Chapter 12: Red Blue Orange Purple
Was this what it was like in the egg...?
Raphael floated in a sea of darkness. Floated, flew, swam... It was pure guesswork. There was no up, there was no down, there was no sideways, there was no past or future.
There were colors. If he let his mind wander, he could let the swirls of color wash over them and then wane only to be replaced by a new rush of color. Red. Blue. Orange. Purple. Back to red. Blue. Orange. Purple...
He wondered if they had some kind of significance. If they had, he couldn't see what it was. That was no surprise, though, because he didn't actually know for sure who he was...
Three weeks ago...
He stood in the shadows and brooded. He did that well. Better than anyone else he could think of. It was more difficult here than in New York, certainly, as people tended to stop and have a second look at the curious figure in the trench-coat and the hat. Though the badly maintained streetlights helped.
Well, let them look. If they saw anything it just made them walk a little quicker in future.
Here was a little town in upstate New York, a little lakeside place called... Lakeside. 'Hell of an imagination, the people who founded this town. He was... Let's just say he wasn't from here. A large green hand with a thumb and two fingers reached up and adjusted the hat, and he sighed. He missed home.
Raphael looked at the ground and gave one more, heartfelt, sigh. "I'm tired of this s"-
-"Hit it!" suggested Michelangelo. When Leonardo looked round at him irritably, he added sheepishly "That always works for me."
Donatello crouched over the desk. "Hi, Master, it's Donatello. Hey, I know you wanted us to stay incommunicado up here... We were worried about you. I rigged up this phone, so if you need us just call... Uh, I got the number here somewhere..."
The three of them – Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello – looked up as Raphael walked in. He tossed the hat onto a table and threw off the coat, while Donatello quietly read the number in front of him into the receiver.
"Where have you been?" Leonardo asked in a reasonable tone.
"Out," Raphael replied. Neither of them pursued the matter any further than that.
"I hope everything is OK back there," Leonardo fretted. He looked dubiously at the mess of wires and components held together with tape and gum that Donatello assured them was now a working telephone. "You sure this thing's working, Donny?"
"Yeah," was the reply. "It's working just fine. I got the Answerphone."
"Answerphone," said Raphael irritably. "That's real helpful, Donny. Sorry, I can't come to the 'phone right now. I'm being attacked by forty members of the Foot Clan. Or maybe I'm just in the bath. Basically, you can't tell!" He turned to Leonardo and snarled "Face it, Leo - We're forgotten out here."
There was a moment of tension as the two stared at each other, then they both backed away.
Leonardo spoke, apparently as much to himself as the others. "Master Splinter said when it was time to go back, we'd know."
Michelangelo thought for a moment. "Hey, do you think Roy's will deliver pizza out this far?"
Leonardo continued to fret. "I sure wish we could see what was going on back home. Hey, maybe we should try contacting April... But then, Master Splinter was pretty clear about that too..."
"I don't know what we're supposed to be achieving out here. If we can't go ahead and make a difference..." Raphael muttered in the background. The others let him.
Donatello responded cheerily. "Hey... Will you relax, Leo? I'm sure everything is getting along just fine without us."
"Yeah, I'm sure it is..." Leonardo agreed distractedly.
Raphael wandered through to the other room the Turtles had made their main hanging out area and almost collapsed on the sofa. Almost. Till he glanced down and saw what currently occupied it.
"Uh, Leo...?" Raphael's voice was casual. "Who's been bringing home strays...?"
"What is this...?"
Raphael didn't know if the voice spoke aloud, or if he heard it in his head. In fact, he wasn't so certain he even had a head any more. Or a neck, or shoulders. Or anything else. Thinking about it, he was sure they were around somewhere. They would turn up.
"This is it... Follow this thread..." The voice was speaking more to itself now, and Raphael wondered what it was doing rummaging around in his memories. Yeah. His memories. They were his. Hmmm.
He wasn't at all sure he liked that.
The factory, a couple of miles outside the town of Lakeside in upstate New York, was out of use but clearly hadn't been for too long. Arriving there, following Master Splinter's hastily issued instructions and still a little shocked by being suddenly uprooted from everything they knew, the Turtles were pleasantly surprised by how much useful stuff they found and they soon had the place adapted to their most basic needs.
