A/N. I decided, after giving it some thought, that the chapter from Mikey's POV, unfortunately, will have to be put on hold for a while. I received some major inspiration while plotting out what my next move for this story would be, where before I was having trouble doing so. I am aware that this may change some things. As a matter in fact, I have no idea what the reaction to the next development of the story will be. Some readers may not like it. But I will go for it anyways. If anyone is confused, I will shed some more light on the situation at the end of this chapter. We've already got enough craziness to look forward to in this chapter as it is. Now let's get to it. And once you're done reading the chapter, leave a review, favorite, follow, and as always… Enjoy! Chapter Nine.
Alright then, this wasn't so long of a wait… for once.
Assistance Required.
As soon as Donnie's eyes opened, the hair on the back of my neck raised.
I don't know if it's a side effect to hanging out with ninjas so often, or how the girls both seemed suddenly more awake and tensed up, but I knew something was wrong, and they did too. This was not normal. There was no way he could suddenly look the way he always did like nothing had happened. Because something had happened, and with this new change, it usually meant something was wrong.
April took the opportunity to take action while he was still disoriented. She immediately launched herself from the back of the van and into a snowbank. I heard Karai unsheath her tanto, and my hands went to my hockey stick. Donnie's pupils dilated, then he looked up at us with a scary grin, and screeched. He didn't recognize us.
"BRACE YOURSELVES!" Karai shouted.
All three of us were armed and ready at this point. Donnie slid gracefully out into the open, tongue flicking in and out between his fangs. A chill ran down my spine when I realized that his tongue and fangs had also remained snake-like, which paired with the eyes and Donnie's face, looked all kinds of wrong.
"Aren't both of his legs broken?" Asked April, eyes wide with terror. "Maybe that'll hinder the attack."
"I don't think he can tell or care about it right now." Karai whispered. "He's gonna attack either way."
Neither of us questioned this. We knew too. Something had gone horribly wrong while Donnie was asleep, and we had been unprepared. Why hadn't we thought he might slip back into the mindset he was in the night he mutated? Why didn't we realize that this may have only been a lull? A brief period of clarity? It was going to happen sooner or later. And with his mutation, it would put us in very deep danger.
We could worry about his appearance later. We needed to stop him now.
Crawling on all fours in a sliding motion like a demented animal, he came at us surprisingly fast, before picking a target. April sensed it first, before turning towards Karai to give a warning. But the warning never came, because it was then that Donnie lunged at his sister.
Karai leapt back, swinging her tanto forwards to defend herself. I saw hesitation in her eyes, regret for having to counter against her own brother, but she had no choice. Moments later, a small cut blossomed on Donnie's jaw where she had nicked him with the edge of her blade. This only made him angry.
I deflected his attention by slamming my hands down hard on his shoulders, hoping to pin him to the ground while he was down. Unfortunately, he was incredibly strong, already stronger than me before the accident, and he put up quite the fight. Snow flew everywhere as he thrashed, snapping his fangs at me and shrieking into the night. My heart pounded as I looked back at the girls. "Help me hold him down!" I screamed.
They flew towards us, but Donnie was faster. I felt his head suddenly slam hard into my chest, causing me to fly backwards. The impact with the snow didn't hurt too bad, but I had the wind knocked out of me. April reached him first, slamming her fists into his back. He stumbled, but turned and knocked her away with one arm.
As I was getting up, Karai managed to get him into a headlock and attempt to pull him down. I had to admit, at the moment, she seemed to be the only one that could match his strength, or come very close to doing so. It was impressive. Especially with what I saw her attempt next.
Once she had him bending over backwards, she kicked out his legs from underneath him. He landed hard on his shell. She then grasped the sides of his head. Her pointer fingers slid down to the sides of his neck, just under his chin, and pushed hard.
The second she did so, his eyes widened. He let out a high-pitched screech of pain and flailed wildly to try and get away from Karai, and remove her fingers from the pressure points. It was like watching someone trying to hold onto a horse attempting to throw them. She had her knee on his plastron, and was trying with all her might to keep him down, but it was hopeless.
Somehow, with Karai's hands still locked on his head, he had risen from the ground. I watched her feet leave the ground, his head swoop violently to the right, and suddenly he was throwing his entire upper body around and around in dizzying circles, attempting to shake her off. What amazed me most was that she held on the entire time. There was no way on earth that she should have been holding on, but she did. I watched her body be thrown around as if she didn't weigh a thing, but it didn't stop her.
