nextgenerationmarvel | Teenage Mutant Pizza Fail

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Teenage Mutant Pizza Fail

What did one feed a boy who could turn into various turtles? Brooke Wyngarde wasn’t all that sure, but internet research had pulled up many different things that a turtle ate or could eat - including greens, shrimp, cuttlefish, and pellets and flakes specifically created for the diet of a turtle. Dairy products, though, apparently weren’t one of the healthiest things you could give a turtle.

It was with this list that Brooke had created a pizza that she was sure would get Pete Eastman to open up to her, minus any of the empathic manipulation that Rachel Grey-Ramsey had expressly forbidden her to use on Pete. She looked down distastefully at the shrimp and cuttlefish mixed with butter lettuce, pellets, and calcium powder, and pushed the box away.

She’d already sent ~~a missive~~ an invitation for Pete to meet her in the kitchen, and was patiently waiting for him in what she considered to be one of her most approachable outfits.

Certainly the green would put them on some sort of even standing, no?

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The physical body that housed Pete Eastman had received the message. It had even gotten to him as a human. However, it wasn't a teenage boy who walked into the kitchen. It was a six-foot-tall samurai turtle.

"Hail and well met! Art thou Lady Wyngarde? She who sent yon missive?" He approached without noticing the pizza.

Brooke blinked as the turtle entered the room. Which one was this again?

Scorcese? Polanski?

Wait, no. They weren't named after filmmakers.

She rose steadily, smoothing out her skirt, and warmed up instantly when he called her Lady Wyngarde.

Why yes. Yes, she was a lady. How kind of him to notice!

"It was more an invitation, really," Brooke said honestly. "To get to know one of my fellow mutants." She offered the turtle her hand, trying very hard to keep her squick factor down. She hadn't been kidding when she'd told Rachel that turtles terrified her a little. "You'll have to forgive my social faux pas here, but I simply can't recall your name."

The man-sized turtle watched her very careful motions when offering her hand to him. He was very gentle in taking it. He bent over her hand in a courtly manner and made the motions of a kiss over the back of the hand. He straightened up with only his hand having touched hers.

"I am called D'Artagnan, my lady."

Brooke smiled a soft little smile. He wasn't green, she realized. But he was polite, and sociable.

And he didn't try to snap her hand off.

That was promising, right?

"It's a pleasure, D'Artagnan," she said. Though, honestly, it would have been more pleasurable to see Pete himself. "Please, won't you have a seat? I brought pizza."

"Grammarcy." Though before he sat down, he would try to pull out her chair and let her be seated and comfortable before he did. Of all the turtles, D'Artagnan was the most chivalrous of Pete's personae.

Though he still hadn't really looked at the pizza yet. He was making sure the lady who summoned him was comfortable first.

Brooke lowered herself into her chair and gently crossed one leg over the other. She brushed her dark chestnut waves off of her shoulders and smiled as charmingly as she could at D'Artagnan. There were also drinks on the table. Sparkling saltwater mixed with some cuttlefish ink for the turtle, and a minty ginger iced tea for Brooke.

"So, how does this work? This time share of existence?"

He flipped one of the table chairs around to straddle it. His shell usually got in the way of sitting on a chair properly. He looked over at the pizza and blinked. He rubbed his eyes and stared at that... culinary monstrosity.

"S'wounds," he mumbled in amazement. He grabbed the drink for him without thinking. He took a sip, and it was all he could do to not spit it back out over Brooke. He made gagging noises and forced himself to swallow.

Brooke felt...well. All of that. She frowned as she watched the turtle gag and sputter. "What's wrong? Is the water not salty enough, or is it too sparkly?" She didn't, of course, think that maybe the drink itself was hideous.

"S-Salty?" He turned his head and tried to rub the taste off his tongue. His other hand set the drink on the table as far from him as he could reach.

"Oh!" Brooke's brow furrowed. "I'm sorry, are you a freshwater turtle instead?" She hadn't even considered that.

