Nine
Leo is rapidly getting tired of walking in counter-clockwise circles. As before, he has the strange feeling that they're not actually moving. The ceiling is still out of sight, as high above them as it ever was, and he doesn't think the ground is visible anymore either. Although he's not really sure, because he is resolutely not looking down. He keeps his gaze focused on the next step, the next step, Mike's heels swinging in and out of his field of vision.
One foot in front of the other.
It's taking all of his mental strength to stay focused on the monotonous staircase, to place his foot squarely every time, and not slip or catch his toes on the edge of a step. He'd never known walking up stairs could be so difficult, but these stairs go on forever, and he's battling just to stay awake. Only the fear of losing the slight curve in his path, and walking straight off the edge of the staircase, is keeping him alert.
Not all of us slept in the van.
It feels like days since Raph made that comment to him.
Maybe it has been.
They haven't said anything for a while, concentrating only on staying awake, on moving forward, but Leo breaks the silence now. "Mike... are you sure you want to keep going?"
"Yeah," Mike says, and Leo hears both exhaustion and determination in his voice. "Why? Do you think we should go back?"
Honestly, Leo is afraid to try turning around. Going down backwards doesn't seem like a good idea either. "Only if you want to."
"No," Mike says. "Not yet."
They climb.
Leo's mind keeps wandering, seeking something more pleasant to fix on, trying to go back to the wonderfully trouble-free weekend, but Leo just blinks hard and focuses again on the endless stairs.
He looks up, and the next level is still thirty feet above them, the ceiling is still lost in darkness.
He realizes how weird that is. There's blackness above him, and he feels like there's blackness below, but the place where they're walking is bathed in the same soft blue light that filled the cavern floor. Leo doesn't know much about the properties of light, but this seems to qualify as an even higher level of strangeness than the upside-down waterfall's ability to illuminate the chamber with a glow that is as intense near the walls as it is just above the pool.
Don't look down. Don't look down.
He looks down.
As he expected, the pillar stretches away below them, and the floor of the cavern is lost in gloom.
As he didn't expect, there's no curve of stairs thirty feet below. In fact, there are no stairs lower than the one he's standing on.
All the steps behind him have vanished.
He yelps, resists the urge to leap away from the precipice at his back, and shouts, "Hurry up! Go!"
Mike picks up the pace, without question, and Leo races after him, double-timing it up the steps. He doesn't look back until they've gone halfway around the pillar.
When he does look back, there are still no stairs behind him.
"Move!" he shouts, and Mike speeds up again. They round the column at a breakneck pace, momentum threatening to throw them off the stairs at any moment. Leo scrambles upwards, as close behind Mike as he dares. Every time he glances back, the stairs behind him have been swallowed up. He climbs in sheer terror, certain that in the next instant whatever's destroying the stairs will catch up to him, take the ground he's standing on, and send him plummeting to his death.
"Faster!" Leo shouts in a panic, even though greater speed only increases the danger of missing a step, of leaning too far to the outside. He's on all fours now, grabbing for handholds that aren't there, trying to lower his center of gravity. Mike is doing the same thing, judging by the changed angle of his flying feet.
And then, suddenly, Mike is gone.
"Mikey!" Leo throws himself upward, prays that Mike hasn't lunged too far in his wild race for the heights...
... and crashes headfirst into a wall.
He lies there for a long moment, stunned, while the stars clear from his vision. He moves his arms, feeling the wide, flat surface he's come to rest on. Then he rolls over, very carefully, and takes stock of the situation.
Mike is sitting beside him, rubbing his head, looking alternately at Leo and at the hole in the floor they've just come up through. "What happened?" he asks.
Leo rolls over again, and crawls on his stomach to the hole. Cautiously, he peers over the edge.
Mike sticks his head over the opposite edge. For a moment, they're both silent. Then Mike says: "Where are the stairs?"
Leo backs away from the hole, and sits up on his knees. "They were disappearing from behind me." He closes his eyes against the pounding pain in his head. "Are you okay?"
"Been better," Mike says. "But also been a lot worse."
