Author's Note: Sorry, I keep forgetting to update here on . You can find more chapters on my AO3 account. Just search for a fic with the same title.
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When Leo Met Mona
Chapter Thirteen: Venomous, Part 1
"Okay, but like how long is this going to take?" Michelangelo asked. "My girlfriend's been blowing up my phone, asking what's been going on. I've kinda been putting her off. And she knows I've been putting her off, and she's going to have my shell if I don't at least go visit her."
"Tell her you're dealing with family business," Leonardo responded on a croaky voice. He coughed in an attempt to clear it, but he still sounded like he had a frog in his throat. "When we're done, you'll go see her. And leave your phone here. We don't need that thing making noise and giving away our position."
Michelangelo looked at his brother. "You feeling okay, bro? You don't sound good."
"I'm fine. Where's Raph? We need to get going."
"I'm right here."
"Do you have the mutagen?" Leonardo rasped.
Raphael held up the black duffel bag. "What's wrong with your throat, Leo? Been suckin' too much dick?"
Leonardo tried to punch him in the arm, but Raphael merrily dodged it. In truth, his throat was a little sore. It was from churring for Mona much longer and louder than he was used to. And he was glad to do it. If it brought her even a little bit of comfort, he would do it again in a heartbeat. Even though he was paying the price of the scratchy throat. Knowing that she was currently resting in his bed, tucked away in his room, and smelling of him was plenty compensation.
"Give me a second," Michelangelo said as he typed furiously on his phone. "I need to tell Kala how much I love her in case anything happens to me."
"Nothing is going to happen," Leonardo insisted for what felt like the umpteenth time. "We stick together. We play it smart, keep our distance. We keep each other safe."
He glanced at Raphael for backup, but the larger brother didn't look all that confident either.
"I mean it," Leonardo continued. "We will do our best to get them under control, maybe even help them, but not at the expense of either of you." He looked from one brother to the other. "If something doesn't feel safe, don't act. We can always regroup and try again." He gripped Michelangelo by the bicep and then looked at Raphael. "Okay?"
Michelangelo looked relieved. "Yeah, we got you bro. Don't do anything stupid yourself, either. I don't want to drag your ass back to Mona and have to explain why we couldn't keep you safe."
Leonardo laughed a raspy laugh and clapped his brother on the arm again. "Sounds like a good plan."
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Mona woke up to an empty bed and a crack of light from the barely open bedroom door. She had no idea what time it was because Leonardo—very proud of his own internal clock—didn't even keep something that told time in his room. And in the lair, it was always blacker than night unless a light was on. It could have been the middle of the night, it could have been past noon. She had no way to tell.
Dressed in the same long shirt as the night before, she padded out into the hallway with a blanket around her shoulders. The lair was very quiet. Empty. She wandered down to the main room and found Splinter alone watching TV. He looked up and smiled when she entered.
"Hello, my dear. Did you rest well?"
She had. Laying in Leonardo's arms, she had drifted off to sleep and slept hard. "I did. What time is it?"
The old rat smiled. "It is the middle of the afternoon."
Jeeze, her own internal clock was way off. Even though she had slept, she was still tired. "It seems like everyone's gone."
"Leonardo took his brothers out. They are going to try to subdue the mutants that are roaming the sewers."
Mona felt ice creep up her spine at the thought of meeting those creatures again in the dark sewer tunnels. She didn't want that for any of the boys, though she knew they were doing what needed to be done.
"Are you hungry?" Splinter then asked.
She definitely was. Splinter escorted her to the kitchen and told her what food they had available. She appreciated it. Though it was an unspoken truth that this would need to be her home for a while, she still felt uncomfortable about helping herself to the kitchen.
As she sat down to eat, Splinter joined her at the table. Mona didn't particularly enjoy being watched while she ate, but this wasn't her home. And it seemed Splinter had something to say.
"I still remember that day," the old rat spoke. "After we were pulled from the fire. We were left in darkness. We were left to grow. The boys don't remember. They were too young. But I remember my body changing, my mind changing, as the mutagen ran through me. I know it is not the same as what is happening to you. But I understand that feeling of your soul being a stranger to your physical form. Feeling achy and helpless and lost. Not having any idea what you are supposed to do with your changes. We are all here for you, for whatever you need."
"Thank you," she said softly. "I really appreciate that. I've never had people in my life I could count on until I met Leo and then all of you. Sometimes I still forget I don't have to do things alone."
