Alright...chapter 10 is up! Please review!
Chapter 10
Raph was sick and tired of being kept in the dark.
Every fake smile his little brother threw at him made him want to throw up. His throat would go dry, and his tongue would stick in his throat. All humor left his eyes. His shoulders tensed, all at the sight of his little brother, trying so hard to look as if nothing was the matter.
He hated it.
Hated it.
His own brother had gone through so much. So much pain. So much suffering. For them. And now, even now, he still couldn't help his little brother. His precious, little, baby brother.
He'd talked to Leo, and he had found the feeling mutual in his older brother. A few words with Donnie had proved that a similar worry festered inside all of his brother's hearts for their youngest.
But what could they do? Mikey obviously was trying so hard to act normal, act as if nothing was wrong. Trying to make the family happy. Trying with all his might, even as he bore his own, unknown burden.
It truly made Raph sick.
He wanted answers. And he wanted answers now.
The red banded turtle left the lair, determination gleaming in his eyes and his thoughts running one thousand miles a second. Only a few feet away from the turnstiles that was the entrance to their home, Raph stopped mid stride, and took a deep breath.
The shadows of the sewers faded slightly with the lair that permeated from the lair. Even so, the pathway before him was almost pitch black. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust, and he felt his hands loosen at his sides.
He needed to think.
His feet shifted against the rough surface of the concrete below him as he briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he had made up his mind.
He sprinted.
He ran and ran and ran, letting his frustration propel his feet with a firework show of adrenaline.
After running for well over a mile through the twisting and turning tunnels of the sewers, Raph finally arrived at his destination.
His destination wasn't much- just an old drainage grate and a view of the stars- but it was a great place to sit down with his thoughts. He plopped himself down on the sewer wall, his shell leaning up against the cold, scratchy surface as he gazed with lucid eyes up at the blinking celestial pinpricks that dared show their faces above the all-powerful New York City skyline.
He presented the evidence before himself, starting with when he first thought Mikey was acting strange about a month ago.
Not to say that Mikey didn't act strange normally, but this was different. This was serious.
Just the other day, he'd accidentally run into Mikey in the dojo, his undivided focus on a set of katas. Raph had paused and stared, wide eyed, as he watched his little brother's body gracefully flow through the motions of the difficult kata. Each kick was as solid as a brick wall, each punch as precise as Leo's punches. Raph marveled at Mikey's brow, taught with concentration and slick with sweat, and so incredibly not Mikey like at all.
The more he had stared, the more he realized that this was the new kata that they had learned not to long ago. Heck, he hadn't even mastered it yet. Leo seemed to be the only one who could do it, and even he had been a little shaky. It was a difficult kata.
But there was Mikey, performing the combination of kicks, punches, and blocks as if he'd done it a thousand million times before. Judging from the tiredness spread across his face and the sweat glistening off his body, he'd probably been doing this for hours.
That wasn't all. There was that other time when they were brushing up on shuriken throwing during training, and one of Donnie's shuriken had missed the target and bounced off the wall at Mikey's face. He'd caught it, plucking it out of the air as if he had seen it coming.
The thing about shuriken, though, was that nobody could just snatch them out of the air like that with one hand and expect to be fine. Mikey had looked around at them, slightly stupefied, before glancing down at his hand dripping blood onto the floor with this blank expression on his face.
The sight of the crimson liquid was enough to get Raph furious, but that slack look his little brother wore made his own blood run cold. As if Mikey didn't think that the fact that he got hurt was an issue, much less important. Even just thinking about it made his frown harden, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
Leo had reported a similar occurrence. Apparently, he had been waking by the main pit of the lair to go to his room to meditate, when he caught sight of a certain orange banded turtle zooming out of Donnie's lab (escaping an angry turtle who was fed up with the fun loving turtle's pestering).
Leo had caught sight of red on his brother's shoulder, and quickly ran him down (with varying amounts of difficulty) to find out what was the matter. Mikey had apparently scraped himself on something sharp, probably one of Don's many inventions, while making his daring, high speed escape. The orange banded turtle didn't even acknowledge the small trickle of blood running down his arm until Leo pointed it out.
However, the longer Raph thought about it, the more confused he became. Why would his brother suddenly start acting like this? Acting as if…he didn't matter.
Raph growled into the dark.
This was all the Shredder's fault, damn him. What had he done to his little brother? What had he done?!
A conversation with Donnie he'd had not long ago struck him suddenly, making Raph gasp sharply. Back when they had been trying to find Mikey, Don had tried countless times to thoroughly hack into the Shredder's mainframe. He'd discovered the main outline of his data, but no information concerning Mikey's whereabouts. However, there was a file that led the purple banded turtle believe that Shred Head had documented what he had done, or what he had been doing, to his little brother at the time.
Donnie had tried to hack into it, with no such luck. Raph remembered the despair that had consumed him, and he felt a black feeling return in the pit of his stomach.