Leo makes himself open his eyes, and stand up. They're in a tunnel now, stone, rounded. Its diameter is safely greater than his height, but no higher. If he stretched up his arm, he could touch the ceiling. Aside from the hole in the floor, he can see no openings. In one direction, the passage ends abruptly, as though it had been capped off, or as though someone had stopped constructing it at that point. In the other direction, it stretches on out of sight.
Only one way to go.
Mike is standing up too, now, looking around. "Leo..." he says slowly. "D'you feel like we're being... herded, somewhere?"
Leo looks down at the hole again. No way back. "Come on," he says.
They start down the passage. It's filled with the same diffuse, sourceless light as the cavern below, but more grey than blue. Stone-colored.
The tunnel is wide enough for them to walk side-by-side, but the curving floor makes it easier to go single-file. Leo takes the lead. Mike follows close behind, but not as close as earlier. Oddly, running for their lives seems to have restored some of his confidence.
As they walk, their way is occasionally impeded by stalagmites, cone-shaped spires rising from the floor. They step around them. In other places, stalactites hang from the ceiling. They duck their heads, or shift to the side. Occasionally, the tunnel is bisected by a column, a smaller cousin to the huge pillars below, where a stalactite and stalagmite have met in the middle, and fused into a single formation. They plant their feet higher on the curve of the wall, slide through the open semi-circle, and continue on their way. Sometimes, they encounter a pair of spires, a stalactite and stalagmite that are growing opposite each other, and which will one day become a single column. Some are still millions of years from touching; others are separated only by an inch. The Turtles admire them, or ignore them, and keep moving.
"How far do you think this goes?" Mike asks.
"I don't know," Leo says. It's not like they have much choice but to follow it.
The spires and columns begin to curve, become wave-form, serpentining as they rise and descend and come together.
Leonardo and Michelangelo walk on.
"Look at this," Mike says.
Leo turns back, to see Mike looking closely at the last stalagmite, pointing to the tip of it. Leo moves towards it, and sees that the back-and-forth curve is capped with a tiny, perfect spiral. Mike pokes it with his finger.
"Let's keep moving," Leo says. He turns, and Mike hurries after him.
A few minutes later, he stops short.
"What?" Mike says.
Leo points up. Just ahead of them is a spiral stalactite, three feet long. If it were straightened out, it would probably be longer than the width of the tunnel.
"Weird," Mike says.
They keep moving. They barely blink at the spiral column blocking their way. They just squeeze around it.
The next formation, though, brings them to a dead halt.
"Are you seeing this?" Leo asks.
"Um..." Mike shifts and looks over Leo's other shoulder, as if the view might be different from there. "Yeah."
It's a lump of rock, floating in the air.
Just... floating in the air.
It's diamond-shaped, thicker in the middle than at the top and bottom. It's as if a column decided to start in the middle, and grow towards the floor and ceiling, instead of doing things in the normal way.
Leo passes his hand over the rock, quickly. Then he sweeps his foot under it. Then he backs away.
Mike moves around him, advancing towards the strange formation. He pokes it with his finger. Then he pushes it with his palm. Then he leans his weight on it.
The rock doesn't move.
"I think," Leo says, "that we should go now."
After that, they pass no more formations. The passage is empty, featureless, endless.
"Does this ever go anywhere?" Mike asks, eventually.
"Look, there," Leo says, pointing ahead. "The light is different."
Several dozen yards ahead of them, the light in the tunnel is warmer. It has colors other than grey.
They cover the distance quickly, and then stop, trying to figure out what they're looking at.
They have finally come to an opening in the tunnel. It's more like a window than a door, eight feet wide, five feet high. There's a knee-high ridge of stone below it, and a narrow lip of overhang above. The corners are rounded.
What's more interesting, though, is what they can see beyond the window.
"Is that... a..." Leo starts, unsure he wants to finish the sentence.
"I think it's an island," Mike says.
It looks very much like an island. A tropical island, complete with sandy beaches and waving palm trees. The island is surrounded by clear blue water, rippling gently. Roughly half a mile of this inviting-looking water stretches between the island and the grey passage, and it laps softly at the stone sill.
The whole scene is covered by a bright, cloudless sky.
"I am so going there," Mike declares, and makes to climb over into the water.
"Mike, wait." Leo catches his brother's arm, makes him stop. "That can't be real."