Only one of their major needs was neglected, and they immediately started thinking about that one. The solution eluded them for a while...
An unconscious form sprawled across the sofa, arm trailing on the floor, quietly snoring. A human boy, Raphael guessed in his mid-teens. "Yeah, that's Todd," Leonardo called casually.
"Todd. Right. Of course it is. Hi, Todd, how do you do? Who's Todd?!"
At that, the boy woke, and looked up at Raphael groggily. The two of them studied each other for a moment. "Hi" said Todd, and turned on his side. Raphael thought he looked a little like Danny - or was it Daniel? - Pennington, their friend from New York, not seen for a while since his dad took a sabbatical from work and they went off somewhere. Looked like sabbaticals were the in-thing right now...
"Hey, no way," said Raphael. "No Todds sleep on this couch till I get some answers."
The kid looked up at him curiously. Not at all surprised by Raphael's appearance or anything. Glad as he was to skip the usual fainting and the other stages of shock, Raphael found that a little disconcerting. This kid seemed pretty familiar with this place, and a little too relaxed with the concept of a mutant turtle ninja.
"You must be Raphael..."
For some reason that annoyed Raph, and he pushed the kid's legs off the couch. "And you must be on my sofa, kid. Vamoose." He sat down next to Todd, and folded his arms irritably.
"How long has this been going on?" he demanded of Michelangelo as he sauntered in.
"Todd? A while now, I guess..."
"Well, Raph, you haven't exactly been around a lot..." Leonardo said with a faint hint of accusation as he came in followed by Donatello.
"Anything else I should know?"
"Yeah..." said Michelangelo. He leaned over the couch, talking to Todd now. "I got a new one. Listen..." He gripped Todd's shoulder and made him turn around to watch him.
"Ow! Man, you're strong..."
"Yeah!" Michelangelo nodded excitably. "'Cause I eats me spinach... Goygoygoygoygoy..." Michelangelo spluttered hoarsely and Donatello patted his back, receiving a silent raised thumb as thanks.
"Told you, Mikey. Popeye's bad for your throat."
"It's an impression too far..." offered Leonardo.
"It might do your voice irreparable harm," warned Donatello.
"So go ahead," contributed Raphael sourly.
Leonardo knew the owner of the voice meant no good. Some instinct alerted him. Sure, this was a dream, or that's what he thought anyway, but he was determined to resist. At least, he would do what he could.
It sure was a weird feeling, having your memories flicked through like the pages of a book...
"Uh... Conference, everybody..." said Raphael. He led the Turtles across the room, where they huddled together. Todd moved to follow. "Sorry, uh, kid. Turtle only conference. It's our rules. Same time every day."
"Since when?" demanded Michelangelo.
"Will you be quiet, Mikey? I just don't want the kid to think this is about him."
"It's not about him?"
"Yeah, it is."
"I'm confused. Anybody else?" contributed Donatello.
"Shaddap. What now?" asked Raphael.
"Now?" Leonardo looked blank.
"He's seen us. He knows who we are. He knows where we are..."
"He's just one kid."
"That's how it starts... One. Then it... I don't know... Escalates..."
"You mean April? You trying to say that was a bad thing...? No, I didn't think so..."
"Sorry if I'm making a snap judgment here, guys..." Michelangelo mused. "But I kinda like April better. If Todd is some kinda replacement, he'd better... He needs some work. He's a fixer upper..."
"No one's replacing April," Leonardo said irritably. "This kid got hurt. What was I supposed to do, leave him there?"
"Hurt?"
"Yeah, he was getting chased by other kids, he fell down. They wanted him to keep some stuff for them, you know, hand it on to some other people, run errands for them. He didn't want to..."
"Stuff?"
"Yeah, Raph. Stuff. Illegal sort of stuff."
"I could hear every word back there, you know..." Todd cut in. "For the record, I'm not trying to replace this chick you're talking about. I'm not trying to replace anybody. I'm just me."
"Uh..." Raphael guided Todd away a few feet from the others. "Kid... It's like this..."
"-I should point out, in the interests of accuracy..." said Donatello, "Todd is actually only a smidgen younger than us."
