Episode 11: The Mutagen of Revenge – Part 1

Black clouds dumped freezing rain down on New York City. The droplets pattered loudly against the glass ceiling of Shredder's lair. Water streamed from the sides of the roof and vanished over the lip, splashing on the ground below, making a deafening roaring sound.

Hun had to raise his voice to be heard.

Shredder sat in his chair, his back as straight as a board, his glare pointed directly at the leader of the Purple Dragons who had arrived, soaked through in his low v-neck black shirt. Next to him, was another sopping wet Purple Dragon, young, with purple highlighted tips in his hair. Shredder leaned forward slightly now that Hun had finished talking. "You saw the teenagers flee into the sewer you say?" Shredder asked lowly, his voice deep enough to break through the sound of the rain.

"That is correct, Master Shredder." Hun said, adjusting the glasses on his nose, even though it was near pitch dark. Other than the two, the huge rhino known as Storengo and the hog known as Zeck stood on either side of him.

"Dah . . . the turtle ninja's also lived in sewer." The Russian Rhino turned to look up at his master and Shredder ignored him. His attention had switched to the second, shivering Purple Dragon that was called Mako.

"You lured them into this trap, did you not?" he asked.

"Uh . . ." Mako began, his voice trembling either from the rain or from fear, Shredder didn't know. Although he assumed and found pleasure in the latter. "Y-yeah, I guess." Shredder hummed under his breath, the sound reverberating off of the metal plating around his mouth, making it sound like a low growl.

Suddenly, the door slammed open and Tigerclaw appeared from the shadows, dripping water everywhere. He practically shoved Hun and Mako to either side of him and bowed at the steps, ignoring the pig and the rhino on either side of the Shredder's throne. "Master Shredder, I have returned."

"Where were you Tigerclaw?" Shredder snapped, "In your unexpected absence I was forced to employ Karai, Bradford and that miserable fish to guard the mutagen." He slowly stood, his long cape moving against the floor, the sound of his metal armor moving against his body echoing with the sound of the heavy rain.

Tigerclaw slowly looked up with his one eye that looked like a topaz in the darkness. "I was searching for the Hamato clan that evaded you in your recent attack at their home. I encountered them in the sewers, but was unable to defeat them as the Shinotomo mutt got involved."

Shredder's eyes narrowed dangerously as he slowly stepped down the metal stairs, his feet clunking loudly against them, thunder crashing behind him. "Those Hamato swine will face a fate worse than their pathetic master." he said. He suddenly turned to the rhino, pointing at him with a gloved finger. "Storengo, Zeck. It is time for you two to redeem yourself. Go into the sewers and bring them back to me."

"Dah, we do it, Shredder." Storengo mumbled, nodding his horned head to his much smaller companion. "Bebop, come."

"That's not my – ." he went silent when he saw the deadly look that Shredder was giving him. "Right, right, of course, whatever you say Master Shredder, sir." the two inched their way out, Storengo booming with his feet until they vanished out into the dark hallway the doors closing behind them by two Footbots.

A shadowy figure appeared from behind the chair. "Did you honestly send those two morons after them?" Karai asked, flashing one of her dirks and letting it spin in her hand, her snake-like eyes staring through the darkness at Shredder.

"Fear not daughter." He said, slowly stepping back up the stairs as Tigerclaw straightened watching with his one beady eye the kunoichi. "Should those two buffoons manage to accomplish the task I have given them, then we will have dealt a swift strike against Splinter and his wretched turtles." He slowly sat down on his chair, looking up at Karai from the corner of his eye. The mind control seemed to be working effectively.

"And should they fail?"

"Then when they return, I will cut them to pieces."

Tigerclaw grinned.

"Either way, I will have gained a victory."

Thunder struck again behind him and lighting flashed across his face.

Breath in.

Breath out.

Ethan basked in the familiar shadow of the tree. When meditating, he could almost imagine himself back out in his backyard, the water spinning past him over rocks and weeds. The sand would be only inches away from him. And a few feet away would be the door and the small circular window that looked into the dojo. Master Hamato would be inside meditating himself and would perhaps glance out like a concerned parent watching a child play.

