So, the muse has been perching on my shoulder for this story to the exclusion of everything else for the last week or two. The story is, in fact, at around 130 pages and still counting, but I'm notorious for updating way behind what I've written – I do a lot of edits and I have to let things really feel right before I submit them to the public eye. But this story has an end in sight, I promise, and I'll carry it through! In the meantime, thank you to everybody who has read and enjoyed the tale so far.

As before, I do not own TMNT or Godzilla – I am only borrowing them for entertainment purposes. And thank you again to Macx for the lending of the "Deep Water"-verse!

Enjoy!

Raphael felt a scowl pull at his face as he silently followed Leo into the building. Thanks to the GPS trackers in the Shell Cells, Donnie's whereabouts were easily traced to a tired old ferry building right in the middle of Godzilla Central. The better-than-standard security they encountered, somewhat challenging even for their skills and experience, had sent a red warning flag up in the angriest turtle's mind. The monitors and motion-sensors were pointed at the ground, not the water where Godzilla lived; these were for intruders, not skyscraper-sized mutants. And any building that looked so inconspicuous but had top-of-the-line equipment against unwanted visitors was highly suspicious. The last time they had been in a similar situation had been Agent Bishop's little basement during the end of the Fugitoid incident.

Raph tensed at the recollection, slipping through the new hole in security around a rooftop entrance. Behind him, he could hear the nearly-inaudible sound of Mikey sucking on his fingers after proving yet again that he was not quite as talented as Donatello at dealing with wiring; however, the youngest turtle had managed nonetheless and the building's lights had obediently died only a heartbeat before. In the stillness following the sudden darkness, they could clearly hear their brother's voice from somewhere below, possibly one floor down.

"Really, we're not a threat to you! I can prove it if you'll just let me up!"

"There," came Leo's whisper, softer even than the sound of his breathing. He pointed to an elevator shaft with a service door, lit by one lone emergency light. The three turtles crept into the shaft, expertly moving stealthily to the floor below via the cables. Another service door swung silently into more darkness, but this was definitely the right place. Small scuffling of feet in one direction indicated people. And people could lead them to their brother.

"Look out!" came Donatello's warning, shouted with such urgency that all three turtles instinctively dodged to one side. It was a near thing – a dart whizzed through the air inches from Mikey's leg. It was followed by another, shot by an unseen adversary.

"It's a funnel point!" Leo realized belatedly. "Spread out! Raph, you get Donnie!" The blue-clad turtle began heading for the direction where the darts were originating, Michelangelo providing a noisy and annoying target off to one side.

"Nyah nyah! Gotta do better than that against a guy like me!" he shouted, bouncing easily over tables and what looked like large pieces of equipment for who-knew-what. When the attacker switched focus to Leonardo, Mikey became the silent one, arcing wide around the crate that served as cover to come up from behind.

Both brothers met each other face to face, their adversary momentarily vanished. But before either could react, a figure dropped onto Leonardo's shoulders, striking hard. As the turtles began to fight in earnest, they each found a moment in the combat to smile: whoever this person was, he or she was very good, but not quite as good as them, certainly not when they were working as a team. Now it was only a matter of time, assuming there were no other surprises ahead.

Meanwhile, Raphael had followed the sounds to where he could tell Donatello was struggling against something. In the near-pitch dark he could see a familiar form straining against bonds on a table.

"Hang on, Donnie. I gotcha," Raph hissed in a voice softer than a breath as he slipped to his brother's side. Beneath the fighting noises across the room, the red-clad turtle could hear a few individuals moving in the darkness around them, though a few yards away. The movements were awkward, stumbling, not those of someone likely to attack in the pitch blackness, but more someone not expecting to have been blanketed in darkness and attacked – to Raphael's mind, therefore, not a threat. Not yet.

"Wait," Donatello tried once more, murmured desperately in the near-silence of their invisibility training. He so wanted to bring things to a peaceful conclusion!

"Later," Raphael cut him off. With a practiced flick of sai, he sliced through the restraints holding his brother down, keeping an ear out for any approaching footsteps. Donatello pulled himself from the table, reaching out for where he knew his bo had been left before the lights went out. With the proper skill of a ninja, he retrieved his other belongings as well, silent as the shadows, and stowed them quickly in his bag.

"Jefe, I got an idea!" came a new whisper in the darkness. The turtles froze in place, absolutely still. Though intended to be quiet, the person could have been heard across the city in his accented hiss. "I can get the lights on in about 30 seconds if you let me hack into a different power grid and route it through some systems."

