Negotiations

Less than 20 minutes later, Don and Mikey gathered a small group of associates in an underground cul-de-sac on the very edge of their territory. It was a fairly comfortable space, with some cushions for sitting and a short Japanese style tea table that served as a planning space. There were quite a few of these meeting places scattered about down here.

Leo had established them years ago as an alternative to meeting in their home. He'd taken the time to scout out locations and furnish them with the basics needed to convene. This way meetings could be held with outsiders without their home being revealed. It had been one of the best decisions Leo had ever made, Don reflected.

Earlier in the tunnel, shock had robbed Leo of his usual gift for strategy. He had briefly told them of following the flame and trying to scare it off.

He had told them of a mysterious girl and the torture she'd suffered. His usually calm voice had cracked and broken as he recounted it and the story had been so garbled, it was hard to make heads or tails of.

Finally Don worked out that the little flame creature had somehow shared a horrible memory of what had happened to the girl with Leo. No wonder he was in shock.

Sol had grown more and more agitated, the longer they lingered in the tunnel and Leo had reflected the same anxiety. Finally Leo couldn't stand to wait any longer and took off on his own to search, after extracting a promise that the others would do as much as they could in his absence.

Don and Mikey were confused by this very un-Leo like behavior but Raph had taken one look at Leo's crazed face and understood. Raph had always been the one with an excess of emotion, the one who had to focus all the time to control his actions. He understood, better than any of the others, the pain of keeping such extreme emotions inside.

Raphael felt nothing but pity for his brother, who was not just dealing with his own emotions, but also the emotions of the victim herself. The horror of being helpless to save her, while being forced to watch that vision was it's own kind of torture.

"I'll take care of him" Raph said quietly, and took off down the corridor behind Leo and the little flame.

Since they had left, Don formulated a plan that he hoped might let them find girl before it was too late. From the look on Leo's face, too late was going to be too much to bear. But it was going to take quick work and the cooperation of a group that did not generally work well together to pull it off.

Don narrowed the area of the city where the girl could have fallen to roughly 40 square blocks. The alley from the vision, which had seemed familiar to Leo had been identified. Not two days ago, Leo and Mikey had run a short patrol over by a new building construction site, to check the place for illegal activity. They had jumped a couple of creeps in that very alley who were trying to mug a tourist.

That gave Don a center point for his search grid. Calculating how far the villains could have carried the girl before she got away again, had given him an outer radius for his search area.

Now they just had to identify all the Long Falls inside that circle and check them out.

Easier said than done. There were layers upon layers of underground areas to search in that area. Old sewers buried deep, Subway tunnels, utility runs, newer surface layer tunnels, and commuter exchanges, some of which carried their own populations.

Seated with Don now were an array of interesting characters he hoped would solve these problems. None of them could really be called trustworthy, and they stared malevolently at one another, but most owed at least one of the brothers' personal favors so an unspoken truce was being observed.

To his left were a pair of scruffy looking little thieves. A young boy and girl, twins, who had been living in and out of the tunnels for some time now. They were wizards at slipping unnoticed into buildings. And that was exactly what Don needed to obtain all the blueprints for underground areas in the search radius.

How he wished those blueprints had been digitized, then he could just hack into the system to get them, but most of the older tunnel plans could only be found in the dusty back rooms of some city buildings downtown.

Next to the catburglars sat a representative from the homeless group, who populated the near surface tunnels in that part of the city. He was there to advise on the movements of tunnel dwellers in the area, and help isolate long falls once a map was compiled.

And then there was Chinowa. He was one of the gang that operated in that area. Don found it a bit distasteful to be dealing with the criminal element he and his brothers were all continuously fighting, but Chinowa was an exception.

Raph had saved him one night from a hit put out on him by a rival gang. While he was a bit of a loose cannon, Chinowa had become a dependable informant. If the beating of the girl was gang related, Chinowa would know.

Negotiations with the twins were easy. They owed Leo after all, and they merely agreed to Don's terms and slipped out to acquire the blueprints.

The briefing with the homeless rep was enlightening. The rep told of a recent upswing in violence in that area, though Chinowa said his gang hadn't been involved, and the rival gangs had been suspiciously quiet of late. Both were relieved to hear that Don and his family would look into it.

Don was planning on more than looking into it and finding this girl. He was planning to avenge her. Or at least avenge Leo, since his brother had obviously been devastated by the experience.

The twins were back in record time, and the group bent to the task of outlining all the places she might have fallen.