..
You're one microscopic cog
In his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed
By his red right hand
-Red Right Hand, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
PUPPETS ON A STRING
Casey uncoiled himself from the warm cocoon of his blanket, rolled over, and stared blankly at his digital alarm clock. It was just after five, but between the darkness of his room and his own grogginess, he spent several disorienting seconds pondering whether it was AM or PM.
The shit-show of insanity that had been the last couple of days quickly replayed through his mind: The showdown in the alley with the Purple Dragons. The tenuous peace he'd made with Raphael, only to then have to save April from him the very next goddamn day. Bradford's horrifying transformation. The success of thwarting the Foot Clan's plan of incinerating the sewers.
Splinter had welcomed April and Casey back into the fold at the lair after all was said and done, apologizing to his sons for how unreasonably strict he'd been. They'd celebrated for a while and hung out together well into the night, then Casey had walked April home. Once he'd finally gotten back to his apartment in the wee hours of the morning, he'd caught up on the local news reports and gotten very, very drunk.
PM then, he concluded. He'd been sleeping it off all day.
He stretched and groaned in denial of having to get up and prepare himself for another weekend as 'Joe'. His Friday evening shift at the restaurant started in two hours.
He switched on his bedside lamp.
"Holy shit!" he yelped, a burst of adrenaline burning the remnants of his hangover away.
Raphael sat leisurely by the window, on a chair typically used for Casey's not-quite dirty laundry pile. Those clothes were on the floor beside it, and Raphael was regarding him calmly.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Casey demanded, putting his hands on his hips angrily. He realized that he was standing there in his boxers, and haphazardly threw on the first pair of pants he could find, grumbling.
"You insisted that I come over," Raphael answered, shrugging. "I got a lot of interesting texts from you this morning." He pulled out his cell phone, and gave Casey a synopsis of his drunk-text greatest hits. "Murdering bastard, going to get me put in jail, drug lord, kidnapping asshole, and apparently I owe you a computer?"
Vague memories of texting the number on the pizza box that was still on his coffee table wafted into Casey's consciousness. "Uh…"
Raphael stood, his shadow looming across the room. "Did you still want to try and give me that ass-kicking you promised?"
Even though Raphael was roughly Casey's height, and standing on the opposite side of his bedroom, Casey briefly felt very small and vulnerable. Then he noticed that Raphael was smirking; the guy was fucking teasing him.
"Screw you, Raph. Sorry that I drunk-texted you a bunch of bullshit, but I am pissed at you."
"Our deal was that I didn't use you to trap your friends, or torture you for information about them. And I haven't."
"Yeah, you're a god-damned saint," scoffed Casey, rifling around his nightstand for a shirt.
"What are you really mad about, Jones?"
"Why do you even care?"
"I need your help with something."
Casey laughed. "You've gotta be shittin' me, bro."
Raphael raised a brow, looking both annoyed and confused.
"Dude, remind me to teach you some proper slang," Casey snorted.
Raphael shifted impatiently.
Casey took a deep breath and tried to bring his erratic heartbeat back under control. Where to even begin? "Okay, first off, fuck you for taking April on a ride…"
"Don't even get me started on that," Raphael interrupted irritably. "If she told you what happened, you would know that wasn't on me. I used her as bait at the end, but I would have cut her loose."
"Fine, I'll give you that, but she did say both you and Bradford were being creepers. I know she's hot, but that is not cool, man."
Raphael put his hands up as if stopping traffic and took a step back. "Hey, it wasn't like that. At all. I'd be happy to never see her again."
"Yeah, right. That girl is a fox."
"That girl is a something…" Raphael mumbled.
Casey looked at Raphael skeptically, waiting for him to elaborate, but he didn't.
"Whatever," Casey conceded. He grabbed his laptop from the living room and brought up the news report for what was now being called the Chinatown Massacre, and passed it to Raphael. "This also had me freakin' out."
"The screen is cracked," Raphael complained, squinting as he read.
"Guess when that happened? The other night, when you tried to kill me for saving your ass. That's why you owe me a computer," he said smugly.
Raphael rolled his eyes but kept reading as Casey busied himself finding actual clean clothes and going to change and wash up in the bathroom.
When Casey came back into the room, his laptop was closed and on his bed. Raphael looked nonplussed.
"So?" prompted Casey.
