Battle
6 hours previous...
A/N: Sorry for the alert spam, but I posted this chapter in a hurry, right before I went out of town for the weekend before it was ready. So I polished it up and am reposting it now. Enjoy!
Donatello shivered. He had left his jacket on the rack at the lair and it was a cold night for early September. Rain had fallen earlier too, judging by the rivulets of water that leaked from a half a hundred different cracks in the cement ceiling above him and the mini river that flowed at his feet. The cold, slightly slimy, more-than-slightly smelly water came up over his ankles. It splashed and slopped as he walked since he wasn't entirely capable of more than a drunken shuffle.
He stopped and leaned heavily against the wall for a minute, glancing up at the sky through a narrow grate. The clouds were parting, revealing a wan moon hanging limply in the dark. The light it cast was yellowish and grimy and made the dank sewer seem all the more murky and dirty.
"Three down, one to go," he muttered, his voice echoing hollowly down the tunnels around him. He had traversed three of the main arteries that branched off from the lair to inspect the sensors. It was an easy job. What should have taken him an hour at the most had taken closer to three. With a lurch, he pushed himself off the wall and continued shambling down the last tunnel.
The south tunnel was a mess. Broken chunks of cement--detritus from an abandoned reno project on the surface by their look--littered the floor, and cracks snaked like black lightning up the smooth walls. Water leaked from the ceiling and the floor was covered in precisely the kind of filth sewers are known for. Donatello grimaced at the smell, his red-rimmed eyes finding the last sensor set in a crack in right wall. He heaved a sigh and set down the black vinyl bag on a spot that was not covered in clumps of dead leaves and excrement. In the bag were the tools and devices he would need to run a diagnostic on the sensor in this tunnel. The other three had proven sound.
"Just my luck, it's the last one that's busted," he muttered to himself. "And in this tunnel. It couldn't have been the first one, ohh no. Because that would have been too easy."
He was dimly aware he was talking to himself a lot lately, but his exhausted mind seemed to have sprung a leak; any thought that passed through it stumbled its way out of his mouth and into the world, audience or no. That troubled him for a brief moment and he paused in his work, trying to recall any data he could on the subject. His mind, perhaps as a plea for mercy, offered a case study he had once read on sleep-deprived people. The study found that they often compensated for their impairment in other ways. Talking to oneself was a side-effect. Thinking--and behaving--as though everything were perfectly all right, was another. The subjects in the study believed their senses were just fine and that they could continue their activities with no detriment of any kind, even though they were impaired...severely.
"That's important to know," Donatello said absently. "I should remember that," he said. He tried to hold onto this thought a little longer but its meaning was slipping out of his exhausted mind like water out of a sieve. "Maybe that's like me," he said aloud. "Maybe I should go...just go and close my eyes..."
Donatello's eyelids drooped and his head started to nod, drawing his chin to his chest. He began to keel to the side when the sound of voices--male voices, and more than one or two--floated down the tunnel toward him on a current of rank, swampy air. With a violent jerk, he snapped away and peered into the blackness of the tunnel. He had long been trained to decipher the distortions that the sewers created. Like the warning on a sideview mirror, objects may be closer than they sound, and Donatello forced his tired mind to determine if those voices were something to worry about.
They weren't his brothers, he knew that immediately, exhausted or no. The voices were loud, raucous, likely belonging to a handful of young men who had had too much to drink, and whose said drinking had convinced them that traipsing around in the stinking sewers of New York on a Friday night would be "fun."
Donatello remained perfectly still, listening. The voices were not getting any clearer; he could decipher no words, and after a minute, they started to fade away altogether. The turtle eased a sigh of relief and set down his bag with renewed determination. The young men likely wouldn't cause any trouble; the sewers were a huge maze of catacombs, of which the turtles' home was a very small part, but...
"Better safe than sorry," Donatello murmured in a much quieter voice, and set to work.
The first device he pulled out of his bag was a receiver. It was similar in appearance to the sensor in that it was a small, black box with a little light in the center of it. Donatello waved his hand in front of the sensor. The little light on the receiver in his hand responded, bathing the dim confines of the tunnel in a soft, blue light.
"That shouldn't happen," Donatello said to no one in particular. "That explains why the damn thing keeps going off."
He muttered a curse and took the sensor out of it's crack at the floor of the tunnel. He would have to recalibrate it so that it was less sensitive. Likely, every rat in the tunnel who passed through its line of fire sent the alarm screaming back in the lair. It was designed to pick up the movements of only creatures larger than a cat. Although stray dogs and cats wandering through the tunnels weren't enough to warrant an "orange alert", homeless people coming to look for their strays were. Rats were supposed to be allowed to pass without fanfare.
