The Last Will of a Mutant Turtle

A TMNT fanfiction

by Crystalbluefox

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Chapter 4

A Genetic second Chance

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Slowly getting over his fever and the illness there was coursed by stress, too little sleep and way too little food, one day Donatello chose to tell his two brothers about it all. Why he had done what he had done, what he had done. His ideas, his out of earth idea that he was sure about would cause the two others a heart attack or an explosion with furry, but they said nothing, stated nothing, argued about nothing, just nodded, added in some very few questions for him to explain something deeper or more precise, but else was quiet, their faces expressionless.

Donatello then told them about what he had experienced in his dream.

He had decided that he wanted to share everything with them… like they used to in the old times.

As he finished he found himself quite out of breathe. He took a mouthful of the water standing before him at the coffee table, as he awaited their final judge, for them to say something, anything. But they were still, way too silent for Donatello's liking as they took it all in. it was a big mouthful, yes, but he had felt that if he should say something, it should be today and it should be everything.

The two brothers looked at one another, exchanging looks before their eyes fell on their nervous brother, who tapped his fingers uneasily against the glass.

Leonardo nodded as it all finally fell into place. "Can…" he started uneasy, glancing sidelong to Mike who looked just as uneasy, but nodded reassuringly back "can we see him?" Donatello swallowed, nodded and showed them into his lab, there looked close to something there had been hit by an atomic bomb under the World War III.

He felt uneasy bringing them into his sanctuary, his hiding place, into the chaotic mess of his life that only he alone could find a thing in or a meaning with.

"All right," he said, taking a deep breath as he walked up to the wall; the posters, grammars, tests and other mathematic conclusions littered the brick wall and functioned as a thin wall to hide whatever was behind it.

He heard his brothers gasp, swallow their breath, like it was only now that they realised how twisted Donatello's mind had been… or still was. He didn't look at them, he didn't dare to see those look in their eyes. Instead, he lifted his head high with proud and respect as he looked at the one behind the thick cylinder glass.

His brother.

Their brother.

Raphael.

He looked like he was sleeping, dreaming a good dream with that content smile on his face. He looked just like as he did at the day after the battle, the day when he was cleaned, washed, all wounds closed with skinglue and minor stings. He looked like he did the day before he was buried.

He looked peaceful. Strong and proud like a warrior.

Just like they all remembered their dear brother as to be.

Leonardo walked up to the cylinder that held one of his beloved brothers inside of it and placed a hand upon the cool glass.

"My brother." He said, with deep honour and love in his voice. "My dearest beloved brother."

"Raph…" Mike choked out, barely keeping his tears at bay, like Leo, but kept his head high with a smile on his face, there told their brother in the cylinder; "I miss you, you fool, but I'm proud of you, bro. We all love you."

Donatello could only nod to the silent words.

It was the first time that he could look at his brother's body without breaking down. Raph would be proud of him.

"And the other?" Leo asked, taking a last look longer at their sleeping brother before facing one of them still alive "The kid?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." Donatello said as he snapped out of his own deep thoughts. He couldn't help but smile, no matter how wicked it must have looked like. He felt proud, even happy. "He's right over here." He brought them to another part of his room, a part that they newer had known of ever had existed, maybe because Donatello had been digging it out himself, enlarging an else very small room. It reminded them of a laboratory just like Bishop's, back then when he studied in Aliens forms and experimented with their bodies.

There where four cylinders just like the one Raph were in, but yet again there was something different about them.

Donatello stepped up to one of them –the table opposite the containers where littered with stacked papers, notes and other things his brothers didn't understand. Miscalculations and experiments there once had gone horrible wrong. Experiments that almost had cost himself his own life once – he had hid longer in his own lab for his brothers not to see him and his deadly wounds – even once one of his experiments had threatened to blow up the whole place.

He shivered by the memories.

"Here he is." Donatello said, he cleared his voice to get rid of the raspy feeling in his throat. He turned on the lights above the cylinders, the room turned silent immediately.

Neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo could believe their own eyes at what met them.