"So what? Those idiots mostly killed each other by accident. It's being reported as an internal skirmish over a new drug. Any investigation that might lead to The Foot will be quashed, and you won't be going to jail."
That wasn't entirely the point in Casey's mind. He'd read graphic descriptions of how brutally some of those people had died, and remembered exactly which ones he had helped take down. Reading that there would be 'further investigation' into the deaths had made his blood run cold and spurred him into going on an epic bender last night. He was selfishly relieved that The Foot would unknowingly shield him from being discovered as an accessory, but the moral and psychological fallout he was feeling from the whole thing was clearly none of Raphael's concern.
"What about the drug, then?" Casey asked. "A few of the Dragons had it on them and in their systems. Did you guys introduce something new into the city?"
"I don't think so, but I can find out. Drugs are not my territory," Raphael said nonchalantly.
"Unreal," grumbled Casey. Casual talk about breaking the law was something he overheard more and more from working alongside mobsters, but he didn't think he'd ever get used to it. In fact, he hoped never would. "What do you want from me, Raph?" he sighed.
Raphael was silent for a moment, as if briefly reconsidering. "Well, if mine and Bradford's mission had succeeded last night, Hamato Yoshi would be dead, Master Shredder would be returning to Japan, and my partner and I would have been free to stabilize New York before heading home ourselves. I would have even left my brothers alone, as long as they didn't come looking for revenge."
"I hope you aren't expecting an apology."
"Instead," Raphael continued sternly, "we are all still stuck here hunting Hamato Yoshi - a murderer and a liar. He can't hide from his crimes forever, and your misguided actions to save him are going to bring nothing but chaos to the city until we finally destroy him."
Casey crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "Is that a threat?"
"It's a fact. Unfortunately, with Master Shredder back in town and more driven than ever, I won't have much time or freedom. Neither will anyone else in my Clan. I need someone that I can trust to help me watch over Chinatown."
"You want me to help you with your protection racket?"
"The racket was with the Purple Dragons," he snapped. "I took over and I actually protect them, without force and at a lower cost. That's why the Dragons were trying to get me out of the way."
"Okay, that makes sense, but why me?"
"It's already what you do, isn't it? All I'm asking is to have a line open for them, and make them a priority if there's trouble. If there's an issue you can't handle on your own, let me know and I'll be there. I'll give you a fifteen percent cut every month for your help."
Casey considered the possible consequences of being on the unofficial payrolls of both the Mafia and The Foot Clan, and whistled to himself. "I don't know, man…"
"I'm expecting it to be quiet for a while after what happened with the Purple Dragons. You already patrol through the area. Now you'll just get paid for it and have backup if you need it."
"I guess so…"
"Good," Raphael said abruptly, pulling a wrapped stack of cash out of a pouch on his belt. "Consider it a signing bonus." He tossed the money onto Casey's bed, where it landed with a soft thud next to his laptop.
Casey picked it up and flipped through the edges on one side with his thumb. At a glance, there was easily two thousand dollars in his hands. When he looked up again, Raphael was gone.
ooooooooooooooo
The Watchtower had been a grand cathedral and place of worship before the Foot Clan had purchased it, whereafter it had gone through drastic renovations for their purposes. The ground level had been stripped of altar and pews, remaining a large, ominously empty space with marble floors. The basement held a fully equipped dojo and a small medical room with a cot and first aid supplies. The second level had been a three-bedroom apartment, presumably for the pastor and his family. The den and living room had been remodeled in order to add three more bedrooms. The third level, Shredder's throne room and sometimes most terrifying place on earth, had been a ballroom for church events.
Saki liked to refer to the second floor where he, Raphael, and Karai had their own rooms as the barracks. Of the remaining three rooms, two had two sets of bunks within them for any Clan member that needed a place to stay, and the other had been claimed by Bradford since his mutation.
Karai paused as she breezed through the kitchen, noting irritably that it was looking a lot more like a frat house than a barracks. Dishes were piled high in the sink, the counter was cluttered, the stovetop stained, and someone had left the clippings of their hand wraps on the floor next to the garbage. She didn't even want to know about the state of their shared bathroom.
The first underling she saw was going to get a major tongue-lashing, but she was too agitated with recent events to make it a priority at the moment. She needed her nerves soothed and an understanding ear, so she continued on her way, giving a cursory knock on Raphael's bedroom door before barging in.
