That You Remember Me

Mikey was trying hard not to panic, and failing miserably. Who were these guys Donnie had been talking about, and what were they going to do to him?

And what had Donnie meant by 'I refused to use more invasive tools?'

Invasive how?

Not good, not good, not good.

Mikey still had nightmares from several close-calls in Kraang facilities, he didn't need whatever memories Donnie's big guns wanted to create for him.

He had to get out of here, and fast. As he had begged April and the others not to come back so soon, he couldn't count on reinforcements, but at least his friends had left him with one means to escape the facility.

He started walking towards the shed. Maybe his pace was too fast for a turtle supposedly not worried about being dissected like in one of Donnie's scientific shows–Mikey swore those were worse than all the horror movies he had seen–but it was the best he could do.

Inside, he crouched and took his borrowed T-Phone. The new program that Rockwell had added was easy to recognize; its icon was Rockwell himself. It was supposed to deactivate the security system and allow Mikey to escape through the tunnels. April had insisted on something, but Mikey couldn't remember what it was.

He clicked on it. A window displayed 'Activate Emergency Procedure?', and he approved.

All hell broke loose immediately. Alarms blared, the lights were switched off and Mikey wondered whether Rockwell had finally lost it for good, because it didn't look at all like an alarm system being deactivated. And Mikey had his fair share of unwillingly activating alarms, but this time it really wasn't his fault!

The trapdoor suddenly opened and Mikey jumped, ready to defend himself against anyone or anything, but nobody came out.

He suddenly remembered what April had warned him about. Using this program 'wouldn't go unnoticed.'

No kidding, Mikey thought as he slid in the tunnel below the shed, following the lights of the emergency signing.

It was time to leave this place.

Rockwell had added a map of the tunnels with arrows indicating the exit, so Mikey had a vague idea of where he was supposed to be going. However, these arrows didn't show where Donnie was, and Mikey wasn't going to leave his brother behind.

So he was running at random in the tunnels. Here the sound of the alarms was less deafening, and the emergency lights weren't flashy enough to be blinding, but the sense of emergency was still pressuring Mikey's chest.

It wasn't long until he reached a door. He barely hesitated before turning the doorknob; he wasn't going to achieve any of his goals if he stayed in this corridor forever. Besides, he couldn't hear anything. The room was probably empty.

The door opened easily, although considering its width it must have been reinforced, and Mikey rushed inside a control room filled to the brim with security people.

So much for the room being empty.

"Warning! The mutant is trying to escape!" someone yelled in a mic.

Mikey made quick work of preventing him to give more details. It was a relief to see that he could still fight, and punching these guys that stood between him and his brother felt nice in a way Raph would definitely have approved of.

On second thought, Raph would probably have smashed them harder than Mikey did. Mikey would have to do better next time.

He stepped over the unconscious bodies scattered across the control room and reached the cameras. He avidly watched them, looking for any trace of a Human Donnie, but they only showed static. They must have been deactivated along with the alarms. Mikey grimaced and left the room to continue his search.

Several rooms later, he started to feel bored. The guys he came across were no match for a teenage mutant ninja turtle on a quest to save his life and his brother. One punch and they went down, one kick and they were thrown across the room. Any video game was way more interesting than that. Did these guys only rely on drugging people to win?

Being bored meant that he was paying less attention to his surroundings. That was why he didn't process how different this new room was until he was right in the center of it.

The immediate roars and desperate shrieks startled him for a second–on instinct, he tried to grab a brother's limb, before remembering that he was alone in this–until he realized that they were coming from caged animals. Tigers and lions, monkeys and even a rhinoceros. The sirens blaring here were maddening them, with good reason. Just looking at them made Mikey sick.

There is no way this is respectable research, April, he thought.

He knew what he had to do. He made for the first cage and looked for something to pick the lock–only to realize that the cage's door wasn't locked at all. Rockwell had really done an outstanding job deactivating everything. He might deserve the title of third best genius Mikey knew–the first one being Donnie and the second one Mikey himself.

