Laura chases off Fish Face with nothing more than a wooden ruler and a lot of attitude, gaining Raph's respect. She later finds a document telling her what happened to Tim. Thinking that her brother died in an explosion, Laura loses herself to grief and injects Raph with a sedative for reasons unknown. Meanwhile, Donnie has troubles finding where Raph was taken. The turtles try to figure it out when Metalhead picks up a signal from Raph's T-Phone, which tracks back to a Foot Base.

Chapter 10: What's Lost and Found

Later that day, Laura was alone in the lab. Bessy had been called upon for his technical help elsewhere. Laura found the document that contained her brother's recruitment information. It gave her the date he started, his rank, his abilities (that section was relatively short), and other random crap that didn't really help her. She grew frustrated with her lack of results. It didn't tell her where he was now. It was just what they collected when he joined the Chris Bradford dojo.

Her mood didn't improve when the Fish Guy decided to show up. His metallic legs clanked on the floor as he walked over to the turtle.

Laura only partially paid attention to their conversation. It consisted mostly of smack talk and making fun of each other. Then they started talking about cooking, or maybe it was how they were going to cook each other? She heard something about soup and sushi . . .

Then the giant dog guy showed up, who apparently was Chris Bradford.

"How many visitors are you going to get, Red?" Laura mumbled to herself, watching the newcomer. She didn't know his name, so she had taken to calling him Spot.

Red made a particularly nasty comment to Xever, who he called Fish Face, which involved Xever's mother and a moldy pickle.

Spot howled in laughter as Xever drew his knife. It wasn't an impressive knife either, just any pocket knife you could pick up in a corner store or something.

"You think you are in a position to be making jokes, eh?" Fish Face twirled his knife around his hand, "Well, we'll see who is laughing."

Raph hardened his face as he watched the knife descend. Laura jumped into action, her ruler zipping through the air. Raph flinched when he heard the familiar slap of wood on flesh and Xever knife clattered to the floor.

"You dare to strike me?" Xever said menacingly, rubbing his hand where Laura Whitten's ruler made contact.

"You dare interfere with my experiments?" Laura replied, mimicking his accent. "I mean really, how rude is that? I'm just trying to do my job here, and all of you yahoo's keep trying to maim my only specimen."

"Know your place girl," Xever stepped forward menacingly, his robotic foot clanking on the ground.

"Oh, I know my place," she stepped between Xever and Red, "It's right here," this time she slapped his fore head, "making sure you don't screw everything up."

"Listen here—" Xever tried again.

"No, you listen," she slapped him again and he took a step back, "if you're gonna mess with my process, then you gonna have to go."

"Stop that," Xever yelled as she slapped him again. He tried to grab the ruler, but she slapped his hand away. Spot howled in laughter as Laura Whitten literally chased Fish Face out of the lab.

"What a girl," Spot laughed.

"You wanna try your luck, Spot?" Laura taunted, a scary expression on her face and a deadly ruler in her grasp.

Spot stopped laughing, "Don't think I can be scared off by office supplied," he growled.

"Don't be so sure," Laura exchanged her ruler for a nearby stapler, "I can be quite creative." Her face held a look of sadistic brutality. A small smile tugged at her lips, as if she was imagining all sorts of pain she could inflict with a stapler.

Spot's ears fell a bit, pressing against his head. "Don't think you've won this," he called as he left the room. Laura could have sworn that his tail was between his legs, which they were rather short despite his large size.

"Don't stop by again," Laura called after him.

"Alright, I'm both curious and a little scared," Red said once the lab doors had sealed themselves shut, "What can do with a stapler?"

"Hell if I know," Laura let out a shaky breath, dropping the stapler. She collapsed into her chair, trembling a bit. "That was terrifying."

"You know, I think I'm starting to like you."

"You're not so bad yourself, Red." She looked at the computer screen and her lack of results. She leaned back in the chair, sighing, looking up at the ceiling.

"Find anything about your brother?" Red asked.

