A/N: Alright here we go again. Back on Boxing Day like I promised. And in this chapter it is revealed who the mystery lady is from chapter 3. And congratulations to . . . absolutely no one, for guessing right. Don't know how I feel about that one. Anyways, on with the show . . . chapter. Whatever.

Chapter 5: I've got no good title for this chapter

"It is well, it is well . . . with, my soul," Laura sang to Bethel's song underneath her breath as she made her way down the street. She had to make one stop before she returned to the small apartment she called home now a days.

She came up to a building that was small for New York, but big enough to serve its purpose. Large, glowing letters spelled out the company's name, Pin Tech, above the front door. This is the lab where Laura had gotten a part time job while she was in town. In exchange for her help now and then, Professor Sandrum let her use the equipment for her more personal projects, ie. fixing Tim, not that he had any idea what she was really doing.

From her discussion with Grape earlier that day, they decided on a series of tests they should run next. Laura was going to set up the first one now, let it run over night and get the results the next morning. The worst part about most biological tests is that they take forever to run.

It was relatively late, and Laura wasn't surprised to see the lobby area to be deserted. There was no secretary on the clock, but Laura knew her way around. She soon found herself in the same lab where her and Prof. Sandrum first met. She grabbed a lab coat off a set of hooks to one side of the door and put on a pair of clear, plastic, safety glasses. Then she got to work.

She gathers the materials she needed; a set of micropipettes of varying sizes, a bag of microcentrifuge tubes, a vortex, etc. She then busied herself with setting up the reactions.

5µL of forward primer

247µL of magnesium chloride

60µL of mutagen sample

500µL of buffer solution

188µL of distilled water to bring the solution up to 1mL

She added the solutions to the tube, and capped it shut. She held it in the vortex for a minute to mix and set it in the incubator at 37°C.

Laura stretched, yawning. She checked the time, it was way later than she wanted it to be so she started putting everything away. The silence in the empty lab was almost deafening, so Laura made quick work of the mess. She slid the last box of pipette tips into the drawer when she remembered something else.

Suppose I should check on those colonies, Laura thought, referring to the bacteria she was growing and looked at her watch, Eh, who needs sleep? It's overrated anyways.

She opened the door to the incubator and pulled out her petri dishes filled with various types of agar. She sighed in frustration as she laid out the plates on a table and counted the colonies of bacteria for her observations . . . or she would be counting colonies if there were any to count. This was the eleventh time she's tried to grow these colonies, but it never seems to work, no matter what environment she exposes them too.

I guess the mutation is too damaging, Laura thought to herself again. This was a project that she had been working on back in Baltimore. Her prof, Doc Lands, had sent over her samples and previous data from tests she had run back on campus. She was experimenting with an unknown physical mutagens and its effects on DNA repair systems. One mutation in particular was giving her problems. It was supposed to knock out one protein used in repair that could easily be fixed by compounds provided in the agar she was growing the bacteria on. But every time she tried, nothing grew. It was really starting to annoy her, but she had bigger problems.

"Well, who cares about you anyways," Laura told the plates as she put them back in the incubator, not that she expected anything to grow on them. "I've got my bro to think about, not some crappy mutagen that doesn't work the way I want it to."

"Laura?" The voice interrupted Laura's thoughts and she jumped in surprise.

"Gah! Prof Sandrum," Laura relaxed when she saw who had snuck up on her. First Grape no the Prof. This was getting to be annoying. Everyone kept scaring her when she was trying to think!

"It's late, what are you doing here?" The urgency in the Professor's voice was apparent; she wasn't supposed to be here. That's when Laura noticed that Prof Sandrum wasn't alone. A man she didn't recognize had followed the Professor into the lab. He was a larger man, with short black hair and a long face with slightly Asian features. He stood stiffly behind the professor, looking over Laura with a stoic expression.

"I was just setting up a reaction I was gonna let incubate over night," Laura explained quickly, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were having a meeting this late. I'm just finishing up, give me a second to get out of your hair." Laura started taking off her lab coat.

"Human," the man behind the Prof said in a robotic voice that sent chills up Laura's spine, "Kraang would like to be informed as to what knowledge the one known as the Assistant in knowing about the mutagen."

