Chapter 1
"Hey! Keep up, Donnie!" Leonardo shouted back, several yards away.
"Yeah, don't wanna end up goin' home alone, do ya?" the red banded Raphael teased. Donatello had been behind all night because one of his many devices kept sparking and glitching, causing him to stop repeatedly. He was half tempted to just throw the thing away, but this particular device had taken him several months to perfect; his sould wouldn't allow such hard work to go to waste.
"Sorry, guys. My locater's a little busted up, but I'm right behind you," Donnie called ahead. He put his device back into a pouch on his belt and kept going.
Mikey dropped back a little to talk to him. "Dude, you alright?" He asked his genius brother, blue eyes filled with concern.
"Yeah...," Don sighed, "I just keep getting caught up in this silly thing." Mikey looked at the aforementioned belt but the pouch Donnie had indicated was flat. Then he noticed the small string trailing in the breeze.
"Uh, bro, I hate to break it to ya, but unless that gizmo is invisible, I think it might've flown the coop, dude," the orange clad turtle said. Donatello's eyes widened and he frantically searched his belt.
"Oh no! Mikey! You gotta help me find it!" Don begged his youngest brother.
"But what about our bro's, bro?"
"I'll call Leo on the Shell Cell and let him know," Don waived off. "Now come on. If someone finds that thing, we could be in some serious trouble."
"Why? What's so special about it?"
"Well..." Don hedged, "I may have kinda been using it to map our new patrol routes..."
Mikey's jaw fell in shock. "Dude! And you're supposed to be the responsible one!"
"I know, I know. Let's just find it," Don exhaled. Before I get us into trouble for it.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
"Come on, Bandit! Let's go outside!," a young woman called as she opened a rooftop door. A Golden Retriever rushed past her legs, nearly knocking her over, to get to a small patch of grass that had been planted atop the building. The young lady huffed at the goofy dog's antics and went to sit on a sunchair to stargaze. Her rear had barely hit the chair when her dog came bounding back into her lap, knocking her back.
"Oof! Bandit!" she wheezed. Having a full grown dog land her full weight on your lap isn't a pleasant feeling. "What do you want, girl?" she asked the canine. "Wanna play fetch?" She reached into a pocket of the hoodie she was wearing and withdrew a bright yellow tennis ball. This got a manic reaction from the dog, Bandit.
Bandit jumped off and started hopping in place, chuffing her excitement to get the ball. Her owner threw the ball to the opposite side of a skylight, golden dog right behind it.
The owner settled back into her chair a little easier before Bandit came trotting back. The girl held her hand out for the dog to drop the ball into it, but was perplexed when metal (not fuzz) hit her hand. She held up the metal thing to eye level to get a better look at it.
The strange object was actually kind of big and was yellow and green in color. It looked like a G.P.S., but with an odd shape to the back of it. A gentle finger flipped open the front in an attempt to determine exactly what this thing was. A small spark of electricity erupted from part of the device, but no harm to the holder.
Quickly determining the cause of the shock, a few buttons were found to be dislodged and some of the main circuitboard could be seen with loose wires. This looks like something I could fix easily, the young woman thought to herself. She fished around in her pocket until she found her trusty Leatherman. Using her fingernails, the girl delicately took off the faceplate of the strange device and used a little flathead screwdriver to tighten the wires beneath.
Once done with that, the faceplate was flipped over and the buttons were properly pushed back into their spaces. Checking that the buttons wouldn't dislodge again, the faceplate was snapped back onto the main unit with a small click. The screen immediately came to life in her hand and began flashing its options. Satisfied with a job well done, the girl shut the screen and placed her favorite tool back into her pocket.
Bandit had long ago done her business and brought back the proper toy and was patiently waiting for her owner at her side. The young lady pat the dog on the head, signalling that the dog should wait by the door.
Such an odd device surely had an owner looking for it, and more likely than not, that owner lived in this building. Gently placing the electronic on the table next to her chair, the girl dug around a messenger back she had brought up for a pen and paper to write a note for the owner. She jotted down a brief explanation of what she had fixed, then placed the note under the accessory. With hope that whoever lost it found it again soon, she gathered her bag and took Bandit inside for a good night's sleep.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Mikey and Don had retraced their steps and were shocked at what they found. On the rooftop that Don had stopped at last, his locater was in the hands of a human female. They were only one rooftop away, in the cover of shadows, so they were ready to follow her, if need be. However, they only had to wait a few minutes before she left the locater on a table. When the girl and her dog left, they waited a moment or two more before going to retrieve it.
"Hey, Donnie, there's a note," Michaelangelo pointed out. He handed it to the purple clad turtle and read it over my shoulder.
To whom this device belongs:
More than likely, you'll be happy that you've found your possession and, like many New Yorkers, you won't really like that someone has fiddled with it. I just thought that I'd let you know that while I did not look at any personal info that may or may not be on it, I did fix a couple problems that wer inflicted upon it. There were a couple of loose wires that posed a shocking hazard (experienced first hand) and a couple buttons were out of place. I'm sorry if this item doesn't happen to work as it should. I will take full responsibility for it and pay for any repairs or a replacement. I apologize if there has been any inconvenience.
Sincerely,
Giada Ingranaggio
She had left a couple bits of contact information at the bottom, as well.
Donatello looked at the note, then at his locater, highly suspicious. He opened the screen and lo-and-behold, it was like it was never broken. The only sign that anything had happened to it was a little chip off one of the buttons, but nothing extreme to worry about. He was too in awe that this girl had fixed his locater and had actually cared that someone may have been worried about losing an artifact like this.
"Dude, that thing was giving you trouble? That chick must have a lot of brains to fix what you couldn't," Mike joked. Don didn't reply. He was thinking back to when they had seen her with the locater, trying to remember what she looked like.
It was fairly dark, so he didn't get many details about her. From where they were, the girl looked to be shorter than he was at his full height of 6'3. She had dark hair and had been wearing a big hooded sweater with jeans. From afar, she looked like any normal civilian, but underneath that hood lay a genius.
~Later~
Surprisingly, Leo didn't lecture Don or Mikey when they returned to the lair. He simply asked if they had found what they were looking for and after giving him the affirmative, he left their presence to go to bed. Mikey and Raph weren't far behind them, off to their own rooms. Don, on the other hand, went to his lab to tinker on some other experiments.
He was mostly curious about how well his locater worked after having been found and "fixed" by that girl. Putting his magnifying glasses on and putting the locater on top of his work table, he started looking for any sabotage. The circuitboard looked fine. No extra pieces or parts. The faceplate was slightly chipped, but that was only a cosmetic issue, so no threat there. Finally, no recent downloads or evidence that the harddrive had been tampered with. If anything, he'd wager that it was slightly faster. Although he could have fixed these problems when he returned to the lair, the fact stood that this "Giada" girl had done it instead.
He pondered over this for a while before he looked at his clock. 3:47 AM. Leonardo would be up in a few hours to wake them all up for their morning katas. Yawning, Donatello turned his desk lamp off and crawled to bed, where he involuntarily dreamt about the faceless genius girl.