A/N: I just wanted to say that for those who might still be reading, I am really sorry for the enormous delay in creating/posting this chapter. I was out of the country for several weeks and have been out of my routine for a long time. I will make every effort to update more regularly from this point, though the only promise I can make is that I will complete this story. Thanks so much for your undeserved patience, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. From now on we will be venturing between two dimensions, but I will make every attempt to be clear as things start coming together. Please let me know if you find this too hard to follow and I will accommodate.
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The scrawny rat scurried over wiring and around various rough protrusions in the sheet rock, toward a light source that he hoped was a crack in the building's wall. Such interruptions in the structure plagued even the finest of New York City's skyscrapers, and the underground levels of the lavish Saki headquarters were no exception.
To his delight, the intrepid rodent was able to squeeze through the crack into an interior that held the usual promise of sustenance. Ever cautious, the rat bobbed his head around, nose in the air, sniffing.
The room was immense, though it appeared cluttered by various pieces of electronic equipment that loomed in from the walls.
The hum of heavy machinery blended with the sound of hushed voices coming from a small group of people gathered against the east wall, their faces awash with a faint glow.
The object of their interest was a large box that lay upon a stainless steel table, illuminated by fluorescent bulbs that cast a soft light on its occupant.
The rat's first objective was to get as far away from the group as possible, having had his share of near-death experiences whenever he came within close proximity of humans. However, he remained riveted in place for a moment, fascinated by the creature within the eerily illuminated container. Though its body was barely more than silhouetted, and covered with various wires, he could make out the rough edge of a shell upon its back, and four muscular human-like limbs. This observation sparked a memory in his tiny rodent mind. He had seen turtle-creatures such as this one before, during his foraging expeditions in the sewers.
During his brief pause, the rat was suddenly startled as one of the people surrounding the enclosure threw a switch on the wall, causing an array of brilliant sparks to course through a transparent fluid that filled in the box. The intense current caused the turtle-creature's body to convulse violently, though it did not make a sound. It lasted for more than a minute, then once again the creature became still.
Having frozen on the spot, the horrified rodent regained his bearings and recoiled in revulsion. Everything was wrong here. He could detect pain, fear, and an evil so potent he felt urged to abandon his mission, and seek food elsewhere. He backed away and squeezed once again through the fissure in the wall. He could deal with the pangs in his stomach for a while longer; some places were best left alone.
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Karai stared at the unmoving turtle's body. His eyes were closed, his features inscrutable underneath the oxygen mask that supplied him while he was submerged in fluid. The only signs that he lived were the slow and steady rise and fall of his plastron and the blip of his heart rate from the monitor above his enclosure which had returned to normal after the shocks were discontinued. A triumph of Utrom technology that had been stolen and warped for Shredder's malicious purposes, the gel acted as both a conductor of electricity and a source of nutrients and healing components for its comatose occupant.
Karai whirled on the man standing next to her, recording vital signs on an electronic hand-held chart. Eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, she addressed him.
"Dr. Chaplin, explain to me one more time why this turtle has not joined us back in this world. Need I remind you of the confidence with which you stated that we could re-awaken him at any moment by inflicting a powerful enough stimulus on his body? Perhaps I missed something there, some vital detail that could prove the cause of your current lack of control of this situation."
Dr. Chaplin began fidgeting nervously under Karai's piercing glare. "Mis-mistress Karai," he stammered, "I simply don't know why this is happening. We've run enough current through him to kill ten ordinary men. If we overdo it and fry his mind, then everything will be—"
She cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand. "You heard Master Shredder yourself, remember? He stated that the most vital part of this experiment lay in our ability to retrieve his mind from the body of the pet turtle at any time. He gave us this morning as our deadline, and here we are. By now, either he mentally contains the necessary information for us to download, or the mission was a failure. Whatever the case, we need him to pull out. NOW."
Before Karai could continue, the booming voice of the Shredder rang out over the building's intercom system. "Karai, I must see you in my chambers immediately. Tell Dr. Chaplin to stop the shock treatments for the moment."
"Yes, Father," Karai responded before shooting a seething glare towards the young scientist. "This conversation is not over, Dr. Chaplin." She looked down at the sleeping form, with no change in her expression. "You are far from winning, Raphael. When you finally do awaken, and I can assure you that will happen, you will wish that we'd killed you in your sleep."
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Karai appeared before Oroku Saki in his chambers and gave him the characteristic slight incline of her head; nothing more, nothing less.
He let it pass, as she knew he would, and got right to the point. "We must stop all attempts to awaken Raphael for the time being."
