Chapter 17: Pipe Down

Technicians in protective gear had by now righted the keg and were securing the nozzle. As Whiskers lurched forward and then steadied on his feet, the Rat King moved forward to intercept the now-bipedal rat, careful not to let any of the liquid touch him. Brief exposure to the original ooze had made him the most powerful Hyn'tnn incarnate yet - the effect this new concentrated mutagen might have was unpredictable enough to make him wary.

As he grappled with his creation, he wasn't quite prepared for the creature's enormous strength! Whiskers lifted the Rat King off his feet and slammed him against the wall. The two of them continued to grapple, physical power almost matched.

Obey! The Rat King sent the simple command across the long-established mental link with his minion. Whiskers, however, was not the simple creature he had been.

Hi!

A simple response, so simple it took the Rat King completely by surprise and put him off balance. Then he realized the voice that replied was a familiar one...

April froze, wide-eyed.

To her alarm, the rat came closer. She instinctively tried to lean forward to keep it in view, and was painfully reminded of the loops of rope holding her pinned to the chair. She heard its light footfall behind her and felt it run underneath. It paused to investigate the rope binding her ankles, and appeared again in front of her.

"Mmmff..." Uncertainly, she offered the rat a tape-muffled greeting. It seemed only polite...

The Rat King stared into the shiny black eyes of the rat. He had not even realized that this was the rat he had sent to spy on the Foot Clan, and would not have considered it important even if he had. Was this creature... remembering?

"What are you doing, Whiskers?" The thought crossed the human's mind and was immediately projected into the Rat King's. That of the rat, too.

Whiskers...? For the rat, a name was a strange concept. Why the human would want to grant him one was a mystery. At least she seemed well-disposed toward him, unlike many of these human creatures he spent so much time observing.

Independently of his master, Whiskers – he liked that – rose up on his rear legs to get a better look at her. That seemed to surprise the human, and with a creak of protest from the chair she tried to lean forward a little despite the restraints. The shiny silver material stuck over her mouth prevented the human from communicating with her own kind, but speech made no sense to Whiskers anyway. Her projected thoughts, however, were totally clear.

"Hi. I know it's a really, really long shot, but I don't suppose you're some kind of psychic rat who likes to gnaw through rope, are you?"

What the Rat King meant by the phrase he had just muttered was anybody's guess... "What the hell is going on here?" Dr Pearson asked that question of the mercenary captain, and got a shrug. She asked it of Bryan, and got less than a shrug.

Bryan had enough going on without having to answer her questions. The voice was back. Or maybe voice was the wrong word now. Bryan couldn't so much hear the old Japanese man now, as feel his consciousness. His intellect, his integrity. His goodness. It told him what he kind of already knew. This was wrong. This had to be stopped.

How?

There, the voice wasn't so helpful. He could tell Bryan what he had to do, but not how to do it. That just wasn't good enough!

Dr Pearson had reached her limit. Grabbing a gun from a mercenary's holster, she pointed it at the Rat King. "All right, Mr so-called Hynten! I get some answers now, or I shoot! Just what have you been doing with my work…?!"

The Rat King ignored her. He was engaged in a struggle on both the physical plane and a mental one, and now he had traced where this sense of individuality had come from he could feel his wayward servant's defenses starting to-

-The shot was very loud in the confined space, and Bryan involuntarily brought his hands up to shield his ears. Dr Pearson stared at the gun, as if she couldn't believe what she had just done. Had she hit him? Had she even meant to fire? Even she didn't know for sure.

For Whiskers the gunshot was a wake-up call. He threw off his distracted master - former master - and erupted across the room with the others making way for him. They weren't messing with that! He careered down the corridor outside till he got out to a walkway overlooking the river.

In the lab, the others heard the splash. The Rat King looked up at Dr Pearson.

"Uh... Mr Hynten... I'm, uh..." She searched for the right words. Sorry I almost shot you? Or was he hit? It was difficult to tell.

"You let him escape." It was a statement, not an angry accusation, but even so Dr Pearson felt a little colder.

"I... Uh..."