Ethan opened his eyes, half from not wanting to take that image any further, and half because he just heard Jess and Kaela come in from school. He looked up at the evergreen leaves of the twisted tree in the center of the sewer's dojo and let his memories fade away from his meditation session, seeping into the ground to water the tree even more with experiences it had seen.

The door of the dojo slid open and Kaela and Jess appeared, backpacks strapped on tight, plastic bags strung between all of their fingers. Kaela brought the bags in her hand up into the air with a grunt and flashed a white smile. "We went shopping finally for new clothes!" She laughed with joy, "Finally, we won't look like homeless people!" Ethan still felt a little spacey as Jess threw several bags at his feet.

Using his long black nails, he peeled back the tape on the bags to see that inside were several shirts and a few pairs of pants, including pajamas, denim, and a few other baggy pairs of sweats. "Thanks!" Ethan said.

"Also," Kaela continued, "I think it would be a good idea to look around and start investigating some things. I bet there are more clues to where the turtles and Hamato Yoshi went!" she pointed to the sliding door behind the tree and Ethan turned to look at it. The whole thing was decorated in ancient Japanese art. Dragons and Samurai and ninja intertwined together in a complex mural. "I saw some scrolls in there the other day and I think that would be a good place to start!"

"Not a bad idea." Ethan said. "You guys start that while I fix these." he motioned to the bag and twitched his whiskers in annoyance.

The two went quiet for a few moments and looked at one another apprehensively, as if daring the other person to talk first. Finally, Jess piped up: "What were you meditating about?"

Ethan ignored their concerned expressions as he took the new clothes out and laid them in front of him. "You know, just a dream I had about a Japanese woman. And the whole Black Hole, dinosaur dream thing." he said. He looked up at them. They were watching him as if expecting him to answer a question and then he said, "But I didn't figure anything else out that's new. Sorry."

Jess nodded with grim satisfaction. "Yeah, I thought as much. Boy, our life is so annoyingly complicated." she pulled a knife from the wall of weapons nearby and sat down next to Ethan to help him cut holes into his pants for his tail to fit through. Kaela passed the shadow of the tree and opened the sliding door to the other room where a pile of scrolls were waiting for her.

Ethan pulled a pair of denim onto his lap and ran his nail along its back between the two pockets and tugged at the seam cutting the strings that littered his knee's like tiny, silky, blue hairs. Jess watched and then began on a pair of his sweats with the knife. "So," Ethan said, tugging at the string. "How is school going? Is detention surviving without me?"

Jess chuckled and brushed hair from her face as she looked down on her rip and smoothed it out with her fingers. "Eh, you know, it's school. I'm sure the detention center misses you so much." She pulled some of the loose black threads out and twitting her fingers, let them fall onto her pant leg.

"And Mako?" Ethan asked slyly.

Jess seemed not to notice the comment at all and smiled up at Kaela as she joined them in the circle under the tree and let the old scrolls she found down gently onto the tatami mat next to her. "You should be grateful, Ethan." Kaela said, "It's super awkward to be around them. It's like a game to see who will notice the other first and run away."

Jess aimed a punch at Kaela's arm but she dodged and laughed, grabbing one of the nearby scrolls and unfurling it in front of her. Jess then turned back to working on Ethan's pants as she set down the sweats and grabbed a pair of denim like the one's Ethan was still working at. "My turn to ask a question, brother dear." She said pointedly, "What's it like to be a Red Panda?" Although she had said it teasingly, Ethan could tell that there was actual curiosity behind it.

Kaela rolled up the scroll and put it in a new pile on her right and picked up the next one gently and slowly opened it, the paper crinkling as she did so. Ethan shrugged, finishing his pair and grabbing a final one in the pile. "It's different. Better eye sight, better hearing, and I swear I can sense things with my tongue which is crazy."

"And a goofy tail – what's that like to have?"

Ethan shrugged again, "It can be a little annoying."

Jess laughed, "We could use you to sweep the floors."

Sticking his tongue out, Ethan pretended to taste the air. "See, I can sense a lot of stupidity coming from your general direction."

Kaela burst into fits of laughter with Ethan as she added to her pile of scrolls that she had already gazed over and Jess joined in until all three of them were wiping tears away from their faces. Kaela suddenly paused as she looked over one of the scrolls. "Hey!" She finally said, her eyes lighting up with excitement. "I recognize this one! Master Hamato had one just like it!" She turned it to show the characters on the page.

