Chapter Sixteen: A Little Rain Shower

In that instant, horrendous screeching and a downpour filled the base. The rain smelled almost as awful as the blaring sounded. That is the most awful sound I've ever heard. Even worse than Mikey's screams when he wakes me up. And that's sayin' something.

The marten jumped off the meerkat to cover her ears and stared at Raph with huge black eyes. Raph, already drenched, rapped the meerkat with the end of his sai right between his startled eyes.

"Get outta here!" He yelled at his soaked teammates as he tossed the meerkat into a chair.

Ausla obeyed. Grek finished a few keystrokes; the blue characters disappeared and the meerkat's game popped back up on the screen. Raph turned and ran after the marten, the wildcat right behind him. Good thinking, but that took time!

A few dim emergency lights flickered on around the edges of the big room, but they barely penetrated the onslaught of water as the trio struggled to sprint towards their exit pipe.

Then Othila swarmed out of doorways, shouting, but they hadn't spotted the intruders yet through the flood. Let's keep it that way!

Raph's ears ached. How could anyone put out a real fire with this awful noise?

Just ahead, Raph could see the soggy marten was flagging in her struggle through the now ankle-deep stinking water. Her wet fur must be weighing her down. And it takes a lot of energy to run through water if you're not used to it. As he passed her, he scooped her up; she yelped but recovered from her surprise quickly. After catching her breath for a second, Ausla twisted around to ride piggyback again. Raph grunted. Yep, she weighs more now.

Finally, he could just make out the pipe ahead; thankfully no floodlights had enlightened this corner.

Raph sloshed into a shadow by the rusty pipe and bent to clasp his fingers together. Claws won't help climbing this. The wildcat accepted his offer and sprung off the platform of Raph's hands to catch the pipe higher up, at a joint, before he started climbing.

Raph scanned the room as best as he could. Shouts attempted to penetrate the blaring alarm and animals sloshed back and forth through the flood at the far end, but nothing indicated they knew the reason for the fire alarm.

With Ausla still hanging onto him like an oversized sopping bath towel, Raph started to scale the pipe. Climbing—is way harder when—everything—is wet!

Above him, Grek reached the dry portion of pipe, above the reach of the industrial sprinklers gushing gallons and gallons of water, and shimmied more quickly up the last little bit before springing up onto the roof. He slipped on the smooth glass, but had righted himself by the time Raph and his passenger neared.

The pipe shifted under Raph. Uh oh.

"Get up there," he growled to Ausla, his voice barely audible through the cacophany.

The wildcat stretched his hand down; Ausla scrambled up onto Raph's shoulders, just barely caught the hand, and was pulled out.

The pipe cracked.

Grek's hand reappeared above him. Raph inched himself higher, but the pipe popped and groaned.

"Come, leader!" The wildcat waved his arm impatiently; his translated voice sounded clearly in Raph's ear.

"The pipe's done for!"

Grek stilled. "What do you want to do, leader?"

"I'll go get the rope!" Ausla's voice came faintly.

Raph glanced below him. Two thoughts jostled for priority: No Othila yet, and A fall from this height would be bad.

"No time for the rope," he growled, and, drawing on all his strength, attempted to launch himself upward toward the opening.

The wildcat grabbed for him, but Raph's hand came up short. Raph fell, windmilled in midair for one terrifying heartbeat, and landed back on the pipe. As his wet body slid down several feet, the pipe simply gave up.

Raph hung on for dear life.

With a series of pops and screeches almost loud enough to rival the blaring alarm and gushing water, the pipe snapped away from the brackets holding it onto the wall and jerkily careened toward the floor.

Then one particularly violent snap jolted Raph off.

With an involuntary yell, Raph twisted his body through the rain and landed with a tremendous splash in a roll.

Some sense alerted him to danger, and with a gasp, Raph dove out of the way of the falling pipe; the top hit the floor, but the lowest part remained attached to the wall, with a great twisted length between the two.

Raph gasped ragged breaths as he rose. Ouch. Despite the roll, the landing had been jarring. Not to mention his pounding adrenaline from his unconventional ride down to the ground level.

Get out of the open! His instincts screamed, and Raph obeyed.

As soon as he had reached the relative safety of the shadowy wall under the pipe, his brain finally recovered. He looked up, thankful there weren't any sprinklers directly overhead, and spotted his teammates' distant heads. "Go!" He said, making a big shooing gesture with his hands. He pointed in the general direction of the clearing and the helicopter. "Head to the chopper!"