Without warning, the Rat King was suddenly only inches away from her. Dr Pearson was grabbed by the throat and lifted off the ground. Her legs kicked frantically. Then he let her go. By throwing her through the window. Dr Pearson's body smashed through the glass and fell toward the river thirty feet or so below. This time the splash was a faint one.

The mercenary captain responded on instinct. His gun was in his hand, but before he could do anything the Rat King had twisted it out of his grip and thrown it after Dr Pearson. The captain threw up his hands and stepped back.

The Rat King's lip was curled, and he was breathing audibly. Then his anger seemed to pass, and a look of sadness and regret passed over his face. Moving over to the now-repaired keg of mutagen, he lifted it and tucked it under his arm. Without another word, he left the lab.

Something made Bryan look at the floor where the Rat King had just walked, and saw a few tell-tale drops of red.

"Step on it, Kevin! Breaking news won't wait for us!" urged Jim McNaughton from the passenger seat of the Channel 3 outside broadcast van, and if he caught the slight rolling of the eyes from his driver and assistant he didn't let on.

By the end of their velocitous dash halfway across the city he regretted his words. Who cares if we miss the story, so long as we get there in one piece?

Arrival at last. This was where the latest reports said the action was. Jim climbed down from the cab and took in their surroundings. They were at the edge of Holland Square, one of New York's oldest gathering places. Not one of its most prestigious areas any more, but not exactly a dump either. Jim had till now never had occasion to come to Holland Square. Clearly, though, the rats had found a reason.

Rats. Lots of them. Milling around Holland Square like... Jim searched for an adjective, and found his limited capacities deserting him in the sight of this horde. He had had no idea he was scared of rats, till tonight.

A small crowd was gathered around the perimeter of the square and Jim fought his own instinct to run, shoving his way to the front instead. He had a job to do.

Why were they here…? More practical than Jim, April and Irma found themselves asking that question more than any other. Why Holland Square…? What did it have to attract the rats, or their master? April had explained what she knew of the Rat King to Irma, and it was an indicator of how strange Irma's life had become that she had believed every word without question.

"Hey, look over there." Irma had spotted the Channel 3 van.

"Yeah..." April was torn. Getting involved in reporting on these events might not be the best way to help the Turtles. She noticed Irma raise her hand to wave when she spotted Jim, and stopped her. "Hey, wait... Let me think."

"Sorry."

"Probably best to stay away for now, Irma. I hate going AWOL, but it might make it tricky to help the guys."

"What if they see you?"

"You're right. I need a disguise." April laughed. Her attention was suddenly grabbed by something else. "Hey..." She walked purposefully along the perimeter of the crowd, those bold enough not to be driven off by the rats. Irma scampered behind her, with a definite sense that she would be spending a lot of time doing that from now on.

One onlooker was perched on the transport that had brought him there - A motorcycle, more specifically a Honda. More specifically, April was sure, Casey's pawned Honda. Under his arm, a crash helmet. More specifically, and April really was feeling like being specific about all this, her helmet.

"Hey... What's the idea?" April grabbed the man's shoulder and turned him round, and was surprised to see... Not a man. Not as such. What was this kid doing with her bike?

Todd gaped at her, clearly having trouble coming to terms with the big city. The lights, the crowds, the marauding horde of rats, and now a seriously hot chick coming out of nowhere and actually talking to him... "Hey... How's it goin'?" he asked casually, affecting a nonchalant attitude, and inwardly cringed. Yeah... cool... Very cool.

"Hi," April replied automatically. "Uh, can I ask where you got this bike?"

"I... found it. Outside an old factory"-

-"Lakeside, upstate," April finished for him, smiling, and pretty much Todd's whole body blushed as she touched his arm. "Well, uh, thank you, but you happen to have found the rightful owner... OK, rightful caretaker... Uh, let's not get into that, huh? I'm gonna need it back."

She plucked the helmet from his hands and, with a cautious glance in the direction of the Channel 3 van, put it on. Todd thought idly that it kind of suited her - it went pretty well with the leather jacket and pants.

Oh yeah... He made a belated connection.

