Chapter Forty: Finding

Jior Early Morning

Raph hung Mikey's snack bag on a broken branch of a nearby tree and shrugged out of his obsolete disguise. With these he made a makeshift pillow and blanket for the burden Leo had just set down on a patch of blue moss. There. That'll help her sleep better.

Leo, stretching out his arms and shoulders, eyed him but said nothing. Yeah, you'd better keep your mouth shut, Leonardo.

"So, uh," Casey mumbled, shuffling his feet on the forest floor, "that couldn't'a gone much worse." Not so loud, knucklehead!

Leo put a finger over his lips and stepped a few feet away from Saja in the tiny hole of the clump of bushy evergreen-like trees Raph had found. He'd pushed through the slumped emerald branches to find a gap that was hidden from anyone passing by. Raph plucked the bag off the broken branch of the only deciduous tree in the area and followed a little more slowly; his body was tired.

"Actually," Leo said, "it could've gone far, far worse. For one, Saja didn't wake up, and therefore she wasn't captured. Second, Don and Mikey can handle themselves. Third, these Jior are a simple, anti-technology, pacifist culture. They're not going to hurt them. In fact, they probably have no idea what to do with them. Fourth, their security is laughable; Don and Mikey might even escape before we have a chance to break them out tonight."

"We were gonna hafta wait anyway," Raph added, crossing his arms. "Don needed more time ta crack that thing."

"So what now?" Casey asked.

Well, I'm still hungry. "Breakfast." Raph opened the snack bag. Maybe a powernap after that.

Casey's blue eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. "Ooh, yeah, I'm hungry."

"Before that," Leo began; Casey looked crushed. "Casey, do you know where that patch of berry bushes is? Could you find it from here?"

Casey faced Leo, but his meaty fist closed around a granola bar. "Uh, yeah, if we backtracked, I think I could find it." He glanced at the label and rejected it in favor of a better one. "What do we want berries for?"

"Well, the food Mikey brought won't last long, especially when we get Don and Mikey back," Leo said, stepping forward to look in the bag himself. "Especially since we don't know how long we'll be waiting for Taevon." His eyes slid to Raph's; Raph knew he was thinking the same thing: If he shows up. "And, we'll need everyone who can teleport, even a little bit, to be at their maximum teleporting ability." I guess that includes me. That's still really weird. If any of us turtles should've gained the superpower of teleporting, it should've been Don. Mikey practically already has it.

Casey tried to open his granola bar wrapper without Leo noticing. He definitely did, but he didn't say anything. "So, you want me to go get berries right now?"

I don't think Casey would ever eat fruit if we didn't make him. Especially April. "Don't sound so disappointed, Case," Raph said. "They weren't that bad."

Leo selected his own bar and nodded. "I think the town will be out of their normal schedule after the excitement of having strangers, and hopefully won't be visiting the berry bushes. You and I will go, see if we can collect some berries, and Raph will stay with Saja."

Raph leaned his weight back on his heels. I guess I can babysit her. She'd freak out if she woke up alone. Besides, she needs a protector. "If I gotta."

Leo tucked his chosen granola bar in his belt, knelt, and started emptying the bag of its contents: several kinds of granola bars, wrapped up brownie squares, the last of the cookies, candy bars, water bottles, and the deck of Uno cards. He turned the bag upside down and, with a shake, evicted some crumbs and a forgotten bouncy ball.

Raph picked up the ball. I swear Mikey hasn't aged since we were seven.

Leo stood and shouldered the bag. "After we get some berries, you can bring them back here, Casey, and eat as much as you want. Save some for Saja when she wakes up."

Uh, what? "An' where are you going?" Raph crossed his arms.

"I'm going to see if there's any sign of Taevon at the Old Anchor. Do we have any paper? If he's not there, I'd like to leave him a note."

Raph frowned. I don't like the idea of him going there alone, but I'm not sure Casey could calm Saja down if she was freaking out, and the less stealth we make Casey do on this mission, the better. He nudged the deck of cards with his toes. "We've got Uno cards, but not a sharpie. Besides, can he read English?"

"You've got a point. I don't know. Maybe I'll just take a card anyway. He'll figure out that we've left it for him, that we're here."

"What if th' locals find it?"

"I'll find a place to tuck it out of easy view," Leo promised. "But even if they do, they already know strangers came into town. You don't have to wolf that down, Casey," he added. "We can eat on the way."

Raph settled cross-legged on the ground, facing Saja and the way they had come in. He locked eyes with Leo. Unspoken communication passed between them, but he only growled, "Don't take too long, Leonardo."

Leo returned his gaze steadily. "I'll be careful." He spoke to Casey without looking at him. "Ready, Casey?"

Raph watched the two of them fight their way through the branches. Be safe.

Jior Midmorning

Don shifted and realized Mikey was no longer pressed against his side. He blinked open his eyes to discover that the light in the room had shifted. Whoa.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Mikey's voice came from above him, somehow.

