Hanami – Chapter 21
"Checkmate."
Sterling grimaced, "Well, that's what I get for taking a chance. The best I could've hoped for was perpetual check. I thought I'd go for it." She shrugged, "But, you got me." She pulled a hideous French accent, "Oui, I soo-ren-dare!"
Donnie chuckled, "If France put up half as good a struggle as you did, the Germans wouldn't have come back for seconds."
Grinning, she caught Donnie's hand. "So if I ask for a rematch, I won't be denied?"
"Are you kidding? I'll accept your challenge any day of the week, but never in the month of Octember."
"What are you talking about?" Sterling hurled the white king at his head and missed.
"Whoa, she's dangerous, folks! Regicide! Regicide!"
"Yeah, yeah. The King is dead. Long live the King." She wiggled the black king, and placed it in the center of the board. "So you know what I'm thinking?" She sighed, and picked up the casserole pan that had held the omelets that morning. "I think it was really sweet of Mike to cook all that food for us and it would be a shame to make him do dishes, too." She tilted her head, "So I wash, you dry? You know where most of this stuff goes."
"If the lady insists."
"Lay-dee!? Wha'choo talkin' 'bout, foo'?"
"You do not have to do this, child."
"I understand." Cabbage, Michelangelo, and Splinter were seated in the upstairs room that Splinter had used for his meditations earlier that morning. "Unfortunately, there are many things which should not go unsaid. Clearly my sisters are as unable to articulate them in one another's company as I am. I would fall to pieces if I pushed either TwoSee or ThreeSee too far. It's for the best if I just tell you, and you can discuss things with them privately." Cabbage sadly smiled. "You'd think we'd be stronger as a group, but it just doesn't work that way. It's more like dominoes, tip one of us and we're all gone."
Michelangelo took her hand and squeezed it gently. She didn't pull it back.
"Let's see, ThreeSee left off this morning with explanation for the units: four specimens per group, each group was given a letter of the alphabet. I don't know if there were A-Z groups, but it was close enough that it made no difference."
"Bear in mind, all these groups were made of turtles: female turtles. It prevented breeding for one thing. It also insured that any data collected was not influenced by differences in gender among the specimens. But the most important thing to the humans in the lab: females, regardless of species, TEND (not are) to be more docile then the males."
"I'm sure you're wondering why TGRI would bother to research 56X's effects solely on turtles. The answer would be that they didn't. Remember how ThreeSee said she was Unit C-3 of SECTION 29 Project 56X? Your section number referred to your species. There were cats, dogs, rats, mice, guinea pigs, real pigs, monkeys, some roaches, chimps, rabbits, frogs, the list just goes on and on. Every section had a control group. Every section was populated solely with females."
Michelangelo looked at her in horror, "Roaches?" Cabbage nodded.
"Once it was established that the mutagen did indeed cause humanoid tendencies in just about every species it came into contact with, the majority of the more dangerous sections were terminated. As time passed, it became evident that even traditional lab animals posed a threat, what with heightened IQ and increased mass, and even more sections were terminated. There was a rumor in the first year alone that a cat from their section's control group had actually killed a researcher."
"At this point, a year or so into the experiments, a young doctor, Prof. James Perry entered our lives." Cabbage stopped, and looked around in surprise. Some one was growling.
Mike couldn't figure why Cabbage and Splinter were staring at him. With a start, he realized he'd been growling. He stopped, blushing furiously. "Channeling Raph, there for a moment. Sorry."
Cabbage looked at Mike and Splinter, "You must have known Prof. Perry somehow, or my sisters and I wouldn't be here. I take it you don't think too highly of him?"