Leonardo and Raphael barely had time to exchange a slightly nervous glance, as they both reached for the girls that were lying at their feet. Then Leonardo's dark eyes were scanning, his mind rapidly calculating. He couldn't tell how many were actually out there, but if they fought anything like the man they'd just taken down, a battle here on the street would probably end up attracting way too much attention. A hasty retreat wasn't a course of action that the turtle relished, but at the moment it was the best thing he could come up with.
It was as if the entire scene were frozen in time, as no one immediately made a move toward them.
"The roof." Leonardo whispered, without hardly moving his lips. Then he cast a split second glance at the dumpster, and hoped Raphael would understand his intentions.
The blue-banded turtle sprang into action, vaulting on top of the trash receptacle. He adjusted accordingly for the extra weight of the woman he was carrying, not pausing for a single second before leaping toward the overhanging ladder. Leonardo firmly planted muscular legs, and drew himself up to the first platform with his free arm. He was relieved to hear Raphael's grunt of exertion from beneath him, but the figures below were reacting quickly as well.
Leonardo heard the soft whistle of a weapon, and one katana was in his hand before he even had time to think about it. It flashed through the air to deflect the throwing knife that was coming at his brother's head, even as Raphael was ramming his leg down on top of the man that was climbing underneath him. His blow knocked the human out cold, and he fell hard against someone trying to push their way up behind him.
Leonardo grabbed a flash cell of of his belt, and armed it with a swift twist of his wrist. The concussion would likely rouse further attention, but he was only concerned with being able to make a clean break of these people. He let it fall over the side of the escape, after shooting Raphael a warning look.
The turtles hefted their precious burdens more tightly as they raced up the stairs of the escape to the roof, and Leonardo rolled up on top on his side alone. Raphael handed the girls up to him first, and then yanked his own way up onto the roof.
"Let's move!" Leonardo urged him, not taking even a moment for either of them to catch their breath.
Each gathered a young woman and then started running, bounding from the roof-top they were on to the next one. Neither turtle said a word to each other, they were completely occupied with the mere effort of escaping. The only sound that accompanied their own feet at first was a mighty rumbling of thunder overhead.
They were three roof-tops away, when the shooting pain of a shuriken striking the back of his calf made Raphael stumble in his stride with a mighty curse, as he struggled to regain his footing.
"Raph, are you alright?" Leonardo spoke up swiftly.
"Fine!" He proclaimed through gritted teeth. "Don't look now Fearless, but I think we've got company!"
"They're not gonna beat us at our own game Raph - we've just got to keep going!"
Yukiko paced slightly while a few of the men hurried to recover the prone bodies of the "boosters", whose only task had been to blend in with the rest of the crowd inside the club, and to retrieve the new arrivals for them. Daichi should have been more than enough to stabilize the situation on the outside, but it was apparent they were dealing with very unusual assailants.
When her phone went off again, she was swift to answer. "Taidan!" She commanded icily, and then hesitated for a beat as information was being relayed. "Continue pursuit, don't let them out of your sight. We'll use vehicles to get ahead of them on the ground first, so let me know if they change directions on you! Don't lose them!"
Leonardo was fighting to keep anxiety and confusion both in check, not certain which emotion was actually stronger at the moment. He wasn't positive that he and Raphael had done the right thing bringing the young women with them, but little alarm bells seemed to signify that the new strangers' intentions toward the girls were no more friendly than the men they'd dealt with easily.
He sensed the men behind them gaining slightly, their own acrobatics not the least bit hampered by the extra weight or the protection of another life that the turtles had to deal with. Leonardo felt his phone vibrating, but chose to ignore it for the moment. He didn't want to deal with even the second's distraction that answering it would require.
Donatello shut his phone, a little bewildered by Leonardo's lack of response. He had long ago turned the wheel of the van over to Michelangelo so that he could focus on tracking his brother's signal, which had recently ceased to be stationary.
"How many times have you called him?" His orange-masked brother asked, deciding to pull over to the side of the road as Donatello was logging inside of a different software program in his laptop.
"Just a couple." Donny replied. "He said they might get caught up in something."
The purple-banded turtle had already fielded a worried phone call from Luke a few minutes ago, wanting to know why Leonardo had activated his homing beacon. Donatello had assured him that his brother had only done it at his request, but now gnawing concern was pushing the turtle to check into their vital signs. He was just starting to tap into the signal of their implanted devices, which he'd been forced to completely replace only a month prior. Whatever little trick Stolle had performed on the transmitters had rendered all of the implants useless.
