Three Weeks Prior:
November
"Why don't you try chewing on this, uh?"
Raphael, the most tempered out of the four brothers, had one of his sais proficiently placed inside of the enemy's mouth while Michelangelo looked on in amusement as he restrained the Foot ninja from behind, interlocking his arms into a grip that resembled a pretzel.
The captive blinked rapidly as he tried to keep from gagging on the tip of the weapon and his mouth was stretched to its limit, making his skin look like the cured membrane of a traditional drum. His eyes flicked back and forth from his tormentor to Don and Leo, pleading with them as though they were the very essence of reason and mercy, who had arrived to quell their brother's hell-raising fury.
"Care if we join the party?" Donatello asked nonchalantly, moving closer to peer at Raph's blade, which was three quarters of the way down the black cave of the man's oral cavity.
"Party?" Mikey snorted, "More like Raph's Dental Care Clinic. He's the type that gives dentists a bad name. Think 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Dentist of New York!' Or – or better yet; 'Raphael: The Mutant Dentist of New York.'"
"Thank you for that, Michelangelo," Donatello deadpanned.
Mikey smiled roguishly, "My pleasure, Bro."
"Raphael, remove your sai from the man's mouth," Leonardo ordered, ignoring the satisfied smirk on his red-masked brother's face.
"I don't see why I have to," he replied obstinately.
Leonardo groaned inwardly and bit his tongue from calling out his brother on insubordination. There were too many things at stake for them to let petty differences come in their way this time; so he willingly allowed the transgression to pass. He decided to empathize with the red-masked terrapin, because for Raphael, even for Donny and Mikey, not being able to save their father had to be as wearing and tearing on them as it was on him.
Summoning his patience, Leonardo simply pointed out that they could not get any answers from the man if he (Raphael) kept him that way – with a sai down his throat.
"Well it ain't like he's talking anyway." The red-masked turtle retorted, glaring into the ninja's face for a moment before he drew his sai out and rubbed it clean on the man's shirt. "How 'bout we stop playing games with each other, uh?" He nudged the man hard in his chest with the tsukagashira of the sai. "You tell us what we wanna know and we let you go free; unharmed. What do you say?"
The man scowled and spat back viciously. "Screw you, freaks!"
Then, almost instantly, the Foot soldier's head whipped to the side violently and Raphael's fist was returning to his side. By the time he recovered, he was looking back at the mutants with a red mouth and some of his teeth clinked on the ground where he spat them out in a slimy soup of blood.
"Ah, ah, ah," Mikey shook his head, "Remember, we agreed to only use nice words." He tightened his hold on the human's arms, forcing him to gasp in pain.
"I will only ask this once," Leonardo took a step forward, bringing himself shoulder to shoulder with Raphael, and lowered his head to look the man directly in the eyes. "Where are you keeping Master Splinter?" The flat side of his blade gently touched the man's bruised jaw.
A peal of laughter erupted from the ninja's bloodied lip and he leveled his gaze on the blue-masked terrapin. "Your threats do not scare me, freak. You were always too weak to kill your enemies. Unfit to be called ninja."
Donatello's hand suddenly flew up to catch Raphael's own in mid-flight as it was about to connect sharply with the man's face once more. "I won't be able to stop the him next time," he warned the human, "so I'd suggest you start talking." He then released his brother's wrist once he felt he had significantly calmed down.
The man glared at them in silence before he opened his mouth to speak again. "You are in no position to threaten me," he said, smirking at them. "Not when our Master has her eyes on your human friends."
Mikey wrung his arms even harder, making him wince involuntarily. "Kill me if you want, turtle, but I highly doubt you would do it," he continued, inching his chin further upward from Leo's sword edge. "The Shredder sees and knows everything. We know where they live, how they move, what they eat, and even when they breathe… Especially that charming female friend of yours who likes to keep you around as a pet," he sneered, pointedly locking his pale grey eyes unto Leonardo.
All four mutants stiffened.
Clatter, clink! Crack!
Shock and silence followed the sudden sound. Leonardo's heart was racing like a wild stallion in his chest. His blood gushed through his vein fuelling them with pure, heated adrenaline. It can't be. The words formed in his mind on their own and he looked down at his hands. They were shaking, and his katanas were lying on the ground near to his toes.
