Lost in the Fight

Chapter 3 - Don in the Dumpster

Mikey had had enough.

"Dudes! Donnie's gone!" Mikey shouted with a commanding voice that did not sound at all like his own.

At long last, someone had gotten through to the feuding turtles.

Mikey didn't much like that he had had to resort to yelling in order to snap his two oldest brothers out of it, but at least something had finally worked. He was thankful for that.

Suddenly no longer possessed by sheer rage, Leo and Raph untangled their weapons and backed away from one another, shaking off the adrenaline and hostility that hung thick in the air. Anger still smoldered in their eyes, but they were no longer fixated on beating one another to a pulp. Their heads were starting clear and the world around them was coming back into focus.

Slowly, the turtles in blue and red turned towards their youngest brother and they could see that he was clearly upset with them. His face was all scrunched up in frustration and he looked as though he was about to start chewing them out when a shrill voice stopped him cold.

At long last, they all heard Donnie, but not until it was too late . . .

The genius turtle screamed out in horror, and then, there was an awful thump sound and the screaming came to an abrupt end. After that, everything went eerily silent.

They exchanged terrified glances for a moment before rushing in the direction that the scream had come from.

"Donnie!" Mikey shrieked, looking over the ledge of the building where he had last seen his brainy big brother. "Dudes, it's totally dark down there! I can't see anything! Donnie! Bro, where are you?"

Mikey was practically hyperventilating as he searched for his brother from above.

Although his own chest was tight with panic, Leo tried to take a much calmer approach to the situation than Mikey had. The oldest turtle liked to think that his ability to stay calm under pressure was one of the main reasons that his father had chosen him to be the leader of the team, but sometimes, he still worried that Master Splinter had only selected him because he had simply asked first . . .

Leonardo whipped out his T-phone and switched on the flashlight app that Donnie had downloaded onto all of their mobile devices. Thanks to his tech savvy little brother, the T-phones served as a much more powerful and useful flashlight than the average cell phone did. Leo's phone was bright enough to reveal that there was something down there, but it wasn't moving.

"Donnie!" Raph hollered with such force that he nearly blew his voice out in the process, and then, he was off and running. Always the most impulsive one of the brothers, Raph started to bolt down the fire escape without exercising an ounce of caution, leaping down entire flights of stairs, hopping from platform to platform.

Leo and Mikey followed closely behind their hotheaded brother, struggling to keep up with the manic and perilous pace that Raph had set. Then, that pace came to a screeching halt on a platform four stories from the ground.

His temperamental brother's sudden stop made Leo's already nervous stomach tie itself into the tightest of knots. He watched on in dread as his red-clad brother's shoulders started to shake and his hands clenched into rigid fists at his sides. It was a sure sign that Raph was fighting to keep his emotions under control.

With newfound speed, Leo made his way down to the platform that his immediate younger brother was standing on.

A second later, Mikey was right behind his oldest brother, looking over his shoulder.

It only took a split-second for the leader in blue and the youngest in orange to spot what had stopped Raph's momentum.

There, on the platform, was Donnie's abandoned bo-staff.