"Can you, um, can you say that again, doc?" Mikey asked, gripping his T-phone tightly to his ear.
"Unfortunately the brain MRI detected a brain tumor," the doctor repeated, glancing down at the strangely-shaped green phone in his patient's lap. He wasn't sure why his patient's husband couldn't be here with him, but he was at least listening in and the physician could hear the concern pouring out of the phone.
Woody stared down at the T-phone as well. When his physician had said he had some news, he'd asked the rest of his family to leave, called Mikey and put the doc on speakerphone.
"Cancer?" Mikey's voice croaked out.
"No, we don't believe its cancer, because it's not invading any of the nearby tissues. But benign doesn't mean it isn't causing problems. It's obviously rubbing against something that it shouldn't, which has led to the headaches and the seizures."
Woody shuddered but it was the only indication the physician got that he was even listening.
Mikey sat on the rooftop across from Woody's room and kept his eyes locked on Woody's pale face. He waited again to see if Woody wanted to ask a question first, but when he didn't, he spoke up again. "How do we get rid of it, doc?"
"The best option is surgery, especially considering the location and the size of the tumor. Depending on what we find will determine if we would recommend radiation after the surgery or not."
"I want you here, Mikey," Woody said, suddenly. And despite the distance and despite the ridiculous hospital gown Woody wore, Mikey could see Woody's chest begin to move up and down much quicker than it should. "I don't care that you're – I don't care. I want you here. Right now."
Mikey watched Woody's eyes lift from the T-phone in his lap to the exact spot where Michelangelo sat in the sunlight across the street. His breath caught at the desperate plea in Woody's eyes and he didn't hesitate to ask the doctor if they could have a few moments to talk in private.
"Of course," the physician said. "I'll send one of my nurses by later. We'll want to schedule your surgery for sometime in the next few days." He gave Woody a small smile, glanced at the cell phone again, and then left the room.
Woody's window slid open as soon as the doctor had pulled the door shut on his way out and Mikey had his arms wrapped around his shaking human a short moment later.
"I'm sorry, Mikey. I'm sorry," Woody said, shaking his head against Mikey's plastron as he felt Mike's arms tighten around him. "You told me weeks ago to go to the doctor and I refused."
Mikey shushed him. "Hate to say it, Woods, but they would've found the same thing and said the same thing if you'd come in weeks ago." He pulled Woody away from his plastron so he could look at him. "And, hey, he said not cancer, right?" Mikey continued, desperate to cheer Woody up. "Quick surgery. Bing, bang, boom. You're home recovering. With me."
"It's not fair that you cant be in here with me," Woody said, tightening his hands around his turtle. "How am I supposed to go through brain surgery without you?"
"Trust me, dude, if what happens whenever I go into Donnie's lab is any indication, you wouldn't want me in that operating room." He watched as a small smile appeared on Woody's face, despite Woody's attempt to stop it. "Especially near your brain. I'm pretty sure we all like ya the way you are."
"That's not what I mean and you know it," Woody said, although he let the smile stay.
"And the sooner you have surgery, the sooner you can come back home. To me. And then one day soon, we'll be all, hey, remember that time you had that pesky brain growth? Maybe we should go ahead and name it now, like we'll call it Franklin -,"
"Franklin?"
"Yeah, I've never liked that name. We'll pretend the surgery is actually a don't let the door hit on ya on the way out Franklin party." Mikey smiled as he watched Woody actually huff out a laugh. "It'll be no big deal."
Woody pulled Mikey back towards him and nodded into his shoulder.
And without Woody's scared eyes looking directly into his, Mikey let his own smile falter as he squeezed Woody. "Just – you just can't leave me, Woody, okay?"
If it wasn't for the sighting of the supposed new mutants, Donnie is pretty sure Leo would've halted their patrols with both Woody and Mikey down and out. But some of the Hamato ninja had also spotted them, although the human ninja were unable to keep up with the new mutants. And so his brothers were still out patrolling for them and tonight Donnie had decided to join the group. He couldn't do anything right now to help Woody, but he could at least do this. Or so he told himself as he ran beside Leo, Raphael and Akito across familiar rooftops.