Karai's typically unreadable brow morphed into lines of confusion. "But why? I thought you'd said that…"
"Yes, daughter, but I was finally able to make contact with my alternate in the spiritual plane. The alternate that dwells in the realm to which we've sent the turtle's mind. I had thought all would be lost if we did not retrieve the information by now, but it seems we have perhaps been hasty. According to the Oroku Saki of that world, Raphael has been restored to his owner, and he suspects the information about the stolen formula will be revealed in front of the turtle within the next twenty-four hours.
"Whether my alternate can supply the information to me through the spiritual plane, or we have to download it from Raphael's mind here upon his forced awakening, we will have it. I do not foresee a need for a third option, but if something goes wrong we can simply… remove the life-sustaining support, and find another way to activate the Darwin's curse and deliver it to the remaining turtles. As both I and my alternate have managed to get our hands on the formula in each of our worlds, we will soon have the capabilities for supreme rule in both dimensions. Whatever takes place, victory is at hand, and there is no opportunity for failure."
Karai gave another nod as she went to relay the latest instructions to Dr. Chaplin, and slipped from the room. Sighing, she wished she could share in her adoptive father's confidence, but his complete lack of acknowledgement of any possibility of failure left her with misgivings. Saki, in his arrogance, always refused to see that nothing was ever as simple as it seemed when the turtles were involved.
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The young professor awoke to find that he was the object of a little too much attention. Reaching groggily back to the last thing he'd seen before collapsing to the floor, he was barely able to prepare himself for the shock a second time. All at once he registered that he was sitting on the soft microfiber of his couch, that a newly warmed cup of coffee was being gently placed in his grasp, and that a pair of concerned blue eyes were staring at him from a masked half-reptilian and half-human face. The latter almost sent him over the edge again, but before he could react, the mutated turtle began speaking excitedly.
"Hey dude, you're back! Don't worry about fainting, we get that a lot. But, if you sit still long enough without doing it again, we can explain. My bros and I promise you that we aren't aliens, but we do come in peace."
The young man's eyes darted around the room to note that two more turtle-men were also gazing at him, but giving him a bit more distance than the one who'd spoken. The turtle wearing a purple mask was gently holding his male pet turtle, Sampson. Somehow, he couldn't find it within himself to be surprised that the small turtle was involved with these… whatever they were.
"I think I heard about you guys on the news," he managed weakly. It was the only thing he could think to say for the moment.
The blue-masked turtle stepped forward, taking control of the situation. "I'm sorry we startled you, but there isn't much time to dwell on that. My name is Leonardo, and these are my brothers, Donatello and Michelangelo." He nodded to each turtle respectively as he named them. "I know what I have to say next may be hard for you to swallow, but please hear me out.
"The turtle you've known as a pet for years is actually our fourth brother, Raphael. Once, for a very short period of time, you owned us all. One day when you were a boy, a day you may remember, you were carrying us home in a glass bowl when an accident caused you to drop us. You managed to save Raphael, but the rest of us were lost in the sewers. Not long after that, we came into contact with a mutagenic substance, which you later found and modified before turning it over to your father. Our exposure caused us to go through a series of changes in which we became more like humans, and it also…"
"It also permanently altered me." The young man jumped, splashing his coffee, at the sight of a large humanoid rat emerging from behind the sofa, wearing a kimono and carrying some type of walking stick.
"A giant mutant rat too? What the…"
"Ah, yes. Please let me introduce our Teacher and adoptive father, Master Splinter."
The man regained his composure enough to ask, "Teacher? Teacher of what?"
"Master Splinter has taught us in the art of ninjutsu. I… I hadn't wanted to throw quite so much on you at once." Leo looked slightly uncomfortable.
"Yeah," the professor replied wryly, "I think you eased me into it all very well. Three mutant ninja turtle brothers with a mutant rat dad, all in five minutes or less. Just another typical New York day, really."
This response seemed to delight Michelangelo, whose smile lit up the room. "Oh, a wiseguy, eh? Dude, you're alright!"
Raphael began wriggling impatiently in Donatello's grasp, diverting Don's attention to the little turtle. "Uh, Leo… I think we'd better keep moving on with the story."
"Right. So, anyway, Professor, in the interest of time I must continue. There's no need for you to fear us, or our martial arts expertise. We use our abilities only to fight the forces of evil, especially one man in particular who represents all the darkness that could ever be brought into this world. That man, whom you may know as Oroku Saki, a supposedly renowned benefactor among your kind, is currently in possession of the formula stolen from your father's workplace. The formula nicknamed 'Darwin's Curse.'"
Master Splinter, seeing doubt begin to settle into the young man's face, stepped in to continue. "My son, whatever deceit and lies you may have been fed about him, Oroku Saki will stop at nothing to control this entire planet. We have reason to believe he has the most malevolent of intentions for this formula, and could potentially use it to wipe out the human race."
