DEAD VOLTAGE

A collaborative effort by Peas N' Carrots.

Neither Peas nor Carrots have any control, rights, or ownership of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Neither stands to profit in any way, shape or form from this work of fanfiction. Both hope you enjoy their flight of fantasy.

Something went amiss under the streets of New York City, within the turtles' lair on a very dark and rainy autumn night. Michaelangelo was writing the last few letters on a piece of notebook paper when--"Aww!" Mikey's voice whined as his room went unnaturally pitch black and silent, "Not another power outage!" There'd been a surprising number of electronic failures lately, and even to Donatello, the cause was unknown. The situation irritated the four turtles to no end, though master Splinter seemed just as content without the power.

Donatello blinked in the darkness. The sudden absence of monitor glow left after-images of the screen across his vision. All around him, the reassuring and steady flow of whirrs, beeps, clicks, and hums that came from his equipment slowed to a silence. He shut his eyes in frustration. After he'd counted backwards from ten--and then a second time when he realized he had not saved--he pulled the flashlight from the top of his desk. Brown outs in the summer were inconvenient: no air conditioning, no TV, no radio, no computer, no fridge, and you had to spark the gas ranges on the stove by hand. But brown outs with winter coming?! That wasn't inconvenient, that was dangerous: no heat.

Hearing Mike squawking in the other room, Donatello sighed. There were some new chores to add to the list before it got cold: build a generator, and start stockpiling the gasoline to run it at the drop of a hat all winter long.

Leonardo had managed to work his way to Donatello's room with only his familiarity with the lair to aid him. He then knocked at the door and spoke towards it. "Sorry to bug you Donatello," he noted, "But we've run out of candles..." Candles would hardly be the issue when the sun went down. Fall nights in New York City were chilly at best.

Noises of rummaging greeted Leonardo as a flashlight beam played crazily over the back wall. "Nnnii, Ee-oh." Donatello's mouthful of flashlight precluded him from articulating anything more than grunts and vowels. The rummaging stopped suddenly, and objects clattered as they shifted.Don straightened up, standing in his pile of junk. The flashlight beam shined across Leo's face and ruined his night vision. "Oh, Leo, since you're here, gimme a hand with this flashlight. I know I've got some lamp oil cans down here that aren't as empty as some of these others." He shifted and Leo heard the clatter of cans on the far side of the room: a good 8 feet back in the depths of Donatello's clutter. "Oh and watch out for the all that loose wiring and the pile of vacuum tubes. I meant to clear those up earlier..."

Don's flashlight shined back into the cabinet; he was lost in his search for lamp oil. The rest of the room lay in front of Leonardo, completely swallowed in the darkness of the underground. The vacuum tubes, the wiring, and all the untold techno-junk that littered Don's lab lurked somewhere in the darkness.

Leonardo squinted and rubbed at his eyes with one hand in attempt to get his night vision back again. "Donatello...do you have any idea what's been causing this," he wondered as he closed his eyes hoping that Don's voice could guide him, "Or at least how we can find out what it is?" In the back of his mind Leo was counting the moments before his other brothers' complaints started raining down onto Donatello. He raised his hands before him at different elevations and walked cautiously through the darkness. Only Leo's long hours of blind-fighting practice could have prepared him to navigate such a mess.

Don's voice sounded distracted and the clunk of cans almost drowns him out as he thinks out loud. "Well, the power grid we're on could be faulty. Or the city may have over-burdened it. Or the main power stations are on the fritz... all in all? The city's workers will have to fix it--unless you guys are gonna get me current schematics for the WHOLE CITY and help me check it all: one electric pole at a time." Don pulled a can that did more sloshing than rattling and passed Leonardo the flashlight. "If you're asking me to 'fix the whole city,' you're nuts. I'm gonna make us a generator, and you an Mike an Raph are gonna start siphoning gas from parked cars... if we spread it out, no one gets stranded and we'll have enough fuel for winter."

Raphael climbed down the ladder with a bag of groceries under one arm and a sack of DVDs hanging off the other. The place was dark, but not silent. Mike was caterwauling in his subway car. Apparently they'd had another outage. "JUS' GREAT!! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSE'TA WATCH THE RENTALS WITHOUT POWER?! DONATELLOOOOO?!" Raphael stopped long enough to throw the groceries on the kitchen table and his coat on the back of the sofa, only barely slowed by the dark. "DONNIE!? How long 'til ya FIX THIS SHIT?!"

