A/N: This story is rated because of cussing (Thanks a lot, Raph.) and gore. It will be a multi-chapter story with lots of mysteries, gore, plot twists, horror, angst, and family love. Be prepared. Sorry this chapter is so short, but they'll get longer. Don't worry. I hope you all enjoy! R&R but no flames! Thanks! :D
Disclaimer: Not mine... :'(
*Chapter One: Missing*
Raphael shuffled into the kitchen earlier than he was used to. Leonardo hadn't woke him up at his usual time, much to Raph's delight. He had gotten an hour at least of extra sleep. It wasn't much, but he'd take it.
Maybe training was postponed. It was rare but not unheard of. Maybe one of his brothers had gotten sick over night?
The kitchen was quiet as he sat down at the table and grabbed a shiny red apple out of the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table. He was the first one up.
Weird.
That usually never happened. Raphael bit into the apple and looked over at the two cups positioned on the other side of the table where Donatello and Leonardo usually sat. Peering into the cups, Raph realized one was filled with coffee and the other contained tea.
Yup. Don and Leo had already been up. But where were they now? Maybe they had both been up having drinks in the middle of the night before going back to bed. Raphael pressed a finger to one of the cups and was a bit surprised to find it still warm.
"Morning, Raphie!" Raphael looked up and saw his baby brother, Michelangelo, bounce happily into the kitchen. Raph rolled his eyes. The way Mikey was so happy in the mornings always aggravated the red-masked turtle.
"Mornin'," Raph grumbled around a mouth full of apple, "Ya seen Leo or Don?" Mikey plopped down in the chair beside Raphael and grabbed an orange.
"Just woke up, bro," Mikey informed him as he began to peel his citrus, "You're the first person I've seen. Well, except for that talking teddy bear in my dream last night..." Mikey lost his train of thought and continued on with his teddy bear dream, though Raph wasn't really listening.
He looked up at the clock on the wall. It was seven in the morning. Leonardo was usually up by then, meditating, and Donnie was usually in his lab all night. Something just didn't feel right.
Come to think of it, Master Splinter was usually sitting at the table waiting for them in the mornings, but where was he now?
"Somethin's wrong, Mike," Raph suddenly said, cutting Mikey off in the middle of his dream story, "Where's Splintah?" Mikey's face fell at the realization.
"Maybe he slept in?" Mikey offered hopefully, but both of them knew Splinter never slept in. Never. Not even when he was sick. Something was definitely wrong.
Raphael and Michelangelo both pushed their chairs back and jumped up, heading for their father's room. The two stopped uneasily at Splinter's room. There was no sound coming from the room, nor was there any smell of incense.
"Uh, Sensei?" Raph called awkwardly, rapping his knuckles against his father's door, "Ya in their, Splintah?" No answer. Mikey and Raph exchanged worried looks before Mikey slowly opened the door.
"My sons..."
"Sensei!" The rat was sprawled out in the middle of the floor, barely conscience, blood leaking from his jaws. His walking stick was on the other side of the room, and an empty tea cup was spilled beside the rat's hand.
The two turtles hurried to their father's aid.
"Sensei, what happened?!" Raph asked as he knelt beside his ill father, "Are ya okay?" The rat glanced weakly at the tea cup on the ground. Raphael picked it up.
"D-drugged," Splinter informed him, as his senses began returning to him, "Drugged me. Attacked me with the staff. Took... L-Leonardo and D-Donatello." Raph heard Mikey give a little squeak.
"Ya gotta speak clearer," Raph said, shaking his head in disbelief, "Who drugged you? Who took 'em?" Splinter looked up at his second oldest son before his eyelids drooped and his head fell to the side.
"What's wrong with him, Raph?" Mikey was asking in a panic as Raphael picked up their unconscious father gently in his arms before laying him down on the bed, "Is he okay? Where are Leo and Donnie?"
Raph turned to face his little brother. Mike was becoming hysteric, and Raphael had no idea how to deal with it.
It was something Leo usually did.
"Calm down, Knuckle-Head," Raphael snapped as he pulled the blankets up around his father's unconscious form, "Splintah's just a little tired. We gotta go check Fearless' room and Donnie's lab." Mikey nodded his head with wide eyes.
