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To say it had been a slow week was probably the biggest understatement the turtles had heard in their lifetimes. There seemed to be nothing of interest going on anywhere. Even on their commutes through town, they hadn’t run into a single evil mutant. No good movies or shows, same old video games, and no real action to be heard of.
The four were scattered about their lair; Donnie had been in his lab all day, Leo was practicing some skate tricks, Mikey was building something not-quite-house-like out of cards, and Raph was sprawled out face down on the floor. Without picking his head up, the oldest brother breathed out a loud sigh and made a very exasperated- and very muffled- statement into the ground.
Leo paused, kicking up and catching his board to reply. “Raph bro, you’re gonna have to consider, oh I dunno, not talking into the floor if you want one of us to hear you.”
“I said is there SERIOUSLY nothing to do around here that will hold my attention for more than five minutes?” Accompanying his annoyed response was an equally annoyed hand gesture, before Raph dropped both his hands and face heavily back onto the tile. Unfortunately for Mikey, the impact was enough to send the entirety of his playing card architecture tumbling.
“RAPH! Not cool man! You’ve single-handedly levelled my Tower of Pizza!” the youngest exclaimed, poring over the cards now scattered across the table.
Leo’s voice picked up again to answer, “Pizza? I thought you were making a tower of cards over there, Mikey!” The younger brother only growled in response to the terrible pun as another voice seemed to interject out of nowhere.
“What I believe he meant was the Tower of Pisa, in which case it might also be good to add that it is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Truly Mikey, not your best choice of landmark to be making out of cards.”
The three in the room didn’t even have to turn to recognize the owner of the voice that had uttered the snarky remark. Donnie was stood leaning against the doorway on the far end of the room, but had apparently been observing long enough to catch onto what was happening.
Mikey began to play up his overdramatic side, “Oh Donnie, your words wound me. Surely you are almost the cruelest person I know, second only to Raph!” He pointed an accusatory finger in the direction of the guilty party, still face flat in the middle of the room.
“I’m sorry! I’m just bored out of my mind over here!” Raph said, turning his head just enough for his words to come out clearly.
“Sorry doesn’t reconstruct my card masterpiece!” huffed Mikey, before Donnie spoke up again.
“Boys boys boys, bicker no longer! I think I may have just the thing to solve the boredom crisis we have on our hands. Let me introduce to you-”
“Yeah no, count me out,” interrupted Leo. Dropping his board back to the ground, he resumed the last skating trick he had been working on without another word.
Ignoring his twin, Donnie resumed, “I see I’ve already been written off by-”
This time it was Raph, who suddenly sat bolt upright. “I think I’ll actually go pick up a couple of pizzas! Hope you guys are hungry, because I sure am all of a sudden for absolutely no reason in particular.”
Donnie sighed, merely glancing to Mikey and receiving a frown and head shake to confirm his suspicions. “Okay, fine! Maybe the last 2 or 3 or 16 inventions didn’t turn out great! Lucky for me, I’ll get to take this one for a test run and have all the fun for myself!”
With that, the discouraged inventor sulked back to his lab. The place was a bit of a mess to say the least. The trash can was overflowing with crumpled up blueprints and prototype drawings, the paper wads littering the floor nearest to his desk. For Donnie, it had not only been an uneventful week; time and time again, he had attempted to make some sort of new gadget, but nothing seemed to be in working order. It had started as experiments to make something useful, but now the scientist brother was desperate to accomplish anything. This newest invention was intended purely for leisure purposes.
First, he’d made a prototype that fit him the same way all of his other shell armor did. He had the framework set for three more that would soon be finished, each designed to fit Leo, Mikey, and Raph respectively. Admittedly, a shell polisher was more of a project for them, after all. Having a soft shell that required protection, Donnie wouldn’t have much use for the benefits of such a thing. However, getting something working was now a matter of his pride, so he settled for something that could impress his brothers and gain him praise.
“Won’t make much of a difference, but I guess I’ll try it for myself anyway,” Donnie muttered to himself. He was already wearing the remote controlled polisher, as he had planned on demonstrating for his brothers before their rude and preemptive rejection. Holding the remote, he turned the dial to the first setting and flicked on the switch. What followed were a series of pained metallic sounds, as the hydraulic systems meant to open up the shell-encasing contraption failed to do so.
“Ugh, really?” Donnie sighed. Another piece of scrap to add to the pile, it seemed. He reached for the blueprint still spread out on the desk when the sound of moving machinery caught his attention.
Without warning, the invention had decided to continue its protocol as if nothing was wrong. The next sound was that of internal mechanisms dispensing something.
“AH! That’s cold!” Donnie yelped, as the shell polish began to drip down his back. “Alright, that sucks a lot most definitely. Hydraulics and heating systems-” As Donnie kept muttering to himself and taking notes on which parts of the invention he needed to revise, he failed to realize that he had not gotten off of this ride just yet.
The device on his back kicked into its theoretical first gear, and the turtle’s eyes widened as he began to hear the whirring sound of the polishers that were dangerously trapped between his shell and the unopened panels of the machine’s outer casing. In a panic, Donnie dropped the remote and attempted to pry the polisher off. Unfortunately, it appeared that one of the few working parts was the failsafe that sealed the device to the front of his shoulders while in operation. If he was right and the system was running the protocol without having verified the early malfunction, this was about to be bad.