"Why not?" Mike says, looking longingly at the island. "We've seen loads of weird stuff underground, and all of -" He pauses, rethinking that. "Well, most of it was real."
Leo moves forward, narrows his eyes at the unlikely scene, and dips his finger into the water. He recoils instantly.
"It's like ice!" he gasps.
Mike can't resist touching the water. A small wave splashes over his hand, and he also jumps back. This isn't what people usually mean by "like ice". This water is clearly below the freezing point. It just hasn't bothered to become solid.
"But the air is so warm!" Mike wails. He glares out at the island, as though it had betrayed him.
"Come on," Leo says, pulling Mike forward, away from the window.
Mike yelps at the cold press of Leo's finger against his skin. "Okay, I'm coming!"
They return to the monotonous greyness of the tunnel, leaving the strange island behind.
After only a few minutes of walking, they come to another window. This one opens onto a cool, leafy forest, silent except for the wind rustling through the trees. They pause briefly, look, and move on.
The next window offers them a fantastical cloudscape. The next is a kind of multi-level stadium. The next is a sunny meadow, with butterflies fluttering over wildflowers.
The next is the angel fountain in Central Park.
"We're saved!" Mike cheers. He leaps forward, but again Leo holds him back.
"Wait," Leo says.
Mike shakes him off. "What's the deal, Leo? We can get home from here!"
Leo scans the scene. It's nighttime, deserted. It looks very much like the familiar plaza. They could get home from here, heading south overland, to their Lair downtown. Assuming that, when they got close, they could find a way back into the sewers.
It seems like a good plan. But something feels wrong. Leo frowns and tries to figure out what's bothering him.
Then he realizes: If this is the plaza, then where am I?
There are no cave-tunnels near that fountain.
"I'm going," Mike announces.
"Mike -!"
"Aaaahhh!"
Leo lunges forward. On his first step onto the stone flags, Mike sank up to his thigh, right in the solid ground. His other foot is still in the tunnel. Leo grabs Mike's arm and hauls backward.
His first effort is not enough. He tries again, and Mike lifts in impossible slow motion. "Help help help help -" Mike chants, resisting the instinct to plant his hand and push himself up.
Then his foot pulls free, and everything comes back to normal speed, and Mike flies across the tunnel, slamming Leo against the opposite wall.
At least he manages to protect his head this time.
Mike helps him up. "You okay?"
"Yeah." Leo rolls his shoulders. "What about you?"
Mike nods.
"No more windows, okay?" Leo says. "We'll stick to the tunnel."
Mike nods again.
Leo knows he's just taken away Mike's power of direction-picking, but right now it seems like a totally reasonable thing to do.
They keep walking. More windows try to entice them with inviting scenes. Mike, apparently over his stomachache, looks hungrily at a lunch spread on a picnic table, but doesn't move towards it. They ignore a pair of hammocks. They aren't tempted by a comfortable-looking living room. They walk right past the quaint medieval village. They barely look at a desert of rolling dunes.
"Leo, wait!"
Leo doesn't stop. "Come on, Mikey."
"No, Leo, wait!"
The urgency in Mike's voice makes Leo halt. He turns back, to see Mike still standing in front of the last window. "What is it?"
"Leo, it's Donnie!"
Leo is at his brother's side in an instant, staring out across the red sand hills. "Where?"
"There!"
Mike pulls Leo over, and points him at an angle. On the far side of a deep canyon, coming towards them but not yet opposite the window, is Donatello.
"Donnie!" Leo shouts.
Don doesn't look up.
"Donnie!" Mike tries.
Still no response. Don is across from them now, and walking past, oblivious to their presence.
Leo cups his hands around his mouth and bellows at the top of his lungs. "Donatello!"
Don doesn't notice.
Leo looks down in frustration. Immediately below the window is a canyon he can't see the bottom of. It's at least forty feet wide, farther than he can jump, even if Mike tries to boost him in the awkwardly low tunnel.
He can't get to his brother.
"He's getting away!" Mike cries desperately. "He's leaving us! Donatello!"
He is not going to let Donatello pass them by. He isn't. There must be a way. There must be...
"Throw something," Leo says suddenly.