Jess raised an eyebrow. "I don't remember that . . ."

"Yeah!" Kaela nodded. "It's the Healing Hands thing that he did on Ethan when he was bitten by Karai to heal him of the snake venom!"

"You can read that?" Ethan asked, gazing closer at the ancient Japanese characters. Some looked familiar, but he couldn't read a word of the stuff. By Jess' expression, she couldn't either.

Kaela looked back at the scroll and shook her head, "No," She stated and pointing to one of the characters with an odd spirally loop at the end she said "But that one looks kinda like a cat laying on the ground, and so it's easy to remember."

"Wow, Kaela." Jess said with a chuckle.

The time for talking immediately ended when suddenly the sound of alerts went off in the lab nearby. Ethan jumped to his feet and Kaela let the scroll fall to the ground, rolling itself back up from the tension of the scroll. The three burst through the doors, throwing them open with a bang! And with a lot of scrambling and shoving, went to the computer monitor. For a moment there was a shadowy, lumbering figure.

Huge.

Then with a blast of what looked like red flame, the camera fuzzed out.

"That is a tunnel not far from here." Kaela said nervously, "Closer than where Tigerclaw was." She looked up to Ethan and Jess with apprehension on her face. "We can't let them find this place."

Ethan nodded in agreement. "Let's grab our weapons. We'll go around the other side so we don't come from the same place Tigerclaw saw. That way, it will confuse them of where the lair is. We'll take care of whoever this is."

"What if it's Shredder?" Jess asked.

"Then we make him pay for what he did to Master Hamato."

Jess gave a grim smile and then without another word, they snatched up their weapons from the living room and booked it out of the lair, leaping over the barriers and onto the railroads. As they burst through the deserted railroads, Ethan felt an immediate nervousness. That figure looked much too large to be Shredder. They were lumbering, huge, and could possibly breath fire. Ethan wouldn't be surprised at this point by anything. Maybe Shredder had hired a dragon or something from Japan that had human arms. He chuckled to himself at the image and then turned, leading his two sisters behind him deeper into one of the neighboring tunnels.

The sewage here was deeper, murkier and huge patches of disgusting gray moss had grown on the ceilings. Loud stomping could be heard not far ahead. Kaela groaned, "I'm still trying to recover from Bloodmaw's beating. Do we have to fight again?"

"It's kinda what ninjas do, Kaela." Jess replied.

"True."

They continued to burst forward and turned again. Two shadows appeared around the corner and Ethan realized that he had already met these two people – or at least had seen them before. One was a colossal rhino, a huge horn protruding from his nose and if Ethan was right – one of his eyes looked like it was made of gold. In one of his hands was a golden sickle, in the other was a huge contraption that looked like a giant metal toaster with a nozzle on the end. The ash on the end made it clear that it was the thing that had shot the flames at their camera and melted it to a puddle.

The second individual next to him was significantly shorter, about Ethan's height if you cut off the huge purple mow-hawk on his piggy head. He looked like a warthog with two huge tusks protruding from the bottom of his mouth, a pair of glasses that looked like they were from the 80's on his face. Purple lights, matching the color of his mow-hawk decorated his jacket, chest, pants and shoes. He sniffed the air and suddenly he turned his brown head towards them, his skin like old leather. "Storengo!" He snapped, his voice high, "I found myself a couple of first-class sucka's."

The rhino turned his head and smiled, "Excellent, comrade Bebop!"

"Wow." Ethan said walking further into the light, pointing his naginata at the big pig. "Your name is Bebop? That's just sad?"

"Stop saying that name! I hate that name!" Bebop snapped and he cried out in anger, throwing his arms into the air as if he had just been stabbed.

"Let me guess, you're here because Shredder wants to know where the turtles are." Jess said, her voice bored. "Please ask your master to sing a different tune."

The Rhino laughed as Kaela and Jess drew their weapons and moved through the slosh next to Ethan, down into a lower stance. "Nobody can stand against the Bebop and the Rocksteady!"

