*Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.

*Author's Notes: Here is chapter 11 of 'You're Needed Here Now, Donnie' and this one is pretty action-packed. I really hope you like it.

Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read, review, favorite, and follow me and my stories. Your kindness and support mean the world to me. Please continue to favorite/follow/review my story if you are enjoying it so I know that you like it. I love the feedback. CJ

Chapter 11 – When Turtles Fly

"Uh, Leo," Mikey whined, vainly attempting to massage the stinging sensation out of his left bicep brought on by a well-performed roundhouse kick courtesy of Rahzar. As he favored his aching arm, the youngest terrapin gyrated and danced about to avoid being kicked again by the bigger mutant. He was also trying his best to retain Rahzar's attention while Leo attempted to get his bearings back. His oldest brother had taken a hard kick from Rahzar, too, but his had been below the belt and Mikey knew from experience that that was going to take a lot more time to recover from than a kick to the arm.

Mikey expertly twirled his nunchucks out in front of him and hooked one of his kusari chains around Rahzar's wrist. He then gave the boney mutant a solid whack to the head with the Kikon-bu end of his other nunchuck handle. Rahzar did a sort of shuffle-step sideways, almost dragging Mikey with him as he staggered to the left, but the agile turtle pulled away his nunchucks just in time to save himself from being strung along like a puppet. Not that Mikey had anything against puppets . . . because he didn't. In fact, he really, really adored puppets. His particular favorite marionette was his big brother, Donnie. Mikey loved it when Raph did the whole Donnie puppet thing. That was super funny stuff, but something told Mikey that being Rahzar's puppet wouldn't be nearly as funny. He was willing to bet that it would be a lot more painful than funny.

Rahzar taking a blind swing and a miss at Mikey's head rudely interrupted the orange-clad turtle's disorganized thought process and snapped him back into reality.

Phew! That was a little too close for comfort . . . Mikey thought as he darted to the opposite side of the street that Rahzar was still hobbling on.

"Leo! We're kind of getting our shells handed to us on a platter here," Mikey not-so ingeniously pointed out, thinking that he was being helpful.

Helpful was not exactly what Leo would have called it. The leader in blue certainly didn't need Mikey to tell him that things weren't going well. He had the bruises to prove it.

"I noticed that, Mikey," Leo groaned in a voice that was significantly rougher than normal. The oldest turtle was still hunched over in pain, with his hands on his knees, waiting for the residual throbbing from Rahzar's cheap shot to subside. The soreness from the unsportsmanlike conduct that the canine mutant had dished out several moments before was gradually dying down, but Leo was still in dire need of an ice pack . . . maybe even two of them.

Excruciating pain or not, it definitely wasn't the best circumstances for the leader to take a prolonged time out. Just because he was hurting, that didn't give him the right to leave Mikey to take Rahzar down on his own. Leo had already seen the awful beast do enough damage to his family for one night.

Forcing himself to stand upright once again, Leonardo did everything in his power to ignore his body's strong objections to the movement. He needed to push the pain out of his mind so that he could focus on the fight rather than on his own misery. His brothers needed him.

Finally, Leo lifted his head up just in time to see Rahzar taking another go at Mikey, but thankfully, his baby brother was nimble enough to dodge the attack and skitter away unscathed. Mikey then started bouncing around like a mindless chimpanzee.

Perhaps nimble hadn't been the right word to describe Mikey . . .

Spastic is more like it . . . Leo mentally noted as he watched Mikey whirl around like a green tornado, all the while, making bizarre whooping noises.

It was a little bit embarrassing.

Leo shook his head from side to side, not at all thrilled with his youngest brother's nonstop horseplay, but he refused to allow himself to be distracted by Mikey's clowning around. The oldest turtle instead concentrated on making another strike at their enemy. Other than the one timely blow to Rahzar's head that Mikey had just gotten in seconds ago, Leo and Mikey had failed to connect any other decent hits thus far and Leo's latest attempt didn't turn out to be anymore successful. The giant mutant dog easily deflected the incoming assault and flicked Leo to the side like he was a bothersome insect.

Dropping his head down as he fell towards the pavement, Leo managed to pull off a rather graceful-looking somersault. Somehow, the terrapin leader had succeeded in making it appear as though he had meant to do the tuck and roll maneuver.

"Oh, man! I wish Raph and Donnie were here . . . " Mikey thought out loud as he increased the distance between he and Rahzar, who was clearly growing more and more impatient with the skirmish.

The words had barely parted Michelangelo's lips when the youngest turtle heard a familiar gruff voice that made his heart sing.