"And if I found out for sure you hatched so much as a second after me, Donny, I'd call you kid as well. Deal with it." Raphael turned to Todd. "Kid... It was fun hanging out, but the thing is, you and us guys, we're from different worlds..."
"I'll say," said Todd. "You guys look like you've wandered in from some Troma flick..."
"Well... Hey! Don't ever say that," responded Raphael, annoyed.
"Yeah," Todd maintained, smile growing. "You guys are definitely in the wrong genre."
"Right, that's it. Forget all the nice stuff I was going to say, kid. Just get the shell outta here."
Leonardo hastened forward from where he had been conferring quietly with Michelangelo for the last couple of minutes. "Hey. Whoa, whoa, whoa... Not so hasty... You know, Todd, I think we might just have something you can do..."
The Rat King sat back in his chair, eyes tightly closed in fierce concentration. The floor, as ever, seethed with rats, and arrayed in front of him were three large Turtle-sized bumps. The bumps, composed of constantly moving rats, swayed slowly as oxygen was allowed in to sustain the Turtles and carbon dioxide allowed to escape.
The Rat King searched the memories of his prisoners. Somewhere in the undisciplined mess of their minds was the information he needed. Sooner or later, whatever it took, he would have it...
"Uh... Is this what you guys do all day...?" Todd waved his hand dismissively at the TV sitting in front of himself, Raphael and Michelangelo.
Oh, sure, Raphael thought, a bunch of mutant turtles, adept in martial arts and going around fighting the good fight, that he could accept. The idea that they might pass some time in front of the tube, however...
"Uh, I suppose..." replied Michelangelo. "Our friend April's on. We try not to miss her shows."
"I'll have to take your word for that." Todd looked again at the TV. The screen was dark, and through the big hole the tube and other inner workings could clearly be seen. Less of a TV, it was more of an ex-TV. It had ceased to be a TV.
Donatello walked past, and Raphael tapped his arm as he came within reach. "Donny, you said you were going to take a look at the TV..."
"I did. Write off, dude. I told you, you need to scavenge us a new one."
Raphael thought for a moment, and looked sheepish. "Oh... Yeah. You did. I'll see what I can find tonight."
Todd stood up and limped over to where Donny sat at his makeshift computer. "That thing's a little small... Where are the cables...?"
"I call it a laptop. I built it myself."
"What 'ya' doing now?" Donatello's deceptively clumsy-looking fingers were tapping at the keyboard at a rate faster than Todd could follow.
"I'm programming... This is the bit that takes time. I'm defining every color as a hexiflexiwexamal code... You see?"
"No." Todd shrugged and wandered back over to Raphael. "What happened to the TV anyway?" he asked casually.
Raphael snorted. "Yeah, that was our revered"-
-"That would be me. Sorry..." said Leonardo. "Sword practice. Got outta hand..."
Todd sat back on the beat-up couch, rubbing his injured knee. He glanced over at a section of the lightweight internal wall that looked like it had been replaced recently. The repair was good, but he could still tell something had happened to it not so long ago. "Did you do that as well?" he asked lightly.
The Turtles glanced at each other sharply. "Uh, yeah..." Leonardo said hurriedly.
OK, change the subject, fine... Todd looked over at Leonardo's swords, hanging from a hook on the wall, deep in thought. "Leo?"
"Yeah?"
"What was it you wanted me to do? You made a big thing of that, and then just clammed up. What's the big secret?"
"Oh yeah..." Leonardo said, hurrying over. "Yeah... I wanted to talk to the other guys about that before asking you. And I have. So, Todd... We might just have a job you can do for us..."
The others gathered round, bubbling up with barely suppressed glee. Leonardo went on. "There's a... thing we really gotta have... Without it, we'll be in real trouble. Ever since we came here to Lakeside, it's gotten very difficult to obtain. See, in New York, we had ways, means, contacts... Here it's not so easy..."
Todd waved his hands, laughing. "Hey... Leo... I got it... You can stop talking. Whatever it is, if it's that important I'll do it. What is it you guys need?"
Pizza!
Michelangelo had got tired of the mystery voice man's incessant questions, and now whatever it asked him it got that simple one-word response. Hey – it was possible if he said it enough times – thought it enough times, whatever - it might actually give him some of that coveted doughy, cheesy, tomatoey goodness. Sure, it wasn't likely, but Michelangelo was an optimist.
