"He isn't answering his tPhone! Why isn't he answering his tPhone, Donnie?!" Raph's voice sounded panicked when Donnie patched him through the line.
"I don't know, Raph! You need to calm down!" Donnie snapped at him, buckling himself in the driver's seat and reaching over to flip several switches on the Shellraiser. "April, Mikey, and I are just getting strapped into the Shellraiser now, we'll be at his ping location in fifteen minutes. How close are you and Casey?"
"We're only a few minutes away now." Raph panted. "The signal is coming from close to that junkyard we were at earlier. We weren't that far away to begin with."
"Good." Donnie nodded, flipping the final switch, and the Shellraiser hummed to life. "See what the situation is, and help Leo if he needs it. Call us with an update if you can, we'll be there as soon as possible." He pushed the armored vehicle into gear, and with a roar, it was off down the tunnel.
"Leo's going to be okay, isn't he?" Mikey asked from his station in the back, his normally childish face serious with worry.
"Of course he is. He's Leo, isn't he?" April said, trying to sound convincing as she twisted around in the passenger seat next to Donnie to look back at the youngest turtle.
"There shouldn't be anything out on the streets that should cause Leo of all people trouble!" Donnie worried fretfully. He reached up and flipped another switch and the tunnel ceiling open up into a ramp, allowing them to roar up onto the streets above. "With Shredder's goons all taken care of, the Foot under Karai's control, and the Kraang gone, the city has been fairly quiet for months!"
"Maybe it's not trouble, like fighting trouble." April theorized as they raced down the street. She held on to the dashboard, and her ponytail flew about as they skidded around a tight corner. "Maybe its something as simple as a building ledge was crumbling more then he expected, and he took a tumble and injured himself?"
"Leo? Make a mistake like that? No way!" Mikey said adamantly. He threw up his hands. "And you know my bro! Even if he broke all four limbs, he'd probably drag himself all the way home by his chin rather then admit it." He bit his lip worriedly, then let his eyes wander to the map screen, staring at the blinking dot that represented the location of the signal.
"Mikey, don't worry, Leo's going to be fine! Raph and Casey are almost there, and those two are going to find him." April tried to reassure him. "And you know how Raph and Casey are, they like to hog all the fun! I bet they'll already have the problem taken care of by the time we get there, and we'll miss out on all the excitement."
"Yeah..." Mikey tried to sound cheerful, but failed. "Man, are we ever going to tease Leo about it later, though." He was quiet for a second, then he reached down and picked up his tPhone again. "I'm going to try calling Leo again. Just to be sure."
Donnie's hands were gripping the steering wheel tighter then usual as they roared down the streets.
Why wasn't Leo answering his tPhone?!
"Leo!" Casey called, walking down the hill and twisting about, looking for the eldest turtle. "Leo, are you here? It's us!"
"Come on, Casey." Raph glanced down at his own, blinking cell phone. "The tPhone's signal's coming from down there, close to th' sewer entrance."
"I don't see or hear anything, Raph." Casey flipped up his hockey mask, looking concerned. "If Leo's in trouble, shouldn't we be hearing a fight, or him calling out or something?"
Raph's mouth tightened. "I should'a never let him go out alone tonight. He was getting funny feelings about being watched earlier." He glanced at his phone again as they approached the pond. "We're getting close. Keep your eyes and ears peeled."
They both carefully approached the pond. By now, it was well into the night, and the darkness was deep and hard to peer through. There was no sound of fighting, or of Leo's voice, or anything. Just rustling cattails and dripping water.
Raph felt the ground underfoot change a bit, and he knelt down, examining it. A feeling of dread began to wash over him as he noticed the patterns in the dirt and grass. He let his hand gently wander across the flattened foliage, trying to feel for clues without disturbing anything. "There was a fight here. With something big, though I can't tell what."
Then his breathing hitched, his heart felt like it froze in his chest, and he had to fight back the welling panic starting to build.
He carefully reached down and gently picked up the blue strip of cloth off the ground with trembling fingers.
Casey was closer the pond, and his call snapped Raph to full attention immediately. "Raph, get over here! Now!"
The panic in Raph now welled up almost to the breaking point as he scrambled up to his feet and sprinted over as fast as he could move his feet. He screeched next to a halt next to Casey, and then he saw what Casey saw, and it felt like somebody punched him right in the gut.
