Snapshots of Time XV

Snapshots of Time XV

Stockpile

“What the hell?”

Raph stepped out of the elevator and almost ran face first into a mountain of metal parts. This was the first time in a couple of days that Raph had ventured up to the garage because he’d been waiting for Casey to get him a specially ordered part for his motorcycle, which wasn’t running.

The part had arrived that afternoon and Raph had picked it up from his friend as soon as it turned dark. The only thing on his mind was installing that part and finding that the garage had somehow been turned into a junkyard was beyond disconcerting.

He heard a thump from somewhere deep inside the precariously balanced towers of junk and began to make his way in that direction. There was a sort of trail laid out that took him farther into the garage, a sort of path that was just wide enough for Raph to fit through.

When he reached a split in the trail Raph stopped to listen. The sound of a metallic clang told him which way to go and he continued onward, stealthily picking his way so as not to announce his approach.

A slight scratching noise kept Raph going; the piles of junk too high for him to see over. When he finally rounded a turn that he knew would put him near the garage workbench, he spotted Donatello.

The genius was squatting in front of the workbench with his shell towards Raph, a collection of metal parts spread out on the floor around him. As Raph watched, he realized that the noises he’d heard were from Don attempting to fit the pieces together like they were a large jigsaw puzzle.

“Did ya’ drag the entire junkyard in here?” Raph demanded, harshly breaking the near silence.

Don twisted around with a jerk, brushing against a stack of parts as he did so. When it began to teeter he quickly reached out to steady it, standing up slowly once it stopped moving.

“I put a note on the elevator door saying that no one should come up here,” Don said crossly.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna pay attention to that,” Raph said. “As many times as you’ve tried to blow yourself up in here while working on some damn dangerous experiment? Leaving ya’ alone ain’t an option.”

“Is that why you came up? To check on me?” Don asked.

With a glare, Raph said, “Actually, I came to work on my bike. Where the shell is it?”

“Work on your . . . oh yeah, the part you were waiting on. I guess it came in?” Don asked.

“It came in,” Raph said. “What are ya’ doing anyway? Why’d ya’ haul the entire junkyard in here?”

“The Professor told me they were having to move to another location in the yard because the owners planned to clear out an acre of space. They were going to dump all of these things into the blast furnace and melt them. I had to move fast to save the pieces I’ve been meaning to strip. Bringing everything here was my only option. The Professor and his friends helped,” Don answered.

“Does anyone else know ya’ turned our garage into a mini-junkyard?” Raph asked. “How long is it gonna take before ya’ clear all of this out?”

As he asked the question, Raph flipped his hand up towards the stacks, slapping something in the center of one by accident. The pile groaned in protest and Don leaped towards his brother, hands out to hold the barely balanced pieces in place.

“Don’t move, Raph!” Don exclaimed. “I didn’t have time to secure this stuff properly. I’m trying to go through it as fast as I can so I can haul away the parts I don’t need.”

Eyes narrowed, Raph asked with dangerous deliberation, “Where is my motorcycle, Donatello?”

“It’s . . . it’s in here somewhere,” Don said, eyes wide with sudden trepidation.

“Ya’ piled shit on top of it, didn’t ya’?” Raph asked, unconcerned about the junk around him as he took a threatening step towards his brother.

“Stay still,” Don pleaded, seeing and understanding the look on the hot head’s face.

Lifting his arms in order to drive a fist into the palm of his hand, Raph’s elbows smacked into metal parts on either side of him. Both piles quivered and then started to shake.

“It’s coming down!” Don yelled, spinning around and diving under the worktable.

Raph lifted his head and watched as a car door slid from the top of the first pile and came flying down at him. A fast leap placed him beneath the worktable next to Don as piles of junk parts started crashing all around them.

It took several minutes for the bedlam to die down. Both Raph and Don coughed as the dust raised by the collapse invaded their lungs, the creaking of the worktable over their heads a reminder that it was the only thing keeping unknown pounds of metal off of their shells.

“Darn it Raph,” Don said, coughing into his hand, “I told you not to move.”

Spitting dirt out of his mouth, Raph looked at Don and asked, “I don’t suppose ya’ thought to park my bike somewhere safe, did ya’?”

With a clearly discomfited expression, Don admitted, “I sort of lost track of it when I started hauling this stuff in here.”