Leo sighed as he took the flashlight. "That was probably around...five minutes. A new record," he stated as Raphael's shouts rang through the lair, "Sorry Donatello. I wasn't trying to say that I expected that much from you." From the direction of Mikey's room, Klunk was heard yowling and knocking something over in sync with Mikey blurting out some self-censored curses. Leo furrowed his brows and shook his head. "I hope this one doesn't last very long."

Donatello let out the sigh that had been building. He made his way back to his workbench and assembled the lantern. The room brightened when he lit it, and Leo could see Don was probably MORE frustrated than Mike or Raph about this... probably because it was his job alone to "fix it."

Raph's head came through the doorway to the lab. "April says these have to go back to the store by noon tamorrow. So make with the fixin'. I've been dyin' ta watch this one." He held up 'Ju-on.'

The frustration ebbed from Don's features, and quiet determination replaced it. The sooner he fixed this, the sooner he could get back to his projects. "Right." Don looked around his lab. He had everything he'd need except quiet. "Okay, Raph I need you and Mike to go get me some stuff..." Don grabbed an envelope and wrote a shopping list on the back of it: the most obscure hardware he could name. "Get me this stuff." By the time they'd found it all, he'd have the generator running. "Leo's gonna stay here and help me get repairs underway."

Raph's mouth opened and shut. The sooner he did this... the sooner he'd be able to kick back and watch his Japanese horror flick. He snapped up the list. "You got it, Don--waittaminute! what the hell is this shit?! ..."

"It's necessary. Ask Casey if you have a problem with it." That would take them even longer. Don kept his smile under an excellent poker face.

If Leonardo knew what his brother had just done, he would have been smirking and congratulating him. Since he knew nothing of Donatello's deception, he had every reason to believe that his brothers were being sent on a vital mission. Mikey had just managed to emerge from his room, complete with a pretty new coat of blue paint, courtesy of Klunk. The painted Mikey grumbled quietly as he attempted uselessly to wipe the paint from his face with his hands and his equally blued bandanna.

Raph headed out of the lab, having snagged a spare flashlight. He tossed the DVDs onto the sofa and flashed a grin full of teeth at his drippy brother. "Very nice camo. We'll never be able to pick you out from the rest of the smurfs." Raph gestured with the flashlight towards the bathroom. "Get cleaned up so you don't leave tracks, cause Donnie jus' gave me a list a shit he needs. We're goin' out. .... unless you wanna stay home and play with makeup some more."

Don sighed. "They'll be gone for at least 5 hours.... okay Leo. We're gonna build a generator."

Mikey smirked and took off his bandanna in reply to Raph's words. "Yeah, funny Raph," he said before tossing the paint soaked cloth at his brother in red. Mike stalked towards the bathroom. "I stepped on the cat and it knocked my paints everywhere. If I wanna play with makeup, I've have April give you a make over." Raph was left with a blue splat on his plastron that had been meant for his face and a little bit of paint on one foot where the bandanna landed. "I'll be done in a minute." He quickly closed the door behind him in attempt to avoid any immediate vengeance from Raph.

Leonardo grinned slightly. "Five hours," he repeated, "Let's hope they at least manage to get out the front door soon.

Raph glared at the bandana, the wet blue on his chest and the closed bathroom door. The wheels spun in Raphael's head: this affront would not go unanswered. Raph left the bandana on the floor and stalked into the bathroom, paying no mind to the shut door. He yanked it open and shut it behind himself. There was 2 seconds of eerie silence before Mikey began screaming like a little girl.

Don fought off the urge to face-palm as the sounds from the living room filtered into the lab. He shot Leonardo a long-suffering glance and began collecting tools by lantern light in his lab.

Ten minutes later, Raphael emerged from the bathroom, a smug look of triumph sat on his face. Mikey would follow later, sullenly burping soft soap. Neither of them wore blue anymore. "Geez, Mike! You comin' or what!?" Raph grabbed his coat and pocketed the list, heading for the ladder.

Mikey muttered quietly to himself between burps as he followed after Raph. "Yeah...hic...right...hic...behind ya...hic," the smaller brother replied as he started pulling on his own coat and grabbed a hat. He stuffed the hat onto his head as he approached the ladder.

Leo watched Don rummaging through his toolboxes. "What's the first order of business in building this, Don?" Donatello put the 'Two Stooges' out of his mind and led Leonardo towards the section of the subway tunnel that they had designated as 'storage.' He played his lantern's light over the haphazard piles of boxes, lumber, spare appliances, old motors, bed frames, exercise equipment, tangled balls of Christmas lights, partial bicycles and extra power chords. None of it worked outright, but all of it could work with 'just a little repair.' Living in the sewer with a homemade TV, meant that Donatello never passed up anything salvageable. Things broke in the Hamato household as inevitably as death and taxes—with Raph's temper and Mike's enthusiasm, there was no avoiding damages. All the salvageables sat, scrounged up and ready for it's repair and debut into use, collecting dust and rusting out in the most remote section of subway tunnel still attached to the lair.

