A/N: -This is a very long chapter in comparison with some of the others but it is full of information about the poison as well as a few examples of its effects as you go through the chappie! I hope you like it – please review for me if you do! I really appreciate it and reading them makes me smile! You may also be interested to know that the whole story has, in fact been written now, and only needs to be published so updates can be as fast or slow as I want them to be (insert evil grin here!) but to be nice I'll make them quite quick, methinks. Ok, enough waffle! Read, enjoy, review!
"Mikey, we gotta act and we gotta act now," Raph shoved past his youngest brother and out of the room.
"Raph, come back – Raph, please, control yourself," Donnie hurried after him and grabbed the hot-headed turtle's wrist, stopping him going any further. Quickly trying to analyse the situation, Mikey realised that Raph was headed for the exit of the lair and Donnie looked tense and that there was a book open on Donnie's desk that the two of his brothers had clearly been looking at. He slowly and cautiously made his way over to the desk, silently dreading what he would see there. He saw a picture of a plant and began to read the description of what its poison would do: -
'Once in the bloodstream, the poison will cause the sufferer to have frequent blackouts, which happen every time the poison rampages through another organ in their body. There is only one antidote for this that must be mixed especially for the purpose and takes six months to make, meaning that unless the sufferer has some ready-made then death is inevitable. Once the sufferer has their first blackout, they become more frequent and more painful, taking longer for them to reach unconsciousness. You cannot tell when the last blackout will occur, but it will usually be about three days after the first and it will seem like any other blackout, except it will be the most painful and the sufferer will not wake up again.'
Mikey, pale-faced and trembling, walked out of the lab and joined his brothers, where Raph was still struggling against Donnie's grip. Putting a hand on Raph's shoulder, he smiled feebly,
"We will get them – and we will get the antidote, even if it kills us."
"When do we leave?" Raph growled to Donnie, unable to resist smiling at Mikey's words.
"Give me two hours to make some preparations – then we're ready to go." Donnie nodded to them, "can you two send Leo through to me? He'll want to know what's in the poison."
"Sure, bro," Raph banged on Leo's door, "HEY, LEO, GET UP AND GET OUT HERE NOW!"
"How charming," Donnie rolled his eyes, "always so polite, huh, Raph?"
"Always," Raph flashed his brother a quick and mischievous smile before turning back to the door, "MIKEY – I'LL PUMMEL YOU!" he suddenly yelled.
"Huh?" Mikey raced out of where he'd gone into his and Raph's room, looking bewildered, "what did I do now?"
"Sssh," Raph whispered, holding a finger to his lips in case his brother wasn't listening to him – at least then he'd see the gesture and take note, "I'm getting Leo to come out of there."
"Raph, don't you dare pummel Mikey – I thought you were going to try and keep your temper with him more. You lose it way too much; he can't help being a prankster, like you can't help being a hot-head and Donnie can't help being a genius. So lay off him for once, yeah? Shell, we haven't got time to waste on petty pranks and other such matters, you know that."
"Chill out, Leo, I was just trying to get you up!" Raph backed off, looking amused; Leo, however, looked far less than amused.
"That's not even funny, Raph. So what do you want?"
"Donnie wants to speak to you in the lab for a minute. By the way, we leave in two hours to go and hunt down those human freaks!" Raph punched the air vigorously and ran into the dojo, fitting in some last minute practice of punching Roshiri's smug face in and damaging his features, hopefully permanently if Raph got his way!
"You wanted to speak to me?" Leo yawned as he arrived in the lab, where he instantly made a beeline for his brother, who was poring over a book.
"Yeah," Don answered distractedly, "Ok, I've drawn up a list of all the effects and in what order they should occur in and at about what stage. I've also got a few facts on each of the ingredients used in case you wanted to look over them. I've talked to Raph and Mikey and they are both aware of what could happen."
"Uh-huh," Leo skimmed through the few sheets of paper he had been handed, "we'd better get going."
"Just let me grab some stuff,"
"What stuff?" Leo eyed his brother curiously.
"Stuff that might help us out a little in the short term – ya know, medical bits and bobs and some other basic equipment. If Stockman's involved then we could be put up against anything."
