"I don't like it." Casey groused as he paced back and forth in the lair. "Raph and the guys have been out on patrol for too long!" April sighed in agreement, she also couldn't shake the impression that their shelled companions were in great danger. She wanted to believe they were okay and they were only waylaid by something or maybe they had dropped by Murakami's for a snack. Maybe she should have gone with them on their patrol after all since she was a full Kunoichi and a member of their family now. However, with the city currently in a state of normalcy; free of maniacal ninja seeking vengeance, tyrannical aliens wanting to mutate the earth and demonic entities that wanted to kill her new found family. She just didn't see any reason to join them. Still, they all knew it was only a matter of time before another threat arose. Tiger Claw had offered a truce following the events with Kavaxas, but that didn't mean he still wasn't their enemy. He just agreed to let matters regarding the Shredder rest, he could still return and try to destroy the fragile peace they have created.
There were certainly other mutants out there who weren't allies of the Turtles or the Mutanimals, any of them could become a threat. And of course there was the matter with Joan Grody, it was thanks to Muckman that Grody and the rest of the city were lead to believe the Turtles were just a bunch of kids playing dress up. The red-haired girl hated to think about what would happen if that lie was exposed.
"Maybe they stopped by Karai's place check on her," April suggested, as much as the human/kraang hybrid did have her problems with the dark-haired Kunoichi. She did admit that Karai was a useful ally and friend when she was needed. Pulling out her t-phone she was going to text Karai to see if she had seen the guys when her eyes widened in shock at what was displayed on her phone.
"Casey," April said with concern as she pointed to the display screen. "The guys are in trouble."
"Is that?" the dark-haired boy asked.
"That's Donnie's tracking beacon," April said. "He only activates it when he knows they're in danger."
"But who or what would attack the guys?" Casey asked, "All the scumbags we know of are either reformed, in prison, or pushing up daisies."
"I don't know," April said. "We are going to need to get in touch with the Mutanimals…and maybe Karai. The guys are going to need all the help they can get."
Leo, Raph, and Mikey were all dumped unceremoniously into a prison cell by Karl. While Donatello struggled in Igor's grip, the mutant rodent was obviously stronger then he looked. And there was also something eerily unnerving as if he was hiding something that even Farrell was unaware of.
In cages all around them were mutants of various types, some sentient, others feral minded and animalistic despite their mutation. Several of them looked starved and sickly, while others looked maimed and scarred. There were several with body parts missing, while others had limbs that looked as though they were rotting off. None of the turtles knew what any of these mutants had been through, and in their hearts, they didn't want to know. Every one of them regarded Igor with fright as though he was one of the forces in this horrible place that they have learned to fear. One mutant somewhere deeper in the prison was screaming incoherently as though he was being tormented.
"Hope you've all said your goodbyes," Karl sniggered "because this one has a date with the Master's dissection table."
"Donnie!" Mikey yelled.
"You and your master better hope I don't bend these bars." Raph snarled "If you so much as scratch my brother…"
"You mean like this!" Karl said giving a sadistic smile before the hand with the spiked brass knuckles sent a solid punch to the side of Donnie's face. Donnie grunted in pain before there was another blow to his solar plexus. The mutant rabbit laughing in delight as he continued to slam the spiked brass knuckles into the purple-masked turtle's face and body over and over and over again!
"Stop it!" Leo yelled but his commands fell on deaf ears as the mutant rabbit continued in taking delight in beating his second brother.
"Oh, that's it!" Raph roared. "I'm going to make a pair of rabbit's feet out of you!"
"That is enough, Karl." Dr. Farrell commanded as he walked in. "I do require the subject still be alive when I begin the procedure."
"Take me instead!" Leo protested "Vivisect me, kill me, do whatever you want! Just leave Donatello and the rest of my brothers alone!"
"Oh…Donatello is it," Farrell said delightedly as the two mutants dragged Donnie away with them. "As in the renaissance sculptor…interesting. Unfortunately, for you…you don't interest in the same way he does. I have a particular fondness for the special ones...the ones that have high intellects or psychic powers. They are particularly useful in my research." A female ferret mutant, eyed a door towards the back of the prison with dread as though knowing what sort of fate awaited the purple-masked turtle. She looked unharmed, but it was clear she had been traumatized by what she had seen and experienced. Her long strawberry blond hair was matted and greasy as if she hasn't washed it in days, and her fur also looked unkempt. Her eyes were red-rimmed from tears and the inability to sleep.
"No, please don't do this!" Mikey begged. "Donnie is one of the kindest and smartest people I know. Smarter than maybe even you…"
"Shut it, Mikey!" Raph growled to his little brother, he could see from the grin spreading across Farrell's face that he had indeed chosen the right turtle for his twisted experiments. Mikey continued without abandon.
"He's able to come up with amazing ideas and solutions to problems," Mikey tearfully begged the scientist. "He's able to develop things that border on the impossible. Please…Please don't cut him open and take him away from us!"