“That’s it genius,” Raph said, crawling towards his brother. “I’m gonna add all of your pieces to the junk out there.”

“Oh shell!” Don yelled, pushing aside the nearest obstruction and clambering out from under the table with Raph in hot pursuit.



Age Defining

“I did it! I did it!” Donatello shouted, waving a slip of paper in the air as he ran out of his lab.

Mikey hit the pause button on the game he was playing and Leo and Raph stopped mid-spar to see what had excited their brilliant brother. Don came to a skidding halt in front of them, so elated that he was spluttering.

“Calm down Donny,” Leo said in a firm voice. “Take your time.”

As Mikey sauntered over to join them, Don held up the piece of paper for his brothers to see. It might as well have been covered in hieroglyphics for all they could make of it.

“That’s real pretty, bro’,” Raph said in a slightly patronizing tone. “Ya’ trading art for science now?”

“This is science,” Don insisted, ignoring the sarcasm. “I’ve finally done it. I’ve determined with certainty the exact order in which we were hatched.”

“O~kay,” Leo said. “I never knew that was important to you.”

“No, no, not important. I just wanted to know,” Don said, eyes shining. “And now I do.”

“How’d you figure it out?” Mikey asked, squinting at the paper his brother was holding.

“First I had to calculate certain variables, such as the incubation period for our specific species of turtle and the probability that we were engineered to be male,” Don said, talking fast. “I decided to use the hatching time to determine age because the chances we came from the same clutch are very small. I used a sample of blood from each of us to extract the exact oxygen content contained within . . . .”

“Short version,” Raph said, interrupting him.

“It was the oxygen markers in each of our DNA strands,” Don said. “I used a new technique that they’re testing in Austria. It shows to within minutes the levels of oxygen in our blood at the time of first exposure to outside air. Each of us cracked open our shells at different times and it was in that way that I could . . . .”

“So what’s the answer, Donny?” Mikey asked, cutting his brother off before they were treated to a lengthy scientific lecture.

“Raph hatched first!” Don exclaimed. “Followed by Mikey, then Leo, then me! I’m the youngest and Raph’s the oldest.”

Don was practically panting with jubilation at his discovery. Leo and Raph looked at each other, wearing matching skeptical expressions. Noticing their appearance, Don huffed and shook the paper in front of their faces.

“I’m telling you, this is infallible,” Don said stubbornly. “Raphael is older than the rest of us.”

Mikey had been looking as though he was about to blow a gasket for the last few minutes and he finally burst out, “That’s not right! It should say I’m the oldest!”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he clapped a hand over it. All three of his brothers turned towards him menacingly.

“What did you do, Michelangelo?” Don asked, staring at the orange banded turtle suspiciously.

“I didn’t do anything,” Mikey answered quickly, taking a step back. “Nothing at all.”

Before he could move farther away, Raph darted behind him and Don and Leo took up flanking positions at his side.

“The truth, Mikey,” Leo said, his tone brooking no argument.

Mikey grinned ingratiatingly as he looked at Don. “I saw our names on the vials in your lab and I sort of . . . switched them. I thought it would be a great gag. They were sitting in the holder with the numbers on it so I put mine in slot one and shuffled the rest around.”

“You . . . switched them?” Don asked, his face turning nearly as purple as his mask.

For a moment he stood there, his upper lip twitching, looking exactly like a cork that was ready to pop out of a bottle. Don didn’t often get that angry and his brothers looked worriedly at one another, remembering a few of the times when he had completely lost his temper.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Mikey said over and over again as fast as he could speak. “I’ll help you re-do the whole thing, I’ll sweep and mop your floor, I’ll do anything . . . .”

“Don. Donny,” Leo said, getting his brother to look at him. “I once looked up the process that hatcheries go through in producing enough baby turtles to fill their orders. I was curious about how many other turtles might have been in the pet store with us. Did you know that sometimes the staff will help open eggs rather than waiting for the natural progression to take place?”

The expression on Don’s face was blank for a moment and then he blinked rapidly, the dark color fading from his cheeks. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said, clearly disconcerted by the news. Taking a deep breath, he added, “I guess that means we’ll never know for sure what our hatching order was.”

“We don’t need to,” Raph told him. “We already know we’re the same age, so a couple minutes here or there don’t matter. The order Master Splinter put us in is good enough for me.”