"Nothing that really helps," Laura glanced at him. He tried to shift to a more comfortable position on the table. iHe shouldn't be here, /iLaura thought. iI could let him escape, undo his bindings. But I may need his help to escape. So I can't let him go yet. I'd better hurry before he finds a way to get himself out or the other turtles decide to turn up./i

Her fingers flew across the keys with renewed determination. Red watched her work. The fire in her eyes was back, and he couldn't help but admire the way she had chased off Fish Face and Dog Pound with nothing more than office supplies and a whole lot of attitude. It may have been a bluff, but that just made her gutsy. He could respect that.

Raphael's mind started to wander, he thought of possible ways to escape, of Spike back home, of possible rescue by his brothers. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts engulf him. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when the Whitten girl stood up suddenly, her chair crashed to the ground.

She reached for a file that sat on the desk beside her. It was the file that Bessy had given her, the one about all the previous experiments performed with the mutagen.

iThis can't be right, /iLaura prayed as she turned to the first experiment that was ever performed, iPlease. Tim you can't be that stupid. /i She looked at the grainy photo of the blob monster raging through the warehouse, intestines and organs floating around in his aqueous protoplasm.

She had only glanced at the file previously, too disgusted by the results to delve into the case study in too much detail. She also didn't make the connection at first. She never thought he would actually use it, it had also been so long since he told her his super hero name. It was the time they were debating over catch phrases, which was also the last time she had spoken with him. She now stared at the name of the test subject.

bPulveriser/b

"You idiot," she whispered. Laura felt her eyes start to water, and she blinked the forming tears away. She read through the file, cramming every sick, unmoral detail into her mind.

His mutation was the epitome of why they needed her help: the mutagen was unstable and unpredictable. They couldn't control him. They set explosive charges in the ware house, and when they saw what happened . . . they destroyed it all.

"He's dead," Laura whimpered. The first tear fell as she dropped her hands to her side. The anguish soon turned into something else. Red hot anger filled her. She crumpled the document she was still holding. Glaring at it, she ripped the crumpled pages to shreds.

She yelled as she turned her wrath on the nearby glass ware. Beakers and flasks shattered against the floor, shards of razor sharp glass flew over the floor. She held up another volumetric flask, ready to smash it into nothingness, when the grief hit her again. She sank to her knees, glass shards ripping through her jeans and slicing her legs. She sat there, silent tears mixing with the puddles of blood forming on the ground, she cradled the flask.

Raph watched silently from his vantage point. He wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he heard enough to guess that Laura Whitten no longer had a reason to help the Foot. If she was going to help him, now would be the time.

"Laura?" he tried. She didn't respond.

"Laura!" he said a little more forcefully. She slowly turned her head to stare at him with wide eyes. "Look, I know this isn't easy, but there's nothing here for you anymore."

Laura picked herself up. She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes and rubbed them hard.

"We need to get out of here," Raph continued, he wasn't sure if she was hearing him.

Laura slowly looked around the lab. Her eyes landed on the medical supplied that Baxter had pulled out of one of his crates yesterday. An idea started to grow in her mind.

"If you can—hey, are you listening," Laura walked right past him, as if she couldn't hear him. She examined a line of small bottles and picked one out. She then picked out a syringe from a box. She filled the needle with the contents of the bottle.

She held the syringe up, examining the clear liquid inside. She squeezed the plunger and watched a thin stream of the solution shoot out the top.

"Laura," Raph tried to get her attention. Raph was scared now. He didn't know what was in that needle, but it couldn't be good. For all he knew, he was watching her contemplate suicide. Great, he just freaked himself out even more. "Laura, snap out of it."

She looked toward him again, then back at the syringe. She sauntered over to the table, syringe hanging loosely by her side. She looked down at Red. She felt bad for doing this, but it was the best plan she could think of.

i Sorry mom,/i she thought, another tear slipping from her eyes, iI guess I'm going to be leaving you too./i

She took a deep breath, making eye contact with those brilliant green eyes. "Sorry Red," she said raising the syringe, "Good night."

"What? Good night?"

Laura Whitten plunged the syringe into Raphael's arm, emptying its contents into his blood stream.