Mikey opened cage after cage, and soon the animals started scattering across the room and the corridors beyond. He jumped on the top of the last cage, satisfied by a job well done, and realized then than it might be harder to run through the corridors now.

His eye caught an air duct on the ceiling, and he immediately brightened. While everyone would be looking for him in the chaos of the wild animals he had just freed, he would continue looking for Donnie on the upper levels.

Minutes later, Mikey was once again running through the facility. A look on his T-Phone showed him that he was, in fact, getting further away from the exit, and he slowed down, mulling his options over. He had enough stamina to keep going on for hours, but was it really the best strategy? What if Donnie had already left? What if Mikey was looking for him in vain? Should he change his course?

Mikey jumped from one feet to the other, unsure of what to do. This was one of the many downsides of being on your own; there was nobody else to discuss with and make a decent plan.

He was still undecided when he heard voices behind the next corner.

"You shouldn't be here. You have no clearance for this area," an unknown voice was saying. "We'll escort you back."

"Please don't hurt him," another voice begged. "I can help. I think he trusts me..."

Mikey's eyes widened. Finally, after what felt like hours running around, he had found him. He had found Donnie. Now he only had to kidnap him, and he could be out of here and rub it in Casey and Mondo's faces forever. He wasn't going to be dissected after all!

Grinning madly to himself, he launched his surprise attack and rushed around the corner to grab Donnie and run for his life.

The welcome committee wasn't what he had expected. The people surrounding Donnie didn't wear lab outfits like the others had. They looked more like governmental agents, which was always bad news.

And they had really, really big guns.

"It's here!" someone shouted.

Someone else pulled a trigger, and something exploded behind Mikey's head.

Did nobody tell you that you shouldn't shoot in a hallway? Mikey tried to say.

"No!" Donnie exclaimed desperately. "You're going to hurt him. Do you have any idea what a marvelous being he is?"

Mikey decided that this description was worth being remembered, and he stored it in his permanent memory. Just as he was considering how much he would tease Donnie about it–later, much later, when everything would be back to normal–someone pushed Donnie aside.

Mikey's eyes turned to white slits. He jumped inside the group, betting that the big guns wouldn't dare to shoot against their own.

A gunshot proved him wrong. The bullet hit the wall, and Mikey could appreciate that it was, in fact, a huge tranquilizer. No doubt he would be put to sleep in seconds if one of these hit him.

Luckily, he was a very fast and very nimble turtle, and he was confident in his ability to dodge as long as he didn't stay here for long.

He knocked down the man closest to Donnie, grabbed Donnie's arm and ran away. The bullets hitting the walls next to him proved that there weren't only tranquilizers in these guns. And Donnie didn't have a shell to protect him. Mikey needed to take cover.

He entered the first room he saw. It was a shared office, with enough chairs and desks to create a nice barricade behind the door.

He could feel Donnie's fascinated gaze on him, as much as the now familiar pressure in his head–but he didn't have time to think about it now.

He was busy here.

"What are you doing?" Donnie asked timidly.

Mikey felt bad for ignoring him, but he needed his energy to lead them out of here. Now wasn't the time to clash against the genie's spell.

Grabbing Donnie's arm again, he crossed the room and opened another door. He was running as fast as he dared with Donnie behind him, which wasn't half as fast as he wished. Obviously Donnie was faster in his turtle form.

Still, it felt nice to hold Donnie's hand, even if it had five fingers. And now Mikey could really head for the exit by following Rockwell's map, and he was in such high spirits, he only missed the right corridor twice.

Then the alarms suddenly stopped, and Mikey's ninja senses tingled.

"Someone must have regained control," Donnie panted behind him.

This couldn't be good. If the cameras were working again, surely people would come for him. At least they weren't far from the exit, namely a utility room connected to the sewers.

Mikey's optimism came to a crash a few seconds later, when he landed in a corridor filled with governmental agents.

"Release your hostage, mutant," a voice said from behind the fighters.

