Chapter 2

Worry

Normally, Mike would try making a game of the trip down to the lair. Normally. Things weren't normal today, though, and his stomach was still protesting. No way was he skating down into the depths tonight.

Don walked beside him. Neither of them talked, but that was okay. Right now they really just needed company, not talk. Talking would mean they'd have to think about what happened, and neither wanted to think. Bad enough they had to explain it all to Splinter when they got back to the lair.

Mike was struck by an odd thought. "Hope Army Wives isn't on," he said quietly. Don cocked his head curiously at his brother and raised a brow ridge. Mike shrugged. "Hate to have to make him miss it for this."

Don's lips twitched. "Yeah, well. That's what TiVo's for."

"Wonder if Denise and Frank are gonna break up or not."

"Do you really pay any attention to that show?"

"Nah, but sometimes you can't help overhearing stuff. He really likes that TV, y'know. You did good with that one, Donnie."

Now the smile became more pronounced on his brother's face. "Maybe. I tried hard, anyway. I got tired of him having to beat the old one before the picture would clear up enough to make out what was going on."

Idle chatter was good. It kept their minds occupied on harmless pursuits. Nothing like talking stuff with wires to keep Donnie's mind away from that… No, no, don't go there. Get back to the wires. Wires were nice and safe because he didn't understand much about them. There were lots of things that Donnie could prattle on about that Mikey didn't understand, like stuff with wires, and the insides of the van, and what made someone skin another human being and leave him to die in horrible pain – "Wires!"

Don stopped and looked at him. "Wires?"

"Eh, forget it." Mike waved his hand dismissively. "I'm havin' an argument with myself about not thinking about things that I keep thinking about, except I'm losing."

Donnie blinked. "You're losing an argument to yourself?"

There was a pause, and then Mike shrugged. "What, you think you cornered the market on talking to yourself?"

"Well… no." Don looked back to the pathway they were negotiating and started walking again. It narrowed here, so they had to move in single file, with Don taking point. "But I don't usually lose arguments with myself."

"Well, do your conversations usually involve horribly mutilated bodies that aren't really dead until they are?"

He heard Donnie make a kind of a chuffing noise, but he wasn't sure if it was a hoarse laugh or his brother trying not to get sick to his stomach. "Yeah, sorry." Mike kicked out a foot at a random bit of flotsam as he walked. "My argument kinda spilled over into the real world. You know anything about something boring we could talk about?"

"That's a pretty broad category for you, Mikey." Donnie went quiet. Mike tried to think of something that wouldn't call to mind the bad images of the last few recent moments. Don spoke up suddenly. "Do you know how to make homemade wine?"

"You can make homemade wine?"

"Ah, good, you don't. I've been thinking about it." The tunnel widened, so they could walk side by side now, and they did so as they descended to their front door. "I can get an entire kit online for about a hundred dollars, have it shipped to April's apartment. They also have ingredients for sale." The path widened again, and Don moved beside his brother. He had that look he sometimes got when he was either reading something that had words with more than twenty syllables or he was trying to take apart something that looked like it might blow up.

"Aw." Mike gave him the Puppy Eyes. Nothing got Donnie out of his private little world like the Puppy Eyes. "You're not gonna let me stomp on any grapes, are you?"

Don smiled thinly. "If you got purple footprints on the ceiling, Splinter would kill me."

"I only did that the one time, and they weren't purple. They were orange."

"And then, after he killed me, he'd give me a lecture on why we don't need a foot-sized rainbow on the ceiling."

They reached the entrance to the lair and Donnie pulled the lever that opened the main door. Both stepped in, looking around, and Donnie shut up the door behind them.

Well, the lair was quiet. Either Army Wives wasn't on, or else Splinter had opted to save it on TiVo to watch after breakfast in the morning. Either way, he was most likely meditating in his room. Don and Mike exchanged a glance that clearly said, You explain it to him.

Mike hoped his brother was going to be the bigger person and give in to the Puppy Eyes again, because Mike was already having a bad flashback of the dead guy (not that he'd been dead at the time, but they didn't know that, and then the guy had fixed that, shut up Mikey, shut up, shut up, shut up!).

Don glared at him. Mike put out his lower lip in a beautiful little pout.

The glare continued for forty-two seconds, if the ticks on the clock above the stove were anywhere near accurate. Mikey debated if he ought to add some teardrops, except by the time he started sniffing, Don had already sighed and turned to Splinter's door. Yeah, I'm good, Mikey thought. Any day the younger sibling could bully the older ones into submission was a good day. Okay, maybe the whole dead body thing kind of dragged that down… never mind.

At the same time, he didn't really want to leave Donnie to fend for himself. After all, it was a pretty horrific thing they both experienced, so why leave his brother alone to explain it to Splinter?

Because he could get away with it.

But what kind of answer was that?

Having once again engaged in an argument with himself that he was doomed to lose, Mikey followed on Donnie's tail as Donnie headed to Splinter's door.

Before Don could knock, they heard their father's voice saying, "Enter."

Don flashed his brother a look. "Either come in or stay out but don't stand by the door spying, okay?" he hissed.

Mikey didn't really have time to debate, since Donnie went inside right away. Momentum drove Mike forward, and, well, great, there went his whole "I perfectly manipulated my brother" thing. The two of them approached their father, knelt, and bowed.