"What are you doing!" he screamed, trying to pull away, but the damage was done. "Are you crazy?!"

"Don't worry, it's just a sedative," Laura reassured him, his eyes were already growing heavy. "I'll make sure you brothers find you. It was good knowing you, Red."

"What are . . . you go . . . going to d-do?" Raph manages, his mind losing touch with reality.

"Something really stupid."

Raphael lost consciousness for a second time in two days.

b
O

/b

Earlier that day down in the turtles' secret lair, Leo woke in the morning to find that, despite the previous night's events, Donnie was already awake and in his lab. He was typing furiously at his computer, trying to get a fix on Raph's T-Phone.

"The best I can find," Donnie explained to Leo as Metalhead handed Donnie a mug of steaming coffee, "was the location where he last made a call, which was to you."

"Can't you track where it is now?" Leo asked watching as lines of code and equations moved across the screen.

"I could, if it was giving off a signal," Donnie took a deep draft of coffee, "It's either gotta be turned off, or the battery died, or it's broken, or something. But I've got nothing."

Leo helped Donnie go through surveillance footage from last night. Donnie hacked into a number of remote servers and pulled up all the videos from cameras in the surrounding area around the parking lot. In the meantime, Metalhead kept scanning for incoming signals from Raph's T-Phone, just in case someone turned it on.

Frustrated, Donnie slammed his fist down on the table.

"Maybe we should take a break," Leo suggested. They had been at it for hours. Mikey had wandered into the lab a while earlier and had helped in going through the videos, until he got hungry and left to order a pizza.

"And do what?" Donnie asked. He was angry at himself, this was supposed to do his area of expertise. But it seems he was as useless here as on the battle field.

"I don't know Donnie," Leo shrugged, "but we can't just keep sifting through videos we don't even know will have anything useful."

"Maybe your right," Donnie said giving in. "So now what? How do we find Raph?"

"Well, let's talk it through," Leo suggested, "We know Shredder's out of town, so where would Karai likely bring him?"

"The arcade!" Mikey walked into the lab, carrying multiple boxes of pizza, a slice already hanging out of his mouth.

"This is serious Mikey," Leo said.

"Let's see," Donnie turned back to his computer and brought up a file with all the known Foot Clan bases. He plotted them on a map and printed it out. Laying it out on the table he critically eyed each position, marked with a black dot. "The fight in the parking lot was here," he marked the place where the parking lot was with a black "X", "and where did you say you found me?"

"Right here," Leo pointed to a street a dozen blocks away, "heading south." Donnie grabbed a purple marker and drew an arrow along the road heading south.

Donnie examined the map. The direction of travel didn't point to any Foot location, the closest one would be a twenty minute drive west. "Where were they taking me? There's no Foot base in this direction."

"You think they set up a new base?" Leo asked.

"Or maybe they got lost?" Mikey said, mouth full of jalapeno and shrimp pizza.

"What if . . ." Donnie though his idea through. "The Foot and the Clan are allies now, so what if . . ." Donnie added Kraang bases to the map as pink dots. The blue arrow pointed in the general direction of one of the Kraang bases.

"So they were taking Donnie to a Kraang base?" Mikey asked confused.

"It would explain why Raph wasn't in the van with me," Donnie explained, "One of us went to the Foot while the other went to the Kraang."

"So if you were heading towards the Kraang," Leo said, "then that means Raph is in a Foot base."

"Which brings us back to the same problem as before," Donnie said gesturing to all the black dots, "which one?"

Metalhead spoke up at this point. A series of beeps sent Donnie to his feet, scrambling back to his computer.

"What is it Donnie," Leo asked, looking over his shoulder.

"It's Raph!" Donnie exclaimed, "His T-Phone just started transmitting a signal."

"Where's it coming from?"

"Give me a second," Donnie stuck his tongue out as he types in more commands. "There!" A map of the city appeared on the screen, with a flashing dot overlapping with one of the Foot bases.

"Alright, gear up," Leo said, kicking into leader mode, "We're bringing our brother home."