Todd felt the whole situation slipping away from him, and tried to make sure the hot chick in leather and her kinda cute friend would at least remember he was still here. "How am I gonna get home?" he asked. "You know... Once I find them."

About to lower the visor, April paused. "Get home? Oh yeah... Look, don't worry about that, OK? I'll make sure... Uh... Find who?"

"This is gonna sound really strange," Todd ventured, "but do you know a guy called Leonardo?"

"Leo?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think Master Splinter is really gone?"

Leonardo squinted through two sets of steel bars to see Michelangelo's face. He thought carefully about his answer. To his surprise, it wasn't the answer he had assumed he would give. "I don't know."

"We saw him fall." In his cage, Raphael was facing away from them.

"Ah, but did you see him land?" Donatello inquired, standing up.

"You weren't there, Donny." Turning his head briefly, Raphael seemed to be about to add something to that, but in the end waved his hand dismissively and turned away again.

"You're right. I wasn't." Donatello leaned forward, letting the bars take his weight. "But I know what I think."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"And what do you think, Donny?" Leonardo asked. Not with any side, but as an honest question.

"I think he's seen too much, been through too much, to just stop like that. If he's gone, it should feel different. Like, the world should have skipped for a moment. Glitched. But it carried right on as if nothing had happened."

"That sounds kind of crazy, Donny," Leonardo commented, but not unkindly.

Donatello smiled faintly. "I know."

"So, Leo?"

"What, Mikey?"

"Do you think he's gone?"

Leonardo considered again. This time his answer was even more surprising. "No."

Why here? That question was occupying April's mind. Why had the rats congregated in Holland Square? What was special about this place? She took a breath and started again. OK. What was here? No sites of strategic value if they were planning to take over the city. No military or police installations. No landmarks of cultural value...

Unless you counted the old hotel. One of the oldest buildings in the city...

Leaning on the bike, April considered Holland Square hotel for the first time. It was in the process of being refitted, and she could see, right now, a few levels up, one floor was undergoing renovation, or it had been till the evacuation a couple of hours before. Some panes of glass were missing, allowing a pipe to emerge for the guys inside to dump refuse into the waiting garbage skip on the ground. Except the skip wasn't directly under the pipe any more. It had been shifted to the side.

Pipe.

The rats milled around the square. They had established a circular patrol pattern, moving round rapidly so that all of them at some point passed under that pipe. April's eyes shot back up to the floor where the pipe emerged.

Oh no...

"There's something down here with us!"

Freddy had dismissed that particular concern the first time he had heard it, but now he was starting to take it seriously. He, Matt and a half-dozen other Foot ninja were picking their way carefully along the sewer tunnel, and from the sounds up ahead someone else was coming toward them at quite a rate. Or was it more than one?

Freddy watched, fascinated, as the creature's shape resolved. A giant rat, the size of a very big dog or a small bear, scampering along on all fours. As it saw them, however, it stood up on its rear legs. Like a man.

It occurred to Todd that in his description of Leonardo and his brothers he had forgotten to tell April they were giant Turtles. She still seemed to get the gist of it anyway, though...

Coming to a decision, to his surprise, April took the helmet off and handed it back to him, patiently pretending to be unaware he had, in his teenage boy way, been looking at her tush till a moment ago. "Uh, Todd, you take that back for now. Irma, look up there. The hotel, that pipe sticking out."

"Pipe?"

"Up there, Irma. There... I won't point at it, up there."

"I don't know, April, I'd call that a chute rather than a pipe."

"Well, I'm calling it a pipe, OK?"

Irma looked at the chute or pipe and the milling rats below, and visibly went pale. "Oh no."

"Right."

"What?" Todd wasn't seeing it.

"Irma, explain it to Todd. I gotta go up there."

"Alone? I'm coming with you."

"Just trust me, I think I know who's gonna be up there... We kinda got a rapport." April didn't look convinced by her own argument, but wasn't going to be talked out of it. "Maybe he'll listen to me. Maybe I can just slow him down a little. I don't know. " She stepped forward, and turned to face them. "You two, wait here," she said decisively, and turned back to the building.

