"This better be worth gettin' me up before the sunrise," Wolverine mutters.

"Cool it, Wolvie," I tell him. "It's not like you actually get to bed before sunrise, anyway. You never sleep; you're a regular bionic man." He growls that he'd be able to be more "bionic" if I had at least given him some time to grab a cup of coffee.

After putting my phone back, I suited up and left MJ my standard note on the pillow. "Saving lives, don't wait up." A quick call to Stark Tower got me through to Wolverine. Even though we're not best buddies, I can't deny that Mother Nature gave him the perfect nose for hunting. After promising him a six-pack, he agreed to meet me on Cooper Avenue. That's the great thing about being friends with Wolverine; he always manages to come through, and at a reasonable price to boot.

We get to the store, and he sniffs around. "Wind ain't exactly conducive to picking up a scent down here. These turtle boys of yours like using sewers and rooftops, right? You look up there, and I'll find the nearest-"

"No splitting up," I interrupt. "Sorry, but when there's a creepy Halloween shop and a terrified ninja turtle involved, I'd rather not take any chances." I step up to the brick wall of the store, meaning to climb up, but my spider sense goes off again. It's not as bad as it had been during the daytime, but it's still pretty bad.

Wolverine notices my hesitation and puts a hand on my shoulder. "C'mon," he says. "Let's go up through the bodega at the end of the block and make our way back here. That way, even if ya can't make it to the roof, you can at least see me when I'm up there." Surprising myself by deciding that he's actually being reasonable, I agree with him. We do just that.

I get an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach as we get closer to the Halloween store's roof, so I pull him to a stop at the rooftop next door. "Any way I can convince you not to go over there?"

I see him looking at me from the corner of my eye. "What, after you dragged me all this way? Sorry, Slick. I ain't got no stupid spider-sense to hold me back." Shaking my hand off, he goes ahead and dives onto the next connected rooftop. I flinch, as though I expect the concrete to swallow him, a la the scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street in which Johnny Depp gets eaten by his bed. I breathe a sigh of relief when nothing happens.

Wolverine looks around, walking to the center of the roof. He apparently spots something on the ground and crouches to it. He remains still for a moment before picking something up and heading back towards me. I feel uncomfortable when I recognize the thing in his hands as Donatello's staff. "Well," I murmur as he comes back to me and offers me the stick, "that certainly doesn't look ominous."

"There were two of 'em," Wolverine tells me. "I picked up the scent of two 'a the turtles. Can't tell which ones, but I'm guessing that one of them is the one that dropped this." I take the staff in my hands, gaping down at it. "That ain't the only ominous thing, bub." I think he's offering me his hand, but I eventually realize that there's something on his glove. Blood.

"Oh shell, as they'd say," I breathe. Looking back up at Wolverine, I ask, "How's that sense of smell of yours work in a sewer system?" He tells me it works as fine as it does anywhere else. We offer one another one more glance.

Then we run as fast as we can to alert the turtles.

You'd think I could get Tony Stark to do something to pretty up the New York City sewage tunnels.

Adjusting my night vision as well as I can, I keep my eye on Wolverine as he follows his nose and other basic instincts. I haven't been this deep in the sewer since Leonardo had led me to their lair at the start of our last little adventure together. Something tells me that, without Donatello manning the security systems, this might be the closest to the lair that anyone's gotten without assistance in a long time.

Wolverine stops suddenly, whirling around. He apparently smelled the presence that I felt with my spider-sense. "You know," he mutters into the darkness, "if I had to pick one thing from the long list of things that tick me off about ninjas, it's the fact that they always feel the need to sneak up on people, even after knowing that they're friends."

"Oh hey, it's Wolverine." I spin around, recognizing Michelangelo's voice. He walks out of the gloom, a relieved grin on his face. "And Spidey, too. What brings you guys through this neck of the woods?"

