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"May, she will stay…"
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Junkyard: New York City, September 8th, 2007
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Leonardo took in a very long breath, stilling himself. He had a nagging thought in the back of his mind that they should pack up and go home for over an hour now, but when Michelangelo taped a plastic bowl to bits of a broken doll, wound a scrap of decaying curtain around it for a mask and started pestering Raphael with 'Turtle Man' he was sure it was time to go.
"My hard protective hand is going to smash Turtle Man's hard protective shell if you don't get him out of my face Mikey…" Raphael's voice bore the strain of sifting through a never-ending pile of refuse only to have the prize elude him.
"But he's a super hero!" Mike grinned, his voice sounding like a cartoon voice over.
"Oh yeah, can he fly?" the red-clad turtle's smile turned from sarcastic to taunting.
The younger brother bit his lip slightly, looking at his impromptu toy. "Sure, he's got a cape."
"Oooh, can I see?" Raph sounded interested. Too interested.
"Umm, just be careful with him ok?" Mikey replied, watching his older brother suspiciously.
Raphael took the jerry-rigged doll and lightly tapped on the mask and cape before nodding his head. "Pretty solid Turtle man. Should we give him a test run?"
"Test run?" Michelangelo was just about to protest when Raphael wound up and sent Turtle Man sailing across the junkyard with a mighty pitch. "Hey! He was my turtle dude!" the younger protested.
"Well look at that, he does fly!" the red clad terrapin crowed back, a grin spread completely across his beak. He turned towards his younger brother and the tell tale silence that preceded a loud, messy, brotherly wrestling match hung in the air.
"Guys, maybe we should head home…" Leo called out a split second before Michelangelo opened his mouth.
The orange clad terrapin blinked at that for a few seconds, as if he was internally shifting gears. As soon as he had settled into his new course of thought he bit his bottom lip. "But were never found a coffeepot…" he pointed out.
Leo gave a small sigh. "We have checked everywhere, there might not be a coffeepot for us to find tonight."
"But we found toasters…" Raphael beamed as he held up his booty bag of appliances.
"Toasters don't make coffee, Raph." Michelangelo pointed out, academically.
"Look on the bright side… maybe they're having a toaster shortage somewhere like Montana, and we can make a killing off of Ebay!" He consoled, patting his older brother on the back.
"Yeah, maybe…" Leo replied, none too convinced. "I dunno, I don't think we're going to find anything else useful tonight, and I don't want to get caught."
Raphael gave a low whistle as another bank of fog rolled up from the sewers. "Yeah, with this cold coming in it looks like another big storm will follow, too."
"Don't do that" the youngest muttered a bit irritably.
"Do what?" Both older brothers asked, nearly in unison.
"You know…" He put his hands up, fixing them with clear blue eyes. "Remember Master Splinter's stories? How the guy who whistled at night called bad spirits down upon him?"
Leonardo gaped for a few seconds while Raphael hid a grin. "Mike, Master Splinter was just telling us stories," the eldest started with a tone of limitless patience.
"I know." He stuck his chin up. "But you know… never hurts to be careful, right?"
"Fearless leader is always careful." Raphael added with barely concealed mirth. "We done here?"
Mikey's shoulders slowly relaxed as he picked up his sack of goodies and fixed his brothers with a challenging grin. "If we're done, then who's up for a race to the big water pipe? Last one down into the sewer is a rotten anchovy!" He gave one last taunting chuckle before running off towards the sewers, leaving Raphael and Leonardo alone.
The red masked brother gave a small chuckle as he watched the youngest sail down into the sewers. "Come on, Leonardo. We should probably catch up to him before he gets lost." He patted his elder brother softly on the shoulder.
Leo sighed a bit, hoisting his own bag over his shoulder. "So you think Don'll be angry?"
Raphael pondered that for a second and shook his head. "Naw. I think he'll be a little irritated and we can find one next week. Now come on… you don't want to be a rotten anchovy, do you?" he grinned and coaxed Leonardo into a run as they raced back for the sewers.