They landed on a rooftop across from the hospital to check in on Mikey first. Mike had blankets and food, although between the reports the family shared with each other, no one had actually seen him eat much in the past few days. And Donnie was pretty sure Casey had tucked a handheld game set somewhere in Mikey's blankets as well. Donnie actually hoped he was playing it when Woody was asleep. A bored Michelangelo always spelled bad news.
"How's he doing?" Leo asked as soon as they reached their youngest brother.
"They took him for a couple more brain scans. Said it would be a couple hours. They're trying to get a good map of where it is before they do the surgery," Mikey said. "April is down there with him."
Measure twice, cut once, Donnie thought to himself but wisely kept the comment to himself. He eagerly checked in often on Michelangelo, but also being married to Woody's sister had him squarely in the middle of the grief-ridden shit storm that had fallen on their family. He was doing his best at home, but he had to admit, he owed all of their family members a museum-sized amount of gratitude for checking in with Sadie as often as they were checking in on Woody.
Mikey stood up and bounced a few times on the balls of his feet. It'd been two days since they had received Woody's diagnosis and he couldn't sit still any longer. Especially when Woody wasn't even in a room where he could see him.
"I'm going to go for a run with you guys," Mikey said, deciding as he said it. He pulled his phone and sent April a quick text, asking her to text him when Woody was back in his room so he'd know when to head back.
"Okay," Leo said, smiling at him. He nodded his head to the side of the building and the group took off behind him. He wasn't even going to split them up, deciding instead that it would be best if they were all together. Mikey was a great tracker, and he was happy to have him with them for that reason, but he was sure this would be a great distraction for their baby brother as well.
They began in the last neighborhood that the mutants had been spotted by the Hamato ninja and ran from there.
"Wait," Akito said at one point and the four turtles stopped and watched as he appeared to be sniffing the air.
"Dude, are you smelling them?" Mikey whispered over to him, even though whispering wasn't necessary for Akito's sense of smell to work. "Leo, do you know how cool your son is if he can smell the bad guys out for us?" he said in a continued whisper that had Donnie and even Raph smiling in response.
"This way," Akito said and pointed to the left. He watched his dad grin at him and hold his arm up, indicating Akito should lead the way. Akito smiled and took off, relishing in the almost silent sounds of his turtle family members following him.
"Wait," Leo said, and now it was his turn to halt the group. "There," he said, pointing a few blocks ahead of them where four or five creatures were currently standing on a rooftop edge. It was dark and they were a distance away, but the mutants were standing on back legs that were similar in appearance to the back legs of dogs and also appeared to be covered in dark fur.
"Let's go," Raph said, urgently, wanting to move before the creatures disappeared from sight.
"We still don't know what they're doing here," Leo said. "What if they're harmless and we scare them?"
"How would we scare them?" Raph asked, pulling his sais and twirling them in his fingers as he shot a cocky grin in Leo's direction.
Leo couldn't resist smiling back at that grin as he shook his head at him.
Suddenly the group of mutants split up, with two going one way and three heading in the opposite direction.
"Mike, you're with me," Leo said, taking off in one direction. "And talk first!" he called over his shoulder to Raphael in particular.
Raph shoved his sais back on his belt and grinned again in Leo's direction as he took off after the other group along with Donnie and Akito.
They lost the group they were supposed to be following, although Raph had to admit Akito's sense of smell was like a new secret tracking weapon. He and Donnie followed loyally behind the young fox and Raph could tell they were closing in on the new mutants when even his senses began to pick up the newcomers.
Raph reached down when his T-phone began vibrating on his belt and hoped it was Leo with good news. A cold feeling settled over him, however, as he noticed from the corner of his eye that Donnie and Akito were both pulling their T-phones as well. He swiped his phone open and immediately saw the fire alarm flashing at him. It was an app Sadie had created a couple years ago. If their phones were ever in a situation with an overwhelming amount of smoke or heat, they set off an alarm, similar to a smoke detector, to all the other phones to alert everyone that they had teammates in danger. The teammates caught in the fire didn't even have to do anything, it was an automatic response.
They knew it worked too, because Leo had set off the alarm shortly after it had been installed just trying to cook something in his and Raph's kitchen.
For a moment, Raph stared at the alarm that told him that both Leo's and Mikey's phones were caught in a fire and he briefly wondered if Leo was actually just near a kitchen before he took off in a sprint, with Akito and Donnie right behind him, towards the coordinates the phones in danger were transmitting to them.