Splinter seemed to mull a thought around in his head before he spoke again. "Romantic love, I used to think, was a human thing. Something us mutants would never understand. Though I do know love—I love my family dearly. But romantic love...even now, I am not sure of it. Yet, I can see clearly that Leonardo loves you. And I have seen your love for him. I have seen that you care for all of my sons and their happiness is important to you. And your happiness is important to all of us. Donatello has told me he will try his best to find a way to reverse your mutation if he can."
Mona perked up at his name. "Is Donatello around?"
"Yes, he is still in the same room. He will be there for a few days more. The wound on his leg was very deep."
"Can I go see him?"
Splinter gave her an amused smile. "I think he would like that. And then he will have someone else to fetch things for him. He has been a very high-maintenance patient."
She grinned. "I don't mind that at all."
After she had eaten, she poked her head into the recovery room and found Donatello, as usual, with his computer in his lap, typing away. She watched him for a minute, noting that his color looked good and he didn't particularly seem to be in pain despite the several bandages covering his side and leg.
"Donnie," she whispered. The turtle didn't seem to hear, so she tried a little louder. "Donnie."
He jerked slightly and looked up, pushing his glasses further up his nose. "Oh, hey."
"Do you need anything? Splinter told me I get to be your gopher for a while."
A cute smile spread across his face. "Uh, no. I think I've already abused that privilege enough for now." He motioned with his head to a nightstand full of snacks and a chair piled with random gadgets. "Thank you for asking, though."
"Then, is it alright if I hang out with you for a while? I'm not sure what to do with myself."
His face brightened. "Yes, sure. Of course! Feel free to sit where ever..." He trailed off when he noticed the only chair was full of his junk. "Feel free to sit anywhere on the bed."
She slid carefully onto the mattress, taking her blanket with her. Fully aware that all she had to wear was a shirt. Not even underwear. How did she hope to wear panties again with that huge, heavy tail? Until that was figured out, she was careful not to give any of the boys an accidental show. Not that Donatello was even looking. His attention was still on his computer screen. Mona had hoped he would be good company, but he seemed distracted.
"What are you working on?" she asked.
He looked at her, as if surprised all over again she was in the room. "Oh, uh, trying to research your mutation, actually. We took as much research from the building as we could. I've been going over the notes, but chemistry isn't my strong suit. I'm sort of giving myself a crash course on all this research."
"Splinter said you were looking into reversing my mutation?"
He hesitated before saying, "Looking into it is a good way of putting it. As I said, it's not my specialty, but I'm trying to learn what exactly they did. But at this point, I'm sorry, I can't promise anything. It's possible after all this, we may learn the mutation can't be reversed. I know that's something you don't want to hear, but I don't want to make you any promises I can't keep."
They definitely were words she didn't want to hear, but she smiled anyway. "I appreciate the honesty. And don't worry, I am queen of not getting my hopes up."
The look of slight sympathy he gave her made Mona regret that she said that last part out loud. Too late to take it back now. The two fell into silence as it seemed she killed that conversation.
Donatello surprised her by closing his laptop. "Have you been getting enough to eat? I've heard more than one brother complain you don't eat very much, though you always seem hungry."
"I get enough. I don't need to take too much."
"If you're worried you're eating our supplies, food is the one thing we don't have any shortage of. You can have as much as you want."
Mona looked confused. She had never really asked where all their food came from before. All she knew was that the turtles ate enough to feed, well, four giant turtles.
"When we were little," Donatello said, "I remember always scrounging for food. Some nights going hungry. Especially since the bigger we got, the more Splinter had to work to keep us fed. As we got older, we learned the best places to go to find expired and thrown out food, but I'll always remember that shame of having to dig through garbage in order to eat. I promised myself I'd find a way to make it better. Allow my family to survive without digging through trash.
"When I was fourteen, I sold my first patent—under a fake name, of course. A specific type of microchip to a Japanese company. I figured out how to set up a bank account all online. Since then, I've sold a few more things to foreign companies. No buyout big enough to cause suspicion—we'll never be millionaires, but I have enough to feed my family for the rest of our lives. The guys all have the account information on their phones for Doordash if they want. And we get automatic grocery deliveries to a fake address every couple of days. If there's anything you want specifically, let me know and I can add it to the order. So eat, Mona Lisa. We've got it covered. We can take care of you."