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"Too slow… too slow!" Michelangelo cackled gleefully as he slid surfer-style across a slick piece of pipe and leapt down to a tunnel below.
"I'll show you too slow." His older brother growled, running along a top pipe at breakneck speed before tucking downwards and pushing off against the wall to make a headlong leap towards the concrete below. He landed, skidding to a one knee stance, balancing himself with his free hand out, salvage sack dragging along behind him before pushing up to both feet just in front of Mikey. The tails of his red bandana flapped tauntingly in the wind.
Jogging just slightly behind them, Leonardo sucked in a breath. If he had hair, it would be on end, but he didn't so he opted for a shouted warning. "You guys better be careful. With the bad weather we just had everything is slick…"
Raphael turned, flashing his older brother a grin. "Careful? We're always careful." He was about to add a wink to the expression, when he found his turn had slowed him just enough to become a younger brother roadblock. The orange clad turtle gasped for a second, trying to skid himself to a halt before sliding directly into the taller turtle, plastron to plastron. The bags of salvage went flying, sending a metallic crash echoing across the sewers.
"Whoah, dude… whoah!" Mikey's voice called from the mess as the impact sent Raph careening backwards shell first. The younger reached out to grab him, and overcompensated, sending himself spinning dizzily on ground wet enough to act as a slip n' slide. Raph hit the corner of a junction with a soft thud and an irritated groan, as the youngest brother clawed at the ground, his legs and chest slipping over the side of a drop-off.
Half a tunnel back, Leo could feel his heart skip a beat as he broke out into a full run. "Mikey? Mikey!" he screamed as he watched the orange bandana tails slide off the floor and slip off beyond the ledger following their green-skinned owner. Skidding to a halt he made a precursory check on Raphael to make sure he was in one piece before heading straight for the ledge. He could feel his breath coming in short jagged pants as he yelled, "Mikey, are you alright? Can you hear me?" not close enough to see what lay beyond the fall.
When the muddy green head popped up from the cutoff Leo yelped and leapt backwards before laying a hand over his plastron. Mike grinned, wringing mud from the tails of his bandana. "Yeah, dude, I can hear you. It's like a four foot drop. I could do without the sludge, though."
Getting to his feet and wiping grimy rainwater from his legs Raphael shook his head. "Well, chalk us up for stupid awards of the week" he chuckled lightly.
The blue clad brother shook his head, as his breath returned to a normal pace. "You scared the crap out of me."
The youngest gave his brother a playful face. "Aww, and I wasn't even trying."
Offering Mike a hand up, Leonardo looked from one brother to the other and back. "Are you guys alright?" he asked in a soft tone.
Raphael stretched out his arms and turned his head stretching his neck a bit. "Pretty sure I'm fine, fearless leader."
Mike looked up at Leo and rubbed his shin. "Well, I landed on something prickly, but otherwise I think I need a shower."
"You needed a shower before this happened," Raph smirked. Mike looked over and stuck his tongue out before his attention was captured by Leo again.
Biting his lip, his tiredness from the night was bringing out a tone of brotherly concern that Mike found growingly amusing. Leo looked down, "you sure you're alright? What did you land on?"
"I'm fine, Mom." The youngest replied cracking a smile before kneeling to pat the muck. "It was probably just some piece of garbage." Drawing up something solid from the mud he rubbed it with a finger. "Or… yeah, never mind…" He dropped it again like it was on fire.
"What was it?" Leo asked.
"Looks like just a chunk of wood." Raph stated, wondering why Mike's face was frozen in a wide eyed look of fear.
"I think it was more like a bone." The youngest said, hopping out of the slick mud as if it was going to bite him. "A finger bone."
Shouldering the salvage bag, hoping that the toasters were uninjured, Raphael turned towards his younger brother. "You have an overactive imagination. First whistling spirits and now finger bones in the sewers?"