"Unless there's lots of'em," Donatello mused, picking at the innards of the sensor. "That means the Rat King and then you've really got a situation on your hands."
The work was hard. Donatello blinked his eyes over and over again, trying to force them to give him a clear picture. But the meager moonlight shining through the grate above him was not enough.
And he had forgotten to bring a flashlight.
"Always be prepared," he muttered and shook his head in frustration. "You'd make a piss-poor Boy Scout, Donatello, my friend." Like the cell phones, the sensor's wiry entrails seemed to have shrunk while his fingers had grown huge, making his attempts to manipulate them clumsy and inept. Under ordinary circumstances, he could've fixed the sensor with his eyes closed, but lately closing his eyes was a luxury he couldn't seem to afford.
Donatello sat down against the wall of the tunnel and rubbed his palms vigorously over his eyes. It didn't help. Neither did a slap or two on the cheeks. An angry notion, alien to his placid demeanor, hinted to him that if he took the accursed sensor and smashed it against the wall, he wouldn't have to finagle with that damnable nest of wires. The notion was a good one, and tempting, but instead of heaving the little box against the rocks, he tried again. Focusing all his concentration, he was able to make the wires do as he commanded. Finally, after what seemed like ages, he closed up the back of the sensor and returned it to its hiding place.
"All right, let's see what's behind door number four." He waved his hand--quickly--in front of the sensor.
Nothing.
"Good."
He leaned over, making the bulk of his body pass through its line of sight. The blue light in the receiver dutifully came on.
"Real good."
Donatello sighed with relief and stood up. He made to retrieve his bag but crouching for so long had taken its toll. The blood rushed to his head, clouding his vision. Instinctively, he tried to right himself but his reflexes were nowhere near as sharp as they ought to have been. His muscles, in a bizarre, disorienting manner, refused to do what he asked them to. Up was down, down was up, and before he could stop himself, Donatello was toppling backwards.
He backpedaled clumsily across the tunnel, his feet sloshing and slapping the sludgy water. His right foot fell on something slick and white he hadn't seen--a package of white powder tucked under a broken hunk of cement. He slipped hard and the back of his right leg struck an outcropping of jagged rock in the decaying sewer. The pain was sharp but not enough to spark Donatello out of his freefall. His head struck the opposite wall of the tunnel and his already impaired vision telescoped rapidly to blackness.
April O'Neil yawned, closed her magazine--Science Now--and set it on the nighstand. Casey was lying beside her, snoring softly. She thought she would turn out her light and join him in sleep but she suddenly felt very awake. She glanced around in the quiet of her apartment; at the window, the bathroom door, her bed and Casey lying in it. It feels wrong somehow. Like something's missing. No, not missing...out of place.
These thoughts were not new, but becoming increasingly more frequent. They confused her, kept her awake some nights, and stole little pieces of her contentment whenever they occured to her. She sighed in annoyance for now the thoughts had taken hold and had begun their roundabout dance in her mind. With a muttered curse, she turned out the light and settled herself against her pillow, ready to fight for her sleep. But sleep wouldn't come. This would be one of those nights.
"What is wrong with me?" she whispered to the ceiling. It gave no reply but to reveal to her that it was high time she swept for cobwebs.
April sighed, feeling more awake than ever. Always the scientist, she turned her thoughts and emotions upside down and inside out, trying to pinpoint that nagging, niggling source of unease that pricked her heart everytime Casey moved or breathed or made a sound.
Finally, April gave up. She tossed the covers off and left the bedroom to go pace the small confines of her neat little apartment. She walked a well-worn route, running her hands through her tousle of hair and shaking her head at the silliness of it all. She contemplated giving in completely and putting in a movie when her eyes fell on her cell phone sitting on the coffee table.
April--without thinking--went to it, picked it up, and dialed a number. There was no answer but the message on the voicemail made her smile.
"Good. He's finally getting some rest," she said, and closed up the phone. She yawned, stretched, and shuffled back to her bedroom.
She was asleep even as her head touched the pillow.
Leonardo woke up with a start and looked immediately to the digital clock on his nightstand. Something was wrong with it, though he couldn't think what. Its neat, red digital numbers said that the time was ten minutes after two. Nothing wrong, nothing out of the ordinary. But Leonardo's sleep-fogged mind was blaring an alarm that wouldn't turn off. Then he saw it. The little red circle alit next to the "a.m." It was ten minutes after two in the morning. "Donatello hasn't come back," he said into the neat, quiet order of his room, jarring the placid stillness with his fear-tinged voice.
