Mea culpa for the slow update time, Fair Readers. This chapter may be short but hopefully it appeals. Takes place simultaneously with Chapter 4 (Consternation).
Chapter 5 – Altercations
"Who has two robotic legs, and loves to stomp turtles?"
Fishface, The Pulverizer
.
"Maybe you should gedd thad", Fishface breathed sourly into Raphael's muzzle, "becoz it's tha thurd time thad theeng's gone off, and the ringtone is starding to get on my nuuurves."
"More than I am, Fishfarce?", Raph cast back at The Shredder's henchfish, punctuating his verbal jab with the point of one sai, as with the other, he deflected the rapid-fire swipes of Rahzar's stiletto claws.
"Raph, could we just wrap this up and get back to the Lair?" Leonardo interjected from across the derelict Kraang laboratory, as he dispatched a final Foot-Bot and charged the giant mutant hound. "I for one, would like to check my phone messages."
Rahzar sensed the Teen Turtle's tension: smelling blood, the skeletonized canine observed, "There's only two uh ya' tonight. Whadappened to the Nunchukudance Kid? And the scrawny purple one; he off polishing his staff?"
The question about Donatello gave both brothers split-second pause, just enough for Fishface to discharge a mechanized kick into Raph's plastron, blasting him shell-first through a stack of wooden pallets. The hotheaded ninja lay dazed on a bed of newly-chipped plywood.
"Dammit", woozed Raph to himself. Only because their AWOL nerd of a brother might have come to such a geeky place had he and Leo searched for Donatello here – as well as at the junkyard, and in the alleys behind local computer repair shops, and at the fancier junkyard – only to stumble upon two of the Foot Clan's slipperiest and strongest assassins who'd arrived first for their own, nefarious reasons.
Leo, irritated to a head, flung a final coil of mangled Foot-Bot from one katana to clash and snarl both of his blades into Rahzar's machete fingers.
Nodding to the scattered broken Bots, Leo taunted, "Why do you guys travel with these things, anyway, when they're so ineffectual? Karai's idea of a learning algorithm worked too well or something? Not that I'm complaining that Shredder's made another stupid choice, and ignored someone smarter than him."
"Let's just say that Master Shredder is making bigger plans these days", Rahzar menaced, defensively. Even twice-mutated, the beast that was once Chris Bradford, Foot Clan Golden Boy, held no less of a sense of loyalty to his twisted liege.
"Shuddup, Mutt", chided Fishface, "We have no more business here. Let's blowwww."
Heaving a swag of alien tech over his shoulder, the bionic fish-man leaped unfazed through the ruddy shards of a second-story windowpane. Not before snapping his nightmare jaws at the two huffing Turtles, Rahzar followed Fishface out of the building and across the desolate New York City rooftops.
"What tha' heck was all that?", a bruised and particularly pissed-off Rapheal groaned as Leo helped his scarlet-banded brother to his feet. "Sounds like Shred-Head's planning something we oughta' know about."
Ignoring Raphael's theorizing, Leo pulled out his T-phone to check his messages. The pixels of Donnie's panicky mass-text flared brightly against the gloom of the old lab: Im safe home soon dont worry [SORRYSORRYSORRY]+-8!
"It's Donnie! He's safe!"
"Did he say why he ditched us like a jerk and made us go looking for 'im?"
Leo only squinted in reply, and snicked the T-phone back into his belt. "Bottom line is: Donnie's safe and he's home. Which is where we need to go, too. We still don't know what happened and what a one-armed snowman had to do with it.
"Well, that sounds like Donatello. Always with the gibberish."
"Nah, Raph. That's Mikey."
"Oh yeah. Fishfreak musta' knocked my head harder than I thought."
"No, you've always been a bit slow", Leo flipped back, as brothers do.
"Huh. Not bad, Chief. Since you're thinking so clearly, can you tell me what Dogbreath meant a moment ago?"
"No, Raph. But once we get back to the Lair – and once we've got Donnie back online – we'll figure it all out. I swear to you, as your Fearless Leader, that no obstacle shall – "
"Yeah, yeah, yeah: my head's hurting even more now. Let's just go home. Besides – Splinter's gonna rip Donnie a new one and I want a front row seat to that show with time to make popcorn."
The two brothers dissolved into the gloom and out into the night, red and blue slips of lethal grace against the waning gibbous moon. Within minutes they had shifted underground, speeding the rest of the short way home deep in silent thought about what would happen next.
Sidebar: the "snowman" thing is a reference to Donnie's hurried insertion of ∞, the scientific symbol for infinity (in positive and negative directions).