When they vanished, Raph whipped around, looking for another way out. Don't they have big red exit signs in this place? That would sure be handy right now.

At that moment, the alarms and the sprinklers shut off, except to drizzle out the last of the water in the system. Raph was thankful for the relief for his ears, but not the absence of the effective distraction.

He followed the wall to the nearest doorway, which he suspected led to the prison hallway. There must be a back door or maybe some stairs or a ladder.

The main lights clicked on. Raph grunted. Tonight is not my night.

He had just made it to the doorway when a shout sounded from across the room.

Time's out. Raph ducked into the hallway, which turned left, and sprinted through the horizontal waterfall flowing down it. One third of the way, he passed three jail cells, one of which had a big patch on the back wall. Why did they cram us all in one, if they had more? That's just mean.

As he had suspected when imprisoned, this seemed to be a storage hallway. No stairway or ladder was visible at the end, but it did turn a corner to the right, toward the outside wall, so that seemed promising. Running became easier as the water lessened.

"There he is!" The forgnathu earbuds translated a shout behind him.

"Stop, you filthy Da'an!"

"What did you do to our base?!"

"Halt, turtle!"

I dunno why anybody ever bothers to yell 'stop' at a guy they're chasing. Nobody ever stops when they're being chased.

Loud pops made Raph's heart and steps quicken further. I haven't seen any guns here, but that doesn't mean—Why am I running so fast? He slowed his pace until he was jogging, sloshing heavily through the puddle of a hallway. Man, I'm tired. Maybe I'll just take a breather for a minute. He slowed further.

Raph glanced down. Why is the floor wet? That's a lot of water. Somebody's gonna have to clean that up before it damages stuff. Hey, I bet my feet are getting wrinkly. He chuckled at the thought.

Hurried sloshing behind him made him turn. Angry, armed animals approached, and Raph shied away. "Hey, what's th' matter, guys? Is somethin' wrong?" He wrinkled his brow when a robotic voice very near him issued a stream of foreign words in a tone that sounded similar to his own.

One of the lead animals, a huge, fat rodent—a cabybara? Raph vaguely remembered some deep-voiced British narrator going on and on about the largest rodent in the world—whacked his companion's head, who was a possum. They both held huge-barreled guns or launchers of some sort, which smoked a bit of purplish gas. "I told you not to shoot at the same time as me! Now he's had too much!"

"Sorry," mumbled the possum, rubbing his head sullenly.

Raph blinked rapidly as he realized purple gas surrounded his head. He tried to focus on it, but this just made him dizzy. He chuckled and sat down with a splash. "What's up, guys?"

"You," began the capybara, his furry eyebrows united in seething rage. "You filthy, sneaking, thieving Da'an… Why is he— Why does he have a forgnathu?"

"He's the turtle—the one a forest patrol found, who talked with Yisu, who's not from here but thinks we're wrong," a voice from the back of the crowd supplied.

"He's the one who destroyed all those computers!" A gold-and-black lizard added; Raph stared in fascination at his bright blue tongue.

The capybara's eyes narrowed further. He handed off his launcher to a prairie dog behind him, drew a kaiken, and approached.

Despite Raph's fuzziness, instincts made him tense and start to reach for his sais.

The animals behind their leader grabbed their weapons; two hurried forward and each grabbed an arm as they hauled him to his feet.

"So, foreigner," the capybara growled, his voice dangerously low and his blade dangerously near Raph's neck, "you've sided with the Da'an. Who came with you into the base?"

Raph thought for a moment, but everything was so foggy. I'm in a base? He glanced around, swayed, and might have fallen over if not for the guards. He didn't see anyone who seemed to be with him, just these angry animals who were definitely against him. "Just me."

"What was your goal?"

I have no idea. I don't remember. I just wanna go to sleep. I'll just ab-lib or something crazy like Mikey. "Well, I did it, didn't I?"

"He must have snuck in just to destroy more of our hard-won technology like last time when he came with that Da'an raid," a monkey offered. "He sure succeeded. Our computers are water-resistant, but hardly water-proof against so much water."

The capybara opened his mouth to speak, but Raph beat him to it. "Can I go ta sleep now?"

Ignoring muffled snickers behind him, the capybara narrowed his eyes again and gestured to the possum, who loaded a squishy purple sphere into the barrel of his launcher. "Yes, you can go to sleep now."

The possum pointed the launcher at Raph's face and fired.