He didn't know how he knew, but he knew the words were true as soon as he uttered them. In a flash, his covers were a heap on the floor and he was flying towards his brother's room, his sleepiness having been consumed in a panic that made him whipshot alert. He flipped on the light in Donatello's room.
The bed was empty.
Moreover, it was unslept in. Donatello hadn't come home.
Leonardo froze. Had it been Raphael's empty room he was staring at, there would be no panic. Raphael was more often than not absent at this hour. But Donatello...Donatello was different. Then Leonardo remembered what Raph had said about Don's lab light being on most nights. He often stayed up late if he an experiment burning through his imagination but tonight felt different. Leonardo broke free of his panic-induced inertia and headed to his brother's lab, but he knew, as if by instinct, that he would find it empty.
He was right.
A thousand benign possibilities as to his brother's whereabouts came to his mind, but Leonardo dismissed them all. Donatello didn't stay out without calling. Donatello didn't go topside without letting someone know about it first. Donatello didn't "lose track of the time"or "forget to check in." He was methodical, practical, logical. You could set your clock by him...
The image of that digital clock coldly declaring the late hour came back to Leonardo and set him in motion. Lightning quick, he dashed through the lair like a big, green Paul Revere, and within moments, the livingroom was filled with pacing, cursing family members.
"Okay, here' s the plan: Mikey, go get a map of the lair and the surrounding tunnels. Don must have one that shows the location of the sensors he went to fix."
"Yeah, unless he took it with him to fix the sensors," Raphael snorted, never once ceasing his pacing back and forth along the carpet in front of the television.
Leonardo ignored him. "Mikey, go. Check the monitors for him, too."
Michelangelo nodded. "Uh, sure thing, Leo," he said, unable to conceal the shaky tremor in his voice.
"He's probably still in the sewers since his topside gear is still here," Leonardo said, with a nod toward the hat rack where Donatello's jacket and cap were neatly hung.
"Nice job, Sherlock," Raphael muttered. "Any other bright ideas?"
"Raphael, be silent!" Splinter spat, his tone uncharacteristically sharp. "You help no one with your sarcasm."
"Sorry, Master, but I just don't see why we're sitting around yakking. Why don't we just go out and find him, already?"
"We need a plan," Leonardo said. "Donatello needs us to help him, not to run around aimlessly, getting lost and losing time."
"Maybe you need a plan, but I got mine. I'm going out to find him."
"Too bad you weren't so eager to help him when he asked you." Leonardo's words stopped Raphael cold in his tracks.
"You want a fist in the mouth?"
"Enough!"
The power behind Splinter's word was strong enough that both brothers' mouths snapped shut.
"Leonardo is right," the rat said in a quieter tone. "If you know precisely where Donatello went, then it shall be quicker to find him. There is no point in losing time to getting lost...or to arguing."
"We're losing time right now," Raphael muttered, but Splinter let it go as Michelangelo bounded back into the room with a worn piece of paper in his hands.
"I don't think it's the latest map, but it's the only one I could find," he said, handing the paper to Leonardo. "I didn't see anything on the monitors."
"It shows the lair and a half-mile radius of tunnels," Leonardo muttered aloud. "The sensors are a quarter-mile out in each direction." He didn't need to explain further--the brothers knew the surrounding sewer system like the backs of their hands. "Raph, you take the east tunnel; Mikey, you take the south. I'll circle up west and then north. Call in if you find him."
"Call on what? Our cell phones don't work, remember?"
Leonardo bit his lip. "Hold on." He raced into Donatello's lab and there they were, neatly lined up on his work table.
All four of them. A pang of guilt twisted his stomach as he rememberd urging his brother to finish the work. He hadn't seen it then (or had an had ignored it) but now his memory brought forth in perfect clarity the weariness in Donatello; how slumped over and defeated he had looked. He was asking for some rest, some help and I said no. With a muttered curse, Leonarod scooped up three of the phones and raced back into the livingroom.
"Here," he said, handing one to Michelangelo and tossing the other to Raphael.
"He fixed them," Michelangelo said, looking forlornly at the phone in his hand.
"Yeah, he did," Leonardo said tersely. "They work now, so use them," he ordered with a pointed look at Raphael.
Raphael grunted only and stamped out of the lair. As soon as he reached the tunnel that would take him east, the sounds of his footsteps vanished and he disappeared into the dark.
"We're going to find him, right Leo? I mean, he's going to be okay. He's just fixing stuff, right? It's just that he's been so tired lately..."
