Italics - Don's Thoughts

Bold - Flashbacks

Chapter 14 (Threats and Hugs)

The next morning I woke a few minutes before nine o'clock. I felt rested and ready for the great deal of work ahead of me. I got out of bed and changed into a different outfit from yesterday. Once decent I left my room, visited the bathroom and made my way to the kitchen to get something to eat. The kitchen was empty when I entered, a stroke of luck on my part. I didn't want to face my brothers right now, especially after how I acted last night at the dinner table.

I approached the coffee machine and found coffee already made for me. Raph, I thought. He was the only other turtle that drink as much coffee as I did. Leo, of course, stuck to tea drinking with Master Splinter and Mikey was officially banned from all caffeinated drinks due to his energetic nature. I grabbed a mug from the cupboard and filed it to the brim with coffee. I breathed in the sweet smell of coffee. Oh how I missed you! I sighed, content. I had missed coffee so much, it has been about a month since the last time I had my favorite beverage. I noticed a half eaten box of donuts sitting on the counter; one was left. Score!

I seated myself at the kitchen table and munched on my donut and sipped my coffee. I finished quickly and went for a refill of coffee before I started my day's work. On my way back to my room I passed the dojo. I paused outside the closed door when the sounds of morning practice reached my ears. I knew that soon my brothers would be exiting the dojo and fighting on who would get the shower first. I knew that Raphael would win against Michelangelo and that Leo would stay in the dojo for at least another hour on top of practice meditating. My family is too predictable.

I headed for my lab first with the intention of retrieving my backpack full of documents that David gave me. Upon entering my lab I found it exactly as I left it. The toaster destroyed still sat upon my desk. I noticed that my backpack was sitting next to the unfixed kitchen appliance. I opened the pack to see if anything has been removed. All the food, first-aid kit, and other supplies were no longer in the bag. All these items have probably found new homes in the lair. But all the documents about my transformation and testing were still in the pack. My equations and drawings also remained in the bag. Zippering the backpack closed I threw it over my shoulder and exited the lab.

On my way back to my room to buckle down to do some work I has to pass the dojo. The doors were now open and I could clearly hear an argument between Raphael and Michelangelo.

"But you got the shower first last time!" Mikey whined.

"Too bad!"

I smiled and shook my head. Typical, I thought. I moved fast passed the dojo to get to my room before I would be in the middle of a warpath with an angry Raphael. I hopped two stairs at a time and barely made it to my room before I heard yelling and the high-pitched screams of my younger brother.

I lowered my coffee mug on to my desk and began to clear a space for my to work. Fifteen minutes later I had a decent area on my desk cleared of any older project. I placed the backpack on the desk and opened it. I first removed all the drawings and random equations and stacked them neatly on my desk. Once they were out of the way I then removed all the deleted documents and began to organize them. Documents about my brothers and I were placed in a pile on the right, documents concerning my secondary mutation in the middle, and documents regarding the tests preformed on my new human body on the left. After an hour of scanning documents and placing them into their designated piles I relaxed and leaned back in my chair looking triumphantly at my three neat stacks of information.

Sighing I reached for the pile of documents on the right and began to read them in detail. The first few pages were on general mutation theory and how it could be applied to explain the phenomena of my family's mutation. I disregarded these pages because they were useless to me and I already knew all about my own mutation. I had heard Splinter tell the story of our creation more than enough times.

The next few pages were interesting. These were on the first sightings of my brothers and I topside. Some were eyewitness accounts of "strange creatures" and "aliens" being spotted on New York City rooftops. Others were pictures of blurry images, supposedly of us, but that looked like pigeons that flew in front of a camera.

After reading these pages I placed them with the others that I had already read. Finally I reached the last twelve pages or so. These were on my family. Information about each of my family members filled up the pages in front of me.

The first page was about Master Splinter. Luckily the information was incomplete and very general. It seemed Bishop knew very little about Splinter, other than the fact that he was a humanoid rat and was a very skilled fighter.

The next two pages were about Leonardo. A general description filled the first full page, which included fighting style, characteristic traits, and a physical description. The second page was a threat assessment. Bishop noted in the files that Leonardo was extremely skilled, the oldest, and the leader. However, this only entitled Leo to be "manageable threat" and placed in the category of "Moderate".

Manageable! Wait until I show this to Leo. He will flip.

The next page was on Michelangelo. This single page indicated to me that Bishop knew very little about the youngest turtle. Half the page was a physical description and notes on fighting style. The second half was a similar to Leo's threat assessment. This described Mikey as "easily distracted" though very skilled. Therefore, Mikey was classified as a "Nescience".

I laughed.