There, laying empty and broken in the muddy ground next to the pond, were torn leather straps, Leo's weapons, and all his gear. Just laying there as if it had fallen off of him in place. One sword was still sheathed in the scabbard attached to the leather straps, and he could see the other sticking out of the weeds nearby. He could see the blinking tPhone still attached to the leather belt. There was no sign of Leo himself anywhere.
"What?" Raph's breath came in unevenly as he tried to make sense of this. He could understand Leo losing his swords. That was a terrifying event in and of itself. But for Leo to lose not only his weapons, but everything? His scabbards, gear belt, and even his mask? What had happened here?!
"I don't see any blood." Casey was kneeling down by the gear, examining the mud closely. He was obviously trying to remain optimistic. "That's good, isn't it?"
And then they both noticed some movement in the mud beneath the belt, like something small was trapped in the soft, wet muck.
"What the heck?" Casey reached over and cautiously scraped some of the mud from the moving lump with his hockey glove.
A tiny turtle head popped out from the soft wet clay from which it had been so rudely pressed down into.
"Oh... FUCK!" Both Casey and Raph breathed at the same time.
"Of all the.. Why are they doing construction on this road now?!" Donnie raged, swerving around a traffic cone. "At this rate, it'll be faster to ditch the Shellraiser and go by rooftop."
April put a hand on his arm. "Leo is going to be fine, Donnie."
He gave her a strained smile, and then the tPhone rang. He noticed the ID, and quickly pushed a button on the dashboard. "Casey? What's going on? Have you found Leo?"
"Donnie!" Casey's voice came through the vehicle speaker, and was squeaky with panic. "Dude, you need to get over here NOW, man! It's bad! It's really bad!"
Donnie felt icy fear constrict his chest. A thousand scenarios of a severely injured or maimed Leo crossed his mind all at once. Oh, let him still be alive. Please, let his big brother still be alive! "Casey! I need you to calm down and talk to me! What's the situation?! Is Leo badly hurt?!"
"Leo's a turtle!" Casey's sounded like he was on the verge of hysterics.
Dead silence.
Donnie felt his eyelid twitching. He allowed himself to entertain a short fantasy involving his bo staff and Casey's remaining teeth, but then he forced himself to take several deep breaths. Patience. He needed patience with this special boy. "Casey..." he asked in an almost a little too kindly voice, tension running deep underneath. "Just how many times did Raphael hit you in the head tonight?"
"No, I mean he's a normal turtle now!" Casey was obviously annoyed by Donnie's lack of understanding.
"Wait, Casey..." April sounded horrified. "Are you saying...?"
"I'm saying that I could now use Leo as a hockey puck at the moment!" Casey snapped in frustration. "I'm holding him right now in one hand! One hand!"
"Leo's been demutated..." Donnie whispered in horror.
"Donnie! Road! Road!" April squeaked in terror, hands flying over to correct the steering wheel.
There was honking and cursing and the Shellraiser swerved several times before righting itself.
Donnie gasped and snapped his focus back into place, concentrating on the road and conversation. He could panic later, right now his brother needed him with a crystal clear mind. "Casey! Are you positive about this?"
"Yeah, we found him laying among his gear in the mud, including his belt and swords and shit. Raph even found his mask. He says it looks like there was a big fight. We don't know with what, though. We don't see anybody or anything around."
"Raph! Where is Raph right now?" Donnie demanded.
"He's looking around, trying to figure out what exactly happened here."
"Don't let him out of your sight!" Donnie ordered fiercely. "If we don't know what got... got Leo... We don't want it getting Raph too." Another construction sign flashed before them, and Donnie swore under his breath, swerving to take a side street instead. "We're caught in a construction zone, so we're being delayed. We'll be there as soon as we can."
"Hurry, guys." Casey sounded worried and scared.
"Just hang on and keep hidden." Donnie instructed them. Then, after a moment, he added in a deadly serious tone. "Oh, and Casey? If you EVER talk about using Leo, or any of my brothers, as a hockey puck again, even in jest, I will personally show you several creative and painful ways actual hockey pucks can be used. Now keep an eye on my brothers until we get there!"
He pushed the call button before Casey could respond, and the call ended. The van was deathly silent for a moment.
"Donnie?" Mikey finally spoke up in a small voice. "You can fix Leo, right? Bring him back to normal?"