"Looks like you two could use the help of the world's most handsome turtle."

"Raph!" Mikey squealed with delight, smiling as wide as his face would go and doing several fist pumps to show his enthusiasm for his second oldest brother's arrival.

It was at that moment that Mikey realized that his wish had just come true. Well, the Raph part of it anyway. The youngest turtle looked up to the skies in wide-eyed wonder, searching for some kind of a sign or the presence of some magical being that had just granted him his wish. Feeling all tingly inside with anticipation, Mikey closed his eyes and made his next wish. "Oh great and totally powerful genie . . . or whatever you are . . . I wish I had unlimited wishes. But if you can't grant that wish, then I wish for an endless supply of comic books and pizza."

Raph came up beside Mikey and slapped him in the back of the head.

"Ow! Hey! I didn't wish for that!" Mikey whimpered up at the traitorous night sky while he rubbed his now aching head.

"No . . . but I did," Raph wisecracked with a mischievous smirk.

"Well, it's still good to see you, bro! Even if you hit me," Mikey said with a beaming smile.

Leo wasn't quite as ecstatic to see Raph.

"Raph, you're supposed to be protecting Donnie, remember?" Leo snarled over his shoulder, making sure not to take his eyes off of Rahzar for more than a few seconds since he was still within the ferocious mutant's attack zone. The blue-masked ninja swished his katanas together, a little bit for show, but more so to hear the somewhat comforting sound that his blades produced when they slid against one another.

Raph pretended to be apathetic to his older brother's question, but inside, his stomach twisted like a pretzel. If Leo found out that he had left Donnie, injured and alone, in the abandoned warehouse right next to them, he'd deshell him for sure. That's when Raph decided that a slight misrepresentation of the truth was in order.

What Fearless doesn't know, won't hurt him . . .

"Relax, Leo. Donnie's in good hands. I left him with Casey," Raph said complacently, lying with practiced ease, thanks to years of stretching the truth in order to save their shells from their disciplinarian father. They were all guilty of it at one time or another . . .

"Ah! Sensei!"

"And where have you been?"

"Nowhere . . . "

"And how did you get so hurt?"

"Oh . . . that . . . um . . . w – well, we were . . . um . . . "

" . . . hit . . . "

" . . . by a . . . "

" . . . bus . . . "

Of course, their wise old Sensei had seen right through that poorly executed fib, even before Mikey had made the ridiculous claim that they had been hit by a 'bus' of all things.

Fortunately for Raph, this particular time, he was dealing with Leonardo, not his highly observant father. Raph's current falsehood appeared to be a much more successful endeavor than the 'bus' falsehood. His older brother didn't seem to suspect a thing. The only downside of Leo buying into the lie was that he took it upon himself to give his immediate younger brother an ear slit full.

"Casey? How is that leaving him in good hands?" Leo started, but Raph quickly blew off his big brother's attempt to reprimand him for his actions. Growing up under the same roof as 'Leonardo the Great' made the hothead an expert at tuning out his older brother's voice. Well, most of the time . . . Sometimes, his older brother knew just how to get underneath his shell. This was not one of those times. That was because Raph had someone else to converge all of his anger on.

" . . . You may as well have asked the Kraang to watch – Are you even listening to me?" Leo griped when he saw that Raph had stopped paying attention to him. It was plain to see that his younger brother's focus was now exclusively on Rahzar. There was no mistaking that the most volatile turtle was just itching to launch an attack.

Why do I even bother? Leo mentally grumbled.

Then, as if he couldn't hold himself back a moment longer, Raph let out a raucous roar and he dashed towards Rahzar, fists and sais leading the way. To Leo's surprise, Raph landed an impressive right hook to Rahzar's chin, temporarily dazing the taller mutant.

Seeing a golden opportunity arise, Leo moved in for the TKO, but, regrettably, Rahzar wasn't as dazed as Leo had thought he was.

Before Leo even got a chance to get a hit in, Rahzar struck the turtle's leader without mercy, slamming his tightly closed fist into Leo's solar plexus.

Leo flew some ten feet through the air, landing on his shell, and then, bouncing several more feet until the curb in front of the fortune cookie factory was nice enough to cease his forward motion. The last bit of momentum from his flight propelled Leo up and over onto his plastron so that he was face down atop the very curb that had stopped him, making it impossible for Raph and Mikey to see if he was conscious or not.

"Leo!" Mikey and Raph yelled simultaneously as they hurried over to their fallen brother, almost too scared to touch him.

Leo moaned in pain as soon as Raph placed a hand on his shoulder.