Splinter, serene, sat akimbo with his hands on his knees. "What troubles you, my sons?" he asked them both softly.

The boys sat up and glanced at each other. "We didn't get in a fight," Donnie said, his voice soft. "It's nothing like that. There's trouble."

Splinter frowned slightly, but waited.

Don faltered. Well, of course he would, Mike realized. Donnie didn't especially like violence. He was more inclined to knock his opponents unconscious and leave the "cleaning up" of them to Raphael and Leonardo. Donnie loved sparring and being physically active, true enough, because for him, those things were a game, or a way to spend time with his brothers, but give him a choice between overhauling the van's engine and engaging in a battle royal with an enemy, he'd take the van any day.

Mike had been more shocked than anything, which is why he'd gotten sick at the sight. Probably, though, poor Donnie was still internalizing the images or whatever it was that he was doing inside that head of his. Well, hell, Mikey didn't have to be selfish all the time. Screwing around with his brothers was more fun when the situation wasn't so serious.

Biting the bullet, Mikey spoke up. "There was a dead body at the mouth of the alley way where we park the van," he said. Oddly, actually talking about it sort of put a distance between him and the images, because now he was trying to translate what was in his head into words, and that made it seem a little less real. Which was good, because he didn't want to throw up again, especially not in Splinter's room. "Only, it wasn't dead. Um, somebody skinned it." Briefly, he outlined what happened earlier, from stumbling upon the "dead" body to its scream and suicide.

Splinter paid close attention to everything Mike said, his eyes widening slightly. He interrupted only twice, to ask for clarification. Mike finished with, "Master, we found it like ten feet from the garage!"

The old rat was up, on his feet, and moving fast. There was concern on his face, but no fear. He stepped away from the boys and walked to the wall containing his library, mostly very old books written in Japanese. "You said it was a Foot soldier?" he asked Mike without looking at him. "The Foot would not torture their ninja thusly, not for punishment, or for any reason." He found what he was looking for and left the room, heading into the living area, where the light was better.

Mike and Donnie looked at each other, unsure what Splinter was getting at, but stood and followed along behind him. "Master?" Donnie asked.

Splinter sat in his chair and turned on the reading lamp beside him, throwing the book open and flipping through it rapidly. "This is a warning, but not from the Foot." He paused in his perusal to look at both his sons. "I cannot say who sent the warning. Perhaps it was coincidence that the body was found so close to our lair, but I do not believe in coincidences."

Mike was puzzled. Splinter talked like he had an idea what was going on, except he'd never hinted that he knew of nut jobs out there that skinned people alive. Their father must have seen their mutual confusion. "The Foot are not the only ones who profit from immorality, my sons. Others do exist, though they have not held sway in our city for some time. It may be that someone is challenging the Foot for rights to New York." He looked down at the book, which Mike saw was a kind of journal, with a bunch of names written down in Japanese. "It has happened before."

"So why…?"

"The body? We are eternally connected to the Foot Clan. Those who know the foot know their enemies. It may be that we are being warned, or that we are being courted for an alliance. Whatever the situation, we are not going to be involved in this. The Foot are devious, but they are not reckless. Karai would not permit her people to torture an enemy so. Whoever left us that message cannot be trusted, under any circumstances, and I will not ally myself or you to anyone so utterly depraved." He continued pouring through the list of names, looking for some kind of connection, Mike guessed.

Splinter glanced around and gestured to the coffee table. "Pencil," he said. Mike snagged one and handed it over. Splinter went down the list of names and made slight notations next to three of them. "Possibilities," he told his sons. "And none of them are good. Michaelangelo, Donatello, you must go and find your brothers. Return home at once. Err on the side of caution, and return quickly. Do not allow Raphael to go out on his own any more than he has already. We will discuss our options fully when the four of you return."

"Yes, sensei," the two said in unison. Both bowed and hurried out. Don flashed a look at his brother. "You think he's right? Someone stalking the Foot Clan?"

"Beats the hell outta me, Donnie," Mike shrugged. They hurried through the sewer. "I never knew there were other people out there tryin' to screw the Foot over."

"I guess it makes sense, though." Don stepped up his pace and once again preceded his brother through the narrow space in the sewer. "I mean, we had to figure there were people buying and selling all the stuff the Foot were stealing and producing, right? So maybe one of them got fed up with the Foot and decided to take over. Cut the middle man out or something."

"Damn, Donnie, you make it sound like a business."

"Crime is a business, Mikey. People make a lot of money off of it." When they could walk beside each other again, Don put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "But it kind of fits. The Foot make a lot of money off of drugs. And really, who'd do something as crazy as what we saw up there, except someone whose brain was fried."

Mike found the ladder up to the manhole inside the garage. "Cops'll be around, right?"

"Leo said he was calling them. Back door." The two of them emerged and headed to the back of the enclosed space that acted as their garage, really a brick false front that divided the alley up so that their hiding space wasn't easily seen. They had a second entrance, much smaller, back there.

Mike stopped on the threshold and looked over his shoulder at his brother. "Hey, Donnie… you worried?"

"Hell, yes, I'm worried." Don flashed him a smile that was only a little forced. "But we can kick it, whatever it is. We always have before."

It wasn't a great boost, but the boys, fortified in each other, were a little more confident as they headed out into the night.