"Human?" Laura asked before realizing something even more terrifying, "Wait, Kraagn?! Like the alien guys?" Thoughts rushed though her head, wondering who this man was, whether he was in league with the aliens. Laura cursed her reluctance to know more about the city's secrets. She knew that it was these Kraang aliens that had brought the mutagen from their dimension, but she knew practically nothing about the aliens themselves.

She studied the unfamiliar man, then realized she had seen him in passing on a few occasions over the times she's been coming here. Was he helping the aliens? Why is the Professor meeting with him?

"Aliens?" Prof Sandrum looked shocked, "How do you . . ."

"Shit," Laura backed away, realizing she just gave herself away.

The man stepped towards her, "The one known as the Assistant will tell Kraang the knowledge that you are knowing about Kraang and how you came to know the knowledge that is the knowledge of Kraang."

How am I getting out of this one? Laura thought desperately. He must have heard her talking to the petri dishes about how the mutagen wasn't working the way it was supposed to and assumed that she was talking about the mutagen that they brought to Earth. Then Laura had to go and open her big mouth and let them know that she knew about the Kraang. She didn't know much, mind you, but she said enough to get their attention.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing. If they're the ones who know the most about the mutagen . . . And then there's the Professor. Laura knew he was experimenting with different kinds of mutagen too. Maybe the project he was working on wasn't focused around a mutagen found on Earth.

"Wait," Laura brings her hands up, stopping the man's advance. "I know about the ooze. Green glowing stuff in crappy glass canisters that can shatter at any time."

Prof Sandrum opened his mouth in disbelief, "How would . . ."

"We've been working on this together for a bit, Prof," Laura said. "I saw some of your notes, and realized what you were working with." She didn't add that she only figured it out ten seconds ago, but he didn't need to know that. "And I can help."

She was really bull shitting her way through this one now. What was it that Grape always said? "The mutagen's unstable, right? And you've been trying to fix that." The man eyed her, his expression remained stoic and emotionless. "I can help. I know just about as much as the Prof here about the mutagen." Laura hoped she was getting through to this guys, if only he would show some sort of emotion!

The man just stood there watching Laura as he was . . . actually, Laura didn't know what he was doing. Was he thinking it over? Was he thinking about the best way to silence her? Was he calling in his alien buddies to deal with the whole thing? Wait, how would he be calling someone? He hasn't moved. If he would only move! He just keeps staring!

The man then scares Laura when he reaches out and roughly grabs her arm, "The place known as Pin Tech has proven to be that which is known as compromised. The necessary action of Kraang will be to move the operation known as the mutagen's stabilization to the place known as Kraang's secret facility until the project is that which is known as complete."

Alright, seems like the guy bought it. Laura is in. Downside, looks like she's not getting out anytime soon.

"Here we go again," Laura mumbles to herself as she manages to grab her backpack before she and the Prof are ushered out of the lab and into the back of a van that was waiting outside.

O o O

"April," Leo greeted the red head as she climbed onto the roof where the four turtles had met up again. "Glad you could make it."

"What's with ditching us," Raph asked not too kindly.

"Just getting to know the new girl," April explained vaguely, not wanting to confess how she had pretty much spilled her guts out to someone she had just met.

"And?" Mikey asked, "she's pretty awesome right?"

"Yeah," April admitted, "She is pretty awesome."

"You should see her with her ruler," Mikey continued, "And how fast Raph can run from her. Heh heh, good times." Mikey chucked to himself as Raph glared at him.

"Anyways," April interrupted, "have you found anything?"

"Oh, you're not gonna believe this," Leo said, smiling. He led her over to the beaten up shed, pushing open the creaky door. April gasped as she was greeted with the glowing canisters that were all lined up nicely against one wall. She counted nine canisters in all.

"How did you manage to find all of this in one night?" She asked bewildered.

"Apparently we aren't the only ones experimenting with the mutagen," Donnie said as he and Leo explained what had happened to April, Raph and Mik—okay, well to April and Raph. Mikey had lost interest and found a way to occupy himself, playing with the canisters of mutagen by stacking them into a tower.

