Thieves and Brigands

By mid-day, they reached London, which was in a great tumult, with people rushing or running, horses, carts, and carriages cutting in front of one another, unheeding and uncaring who was trampled or run down in their haste. The chaos led to accidents; broken wheels and axles, injury, death, in an everyone-for-themselves frenzy to grab hold of anything valuable—whether it was their own or not—and proceed out of the city as quickly as possible.

Casey's little group of soldiers gawked at the chaos for a second, then he motioned the boys toward the crowd with the idea of some sort of controlling measures in mind. They left Irvine leaning on Don. Donatello took it upon himself to escort the wounded boy to the hospital, but as they approached, it was clear the building was already packed to the gills with injured, and Irvine waved him back to where they'd come from. The doctors had no time for an injured soldier who was already attended to and in stable condition. The turtle helped him to sit on the platform at the train station, where a cluster of out-of-commission soldiers already sat. Some of the people milling about there complained of the train being late, and Don explained what they had encountered on the tracks. The onlookers stared at him, aghast, and many of them picked up their belongings and left to find transport elsewhere.

With Irvine out of the way, Donatello headed back toward the chaotic main thoroughfare. A pistol shot rang out. Whatever the owner had been aiming at, they had missed, instead hitting the haunch of a carthorse, who reared, squealing in pain, and fell to the side, taking out the other horse and upending the entire cart, spilling owners and all of its contents into the street. Two of Casey's troop were trying to assist there, with Yates holding the man with the pistol in a headlock until he could wrest the weapon from his grasp while his comrade, Felton, tried to get the injured horse to calm down.

A bit further up, he found another of their number trying to convince a man away from a pile of gold sovereigns spilled across the road. The old man clutched a large satchel full of the coins, which had gotten knocked out of his grasp, and while scrounging through the dirt to recover them, was run over by a carriage and trampled by the horses, breaking his back and leaving him paralyzed in the legs. Despite that, his first concern was his money, which he kept grabbing for despite Woodriff—as he'd learned the boy's name was, as they'd traveled, and the last, whom he didn't see among the crowd, was Killian—and a pair of other men trying to get the old man to safety.

Don could hardly move within the flood of people, horses and vehicles. A cart clipped his carapace, and while it did him no physical injury, it did jostle him, knocking him off balance. He backed away from the stream of activity… It was best not to try to cross the chaos without a very good reason to. Glancing down the street, he happened upon a dry goods and hard wares store. The door was unlocked, though no one was present. The shelves of foodstuffs had been ravaged, save for a few things spilt on the floor, but there were still some tools left on the racks. He helped himself to a pair of snipe-nose plies, a coil of copper wire, and a jar of putty, put the lot in a grain sack, and left three shillings under the foot of the cash box, hoping he'd estimated the cost correctly.

As he was leaving the general store, Casey Jones spotted him and ran up. "Thire y'are! Cam wuth mae!" he said, steering the scientist around the corner, into a residential street. "Got us th' bleck powdah," he said in a low, confidential tone, showing Donatello the powder horn.

Don's brows rose, impressed, but leery. "Why are you whispering, then? Did you talk with the commander?"

"Yeh," the teen replied, toeing the dirt guiltily. " 'e sed 'e's got 'igher prior'tees. So I nicked this! But, we prob'ly ort not ta stick 'round, neither."

Don passed a hand down his face. "You are absolutely the worst soldier I have ever clapped eyes on… You're going to get court-martialed!" he hissed, now likewise on guard in case someone from the army happened to overhear.

"Aesiah te ask fohgiveniss, en all thet," Casey replied flippantly. "O'll worry 'bout consequences efteh we're 'eroes."

Donnie sighed. "It's not about being heroes."

"Sure 'tisn't," Jones replied proudly, earning him a sideways glance.

"That ego is going to get you in trouble, if it hasn't already."

" 'asn't yit!" was his smug return as he hopped up the porch steps of the nearest house and tried the knob. It rattled, but didn't open, so he proceeded to the next in the row.

"What're you doing?" Don asked, partially aghast and partly wanting an actual answer.

"Riquisitionin'. Ye need te git sorsers en springs from somewheh, yeh?"

Casey had given up on trying doorknobs and had picked up an erstwhile brick, hauling his arm back to pitch it through a window, but Donatello grabbed hold of it before he could throw. "There's better ways at our disposal." He proceeded to slip the handcase from his back and pull out two small metal picks, one straight, one hooked, and after slipping them into the keyhole and working them around for thirty seconds or so, the lock popped and the door swung open. After Donatello had stepped inside, there came a crash and shattering of glass as the brick clunked across the floor, and he spun around in his tracks. "Casey!"

