Apologies for the really slow update, my plot bunne went into hibernation and it's only just groggily waking back up.
Hope you enjoy anyway!
7
They arrived too late.
The machines were already corralling the Mutant into a vehicle when they settled into a dark alcove, a safe distance away from the chaos. There were four men at the back of the armoured van, heaving the door closed on the shrieking ballistic bird-creature, and the machines (however many of them that were left, anyway) were hovering close by, ready to zap anything or anyone that interfered with the transportation of the goods.
Donatello recognised Abigail Finn standing next to the drivers' seat, talking into a phone looking smug and victorious.
She looked just as tough and ridiculous as the day he'd seen her bug Casey and April about finding the Green Man near their property (stupid Mikey on his stupid walk in the stupid woods), but instead of her deluded cheery optimism concerning her greedy dream of televised fame and recognition, there was a… an edge to her, a new dark edge that made her seem more vindictive and menacing and downright dangerous.
Where was she getting the funds to do this, anyway? She should've been ruined since the last fiasco.
He said as much, making Leonardo frown. They maintained their silence as the Mutant was packed away, the remaining robots zoomed into a compartment in the side of the van and the humans jogged off to their own modes of transport.
Don watched his brother shed the suit and gun and anything unnecessary for a rooftop run. "Stay on the slider, keep looking for Mikey. I'll follow them, see where they're at. At least then we can work on plan B."
"Or…" the purple-banded ninja opened the dashboard, flicked at a compartment, clicked a small button on a magnetic caltrop and flung it at the van. It connected near the number-plate, and latched on. "I could just trace it with a tracking device."
Leo blinked, stunned, and gave a rueful laugh. "You and your bag of tricks."
"It's a weak one, so we need to keep a close distance for it to be of any use. You should stay. Look for Mikey. I'll see where Ms Finn's going."
Leo nodded as they backtracked into the underground that was their home turf, and Don dropped Leo at a comfortable corner before they parted ways, both grimly determined.
… … … … …
It was very early morning considering the light in the distance that was probably the vague direction of east as the three of them burst out of the manhole and huddled in the alley between a wall of old newspapers wrapped in twine and a large industrial garbage bin. Chucky closed the manhole behind them before leaping to the two girls' side, both of them shaking. He put his hand to his shell, groping madly, but there was no reassuring weight of a nunchuck.
Oh, yeah, he thought with a hollowing miserable feeling, I left it for that monster's chew-toy.
They just sat there, stunned and scared and gasping from the running. Chucky reckoned that he had enough adrenaline pumping through him to keep him from sleeping for like, two weeks. Seriously, he'd escaped from a monster that was bigger than him. How did that kind of thing happen anyway?
Then Lucinda shuddered, and whimpered, "That looked a lot like Alley."
Chucky swallowed.
"It… by all things good, I hope it wasn't," Azmina rumbled, sounding desperate. "Because if it was…"
"She'll be dead real soon." The snake muttered bluntly, before closing her eyes. A tear escaped her tightly scrunched lids.
Chucky chewed the inside of his mouth as they huddled, nervously eyeing the lightening sky. Somewhere in his gut a voice was telling him that sunlight was not his friend, light of all kinds would lead him to be sought and caught and slaughtered, and that probably included the two utterly miserable people that he was shielding against said light with his large shell.
And his stomach, being the sensitive organ in terms of awkward situations, growled loudly.
Lucinda blinked at him. So did Azmina. They stared for what felt like an aeon and Chucky wished he could drop his head into his shell and stay there till they forgot he existed, it was that embarrassing.
Then Azmina gave a helpless snort of laughter.
Chucky gave a shy smile too as Lucinda chuckled and that led the dog to snort again, and then that seemed to break the dam and they were all laughing probably a little louder than was safe, but who cared, they'd just escaped a monster that could've been their sister or something. Humans compared to this? Pah!
"Uh…" He finally, sheepishly, brought forth the box of pizza and the bag full of rolls, opening them up on the asphalt. The toppings were flung all over the inside of the box and the rolls themselves were kind of squashed. There was no way any of it was still piping hot, but it was better than cold, and Azmina looked reservedly impressed. "So, pizza. Didn't drop it."
"Ooh, I've heard of pizza." Lucinda whispered, uncoiling from Azmina's midriff and poking her snout at the circular food. "It's meant to be really good."
"It is." He hastily ripped open the paper bag full of rolls for her, and added, "Chunky rolls for you, too. No onions for you, Azmina."
She waggled her eyebrows. "You knew about the onions?"
Chucky nodded fervently. "Lucinda said so."
She laughed again, a rumble that shook her whole body. "You may be of use yet. Now, let's eat. We'll head back to the park once we've had our meal, and from there we'll think of something. We always do."
Lucinda's tongue flickered frantically over one of the rolls, tasting its scent and noticeably drooling as a result. "Chucky's coming, right?"
"Like I have a choice," she grumbled with good nature, making Chucky beam, "We need all the strength we have, and that includes numbers. You can have the honour of first bite, Chucky; you earned it."
Grinning, he swiped a slice of heaven. "It was worth it."
… … … … …
Master Splinter found where he assumed the snake had gone, and where he hoped Michelangelo had been as well.
The sight he found was something too painfully familiar.