"Good point," Leo shrugged, "I'll round up the others – meet you by the door."
"No need, they'll be there already – um, Leo, I wouldn't show the others page four – the little notebook page at the back of that pile," he gestured to the papers Leo was clutching.
"Why not?" Leo asked, puzzled, having not noticed the smaller piece of paper. Reading it quickly, his eyes widened and he inhaled sharply with shock. He read it over and over again, just to make sure what he was reading was the truth and not some false figment of his imagination – but it was crystal clear. He looked back up at Donnie and nodded to him in acknowledgement of what he was being informed of.
"So you won't show them?"
"I think that's for the best – why let them know of this until it's absolutely necessary?" Leo sighed sorrowfully, "There's no point."
"I know," Donnie spoke quietly, "c'mon, I'm ready to go now." He picked up his bag and the two turtles left the room.
"About time too!" Raph threw his hands up in exasperation as his two brothers joined them at the door to the lair.
"Donnie, what have you got in that thing?" Mikey was referring to Don's shoulder bag, which looked as though it was about to burst at the seams.
"Everything, including the kitchen sink, and more I'll bet," Raph mumbled restlessly. He was getting fidgety and impatient with all the chattering and wanted nothing more than to get going.
"Be patient, Raph," Leo read his brother's mind, "you'll get the fight you're pining for so much."
"Can. We. Please. Go. Now?" Raph separated his words very carefully, having thrown a sour glance in his older brother's direction, gaining only a poking out of the tongue in return. Rolling his eyes, Leo shoved the papers Donnie had given him into his belt and looked at each of his brothers in turn.
"All right, let's go," he announced.
"Now how many times have we heard that line recently?" Mikey chortled, receiving a bap round the head from a now extremely irate Raphael, "ow! It was a joke! Y'know, Raphy-boy, you really ought to recover your sense of humour. You used to have one…kind of…" he trailed off as he saw Leo and Donnie miming a painful and sudden death behind Raph's back and waving for him to stop. The four turtles shared an awkward silence and then left the lair, moving swiftly and stealthily.
"So where do we start?" Raph inquired once they were top-side and safely concealed in an alley.
"Well, Donnie here did some research into all the graffiti that has been appearing all over this city and has discovered that each one has exactly the same background,"
"What's that got to do with anything?" Raph snorted impatiently.
"Everything," Leo snapped back, "the background is where they want us to die – and if it's always the same then it must be where they're waiting for us."
"And where is it?"
"It looks like a forest of some sort. So it could be the one outside the Foot Headquarters, if you really think about it," Leo paused for a minute and then continued, "but the trees were only visible through a rectangle in the corner of each design, meaning it must be in a room. And rooms were on a level with the bottom of the trees so---" he was cut off by the excited red-clad turtle.
"It's gotta be a secret hideout in the forest by the Foot Headquarters," his face fell, "but that place is rigged up with hundreds of traps – and it's huge! And it's either side of the actual Foot building, so it could be on either side…how do we find it?"
"Pot luck," Donnie grimaced from where he had been standing, "hey, where's Mikey gone?"
"Uh…guys…" the youngest turtle pulled on Raph's arm urgently, "you might wanna have a look at this – it's the most detailed piece of 'artwork' yet!" he led them back a little further into the alleyway to a large wall, just about visible in the darkness by the light of a streetlamp at the opening of the alley. The four turtles squinted through the heavy darkness at the picture and four pairs of eyes widened as they cast their gazes over it several times.
Mikey was looking at the picture of the turtle with an orange stripe above its head – this was how they wanted him to die. He was hung by his wrists from a beam of the ceiling and his feet had been cut off with a chainsaw, courtesy of Ramakha, along with Roshiri carving obscenities onto his shell and Reginald gouging chunks out of his face with some sort of sharp implement. On top of all this, Ronald was whipping him with a whip; and the whip was on fire, literally, with the flames licking at Mikey and searing into his flesh as the strikes hit him.
Leo was horror-struck by the turtle with the blue stripe above its head; the poison was clearly what the human brothers intended to actually kill him as he was a funny colour, but there were other methods of torture. Reginald was cutting slits all down his arms, making them deep enough to draw blood but not so deep as to cut into veins or arteries. Ronald and Roshiri were beating him with clubs, cracking his shell, and Ramakha was there with a clawed gauntlet, such as Shredder used to wear, and was drawing it down his entire body over and over again, deeper each time so eventually it would break through to the vital organs.
