Chapter Text
Donatello and Michelangelo fell.
It didn’t exactly feel like falling. In fact, it was a little like floating… except for the blisteringly icy wind punching every inch of their bodies, all at the same time. Except the breath being ripped from their lungs and hurled upward so they had to lift their chins and gasp for mouthfuls of thin, frigid air. All sound lost except for the jet-engine roar of atmosphere hurtling past their ears at over 120 miles per hour.
Below them, the eastern seaboard sprawled in the night, a diaphanous quilt of cities, towns, and their web of roads, all curving softly toward the horizon until they met the pitch-black line of ocean. And all this was nearer now—yes, distinctly nearer than it had been.
Don felt the bare space on his shell where, in any reasonable world, a parachute should have been attached. But, of course, nothing was there. All he had were his brother’s hands clenched on his elbows, and his own on his brother’s, fingers curled against the risk of frostbite. That…and the metal contraptions on their right forearms. These felt like children’s toys within the howling darkness around them.
They fell through the night.
Mikey grinned.
And the earth rose to meet them.
One Week Earlier
Mikey was dabbling in the kitchen, exploring what might happen if someone were to replace ALL the puffed rice in a batch of rice krispie treats with marshmallows picked out of Lucky Charms. Raph and Leo were out on a quick reconnaissance mission, something in the warehouse district. So only Mikey heard the resounding crash coming from Donnie’s lab. It was the kind of crash with layers—the impact of multiple materials smashing and clattering against the stones of the lab at slightly different times—a veritable cacophony.
Mikey winced. With a sigh, he put aside the mixing bowl, gently removed Klunk from the counter, and made his way to see what disaster had befallen his genius brother.
Bracing himself, he eased open the lab door. Sure enough, an impressive array of smashed glass, toppled books, and strange tools littered the stone floor. The huge metal cabinet that usually stood against one wall lay on its side, emptied of its contents.
Donatello sat in his lab chair, head back, eyes closed, the very picture of despondence. An odd metal apparatus was fitted to Donnie’s right forearm, now hanging listlessly to his side. But Donnie was clearly uninjured.
“Mikey.” Don acknowledged his brother without opening his eyes or moving an inch.
“Donnie.” Mikey nimbly navigated around the spray of broken glass to where Don sat in front of his workbench. He moved aside some blueprints and hopped up to sit on the workbench, legs swinging. He knew from extensive experience that, in these moments, it was better to wait and let Donnie signal he was ready for conversation once he’d mastered his own frustration.
Finally, Donatello released a deep sigh and opened his eyes to gaze at the mess.
Mikey took it as a sign he was ready to talk. “Redecorating?” he asked, one brow ridge in a wry arch.
“Yep.” Don’s half-smile response was resigned. “I thought how much better it would be if all my scientific equipment was arranged in small sharp pieces all over the ground.” Don wearily unstrapped the metal contraption from his arm and laid it on the workbench.
“Definitely easier to reach,” Mikey agreed amiably as he hopped down and retrieved the large broom and dustpan from the corner.
In an easy (and for Mikey, somewhat unusual) silence, the two brothers went to work sweeping up the debris. Don salvaged bits and pieces on occasion as they worked, and in a surprisingly short time, they’d cleared the floor.
“That’s great, Mikey.” Don gave his brother an appreciative smile once they’d settled the cabinet back in its place. “Thanks for all your help.”
“No sweat, bro. Besides, remember how you helped me clean the kitchen last week?”
“Hm. Yes. After the ‘let’s try putting a dozen eggs in the microwave’ debacle. Hard to forget.”
“Hey, how was I to know it would make them explode?”
“Some day you should let me explain thermodynamics to you.”
“Sure, dude!” Mikey casually balanced one of Donnie’s screwdrivers on his fingertip. “Have your people call my people. We’ll set something up.”
Don smiled as he plucked the screwdriver from Mikey’s hand.
As Donatello rearranged the remaining unbroken gadgets back onto the cabinet shelves, Michelangelo wandered back to examine the strange metal glove-like thing Donnie had been wearing when he’d first entered. Although it looked boxy and a little cumbersome, there was a strange metallic elegance to its form. Mikey could see where two turtle fingers fit on its base as well as a place for a thumb to operate some kind of toggle. Two sturdy-looking glass nodes emerged from the mechanism’s top, and three more nodes of an indeterminate, shimmering material graced its front where the knuckles would be.
Mikey picked it up and hefted it. It was surprisingly light.
“Going for a glam-rock-meets-Terminator look here, Donnie?”
Don turned to find the object in Mikey’s hands.
“Something like that. That is the culprit here.” Don gestured to where the mess had been. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about since I got back from that other dimension Kirby created with the crystal a few years back. Remember that? He drew this device; he called it a ‘Gravity Equalizer,’ but I’m going with ‘Gravity Gauntlet.’”
“Ooh. Gauntlet . I like it. Very ‘Ren Faire,’ dude.”
Don smiled. “Anyway, its energy ray could negate the gravity of any object or life form, throwing them, floating, up into the air. Pretty handy, frankly.”
“No way!” Mikey’s eyes shone as he inspected the gadget with renewed enthusiasm.
“A lot of the theoretical work on anti-gravity was already done by this physicist named Lillja. I’m just putting it into practice.”