That was all the motivation Mikey needed to launch his own assault on Rahzar. The youngest brother already despised Chris Bradford more than their average enemy due to their rocky history together. Then, the jerk had gone and hurt Donnie real bad. Now, seeing Leo's prostrate form on the sidewalk only made Mikey despise his former friend "Rad Brad" that much more. Watching Bradford attack his oldest brother was the last straw needed to push Mikey over the edge. The normally happy-go-lucky turtle didn't just go insane. He went Raph-insane.

"Mikey! No!" Raph yelled, but he was too late. Mikey had already made up his mind.

"You hurt my brothers, you big, ugly creep!" Mikey shouted as he barreled full speed into Rahzar's gut with his shoulder and shell.

Once again, the biggest mutant of the five proved to be an impenetrable fortress, seemingly impervious to turtles smashing into his midsection.

Slightly woozy and confused from the collision, Mikey stooped in front of Rahzar. While the youngest sibling waited for the world to stop spinning, he made the mistake of leaving his shell unprotected.

Rahzar swung his huge arm out and nailed Mikey with a bone-jarring backhand, much like what he had done to Donnie earlier when he had rendered him unconscious.

Raphael's heart just about leapt out of his chest as he watched his baby brother sail into a nearby wall. The only positive thing about what had just happened was that Mikey hit shell first rather than head first like poor Donnie had, but that didn't bring the red-clad turtle a whole lot of comfort. Not when he saw Mikey fall lifelessly to the ground much the same way that his genius brother had back in the warehouse.

"Mikey!" Raph howled, sprinting towards his downed little brother. Once beside Mikey, Raph rolled him over onto his carapace, and, like Leo, the youngest turtle let out a moan of pain.

"Two down, one to go," Rahzar snarled, slowly backing away from where Raph was poised over Mikey. Raph noticed that the bigger mutant was getting unnervingly close to Leo, who was still lying face down, not moving. Raph rose to his feet and twirled his sais, preparing to defend Leo at all cost.

"Once I take care of you, I'll find that scrawny brother of yours and I'll make him suffer for all of the trouble you four have caused me tonight. Then, when he turns me human again, I'll show him what real pain is. Maybe I'll send him back to your rat master, piece by piece. Which piece do you think your Sensei would like first?" Rahzar asked coldly and his face twisted into a sickening smile, as though the very thought of causing Donatello pain brought him immense pleasure. What was actually making him smile was the satisfaction of seeing the hot-tempered turtle about to blow his top. It was so easy to push this one's buttons. Rahzar almost hated to have to kill him . . .

"You keep your filthy claws away from my brother!" Raph screamed, making a beeline for Rahzar, growling the whole way. The three prongs of the sai clutched in Raph's right hand were aimed straight for Rahzar's throat as he charged, but the larger mutant anticipated this and blocked the move with a well-timed side swipe of his forearm, effectively knocking Raph's weapon out of his hand.

Rahzar then hauled his other arm back and sent his open hand flying into Raph's temple, causing the red-banded turtle's head to jerk to the side as he teetered backwards several steps. Spots filled Raph's vision and he wasn't even aware that he had dropped his other sai to the ground until he heard a 'ting' sound. With his hands now free of projectile objects, Raph instinctively clutched his thudding head.

Seeing that the turtle was dazed from the swat that he had just delivered to his head, Rahzar chose to capitalize on the turtle's bad decision to temporarily let his guard down and leave himself vulnerable to attack. The hulking mutant dog drew his right claws back in an almost theatrical fashion and prepared to deliver a death blow straight into Raphael's chest.

Raph was slouched forward, rubbing his aching head, so he was momentarily oblivious to Rahzar's incoming strike. By the time the second oldest turtle's vision focused enough to see the claws coming at him, there was nothing he could do to stop them. With Leo and Mikey already down, Raph was about to get stuck like a big, green pin cushion.

"Oh . . . this is gonna hurt," Raph groaned, pressing his eyes tightly closed and holding his breath as he waited for the white hot stabbing pain from Rahzar's claws to course through him.

The pain never came.

At least, not for Raph . . .

For a split-second, Raph thought that maybe he had died instantly from the fatal puncture wounds that he had been bracing himself for, but, if he was in fact dead, why could he still feel his head throbbing and his heart pounding wildly against his rib cage? And why did his mouth feel so dry? And why did he still have this unspeakable feeling of dread burning in the pit of his stomach?

Unable to take the suspense a moment longer, Raph blindly patted down his plastron, checking for anything out of the ordinary . . . Or, more importantly, checking for any holes that hadn't been there before.

