Where are you now?

Swish...

The sword sliced through the air with a whisper of perfectly honed steel, the blade wickedly sharp. Had anyone been in its path, they would have had their flesh slit down to the bone before there was a chance to cry out. But there was no one there to get in the way.

And the one wielding the sword was too good to make those kind of careless mistakes. If the sword were to rip through a person, it would be because he wanted them dead.

Concentrating fiercely, Leonardo went through the kata again. And again. He could do it already, but it wasn't good enough. It had to be perfect. And he wasn't going to stop practising it until it was. Anything less than total accuracy wasn't good enough – it could mean the difference between their lives and their deaths.

And he had a score to settle, one that demanded he be at the peak of his skills and stay there. He didn't know when he would be able to avenge what had been done to his brother and his Sensei, but when the time came, he would be ready.

His brother.

His failure.

Leo began to go through the kata again, trying to focus still further. But as happened so often these days, he could taste bitter defeat trying to get through his defences. Gritting his teeth, he tried harder to block out the sensation, but it always found a way to return, to torment him.

They had defeated the Shredder, he would remind himself at such times. Driven the Sword of Tengu right through his alien form.

But the price was too high, was the invariable comeback.

Raphael was missing. Possibly dead. Probably dead. Splinter too. Because he had led them into a battle he had been ill-prepared to lead. Because he was inadequate.

Because of Karai.

Without warning, he turned and hurled the katana in a deadly accurate throw that impaled the punch bag Raph used so often. It immediately began to leak stuffing and Leo knew if Raph had been there to see the state of it, there would be hell to pay.

But of course, he wasn't there.

Leo glared at the katana for a moment, then his shoulders sagged. Was it his fault? He had hesitated. Karai had been standing over Donnie and Leo had paused, letting their shared past cloud his judgement. Remembering how they had grown up together, been friends, hoping against hope that she would see that her loyalty was horribly misplaced. And if she didn't, Donnie could move in time and he could get to her even if he didn't.

But Donnie hadn't been her target.

He didn't even know if Raph was still alive or not. Mikey had gone after their brother and Karai got the drop on him, leaving him unconscious and with no knowledge of what had become of either Raph or Splinter after they had fallen off the building.

Sometimes, it seemed harder not to know than if they had died for sure, been left for himself and Donatello and Michelangelo to find. That would be painful, horribly painful – but this limbo was worse. A part of him was sure they were alive and his instincts screamed at him to do something. Not that there was anything he could do at that point. Other times, he was convinced that no one could have survived the fall, that Karai had stolen the bodies to play with their minds, give them some illusion of hope and steal it from them when it would best suit her purposes. In battle no doubt. She had to know that they intended on avenging their fallen brother.

Or there were other things she could do, things that didn't bear thinking about for long. She could get money for DNA such as theirs, plenty of money. There was always her pet scientist Stockman, assuming he hadn't bailed out of the operation when Oruku Saki died – but that wasn't his style, not when there was money and resources to be had.

Or there were ways of using their broken corpses to take the fight right out of the three remaining mutants. Things that could cause them to react blindly, to lash out, to give up caring about their own well being.

Leo refused to lose any more of his brothers to this feud.

He knew what they thought. Donnie believed there was no way either Raph or Splinter had survived and mourned them as if they were dead. He cited probabilities related to the height and speed of their falls, the evidence left behind by his broken bo. There was a constant, dull hurt in his eyes as he recited the facts. He didn't want their brother to be dead – but his own scientific outlook wouldn't let him think otherwise.

Mikey insisted Raph and Splinter were both alive, being kept prisoner somewhere by Karai. His own theory related to the lack of bodies found, that Karai had been on the helipad that night, the surprisingly small amount of blood. Donnie had once or twice tried to explain these away, citing shattered bones rather than open wounds, but Mikey had an almost hysterical refusal to listen. He wouldn't accept the possibility that they could be dead.

Leo didn't know what to think.

