Chapter Text
He’s gotten sick. Again. “Master Splinter . . . Father . . . what can we do to help?” I ask, looking over Leo’s shoulder at the Rat who raised us, protected us from the world until we were better able to deal with its unfair little pot-shots ourselves. He deserves better than to get sick again, I think sourly, railing mentally against things I can’t control because in truth I’m frightened by the situation.
Here it is, like a week away from Christmas and we’ve barely got the tree out – it’s still waiting to be decorated, limping a bit in the middle of our main room as if embarrassed to be a naked Christmas tree.
But Master Splinter has been here in his room, hardly sleeping and hardly breathing well . . . so the tree has to wait. Like the rest of the lair’s decorations. I tried putting up all the garlands alone, but one Turtle on a ladder stringing anything on his own is a suicide mission. For a brief moment I groan, recalling that half of them look like they’ve suffered a Raph-sized temper tantrum. As it is, they had Klunk going after their dangling ends like me grabbing for stuff on New Comic Book Day. When I finally let up on the decorating and asked my little furry friend what she wanted, the little girl went and pawed at sensei’s door. When I asked if she could come in, Don said that he didn’t want the cat wandering all over his equipment spreading cat hair and static electricity. “Sorry Klunk, no visits with sensei for you, I guess.” The little girl’s been sulking ever since.
Some Christmas, huh?
“Is there anything we can do for him?” I ask Leo and Don as the two hover over Father.
“It’s odd that it could be so flu-like,” Donnie mutters, more than likely ignoring that I’m even there.
“Are you sure that none of the remedies you’ve already given him have had any positive effects?” Leo asks softly, his eyes narrowed in concern as Splinter’s chest vibrates with each breath.
“None of them have seemed to work so far,” Don responds, reaching out to take Father’s pulse again, eyes fluttering up and down the furry form lying before them. “I’m to the point of wondering if it isn’t really a disease at all, honestly.”
“You mean somebody might have put a curse on him?” I ask, piping up. Bad enough to be in here and feel so helpless; being in here, feeling helpless, and being utterly ignored would be worse.
“I’m not even sure if it’s a curse, exactly, Mikey,” Don tells me, finally lifting his eyes from the bed for a second or two. “But I’m not so experienced in spells, curses, or magic in general.” My brother’s lips twist in a frown, and I totally get it: he likes the world to be ordered, patterned, easily manipulated and understood. When life throws him a curve ball he can’t just pick apart like a car or the coffee pot, Don ends up less than happy.
“So, what are we going to do about this?” I ask again, because Splinter’s been lying there for over a week now. Even I know that this can’t be good for him, no matter what his age is.
“I’m afraid we’re at an impasse,” Don replies, scratching his head. “We don’t exactly know a lot of magic adepts at the moment that I think would be worth contacting.”
“But . . . if we don’t do something soon, then he’ll die,” I utter, realizing that it makes me sound like a little kid again, a bit high and slightly whiny. I don’t care. The fear of losing our Father makes me feel like I’m little all over again, hounded by that scary skeleton demon all over again. I don’t like this feeling. “What about Usagi?” I ask, looking over at Leo now. “Do you think he’d know anything useful?” Leo looks at me for a moment as if I’ve suggested making an apple pie with oranges, and irritation roils in my stomach.
“Why do you think Usagi would know anything about this?” he asks in turn, brows clumping as his mental wheels seem to churn the idea around anyway.
“Well, I mean,” I start to explain, but the looks I’m getting are freaking me out; Don’s looking at me as if I’ve grown a second head, and Leo still looks so half here that I don’t know if he’s really even listening. I sigh, and then lock my eyes back on Splinter. “Usagi lives on a world filled with a bunch of wandering priests and priestesses and stuff . . . so, if it’s a curse or something . . . wouldn’t he know somebody that we could ask for advice?”
Leo nods his head slowly. “I see what you’re getting at,” he all but whispers. “But finding Usagi may take too much time – time Splinter no longer has.”
“Well, somebody’s gotta do something,” I argued hotly, “I mean, if we do nothing we lose him anyway!” I look back and forth between my older brothers as Don immerses himself in checking machines he’s placed near our Father’s bedside and Leo kneels to cradle a time-worn hand between his own battle-weary palms. I can’t run this idea past Raph, ‘cause ever since Leo and Don started trying to get Splinter well our hot-tempered brother’s been out doing the daily head-bashing rounds in solo mode. “So I’ll go.”
“What do you mean by saying ‘I’ll go’, Mikey?” Leonardo asked, turning his head my way.
“Just what it sounds like, Leo,” I told him, crossing my arms and looking over at Donnie for a moment too. “If you guys are busy watching over Splinter and Raph’ll be crazy going out on rounds by himself, then that leaves me the only one free to go out and . . . do a Rabbit Roundup.”
“A . . .” Leo gaped at me, much like a landed fish gulping for air. “A Rabbit Roundup?”
“Too much?” I asked, looking at my brother sternly. He was already showing signs that, contrary to Don, he hadn’t slept much since Splinter had ended up sick in bed. Personally I thought that Usagi’d have a better chance of getting Leo to take care of himself than I could, but I sure as shell wasn’t going to go phrasing the whole thing that way. “I mean it, Leo – who else might be able to help Master Splinter than the one who helped you when you got poisoned in the Battle Nexus?”
