Author Note: Thanks for the reviews! As always, they are much appreciated. Hope you enjoy the next chapter! This is the longest one, so grab yourself a drink or whatever before you begin. And be warned; it also contains a lot of potty mouth and extreme senseless violence. I've raised the rating for a reason, please do not read if you think these things might upset or offend you.
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A light. Ahead.
It has been growing lighter so gradually that in his distressed state, he has barely noticed. But as soon as he accepts the change, he realises he has been able to stagger out of the way of debris, to catch the wall with his hand and lean on it instead of walk face-first into it.
The bird croaks, as if confirming his thoughts.
The tunnel is still a tunnel, long abandoned by human agents. And yet, it is somehow familiar. He feels as though he has been here many times before, yet the memory does not seem unpleasant. Not unpleasant – but old, as if there is some gap of time that has passed since his last time here and whatever it was that he can not bring himself to recall.
He stumbles toward the light.
The fabric he has picked up brushes against his leg and yet he does not look down, suddenly superstitiously afraid to. He does not know what it was he has picked up before and finding out now, before he is safe, would break some good luck streak. He knows that he has never found merit in such thoughts before, but a part of him thinks that if he can ignore the implications of those threads until he is in the light, then everything will be alright.
How can there be light down here?
He finds that he doesn't care about the how, just as long as there is.
He thinks of the admonishment given to children the world over by their well-meaning parents; there is nothing there in the dark that is not there in the light.
It is a lie. An unconscious lie, because those who preach it have never found anything lurking in the dark for them, but a lie nevertheless. In the dark, there is fear, the monsters the mind brings to life that might have been there all along, but do not strike until they cannot be seen. He, as ninja, knows that well.
Ninja. Another memory.
Not here!
The light comes from a chamber, a door that should not have been open left wide. Approaching it, he is filled with a nameless dread. He approached this door before, with that same emotion. And that time, just as this, he knew that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong...
Gathering his nerves, he steps into the chamber.
His first thought is fleeting, taking in just how huge the space is.
I thought that the first time.
But he does not recall the first time right now. Not at all.
The thoughts of size are banished by the sight of devastation before him. It is as if someone has been through here, deliberately destroying everything within. The most noticeable is what looks like some huge robotic structure, scorched and scattered, some great internal heat throwing it apart.
Foot...
The thought makes no sense.
He glances around further, realising that this had been a dwelling for someone before the robot, before the destruction. That chairs and television sets and ornamentation have been casually trashed.
Who could live beneath the streets?
This room here? Mine! And where you're standing? Also mine!
The voice seems to echo through the chamber and he looks around, trying to find its source. It takes him several moments to realise that the voice came not from without, but within. A memory, so real it intrudes on the present.
This has always been a place of light.
The thought is his own and he does not dismiss it. Instead, he examines his surroundings more carefully. There is electricity down here and someone has left it on, lit dimly, perhaps to be able to see once closing in on the area.
But who would want to come back to this place?
He shakes his head. Questions, questions with no immediate answers. Just the ruins of what may have been a home and a light that should not be here.
Unbidden, he raises his head and sees the bird that had been seemingly leading him all this time. A huge, black creature, black eyes, black beak. It sits perched on a railing above the main area, beside what seems to be a door in the shadows, staring at him.
He meets its gaze.
And suddenly, it is as if he is taken away from his own body, his own perspective. Instead, he can see through the black and white world of the bird, see his own face, wide eyed and covered in dirt, see the dark streaks across his arms that might have been mud or blood or magic fucking marker for all the colour spectrum tells him.
He is replaced by two figures of what seem to be a man and a woman in the dim light and the black and white view. They stand right where he is standing, and yet there is a quality to the sight of himself through the bird's vision that is lacking when he sees the humans. It is more like watching a television than seeing through real eyes.
He knows that the pair are not with him now and instinctively realises that this is something that has happened, something that was once real and is now memory.
"I won't turn off the lights."
"Why not? It's not like – well, y'know. Like anyone'll ever be here again."
"I know! But – but..."
A moment passed between them, one that should have been broken by them offering comfort to each other but instead seemed to be the awkward interaction of two complete strangers.
"As long as the light is on, they might come home. I know they can't – but I can't bring myself to say goodbye. Not like this, not right now. To shut it all off and leave..."