She pressed even harder, and he finally was back on the ground, twitching in shock. She let go, even though he wasn't unconscious, and pinned him down. April and I ran to do the same. "Will this hold him?" I asked.
I really shouldn't have done that.
Next thing I knew, I was violently flung backwards for the second time that night. I scrambled up again, fueled by adrenaline, only to find the girls. Donnie was nowhere in sight, but I soon discovered where he was. The leaves in the trees above us were violently rustling, the sound traveling over our heads and off into the east.
"We can't lose him again!" shouted Karai. "Follow the movement of the leaves!"
We took off, further and further into the forest. The air didn't feel remotely cold due to how fast our blood was pumping. My eyes were trained to the treetops, scanning for the rustling. It was just ahead of us, going faster and faster, and we were having a hard time catching up. If we lost him now… I couldn't let that happen. Neither April or Karai would be able to handle that again.
"I'll draw his attention!" I shouted, running to the nearest tree and beginning to climb.
"What?!"
"Casey, wait!"
I reached the branches, and then began rustling them myself. "Hey Donnie! I'm over here!" I roared. "Come and get me!"
"You're gonna get yourself killed Jones!" April cried from below. I ignored her. The beating of my heart in my ears was suddenly drowned out by the sound of my friend, wild and crazed, rushing through the treetops closer and closer to my location. I would not be fast enough to defend myself. There was a jolt, something colliding with me at a breakneck speed, the feeling of falling, two screams-
And then blackness……"I know how much you want to fix this sweetheart…" What? Is that… who I think it was? She appeared as if out of mist. Her skin was pale, paler than it should have been. Her frame looked frail and fragile, boney and delicate. Where there had once been flowing red hair, there was now only a haphazardly placed hat. You could see the exhaustion in her eyes, no matter how she hard she tried to hide it. Mom. My mouth moved, even though I wasn't in control of it. I sounded fourteen again when I spoke "No… I can find a way to fix this! I promise!" She smiled fondly, brushing my hair back behind my ear. "I'll bet you want to fix this more than anything else in the world." I buried my face into her chest, trying to block out the smell of medicine, and to hide my tears. I found it harder and harder to keep them in now. I sniffled, trying to reign in my emotions. "What?" I croaked.
I struggled to hold onto my mother's image, and voice, but they morphed as I drifted back into consciousness. Instead of her chest, my face was pressed into a pillow. I was lying on my stomach, and a voice, not my mothers, was asking softly, "Are you alright, Casey?"
It was then that I registered the pounding in my skull, radiating from the back of my head. I lifted a hand to it and found an enormous lump. Something cold was pressed into my hand, but I jumped at the touch, not expecting it.
"Sorry!" I heard the voice say. "I didn't mean to startle you."
I lifted my face from the pillow, and saw that the freezing object was an ice pack. Go figure. I pressed it to the painful bump on the back of my head, and the pain was instantly eased. I then turned to see Karai sitting on the edge of a small bed. The room looked almost like a normal bedroom, with a large floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the forest.
"Karai," I started. "Are we at the mansion?"
She nodded. Then, the events from earlier came rushing back to me, and I sat up. "Donnie! Is he-"
"It's alright, Casey. We've got him safe. He's out cold in the other room, and April volunteered to guard him." she said, smiling. It was a tired smile, like the one my mom gave me in my dream.
Instantly, I was relieved. We were all safe. But then...
"How did you manage to catch him?" I asked.
Karai's smile grew wider. "April." she answered. "I'm not exactly sure what happened, but after you were knocked out, she got his attention. She was freaking out, and he was about to get her, and… well, she screamed. And the whole place lit up! It was insane! Next thing we knew, he was passed out on the ground. So, we hauled you both up here."
Instantly, I felt bad knowing I had gone and put myself in serious danger again. Not to mention leaving the girls to do all the work. Karai seemed to notice this. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You really do have a knack for putting your life on the line, don't you, Casey?"
I grinned sheepishly. "Yeah. Raph says so all the time."
She frowned. I wondered for a moment that I had upset her by talking about Raph, who I knew was mad at both of us, but before I could apologize, her next words made me realize that it wasn't Raph she was upset about.
"I wish we didn't have to hurt him. He's been through enough."
I remembered the hurt look I saw as she dealt the first attack against Donnie. If he hadn't been attacking us, she would have never done something like that. He was her little brother. Being an older sibling myself, I could agree. Besides, the guys felt like the brothers I never had. "I wouldn't have done it either, if it didn't come to what it did." I said.