The lion's den - the rat's den - awaited. Why did she have a feeling she was going to regret this?

"Don't get too close," Matt warned. Freddy ignored him, stepping toward the giant rat, fascinated.

"This is incredible."

"It's just like those crazy things... Razor and Toker."

"No, it isn't, look at it. This is very different." Freddy reached out toward Whiskers but stopped before actually making contact, his expression carefully benign. Could this thing interpret human expressions? Whiskers shrank inward a little, but he didn't retreat.

"See…?" Freddy said in a soothing voice. "It knows we mean no harm." As a ninja snorted at that assertion, he shot a dangerous glance at him. "Don't you?" he asked Whiskers. The Rat moved his head forward toward Freddy, and as the others raised their weapons nervously he held up his hand to stay them. Whiskers sniffed the air, cautiously at first then more intently.

Then, unexpectedly, he turned to Matt. He reached out with his... Freddy supposed it was a hand. When no one tried to stop him, Whiskers reached under Matt's tunic and pulled out an object. A black leather glove.

"So that's what you could smell," Freddy mused under his breath, taking the glove from Whiskers gently.

"I forgot I still had that," said Matt. Freddy's raised hand silenced him.

"Where…?" It spoke! Whiskers sniffed the air again, head turning. He seemed to pick up something of interest. "What are you doing, Whiskers...?" pondered the rat, seemingly reciting something from memory.

"That's April's glove," Freddy told him. "You've seen her?"

"Aay-Pril..." Whiskers repeated, as if weighing the possible answers to that.

"Yeah."

"Gave Whiskers name."

Freddy's eyebrows rose slightly, but other than that he gave no sign this perturbed him. "Well, like I say, that's her glove."

"April's... glove."

"Yeah, that's right. I think we should get it back to her right away... Don't you?"

Whiskers thought about that, and it looked like it made sense to his developing sense of right and wrong.

"Do you know where she is…?" Freddy had a feeling this was going to work. Matt shook his head and sighed.

"Find April... Glove." The rat seemed to be mulling it over. Finally, he looked at Freddy and something in its expression told the Foot leader that, crazy at it was, this was actually going to work. Freddy took it as a sign when he turned and hurried away down the tunnel.

He turned to the others and smiled. "Follow that rat."

Chief Sterns stood in the calm center of a raging whirlpool of activity. The Crisis Control room was full of police officers and technicians, yelling into phones, blocking out the noise to hear incoming calls, furiously scribbling down reports. Demanding reports from the field. Demanding information. Information was supposed to come in here and decisions were supposed to come out. That's how it worked.

That's how it was supposed to work.

"Chief - They're saying it's more of them than before, there's at least five hundred."

"They're just milling around."

"But are they actually doing anything...? I think we should-"

"-Chief...?"

"More like a thousand!"

"We got a report here..."

"Holland Square?"

"We sent somebody already. Have you tried-?"

"-Chief…?"

"Holland Square, yeah."

"Rats…? Yeah... I'd noticed."

"Holland Square..."

"Chief…? We got the Mayor on the line."

Sterns turned and left the room. Everyone else there looked at each other. Could he do that?

The Turtles looked up as someone came in through the doors - It was Sterns. "Don't make me regret this," he said. He turned to the zoologist, who was groggily stumbling to his feet. "Get them outta there!"

A cold wind whistled through the gap where the window had been removed, and the Rat King shivered. That surprised him. He had never felt particularly vulnerable to extremes of temperature before. The reason why occurred to him, and he shivered again. This time not with the cold.

Despite the pressure of time, he had taken the opportunity to don the familiar rags and bandages. This Hyn'tnn incarnate felt more at ease this way. More... ready.

He could sense her approach long before she got there, and used the time to haul the keg of mutagen into place. It seemed far heavier now than it had when he set out from the laboratory. He eyed the couple of dozen rats who had accompanied him with a faintly resentful air. They had not been much help. Such a laborious task certainly displayed their limitations.

That would soon change.

