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“—So for the dry ingredients, we need—”
“Sorry Mikey, I missed that,” Mikey’s blue brother interrupts, “Can you repeat that from. The everything?”
Mikey snaps his beak shut as he narrows his eyes at Leo, crossing his arms indignantly. “Cut it out Leo, I didn’t even list anything yet!”
‘Mikey, Raph doesn’t get what this thing means by baking prowler,” Raph chimes in, looking rather perplexed at the paper in his hands. He squints at it, crinkling the paper as if condensing the words into a more comprehensible form..
Donnie snatches the list from Raph, scans it for a second, and looks back up at Raph, almost defeatedly. “Do you by chance mean baking powder?”
Raph blinks, before scratching his head awkwardly. “Oh. Yeah, that.”
“Whatever, we don’t need a recipe read-through before we even walk into the store. Donnie, just give everyone a copy of the list so we can go in,” Leo drawls, bored.
“Ah yes, the copies that I have so kindly printed out for you all. You are welcome, by the way,” Donnie declares as he hands them out, earning a chorus of groans.
Raph points his gaze toward the market— named Stock Market— entrance. “Alright Mad Bakers. Move out!”
——————————
Raph hadn’t even tried to stop Leo and Mikey from goofing off with the shopping cart. Next to him, Donnie was meticulously analyzing each carton of milk. Behind him, the screams of a Mikey being carted around at top speed could be heard for miles.
“Donnie, they're all the exact same brand of milk, it doesn’t matter. Just pick one!” Raph says impatiently.
“Scoff! Everyone knows you need to choose your items wisely by the expiration date,” Donnie waves him off. “This is why everything you purchase goes bad in a day.”
Raph sighs heavily, glancing back to the other two, who’ve gone surprisingly quiet. And are nowhere to be found. He sighs again. Little brothers. You gotta love em.
——————————
“Alright— Mikey get out of the cart! It’s my turn!”
Mikey groans, putting a hand on his hip after slipping over the side. Leo hops in and does excited little tippy-taps on his thighs as he waits for Mikey to push him. Mikey grabs the handle. He bends his knees a little, getting into a ready position. Then he takes off.
They soar through the store with whoops and cheers for a good five seconds before Leo screams, “Stop!”
Mikey yelps and immediately screeches to a halt, and Leo has to hang onto the sides of the cart to not be flung through the air. Mikey practically shrieks, “What! What is it, what happened!”
But Leo doesn’t say anything as he gets out of the cart, and walks straight past Mikey.
“Leo?” Mikey asks, far quieter, and thoroughly puzzled. Leo walks straight up to a clothing rack, full of middle-aged father Hawaiian polos.
“It's…” He whispers, enthralled as he rubs his fingers over the texture of the button up’s fabric. “It’s beautiful.”
The metal cart clinks as the shirt lands in along with the ingredients. Or, lack thereof.
——————————
“We can check off the eggs, milk, and butter,” Donnie leads Raph out of the dairy aisle. Raph hums, messily crossing the aforementioned items off the checklist in a few swift motions. Donnie looks up, “Now we need to acquire the—”
“Chocolate!” Raph exclaims as he spots it, at the very same time Donnie finishes, “sugar.”
Both in separate aisles, right next to each other. “Alright, Raph, you grab the chocolate. I’m in need of more sugar cubes for my signature flavorless juice anyhow.”
Raph nods seriously, venturing off to grab his assigned ingredient, and is immediately stumped. ( Um, what’s the difference between milk chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate?)
Meanwhile, Donnie’s eyes rapidly flick between the three brands of sugar cubes in indecisive distress. They don’t have his usual go-to brand in stock, and therefore he has to take into account several factors in his decision: the pricing, the brand’s reliability, the sugar cube sizes, the ingredients (no, it is not “just sugar!” and no, he is not overthinking). To make matters worse, all three of them were different sizes. It would be so much easier if they just had his favorite brand in stock…
He attempts to grab a bag to put on the kitchen scale he had so cleverly chosen to bring on this shopping trip for this exact purpose, but his hand freezes as it collides with something distinctly metal. And then the metal moves.