Don pointed at a black shape in the back of the pile, underneath a tangle of chairs. "That old bedframe will be our base. We'll anchor that--" he pointed to another shadow under the piles of lumber, sitting in an old claw foot bathtub, "Motor to it, and build from there!"

Splinter emerged from his room, holding and petting a purring Klunk in his arms. "Very good, Donatello. It's always a comfort to know you have a plan for repairs. Things are well in hand. " Klunk melted to a puddle of boneless kitty under Splinter's nails. "Since I can see that you and your brother will be at work for some time, I will prepare us some dinner, yes? I believe that club sandwiches will not prove too difficult to make without electricity." Klunk's limp limbs hung down from his jello body of fur and happiness. "I trust you both to notify me if Ii can help in any way." Splinter made eye contact with both the brothers, daring them to tell their Master to 'take it easy.' Satisfied that they would not dare attempt to keep him from working beside them after supper, Splinter took his armful of cat-loaf to the kitchen with him.

Don looked back at Leo with a grin and a small bow. The prospect of having another pair of hands attached to another rational person cheered him. "After you..." The pile of horded junk waited for them in the lantern light.

Across town, in the basement of the NYC Power & Electric's Generator plant, three men whispered in frightened tones.

"I don't know what it means! This isn't covered in the journals!"

"So you don't know why it keeps happening? Did you check all your Grand-dad's journals and logs?"

"Of course I have! Quit pestering me with stupid questions!"

"Do you have any idea what could be wrong? If this system is showing signs of instability, maybe we need to repeat the rituals again..."

"That's what you say every time! CHRIST

"... well, that's cause it works!"

"Yessssssss... it does work... for a week, or a month, or two days... we can't just keep sacrificing people for the rest of our lives! I've got appointments to keep! I'm a busy man, and I can't live coming here every time the system goes haywire."

"True, we do need to find a more permanent solution, but unless you have that solution now?... Another ritual is our only option."

"Fine. I'm sure there's at least one ripe one in the sub-basement. Pull up one of those twins. They've been down there for what? Three months? That should do. Not as potent as usual, but we're running out of the real 'long-term' tenants. Oh! Have the boys pick up some new blood. If we don't restock now, we'll be short a life when we need one later. "

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir."

Leo chuckled a little before making his way into the maze of junk. "Do you think master Splinter is getting a little bothered by age?" He asked Donatello seriously, "I don't mean that in the sense of things like aches or pains. Doesn't it seem that it bothers him emotionally?" Leo seemed a little worried as he questioned Donatello, but he was still making his way through the junk. As he reached the bed frame he began working at trying to move it.

Don set his lantern up on a chest of drawers where it would illuminate the storage area. He picked his way through the junk, and started moving the lumber off of the bed frame for Leo. A guilty grimace flashed over his features. "I think ... yeah. It's my fault. I was bugging him earlier this week to let me get his blood pressure and just.... just a check up!" Don shouldered more two by fours out of the way. "He's worse than Raph is about it. It had nothing to do with his age. We live in a sewer. I wanna know that my family's healthy and not working on arsenic poisoning or something." Having stacked the wood out of the way, Don griped the other end of the bed frame and hoisted. "...Okay it had a little bit to do with his age.... but still. I didn't think it was unreasonable. " Don mumbled, "I kinda told him to take it easier on himself. I think he took that the wrong way."

"I suppose I can understand how master Splinter would be upset," Leo nodded. "Older people seem to get a little touchy with those sort of thing don't they?" He lifts his side of the bed frame and starts helping Don get it into place.

Splinter cleared his throat from behind them. "Yes, I'm sure the elderly find such assumptions about their abilities quite trying." An ached brow made it perfectly clear that Splinter would only consider himself 'elderly' a month or two after he had passed away and not a moment sooner. His gaze softened. "I do appreciate your concern, Donatello. Though it is hardly warranted. Come. Dinner is prepared. "

Leo made a strange expression at Splinter's return and gave him an uneasy smile. "I didn't mean to say you were elderly," Leo insists as he carefully settles his side of the bed frame down somewhere safe, "Certainly you aren't." He seemed as though he thought he had insulted his master and was trying to make up for it fast.

Splinter blinked at the expression on his sons' faces. Leonardo and Donatello were clearly worried they'd mortally offended him. A smile became a chuckle at his own expense. "My sons, perhaps it is merely for vanity's sake that I reacted so poorly. Forgive me. I had not intended to seem cross. Please do not look so upset." Splinter approached his sons and laid a hand on their shoulders, to show he really was not holding any kind of grudge. "Come now. The generator can keep. Let us eat before Klunk steals the meat from our sandwiches."

