I do not own any of these characters from the Fast Forward season of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show that began to air in 2003. I also make no money from writing about and posting about them on here.

Donnie peered down the shaft after their enemy who had now disappeared from sight after becoming smaller and smaller during her fall, "Talk about a total crash!"

Raph and Leo turned semi-patient scowls upon him while Mikey grinned. Then Leo put his swords away. "Okay, who is going to the bottom of this shaft to look for her, and who is going back to the dojo to check on Sensei, Cody, and Serling?"

Mikey spun on his heel and ran down the stairs. "I'll go check on the others!"

Leo watched him go raising an eye-ridge. Donnie grinned over his shoulder at his leader. "Go on, Leo. Raph and I'll go make sure Viral's out of commission."

Leo met Donnie's gaze raising both his eye-ridges. "You sure?" Despite his earlier comment, other than what he could see he didn't know how well Donnie and Cody had come out of their altercations with Viral outside the dojo while he Mikey, Raph, Sensei had been stuck in it. Why had Viral thought Cody "Out of play?" Should Donnie be taking things easy?

Donnie gave him a grin. "Yeah, you go back and check on Cody, Serling, and Sensei. Raph and I will be fine."

Leo opened his mouth, then paused and changed what he was about to say. He stiffened as he realized what he had to inform his brother of. "Actually, Don, Sensei was electrocuted ... He could use your doctoring right now."

Donnie's eyes widened. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go check on him! I'll be in to be 'Dr. Don' as soon as I'm 'sure' Viral's can't do him or anyone else anymore damage! I do know computer viruses and machines better than you last I checked. If she does manage to come back in the next few minutes ..." Donnie shook his head staring down the shaft.

Leo pursed his lips. Don did have a point. If their enemy was human, or even just flesh and blood, he might be as confident in his own ability to know whether or not they were truly defeated as Don's, but ...

Raph spun his sai as he glowered down at the bottom of the empty shaft. "Yeah, don't worry Leo. Don and I'll make certain Viral stays gone this time!"

Leo nodded. He didn't know their enemy as well as Don, and where his brother's intellect may fail Raph's strength and determination to keep an enemy "down" might succeed. Also, Mikey shouldn't be left to do all the "checking" on civilians and injured by himself. Leo knew he might not be as good a doctor as Don, and Raph might be a whole lot worse at bedside manners than himself, but the last hands they wanted to fall into when they needed patching up was Mikey. Leo turned and ran back the way they'd come.

As he ran across the bridge to the dojo, he noticed Serling lifting his head off the floor. Leo paused beside the robot and leaned over the metallic servant extending three of his green fingers and a palm. "Need a hand?" If the robot had taken this long to move, maybe they had really broken something running by and over him, or maybe Viral had.

Serling's metal eyebrows lowered. "From you? I think not." The robot's metal arms began pushing him up without any noticeable stalling or extra noises. Leo shrugged and ran on.

Inside the dojo, Leo heard Cody's high voice asking, "What happened?"

Leo frowned as he saw Mikey kneeling over the prone form of their father. His younger brother was poking the poor rat on the side of the head. Gentleness with the injured usually took a backseat to his orange-clad brother's need to relieve his own fears. Leo's annoyance lessened as he heard the waver in his fun-loving brother's voice echoing off the dome walls. "Sensei?"

Leo was striding to them when he heard a groan. He knelt down beside the rat himself as their sensei opened his eyes. Leo met his gaze as his own eyes widened. "Sensei? Are you okay?"

Splinter sighed as he sat up "This time was not as bad as last, but I am an older rat now than I was then."

Cody blinked down at his eldest guest. "Last time?"

Leo slid his arms under his teacher's knees and shoulder blades to pick him up. "Sensei was electrocuted when we fought the Shredder for the last time."

Mikey grinned at Leo putting his hands on his hips. One rested near his nunchucks. "You mean right before the Utrom sent his evil alien squid-head to an ice asteroid?"

Leo gave his brother a side-ways glance while holding their teacher. "Yeah, then …"

Cody straightened and blinked at a wall before saying "Oh yeah, I forgot that happened to Splinter …"

Leo began carrying his father out of the dojo speaking while he did. "April and Casey wrote about it in their journal?"

"Oh yeah, a lot, especially at the farm after. I mean I 'do' remember how things ended with the Shredder. I just forgot … you know … that Splinter got hurt that way then."

