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This story is rated G and should be appropriate for all ages.
Michaelangelo pored over the rubble that covered what was left of the old lair, hoping to unearth whatever personal effects might remain. Coming back here always depressed and frightened him, no matter how many times they did it, and he wanted to get this salvage trip over with quickly. His family had spent a decade and a half scavenging junk and making it usable, clawing their way up from bare-level sustenance to something that a surface-dweller might recognize as almost normal. Their lair was- had been- the depository of all those efforts, both a storehouse of personal treasures and a safe rock to hide under in times of trouble. In an instant, all that had been swept away.
Mike tried to think of something else as he brushed dust from a tattered wall hanging he'd unearthed. Mangled, but maybe Splinter could do something with it anyway. He carefully rolled it up and tucked it into his belt. A shout from Casey distracted him, bouncing crazily off the collapsed pillars and chunks of concrete that formed the lair's new geography. "Hey Mike, come help me with this, huh?"
He scrambled over the debris into what had once been his and Raph's room. Casey was trying to shift an enormous chunk of ceiling from the crushed remains of a futon. Mike stooped to help, and with several minutes of effort they managed to haul the rock out into the passageway they'd already checked.
"Yeesh, what a mess," Casey griped. He pawed through the dust, gravel, and chunks of wood and came up with a ragged rectangle of paper. "What's this?" Grimaced, crumpled it up, and tossed it away. "More junk."
"Hey wait," Mike said, feeling a stirring of memory. He crouched and grabbed the paper; as he smoothed it on his knee, he recognized it as the desiccated cover of a comic book. Stained by time, dust, and water, and coated with a sheen of scotch tape, the sadly mutilated piece of art had clearly seen better days. "Whoa." He dug in the rubble where Casey had found the page, and came up with the rest of the book. Its pages were just as careworn, although not festooned with tape.
Casey snorted. "Total loss man. Better just toss it."
Mike shook his head as he set the cover on top of the comic book. "No...it's important." Touching his thumb to the hero's face, Mike remembered the days when he had loved the book so much that he read it every day...that was half a lifetime ago. Well, half his lifetime, anyway.
Another soft whimper escaped Michaelangelo.
But it was somewhat of a misnomer to describe it as "another" whimper; the Turtle had been engaged in one long, ceaseless noise of misery since he had crawled into Splinter's bed not long after being tucked into his own.
Splinter sighed and shifted Michaelangelo's weight against him. He was still small enough for the rat to cradle, but just barely. "It still hurts, my son?" he said in a low voice.
"Yes, Master," Mike whispered. "I close my eyes and try to sleep but it just hurts and hurts. Make it stop hurting, please," he begged. "Please, Master Splinter..." Splinter desperately wished he could, but his primitive skill could not still the pain in his son's ear, much less cure the infection he suspected was the cause. All he could do was attempt to comfort the young Turtle as best he could, until the infection ran its course and Michaelangelo had fought it off.
Splinter knew little of biology, but it was clear that something about the Turtles made them susceptible to these ailments. Hardly did one of them throw off an infection before another had it. Last week, it had been Donatello, forced to endure a fever as well as the pain. And a couple weeks before that, Leonardo had been struck with a particularly bad earache that skewed his balance so completely that he could hardly walk.
As Splinter patiently rocked his sick charge, resigning himself to another sleepless night, he tried hard to think of a solution. If he didn't find one, he feared that these persistent infections might damage his sons' hearing, or worse yet, that an infection might come that they'd be unable to fight off. Yes, something had to be done...
"I think they're cool." Michaelangelo bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, waving the bit of cloth like a flag. He showed no signs now of the sickness that had so recently laid him low.
"Well I think they're DUMB." Raphael sounded grumpy, as usual. Whatever he thought of this new idea of Splinter's, he was as likely as not to use it as an excuse to pick a fight. Mike's incessant cheerfulness was a tangible force that either buoyed you or irritated you. With Raph, it was nearly always the latter. That Mike could remain ever-cheerful in the face of Raph's hostility was something of a small miracle.