"This isn't where they lived."
"Not lately, but – this is home. This is where we were a family. I can't just switch the light off on that."
"She knows where it is."
"She won't care, once she realises that they're all gone."
A nod. "If it makes you feel better."
They walk out, not touching. The lights stay on.
And the voice carried back to the lair. "I still don't feel any better..."
He wrenches his gaze away from the crows, squeezing his eyes closed. Answers to the trivial question about the lights, not about the major ones, why he is here, what is happening.
Who he is.
His hand grips the fabric and he finds he still dare not look.
Instead, he makes his way toward the crow, until he is stands beneath it, then leaps. Effortlessly, he grasps the ledge and swings himself onto the catwalk. It does not occur to him that this is beyond what should be normal.
The crow sits.
Waiting.
Watching.
He walks into the first room, the one that the bird perches outside.
It might once have been some kind of bedroom he decides. There are a few books, now scorched and torn and scattered across the floor. Unidentifiable material across the floor, trodden underfoot. A puddle of fabric on the floor, a sheet, a pillow.
And beneath it, canvas. There was no bed here; the covers had been set across something else.
Hammock.
I bet you fall out of that every single night.
You mean you hope I do.
He presses his hands into the sides of his head, wondering if there is any way to stop the random memories that attack him.
Something catches his eye, the fabric which he has been too superstitious to look at before.
He brings his hand before his face and stares for the first time at the four strips of fabric, greying and rotting. Red. Orange. Purple. Blue. He can tell from the vague patches which have retained their colour...
He had never intended to lead them into a trap, but that was just what he had done.
The four of them are trussed to a bench against a wall, hands and legs immobile. They have all tussled with the bonds and found them to be seemingly impenetrable. Not so much the knots, but the material, a thin wire that slices them to pieces. Rope, they could have been out of in moments, but the wire is killing them every time they move, cutting into tendon and muscle. Better to stay still and take their next best chance.
He stiffens, every muscle in his body going rigid as memory floods back.
There are four guys in the room, four guys they could easily fight their way through if not for the wire slicing into them and causing them too much blood loss for a serious fight.
The one guy, obviously the leader, was movie star handsome, dark hair curling over his collar, dark eyes, regarding them, tall and not overly ripped. But that guy stays back while the others play.
"Little green men." A man regards them curiously, not seeming exactly sober. His eyes twinkle with good humour and all four of them are aware of how many weapons he could hold beneath his leather trench coat. The dude is at least six-five, but skinny rather than built, the coat seemingly made for someone far shorter.
"No way Mongo." The second guy puts his face right in Mikey's, examining the turtle that for once, has nothing to say. His shirt is open almost from the waist, revealing his muscular torso beneath, and knives hang from either side of his belt. He also wears a waistcoat, far bulkier than the body beneath should have allowed. "From some Godforsaken jungle we ain't heard of yet."
"Nah," says the third, a filthy little man whose hair grows in listless patches and whose teeth might have last seen a dentist sometime around his fourth birthday. "No hidden tribes Long John, no matter what you think. These are home grown. One of the CIA secret weapons."
Raphael snaps. He had always had trouble keeping a lid on his temper and no matter how much work he had done to get on top of it; his mouth is like a half-tamed horse, ready to bolt at any moment. "Hey, jackoff. Let me loose and I'll show ya a REAL secret weapon!"
Mongo pulls a gun from the confines of his jacket in one easy movement, presses the butt against Raph's head. Raph growls, unafraid. He has enough knowledge of villains to know that they don't imprison others just to blow them away.
"Boss, he's too loud!"
The head guy nods. "Fine. Kill him."
Before anyone can do anything, say anything, Mongo pulls the trigger.
His head slams back, remembering the impact, remembering the smell of smoke, the way the echo had reverberated through the room.
Remembering everything.
Raph's head jerks back, smacking against the wall with a solid thud. At the same time, a spray of blood spatters against the wall, interspersed with chunks of pink and grey matter, making what could have been outsider art across the stones.
Raph's head slumps forward, face barely marred, save for a neat little hole between his eyes.
His head drops forward, as if all the muscles in his neck have failed, taking a step backward and almost tripping over his own feet.
Mikey screams.