Mikey sent him a side-ways glare. "Is that why you gave your dojo the means to attack us like Shredder and the Foot?"

Splinter spoke up from Leo's arms. "Michelangelo … do not place blame where it does not belong. The intruder turned Cody san's good gift to us against us. You would not blame your brother if a foe turned one of Leo's katana against you."

Cody hung his head. "I guess I should work to make the dojo safer, though, in case this happens again or something like it. I swear though, I thought you guys could handle anything! The weapons in the walls were just to make some of the battle scenarios more realistic not actually hurt you!" Cody stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket and stared down at the floor as he walked with the mutants.

Leo sighed. "Well, I don't think any of the fake enemies in your programed battle scenarios will be as interested in 'toying' with us as Viral was. Not even in the Moo Mesa setting."

Cody turned a big grin on Leonardo. "Oh, you saw that one!"

Sensei spoke from Leo's arms again. "Who was this 'Viral' Cody san?"

Cody's smile fell away as he turned his stare ahead and shrugged, "Some computer program who can talk and wanted to get into the O'Neil tech's mainframe. She couldn't do it through the power grid, so she came here. And then she couldn't get through all the layers of encryption, so she tried to get me to give her the passwords by threatening you guys and attacking me through Serling."

Serling appeared in front of them as they were about to walk out into the rest of the mansion. "Master Cody, are you alright?! Last time I saw you that awful reptile took you out a window to get away from me and that awful intruder into my systems!"

Leo froze and turned his stare on Cody. He also felt his sensei stiffen in his arms, but the turtle leader spoke first. "Donnie took you out a window?"

Cody grinned. "Yeah, we were okay though. Donnie caught us with his bo staff on the wall outside and then kicked in a vent so we could crawl inside and from there hack into the power grid so we could cut the power to purge Viral from the system!"

Leo frowned "What floor were you both on?"

Cody let his gaze drop and crinkled his brow in thought. "Not sure. But I think it wasn't as high up as last time."

Mikey began tapping the tips of his fingertips together as he chuckled. "Uh, Cody, when you say last time …"

Cody looked up smiling. "When Raph caught me while you guys were trying to get me away from those kidnappers."

Leo frowned. Now it made sense Donnie had wanted to split up. Leo began walking with his sensei again. Cody peered up into Leo's face a moment. "Donnie caught me. I mean it was scary, but we were better off outside and then back in the vents than in the house with Viral."

Serling growled as he stomped his metal steps beside them. "These things never happened to Master Cody before 'you' pests came along!"

Leo rolled his eyes. "I assure you we didn't mean for any of this to happen."

Serling turned his glare on Leonardo. "Yes, just like Donatello didn't mean to cause the kitchen bot to malfunction and Michelangelo didn't mean to slide into our fifteenth century Ming vase!"

Mikey reached up to rub the back of his head. "Sorry about that."

Leo sighed as he put his father down on the rat's guest bed in Cody's manor. Then he looked around. Man, it was still weird them all having, not just rooms to themselves, they'd had those a few years, but 'such' rooms. He glanced up at the high ceiling, the nightstand, and the bed with drapes that let Splinter draw them when he wanted privacy like the silk screens had provided for him back home. Then Leo turned his gaze down and let it linger on his father. "How are you doing?"

Splinter nodded. "Much better now, I think. But where are my other sons Leonardo and Michaelangelo?"

"Making sure Viral won't bother us again."

Cody glanced out the door behind them. "But we should probably have Donnie check on you just to make certain you're okay." Then he scratched his head a moment and said, "Or I could call a doctor?"

Serling smiled. "Perhaps such a professional might recommend we release them back into the wild!"

Both turtles frowned at Serling, but Splinter seemed to have fallen sound asleep. Then Leo glared out the window across from his father's bed. "Where 'is' Donnie?" How long did it take to find one twisted, smashed up practice bot? Unless …

"Cody, Serling, stay with Sensei!"

He turned and ran out of the room before heading down the first flight of stairs. Mikey was first right behind and then right beside him. Leo didn't stop at his appearance either place.

Serling might not be the safest person to leave Splinter alone with, but Cody was there too, and he had kept his robot butler's displeasure with them from boiling over into any real harm done. Leo also thought their father was the member of his family the paranoid caretaker hated least. Mikey spoke form beside him without gasping despite this being his third sprint through the manor after participating in three major fights. "What's up, Leo?"