She was quiet for a moment. When she smiled at him, it was a little forced, a little awkward. "I'm not used to being taken care of. Even when I was a kid. My mom was always such a hot mess—especially after her accident. It was like I was the parent and she was the child. After she died, being in the foster system for those last few years, you feel like all you are is this vacuum, sucking up other people's resources. And you try so hard to take up as little space as possible and..."
She trailed off and shook her head, then looked up at Donatello who was watching her neutrally, waiting for her to finish.
"This, where I'm at right now, is a struggle. I can't do anything for myself. I can't go out in public. I can't get anything for myself. I have to rely entirely on you guys and I hate it. Even though I know all of you are willing to help me. It's a position I'm not used to being in and I'm afraid I might be a pain in the ass about it sometimes."
Donatello gave her a partial smile and opened his laptop. "Since both of us are feeling a bit useless right now, would you like to watch funny videos online with me?"
She grinned and scooted up with her blanket. "That sounds like a great idea."
.
There were miles and miles and miles of sewer under New York City. Layers upon layers. Seemingly an infinite amount of places for mutant reptiles to hide. Despite their immense size, locating even just one of them was turning out to be a chore.
The turtles began with the same area they first found Mona Lisa. They discovered the remains of the mutant she killed. The stains of Donatello's blood on the ground. But no other mutants. They had all moved on from the scene of violence to find their own territories.
Normally, this was where the team would rely on Donatello to bring up maps and schematics of the sewer system and to suggest a way to efficiently search the area. With them down one brother, they made do with a tablet Donatello had prepared for them that had what maps of the sewer systems he could find. And all they could do from that point on was systematically comb through the tunnels. It would have been faster for the three to split up and check off areas, but none of them dared go anywhere alone.
Thus, the team of three turtles spent hour upon hour trudging through miles and miles of sewer. No idea where they were going, but hoping they'd find a mutant eventually. Donatello wasn't even there to give them a probability factor of their chances. At this point, it felt like the odds weren't in their favor.
"Maybe we should stop and order a pizza," Michelangelo suggested in the darkness. It had to have been well past lunch time. All three turtles could feel it in their stomachs. They hadn't packed food. They hadn't expected it to be so hard to find mutants of that size.
"A break doesn't sound so bad," Raphael agreed. "Hell, maybe they like pizza, too. Maybe the smell will start bringing those giant lizards right to us."
Leonardo glanced at his brothers, but didn't say anything. The more they chatted while they walked, the more he was losing his voice. It was becoming more of a rasp with each passing hour. But taking a break to eat sounded like a good idea. They would go back to the lair, check on the family, and then search again in a different area.
That was the plan as they moved into tunnels closer to the surface. But then Leonardo heard it first. The deep, heavy growl of something big; a predator. A sound that tickled his nerves and spoke to the most primal part of him and told him to beware, that he was made of food. That something lurked out there that would gladly kill so it could survive. It was a unique sort of panic to suddenly go from the top of the food chain to the bottom.
That early warning sense of danger was all they were afforded as something hulking and dark came out of the tunnels. It barreled toward them like a freight train, jaws open wide, snapping at them as they dodged out of the way. This tunnel wasn't nearly as big as those lower down. Dodging didn't put them out of mouth's reach. This one massive, thrashing lizard was beating the hell out of the turtles as they were thrown against the sides of the tunnels, kicking off the mutant's body, trying to keep away from the teeth.
"Dose it!" Leonardo barked with what voice he had left. "If anyone has a chance, hit it with mutagen!"
Raphael was fighting off the mouth while Leonardo was being tossed around by the tail. Michelangelo...he had found himself straight on the back of the mutant and it screamed as he dug his nails and knees in to hang on. Several canisters fell from his pack before he managed to grab one, pop the cap and sink it into the lizard's flank.
Michelangelo was instantly bucked off as the dose hissed and the needle pierced flesh. He sailed over Raphael's head and into the darkness. Raphael was still doing his best not to end up in the mutant's jaws when it suddenly coughed up a thick, rank bile that splattered all over his face and shoulders. Which immediately caused Raphael to throw up as well.
The mutant continued to heave like a cat coughing up a hairball, and then suddenly screamed. It threw its head back, neck nearly folding in on itself. Then it fell to the ground, thrashing and groaning with pain. Its eyes rolled back, tongue lolled out. It made the most pitiful, painful sounds. And then, the body began shrinking.
