A few days earlier…
"SPLINTS!"
Splinter was shaken roughly from his milk-and-cake induced slumber by a frazzled and panicking April. "What is so urgent that you must wake me from my beauty sleep?!" he said.
April was unamused. "SPLINTS! I can't find the guys!"
"They're probably messing around somewhere; New York is a big city," he replied.
"I tried calling Donnie, but he didn't answer! Donnie ALWAYS answers, especially when it's me! So I went out to their favorite places, and they weren't there!" April said frantically. "THEY'RE MISSING!"
Splinter sighed. "Like I said, they're probably just messing around. No need to worry. You're jumping to conclusions." He yawned. "Problem solved. Now, back to my sleep…"
"NO!" April smacked his arm and he jolted awake again. "This is a crisis! Like I said, DONNIE ALWAYS ANSWERS HIS PHONE. The others didn't answer either! Somethings up! What if they got kidnapped by the foot clan or something?"
That got Splinter thinking again. "Hmmm… you have a point…" He made up his mind. "April!" he said seriously.
April perked up. "Yes?"
"Go trace Purple's technology. He has trackers on it, no? I will stay here." And sleep. He would stay here and sleep. But that went unsaid.
April groaned. She walked over to Dee's lab. The entire place was purple. (There was something wrong with that boy! Purple is a great color and all, but hasn't he ever heard of too much of a good thing?) The room glowed with that technological buzz that came from all the machines Don had created in the past. The purple LED lights flickered on as April walked in. Donnie had installed a motion sensor a while back so the lights would turn on whenever someone came in.
On the table was a bunch of random tech (or random to April's eyes) that Donnie had left. Also on the table was Dee's tablet. April walked over to it. Picking it up, she typed in the password. She was the only one Dee trusted enough to tell his password. That was something she secretly took pride in.
She opened the tracking app Donnie had. She scrolled through the numerous inventions Donnie had listed. Shelldon… Turtle Tank… drill… salami…
She tried tracking his phone. Nothing. Nothing on his tech bo either. Or his battle shell.
Something was up.
April ran back down to the tv room where Splinter was sleeping again. (How?!) She shook him roughly awake. "SPLINTS!"
"Ah! April, what is it?" Splinter said, annoyed.
"DONNIE'S DEVICES ARE DOWN! WE CAN'T TRACK THEM! THIS! IS! BAD!"
Splinter rubbed his ears. April's screams were very loud. Although part of that may have been because of his hyper-sensitive rat ears.
"April calm down. Explain to me in a volume that isn't" -he rubbed his ears again- "eardrum shattering."
"Jeez, Splints, we went through this! The guys. Are. MISSING!"
"Oh.. right…" Splinter looked straight forward. And then- "AAAAAAAAH PANICKING!"
"SPLINTS! Stop running around! We have to find out where they are!" said April. She seemed to have regained her composure.
"Right… you're right as always, April. Let's go to the Foot Shack!"
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SONS!"
"Whaaaaaaaat?" said Flame Head 2. (The big one. Neither Splinter nor April felt like asking for a name.) "We didn't do aaaanything!"
Flame Head 1 groaned. "Good going. That sounded super suspicious! Now they'll never believe the li-IIIIIII mean TRUTH that we have nothing to do with this!"
April and Splinter exchanged a look.
Running at full speed toward the flame heads, April grabbed Flame 1 and pinned him to the ground. Splinter swept in and did the same to the big one. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO THEM!" they yelled in unison.
"Fine, fine!" said Flame 1, sweating. "Jeez, we'll tell you what we did! Psychopaths…" (He muttered the last part.) "So there's this torture business; it's called The HellHole: Torture and Kidnapping. They specialize in breaking people's spirits. They also do torture classes for people who want to learn; its pretty amazing."
"Oh yeah, I went to a few of their classes," said Flame 2 from under Splinter. "It was great. They have a great curricul-"
"Get to the point!" groaned April. She didn't like where this was going.
"Oh, right. Anyway," continued Flame 1, "we had heard they had great service-"
"They do!" added Flame 2.
"Yeah, and we hired them to torture the turtles. For a really reasonable price, too! Love that place. The Hellhole has super awesome custom torture. It was- OWW!" April had slapped his face. She just couldn't bear hearing more about how her best friends were being tortured.
Splinter was of a similar mind. "Who is in charge of this 'Hellhole'?" he said with gritted teeth, pressing harder on Flame 2.
"Nobody knows; they are totally shrouded in mystery and no one even has a name and please stop choking me-" replied Flame 2, barely able to breathe.
Splinter let go. (Only a little.)
"Where is this organization based?" April asked menacingly to Flame 1, wanting to try out her interrogation skills. She made the most intimidating face she could and-
"You did very well April," Splinter said as they walked toward the address the flame heads had given them. After April had used her highly effective interrogation techniques, the flame heads had run away like babies. It was hilarious. After that, Splinter had changed into his Randall disguise, just in case. Then they started on the way to The Hellhole.
April laughed. "I did, didn't I? Anyway, here we are- woah." They had walked in.
The outside of the place was pretty inconspicuous. It looked sort of like a big, abandoned hotel. All the windows were shut and there was no light leaking through. But the inside told a whole different story.
The entire place was lit up with bright white light. There was a counter on the other end of the room, with a red cloaked figure sitting behind it. Along one wall were some blood red couches. Some people were sitting on them. A few of them had red cloaks as well. Some were yokai. There were some grizzled looking humans there, too. There were multiple red cloaked people (Were they even people?) around the room. Splinter and April even heard a few conversing.
"Don't you wish you were on torture duty?" said one of them.
"Yeah. It sucks that we, full time employees here, have to stay in the lobby, while stupid Phobo, an intern, gets to do the fun job. It's not fair!"
"I know, right! Ozul is there with Phobus too."
"Well, Ozul's alright. I'm actually surprised he hasn't been hired yet. He did better that us on the torture license test."
"So did Phobus."
"Uuuuhg, Phobo is the worst!" the guy groaned.
"I don't know what Phobus did to you to make you hate him so much. He's an alright guy. For a torturer, at least." The person chuckled. " And don't call him Phobo, you know he gets really upset when people call him that."
"Yeah, that's why it's FUN!"
April and Splinter walked past the guys. They made their way to the counter. Splinter took charge here.
"Hey! I'd like to know about the whereabouts of some… turtles." He got up close on top of the counter. "What do you know about Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael?"
"OOF!" April landed hard on her butt. Splinter landed on his head. He deserved it, thought April.
"HOW DID YOU GET US KICKED OUT!" She yelled.
Splinter once again rubbed his ears. "April, you're eardrum shattering again…"
That just made April even more angry. "I DON"T CARE! WE WERE RIGHT THERE! NOW WE HAVE NO INFORMATION!"
"Not so much no information," Splinter said slyly. He pulled out a- A blueprint of the building! It had everything labeled- every torture room, every guard station, even a room of spare uniforms.
"Splints! This is perfect!" said April excitedly, forgetting her previous anger. "How did you even get this?"
"A little of this, a little of that," Splinter said. "And a little sleight of hand and stealing."
"Do you know what this means? It means we can save the turtles!"
A/N: I really enjoyed writing this chapter. It was actually funny. I hope you enjoyed reading it. The next chapter will be out next week, as always. And no, it will not be the rescue. There is still some ways to go till then. Anyway, thank you for reading this.