I can't help but regard him with a sense of suspicion. If he had been the turtle that was spending so much time in the Halloween store, then his unexplainable joviality isn't exactly putting me at ease. "Where's Donnie?" I ask him. "And Raph? I saw them earlier today, and-"

"Ya didn't see me, Wall-crawler," Raphael says as he slowly emerges from the shadows. "Donnie, maybe. But I've been in the lair all day." With a chuckle, Michelangelo explains that poor little Raph has been sick.

Raphael looks like he's about to snap at his brother, but stops when he sees what I've got in my hand. "Hey," he says, stepping towards me. "Is that… is that Donnie's bo?" Glaring up at me, he spits out, "Okay, Spidey. Spill."

"Whoa, time out," I say, backing away from the hotheaded turtle. "What do you mean, I didn't see you today? I was talking to you and Donnie at around six-thirty. Remember, you asked me if I dropped in for a social call and I made fun of your big mouth?" Seeing his blank expression, I murmur, "Oookay, you don't remember."

"Spidey," Michelangelo tells me lowly, "I can vouch for Raph. He's been hacking up a lung for most of yesterday and today. You trying to tell us that you saw someone talking to Donnie that looked like Raph?"

"It was Raph!" I insist. "Same voice, same body language, heck, he even had the same reaction when I pushed his buttons!"

"It wasn't me!" Raphael barks back. He grabs the staff out of my hand and says, "Ya said he was with Donnie, and now ya come back with Don's weapon. If somethin' happened to Don, and there's some guy walkin' around impersonatin' me-"

"That can't be the case," I tell him as I shake my head. "If that wasn't you, my spider-sense would go off. It'd tell me that something was wrong."

"Hold on here, Slick," Wolverine says as he slips in between me and Raphael. "I'm trying to get a handle on this. So you spot Raph and Don earlier today, and now Don's missing after sending you a distressed phone call."

"He's what?" Raphael almost shouts. "He ain't missin'. I… I'm pretty sure that he was back at the lair. Wasn't he, Mikey?" Michelangelo shrugs. Looking down thoughtfully, Raphael takes out his shell cell and says that he's going to give Donatello a call.

"Let me finish here," Wolverine continues. "So we come down here and find out that Raph actually wasn't with Don earlier, but Spidey's warning system didn't go off. That don't tell us much of anything, except that Don wasn't in any danger when Spidey saw him. Afterwards though… well, whatever happened, happened." I was relieved that Wolverine neglected to mention the blood we found on the site.

Raphael put away his shell cell. "Funny," he says. "Don ain't answerin'." I ask him if the phone rang at all, and he blinks at me. "No. Nuthin'. Like one of our phones is dead or somethin'. But mine's fine. So maybe Donnie's is busted."

I turned to look at Michelangelo. "Mike," I tell him, "when I was talking to Don earlier, I told him that I wanted to talk to you. He tried to give you a call, but he said the same thing about your phone. Any thoughts?"

Michelangelo became visibly uncomfortable when all eyes turned to him. "Me?" Michelangelo squeaks. "You wanted to talk to me? Why? What'd I do?" I ask him if he's been hanging around a Halloween store on Cooper Avenue.

"Sure he has," Raphael answers. "Me 'n him both. April's throwin' a Halloween party, and Mikey volunteered to spring for decorations. I go along with 'im to make sure that he doesn't go crazy and spend all our cash."

"Both of you?" I ask. "That's weird. You… I mean… whoever I was talking to earlier said that Mike's been going there on his own. My spider-sense went off the charts when I tried to visit the place myself, so I wanted to know if there was anything creepy about it."

"You mean besides the life-sized pirate banshee that screams every time you walk through the door?" Michelangelo queries with a shudder. "Man, talk about something that gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"It's kinda dirty," Raphael offers. "I thought that was weird since it's a new store, but then I saw the cashier pourin' more 'dust' onto the counter from a jar, so I realized it was just a cheesy effect."

"A bit counterproductive," Wolverine observes, "if they're aiming on keeping customers browsing the shelves instead of sneezing on them." I agree, and ask the turtles if there was anything else.