"Yeah, he's okay, Mikey. He probably fell asleep in one of the tunnels. Poor guy works too hard, you know?" And we work him too hard, he thought but did not say. I let this happen. I let him down...
Michelangelo was nodding but Leonardo could see his words offered little reassurance. He watched his little brother take a deep breath and straighten up. A determined glint in his eye replaced his fear and Leonardo couldn't help but be proud. Michelangelo had a big heart but he also knew when it was time to get down to business. Without another word, he slipped--ghost-like quiet--out of the lair and into the south tunnel.
Every fiber in Leonardo's reiterated the fear that Donatello was not, in fact, peacefully sleeping in some dark corner of the sewers, but instead of running out the door, he turned to Master Splinter. Before he could even speak, the old rat raised his hand.
"Blame no one, especially not yourself at this moment. Go. Find him. There will be time enough to discuss how to make things better once he is returned to us."
Leonardo nodded and handed the rat a cellphone. "It's Don's. I'll call you if we find him."
Splinter watched his eldest go, concern in his black eyes for Leonardo's choice of words.
Michelangelo padded softly down the south tunnel. He hated that particular tunnel--it was no good for skateboarding what with its broken chunks of cement all over the place, and all kinds of nasty filth piled on the floor. Plus, he didn't like the way the wind moaned through the broken pipes sometimes. The wind sounded like ghosts and Michelangelo didn't like ghosts.
Don once told him there was not enough scientific evidence to prove the existence of ghosts but Raph had disagreed. He told Michelangelo that back in the olden days, like around the time of the plague, a guy would go around on a horse cart collecting dead bodies from the neighborhood and then dump the corpses into the south tunnel of the sewer...only not all of them were dead.
"Bring out yer dead!" Raph said the guy would call, ringing a bell to announce his presence. The people would bring out those who had died that week of the plague and toss them in the cart. But if a guy wasn't all dead--maybe really old or something--he might get put on the cart anyway. So the moaning and groaning Mikey heard was not the wind in the pipes, but plague guys who had been dumped in the sewer and were left to eat the corpses of the dead before kicking the bucket themselves.
Parts of the story sounded vaguely familiar to Michelangelo; like from a movie he had seen once, maybe. The fact that Don and Leo were snickering behind their hands was suspicious too, but better to be safe than sorry--he avoided the south tunnel at all costs.
But now, a legion of hugry undead shuffling down that tunnel wouldn't have kept him from trying to find Donatello. It wouldn't even make him pause.
Before Leonardo woke him up, Michelangelo's dreams were unsettling. They started out all right--really all right, as a matter of fact since they featured his online girlfriend and her thong bikini. But then they changed, grew dark and confusing. The last one was the strangest. In it, Donatello was in his lab. It was completely dark but for the work light on his table. He was hunched over something that Michelangelo couldn't see from the door.
"Whatcha doin', Don?"
"Working," came the reply. His brother's voice sounded old.
"On what?" Michelangelo didn't move from his spot at the door. He didn't want to.
"There's always something to work on, Mikey."
At that, Donatello raised his head and showed Michelangelo his project. But Donatello's hands were empty...and his eyes were closed. He looked positively creepy. Michelangelo had woken with a start a split second before Leonardo had bounded into his room and thought he wasn't sure why, he wasn't at all surprised to hear that Donatello hadn't come home yet.
Now, as Michelangelo made his way swiftly yet quietly through the tunnel, the unsettled feeling in his heart grew. Leonardo was a terrible liar; Michelangelo knew he wasn't going to stumble across his brother sleeping peacefully in the tunnel, his head pillowed on his bag.
And he wasn't.
Michelangelo saw the unmistakeable outline of Donatello lying slumped like a ragdoll against one wall of the tunnel. His arms and legs were splayed and his head was at an uncomfortable angle that no one would adopt if he were merely sleeping. The youngest brother was known best for his soft heart and sense of fun, but Michelangelo was as highly trained as the rest of them in his art. Quickly, and with ninja-sharp precision, he assessed the situation.
There were no assailants present nor any sign of battle. He saw no footprints in the muck of the tunnel floor besides his own and Donatello's. But for the poitpoitpoit sound of dripping water onto metal, all was quiet. Michelangelo whipped out his cell phone, flipped it to walkie-talkie mode--an innovation of Don's--and hit 'speak.'
"Found him. South tunnel. Come quick."
The replies were immediate.
"Copy that."
"I'm there."
Michelangelo nodded and flipped the phone shut. He swiftly knelt beside Donatello. His fingers felt for a pulse and found it--rapid and uneven.