With Akito's speed soon landing him in front of the turtles, he took the lead and Raph shut off the alarm on his phone so he could push the speed dial for Leo's phone. He cursed as the phone rang and rang until Leo's voicemail picked up. He quickly hung up and hit the speed dial again as they raced over rooftops.
Donnie watched him and didn't ask questions since it was pretty clear what Raph was doing. His nose picked up the smell of smoke before they saw it and he gasped when the fire finally came into view. He recognized the building as an abandoned hotel and stared in shock as there seemed to be a fire burning in every visible window. Akito had skidded to a halt on the building right before the hotel, stopping himself before he made the jump to the burning hotel roof, but Donnie had to reach out and grab Raph by the shell with both arms to stop him from jumping.
"Leggo!" Raph growled at him and frantically pushed Donnie's hands away from.
"Pops, please!" Akito said, rushing in front of his father before he could try to make the jump again. "What if it's just their phones in there?" Akito said in a rush, his eyes moving frantically to his Uncle Donnie as he kept his hands pressed against his father's plastron. He was taller than Raphael now, but not as strong, and if Raphael really wanted to move his fox son, he could do so easily. "We don't know that they're in there, right? Right?"
Raph's chest tightened and his eyes began to burn as he stared at the building engulfed in flames. The building that his senses told him currently held his mate and his little brother within its burning walls. He knew they were in there, because Raphael's ability to sense not only Leo, but all of his brothers, rivaled Leo's ability to do the same. Mikey could do it as well as long as Leo made a game out of it. But Donnie had never really tried to master it, relying instead on his technology to tell him where his brothers were.
Raph pushed his senses into the building again and sensed Mike there without emotion, which told Raph he was probably unconscious. But Leo. Raph pushed his senses again to find Leo. Leo was struggling in a way that made Raph's stomach twist painfully. No doubt Fearless was looking for a way out while also trying to save their baby brother.
"Leo," he whispered as he began to push Akito aside to make the jump to the burning building. But he stopped struggling and froze a second later when Leo's growl-filled voice filled his head.
DON'T.
YOU.
DARE.
Raph stared at the building. Because just like he could sense Leo in there, Leo clearly just sensed him out here, and was doing his best to warn Raphael away from entering the burning building.
Akito turned back to his father and stared at his frozen, shocked face. "What?" he asked. He tried to shake his father's shoulder and still got no response other than watching him close his eyes and duck his chin.
Raphael pushed his senses back into the building to search for Leo again. He growled a few moments later when he couldn't sense him or Mikey.
Donnie swiped open his T-phone again as sirens closed in on the building and firefighters suddenly appeared to battle the fire. He suddenly frowned. "They're gone," he said.
"Gone from the building?" Akito asked, his voice full of hope.
"No, just gone. Off the grid."
Akito glanced back at his father who didn't appear to be paying attention to what Uncle Donnie was saying.
"Like the phones have been too damaged in the fire to keep working?" Akito asked, although the thought of the fire being too much for the phones was too already too much for him to handle considering what it meant for his dad and his Uncle Mikey.
"That's impossible," Donnie said. "These T-phones are indestructible."
"Don?" Raph said, pulling himself back together as Donnie's words reached him.
"These T-phones are like the fucking black boxes found in airplanes that always survive a crash," Donnie said harshly as he frantically typed into his T-phone, forcing it to search for Leo's and Mikey's signals again.
Akito's eyes widened as the uncharacteristic curse flew out of his uncle's mouth as Raphael tried and failed one more time to sense Leo or Mike. Raph knew what Donnie was saying before Akito did. He felt a chill run through him as he realized Leo and Mike were gone. But he'd take on any other problem as long as Leo and Mike weren't in that fire anymore. Because gone didn't mean dead.
Besides, he knew he'd feel it if Leonardo was dead.
A/N: Well, it's happened again. I'm thrilled to share another piece of fanart with you guys. Once again, the link wont work, but please head to deviantart and check out Jegrde's page to see "Reader115 AU - Akito" which is an AMAZING visual of Akito based on a scene in this chapter. The fear drawn into his little fox face is incredible, Jegrde, really incredible. I hope you guys check it out and let Jegrde know what you think as well.
