Another AMAZING screenshot edit by  Oscarvanderhof that I wrote up a short story for!

Enjoy!

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For all his brilliance, Donnie was one thing above all else: stubborn. He was always right because how could he, with all his genius and optimally functioning neural circuitry, ever be wrong? How could any of his brothers, whom he loved of course, ever outsmart him? How could they know something he did not? How could they predict something that he had not already considered or forecasted? It was, simply, through pure definition, impossible.

Donnie didn’t listen to Mikey when he started playing The Purple Game who warned how, despite its simple mechanics, engaging the game could be: how addicting achieving those simple in-game achievements was, how obsessive he’d be with trying to obtain every locked digital token, outfit, and emblem. He had scoffed at the idea that such a simple collectibles game would entertain him, a man of complexity, culture, and class. The first time he picked up the controls, he rolled his eyes in a dramatic display of his projected condescension. The third time he silently scoffed as his eyes focused on the screen. During the sixth session, he was wiping stressed beads of sweat from his brow, and by the tenth, he was shouting his displeasure, and triumph, at the screen.

Donnie didn’t listen to Leo who commented just how large the bags under his eyes were growing as he played The Purple Game late into the night and sometimes until the sun rose in the morning, his bros finding him in the same adrenaline-fueled position they’d seen him in the night before. Leo said that Donnie had a problem, that he was obsessed, but Donnie didn’t listen. How could he be addicted to such a dumb, simple game?! How could HE not have control over himself?! He could stop anytime he wanted to. He just didn’t want to. He was so close to unlocking the Platinum-Mecha upgrade…

Donnie began to slack on his normal lab duties, taking weeks to fix Mikey’s game controllers, and a month to patch up the leaking shower head in the bathroom. He began to miss practices and called out “sick” for surveillance missions which Raph was quick to vocalize his displeasure about. He went to confront Donnie, finding the purple-banded, oversized sweater swaddled turtle exactly where he expected: glued to his computer console. He was surrounded by a sea of chip bags, cookie sleeves, and heavily sugared and caffeine sodas and energy drinks, mounds that had been growing larger and larger with each passing day.

Donnie didn’t listen to Raph as his older brother chastised him for his absence, his negligence, and his clear addiction to this dumb game. Donnie just brushed the comments off, taking another swig of his Mountain Double Dew and letting Raph’s words pass right over him. He didn’t register Raph’s comments about how lazy he had become or how if he was just going to keep sitting on his ass all day, he’d become a fatass himself. While Donnie had registered the comment as an unwarranted threat, he didn’t realize that Raph was making an observation: a statement of fact. Donnie had barely blinked away from his perpetual gaming marathon to even given himself a chance to notice that his once lithe frame was starting to swell: he had already started to become that fat ass.

All those empty sugars, fats, and salts from his junk food snacking and binging had been going not just right to his thighs, but his rump itself. His cheeks had swollen and begun to fill his gaming seat, making it a tighter and tighter squeeze. Donnie scoffed when his chair started to squeak and moan as dozens of pounds of blubber packed onto his lower half, assuming his bros were starting to sabotage him so he decided to get back at them: he reinforced his chair with rebar. With no auditory feedback about his growing weight, his body only continued to expand. To grow. To swell. To thicken. To fatten.

Seemingly overnight, he went from a thin-hipped, toned ninja to a bottom-heavy gamer bro, his already meager muscles atrophying, neglected, beneath the softening layers of adipose suffocating them from above. His rump splayed heavily across his chair eventually starting to dip over the edges with gelatinous pudge, yet Donnie remained stubbornly focused on his game. Nothing was amiss because how could anything be amiss? He was the most observant turtle in the world! He was a scientist after all. Nothing got passed him! Nothing held him back! Even as his trips to the fridge to replenish his soda stores grew slower and more arduous, as his walks turned into waddles, his thunderous thighs jostling and his plump rump bouncing with each heavy step, then plod, then stomp he made, as he began to sweat from just the meagerest bouts of exercise, his mind remained occupied solely by his game: solely by The Purple Game.

Donnie didn’t listen as the subtle pot belly around his middle swelled into a fully-fledged gut. He didn’t listen as his bros tried to draw his attention to the growing number of fat rolls along his sides and how his once baggy sweatshirts were turning into crop tops around his thickening moobs and doughy shoulders. He didn’t listen to any of them. That was until April visited.

Returning from her semester at college, Leo, Mikey, and Raph were shocked that April’s jaw didn’t drop the moment she laid eyes on Donnie after dropping by the lair for a visit. Instead, she casually grabbed a chair and rolled up next to their now fatass purple-banded brother. They watched as Donnie, for the first time in months, peeled his eyes away from his game, away from tracking his rise to number one on The Purple Game World Leader Board as April leaned back and casually uttered that one phrase:

“What’s up, Dough Boy?” The name was far tamer than those Donnie’s brothers had been throwing around behind his back, and sometimes to his face, yet they saw Donnie take pause. Maybe it was the messenger, maybe it was the straw that finally broke that camel of denial’s back, but all in one moment, a rush of realization seemed to dawn on Donnie. He slowly glanced down at the tears in his ankles straps, the fraying fibers of his sweatshirt, at the mound of pudge cascading out of his middle and between his thunderous thighs, at the pair of boulder-sized mounds of blubbery sticking out his rump, and at the soft moobs jostling on his chest with each breath he took. He then looked back up at the game flickering on the television monitor, then at the pig stye his lab had devolved into, towards his brothers peering in from the doorway, then back to April.

“I’m gonna be eating broccoli from now on, aren’t I?” Donnie asked flatly.

“What do you think, genius?"