Raph scrambled to his feet and took a few steps back away from the woman. His eyes scanned up and down the now human Mona Lisa. "Mona…. H-how… You're human!"
The woman was standing there looking at her perfectly painted manicure before pulling her hand closer and looking at it from a different angle. "No shit Sherlock."
The turtle glared. "How'd you become human?" He snapped.
"Well now isn't that the big question of the night." She smirked and took a seat at the dining room table. "Why don't you be a good boy and go fetch Leo for me."
His eye narrowed. "I'm not your lap dog Mona. You know where his room is. Fetch him yourself." With that Raph turned his shell to her and headed back to his room.
"That's not a wise decision Raph." Mona scolded, but made no move to follow him.
So Raph didn't turn around. He slowly opened his bedroom door and slipped inside where he could hear the steady breaths of the woman sleeping in his hammock. The turtle went to the edge of the slightly swinging bed and looked down at Jack. A big calloused finger brushed her tangled hair out of her face before he gently started to slide his arms under her.
That's when he heard the screams. Jack's eyes snapped open and locked onto Raph's face. Raph helped her sit up and put a finger to his lips. "Stay put." He whispered as he grabbed his sai and flipped them around his hands. Dashing out of the room Raph saw Antonello zipping past him, his axe ready to swing. Following his brother he grit his teeth and stepped out into the living room. The sight that greeted him wasn't what he expected.
There were at least a dozen foot soldiers. They had Donatello face down on the floor in restraints. Leo was against the wall, his swords on the floor as someone tightened a chain around his neck. Mikey was dealing with a handful of soldiers in the acrobatic way he always did. Ant stormed in and charged at the Foot soldiers while Raph swung around and took out the nearest intruders. Donatello screamed as something was stabbed into his side. Raph knocked out the Foot in front of him, but he couldn't see Donnie. What were they doing to him? His fists connected with more soldiers as he shoved them out of the way. His eye searched the room for his brothers. Leo was gone. Mikey was still tripping and kicking people. Ant wasn't to his right any more and he could no longer hear the screams from Donnie.
Another high pitched scream pierced through the sewer home. "Jack!" Raph bolted back to the bedroom. Swinging the door open he charged in but froze two steps into the room. Jack was sitting on the floor against the back wall, Tears were streaming down her face as she looked at the body on the floor before her. The turtle spied three shobo sticking out of the dead masked man. There were two in his neck and one in his temple.
"I-I… I didn't mean to… He was…" She was trembling as her bright eyes flicked back and forth between the body and Raphael.
Shoving the body away from her, Raph knelt down and helped her stand. "It's okay. You were just defending yourself." There was a deep seated anger boiling in his gut. He should have been there to protect her. No one should have been able to get that close…. Yet, even with her injuries, with the physical pain she was in, the woman managed to kill another trained fighter. Even Raph couldn't deny he was kind of proud of her abilities.
There was a strangled shout from the other room. "Raph!" It was Mikey.
"Stay put." Raph grabbed the body and drug it with him back into the open area of the house. What surprised him now was how empty the room was. Mikey was standing there rubbing his shoulder, his head hanging down as he looked at the three bodies that littered the floor. More Foot. More to clean up. Great… Raphael snorted. "More fuckers to get rid of."
"Raph…" Mikey said softly.
"Don't try to get out of helping me clean up this mess. You guys all helped make it."
"Raphael!"
"What?" Raph yelled at him as he turned around.
Mikey was glaring. "The others are gone." He glanced around the room. "They were taken."
Raph felt a chill squirm up his spine. He looked at the room. The broken table, the flipped over couch, Leo's katanas were thrown in the corner, Donatello's bo staff was broken in half and thrown in opposite corners, Ant's axe was buried in the back of the sofa. There was blood splattered everywhere. Did it belong to the Foot or was it his brothers'?
"What do you mean they were taken?" Raph asked behind his gritted teeth.
"They were taken!" Mikey looked at him hard. "We were outnumbered and cornered and the bastards got them. They tied them up with chains and carried them off! I couldn't do anything to stop them…"
The older turtle swallowed hard as his mind tried to process the information. He blinked a few times before shouting and punching the wall. "How the hell did this happen!"
"I told you it wasn't smart to get on my bad side."
The brothers looked to the destroyed doorway. Mona Lisa was standing there in her little pink dress, smirking.
Raphael growled and stormed over to her. "What the hell did you do?"
"I didn't do anything." She turned and started to walk away.
The red wearing turtle made to follow her but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. His head snapped in the direction and he found Mikey shaking his head. "We need to think. Now is not the time to jump head first." He paused a moment. "Never thought I'd have to be the one saying that."
Raphael hung his head and ran a hand over his face before he lashed out and punched the wall closest to him. The brick and mortar crumbled with the already dilapidated door and wall.
"How is she human?" Mikey asked quietly.
"That's a damn good question." Raph snorted. "She had something to do with this. I know it."