After setting this page aside, I turned my attention on the three pages devoted to Raphael. The first page was similar to Leo's; including descriptions and fighting style. The second page interested me. It was on Raph's behavioral patterns. It described the commonality and statistical percentages of when and where Raph goes when he is topside. It notes that he is alone when he goes topside except when he is with Casey doing vigilante work. The accuracy of these percentages scared me. There was also some information on Casey at the bottom of the page. The final page was another threat assessment. This one described Raph as "unpredictable" and "easily angered". He was placed in the category of "Dangerous".

Raph would like that, I thought. He's more dangerous than Leo.

Worry and anxiety gripped me when I realized that all of my family had been mentioned except me. True to my worry the final five pages were on me. The first page was the same as all the others. The second and third pages were behavioral patterns, similar to the documentations made on Raph. These depicted my visits to the junkyard, which one I visited the most, around what time of day or night I went, and whether if I was alone or accompanied. It was also documented that I frequently visited April. At the bottom of the third page there was an entire section devoted to April. I finally looked at the last two pages: the threat assessment. Before looking at it I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to loosen the knot that had formed in my stomach over that few minutes. My assessment was long and detailed. It described my observed relationship with my brothers and even included an approximated IQ reading that was scarily close to a reading I had gotten when I, out of curiosity, had taken an IQ test online. Everything Bishop had told me when I was with him was somewhere on these two pages. I eventually reached my threat level. I had to read it twice before I could even comprehend it. It read, "Extremely Dangerous: Avoid At All Costs".

After a minute I overcame my shock. I wanted to scream at Bishop. I wanted to rip apart his silly documents, and I almost did before I contained myself. I instead placed my pages into the locked drawer on my desk were I kept personal items, very important invention ideas, the little money I had, and expensive tools that could not be broken because thy were irreplaceable.

I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was lunchtime. I didn't want to leave my room but Leo would notice if I didn't come out and eat. I was also due for a refill, I had finished my last mug of coffee at least three hours ago. Knowing I had to leave my room at some point for food and coffee I climbed out of my chair and exited my room. On my way to the kitchen I ran into Mikey.

He smiled at me and said, "What's up, Donnie?"

"The overhead interior surface that covers the upper limit of a room," I responded sarcastically. My answer earned an eye roll.

"What were you doing in your room? Resting?" Mikey inquired.

I shrugged my shoulders; "I was just reading some documents that were in my backpack when I escaped. I hope to discover what Bishop did to me so I can reverse it."

We entered the kitchen and Mikey began to make himself a sandwich. He offered to make me one, I accepted. After a few minutes we were both seated at the table eating.

Mikey suddenly stopped eating and looked at me intently. I also stopped eating and asked, "What?"

"Why?" Mikey rebutted.

"Why what?" I questioned, now confused.

"Why do you want to change back?"

"Because this," I gestured to my human body, "is not normal."

He laughed. "Being human is normal, Don."

I rolled my eyes, "Yes. But I meant not normal for us."

"Since when is anything normal for us?"

He has a point. Our lives have been far from any possible definition of normal. I huffed. "I just want to be a turtle again."

"Why?" Mikey repeated his original question.

I paused. I didn't know why, I just knew I wanted to change back. Mikey sensed my internal dilemma so he continued to talk; "I mean, you can go outside now. Be 'normal'," he mad air quotes with two of his green fingers. "You can live the life we never could have being turtles. The possibilities are endless!"

I wanted to believe Mikey but I couldn't. I'm dangerous. Think of how dangerous I could be as a human. My brain and heart became conflicted. My brain told me to change myself back but my heart told me to listen to Mikey.

Conflicted, I stared at Mikey. He stared back. Our food was forgotten. I was debating whether to tell Mikey my hesitation at remaining human but the noise of someone entering the room stopped me.

"Umm, are you guys okay?" Leo asked from the doorway.

"Yeah," I responded, breaking eye contact. I stood up and pushed my plate of half-eaten sandwich away from my person. "I'm not hungry anymore," I mumbled. Slowly I slipped passed Leo, who still stood in the doorway, and exited the kitchen.

Half way down the hall I heard Leo say to Mikey, "What did you say to him?"

I moved faster down the hallway so I didn't have to hear Mikey's response. I still had two more piles of documents waiting for me in my room that I wanted to sort through. I seated myself once again at my desk and stretched before diving down into the second stack of files, the ones about my secondary genetic mutation. It was dry material to say the least. The first page said, "Secondary mutation is a phenomenon that - when the DNA in any cell is be altered through environmental exposure to certain chemicals, ultraviolet radiation, other genetic insults, or even errors that occur during the process of replication - among mutants seems inexplicable. Scientists hypothesize that, since the mutant population was entering the millions at that time, mutant physiology is responding to the need for survival."