He raises an eyebrow as he briskly pushes several bags of sugar cubes out of the way with his arm. The robot’s bright red eyes widen when it realizes it's been caught— as do Donnies— and it lets out a squeak before the rug is promptly pulled out from under him.
Literally. He’s literally falling through the floor.
——————————
When Raph walks into the sugar aisle to meet back up with Donnie, he’s nowhere to be found. He sighs. Little brothers. You gotta love em.
——————————
“Wait wait Mikey stop— oh my god oh my god Mikey,” Leo yelps, grabbing a fistful of Mikey’s mask tails without looking and yanking him back. He falls to the ground and does not get back up.
“Mikey… Do you see that?” he says lowly. Mikey pops back up next to him and turns to see what he’s looking at.
“Omigosh!” he exclaims, bringing his hands up to cover his mouth. Right there, in front of the two turtles, the most glamorous, elegant, wondrous pair of sunglasses laid, abandoned in the aisle they’d been in for flour. They look at each other.
“We have to get it.”
——————————
Liters of sweat stream down Raphs face. With the stress he’s under, his mask must be soaked. He can’t read these tiny letters! He keeps getting distracted and forgetting which one he’s grabbed. Was it the baking powder or baking soda? They both start with baking and have tiny little letters so reading them to remember takes so long. What the heck is the difference between baking powder and baking soda? They’re both white powders used in baking.
He’s on the verge of wrecking the whole aisle when he hears two very distinctly familiar voices. He turns to the aisle entrance to see Mikey and Leo, walking on by.
They have zero of the remaining ingredients in their cart, and also a very… unique Hawaiian polo and a sharp looking pair of sunglasses? Well, as long as they use their own money, Raph’s not gonna question it.
They spot him and put a pause to their conversation, with Mikey immediately waving enthusiastically as Leo opens his mouth to greet him.
Raph moves to raise his arm in a wave, but before he can, he hears a distinctly metal noise from underneath him. And when he looks down…
——————————
Leo blinks. Okay, so Raph just fell through the floor.
… Did Raph just fall through the floor? Raph just fell through the floor. Okay!
Leo looks over the shopping cart at Mikey very slowly. They make eye contact, and then Mikey looks back at the giant hole in the floor with wide, untrustworthy eyes. And then back at Leo. And back at the hole.
“Mikey,” Leo says. “Mikey no.”
Mikey’s eyes flick back over to Leo once, then back to the hole. He runs, jumps, and cannonballs into the hole.
“ Cowabungaaaaa…” his voice trails off in the height of the fall. Well then.
Leo exhales all his dismay, and then scans over the items in the cart. Two significant items, in particular.
Because if he's going to be dealing with this, he's going to look really cool while he does it.
——————————
“...aaaaaaaaOOF—” Mikey lands in Raph’s large arms with a thump. Raph readjusts to hold him by the shoulders like a ragdoll and fervently scans him over for injuries. He finds none.
“Mikey!” Raph yells, very directly into his face. Mikey winces. “Are you good? You okay?”
He smushes the side of Raph’s face with his hand trying to push his head away, earning an indignant noise from Raph as Mikey wriggles and wrestles his hold. “You stink, put me down!”
Raph promptly drops the squirming turtle onto the stone floor hard, because he doesn’t take no shit. Mikey isn’t given the time to whine about it, because just a moment later, a disembodied voice speaks.
“Welcome, mutants… to my Maze of Doom!” A dramatic boom sound effect reverberates over the speaker at the name.
Mikey rises to a defensive stance as Raph whips around to see a cute little robot, looking directly at them. And speaking, directly to them. Apparently.
“Um,” Raph says, scratching his head. “What?”
“To escape my Maze of Doom, you must escape my Maze of Doom!”
“Wait, I recognize that grating prepubescent voice! That’s— that’s Dexter Stockman!” Mikey exclaims, pointing an antagonistic finger at the robot.
“It’s Baxter Stockboy!” He squawks. Additionally, he mumbles, “And my mom said my voice will change any day now.”
“Tom-aye-to, to-mah-to. And what’s the deal with this whole ‘Maze of Doom’ thing?” Raph makes air quotes. “Also, are you gonna play that sound effect every time someone says Maze of Doom?”