"Wow," Mike was the first to break the silence with his outburst, as he stepped up to the cylinder, the glass a tan warmer than the one containing Raphael. The liquid inside was pink, bobbles circulated inside of it, as to filtering the liquid with the gas Donatello especially had created to it. The body inside of the cylinder looked like it was sleeping, a nerve pulled, making one of the three fingers twitch, enlightening that the body most certainly was alive.

Leonardo couldn't help but look amazed at the one inside of the cylinder, yet feeling all spooked out at the same time. He felt nostalgic looking at him. To think that Donatello had been working with something like this…

"He looks… just like him."

It was a kid. A turtle boy. A true copy of a very young Raphael; The skin, the build of his body, the size.

"How… old is he?" Leonardo asked, feeling conflicted by his own feelings about all of this. Science had always scared him, and somehow Donatello was scarring him as well…it was better when his younger brother just kept to the electronic parts. He glanced at the said brother, who was standing and checking up the panel right next to the glass window of the cylinder. He scribbled something down before answering – he had that determined look, a look that he had missed so much to see, even though it was freaking him out a little.

It was better than the blank expressionless face that they had been used to see for the last couple or so years.

"He's two years and almost four months old," he told them, checking something up again, pressing a button here, scribbling something down, adjusting something there. Scribbling down something more, before finally laying the pad aside and looking up at his two brothers.

He was close to shocked at their expressions. The two of them almost looked young again; shock, fear, respect, amusement, surprise, amazed… but no anger, no hatreds, no disgust. He had brazed himself for the ladder, but there was none of that shining in their eyes, their faces. Maybe there was a bit awareness in their body language, but that was about it. And he told them that. "You don't feel grossed out?"

"I feel a bit freaked out, but that's about it," Leonardo answered, eyeing his brother warily. Mike almost jumped with glee and excitement behind him.

"This is so cool! Can we play with him? Huh? Huh? Can we?" Let it down to their youngest brother to lighten up the mood.

"No, Mikey, you can not." Donatello said sharply, Michelangelo pouted, pressing his chin against the glass in utter protest.

"So," Leo began, interrupting Mike's childish behaviour, rubbing the back of his neck "What do you have in mind doing with him? I mean, if he's aging, wouldn't it be futile with your plans?"

"I've slowed the aging process close to zero. The moment the birthtub will be activated and opened, the moment he will start aging again, at normal speed."

"Like in turtle-speed—! Haha!" Donatello just blinked at his brother's clearly joke, though his explanation was correct, literally.

"You honestly not against what I'm doing?" he asked dumfounded, still not comprehending how well his two brothers were taking it. Leo thought hard, twisting and turning his answer in his head before he spoke.

"Both yes and no. It's a bit…weird, maybe even disturbing knowing that you have been experimenting with something like this for such a long time and without us knowing any of it…"

"But it's freaking cool!" Mike exclaimed, looking at him with his childish joyous smile and shining bright eyes – it had been so long since he had seen such an expression on his brother's face… he really had been close to ruin the rest of their family, Donatello thought grudgingly. "Getting a second chance in life like from start zero, or two? You're a freaking genius, Doctor Albert Einstein alias Doctor Frankenstein~!"

"Mike's right… for the first time ever."

"Hey!"

"Really? I mean, really? You don't-"

Leo placed a hand on his brother's shell, clapping it.

"If sensei and Raph is in on it, as you told us," he looked back over his shoulder to be met by their youngest brother's beaming smile – he hadn't seen one of those ever since…then. He looked back at his other brother, unaware of how much Mike's smile had influenced his own "so are we!"

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"So~, how does it work?" Mike was sitting backwards on a chair, tilting it slowly as he watched his brother studying something he had retracted from his blood…or something like that. Donatello sighed heavily, turning a gear on the microscope to get a sharper look at it, while fumbling around for a long thing syringe – it was great to have their brother back like that.

"Mikey, it would be too complicated telling that to you," he began, then stopped, thought and tried another explanation there were less complicated. "Okay, you know the story about the bee and flower, right?"