Not the scream he reserves for times of shock, when he has been taken by surprise, the one they all tease him about. This is a scream of fury, of pain, of rage. Mikey knows Raph is gone before their brothers can clear the possibility through their brain.
"Chickenshit FUCKS!"
No one had ever heard Mike use curse words so freely before, usually saving the casual expletives for his red-banded brother, but with the tears that coursed down his face, he gains a vulgar eloquence. He strains against the wire, no doubt slicing himself to ribbons, spewing hate at his captors.
"Cowards! Cowardly streaks of piss! I'll KILL YOU! Too fucking scared to fight us fair, you fucking chickenshit assholes, I'll rip a hole in your stomachs and shit in it, I'll torch your corpses and – and – I'LL STRANGLE YOU WITH YOUR OWN INTESTINES YOU FUCKING MURDERING BASTARDS!!"
The boss regards him with a bored nonchalance. "Good idea freak. Long John, would you mind?"
"Sure."
Long John steps forward, twisting his walking stick and revealing a long sword within. Even as Mike spews curses, he pulls his hand back and drives it forward, hard, right into Mike's stomach.
"It's tough, " he complains, sword caught between the scutes of Mike's plastron. He shoves harder, working the blade in small sawing motions until it goes through into the soft, yielding flesh below.
He gives an inarticulate cry, part rage and part desperate sorrow, putting his hands to the lower part of his plastron and holding tight, as if to stem an injury that is not there.
This time, Mikey doesn't scream.
He gasps, the note of surprise clearly audible in spite of the pain hidden in the exhalation. He jerks back as far back as the wall and the bonds will allow him to go. His eyes are wide, teeth bared in a snarl, but he still refuses to make a sound.
He stumbles as he backs up, not noticing, moaning as he does so, not seeing the room before him, seeing only the blood and the pain.
The crow watches impassively.
It seems to take Mikey a long time to die.
His pain is obvious; in spite of the silence he has chosen to bear it in, his pained breathing as the sword levers upward, slicing through the protection of his plastron, the spill of blood coming from his stomach, blood oozing from his mouth.
So much blood.
At the end, his intestines fall from his body in bloody ropes and he gives a high-pitched sound before slumping forward, held up by the wire and beyond caring how it digs into his skin.
"Gross-a-rama," says Mongo, eerily reminiscent of Mikey during his childhood when the term had been his favourite expression of distaste.
Donnie and Leo allow their eyes to meet. Leo's face is a mask of fury, a declaration of his intent. But Donnie is the one who is in tears. The hope seems to have left him and it is the absence of it that his brother sees most clearly.
Long John takes a step away from their mutilated brother, slips in the blood and nearly falls on his ass. Mongo gives a giggle, stupidly amused, although Long John has managed to avoid landing in the gore.
"Shit." Long John glares at Mongo, the tall man not noticing in his amusement.
"Y'know, we should save all this shit," says the man with the bad teeth, indicating to Mike's innards. "CIA don't want everyone to know how they make their freaks."
"Shit Capp, you and the CIA." Mongo sounds bored by the whole thing. "Innards look just the same as anyone's. It's the brain you wanna keep."
"Well then." Capp steps forward, withdrawing a wicked-looking knife of his own. "Let's get us a brain of our own."
He approaches Donatello, pulls the knife across the top of his head. A thin trail of blood appears and Don goes rigid, unable to escape and not sure how, where his chance would come from.
Leo goes crazy.
He throws himself to the side, trying to free himself of the bonds that tie him, mindless of the way it tears at his skin.
Long John puts his hand atop Leo's head, stilling him right away. Leo meets his eyes, bright hatred meeting good humour.
"Don't be so anxious," Mongo says gently. "It'll soon be your turn."
Capp saws at Donnie's head, the turtle moaning, crying, as the agony gets the better of him.
"You sure as shit ain't no surgeon Cap," says the boss, amused.
"Hey, I saw all this on a documentary. They do this to monkeys, saw off their heads and eat the brains."
Long John made puking sounds.
"I ain't gonna eat the brains! I just wanna get the brain out. Gotta be worth something."
He manages to get the blade all the way through Don's head, taking off the top as easily as cracking a boiled egg, if not as neatly. By the time he is done, Don's face is obscured by blood, his intermittent cries weakening.
He cries out, clutching his head in both hands.