Mike looks at him like he's lost his mind. "What?"
"Throw something!" Leo glances across the canyon. Don is already moving beyond the window, out of their line of sight. "Hurry!"
Mike pats his belt frantically. "I don't have anything!"
Something clicks in Leo's mind. "Throw your phone!"
Mike reaches to his hip, snatches his phone from its pouch, bounces it once in his palm, then winds up and hurls it across the canyon. It's a good throw. The phone hits Don squarely in his shoulder, then drops softly to the sandy ground.
Ah, Leo thinks. They ARE still good for communication.
Don jumps and whirls around, already drawing his bo. He stares across at them in surprise, then looks down with the same expression, as though he hadn't noticed he was walking along the edge of a cliff.
"Donatello!" Leo shouts over the divide. "Go this way!" He points in the direction he and Mike had been travelling, the direction Don had been coming from. "Stay parallel to us! We'll find a way across!"
Don shakes his head. "There's nothing that way!"
Given the fact that Don had just managed to miss two brothers calling urgently for him, Leo isn't too hopeful that Don had been paying much attention to what he'd been walking past. "Go back!" he shouts again.
Don isn't listening. He's looking thoughtfully at his bo, then at the canyon. He looks up, meeting Leo's gaze. "I can vault this!"
"No you can't!" Leo blocks the window with his body, giving Don no place to land. As much as he would like for Don to simply jump across the gap, the distance is too great. An attempt to cross it would only end in disaster. "It's too far!"
Don scoops up Mike's phone and tucks it into his belt, then backs up a pace and raises his bo into a vaulting position. "I can make it! Get out of the way!"
"Don't you dare!" Leo shouts, but Don is already springing forward, planting his bo in the sand and pushing off powerfully. He stretches his long limbs over the chasm, reaching out with his feet, his bo coming up behind him.
Leo gets out of the way, instinctively, but even as he does, he sees that Don isn't going to make it.
Don flips over in midair, bringing his arms forward, and in his face Leo can see that Don knows too.
"Mike!" Leo shouts, but Mike is already moving, whipping out his nunchuck, snapping it forward to wrap the chain around Don's bo.
He's reaching too far.
Leo leaps to grab Mike's arm, to prevent him from pitching over the edge.
And not far enough.
The nunchuck flails uselessly in Mike's hand.
Don looks up at them, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, caught in a silent scream for help.
And then he falls.
"No!" Mike throws himself at the edge, but Leo holds him, pulls him back, hugs him to his chest.
"Don't look, Mikey. Don't look."
"But -!" Mike struggles, but Leo only holds him tighter. "Leo, he's dead!"
"No." Leo squeezes Mike until he stops fighting. "He isn't. He isn't. Nothing here is what it seems. He'll be okay, Mike. He'll be okay."
Mike pushes away from him, and stares at him with an expression of horror and loss and deep betrayal.
"That might not even have been the real Don," Leo says softly.
Mike's expression intensifies. "How can you say that?" he moans. "Don't you know your own brother?"
"I don't know anything right now," Leo says. He holds out his hand. "Come on. We have to keep moving."
Mike looks at him distrustfully.
"Please, Mike," Leo says. "I need you."
"I can't."
"Yes you can." Leo keeps his hand and his voice steady. "You can do this, Mike. Trust me."
Mike shakes his head. "I can't, Leo. How could -" He looks towards the window. "How could you just leave him?" He takes a step back. "I'm staying, Leo. I'm -" He breaks off, his eyes going to the floor between them.
Leo is about to say something, but a split second later he realizes that Mike is looking at something, and not just lowering his eyes.
He's looking at a raised seam in the floor of the tunnel, the stone seeming to draw together to create a tiny ridge.
In the next instant, the ridge shoots upward. It fills Leo's vision, spreads itself across the passage.
It cuts him off from his brother.
Leo turns immediately to the window, intending to leap through it, to flip himself around the end of the wall. But just as quickly as the wall rose, it curves and stretches, sealing off the opening and giving Leo no way around.
Leo throws himself at the barrier, scrabbling at it with his hands. Maybe some part of it is not solid; maybe some part will vanish if he presses it. "Mike! Mikey!"
