I do admit that I have two TMNT fics that I haven't touched in over three years, and it's been a very long time since I've written anything for them so I really shouldn't be starting a new one, but hey, I'm experiencing a revival, here. I've been watching the 2003-7 series virtually nonstop for the last week, and I reminded myself why I love those turtle so gaddamn much,
Because they're stupidly AWESOME. That's why.
I think I got back to them when I heard nickelodeon picked them up last year, and I've been trying to get their new episodes and finding the old ones nostalgic... and here we are. In my defence, this idea's been in my head for FIVE YEARS. Maybe even longer. It's time it got posted on the net.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here is:
The Bourne Complex
Part 1
All my fault.
He was screaming his brother's name as said turtle stumbled, his pained cries choked back by more gunshots, his body jerking back and back with each burst of violent sound. Somehow his brain was automatically counting the bullets ramming into his chest. Two. Five. Six.
All my fault. All my fault.
The words were ringing in his mind as he dove, catching the sibling that was still being mercilessly shot at, bullets catching his arms too as he protected the other from further harm. The words drummed in his heart, as he heard the other two coming for them, alerted by the gun's roars. The words were in his very pulse, beating, beating, beating with the blood that flowed over his brother's body and onto his hands.
All my fault. All my fault. All my fault.
The smug flashlight tumbled and bounced on the sewer floors before it hit its head and went out. Swords cut barrels, the bo beat at the gunman, and there was so much rage in their war cries it was terrifying, because Donnie, Donnie looked like he was ready and willing to beat the man to death.
He would be feeling the same if it weren't for the terror concerning the knowledge that there were four bullets in his brother's plastron, cracked like concrete around each wound. The other two were in his leg, the red rippling down like ribbons, like his mask. The blood was hot. It was so hot.
His brother croaked his name, asking if he was okay.
"Get him home! Get sensei, get April, stop the bleeding just get him home!"
He was jerked into action by the desperation in fearless leader's voice and he was carrying him, taking hasty shaking steps that would've gained momentum, would've had him racing for home and health but there was one more shot, and it got him in the side. There was enough force to shove him off the lip of the path, and the storm-water was all too happy to swallow them both up with the rest of New York's trash. The water swallowed them both whole.
"Mikey! Raph!"
He tried to hold on. He really, really did. In fact he'd been doing a great job despite his panic and terror and the dark but his brother was a deadweight and he was drowning and something that should've been too large to be in the sewers rammed into them both and separated them. Panic, so much panic, choked him more than the water ever could, because his gut-shot brother was drifting away face down and the light was out again and there was nothing but darkness, drowning terrifying darkness that was intermittently broken by sparks of machines being cut and more shots being fired. It didn't help that those were being swept away, and the water dragged him down. The hot blood on his hands seemed to sear into his skin no matter how icy cold the water was, and even as he breached the surface for air, desperate stinking blessed air, a low ceiling of a tunnel rammed against his skull, and for good measure skimmed him with the jagged end of a plastic broken pipe.
Even unconscious, the words haunted him, beat his soul to pulp.
All my fault.
… … … … … …
Leo didn't get the chance to snick the hunter's head off because Don beat him to it. With one, merciless uncharacteristically brutal jab of the bo, the human's throat caved in. He would probably go into shock, suffocate, die painfully and slowly. Quietly too, since his voice box would be mangled as a result.
Leonardo briefly wondered if all that had been calculated before slicing the companion robot of the hunter into three choppy pieces. The sparks flew blue in the dark of the sewer, sketchily depicting the little man's death.
The electromagnetic pulse or whatever that had been responsible for the blackout went away, and their world flickered back into the haze of old dodgy light bulbs and their own high-tech flashlights. It took less than two seconds for it to happen but it took even less than a tenth of that time for the two brothers to surge towards where Raphael and Mikey had fallen.
"Mikey! Raph!"
They ran with the current, flinging the light of their torches over the turbulent water, calling for them.
A few yards and Raphael was in sight, caught against a blocked grille, his head above water thank god thank GOD. They dove in, dragging their freezing brother to the lip of the waterway, pushing him up like a sack of sand. He groaned, he bled, he was barely breathing.
Leonardo undid the knots that strapped his swords to his shell as he said, "Donnie, get Raph back to the lair, we have to stop the blood flow. I'm going for Mikey."
Don was already calling for backup on the shell-cell, hands shaking, sounding scared now that the initial rage had flown past. Leo abandoned his weapons and dived into the water but it was a futile effort, considering the dark and the amount of water and the fact that no matter how much he shouted Mikey's name he got no response.
