A Brother's Intuition

Rule Number One

Michelangelo crept softly down the hall to Raphael's room. He stood outside for almost two minutes, wondering whether or not he should really do this. Did he really want to know what lay beyond that door? Finally, Mikey threw caution to the wind and reached for the doorknob, looking both ways down the hall.

See, one thing Michelangelo did know was rule number one. When it came to his brothers and doing something he wasn't supposed to, rule number one was always: don't get caught.

With no further ado, Mikey entered Raph's room. It was dark, pitch black, in fact, as most of their rooms were without the lights on. Mikey reached over and flipped the switch. Whoa, Raph had done some redecorating since the last time he was here. The bed, really just a broken-down mattress, had been moved from the back wall to the side wall. And as Mikey turned to the back of the room, he saw why.

Dude...It's like something out of one of those detective films!

Yarn, strings, pictures, scraps of paper, notes written in a messy scrawl, and push-pins all surrounding or embedded in a huge map of the city. All the push-pins were connected to each other by color-coded pieces of string. Mikey frowned, his tongue sticking out a little, as he tried to decipher the code.

There were many different colors, but the most substantial were red, black and white. There was more black than anything else, but there were also many points where the red met the black. There was also something else that struck Michelangelo as strange. Each push-pin had a date tag attached to it. Since about two weeks ago, the red and white strings had been traveling side by side, and though each occasionally deviated, most of the time those two went together. It was odd. Mikey assumed that the red was Raph. The black was presumably the Foot and the white...the white threw him off. What the shell did the white mean?

His eyes narrowed as a cloud of suspicion hung over him. Something strange was going on. Mickey traced the white yarn back from last point on the map. Ever so slowly, he worked backwards, noting every instance when the two strings parted. Funny, when they did separate they usually went in opposite directions.

Moving even further back, to a point about two weeks ago, Mikey found the origin point of the white string. It was a narrow old alley in a bad part of town. Coincidentally, or perhaps it was not a coincidence, the white push-pin that the white string was tied around, had the red string looped around it as well. Something about this whole thing made Michelangelo uneasy. The idea that his brother had been working with someone he'd met on the street...left him not really knowing  what to think.

The orange-masked turtle glanced at the clock. Aw shell! It was almost time for dinner! If he got caught, or if one of his brothers started looking for him, he could end up in trouble. Mikey decided he wouldn't tell any of them about this. Not until he'd given Raphael a chance to explain himself. He left as silently as he had come, closing the door tightly behind him.
—————————

It was getting late and still no sign of Shredder. Raphael and Casey were able to easily locate Karai and her men and had been following the Foot for about an hour. So far they hadn't been spotted. If they were patient the little ants would lead them back to the nest and straight to their leader. Raph looked back over his shoulder to the human who stood slightly behind him. "How're you holding up?"

Casey groaned. "Well if they make us run much further, I'll be too fucking tired to fight." The human raised an eyebrow inquiringly, "Aren't you tired?"

"Mutant." Raph stated, curtly.

Jones apparently wanted more explanation than that because he grumbled something about mutants and their strange abilities.