Without a word Don turned and walked back towards his lab. Concerned, Leo called after him, “Are you okay? What are you going to do now?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Don stopped to answer, glancing at Mikey with such a look of intent that the youngest flinched. “I just thought of a new project that’s going right to the top of my list.”

“Not this age thing again I hope,” Raph said.

“No,” Don said. “I’m going to install a retinal scanning lock on the lab door so that Mikey can’t ever get in there again.”

Wadding the paper he was still holding into a tight ball, Don threw it hard, bouncing it off of Mikey’s head.

“Hey!” Mikey yelped in protest as Don stormed away.

With a laugh, Raph told him, “You’d better be happy that’s all he does, little brother.”



Somnambulance

Donatello was awakened from a deep sleep by the shifting of his bed. Opening his eyes groggily, he found himself looking up at Leonardo, who was hovering directly over him.

His older brother was staring into Don’s face and did not utter a word when the younger turtle woke. Leo’s expression was so odd that Don remained silent, the feeling that something was off growing stronger when he noticed that Leo’s eyes were damp.

The tableau held for several minutes until Don asked quietly, “Leo?”

At the sound of his voice, Leo smoothly rolled off of the bed and glided across the room as silently as he’d entered, never once acknowledging Don. Surprised at the unexpectedness of Leo’s departure, it took Don a minute to shove back his blankets and get up to follow him.

Don reached the hallway in time to see Leo disappear into Michelangelo’s room. Greatly concerned, Don started in that direction, intent on finding out what was wrong.

A large shape detached itself from the shadows and caught hold of Don’s arm before he could take more than two steps. Startled, Don looked back to see Raphael, whose countenance appeared very somber.

“Wait,” Raph said, his voice low.

“What’s going on?” Don asked, now more than a little frightened.

“Leo’s sleepwalking,” Raph told him. “He’s been doing it for a week. I know because I wasn’t asleep the first time he came in my room to check on me. I stayed up the next night to see if he’d repeat and he did.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?” Don glanced at Mikey’s door and then back at Raph.

“’Cause he’s usually silent,” Raph answered. “He doesn’t get on your bed or disturb ya’ when you’re passed out at your desk. I leave him alone while he makes his rounds and wait for him to go back to bed. Tonight is different.”

Almost as if to prove his point, they both heard Klunk’s meow just before Leo came out of Mikey’s room and turned towards his own. A split second later Mikey appeared in his doorway, eyes wide.

His mouth opened but Raph cut him off. “Be quiet, Leo’s sleepwalking.”

Mikey frowned as he came out of his room. “Why? He’s never done that before.”

Raph released Don’s arm and walked a few steps forward so that he was between his two brothers in order to keep his voice down. “Remember just over a week ago when we barely got out of Shredder’s trap with our shells intact? We got separated and lost track of each other ‘cause we couldn’t use our shell cells. Leo waited here at the lair for a couple of hours before the rest of us showed up. He didn’t say so but I could tell he thought we’d gotten killed.”

“That’s why he was staring at me,” Don said with sudden understanding. “He looked like he’d been crying.”

“We gotta do something,” Mikey said, looking unhappy. “Should we wake him up?”

“No,” Raph said quickly. “He’d just put on that stoic face of his and pretend nothing’s wrong. We have to reach him on that . . . what’s it called? Subconscious level.”

“Down where his real fear is hiding,” Don supplied. “How?”

Raph started towards Leo’s room, telling his brothers, “Come with me.”

Because he seemed so sure of himself, Don and Mikey followed with no further questions. They all took care to stay quiet as they entered Leo’s room, finding that he’d returned to his own bed.

As they watched, Leo moaned as if in pain and began to thrash around on the bed, kicking his blankets off the side. Raph immediately moved over to him, picking the blankets up from the floor and straightening them before crawling into bed with Leo.

Picking up Raph’s train of thought, Don quickly joined them, careful not to wake Leo. As Don pressed in on Leo’s other side, Mikey crawled onto the bed, draping an arm over Don in order to rest his hand on Leo’s plastron.

The effect was instantaneous; Leo stopped moving and the lines of torment that had been etched on his face smoothed out.

With a sigh, Leo fell into a deeply peaceful sleep, his brothers gathered safely around him.