The three brothers reconvened as the mutant trembled and twitched weakly on the ground, breathing hard, but eyes closed as if it had lost consciousness. Leonardo dared to get closer, running his light over the creature to get a better look. It was now more their size, but leaner. The mutant was a dark bluish, gray—nearly black—highlighted with brilliant spots of turquoise all over its body.
"Careful Leo," Raphael said. "Just because it's smaller doesn't mean it's not dangerous."
Leonardo glanced back at him, annoyed at his brother's attempt to mother him. "How about you worry about staying where we can't smell you and I'll worry about this?" he shot back with his scratchy voice.
Raphael growled in annoyance and was about to retort. Leonardo was waiting for the inevitable angry response. There was always one coming. And at the moment, his shell was turned toward the prone mutant. He didn't notice its eyes snap open until those teeth and claws were suddenly lunging for him.
Only his brothers saw the creature move to strike.
"LEO!"
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Splinter was the one to greet them as his three sons returned. They had been gone nearly seven hours. With them, they had a reasonably-sized mutant lizard of dark grey and turquoise tied around the snout and limbs with rope. It had taken all three turtles to subdue it, tie it up and carry it back to the lair. They dropped it with a collection of tired huffs. The mutant fell to the floor on its stomach, but it could do little else but growl and wriggle on the floor like a serpent.
"We got one!" Michelangelo crowed in triumph.
Splinter blinked at them. "All this time, you only encountered one?"
The orange-clad turtle immediately deflated.
"I'm hitting the shower," Raphael announced.
"Good you need it," Michelangelo teased back, wind immediately returning to his sails.
Splinter's nose recoiled as he caught a whiff of his largest son. But Raphael didn't get a chance to make it down the hall when Mona Lisa appeared.
"You got one?" she asked, then visibly balked when she saw the bound mutant on the floor. Her voice suddenly rose in distress as her pupils dilated. "You brought it here?"
"Well, yeah," Raphael insisted. "What were we supposed to do with it? Throw it in the trash?"
Her wild eyes glanced from one turtle to the next before settling on the last one. "Leo! Why did you bring it here?"
He frowned, looking confused.
"Leo can't say anything," Michelangelo offered. "His voice is like gone gone."
Raphael chuckled. "He'd been losing it all day. But this guy gave him the jump scare of his life. We thought he was out cold, but he suddenly came back to life and Leo screamed out whatever he had left."
The two verbal brothers snickered together.
"Raphael, go shower!" Splinter ordered.
"I'm going," he replied, slipping out and down the hall.
Mona looked even more disturbed that one of her turtle protectors was leaving her with the bound mutant on the floor.
"That thing can't stay here," she insisted.
The mutant looked right at her and the growling stopped. It stared, fixated, and she backed away. Leonardo quickly moved in to block her view with his body. She looked at him with pleading eyes, clutched his arms. His mouth moved like he was trying to speak, but very little sound came out.
"You really did lose your voice," she murmured. "Because of last night?"
He looked a little embarrassed, but didn't shake his head in a no. He looked over at Michelangelo and made a few gestures at him.
"Leo says we don't have anywhere else to put this guy. What do you want us to do with him?"
She tipped her head. "You guys know sign language?"
Michelangelo smiled. "More like an abridged, turtle-friendly language we put together for stealth missions. But I'm with Leo. He's smaller now. He should be fine, right? Why can't we bring him back here?"
"Because he's a wild animal!" she shot back, exasperated.
Leonardo seemed to share that exasperation in his expression and gestured again.
"We were wild animals, too," Michelangelo interpreted.
"You were harmless baby turtles who had time to learn and grow. That's a giant ass monster capable of killing people—who has probably already killed people. Are you expecting it to sleep on the couch?"
Leonardo looked hurt. And when he signed, Michelangelo then shared that hurt.
"People have called us monsters, too." Then Michelangelo added his own words. "It isn't fair what happened to them, just like it wasn't fair what happened to you, Mona. They deserve a chance."
And now Mona was the one who looked hurt. She struggled to find a response as shells were once again turned from the mutant. They didn't notice the creature wriggle one arm free. They didn't notice it use its new intelligence to slide the ropes off its long snout and then continue to chew himself free.
Then it charged the turtles with a feral scream, knocking them both off their feet. Jaws out, he came right for Mona Lisa in a rage. A heavy rat tail slapped the head away before teeth could find her flesh. The mutant went tail for tail, slapping Splinter off his feet and throwing him against the wall. The lizard came after Mona again and she dropped to the ground, pressed against the wall out of pure fear. The teeth missed her, but the claws found their mark.