He was half sitting, half lying in bed atop the blanket, his shell against the wall to prop him up, reading a novel. One leg was thrown over Hachiko, who was happily curled up under the crook of Raphael's knee. The dog looked up, his tail thumping on the bed at her presence.
Raphael grunted a greeting as Karai plunked down on the foot of his bed and gave Hachiko's ears a friendly scratch. She waited for Rapahel to finish his page, looking around his tidy room and noticing the growing collection of books on his shelf; he had everything from textbooks to fantasy novels.
"You've been reading a lot lately," she noted as he marked his page and tossed the book onto his desk.
"I didn't have an English tutor the last four years," he replied, shrugging. "I needed to refresh, and now it's just a habit, I guess."
His voice held the slightest hint of self consciousness. She realized with a touch of guilt that she had never really considered the fact that his formal education had ended when he was twelve years old. He'd gone to train with the Elite, while she had stayed back and studied with the best private tutors in Japan to an early university level by sixteen.
"I have a few books I could lend you," she said before her silence became an awkward one.
"Thanks." Raphael sat up and crossed his legs, and Hachiko rolled onto his back to beg for belly rubs between them.
They snorted out a laugh as they both indulged him, and Karai was already starting to feel better.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"Father is pacing upstairs again. I'm hoping he heads back out to the mansion soon."
"He usually doesn't sleep here, so it should be soon," Raphael offered. "He's been up for what? A day and a half now?"
"Something like that…" she sighed. "Apparently tracking down or even contacting Tiger Claw is almost impossible on short notice, and that has him very on edge. He doesn't seem to care about anything else."
"He's obsessed," Raphael said quietly.
"Yes! He's so focused on bringing down Hamato Yoshi that some of his other duties are not being taken care of, so I have to pick up the slack. But when I don't share that single-minded focus with him, he makes comments that imply that I don't care about avenging my mother..." Karai's throat felt tight suddenly, and her voice wavered as she added, "and that just isn't true."
She didn't want to cry, didn't want to seem like she was cracking under the pressure, so she found her anger and held on to it. Let it burn away the impending tears in an all-too familiar dance. Raphael's hand warmed her shoulder, giving it the gentlest squeeze before retreating.
She pushed her emotions aside with a quick sniffle and steered the conversation away from her mother. "I had to run a conference call today to make sure things are still running smoothly in Japan. I've been there for plenty of calls and meetings with him before, but I've never had to run one! I felt like some child pretending to be a grown up, it was humiliating."
"I'm sure you did just fine. He's been preparing you for this." His voice was light as he praised her, but his expression was dark, haunted even. "We both have our role to play. At least you're doing well in yours."
Karai had the distinct feeling that he wasn't just talking about how Father had reamed him out for failing to find Yoshi or the Purple Dragons fiasco, despite all the progress he'd made for the Clan while he'd been in charge.
"What's wrong, Raph?" she asked gently.
"I've just finally realized what role he's been training me for. Ever since you mentioned that Tiger Claw was supposed to replace me in New York when he thought I was dead."
The bitterness in his tone sent a chill down her spine. Even Hachiko whined and licked his nearest knee.
"He's trained you to be the best warrior possible, just like him."
"He knows I would die for you," he said, his emerald eyes meeting hers seriously. "He's passing the Shredder mantle on to both of us, sure, but not because I mean anything to him. You are going to be the face and the real force behind the Foot Clan one day. I'm just the terrifying monster your enemies would have to go through to get to you. Your shield. Expendable. And apparently, replaceable."
Karai exhaled slowly, feeling as if she were absorbing an unexpected punch. "You're not…"
"I'm just a tool to him and you know it."
"Damn it, Raph, no one knows what really goes on in Father's head," she snapped. "Does it matter what his intentions are in making us partners to lead the Foot? At that point, he'll be gone. You are not my shield, you're my best friend."
"I'm both. I always have been. Willingly."
Karai felt tears prickle at her eyes again. "You sap, you're gonna make me cry," she scolded, smacking at his arm playfully.
Hachiko took that as a signal it was time to play and bounced between the two of them, grinning his canine grin.
Karai laughed, the unexpected weight of their conversation lifting as Raphael smiled and ruffled the dogs fur in every which way. Hachiko shot off the bed like a bullet, running a few tight donuts around the bedroom in excitement.
An alert sounded on both of their cell phones simultaneously, and Karai checked it with a groan.