"Okay, you do that. On my mark, I want the lights on full. I'm going to see if I can help Monique. Elise, stay here and see if you can keep this one from running away."

A person moved in their direction, obviously someone trying to be quiet and who knew their way around. Without any signal needed between them, Donatello and Raphael soundlessly leapt into the air, catching the rafters of the ceiling and easily pulling themselves out of the way, though the purple-clad turtle hung back for a moment longer.

As they crept through the rafters, Raphael felt something tense within settle. His brother was safe – he could breathe again. Angry as a matter of course, the red-banded turtle lost all sense of perspective or patience when one of his brothers was in danger. He would break his body into pieces before he'd allow Don to be hurt again; already and not long ago he had stood by while the cut that led to the outbreak infection almost cost him a brother. "Never again," Raph promised himself. Raph tugged on Don's arm in the direction of the continuing fight between the other two and this "Monique" person. It was time to head home – they could sort out the details later.

-==OOO==-

As Nick picked his way as quietly as he could across the completely darkened space, he felt a thrill of fear run up his spine, coloring the scientific interest that was already piqued. From what he had heard, whoever these intruders were knew their "guest," given that they had spoken of a "Donnie," and that could only mean the turtle who called himself Donatello. But were they friends or enemies, and to whom?

Crossing into the common area of the loft, Nick felt a stir in his mind and quickly clamped down his emotions with steely control, simultaneously denying any need for help. The situation was chaotic enough without adding another, and giant, mutant to the problem, especially while they were all indoors and wanted to keep the lab in one piece. He heard Monique grunt with effort and sprang forward.

"Randy, now!" he roared, and the lights blazed to life. At the same instant, smoke pellets flew into the fray, quickly obscuring two forms locked in combat with Monique. Nick couldn't be sure, given the very brief look, but he was willing to bet he had seen two more turtles. The scientist covered his face with his shirt as the smoke threatened to overwhelm him. A sudden silence fell as the noises of the fight abruptly stopped.

"Is that smoke? Like fire?" Mendel squeaked from where he had taken refuge in a corner as the quiet stretched a few moments and the smoke curled lazily up to the ceiling.

"No," Monique coughed, emerging from the smoke rather disheveled and breathing hard. "Merely a tactic to cover their escape."

"So whoever it was is gone?" Randy asked.

"Looks like it," Nick called back, opening a nearby window. The smoke quickly vanished in the breeze of the fresh air, revealing an empty space once more.

"Them and our friend," Elsie announced. Everyone turned to the examination table and saw that, indeed, Donatello was missing, and they needed a new set of straps. Perhaps thicker ones.

"How...?" Mendel began, tipping his head to one side. "I mean, I know the readings said that one was smart but...?"

"I'd say perhaps we underestimated the threat these creatures may pose," Monique scowled dourly. She had not been that outmatched in hand-to-hand contact in years, and yet what her hands had met in the darkness had not been human flesh and blood – of that she was certain.

"No, Monique. I think you're wrong." Everyone looked back at where Nick was leaning against the wall, thoughtfully staring at the open service door to the elevator, still swinging slightly. "We did underestimate them, but I don't think they're a threat at all. I think," and he sighed, "we just missed the chance at a friend."

-==OOO==-

Donatello took a slow breath and waited for the lecture to begin.

"Sure you're okay?" Leo asked, no hint of accusation in his voice.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'd have been fine, too. They weren't going to hurt me." Donnie looked more closely at the eldest turtle. Normally he would have expected the "see, we told you it was dangerous, now don't let it happen again" speech on the way home, Leo not even waiting to arrive at the lair to begin. Normally there would be the concerns of secrecy, of endangering the family, carefully delineated. Normally the soft side of the turtles' leader would have come out later, after his brother was properly ashamed. But this time Leonardo seemed intent on skipping his usual spiel and going straight to the concern.

"What's that?" Raphael asked, pointing. Donatello looked down too, to the bandage that had been wrapped around the tiny punctures made by the darts in his arm. Without missing a beat, Leo pulled out one of his twin blades and neatly sliced through the gauze, sending it floating to the ground. Neither turtle flinched at how close the sword came to Donnie's skin – they both knew Leonardo would cut his own arm off before he would intentionally harm his brother.

"It's just…"

"There's a little blood," Michelangelo piped up, scrutinizing the spots carefully. "They hit you with something?"

"Yeah, they put me out…"

"Okay. We'll take you to Leatherhead for a full workup, then." Leo scooped the fallen gauze from the ground and tucked it away. "We can ask him to test this, too."