April cautiously peered around the corner before she came in. "Uh, hi..." was her opening gambit. The rats scampered across the floor toward her, stopping a few feet short. She gingerly reached out a hand in their direction, as if to pet one of them, but quickly changed her mind. "Hi there, guys..." she greeted them uncertainly.

He turned briefly. "Hi," he said casually.

"Hi," she said again, and then laughed at the absurd self-consciousness of it, before throwing her hands wide and clasping them in front of her, nervously shifting her weight from foot to foot. One of them better start start saying something other than Hi. "Uh, how'ya been?"

"Fine," he said, still engaged in preparing the keg of mutagen. "Don't worry, the rats won't harm you unless I will it." His voice was gentle, kindly even, but April recognized the implied threat.

"Uh, are you sure you want to do that?" she asked, eyeing the keg of mutagen, her apparent casualness fooling no one.

"Yes, quite sure."

"OK... I couldn't talk you out of it, could I?"

"I doubt it."

"Right. I'm not, uh, getting in the way here?"

"Not at all. Your presence is welcome... Pleasant, in fact."

"OK..." Eyeing the rats carefully, April tried moving forward, but that seemed to make them mad. She really didn't want to do that, but if it came to it... "So, uh, Freddy and company... The Foot Clan..." He turned around to face her, leaving the keg on the floor right next to the pipe. If she could even distract him for a short time, maybe someone else could pick up the slack... "You had some kinda deal with Freddy. What was that about?" Change the subject. A perfectly valid tactic.

"Fetching and carrying, at a critical point in my plans," he sort of explained. "Freddy thought of himself as far more important than he actually was. You might call him a non-entity."

"Oooohhh... I hear ya..." she said, nodding.

"I'm sorry. Was I not audible before?"

April smiled. "You're strange, you know that? And I don't mean just because you want to take over the city with an army of rats. Believe me, I'm not all that judgmental."

"Freddy is still troublesome," he continued. "But I do not kill unless there is a direct threat to my goals." Remembering Doctor Pearson, he felt a twinge of guilt. "At least, I try to avoid it..."

"Sure you couldn't make an exception in his case…? I don't mean that… Yes I do."

"He is coming here." The Rat King dropped that news casually.

Realizing he meant Freddy, April shifted nervously. "Uh… Here here? Right here? Here where we are, here…?"

"Yes. But he will be too late to stop me."

"Oh, good…" she commented sarcastically, looking around the room. "That's definitely what I was worried about, yeah."

"I must correct you."

"Oh…" She turned back to face him. "OK. What about?"

"The goal is not to control this city. In the end, the dominion of the rat will extend to the entire world."

"Uh... Right." That was a lot to take in. "Gotta say, and I'm not getting at'ya, I'm, uh, not totally sold on that being, you know, a good idea..."

"You want to avoid the Foot?" he cut in.

"Yeah... Yeah, of course," she replied, flustered. "I don't exactly want to be their prisoner again. That was a whole world of not fun."

"Yes." He considered that. "Understandable. In that case, I am sorry." It sounded like he meant it.

"Ooohhh... kaaayyy..." she said warily. "Sorry for what?"

He swung round. At his silent command, the force of rats blocked April's way back, and then forced her into a corner. There they stayed, blocking her escape. "For keeping you here," he explained. "For returning you to the Foot Clan."

"What…?" April couldn't believe what she had just heard. "Why...?!" Realizing she would get no answer, she looked round desperately for some means of escape. "That's just mean!"

The Rat King reached under the layers of bandages and rags. His hand came away red. He looked at it blankly. The time was near...

Keeping a wary eye on the rats, April started feeling the wall behind her. As a piece of it crumbled away she scattered the debris over them and tried to run for it. The rats reformed and stopped her, driving her back into the corner. She recovered her balance only with difficulty, throwing her hands up in the air, shoulders hunched and eyes tight shut, trying to assure the rats she was done for now and stop them swarming her. The rats brushed against her feet before retreating again, and this time they granted her a much smaller space to stand in.

April opened her eyes again, surprised to find she was still all right. Yeah, she was fine... Till this guy gave her back to the Foot...! She shouted an appeal to the Rat King with more desperation than actual hope. "Why can't you just let me go...?!"