"Donnie, can you hear me? Can you tell me what happened?" Michelangelo asked. His brother's only response was a croaking moan that scared Michelangelo worse than any ghost story. He had begun to shiver as though freezing cold but his skin was burning hot to the touch. Michelangelo swallowed hard. "Hang in there, okay? The guys are on their way. But I gotta see if you've got broken bones before we move you." Donatello made no reply and Michelangelo set to work.
Starting from his head and working down, Michelangelo laid his hands on his brother. The bump on the back of Donatello's head--wet and sticky with blood--was discovered immediatly and Michelangelo bit his lip, the fear rising in him again. "Wake up, Donnie. Come on, bro, wake up," he said, lightly patting his brother's cheeks. "I know you're tired, but you're not supposed to go to sleep if you've got a concussion, right? You told me that like, a hundred times."
But Donatello only moaned again, and shivered more violently, as though he were lying naked in the middle of a snowstorm. Michelangelo glanced down the tunnel. No sign of Leonardo yet. Michelangelo bit his lip. "Okay, okay. That's all right. We'll just keep going. You don't have to talk, just stay with me, okay bro?"
Quickly, he patted down his brother, feeling for the tell-tale heat and swelling that would indicate a broken bone hiding beneath the surface of the skin. Donatello's skin was already alarmingly hot so Michelangelo had to be a little firmer in his search. Plus, his brother was lying in three inches of disgusting filth; so when Michelangelo laid his hand on the gaping gash behind Donatello's right leg, he almost missed it. But Donatello cried out and Michelangelo realized the pool of liquid he was kneeling in was not entirely sewer water.
"Oh jeez, this is bad. Damn, bro, I'm so sorry."
Gingerly, Michelangelo lifted Donatello's leg and peered at the wound. "Ouch. Nasty," he murmured. Wasting no time, he took off his bandana and tied it securely to Donatello's thigh, just above the gash. Immediately, the red cloth turned darker, looking almost black in the dim light. "There ya go. Good as new. Well, almost. You could use a shower, you know. You don't smell so good."
Donatello whimpered and Michelangelo sort of felt like doing the same. He glanced frantically down the tunnels again but still, his brothers weren't there. Then his eyes fell on the white package at Donatello's feet. He picked it up and examined it.
"Whoa. That's a lot of blow. Or something..." He glanced down at his unconscious brother. "This isn't yours, right?" And then he heard the voices.
"Sweet. The calvary's coming, Donnie. Hang in there..." Michelangelo snapped his mouth shut. The voices didn't belong to Leo or Raph. Not at all. They were too loud and there were too many of them...and they were getting closer.
"Come on, Gus, we've been down here for hours. Let's call it a night and get the fuck out of here."
A trio of other voices echoed that sentiment and then another, deeper voice said, "Forman said he stashed nearly ten ounces of primo shit somewhere down here and I know we're close. You wanna just walk away from that?"
"Yes."
"It fuckin' reeks down here."
"Pussies. Go ahead. But I'm gonna find the shit, I'm gonna get high as a kite, then I'm gonna sell the rest and all you motherfuckers can just go suck it."
No arguing with that kind of reasoning, Michelangelo mused. Apparently the others agreed as their voices dissolved into grumbles of assent...and drew nearer. The ninja turtle could now here their footfalls and see the back-and-forth of a lone flashlight's beam swinging in the tunnel about fifty yards away. Five men were heading straight toward he and Donnie.
Hardly daring to breathe, Michelangelo thought quickly, his hands going instantly to his nunchuku. The men were likely a bunch of scumbags but they didn't deserve to die. But they also couldn't be allowed to wander around freely on turtle property, nor come across Donatello lying helpless and unconscious. Without giving himself a chance to change his mind, Michelangelo dropped into a roll and covered himself in slimy, stinking sewage and then crouched at the corner where the south tunnel was bisected by another. The men got closer and he could see them much more clearly now.
"Yep. Definitely of the scumbag variety," he breathed. "They're want that little bag of white stuff you found, Donnie." His hands clutched his nunchuku tightly and every muscle in his body coiled, ready to spring. "Just a little closer, fellas. Wouldn't want you to miss the show..." The men were almost on him now, just ten feet away, and then...
"Gaaaarrrrghghhggghg!!" Michelangelo croaked, springing onto the path in front of the men, arms raised, filth and sewage dripping off him, his nunchuku a spinning blur.