The professor shook his head in disbelief. "But how…"
It was Donatello's turn to speak up. "You see, Saki cannot utilize the formula right now because he doesn't have access to the top-secret conditions under which it can be activated. Your father designed it to be dependent upon those conditions as a protective measure, which is great, but Saki will go to any means to extract that information so he can activate the substance himself. And I do mean any means. In fact, he had temporarily stolen Raphael from your apartment and implanted a recording device under his carapace, so that if and when your father revealed information about the Darwin's Curse to you, he'd have access. He figured he'd use the most stealthy methods his scientists could dream up, since your father guards the secret so closely."
Donatello stopped when he noticed the young man's eyes were narrowed in suspicion. "So, Donatello, is it? I can buy your existence and all, but beyond that I'm not so sure. Someone swiped my turtle, and put him back before I noticed? They placed a recording device on him to steal information about activating that stolen pesticide? They want to use it to, dare I say it, control the world? Surely you can see why that all seems a little far-fetched! I think it would really help me out if you could explain to me just how you and your mutant family came to 'know' all this."
Michelangelo quickly piped up, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Oh, that's easy. Raphael told us."
The professor darted a glance at his pet, his face the picture of skepticism, before resting his eyes back onto the orange-banded turtle next to him. "Raphael told you."
Donatello and his brothers all nodded, while the aged rat simply studied the young man's face. The purple-banded turtle took the lead once more. "I know this is all a bit overwhelming, even inconceivable, but I can promise you we are telling you the truth. You see, there is another world, an alternate dimension if you will, in which all four of us were mutated – including Raphael. Somehow, Raphael's mind was pulled from that dimension and put into the body of the turtle you've known for the last several years as your pet. He's the same turtle either way, it's just that in this world, he never mutated. Don't ask me how this happened, but Oroku Saki probably had something to do with that too."
The young man looked very doubtful. "I mean, it just seems ridiculous, if you'll pardon my saying. All he's ever done is crawl around and eat lettuce, pretty average stuff if you ask me."
At this, Raphael began wriggling violently again, desperate to prove himself. He was relieved when Donatello, who could barely keep hold of him, got the message. "Look, Professor. I'm going to put Raphael down on your lap. I think he can show you much better than we can tell you." Donatello gently lowered his charge, who had become still once more, onto the man's knee.
Michelangelo nodded insistently. "Seriously, bud, he's in there. Go on and ask him something. But make sure the answer's yes or no. We haven't, like, trained him to speak yet."
The young man studied Raphael, who was trying very hard to glare menacingly at his youngest brother. Feeling utterly foolish, he said, "Ok, here goes nothing. Sooo… Raphael, did I call you Sampson before?"
Raphael nodded his head distinctly, three times, while staring solemnly up at the human.
"Ooookay, that was sort-of weird. Well, then, was the other turtle in your aquarium also male?"
A slow shake of the head, also three times.
"Was she named Delilah?"
Another nod.
The young man looked up, his eyes wide, sparing a glance at each of the mutants in turn. His eyes rested upon Master Splinter's kindly features. "I..I, I don't know what to say! I mean, I've seen some crazy stuff before, but this is… this is… wow. I really am at a loss for words. I guess all I can say is… I believe you.
"By the way, I guess I've been rude in not introducing myself. I've never met anyone like you before, that's for sure. Doesn't excuse bad manners though – my name is Dr. Mark Bronson. You can call me Mark."
The shared relief in the room was almost tangible.
Master Splinter stepped forward, sharp eyes sparkling. "We are so pleased to hear that you accept what we have brought to you. However, now we must make haste. Raphael has told us that your father is coming tonight to discuss this Darwin formula with you. We must all work together, and we must destroy it and all evidence of its existence, my son."
His mind made up, Mark nodded resolutely. "Right, so when Dad comes, and after we revive him, we'll do exactly as you're suggesting. As much good as the stuff might do for our society, it's got too much terrible potential in the wrong hands. We'd already about made up our minds to get rid of it, as soon as we'd heard it was stolen. Now, Dad knows a lot more about it than I do, but I think there's someone else who can help as well. Do you mind if I call my new girlfriend? She's really savvy with the biomolecular side of things, a lot more so than I am. Plus she was an assistant to some guy who was big into developing methods for pest control at her last job. I'm sure she'd be happy to lend a hand.
Raphael was caught off-guard. He hadn't known about the professor having any dates, much less a girlfriend; she hadn't yet been to the apartment as far as he was aware. Still, now was as good a time as any for a first visit, he supposed. He joined with the rest of his family in nodding their approval. Knowing the Shredder, and the lengths to which he would go to achieve his ends, they might need all the help they could get.
No one noticed that the young man's hand was trembling slightly from the day's surprises, as he picked up the receiver and dialed the number for his new girlfriend. She picked up on the second ring.
"April? Hey, it's Mark. Listen, are you busy tonight?"
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