Black and razor sharp, they cut through her shirt and skin as the lizard was grabbed by the tail and jerked back by two very large and angry turtles. The mutant immediately jerked its head back and hissed its anger at them, teeth bared. Leonardo heaved the creature back in an impressive show of strength as the lizard's nails scraped without purchase on the concrete floor.
The mutant then turned on them, fast as a snake strike. The turtles jumped out of the way and then scrambled to put themselves between it and Mona and Splinter. The mutant remained crouched on the floor, seething and full of murder. Then Leonardo reached behind him. He unsheathed the two katana from his back. His teeth too were bared in anger as the sharp metal gleamed in the light.
Something in the mutant's face seemed to click. It spun around and tore out of the lair in an awkward scramble of still trying to run on all fours with its newly mutated body. Plenty of personal items were broken and topped in its wake as it made straight for the lair's exit and disappeared.
"Everybody okay?" Michelangelo asked after he dared to remove his eyes from where the mutant had fled.
"What the fuck is happening out there?" Raphael demanded from down the hall.
"Don't worry about it!" Michelangelo yelled back with the same force, clearly still on an adrenaline high. "It's fine! Finish your shower!"
To his side, Splinter groaned and he moved to help his master get back on his feet.
Leonardo was the last to finally remove his gaze from the exit. When he looked back, he found Mona Lisa pressed against the wall, knees pulled up to her chest. Eyes wide, body shaking. Swords sheathed, he crouched in front of her, feeling helpless without his voice. He had such a need to talk to her that it ached in his chest.
She didn't seem to even notice he was there at first. When he crouched to her level, he saw that the pupils of her wide eyes had narrowed into long slits. Like a reptile's. He touched her hand and she jumped and stared at him. Her pupils went back to their usual large, round shape. She made no move to touch him or reach out for comfort, even though she was still shaking. There was blood on her shirt where it had been ripped by the mutant's claws.
"Okay, now I need to know what's going on," came Donatello's strained voice as he gingerly dragged himself into the room. Using his bo as a walking stick, he winced with every step from his damaged side, but insistently continued on.
"Donnie!" Michelangelo rushed to help him. "Hey, everything's fine. We just had an issue with a runaway mutant."
The tallest brother looked around. "You brought one of them here? Where did it go?"
"We thought after we made it smaller it would be easier to handle if we brought it home. Our bad. We were trying to help it."
"Is that why Mona Lisa is on the floor, traumatized? Did you guys not see what they did to her the first time around? What they did to me? And you still brought them back to our home? The one place we're supposed to be safe? Leo?"
"He can't talk," Michelangelo answered for him. "He lost his voice."
Leonardo was torn. Should he turn his back on the shivering Mona to talk with the upset Donatello, or keep his shell to his brother so he wouldn't have to move away from trying to comfort her?
He opted for sitting next to Mona on the floor so he could look at his brother.
Sorry, he signed. I wasn't thinking. We don't have anywhere else to put them.
"We'll have to make or find someplace," Donatello insisted. "They can't come back here. Ever."
Leonardo nodded, then looked to Mona Lisa and mouthed "I'm sorry."
She sidled up to him and he raised his arm to put it around her and pull her in. He coughed to try to clear his throat, but his voice was still completely gone.
"Leonardo, I will make you some tea for your throat," Splinter announced.
"Donnie," Michelangelo then said. "You're looking a little sweaty, dude. Can I help you back to bed or set you up in the recliner?"
Donatello ignored him, still focused on the only female in the room. "Mona, are you okay? Are you bleeding?"
She glanced down at her shirt. There were a few places it was torn. The claws had managed to catch her thigh and three red marks were seeping a bit of blood. She hadn't even noticed until then.
"It's fine," she said in a shaking voice "I'll be fine."
"No, it's not fine," Donatello insisted with more passion than she was used to hearing from him. His voice cracked with emotion. "You're supposed to be safe here! We're all supposed to be safe—" Emotion cut off his words.
Mona pulled herself from Leonardo's arm and ran to the tallest brother. She put her arms around him the best she could.
"You're safe here, Donnie," she murmured into his chest. "I've got you."
Michelangelo was right there with arms around his brother as well. "I gotcha, too, bro."
All Donatello could do was stand there and fight to calm himself. One hand hid his eyes, mouth in a grimace, as he tried to keep it under control.