Donnie braced himself, expecting pain as the polisher arms inside were to extend and more than likely break within the confined space. However, very much to his surprise, another failsafe happened to be working. The internal safety measure had been coded in to allow the arms to adjust how much pressure they applied, so as not to become uncomfortably rough. To Donnie, this saved him the trouble of unimaginable pain, but brought with it its own issue.
“haaaAH!” The spinning brushes came in contact with his shell, and Donnie quickly came to the realization that this was definitely not an invention he planned on keeping for himself. Against his soft and sensitive shell, the rotary brushes made an unbearably ticklish sensation. Dissolving into giggles, the turtle doubled over. All of his prior panic was now converted to a different kind of motivation. This thing needed to come off, and the only way to do that was to turn it off.
At first glance, the remote was nowhere to be seen. He was pretty sure he’d dropped it nearby, but its exact location was hard to pinpoint with the tickly feeling breaking his concentration. The polisher continued its program as Donnie struggled to find the remote among the mess in his room. As someone who was normally organized, and who was more ticklish than he was willing to admit, this was probably his worst nightmare. The arms of the rotary brushes began to move opposite each other, tickling up and down his back and eliciting louder laughter than before.
Running low on ideas, Donnie flipped down his goggles in hopes that it would help him locate the remote. The torturous fluttering of the brushes brought him down to his knees and clouded his focus, but he continued to search the floor for the missing device. He refused to let the thought take over that he needed to call for help from one of his brothers. He couldn’t let them see him like this!
Almost as if the thought were some comedically timed, telepathic cue, another voice called out to him quickly approaching his lab.
“Hey Donnie! I came to apologize for-” Mikey rounded the corner and stopped cold in his tracks. He certainly hadn’t expected Donnie to be laughing out loud at seemingly nothing, much less doing so on the ground, wearing his goggles and what looked like new shell armor.
“M-Mihikey! Cohohome hehere!” Donnie struggled to speak through his laughter, but the younger turtle complied. The lab doors slid shut behind him as he approached the cackling heap on the floor, nearly unidentifiable as the usual stone-faced, smug Donnie that he called his brother.
“Heh, what’s so funny Donmeister?” Mikey didn’t admit it out loud, but it did make him happy to hear the scientist laughing after such a cruddy week.
“Ihihi neheheed the remohohote!” Donnie was really struggling to form cohesive thoughts at this point as tears formed in the corners of his eyes. The brushes were still moving up and down, rhythmically tickling his shell and causing him to twitch with each change in motion.
“Remote to what? Ohmigosh, did April send you some new funny meme?” Mikey was genuinely giggling along with Donnie now, but the latter was howling with laughter.
“BIHIHIG REHED DIAHAHAL! SWITCH ON THE LEHEHEHEFT!” The brushes began to spin faster, but the arms synced up and now moved together at what felt like an unbelievably slow pace down the length of Donnie’s back.
“Alright alright! I gotcha bro, just a sec!” Mikey’s eyes scanned the room, which appeared to contain no such remote at a glance. Getting low to the ground, the smaller turtle pushed away the crumpled papers in his immediate vicinity and spotted the remote his brother had described underneath the desk.
“Found it! Now what do you want me to do with it?” Mikey barely finished his question before Donnie replied.
“JUHUST TURN IT OHOHOFF! PLEHEASE!” Donnie begged for his brother to end the torture he’d been enduring for several minutes now, and was relieved when the whirring slowed and the gadget on his back came to a halt. Fully collapsing to the floor, he breathed heavily and lifted the goggles to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“Jeez Don, what did you get yourself into this time?” Mikey was still stifling his laughter, entertained but confused as to what was going on.
After taking a moment to catch his breath, Donnie answered, “This polisher... is going... in the trash.”
“Polisher?” Suddenly, it clicked. Mikey had noticed the new design of the tech that covered his brother’s shell... and now he held the remote to that tech in his hand. Glancing down with a mischievous grin, the turtle flicked the switch back to the ‘on’ setting with his thumb.
“Nonono Mikey doHOHON’T!” Donnie had only a moment to squeak out in protest as the machinery hummed back to life, resuming tickling as it had been before.
“Ohmigosh, you got yourself stuck in a tickling machine?!” Mikey laughed almost as hard as Donnie in that moment, now fully understanding what he had stumbled upon.
“Ihihit’s a shehell polisher!” Donnie choked on his words, now back to giggling as he had been previously.
Mikey’s grin grew into an almost evil smirk, knowing fully well what he was doing now. “Well if it’s a polisher, then I’m sure this will make your shell nice and shiny!” With that, he turned the dial up two clicks.
“aHAH!” Donnie found himself unable to respond with words entirely as the rotary brushes began to spin even faster, and now pressed against his shell with more devastatingly ticklish force than before. Face flushed red, Donatello pounded one fist into the floor as his breath failed to keep up with his laughter.
Mikey, not mean enough to suffocate his poor brother with tickles, turned the dial back down to the first setting before flipping the switch off once more. The older brother flopped back to the floor, chest heaving, and this time pulled the device off his shoulders the moment he had his breath back.
“Nohot funny, Mikey.” Donnie tried his hardest to speak sternly, but still spoke through a residual smile.
“Oh yeah? Well I think you’re just a big softie, and I’m not just talking about the shell. I bet you’d think differently if I were the one rolling on the floor, laughing like a dork.” Mikey stuck his tongue out to add emphasis to the end of his sassy statement.
“Hehe, I’m sure I would, buddy. As long as you give me the remote.”