Chapter 3-Darkness

I'm sprinting. I'm moving so fast I don't even know if I'm timing my movements right. I don't care. I'm too preoccupied with running to care. I feel like I should be angry. I always get angry when something goes wrong like this. Hell, I get angry at the flip of a dime! But the anger is overshadowed by something else I can't really recognize.

"Mikey, get one o' the shell sleds and punch it for Liberty Island!"

There's silence on his end, and I feel myself grow more overwhelmed by this unfamiliar feeling, this darkness that's slowly eating away at me.

"Mikey! Listen! I know you're in a funk right now, but Leo needs us! He's standing on ol' Lady Liberty, and I think he's gonna jump!"

I keep running, and I don't bother waiting for him to answer. Somehow, I just know he heard me. I leap over the noisy streets below to another rooftop, I feel the darkness catching up to me. It's whispering, tempting me to slow down, to just fall over and rest. I run faster, I'm almost there. I'm getting close to the water, the sea that sits there, mocking me, telling me that I'm too weak to cross it in time. The darkness reaches for me, it takes hold of my arms. Its trying to drag me down, its not trying to tempt me anymore, its attacking me. My body starts aching, starting with my arms. The darkness starts creeping down my body, filling my body with thousands of little stings of pain, aches, cramps. I feel myself slow down, involuntarily, my body won't listen to me.

'Don't quit on me now!'

I feel the familiar flames of anger rise up within me, they free me from the chains of darkness, their heat drives the pain away. I'm sprinting again, I'm outrunning the aches, I am fire. I'm burning, leaving the smoke of my flames in my wake. I leap off the edge of the last building between me and the water, I swing from the street lights, instinctively keeping out of the lights to avoid being seen, despite being too enraged to care. I crash through the trees of Battery Park, ignoring the branches that are lashing out at me, trying to keep me from getting to Leo. My flames are too hot, my rage too powerful to be stopped, and I keep running, despite the cuts, the blood leaking from my face and limbs. I crash through the last of the trees, my feet pounding across the ground, beating it. I leap out over the water, over the tunnel leading to our home in the sewers, just as Mikey appears out from it on the shell sled. I land on the back behind him, he yelps. He says something, but I don't hear him, I just shout at him to go faster. I see Leo at the edge of Lady Liberty, having removed his mask and belt. I see Donnie closing in out of the corner of my eye, but it just barely registers. We're almost there, halfway there, and then it happens. HE JUMPS!

"DAMMIT!"

I see Donnie manage to catch him, but then they both start plummeting downward! So close, so damned close... I jump over Mikey, onto the front of the shell sled. He shouts, asking me what I'm doing, but I don't really hear him. He's far away from me now.

"MIKEY, HIT THE BRAKES, RIGHT NOW!"

There's half a second of hesitation, then he does it, and the sled comes to a screeching halt. I don't. I'm flying through the air, flying towards my falling brothers. I take out both my sais, I hurl them with all my strength at Lady Liberty. They hit their mark, and they manage to hook onto Donnie's glider. The shock of the sudden stop is too much to keep it held in place, but they're close enough to the ground. The danger is gone. Suddenly, I'm sprinting again, and anger is still my fire. I reach them, I throw Donnie and his glider aside, I flip Leo onto his shell, I pull him up into a sitting position.

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YA THINKIN'?!"