He never wanted to feel that way again.
Looks like he was going to go have a visit at the Shredder's place.
The idea was stupid. Even he knew it was stupid. Of course it was stupid. A turtle couldn't just raid his arch enemy's headquarters alone and expect to come out tap dancing.
He did it anyway.
He had stuck to the shadows, expertly convincing even the wind that he was nothing but darkness as he swept across the rooftops. He was quieter than silence itself.
He infiltrated the building easily, and without detection. Effortlessly breezing past the countless squardons of guards that riddled the place, he made his way through corridors and used the gables overhead as often as he could.
Raph didn't know his way around here very well, so when he did find himself a few yards away from the Tin Can himself talking to one of his henchman, Fishface, he froze in both horror and delight.
They were talking about Mikey.
"That stupid turtle is still alive. Did we give him the right amount?" That was Fishface. Raph, perched precariously above his two enemy's on a wooden beam, didn't dare move to get a better look at the conversation. One false move could give him away. Schooling his features, Raph evened out his breathing, keeping his heart rate slow. He could not afford to react to what they were saying.
"Yes. My intention was not to kill him with the poison anyway. I rather desired its effects."
Raph felt his heart clench at Shredder's cruel, cold voice taht rang clear with authority and no small amount of amusement below him. Poison? They had poisoned his brother?!
There was a tense pause below him, and the mechanic legs that kept Fishface upright whirred slightly as he apparently shifted.
"…excuse me Master. But what effects are those exactly?"
For once, Raph was grateful that Fishface was there. Now he could find out the effects of the poison as well, and then hopefully tell Donnie before something seriously bad happened.
"You indolent servant! I told Bradford, did he not tell you?"
"No, Master."
There was another pause, and Raph held his breath.
"He feels their pain."
"…what?"
"The turtle. Stockman cooked up a concoction using traces of his DNA so that his nervous system would connect with that of the other turtle's. Whenever one of them is in pain, he will feel it also."
Raph knew they said more after that, but he didn't hear. Even after they left the room, he remained completely and utterly still, his eyes unbelievably wide. The entire world seemed to freeze, events playing back in his mind as if he was at the movie theater and watching a film filled with memories from the past, Mikey being the star. He felt his breathing quicken, and his heart seemed to be locked inside a tight vice.
Everything made sense now.
He needed to get home.
Now.
He made it out of there. Chased by Foot ninjas yes, but he made it out. He ran, ran so fast everything seemed to blur.
He needed to get home. He needed to get home.
He needed to get home.
He made it to the manhole. He really did. It was right there, in front of his eyes. A few feet away and he'd be under it. A few feet away and then it was straight home, where Mikey was.
A few feet away was a Purple Dragon.
He fought, his knuckles aching with every punch, but his mind focused on the pain more than usual. Mikey was feeling his pain now too. Mikey.
He fought harder, each punch and kick was fast and furious, but there were too many.
A bat to his shoulder made him fall to the ground. But he got back up. He got back up because he knew Mikey would've gotten back up, because Mikey had been getting back up this entire time and Raph hadn't even realized that he'd been down. He dodged, his eyes flickering from snickering gang member to snickering gang member, taking in their movements and their enormous numbers. They were good at ganging up on one victim, and Raph was getting slower and slower. He wasn't quite dodging everything anymore.
At first, he thought he had been punched in the side. The air rushed out of him and the pain was blunt.
He glanced down and saw the knife.
O god, the knife.
The knife that Mikey would be feeling too, the pain, the agony that he would be feeling too, right then, at this moment.
Mikey was feeling this.
Mikey was-
Mikey was in front of him, growling a growl so deep and threatening that for a fleeting split second Raph felt sorry for the PDs.
Leo was there, looking into his eyes.
"It's okay Raph. We got you. It's okay."
But Raph kept glancing over at his furious little brother, taking down Purple Dragon after Purple Dragon with such rage and precision that it was scary, and when all the punks were unconscious on the ground and the orange banded brother had whirled around to look at him with his baby blue eyes, Raph couldn't help but chuckle.
"Wow, kid…didn't know you had it in ya…"
But he wasn't talking about the fallen PDs. He was talking about the secrecy, the tolerance, the pure strength that his brother must've had to keep up his façade, to not let them know. Mikey normally milked his injuries. When he was injured, he made sure people knew.
But that had all changed. All because of his stupidity. All because he was too dumb enough to realize sooner that his brother was hurting, hurting in more ways than one. Hurting for them. Hurting for him. Why was he smiling? He shouldn't be smiling. This wasn't funny. This wasn't funny at all.
Darkness took him.
He woke up before his little brother did in the infirmary, and he stared at his peaceful face forever.
He should've known, should've guessed, should've figured it out.
His expression softened slightly when he say that his little brother was waking up. He was going to be okay, right? They were going to be okay.
The soft smile that had played across his lips went blank, than hard, all at once.
They needed to talk.