
"What about her, Raph? You know we can't move her yet."
"Yeah, but she ain't gonna wanna stay down 'ere ferever… an' when she wants ta get outta 'ere, den what?"
"This isn't a prison, Raph," Leo said with a frown.
Donatello sighed as he stood up to refresh his coffee, the squished slice of orange slid onto the seat of his chair. "We can only try to hope she'll listen to reason, Raph. Tell her it isn't safe for her here in the city, that if she really insists on going that she should get out of New York. Find somewhere else or someone else to go stay with. That way at least she wouldn't be alone."
The kitchen was silent for a minute, the strong smell of hot coffee got stronger as Don poured some more into his cup.
"An' what if she don't wanna leave da city?"
"Raph, I think she'll be more willing to listen to us now." Don pointed out as he sipped at his coffee heading back to his chair.
"Yeah… maybe… "
"She isn't going to want to go through the Foot again, Raph." Elizabeth pointed out. "She's not stupid."
"If she doesn't want to leave the city we'll have to figure out a safe place for her to… YEOW!"
Don, who had sat back down on his chair leapt up as the cold slice of orange squished under his legs, effectively ending that conversation.
Elizabeth sighed as she closed the nursery door, Akemi down for her nap. Hearing the TVs playing she started for the stairs but paused when she heard the activity in Michelangelo's room. Hesitating she knocked and pushed open the door.
She was startled when she saw the room clean. Michelangelo notoriously known for being untidy, Elizabeth had always had to make sure that Akemi had been carefully watched when she'd first learned to crawl and had had a tendency to put anything and everything she found into her mouth. Elizabeth had often had to pull out parts of action figures or candy wrappers that Michelangelo had left lying around out of Akemi's mouth.
To see the room so clean now seemed unnatural. And the one doing the cleaning really startled her. Michelangelo was scrubbing a bit of dried cheese off the floor. If Elizabeth didn't know better she would've thought that this was Leonardo's room. Leonardo had always kept everything neat and tidy, Raph had been doing better with that since she'd moved in, especially after Akemi had been born. But even then Leonardo was still the neatest of the four brothers. But this… this was so unnatural.
The comic books had been piled in one corner, a large garbage bag next to them, two more large bags of garbage were in the middle of the room, waiting to be taken out.
"Mikey, what are you doing?"
The turtle jumped, and spun, obviously startled, automatically taking a defensive position. Obviously not all his ninja training had deserted him. Elizabeth didn't move, she knew how quickly the turtles could move and how they reacted to being startled. Memory or not Mikey might accidentally hurt her without meaning to.
But after a minute his stance relaxed. "Oh, um hi Emily."
"Elizabeth," Elizabeth corrected quietly.
She saw his face darken a little in embarrassment with his mistake.
"Right, Elizabeth, sorry."
"It's ok, Mikey." Elizabeth said with a shake of her head. "But… what are you doing with all your stuff?"
"Throwing it out. It's just cluttering it up in here and is making a mess." Michelangelo grabbed a couple of action figures, one looked like the Silver Sentry, into the bag. His bright blue eyes roamed the room finding the last action figures he had and tossed them into the bag before tying it shut. "Who plays with all this crap anyway?"
Elizabeth felt her heart sink to her stomach. Michelangelo loved those action figures. She knew that Raph often teased Mikey about playing with "dollies", but she also knew that Raph really didn't mind all that much. It was just a part of who Michelangelo was. To see him throwing them into a bag like trash…
But he wasn't done there. As if remembering the comic books Michelangelo walked over to them and began to toss them into the empty bag.
"Don't you want to keep those?"
"Why would I? Who reads those stupid things?"
If Mikey ever got his memory back… if he ever found out what he'd done to his precious comic book and action figure collections what would he do?
"Want some help? I could take some of that stuff to the trash for you since you don't know where it is."
He just nodded a little as he kept throwing more comic books into the bag. Elizabeth walked into the room, grabbing the bag of trash and the bag of action figures. She walked down to her own room, depositing the bag of action figures inside. She'd talk to Raph and the others and figure out where they could store Michelangelo's things until he got his memory back. But for now it would be safe in there.
Closing the door she took the bag of trash to the bin and returned just as Michelangelo was tying up the first bag.
"Need to get another bag," he muttered. He brushed past her.
Elizabeth grabbed the bag handles and hauled it up. It was heavy and the bag was threatening to tear under the weight of the comics he'd thrown into it. Elizabeth settled for half carrying half dragging the bag out of the room, praying that it would tear. Someone must've been listening, because there was only a couple small holes in the bottom, though the bag looked stretched and torn by the time she made it to her own room. Opening the bag she pulled out a few of the comic books. The pages were bent and rumpled, some of them even torn.
Elizabeth tried to straighten out the pages with her hands, though it was of little use, they just crinkled right back up again. Elizabeth drew a sharp breath. She had to talk to the brothers. They had to do something. Leaving the comic books in the bag for now she hurried to find the others. Knowing Mikey would thank her for this later, when he was himself again.