"Oh, come on, Donnie! I'm not five anymore!" the turtle whined, clearly unsatisfied by his way of speaking, Donatello couldn't help to pull a smile.

"Well, somewhat you are still five."

Mike threw his hands up in the air. "Yeah okay, I'm seventy-five. That's still a seventy years difference!"

'And yet we all still look like some at the age of thirty or so." Needless to say that Donatello still was amazed at the part of a turtle's normal age could expand till the age of almost two hundred – twice the age of a normal human being. No wonder that they still felt a bit childish sometime… or that was maybe just because they were who they were.

He put a finger up to his lips, making the impression of that he was thinking deeply "Well, I dunno,"

"Donnie-!"

He chuckled, realising how much he had missed doing just that… and how much he had missed his family, like this. He should have opened up a long time ago… then maybe he even would have had some more time with Raph and sensei. He looked back down into the microscope.

"All in all I'm just checking out your DNA and your genetic cells," he threw a thumb behind him to point out all the merchandises Mike didn't even know half the name of, if even a quarter, "taking some blood samples, finding those cells there looks strongest and then I've starved them of nutrients so that they won't begin to copy their chromosomes, what they usually does right before the cells reproduce themselves."

"Uh… whatever you said… is that bad?"

Donatello sighed and looked up, removing the document glass aside while looking for…something else –apparently it wasn't the syringe he looked for in the first place. "Yes, it's bad, 'cause if they manage to copy their chromosomes, it can cause defect in the organism." At Mike's blank expression he added "The embryo would be deformed or most likely won't survive." Mike made a silent 'O' with his mouth as he understood…somewhat.

"And then?"

"It's marvellous that you even have understood just a little from what I've said until now."

"Well, you know me," Mike said, large smile littering his face as he tilted on his chair "I'm an expert in surprising people!"

"You can say that again," Donatello mumbled as he looked for a new document glass to work on, he found one and carefully placed it into the microscope "Anyway, your cell's seems healthy and strong,"

"Well, it is me that we're talking about!"

"Don't flatter yourself too much," Donatello grumbled, though a smile tucked the corner of his lips. "Beside that," he continued his lesson "I'll take an unfertilized egg cell from a normal female turtle,"

"Oh! Is she pretty?" Donatello gave him a bored, irritated look. Michelangelo rose his hands as in defence "okay okay, I'll be shutting up. Please, do continue, professor."

"She's a normal nice looking turtle.Maybe you want to date her?"

"Nah, she's too young too me." Mike flashed him another grin as he returned back to tilting on his chair. Donatello got a sudden lust to kick out towards one of the stool's legs, just to see him crashing down.

He found instead the utensils that he needed and made ready for his next task. Taking the glass pipette there looked alike a syringe, but its 'needle' much thinner than hair. He signed Mike to come over to take a look as he had it all ready "Just don't spit at it or breathe down at it" he told him. As his brother came over to take a look through the microscope, he inserted the tip of the pipette into the egg cell while he told his brother his every doing. "Now I'll extract this egg cell's genes, so the egg cell has no nucleus to feed the other cell –your cell-, that I will insert so they will be fused together. And voila!" He placed down the other pipette there now was empty for Mike's gene cells, "you got yourself a clone."

"Woow," Mike said amazed. "I didn't understand the half of it, but that bro, looked cool!" Donatello rolled his eyes.

"So now the fused cell will begin to develop as an embryo, and normally it would be implanted into a ewe, a surrogate mother to carry the egg until it is ready to lay it, but since our embryo is also a mutant, the egg won't develop like any other normal turtle egg, since its shield will be too weak. It needs something else to feed onto as well. So therefore I have developed an artificial amniotic fluid, like in a human's uterus, so the egg will evolve like a normal turtle-egg, but then crack in the middle of the process and evolve into its finishing form in the artificial amniotic fluid, just like a normal human embryo." He pointed towards the canister with the body of a very young Raphael in it. "After the embryo is ready to get "born", I change the artificial amniotic fluid into something there looks a bit like it, but lasts much longer. The bobbles feeds the fluid so it can feed the body, just like a normal human's uterus. As it is ready to get 'born', the change of the gas into oxygen will 'train' the body to breathe and get accustomed to air, before draining the container for any fluid at all." Donatello looked up at his silent brother. "You didn't understand a word of what I just told ya, did you?"