"Mikey!" Leo barked "You're only proving that he was right in taking Donnie."
"Oh right," Mikey balked as he realized what he had been doing "What I meant to say is Donnie is completely useless to you…he's actually a complete idiot who doesn't do anything right. If you want a smart turtle, take Raph…he'd be perfect for your experiments, like yesterday he was trying to combine a philange with a dinglehopper, so it can clean out our...uh...our garbage disposal."
"Nice try," Farrell sneered at the smaller turtle. "But I was listening to your conversation before I made my grand entrance. The rest of you were referring to him as though he was the smart one among you. Also, he did seem to go quiet when I mentioned one of the four of you was not genetically related. It makes me wonder if he already knew of that fact...and why he wishes to hide it."
Leo's eyes shifted as though something he was pondering for quite some time was suddenly starting to make sense, while Raph's eyes widened in realization and his fists clenched in anger.
"Also this Raph, as you call him," Farrell continued "doesn't look like he even possesses the brain capacity that would be needed to create something as complex as those fascinating smartphone devices my servants took from you. Let alone to program those extensive encryptions that were on the phone that is broadcasting your location. I'm not worried of course, I am actually quite interested in seeing just who will be coming to your rescue."
"Then you should be worried," Raph snarled, his hands slamming the bars angrily. "We have strong and powerful friends who would fight until their last breath to help us. Ones that can turn you and your crazed stooges into mincemeat. The whole lot of them are probably on their way here right now!"
"I think I should plan some other experiments on your companion for now," Farrell said completely dismissing Raph's statements. Mikey breathed out a sigh of relief; Donnie wasn't going to be cut open after all. Both Leo and Raph however tensed, knowing that whatever awaited their brother could be even worse. Pulling out a communication device he brought it to his mouth.
"Karl," the balding doctor leered at the three turtles before him as he spoke. "Prepare our young friend for my Mentalwave Device."
"You're going to microwave Donnie?!" Mikey gasped as he mentally visualized his immediate older brother strapped to a rotating glass disk as his body inflated like a bag of popcorn.
"With my mentalwave device," Farrell an almost lustful smirk as he explained to the three turtles. "I will rip into his intriguing brain and learn every memory, every thought, every secret he possesses. All of it will be mine...and after I am done then I will take what I want from his physical body, tata for now."
"I'm warning you, Ferrall!" Leo snarled at the elderly human left the room; lunging at the bars of their prison with a fierceness that seemed alien to the normally calm and noble turtle. His hands angrily shaking the bars of the cage as though he was trying to pry them loose from the wall. "You and your mutant goons should have let us go when you had the chance! We're going to get out of here, and when we do we will make you suffer for anything you do to Donnie! You're going to regret the day you ever heard of us!" Raph responded to Leo's tirade by lunging forward and enfolding his older brother in his arms.
"Calm down," Raph soothingly said to his brother, though he also felt his own level of anxiety over what was befalling their genius brother. "Donnie's no weakling; he's a tough turtle…tougher than any of us give him credit for. Getting mad is not going to do him any favors, we need to calm down and figure a way out of here." Leo's ire deflated as he rested his head on his immediate younger brother's shoulder.
"I can't…" Leo said as the young leaders void began to crack with oncoming sobs. "I can't lose…I can't fail anyone else…not after…" No one needed to ask him to clarify. Leo was the turtle who had suffered the most following Splinter's passing. Taking up the role of the head of the Hamato Clan in their father's place had been a heavy burden. A role they had all witnessed him struggle with. The very notion of another member of their family meeting a horrible end was a nightmare that visited the leader-in-blue every night.
The visions were always different, but the results were always the same. In some visions, one of his brothers, April, Casey, or Karai would meet their deaths. In other visions, it was more than one of his family members. Such as Donnie being struck down while he was busy trying to disarm an explosive or an enemies mechanized weapon. While Raph is taken down as he savagely runs at a foe to avenge their gentle brother's death. Or maybe Mikey overwhelmed by an enemy force and Donnie being slaughtered in his attempts to protect and assist his only little brother or maybe April.
Other times it all his brothers meeting their end at the hands of a foe…such as the vision of Jei he and his brothers received at that alternate version of Earth where Miyamoto Usagi resided. Seeing Mikey giving his all to fight the crazed wolf only to be stabbed in the gut before he was sent tumbling to the ravine below. Raph rushing to avenge his little brother only to be hit directly by a deadly blast of spirit fire that sends him also plummeting down the mountainside. Jei taking advantage of the momentary shock of witnessing their brother's deaths by knocking Donnie aside and sending Leo tumbling down the mountain face separating him from his second brother. As he felt his body being dashed against the rocks he briefly saw a turtle-shaped form that was suspended in the sky. It was only when he found himself lying among the bodies of his brothers that the true horror of the event truly hit him. His brothers were dead because he failed to protect them…he had failed them all.