A tear slipped down her right cheek. She closed her eyes. "I thought he was getting better," she choked out, voice breaking profoundly.
My heart dropped. I saw myself, my reaction when I had been delivered the news of my mother's death, in her expression. She was devastated. Letting the ice-pack fall, I slid to her end of the bed and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She wrapped hers around my neck in return.
"I know. I know we would all give anything to have the real Donnie back right now." I whispered. "Including me. I know I didn't get along with him much, but all in all, he's my friend. We all miss him, and we're gonna do everything we can to help him."
Her tears were absorbed in my shirt. She was silent, but she still cried hard. I felt like crying myself. The whole situation seemed hopeless. We could care for him, but there may not have been a cure. And who knows what might happen next?
As I was thinking these very words, by some sort of luck, we got our answer. The door flew open, and a teary eyed April was standing in the doorway, looking breathless, like she had run to our room.
"April?" I asked. "What's wrong?"
"He's awake." She said, so quiet that we almost couldn't hear her. "But he's… come on, you have to see this!"
Instantly, we were alarmed. Karai was already out of the room, rushing down the hallway. April and I followed, having a hard time keeping up with her. My heart began to race again. April hadn't said if anything was wrong or not. What else could have happened that was so important?
When we arrived, we saw that Donnie had reverted to his snake form once again. He was sitting on a bed much larger than the one I woke up in, propped up against pillows with his tail draped in one long line down the bed. He looked dreadful. His eyes and nose were red with some sort of illness, and he was about ten times more banged up than he was last night. Karai and April had clearly spent a while patching him up. My eye caught the spot on his jaw where Karai had gotten him and I cringed. She had had to stitch it shut.
But my attention was drawn away from his unfortunate injuries a moment later. As soon as his sister hurried into the room, his eyes widened, and his head perked up. A smile spread across his face, not like the terrifying, sickly grin he gave us when he could only recognize us as prey, but a warm, knowing smile. He was excited to see us.
"I was guarding him, and when he woke up…"
As April walked in behind us, Karai sat down on the side of the bed, and looked her little brother in the eyes. "Donnie, how do you feel? Different? Do you remember what happened?"
"Karai, wait, let him…"
Before April could finish her sentence, Donnie's face fell. The excitement vanished from his eyes. He averted them, training them down onto the sheets, downcast considerably in a few seconds. Then, he did something strange. He opened his mouth, but a few odd hacking sounds came out, almost as if he were having trouble with his throat. He gave a few sharp coughs, then fell silent.
And then…
"I'm sorry."
My jaw went slack. It was quiet, but it was there. There was only one person it could have come from.
"Donnie," Karai said, eyes wide in astonishment. "Did you just?-"
He nodded, with another smile, tinged this time with relief, and a little bit of sadness. "Yeah." He answered softly.
Karai immediately gathered him up in a gentle hug. She began to tremble, and I could tell she was crying again. Donnie's voice had no hint of the hissing that afflicted it the past three days or so. It was clear, and sounded the same as it had before this mess began. It felt as if we had him back more than ever before.
April sat down on Donnie's other side, and when I joined, we formed a sort of circle on the bed. Karai let Donnie rest his head on her shoulder. She still had tears trailing down her cheeks, and made no move to dry them. She wasn't the kind of girl I imagined would grow up being allowed to cry much, so this was a good opportunity to let her get her emotions out. We all needed it.
"Are you feeling okay, D?" asked April. "Not good." he muttered. "In a very literal way. On the outside, I can tell that I have aggravated my injuries, which I am very sorry about by the way," He paused for a moment, breathing deeply. Talking seemed to be taxing, which was worrying. "And on the inside… well, I know about the fight."
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"When I lost control… everything went black, so I couldn't see it. But I could hear and feel it. It was exactly how I was after my mutation, and when I woke up again, I was in control." he explained.
It definitely made sense. But something else didn't fit. I gave him a minute to catch his breath again, before asking my new question. "Alright… so you could tell what was going on, but something took over your mind. Did you know you had… um, shifted forms somehow?"
He nodded. "Yeah. I didn't even know I could do that. And it's possible…that there are other things I can do with it once I get stronger."
His face fell. "But I definitely won't try that again anytime soon."
This took us all by surprise. "Wait, do you mean you did it on purpose?" asked Karai, looking shocked.