Once his tongue tasted less salty, he turned back to face Brooke. "I am a man-turtle. I sup the same as other men."

He scratched his jaw with his three-fingered, Nightcrawler-esque hands. "And how doth a pizza come that way?"

"Specially ordered," Brooke said. To be honest, she'd had Sharona make it for her and deliver it to the X-Mansion. It was the least her maid could do considering that she had the run of Brooke's Manhattan penthouse while Brooke was staying at Xavier's.

"Is that...not something you would eat?" Because shrimp and lettuce were totally people food.

He carefully poked at the box with a finger. It felt very real. "Why are there pellets and powder? I am honored by the gesture, but this repast looks... uneatable."

That powder did not look like Romano at all.

"Internet research?" Brooke said. "I looked up the diet of pet turtles and found...well, this. I mean, not on a pizza, but teenage boys love pizza, and teenage turtles love cuttlefish and pellets, and so I thought I'd bring the best of both worlds together in a gastronomically delicious mash-up, but clearly I was mistaken." Word vomit. Yes, Brooke Wyngarde was off her game and very uncomfortable. She hated not being the person in absolute power.

D'Artagnan's scaly brows knit together. "Lady Wyngarde, do I look like a pet?"

His voice was even and calm. He was mostly just baffled by the foods. He was not going to take offense for someone trying to appeal to him. Even if it was worlds away from what he actually ate.

"Well, no," Brooke admitted after a long pause. "You don't seem very pet-like at all. But," she added, "I really wasn't sure what dietary restrictions you might have had, if any." She stood up, took the pizza, and marched it over to where she thought the trash can may have been.

It wasn't there, though.

Hmm.

She turned around, pizza still in hand, and managed to find the trash. Disposing of the failed pizza, she turned to the fridge and pulled out a hunk of roast beef, horseradish sauce, and bread from the pantry. Fine. Roast beef sandwiches would do, right?

She paused. Did turtles eat meat not from the ocean?

"Wait. Before I start making this," or trying to, really, considering Brooke's lack of talent in the kitchen, "do you eat beef?"

D'Artagnan quietly and calmly watched Brooke wander around the kitchen with a pizza box in her hand. He leaned forward and rested his arms on the top of the chair back.

"Aye, I eat meat of the cow."

"Let's just call it beef, okay?" Brooke didn't like thinking about where her food came from.

"So, this turtle thing? Five of you, one body. How does this work?"

"However thine wishes run," he answered amenably. He was not bothered much where his food came from. Just that it ended up in his stomach.

"I am not aware of the others or how their being comes to flesh. When I see an opportunity to be free, I take it. Young Master Eastman would know such details better." He shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"I see," Brooke said, carefully placing slices of roast beef on a slice of buttered and horseradished bread. "Have you ever...rescinded an opportunity to be free willingly? To let Pete come to the fore?"

D'Artagnan tapped under his mouth with a finger as he considered.

"Mayhap, I have. But what chances I don't take are usually spoken for by another." He was conscious of time passing when he wasn't at the fore. When it got too idle for him, he elbowed his way out.

"So you're all aware in there, and you're each fighting for a little piece of dominance?" That was actually very interesting. But how did Pete, the boy whose mutation this was, deal with that?

Was it at all similar to cases of MPD?

He was silent for a moment as he tried to figure out how to explain it. It was a natural part of being to him so he had no idea how to tell someone who didn't live that way.

"I am unaware of what happens when I am not at the fore, but I am aware of the passage of time." That was the best the forthright samurai could come up with.

"That's so...odd." She tilted her head to one side, deep in thought for a moment, before snapping out of it and walking a sandwich over to the turtle. She took a look at the glass of water she'd had specially prepared - half-drunk and also a failure - and replaced it with a glass of minty limeade.

"Who is the strongest personality of you five?" She wondered if Pete might be the weakest, being a victim of his own mutation.

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