The effect was rather spectacular. Five pale, grizzled faces at once became masks of abject terror. The flashlight hit the ground with a crack after being dropped from nerveless fingers. The beam flickered crazily for a moment and then was gone, leaving them all in almost total darkness. The screams of the men--much higher pitched than Michelangelo would have believed--tore through the tunnels, followed by a scrambling and scraping of heels as they, in a group, turned to flee.
"Gaaarrgg! I'm gonna tear off your flesh and eat your bones!! Arrggghhhgg!" Michelangelo lurched after them, listening with amusement to the sounds of retreat.
"Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..."
"I told you, man. I told you!"
"What the hell was that?"
Michelangelo smiled, watching them push and stumble their way down the tunnel. "That was the swamp creature from hell," he said softly, "and don't you forget it."
He listened for a moment as their footsteps grew fainter and then he heard a hair-raising, "Blaaarrrgg!" followed by another chorus of rather girly screams. Michelangelo chuckled. "Sounds like Raph liked my idea." His smile faded as Donatello moaned again.
"April..."
Michelangelo knelt beside his brother. "Yeah, bro. It's okay. We're gonna help you. April will help you."
A moment later Leonardo was there, kneeling beside them. "How is he?" Leonardo laid his hand to Donatello's forehead.
"Not great," Michelangelo said. "He's got a bad fever, a cut leg, and he cracked his head pretty good."
"From those guys?"
"No, I found him like this."
"Who were they?"
"Druggies," Michelangelo said jerking his thumb at the white plastic package at Donatello's feet. "They're looking for their baking power."
Leonardo made a disgusted face. "All right, let's get him home."
"Where's Raph?"
"He's making sure those guys find their way out of the sewers completely." Leonardo glanced at his brother up and down. "Good idea you had. No casualties, no discovery. Excellent."
Michelangelo nodded. Normally, such praise from Leo would make him swell with pride, but not now. "We should have...done something sooner, right? I mean, about Don?"
Leonardo pressed his lips together, his expression tight and unreadable. "Come on, get his legs. Hurry." Gently, he took hold of Donatello by the shoulders, Michelangelo took him by the legs, both brothers mindful of his injuries. Quickly and smoothly, they hefted the unconscious turtle and started for the lair.
Ten paces later, Leonardo stopped suddenly.
"What--?"
"Hsst!"
Michelangelo snapped his mouth shut for now he heard it too--the unmistakeable sounds of battle were echoing down the tunnel towards them. "It's cool, Raph can handle'em," he whispered after a moment. "Those idiots don't know what they're up against."
Leonardo seemed inclined to agree when a gunshot ripped through the air, sending rippling, thunderous noise along the pathways of the sewer, followed by silence. The turtles exchanged alarmed glances over Donatello's body hanging limply between them.
"Oh, Raph," Michelangelo whispered.
Leonardo sprang into action. "Put him down here...gently...that's it." He whipped out his cell phone and pushed 'speak'. "Master Splinter, we're in the south tunnel. We've got Don but we have to leave him; Raph's in trouble. Do you read?"
There was a silence that seemed to last an eternity and then, "Go. I will be there."
Leonardo snapped his phone shut and drew his katana. Michelangelo, still dripping with sewer refuse, whipped out his nunchucks. Now, a confusing array of sounds were traveling down the tunnel at them. It sounded as though the battle had begun anew, and then another ear-splitting gunshot tore through the air.
"Stay close and low," Leonardo hissed to Michelangelo as the two of them slipped down the tunnel, silent and fast. "Always look for cover and use your shell if things get worse."
Michelangelo didn't want to think about how things could get worse. He'd never been in a gun battle before...either Leo had or he'd just studied up on the subject. Michelangelo hoped it was the latter.
The sewer was dark; the turtles were guided by sound only and the effect was frightening. Michelangelo could just imagine a bullet, invisible and impossibly fast, zipping out of the dark and striking he or Leonardo. His vivid imagination conjured terrible visions of Leonardo going down with a grunt and a thud, or his own plastron erupting in a little explosion of blood and bone. He kept moving but he found his mouth had gone completely dry and his heart was pounding much harder than it had for any battle he had ever participated in before. How did it get this bad? the thought echoed over and over in his mind until they were near enough to the battle and then he forced himself to focus.
Twenty feet ahead, the dim tunnel revealed an intersection. Shouts and threats were being exchanged. With a sigh of relief, Michelangelo could hear his brother's trademark taunting coming from somewhere up ahead.
"You gonna hide behind that gun all night? Come on...get on out here and let's play."
"Fuck you, man. I don't know who you're running with, but hand over the stash...now."
Michelangelo and Leonardo arrived to find Raphael crouched behind a large chunk of concrete, his opponents slinking down the sides of the tunnel ahead.