Raph gulped at the sight before him of the turtle with the red stripe over its head. Roshiri was using a long, thin tool to pierce his chest, clearly having punctured his lungs already, while Reginald was using a crow bar to break his arms and legs one by one in several places each time. Ronald, however, was holding the controlling device to the poison just out of his reach and every time Raph tried to get it with his one unbroken arm an electric shock was issued, illustrated by bolts of lightning going from the remote control to Raph's body. Ramakha was taking the more traditional approach to torture and was slamming large rocks into Raph's plastron, winding him and obviously making his lungs even more strained.
Donnie scanned over the other drawings and it took as while to see the appalling picture of himself, as the turtle with the purple stripe was lower than the other pictures; he was tied to an old-age torture rack, being stretched by Roshiri. Ramakha and Reginald seemed to be playing 'noughts and crosses' on his plastron and his legs, which were stretched out more than was natural; but they were not using pens, they were using a red-hot poker and a knife to make their marks. Ronald was cutting his fingers and toes off and, from what Donnie could see, he was also missing his tongue.
The four reptilian brothers shared a look of disgust and slight nausea at the sights that lay before them. In silence, they observed each other's pictures and the deathly stillness was broken only by Leo's authoritative voice,
"Standing here looking at these won't get us anywhere – we need to find them."
"Leo's right," Donnie backed his brother up in an equally solid voice, "whatever happens we're running the risk of at least one death."
"Yeah," Mikey agreed, enthusiasm now creeping back into his tone.
"Those sons-of-a---"
"Raph!" Leo hissed at his brother disapprovingly. Raph scowled but continued, missing out the word he had been about to put in.
"They won't know what's hit them," the red-clad turtle finished, "happy, oh fearless leader?"
"Ecstatic," Leo replied dryly, casting an icy look at his brother.
The turtles slunk through the streets of New York City, soft as mice, until they reached a point at which it would make sense to transfer their operation to the rooftops for a time. Clambering up the fire escape, they were nearing the top when Raph let out a cry from where he was a little way down the ladder. Donnie and Mikey, both of whom had already reached the top, turned and hurried back to the edge. Peering over the side of the building and down the ladder, they caught sight of Raph and Leo, just over halfway up, the first of the two clinging to a rung of the ladder by one hand, his other holding onto the latter, who had passed out and was dangling from his brother's slackening grip. Mikey, being the more nimble of the two at the top, leapt down with surprising grace, practically sliding down the ladder, and coming to a sudden halt just above Raph. Locking his legs around a rung, he let himself hang down until he could reach Leo. Taking hold of his older brother's arm, he waited for Raph to carefully climb over them. Raph copied Mikey's technique but grasped his youngest brother's ankles instead of Leo's. Donnie could now just about reach Raph's and started pulling them up, slowly but surely, until Raph was safely on the rooftop and could help pull their other two brothers to safety. Sinking down to the floor, Mikey tried to catch his breath while Donnie did a quick check over of Leo. Raph made a beeline for Mikey and helped the younger turtle up, patting him on the back as he did so in a silent acknowledgement of gratitude – after all, Raphael wasn't going to compliment someone that lightly, was he?
"What the shell?" Leo moaned as he regained consciousness. With one look at his brother's face, he sighed, "blackout?" he asked, though he didn't really need to wait for the answer.
"Uh-huh; Leo, what happened?" Donnie spoke gently.
"I'm not really sure – all I remember is pain and falling. I vaguely recall someone grabbing my wrist and cursing,"
"That would be Raph," Donnie laughed, shaking his head.
"I thought as much,"
"What kind of pain? How bad was it?" Donnie carried on, face deadly serious now.
"Not too bad – not intense enough or for long enough to let me know what was about to happen." Leo responded.
"Where was the pain?" Donnie raised this unexpected question so quickly that it took Leo a moment to register what he was supposed to be saying.
