&&&&&&&&&&&

Some nineteen years later...

"See, it's easy. Just add the right ingredients and everything works out fine. It's just like baking a cake!"

"Yeah, except when you mess up baking a cake your oven gets covered in goo rather than turned into a smoking hole in the ground." Layla smiled and pushed her glasses further up her nose.

Michelangelo smiled back. "Yeah, Semtex can be touchy that way. It just takes some practice. Wanna try?"

Layla backed off, shaking her head. "Uh-uh. Some other time perhaps. I'm supposed to be starting off small!"

"Your choice," said Mikey with a shrug. "How small?"

"Molotov cocktail small?"

"Wuss!" Mikey laughed at the woman. "Beside, Molotov's have no finesse. Too hard to control, strictly amateur night. Tell you what, I'll show you how to rig a gun to blow when the trigger's pulled. Useful skill should you get the chance to disable an enemy's firearms."

"Sure thing!"

Layla's enthusiasm for the task made Mikey smile again. She seemed too young to be working with them, but then again if the boss said she was ready to learn more, then it was his job to teach. And it didn't hurt that she was cute in an understated way, cheerful and able to grasp what he told her with minimal explanation.

Most of the time anyway. As he was mid-way through telling her about the right way to rig the gun, he could sense that she was looking not at the weapon he used to demonstrate, but on him. For a moment he was slightly flustered – he wasn't used to scrutiny from women, especially not cute, funny ones – then he decided to speak up.

"Is something wrong? You're not paying attention."

"Oh! Um..." Layla gave an embarrassed laugh. "It's just, um, I was wondering – um, I don't want to offend you, but, um..."

Mikey slapped a hand to his forehead. "It's the giant turtle thing, isn't it? So it is noticeable!"

"Well, yeah." She gave the same embarrassed laugh. "It's just, they kinda warned me you weren't, um, strictly human but I thought they were teasing the new kid, y'know?"

"Teasing the new kid would be not telling you," said Mikey, recalling the only time that joke had been played on a new recruit some six months previously. After the screaming fit the guy had thrown, he hadn't lasted five minutes in the division. "It's kind of a long story. But I'll give you the short version. As far as can be told, my two brothers and I were mutated from normal turtles by unknown means, found by some maintainer dude in the sewers and brought to the lab. When they found out we were sentient, they tried to treat us as normally as possible and find out how we came to be like we are. And make sure we weren't from outer space of course, but they proved that quickly enough. Good thing too. I've never been fond of vivisection."

Layla smiled, as he hoped she would. Telling his origin story was never fun and it was even less fun when telling it to someone like her. Admitting he used to be a pet really put a dampener on any kind of romantic life...

What romantic life?

"One of the scientists gave us names – his daughter was studying art history and we got named after her favourite artists. Good thing she wasn't any younger or we might have ended up being Mickey, Donald and Goofy."

Layla sniggered. "Which one would you have been? Goofy?"

"Nah, that'd be my brother Raph. Just because it'd irritate him so much."

He was about to return to his explanation when her pager bleeped. She unclipped it from her belt, read it and frowned. "Damn, I have to go. Same time tomorrow?"

"For sure." Mikey pretended to clean away the explosives he had been demonstrating, sneakily watching her as she left. She really filled out those combat pants. Damn, if only he had thought to tell her he was really a mutant human, then maybe...

Maybe nothing. Makes no difference.

Man, I hate being a turtle.

Layla made her way further into the compound, not hurrying. She'd get there in her own time and no one would complain. She was too important. She wasn't exactly the wide-eyed newbie that Michelangelo had taken her for.

The only drawback to that was what he would do if he ever found that out.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

BLAM!

BLAM!

BLAM!

Raphael pressed the button that would bring the target close enough for him to check how many bullets had hit their mark. The paper was shaped like a man and upon inspection, he saw enough had hit the bullseye to make one large hole rather than several small ones. There were a few strays around it and the head had been blasted into tatters. Not too bad.

But not as good as he would like.

Scowling, he checked over the weapon. It was a special issue, given only to the elite of the black ops. Out of all of the operatives, he was the best shot, in the best shape. He pushed himself to be the best, not content with mediocrity.

Because if I became expendable...

If he did, then there was still plenty that could be learned from him. Dead or alive.

In honesty, he was amazed that the order to use them as test subjects hadn't come down as soon as they were discovered, but Bishop had told him once that one of the scientists had petitioned long and hard for the chance to see how intelligent they could become, what the long term effects of whatever had been done to them were. Raph imagined that Bishop hadn't been happy about that, but even he would have to admit the gamble had paid off. Alive, the three of them had still been able to give him blood samples and they had isolated the mutagen several years previously, studying its effects right up to the present. That there were already three mutants meant they didn't have to wait to isolate the mutagen before starting their experiments, saving them twenty years. And they knew from the turtles that they could expect intelligence and speech.

Still, Bishop sometimes seemed disappointed that he hadn't been able to get his answers just by tearing them apart. Then again, Bishop had some kind of mission to protect the human race going on and the turtles may be humanoid but they sure would never pass as homo sapien. He resented that in spite of his pleas to his superiors, they had been allowed to live. Not that he was above using their uniqueness to further his own agenda should the need arise.

And raised exclusively as genetic freaks, the many scientists trying to gage the extent of their intelligence and other attributes, was it any wonder that they had all become proficient in the areas specialised in by those around them?