He wanted desperately to believe that Raph was alive, that somehow he had survived the fall and Karai had taken him as a bargaining tool. That she would try to use him to make them all give in to her. There was something almost comforting in that, knowing if that was the case they could maybe form some kind of plan that would allow them to get to Raph and at the same time, exact some revenge on Karai. But having seen how far it was to fall and knowing that Karai knew all too well the advantages that could be gained from messing with their minds by giving them false hope – he found it hard to reconcile that with any possibility of survival.

And even if Raph had survived, would Splinter? Raph had the added protection of his shell, although it made Leo cringe to think of how it would have shattered upon impact. Splinter had no such protection and he had been the first out of the window. The odds that Splinter had lived were low. Leo grieved for the rat of course, the way he had brought them together as a family, tried to help them, teach them. Even after they had tried to push him away, he had persisted and it was his doing that they had been able to recover enough to take on the Shredder at all.

But most of his sorrow was on behalf of the brother with whom he had grown up, argued, played, trained, fought both against and beside.

Alive or dead?

If he could find Karai, maybe he could somehow force her to talk. Tell him what had happened that night after she had run from the room where the Shredder had died and vanished into the night, taking with her all knowledge of the fate of their brother...

And would she tell him the truth, even if her life was at stake?

She wanted revenge on them as badly as they did against her, that was something he had to keep in mind. She would stop at nothing to break their minds and bodies, nothing. She would be relentless.

And she would be looking for them already.

He would find his answers. He would find a way to make her tell the truth, find out what she had planned. He'd make her tell him what she had done with Raphael – and then he would make her pay for what she had taken from them.

But he refused to risk his family again.

Donnie had been hurt in the last battle, badly enough for him to have been taking it easy on his training. Mikey too had been injured, but there was no sign of him letting up. His wounds had been more superficial, but that wasn't the reason. The re-emergence of his more cheerful, jocular personality hadn't lasted, not after what had happened at the Foot headquarters.

He wouldn't let either of them be taken or killed like he had let Karai do to Raph.

Straightening up, Leo went over to the punching bag and took his katana from it, returning to the kata he was determined to perfect.

I do what I have to, to protect this family...

No matter what.

Donatello could hear the sounds of his brother training but didn't pay them much attention. It seemed as if Leonardo did little else lately. Donnie himself couldn't do very much ninjitsu until his injuries were all healed up, but they seemed to be mending rapidly.

His physical wounds anyway.

There was a war coming, he knew that. They would have revenge for what had happened to Raph and Splinter. But for that, they had to have the advantage. Their numbers were depleted and all of them were mentally and emotionally damaged. Karai would be able to use that against them. They had to have something they could use against her.

To that end, Donnie had been doing some work of his own. He had made motorcycles for all of them, trying to force away the knowledge that Raph would have loved something like that. Especially with the added bonus of weaponry he had added to them. He had made a tunneller with the vague notion they might use it to get into the new Foot Headquarters from below. He worked on weapons, making himself a new bo. And he carried the lone sun and moon dagger that Raph had left behind with him at all times.

He worked on his inventions until he fell into an exhausted sleep. It was the only way he could get any rest these days. Otherwise he lay awake, staring into the dark, reliving the moment Raph had died over and over again.

Karai cutting the rope that tethered Raph to the building, Donnie helpless to do anything as the severed end fell through the window, out of Donnie's reach, nothing he could do...

He had also been monitoring the Foot, or trying to, with his computer. There had been a slight dip in the stock value of their legitimate businesses, but that had soon stabilised. There was little or nothing to be found in those files anyway. Anything to do with mutants was unlikely to be legitimate.

He had tried everything he could think of, chasing possibilities, even googling for information. He had turned up nothing, no mentions anywhere of advanced mutations or any new research into the topic that would suggest an agency had got hold of Raphael's DNA. Hacking into one of the Foots legitimate enterprises, a bio lab, had yielded nothing.

He doubted Karai was stupid enough to put that information where it could be hacked – she knew after all that he was good at that stuff. But Stockman was another matter. The man was filled with his own importance and the odds were that if he knew anything, it would be accessible. Difficult but do-able. Stockman would assume that he was far too clever for Don, in spite of the fact that the mutant had proved otherwise time and again.