Donnie’s eyes flared with that familiar mad-scientist excitement as he warmed to his topic. “The trick,” Don continued, “is to vibrate all of the atoms in your target at a certain, specific frequency. It loosens gravity’s hold for three or four seconds until the atoms fall back into alignment. I was pretty sure there was a way to build it in our, less fantastical, dimension, but it’s taken two years of research and tinkering to get it this far. And this far still isn’t cutting it.” Don flopped back into his chair and gestured vaguely at the restored-but-substantially-empty metal cabinet. “I was trying to levitate one object in that case and float it toward me. Instead, it picked up the whole cabinet! And when I tried to set it down gently…” He raised both hands in exasperation.
“Smash-Bang-Boom,” said Mikey.
“Exactly. Smash-Bang-Boom.” Donnie narrowed his eyes critically at the device. “Something’s up with the phase modulator. I don’t get it. That always worked perfectly in the prototype, even if nothing else did.” Here, he turned to a different section of his work bench and whisked away a gray felt cloth that Mikey hadn’t noticed, revealing another extraordinarily similar device.
“You made TWO?!”
“Well, yeah. I mean, this is the prototype. It’s got some glitches—mostly the frequency stabilizer, I think. And the battery life isn’t great. Those are things that this one is supposed to improve on.”
Don eyed the newer model. “Mikey, I’m going to ask you to keep this between us for now, okay? I don’t want to show it to the full team until it can provide a strategic advantage, which it’s not ready for right now.”
Mikey shrugged. “You got it, bro. No gauntlet-talk.”
“Thanks. Not yet, anyway. I’ll keep working on it. I’m done for today, though. What do you say you and I get a little ‘SiegeNight’ in before the guys get back and hog the console?” As Don spoke, he set the prototype gauntlet on a corner-table alongside an assemblage of other inexplicable mechanisms. It seemed almost camouflaged against them. He left the newer model on his main workbench and clicked off the lamp.
“Sure, bro! But come help me finish up in the kitchen first. You think an anti-gravity ray is rad? You should see what I’m making!”
As Mikey followed his brother out of the lab, he couldn’t resist a look back over his shoulder to where the gauntlets lay in shadow.
Raphael and Leonardo had returned home laden with worry. The four turtles gathered in the kitchen, nibbling on Mikey’s marshmallowy confections (the verdict was ‘not quite inedible’) to talk the situation through.
Something suspicious was going on with the Mutanimals under Hob’s leadership. The mutated cat was gathering, and sometimes creating , quite a following of other mutants. The Mutanimals were no longer the rag-tag bunch of well-meaning misfits who’d once been the turtles’ allies.
“It’s different since Slash died,” Raph said with a sigh.
“Yeah,” Mikey agreed sadly around a mouthful of marshmallow. “Hob’s always been on-edge, but Slash mellowed out the dude. With him gone…”
“Hob’s angry.” Raph completed his sentence. He picked out a green marshmallow from the multi-colored lump in his hand and ate it thoughtfully. “I mean, I get it. I’m angry too. But now he’s got all this bull-crap about mutant superiority and ‘humans are the monsters.’ I don’t know. It’s gettin’ pretty extreme.”
“That warehouse they’re guarding is locked up as tight as Fort Knox,” Leo added. He pushed his shell-cell across the table so Mikey and Donnie could see the photo on the screen. Guards were stationed around the building, heavily armed.
Don used two fingers to zoom in on the roof itself and pointed to a dark crease across its surface. “Retractable roof? That’s pretty high-tech for some old warehouse.”
“We’re going to need to have a solid strategy to get in there and figure it out,” Leo stated. “I’m not sure it’s worth it right now.”
“Whad’ya mean ‘not worth it’?” Raph asked. “Something’s goin’ on in there. All those trucks in and out? All that firepower they got?”
“Sure, but maybe it’s best to wait. What would Master Splinter say? Just charge in with no information? We watch. Let them show their hand.”
Mikey agreed. “It is the Mutanimals. It’s not like they’re alien invaders. They’re not criminal masterminds. I mean, except for Pigeon Pete.” Mikey grinned fondly.
“And don’t even get me started on the pet store robberies!” Raph added. “Where’s he gettin’ all that mutagen to build his little mutant army?”
Michelangelo’s eyes went wide. “And what if he mutates more turtles? What if he gives them masks that look like ours and we can’t tell them apart from us and they infiltrate the lair and—” Raph smacked the back of Mikey’s head.
“What’s on the trucks?” Don piped in. “Any symbols? Lettering?”
“Yeah, now that ya mention it.” Raph replied. “Show ‘em, Leo.”
Leo scrolled to the next photo—a large gray truck, windows darkened, unmarked except for the passenger door, which showed a red circle with a white line through its center from top to bottom.
Donnie looked closely. “Don’t recognize it. You, Mikey?”
“Nada, dude.”
“I’ll see what I can find out about that logo. But don’t hold your breath, guys. I have the feeling this one will take some digging.”
Donnie returned to his lab that night to start searching, flicking on the desk lamp at his computer station. He glanced to the table where he’d left the prototype for the gravity gauntlet and was completely unsurprised to find the spot empty.
Don smiled. Then he turned back to his computer and got to work.