"Stomach…" he trailed off, thinking back to why this could have any significance. With a start, it dawned on him that he had read something about blackouts in the papers Donnie had given him, "that means that part of me is infected now, right?"
"Affirmative," Don nodded, "unfortunately."
"But there was no pain in the first blackout – why not?"
"I'm not sure – maybe that was just when it first started to work," Donnie shrugged, his face pensive.
"You ok?" Mikey and Raph arrived on the scene.
"Absolutely fine," Leo replied briskly, standing up, a wry smile passing over his grave face.
"Yeah, sure…" Raph muttered sarcastically, "So you ok to keep moving now or what?"
"Fan-bluddy-tastic – come on," he led the way onto the next rooftop, leaping the gap with ease as if nothing had happened, but the poison was running rampant inside him, playing havoc with his immune system and every other system there was functioning in his body.
Thankfully, there were no more blackouts for the remainder of the rooftop journey and the turtles all relaxed and let some of the tension and wariness flow out of them for a short while as they stared at the building directly opposite them; the Headquarters of the Four Human brothers. It appeared to be deserted but, from past experience, the turtles had learnt never to judge a book by its cover as things aren't always what they first appear to be. They scampered across to the edge of the forest and crouched down in some bushes, careful to check for any traps. Finding none, they all looked expectantly to Leo for an order of what to do next. His eyes flicked about their immediate surroundings and after a minute or two he turned to them and whispered,
"We'll go back across the street and find some shelter. We'll hide out there for the night and then start looking in the morning, when it's light enough to see any potential traps or secret hidey-holes. Right now, we'd only be beckoning them to capture us by presenting them with easy targets."
"So we gotta wait even longer?" Raph groaned.
"Yes, Raphael, we do, unless you want to get us killed with some idiotic and rash stunt?" Leo used his brother's full name to emphasise his point before heading back across to the back street from which they had just come. Raph hesitated, casting a glance back at the forest, before following his three brothers. Freezing halfway across the road, he sensed something watching him and whirled round to face the forest once more. Gasping, he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of two glowing red eyes from high up in a tree just above where he and his brothers had been talking moments before. He even thought he could make out the vague outline of a beetle attached to the luminous eyes. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, then squinting to try and get a better view, but the beetle was gone. Maybe he'd imagined it, or maybe it really was there. Perhaps it was Baxter Stockman, back in his beetle form, spying on them for the Shredder's brothers. Heart racing, he ran to join his brothers, finding his eldest brother waiting by the entrance for the alleyway for him.
"Raph, what's gotten into you? Stopping like that in the middle of the road! What if---" Leo stopped abruptly, "Raph? What's up?"
"Stockman…back as a beetle," Raph panted, "he was spying on us – we have to find somewhere a little further away for us to stay for the night."
"Stockman?" Leo had barely taken in the first bit of news when he was snapped into action, "Follow me – we have to get Mikey and Don and get out of here now!"
"Ok, so where are we going to stay?" Raph speeded his pace to keep up with his brother's quick stride.
"I don't…freeze where you are, Raph," the leader's voice was wary.
"Huh?" Raph questioned, bemused, but he did as he was told. Leo plucked something off of his shell and held it up to eye level. The two turtles examined it closely before Leo eventually confirmed what Raph had feared, "a bug – Stockman must have planted it on you so they could find us and kill us in our sleep. Well, that won't work," Leo spotted a car's headlights driving along the road outside the Foot HQ. As it stopped to let somebody out, Leo threw the bug into its path so the vehicle ran over it, leaving it smashed and broken on the tarmac, "there, that's that taken care of," he concluded cheerfully.
"Right…a place to stay?" Raph brought them back onto the problem at hand.
"Right – Donnie, Mikey," Leo called quietly as they walked. The two youngest turtles emerged seconds later, Donnie looking serious.
"Leo, we just found a bug on Mikey – there wasn't one on me – but it's destroyed now so I think we're safe. You two might want to check in case you've got one planted on you though."
"Way ahead of you, bro," Leo pointed to the squashed tracking device in the road, "and there's not one on me."
"Great – so we need to find somewhere to stay."
"We're going a little deeper into town so that they can't catch us in our sleep – we'll let them think we're staying somewhere in this alleyway, although they've probably realised we've discovered and destroyed their bugs and won't bother coming after us now."
