Oops, I've forgotten to add the usual disclaimer: I don't own the TMNT, I'm making no money off of this story – in fact, I work for the state, and therefore I have no money: please don't sue!
Chapter 3
He was drifting again, pulling away from the shore on a raft he didn't remember making. In the distance, just at the edge of hearing, his brothers' voices – they laughed and talked and sounded utterly sane, normal, safe…but too far away.
Drifting…
The sun was hot on his skin, and he turned his face up into the warmth, feeling the light through his closed eyes. The motion of the sea was so subtle that he didn't hear waves on the shore. Only the increasingly remote sound of their voices, occupied in their own conversations…the heat sank into him, penetrating skin and muscle almost painfully.
It suddenly came to him that he was far too hot and uncomfortable.
The sea rocked under him, the waves pulling him further away, the voices too distant to make out more than the vague knowledge that they were there. He sluggishly stirred enough to look around, to look for shore –
It was gone.
A powerful sun beat down on him, blinding him and obliterating all traces of direction. The wind blew from all directions, no direction, and he had no compass to orient with…he had no way to know how to strike out for home. Any direction he chose was likely to be the wrong one. He gasped, clutched at the edges of the raft, and stared around wildly, squinting against the treacherous sunlight. The voices were too far away to even be whispers.
The raft bucked under him. A wave crested the fragile, useless edge, spilled across the surface.
He was lost. Alone on the open sea, directionless, powerless, exposed and utterly lost. He'd drifted too far away, without even knowing he was moving. He'd been swept away without even realizing it, and it was all his fault…he was alone, alone, alone…
He dipped one hand over the side of the raft and brought up a handful of the implacable sea. It dripped, thick and red, through his fingers.
The sea was made of blood…
"Ughn," Donatello woke from one nightmare to find that he was still trapped in the other.
Outside the barred door, he heard the unmistakable sounds of someone dying. His stomach turned – in the time he'd spent in the Arena (and how long had he been there, he wondered briefly, before giving it up as a useless thought; Triceraton days weren't the same as days back home) he hadn't been able to get used to that. He rolled off the narrow shelf that served as a bed, and made his way to the door of his cell.
A Saurosan lay wounded in the common area that that served as a training hall and staging area for all the Arena's combatants. The broken lengths of several spears could still be seen, heaving in and out of sight among the shifting folds of skin, as the creature fought for a few more minutes of life. Beside it, a Glyson lay dead, flesh already liquefying from the poison the Saurosan injected into him during their combat.
"Bad form, to have both combatants die," Trell rumbled from outside the door. He shook his head. "Can't imagine what their management was thinking – they were too well-matched for it to go any other way."
Don ignored him. He focused on the dying Saurosan, willing it to make some kind of end before Trell or another one of the Triceratons could decide to use the dying creature as some kind of training exercise. He refused to look away, even when the thick flesh began to shudder in what was unmistakably – and mercifully – death-spasms.
There wasn't much he could do for the other beings who were trapped in the Arena with him, except to make their deaths as fast and painless as possible when they faced him. When their deaths came some other way, the only thing he could give them was his respect and attention as they bled out their lives.
Trell was amused. "C'mon! That thing doesn't care if you respect it – if it'd been you in the Arena today, you'd be the one slithering into the drains right now, and don't you forget it!"
He hadn't forgotten. Unbidden, his mind gave him three ways he could've killed the Saurosan himself – one of which would actually have been painless for it – and he filed the knowledge away, in case he faced another one someday.
"If you're up, you might as well make yourself useful," Trell unlocked the door of Don's cell. "Occe's sent for someone to get the poison sacs out of that hairy monster. After they're done, you can help them haul it off."
Don shuddered. The Triceratons were ruthlessly practical with the bodies of the Arena's dead combatants, he knew.
Trell wandered off, leaving Don unsupervised. As everyone knew, it was perfectly safe to leave him unguarded. No chains or locks were required to keep him in place, and no whips or restraints were necessary to get him to go out into the Arena to fight in his turn. His cell was locked only when he slept, for his own protection – other combatants weren't above attacking each other in the dark places under the Arena, and his captors felt it would be a shame to lose him that way, after all they'd gone through to get him. But he was allowed free run otherwise. He wouldn't make any attempt to escape.
He was bound to the Arena by something far stronger than pain or fear.
In the weeks – cycles? – since his capture, Don had thought long and hard on the agreement he made with the big Triceraton. If you die before I tell you to, your females will die soon after, Tedha had told him. In his fury and outrage that anyone would threaten April and Shadow – and his shock at finding himself a captive in the first place – Don had felt it best to acquiesce. His life wasn't worth the threat of danger to the baby, after all, and the mere idea that April would ever be in Triceraton hands was enough to make him see red.