Leonardo stood, chest aching. He really hadn't been thinking. Yes, they had been through all sorts of fights and danger in their lives. But none of them had been so close to death or hurt as bad as Donatello had. They had literally faced monsters and he had been pulled from the jaws of death. Leonardo was an idiot to think that any of his brothers would come out of that without some sort of emotional baggage. But he had never seen Donatello break like that. Or Mona Lisa cower in such fear. He had to protect them both. He had to fix the mutant problem while allowing them a safe place to heal.
Donatello made a grunt of pain and both mutants that held him let go.
"You shouldn't be standing," Mona said. "Where do you want to be?"
At first, he glanced to the recliner in the main room. A change of scenery would be nice. But he saw everything toppled over from the mutant's hasty escape. He saw how close the recliner was to the open passageway.
"Back to bed, I suppose." He tried to put some levity in his voice, but Leonardo saw it. Donatello was afraid.
As Mona helped him back to bed, Leonardo looked to Michelangelo and signed. We need to lock down the lair. Keep it safe.
Michelangelo nodded, but then paused. "Uh...but I still gotta go see Kala." At Leonardo's frown, he quickly added. "C'mon man, it's been days. If I don't show up, she's going to find herself a new non-turtle boyfriend. I can't let that happen!"
It's dangerous to go out alone, Leonardo signed back.
"Can Raph come with me and we'll bring her back here?"
The expression on Leonardo's face told that was a no.
"Just Face Time or whatever," Raphael said as he walked in wearing a new change of pants and little else. "By now people are hearing on the news something's in the sewers killing people. She'll understand it's not safe. When we got a better handle on this, I'll go with you so you can visit her."
Michelangelo sighed, but seemed to agree. "Okay then, I'm gonna need at least an hour of private time in my room then."
As he walked off, Raphael yelled after him, "That's more information than we wanted to know!"
.
Bedtime came early for the turtles. Those who went mutant hunting were wiped out. Mona insisted Leonardo go to bed early and took a heat pack to bed with them for his throat. Michelangelo was in his room with the door closed, but his voice could be heard every now and then still talking to Kala. Splinter was up and down, taking short naps. The mutant attack had rattled him, too. None of them liked that there was a feral mutant out there that knew where they lived and they only had themselves to blame.
This was on Raphael's mind as well. The lair had a heavy metal door, sealing it in from the outside, but they never used it. There was never a need to, until today. Even though they were locked in for the night, he still checked it. And then he stared at it for several minutes after. It was a strange sensation to be afraid in his own home. It had been a long time since he felt this way. Not since The Foot tore up their old lair when they were teens. It had taken them a while to shake off that as well, but this was the very first time they had locked the lair down like this.
As he headed for bed, Raphael stopped by the spare room where a light was still on. As usual, Donatello would probably be up all night fiddling with his shit. He actually jumped, glancing up from his laptop with wide eyes as Raphael poked his head in and asked if he needed anything.
He blinked a moment through his glasses. "Uh, no. Thanks, Raph."
"Sorry if I scared ya. You still jumpy from earlier?"
"N...no. I just..." He looked down at the computer in his lap. "I'm watching the surveillance footage from the lab. How they treated those mutants. How they mutated them." He paused, mouth moving like he had more to say, but unsure if he should say it. Raphael remained quiet, waiting. "I found the video of Mona Lisa's mutation. I was watching it when you came in."
Raphael's eyes widened. "Shit." He glanced down the empty hall, as if afraid just saying that much would summon anyone from their bedrooms. The lair remained quiet.
"Do you want to see?"
He did. Another glance down the dark, empty hallway that led to the bedrooms and Raphael sat on the bed next to his brother. The gray-scale footage had sound, and they watched it with the volume down low. Which was necessary with the amount of screaming and fighting going on as Mona Lisa, still human, was dragged into one of the cells by no less than three men. And she was tearing them all to pieces as best she could, calling them every foul name ever conceived by man.
Raphael gave a grunt of approval at that. At least that wildcat girl of Leo's went down fighting. Once they had locked her in, the mutation began. They must have already dosed her before they even dragged her in. Donatello had to turn down the sound even more as the real screaming started. The most blood-curdling, pain-filled screams as the human body was forced into a metamorphosis unheard of by science. Bones cracked, skin split. Everything rearranged itself. And it took its sweet time doing so.
Raphael shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. "Can you skip it?" he asked with a certain anxiety in his voice. "I can't watch this."