"I don't think so…," he started, before going on, "But for the past three days, I've been feeling an urge to try. A sort of…instinct. It just kept getting stronger and stronger, and then finally, I couldn't resist. I just wanted to…feel normal again, subconsciously, I guess. But when I tried it…I slipped. Back into darkness."
I was amazed. He had been locked up for days, unable to convey anything to anyone. We listened as he kept going, not wanting to hold anything back.
"I think whatever April did to knock me out was what also knocked me back into control of myself. If it happens again…that would be very helpful in the future. I don't think it will be long…before I'll loose control again. Already…I think my subconscious wants it to happen again. Even if…I don't want it to happen again."
While talking, he was looking increasingly upset. We probably did to. "If it does happen…I'd wager that it'll take another three days. And after that passes, if April is able to…keep me controlled, I might loose my ability to talk again, until the next time it happens."
"So you'll be going back and forth between talking and not talking?" Karai asked, horrified. Another nod. "Exactly."
"Well then, why would that be a problem if April can keep him in control?" I asked.
"Casey," said April, looking grave. "I don't know if I have the energy to do that for very long. And from the look of it, when he tried to switch forms, it was like his brain was turned off. Something like that could only be caused by something really big, like a botched mutation. A human may be able to switch back and forth like that. But someone already mutated? I don't think so."
I was starting to get what she was saying, but dreading her next words. "So, if it happens enough times…" I started.
"With so much going on in his head, so much stress… it could lead to some serious problems. Like… madness level problems." She finished.
No one moved. No one could stop thinking about the horror of April's words. Madness. Donnie, stricken by madness. Unimaginable. And we didn't know how much longer either Donnie or April had to keep the situation under control before that happened. Which now meant we were caught in a race against time. A race to do to the impossible. The impossible which Karai voiced.
"That settles it then." she announced. "The snake side needs to go."
I couldn't agree more. But the question was…
"How?" asked April.
I wish I could say we didn't, but we looked at Donnie. Immediately, his eyes welled up. I had never seen him cry, but clearly, the stress and fear of the situation had finally gotten to him. "I wouldn't even know what to do." he muttered. Tears spilled over onto his face, and he sniffled. Karai and April both pulled him into a hug, but he barely noticed.
"I just wish someone could...help me." he moaned.
This was bad. Really bad. If he had no idea, I doubted anyone else could have a better plan. I had no idea what sort of mad science it would take to fix something like this. Retro mutagen wouldn't help, that would only reverse both mutations, and we didn't need that. If only it could take something normal, something we could easily use, something ready and waiting for us…
Hold on…
As an idea was being conjured up in my brain, my mother's words to me rang in my ears.
"There is something out there you can fix. I just know it. There will more than likely be a time where the world will call upon Casey Jones. And you'll have the answer.""We could donate blood." I said, as if in a daze.
All three of the other occupants in the room stared at me. "What?" asked Karai.
"He's stuck between turtle and snake only. There's not enough human DNA in his system." I explained. "So, if one of us can donate blood to him…"
"That may cancel out the snake!" Karai shouted, leaping to her feet. "Casey, that's genius!"
April looked concerned. "But what if we can't donate?"
"Then we'll have to find someone who can. No matter what." I answered. "Donnie, what do you say, does it sound like it might work?"
We all looked back at Donnie. He took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and then spoke. "I suppose… we can try it. I honestly don't have a better option."
We all heaved a sigh of relief. I couldn't believe it. I had found the answer after all. Just like Mom said I would.
"Alright, guys." April said. "Do we have the right equipment for this?"
Karai nodded, starting to talk about how when Stockman began working for Shredder, they brought some of his equipment here to use just in case. We could draw blood, and then see who was able to donate, if any of us could. I was excited. I could almost imagine our plan, as Mikey would name it.
Operation Donation is a go.
A/N. Somewhere in the mutation, the DNA got badly messed up. So when Donnie tried to change like Karai can in the show, it only made him crazy again. So it's only when he's a snake that he's okay. And every time he switches back, it has varying results, like his ability to speak, which has just come back, but may be lost again the next time it happens. So now, next chapter will see them doing the blood draw, and taking a bit of a breather… for about the first half. When they get the results… THAT'S when they get the shock of a lifetime. Nothing will be the same afterwards. Hopefully, we won't have to wait long for the next chapter. I have another story to update before working on the next chapter, but I will do it quickly. Anyways, that's it for this chapter. And once you're done, leave a review, favorite, follow, and as always… Stay Tuned! ;)
Alright. Here's the thing.