"Donnie! Ergh! –Hey Leo!" Raph opened Donnie's bedroom door further, gazing at his brother with exhaustion. Leo paused, letting a few seconds' trickle before he turned around to face Raph with a deep breath. He wasn't in the spirit for another round of fighting

"Bro, can you put this chemical in Donnie's lab? Brainiac here almost dropped it on himself while trying to reach it." Leo reached for the substance as Raph handed it to him. His head turning to meet Donnie laughing. It was all bubbly and innocent, like a toddler laugh. Donnie rarely laughed when he was... normal. Seeing him laugh was almost alien to him. Donnie chuckled, a lot, but laughing really wasn't his thing. They were too busy to even laugh with the situation they have at hand...

A smile spread across the hothead's face; "thanks." He declared bluntly, and Leo turned to look at Raph with a firm nod. The turtle in red got up from the bed and shut the door close to have some privacy with his wounded brother.

Leo shot him a smile, sulking with the compound on his hand. He steered away from his brother's room and went to the close labs. He shuddered, the usual opened and use lab was vacant and abandoned.

Leo opened the laboratory door in haste, the test tube of mysterious pink, dissolved substance held in his fingers. He was cautious as to keep Donnie's strange concoction away from his reptilian skin. He pushed the large barricaded doors in front of him. Skin on steel — pride on guilt — there had never been an emptier feeling. As the door reeled away from his darkened green fingertips, the dull and darkened atmosphere surrounded him.

He squinted his eyes slightly to make out the figure of his surroundings. Ever since the incident, Donnie's mechanical haven has been lay a waste with its abandonment. With its caretaker and inventor out of commission, its once lively machines now wasted on the concrete flooring, rust starting to form on their silver lined edges. The chemicals which once bubbled with Donnie's scientific pride and achievement now lay dead and dull in their containers.

The surgery had left the lab into a permanent ruin. Leo could only feel as empty as the abandoned lab he had entered. His tired eyes were colored as dull as the broken machine parts that were scattered on the floor.

The leader entered, careful not to step on anything that may have been left behind by his brothers. A cold shiver crawled sinisterly up his spine and course through every patterned edge of his shell.

He looked around, eyes scanning for a place to set the test tubes so that Donnie couldn't set hand on them. In his findings, he ran into what appeared to be notes — blueprints and notations that made no sense to anyone other than Donnie.

In his curiosity, he tried to decode the variables and terms that Donnie had scribbled on the line paper but to no avail. Each set of notes had a date, time and its own data to present to keep track of the terrapin scientist's work.

A number equation with variables he couldn't comprehend and some odd but very detailed drawings of the brain worm later, he found something that peaked his interest; Donnie's journal entries.

They seemed to be in a diary like format by the way they were all written with dates that were only recent, all starting from the day Karai was horribly disfigured and mutated.
Leo sighed to himself, rubbing his eyes from tiredness as he scattered for the earliest of records.

11/ 03 / 15; 10:02 PM

We had her. Leo and Splinter were finally happy. And now I have to find a brand new retro mutagen that matches the chemical formula of the concoction that Professor Stinkman used in his batch. (Actually, he barely had any credibility to begin with so I don't know is he deserves to be affiliated with the "Professor" title. But, then again, it's just a sarcastic remark so I guess it makes no difference and I'm babbling again... Man I've been awake for far too long.)

It's bad enough seeing Master Splinter miserable with her daughter taken from him again but Leo isn't helping me with this either. I already feel guilty for her mutation and I don't know why. There was nothing I could do to subvert the inevitability of her mutation and it was Shredder who cut the chain to her cage anyways. I don't get it. Why am I getting like this? Doesn't matter anyways... I need to work on this cure for Karai and I need to do it quick before Leo's constant nagging drives me to the brink of insanity...

In dispute, Leo flipped to a few pages. He watched as he did that the small diary was filled with notes about chemicals, and there was small, but capitalize "FAIL" on some of the calculations. Stopping to a page with a chunk of paragraphs, Leo's heart skipped a beat as he read on.