"I don't think things are going well for Raph and Don ..."

The two raced down several flights of step before finally coming to the floor the elevator shaft ended at. Then they ran over to its open doors and looked in. Donnie straightened from where he'd been bent over studying the seams of the empty shaft's bottom floor. He looked up at them to grin too tightly. "Oh ... Leo … Here so soon? How's father?"

Raph meanwhile was leaning a shoulder against a bare shaft wall while glaring and drumming his fingers on his bulging bicep. Leo looked away from him the hothead to meet his non-glaring brother's gaze. "Donnie ... Where's Viral or the practice bot Viral was in?"

Donnie glanced up the shaft clenching his teeth before opening them to reply. "Well, you see … We aren't ... sure ..."

Mikey raised both hands into the air and yelled scowling "Of course not! Because bad guys that cause that much trouble can never just strike once! They have to come back for the sequels!"

Leo turned a glare on Mikey. "Just for that, you and I are taking Don's place in the search." He'd then looked back to his genius brother and pointed at him. "'You' need to go check on Father! And then afterward explain to me why taking Cody out a window hundreds of floors above ground was really necessary in the moment!"

Raph had straightened and stared at Leo. Then he'd turned his gaze on Don. Donnie himself was staring at Leo and rubbing his head. "I assure you it 'was' necessary. Anyway, I will go check on Father now." He strode out with both Leo and even Mikey watching him with crossed arms and a disapproving stare, but the genius still managed to say as he walked, "If you see anything that looks like a clue to Viral's fate or whereabouts just make a mental note of it so you can point it out to me when I get back." Donnie then began running up the stairs Leo and Mikey had just run down. Leo sighed and entered the shaft.

No clues had appeared for he and the others to point out to Don later. When the genius returned to help less than half an hour later saying all Splinter really needed was rest, which he was already getting, they still found nothing. They got out some ropes and pullies and went up and down the shaft. Mikey played Tarzan. Donnie pointed out crevices and holes Viral's rope-like appendages could have caught ahold of on her way down. He then hypothesized she may have climbed out through a vent like he and Cody had crawled in through one or exited through the same open doors they had thrown her down through, or maybe even have done something his own genius couldn't guess. Overall, it was a whole lot of conjecture. Leo finally sighed and gave up. For now, there was no way to be sure what happened to Viral much as he hated it. He really hoped Mikey wasn't right, though, and they would "never" see her again, or hear her, or even have to think about her too often.

They did have to report back to Cody and Serling, however. Raph's half growled half shouted a summary of their efforts then. "Checked every inch of that elevator shaft. Nothin. She high-tailed it out of here."

Donnie, however, who'd been typing at and staring at a screen hovering above his wrist-tech on their way back up to the living room, now stood proud and tall before them all grinning. "I ran a complete scan of the mainframe. No sign of Viral there. The system's clean!"

Serling stepped past Donnie staring at a broken piece of furniture and gestured at it with both his robotic arms. "I wish I could say the same for this room."

A familiar raspy voice spoke from the doorway then. "You did well my sons." Splinter strode into the room as they all looked up to watch.

Leo stood up. "Master ..." He and Mikey ran a few steps up to their teacher who continued to approach them as well. Mikey stayed silent, but Leo asked, "Are you alright?"

Splinter spread his arms as he answered softly, "I believe so Leonardo." The old rat then fixed his eyes on Cody and walked through his two sons to approach him. "Cody, today you saw a fine example of how a ninja needs to develop both mind and body."

Cody put a finger to his chin while staring back into the gaze of the rat. Splinter continued. "Victory required both the keenness of Donatello's mind ..." Splinter pressed a finger to his own temple, "and the endurance of his brothers' bodies." The ninjitsu teacher then gestured outward with his arms. Donnie and Raph grinned at their father from behind and over Cody's shoulders.

Cody grinned back at the experienced ninjitsu teacher too. "Okay Master Splinter, now I understand."

Leo smiled softly off to the side. Maybe something good had come out of this adventure. Splinter said, "Good. Now let us all resume Cody's training." The family of mutants then gathered around young Cody before they did just that.

What do you think of this chapter?

God bless

ScribeofHeroes