Shila

Local Man Attacked by 'Dinosaur'; Dies in Hospital

Unexplained Attacks Continue on West Side

Third Death in Four Weeks – Mayor Says it's 'All Under Control'

The headlines weren't making much sense. Most of the articles were fear-mongering; trying to scare people for attention, and most of them didn't have any evidence besides rumors. Actually… none of them had any actual physical evidence. There was nothing to be found. Not a sighting, not a weapon, just leftover splatters of blood and the victims' bodies. Not even a fingerprint. The only clue given was a man's claim of being attacked by some sort of dinosaur, before he died of his wounds in hospital. Working on something at such a large scale, with nothing to actually work with, was incredibly frustrating for the young turtle.

The attacks had been going on for a month now. They had started out quite violently, with people actually being torn apart and left in pieces, and then they started simmering down. Which was odd, for a murderer. Whoever it was didn't want to keep being messy. The latest attack had resulted in a young girl being hospitalized with minor wounds – some sort of cuts and knife marks – and… poisoned. She couldn't have been more than twelve. And yet she was in a coma in the hospital because someone decided she was a prime target.

It was infuriating.

'—police chief Janice Waltz. She says that the attacks 'are sloppily executed' and that the culprit will 'slip up and get caught soon enough'. How soon is soon enough? How many more people are going to get hurt, or killed? With the latest attack on 12-year-old Maria Solomon bringing a new light of urgency to the situation, the public is desperate for answers.'

"How's the research coming?"

Donatello looked up from his computer as Leonardo's voice reached his ears, the brother in question stepping through the lab doors and walking over to his desk. The leader looked about as stressed as usual, but somehow there was a deeper worry in his eyes. Leo was scared. Whatever this thing was, it was a threat to their city, and usually the police being unable to figure it out meant it was something involving them. The Kraang, the Foot, some other kind of mutant stuff. Which, in turn, meant nothing good.

Donnie sighed and shook his head helplessly, slumping back into his chair. He cracked his neck before replying; he'd been sitting here for hours, and his muscles had tensed up. He had no news to give his brother, which also meant nothing good. No news meant nothing they could work with. Not even the great leader of the team could find a murderer if there wasn't any evidence to go by.

"Nothing. Not a single shred of a clue. Nobody's seen anything, and those that have are either dead or comatose. The only lead we have is the area; the attacks all happened on the west side between two and six in the morning."

"Two and six?" Leo's eyes narrowed and he leaned over Donnie's desk, looking at the screen of his computer and skimming quickly over the article. Donnie watched as his brother's shoulders stiffened up, and he knew that the next question was coming. "Wasn't the last victim a kid? What's a kid doing out at two a.m.?"

"She wasn't." That was the worst part. Donnie grit his teeth and reached up, running a hand over his head. This should be fun. "She was attacked in her own bedroom. The window was smashed. Whatever it was chose her, and I can't figure out why. None of these victims have anything in common! What the shell is a twelve year old girl going to have in common with a sixty five year old white guy? Nothing! They weren't even distantly related."

"Easy, Donnie." Leo's hand reached for his shoulder and gave a small squeeze, and Donnie found himself glancing up to see that the worry in Leo's eyes had faded into mild amusement. Oh good. At least Leo was getting a chuckle out of his outburst. "A smashed window means something had to break it. It's a lead. We'll go check it out tonight, maybe we can find something the police missed. Especially if we know what we're looking for might not be a human."

"You think it's a mutant?"

"It's a possibility. Or more like a probability at this point. What else would it be?"

That was true enough. Donatello rubbed his face, pulling in a deep breath as he thought over everything. A mutant was – could be – killing people. Attacking them in their own homes, attacking little girls in their beds...

Why?

What motive could a rogue mutant possibly have for attacking a helpless kid? It didn't make sense. Unless the Kraang had something in mind, but they didn't usually kill anyone. Mutate them, maybe, but killing and poisoning wasn't their style. And the Foot at least had the decency to hold to their honor. Except the Foot usually ran on the opposite side of the city. Closer to the concentrated population. There wasn't much on the west side besides apartment complexes and hotels. It wasn't a shopping district. It was far from Visioso's gang, out of the Foot's territory, and the method of operation didn't match up with the Kraang.

Whatever this was… it was new. And when it came to the turtles and their luck, new usually meant bad.

The apartment was silent when they got there. It was one of the smaller complexes, maybe a few dozen apartments in the building. Kind of breaking down; obviously not the high end kind of the deal. Which was probably why the only thing covering the window was two pieces of tape. No need for anything sturdier when nobody was going to break in. There was nothing to steal, so why bother? Even so, when Donatello peeked inside, the bedroom door was locked. Obviously the police weren't done investigating. He'd found out through radio chatter that the family had been moved out to stay with a relative while the investigation went on, which meant the turtles had plenty of privacy to take a look.

"Don't break the tape. We don't want to leave evidence of a break in." Donnie whispered as he glanced behind him, tugging the tape off of the window and pulling it to the side. He nodded for his brothers to enter, all three passing by him without a sound, before he followed close behind.

The room was small, but it looked cozy. Or, at least, it looked like it would have been cozy if it looked normal. The yellow bedsheets were shredded and there were splatters of blood over the mattress. Both mattress and bedframe were on their sides. The dresser was in pieces, there were gigantic gouge marks in the floor and, as Donnie looked behind him, the windowsill. They looked like claw marks, which matched up with the dinosaur claim from the other victim.

Except dinosaurs were extinct and that just didn't make sense.

"This is some Jurassic Park kind of crap or what?" Raphael hissed under his breath, crouching down to feel the marks on the floor. He frowned, pulling out a sai to trace the mark before glancing up to the others. "The dead guy wasn't kidding. I'm kind of leaning towards dinosaur, too."