"What's the story?" Leonardo whispered.
Raphael grimaced. "Five assholes, one gun," he whispered back. "I'm trying to keep them from splitting up and spreading out. Any ideas?"
Rapidly, Leonardo said, "They're after drugs. Cocaine or heroin. Don't know which. Don found a white package, size of a small pillow."
Raphael nodded and called out, "Yeah, I got your stash. Would be too bad if it got a little wet, now, wouldn't it?"
The five men, all bunched together behind the one wielding the gun, muttered among themselves. Their leader brandished the gun, it was a small silver flash in the dimness of the tunnel. "I'll kill you, whoever the fuck you are, if you don't hand over that shit now."
"Oops!" Raphael called. "I think I made a little hole in the bag. Is that bad?"
The reply was a frustrated exclamation and not one, but two thunderous gun shots. Twin flashes of blinding light illuminated the tunnel for a brief second and a piece of cement six inches above Raphael's head exploded, raining jagged shrapnel over them. The men advanced.
"You missed, Jesse James, but I think you made the hole in the bag bigger," Raphael called. "Look, it's snowing!" To his brothers, Raphael whispered, "Those were the closest shots yet. I can't keep taunting these morons. How about a plan?"
The turtles backed down the tunnel, keeping behind broken hunks of cement and falled pieces of tunnel. Leonardo took a quick glance at the intruders and found that, for the moment, he could see them quite clearly. Light from a grate above them illuminated the group briefly as they continued their march down the tunnel. The turtle saw the glint of knives and heard the soft clinking of chains and realized that while the others weren't weilding guns, each had a weapon of their own.
"There's a grate above them," Leonardo whispered. "Get cover around that corner," he said with a nod at a tunnel ten feet behind them that ran perpendicular to their own. "Mikey and I will get topside and drop down on them from behind."
Raphael nodded. "All right, but hurry. These guys are stupid but it won't take them long to get tired of this."
As silent as ghosts, his brothers vanished.
Raphael backed around the corner, into the tunnel Leonardo had indicated, keeping low.
"I'm done fucking around with you, man," called the man with the gun. "Just hand over the shit and I promise I won't blow a hole in your fucking head. Your balls...maybe." A round of laughter echoed through the tunnels.
"Now there's an offer I can't refuse," Raphael muttered to himself quietly, not wanting to give his position away. Slowly, he peered around the corner. The men, moving slowly and cautiously in the dark, continued towards the intersection of his tunnel and theirs, each one scanning the dimness intently for some sign of their strange tormentor.
The group drew closer and Raphael wondered what he was supposed to do if they came far enough into the intersection and saw him. But then, with a widening smile of anticipation, Raphael watched as two dark shapes dropped silently down behind the men. "Playtime's over, scuzzbuckets." He gathered a handful of rocks into his fist, waiting until his brothers were closer. Leonardo and Michelangelo didn't attack but, operating on the strange yet perfect connection the turtles shared, waited until Raphael made his move...and when he did, the tunnel erupted into a blaze of motion.
Raphael hurled his handful of rocks across the tunnel where they crackled over the wall. The group of men, in perfect, predictable unison, turned toward the sound; the leader firing yet another shot. Another ear-splitting bang, another flash of blinding light momentarily incapacitated the men... but not the turtles.
Even as he threw the rocks, Raphael's other hand was reaching for his sai. He withdrew the weapon and flung it like a knife-thrower at a carnival. End over end, the sai whipped through the air and struck the gunslinger's outstretched hand. Bones shattered, the gun fell into the sludge below, and an agonized scream ripped through the sewers. Raphael wasted no time, but grabbed his other sai and dashed out from his hiding place, into the fray.
As soon as the sounds of rocks skittering against the wall took the mens' attention, Leonardo and Michelangelo--now coated in a dried shell of sewer muck--sprang into action. The two men at the back of the pack went down easily, neither of them having seen or heard their attackers until blows to the head knocked them unconscious. They dropped like puppets whose strings have been cut, landing with a thud onto the ground. The next two men were a tad sharper.
"Behind!" one shouted, and they both turned, brandishing their weapons. The light was meager but enough for each to square off with their opponents. Michelangelo, his nunchucks whipping the air around him, faced the knife wielder, Leonardo had the one with the chain.
"Who the hell are you?" asked the knife man.
"Your worst nightmare, dude," Michelangelo replied, trying to affect ominous tones but failing miserably. His nunchuku were far more articulate. The man's knife jabbed here and there, but Michelangelo danced easily out of reach and brought his own weapons whipping down.