Raphael smirked and raised his weapon again, pressing the button that would give him a fresh target to aim for. He had shot his first gun at the age of around three, or so the scientists amazed by him estimated. They had wanted to test his hand to eye co-ordination and his ability to aim. He had missed the target by a mile and ever since been determined that he would master weapons. Failing wasn't an option.

He had no illusions about what would happen to them should their usefulness end.

And with that in mind, he had ingratiated himself into the organisation, making sure he was a crack shot, superb sniper, strong enough to hold his own in a fight. His brothers had done the same, whether consciously or unconsciously. The three of them were among the best operatives the group had.

When the alien threat arose, the human race could count three non-humans among their protectors.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Glancing at the grey in the pod, Donatello sighed. The creature looked almost alive, moving in the fluid that kept its body vital and fresh, although it had been dead for many decades, the movement merely the eddy's of water causing the limbs to float.

Damn, those things were creepy.

He rubbed his eyes and went back to his notes. Although the scientists who had studied them as infants would now guess his age as around twenty or so, he had a formidable intelligence that hadn't gone unnoticed and had been put to good use. A group of scientists at the facility were convinced it was possible to bioengineer an alien like the one in the tube and although Don had initially been sceptical, he realised it may just be possible. If they could replicate the alien, it would be a step toward understanding it and maybe working out how better to protect themselves from invasion, should it ever come to that.

But he wasn't getting much joy from staring at his notes. His concentration was fried. Maybe he should take some sleep or something. He wasn't doing a lot of good where he was...

His pager went off. With a sigh, he checked the number and realised it was Dr Adamson, another scientist with whom he worked. Picking up the office phone, he called out to see what the big emergency was.

"Donatello, we nailed it!"

That woke him up. "We did?"

"Yeah, that new DNA code you came up with really did the trick. Seems like we succeeded! But you'd better get your shell down here. I had to notify Agent Bishop and he's on his way here right now."

"Right." Don felt a wave of dislike for the head of the facility and forced it back. "I'll be there in a moment."

Slamming the phone back onto its cradle, he raced out of the room and toward the lab where most of the bioengineering had been going on. In spite of the late hour, there were three scientists in the room, Dr Adamson and two of his more enthusiastic assistants.

"Check it out Donnie-boy!" Adamson indicated to a stasis chamber where another grey floated. It might not have been moving but the differences between it and the dead specimen were obvious. This one was alive.

"Wow!" Don peered into the stasis tube, fascinated. "We really pulled it off!"

"Sure did," replied Adamson, holding out a plastic cup. "Champagne?"

"Thanks." Don sipped the liquid, allowing himself to get swept up in the excitement of the moment. Having to live at the facility had its drawbacks – the lack of freedom, the knowledge that he was as much of a scientific observation as anything he kept in a petri dish, the constant nagging fear of what would happen if he or his two brothers ever became expendable – but moments like this almost made up for it.

Almost.

When Bishop finally arrived, Don was almost at the end of his second cup of champagne and there was a definite party mood in the air. The appearance of the Agent dampened the enthusiasm somewhat, but it would have taken a miracle for the jubilation to be held in check entirely.

"Is this it?" Bishop strode over to the stasis tube and Don had to restrain himself from informing the man that it sure as hell wasn't modern art.

"That's it," said Adamson. "Alive and kicking. Beautiful, isn't it?"

"humph." Bishop indicated to the controls of the tube. "Let it out."

"Um, sir?" Adamson's voice was hesitant. "I don't know if that's wise. We don't know it's hostility level or..."

"I can handle it man, just do it!"

Nervously, Adamson tapped in the code that would release the grey. Don watched, tensed to head for the door if things went bad. He didn't have a gun with him and didn't want to chance facing the bioengineered alien in hand to hand combat. He had some training in that field, but not so much that he would trust his abilities against it.

The grey emerged from the tube, seemingly disoriented, doing nothing more than gazing at Bishop. And then a grimace of anger appeared on the Agents face and spinning around, he kicked the alien in the midsection.

Don blinked. That was unexpected... Where had the aggression come from? Bishop wasn't the most stable of guys, or so he suspected, but it was him who had told them to work on the alien and to keep him updated with the progress. Why would he attack something he had taken such a personal interest in?

The alien began to swell and with a sinking heart, Don realised that something was amiss. The aliens system had to be unstable. They hadn't perfected the bioengineering after all.

The grey exploded, showering the lab and Bishop in genetic waste.

"You call this disaster a breakthrough?"

"Uh..." Adamson tried to think fast. "It is in a way sir. After all, now we know what can be done, we can perfect the bioengineering process in order to stabilise and evolve the prototypes system and..."

"Spare me the details," growled Bishop, glaring at his ruined suit. "Just get it done. And get me a sample of that – whatever it is."

Don observed that Bishop was pretty much covered in samples of the 'whatever it was' and fought back laughter. The last thing he needed was to gain Bishop's ire.

"Guess we celebrated too soon," said Adamson ruefully after Bishop had left.

"We bioengineered an alien life form," Don reminded him. "I'd hardly call that a failure. Bishop's just too damn impatient."

"Yeah," sighed Adamson, checking the mess on the floor. "What does he want with the genetic material anyway? Not like he can do anything with it that we can't."

"We're not the only scientists working here," said Don, painfully aware of the fact. "He probably wants one of the other teams to do some investigating into it too."

No doubt one of the teams that does the weird, freaky experiments, he thought to himself. I'm glad they're nothing to do with me.