Uncommon Cold is the comic in the twentieth issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Appearing in Uncommon Cold[]
Major characters[]
Locations[]
Objects and vehicles[]
Synopsis[]
Using their mutagen tracker, the Turtles are following a trail in a city alley, the Shellraiser parked nearby. Michelangelo is sick with a cold and complaining that he wants to go home. Leonardo tells him he’ll be fine, to which Mikey responds that it’s easy to say when you’re not the one who’s sick.
Donatello says they’ll go home when they find the mutagen canister, which he’s certain is nearby. Mikey finds it next to a dumpster, but it’s cracked and almost empty. He’s still holding the canister when he suddenly sneezes on it. Glancing over at his brothers, he sees them backed against the wall looking shocked, except for Raphael is looks grossed out. Mikey doesn’t understand why they’re reacting that way to a simple sneeze, until he turns around.
Hovering in the air is Mikey’s cold virus, which has been mutated. Mikey is still quite sick and sneezing, and to make things worse, the virus takes off. Leo shouts that they have to catch it and they begin the chase. The virus zips past people on the street as the Turtles try to keep track of it from the rooftops. Leo asks what it’s doing and Don says he thinks it’s trying to infect people. He starts to go into a detailed explanation, but Raph cuts him off.
They finally corner the virus and Don says it’s a complex scientific issue and they need to study it. Raph says they need to punch it. Mikey is just glad it doesn’t have crazy mutant virus superpowers like lasers. A moment later he retracts that statement as the virus changes color from green to blue and starts firing lasers at them.
Scattering to avoid the lasers, Don says he accepts Raph’s punching hypothesis. Leo calls for Raph to try and grab it, but Raph refuses to touch something that came out of Mikey’s nose. Mikey finally tells them since it was his nose, he’ll get it. He reaches for the virus, but it starts firing lasers at him. Leo shouts that he’s had enough and kicks it towards Don, who bats it with his staff in Raph’s direction. Raph punches it towards Mikey, but the younger Turtle is blowing his nose and the virus passes over his head.
Leo fusses at him, wanting to know why Mikey didn’t grab it. Mikey says he meant to but – he sneezes before he can finish the explanation. Soon they are back at the lair. Raph wants to know why they came back home when they should be chasing the virus down. Leo tells him they lost it, but as Don makes adjustments on the tracker he says to relax because he can track it. Then Leo asks how they stop it when they find it. Mikey offers suggestions like fighting it with chicken soup and orange juice, but Don tells him there’s no cure for the common cold.
Suddenly Mikey has another idea – to give the cold virus a cold. Leo starts to discount the suggestion when Don says that might just work. Mikey begins congratulating himself, but Don tells him that idea was terrible but he’s realized that a virus will become dormant at super-cold temperatures. He has an idea on how to make that happen.
Shorty thereafter, the Turtles have tracked the virus to a warehouse. Each of them has a CO2 canister strapped to his back. Raph kicks over a crate a get the virus to come out into the open and then they open their firing nozzles and fire at it. The CO2 freezes the virus and it hits the ground. Suddenly the mutagen tracker starts beeping and Don announces that he’s picking up even more signals.
The Turtles look up and see dozens of giant viruses floating above them and realize that it’s multiplied. They start firing their CO2 blasters as fast as they can, but there’s too many of them. Leo shouts that they have to keep freezing them because if the viruses spread outside, they could infect the entire city.
Raph is hit by one of the lasers and Mikey rushes to save him. He bends over his brother and is in turn hit by lasers as well, which he discovers doesn’t hurt, it only tickles. However, Raph has been infected and begins sneezing. Don realizes that since Mikey was the original host, his body’s made antibodies to fight it. The blasts don’t work on him, but one his Leo and he becomes ill. A second later, Don is hit, which leaves all but Mikey down with a debilitating cold.
Mikey tries freezing viruses by himself and quickly knows he can’t do it all on his own. The viruses start chasing him, though he’s trying to think what to do. Suddenly he comes upon a walk-in freezer and opens the door, calling to the viruses to get him.
The viruses all dive at Mikey, who ducks, causing them to enter the freezer. He slams the door shut and the instantly frozen viruses drop to the floor. Mikey turns to his very ill brothers and tells them not to all thank him at once.
Soon the Turtles are back home. Don gives Mikey credit for having a great idea and Mikey can’t understand why they always doubt him. He figured that little room was more than big enough to hold the viruses. Don tells him that it was a walk-in freezer and he froze them all, which of course Mikey didn’t realize would happen. Mikey waves it off and noticed that his cold is gone. Mikey then calls for a high three, but his brothers are sneezing, coughing, and blowing their nose as they’re now the ones who are sick. Mikey says that it looks like time for his patented chicken waffle orange nacho peanut brittle cure. He races off to play Doctor Mikey and Raph says he’d rather stay sick forever.