But there was nothing. It was a frustrating time for Donnie. He had scoured the net for anything – rumours, heresay, just something that didn't quite add up. Anything would have done.

Nothing.

Stockman himself was recuperating from an 'accident' according to what Donnie had read. The man had lost an eye and a hand, was forced to wear a prosthetic limb. Donnie doubted that was an accident. He suspected Hun had more to do with that than was let on by the official statements from Stocktronics. Stockman had to have been angered and humiliated by that and Don filed the knowledge away for later use. It might prove to be a chink in the Foots armour.

If it was, it seemed to be the only one.

April had come down to the lair on occasion to help with the search. With the antique shop in ruins, she had decided to stay with Casey. The turtles had offered for her to remain with them, but she had declined and Donnie didn't blame her. They weren't exactly the most gracious of hosts at the moment. Her own reports of what was happening above ground gave Don some grim satisfaction. There was gang violence erupting all over the city. That had to mean that news of the Foots defeat had spread. Maybe with the Foot and the Purple Dragons with them kept busy, they would be able to take Karai by surprise when they acted.

When they managed to find her.

She had made several public appearances, dedicating a building and a statue to Oruku Saki. Donnie had felt the uncharacteristic urge to go graffiti on the ugly thing. But there was no word on where she was staying or even if there were any plans to renovate the original Foot Headquarters. Rebuilding elsewhere could take years, making Don suspect that at some point they would begin work on the building, restoring the tech he had fried and improving defences.

If work did begin, Mikey would know about it. But Mikey wasn't talking.

Don worried about both of his brothers. Mikey insisted that Raph had to be alive, refused to even hear the suggestion that he might not be. His optimistic nature was funnelled into that one hope, with nothing left over for anything else. He was quiet and brooding, leaving the lair to go looking for Raph or Karai. His constant vigil on the streets had led to several shouted arguments with Leo.

Leo had also began to brood, with all the intensity that he usually gave to training. He had changed overnight, becoming darker and silently angry. The fury radiated off him, never vocalised. He trained into the small hours, determined to protect all of them at any cost. And he was hard in a way he had never been before. Donnie's attempts to speak to him about it had been brushed off and Don was slightly afraid to say what he was thinking – that the silent, angry, cold demeanour had begun to remind him of Oruku Saki. That would no doubt send Leo off the deep end and Don no longer trusted him to know when to stop.

Sighing, Don adjusted his welding mask and returned to his worktop. Leo might be present in the lair, but Donnie had no idea were Mikey could be. He was out scouring the streets. Again. And he never took his shell-cell with him anymore. If Don called him, he would hear the tone emerging from Mike's room. If something happened, Mikey would have no way to call for help. And no matter how often Don pointed that out, Mike wasn't listening.

He was beginning to get pissed off with the pair of them.

As Donnie had suspected, Mikey was out of the lair, searching for a sign – any sign – of Karai's whereabouts. She and she alone knew where Raph and Splinter were, therefore she was Mikey's best chance of getting his brother back. He had to find her, follow her, discover where she may be hiding them.

He used the rooftops as easily as the streets, more easily since there was less need to hide in the shadows. His feet pounded the bricks, his arms pumped to increase speed, his scars stood out in livid contrast to his green skin. There were more scars since that night, but those would fade. The Shredder's marks never would. One side of his wide mouth was frozen in a sneer, the other side was turned down in displeasure. Anyone who did see him would recognise immediately that he was not to be messed with. Not right then.

He cleared the distance between buildings with ease, although one slip would have sent him plummeting six storeys to the ground. He was taking more chances these days, too many. The rooftops were higher, the gaps between them longer, the leaps to the ground more nonchalant. He knew he was courting death, but wasn't sure he cared much.

Landing on the next rooftop, his heel scant inches from the edge, he slowed to a walk and crossed the distance to the other edge. From this vantage point he could see the Foot Headquarters, dark and silent.

He usually ended up here at some point during the night.

