It was like any other day as my ramen noodle lunch boiled on the stove. "It's actually not that bad, Hermana," my twin brother said over the phone. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles popped up in our conversation, leading to our dispute over the most recent incarnation.
"Come on! RotTMNT is horrible. I mean the term rot is literally in the acronym..."
"Look, I know the first episode was kind of so-so, but what pilot isn't? You should give it another shot and watch through the series. Oyes! they're releasing a movie next Friday! We can binge the series until the release together. Come on, por favor?"
"Ah! Okay, fine," I said. It was hard to say no to my best friend, "We'll start after you're done with the deliveries...Speaking of, did you lose that asshole?"
"I think so," said Val, "At least I don't see his car anymore."
"That shit stain, skipping work to taunt you! I'm going to bring it up with Mama. I don't care how long..." A crack of thunder sounded from outside as our call was cut. A bit of panic set into my heart as I said, "Hermano? Val? A phone tower must have been hit..." Then the lights went out. "Fuck."
"Okay, keep cool, Tina," I told myself, "He'll be okay. He's not a kid anymore..." Holding my phone under my chin, I used its flashlight to help me rummage my house's storage closet for some lanterns when I heard a thump. When I got a lantern out and on, I picked up a small box with a turtle engraving on the top. On the front was a small keyhole.
"Wasn't this papa's?" I vaguely remembered my old man carrying it around. Hoping it would take my mind off my brother's status, I made my way to the garage to rummage through the various sets of keys hanging on a wall. Some were copies of copies. Others were just there because they were rarely needed. Of course, there were ones we didn't remember opening anything with.
On one set, I spotted a small and old skeleton key whose head's shape matched the box's engraving. "Well...isn't that convenient?" I opened the box, revealing an emerald earring and, going along with the theme, it was in the shape of a turtle shell.
On the inside, a couple of sentences in Spanish were engraved. "Why do I just have to be kindalingual?" I sighed to myself. One of the words popped out at me, "Tortuga, or turtle (or tortoise)...Our family name. Must be an heirloom or something..."
After a moment of silently staring at the earing. I made my way to the bathroom to try it on in the mirror, "Chido! this would've looked great with my Quincenera dress! What the? What's happening!" The earring vibrated, glowing a bright shade of green.
The flash of light consumed everything around me and the next moment I felt myself crashing into someone saying, "Finally! After all these centuries this is..." After tumbling forward for a few seconds I rubbed my head as a strange cylinder thing rolled up next to me.
"What the? Get it back!" said the same hoarse voice.
"Not if I can help it with my certified awesome mystic powers!" I turned my head, but before I could see who was talking I felt myself falling again, landing in a rather cushy dumpster. I looked up only to see a blue hole close up. Then I looked down to see the cylindrical object was in my lap.
After a second, I kicked it away from me. It hit a corner of the dumpster as I scrambled out of the surrounding alleyway and into a crowd of people. Disoriented, I stumbled through bright lights and honks until I found myself in a place I'd never been but seen a million times on TV. "I'm I...in New York City?" I asked myself as I processed that I was in fact in the middle of Times Square.
I whipped out my phone only to find it had no service at all, "Que este? I'm pretty sure our plan covers New York..." After an hour of trying to get a signal, I decided to try something else.
Sometime after managing to work up the courage to get some directions from an actual person, I found myself at a computer in a nearby public library. My stomach groaned as my brain went fuzzy. "Ug...Wish I got to eat lunch, at least...Come on Tina. Pull through this till you get a hold of mom, Val, hell, maybe even the shit stain. He'd love it if I asked for help..." I entered website after website until my wrists ached "No Facebook? No Gmail? This doesn't make any sense..."
Suddenly a swish sounded. I jolted in my chair, crashing down to the floor. "See. I told you we'd find her," someone said smugly.
"Let me interject, it was thanks to my mystic tracking tech and this box," another, sort of fresca voice said.
"We would have sooner if you listened to Donnie in the first place, Leo! Instead, we spent the past few hours scrambling halfway across the city!"
"Hey, are you okay, miss?" I was helped up by a short, oranged-masked turtle-man? Turtle-boy? Wait...No...freakin'...way.
"T-Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles?" I said as I scanned the group in front of me. I'm sure I wore a surprised Pikachu face.
"Catchy! I like the sound of that," said the blue-clad Leonardo. Maybe it was because of hunger or I was just in shock. But whatever it was due to, I fainted.
YOU ARE READING
The Turtle Charm
Fanfiction(Edited because I was surprised by how much of a romance I've been making it...🐢💙) Hello, everybody! I was skeptical about the new version of TMNT, but I found myself enjoying it and the recently released movie to the point where I'm writing fanfi...