"I'll check Donnie's lab," Mikey announced before taking off out of Splinter's room. Raphael headed to Leo's room and was surprised to find the door wide open. Leonardo usually left his door closed. He liked his privacy.
Stepping into the room, Raphael noticed the room looked almost completely normal.
Almost.
In the middle of the room was a doll, but not just any doll. It was a wooden doll painted green and wearing a blue strip of fabric over it's shiny blue button eyes. It sat in the floor, staring up at Raphael with a smile made of a stitched up mouth. Raph shuttered at the look of it. He hated dolls almost as much as he hated bugs.
The doll was holding a folded piece of paper in its hand. With unnecessary caution, Raphael picked up the wooden turtle doll and pulled the note from it's clutches. Before he could read it, though, Michelangelo came running into the room holding a similar green doll.
It was wearing a purple mask.
"Raph! Raph!" Mikey was yelling, waving the Donnie-doll in Raphael's face, "Donnie got turned into a doll!" Raphael smacked the back of Mikey's head with enough force that it caused the younger brother to drop the doll.
"That ain't Donnie, you idiot," Raph snapped, looking down at the note and doll on his other hand, "Did that thing come with a note or somethin'?" Mikey shook his head, rubbing the sore spot on his cranium and picking up the Donnie-doll from the ground.
Raphael opened the note and read it to himself. It was a poem. A twisted and disturbed poem that made Raph want to get sick the longer he read it.
"Your brothers belong to me now,
There's a lesson they must learn,
But if you want to cooperate,
Their freedom you may earn.
They call me the Toymaker,
You're my toys inside this game.
I control what you all will do,
My being fits my name.
If you want to save your brothers,
You might need a clue.
I'll only give you one, new friends,
No need to feel so blue.
Good Luck."
That was the end of the note.
Raphael read it over and over, inside his head and out loud. He flipped it over and was confused and angry to see that the back was blank.
"Damn it!" he growled furiously as he crumbled up the paper in his fists, "Where the hell is the clue?!" Michelangelo pulled the note from his brother's hands and read it himself.
"This Toymaker guy hid something here in Leo's room, I think," Mikey decided, holding the paper back out to Raphael, "The note says, 'No need to feel so blue.' Blue. Leo's mask is blue." He shrugged, looking at the Leo doll in Raph's hands, sadly.
"You think dat's da clue?" Raph asked, surprised. Mikey usually wasn't the type to use his brain often.
That was something Donatello usually did.
After checking on Splinter, who was still sleeping peacefully, the two brothers began tearing Leo's bedroom apart in search of something, anything that would help them find their missing brothers.
As Raphael pulled the blankets from Leo's bed, he couldn't help but feel guilt rising in his stomach. His brothers could be hurt. Dead, even. And what was he doing? Destroying their things.
In the middle of his mental rampage, something fell out of the pillow case Raph held in his hands.
"I think I got somethin'," Raph called over to Mikey, who ceased rummaging through Leo's drawers and ran over to the bed.
"What is it?"
Raphael picked the object up off the ground. It was a tape with a label that read "How To Make Toys". The two brothers gulped.
"Donnie has a VCR in his lab," Mikey said quietly as Raph turned the tape over in his hands. He took the Leo doll from Raphael's hands and carried it, along with the Donnie doll, into the living room and set the pair on the coffee table.
"It looks just like them," Mikey whispered with a shiver as Raph entered the room as well, "Do you think that they're, you know...alive?" Raph looked from the tape to the dolls to his little brother.
"Course they're alive," Raph snapped, though it came out quieter than he intended, "They're fine. They just need a little help is all."
In Donnie's lab, Raph couldn't help but feel as if he was disrupting something. It was the way he always felt when he entered his immediate younger brother's lab. Usually Donnie was working on some project or invention at his desk, and it felt completely wrong that Don wasn't there now.
Spotting the VCR hooked up to a small television in the corner, Raphael pushed the tape inside as he and Mikey stood waiting to see the horrors that were bound to appear on the screen.
The video began.