Donatello couldn't help rolling his eyes as the man's name even entered his mind, and immediately pushed further thought of him to the side. Leonardo's intermittent reminder had been going off for several minutes, but a sudden stronger pulse from the watch on his wrist indicated that a second beacon had been activated.
Michelangelo reacted to it faster than he did, instantly tapping a button on the display of his watch. "Why would Raph turn his on Donny? They're still together, aren't they?"
A couple of keystrokes later, Donatello nodded. "They are, and they're still on the move too. Something's off here Mikey. I don't know what it is, but something's definitely off."
The purple-banded turtle glanced down the road that they were parked on, seeming to be mulling something over. "Do you think we could take a left up here?"
"You wanna get on the other side of 'em?"
"Something like that. Let's get moving, okay?"
"I sure hope they don't take me setting that off figuratively!" Raphael exclaimed.
Leonardo didn't even make a response, as they made the leap to the next roof-top.
Both turtles pulled up sharply at the sight waiting them on the other side. The shadowy outlines of several figures were the last thing that either of them had expected to see. As they spun on heel to try and make a jump to the right, the men fanned out across roof so that all hope of an easy jump was immediately cut off.
"I think they just beat us at our own game Leo." Raphael muttered under his breath.
The blue-banded turtle held his stance for a few seconds longer, never taking his eyes off the enemy. "It's not over Raph."
"No, looks like we're just about to get started." He replied sarcastically. "How are we supposed to protect them Leo?" He spoke of the young women, as the circle closed in on both of them.
"We have to win." He answered simply.
"Yeah, sure. Piece of cake." Raphael said as he slowly put his girl down, and Leonardo followed suite.
They backed into each other, each drawing their respective blades. On the outskirts of the group, Yukiko raised her eyebrows at the sight of the one turtle wielding two katana.
"Atakku!" She ordered the waiting men.
Their first order of business was to separate the two turtles, and it was not expected to be an easy feat. In that instant, it was the advancement of five other naked blades that convinced Leonardo to take a step away from Raphael.
"I'm going to take these guys Raph." The turtle informed his younger brother.
"Better know what you're doing!"
"There's still plenty to go around." Leonardo commented, now holding both blades straight out in either direction, to partially ward off attackers who had yet to try and actually cross katanas with him.
That changed an instant later. The blue-banded turtle had to react quickly to both parry and avoid the blades that were coming from several directions, inadvertantly forcing him to put more space between himself and Raphael than he wanted to. There was no time to think or to calculate his opponents, their own speed or skill. He had but fractions of seconds to avoid and strike back, to recoil and then lunge in return. It was an exercise in pure instinct such as he'd rarely engaged in that strongly at any point in the past.
Leonardo couldn't prevent every strike from at least glancing contact, though his reflexes had rescued him from any injury of serious depth. He was aware of the searing pain of a blade tip as it barely grazed his forehead, before he ducked out of further reach of it. Another had managed to nick the bicep of his left arm a little more deeply, right before he'd disarmed the first of his opponents.
Raphael had been facing down a few others, with a more brutal assault of his own weapons than he'd ever unleashed on another person. When he felt the lunge of one of their fists directly into his shell, he couldn't keep from laughing outright.
"Nice try Sparky. Why dontcha go ahead and break your other fist while you're at it?" He called derisively, ramming his elbow into the stunned man's face as further punishment.
Then the turtle was forced to swivel quickly, to avoid the spiked ball of a chigiriki. He reacted by capturing the chain of the weapon in one of the pronged sides of his sai, and jerked fiercely to disarm the assailant. Then he lunged forward with a powerful kick to the next closest one's jaw. He was just starting to feel a little more confident in their ability to take the fight, when the sound of additional soft foot falls on the roof got his attention.
The sight of more of the men coming was just a tad disheartening. Shell!
Instant concern seized him for his older brother, and he found himself searching out for some sight of him. He couldn't see the blue-banded turtle from where he was, and had no idea that Leonardo was actually looking for him too.
Leonardo was flat on his shell on the roof, still clinging to both katana in a death grip, though he was being restrained from raising them. A disturbingly close flash of lightning reflected off the blade of another katana, that was hovering dangerously near his throat.