Don let out the breath he'd be holding and nodded with a grin. "I'm all for it. C'mon Leo."

"You can't DO this!! Where are you TAKING me?! My sister! What are you going to do with HER?! I--" The door shut on the ragged woman's frantic cries.

"Thank goodness. All that carrying on really grates on one's nerves. Do make sure she's chained down securely. You wouldn't believe the flexibility some people have. Especially after they've become desperate enough to break their own bones for escape."

"Yes sir. She's definitely in place."

"Have you set up the wardings and the vessel yet? It'd be a shame to miss panic like this."

"Yes, yes. Everything is in place. The vessel is already collecting her fear, her hate, her panic; she's brimming with what we need. We won't have to torture her for another few hours. Feel free to take a break before we begin to milk her."

"Thank you, sir."

"Thank you, sir, but I'll stay here and prepare the equipment."

"Very well. I'll see you gentlemen in a few hours."

Mikey trudged along behind Raph, still burping up bubbles occasionally. "So we're goin' to the junk yard first, right," Mike asked, "An' then if we don't find it all we'll check some dumpsters? Or what?"

Raph shrugged. "I was actually thinkin' it'd be faster ta break up a drug deal'er two an' head over ta that mom'n'pop hardware store off of Brant an' 32nd. Figure s'long's we don't break anythin' gettin' in after hours, an' leave cash fer the shit Don needs, it'll be one stop shoppin'. " Raph grinned as he climbed up a ladder to a manhole cover. "And we get a workout."

Meanwhile Mikey grinned at Raph and continued after him. "Now we just gotta find the drug dealers," Mikey stated.

Raph gave Mikey a flat look. "I'll give ya a hint, Mike: Queens." Raph didn't wait for his brother to replace the manhole cover before snagging a fire escape and heading for the roof. "Las' one ta the bridge is a pipe licker!"

Mikey grunted as he quickly worked on replacing the manhole cover. He smirked in the darkness of the alley. Raph knew he would need to cheat to win. Without that head start, Mike would blow by him over the first block.

Raphael rushed headlong into the darkness. With the power out all over NYC, the city was truly a ninja's playground. Only the city hall, hospitals and police stations had lights, powered by their own back-up generators. The darkness filled the spaces between the buildings like a tangible force. Only occasional headlights and the dim glow of candle light in a few windows pushed the night back. With all the shadows of a burnt out city to cloak him, Raphael ghosted over the roofs like an invisible wind. This alone made missing the movie worth it. There was nowhere he couldn't go and no one to see him--nothing but freedom beneath his pounding feet and flying leaps for as far as the eye could see.

The darkness was not a comfort to the captive in the sub-basement of the power plant. It hid her jailers. It cloaked her torturers. There was no familiarity in it, just emptiness. She'd cried herself hoarse, and sat shivering and silent strapped to a chair that radiated cold. The longer she sat in silence, the emptiness that surrounded her seemed to grow. The room that had echoed her cries before soaked in the whispers of her ragged panting now. It weighed on her and dampened even the pounding of her heart, swallowing any sound she made. Her eyes strained in the pitch of the space to find something, anything, to give her reference. Her bare feet had long since lost feeling. She was afloat in a room without walls, ceiling or floor. She was suspended in a darkness so complete, she may as well have been blind.

The three men circled their captive by the dim glow of candlelight, stepping very carefully to avoid smudging the arcane symbols on the floor. The woman's mouth hung open, slack lipped. A thread of saliva trailed from her lower lip down to the soiled front of her t-shirt, making a dark stain where it had begun to puddle. Her eyes swiveled in constant motion, seeing nothing, but desperately searching all the same. Panic and fear had drained her of any color she had left and her dirty hair framed her gaunt face in lank, greasy handfuls.

"They always react so differently to this part. I often wonder what they see

"In another hour or so, you can ask her yourself."

"...You know full well they're never coherent enough to answer-- which is truly a pity."

The woman in the chair made no response, completely lost in a void without end.

To Be Continued!!

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Hello! Carrots here. Both Peas and I have other pennames. Peas is the sweet and steamy Meira-Bates. I'm the long-lost Kyabetsu. Both of us are still working on our own individual projects, but we wanted to share updating and feedback on this one. This story began as a round robin on a forum, but received so little interest, that Peas and I decided we'd just write it together and do what we wanted.

Thank you for your time, and please consider reviewing. We both love to talk.

--Carrots