[Open]

[i_speak_softly]

Characters: Donatello and OPEN
Date: April 27, and some number of following days, depending how this goes
Location: All over the city, but starting at ME-3B and hopefully ending at WA-3B
Situation: Leo ordered Don to get off the networks, so the brainy Turtle sets out to find his brother the old-fashioned way.
Warnings/Rating: Probably nothing exciting.

It takes Don the rest of the night to pick over the components of his console, put them back together again, and boot the machine in his best approximation of safe mode. This still doesn't solve any of the issues - unsurprising, since Mike Weston had told him the problem was in the network - and he checks his messages as carefully as possible.

Leo has left him a cryptic instruction. Not daring to reply, he memorizes it, then shuts down the machine and hits the street.

Where the water meets the steel. A shipyard? Don heads toward the edge of the city, where one is likely to be, but inquiries direct him westward towards the Water Sector.

As he walks, Don wonders if the sector border is what Leo meant. But the border is a long one - it took Don an hour to get across the city by car, and he can tell he hadn't crossed nearly all of it - and he doesn't know which side of the line his brother is on.

Or wait! What if Leo meant a weapons forge? Submerging a steel blade in water is a critical step in the sword-making process, and that's just the kind of thing Leo would think of when giving coded orders on short notice. But a place like that would most likely be in the Fire Sector, and that's really a long way… Maybe he can hitch a ride?

Comments

[michaeljangelo]

"By my count we're at three," he says holding up one hand. "No wait, make that four." He adds the thumb from his other hand. "What about Leo?"

[i_speak_softly]

"Counting me?" Don scratches his head: that would be the normal number, but if one of them is this other Mike, then someone is missing. "Leo... Do you know where he is?"

[michaeljangelo]

"No, not counting you. I mean, you're already counted. Leo and Raph seemed pretty convinced that you're their Donatello, so that means you guys only count as two. I'm one. You guys are two. The kids were three, and this Casey Guy makes four."

Mike's logic is sound, it's just...he didn't really clarify that he was counting worlds, and not turtles. Mike seems completely unbothered by their talking at cross purposes.

"Right this second? No, I don't know where he is, but I know where he'll be. We're supposed to rendezvous back at the house whether we found you or not."

[i_speak_softly]

This is weird counting - or math, Don isn't even sure - even by the self-taught Turtle's somewhat creative standards, but he is rapidly losing interest in the details. (For now. Only for now. Later he will be buried up to his beak in calculations, learning how all this works.) At this point, all he cares about is finding whatever part of his family is reachably nearby.

"Please take me there."

[michaeljangelo]

"Sure! Yeah, okay. We can do that. Do you uh...mind if we just take like, the streets though? I don't think I could handle a roof run right now."

He sounds like he's fighting back another cough, and that's because...he kind of is.

[i_speak_softly]

Oh, right. Don had forgotten about the hacking cough in the amazement of meeting a mutant turtle he didn't already know.

"Sure, but I have to insist on a detour past a place where we can get medical supplies."

Any mutant turtle is automatically One Of Don's, and therefore Mike is not escaping a thorough examination.

[michaeljangelo]

"Should I be afraid," he says as the cough breaks free. "Because I'm kind of thinking I should be afraid."

[i_speak_softly]

"It depends," Don replies. "How long have you had that cough?"

[michaeljangelo]

"Since the last attack? There were like...spores or something. It was a bad scene. I'm better though, if you think this is bad you should have heard me before. It was ugly."

All of this is said as if what he's saying is no-big-thing, because to Mike, it really isn't, for the most part. They lived to see another day, everything else can be dealt with in its own time, and after many a long hot bath.

"C'mon, you can play mother hen when we get back."

[i_speak_softly]

Great, another tough-guy patient who won't admit when he's sick. (Not that Don has a leg to stand on there, literally, trekking all over the city with his wound still bandaged.)

"Medical supplies, right now, and on the way I want to hear the real story about this place."

[michaeljangelo]

"Counter-offer: We go back to the house," he pauses to put a hand up as if to silence Don before he can open his mouth to object. "Where I assure you there are plenty of med supplies stockpiled, and on the way I will totally answer any question I actually know the answer to. I might even let you into my kitchen."

[i_speak_softly]

"Point of clarification," Don replies, before agreeing to anything. "Stockpiled by whom?"

[michaeljangelo]

"...Leo?"

Because he knows if he says me Don is likely to look at him askance.

[i_speak_softly]

Don looks at Mike askance anyway, because that was a blatant lie. Care to try again?

[michaeljangelo]

A slow smile creeps across his face.

"...and Raph?"

This still counts as being on his best behavior...right?

[i_speak_softly]

No.

"Are you always this bad at lying, or are the spores parasitizing your brain?"

[michaeljangelo]

"Yes," he says before he starts laughing...and then coughing. But it's worth it. Totally worth it.
Eventually the coughing stops.

"Trust me, okay. I know my way around a first aid kit."

[i_speak_softly]

"Fine. Let's go."

Don doesn't know whether to believe this either, but he doesn't want to waste any more time standing around on a street corner.

[michaeljangelo]

They may not be the same, but the similarities between this Michaelangelo, and Don's Michaelangelo are kind of hard to miss.

Like, for instance, the slight bit of extra jaunty in his step when it's clear to Mike he's won this particular Battle of Wits.

"Right this way, my good sir. Right this way."