Donatello, sitting on Raph's bed, slowly turned his over in his hands, but didn't say anything.
Leonardo had already folded his over and tied it behind his head in the way Splinter had explained. The red piece of cloth was big enough that doubled over and tied with the folded edge just above his eye ridges, the loose edges hung over the back of his head. "It won't kill you, Raph," he said in his Splinter-knows-best voice.
"Naw, it'll just make me look like...like..." Raph was stumped for a second. "Like a girl with a handkerchief on her head." It was weak, but Leo glared daggers at him anyway and the two brothers stood beak to beak in confrontational silence. A moment passed.
Mike's face twisted and he suddenly snorted with the effort of suppressing his laughter. The tense mood was broken, leaving Leo and Don relieved and Raph annoyed enough to give Mikey a good shove. His little brother let himself be pushed backward, and fell onto the bed where he rocked on his shell and giggled helplessly. Raph scowled to cover his embarrassment and angrily scuffed his heel against the ground. "Wasn't that bad," he muttered.
"Oh, but it WAS," Mike replied gleefully, and Don deemed it wisest to cut the exchange off before Raph started swinging punches.
"Come on, Raph, it's not like anyone but us will see you, and we'll be wearing them too," Don said. He carefully affixed his, hoping the gesture would calm his volatile brother into reasonableness.
"Anyway, I don't mind looking a little silly if it means fewer ear infections," Leo added.
Raph scowled anew. "That's why Splinter SAYS we have to wear ‘em, but that don't make no sense. He said when our ears hurt it's cuz something's wrong inside, so how is a piece of cloth OUTside going to help INside?" Raph was sounding as reasonable as could be, and even trusting Leo, who'd probably drink sewer water if Splinter told him it was good for him, was biting his lip in some apprehension. Mike frowned. "Besides, if they're so great, why doesn't HE wear one too?" Raph folded his arms over his chest triumphantly. Case closed.
"It's not that simple, Raph," Don contradicted. "Master Splinter is a rat, a mammal, and we're reptiles. We have different kinds of ears than mammals. I was reading about how infections of the eustachian tube-"
"The WHAT?" Mike asked, staring goggle-eyed. Don surveyed Leo and Raph's equally glazed expressions, and sighed inwardly.
"Our ears get infected easier than his," Don explained, as simply as he could. "He has part of his ears outside his head to protect them, to catch dirt and germs and stuff before they get in and cause an infection and make him sick. We don't."
"They still look dumb," Raph muttered, kicking the ground harder than ever. But he already knew he'd been defeated.
"Kayyyy-monnnn, Raphers," Mike said in his sweetest, most endearing tone. He quit playing around with his own cloth and deftly arranged it atop his head. He fluttered his eyes, trying to look charming, and under the combined onslaught of reason and cuteness, Raph finally, grumpily relented.
"Oh, fine," he snarled, putting his on. "But only cuz Splinter'll have my shell if everybody does it but me. And it still looks STUPID." He stomped out of their bedroom, out of their main room, and they all heard the loud *ping* of the gravel Raph began to bounce off the pipes outside to express his feelings.
Don breathed a sigh of relief, Mike flopped back down on his bed, and Leo just rolled his eyes. Crisis averted.
Raph continued to sulk about the cloths for the rest of the day. In practice, he growled loudest when his came undone or interfered with his sparring. At dinner, he ate quickly and silently, without so much as making eye contact with anyone. And that evening, after Splinter had retired to his room and the four Turtles were crouched around their little black and white tv set, Raph remained taciturn even as he hogged the remote Don had rigged up. He surfed aimlessly back and forth across the handful of fuzzy channels they managed to receive.
"Can't you do something about this reception, Don?" he grumbled. "Can't see a thing."
"Not unless you stop somewhere," Don said patiently. Leo, perched in the rear where Raph couldn't see him, rolled his eyes sympathetically. Here we go, Mike thought. Tonight's fight du jour.