He could see the sign of the Foot, a mere silhouette against the building without the light that had powered it before. Clenching his fists, he glared at the symbol. The place where he had grown up. The people who had made him who he was. The ones who had taken his brother. That symbol was the embodiment of everything that had been his life – and everything that had ever gone wrong with it.

The Foot.

There was no sign that anyone was working on the building – but like Donnie, he believed it was only a matter of time. Building another skyscraper to suit their purposes would take too long and in spite of the ruined tech, the building itself was structurally sound. He had the sudden urge to sneak inside the building, pour some petrol around the place and set the whole sorry mess on fire. He quelled the urge quickly. As long as the building was there, Karai could return to it. The building was his best chance of finally spying her.

In spite of the satisfaction it would give him to dance in the ruins of the building, he couldn't risk it.

He would find Karai. Karai would lead him to Raphael. And then he would get his brother back and kill her. For what she had done to all of them, but especially to Raph and Splinter – and to him. Because in spite of his insistence that the two were alive, there was a part of him that he buried and tried to ignore, a part that whispered to him that they were dead after all...

He knew Don thought they were dead and thought Mikey's inability to admit it meant he was delusional. Yeah, well maybe Don wasn't as smart as he thought he was. And on the few occasions that Leo had confronted the issue, he had narrowed his eyes and growled that he didn't know.

Leo was really beginning to get on Mikey's nerves.

Leo was supposed to be the leader, the turtle of action. Instead, he was hiding out in the lair and training all the time, insisting they had to wait until Donnie was healed up. In Mikey's opinion, he should have made Donnie stay home and the two of them gone after Karai, before she had a chance to recover from their first attack. But Leo was being over-cautious instead of acting, training all the time instead of doing something that might actually get their family back. And he was trying to exert his authority over them, ordering them around. Every time Mikey came back from one of his late night hunts, Leo would snarl at him, telling him it was too dangerous, that he should be training and not wasting his time, demanding he remained home. Sometimes, Mikey would ignore him and go to his room without answering. Other times, he would yell back or storm out of the lair. If it was still dark, he might return to his searching. In daylight, he would just wander the sewers, his mind in turmoil.

As children, he had been a little jealous of Leo. Leo was Master Saki's favourite, he never got in the way, never made Master Saki angry with stupid, childish pranks. And he had never had to be as severely reprimanded as Mikey had been.

No wonder the three of them hadn't trusted Leo when they discovered Splinter.

Mikey sighed, looking at the ground six storeys below. The first person he had told about Splinter was Raph, the one turtle of the four of them that he thought could be trusted with such a massive secret. And Splinter had reached out to him, trained him in the use of the nunchaku and even laughed at his lame jokes. Mostly, Splinter had seemed happy just to be around them.

If Leo had been the one to go down to the helipad that night instead of him, reflected Mikey bitterly, he wouldn't have been taken by surprise, oh no. Leo would have known somehow that she was there, avoided the knock-out dart and stopped her cold, before she could take Raph away. Ha, and Donnie would probably done some speedy micro-surgery using a katana and an ice cube.

Sometimes, Mikey thought privately that it might be for the best that Karai had Raph and Splinter. Not that he was happy about it, but she was in more of a position to tend to whatever wounds they had, people working for her who would know how to do that and had access to facilities that would make recovery possible. All they had to offer someone grievously injured was a dark, dank sewer and whatever medical information Donnie could glean from the internet.

But most of the time, it worried Mikey that Karai had his brother. Their well being was not in her best interests and she had to have some secret reason for wanting them. Likely as pawns, so she could lure the rest of them into a trap. Or something even more sinister. Surely she would want Leo more than either he or Donnie, or Splinter or Raph. After all, Leo was the one who had finally killed the Shredder, once and for all.

And they had all grown up with Karai. Mikey knew her well. What Karai wanted, Karai got, no matter what she had to do to get it. No one had been as determined as her, not even Leo. Although he seemed to be getting more like her with each passing day.

Where is she hiding?

It was so frustrating not knowing where she was, not being able to act. If he could find her, he could do something, be that much closer to finding Raph.

He had to find Raph. The others were doing nothing, so it was up to him.