He wondered, in the rare quiet moments in his new life, if perhaps he'd miscalculated…he had his doubts, now, about the true threat to the woman and the girl. Small doubts, but doubts nonetheless. Would they really have been in danger, if he'd refused to cooperate? If he had tried to escape, and died in the trying of it – or even more unlikely: succeeded – would there really have been a danger to the rest of the family?
If you die before I tell you to, your females will die soon after...but how could Triceratons find one human woman, and one human girl, on a planet teeming with humans?
Don wrenched himself away from that line of speculation. He had doubts, yes…but those doubts weren't enough to allow him to risk the lives of his family. It wasn't an experiment he was prepared to make. He simply didn't have enough information to be sure, and until he was certain, he would do whatever he could to keep his family safe.
After all, he reasoned, he'd believed for years that the Triceratons couldn't find Earth, and he'd been proven wrong. Best to be cautious, then, with any other assumptions. Best to wait, and learn, and determine the real threat to them.
Though he'd watched it die, Don couldn't watch as the Saurosan was cut apart for the poison sacs behind its mandibles. Death was one thing, but dismemberment was another. Instead, he watched the training exercises taking place in the Arena itself.
The Arena was rarely quiet for long. In those rare moments – like this one – the Triceraton All-Star team trained their newest members. These were the new-fledged warriors whose skills weren't yet strong enough to warrant showing them off to the crowd. The more seasoned members of the troupe drilled the younglings repeatedly, ruthlessly – turnover among the All-Stars was high, and they couldn't afford to have unprepared fighters when the first-string team inevitably needed new members.
He'd been in the Arena long enough to recognize individual fighting styles among the raw recruits. His practiced eye marked out the ones who were likely to get sent against him, and he scowled. Membership in the All-Stars was a coveted honor among young Triceratons, but it was a lifetime commitment. Those who didn't catch on to their training quickly had to be removed from the team, to make room for others.
Don was currently the most popular method for removing the undesirables from the ranks.
At least half-a-dozen of the newest members wouldn't last out the cycle, he saw instantly. If he was lucky – and if they were luckier – the others would improve quickly. If he only had six to take out, that would make for three fights in twice as many days. But if the others didn't grasp the difficult lessons, and do it fast, he might end up having to fight every day in the next cycle.
He wondered when he'd stopped thinking about the Triceratons as individuals, and started thinking about them as messy interruptions to his days. But that was another thought that could only lead him nowhere, and he squashed it quickly – no point in wasting time thinking about himself.
Occe called him, then, and he went back to help haul the Saurosan away.
"This one goes straight to the incinerator," Occe grunted as he strained to toss the rough ropes over the body. "Nothing here worth eating, not even for the Dead Ones."
Don fought off revulsion. The bodies of the Arena's dead weren't allowed to go to waste – it was expensive to feed the constantly shifting population. Saurosans were apparently too toxic to become edible, and for a fleeting second he envied the creature – Don knew he wouldn't end up in the incinerator when his time finally came. Then he threw that thought aside, too, and leaned into the ropes.
He couldn't die yet. Too much was riding on his continued survival.
Trell had to be recruited to heave the corpse into the incinerator – no one else was tall enough, or had the leverage, to get it over the threshold and into the flames. The Triceraton coughed and waved one big hand in front of his face to dispel the acrid smell that came through the door before it could be closed. Don bit down on the breathing tube that was, by now, as much a part of him as his shell – he didn't want to breathe even the supposedly filtered air that would come through while he was near the incinerator.
He'd almost forgotten what it was to breathe normally, without the tube.
He couldn't remember the last time he spoke.
The raft fell apart under him. He treaded the bloody water, still holding the tiny spark of hope that he might, somehow, find the shore…
Starless night fell over the crimson sea.
Tedha was pleased. That much was obvious from the big Triceraton's stance as he watched the fighters limber up for the day's matches. Two of his own recruits had made it past the initial cycle of training for the All Stars, and two more had been pushed forward in the ranks, and would soon be first-string fighters. It had been a good cycle for him.
"I can't get merchandise to the vendors fast enough," he bragged to Trell. "People are crazy for him – I've had some offers to buy him that almost made Mother consider it."
Trell made polite, obsequious noises. The two Triceratons were cousins, though their stations in life were very different – Tedha had the two syllable-name that meant that he was of ongoing value to his mother, while his cousin bore only one syllable. Trell owed his continued employment, and the name that came with it, to his work on behalf of the family. He could lose both at any moment, and he knew it. Not for the first time, he cursed the Divinity that had saddled him with a stringy, lanky form in a family replete with heavy-muscled hulks like Tedha. Even if Trell had been able to garner his mother's favor, it was unlikely that any other matriarch would look on him as a potential mate.