But the top of his head is removed before he is granted the mercy of death.
"Told ya!" Capp chuckles to himself. "We could get big money to keep this brain a secret..."
Mongo pushes past, pulling out a switch blade and flicking it open. He drops his hand into the shell of Donnie's head before Capp can stop him.
He screams, the sound lost and afraid, batting away the ghost of the intruding hands above his own head.
Mongo flicks his wrist lazily and his left hand dives into Don's cranium, pulling out something pink, a thin sliver.
"Brainssss..." he grins, shoving the piece into his mouth.
"Guh-ROSSSSS!" screams Long John.
"EEWWGG!" adds Mongo, spitting across the floor. "Tastes all drippy. Like meat-flavoured gum or something."
Donnie was stiff, all his muscles locked. It told Leo that he was still alive.
But he couldn't see his brothers face because of the blood.
"Great Mongo," snaps Capp. "The CIA ain't gonna pay us for the brain if you've gone and chewed on it!"
"Fuck the CIA," mutters Mongo. "These freaks ain't their work."
"Might as well get rid of it now," growls Capp, taking the knife he used to remove the top of Don's head and slamming it in a downward motion, deep into the brain.
He screams.
Don's limbs flop, the severing of his life so sudden that Leo can barely believe he has witnessed what he has.
And now he is the only one left.
He screams.
The four gather around him, careful not to slip on Mike's blood, not even looking at the fragile corpses of the lives they have taken.
Leo glares at them. He is beyond grief, beyond rage. He has one thought on his mind, the thought that all the people before him must die. They must, before they could take any one else, destroy anyone else.
Like they have destroyed his brothers.
Like they have destroyed him.
"I will kill you."
The boss smiles at him, almost tender in his understanding. "How?"
They fall upon him.
He screams.
He staggers backward, hitting the rail that is supposed to stop him going too far and falling over it. As he plummets to the floor, he is convinced that his life is over and is absurdly grateful. He does not want to remain in this world, not in a place where humans can do the things he has been witness to.
He crashes among the remains of the robot, the sharp metal slicing into his skin. He lies among the debris and howls his anguish. He screams until his throat burns and his voice is barely more than a croak.
The crow watches.
He has fallen far; the twisted metal has cut him deep. In some way, he hopes that the steel has injured him enough to kill him, to let out his blood until he does not have enough to keep him moving, for this torment to be over.
His tears finally stops and he picks up his arms, thinking to examine the wounds and seeing how long he has left, how soon it will be before he can be in eternity and free of this anguish.
The metal has sliced him, he sees, probably mortally – a wicked shard has sliced his entire arm along the vein, the one that the true suicide chasers open. And yet he is still here.
As he watches, the skin knits back together.
He stares.
The skin goes from open wound to mild scratch, to scar. As he watches, the scar goes from serious, to noticeable, to memory, to nothing. He is as intact as before he fell.
He rises, the fear beginning to ebb, replaced by something else.
His brothers had been slain before him, by monsters that he had sworn his vengeance on. And he had died before he could carry out his promise.
But somehow, some way, he is back.
He has to find those men. He has to find them and stop them; because he knows that he and his brothers were just another statistic in a long line of ruined lives that these men had ruined and will continue to ruin as long as they breathe.
But now he has his fractured memories, things that might just be able to help him find the men who did this to them. He has the knowledge that there is no coincidence to his – resurrection – because such randomness seems inconceivable to him; he is here to right a wrong. He has a thirst for vengeance so strong he can taste it.
And he seems to be invulnerable.
The crow caws, apparently in approval and he amends his list; he also has the bird, some kind of psychic connection to it he surmises, based on his ability to unerringly follow it through the dark to the lair and the way he has been able to see through its eyes. Whatever brought him back here, he knows beyond doubt that the crow is a part of it.
Revenge is first. Whatever happens afterwards – well, he does not care.
His weapons are not with him, he has to assume that they are lost to him. But he does not doubt that he can find more even around this place abandoned even before death. Their family had hoarded weapons in the same way that other families collected photographs and proudly displayed schoolwork.
He looks up at the crow, exercises his speech for the first time. "It's a good night to go hunting."
The crows cry echoes around the empty chamber as it takes flight. The turtle watches it, eyes grim but his mouth set in what might have been a smile.