Title: Consequences
Rating: T
Summary: While mutated into a monster, Donatello escapes into the city and commits a terrible crime. The mutagen Bishop released into New York has claimed victim after victim, and a young reporter is slowly putting the pieces together. Raph/OC, Mikey/OC, Leo/OC
Chapter 2Raphael and Casey had not been trekking through the sewers for very long when a scuffling sound caught their attention. Wordlessly, Raphael slipped a cure out of the belt he wore and tossed it to Casey. Casey nodded grimly, pulling his mask down over his face and quietly slipping his hockey stick out of his bag.
Carefully, the two fighters crept forward into the darkness, all of their senses tuned on the noise projecting from a dark tunnel. The scuffling sound stopped, and a low hissing rumbled outwards instead. Knowing they'd lost the element of surprise, Raphael flicked on his flashlight to reveal the creature. Casey cursed and reeled back in disgust.
"What is that thing!" he asked. Raphael gripped the cure in his hand as if it were a trusty sai and began to inch closer to the…thing.
"Looks like it's some kinda' mutated roach. Too bad for him that I really don't like bugs," Raphael said before launching into the air with a battle cry, flipping over the top of the monster and attempting to stab the creature's neck. He missed his mark and the cockroach man raised a hairy leg, swatting him into the sewer wall. Letting out a cry of his own, Casey rushed in next, thwacking away the monster's leg and almost getting in close enough to inject the cure before a meaty human looking hand grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and flung him backwards. Casey groaned as he hit the cement, his hockey stick clattering away from him and the cure rolling into the current of sewer water. His vision swimming, he glanced up just in time to see the roach mutant scuttle towards him, his eyes glowing red in the darkness. Casey vainly covered his face with his arm, but the expected blow never came.
Instead, the monster staggered backwards, screeching painfully as his skin bubbled and his body shook. Raphael carefully sidestepped around him, approaching Casey's side.
"You okay, bro'?" he asked, unwilling to tear his eyes away from the shape-shifting monster.
"Yeah…better than he is, that's for sure," Casey remarked, relief evident in his voice. They watched as the mutated creature convulsed and hissed. He dropped to the ground weakly as some of the brown parts of his body became flesh toned again.
"It's turnin' into a man!" Raphael exclaimed.
He approached the battered looking body of the corpulent white male, naked and glistening with sweat. A roach leg stuck awkwardly out of his side as if the mutation had been badly reversed.
"He don't look so good, Case," Raph said worriedly. Casey got to his feet, joining Raphael to stare at the "cured" human. Raphael was right. The human was still convulsing. The skin on his face had not returned to normal. It was still bubbling and stretching gruesomely. His feet twitched as if they were being jerked by string, and something seemed to be kicking around inside his stomach.
The man's eyes bulged open and he vomited, making that strange hissing noise one last time before he finally died.
Raphael stood in silence over the corpse, overwhelmed with feelings of pity first, and also a guilty relief that the cure had yielded a better result when they'd used it on his brother.
"I guess his body just couldn't handle the shift back into human," Casey stated blandly. His mask was in place, so Raphael couldn't see what emotion was on his face.
"What do ya' think we should do with the body?" Raphael asked. "We can't jus' leave it here. The last thing we need is a bunch of cops poking around in the sewers."
"I guess we gotta dump him somewhere," Casey decided after a few moments of thought. "I got an old tarp in my apartment. We can wrap him up in that and leave him in a bad part of town."
The topic was a grim one, but Raphael and Casey weren't the type to flinch from the reality of a situation.
"Alright. You go get the tarp, and I'll keep huntin' down these things," Raphael said. Casey nodded, though he expressed some concern about Raph going alone. "I can handle it," Raphael replied a bit too confidently. "I'll meet you back here in an hour and a half. If I'm not here in two hours, call the shell cell. If I don't pick up, call Leo and Mike."
"Sure thing, and be careful, bro' – these mutants ain't no pushovers."
"Yeah, and you watch your back on your way to your place. I guarantee you these things aren't all down in the sewers. Some of em' are bound to be roamin' around topside."
With no further words, the two parted ways to carry out their respective tasks.
TMNT
When Devon awoke, there was a kindly looking woman watching him carefully. The room he was in was dark, but it was warm and dry. The bed was comfortable, and the sheets were as soft as worn in T-shirts. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes fully, wondering what had happened to him.