But it didn't look like he was going to trace Karai tonight. There had been no sign of her anywhere, he hadn't seen a Foot ninja since their battle against the Shredder he could follow, no way of knowing where she had relocated to.

Sighing, he turned reluctantly away from the Foot's deserted Headquarters and ran across the rooftops in the direction of home. He had broken up some gang activities that night – no Purple Dragons, but some punk kids trying to muscle in on their territory. They had no idea who they were messing with. It was better that they faced Mikey's anger than the wrath of the Purple Dragons. At least he left them alive and scared rather than dead too young.

Like Raph – no, Raph's alive, I know he is...

Every time he stopped a mugging or a robbery, he asked the same question of the terrified criminals. "Where are the Foot?" None of them had known. Even the Purple Dragons seemed to have been laying low. Either they were more scared of the retribution of the Foot than they were of Mikey, which seemed unlikely with his green, scarred visage growling in their face, or they were telling the truth. Mikey believed the latter.

He had learned more about the Purple Dragons using the same tactics – and what he had found out was strange. It didn't gel with what he knew. Apparently the Purple Dragons had gone up in the world, rumours of fancy new digs and shadowy activities running rife amongst the gangs in the area. No one knew much more than that though. And Mikey couldn't figure it out. Karai led the Foot with the demise of the Shredder and she had never liked the Purple Dragons. They had their uses, but she found their methods distasteful. Maybe it was a way of consolidating her own position; giving the Dragons a veneer of greater success than they actually enjoyed.

But the violence on the streets was reaching crisis point. He was only one turtle and couldn't be everywhere at once, so he imagined he missed much of what went on. The results he sometimes saw on the news, when he could bring himself to watch.

The sewer entrance closest to their lair loomed up ahead and he dropped to the floor from a greater height than his brothers would approve of, silently blending into the shadows and raising the manhole cover. He might be done for the night, but he wasn't looking forward to facing Leonardo.

The sewers were as dark and dank as ever and Mikey frowned. If it hadn't been for Shredder, he would have grown up down here with Splinter as a father rather than Oruku Saki. Would the constant isolation and unpleasant living conditions be a fair trade for never having to deal with Saki as a mentor?

Yes. Of course it would.

Strolling into the lair, Mikey was relieved to see neither Leo nor Donnie about. Probably both asleep. Leo had been driving himself pretty hard and Donnie never seemed to rest at all. But Mikey wasn't tired and threw himself onto the couch, grabbing up the remote and flipping aimlessly through the channels.

Click. Cartoons. He wasn't really in the mood.

Click. Music channel. Again, not in the mood.

Click. Titanic rerun. Yeah, just what he needed, to be more depressed.

Click. Formula one. Raph would probably ask him to keep it on.

Click. Discussion programme. The topic was the recent gang hostilities in New York. It was about even who was shouting the loudest. Mikey kept it on for a few seconds, smirking at some of the uninformed opinions spouted at both sides.

Click. The news. More on the gang violence of late. Mikey left it on, considering what he knew about the Foot, the Dragons and what had been going on of late. There was a definite territory war on, that was for sure, but the Foot and the Dragons ought to have squashed the few rival factions before now. Why hadn't they?

And then the answer occurred to him, so simple that he almost groaned aloud at the realisation. Karai and Hun didn't like each other. Not in the slightest. Hun was loyal to the Shredder, but would he take orders from Karai?

Mikey doubted it.

So if Hun had split from the Foot, odds were he would be left to lead the Dragons. And he wouldn't be satisfied with retaining the territory the Dragons had already had. He would want to expand, not just to piss off Karai but to prove that he could. To enjoy the same level of power he'd had as right hand man of the Shredder, but this time under his own terms.

So the Foot and the Dragons were divided. Maybe fighting against each other. And there were other gangs taking advantage of that, which was the real reason things had been escalating of late.

Mikey smiled. Not his former, sunny smile, but a smile with undertones of pure malice. So the Foot were having problems. And the Dragons were occupied. There just might be a way to use that to his advantage.

And then he could force Karai to release Raphael and Splinter. And get some measure of revenge at the same time.