Note: Thanks again for all the kind reviews. Since there were so many (and I am dragging it out a little) you get two chapters this time. Hope you like them.
Chapter Four
"Who knew April had such a huge basement," Donny remarked as he and his brothers glided from rooftop to rooftop in the sunset sky. The task of clearing their friend's basement had taken an entire day, largely due to sorting through all the heavy boxes, and the events of the previous evening weighing heavier still on each brother's mind.
"And who knew she had so much junk to fill it with," Raph muttered, bounding behind his brothers. Suddenly he saw something out of the corner of his eye, and quickly skidded to a halt. He looked over the edge of the rooftop and spotted a pack of males in an alley below. "Hello, what have we here?" He murmured.
"Keep up, Raph," Leo commanded, noticing that his brother had fallen behind.
"Yeah, yeah," Raph called back absently, watching the group intently. There appeared to be a great amount of them, about nine or ten, all dressed in jeans and thick jackets. He listened hard, and could hear some kind of high-pitched whimpering, like that of a child. He jumped from the rooftop to a flight of stairs set lower down the building, where he got a better look. On closer inspection, Raphael caught sight of a young boy struggling against the men.
Raphael, without thinking or questioning for a moment about what he was doing, jumped down the flight of steps and landed gracefully behind the group of males. "A little outnumbered, ain't he?"
The men all turned around, and to Raphael's surprise, a few of them smiled wryly to themselves. They dropped the boy in the blink of an eye, turning their attention immediately to the new and strange arrival. The boy was stunned, and stared at his hero for a second before getting to his feet and running for all he was worth. Raph made sure the boy was out of sight before he growled, "any of you creeps gonna follow suit, or would you prefer to stick around for the party instead?"
The men all began to draw their weapons and adopted a ready stance, waiting for the strange figure to make his move.
Meanwhile, Leo noticed that Raphael was no longer with him and Donny. "Don, wait a minute," he said quickly, stopped and looking around for any signs of his brother. He hurried along the edges of the rooftops until he saw the crowd below, the one that Raphael was currently trying to battle.
Leo silently cursed before he jumped down towards the fight, with Donny not far behind. They instantly joined the fight, picking the men surrounding Raphael one by one before quickly disposing of them.
"Trouble always seems to find you, doesn't it, Raphael," Leo growled as he fought with two men, one using a staff as his weapon, the other a chain.
"These guys were playing with some kid here, and I couldn't resist joining in," Raphael growled back, irritated at being reprimanded by Leo when the cause of his fight was just. He had fended off a few of them, but as he was the one that started the fight, everybody wanted to fight him. "Jeez, one at a time, there's plenty to go around," he muttered, his sais dancing smartly in his hands as he attacked.
"In that case, you should have called us, you're always leaving us out of stuff," Donny called from where he fought, keeping two men at bay with his bo staff.
"I'll remember for next time," Raph yelled back, before he was closed in on. Three men surrounded Raphael as he fought. He took two of them out with a slightly unsteady split kick, but the third got the better of him as he struggled with his balance. The great, bulky man, with red-coloured hair, took his chance and struck Raphael over the head with a club.
Raphael fell awkwardly to the ground, groaning as he did. He grumbled as he tried to get to his feet, not quite sure what hit him. Behind him, a smaller man with a blonde moustache held a syringe, poised to inject the fluid into the turtle below him.
Leo saw what was happening out of the corner of his eye, and acted swiftly. He took one last swipe of his katana at the man he was fighting, before running fiercely, slamming his swords point-first into the floor and landing feet-first into the man with the syringe. The needle rolled away from the smaller man and came to a halt between two trashcans, where it lay out of sight.
"Let's get out of here," one of the men cried as he was knocked to the ground by Donatello's bo staff.
"But what about the subject?" another man shouted.
"It's not the same one," a third called out.
"Fine, we've got nothing to keep us here, let's go," the man who had dropped the needle commanded, before all the men scattered and ran out of the alley, much to the amazement of the other turtles.
Leo walked over to Raph, who was at that time struggling to get up from the ground. "You okay, Raph?"
"Yeh, I could have taken him," Raphael mumbled, his eyes saying thank you to his brother. Leo nodded, smiling ever-so-slightly at his brother's method of showing gratitude.
"Not after he'd injected you with this," Donny said, picking up the syringe from its concealed place. He studied it carefully for a moment, before placing it in his bag. "I'll take a look at what it's got in it when we get back. And that's after I clean up your head," he added, seeing the wound given to Raphael by the hulking man.
"Yeah, whatever," Raphael muttered, thinking to himself that his head hurt only a little, and that if Leo had not stepped in, things could have been a lot worse. That was not the main topic on his mind. "Who were those guys? What did they want with that kid? And what did they mean, talking about the subject?" Raph asked, looking at the evidence and thinking that it looked like a small few random puzzle pieces, without any links between them.
"The fluid in this needle might be able to answer some of those questions, when I find out exactly what it is," Donny said as he climbed into the manhole, following his brothers to the sewers below.