Don tilted his head and found his younger brother sitting cross-legged atop The Technology, beaming. I'm pretty sure both the original creators and the current owners of that machine would be horrified to see a teenage turtle sitting on top of it. "Mikey, what are you—how—"

"I woke up before you, so I went to spy out the window again, and while I was standing on the crate, I saw there was a door on top of this doohickey, so I climbed up, but I couldn't get it open, and I was going to look in your duffel for something to open it with, but then I remembered that I'm not supposed to go in your duffel ever ever, or you'll glue my mouth shut or chop off all my fingers or something, so I've just been waiting for you to wake up so you can get a thingybopper out of your duffel so we can open the door and see what's inside."

Don's head spun as he tried to absorb this high-speed information. Talk about a run-on sentence. He sat up and saw his duffel lying on a barrel to his right, near where he'd hidden it.

He yawned and stretched. While Mikey hummed a quiet but impatient tune, Don unfolded himself from his awkward sleeping position and tried to grind the sleep from his eyes. Wow. I guess I really went out. He twisted left and right. Looks like maybe… mid to late morning. It's hard to tell without direct sunlight. Maybe I can look out those exterior windows in a minute to look at the shadows from the sun. Not that this world's sun will necessarily be an accurate measure, given that it's a different planet and all.

Don rummaged in his duffel for twenty seconds before he realized he didn't know what he was looking for. "What do you need?"

"Y'know, a…" Mikey gestured a twisting motion with his hand.

The duffel yielded a Philips screwdriver, and Don held it up.

"No, no, the other kind. The flat one."

Grumbling, Don fished for a flathead. I guess that does make more sense than an alien civilization developing the exact same torque techniques, especially with the same shape of screwhead. Plus, the rest of the machine doesn't have any screws anywhere.

Mikey accepted the tool and starting prying at the panel; Don yawned and clambered atop the three-foot-tall crate Mikey had pushed against the side of The Technology. I hope it's not secured somehow. There're a dozen ways to lock a panel like that.

The tiny crowbar worked; the panel opened.

"Dude!" Mikey leaned over. "It's a cool glowy crystal thing!"

That must be the power source I couldn't find. There wasn't room for two turtles atop the machine with the door open, but Don bent to pull open one of the side panels, hooked his toes into the narrow ledge at the bottom, and pulled himself up higher to see into the recessed hatch. Mikey grabbed his hand to help him balance.

Inside, a faceted crystal the size of a human head pulsed with energy. An intricate, specially designed system of metal prongs swirled around the crystal's lower half, securing it in place. Royal purple and deep teal pulsed and swirled within the crystal, as if chasing each other, like a shaken snow globe. Gentle but rippling light emanated from its surface.

"Whoa," Don breathed. Even from there, he could sense the raw power in the crystal.

"It's so pretty," Mikey said. The light tinted his green skin purplish. "It's like something from a movie."

"It sure is." Don watched the colors swirl underneath the crystal's surface. Is it hollow, and just a container? Is that liquid inside? Not that I'm going to try to find out. "It makes me think of a giant version of a kyber crystal, the things inside lightsabers—only those just glow one color, and they're fictional, of course."

Mikey leaned forward and slowly reached his free hand inside the opening. "Oh, hey, there's a paper here. A book?"

"Mikey, don't—"

Unscathed, Mikey withdrew his hand and a pale blue booklet.

Don took it and stepped back down onto the crate. It wasn't really paper; the smooth but not slick surface reminded Don of plastic. He flipped it over to see the same blocky script in as the labels all over The Technology, forming what might be a title. He opened it and found a drawing of The Technology with script off to the sides. Lines connected text with parts of the diagram. Are those labels? I think those match the word inside each panel. Don compared the open panel before him with the one in the diagram; it matched.

The next page had simple sketches of various humanoids—including what appeared to be humans—on the left side of the page, each enclosed with a blue box, and different humanoids on the right half, most of which had fat black horizontal lines through them. A few had no marking at all. That must be… check, it works on these races, and negative, does not work on those races. And a few "we don't know yets."

After several pages that were mostly text with some small incomprehensible diagrams, what appeared to be the main body of the booklet began: drawings of a humanoid in a certain state, a particular panel of The Technology with certain switches and dials clearly set to "on" marked in blue illustrated underneath, and then an arrow pointing at a second drawing of the humanoid in a different state. Invisibility. Some sort of megaphone voice. Health. What seemed to be confidence, or even a love potion of sorts. Better hearing. The ability to breathe underwater. Great strength.

All trace of sleepiness evaporated, Don flipped pages almost as fast as his heart was beating. "Mikey!" Do you know what you've found?"

"A... picture book?"

"It's an instruction manual! With illustrations!"

"Uh, cool," Mikey said.

"This is great! This is amazing! It shows exactly which switches to flip for certain results!"

Mikey peered down and chortled. "So, it's like, how-to-alien-techno for dummies?"

"Yeah!" Don was too excited to correct or even notice the implications of Mikey's words. "Now I actually have a chance of reversing Saja's punishment!"

"Cowabunga! But, uh, Donnie, didn't you say we should be quiet? And can I get down now?"

"Oh, right." Don absent-mindedly jumped down from the crate and found a well-lit spot to set the manual down. He fetched his notebook and pen. He was vaguely aware of Mikey descending behind him, but then all awareness of the world around him faded as he pored over the gold mine of a discovery.