Not that he was likely to encounter any females of any status, working in the access tunnels of the Arena…
"Would she seriously consider selling him?" Trell asked carefully. There might be an opportunity here! He stifled an urge to cough – something in the damp air was making him wheeze, lately.
Tedha laughed. "Never! She's too good at this – she has the whole narrative planned out already, all the way to the end. We'll make him even more popular, before we're through with him."
"Hm." Neither Triceraton wasted any sentiment on the little fighter from Earth. He was a male, and therefore expendable. At the very least, he would get the satisfaction of knowing that the crowds loved him, in the brief span of time that he would have in their eyes. Most males didn't get that. "Shame you couldn't get more like him."
Tedha looked sideways at Trell. "Yes. A shame." And then he made his excuses and moved off, abruptly.
Trell frowned as he watched his cousin leave. Had he said something wrong? More important, had he said something that would garner the displeasure of either his mother or his aunt? He had to be careful, or he'd end up nameless and unemployed in short order. He wasn't anxious to join the ranks of the nameless military grunts!
"You there! Don't just hold that thing, use it! It's a weapon, not a decoration!" Occe shouted at the fighters clustered in the common area. "Merciful Divinity, it's a wonder any of you lived long enough to get here at all! Don't you have any sense of pride? Can't you remember the glory and honor of your homes?"
Trell waded back into the group, taking up his duties of readying the fighters to be sent out. Behind him, the music of the All-Stars rippled out over the sands, and the crowd roared approval. Some of the fighters were showing signs of distress. His practiced eye noted the ones who could probably be cajoled or threatened into at least the appearance of stoicism, and he weeded the rest out – a certain number of combatants could be permitted to display their cowardice without upsetting the audience. In fact, in the right proportions, and matched against the correct foes and at the correct times, it could even be vastly amusing for the crowd. Occe was a brilliant judge of these situations.
Once things were in motion, the rest of the day's activities fell into place properly. In a brief quiet moment in the flurry of events, Trell spotted the little fighter from Earth, sitting on a ledge overlooking the common area. "Why can't they all be professionals like you?" he asked rhetorically – he knew he'd get no response from the creature. Tedha said he could speak, but Trell had never heard him do so. "Why can't you whip them into shape a little bit, before they get this far?"
The warrior gave him a look that Trell couldn't read – damn these off-worlders and their bizarre facial contortions! – and went back to sharpening the weapons he'd been allotted for the day: short, leaf-bladed kes knives. Kes were easily concealed, easily thrown, and deadly-sharp. A narrow grove down the length of each one could be used to carry poison. For Triceratons, these were little more than toys. In the hands of the Earth-warrior, they looked more deadly.
Of course, everything looked more deadly in his hands, Trell reflected sourly. Everything looked like a weapon in his hands, as though he had instantly appraised it and determined the best way to use it to kill someone. He probably had, too. If the motley assemblage of combatants had been made up of warriors like this one, the Arena would be a far different place. Hells, even one or two more like him would improve the tone immeasurably!
He pondered his cousin's odd response while he chivvied the next pair into place for the Mismatched Fighters round that preceded the usual mid-day break. Trell waited for the right moment to push them out onto the sands – the roar of laughter from the crowd told him that, once again, Occe's sense of theatrics had selected the right pair for the match – then bent double with a sudden cough. He wheezed, standing up. The world tilted a little bit before settling back down. "I've got to get out of these tunnels," he grumbled out loud. "Damned place makes a person sick, if he spends too much time here."
Bodies were brought back and dumped in the common area. Lightly-wounded fighters were bandaged up, if warranted, or sent to join the Dead Ones if their performances hadn't earned them a reprieve; the more severely injured were dispatched and added to the meat pile in the center. Trell had his hands full, dealing with a surviving quintet of Xogian warriors who didn't take well to the idea that their fallen comrades were only good for food. Overhead, the crowds rumbled through the causeways, intent on securing their own meals and – more important – their souvenirs for the day's events.
And then the early main event of the day: the Earth-warrior versus the culled rejects from the All-Stars.
The All-Stars stood on the sands as a group, waiting for the signal that would cause the bulk of the group to melt back and abandon the rejects to their fate. Since Prime Leader Zanramon V wasn't in attendance, there was no one to make a speech highlighting the glories of the All-Stars (and by implication, the failures of the rejected candidates).