Taking Leo's offer of a hand, Mike climbed up onto the walkway. "If you want to go look you can, I'd rather get out of here;" his voice had a cuttingly serious tone.
His red clad brother looked like he was seriously considering jumping down there to investigate the claim, but he lingered at the edge of the drop-off. "Sewers bring all kinds of things though here. All good turtles should be curious." He said it, but he didn't sound convinced.
"No, all good turtles need to stop racing down the sewers;" Leo reminded, exhaustion creeping through his voice.
Mike was quiet for several long seconds, before he put a hand on Raphael's shoulder to draw him back while he spoke to Leonardo. "No problem, bro. We'll ferry these toasters back safe and sound… you'll see!" He fixed Raphael with a carefully cheerful expression, "we'll just race to see who gets in the shower first."
The red clad brother shook his head, dropping his curiosity at what Michelangelo might have uncovered and slowly grinned back. "You're on…"
The eldest chuckled a little bit at that, picking up his own bag of salvage and following after them quickly, fully intending to get in a good bid at being first in line for the shower.
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Sewers: New York City, April 23rd, 1985
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It was hard to tell what was louder: her footfalls or the smack of the gum as she chewed it. It was the one thing she had to hold on to in this dark, cold, damp pit of sewers.
While the others had flashlights or key chain lights of some kind, Ashlee had never traveled with anything but some cash and several dozen packs of gum. She had never found this to be a problem… before tonight.
Step by step, she shuffled her feet, pushing them forward so they scraped on the stone was she went. It was the only way she could tell when a passage ended and she would hit dirt or water or a wall without running headlong into it.
'They should make glow in the dark gum' she thought to herself as she walked. 'If they did then I wouldn't be lost.'
From time to time she would blink in the darkness and think she saw a light or something move up ahead. But by the time she called up the courage to try to speak, it would settle back into blackness. She always ended up swallowing her words and trudging along silently.
Ashlee sighed as she turned another corner. She wondered if it was day out already, and she would never know because it was so dark down here. She wondered if the others would find their way out and forget about her. She wondered if she would run out of gum before she was found. She gave a second sigh, the smacking pausing for a second as she rolled the gum in her mouth, and that's when she heard it.
Footsteps.
Timed with her chewing, hidden by the smacks of her gum, they stopped seconds after she stopped. She could almost sense someone… or something… waiting. Ashlee swallowed again, this time finding her throat dry. Words escaped past her lips like a squeak. "Is anybody there?"
There was no answer, but it didn't make the feeling that she was being watched go away. Ash closed her eyes, and stood on the tips of her toes, turning like a ballet dancer caught in slow motion. Behind her was a great big swath of darkness. "Hello?" she asked again.
There was a pause and then a click, like a flashlight turning one, but the light that poured out into the tunnel was pale and unearthly. It illuminated a thin face, a middle-aged man with wavy dark hair and a cheap but well pressed suit. He would have been handsome if a large chunk of his temple hadn't been ripped away by a pistol, leaving his dark eyes with a deep, empty stare. Slowly his ghostly mouth curled into a smile as Ashlee's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. When his voice cut the darkness it was as thin as a whisper, and yet it seemed to echo all the way down the tunnel.
He spoke only one word: "Boo."
Ashlee jumped backwards, trying to scream, sucking in a great gust of air like a drowning person surfacing from the water. She was going to turn and run, when she felt something slide down her throat and lodge there. Her brows knit in terror as she slowly realized what it was.
She had swallowed her gum.
Giving a soft whine, she tried to breathe, clawing at her throat. Doubling over she gave short little coughs, trying to dislodge the wad, her hands alternately clawing at her neck and pawing at the sides of the subway tunnel. She even started to look around for the apparition, gesturing wildly for a pat on the back.
But he stayed where he was, watching in his semi-hazy form as her cheeks turned from red to dark purple, and finally as she toppled over, mouth open and eyes wide. She thrashed about on the ground for a few seconds until finally the light faded from her expression.