"What did Farrell mean about only two of us actually being brothers with you, Leo?" Mikey asked as his oldest brothers sobs became a soft anxious whimper. "And if Donnie knew...why didn't he say anything."
"We can't focus on that," Leo stated as he tried to regain his composure. "We need to focus on getting out of here?"
"But what if it's true?" Mikey pointed out "Could it be possible that one of us isn't related to the rest?"
"Actually, Mikey does bring up a good question." Raph countered as he let go of Leo. "Don, did that DNA test on us when we were kids...he attempted to do one when we were eight, and the only reason we agreed to it when we were twelve was just so he would stop asking. If he came across something like this, he should have said something."
"Maybe he was silent about this fact because he was protecting us," Leo said firmly as he returned to the stoic resolve that he prided himself with. "When I had asked about that DNA experiment he had been working on back then, he had brushed it off as inconclusive. Then he started asking some rather vague-sounding questions, and that was what keyed me in that he had actually found something. Unfortunately, when I tried to demand what the questions were really implying he got evasive. I didn't understand it back then, but I think I do now."
"What do you mean," Raph demanded, "If I learned one of us wasn't related I would have openly told you guys."
"Remember that mummy movie we watched long ago," Leo pointed out " and you commented about how unrealistic it was for all that chaos to be caused by a 'stupid' book. Splinter then contradicted you and said there were some books that actually were very dangerous. Some were not dangerous in themselves, what made them truly dangerous was how people interpreted and used the knowledge within said books. Then there are others that were so dangerous that they could devour the sanity of any who read it."
"Yeah, and?" Raph rolled his eyes not really grasping what Leo was pointing at.
"Before Donnie began his experiment," Leo stated "Splinter warned Donnie to be mindful that some knowledge was best left alone. The only reason D, would have been evasive about his experiment was because he found something that he hadn't intended to learn. So he kept silent because he how dangerous that knowledge would have been if revealed."
"But we were born in a pet shop," Raph pointed out. "Wouldn't that alone have caused bio-discrepancies. Three of us could have been touched by one employee and one of us could have been touched by someone else, maybe even Splinter himself."
"What if one of us had a different mommy turtle and daddy turtle?" Mikey suggested
"Turtles are born from eggs, Mikey!' Raph groused as the conversation irritated him. "So the only way any of us would not be siblings is if the egg of one clutch somehow wound up in the incubation tank with the rest of us."
"That could still happen right?" Mikey pointed out.
"Yes, Mikey," Leo sighed. "But if that was the case, would that be knowledge you would honestly want the know? How would one of you act if someone told you that you biologically were not related to the people you knew as family."
"I'd want to punch their teeth in." Raph admitted, "I'd let them know that they should have left well enough alone and regretted the day they did that stupid DNA test."
"I don't think anything would change," Mikey said, "Because you guys will still be my bro's no matter what anyone says, but I'd still wish they never told me."
"That is why Donnie kept silent about this," Leo explained. "He knew this knowledge would cause a lot of damage if it was revealed. While nothing would change in actuality, for the turtle this knowledge pertained to...they would feel alienated and seen as different. If it was you Raph...you would lash out in anger because you would feel like you were discarded and abandoned by those around you. If it was Mikey, he would still see things as normal. However, it would be difficult for him to tell if we were honestly teasing him as a brother or if we were generally being mean to him because he wasn't one of us. And if was Donnie..."
Leo didn't continue, he didn't need to. All three turtles knew of the four of them, Donnie was often set apart from the rest of them. He was a strong fighter on his own, but weaker in comparison to the rest of his family. He was more intelligent than the rest of them which at times caused them to tune him out or have difficulty in understanding what he was saying. More than once he had chosen to reclusively shut himself in his lab much of the time. Often they took that to mean so they wouldn't bother him, but thinking on it...Leo began to wonder if that was really the reason his second brother isolated himself as much as he did.
"But which one of us isn't related?" Mikey asked not wanting to let the question drop.
"Maybe it's you," Raph groused as he angrily turned to the smaller turtle. "It'd make the most sense because you are an idiot."
"Well," Mikey fumed angrily at Raph's comment. He was aware he wasn't the smartest or the most focused member of the team, but to say he wasn't related because he was stupid was below the belt even for someone like Raph. "What if you are the one who has the stranger DMV!? Donnie and Leo have got to be my real brothers because they aren't complete assholes like you are!"
"Stop it, both of you!" Leo shouted "This is exactly how Farrell wants it…he told us that one of us wasn't related so we'd doubt and fight each other. By giving into it we are only distracting ourselves from what we really should be doing which is getting to Donnie and getting out of here. Besides it changes nothing, the four of us are still brothers….we're still a team."
"Maybe you're right," Raph sighed. The red-masked turtle would have said more but all three Turtles went silent at the sound of their brother's cries of distress.