Jack was finally calm, still shaking just a little bit though. Brushing her tangled hair out of her face she found her way to her feet without popping any stitches on her side. Her small bare feet carried her out to a silent living room. The room was simply destroyed; there was no other way to describe it. The couch was flipped over, an axe buried in it. The entertainment center was in pieces, again. There were four bodies of foot soldiers lying in pools of blood on the floor. Jacquelyn took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Keep calm… calm… "Raph?" She called out as she looked around. But nothing answered her. "Raph?" Her voice started to shake. Where was everyone?
She looked around again. That's when it dawned on her that the axe in the sofa belonged to Ant. Wrapping her small hand around the handle she wrenched it out of the couch and let it hang by her side. IT was too heavy for her to use, but holding it made her feel a bit safer. Slowly she walked around and found Leo's katanas and then the broken bo staff.
"Where are you guys? What happened?" She bit down on her lip as she tried to staunch the growing knot of fear in her stomach. All sorts of scenarios started to run through her head, and none of them were good. Running back to the bedroom, Jack flipped on the light and rummaged around to find the rest of her shobo. They'd be easier to carry than Ant's axe. She scanned the corner of the room to find her small sneakers and shoved her feet into them without bothering to find socks. "Fuck this thing." She pulled her arm out of the sling and tossed the apparatus aside.
Hurrying out into the living room, Jack stopped suddenly at the sight of something odd standing in the middle of her living room. A figure covered in white fur wearing a blue Japanese-esque outfit? It was something straight out of a history book Jack had seen in high school.
The figure had swords tied to his waist and a folded cloth wrapped around something was tucked under his arm.
"Something has gone horribly wrong here." A soft voce came from him.
"W-who are you?" Jack finally stuttered.
The person-thing turned around. He was a rabbit. His ears tied together and hanging limply down behind his head. He had a small smooth pink nose and a few whiskers that sprouted from his face.
"Miss Jacquelyn?" He brow quirked as he straightened out the top of his kimono like garment.
"How do you know who I am?" Jack took a step back.
He bowed which surprised her. "Miyamoto Usagi at your service. Donatello contacted me at your request for a birthday present for Raphael."
"Oh… that was you." Jack had almost forgotten about that arrangement. It seemed like such a distant thing now.
The rabbit looked around. "What has happened here?"
Jack almost laughed nervously but there were tears dripping down her cheeks. "That's what I'd like to know."
"Raph, what are you doing?" Mikey was standing in the doorway of a small uptown apartment, keeping watch as his brother tore up the living room. "What are we looking for?"
"I'll know it when I find it." Raph muttered as he started to rip book after book off the shelf and throw it to the floor.
When the sounds stopped, Mikey turned around and found his brother staring at a hard bound notebook. "What is that?" He crossed the room and stared down at the label on the front of the book. Xanus Laboratories; Project Deconstruction and Project Reconstruction. "What the hell does that mean?" Mikey asked, his voice almost shaking.
"It means Mona was working for Xanus." He lashed out and punched the shelf, the thin wooden planks breaking and clattering to the floor under the weight of the remaining books and decorations. "The whole fucking time, her obsessions and resources… All came from Xanus."
Mikey put his hands on his head and started to walk around in circles. "No… no no no. That doesn't make any sense!" He looked at his brother. "Mona has been around for years! She is engaged to our brother! She can't be plotting to do something with this sick psycho!"
"It doesn't matter if it makes sense." Raph flipped through a few pages of the book and looked at it. "We know her hand writing. This is hers. And you can't even say you didn't know how hell bent she was on finding a fucking cure for what happened to her. Xanus would be the only place that could come close to giving her that." Raph went to the window after shoving the book in his belt. "We need to get home and tell Jacquelyn. Maybe she'll have some kind of idea…" He was grinding his teeth, fighting every urge to just sprint across town to get to the corporations building and find his brothers.
As the pair traversed the dark buildings and streets, Raph hoped that nothing had come back while they were gone. He hadn't exactly been thinking when he stormed off. Honestly the idea to search Mona's apartment had only come when he had been half way to the Xanus building. The only thing on his mind had been getting to his brothers, Mikey screaming at him to stop and think finally made him stop. The fact that he had left Jack, alone, hadn't occurred to him at all. "Pick it up Mikey!" He called over to his shoulder to his brother.
When they crawled through the rubble blocked door Raph stumbled into the living room. "Jack!" He called out. "Jacquelyn!" The home echoed back at him. He ran back to his bed room and found it empty. Running to the opposite end of the hall he flung her bed room door open. Empty. "Shit."
Mikey was in the sparring room, grabbing Leo's back up katana and an extra staff for Donnie. Raph appeared in the door way, Ant's axe in his hand. "Dude, where's Jack?"
"Not here." Raph snorted. "Her shobo are gone though so… I don't think she was taken. Where the hell she went, I have no idea. Or why…"
"At least she hasn't been captured. That's always a good thing." Mikey tried to sound positive. "So, since she's not here, hopefully out of harm's way, why don't we go get our brother's back."