Chapter 3
Chapter song: Television Rules the Nation & Prime Time of your Life - Daft Punk
"A contingency plan? Is that all you are to him?" Raphael exclaimed in disbelief, Miranda ran her fingers through her hair to move a few strands out of her face as she burned the intel file she took from Charles' office, all except for a few photos of her and the boys as well as a photo of her family she thought she had lost years ago.
"Better than looking at me as jus' a floozy. He knew I was dangerous." Miranda said as she continued to burn old files of her actions during her years under Shredder, she preferred to not remember these years fondly.
"I would have used a better choice of vocabulary if he knew THAT much about you." Rapheal grumbled.
"Still impressive he managed to get all that dirt on you Miranda." Donatello called out while sitting at his computer, six screens facing him as three of them on his right were scanning through archives of information, on his left, one of the screens was doing a GPS search of the Manhattan, the other below it looked at the stocks coming straight from the New York stock exchange, the one below that one, solitaire.
"Donnie, shut the fuck up." Raphael said, looking back at his brother.
"Can you guys keep it down? I'm trying to watch the Food Network's special on gourmet pizza." Michelangelo called up to them from one corner of the sewers.
"We're trying to do work up here Mikey, just turn up the volume." Raph called back to Michelangelo before looking back to Miranda and a photo she placed to the side to not burn, "I remember this, we took out a drug ring that night, I could have sworn we were all alone when we fought in that alleyway. How the hell did they get a picture of us?"
"I dunno, Raph, but if this guy could afford a skilled assassin t' keep a gun on me and fire anytime he saw fit, his money is goin' where his mouth is." Miranda said not even looking up from the newspaper clippings and photographs she was burning or saving, she almost burned the "missing child" report but she felt obliged to read it when she had the time later on.
"You could have called us, you could have had back-up in case anything went wrong." Leonardo said, exiting through a sewer tunnel to join Miranda and Raph.
"An' risk your safeties? Splinter would have my blood if I did that." Miranda said finishing the file as she threw the folder into the trash can in the middle of the table where she had her fire burning. The rest of the pictures she had, the ones she held some personal connection to, she kept for herself, the rest, she pushed over to Raph so he and the boys could keep them.
"But Master Splinter doesn't aim to kill people Miranda, it's not in his nature." Donnie spoke out from his monitors.
"Shut the fuck up, Donnie." Raph called out again without even looking at Donatello, Miranda held back a chuckle; typical brother behavior.
"Donnie, how's that search goin?" Miranda called over to Donatello as she walked over to his chair and his monitors.
"Well, I have the guy and, I don't have him." Donnie said as his center monitor pulled up a photograph of the upper body of Charles Hughs as a a short bio appeared on the three monitors on Donatello's right. "This guy doesn't seem to have a legitimate birth certificate, in fact, back in '07, this was brought to trail to get him to prove his true identity." The central computer monitor showed a photograph of Charles leaving a court house with lawyers and the press around him, even in the photo, Miranda could see his nonchalance about any of this, it was almost like the guy was a robot and nothing surprised or shocked him. "The case was eventually settled out of court for $17 million."
"Geez, it's like this guy's really hiding something that he doesn't want anyone else to know about…" Leonardo commented staring up at the computer screens, standing next to Miranda on her right.
"An' he's done a good job at doin' it." Miranda replied.
"He looks like a sleazeball with the way he combs his hair like that. I'd sooner shave it all off than have my hair look like that." Raphael commented, walking up next to Miranda on her left.
"But Raph, we don't have hair." Donatello said.
"Again, Donnie, shut the fuck up." Raph just said flatly.
"Still trying to watch TV!" Michelangelo called out from the other side of the area, they ignored him.
"Now why you gotta be mean to Donnie like that?" Leo spoke firmly to Raph.
"What? We're just playing around and he knows it, ain't that right Donnie?" Raph joking said giving a playful jab to Donnie's shoulder.
"We were playing around?" Donatello replied with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"heh huh, shut the fuck up Donnie." Raphael quickly added to his laugh.
"Donnie, th' bio he does have, can you cross-reference with American families?" Miranda broke through the argument to get the boys back to the matter on hand.
"I think so, what exactly would I be looking for?" Donnie asked.
"Try runaways, a search on gifted or exceptional children in th' mid-United States area." Miranda replied as Donnie's three fingers got to work.
"Why Mid-US specifically?" Leonardo questioned.
"When I met him on th' roof, he felt th' need t' point out my Slovak-Texan accent, when he spoke t' me in his office, I couldn't help but notice a bit of a twang in his voice slipping through a few times. I was guessin' maybe Wisconsin 'r Minnesota." Miranda replied to Leo, "I've met a few families from there an' noticed this jerk-off's twang slipped through a few times, like he was tryin' t' hide somethin'."
"Okay, I pulled up a few police files of children running away in the middle United States area, most of the missing children returned home after a few weeks, I found one that was never closed, yet it was said to 'never be on record.'" Donatello said, the monitors pulling up files and paper copies to show on the screens.
"Then how the hell are you finding it Donnie?" Raphael said in a huff.