Bryan walked and walked. He didn't know how far. He didn't know how long. Finding himself in a part of the city he didn't know, he eyed the exotic shops with their bright neon signs and murky interiors. An occasional passer-by bowed to him, and he found himself bowing back.

He stopped. The boy was looking at him funny. The young Japanese boy, in his early teens, blocked Bryan's way.

"Uh, I don't think I have any money," Bryan muttered.

"What?" The boy looked askance at him. "I'm not trying to mug you." He looked dubious for a moment. "Look up."

Bryan looked up. The shop sign above him was arranged around a neon representation of some kind of animal. A rat. The boy studied his reaction, and after a moment seemed satisfied. "OK. It's you. Come with me."

What else could he do? Bryan followed.

Whiskers led Freddy, Matt and the other Foot ninja to the bottom of a ladder, and clawed briefly at the bottom rungs.

"You've found her?" Freddy dashed forward, and started climbing the ladder. At the top, he pushed at the cover. Annoyed when it barely shifted, he climbed down and barked "You two... Up there and get that cover off. Make it quick."

Turning to Whiskers, he smiled. "Well done, Whiskers. Looks like we'll soon get April's glove back to her. I can just picture her face when she sees us..."

The cover lifted, and two Foot ninja emerged into the cellar of the Holland Square hotel. Dimly-lit, silent. Dust that had lain undisturbed for a while swirled around with the sudden movement of air. Freddy was the next to come up, then Matt, then Whiskers, squeezing through with difficulty, easily forgetting his new bulk, and the remaining ninja followed. Freddy took stock of their surroundings, and noticed only one other exit at the top of some stairs.

"OK... Where are we?" he pondered.

"Holland Square hotel, it says here..." said Matt. Freddy grinned – he knew there was a reason he kept Matt around.

Turning, he quietly addressed the two ninja who had been first into the cellar. "You two – back into the tunnels. Close it up behind you and get back to the van. Bring it round to the back of the hotel. The alley. Back, not front. OK? You got that? Go do it."

Matt eyed Freddy skeptically. "And us?"

"She's here? In this building?" Freddy asked Whiskers. The rat nodded. Then started blinking rapidly. "What's wrong?" he demanded, his manner suddenly brusque, while unnoticed, he discarded the glove on the floor. It had served its purpose.

"I..." Whiskers doubled over and clutched his head. "He is... He is..."

"He...?"

"He is found..." said Whiskers unhelpfully. "He is returning."

"OK." Freddy snapped his fingers and led the way up the stairs and into the main floor of the hotel. The other ninja followed, leaving the distracted Whiskers in the cellar. "Close the door! See if you can find something to block it!" he demanded.

"What's wrong? Getting tired of our new recruit?" Matt asked dryly.

"Had to get rid of him somehow. That was a stroke of luck, my friend. Above all else, a leader should be lucky."

"What now?"

"Now...? We get our hostage back and proceed with the plan."

"That's... Master Tatsu's plan…?"

"Tatsu's plan... With a few alterations."

Penned in by the rats, April could do nothing to stop the Rat King. He made one last effort, and it seemed to be costing him a lot, lifting the keg of mutagen up to the end of the refuse pipe.

It poured.

By the time he and the boy reached the top of the stairs, Bryan was out of breath. He had let the exercise slide of late, in favor of his project. His two projects, he supposed, even if one of them had been pursued under hypnosis.

"Here we are," said the boy. "Take off your jacket if you want, you might be here a while."

"Why am I here?" Bryan asked. He peered at the other inhabitants of the small tenement, an elderly couple, as they came forward to get a better look at him.

"This is him, Grandma." The old woman seemed to accept this. The old man poked Bryan with his walking stick, and harrumphed. They went through to another room, and beckoned Bryan after them. Once he saw what was there, he understood. Sort of.

A figure lay on the bed, covers drawn up around him. Silent. Dead? No, not dead. Not quite. The chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly. "Kappa," said the old man.

It was Splinter.

Next: The rats get high, Donatello orders dessert and... The King is dead - Long live the King...