"Oops," the boy smirked in a way that said he was not at all sorry for the deed.

Don sighed out his irritation, and moved on. "Since you're on a destructive bent anyway, why don't you get the springs for me," he said, tossing Casey the pliers.

"Ye-heah!" the boy crowed, whipping his buck-knife out of his pocket as he headed up the stairs. Don stayed below, picking through the china cabinet, as well as the kitchen cabinets, comparing the ordinary crockery with the fancier porcelain, debating between the two. He set the two plates down, instead going to a roll-top desk in the entryway and searching through it for a pen and a piece of paper.

"Oi, 'ow miny springs d'jou naed?" Casey called from above.

Don thought for a moment, "Six, I should think."

There was a slight pause before the teen's voice sounded again. " 'ow 'bout eight?"

The scientist sighed again. "Yes, that'll be fine…"

Casey reappeared, arms full of springs, looking over Don's shoulder as he wrote. "Wozzeet, 'en?"

"A note to the owners, saying what we've taken, apologizing for the inconvenience, etcetera, etcetera. But I can't decide between the fine porcelain plates and the ordinary saucers… The clay has a heavier weight, so the explosion might be dampened a bit, but the porcelain is so fragile, it might break before we need it to…"

"Wrep it ap in some regs, then?" Casey ducked into the kitchen, reappearing with a dish towel, which he ripped in half, handing it to Donatello. " 'ere ya go."

Don gave the china plates a mournful look. "These are so rare, though… they're very expensive. It seems like such a waste…"

"Look, Mistah Scoince, we's et war, 'ere. We got no guarantee this plice won't be burnt to the bloody graound, in which kise, the fency dishwork is oll but ollriddy smeshed. Tike wot ye naed, en bill et to th' ahmy."

Don stared at him, assessing Casey's idea, then gave a nod of confirmation. "Might just as well, then. Get some of the herb jars from the spice racks. Dump the herbs on those plates I already pulled out."

"Roight."

x-x-x-x-x

With all of their various acquisitions squared away, they headed back to the main thoroughfare, where Casey headed away from the chaotic road, which now sounded much more panicked. Don quirked his brows at him. "I thought we were going to get the others."

"Nae, thaey'll be oll roight 'ere. Thaey kin go beck te the ahmy. Thet's bettah then fallowin' mae 'round, yeh?"

Don gave him a dismayed look. "Aren't you even going to tell them you've gone? Casey…"

But just as he started in to lecture the boy, a row of flame shot up from a street a few blocks behind them, the oncoming fighting machine letting out a deafening, "KRAANG!"

"Naep! Toime ta go!" Casey declared, grabbing hold of him and hustling him into a dead run away from the city

x-x-x-x-x

They ran until neither of them could breathe any further, miles outside of London.

"Did… did it cam 'round the beck a' as?" Casey panted.

Don gulped air, and said, "No… I think that was another one."

"Bloody 'ell…"

Traffic upon this particular small, uncobbled road was much thinner than within the city proper, as it seemed few had thought to come this way. While that meant less crowd to fight their way through, it also meant that some unfortunates were at the mercy of those who would take advantage of them with no one around to assist. But both Casey and Don's ears pricked up at the sound of women screaming, and both immediately ran toward its source.

Around a slight bend and a small wood, a middle-aged woman and a girl roughly their own age were being beset by a tall and broad dog-man and a fish-man wearing a complicated steam-and-hydraulic set of legs and water tanks at his gills, and what looked like a large reservoir upon his back, with a little crooked vent at the top that let out the occasional toot of steam like a heating kettle. They seemed to want to deprive the women of their transport, a small horsecart, if not more. The elder could only scream, calling for 'Augie', but the young woman was putting up a fight, lashing viciously at the two beast-men with her horsewhip. The brawny dog managed to get a good hold on the cart, overturn it and dump the two ladies and all of their luggage out just as Donatello and Casey arrived to face down the blackguards.

Don found himself facing up against the dog-man, while Casey took on the fish, the girl from the cart taking a slash at their attackers when she could to assist them.

The dog took several swipes at Donatello, who jumped back out of the path of each one as he looked for his advantage.

"Give it up, boy," the dog growled at him. "You haven't a chance!"

"Actually, given your weight advantage and the angle of the sun at the moment, I estimate my chances to be roughly fifty-six point seven nine percent, putting me at a slight advantage." His foot touched a long, sturdy branch on the ground, and he kicked it up into his hands. "Make that fifty-nine even! I'll take those odds!" He spun the stick in his hands, striking the dog with a jab to his nose. The dogman recoiled, stepping back as he was slammed in the side of the head as a follow-up strike. "Thank you, Leonardo, for the aikido training…" Don muttered to himself gleefully.