His question is answered as it’s spoken. He sighs.
“The ‘deal’ is that you got me sent to kid genius jail!” Baxter shouts, ignoring turtle protests of ‘well you really did it to yourself.’ “And with the property size of my family's new store, I’ve enacted my plan for revenge!”
“Wait, you’re telling me you built this place?” Raph quiries. It wasn’t that he was doubting the kid, it was just, well. These tunnels were lined with stone bricks, and even if it was just dirt, it would’ve taken some real resources and a whole team of people. So in short he was doubting the kid.
“But of course!” Baxter replies. He does not elaborate further. Raph raises an eyebrow, and Baxter clears his throat. “You must traverse my genius-built maze, or be trapped here. Forever!”
“Can’t be that hard. I’m a maze master, baby!” Mikey pumps his fist confidently.
“Ohohoh. Did I forget to mention? My Mousers will be obstructing your escapade the entire time!” Baxter cackles maniacally. Around a corridor, an army of Mousers trots behind the one who Baxter’s been communicating through. Raph snorts.
“These little guys? I could crush one with just one of my bare hands!” Raph makes a fist, to showcase the size of his bare hand.
“Oh? Then I suppose you wouldn’t mind this!” Baxter laughs. In an instant, every single one of the Mousers snap to attention. In the next, the entire army is charging at them.
Raph was true in his boast. As soon as one gets within reaching distance, he picks it up and crushes it with his bare hand. Several jump at him, and he swats them out of the air. But he didn’t account for the problem of the sheer number of mousers. He can’t aim for all of them at once, and several crawl or jump onto him and clamp down on his flesh. He howls, turning to Mikey.
“Mikey! Mikey they bite, they bite hard, ” he says to Mikey, who had long since realized their disadvantage through observation and had started backing away. He moves while looking at Raph like he wants him to run. Raph tries to shake them off with the least amount of pain possible, but he’s too slow, and they just keep coming. He opts to run with Mikey and pull them off as hard as he can as they go. They don’t go easy, and each one leaves his skin bruised and raw.
——————————
He really did not need to manufacture these to bite so hard, Donnie thinks, holding his breath as one of the pesky Micro-Bots nears where he’d slithered into the shadows. Should’ve built them with night vision. Ha, what an idiot.
He waits until the moment the bot has just passed him, and pounces. Hitting it with the conveniently Bō-esque stick he found, it smacks hard against the stone and falls just as hard to the ground. With one more hit, it’s a goner.
They were a minute threat now that the majority seemed to have lost track of him. They were a much bigger issue when he’d first fallen down.
(Really, Donnie should have known this would happen. “Stock Market?” It was so obvious!
“If you desire to see the sun again, you must traverse my genius-built maze!” Baxter cackled.
“Hey you can’t call it Genius-Built because I have that trademarked, actually, so,” Donnie crossed his arms in a highly mature and sophisticated and not at all defensive manner.
“Wh—? There's no way you have it trademarked, you’re probably not even legally registered to exist, how would you have that legally trademarked,” Baxter deduced audaciously. “And since it’s not legally trademarked, I can use whatever I want. There’s no legal repercussions.”
“Um, yeah well, actually the legal repercussions are that I Will Find You.”
A pause.
Baxter continues, audibly less sure of himself. “You must escape both my Maze of Doom and the Mousers that inhabit it, to escape the Maze of Doom… Or perish!”
“Uh huh, yeah that's all great but if you play that sound effect one more time—”)
From the moment Baxter had claimed it as his, Donnie had almost immediately clocked him as lying. There was physically no way a child could’ve built something like this. (I mean, I could’ve.)
But also, the more Donnie looked around, the more he got the feeling this place was part of some messed up government experiment or something. Some kind of professionally facilitated experimentation had been going on here, at least.
Take this bright red button he’s just come across on the wall of the right side of the corridor he’d been trailing down. Several chalk drawn arrows are scribbled across the wall, pointing to the button, and all connected to several ominous messages.
“BUTTON RELEASES THE CO2.”
“DO NOT PRESS.”
“FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY.”
“ONLY PRESS IN CASE OF THE ESCAPE OF THE WORMS.”