Donnie almost wanted to let out a strangled laugh. Was it hysteria setting in? Normal? What on earth was normal about a mutant turtle? If anything, demutating was what made Leo more normal. But he couldn't say anything like that to Mikey. No, he had to be the comforting brother at the moment. And maybe, just maybe, if he made it convincing enough, he could comfort himself as well.
"I have every confidence that I should be able to, Mikey, especially if we find out what happened to him in the first place. If it was a mutagen siphoning attack, we'll have to somehow retrieve Leo's missing mutagen and reintroduce it into his body. If it's a mutagen repression situation, it'll be a matter of reverse engineering the process. Of course, there is a possibility that it was a secondary mutation, which counteracted and cancelled out Leo's original mutation. In such a scenario, I guess I would have to engineer a specific retromutagen to only effect the newer... Oh, for the love of Tesla's coils!" Donnie swore as they reached another construction zone and had to make another detour.
"Come on Leo." Casey was sitting cross legged in the grass and had the tiny, mud-encrusted turtle cradled gently in his gloved hands, peering closely at the retracted body inside the shell. "You can come out! It's me, your pal Casey Jones! You're safe now!"
Raph landed lightly next to Casey, and shook his head. "I can't seem to find any sign of an enemy nearby anymore. The tracks make no sense either! I think I recognize a few of Leo's, but I have no idea how many things he was fighting, or what they even were. The only thing I can tell is that they're not normal prints!" He gritted his teeth, frustrated. Somebody or something had attacked his brother, and he didn't know how to help him. Every instinct in him just wanted to find the responsible party and cave their faces in with his fist, but there was nothing to hit! He felt so helpless, and he hated that! He sighed and turned to Casey. "How's Leo doing?"
Casey shook his head. "Still hiding in his shell. I don't know man, it's like he doesn't even recognize us. I hope the others gets here soon, maybe April can get through to him."
Raph adjusted Leo's sword scabbards and gear thrown over his shoulder, and numbly nodded. "And Donnie will figure everything out, I know. I just feel so... useless right now." He still hadn't come to terms that the small turtle that Casey was holding was his brother, Leonardo. The same brother he had grown up with, fought with, trained with, argued with over anything and everything. That little, frightened thing that probably weighed less then two pounds, that couldn't be his fearless leader and sensei. It just didn't seem possible. He shuffled his feet, then growled and turned away. "I'm going to go look down by the pond again. See if there aren't some clues I missed."
"Yeah, man. I'll keep talking to Leo. I'm not sure, but maybe, somewhere deep down, he can understand me. Maybe I can make him feel a little better."
"Hey! Is somebody down there?!" A flashlight started bobbing down the hill towards them, and it looked like two humans were heading down from the junkyard towards them. "Hey, you! Kid! What are you doing out here!"
"Crap! Somebody's coming! Raph, you gotta hide!" Casey scrambled to his feet and turned towards Raph in alarm, but blinked when all he saw was the grass blowing gently in the night breeze. He sighed and shook his head, wondering why he was surprised every time this happened. The turtles were ninjas, after all.
He turned back and pasted a friendly, innocent smile on his face, inwardly screaming all the while when he saw one of the approaching humans was a cop. The other one looked more like some sort of official inspector or something.
"Good evening, officer!" he kept his tone casual and friendly. "It's a lovely night out for a stroll, wouldn't you agree?"
"What are you doing out here, kid?" the police officer looked at him suspiciously.
"I'm... uh... doing a school project." Casey fished quickly around for a believable alibi. His gaze fell over the pond momentarily. "Collecting leaves... and nature things..."
"Uh... huh." the officer didn't look convinced as he looked Casey over. "At two in the morning?"
"Um... well.. this is embarrassing, but I completely forgot about the project until tonight, and it's due first thing in the morning! Talk about pulling your all nighters, huh?" Casey laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head.
"Tomorrow's Sunday." the officer pointed out, arms crossed.
"It's... for Sunday school?" Casey gave his most convincing, gap-toothed smile.
They weren't buying it.
The cop narrowed his eyes. "Nice try kid. I'm afraid you're coming with me. We're going to have a chat with your folks and see if they're aware of your late night 'Sunday School projects'."