Their first home, crumbled under mouser attacks. Their second destroyed by the Foot. Now this, a strange meagre resting place, perhaps for some homeless human, torn apart by the creature whose screams he'd heard mere minutes before. Someone's home had been utterly wrecked, and for that he was sympathetic. But then he took a deep breath and cast the thought aside, every fibre of himself focusing on Michelangelo.
This didn't bode well.
His scent was here; it was too strong for just one measly snake… Michelangelo had been here. And something else. With fur, similar to Klunk, but… bigger. A fair size bigger. Could it have been the Mutant, covering all other similar mammalian scents? Splinter picked through the debris, and found a leather pad.
Michelangelo's.
He remembered making them. He'd collected hollowed out plastic elbow and knee protectors human children often wore when skating or boarding to protect them from scrapes. He'd wanted to do the same for his sons, they who were constantly in danger of infections, constantly falling in the tunnels and grit and the terrible mess that was their home. How long had he collected the leather ripped from old couches and jackets and seats of used cars? Binding them to the plastic had been an arduous task, and when he'd been able to give them all each their own pair of pads to protect their ever vulnerable joints…
He clutched the pad against his chest, tightly. So very, very tightly.
He hoped his boy wasn't hurt too badly, wherever he was.
… … … … …
Donatello tracked her to a factory off the side of a motorway. It had been really hard tracking her, in all honesty, since he'd eventually had to resort to getting off the sewer slider and remotely control the Battle-shell to get him from behind a lonely supermarket's dumpster (the shell-cycle would have been far better but someone decided to mess with it while they had holes the size of Belgium in their fronts) before finally tailing her to said factory.
A place that'd made an ice-cream that'd gone off the shelves years before. The logo/mascot was still there, faded and peeling.
He parked out of sight, unable to do much since it was still day. Though he did have a lot of options available to him, like ramming the van into the factory, guns blazing, performing a spectacular movie-worthy 'drive by' with antidote instead of lead bullets. But that wasn't what he'd do. For one? Those movie-scenes were ridiculous; how could those gangs be so piss-poor at aiming? For two? Waste of resources. For three, the van stood out like a sore thumb. At night it blended right in; trucks full of goods moved in the dark all the time.
Daylight was not their friend.
Donatello scowled at the sunlight outside, and went for the old trench-coat in the back. He wrapped an old woollen mat over his face to look like a beard, wore sunglasses, covered his head with a faded Bob Marley hat, and proceeded to cover his hands with gloves. He nearly forgot the trousers, his mind deep in thought.
He took a battered shopping trolley from the trunk, pre-stuffed with disguised goodies, before meandering round the factory. He checked window positions. Security measures on the roof and walls. The number of goons. The probable number of fire-arms, and the definite need for a secure wall between them and the bullets and the Mutant.
Hm. Guns blazing with antidote and rockets, a scene full of chaos and explosions worthy of a B-rate action movie (or something with Stalone in it) might be in fact what they needed.
… … … … …
Leonardo found Master Splinter going through the debris and they grimly compared notes.
Things they knew for sure: there was a snake involved. There was someone out there with limited resources with that snake. There was an Outbreak Mutant. The Outbreak Mutant had gone through here, where the person with the snake had been holed up, with Michelangelo's pad left behind.
Possible scenarios: Person with snake had kidnapped Mikey, who escaped, leaving his pad behind in the confusion caused when the Mutant attacked. Person with snake had turned into Outbreak Mutant, and Mikey had escaped. Person with snake had been attacked by Outbreak Mutant, and Michelangelo had saved him and in the confusion left the pad, though that was doubtful.
The most doubtful of their scenarios was that this hole had nothing to do with Michelangelo; it was some homeless person's abode that the snake had wandered into, and he'd picked up their missing turtle's pad from somewhere else, someplace where the turtle actually was.
Splinter growled, clawing at his eyes in frustration as well as to get the muck he'd slathered himself with out of his line of sight. "We must keep searching. It is a lead we have been hoping for." Taking a deep breath he asked, "Where is Donatello?"
"He's going after the Mutant. Reconnaissance, nothing more. If he doesn't contact us in another fifteen minutes I'll call his shell-cell."
"Dare I ask what has happened to the Mutant?" Splinter grumbled, gesturing for his son to follow as they began searching through the brick and mortar strewn over the sewer grounds, still searching for clues.
"Captured, possibly for research, most-likely to be showed around for entertainment. I hear that was the whole point when Abigail Finn went looking for the green man last time."
Splinter remembered that episode. He sighed and clawed at his eyes again. "Yes, I remember. Foolish greed has sharpened with vindication. An enemy with a grudge can be worse than one with skill. And an enemy who plans to shine light and infamy upon the tunnels of our home… we must stop her, if only to protect ourselves."
"Hai, sensei."
They tried not to dwell on the fact that this would surely impede on their search for Michelangelo, but they just searched, found nothing of real worth, and called Don to see if he had found anything.
It was better than going home empty-handed.
Yeah, I know, nothing much happened. Like i said, Plot bunny sleepy-sleep. Ugh.
There are so many unfinished stories in my profile it's sad. I'm determined to finish them, i am, really. It's just... which ones do i do first? Not to mention I left them alone for so long they make me wince when I read them. Seriously.
Ugh.
Anyway, please leave reviews? Looking forward to them all.
Sincerely,
S.S.