"Hey there, kiddo," the pretty woman said, gently pushing a lock of his hair off his forehead. "How are you feeling?" she asked softly. He groaned when he realized just how terrible he felt. His whole body was aching and his head throbbed.
"Not so good…what happened to me? Where's my mom?" he croaked. His voice was dry and the water the woman held for him tasted heavenly.
"You're with friends, and you're safe. Your name is Devon, isn't it? I'm April."
"April," he repeated softly, wondering why she had greeted him upon waking instead of his mother. "Where's my mom?" he asked again, desperate to know the answer. Something tickled at the back of his brain that made him feel terribly cold inside. He was missing something, or maybe it was that he had forgotten something very, very important. The look of worry and nervousness on April's face confirmed his feelings of apprehension.
"Devon…" April began a bit helplessly, "Devon, there was a terrible accident…"
"NO! Where's my mom? Where is she? Why won't you let me see her? You're hiding her from me!" he lashed out at the pretty woman, balling up his fist and striking at her, wanting her to understand how angry he was that she was not his mother.
"Devon, calm down, sweetie! Just calm down," April soothed, catching the boy's fist and pulling him into her arms. She held him tightly, rocking him as her mother had done to her when she was a young child and upset. Soon she felt him yield to her hold and felt his tears against her neck. She knew that he was remembering, and that there was nothing she could do to take away his pain. She held him, all the while murmuring words of comfort to him as he clung to her.
He sobbed for a good hour. Finally, his grieving exhausted him and he fell into a restless sleep plagued by nightmares. April lowered him gently back onto Mikey's bed, and then stood watching him sleep for a few minuets. She did not know much about how to deal with a grieving child, but she did have one idea that might help.
When April emerged from Mikey's room, all eyes turned to her.
"How is he? We heard him shouting," Mikey stated. She nodded a bit absently, deep in thought.
"He's scared and upset, of course. It might help him a bit if the things around him weren't so strange to him. The man on the television said he and his mother lived in a trailer in the junkyard, right?" she asked no one in particular. Master Splinter nodded.
"Just what is it you are considering, Miss O'Neil?" he asked. April turned to Mikey.
"Leo should stay here to monitor Donnie, but you could go and get some of his things, Mike. If we wait too long, the police will sweep through the place and the owner of the junkyard will probably trash or sell all of his things."
"Yeah, he's been through enough without loosing everything familiar to him. I'll go now…if that's okay with you, Sensei?" Mikey asked respectfully. Master Splinter considered sending Leonardo instead, but the determination on Mikey's usually joking face made him re-consider. Michelangelo was struggling with the events that had taken place, and was obviously deeply upset by them. While his eldest son could handle darker emotions, Splinter feared his youngest might be greatly upset by them. It would do him good to be out doing something, instead of sitting in the lair watching the grisly news footage play over and over again.
"Yes, Michelangelo. Go quickly, and do not be seen," Splinter ordered gently. Mikey nodded, his face devoid of any humor or mischief. It was unsettling to see him so serious. Master Splinter did not like it. Michelangelo left the lair just as Leo's shell cell rang, startling them all. A bit puzzled, Leo flicked it open and held it to his ear.
"Hello?"
"Leo, it's me Casey. Raph was supposed to meet me down here in the sewers a half hour ago, but he ain't here yet and he told me to call you if he didn't show up," Casey's voice sounded worried. Leo's response was fast and angry.
"Why did he go off by himself? Can't he quit being a hot head for just one night?" Leo half-shouted into the phone. The stress of the past few hours was wearing him thin. Casey's angry retort was just as heated.
"He wasn't bein' rash! We gave the cure to some roach mutant, and it killed him, so I went to get a tarp from my place while Raph went to see if there were any others down in the sewers! He handled the first one fine, but I'm worried he might have run into more than one of 'em, and he ain't answerin' his phone, so quit preachin' and get your butt out here to help me track him down!"
The line went dead and Leonardo closed the phone, feeling ashamed of himself for drawing such a hasty and negative conclusion about his brother.
"I have to go help Casey find Raphael. I'll be back soon," Leonardo said as confidently as he could for the sake of April and Splinter. Splinter nodded, taking in a deep breath and sighing heavily. The trials they would face, it would seem, were not over yet.
