"So you met this uplifted sea turtle?" Peter's mother, Fran, asked to him with a small smile when Peter and the four pet turtles that had been bought as pets and were now the ones that Peter and his friends now had as potential mates.
He got along well with Lina, Reva, Dela, and Mara in many ways, though for the moment he really hadn't come to a full choice on who would be his mate, but he had also noticed that they had also come like his friends Adam, Tom, and Jerry as well. It was a good unit that was a cross between a close family and something else, though the closest word that Peter thought fit the relationship between the Green Glacier Adventure Clan and the turtle sisters was a sort of shared harem, but even that didn't sound quite close enough. The rip to Mieni for Spring Break wasn't that though. That trip was more to meet Topanga, the Leatherback Sea Turtle that had been uplifted.
"Yes," Peter said with a very happy nod as he looked to both his mother and his father, Carl, "It was neat and a great adventure. She's a bit differently built from us, but it was neat to meet her."
"It was fun," Lina agreed.
"It was like meeting Screw Attack's version of Gamera," Dela said with a bit of a smile, resulting in a couple of groans from her sisters, "What?"
"She wasn't a giant turtle, Dela," Reva grumbled.
"But her shell... it was closer to Screw Attack's depiction in Godzilla versus Gamera," Dela answered getting Carl and Fran to trade glances as they didn't follow the web-shows that their son or his "girlfriends" followed.
"Why don't you start at the beginning, Peter," Carl said slowly.
"Well..." Peter began.
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The Green Glacier Adventure Clan and the four turtle sisters marveled at the buildings around the air strip on the main island of Mieni. It was warm and that warmth did feel good with their scales. After a brief hello with Abby and her friends, they handled their first tasks, which were to get to their rooms at the hotel, which would ultimately have some rotation over the week, but for the two groups of four that wasn't a major issue. They eventually regrouped outside the hotel and looked around then.
"Okay, we're all clear on the plan?" Peter asked to the group as they gathered together. It wasn't something that all of them didn't know, but it was something that would be good to make sure they were all on the same page. It was ultimately Adam who spoke up.
"We find where she's working and politely introduce ourselves as friends and see what she's been doing for her own work on the island," Adam spoke.
"And they said she's working on one of the beaches on the outside part of the island," Mara added, "which should be interesting to see..."
They all nodded to that. The atoll was built like just about every atoll out there with the collection of islands forming a circle with small inlets from the outside ocean into the lagoon. Most of the beaches for tourists were with the internal lagoon where the waters were calmer and ultimately shallower, but there were beaches on the outside of all of the islands that made up the atoll. Abby and her friends had stated that Topanga was being employed by Horizon as port of a project that presently they didn't know entirely about, though it sounded like it was dealing with other turtles, which only raised their curiosity even more.
So from there, they moved around the hotel and toward the outside of the island and then began to simply walk along the beach, mostly hoping to run into Topanga as they did so. They also marveled at some of the tropical forests that seemed to be in the coming fairly close to some of the beaches. Eventually they came up to a rather large sign that was placed on a wooden post that was buried in the sand. The sign was diamond shaped and had a sea turtle drawn in blue ink near its bottom corner of the sign. Above it was the writing, "Leatherback Sea Turtle Nesting Grounds. No Trespassing."
"We can't go any farther," Tom sighed heavily and looked at the sign.
"What for?" Reva asked, "We'll be careful and won't mess up the beach."
"It's not that easy," came a female voice from the trees to their immediate left and they looked to see the source of the voice.
Her body was built a bit like theirs, but the Green Glacier Adventure Clan members and the turtle sisters soon saw differences. The new arrival's "shell" was generally tighter around her than their own shells did, but in general did form something of a teardrop shape, though between her generous breasts and hips it wasn't that easy to put together. They also noticed by the shorts and white shirt that she was wearing were being worn OVER her shell. Her scales and skin also seemed to be different from theirs, which was largely black in color with various small white spots, particularly on her head and arms. They also saw that her arms were longer than her legs and her hands were webbed to the point that they looked almost like shovels. This was clearly the uplifted sea turtle.
"Are you Topanga?" Peter asked.
"Yes," Topanga nodded as she looked to the eight other turtle Animalians, though they were all different from her.
There were four males and four females. The males had hair, much like the female snake that had recently arrived and looked like she had buttons on her tail. The all had hard looking shells that served as armor and even clothes, though all of them looked like they were wearing something under their shells. The backs of their shells and their scales had some bright color to them that seemed to be a black base with yellowish stripes in places and large yellowish spots in others. Their shells also didn't quite hug their bodies as closely as hers did, and made it clear that they could pull their shells off if they needed to.
"It's great to meet you!" Peter said with the others nodding in agreement and came up one by one to shake Topanga's hands. "I'm Peter, and these are my friends Adam, Tom, and Jerry. These are our... "girlfriends" Lina, Reva, Dela, and Mara."
"Girlfriends..." Topanga wonder.
"We were originally Peter's pets... and he liked all of us," Lina explained, "then we were uplifted and we remembered the care and love he'd actually had for us and understood it better than we did as mundane turtles."
"We then found ourselves loving him and thus why we were thrilled when became a male turtle," Mara added.
"But we didn't want to fight each other over, because we're sisters, and so we agreed to date and share him until he picks the one of us he wants as his mate," Reva spoke.
"And then leading to inviting my friends to become turtles, too," Peter finished the explanation, "that way the sisters here have potential suitors of their own."
"And so far, it's be fun," Jerry said with a smile on his beak, "a great adventure."
"Which then brings us here," Mara spoke, "as we are all Box Turtles, a terrestrial turtle species, and many other turtle Animalians in Lyre and Animalia are built like us being former pet turtles that were caught up in the first Animalia outbreak. When we heard that you, a sea turtle was uplifted, we wanted to come meet you."
"And offer an honorary membership in the Green Glacier Adventure Clan," Tom added, "It'd be fun with games so on."
"So... what is with the sign?" Reva asked before Topanga could think of an answer to Tom's comment.
"Well... Mieni has proven to be a potential breeding ground for the Pacific subgroup of the Leatherback Sea Turtle," Topanga answered, "It's why I was brought from the Atlantic subgroup, so as to make sure that the natural balance wasn't harmed. I've been hired by Horizon to aid their scientists in doing the most that can be done to make sure that beaches, which sea turtles of any species need to lay their eggs, stay clear and not bothered by people... including tourists... As even being careful... if you step on a nest, you could crush the eggs, even if you're careful... and that'd hurt the Leatherback population in the Pacific."
"Can we help?" Dela asked.
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"And so we ended up spending much of the week helping Topanga with her work and she took us swimming as we shared things about us... and learned about her," Peter then finished telling his parents.
"So you spent your Spring Break working?" Carl asked.
"It wasn't really working," Lina commented, "we didn't spend it partying, but we did have some fun."
"And she did seem to like Peter and his friend's Dungeons and Dragons game once they explained it to her," Mara finished, "In that... it was a fun week."
"Well..." Fran smiled, "That is good."