"That was almost too easy." The apparition murmured as he knelt down to touch the teen's face, pushing the eyelids shut.
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Sewers: New York City, September 8th, 2007
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A shower had never felt so good, even if Leonardo had sneakily reserved all of his racing strength for one last burst to beat them all to it. The warm water reminded him of Master Splinter's hugs when they were children and the clean feeling he had when he stepped out almost eased away the irrational worry that clung to his shell ever since he found the bone in the muck.
Almost.
Now cuddled up in bed, fending off the unseasonable chill in the air and tucked in with a flashlight and the newest issue of Mega Zoltaire Versus Gamma Rabbit X, Michelangelo felt a small ripple of doubt chew into the back of his brain. He remembered being careful as they headed back home, focused on watching where they were going and keeping his footing, but he also remembered a strange faint smacking sound, like raindrops on a pane of glass that seemed to stay with them as they ran.
Like they were being followed.
He told himself that wasn't possible. He had checked behind his back more times than he could count, and if Leonardo, master ninja and most careful of older brothers hadn't seen or heard anything even when Mike prompted a quick check then it had to all be in his head, right?
Maybe a good night's sleep would clear his fears. Besides, he couldn't focus on how awesome Mega Zoltaire's plan to escape the clutches of the Grogon hordes was when he kept worrying about strange noises and Master Splinter's old ghost stories. With a sigh he tucked the comic book away under his nunchuku and clicked off the light. Everything would look better in the morning.
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She waited until he had drifted off the sleep before she moved. A faint ghostly shadow melted out of the darkness until she was standing at the foot of his bed, staring at the terrapin as he fell into quiet snoring. The soft smack of gun being chewed faded into the first drops of a late night storm as Michelangelo shivered in his sleep.
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Sewers: New York City, April 23rd, 1985
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Sarah-Kay saw the exact same thing Stephanie did, and she hadn't stopped running since the word had left the younger girl's mouth. Her vision had clouded over in a white-hot panic to get away from the specter in front of her, and she had put her legs on autopilot.
Now, pausing to drag a few harsh breaths through her burning lungs, she collapsed against the side of the wall with her legs shaking against it. It took more than a minute before she could gather up enough strength to stand on her own.
Sucking in one last raspy breath, she steadied herself and ran a hand through her vibrant red hair, shining her flashlight back the way she came. No one was behind her.
Frowning, she started to walk back at a brisk pace, keeping her eyes peeled as wide as they could open to search for signs of life in the gloom. After twisting down one passage and turning down the next her breath started to come in gasping little pants. "How far did I go?" she muttered angrily to herself. If there were only a light switch this would be so much easier.
She continued onwards, trying to retrace steps she didn't remember taking in the first place, stubbornly keeping her lips shut. Ahead of her white lights flickered in the endless curtain of black sewer walls. Sarah-Kay couldn't tell if they were flashlights or train lights or ghosts.
Finally, as her feet were hurting and she was shivering despite her sweatshirt, she squinted at the lights ahead and decided to call out. "Guys… hey, guys!" she yelled, trying not to sound scared. One of the lights flickered for a moment but there was no call back. The red head sucked in a long weary breath and called again, "Guys, it's me!" Under her breath she added "this isn't funny anymore."
Slowly, one by one the lights in the distance flickered and went out. She lifted her flashlight, aiming it as far down the passageway as she could, watching as its beam started to flicker and die as well.
"Oh, come on…" her voice was shaking as she smacked the flashlight against the palm of her hand. It flickered off, and then slowly, as the batteries shifted, the light sputtered back to life. "This is so not funny." She blew a tense puff of air out through her teeth before she steadied her flashlight in front of her.