"If I have to hear that name one more time—!" Bebop screamed, his voice echoing around the tunnel, but Ethan burst forward, his feet splashing through the water and he threw a pair of shurikan in their direction. Rocksteady jumped forward, his feet making the whole tunnel quake when he moved and the bits of sharpened metal stuck into the side of his huge flamethrower. A second later, Ethan was looking at a fresh wave of orange fire dancing toward him.

"Wow!"

Ethan ducked, his knees sinking down into the water, all the way to his waist as the flame moved over his head, a wave of heat singing at his fur and vanishing before it managed to get near Jess and Kaela who had jumped forward. Kaela's ribbon tangled around the the boxy flamethrower and she tugged with a sharp cry. The huge weapon hardly moved at all. "Well, I didn't think about this." Kaela said to herself as Rocksteady laughed and threw the ribbon off with a quick wrench of the machine.

"I'm gonna shave that stupid haircut off!" Jess snapped, running across the gray moss, her kama glimmering in the light of another blast of flame that she dodged.

"You wanna dance?" Bebop asked, his voice going dangerously high. He spun, "Woohoo!" His hair lit up like a game screen and with a chuck, a beam of purple erupted at Jess and she shrieked, pressing against the wall to dodge the sudden attack. "You gotta learn to flow with your hip-hop girl." He laughed mockingly.

"Bleh." Ethan got back up, his fur soaked through with filth. Getting back up he turned to Kaela who moved with velocity, her ribbon slamming Rocksteady back again as he tried to press forward with his monstrous flamethrower. "Back Rhino!" Kaela snapped. She turned to Ethan when she saw that he had managed to get back up. "If he gets any closer to us, he's gonna set us on fire."

Ethan turned to Jess who had moved in, slashing the wicked blades of her weapons at Bebop who almost looked like he was dancing, twisting on the spot and moon walking with an almost inappropriate amount of flare. Rocksteady wasn't far from her either. "Jess!" Ethan cried, "Back off! Get out of their range." He growled and jumped forward, "Hold that rhino off for me Kaela!" he said as he ran forward after Jess, moving himself closer to danger.

"Easier said that done!" Kaela cried.

"Dah, the girl is right! You are finished!"

"Shut up already!" Ethan slammed his naginata at Rocksteady but yelped and ducked again to avoid getting slammed in the head with a huge gray, rock-like fist.

"I'll pop your heads like the blueberries!" Flames burst in front of Ethan and he leaped back out of range.

"I can't move in."

Bebop dodged another slash and threw what looked like a bouncy ball. It slammed into Kaela's dart, throwing it against the wall and burst like a water balloon, strange purple goo sticking her weapon to the wall. "What the heck!" Kaela cried in panic, wrenching her ribbon. "Is this glue?" It hardly budged.

Jess' kama sung through the air, whistling as she tried to strike. Bebop moved back, spinning with light feet, making odd noises all the way, some sounding more like laughter, some sounding more like a Michael Jackson performance.

Ethan hissed through his teeth as he moved back next to Kaela to dodge another wide shot of fire. "Getting back in there is impossible!" he said to her.

Kaela wrenched at her weapon again. "I'm out of the game, Ethan!" She cried nervously. Ethan grabbed hold to her ribbon and wrenched with her and they both fell backward as her bolt broke free from the goo and they slammed backward into the filthy water again.

"Yuck!" Kaela cried.

Ethan slowly looked up towards Jess, "Jess, get out of their range!" She had moved further in, still trying to strike Bebop, and although he wasn't fighting back, she wasn't landing a single blow. Rocksteady turned and raised his fist. "JESS LOOK OUT!" Ethan and Kaela both screamed simultaneously.

His fist came down and slammed Jess on the head.

"JESS!" Kaela screamed, her hand coming to her mouth, dirt and brownish water tumbling through her fingers. With a thump, she fell to the ground, her kama's clattering down next to her. Bebop laughed and picked up the two weapons.

Ethan jumped to his feet with Kaela, but before either could run forward to their fallen sister, another blast of fire erupted towards them. They backed away as Rocksteady picked her up, blood trickling from her forehead. He slung her over his shoulder and then let another blast of fire follow him as the two ran down the tunnel, Bebop's "Woohoo" Echoing away from them.

"After them!" Ethan yelled. The two burst forward and ran as hard as they could, water kicking up all around them. They weaved through tunnels, but within a few moments, the two figures were gone with their sister, nowhere to be found.