"While a mutation is defined as any alteration in the DNA sequence, biologists use the term "single nucleotide polymorphism" (SNP) to refer to a single base pair alteration that is common in the population. Specifically, a polymorphism is any genetic location at which at least two different sequences are found, with each sequence present in at least 1% of the population. The cutoff of at least 1% prevalence for a variation to be classified as a polymorphism is somewhat arbitrary; if the frequency is lower than this, the allele is typically regarded as a mutation."

"Changes in the DNA sequence can also occur at the level of the chromosome, in which large segments of chromosomes are altered. Fragments of chromosomes can be deleted, duplicated, inverted, translocated to different chromosomes, or otherwise rearranged, resulting in changes such as modification of gene dosage, the complete absence of genes, or the alteration of gene sequence. The type of variation that occurs when entire areas of chromosomes are duplicated or lost has especially important implications for human disease and evolution."

This information was useless to my and my quest of trying to reverse my transformation and return to my normal terrapin form. Any first year biology student knew this knowledge about the basis of genetic mutations in humans. I set down this first page and looked at the hundred or more left. This is going to take the rest of the day, I thought. I picked up the next page and began to read. My eyes met more basic biological information about gene mutation. I ran my hand through my hair. Make that the rest of the year.

Three hours later I had barely made a dent in the pile of papers. My eyes were growing tired and I decided to stop. I hadn't found anything useful. Almost everything I read was theories and hypotheses that, when I thought they could be possibly helpful, were disproved a few paragraphs or pages later. The note pad I had started to take notes on was a giant black blob of ink. Everything I had written was eventually crossed out. I ripped the paper off the pad, crumpled it up, and threw it at my trashcan. I was too tired to even celebrate when it landed perfectly in the bin.

I was frustrated; I had wasted a day on nothing. I spun in my swivel chair so my back was to the desk. Scanning my messy room my eyes caught sight of my covered mirror. My frustration gave way to anger: anger at Bishop for changing me and destroying my relatively normal life; anger at myself for allowing myself to be so careless to be captured and not fighting hard enough to escape once captured.

I stood and moved toward the mirror. I grabbed the corner of the sheet and with a yank permitted the fabric to slide off the frame and fall to the ground at my feet. Green and gold-flecked eyes met my gaze. I stared at the eyes. I searched in their depths for the answer to my problems, trying to find the grain of truth that I had been denying myself to believe: that there is no cure. I stared intently at those eyes. I was sucked in by their strength and power. I got lost in them. So lost I didn't hear my bedroom door open.

"What cha lookin' at?"

I jumped, startled. I gyrated towards the door and found Raphael occupying it. My shoulders slumped in relief that it wasn't Leo. "What do you want Raph?" I asked, puzzled by his appearance. This was the first time I was alone and having a decent "conversation" which him since that first afternoon in the kitchen.

He shrugged. "Just checkin' on ya."

"I thought you were avoiding me."

He frowned at this. "Naw, ya'd know if I was avoidin' ya."

I turned back to the mirror and looked once more into my eyes. Fear seized my heart and anguish twisted my gut. My eyes began to shine with the water and salt of newly formed tears. I pivoted back to face my brother and told him truthfully, "I'm scared."

Raph's frown was quickly replaced with a look of worry. He gracefully glided into my door and snapped the door shut behind him. Moving with the same grace he maneuvered among the mess of my room to reach me. Now standing before me he said, "What cha afraid of?"

I shook my head and moved to sit on my bed. How could he understand? I thought. I barely understand it myself. But I tried, "I'm scared I'm going to be stuck like this." I gestured at my body.

"You'll think of somethin'," he assured me. "Yer a smart turtle…"

At this statement I wailed and more tears began to fall. Raph winced but walked towards me anyway. "Now ya know that's not what I meant." The bed creaked and sank under his added weight.

"B-but-"

"No 'buts'," Raph scolded me. "I know yer scared, hell I'm scared fer ya..."

I cried harder.

"But," he growled. "Ta fear is one thing. Ta let fear grab ya an' shake ya all up is another. Fear has a large shadow, but he 'imself is small."

I hiccupped. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that ya block all chances of success if ya allow yer fear ta grow bigger than yer faith. I know ya an' I have faith in ya, Donnie. Just have some faith in yerself." He then wrapped his arm around my frail, trembling shoulders and gave a good squeeze – a sort of 'Raph hug' if you will.

We then sat there, on my bed, until my tears subsided. This, I realized, is one of those times that Raph shows me his true side. A wise, caring turtle emerges its rough exterior and offers me a pearl of wisdom, and I, gracious, take it and cherish it.

"Thanks Raph."

"No problem, lil' bro."