Leo huffed as he shook his head. “You’re right, Mikey. He may know something we don’t.”
“And if you guys’re gonna stay here with Splinter,” I reiterated, “then it makes sense that I go and find Usagi.” There was a tense moment where nobody in the room said a thing, Don and Leo staring at each other for a few seconds as if they could speak telepathically, and then Leonardo stood up and faced me.
“Mikey, go get your things together, and I’ll create the gateway for you in here.”
I nodded, already feeling better for having made the decision to do something that might help. “Thanks, Leo.” Of course, the problem was that now I actually had to deliver on that promise.
Klunk was sitting on my bed when I came in, going to my closet and grabbing my backpack out. “Meow,” she asked, looking down at me.
“I’m sick of waiting around, Klunk. Somebody’s gotta do something, you know?”
“M-rauuull,” she responded, padding to the edge of my bed while I was slipping a burrito-rolled blanket and my trench coat into my pack, along with a First-Aid kit. I’d stop by the kitchen on my way back and snag some trail mix and granola bars. “Mew?”
I turned my head to see Klunk’s green eyes staring into my blue ones. “I won’t be gone long, Klunk, but I need you to do something for me.”
“Rawl?” Klunk replied, blinking her eyes and leaning forward until her forehead hit mine.
I chuckled, gazing at her until our eyes met once more. “Look out for the others for me.” Klunk sat back on my bed, her focus still on me. “I know Donnie’s not lettin’ you into sensei’s room yet, but try to make sure that nobody gets in to hurt any of them, okay?”
“Meow!” she replied, purring loudly and following me out of the room and towards the kitchen.
Minutes later, I’d raided the pantry and was headed back to Master Splinter’s room when Raph got home. I think I actually saw his face the moment he noticed my backpack. He certainly didn’t leave me wondering for long. “And just where do you think you’re going!?”
“I’m going to go grab Usagi,” I told him, adjusting my pack on my right shoulder. “Leo’s gonna bring the Gate up for me soon as I go into Father’s room.”
“And Leo thinks that you can handle looking for a roaming Rabbit all on your own, huh?”
I looked at his tired, irritated expression, and forced myself to look him in the eye. “Come on, Raph – I feel like the odd Turtle out. You’re running our rounds alone, or just taking Casey with you, Don’s been playing Doctor since Splinter got sick, and Leo . . . Leo hasn’t left Splinter’s side in nearly a week! I needed something constructive to do before going crazy.”
“Thought you were doing the decorations,” he said, but a yawn punctuated the end of his sentence.
“I was,” I told him quickly, and then I waved my hands around at the decorations. “And I suck doing them all by myself,” I complained, feeling a sudden need to snarl. “So, in the interest of not being totally useless, I volunteered to go catch a Rabbit.”
“And what would we want Usagi here for?” Raph asked me, following as I opened the door to Splinter’s room. Klunk, who’d now taken up a stop resting right outside the door, looked up at me plaintively only to lie back down when I shook my head at her; she’s a good girl, though, and hasn’t tried sneaking in through the door.
“Michelangelo believes that Usagi may know of some way to cure Father of . . . whatever this is he’s suffering from,” Leonardo explains to our hot-tempered brother, finishing up the last symbol needed for the strange glowing gateway that serves as our only transport to both the Battle Nexus – where I was the first of us to become a champion, after Master Splinter and his Master Yoshi – and to the alternate Earth where Miyamoto Usagi lives.
“Based on what!?” Raph blurts, pointing at me as Leo steps back from the wall he’s drawn on.
“Based on the fact that Leo told me once how he was poisoned by the Daimyo’s son and it was Usagi who not only detected the poison’s entry point, but also had the herbs needed to counteract the poison, that’s why,” I told him hotly.
“Mikey? Your ride is here,” Leo said gently, nodding toward an open portal that swirled like a giant vertical whirlpool.
“Then I’m off,” I told him, adjusting the pack one more time. “I’ll go get Usagi, and come back here.”
“He knows how to create the Gate,” Leo said, nodding as he watched me walk up to the portal. “Be fast – you may have to track him down, and Father doesn’t have a lot of time.”
I looked back at him for a second, the glow of the Gate causing the circles under his eyes to seem nearly pitch black. We all need Father to get well again, but at this point I think Leo also needs to see Usagi. After all, he may be the only one who can talk some sense into my dear older brother about taking care of himself as well as taking care of others. Our eyes meet, and I find myself praying like mad that Leo gets some sleep while I’m gone.
“It’s morning here, Mike,” Leo blurts out as I turn around. “The second you go through that Gate it’ll be nighttime on Usagi’s world! Be careful, little brother!”
I lift a hand and nod, because saying anything now would be to waste even more time, and I walk into the Gate. There’s an instant pull at my middle as this thing . . . this ‘mystical portal’ seems to shove me bodily from one point to another, taking me who-knows-how-many light years away from my family. The glow is so blinding that I have to shut my eyes as it happens, and when I re-open them all I see are open fields and a mountain range in the background with a big, fat bright moon overhead. A small boy seems to be playing just off the roadside, and so I head for him as quickly as I can. “Excuse me, but could you point me to . . .” My words peter to a stop as the boy turns to look not at me, but at the sky, eyes wide.
And that’s when the Bats attack.