The scream that was ripped from her lungs made her throat ache, rent from the vision ahead of her. The first thing her eyes connected with was the hollow, rotting orbs of the dark haired ghost woman. Desperately Sarah-Kay blinked, trying to wipe the illusion from her eyes, but it didn't work. The ghost was not only there, but also moving closer. Its breath - if a ghost could even have breath - washed over the teenager like the rippling chill of standing in front of a chest freezer. Her own breath fogged over.
Her mind felt like a wet washcloth being wrung out, and when she came to enough sense to think, she waffled between the choices of wetting her pants or running.
Fortunately her good upbringing suggested that running was the wiser course of action. She set off again, her already aching feet hitting the stonework like jackhammers. When she twisted back to check over her shoulder she could see the crushed form directly behind her. It didn't seem to run, but in a classically ghost-like fashion it seemed to levitate, the dress flowing around the hips like a mockery of wings.
Sarah-Kay turned down a hallway, trying to evade its baleful glare. Her flashlight chattered in her hands, making a strobe-light effect on the floor. Had she been at a party she would have been amused, but at the moment it made everything seem very surreal. The stones were skipping and flashing under the shaking beam of light, finally falling off into black.
Black?
The red haired teen skidded to a halt at the end of the room, sending small pebbles skittering off into the blackness of the pit beyond. It looked like a long forgotten construction site, with some sort of drainage ditch cut into the rock. Had she been thinking clearly Sarah-Kay might have wondered how long city works left this project lay, but clear thought was all the way back up on the platform with the comfort of the lights. All she saw now was a big black pit.
Skirting the edge of the pit, she turned around. Her eyes widened, and she felt a chill pass down her throat and settle into the pit of her stomach as her gaze connected with the lifeless orbs in front of her. This time there was no edge of toughness to her voice. It had all drained away into a meek little plea.
"What do you want?"
She backed up fractionally as the ghost woman held up a smashed hand and walked towards her. She could see shards of bone peeking through the white, blood-drained flesh. "What do you want from me?" the teen implored again as tears started to drain down her face.
The ghost-woman said nothing, but she smiled. The inside of her mouth was quite different from the rest of her body. Rather than deathly white, it was warm and red, blood oozing from between jagged, pointed teeth. Sarah tried to scream but she couldn't even draw a breath, everything stuck right behind her tongue. As the ghost-woman reached out to drag her forward, a primal fear shot through the teenager's nerves. She knew what it wanted.
It wanted to devour her.
She was already off balance from trying to jerk away so all it took was the faintest touch to send her toppling backwards. In fact, Sarah-Kay wasn't even sure of the ghost-woman had even touched her. She never appeared fully solid, not that it mattered. She was real enough to scare the teenager into taking that last fateful step. Her foot sank down to the ground level behind her and then as her front knee caved in, she remembered that there was no ground. For a second she felt as if her heart had leapt forward into her throat, blocking out all the air, and her arms clawed forward to grab something that wasn't there. The world spun as her body twisted inexorably backwards and wind stared to rush around her face, catching her hair. There was nothing to grab a hold of; even the ground sank away above her head.
Suddenly it dawned upon her why the ghost-woman's skirt looked like wings curled around her form.
She was falling.
It was the last thought that passed through her mind before the sickening crunch of her head hitting the bottom of the pit, and her vision faded to black.
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Sewers: New York City, September 8th, 2007
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"I am for you, Raphael…"
The teenager blinked, mumbling in the hazy darkness. "Whu-?" He felt slightly lightheaded, like he hadn't quite woken up yet.
"I said I am here for you."
Female. The voice was female… and not April. Not that April would be in his bedroom in the middle of the night unless he was dreaming. Well, he might be dreaming. He struggled to clear the sleep from his eyes and get them to focus, but his ninja-trained senses felt sluggish, almost drugged. "Who are you?" he slurred.
He could hear the shift in… her? Must have been a girl's stance. The crunch of too-tight jeans and the jangle of bracelets. "My name's Sarah-Kay, and I am here for you."