"That's impossible, Raph." Donnie snapped, but even he had to admit, he could see why his brother thought so. Unless a tiger had gotten in here and had grown super-claws… there wasn't anything on Earth with claws like this. Except, maybe, a mutant. Which was honestly the most probable explanation for this. "Do you think it could be someone we know? Slash? Rahzar?"

"Slash's claws aren't sharp like this. Rahzar, maybe. Or Tigerclaw, but I would've thought he had more honor than this." Leonardo muttered, crossing his arms. He shook his head, going back over to the window and peering out. The night was quiet, and Donnie could almost hear the cogs trying to work this out in the leader's mind. "But that still leaves us with the question of why. The Foot have nothing to gain from this. There's no motive."

"Unless they wanna scare people."

The three brothers stopped and turned to look at Mikey from where he'd spoken up, shifting away from the remains of the dresser, looking shaken. Michelangelo looked back up to them, giving a sheepish grin as he shrugged.

"I'm just sayin'. If they wanna scare someone, this is the way to do it. I mean. I wasn't even attacked, but this is freakin' me out. If this thing is attacking kids, then it'll attack anybody. What if it is a dinosaur? Dinosaurs should stay in movies, right? Or underground? This can't be real."

"For the last—it's not a dinosaur!" Exasperated, Donnie put his hands on his head, heaving a sigh. This was impossible. Brothers. What would he do without—?

Wait.

Donatello narrowed his eyes as he spotted something caught in the broken wood of the dresser. It was small, but the color difference from the dresser was enough to catch his attention. Tilting his head, Donnie went over to Mikey's side, gently nudging him away from the mess as he knelt down and pulled a clump of fur out of the broken slabs. Well… at least that proved it wasn't a dinosaur.

"Hey… check this out. Its fur."

"Yeah, so? Maybe the kid's got a cat or somethin'." Raph piped up, shooting his brother a look. Of course he was the first one to retort. Why was he always challenging him? Donnie returned the look instantly, getting to his feet and holding the clump up in his fingers, putting his other hand on his hip.

"A cat that's blue?"

"Blue?"

Leo frowned as he walked over to Donnie, taking the fur from him and looking it over. The confusion on all of their faces sure mirrored what he felt inside. Donnie shook his head helplessly, giving a shrug as the others turned to look at him. Usually he was one with all of the answers, but right now, he had none to give.

"I don't know of any animals with blue fur, guys. Let alone native to around here."

"So it's a mutant." Mikey got up from his crouch, peering at the fur as Leo passed it back to Donnie. He reached out to touch it, brow creasing a little. "It's gotta be."

"Which means we can track it." Donnie burst into a grin, tucking the fur away into one of the pockets on his belt, feeling the anxiety of not knowing slowly begin to ebb away. "It's new, something we haven't seen before, but if it's a mutant, we can find it. We'll just have to go home and adjust the mutagen tracker a little bit before we—!"

All of the brothers jumped to their feet as screaming started from outside. One glance between the four and they were leaping back out of the window, Donnie only taking a moment to replace the tape over it before they burst into a run. Maybe they were going to find out what this thing was after all. A little more preparation would have been nice, but hey, they'd take what they were given.

The screams cut off as they got closer to the source; an alley hidden behind an old warehouse. That wasn't good. Michelangelo was the first one to reach it. Donnie watched as Mikey stopped dead at the edge of the rooftop, horror written all over his face, and he understood why as soon as he looked down.

And suddenly, he found he really didn't want to know what this thing was.

The alley was littered with bodies. Most of them weren't even intact. Even from here, he could see the tattoo of a purple dragon on one of the men's arms, which was lying much further away from his shoulder than it should have been. Must've been a gang patrol. Well, they weren't a patrol now. Blood was splattered over the walls beside them, and one of the bodies was missing a leg. No wait—it was just lying several dozen feet away. There must have been eight people down there, if you put all of the pieces of them back together.

Now they were all dead, with nothing in sight to explain why.

"Donnie, what the hell is going on?" Raph hissed to his brother, shoulders tensed as he glanced over to the genius. Donnie could tell by the way his eyes were wide and the way Raph seemed to shrink back from the edge of the rooftop that his brother was spooked, and he couldn't blame him. This was a nasty sight, even for the big tough protector of the family. Something was out there doing this to random people, and now they had to figure out not only what, but how to stop it.

"I don't know." Donatello muttered softly, looking back down to the mess in the alley. A chunk had been taken out of one of the corpse's sides, the outline clearly stating bite wound. This thing, whatever it was... it was big. "They're torn apart. See that bite? Right there?" Pointing to the body he was looking at, Donnie crouched on the ledge, unable to take his eyes off of the scene. His brothers followed his hand, and he was pretty sure he heard Mikey stifle a gag.

"It's a killing bite, but all of the flesh is torn away. This thing isn't killing for fun."

"Are you saying its hunting people?!" Raph hissed through his teeth.

"Well I'm not saying it because I like the idea. It probably is. But that doesn't really explain why the other bodies were left intact besides their wounds." Donnie finally heaved a sigh, rubbing his face. This was all messed up, and he needed time to think things over. This couldn't be true. Mutants didn't hunt people, they stayed away from them! And they didn't tend to eat them either. "I'll get April to call the police and report this in… we should get home."

"We'll figure out what's going on tomorrow, alright?" Leo put his hand on Donnie's shoulder, and Donnie looked up, grateful for the reassurance. Looking back down to the chaos below, Donnie nodded, frowning.

"Hopefully."

Hello everyone! Long time no talk. I've updated this chapter a bit from what it was before, with a better ending to it. Hopefully I can get the next chapter out soon - this is mostly a self-indulgent fic for two of my OCs.

Leave a comment on what you think!

~Jeli