The phone was on the other side of the room when it began to buzz. For a moment, Don wondered how he had forgotten to bring it with him when he finally sat down after sanding and staining one of the cribs. Then he remembered that no one called him anyway, and since he was currently too big for his belt, it wasn't automatically on his person.
Don groaned and then painfully hefted himself to his feet. He managed to reach the phone just before it went to voicemail. He didn't bother to see who was calling. "Hello?" he huffed.
"Don? Is that you? It's Valeria."
Well, this was unexpected. "It's me," Don panted, still out of breath from the struggle to get to his feet and then to the phone. Some ninja he was. "What's up?" he breathed. "Are you okay?"
Don chastised himself. Of course, she wasn't. It's not like she would've called just to talk.
"No, I'm not," Valeria confirmed. "I think that Hun is onto us. A group of armed men broke into my hotel room. I managed to escape but I know they're still after me."
Don gasped "Did you get somewhere safe?"
"I'm okay for now, but I'm scared that my team has been compromised. I tried calling a few of them, but there was no answer on any of their cell phones. I ditched my own phone, in case they were using it to track me. I still have your Shell Cell, though, and I knew that would be safe. I'm sorry but I just didn't know what else to do. I need help, and you're the only one that I can call with this thing."
Suddenly, all of Don's aches and pains were forgotten. "Just tell me where you are and I'll come get you. We'll figure this all out together."
Valeria gave him her location. Don activated a tracking program and instructed her to leave the phone on and get into the sewer then travel several blocks east. Don then squeezed himself into his equipment and began the two and a half-mile hike to her location. He considered stopping by the Lair to grab a sewer slider but then thought better of it. As miserable as a five-mile walk sounded, he couldn't chance an encounter with his brothers. He'd rather crawl through glass at this point. They'd probably only lecture him about how stupid he was to trust one of Bishop's employees.
Valeria's phone vibrated. She picked it up and said hello, expecting to hear Donatello's gentle voice in return. Instead, she was met with heavy breathing. Her first instinct was to assume that this phone was somehow compromised as well. She hissed a series of threats and expletives, only to hear Don after all.
"Wait!" he gasped. "It's me. You still okay?"
"Yes," Valeria said, holding back a sigh of relief. "Sorry. I thought you were one of them."
"I'm almost there," Don panted. "Didn't want to startle you when I arrived. Just a heads up; I look different than the last time you saw me."
"Okaaaay," Valeria drawled. The guy was a mutant turtle. She was used to him looking abnormal. "See you soon?"
"Yeah," Don puffed, not bothering to say goodbye before he hung up.
Donatello appeared a minute later, and he did, indeed, look very different. He was wearing clothes, and what might have been night vision goggles with multiple fancy, high-tech lenses. He had a long staff, but he was leaning heavily on it rather than carrying it in a holster. Perhaps most surprising, he wore a vest that appeared ready to burst apart at the seams over a huge belly that definitely hadn't been there last she saw him. He had his free hand clutched around the widest part, and was running at an impressive clip, despite a heavy waddle. To his credit, his footsteps were as quiet as ever. While this explained the huffing and puffing, it lent itself to a whole new series of questions.
Valeria didn't mean to stare, but it was hard not to. Donatello looked for all the world like he was pregnant, and ready to pop, at that. This didn't make any sense at all. Had 'he' been a 'she' all along, and simply too polite to correct people's misconceptions? Valeria stood there, agawk, while her brain attempted to make sense of this. In the meantime, Don sensed her distress, although perhaps not its cause. His strong arms came around her, and he pulled her in close. It was an awkward hug, and Don was forced to twist himself at an uncomfortable angle to make it work, but it was all the reassurance that Valeria needed.
She buried her face in his chest, overcome by the feeling that everything would be all right now. It was amazing how his mere presence could fix everything that had been going wrong. For a moment, she kind of hoped that Don really was pregnant. He'd be the boo-boo kisser to end all boo-boo kissers. She was so happy to be in his comforting arms that she didn't realize she had started crying. "Hey now, it's okay," Don soothed. "You're safe."
"I know, Don. Thanks for coming." She reluctantly pulled out of the hug.
"You okay?" Don asked, giving her a brief once-over. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"
"No," Valeria confirmed. "I heard them jiggling the doorknob, and I booked it out the fire escape. They chased me for a while, but I lost them in a crowd. I don't think they saw me drop my phone or go into the sewer."