Michelangelo was so fast and his strikes so rapid, the man must have thought he were fighting six opponents instead of one. In a series of perfectly precise strikes, the turtle knocked the knife from his hand, crushed the hand that held it, then cracked against the man's skull. He fell to the ground in a heap beside his already bested comrades.
Leonardo, meanwhile, was having some trouble with his own chain-wielding opponent...some.
The man had managed to keep Leonardo away with some admirably agile whips of his chain. But his success was largely due to the fact that Leonardo was trying to beat him without actually killing him. Had the drug addict been a Foot, he would already be cut to ribbons.
The man struck out again and again, with Leonardo knocking aside the chain with a katana. "Come on, freak," the man taunted. "I don't got all day." He struck out with his chain again.
"No, you don't," Leonardo said, defending the strike with the flat of his katana. Then, with a deft twist of his wrist, he wrapped the chain around his sword and yanked the man forward. The druggie crashed into Leonardo's plastron and was, for a brief moment, face to face with the turtle. His red-rimmed, watery eyes widened in disbelief and fear. His jaw, covered in a three-day growth of stubble, worked slowly, moving up and down like a fish. "Wha...wha...?"
Leonardo flashed a devious grin his brothers would not have recognized had they seen it. He let the man ogle him for a second longer than was safe, knowing it was a stupid thing to do but feeling strangely good for doing it anyway. "Goodnight," he said when the man's eyes began to really focus, and he brought the hilt of his katana down on his head. The staring eyes rolled back in their sockets and he slumped to the ground.
While his brothers were taking care of the lackeys, Raphael was busy with the gunslinger. Despite a shattered wrist and three broken fingers, the man realized that his gun was his best hope. Grunting with pain, he flew forward, good hand outstretched, to where the gun lay in the muck, some five feet from him. Raphael tackled him just as the man's hand wrapped around the weapon.
Maybe Raphael thought the man was overmatched and so didn't move as fast as he ought. Or maybe the man was faster and more agile than the turtle gave him credit for. Or maybe desperation made him lucky because, moving like an eel, the man wrested himself out of Raphael's grasp, rolled on his back, aimed the gun square in Raphael's face and fired.
Click.
The gun was empty.
"Or maybe I counted and knew you were out of bullets, asshole."
The man's face contorted in fear. Raphael smiled. He raised his fist and then brought it down again and the gunslinger knew nothing but blackness.
Leonardo sheathed his katana and surveyed the scene. "Raph and Mike, clean up the mess. I'll go with Splinter and get Donatello home."
Raphael looked inclined to argue but Leonardo was already gone.
"Sure, sure, leave us with the fun stuff," Raphael muttered. He glanced around at the five unconscious men and sighed. "All right, let's get to it, Mikey. Mikey?"
Michelangelo was sitting on his heels, holding his head in his hands and shaking it back and forth.
"Hey, man. You okay?" He laid his hand on his brother's shoulder and was astonished when Michelangelo knocked it away.
"What the hell, Raph?" Michelangelo demanded, getting in his brother's face. "I saw it! I saw you and that guy with the gun! You could have been killed!"
"Whoa, take it easy, Mikey," Raphael said, holding up his hands. "I knew he was out of bullets..."
"Yeah, but I didn't!" Michelangelo cried, shoving Raphael to the ground. He stood over his astonished brother, breathing hard. Raphael, his eyes wide, could only stare.
There was a silence so deep, even the constant dripping of water seemed to quiet. After a moment, Michelangelo shook his head, looking around the sewers, his eyes wet. "You okay?" he asked gruffly.
Raphael nodded.
Michelangelo looked down at him, held out his hand. Raphael took it and let himself be pulled up.
"Sorry, Mike."
His little brother looked away. Finally, he nodded, wiped his hand over his eyes and said, "Let's get these guys out of here."
"Yeah, okay."
And for the next twenty minutes, they removed the intruders from their home in perfect tandem, and perfect silence.
Officer O'Malley thought he had seen everything in his twenty-six years with the NYPD. "But this takes the cake and the bakery too," he murmured, standing in the glare of his cruiser's headlights.
Five young men in filthy, stinking clothes, lay unconscious in a heap in the alley of Bleeker and Twenty-First. They each bore injuries consistent with streetfighting--broken hands and cracked skulls. The fact that they were neatly trussed and waiting for the police after an anonymous tip was called in, was not so bizarre.
What made Office O'Malley scratch his balding head and stay his hand as he wrote out the report was the fact that the five young men were powdered like donuts in what was likely over two hundred thousand dollars' worth of heroin.