I own nothing, but my OC.
Major event in this chapter was inspired by "Fireworksinthenight's" story "Just Fine" 28th chapter: Truth be Told.
Splinter was searching through a tunnel that was dry as a field ready to be harvested. Indeed that was what he was there to do. Now the turtles had shown signs of growing out of their playpen, it was time to make changes to it again. Though, "Jona" would likely have helped, if he'd asked, by simply buying what he needed to do so, he despised having to ask her. In this particular place, he might find helpful bits of discarded things to do it himself.
For one thing, he'd actually found the grocery cart he'd used to transport his turtles before the last Kraang attack in another place. It had been Jona who'd helped him remove its wheels and place them on the four corners of the playpen to make it moveable. Unfortunately, after that, certain turtles, most often Michelangelo, liked to not only climb out, but then push the rest of their brothers along in it. However, the pen's mobility also allowed him to take them all along on his scavenging expeditions. Since she "was" a help of getting them all fed with food from above, looking after the turtles while he was busy, and even seeing potential in bits of trash he had overlooked, he often told his scavenging plans to Jona.
Right now, the turtles were playing with the leftovers of the tub of chalk Jona had brought down in what she'd thought would be her last delivery to them. He'd found they liked to use it to draw on themselves and each other as much as anything else. As the chalk seemed of as nontoxic a variety as possible, and washed off more easily than paint or marker ink it seemed a reasonable way to keep them busy in their movable pen, for a while anyway, especially Michelangelo.
As he poked and sniffed amid a layer of organic material in which the inorganic was lodged at the bottom of the dry and seemingly unused for some time pipe, Splinter felt something. Then he heard something. A trembling started beneath his paws. A rush of water in the distance behind him reached his swiveled back ears. No!
His eyes expanded in his head. His ears went stiff and straight as stalks. He turned and flung himself at the playpen. No time to move it. He grabbed every turtle inside and leapt at ... no the entrance to the next pipe was to far and might not help much. He jumped up and grabbed ahold of a bar wrapping one, free arm and his legs around it. Then he looked at the turtles hoping to alleviate their fear, or maybe his own. Three faces looked back, small, round, eyes reflecting his own emotions. Wait … three? One, Raphael, two, Donatello, three Michelangelo … Where? His head spun to look down. Right near where he'd just been standing, neck-craned back to look up at him, was Leonardo. And the rush of water came onward. Leonardo turned his face toward it.
Splinter tried to cry out, but his vocal cords, and his chest, were too tight … No! The water came on, a wave several times higher than what the baby turtle stood. It would at least splash his own back where he clung to the ceiling by this smaller pipe, but it would eat his child whole!
A scream echoed down the pipes all around them warring for dominance with the roar of the wave. A body blurred as it raced for the turtle, grabbed him, and turned its back to the wave while holding him before it. And then they were both gone, swallowed, dissolved, by all that water, all that brown, somewhat warm water that soaked and pulled at him. But he held on. It was gone soon after. First, it no longer pulled at him, then it no longer touched him, then it was far beneath him, and then it was past them in the distance. In that distance, he heard another sound a gurgling sound like water going down a drain … Soon that sound was gone too. Silence followed.
He let go entirely to make the drop, long as it was, to the now nearly washed clean bottom of that wide, gigantic pipe. There, he fell to his knees and bent over pushing his remaining turtles deep into his chest as they whined, coughed, and sniffed. He sobbed. His own sounds, that rattling, staccato anguish echoed off the curved, metal walls surrounding them. Then another sound came back ...
"Yoshi! Yoshi, get your tail down here! Now!"
What do you think happened?
God Bless
ScribeofHeroes
