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One wrong turn.
It only took one wrong turn in this city to end up cornered in a dead end of an alley. The five punks cracking their knuckles, not only blocking your one escape route, were definitely not your friends. They smiled wickedly at you. And you cursed your confidence, your piss-poor navigational skills, and for being in a new city. You should have listened to your parents.
“We don’t want this to be hard,” one of them said. “We just want your money.”
You clung to the wall, calculating the space between the nearest one and the building he stood beside. The gap was large enough for you to squeeze through. But, your eyes flicked over all of them. Could you make it past them all?
“I don’t have any money,” you blurted.
Another laughed. “This isn’t our first rodeo.”
You chose then to make a mad dash for it. Peeling yourself off the wall, you focused your eyes on the gap. The punks jumped into action immediately and the first one threw his arm out. Unable to stop yourself or duck in time, you plowed into his muscled arm. A moment later, you clutched your stomach on the ground, groaning weakly.
Oh, you wished you called a cab instead of walking at night.
The punks laughed at you. As the nearest leaned down to grab you, a new laughter chimed in.
“Did someone say rodeo?”
All of them looked up, as did you. Straight from the sky, a dark silhouette dropped down. In a blur, they spread their legs and yelled in a bad southern accent, “yeehaw!”
He knocked down two guys in one go. What’s worse, you got an eyeful of a shell. You had no time to comprehend what was happening as three more guys came down from above. They landed on the ground smoothly.
The punks stiffened and pulled out knives. “What are you?”
You had the same question.
Though little light filtered into the alley, you could clearly determine they weren’t human. And something told you those weren’t costumes.
One of them in a purple mask twirled a bo staff before getting into a fighting stance. “We’re turtles.”
A fight broke out. You picked yourself off the ground, scrambling to leave, but it was over as soon as it started. The talking turtles took them out with ease. They fought swiftly, efficiently, way better than common thugs. And they didn’t even use their weapons on their backs.
The one in a blue mask shook his fist, having punched the last guy. He looked your way, no doubt taking in your shocked expression. “No need to thank us.”
The purple one chuckled coolly, twirling and stashing his bo staff over his shoulder. “We’re just doing our job.”
Job? What job? Beating up thugs? Thanks?
The red one crossed his arms. “We will accept payments, though. Little compensation to your local, mutant vigilantes.”
Mutants?
The one that dropped down in a bad southern accent, that you now saw in an orange mask, slumped his shoulders in awe. “Wait, we could get paid this whole time?”
Some bickering broke out between them all that you didn’t catch. You did not need to be told twice to give your money to fist-fighting turtles. They still blocked your exit and you’d rather not end up like the knocked out thugs on the ground.
With a trembling hand, you rifled through your wallet. Some coins clattered to the ground, catching their attention. True to what you told the thugs, you had no money on you. Still, you couldn’t tell that to these guys. You pulled out the first thing you saw.
“I have a stamp card for Lou’s Pizza,” you muttered, completely unaware of their piqued attention. You were too busy questioning if mutant turtles knew what pizza was, or how a stamp card worked. “Just needs two more stamps and you get a free-”
The orange one swiped it out of your hands. He raised it victoriously while you gawked at the speed with which he snagged it from you. “Nice! Free pizza!!”
“Mikey, give the card back.” The one in blue set his hand on his hip. He sighed. “We aren’t really going to accept it.”
That didn’t mean he didn’t give you a questioning look. In fact, they all did. Their stances lowered completely and you swore they gave you puppy dog eyes. The one in orange was the one to ask in an eager voice, his voice raised a pitch. “Can we?”
“Uh.” You blinked dumbfounded. Were they not going to hurt you after all? Your voice came out uneasy as you nodded once. “Sure.”
They all turned to each other and had a group high-five. No, high-three? They had three fingers. “Cool!”
You turned away to look up at the sky. Did they come from the sky itself or the roof? Could turtles climb walls? As soon as you realized you didn’t hear their voices, your head snapped back down to them. You guffawed at the clearly missing turtles from your visage. The sound of a manhole cover wobbling drew your attention to it, further up the alley. You heard their echoes of laughter.
A goofy voice hollered out loud, muffled by the cover, “I smell a win!”
Just when you thought you were safe, the lid lifted slightly and a red mask popped into view. The turtle stared at you. He squinted at you accusingly. “Don’t tell anybody what you saw tonight.”
You didn’t think anyone would believe you if you did. He hadn’t joined his friends, so you nodded. Rather frantically at that.
He gave a light scoff and nodded once in return. “Good.”
The lid closed and you slumped against the wall. He was gone. They all were. The…giant, talking turtles. The groans below alerted you to the slowly-coming-to thugs and you hauled yourself out of that alley, rushing home.
You went to sleep that night checking this experience off as just a New York thing.