No Use |TMNT

Chapter 20

"Donnie! Ergh! –Hey Leo!" Raph opened Donnie's bedroom door further, gazing at his brother with exhaustion. Leo paused, letting a few seconds' trickle before he turned around to face Raph with a deep breath. He wasn't in the spirit for another round of fighting

"Bro, can you put this chemical in Donnie's lab? Brainiac here almost dropped it on himself while trying to reach it." Leo reached for the substance as Raph handed it to him. His head turning to meet Donnie laughing. It was all bubbly and innocent, like a toddler laugh. Donnie rarely laughed when he was... normal. Seeing him laugh was almost alien to him. Donnie chuckled, a lot, but laughing really wasn't his thing. They were too busy to even laugh with the situation they have at hand...

A smile spread across the hothead's face; "thanks." He declared bluntly, and Leo turned to look at Raph with a firm nod. The turtle in red got up from the bed and shut the door close to have some privacy with his wounded brother.

Leo shot him a smile, sulking with the compound on his hand. He steered away from his brother's room and went to the close labs. He shuddered, the usual opened and use lab was vacant and abandoned.

Leo opened the laboratory door in haste, the test tube of mysterious pink, dissolved substance held in his fingers. He was cautious as to keep Donnie's strange concoction away from his reptilian skin. He pushed the large barricaded doors in front of him. Skin on steel — pride on guilt — there had never been an emptier feeling. As the door reeled away from his darkened green fingertips, the dull and darkened atmosphere surrounded him.

He squinted his eyes slightly to make out the figure of his surroundings. Ever since the incident, Donnie's mechanical haven has been lay a waste with its abandonment. With its caretaker and inventor out of commission, its once lively machines now wasted on the concrete flooring, rust starting to form on their silver lined edges. The chemicals which once bubbled with Donnie's scientific pride and achievement now lay dead and dull in their containers.

The surgery had left the lab into a permanent ruin. Leo could only feel as empty as the abandoned lab he had entered. His tired eyes were colored as dull as the broken machine parts that were scattered on the floor.

The leader entered, careful not to step on anything that may have been left behind by his brothers. A cold shiver crawled sinisterly up his spine and course through every patterned edge of his shell.

He looked around, eyes scanning for a place to set the test tubes so that Donnie couldn't set hand on them. In his findings, he ran into what appeared to be notes — blueprints and notations that made no sense to anyone other than Donnie.

In his curiosity, he tried to decode the variables and terms that Donnie had scribbled on the line paper but to no avail. Each set of notes had a date, time and its own data to present to keep track of the terrapin scientist's work.

A number equation with variables he couldn't comprehend and some odd but very detailed drawings of the brain worm later, he found something that peaked his interest; Donnie's journal entries.

They seemed to be in a diary like format by the way they were all written with dates that were only recent, all starting from the day Karai was horribly disfigured and mutated.
Leo sighed to himself, rubbing his eyes from tiredness as he scattered for the earliest of records.

11/ 03 / 15; 10:02 PM

We had her. Leo and Splinter were finally happy. And now I have to find a brand new retro mutagen that matches the chemical formula of the concoction that Professor Stinkman used in his batch. (Actually, he barely had any credibility to begin with so I don't know is he deserves to be affiliated with the "Professor" title. But, then again, it's just a sarcastic remark so I guess it makes no difference and I'm babbling again... Man I've been awake for far too long.)