Donatello clicked the timeline and scrolled forward. The mutation kept going. The change lasted more than forty minutes before the thrashing, screaming, now-mutated lizard body fell still. She mercifully slept. The body was still, despite being prodded by several of the scientific team—for nearly thirty hours before stirring again.
It seemed the humans on this project did feed their creations, at least a little. They threw what looked to be raw hamburger into the pens. Not a lot, but it was something. The other mutants would gobble it up. Mona looked at the meat thrown on the ground and then ignored it.
There were several days of footage just of her. She moved differently than the other mutants. Always intelligent, always alert when any of the humans walked by. At night, when no one was observing her, she would inspect the lock of her pen and test it all around.
Raphael glanced from the screen to his brother. Donatello's focus remained glued to the computer screen as he fast forwarded the feed. They both knew when he was looking for. They wanted to see how the whole thing ended up in chaos.
Eventually, they found the last day of calm and captivity. They didn't know why—and maybe they would never know—but the wall between Mona Lisa's cell and the one next to her was raised up, giving the two mutants access to each other. The creature in the other cell was another lizard mutant. They were both roughly the same size, maybe him a little bigger. Mona froze when she saw the other mutant and hunched low, backing into the corner, trying to stay out of his line of sight.
But the mutant was clearly curious. He snaked out his tongue and tested the air before easing into her cell. Mona remained flat on the floor, curled up as tight as she could. The mutant growled at her as he came closer. She still didn't move, even as he bit experimentally at her flank. He bit at her shoulder more aggressively and she bolted, fled into the second cell. The male trotted after her, still growling. Everywhere Mona tried to get away from him, he followed.
It was awkward to watch. One animal, and one in an animal's skin that had no idea how to be an animal. Several of the humans in the lab were watching, too. Taking notes, observing the behavior. Some even laughed at the absurdity of it.
"It's the only thing close to a female this guy's ever going to see," one man laughed. "No wonder he's being so pushy."
"Her brain's still too human," another said. "She's not going to let him do anything."
"She might not have a choice," the first replied.
More laughter.
"What the fuck?" Raphael muttered under his breath.
Donatello motioned him to be quiet. He too was observing. Listening to everything, not missing a thing as his jaw clenched.
The male slowly became more irritated, more aggressive. He growled and snapped at her every time she scrambled away as he doggedly chased her from one pen to the other. As she tried to slip by him, he suddenly lurched and grabbed her shoulder with his mouth. His claws dug into her skin as he tried to climb on top of her, pin her down.
She screamed. That same ear-splitting, horrifying scream they all heard down in the tunnels. In a blink, she was no longer awkward limbs and confusion. She turned and snapped her jaws, unerringly finding the mutant's throat with her teeth. Both lizards thrashed and swiped with their claws. Blood spilled onto the concrete floor. The humans watched the carnage in horror as a lifeless lizard form was flung against the cell door, causing them to stumble back.
Then Mona charged the door. Furious, covered in blood, she was a vision of monstrous horror as she flung her body at the cell door. And it didn't really take much before the door flew right off its hinges and she was out.
Donatello made a noise at that. Raphael had to assume he already knew what failed in her containment and had an idea of how to reinforce it. That was how his mind worked. Always planning, always improving. But Raphael's mind was stuck on something else. As the humans scattered in her wake, Mona went right to a heavy latch at the wall and pulled it with her claws. All the other containment cells slowly opened.
I promised if anyone hurt her, I would finish whatever she left behind.
It was a peculiar thing to say. Leonardo's perception of his girlfriend was starting to make more sense. He never gave up on her. While she was missing, he knew eventually she would cause so much chaos he would take notice. What he saw in this video wasn't just chaos, it was a bloodbath.
The cell doors opened slowly. Too slowly for some. Great hulking mutants tore themselves out the rest of the way, desperate to get out of cages that were far too small for them. Feral, starving, they descended upon the humans and even attacked each other. Donatello muted the computer when the screams became too much, but he continued to watch.
"Whoa, whoa! What's that?" Raphael demanded, nearly shooting up on his knees.
"What?" Donatello asked, pausing the feed.
"That! Look at that thing back there!" He stabbed a finger at a dark, shelled figure far in the background. It moved heavy, slow. It was massive. "Is that a...fucking turtle?"
Donatello leaned into peer at it.
Then there was a scream. The same feral scream from the tunnels, from the video feed. It was coming from the bedrooms down the hall.