TMNT
Leonardo moved through the sewers quickly on one of Donnie's sewer sliders, cutting through the murky water and making his way towards where Raphael was located. He'd used the tracking device on the shell cell. Hopefully Raphael still had it with him and hadn't dropped it somewhere.
Thankfully, as Leo drew closer and killed the engine, he heard the sounds of his brother fighting. He jumped out, katanas drawn, ready to enter into the fray.
He turned the corner and nearly stumbled backwards in surprise when he saw what his brother was up against. Two mutated turtles, similar in size and shape to Donnie when he had been changed, struck at Raphael with enraged intensity. The bulkier of the two fought with particular aggression. Raphael was doing his best to get close and administer the cure, but the two were working in tandem to bat him around like a rag doll.
"Bout time you got here, bro' – didn't think I could hold out much longer!" Raph said as he tossed Leo a needle. Leo caught the cure and sheathed one sword, leaping towards the smaller one and nimbly dodging the monster's brutal swing. He brought the flat of his katana blade down on the monster's head, knocking the sense out of him and giving him a few precious seconds to wheel around and stick the cure into the creature's beefy leg.
At the same moment, Raphael was picked up by the other monster and shaken violently. Still, the red-clad turtle managed to force the needle into the arm holding him, gasping for air when the monster responded by tightening his grip. Leo jumped forward and kicked the beast, sending it flying and freeing Raphael from its grasp. His brother fell to the ground panting, weakly massaging his plastron.
"Don't drop your guard. I found another one of 'em before these two, and even after you give 'em the cure, they still have some fight in 'em," Raph warned. Leo eyed a particularly dark purpling bruise on Raphael's thigh and assumed his brother spoke from experience.
Leonardo watched in amazement as the two monsters reverted into more humanoid forms.
"They're changing, but not entirely," he said, moving to help Raphael stand up.
"Yeah, this cure ain't so great. It's had different results each time. One guy mutated back into a human but kept some of his roach parts. The last one turned back into a rat, healthy as any other in the sewer. It's the mutated humans that have the problem."
"I'm not a scientist, but that's probably because Stockman designed the cure with Don in mind," Leonardo surmised, still fascinated by the shrinking turtles, especially one of them. She, for they could now see that they were definitely both women, looked much like a female version of himself or one of his brothers, though considerably less bulky and much more curvy. Her skin was a lighter green that his own. In fact, it was almost a flesh-toned color around her neck, her eyes, and her plastron. Her plastron did not look to be very thick, and her shell was small and more flat than curved. Each hand had five fingers and each foot had five toes. She seemed to have survived the mutation just fine and was merely sleeping.
The other woman did not mutate as well as her companion. For one thing, her stomach was grotesquely extended, and the muscles under her abdomen rippled in small waves. She was awake and screaming, gasping for air and convulsing with the pain of yet another shape shifting. Her back arched strangely as the shell underneath her shrunk. She was covered in shallow gashes, with a particularly nasty cut on her inner thigh. Her coloring had changed much in the same way that the other girl's had, but there were angry red marks running along her sides where the skin had been stretched too far, too soon.
"I think…she's pregnant," Leo realized, his eyes widening. Raph grunted, as if the realization was a physical blow.
"The kid can't be alive. No way. Not after goin' through somethin' like that. What if she's loosin' the kid right now?"
"You mean a miscarriage?"
"Yeah, that," Raphael responded, looking extremely uncomfortable with the situation. Giant roach monsters he could handle, but a pregnant turtle woman having a miscarriage in the sewer was far out of his comfort zone.
"I don't know. I don't know what to do," Leo said helplessly, moving towards the struggling woman like a tentative wild animal approaching a human. She seemed to not notice him or anything outside of her pain, but when he drew close enough, she lashed out at him and caught him squarely across the jaw.
"Leo!" Raph exclaimed. He joined his brother and helped him re-gain his footing as they watched the mutation finish. The second woman was covered in sweat, her blonde hair plastered unattractively to her face and neck. She took great heaving breaths as her stomach ceased rolling and some of her pain ebbed away. Much to Leo and Raph's discomfort, she remained conscious.
"Stay…away…" she croaked. It was a useless command, as she obviously had no strength left to enforce it.
"We just want to help," Leo was quick to reply, putting his empty hands up in a show of peace.