Mikey recognized Donnie's coworker.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm fine," Donnie said, smiling.

Mikey could only hope he would stay that way. The agents had now engaged in combat, and Mikey was busy dodging, kicking and punching. The first tranquilizer hit the wall behind him, the second the ceiling, and the third bounced against his shell. He stayed as close to Donnie as he dared, unwilling to endanger him more than he already was.

Then he felt a punch to his face and he staggered backwards, blinking. He retaliated immediately, but this new opponent was faster and tougher than the others. Mikey would have to take advantage of his speed and his mad combat skills, and…

Mikey met his opponent's gaze and froze. It wasn't because of the genie's spell; his body had just halted every movement, every thought, as his heart tried to process what he was seeing.

His heart, who had known the deep blue of these eyes for as long as Mikey could remember.

Leo? Mikey thought, intensely, desperately, as he lost himself in the cold and detached gaze the human in front of him was casting on him. It was an expression that Mikey had seen directed at their enemies, never on him–never.

He was still stock-still, so he shouldn't have been surprised when he fell to the ground a moment later. Several guns were immediately pointed at him, including one held by Leo himself.

"So mutants really do exist," Leo said pensively in the voice that Mikey loved so much. So soft, so calm. It spoke of soothing nightmares and protective arms and laughter in front of the TV and–

"No!" Donnie yelled behind Mikey. "Don't hurt him!"

This other voice snapped Mikey out of his trance, and he blinked. He was surrounded by many opponents, and he didn't think he was fast enough to avoid all of their guns.

This didn't look too good. But at least he had now found two of his missing brothers, which was progress, right?

"He was kidnapping you," Leo said matter-of-factly.

"I… Yeah, but…" Donnie cleared his throat. "I don't mind."

"Does one of you have some tranquilizer left?" Leo asked, ignoring Donnie.

Rude, Leo, Mikey couldn't help thinking.

"Yes," Donnie's colleague said, moving forward.

Mikey tensed.

At the same time, Donnie threw himself in the middle of the group of governmental agents. "Run!" he shouted to Mikey right as he was overpowered.

Mikey's body reacted before his brain had made up his mind. Taking advantage of the confusion, he threw a water balloon at Leo–what he was hoping to achieve he couldn't tell, maybe to defend himself without risking to hurt his brother's fragile human body, maybe to bring memories back to the surface of Leo's mind, and maybe it worked because for the briefest of moments he saw surprise on Leo's face…

It could also have been because governmental agents might not be used to water balloon attacks, but Mikey was nothing if not an optimist.

A bullet grazed his arm, drawing blood.

"What are you waiting for?" Leo's voice commanded. "Don't let him escape!"

Mikey gulped. Leo was downright scary like this. Mikey had thought he had been on his brother's bad side before, but he was reconsidering it now.

Donnie was now being dragged away from Mikey. Mikey wanted to yell in protest, wanted to run after him, but he was busy dodging the many bullets and soon there would be too many of them and Mikey's shell could only take so much damage, and he needed a plan, and… and…

And he wanted nothing more than to throw himself in Leo's arms and stay here forever. But the rational part of his mind, the one that his brothers pretended didn't exist, knew that Leo wasn't in his normal state. Leo wasn't safe to be around, no matter how absurd the concept sounded.

The spell probably wouldn't let me anyways, he thought despondently.

A plan. He needed a plan. What did they use to do when surrounded by too many enemies, in a situation where they couldn't seem to win?

Ah yes. A tactical retreat. Leaving for now and coming back later–better prepared. Even Raph had acknowledged the wisdom of such a move, Raph who hated to leave any of them behind, no matter if it was only temporary…

A bullet grazed Mikey's leg, and he rushed towards the exit. Donnie's colleague was in his way, and Mikey didn't hesitate to knock him down. Served him right for not believing Mikey could fight.

He burst inside the utility room and immediately found the huge pipe that discharged in the sewers. He jumped inside, ignoring the sudden burning of his scratches.

I'll come back for you, Leo, Donnie. That's a promise.