11/18/15; 3:02 AM

'Failure— just another failure. I've had some shit luck with some of my experiments before but none this... awful! At this rate, I'll never find this cure for Karai— especially under this pressure. I don't even like Karai all that much and I certainly don't want to spend this much of my time and effort to heal her of her mutation but, with Splinter and the rest of the guys counting on me and with all of Leo's insanely provocative silent treatment, this cure is literally driving me crazy. I know he's mad but he just won't talk to me.

Sure, Leo and I never really got along sometimes, in fact he doesn't really pay much attention to me unless he needs something built or fixed since he spends so much time on Raph's case, but he never had anything against me— at least not until now. Maybe he hates I don't know. This is frustrating. Karai's mutation is oddly unique. Without proper blood samples of any indication on the chemical concoction added to the mutation, this is going to be far more difficult than I initially hoped.

I started going to the Periodic Table to search if any elements shared the same effects when combined with the mutagenic formula I've created in the past but there's virtually nothing about Karai's mutation that could indicate to a specific element. Whatever chemicals Baxter put in the mutagen had to have come from Earth unless they have access to some sort of rare alien metal I don't know about. I can disqualify all the basic liquids and gasses like Helium, Hydrogen, Oxygen and Boron. But it's hard to eliminate some elements from here... I'm taking my research into the Rare-Earth Metals for the answer but there's no guarantee that I'll even have the correct formula. I'm going to run some tests now... hopefully, they'll give me some sort of progress.'

11/20/15; 12:03 AM

I fought with Leo again.

Leo found himself flipping over the same page continually. Everything else on that page is more technical stuff he didn't understood or could pronounce it at all. He wasn't as interested with the huge terms as he was with Donnie's personal responses.

He gazed at the short response one more time before impulsively going to the final sheet; the last piece Donnie recorded before his capture.

12/01/15; 5:27 AM

'Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure. Failure. Damn it... Why can't I perfect this cure? Why can't I do this one little thing for Splinter and Leo? I'm such an IDIOT. I've been working on this cure for weeks and NOTHING. There's no one to turn to for help since no one studies the mutagen like I do and, if I can't do it then who can? This is turning out to be a disaster the more I work and I'm fully aware that the stress and frustration is terrible for my own health — mentally and physically. But I can't give up now — not with Leo on my back and clinging on like Shredder clings to his vendetta over Splinter... okay bad analogy but Leo's making this job at least 1.89 hundred times more stressful than it needs to be.

He's BEYOND angry with me through no fault of my own and he does absolutely nothing to help me with this cure that he wants too much. We've already had a fight — and an ugly one at that — and his little "try harder" statements aren't exactly helping... I can't concentrate on anything and I've been up for far too long, not even coffee can bring me energy to train and fight the Shredder or the Kraang the day after. I don't even want to think of those two right now. All I know is is that I've been trying way too hard to find this cure — harder than Leo train, if that's possible. He obviously doesn't understand the kind of pressure I'm under but I at the least expect him to empathize since HE himself is pressured every single day of his life to NOT fail as a leader.

I don't know if that makes the situation better or if it just makes Leo a huge hypocrite and a bigger pain in the shell — I'm leaning more towards the latter. I'm such a useless brother but I've poured so much of myself into this — I'm NOT going to give up now. Mark my words, I'll finish this cure no matter what. I'll make Sensei happy, I'll finally relieve the tension in my family, I'll have a sister again and I'm going to make Leo happy again... Just wait. I'm going to make Leo proud if it's the last thing I do.'

It was the second time today that left Leo's mouth agape. Not plainly did he overlook his brother, but he lashed out at him. It wasn't him at all, and he acknowledged it was becoming an issue. His own little brother was taken into his own rage for Karai that he didn't understand how serious he was hurting him… where he should be helping him instead.

Mike will not ever allow him near Donnie for his impulsive actions.

The book fell with a 'thud' by his feet, but Leo doesn't pick it up. He leaves the lab in a flurry. He must make up to Donnie, somehow…