"Useless thing," Raph muttered, reaching out and tweaking the antenna that Don had so painstakingly arranged atop the set.
"Raph, don't," Don warned, sounding close to panic.
"I'm not a moron, Donatello, I won't break it," Raph snapped. "I just wanna know why the reception's so awful." Mike sighed and felt a little cranky himself as he wondered why Raph had to turn everything into a fight.
"Maybe your big, thick head's blocking the signal," Mike muttered, not looking up from the scrap of newspaper he was doodling on with a stubby pencil.
The remote bounced off the back of his shell and cracked open against the floor, spilling its batteries and a coil of wiring. Don's cry of protest had hardly died before Raph was straddling Mike's back and pushing his head into the floor.
"What's that, Mike? I didn't quite hear you," Raph snarled.
Leo grabbed his arm and dragged him off. "That's enough, Raphael!"
"Let go!" Raph yanked his arm free.
Don looked up from the pieces of the remote that he was tenderly gathering up. "Why do you have to be so cranky anyway? Are you still mad about the headcloths?"
"Yes, I'm still mad about the headcloths," Raph replied in a singsong parody of Don's voice. "They look stupid, they feel stupid, and they come off too easy. And I'm tired of putting up with it."
"They're not that bad Raph, geez," Mike protested, turning on his side so he could see Raph over his shoulder.
Raph suddenly turned on him. "This is all your fault anyway," he blazed. "If you hadn't kept Splinter up all night crying like a baby, he wouldn't be making us wear them."
"Hey Raph, WHOA," Leo said furiously. "That is totally unfair. We've all been sick a lot, it's not Mike's fault." Mike turned his head away from Raph, blinking back tears, but Raph didn't seem to see.
"You guys...argh!" Raph was so frustrated he couldn't even argue. He stomped off into the dojo, the only place he could really go to get away from his brothers.
Mike retreated to his room to think. His and Raph's room, really, but when Raph was out being Raph, it was Mike's private space. He sprawled facedown on his beat-up futon.
Deep down, he knew this situation was Raph's fault, not his, but he couldn't help being hurt at Raph's constant browbeating. Everyone thinks I'm a baby, but he's the only one that says it right to my face, Mike thought sullenly. He wasn't a baby. He liked to mess around, sure, but why did that make them all assume he was stupider than them? No one called Raph a baby even though he had temper tantrums like one. Mike wrapped his arms around his pillow and buried his face in it.
Of all four of them, he was the only one being really good-natured about Splinter's new rule. It wasn't that big a deal to him, but apparently it bothered Don and Leo and Raph a lot to wear the bits of cloth on their heads. He made jokes about it because he wanted them to see how silly it was to get upset over, and laugh with him and not mind. But all he was doing was making Raph madder and madder. Try as he might, it seemed like nothing he said or did could please Raph.
He wished he could think of another way to make them all feel better, especially Raph...If he could do that, Raph would stop being in such a bad mood, and then he would see that Mike was just playing. He concentrated as hard as he could on coming up with a solution, but- nothing. Maybe I really am stupider, he thought sadly. But then, nobody else had even been trying to make the best of things, so wasn't he already ahead? All this concentrating was hurting his head.
He reached under the bed and hauled out his prized possession, a battered comic book he had found wedged in a storm grate while on an outing with Splinter, who had humored him by climbing up the wall to pull it free. Page by page, Mike had carefully dried out the waterlogged comic, ignoring his brothers' teasing. Some of the pages were blurry, but most of it was still readable; in looking at the pictures and sounding out the words, he had opened up a new world, one where superheroes battled against evil. Mike was entranced, and he read the book over and over, even thinking about new adventures the hero might have, or that he himself might have. He sighed happily as he stared at the colorful drawing on the cover. If he really was a hero, his brothers would have to respect him.
A flash of inspiration hit Mike, and he suddenly sat up.
That's it!
The TMNT and associated characters belong to Mirage. The original stories and characters are mine. Steal my work and I will devour your soul.