Untold Tales of the TMNT: Biohazard

Here's another:

Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Story Proposal

“BIOHAZARD”

Quick notes:
The aim of this story, at its core, is to shed some light on the nature of the chemical compound that mutated the turtles into what they are today. I’m going to be reaching right back to the early days of the comics in this one, but also keeping it fresh and in line with the more urban, street level stories currently being told in Tales.
This story again features Hun, along with criminal “ally” King Cobra as the masterminds of this piece, but the core antagonist is something not yet seen in the comics (or the cartoons… at least, not as horrifyingly as I envision here!). Over the course of this tragic story, we will gradually learn more and more about the nature of the mutation the Turtles underwent, and the substance that changed them. It’s a horror-action story, with a touch romance and a twist of intrigue…

We open to find that Hun has been sending Purple Dragons into the sewers in search of the Turtles’ old lairs, based on information he recently received from “The Network” (I’ve included The Network in another story, but obviously this is something we would need to discuss the presence of. The alternative in this situation would be Lin, the Shredder loyalist who freed Hun in the first place)

Until recently, they were unable to turn anything up, but as we learn in the opening sequence, the Purple Dragons have discovered the Turtles’ original lair.
Devastated by the initial wave of Mouser attacks, and further rocked by all that has happened to the city over the past few years, the Dragons fear they won’t find anything of use in the caved in abode. That’s until one of them finds a locked, beaten box containing the remains of the T.C.R.I. canister that transformed the Turtles and their master years before.

King Cobra recognizes the T.C.R.I. initials from the news coverage of the bizarre incident that took place when the Turtles returned from D’hoonib, and is intrigued by the connection between the company and the Turtles. He demands the canister be analyzed, and this is essentially where our story really takes off.
After having crooked forensic workers analyze the canister, they discover trace elements of the mutagenic compound inside the remains of the canister. Both Hun and King Cobra are intrigued and have the compound be synthesized (maybe an NYU hostage situation?).

A test batch is produced and Hun cruelly uses one of his own lackeys as an unwilling test subject. Now, this is where things start to get interesting. The Turtles and Splinter gained human biological traits through their mutation, but when a human is exposed to a similar substance the effects are horrendous.
The ganger becomes a horrendous monster. The first stage of the mutation sees him become a fleshy distortion of his former self, as though several changes were trying to occur at once inside the ganger’s body but none work in conjunction with the other. It’s almost Lovecraftian, or like Francis Bacon colliding with H.R. Giger.

The girlfriend of the ganger, also a Purple Dragon is horrified, and although once an enemy of the Turtles goes in search of them for their help. Hun just assumes she doesn’t have the stomach for it and laughs at her as she runs away.

They try to subdue the monster for containment, but its mutation continues and it proves too strong for any of them. It breaks free. Hun initially starts commanding his men go after it, but King Cobra nonchalantly tells him to let it go. “The cops can deal with it… or the freaks!” and points out that the discovery they have made today is far more important…

The girlfriend of the ganger (let’s call her Megan for now) manages to get in touch with the Michelangelo, who contacts Raph and Don (Leo is momentarily unreachable), and she fills them in on what has happened. Leo then contacts the others and tells them that they’d better get to where he is ASAP.

They find Leo with Miller on a rooftop overlooking an alleyway near a meatpacking warehouse. Down on the street, the cops have cordoned off the alley. Media and general public have started gathering to see what’s going on. Deep inside the alleyway, the constantly mutating creature appears to be in some sort of catatonic state, having fed on raw meat from the warehouse. It looks different, but it’s definitely him.

The Turtles advise Miller to keep his men away from it, but someone taking photographs gets too close and agitates the creature, sending it on another rampage. It seems to be perpetually hungry, consuming what and who it can, and the constant state of mutation seems to be tearing it apart. The Turtles track it and try to come up with a way of beating it (of course, they try things the dirty way to begin with, but the creature brushes them aside with ease).

Don hypothesizes that the biology of the human involved might not be “chemically clean” at the time of the mutation, and the off-balanced body chemistry may be accelerating the mutagen’s affect on the human physiology. Donatello reasons that the chemical waste from the transmat experiments might have contained biological waste from when the Utroms began developing “skins” for their exosuits, hence their particular mutations. The human biological elements in the waste would normally cause animals to start adopting humanoid characteristics, as seen with the Turtles, Splinter and Leatherhead, but there’s no telling what it would do to a human, and there’s no telling what OTHER batches of waste might do, because the balance of radioactive transmat waste and human biological waste would have to be EXACTLY right. Here we see what happens when a human is exposed, but Don says that it might not even be exact, as he knows that Hun and King Cobra have “copied” the chemical compound.
Don tells Miller that he needs some form of coagulant, as it may be the only way to slow the creature down.

The Turtles realize they’re going to have to stall the creature as long as they can, keep it occupied and away from the public. The creature continues to get larger and more dangerous, and eventually Miller gets back with the coagulants. They try loading them into a tranquilizer and administering it that way, but the effected area isn’t large enough, and they need the creature to ingest them. Eventually, Megan tries to reach whatever is left of her boyfriend inside the monster, but there is nothing left. The momentary pause allows them to take this opportunity to force feed the creature the coagulants and it starts to slow down. We can see it as the blood starts to slow down and thicken, killing the creature from the inside. Megan is distraught that she ultimately had a hand in killing her loved one, but Leo offers her a different perspective, telling her that the evil ones here are the people that did this to her, she helped release him.

Miller helps get the Turtles and Megan away from a gathering public, but in the final scene, a large convoy of ominous black vans arrives on the scene and government agents converge on the body of the creature… could these be the same agents that took the body of Razorback at the end of #61?