That didn't stop him from trying for hours, desperate cloying fear tugging at his heart.
"Mikey! Mikey!"
The sewers roared with the sound of water, and drowned out everything else.
… … … … …
Something beat at his chest and he coughed up water. And half a lung.
Mikey scrabbled to the side, coughing and hacking, pain in his head and pain in his body and his throat and nose was raw from nearly drowning. Oh, ow. Ow, ow, ow, this really-really hurt. Like, beat-down by the Foot hurt. Breathing brought on a pang of angry ow-ness from his side, and he touched it and that hurt even worse, and when he looked at his hand, there was blood.
His brother's blood, so much blood. Of Raph's. Oh shell Raph. The orange-banded turtle's head rocked and spun, as if the brain inside was falling with Raph, onto the hard ground, perforated by lead or iron or whatever bullets were made of nowadays. The vivid image of those hunks of metal punching into his brother, one by one, each followed by a triumphant vindictive bang, bang, and oh shell, shell, if he hadn't picked up the stupid flashlight, if only he'd been listening to Leo and Don none of this would have happened, none of the blood, the screams choked off by pain and more bullets and then being silent, so scarily deathly silent.
Raph. Dead. Raph could be dead. Raphael could be dead and it would be his fault.
"No, shell no, please, please," Michelangelo crawled onto his front, dragging his body out of the water, not caring that it was broad daylight, that he'd been spat out onto muck-filled beaches where the pipes met the sea and river; he needed to get home, needed to save his brother, needed to….
What if he was dead?
"No."
What if Raph was already dead and they were just waiting for him with their accusations?
"Shell no,"
The world was spinning and the voice in his head was telling him that there was no way in hell that his brothers would ever forgive him this stupid mistake, there was no way their sensei, their father would overlook this and let him live through it unpunished. Forever.
"No!"
Michelangelo lurched up onto his feet far too quickly for his head, which was still aching up a storm from the blows in the sewers. Dizziness hit him from behind like a mace, pain choking off his air and consciousness like a chain.
He blacked out again, a pair of eyes watching him.
… … … … …
Leatherhead's home was in utter chaos. Controlled chaos, but chaos nonetheless. It didn't help that Donatello was bursting in, screaming for his crocodile friend for help, telling the giant genius of the circumstances of the attack and how Raphael, Raph, his brother wasn't even grumbling, he was deathly silent, and the blood was slick on Don's shell. LH recovered from the initial shock and went to deliberately calm work.
Thanks to the recent Outbreak and Don's recovery from it, there were lots of health-based equipment strewn all over LH's place. IV bags for Don's occasional dizzy spells, shots of insulin, penicillin, left over tranquilizers, tanks full of oxygen. They were lucky that the attack had occurred near the abandoned station, even luckier that the attacker had chosen now of all times to do it. Raph's breath rattled in his chest, his perforated bleeding chest (that Don knew only the fundamentals about fixing), even as Leatherhead and Donatello placed him on a table and put an oxygen mask over his nose.
The purple banded turtle lurched to a stop as Leatherhead turned on all the table lamps onto Raphael's temporary gurney, the wounds making themselves starkly apparent. Oh God, oh god oh shell oh damn-damn-damn, six bullets. Six bullets. Four bullets in the chest, two in the right thigh, two eyes weeping red tears. Panic spread through him like a virus in a computer, shutting down all his cognitive processes and just stranding him there in a network of utter helplessness.
He was the closest thing to a doctor they had and he knew nothing, absolutely nothing as to what to do.
Leatherhead immediately went for a tranquilizer and shot half its contents into Raphael's thigh. The whole dose, considering that they'd been designed for Bishop's accidental super-mutants, would probably have killed him.
The hothead growled something before he closed his eyes, face still screwed tight even in induced sleep. Don gulped, hands shaking as he put his bo aside to deal with the injuries. "How… how bad are they?"
Leatherhead inspected each one carefully, and the tension in his large shoulders eased. "They are not deep, my friend. The plastron seems to have taken the brunt of the damage, and judging by what you have said, these shots were meant to incapacitate, not kill."
Somehow that was worse, so much worse, but at least then there was hope. April and Casey rushed in, Splinter at their side, and Don found himself desperately thinking, where in shell was Leo and Mikey? They should've found each other by now, they should've been rushing back, asking what to do, telling him what to do, the Fearless Leader and the reluctant Nurse, but there was no hope of them arriving anytime soon. It was up to Don to take on the responsibility of saving his brother's life.
He hoped the weight wouldn't crush him.