The Earth-warrior stood just inside the entrance, waiting for the right moment. Whatever his flaws, whatever his background, he certainly learned quickly – he'd never once blown an entrance during his time in the Arena. Tedha stood beside him, and fidgeted with something in his pocket. Trell frowned – surely the little warrior still had plenty of time in the Arena? The family hadn't yet made all the money it could, even Trell knew that! With the right merchandising, and a lot of luck, he was good for at least several more cycles, and could earn enough money to keep the family financially secure for a long time after that.
Mere seconds before the entrance cue, Tedha moved. An ampoule glittered in his hand as he pressed it quickly into the warrior's arm. The Earth-creature, having grown used to Tedha's presence, didn't realize his danger until the drug in the ampoule was already well-delivered.
"Something to help you develop a sense of the dramatic," Tedha rumbled, pleased with himself.
The warrior blinked, and backed up a step. He brought one kes up.
"Ah-ah! Don't forget the females!" Tedha said in tones of warning.
The creature wavered. The music changed – his cue to enter.
Trell held his breath.
And then, obedient to his training and to whatever threat Tedha held over him, the Earth-warrior left the tunnels and strode out onto the sands. The crowd roared approval.
The fight began.
Trell sidled over to his cousin. "What was that?" he demanded more sharply than was good for him, given his position. "Did you clear it with Occe? It's dangerous to start drugging combatants, and it should be cleared with the Arena Master first!"
Tedha shrugged in magnificent indifference. "Mother's orders," he said simply. Even Occe had no power to influence or even berate a Triceraton who was doing as his mother told him to do; everyone knew that.
Trell ground his teeth in fury. It would be so like Tedha to be unconcerned about the intricacies of arranging and corralling the fighters, both on and off the sands!
In the Arena, things happened very quickly. Everyone knew that. Though people clamored to see the little warrior from Earth – he had a kind of cult-following, both from his own appeal and from the legendary combat, years ago, when he and three others of his kind had destroyed the All-Stars' first string team – even Trell had to admit that he was in danger of staying firmly entrenched as a second-tier attraction. His kills were simply too quick, too clean, to hold the crowd's interest for long. The professionalism that made him easy for Tedha and Occe to handle carried over into the Arena, too, and he simply didn't have the lust for battle that would propel him into the ranks of the first-tier attractions.
Apparently Tedha wasn't satisfied with managing a second-tier property any longer. Whatever drug he'd injected into the little warrior, it was doing amazing things to his blood-lust.
One Triceraton went down, screaming, with a kes buried so deep in his thigh that it disappeared; blood sprayed into the air. The Earth-warrior ignored both the blood and the screams as he used the fallen warrior to launch himself at the second. Another kes winked in his hand. He seized the warrior's left upper horn as his leap carried him over, and in the seconds before both of them hit the ground, stabbed the Triceraton in the eyes, the blade going down twice in rapid succession.
Two Triceraton warriors lay dying on the sands behind him, as the little warrior simply walked away. Both of the former All-Stars twitched and flailed and screamed. Their killer ignored them. Instead, he walked halfway across the open sand, to stand in front of the All Stars' entrance to the Arena. He stopped. Raised one arm in what was unmistakably a gesture of challenge. Then simply stood there, radiating menace.
The crowd quieted. The only clear sound was the screaming struggles of the two fallen Triceratons. Even Trell held his breath – what was going on?
In the darkness of the All Stars' tunnel, something stirred.
The crowd erupted as two more Triceratons emerged onto the sands, this time carrying long spears.
Their weapons were seized and turned against them by a sudden blur of furious movement. One Triceraton was impaled on the weapon of his companion, while that All Star still held it. He dropped to the sands, gurgling. Before he finished dying, the other warrior collapsed beside him, another kes – previously unseen by the crowd – glinting in his throat.
The little fighter stood still for a moment. The crowd went wild.
And then he yanked the spear out of the body of the dying Triceraton – ignoring the other, more easily-available spear in favor of the one that had to be removed from the shrieking warrior – and made his way back across the sands, to plunge it into the hearts of the first two.
The crowd was on its feet.
He paused. Glanced around the crowded stands.
And then tossed the spear down onto one twitching body in a gesture of pure contempt before making his way off the sands.
"Now we really won't be able to keep the merchants stocked," Tedha said smugly.
The hope didn't fade right away. Even when the blood-water began to break over his head – even when he got so tired of fighting the waves that he began to think about sliding beneath them – he still felt some hope. They would come for him, he was sure, before the end. After all, they wouldn't want to lose him like this, would they?
He couldn't let go until he knew that they knew what happened…
