Demon in the Sewers 5

Raphael raced the rooftops, too grim to smile at the feel of the wind and open sky.  Still the wind felt good and the open air much better than the heavy closeness of the new lair. Raphael hadn't realized how the feel in the new lair always held stiffness and tightened the cords of his muscles. His leaps grew as the night lengthened and the bottles around him grew heavier.

Back in the Lair, Splinter held himself in deep meditation. Out at the edges of his other senses, a dark flicker occurred and danced away as he tuned his awareness to it. The thing left obvious markers and although lost to his awareness, the old rat turned his attention to the new home around him. These new traces were easily followed and tracked across the lair in multiple alarming tracks, fewer in the upper levels but, also present there. Another flicker occurred on the first level and Splinter bought his awareness to his body with a gasp. Standing up, he dashed from the room, past a startled Leonardo who resheathed his sword and hurriedly followed him.

Ignoring his eldest's cry, Splinter held up a hand for silence and quietly entered Donatello's abode, the smell and energy emanations of his son's machines made the traces here more difficult to find.

"We may be able to rely on close approximations of herbs needed but, I'm not sure if that will affect things when we start fighting with the smoke involved. Perhaps storing the smoke to make it aimable..." Donatello's murmured voice cut off as he picked up his mug and took a sip, giving a surprised grimace. "Ew, Raph? Did the walnut hazelnut get soaked in that flooding? This coffee is horrible."

Splinter's eyes sharpened as Donatello gave a regretful shake of his head and put the mug down next to the invisible traces Splinter had followed. His nose twitched as he stealthily leaned in to sniff the coffee, eyes flicking to Leonardo as he quietly whispered, "Two sterile containers from the medbay, now."

To his credit, Donatello looked up at the quiet whisper, "Dad? What is it?" His eyes betrayed his sudden unease at the rat hovering over his coffee. "Yeah, Raph. Splinter's in the room, uh, checking on me. Continue the mission." He hit two keys on the keyboard and a red 'x' appeared on a speaker symbol in the corner of the computer screen. He stilled into battle readiness, fingers poised on the headset as Leonardo handed their Sensei two open basins that equipped his medical supplies.

"The only thing that came to my awareness stopped here. Next to where I presume you have been keeping your mug?" Donatello nodded as his eyes widened and his tongue made an appearance as he licked the roof of his suddenly dry mouth. "I see..." Splinter turned on a small bench lamp and pointed it into the larger basin. Without another word, Splinter took the mug and slowly poured the contents into the wider basin. The thin layer of coffee soon gave way to a collection of milky clots, dropping into the thin layer of coffee with small splashes, the bottom clot breaking into wiggly unwanteds.

Donatello exploded into action, whipping off the headset and yanking the other basin from Splinter's limp grasp to curl over the container a small distance away in dry heaves that eventually produced results. Leonardo simply pushed the basin further from the light of the computer screen and gingerly settled into the chair still warm from his brother's shell. At Splinter's pointing out of the two keys Donatello had hit, Leo removed his swords to sit back in the chair, swallowed dryly, and adjusted the headset. Triggering the headset, Leonardo winced at Raphael's urgent voice and quietly announced himself.

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Raphael's head whipped around, eyes visualizing the far away Lair. "Leo? What the shell are you doing on? Where's Pop?" Not the most stealthy level of tones in a Roman Catholic Church ever produced after dark. Raphael belatedly lowered his voice as he hissed his concerns into the darkness. "What the shell is that racket in the background, Leo? And where's Donnie?" Raphael felt his brow furrow into a scowl as the reply came to him.

"We, uh, relieved him of duty to let him deal with--" the sound of intense vomiting became obvious and clear as Leo paused in the touchy subject.  "Well, we know that our enemy can spread rot and infestation with it's presence." The soft tone of sympathy, all Leo in the darkness of the alcove around Raphael.

"Dammit, always teased him about his addiction to that swill." Raphael winced as the mic picked up too many details and even Splinter's voice soothing his smartest brother in his distress.  Not all that surprising, now that he understood what the background noise meant and Leo's softly nauseated tone. "I'm nowhere near done, Leo. Do I need to head home?" He instinctively leaned to hear Leo over the background noises.

"No," that came through clearly, although the mic must be set too far from Leo's mouth to bring his voice up to cover the coughing in the background. "We need to set protections around the Lair. This thing can go anywhere without bringing attention to itself. It rotted the milk right IN Donnie's coffee. You know he pours it here." A soft tenor of anticipated violence tinged Leo's voice, and Raphael grinned.

"We'll get it. Nothing gets to touch Donnie's coffee and get away with it. Just ain't done. Right?" He clearly heard Splinter's voice call his older brother. "I got this. Go help with Donnie, then check Mikey, okay?" He heard a snort and acceptance before the jiggled static of the headset being removed cut off mid-noise. "And then there were two..." Sighing softly, Raphael heard a light fabric rustle and turned swiftly to put eyes on the noise.

A small moccasin pulled back into shadows and reunited with a dark bulk with bright eyes. "Aw, shit." The intensely guilty comment just slipped out. Raphael felt truly happy Leonardo wasn't on the mic anymore as the turtle realized he had just been revealed to none other than a nun. "Um, hey, just here raiding the Holy Water for some weird az-ah, stuff at home. I know I look weird..." His voice trailed off as the woman stepped into a beam of light, revealing an obvious bump held by a protective grasp and his eyes widened just as round.

A soft voice murmured into the darkness around them, "Madre de Dios, it's true."

Demon in the Sewers 6/17