Mike flashed him a grin. "But it sounded cool!"

Before Donatello could say anything, Leonardo, who had silently been sitting in the corner of the lab watching his own embryo in its own canister, interfered. The two others had almost forgot the presence of their third and oldest brother "I sort of get what you're saying here, Don. But after all of this… how can we be sure that we'll become… us, in those bodies?"

Donatello stood up, swatting at Mike's hands as he reached out to touch something, his expression grave and unsure. "We won't." he said honestly "Normally just before an embryo will be born, somewhat a month or two before, I think, a soul will seek down to the empty body and take place in it. That's why some embryo is dead when they are born; there hasn't been a soul there has managed to seek down into it."

"So, it's not even for certain that we'll be us, in those bodies?" Donatello shook his head slowly. Leo exhaled calmly. "Then how can we be sure?"

"We can't, unless we'll manage, after we pass away, to stay alert around these bodies. It's called a pull. Whenever a soul feels a pull, it knows that there's a new body ready to be born there fits just for them. Also," he added, pointing to the stones there were placed above each canister, "these stones above will help us concentrate into each of these bodies… before any other souls feels it."

"And you know all of this…how?"

'Raph,' he wanted to say, but couldn't. Explaining it was impossible as well, because he wouldn't know how to put it into words what he had been shown, just few weeks ago. Somehow Leo caught his answer in his brown eyes, or maybe he just understood that he couldn't explain it to him, but he nodded and didn't push it.

"The stones I got from one of our underground excavations – you remember that exploration we made about ten years ago?"

"Oh yeah," Mike said, remembering it clearly "With monsters guarding the hidden city – just like back then when we helped Quary and the others down in that underground City? I don't really remember her real name anymore; Quary sounds so much cooler anyway."

"Uh, yeah… right. Anyway, in our latest exploration Raph found something down there, apparently something they used for rituals to bring back souls so they could be reborn in bodies of their own choice. Legend says that they haunted down people that they saw seemed fit to just that soul. They extracted the soul-host of the body so that the souls of their own people could enter. That way they could keep alive without having to do with kids. Children were unpredictable, they never could be sure as to were the child would turn to once they got old enough. All in all their history were nothing but a cruel bloodbath."

"Thank god that they ceased." Leonardo said.

"Thank god that we got rid of those monsters!" added Mike "They were surely giving me the chills!"

"So, what now?" Leo asked after a long break of silence.

"Now," Donatello said, as he placed the fused egg cell into the last canister – the bottom of it already filled with the artificial amniotic fluid. With a push on a button the glass door slid closed and locked "we pray, wait, hope," a push to another button and the canister was slowly, filled with more of the purple looking fluid. He turned towards his brothers after finishing up the last things and gave them a warm smile he hadn't felt for ages, a smile he never thought ever would touch his lips again "and enjoy the rest of our life with cracking skulls, crushing bones, crazy living and enjoying calm, funny, weird, out of earth moments…together…!"

"Yow-! The Mutant Ninja Turtles are gonna blow this city apart like they never have done before!" Michelangelo added, laughing, launching an arm in the air.

Donatello nodded. "No more experiments like these for me," he said, looking at each canister containing each a fused egg cell, the last of them containing a turtle-child's body instead "beside checking up on them and make sure that they'll live."

"They'll live," Leonardo assured, clapping his brother's shoulder "We'll live."

"The Mutant Ninja Turtles will never perish!" Mike hollered, high on joy and adrenaline, more than happy for the three of them to be a team again…and then some when in the future, in another life, they'll be four…again… maybe five.

Leonardo hugged his brother from the side. "It's good to have you back, brother."

Donatello's smiled widened as he hugged back "It's goodto be back, brother."

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To be continued

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