He squints at the wall for a few moments in an attempt to decipher the purpose of this. Then he shrugs and moves on.
There are two ways he could go from here. In front of him, the corridor continues. He could go forward, but. There is a hallway on the left side of the corridor in the middle. It leads to a metal door. He considers exploring it, but before he can reach a consensus, two of his brothers are barreling down the hallway screaming, running for their lives from an entire horde of mousers. He instinctively takes a surprised step back, getting ready to run with his brothers— but when he looks behind him, a new wave of mousers has cut them off. He curses under his breath.
His brothers have almost reached him when he turns back— and then, Mikey skids to a halt, cutting off his screams. His eyes flick towards the large red button with wide, untrustworthy eyes. And then to Donnie, and then to Raph. Donnie hardly manages to open his mouth before Mikey slams a fist on the button, because of course he does.
There’s one second where nothing happens, and Donnie almost feels relief. And then there's a noise, like pressured air being released, and when they all look up, well.
“BUTTON RELEASES THE CO2.” It sure does.
In a few swift movements Donnie grabs his dumb dumb brother by the wrist and runs toward the metal door, his slightly less dumb dumb brother following close behind. He prays to god it's not locked, twists the handle and throws the door open.
He runs in and then flips on his heel to slam the door shut behind his brothers who’ve just barely made it inside, and he flips the latch inside the handle. Almost instantly, they hear the pounding of mousers throwing themselves at the door repeatedly, and trying to secure a bite on the flat surface. All three turtles press themselves against the pounding door, like it’ll do anything at all.
Donnie scans the room. No other way out. After ten minutes, the pounding suddenly gets less frequent and more rhythmic, but far stronger, and he backs away from the door, brothers following suit. “Raph? Any Ideas?”
Raph stops worrying his bottom lip with his snaggletooth to open his mouth. “Uh! What if we—”
“Don’t say smash them!” Both of his brothers yell at the same time.
“How many of them are outside the door?” Donnie asks over the noise.
“How am I supposed to know? There’s no window!” Mikey yells back at him. Donnie curses, very much over his breath.
“Right. I guess we just have to—” he’s cut off over the sound of concrete crumbling. He immediately shields his head, and peeks over his arms to watch the dust clear.
“Hey guys!” Leo, wearing a Hawaiian polo with the top two buttons undone and classic black sunglasses, waves at them from the demolished doorway with the hand not holding a fire extinguisher.
“Leo!”
“Leo?”
“Leo! You made it!” Mikey cheers.
Raph is next. “Leo! How did you—”
“Oh, yeah, ha! Funny story, really. When Mikey jumped down—”
“Jumped?!”
“—I figured I’d have to pull you guys out sooner or later—”
“Could’ve been a whole lot sooner.”
“—So I grabbed this fire extinguisher that was conveniently close to where the hole Raph fell through was—”
“Ohh, like we need more carbon dioxide!”
“—And made my way down. All of the mousers were after you three, so you were easy to find, and I was pretty unbothered. Anywhizzle, looks like Baxter called off the little guys after you made it in here. Probably doesn’t want to be responsible for something actually happening to you. I really don’t think the whole toxic gas thing was part of his plan!” Leo says, relatively cheerily. There’s an odd quality to his tone, though.
“What is with this abhorrent outfit,” Donnie deadpans.
“And are, are you alright? Because, you know, you seem a bit—” Mikey starts.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, my dear twin,” he responds, earning a long and hard groan from Donnie, “And I’m fine, really! Gas… bit light-headed. Not a lot of ventilation in these tunnels.”
Before anyone can respond, the sound of a throat clearing with the quality of a cheap microphone within the budget of a twelve year old genius sounds from behind Leo, who turns around to face one lone Mouser.
“So, I didn’t really mean for— all this,” Baxter says guiltily, sounding a lot like a kid confessing to stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. “Um, there's an exit down the hall and to the left if you go left when you exit the room. Um.”
Well, isn’t that convenient.
——————————
Raph scoops up just a small amount of the mixture out of the bowl with his finger, and brings it to his mouth. He licks his lips.
“Wow, it tastes so good already!” Wow, he and his brothers were just so talented.
“Probably because it is
literally butter and sugar.”