"Not to mention you'll definitely need to avoid this area for the time being." the inspector let the flashlight roam across the pond area. "We were just investigating a report of a toxic chemical being improperly disposed of in the area, and we're going to have to close off the area to the public until it's cleaned up." He turned the flashlight back onto Casey. "If you have collected any samples from this area for this hypothetical school project, I'm afraid I'm going to have to confiscate them. We're not entirely sure how far the contamination has spread."
Casey felt a welling of panic, and tried to casually keep the turtle he held out of sight. "Samples? Oh, um, no, I just got here. I didn't have time to collect anything yet."
"What are you hiding behind your back?" the cop asked suspiciously, taking a step forward.
"Nothing!" Casey protested, taking a step back.
There was a brief scuffle, which ended up with the cop holding Casey's arm in one hand, and the turtle in the other. The officer gave Casey a dark look. "And just what were you planning on doing with this turtle, young man?!"
"I wasn't going to hurt him, I swear! Never!" Casey protested fiercely, tugging his arm. "He's... he's my pet! I was just taking him out for a walk! Can't a kid take his pet out for a walk these days?! I thought this was America!"
The inspector took the turtle in gloved hands and looked it over. "This turtle is obviously from the pond area, judging from the mud and clay coating it. I'll take it back to the lab and do some blood tests for contamination."
"What?! No! Wait, you don't understand. That turtle is my friend! You can't take him!" Casey struggled in the cop's grip.
"Come on, kid. You're going to give me your folk's phone number, and we're going to have a long talk down at the station." the cop said sternly, pulling Casey along.
Raph watched them go from his hiding place, swearing inwardly. He quickly grabbed his tPhone.
"Mikey! Have you pulled up the navigation maps yet?" Donnie hissed in frustration, glaring at yet another detour barricade. "We need to figure out how to bypass all this COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL AND PROBABLY HIGHLY AGAINST CITY CODING ORDINANCES construction going on!"
"I'm trying, but it's still calculating, Dee!" Mikey hollered back from the navigation station. "It looks like the roads in this area are seriously messed up!"
"Of all the... Seriously, there must be either some serious bribes being toss around, or some sort of councilman's revenge against some rival in this neighborhood!" Donnie continued to rant. "This makes no sense!"
April exhaled, sticking her head out the window to look around. "Maybe you had the right idea, Donnie. Maybe taking to the rooftops would be faster."
The tPhone started ringing again, and Donnie quickly pressed the speaker button on the Shellraiser. "Raph! We're still trying to get there. What's going on?"
"Donnie, we have trouble!" Raph hissed in an urgent whisper.
"What now?! Are you under attack?!" Donnie was instantly alert.
"Some humans were here investigating that chemical spill you called in, and now some cop is dragging Casey away, and the other human is talking about taking Leo to a lab for testing!" Raph sounded close to panicking.
"Shit." Donnie very rarely swore, but this seemed like the right time to let Raph and Casey's influence slip through. He had told the officials over the phone that the spill was extremely dangerous and stressed that it should be taken care of immediately, but he had never imagined that they would actually do so. At the very least, he expected them to wait until daylight! Now any clues as to what had happened to Leo would either be trampled on or rendered inaccessible to him by all the humans that were crawling around there. Of all the times for the humans to actually start acting responsibly!
"What do I do, Donnie?!" Raph was clearly torn. "I know I can't be seen, but I can't just let them take Leo! Do I... do I attack the cop?"
"Raphael, do NOT attack the police officer! Do you understand me?! You are NOT to attack the police officer!" Donnie ordered emphatically, his finger firmly poking the speaker as if hoping that Raph would be able to feel it and realize just how strongly Donnie was discouraging this.
There was a moment of silence, and then Raph spoke up again, less in a whisper this time and now sounding more impressed. "Oh, wait. Never mind. Casey's attacking the cop."
"He's WHAT?!" Donnie's voice squeaked several octaves higher then normal.
April gave a groan and buried her face in her hands.
"Oh, yeah dude!" Mikey cheered from the back seat. "Rage against the machine!"
"Ha! I taught him that move! And now he's got Leo back and he's running for it! I'm going to see if I can't help him. Don't worry, I'll make sure I'm not seen." Raph quickly said, and then hung up on them.
Donnie yanked on the steering wheel, causing the Shellraiser to screech to the side and off the street to disappear down an alleyway. He slammed the gear to park as he turned it off, and threw open the door. "That's it! Everybody out! We're taking to the rooftops!"