To Death and Back...

[Ch.1]: Hot Blood

"Donnie?"

It was another normal day for the turtles. The fearsome four had gone topside last night and had a session of Foot-clan-butt-kicking, and all of them were relaxing back in the sewers. However, there was tension in the air, Mikey had noticed. For some reason, the others just hadn't been getting along very well, lately. Maybe it was something in the pizza, but everyone had been getting on everybody else's nerves a lot, and their rusty teamwork during more recent battles had left a lot more injuries afterward than usual - more injuries and more tempers. Raph and Leo had been fighting more frequently and more heatedly, and Donnie was snappy and best left alone. With nothing else to do, Mikey had been quietly amusing himself with his video games for the past few weeks, trying to stay out of the way.

Now if he could just remember where he set down the Xbox controller...

After rolling his eyes, Donnie replied, "What is it?"

"Have you seen my controller anywhere?" Mikey asked, flipping the couch cushions. "I can't find it."

"How should I know where it is?" Donnie growled, turning back to his work. He was tinkering with mechanical scraps, working on his seemingly half finished, newest invention. "I don't have time for those baby play sets of yours."

Sighing, Mikey checked under the couch, and not finding his controller, sat back down with a huff, watching the blank TV screen. He wished it would hurry up and be nighttime already...he was planning on getting some much-needed fresh air, as soon as it was dark enough.

"And what about YOU, oh fearless leader?"

Donnie and Mikey both turned their heads towards the sound, and Mikey felt something like a rock drop into his gut. Raph and Leo, going at it again... the two walked into the main part of the lair, having just come back from checking out a blown circuit breaker in another part of the sewers for Donnie.

"Would you just cut it out?" Leo replied, a raw and testy tone to his voice. "Stop being such a whiner."

"Yeah? So I 'spose that it's NOT your fault that the Foot ninja got away last night? The one that was right under your nose, if I recall?" Raph shot back.

"There was no need to stop him, for the billionth time."

"You kiddin' me? After the kind of gig he pulled?" Raph and Leo stopped walking, and turned to face each other. "He'd just broken into that computer shop, remember? That guy hacked into the major corporation and had a whole barrage of the new techno-data to take back to the Shredder - they could make a whole new breed of pain-in-the-butt weapons for their little Kraang buddies with that!" Raph threw his hands in the air for emphasis. "An' not to mention that buttload of cash he hauled off with all those trinkets he stole too! After YOU got in my way!"

"There's no reason to worry about the DATA he stole," Leo argued. "There's little chance the guy got any information the Kraang don't probably already know about. And I had no CHOICE but to let him get away," he said. "Going after him at that point would have been more trouble than it was worth."

"Tch, right! Good to know you put so much effort into stoppin' the bad guys!" Raph scoffed.

"If you were so mortified, why didn't YOU go after him!" Leo shouted, and the two snarled at each other.

"Would you two can it?" Donnie broke in, walking down to the pair. "Did you even find the circuit breaker?"

"Yeah, we found it." Raph said. "Right before Leo busted it up."

"I did not!" Leo snapped. "It was shorted out from the sewer water, and the rats had been gnawing it and eating the acid that was leaking out. There were dead, toxic rats all over it, so - "