The three turtles were chatting excitedly to one another about one of the stories of April's father she had told them that day when they entered the lair. They found their Master sitting in the armchair, drinking a cup of steaming herbal tea.
"Good evening, my sons," he greeted, placing the cup on the table and standing before them. "I trust you are all hungry from your day working?"
"I'll make something," Leo offered, heading for the kitchen.
"Master Splinter, is Mikey in his room?" Raphael asked, having looked about the lair and not found him.
"Yes, Raphael, he is resting following his training today," Splinter said, nodding to Michelangelo's room. Raphael made a move to towards the room, but Donatello pulled him back.
"Hold still, Raphy, I'm going to try and clean your cut," Donny said, wiping it with a cloth soaked in antiseptic.
"Raphael, how did you injure your head?" Splinter asked, demanding an explanation.
"We saw a couple of guys giving a kid some trouble on the way home, and I guess they didn't want me to play," Raph said casually, grimacing at his stinging wound.
"They were going to inject Raph with some kind of fluid in a syringe, before Leo got to them," Donny said, giving further explanation. He paused, then added, "I think there's more to those guys than meets the eye, so I picked up the needle, to study it."
"What do you suspect, Donatello?" Splinter asked curiously.
"I won't be sure until I've studied the contents of that syringe," Donny said guardedly. At that time he had his suspicions, but he was not ready to share them until he had at least some kind of confirmation. He finished cleaning the cut and said, "There, finished."
"Thanks, Don," Raph said gratefully, before walking towards Mikey's room. He hesitated outside the door, and opted to knock first.
"Yeah?" Came the muffled grunt from inside.
"It's me, Raph," the red-banded turtle began. "Can I come in?"
"Sure, whatever."
Raphael quietly opened the door and stepped into the dark room. The only light in the room came from the crack beneath the door. Mikey was laid facing away from the door on the crumpled covers of his bed, staring at the ceiling. One arm was thrown slackly over his face, as though shielding his eyes from light that wasn't there.
Raphael picked his way through the mess of clutter upon the floor and perched at the foot of his brother's bed. He fumbled with a loose thread on Mikey's cover for a moment, before speaking. "I came to apologise," he began brusquely, immediately regretting the somewhat harsh tone.
"For what?" Mikey mumbled back, his eyes still fixed on the ceiling.
"Well," Raphael began through gritted teeth, not enjoying Mikey's moody attitude, "for ragging on you the night before last, in sewers. I shouldn't have said words like that to discourage you. You didn't need it." He paused, receiving no response from Mikey, and pressed on. "I feel, I don't know, I just feel like I'm responsible or something for, you going out last night."
"You are."
"I... what?" Raphael stalled, taken aback. He hadn't seen that one coming. "You... that means... am I really the cause of you going out and getting drunk last night?" As an afterthought, he added, "and I thought you said you couldn't remember anything."
Mikey sighed, and moved into a sitting position on his bed, looking at Raphael for the first time. "Listen, Raph. When I was training today, I hit my head."
"There's a lot of that going around," Raphael commented wryly.
"Dude, who gave you that? Did you drop something valuable at April's?" Mikey asked, studying the mark on his brother's head. Raphael shrugged, and Mikey continued. "Anyway, when I hit my head, something weird happened. There was, like, this flashback of last night. I remember running through the city, because I was pulling extra training."
"'Cause of me," Raphael murmured, looking toward the floor.
"Maybe, but I didn't go out into the city to get drunk, not because of you or anyone," Mikey explained hurriedly. "I just went out there to train. I haven't been able to figure out how I ended up doing getting plastered. I mean, I wasn't that annoyed or anything. I just got a little annoyed with myself because I messed up in the park, and I messed up in training last night."
"We all mess up sometimes, Mikey, you just need to put it behind you and get on with it," Raphael said positively. He chuckled to himself and added, "I guess you needed to hear that last night, before any of this happened."
"Maybe," Mikey shrugged, then grinned, "but then, if you had, I wouldn't have known what it's like to be drunk!"
Raphael laughed and asked, "so what did you think of it?"
Mikey thought about this for a moment, then sighed. "I don't remember a lot about being drunk, but I sure remember what I feel like now, afterwards."
Raphael frowned. "You still don't feel too hot?"
"Not really," Mikey said, shaking his head slightly. "My head really hurts, and I don't really feel all that hungry, and..."
"Whoa! We'd better call a specialist in for this one – Mikey doesn't feel hungry! Let's alert the media, too!" Raphael said flippantly.
Mikey punched his brother lightly in the shoulder. "Quit goofing around, Raph. Master Splinter said I should just sleep it off or something, but he says I should still eat. I didn't eat dinner last night, or a lot of lunch today."
"It's safe to eat today, Leo's cooking something right now," Raphael informed him. He stood up off the bed. "C'mon, it should be about done." Mikey stood up also, and followed his brother out of the room.
