The first thing Raphael realised was that he was in pain, there was something warm and heavy against his side and his head was spinning. He could feel the ground vibrating beneath him.
Slowly opening his eyes, his vision was filled with bright lights and grey steel. He’d never been inside a van before, but he’d seen this type of thing on television: he’d been kidnapped.
Blinking away the spots in his eyes, he started looking around.
The back of the van was separated from the front; a dark window, fitted into the metal hid the driver from view. Raph forced himself to look away from a red stain on the wall.
He tried to stand, only to stumble back to the floor, the weight on his side slipping into his lap.
Raphael looked down to see the still form of his younger brother, face down on top of his plastron.
“Donnie?” When he didn’t get an answer he quickly turned the younger turtle around to face him.
“Donatello?” His brother didn’t show any response. Raph let out a sigh of relief as he saw the slow rise and fall of his brother's plastron.
Suddenly the van screeched to a halt, sending him backwards into the wall with a bang. Raph froze as two raised voices were heard behind the window.
“Nice driving, Penn! You better hope you didn't damage the merchandise.” A harsh Japanese accent.
“Chill out. S’not like they can’t take a few bruises.”
“You better hope that the customer agrees with you.”
Raph took hold of Donnie’s shell and started shaking him gently.
“Donnie. Donnie, you gotta wake up now.” He whispered, too afraid of talking too loud now that he knew their kidnappers were walking around the van.
The door to the van had bounced open slightly, and two shadows passed by the ray of light.
Donnie groaned quietly but didn’t wake up; instead he just curled into himself tighter. Raph shot a fearful look at the door, but their captors were deep in conversation with a third voice.
As quietly as he could, he dragged his brother into the corner of the van, standing protectively in front of him. It was his fault they were in this mess, and he was going to use the little martial arts that he knew to defend his brother.
“So, you get a test subject, Bishop, and I get a pet.” The Japanese voice filtered through the van as three shadows appeared back in the light.
“You sure you want one of these Kaito ?” The second voice asked uncertainly.
“Why not, I promised my nephew a pet for his birthday.” The Japanese voice sounded like it was smirking. “And how hard can it be to look after a turtle?”
Raph’s head hurt as he tried to take in all this information. He and Donnie were about to be sold; one of them was going to be a pet, and the other was going to be a test subject.
Raph didn’t like the sound of a test subject; he’d seen enough clips from old sci-fi films to know that that was a bad thing.
The metal door was pushed upwards, revealing the three men behind it. The Japanese man 'Kaito' who had been driving was studying them carefully, and the other from the van just looked amused as he saw that Raph was awake. The third, which Raph assumed to be the buyer looking for a test subject looked completely out of place. He was wearing a dark suit and tie with glasses, his jet black hair slicked back with a wire trailing into his suite from a small device in his ear.
“Looks like we got a fighter.” The second voice 'Penn' laughed. “Haven’t had one of them for a while... The smaller one's still out though.”
Kaito muttered something under his breath before heading into the van, towards the growling emerald green turtle, who stood up to his full height trying and failing to look threatening.
Raph stood his ground for a while before suddenly rushing the human, aiming to knock him back out of the van. The man easily dodged the young turtle, and unable to change tactic in time Raph had to turn in mid air so that he hit the side of the van with his shell instead of his face.
Before the man could grab him though he managed to get to his feet and slide between the guys legs towards the opening of the van and the two man stood there waiting for him.
Donnie was starting to come too from the sedatives they had been given to keep them unconscious until the sale was over, obviously the humans hadn't taken into account that turtles aren't as susceptible to most drugs as other species. The smaller olive turtle just looked confused until his eyes widened with hazy realisation.
While Raph was occupied with Kaito, Penn sighed and turned to the the other human. “I'll get the other one for you, we'll deal with this one ourselves.”
Suddenly the emerald turtle realised that he was going to have to make a choice, there was no way they were both going to get out and he wasn't going to leave Donnie behind.
The Japanese man managed to grab Raph while he was distracted and suddenly Raph started to panic even more. This man just wanted a pet, but from what Raph could guess about being a test subject, it sounded a hell of a lot worse.
“Run Donnie!” Raph shouted as the other guy climbed into the van to approach his brother, but the olive turtle was still shaking off the last of his drugged haze and was too slow to move away.
Suddenly biting at Kaito's arm Raph managed to get the man to drop him before darting toward the door, hoping to tackle the man or get caught himself. If one of them had to be test subject than he'd make sure it was him and spare Donnie from that.
The situation was taken out of his hands when suddenly there was a flash of blank and the man in the suit had him pinned to his chest, preventing him from moving before securing his wrists with handcuffs to stop him from fighting further. “This one will be fine. It's a pleasure doing business with you.” Bishop spoke for the first time as he took Raph to his blank car to go on his way.
Donnie had snapped out of his daze too late to do anything but shout after his brother, crying as he tried to struggle out of arms that had already grabbed him and was holding him tight while they prepared another syringe of sedative.
Both brothers could only watch as they were taken away from each other, getting drowsy as the drugs kicked in and everything thing faded to black.