Nothing . . .

Exhaling a tremulous breath, Raph's now overstrained brain gradually attempted to make sense of things again. Keeping his eyes sealed shut out of fear, he mentally retraced the sounds that he had just heard. First, he had heard the familiar sound of his name being called out. It had sounded like it had come from above. Then, there had been a stomach-turning thump, followed by several grunts of pain. One thump, two voices. Now, silence . . .

The silence was terrifying, but what filled Raph's soul with even more terror than the silence was the fact that he could have sworn that one of those voices belonged to Donnie.

Donnie . . .

Sucking in a gulp of air so hard that he nearly choked on it, Raph forced himself to open his eyes, although every fiber of his being was screaming for him not to.

"D – Donnie?" Raph gasped as the breath that he had just taken in was stolen away from him. His hands began to sweat and shake uncontrollably at his sides. At an absolute loss as to what to do, he could only stand there and stare for several agonizing moments. The scene before him was too much to take in all at once.

Rahzar's huge form was splayed out on the pavement, arms and legs widely spread-out, like he had fallen asleep while in the midst of making a snow angel. It may have been a comical sight to behold if Raph wasn't feeling so completely mortified right now.

On top of the skeletal mutant's sprawled out body was a large, grungy-looking cardboard box that was mostly in one piece. The unknown contents of the box were still miraculously contained inside thanks to the supernatural powers of packaging tape. Attached to said cardboard box that had presumably been responsible for knocking Rahzar out cold was a man-sized mutant turtle that – much to Raph's horror – was draped over the mutant canine and the box at an awkward angle. The turtle's eyes were closed and he appeared to be completely motionless.

"Donnie!" Raph shouted, clumsily sidestepping around Rahzar to get to his genius brother. The temperamental turtle was now skyrocketing towards a full-blown nervous breakdown.

For reasons Raph could not even begin to comprehend, Donnie had the big, filthy cardboard box strapped to his back like a parachute, securely fastened to his plastron and shoulders by some tattered old ropes that he must have found inside of the factory. On the ground beside Donnie's outstretched right arm was his bo-staff. Raph assumed that his little brother must have dropped the weapon upon impact with the mutant below him.

Upon impact . . . Raph swallowed so hard it hurt as his gaze found its way up to the balcony above them. It had to be an eighteen to twenty-foot drop from the balcony down to the ground.

"Aw shell," Raph muttered, frantically searching the area for his dropped sais. Once he spotted one of them, he quickly snatched it up and began to cut away the ropes that were keeping Donnie pinned to the cardboard box.

"Why, Donnie? Why would you do that?" Raph rhetorically asked, letting his voice crack without contest as he sliced away the last of the ropes.

When all of the ropes were removed, Donnie's body started to limply slide forward off of the box, but his big brother was there, ready to catch him. Raph wrapped his muscular arms around Donnie's torso and carefully dragged his unresponsive little brother several feet away from where Rahzar was laid out.

Raph nervously glanced over his shoulder and he could see that both Leo and Mikey were starting to come around. While the sight initially brought Raph a modicum of relief, in the end, it wound up making him that much more stressed out. It meant that Rahzar could wake up at any time.

"Leo! I could really use your help over here!" Raph sharply howled over his shoulder, and then, turned back towards Donnie. Removing his elbow pads in one swift motion, Raph cautiously lifted Donnie's head up off of the ground and gently rested it back down upon his elbow pads. Still, Donnie didn't look as though he felt all that comfortable. Then again, Raph wasn't feeling all that comfortable, either.

"Open your eyes, Donnie," Raph said, patting the side of his younger brother's face, exactly like he had done earlier when the genius was unconscious, and, just like earlier, Donnie did not respond to the physical contact. Fortunately, this time, Raph had the presence of mind to restrain himself from slapping his little brother, knowing that he already had a head injury. Raph didn't want to make things worse than they already were.

Like I could possibly make things any worse than I already have . . . This is all my fault. I should have never left him, Raph thought hysterically, scared out of his shell.

"Come on, Brainiac! Don't do this to me! Let me see your eyes, Donnie. Remember, you said yourself that you shouldn't go to sleep with a concussion . . . so the doctor can't go ignoring his own orders, right?" Raph tried to reason with Donnie, but to no avail.

Donnie's body was dreadfully still.

Too still . . .

Oh no! No! No! No! Please, Donnie! Please! No!

To be continued . . .

*Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading. Please continue to favorite/follow/review if you like this story and that cliffhanger ending . . . ;) CJ