Something else he was - underestimated. He had a feeling voice man was in a hurry, and the longer he could keep him occupied the better.
Ow! That hurt!
The questions were over. Michelangelo felt like fingers were actually delving into his brain and could only watch helplessly as his carefully constructed mental pizza was torn apart and cast into the darkness. It upset him even when he reminded himself the pizza wasn't real...
"...In fact, you know what, kid?" said Raphael. "We got some money. You got a mug that won't make the guy in the pizza place go aaaaaggghhhh and run for the Catskills... You see where I'm goin' wit' this?"
"Uh, I think so." Todd smiled, as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello all nodded enthusiastically. Then his face fell, and he gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "You want me to be an errand boy. Just like those drug dealers did."
"Right," said Raphael, pleased. "Um, no," he added. "Not exactly," he clarified.
"Hey, Todd, don't think of it that way," Leonardo said, an arm round his shoulder. "Think of it as... logistical support."
"I wanna be like you guys," Todd pleaded. He looked at each of them in turn.
"Uh... I think I saw a can of green paint somewhere," said Michelangelo helpfully.
"Ha ha. You know what I mean, you guys," Todd insisted. "If I had a tenth of your skills, I could set this whole place to rights."
"You know, kid..." Raphael mused. "...Doing what we do isn't about waving swords around or beating people up whenever you want. Most of it is up here..." He laid a hand on the domed top of his own head. "It's a positive mental attitude... It's about finding... the still point..."
"Um, where did Raph go?" Leonardo asked. "Bring him back, somebody."
Raphael guided Todd to the center of the room. "Look, kid - try this, OK..." He touched Todd's left foot and made him lift it off the ground and stand on the right one alone. "Try standing like this. See how long you can hold it."
Todd looked doubtful. "OK." He stood on one foot for a while, watched by the Turtles. After a few seconds, he wobbled slightly. After a minute, he wobbled a lot. The Turtles exchanged doubtful glances. Todd's left foot hit the floor to stop him falling over.
"Hey, that's not fair. You know I hurt the knee, plus I got an inner ear thing," he said defensively. "I just need to practice."
Raphael pointed at him. "Exactly... Exactly... And exactly."
Leonardo took up the theme. "Raph's right, Todd. Kind of. In his own way. Sometimes. At least, I can see what he's going for. It's a long road, and a steep learning curve. And you don't have to be a ninja to make the right choices in your life."
Michelangelo took Todd by the arm and steered him away from the others. "I think what they're trying to say is..." He thought for a moment. "Could you get us pizza? Please? There was some other stuff, but I kinda zoned out." He grinned.
The rats streamed around their monarch's throne in a state of high agitation. They could feel his state of anxiety, and were being whipped into a restless fervor that in turn became a feedback loop that made the Rat King himself start to lose his grip on their minds.
He was so near. Where was it hidden...? His path through their memories was obscured by the flashing colors – each time he had a firm grasp of a particular incident, a burst of red would make him lose it and he would need to find it all over again. Red, blue, orange, purple.
Red. Blue. Orange. Purple.
If only he had access to the other Turtle's mind. Donatello. He felt sure the missing pieces must be there. Even the Rat King was moved to smile faintly as he remembered the other Turtles' mangled recollection of I'm defining every color as a hexadecimal code...
Red. Blue. Orange. Purple.
Always in that order.
He was sure he had been on the right track. The Turtles would not grant him direct access to the portion of their memories he was looking for, but he had found isolated threads that should have been possible to follow. An insidious path through their defenses – clues – a trail of breadcrumbs. Pizza crumbs.
Where had that come from? Irrelevant. Or was it?
Always in that order. Of course. He saw it now, but also saw that it was not complete. There was more, and, maddeningly, they didn't know it. How could that be?
He followed the thread. He could see the Turtles in the alley. The four thieves sat back to back, bound and gagged. He listened impatiently as the easily distracted Turtles meandered their way to the truth. It would be nice if she had left them a trail. Breadcrumbs... Pizza crumbs...