"Leo!" Raph's cry sounded like a distant bell in a dense, darkening fog and it was filled with disbelief and anger.
"Why did you do that?" Donatello's voice cut through the freezing ice in the leader's brain, bringing him back to the ground.
"Don?" Leonardo's voice shook as he focused on his purple-masked sibling. Donatello's eyes were wide and he was staring at him with absolute surprise on his face. "Don, what – what was he - ?"
"Guys?" Mikey croaked from somewhere beside; his voice seeming strained.
When Leonardo turned his head to face his most jovial brother, he saw that he was struggling to hold up the Foot soldier in his arms. The man's jaw was slack and his head hung low at an awkward angle, revealing the severed bones in his neck under the skin.
"Mikey, let go of him!" Raphael commanded causing the turtle to immediately drop the man's body. He then spun around on the eldest, "What the hell, Leo! You killed the man! And you want to lecture me about self-control!" Raph's voice thundered across the city air, rustling a couple birds out of their roosts and frightening some cats down in the alleyway below.
"I – I know, I know. I screwed up big time," Leonardo groaned, bending down to retrieve his weapons from the ground. He straightened up, greeting his brothers with an expression that could have mirrored a range of emotions from nervousness to shame, and carefully re-holstered his twin blades. "I'm really sorry, guys. I guess I lost it when he mentioned -"
"April, Leo," Donatello inserted quickly. "He was talking about April." He grabbed hold of Leo's shoulder and gave him a quick and firm shake, "Her apartment is under surveillance, remember?"
"Yeah…But the way he looked at me, Donny, it was as if he knew about her," the blue-masked ninja admitted; his mind warped on the young nurse at home alone in her house.
"He was messing with you," Michelangelo spoke up at last, rolling his eyes to the heavens for dramatic emphasis, "Like he was messing with me and Raph before you got here. The dude's obsessed with April. He thought that we each had our own infatuation with her, can you believe that? You should have heard what he told Raph."
Leo frowned at his orange-masked brother, "No… it did not sound like that to me."
Raphael coughed. "That's probably because you're so caught up being sick with lo -"
"Ah!" Donatello promptly interrupted the hot headed turtle. "Not here," he narrowed his eyes at Raph who in turn wrinkled his face. Then to Leo he said, "She's safe and you know this. I would have told you if I had seen any Foot members nearby and I haven't. That was the purpose of having me set up cameras over there a few months ago, right?"
"Yes, you're right," Leonardo agreed, "and I guess they would've attacked me sooner if they had found out. I suppose I would have been the perfect target for them – alone, outnumbered and with a liability."
His mood darkened at his own words as he dwelled on the reality of their circumstances. If they did find out about Hazel, then what's going to stop them from taking the opportunity to try to bring down one of their most despised enemies? The levels of animosity between the two clans were at staggering proportions; where the Foot would scramble at any means to bring the four terrapins down to full submission. This was the life he led; a life full of hate, deceit and death. A life he had evidently dragged an innocent woman into and soon enough, their worlds were going to implode at the crossing point. The real question was: how was he going to stop it? And he already knew the answer to that.
"Right," the red-masked ninja drawled, "So now that all of this has been cleared up with you, Fearless Leader, you owe us another squealer." He jabbed a thumb at his elder brother's plastron.
"Yeah," Mikey joined in, "they keep dying with you. It's like you're the Foot Ninja Angel of Death or something." He looked down at his brother's victim, shaking his head. "Poor guy never stood a chance. Geesh, now I'm afraid to even say the H-word." Michelangelo cackled, ducking and rolling away from Leonardo's arm to sprint off.
The remaining Hamato clan members sighed in unison; daunted by Mikey's rapid burst of energy, and followed after him across the sleeping city under the swollen belly of the pregnant, silver moon. The time for them to stop had not yet come, since Splinter was the mark of the endgame.
A/N: You can sue me for the uncharacteristic Leo. The dude's under a lot of pressure. Heh Heh.
Vocabulary:
tsuka - the handle of the katana or sai.
tsukagashira - the base of the handle on the sai.
Technically all foreign languages are supposed to be underlined and in italics, but the words '
katana' and 'sai' just seem like they have been integrated largely into English writing (fanfic) so I refused to go back and underline them and whatnot.