The four of them found a derelict house in a filthy back-street next to a run-down club. There was an eviction and demolition notice on the doors of both the house and the club, which were adjoined. The door was open and, after double checking nobody was there, Leo announced that they could stay the night there,
"We'll have to have people on watch all through the night though and we'll swap watches every two or three hours. I'll take first watch, Mikey can take second, Donnie can take third and Raph can take fourth – understood?" he awaited their nods of approval. On receiving them, though they were reluctant to let Leo on watch at all under the current circumstances, Leo grinned at them, "Ok, so let's find the living room of this joint and get some form of rest."
"Sounds good to me," Donnie smiled tiredly, backed up by a huge yawn from Mikey. In the living room, there were two ragged old sofas, but they were soft and a reasonable substitution for a bed, so Mikey and Raph settled down on one while Donnie took the other.
The first hour of Leo's watch passed without a problem, and the only sound was that from the occasional passing of someone driving home from a late-night shift at work, most likely looking forward to a cosy bed to rest in, their only worry being will they still have to go in early the next morning and the only stress weighing down on them being a small pile of paperwork or a couple of bills that were slightly overdue. Such worries were a stark contrast to those of Leonardo and his family, who were constantly cheating death and facing enemies. But the harshest and most unjust of the differences between the two situations was the age – the humans who lived in the city and worked every day were twice the age of the turtles, who were mere teenagers. Sighing to himself as he gazed longingly out of the cracked and fogged up window at the world outside, Leo couldn't help but want something more – a little more freedom and a little less of hiding away and running from so many different enemies, all of which seemed to want them dead and stuffed. A sharp pain in his abdomen interrupted his chain of thought and he fell to the floor, clutching with clawed hands at where the pain was, as if he could grab it and rip it out to make it stop. Biting back a scream, and exchanging it for a barely audible whimper, he crawled over to the corner and tried to will the pain away. He knew a blackout would come at any minute; sure enough, he soon lost his grip on consciousness and blacked out, still curled up in the corner. He didn't know how long he had been out for but no-one else was awake when he came round and he looked at the dust-ridden clock on the wall at the other end of the room and a wave of relief surged through him as he realised that it was only just coming up to changeover time for the watches. Stumbling a little as he made his way over to his brothers, he realised there were two of Mikey and two of Raph on the sofa in front of him. The second ones were very faint outlines but Leo knew they would become clearer as time went on, due to the effects of the poison, until it would finally end in death if they didn't find the antidote. Forcing his morbid thoughts to the farthest reaches of his mind, he shook his youngest brother gently, careful not to wake Raph, and the two brothers silently swapped places with only a brief nod to each other.
A/N: - There you have it – find out what happens on the other watches in the next chapter and also what happens in the next couple of days. There has been a slight change to the amount of chapters – there will now be 24 rather than 22 as there's too much to cram into one chapter and I want to do this battle justice as it's what I've been building up through during the whole story! Enough from me, here's the shout-outs: -
Lioness Goddess: - I wanted a real brother moment between those two – oldest and youngest! Cliffies can be ok sometimes if you're reading them, but not very often!
Chibi Rose Angel: - Ah, I see – well, I think now would be an appropriate time to plead for my life! Pleeeaaaase don't come after me – heh heh, anyway, thanks for your review! And as for Leo needing his brothers? It's about to get a whole lot worse – and I mean a whole lot worse…
Pi90Katana: - I love putting brotherly moments in and reversing Leo and Mikey's status for a scene is fun as usually its Leo telling Mikey off! Thanks for your review!
SassyBlondexoxo: - Aw, don't slap yourself! I'm just glad you've reviewed – it's nice to get a new reviewer this far into the story – keeps me on my toes! Hope this chappie answered any questions you had about the poison.
Lady-of-the-Rings: - Thank you so much for your review – and yeah, a lot of people like that Mikey and Leo part and I'm really happy about it – it was one of my favourite bits to write and I've had a great response to it!
BlueRaven: - I'm really pleased people are liking the Leo/Mikey brother moment – I wanted it in there because I loved it but I wasn't sure whether everyone else would – and the whole story is written now so I can make the updates once a week!