"Bullshit!" the woman retorted, looking panic-stricken and clutching protectively at her extended belly with her arms.
"One of you turtle monsters attacked me! You killed my boyfriend!"
Raphael glanced uneasily at Leo and mouthed Donnie's name in a questioning way. Leo sighed, hoping his brother was not responsible for yet another death and that it had been some other mutated turtleoid creature causing havoc around town. Worrying about it, he realized, would do them no good at the moment anyway.
"Neither one of us attacked you. We are mutants, but as you can see, we're quite rational. We aren't monsters, and we aren't going to hurt you. We just want to help," Leo repeated in as calming a way as he could. Raphael located his shell cell a few feet away where he had dropped it and moved to retrieve it.
"Look, lady, I'll call another human. Will that make you feel better?"
She didn't reply, but watched him hawk-like as he punched in Casey's number.
"Yo, Case, Leo and I are in the near 4th Street. We've got…a situation here." Raphael listened to Casey's short response and then flicked the phone closed. "Casey's on his way," he said, more to Leonardo than to the woman. Leo had carefully approached her again, trying to ascertain if she had any wounds.
"Are you bleeding anywhere?" he asked softly. She swallowed, glanced around her a bit wild-eyed, then settled on staring at her stomach.
"My baby…" her voice was a soft, mournful moan.
"The baby could still be okay. You don't know that it's harmed. Are you bleeding?" Leo asked again, with the patience of a saint. She turned her dark eyes to stare at him. Her look was vacant and glassy, but she gave him a sensible response.
"No. I'm not bleeding."
"What about the inside of your leg? I see clotted blood. Does it hurt?"
She didn't answer him. She seemed to stare through him, perhaps at Raphael, perhaps at some demon only she could see.
"My baby…my baby…" She had not passed out, but she was no longer with them mentally. Leo stood wearily and turned to Raphael.
"This is crazy. Completely crazy."
Raphael snorted. "We've seen stranger things than a pregnant female, Leo. Get a grip on ya' self." Leo nodded sharply at the words, returning to 'fearless leader' mode.
"I should check the other girl and make sure she's alright. When Casey gets here, we'll bring them back to the lair."
"You do that. I'm gonna go dump the body."
Despite the situation, Leo smirked a bit at his gruff brother.
"Are you saying you'd rather dispose of a dead body than deal with some harmless women?"
Raphael merely stared at him, his expression completely serious.
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
Leo didn't have time to comment, as Casey came running onto the scene huffing and puffing like a winded animal.
"Woah! Where'd the turtle chicks come from?" he asked in surprise. Raphael merely walked off in the direction Casey had come from, leaving Leo to explain.
"They were mutated like Donnie, but when we gave them the cure, they didn't fully return to their human forms. One of them is pregnant," Leo stated obviously, "and the other seems to have handled the mutation just fine. We need to take them to the lair and let them rest somewhere comfortable. Raph is taking care of…the other one."
"Alright, sounds like a plan to me," Casey said, recovering his breath a bit. He then moved to the unconscious one and easily hefted her into his arms. It was a bit awkward getting on the sewer slider with her in his arms, but he managed to do so and still leave space for Leonardo on the back.
The blue-clad turtle approached the pregnant woman for the third time.
"Alright, I'm going to take you some place safe, okay?" he explained quietly. She didn't respond. He wondered fearfully for a second if she was dead. He hesitantly touched her shoulder, and she blinked owlishly at him. Still alive, but she was in shock. He could handle that. Carefully, trying not to jar her around too much, he lifted her and made his way to the slider. She was incredibly heavy. He imagined it was because she was pregnant and her shocked state made her dead weight. Their progress home was slow and cramped, but eventually Casey and Leonardo managed to make it back inside the lair with their new guests. As the doors to the lair opened, Leonardo glanced at the woman's vacant stare.
"If we keep this up, we're going to run out of beds soon," he said half-jokingly/half-serious. Casey nodded, carrying the girl to the couch and placing her down beside a very surprised looking Master Splinter.
"But hey, at least these two are chicks instead of a little kid. At least that's an improvement."
Leonardo gratefully placed his load into the battered armchair. Master Splinter studied each girl carefully, and then stood up as if his bones were protesting the movement.
"I do not even want to know. I am going to bed for the night. Wake me if there is more trouble, but otherwise we will discuss things in the morning."