A few months ago, T-M-N-T time-scale, there WERE four brothers living in the Lair. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michaelangelo. It was one of the rare moments where the four Turtles had the Lair all to themselves. Michaelangelo was drawing a comic, Donatello was upgrading a robot named Metalhead, and Leonardo was spotting Raphael as he was doing some bench-pressing with New York City manholes as weights. “Hey, Raph,” said Leonardo.
“What?” grunted Raphael.
“What’s a barista’s favorite exercise?” asked Leonardo.
“…If the answer’s French Press, do NOT tell Kappa Joe that!” warned Raphael. “You know he’s still trying to get over his breakup with his barista boyfriend.”
“Dude, why do you think I’m telling YOU that joke? I don’t wanna put up with a moody Kappa Joe!”
“…Probably a good thing, because it’s sad that I have to-.” The alarms then started blaring. Leonardo helped Raphael return the weight bar back to its rest position.
“Donnie?” asked Leonardo as they and Michaelangelo approached their brother as he sat down at the computer.
“Looks like we got an intruder here,” replied Donatello.
“What?! Where?!” asked Raphael.
“I can’t tell. It’s concealed.”
“Dude, another ninja?!” gulped Michaelangelo.
“Wait, something’s going-!” Donatello’s computer blacked out. “No! NO! Our computer systems! They’re offline!”
“Let’s get out of here!” said Leonardo. “I don’t want to stay here without those emergency protocols you cooked up! Mikey, get the door!” Michaelangelo nodded and put his hands on the door and…tried to open it.
“…Um, dudes!” he called. “I think there’s a problem in the ol’ escape plan!”
“Please do not tell me you’re pushing on it,” groaned Raphael.
“Guys, the door won’t open!” Michaelangelo WAS pulling on it. “And it’s unlocked!” Raphael tried the door, but to no avail.
“…Donnie, pool! I’m the cue-ball!” he called.
“Got it!” replied Donatello. Raphael retreated into his shell and red lightning spouted from his shell holes. Donatello then twirled his bo as purple lightning sparked from both ends. He then jabbed one end into Raphael’s shell and sent him flying across the floor like a pool ball. Raphael then struck the door and created an explosion…then was sent flying back to his brothers, crashing into them all. The smoke cleared and the door was unscathed.
“…Crap!” swore Leonardo as he and his brothers picked themselves up. “The protection spells Kappa Joe set up!”
“Dang it! I forgot!” complained Raphael.
“It was a good shot anyways,” said Leonardo.
“Then we’ll get an axe and chop it down,” suggested Michaelangelo.
“Won’t work,” replied Leonardo. “The spell works on normal attacks too.” He then snapped his fingers. “Donnie! The upgrade you and Mortu made to the T-Phones! You said that if you hit the button three times, it will open an emergency portal!”
“Unfortunately,” reported Donatello with a wince on his face, “the exit point of that portal leads to my lab. It won’t help our current situation.”
“Well, then we try and call our friends!” suggested Raphael.
“Not possible,” replied Leonardo. “The computer’s systems are tied to our T-Phones’ actual phone functions. Without it, we can’t call anyone.”
“Dudes, let me see if I’m reading the situation right,” said Michaelangelo. “We’re stuck in the Lair, we’ve got no way of booking it outta here, no way of calling for help, and there’s some…THING in here with us!”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” confirmed Leonardo. He then drew his katanas. “Arm yourselves, guys.”
A few hours later, Leonardo checked in with his brothers. “Any luck?” he asked Donatello. The poor tech Turtle ran his three-fingered hand down his face as he set down what he was working on.
“Unfortunately, no,” he said. “It’s not a question of if it’s possible for me to link several communications devices together. I can do that in my sleep. But I keep running into the same problem; there just isn’t enough power to reach out to our friends and family.”
“And that’s assuming that whatever’s happening isn’t blocking the communications channels,” sighed Leonardo. “After all, April helped you in making half the tech here, whatever backdoor she made should have alerted her about all this going down.”
“That’s my theory too,” said Donatello.
“How’s things going in getting the protection spells down on your end, Leo?” asked Michaelangelo. “I’m hitting a wall here.”
“Sadly, you and I likely have the same problem,” replied Leonardo. “We only know how to cast it, but not how to take it down.”
“I tried taking the hinges off,” said Raphael. “Thought we needed to think about a simple solution, but no dice. The screws wouldn’t budge. I think I stripped them too.”
“It was an idea worth trying, Raph,” soothed Leonardo. He looked back at Donatello. “What about the main computer?” he asked. “Didn’t you say you had something to bring it back online?”
“I tried for two hours before giving up on it,” answered Donatello. “The main relays are just too badly damaged to bypass.”
“Yeah, I bet you’re working REAL hard on fixing it,” muttered Raphael. “I mean, you’ve been a big help so far.”
“…And that means what, pray tell?” asked Donatello.