Raphael put a hand to the sides of his neck and pinched lightly in the way Donatello did when he was fending off a headache. "Why are you here for me?"
"Because I love you."
He was searching for the razor-sharp response to throw back at her, but he came up with only a weak "what?" He was only just beginning to pick out the dim outline of her form standing by his bunk, folding her arms across her chest.
"I said I love you, and I came for you, you and you alone." The response almost sounded huffy.
"That's… creepy." Raphael replied, wondering just what in the hell Michelangelo spiked that mushroom and pineapple pizza with beyond anchovies. Still, his body seemed to move in slow motion, unable to get into proper defense.
The outline of a teenage girl threw her hands up. "Creepy? Can't you see? I have watched you for years. We are perfect for one another. Our sarcasm. Our passion. Our tempers. You have a red bandana; I have red hair… perfect!"
His jaw dropped, eyes wide in the darkness. "Okay, that blows creepy out of the water and treads directly into the territory of psychotic. And that is the most superficial bunch of tripe to claim a connection with someone, or hadn't you noticed that I'm a giant talking turtle?" His words were rewarded with a blank, shocked silence at the refusal. Shaking his head and slowly drawing himself up his jaw set into a hard line. "You said you were watching us, for years? How?" His voice was dangerously low.
"Easy, we followed you." He couldn't see the smirk, but he heard it.
"Follow a ninja, for years, and remain unnoticed?" Raphael didn't even bother to hide his incredulity.
"Not so hard when you're dead;" the clipped reply came, and the outline stepped slightly forward into the thin trail of light streaming from the nightlight by the door. Her red hair was matted down with a slick sheen of blood, the left side of her head dented as if it had simply collapsed in on itself, her jacket puffed up as if she was forever falling. She reached out a pale, blood covered hand and Raphael jerked backward with a start...
And promptly slammed his head into the head of the bunk. His eyes snapped open, breaking all remnants of sleep like a sledgehammer through a glass window. Sweat poured from red-hot green skin while his heart pounded a panicked drumbeat in his ears, but this time he was sure he was awake. "Remind me to ditch this stupid bed for a hammock or something," he muttered as he slowly reigned in his senses. After a few calming moments he stared into the darkness before him, making sure it was all a dream before he gingerly rubbed the tender lump. "Stupid nightmares." He muttered lightly to himself. "This one was stupider than most."
"And what makes it stupid?" A pouting female voice came from the darkness just in front of him.
Raphael felt his usually cool blood turn to ice, but at least this time his body responded, snatching the twin sai from his bedside before he spoke. "Who the hell are you?"
A bloodied, translucent form smiled back at him from the darkness. "I came for you, Raphael."
He stabbed forward, sais cutting thin air as she clasped his wrist, and from the simple touch a feeling of cold penetrated his arm, sharper than the stab of knives and deep enough to touch his bones. He sprang to his feet with a pained cry, knocking over half the things piled on his bed stand and ready to fight. Nearby he could hear his brothers rousing awake. "I don't want you." He ground out, shielding his injured arm.
"That's too bad. You don't get a choice." The ghost smirked at him and winked, blowing him a kiss before she faded into mist.
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Nightmares were not uncommon for three young turtles asked to face enemies most people never dreamt of. Leonardo remembered the nights when they would all pile together to stave off bad dreams, but as they grew older they started to wait until one brother called for the others, or headed out of their room. Privacy and being able to stand alone were valued by the growing teens as much as brotherly support. So when he head Raphael jolt awake and mutter to himself he wasn't too concerned.
When he heard the strangled cry of pain, Leonardo had shot from his bed like a bolt. Privacy or no, he ran down the short hallway and threw open his brother's door to find Raphael slowly sinking to his knees as his sais hit the floor. He gave Leo a quiet, grateful look as his older brother caught his shoulder, stopping him mid sink.
Leonardo shivered, guiding his brother's limp form towards a crash landing on the bed. Raphael was cold.
Ice cold.
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