"So we've still got one canister on the loose," Leo finished, "but Donnie managed to place a tracker on the lady's car."

"Right now, it's stopped at the outskirts of town," Donnie said, checking his tracker app on his T-Phone. "She might be moving everything to a new hideout, maybe some sort of lab."

"But why do you think she's moving everything," Raph asked.

"Maybe she's being chased by zombies," Mikey pitched, looking up from his tower. "I read this comic once where the zombies were created by this mystery ooze and they were all chasing this guy who had a big stash of the stuff because tasted really good with brains-."

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard," Raph said, cutting him off and getting right up in Mikey's face. When Mikey didn't back down, Raph knocked over his tower. Mutagen canisters clattered to the group, scattering a glowing light around the small shed.

One canister rolled into the corner. "Cut it out guys," Donnie said, retrieving it, "You could crack one." Behind one of the empty, overturned boxes, the glow from the ooze revealed a thick file that the lady had left behind. "Hey guys, check it out."

He opened the file and started glancing through the pages. "Like I thought, that lady was unraveling the molecular structure of the mutagen along with how it works."

"We know how it works," Raph said, "you pour it on something, and it mutates it."

Donnie simply rolled his eyes, not bothering to point out how simplistic that was.

"Hey, is that her name?" April pointed to a signature at the bottom of one of the pages, "Alice Kennington? I think I've heard that name before."

"Really?" Leo said, "From where?"

"Give me a second," April said, scrunching up her face in thought. Donnie smiled at how cute April looked when she was thinking. "Wait, wasn't Alice Kennington one of the missing scientists that the Kraang kidnapped a while back?"

"Hey, I think you're right," Donnie agreed, recalling a list of missing scientists that from the previous year.

"Hey, we never did find out what happened to all of those guys," Mikey piped up again, "I mean, we sort of let the whole thing drop after we got April's dad back."

"I thought they all escaped when we took out the Technodrome," Raph said.

"I'm sure they did," Leo said, "I mean, this Alice person did, right? That must be where she got the mutagen from."

"You think she stole it from the Kraang when she escaped?" April asked.

"I think it would be more likely that she started collecting them after the spill," Donnie said. "I mean, I can't see how she would be able to bring this many canisters with her while trying to escape at the same time. When all those canisters fell, she must have recognized them. Maybe she was collecting them so no one else would get mutated."

"Either way," Leo said, "if she knows about the Kraang, maybe she knows about a way to stop them, and what they're up to."

"Duh, we know what their doing," Mikey said, "they're trying to take over the world. Honestly dude, think these things through."

Leo glared at Mikey until Raph smacked him over the head.

"Ouch," Mikey complained.

"Thanks," Leo said.

"No problem," Raph replied.

"Now let's find Alice Kennington," Leo declared.

"But what about the mutagen?" Donnie asked, stopping them all in their tracks. They all looked towards the shed and its ominous glow. "We can't just leave it here."

"Alright, then we split up," Leo said thinking things through, "Raph, you and Mikey bring the canisters back to the lair. Me, Donnie and April will find Alice Kennington."

"What?" Raph said, "But I've been stuck with Mikey all night! Make Donnie go."

"Hey!" Mikey said.

"I'm the one with the tracker," Donnie pointed out, waving his T-Phone.

Raph growled as the others turned around and started to leave.

"Just don't crack open any canisters," Leo warned as he jumped to the adjacent building following Donnie as he led the way.

"No duh," Raph said even though Leo couldn't hear him any more. He turned back to the shed and saw that in the short amount of time that the others had left, Mikey had managed to reconstruct his mutagen tower. He was holding the last canister and was carefully placing it on the top, his tongue sticking out in concentration. Raph rolled his eyes and swiped the canister out of his hands.

"Hey!" Mikey said again as his tower collapsed for a second time.

"Come on, genius," Raph said as he piled canisters into his arms.

A/N: So the mysterious lady turned out to be one of the missing scientists from season 1. It's always bugged me that we never really see any of them, and like Mikey so kindly points out in this chapter, they are kind of forgotten about after Kirby gets rescued.

In other notes, it seems that Laura's gotten herself kidnapped again! But this time by the Kraang. How will she get herself out of this one?