Michelangelo shakes his head, but Raphael seems to be in a bit more of a sharing mood, which comes as a shocker. "Yeah, there was somethin'. They had these creepy shadow puppets all along the wall. Mikey 'n I couldn't help starin' at 'em. I couldn't find a projector or nuthin', so I've got no clue where they came from. I wanted to ask the cashier how they did that and how much it cost, but I couldn't find him." He looks like he's about to add more to that, but he suddenly turns away and lets out a loud sneeze, followed by a groan.

"Gesundheit," Michelangelo says, putting a hand on his brother's shell. "Man, whatever you're coming down with, bro, it's bad. Maybe you shouldn't have come out here with me. Your allergies are seriously kicking your shell."

"I don't got no allergies," Raphael states vehemently, although I can see his eyes watering as he drapes an arm around his stomach, as though in pain. "It's just the colder weather playin' around with my immune system. C'mon. Let's get back to the lair. Maybe Donnie's there 'n he can gimme somethin' for it. If not, we gotta talk to Leo about the weirdness anyway."

"Nothing short of pneumonia will get you to take it easy, huh, tough guy?" I ask Raphael. Though I'm not sure what it is, I'm beginning to see a pattern here. Something tells me that this would be a lot easier to figure out if Donatello were around. Something else tells me that that may be why he's the first one to go missing. I don't know why I'm convinced that he's only the "first one," but I try to shake that thought out of my head as I throw an arm around Michelangelo's shoulders. "Take care of your brother, Mikey. Don't let him go off the deep end. Otherwise, Wolvie here's gonna have to reel him back in, and you never like for him to get more involved than he has to."

"Especially when it's four-thirty in the morning and I could be in a nice warm bed," Wolverine mutters. To the turtles, he says, "You guys call Spidey if you need reinforcements. All the scary crazies start coming out around Halloween. Must be something in the air."

"Or it could be the fact that All Hallow's Eve has its roots in being the night that spirits can walk the Earth," I remind him.

"Pete," he growls, "shut up." He looks to Raphael, his voice losing a bit of its edge. "Take care of that cold, kid. Your brothers might just need ya." Raphael nods before waving Wolverine off and turning away. Michelangelo does the same, jogging to keep up with his brother.

We watch the turtles disappear out of sight. Once we're alone, Wolverine says, "So… something's telling me that this is more than your average missing mutant case." I sigh, telling him that I think so, too. I realize that Raphael had walked away with Donatello's staff, but I figure that that's okay. I wouldn't need it.

"Is it wrong that I snuck a tracer onto Mike's bandanna?" I ask Wolverine. He chuckles, telling me that they had pulled that game enough times themselves to warrant me doing the same unto them. I stay quiet before asking, "Then would it be wrong if I ask for your glove?" Wolverine blinks and looks at me, asking me what I wanted one of his gloves for. "The glove that you touched the blood with," I clarify. "I have the feeling that, if it's Donatello's, I might just need it as a control sample."

He eyes me cautiously before carefully slipping the glove off."You scientists and your samples," he tells me somewhat condescendingly. "Care to explain to a guy what you need a 'control' sample of a mutant turtle's blood for?"

Taking the glove and squinting down at the still-sticky red spots on it, I quietly reply, "There's almost no way that the turtle I spoke to earlier wasn't Raphael. I don't think he'd have a reason to lie about something like that, but I find it interesting that, earlier, Don had tried to call Mike, but Mike's phone was apparently dead. Now Raph tried to call Don, and his phone was dead. Maybe tomorrow… Leo will try and call Raph, and Raph's phone will be the dead one."

We remain silent for a moment before Wolverine brings up, "And in the end, the only one who won't be calling to see if someone's okay is gonna be Mike. So it either all started with him… or it's gonna end with him." I nod slowly. "Well, damn," Wolverine says after a pause. "Tapping him might just answer everything before it's too late."

"Right," I mutter. "But I'm more worried about who it might already be too late for."