"Guys, what is the deal?" Donatello finally asked, torn between rolling his eyes and laughing at how absurd this was. "All that happened was they caught me, sedated me, and were trying to figure out what sort of mutation I was before you came in. Nothing funny. These people are doctors, specialists. It's not like it was Agent Bishop!"

"Look, no offense bro'," Raph said, "but we're not takin' any chances with you this time. Last time you got a scrape we almost had to install the world's biggest aquarium to keep you in. Remember that?"

"It isn't that we don't believe you or trust you," Leo added, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder, "but Raph's right. None of us know what was in that dart, including you. None of us know how that stuff might react with our bodies. Let Leatherhead run the checks just to be sure, okay?"

"But…"

"You're not gonna win this one," Mikey said cheerfully. "So don't make us tie you up and carry you to LH, 'cause we totally will!"

Donatello sighed. They were right, of course; he had come perilously close to losing himself to foreign chemicals once not very long before, and he didn't care to repeat the experience. And the concern his brothers were showing him warmed him to his shell – they were genuinely worried. The least he could do was help alleviate their anxiety. But even as he permitted himself to be led deep into the sewers to Leatherhead's new home and lab, he sighed internally. Somehow, he just couldn't believe Dr Tatopoulos would have allowed anything like that to happen to him, no matter what his brothers said.

-==OOO==-

"We should have eliminated it at the first opportunity."

"And the award for blowing the situation WAY out of proportion goes to…Monique!" Randy quipped.

"From everything we saw, don't you think if they'd wanted to hurt us they could have?" Elsie asked pointedly. She gestured to the precisely cut restraints on their examination table. "They were strong, fast, armed, and obviously skilled. And all they did was take one of their own away from, what to them, probably looked like a pretty suspicious situation."

"Loathe as I am to agree, in this case I'm with the others," Mendel said hesitantly. "I mean, if it were one of us on a table being examined by a bunch of mutants, wouldn't you do the same thing? Besides, that one was polite, said please, and I wasn't allergic to him – what's not to like in that?" The blonde scientist's entreating attempt at humor fell rather flat.

"Irrelevant. The creature and its fellows constitute a threat. They know our location, our defenses, and our capabilities. We cannot ignore this." Monique's eyes narrowed as she glared around the room. Randy shrugged helplessly, Craven winced openly, and Elsie glared back. But Nick was looking at the table intently.

"Jefe, what do you think?"

"Monique, I know you're worried. But I really think you're wrong on this one." Nick finally looked up from the table. Those who knew him well could see that his mind was elsewhere.

"I do not believe so."

"Just because you got your butt kicked doesn't mean you have to be a sore loser," Elsie snickered. Monique ignored her with a superior sniff.

"So what's the plan, then? Do we beef up security? Go turtle-hunting?" Mendel asked.

"No," Nick cut off the inevitable stream of recommendations from the French agent. "We're going to leave it for now. It's not like we don't have enough to do already. I think we'll see them again sometime, and I'd rather we let it happen on their terms than go find them ourselves."

Before anyone could say anything else, Nick turned and walked out to the pier. The set of his shoulders told the HEAT team all they needed to know about his frame of mind, and they let him be, returning to their own spirited debate.

Outside, Nick leaned on a railing and closed his eyes against the cool night air. A swirl of emotions inside struck and ebbed like the water before him, but all things considered, it was pretty calm. Between the helpful distance of time and the training of Monique, the once ever-present specter in the back of his mind had become easier to bear, almost welcome now. It had, at the least, become so familiar, he wasn't sure what he would do without it. But when his emotions were riled up, as they had been tonight when the lab plunged into darkness, it took all Nick's self-control to keep that presence calm and away.

"Hey, big guy," he said softly as a giant snout broke the water's surface before him. Godzilla's brilliant eyes glowed very slightly in the harbor-lit darkness, and they seemed to burn as they sought their parent. Without even looking, Nick could see and feel every fiber of Godzilla. Their link, their bond, had only grown deeper over time since it had been forcibly awoken in them both, and though Nick was slowly becoming accustomed to it, it was still vividly raw sometimes.

"I'm okay, Godzilla," Nick breathed, opening his eyes and projecting comfort and security. Unconsciously, he extended a hand to touch the exposed scales, rubbing them almost affectionately. The fear that had prickled in his mind so recently had alarmed his enormous charge, and it had taken most of Nick's self-control to keep Godzilla from tearing apart the lab to find out what had upset his parent. Though by now they had both learned to read each other clearly enough that Godzilla might well have been able to understand Nick's thoughts and feelings and recognize that, even though events were alarming, they weren't precisely threatening. "Nothing happened. Well, something happened. But not what they think."