The girl, April O'Neil... Even as he followed this line of reasoning one of his rats was dispatched to make sure April was still where he had last located her. He was impressed by the Turtles' efforts to deflect his attention from their human friend - Even on a subconscious level, they were protecting her. It had taken him this long to realize she might be as much a guardian of the item he needed as they were...
The report came back swiftly. Unsurprisingly, April was still held at the Foot Clan's junkyard base - From his spy came a quick visual flash of the captive reporter writhing against her cruel bonds, and through the mental link created by her unexpected plea for help he got a sense of her apprehension, her ever-growing feeling of dread... At the back of his mind, he was vaguely aware of the three Turtles' dismay and anger as the vision was shared with them, but they were irrelevant now.
Even so... Was it... pity he felt? Even guilt, since by capturing the Turtles he had deprived April of help and left her at the Foot's non-existent mercy...? These sensations meant something to Lawrence Hynten, but he was buried deep in the Rat King's mind and had very little power to influence him.
Impatiently, he dismissed such thoughts... Time to go. Not on any kind of rescue mission - the information he needed was all that mattered.
The Rat King stepped down, and the rats scattered around him as he strode purposefully to the exit.
Things had gone quiet out in the yard, but if anything that made April more uneasy. She watched from her chair - although she could hardly watch from anywhere else - as the silhouette of the Foot sentry moved past the window again, and then peered anxiously into the murky shadows of the now dimly-lit workshop.
A sudden noise made her jump, only to be painfully held immobile by the pinioning ropes... OK, it was only the workshop settling as the temperature dropped.
What time was it...? It had been dark a while... How many hours now since they had tied her to this chair...? Annoyingly, she could faintly hear the ticking of her watch, useless with her hands tied behind her. How much longer were they going to keep her like this...?
Something fell off one of the work benches off to the side of her, and a scurrying sound followed - April laboriously shifted the chair round a little, but by that time there was nothing to see.
"Mmmff...?" she inquired cautiously through the tape - That you, Whiskers...?
The rats were left in turmoil after the departure of their master, some still under his control and others decidedly not. Some started to fight each other in territorial dispute that had long been subdued by their common purpose and the iron will of their master. An iron will suddenly relaxed.
"Uuuuuuuuhhh..."
A groan escaped from one of the large mounds of rat flesh, and the mass of rodents shifted as something powerful fought to escape from beneath. With an effort that left him thoroughly exhausted, Leonardo erupted from his living prison and collapsed again to the floor.
He forced himself to stand, and assisted his two brothers as they struggled free as well. Weak as kittens, but give them time. Just a little time.
Then they would make the Rat King pay.
Their duties finished for now, Matt and Jake stood at the edge of the yard. They weren't likely to be disturbed - Young as they were, they were pretty much senior Foot ninja after the recent losses. "What's up...?" Matt sighed. "OK, you're not still mooning over the reporter, are you?"
"What...? No..!" Jake snapped, screwing his face up like the suggestion was absurd.
"But what?"
"I didn't say but."
"You thought it."
"I mean... There's all of us out here, somebody guarding the workshop all the time... There's no way she can escape... Couldn't we at least untie her...?"
"Yeah, well... You hear about the last guy who questioned Master Tatsu's orders...?"
"No," Jake replied, intrigued. Matt started to move away, but turned back momentarily to have the last word.
"No. Neither did I."
Add to to-do list... Escapology classes. The full Houdini. If I ever get out of here...
What had happened to the Turtles? April knew that the Foot's plan was to use her as bait to lure them into a trap - that much was obvious - and she could be certain they had left a few clues to follow to get them here. She really didn't want her friends to step into the trap, even if it meant her staying here, but at the same time doubted anything could stop them doing just that. So what had happened?
Bummer... The word sprang to mind out of nowhere, and the duct-tape was creased and stretched by her automatic smile. That's what he would say. The danger she was in really put petty arguments into perspective.
Well... At least things probably couldn't get much worse...
The rats were on the move. They streamed through the sewer tunnels, channeled toward the optimum points of attack. All with one mind, directed by one will. Then... a new thought. New orders. Some, many of them in fact, found themselves re-directed.
They had a new objective...
Next: April ponders Houdini, Jake tries being good cop and Irma saves the planet…