"Great job," Don complimented. His shell made a thunking sound as he leaned back against the masonry. He toggled a switch on his eyewear and looked around.
"Thanks," Valeria said. "And thanks for meeting me. I had no idea where to go or what to do. All I could think of was to call you."
"No problem," Don said, as he adjusted another setting.
Valeria couldn't hold her tongue any longer. "You weren't kidding about looking different."
"It's the goggles," Don quipped.
Valeria took this to mean that he didn't want to discuss his extremely obvious physical changes. "Yeah, must be." She smiled. "So, what do they do, other than make you look like a total badass?"
"They have a number of different functions - night vision, infrared, echolocation." Apparently satisfied, Don flipped the lenses up to reveal his chocolate brown eyes. "No sign of you being tracked. Now let's sweep you for bugs."
"What? The goggles don't do that too?"
"Nope. Different tool." Don pulled a makeshift-looking device out of a brown duffel bag and connected some wires. He then ran it up and down her body, both front and back. "You're clean," he finally congratulated.
"As clean as I can be given that I'm in a sewer," Valeria commented. "So, what's the plan now?"
Don finished repacking his equipment, then pushed off the wall with a grunt. "Now, we go back to my place and figure out our next steps. I promise you'll be safe there. I've got it locked down tighter than Fort Knox."
"Okay," Valeria agreed, surprised by the appearance of a few butterflies in her stomach. "Lead the way."
To Valeria's utter confusion, Donatello didn't move. He cocked his head and trained his eyes on a nearby storm drain grate. After a few moments, he shot her a dark look. "Did you hear that?" he whispered, harshly.
"Hear what?" Valeria asked. She hadn't heard a thing, but her entire body seemed to be breaking out in goosebumps.
"Maybe it's a coincidence, but someone on the street - I swear I heard them say your name."
"That's not funny, Don," Valeria chastised.
Don frowned. "I'm not kidding. Valeria is hardly a common name."
"Could they have just been talking about malaria?" Val half-joked. Her turtle companion didn't seem amused. "I have such a stupid name," she murmured beneath her breath, looking at her feet.
Valeria didn't know whether to run away or to follow this lead. She looked to Don for guidance, but he seemed just as unsure as she felt. After a moment, he straightened up. "It sounded like they were headed back towards your hotel. We don't need to confront anyone, but we should at least try to listen in, see if we can figure out what on earth went down tonight."
Donatello began walking in the direction that she had run from. "This storm drain follows the road above," he called back to her.
Don offered her the arm that was not occupied by the duffel and staff. She gladly accepted, not just because it made her feel more secure, but because she'd already found out the hard way that there were a lot of trip hazards down here.
Before long, Valeria noticed that Don was breathing almost as heavily as he had been on the phone. "You okay?" she asked.
"Oh, I'm fine. Just a lung capacity issue," Don dismissed.
Valeria felt herself overcome with concern that maybe her friend was being disfigured by an inoperable tumor. "You… you aren't sick, are you?" she fretted. Is that why he hadn't made arrangements to see her while she was in the city? What if she had pulled him away from his sickbed? He had seemed very ill at Area 51. God, she was an idiot.
Donatello cringed. "I'm not sick. I'll explain later. Right now, I need to focus on listening."
Donatello must have had some sort of turtle super senses because the only noises that Valeria could hear from the streets above were too muffled to be meaningful. After twenty minutes of walking, Don slowed and sidled up to a storm drain grate. He kept his head near the opening, just out of the sight of anyone on the street. Valeria followed suit and positioned herself on the other side.
She could see that the street above was almost empty. But, someone was pacing near the grate. That could have been happening for any number of reasons, but Donatello seemed certain that this was important. She shrugged at him, hoping for a bit of insight. He ducked beneath the grate and whispered into her ear.
"Black combat boots with a broken right shoelace. I saw them go by right after someone said your name earlier."
The hair on the back of Valeria's neck stood up. She didn't know if it was from fear, Don's breath in her ear, or both.
"I lost her. I lost her," the combat-booted man hissed. It was easy to guess that he was speaking into a cell phone. "No freakin' clue," he said after a pause. "You got yours?" The pacing stopped for a minute. "I'm in front of the store." Another pause. "No. You come to me! I don't care if you got yours. This is the meetup point, now you get to it, and we go for mine together!"
