Molly and the Boys - 5

        Leonardo paced uneasily, halfway between Donatello’s lab and the door to the swimming pool. Under his strict orders, Michelangelo and Raphael had retreated so as to keep from overwhelming Molly. With no other spectacle to play audience to, they had followed their nerdier brother into his element and were watching him arrange a set of slides by a microscope. “So,” Mikey tested. “She’s gonna be like, a turtle-ette now, or what?”
        “It’s too early to tell,” Donatello replied through a set of clenched teeth. He hooked his laptop up to the microscope and created a feed-screen to enlarge the visual on each sample and display it for his brothers. “This could just be a temporary side-effect, or an incomplete one. We have absolutely no way of knowing.”
        “Dude, whatever,” Raphael scoffed. “I can tell you already know what it is, so spill! You said you had a theory!”
        Donatello let out a tart breath and stopped what he was doing to turn and look head-on at his audience. "This isn't helping me go faster, you know."
        Raphael rolled his eyes. "Just figure it out," Leonardo commanded sharply as he paced. "As quick as you can! Please." His brother flinched and slid the first glass frame under the lens. He adjusted the image on the computer screen until it was clear: bright red, round—
        “Fuzzy tomato bagels?” Michelangelo guessed.
        Donatello rolled his eyes. “Human blood cells,” he growled. He clicked a key to save the image, then switched the slide out of the microscope for another one. These cells were much more ovular, with almost clear outsides and a purple center.
        “Creepy ghost grapes!”
        “Un-mutated turtle cells.” He loaded the last slide, which had a few scattered turtle cells, but mostly bore a swarm of crimson ovals that contained tinted purple nuclei. A mergence between the species. “And these… are ours.”
        “How come some of those look different from each other?”
          “They ain’t all mutated,” Raphael muttered to Mikey. “…I think.”
        “Top of the class,” Donatello admitted, eyeing his red-masked brother with a hint of pride.
          “But why not?”
          “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Donatello explained as his mouth went into rapid-fire mode. “When we first came in contact with the ooze, the cells it touched formed these reddish hybrids. But not all our cells were affected, like you said. So, I’ve had two theories for a while. Since our cells aren’t all identical, at first I thought maybe the mutigen had reached some sort of peak in our bodies, and then just stopped working, and left us with a mixture of altered and unaltered cells. Under this theory — I call it the Limited Mutation Theory, not all of our bodies were mutated to their full potential. In layman’s terms, we’ve only been partially-mutated this whole time!”
        Raphael shifted uneasily and crossed his arms. “Whaddo you mean, partially-mutated? You mean we mighta looked more human than this or somethin’? What sorta messed-up theory is that?”
        “It- it’s a wrong, theory, Raph,” Donatello assured him. “At least, I think it is.” The edges of his mask furrowed in concentration. “Because even though we do have a small number of un-mutated cells left… under that theory, Molly’s cells would be safe from ours. She might have been given mutant blood cells that would multiply in her system, but they would always be blood cells. And only blood cells. Which wouldn’t alter her appearance at all.
        “But if her bodily homeostasis is being affected — not just affected, changed — by this transfusion, that means that the mutigen in our bodies is still active.” Donatello shook his head in amazement and glanced at his brothers, hoping they understood the incredible medical marvel he had revealed. “After all these years. It’s still passing between the cells in our bodies, and genetically re-writing them to keep us the way we are.”
        “Whoa,” Mikey sighed — though it looked as if he hadn’t been able to process half of the lecture.
        Leonardo gave the pool door a mournful glance before turning to enter the laboratory completely, clutching his temple. “Wait, wait just a second… if the mutigen warps a cell’s DNA to… I dunno, humanize it, or whatever… then why is Molly turning into… into—”
        “Into a turtle?” Raphael completed for him, almost smug at the fact that his ‘perfect’ brother had caused this catastrophe. Leonardo glared at him, and for a tense moment they were nearly nose-to-nose.
        “I thought of that, too,” Donatello broke in quickly. “Because you’re right — why wouldn’t the mutigen just… enforce her humanity as it is? But then I realized that it wasn’t just ooze inside her: there was also turtle DNA. So somehow, the mutigen must be exchanging or mixing her DNA with ours.
        “And then I had it! The ooze, in its original form, does enter a cell and mutate it to become slightly humanoid. But then it travels to other cells, not as a contaminate substance but as a virus: it implants a copy of the DNA from the first mutated cell into all the others! Only pure, un-diluted ooze actually mutates genes: once it’s active in a living creature, the process is all about genetic transfer, from one cell to the next.
        “That’s why Molly’s genes are slowly being over-written by our own. The active mutigen is spreading turtle DNA through her body like a virus. And since she lost so much blood to bruising and to her bullet-wound, her veins were probably 50% full of mutations before I even finished her surgery!”
        Donatello finally stopped to take a deep breath. Leonardo was staring at his lab results in disbelief, while Raphael and Michelangelo looked increasingly unsure about the meaning of the oration. “Lemme get this straight,” Raph growled. “We tell ya Molly’s turning into a turtle, you do a bunch of sciency crap, and then you come up with a freakin’ Harvard lecture… that basically means, ‘Yep! Science proves she’s turning into a turtle!’ Good ol’ Captain Obvious, what would we do without’cha?”
        “But don’t you see? Now we know it’s because of the mutigen!”
        “Ya think!? We’re mutants, she’s mutating, what’s so hard to connect about those dots? Geez, talk about a waste o’time, I coulda beat my high score on Mario Brothers…”
        “You mean,” Mikey strained withe of a scratch of his head. “Molly’s infected with turtle-ooze?”
        Donatello rubbed his eyes and shook his head in shame, but then shrugged. “Yes. Yes, she is infected with turtle ooze. It magically takes a copy of mutant turtle everywhere it goes, and changes everything it touches into a mutant turtle!”
        Michelangelo’s eyes grew wide as saucers. “Far out,” he sighed dreamily… then he sat bolt upright. “Can we find some more animals to mutate!?”
        “No!” his brothers roared back.