Casey found himself in more of a pickle than he'd expected, as the fishman's legs turned out to be a whirling metal deathtrap anytime he came near; one strike from the spinning metal claws would likely tear him to pieces. As he tried to circle, he only found himself facing the fish again, as the swift mechanical legs swung him around.

"Mira, army boy," the fish said flippantly with a Portuguese accent, "we only want the cart and the horse, perhaps a few valuables. Certainly not worth your lives, yes? But we will take blood if you do not back down!"

"Nae doice, Fesh-fayce!"

The fish gave him a confused look. "What in the world did you just say?"

Continuing to run a circle around his adversary, Casey scooped up a stone from the ground, and as the fishman shifted again, threw it full force into his face, causing him to spin wildly upon his metal legs. As he rotated, Casey lunged forward with his buck-knife, intending to filet the brigand, but instead catching one of the tubes attached to the fish's breathing apparatus. Water spattered everywhere as the fish tried to regain control enough to grab the flailing hose. "Bradford! Help!" he hollered.

But the dogman had his own problems to deal with, fighting against the surprisingly agile turtle, who, despite the dog's much larger bulk and brawn, kept taking hits from the stick at a furious rate, as well as being snapped by the whip, now in possession of the older woman, who had been convinced of the need to fight and was doing so wholeheartedly. On top of that, the clever turtle had manipulated Bradford into a position where he was facing the low, but still bright, western sun, putting him at a disadvantage he should not have let himself be put in. Another strike, and he stepped back, bumping into the overturned cart. He pushed forward, finding himself barred by Don's stick. With a downward slash of his claws, the frail weapon fell into several pieces, leaving its wielder gawking at its remaining short bits. Bradford guffawed at him malevolently, but stopped short as there was a loud crack and he pitched forward onto the ground, knocked cold by a large piece of luggage, wielded by the red-haired girl as she balanced on the upended cart.

"Oh, well done!" Don commented to her, offering her a hand down, but otherwise struck quite still by her looks, now that he had a chance to see her outside of the fight.

"Thank you," she replied. "We surely appreciate the assistance!"

"Very much so," agreed the middle-aged woman. "Now where's the horse gone off to? Penny! Back you come!" she called, clicking her tongue and going after it.

The girl chuckled, letting her companion go, as the only apparent threat left was the fishman, who was quite busy cursing them from the puddle he'd found to lie in to breathe while attempting to reattach his severed hose. "I'm April O'Neil," she presented herself, "and that's my aunt, June Elphistone. And you are?"

Donatello needed the prompting to knock him out of his daze, and it still didn't bring him fully back before his mouth engaged without the rest of him. "Beautiful… I… I mean, I'm Donatello… Donatello Ogilvy."

April politely held back a laugh, but before she could get a word in, Casey barged in. "…en' Casey Jones is loikwoise plaesed te mike yer acquointence!"

He took her daintily gloved hand, making to press a kiss to it, but April drew away as if with sudden realization. "Oh! We should right the cart! Could you lend me a bit of help?"

"Of course!" Don said brightly, all but leaping to help tilt the cart back to its wheels.

Casey looked a bit stunned at the denial of his affections, but snapped out of it quickly. "Wull, yeh, obv'yisly!" He started pulling the cart from the other side, and it was swiftly rocked back onto its wheels. The boys piled the women's trunk and luggage back into their places in the back of the cart, and had everything loaded by the time Ms. Elphistone returned with the copper-colored pony and hitched her back into her traces.

"There we go… Penny-Farthing thought it was an opportune moment to go sow her wild oats," she said with a smirk. "Can't thank you enough, gents!" she said, the humor draining from her face. "All this dreadful Martian business about, then we're attacked in the middle of nowhere… It gave me quite the start, let me tell you! Did it you, April, dear?"

"I'm fine, Aunt June," April assured her. "This is Casey and Donatello."

They exchanged acquaintances, and then Don asked, "Do you still have far to travel?"

"Well, it is still a ways," April said.

"Perhaps it'd be best if we escorted you."

"Aye," Casey agreed, "dan't want 'is sort a' thing heppenin' agin!"

The young woman seemed to take a bit of offense to this. "As we've shown, I should think, we can defend ourselves!"

"Oh, no! No doubt of that!" Donatello conceded. "I'm more concerned of preventing any other brigand that happens upon you of any more cranial trauma."

April's cheeks puffed with held laughter, which, after another second, she let loose fully, and Don laughed along with her. "Well, then, Beautiful Donatello Ogilvy, we should gladly have you along!"

Don blushed past the olive shade of his cheeks, and Casey's laughter carried over to him.