An answering thump from the other side. "Leo! Help me!"
"I'm coming, Mikey!" He claws at the stone, tries to push himself through it, anything to reach his brother.
"Leo, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it! I - Aaaaahhh!"
"Michelangelo!" He attacks the wall like a wild animal, unable to think of anything else, his entire being focused on getting to the other side, getting to Mike.
He's so focused on that one goal, that he doesn't even notice a shift in the air behind him. He doesn't notice someone watching him as he sinks to the ground, sobbing and softly calling his brother's name. It isn't until he's kneeling there, his palms and forehead pressed against the wall, that he hears someone addressing him.
"Leonardo. You disgrace yourself."
He's on his feet in an instant, his fists clenched, sizing up this enemy who has come to him in his moment of weakness.
The man before him is tall, with piercing eyes behind a strange mask. His long red hair is pulled back, and on one hand he wears a metal glove.
I know this man.
He ought to. This is the foreign ninja who had once challenged him to a mortal duel, and nearly won by throwing him off a bridge.
What Leo doesn't recognize is the weapon in the ninja's hand. It's a staff, but with a short crosspiece at one end, unlike anything Leo has seen before. Automatically, the back of his brain starts working out the possible and likely uses of this weapon, its strengths and weaknesses, and the best way to counter it.
The tears evaporate from his voice in an instant. "What do you want?" he growls.
"What a rude greeting, Leonardo," the man says, as if Leo is a mannerless child who needs to be corrected.
Leo bristles. "You've come at a bad time."
"Forgive me," the man says, but there's no sincerity in it. "Ah, I haven't even introduced myself." He bows, slightly, mockingly. "My name is Ue," he says. "Ue-sama, to you."
"-sama nothing," Leo returns. "I beat you, remember?" He turns away, examining the wall more calmly now, his senses still open to what's behind him. "Did you come for a rematch?" He can't resist answering Ue's belittling insult. "Does your father know you're here?"
He turns quickly at Ue's palpable anger, preparing for an attack.
"You impudent weakling!" Ue clenches his metal-covered fist, but doesn't strike. "I am better than you!"
"I seem to recall that's not the case," Leo says. "But you want to fight?" He draws his swords and slides down into an aggressive stance, one smooth motion. "Then come on. Let's fight."
Ue straightens, mastering himself. "I have not come for a rematch," he says, ignoring Leo's offer of battle, answering the earlier question. "I have come to finish the match we have already begun."
Leo narrows his eyes. "What are you talking about? That was over months ago."
"It was a duel to the death," Ue says, with a note of triumph. "And I am still alive."
Leo's hands clench on his weapons, as he realizes the implications of his enemy's words.
"The match," Ue says, in a low voice, "is not over."
"You're insane," Leo hisses. "You don't want to do this."
"It is dishonor to us both if the match goes unfinished," Ue says. It's obvious, from his tone, that he believes his own words.
Leo controls his urge to cut the man down where he stands. His own honor demands that he warn him first. "I spared your life once," he says. "If you insist on continuing this, I won't do it again."
"No," Ue says. "You will not have the opportunity." He raises his staff slightly, and again Leo braces for attack. "We will meet in battle soon, Leonardo. Prepare yourself for honorable death."
"I won't lose," Leo spits.
"You will," Ue replies. "Because I have already won."
Leo shifts the angle of his blade. "You have won nothing, except disgrace for your family."
"I have already won," Ue repeats. "You simply don't know it yet." He steps back, draws his cape around him, and vanishes in a swirl of purple fabric.
Only his voice lingers behind. "Farewell, Leonardo," it whispers.
Leo holds his pose for a moment, extending his senses, remaining alert for attack. He remembers his battle against Ue, remembers how the alien ninja's teleporting ability makes him a dangerous adversary. But Ue's words, and the silence of the tunnel, convince him that his opponent is not coming back.
He sheathes his swords and rises out of his low stance. "'Already won'?" he says, to the empty passage. "How could he have already won, if I'm still standing here?"
Donatello, falling down the canyon.
Michelangelo, screaming behind a wall.
Raphael, walking alone through a tunnel.
His brothers.
His heart freezes in his chest.
"Oh, no..."