Valeria backed away from the grate. That was all she needed to hear. She retreated several feet deeper into the sewer. Donatello followed, his face etched with concern. He put his hands on her upper arms, stoking them comfortingly.
"That's one of the guys who was after me," she confessed. "I'm sure of it."
Despite the comfort he was offering her, Don looked ready to murder someone as he glared back in the direction of the street.
"Can we just go to your place now?" Valeria begged. "You said that it's safe there."
"It sounds like they have your teammate," Don worried. "The way they were talking-"
"Oh God," Valeria moaned. "No, we have to stop them."
"I can try," Don promised.
"No, I said 'we,'" Valeria hissed. "It's me and my team they were after. It's my fight!"
"And that's why you can't get caught," Don insisted. "You're obviously close to something big here if they felt the need to take you guys out of commission so quickly. You've got to remain free and finish your work."
"Same goes for you, Don," Valeria reminded him.
"EDS is almost done. Besides, I'm a ninja, remember?"
Valeria glared at him. He had a lot of audacity to break out a line like that. The effectiveness of her glare was compromised, as three new sets of feet appeared and stole both Don and Val's attention. One of those sets of feet happened to be wearing hotel slippers. Valeria recognized the crest as that of the hotel she had been staying at. "Let me go!" their owner begged.
Valeria grabbed Don's bicep. "That's Jeff!" He was her teammate - a hopelessly dorky, harmonica playing, BBQ-loving, soon-to-be grandpa.
Donatello wasted no time. He pressed his phone into her hand. "If anything happens to me, call this number. She'll know what to do. After you make the call, drop the phone and run."
The name on the screen said "April." Valeria wondered who that was. An unexpected pang of jealousy shot through her. She shook her head to dismiss it. Her mind quickly shifted gears as she realized that she was, for the second time that night, all alone in the sewer.
Valeria had wanted to stop Don, or at the very least, wish him luck, but she was too late. He was gone, having scuttled up the ladder to a nearby manhole. She briefly saw a sliver of light as he squeezed his strangely misshapen body through it. When the manhole cover closed, it was completely silent. He'd obviously had years of practice with that.
It was funny, watching the scene unfold from below. Don must have taken a circuitous route because his olive green feet appeared from a very different direction than Valeria had been expecting. His toes were spread wide, his footfalls completely silent. The men squabbled, apparently unaware of what was about to hit them. Don's staff struck the ground, followed by an 'oof.'
"What is that thing?" someone screamed.
Valeria briefly saw Don's feet again, before they both lifted off the ground. There was a cry of pain from above, not Don or Jeff's, thank goodness.
The combat boots stumbled by. Valeria could hear the sounds of bodies hitting one another.
"Run!" Don panted. It didn't seem to be aimed at her.
Valeria lurched back as someone fell down next to the grate she was watching from. Her blood ran cold, but she wasn't immediately spotted. The person awkwardly righted himself. For a moment, his face became visible. It was Jeff! He appeared to be in a panic and clearly hadn't noticed her there.
"Run!" Don begged once more. "Just go!"
Jeff made a strange noise and did as he was ordered. The sounds of the fight continued, but Valeria couldn't see anything. She could hear the whistle of Donatello's bo, and could only assume that he was holding the apparent kidnappers back to give Jeff time to escape.
At one point, Don backpedaled into her line of vision. He dropped down onto one knee, doubled over in apparent pain. After a deep breath, he clambered back to his feet and scampered off. He grunted, and the body of one of the bad guys was flung into a signpost with a resounding metallic 'ding.'
Someone else yelped and two sets of footsteps could be heard taking off at a run. Then, there was silence. Valeria's heart rate picked up again. She wanted to check on Donatello, but she wasn't ready to leave her hiding place yet. The moments stretched into minutes. She was considering calling April when someone tapped her shoulder.
"Don!" He must have taken a different manhole to get back below ground! Valeria threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him so hard that he whimpered and fell back a step. She quickly let him go. Once the pain cleared from his face, he winked and put a finger in front of his mouth. There was still a slight risk of them being followed. Donatello offered her his arm, and they began the trek to his home.