Reaching into a pocket, he drew out a slip of paper. Sometime after the lights had gone out, as he had been moving to help Monique, Nick had felt something that, at the time, he had dismissed as some object in the lab he had run into in the dark. But when he found an email address scrawled on a scrap torn from a printout that had been near the table, when he put that together with the sense that what he had felt in the dark was actually a three-fingered grip on his shoulder, when he added the earnest and intelligent demeanor and expressions of Donatello, he could only think that Monique was wrong.

"You look like a big monster to everybody but me and HEAT, don't you?" he said softly to Godzilla, who snorted gently in return, reading a melancholy touch in his parent's mind. "But we know you're not. If I'd met that turtle before you, I wonder if I would have made the mistake with him that everybody else does with you."

Nick hid a smile as he considered what Monique would do if she ever found out about the contact information he now possessed on what she had labeled "that dangerous creature." She'd probably lecture him for weeks, not to mention threaten to break not a few of his bones. But Nick knew, as did the rest on the team, that Monique's brusqueness and preoccupation with security, which Elsie called a polite term for "paranoia," was driven as much by her conscience as by her duties. Cold and aloof to any outsider, Monique was as protective of HEAT as Godzilla was of Nick, and this encounter had evidently shaken her sense of security pretty badly. Nick made a mental note to talk to her sometime about it. But not yet.

"Thanks for checking on me, Godzilla. But you can go back to hunting. I've got an email to write."

-==OOO==-

As Godzilla slid back under the water, confident that his parent was safe, even if still troubled by the mysterious things that worried him, the giant creature caught the scent of that odd encounter from earlier. He had battled things his own size and somewhat smaller, all of which had posed an immanent and obvious threat to his territory and to Nick. Protect. It was a simple urge, instinctive as breathing. But the small being that had been in his space today did not seem to require an attack, did not threaten enough to be driven away. Godzilla felt about it as he did about whales that sometimes encroached on his territory – they meant no harm, would not injure his parent, and would not interfere with him, so he was not aggressive towards them.

But the appearance of this individual reminded him of a sea-going type of similar creature that was generally not worth eating and otherwise so powerless as to be beneath his notice. Still, this creature had been the size of his parent, and Godzilla knew that small threats to him could be dangerous to Nick. As Godzilla effortlessly explored an interesting current deep underwater, he felt his parent's worry ebb away. Whatever that intruder had been, it had not threatened Nick. It had not done harm or challenged him in any way. Even if there were a group of them, as he had smelled, he had no cause to deal with them if they did not threaten what was his. The other humans so commonly nearby lived in his territory and were protected, especially and above all his parent. These others could come and go if they pleased, as long as they left what was his unharmed.

Snorting, Godzilla shot forward, the raw pleasure of water in his mind. The harmless intruders fell away from his interest, and a nearby school of fish instead captured his intense attention. All was well, Nick was safe, and here was food. What more was there?

-==OOO==-

Good evening,

I certainly hope it is someone I unexpectedly met this evening on Staten Island that's receiving this email. Since I'm not quite sure, and since I don't know how secure this is, I won't say much, but I did want to make it clear how sorry I am that things happened the way they did. I think you were right, and we should have listened to you. But, for whatever it's worth, I'm glad to have met you, and I hope you're willing to forgive our precautions. But it's probably better to stay away from my team for a while.

You spoke of learning from each other. If you feel you can trust me, I'd like the chance to find out what you're working on and see where our interests dovetail. When you can confirm who has received this email, and if you know if this is secured, I'd be glad to send you some information if it will further your studies.

I hope you and your friends are someplace safe.

Dr. Nick Tatopoulos

-==OOO==-

Dr. Tatopoulos,

Yes, this email is secure – even your resident hacker can't break my security, not yet.

I'm sorry things happened the way they did, too. I tried to tell you that someone would come to find me eventually, and I hope they didn't bruise your friend too much. Ditto on my staying away for a while; not only would your team not be ready, but neither would mine!

I've attached some basic information on what I've learned and the gaps in my knowledge. Also a couple of schematics I think you'll find interesting. I don't know if this will help you at all in your work, but I'm hoping you can help me.

Maybe next time we meet we can make things go differently. For everybody. In the meantime, I'm trusting your discretion as a scientist. I would speculate that anybody who is that close to Godzilla and hasn't tried to destroy him can be trusted, so I'm hoping you'll prove me right.

Don