001; Audio - The one where Mike tries to make sense of this.

[michaeljangelo]

[Mike knows the rules, and he knows them by heart: When you're in a new place, and you aren't sure of your surroundings, you stay hidden to stay safe. Someone will come and find you. So when the kedan deliver him to his suite, Michaelangelo stays there.

It's only after he's lowered all the shades, explored the suite from top to bottom, and booby-trapped the front door with common household items, that Mike turns his attention to the communication console. Mike's access and familiarity with all things computer has been limited at best, with the bulk of his exposure coming in the form of play-testing what ever new video game Donatello had been coding. So it comes as more than a little bit of a shock to him that the console is as easy for him to work as the skim-milk blue guy with a similar number of fingers on his hands said it would be.

It doesn't matter that he's not home, or that the people who found him aren't quite human, or even that anyone who saw him on this vidscreen thing could easily just assume he was some sort of special effect added in post production.]

Um...hello? I.
I'm just looking for my brothers. There was a light from some sort of machine. They started to disappear without me. I just. I just want to find them.

Leo? Donnie? Raph? Please tell me you're out there. Please?

Comments

[dracobin]

You do not look like a hideous freak of nature to me; only a little curious, but that is because I have never seen a talking turtle before. Is the city truly so great, if it does not accept that you exist?

[michaeljangelo]

It's not quite that easy though, I mean...people are just jumpy by design. They don't really like what they don't understand. You can't really hold that against them.

[dracobin]

No, you are correct; it is the same reason why British dragons have no rights at present. But people may be brought to understand, given time; I am confident of that, at least.

[michaeljangelo]

You guys don't have any rights? I mean...my family doesn't either, but that's mostly because no one knows we're down there. You guys, well...I'd imagine you're a little hard to miss.

[dracobin]

[Aaaaand that's his cue. Temeraire's voice grows gradually more heated as he speaks, and his tail begins lashing back and forth in a corner of the screen.]

We are only given space, in coverts, without even shelter from rain or wind, and the government provides cows for us to eat, but that is all; and in return we are expected to fight for Britain and nothing else. And if we decide we should not like to fight, then we are sent to breeding-grounds and kept there for the rest of our lives. We cannot even go into cities, and try to make a living, because they say we will frighten the people in them. I did not mind it when I was very young, but that is because I did not know any better. Now I understand how it is.

[michaeljangelo]

[Mike might just lean a bit back from the screen.]

What kind of work would you be doing if they'd let you?

[dracobin]

[Oh no, he has startled the turtle! Temeraire looks a little abashed, settling back and letting out a deep rumble of a breath.]

I expect I would still be fighting, because we are at war, and it would be cowardly of me to leave my friends undefended. But it does not seem very fair to me that a human soldier would be paid for doing his duty, and not a dragon.

[He pauses, then blinks at the screen.] But it is worse for you, is it not, if you cannot even go out in the open? What do you do for a living?

[michaeljangelo]

A living? Like for work? Er...well, I don't really. I mean, recently my brothers and I have been doing odd jobs around April's apartment building, but that's pretty much it.

[dracobin]

Oh, I see. Then what did you do while you were living in the sewers? Surely it would have gotten boring after a while.

[michaeljangelo]

Trained, mostly. Though, though that still left plenty of time for video games, reading, and television.

[dracobin]

What sort of training was it? I quite like reading, but I have never heard of the other two.

[michaeljangelo]

Oh you know, this and that and some other things.

[He's really rather dismissive about the whole training thing.]

Television? It's kind of like what you're looking at right now, only instead of talking to someone through it, you're watching theater.

[dracobin]

Oh, like movies? The Doctor told me about those. So they are viewed through screens like this one? What sorts of things do you like to watch?

[michaeljangelo]

Pretty much anything that's on tv. I like people, and that's where the people have mostly lived for me.

[dracobin]

You mean to say that you like people, even if they should scream and run away from you, if they ever saw you.

[michaeljangelo]

Well...yeah. Of course.

[dracobin]

But surely not all people would react badly? You mentioned an April--is she a turtle, as well?

[michaeljangelo]

Nope. She's one hundred percent human, far as we can tell.