He ordered hot water, hot towels, a fire to disinfect his pincers and tweezers, fishing string, a needle. They stuck two IV bags into Raph's arm, and under the strongest flashlight he had, held by Master Splinter, Donatello and Leatherhead went through the process of extracting the bullets out of Raph's body, one by one.
It was maybe two hours till they could back away from the gurney, wounds sewn closed, wrapped, disinfected to the best of their abilities, Raph still breathing, Raph still alive.
It was another hour and a half before April and Casey went to look for the blue-banded turtle, and another two before Leo came back with them, shame and disgust and self-hatred in his eyes with Mikey's shell-cell and one of his nunchucks in hand.
… … … … …
He opened his eyes again, but this time instead of choking up water, he was choking up lunch. He scrambled off his back, coughing and hacking, his arms and legs not really understanding what he wanted them to do.
He finally got on his fours and hurled at the ground. It was Chinese food. Only Chinese food could taste this weird coming back up.
"Argh, gross."
He spat, twice, before even considering doing anything else. He tried to stand but his legs shook so much that he fell back on his knees. Though he had a feeling that with the dizzy spell, he wouldn't have been up on his feet for more than a second anyway. And his side. It was pulsing with a dull ache that made him wince, breathing more of a chore than an instinct to live. His head was pounding. Oh wow his head was pounding. He grabbed his head and moaned plaintively, blinking back the bright blurry haze that came from a concussion. His ears were ringing like fire-alarms. Oh, yeah, this was definitely a concussion. A bad one, too.
Wait, wait, was that why he wasn't seeing anything? Like, at all?
"Oh, man…"
He blinked, and blinked again, but the situation didn't change. He couldn't see a thing, nada, zip, nothing at all, it was just darkness and terrifying silence. No, wait. There was a sound. He listened as carefully as he could, despite the constant pounding in his head. Dripping. Water. And carefully avoiding where he thought he'd puked, his hands felt asphalt and concrete, damp too. The air, once he breathed it to taste it, was stale, kinda gross, with a hint of mould.
Okay. Okay, so there was a chance that he was underground. He tried to look at his hand in the dark, and thankfully, if there was like an inch between it and his nose, he could see its outline. Not blind. That's good.
He closed his eyes. Screwed them shut, really. Oh wow his head was pounding. How did he get here anyway? The last thing he remembered, was…
Blood. So much blood, blood on his hand, his conscience, screaming.
Another urge to hurl overcame him. What… what the shell was that?
"So you're awake."
He yelped in response, the sound echoing in the stark dark. There was a silence after that, for a bit, but he thought he heard something shuffle in the dark. "What, who, who's there?"
The low rumbling woman's voice, accented with a touch of an Irish twang, hissed again. It was from a distance, but still, pretty scary. "You're my prisoner, so you can call me… who I am is none of your business. You can call me Jailor. Or Arbiter."
He blinked. "Uh…"
Another pause, but one that wasn't as long as before.
"First of all, are you alright?"
Considering the menace that the voice painstakingly exuded as it spoke, he was fairly confused. "Um, well, my head hurts, but I think I just hit it really hard…"
"You're not about to turn into a monster, are you?"
"Huh? What?" if confusion was a sport, he'd totally be awesome at it right about now. But seriously, a monster? What was this lady talking about anyway? "No? Um, why? I mean, why would I?"
"Everything has been turning into monsters." The deep gravelly lady-voice replied grimly, "Even fleas. So you could, too."
"Oh. Oh well I uh…" he winced, the sharp pain in his temple taking the most attention. He wasn't really convinced on the monster thing, since, fleas were tiny little buggers, (heh, buggers. Bugs.) but hey, if this headache went away if he suddenly monster-fied, he could be okay with that. "Okay. I'll be careful."
"Good," she responded with grave approval, "Now, who are you?"
"…What?"
"Who are you?" it hissed with the most menace thus far, the tongue rolling with something close to rage, "And what are you doing by my home?"
Wherever he physically looked, it was dark. Just like his head. A stab of pain raced through his skull like nails, and he couldn't help but wonder if this was how Frankenstein felt all the time.
"I don't… I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I… I uh, I…." He stumbled back onto his tail, gritting his teeth, pressing the heels of his palms against the corner of his eyes. His head felt like it would shudder into putty, it hurt that much.
His name. He couldn't remember his own name.
"I don't… I don't know who I am."
… … … … …
So yeah, reviews woud be much appreciated. Please try not to judge me by my other TMNT fics, they were written a long time ago, so the quality isn't the best.
Hope you enjoy!