"When in doubt, follow the paper trail Raph." Donatello replied as another monitor showed up some more information, "Now here's something to grab your interest. That runaway child report disappeared from Minnesota a week after the September 11 attacks."
"Son of'a bitch…" Miranda swore under her breath.
"He used everyone's panic from the attacks to remove his own missing child report so no one could trace his back history and no one was the wiser for it. For a sleazeball, he's pretty crafty." Raphael said, pretty much cementing the obvious.
"Still trying to watch Food Network's special on gourmet pizza!" Michelangelo yelled out again, of course, they ignored him again.
"That's all theoretical Raph, we can't say for sure. Maybe it's him, maybe it's not, we can't just jump to conclusions." Leonardo replied to Raphael.
"Can ya find anything about th' missing kid Donnie?" Miranda said over to Donatello, he nodded and began typing intuit he computer as a picture of a frail kid, freckles, unkempt blonde hair and a worn Ghostbusters T-Shirt.
"Name is Harold Lundegaard, born in Brainerd, Minnesota in 1974. He was 13 when he ran away from home, had two brothers and one sister, it also says he was an avid pursuer of chess." Donatello read off as Miranda looked at this kid, trying to piece him together with the mystery businessman she had met last night.
"Chess huh?" Miranda put a finger to her chin and thought, Chess is a sport that involves a lot of careful planning and strategy; Charles put a ton of careful thinking to get her to meet him, so could the two possibly-
"Hey! What gives! Go back to the pizza!" Michelangelo yelled out in anger when the television signal was taken over as static appeared.
"Pipe down Mikey, adults are trying to work here." Raphael called out without even looking back at Michelangelo. Just then, the television static disappeared as the symbol of a yellow bird appeared on the TV.
"Uh, guys? I think you might want to come look at this, this yellow bird appeared on the TV." Michelangelo said unsure what was going on. Hearing Mikey describe a yellow bird pulled Miranda out of her thought process as she quickly turned and looked over to the TV Mikey was sitting at.
"Mikey, turn it up! Boys, hush up!" Miranda called out as she quickly made her way over to the TV with the boys following. The symbol held there for a bit before the symbol disappeared and there stood a man in ceremonial robes, he held his hands together, his index fingers resting against each other above the knuckles, while his pinkie fingers rested against each other underneath the knuckles. Even though the robe was a different color and as he still could not see his face, she already knew- "Rizza…"
"My children, a new age is upon us. A new age of traditionalism conflicting with modernization and you are caught in the middle of it." the robed stranger on the Television screen said.
"I am?" Michelangelo asked the TV innocently.
"Shh!" Miranda shushed to continue to listen.
"As of now, there is one traditionalist East gang fighting for the soul of New York City. Their methods are as weak as their soldiers and their fighting techniques. But we will build a new order upon their foundation. Why should you tolerate them? They rob you, they kill you and they destroy the values you hold firm to…we offer an alternative…" Master Rizza spoke in a charismatic yet soft tone as he waved one of his hands to the side to show a captured Foot ninja, tied and covered with a bag on his head, "we offer to destroy evil not by our hands, but by your own hands…in a beehive colony, the workers mobilize to turn any intruder away from the sweet nectar they work to produce. But us nine cannot ward off evil alone, we require a legion of dedicated men and women to help us. Spread the word, come to me, become a Killer Bee, we shall eliminate your fears and make you into what your fears dread." With that, his hand closest to the captured Foot Ninja rested upon the ninja as the sickening sound of bone breaking and a death rattle was all Miranda and the Boys needed to indicate the poor Foot Ninja was dead as Master Rizza pushed the body to the side, winning the chuckles of his other companions for this murder. Master Rizza turned back to the camera, "we are the Wutang Clan and salvation is within your reach, or, just sit and let these delinquents grow like a cancer. We offer the solution and you are the remedy…" With that, the television screen switched over to the Yellow Wutang Bird again before eventually going back to Michelangelo's Gourmet Pizza special.
"Yay! My show came back on!" Michelangelo enthusiastically said as the others backed up with a worried look in their eyes.
"There guys mean business." Leonardo said.
"How the hell did your sleazeball friend find these creeps?" Raphael spoke to Miranda.
"He ain't my friend and from what he told me, they came t' him with a sword up against his co-workers." Miranda said, in disbelief that the murder of a former Foot Ninja was actually shown on television in front of everyone.
"I couldn't get a link on the source of the broadcast, but monitoring social media websites, everyone in New York saw that…" Donatello said, some visible shock in his tone to those events.
"Miranda…you wouldn't happen to have a business card or some way to get in contact from that Hughes guy would you?" Leonardo said to Miranda.
"Yeah…yeah I took'a card from his office…" Miranda said, "I'll head topside an' call him…" she turned and made her way to the exit to get a better signal for her cell phone, still in disbelief that murder was shown on television, the image of young children seeing that haunting her.
"Give the Wutang Clan some credit Raph, they really got some heads turning with that." Donatello tried to joke to lighten the mood.
"Shut the fuck up Donnie…" Raph responded with a hint of hostility in his tone.