"Calming His Storm" ~Book 1: Gathering Clouds~ (TMNT 2012 Fanfiction; RaphxOC )

Chapter 6: Subsumed

A slow, faint glow crept across Jamie's eyelids, bringing her consciousness up from the depths where it had been comfortably residing. She groaned, not wanting the light to wake her fully, but she knew the sun was streaming in from somewhere in her room, telling her to rise. She squeezed her eyelids shut and pulled her pillow over her head to block it out.

This pillow smells funny...

Jamie cracked open an eye in her dark, plush cave. Glaringly white, artificial light was piercing in through the wrinkles in the fabric. She wrinkled her brows in confusion.

Artificial?...

She jolted upright, throwing the pillow to the other side of the couch, and looked around wildly.

"Hey! You're awake!"

Jamie swiveled her head around towards the source of the voice and finally gained her bearings. She breathed a sigh of relief as she recognized the couch she was sitting on and the walls of the kitchen and sitting room, now more illuminated by the overhead lights. A grinning, orange-banded turtle was standing by the fridge, furiously stirring a bowl with a metal whisk.

"You hungry?" He asked, cheerfully.

Jamie blinked a few times to clear her head and again, she had to allow her mind to accept what she was seeing; she had to let herself believe that what happened last night was real. She patted the cushions underneath her legs and let the scent of jasmine fill her lungs.

"Yeah, breakfast would be great." She said, smiling and getting up to stretch her sore back. She wasn't used to sleeping all scrunched up on a couch.

Mikey laughed at her.

"Breakfast? Dude, what time do you think it is? You've been sleeping forever, but no one would let me wake you up. You looked so out of it."

"Wait, what?! What time is it?" She asked, quickly scanning the room for her phone. She realized she left it back at her apartment.

"It's like 3 in the afternoon, but no worries bro, you haven't cut into my tv watching time. I just got done with training and I'm making a snack. The others will be done in a minute too." He said, turning to put his bowl on the counter and began to chop some onions.

"Training?"

"Yeah. You can go watch if you want."

Jamie perked up at the thought of getting to see the brothers in action and nodded.

He pointed towards the mysterious door that had been closed the night before, now open. A timer went off on his T-phone and he quickly went to turn it off. She took a deep breath and then hesitantly made her way over to the door to peer in, her mind never expecting the sight that greeted her.

The room itself seemed like one of those dojos in the Japanese movies, very wide and open while the wooden, papyrus walls were lined with miscellaneous things. Jamie recognized some of the brother's weapons strewn about against the walls along with water bottles, towels, and other training equipment. She even spied a punching bag in the corner. Ornamental carpets provided the room's interior with cushion underfoot; they were decorated with red and orange figures, swirling around like feathers in the wind. A giant tree even grew in the center of the room, and Jamie wondered for a moment if that was where the jasmine radiated from.

The tree was not, however, the most surprising spectacle she observed upon entering the room. Nothing in the world could top two mutant turtles fighting diligently against one another, their weapons crashing as they pushed each other back and forth across the room. Jamie recognized Donnie and Leo to be the ones sparring, if only from the color of their masks since they were moving almost too fast to differentiate between them. Donnie was sparing with a long wooden staff, the end protruding a blade, while Leo's weapons looked like two long swords. Jamie made a mental note to ask what they were called later.