“Oh, nothing,” grunted Raphael. “But I ain’t the tech boy and I never really learned much about Leo and Mikey’s mystic mojo, so I had a lotta time to stand around and think for a while! I just find it funny that the guy that’s supposed to have a way with machines seems pretty crappy at his job, hobby, whatever!”
“Kindly elaborate on that statement!” snapped Donatello.
“You were the one that told Leo to go on a wild goose chase when his mystic power went haywire despite Pops saying that’s a bad idea! You started working on a weapon for him, but you never got it to work right! And it was your crappy communicator that went kaput when we needed to call him! For someone who’s supposed to be a scientific teen prodigy, you don’t do much around here but screw up!”
“There’s always a margin for error in science, you musclebound meathead!”
“Not to mention that, ever since Utrom Shredder was found guilty and exiled to the coldest parts of space, YOU haven’t had any incentive to help us anymore!”
“Raph,” interjected Leonardo, “Donnie’s had a close eye on him since Ch’Rell was finally brought to justice. And even then, we still have Bishop to help should Donnie go crazy again.”
“Yeah, Bishop was watching him,” replied Raphael, “until all our systems got switched off! He’s been alone in the Lair lots of times! He could have screwed around with the circuits at any time!” Raphael then got an idea. “…Assuming, of course…” he then drew his sai, “he’s who he says he is, at least mentally!”
“What the hell are you talking about?!” protested Donatello.
“It happened with the idiot last year!” replied Raphael as he pointed his thumb at Michaelangelo. “Cyber-Shredder possessed him and it wasn’t that doofus at the controls!”
“…I’m not an idiot!” hissed Michaelangelo.
“Maybe Saki was right and Cyber-Shredder DIDN’T die in the idiot!” continued Raphael as he got into a combat stance. “Maybe he just jumped ship!”
“I’M NOT AN IDIOT!” shouted Michaelangelo.
“Raph, stop!” protested Leonardo. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“I am NOT an idiot, Raphael!” snarled Michaelangelo. “And you’re not half as smart as you think you are!”
“He’s right!” agreed Donatello. “For someone who throws around words like ‘idiot’, YOU haven’t been particularly helpful to the cause! All you do is wave your sai around!” He then recalled something. “…In fact, when this all started, those salad tongs were the first thing you went for instead of a key!”
“SALAD TONGS?!” roared Raphael.
“WILL ALL OF YOU COOL IT?!” shouted Leonardo.
“You gonna listen to Donnie?!” protested Raphael. “He could be tricking us! He could be Cyber-Shredder! He could be a shape-shifter mutant under his control!”
“Dudes, Cyber-Shredder is dead! He’s, like, FRIED!” insisted Michaelangelo.
“Oh yeah?!” growled Raphael. “And you’d be the expert, wouldn’t you?! You know, maybe Cyber-Shredder DIDN’T jump ship! Maybe we should be looking at the guy who WAS possessed last year and almost killed us all!”
“You leave the Lair all the time to go on ‘patrol’ with the Mad Dogz!” snapped Michaelangelo. “And, yeah, I bet street gangs are real popular since NINJAS still got like six decades on them!”
“Do you even listen to the crap coming out of your beak?!”
“Better than the crap coming out of YOUR beak, Raphael!” Michaelangelo then got into his own combat stance with a nunchaku in his hands. “Assuming that’s who YOU are!”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere!” snapped Leonardo. “We have to work toge-!”
“AND YOU!” shouted Raphael as he pointed at Leonardo. “You left us alone for three months with that psycho, Slash, and he almost killed us! Did you even think about switching off his combat program?!”
“There WAS a way to make him docile!” snapped Leonardo. “You could have turned him off at any time!”
“Yeah, right! …Or maybe YOU’RE not who you say you are!”
“What kind of weed are you smoking?!”
“The remote for Slash’s cybernetics vanished after you got back!”
“An intruder got inside and took it! Master Splinter didn’t feel anything that night and Metalhead never identified who it was! Even then, Slash wasn’t switched on in the Lair!”
“Yeah, somebody got in! But you’ll recall that the intruder alarms didn’t start blaring when he got in! Maybe somebody LET him in!”
“I should be accusing all the rest of you!” Leonardo was addressing everyone now. “After all, I was gone for three months, any one of you could have let that intruder in here!”
“And that’s assuming you came back at all!” snarled Raphael.
“WHAT?!” protested Leonardo.
“We couldn’t contact Leonardo during those three months! Maybe he never made it home! Maybe you’re something else entirely!”
“And yet, YOU’RE the one flinging accusations against everyone else left, right, and center, Raphael! Michaelangelo’s right! You DO leave the Lair for days at a time without a word of explanation!”
“And YOU’RE the one trying to pit us all against each other!” interjected Donatello.
“But he DOES have a point, Donatello!” snapped Leonardo. “YOU have been remarkably unhelpful! You know, maybe I should outsource the science support!” By then, it was a four-way shouting match between the Turtles.