"Shit," she cursed. "One of our safehouses was just robbed." Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "And the Soldier who checked in when the alarm went off said there's a giant hole in the floor."
"What in the hell?"
Karai sent out a mass text to everyone who got the alert to let them know that her and Raphael would investigate, then double checked her armor and weapons.
"Sorry, buddy, raincheck," Raphael said apologetically to a disappointed Hachiko, grabbing for his own armor.
ooooooooooooooo
Karai arrived at the safehouse, Raphael accompanying her silently into the dimly lit basement. Something had pushed its way through the floor
from below, heaving earth and concrete up with it and leaving a raised ring of rubble around the diameter.
The Foot Soldier who had originally sounded the alarm stood on the opposite side of the opening and rubbed the back of her neck nervously, as if afraid to be reprimanded. She had removed her cowl and bandana, which was bunched up over most of her face. Karai likewise pulled her black mask on over her mouth and nose; the dust was still settling and the air was thick with it.
To their left, a closet door had been shredded into kindling and the large safe within it stood empty and vandalized.
Raphael gave the safe a quick inspection, his fingertips running over deep gashes in the metal. "They almost look like claw marks," he muttered.
"Who in the world would be stupid enough to do this to us?" Karai wondered out loud.
"Someone who won't get the chance to cross us again."
Karai carefully climbed the rubble as Raphael returned to her side, curious to see how deep the hole was. If she had been on her own, she would have needed a cord and harness or rope ladder to get to the bottom of the chasm. Whatever had done this had come up from the sewer line, and tore through multiple layers of concrete, metal, earth, and rock. The cement floor of the sewer was unscathed, and about a twenty foot drop from where she stood.
"Ready?" Raphael asked.
Karai wrinkled her nose under her mask at the sewer. "As I'll ever be…"
A moment later she was cradled in his arms, her stomach protesting the rapid speed with which they plummeted. Raphael's landing wasn't rough, but the sudden cessation of movement felt jarring nonetheless. He set her feet back under her, and she found a flashlight on her belt so they could have a look around.
It was both chilly and humid underground. If her flashlight were to fail her, they would be swallowed completely by the darkness within a few steps. An unpleasant shiver went up her spine; she already wanted to get the hell out of there.
"Look," she said, her beam zeroing in on a small scratch in the cement.
"There's more." Raphael raised her wrist to illuminate another on the side of the retaining wall.
"Are they like the scratches on the safe?"
"Yeah. More shallow, but similar."
It was their only lead, so they had to follow through with it. Karai sighed miserably, trying to traverse the drier sections of the pathway as they followed the irregular scratch marks through the bowels of New York.
"Using the sewer lines to steal from the Foot Clan, it seems like your brothers would be the obvious suspects, right?" Karai asked rhetorically. "But it's too obvious."
"I agree. I don't think they want to attract our attention right now, unless this is a trap we are walking into."
The scratches became more concentrated until finally they found the tunnel that seemed to be the hub of activity. Multiple trails led out from it in every direction. They crouched down on either side of the entrance and Karai shone the light down the long, narrow tunnel. It was scored with hundreds of the small gouges.
Raphael pinched between his eyes, his shoulders sagging in defeat. The tunnel was small enough that Karai would have to walk with a stooped back, but Raphael would barely fit in a crouch.
"What do you think made these marks? Some kind of machine?" she asked, giving Raphael a sympathetic look.
"Or something else with claws that can go through metal and concrete."
"Great," Karai said sarcastically.
Raphael gestured to the tunnel. "Ladies first."
Karai snorted in amusement, even though he was only being practical. She was more maneuverable in the cramped space than Raphael, and could search for and disarm any traps or security devices with much more ease. Much to her surprise, however, there weren't any. She did find a homemade offshoot to the tunnel that lead up on a roughly forty-five degree angle. They climbed the incline until they reached the end, where a circular door above their heads beckoned curiously.
"Whoever they are, they don't seem to care about any extra security," Karai whispered.
"So probably a trap," huffed Raphael, already jamming his sai between the two semi-circle panels that made up the door and prying them open.
Something beeped from above, and there was a whoosh as the doors gave out and parted completely. Raphael insisted on going up into the dark space first, then cussed softly and ushered her up into what looked like a storage room. They were near a wall which had a proper door, the light from beyond spilling in beneath it. The beeping hadn't stopped, and a small bead of white light beside the door thrummed in time with the noise. An alarm.
"Can you..?"
Karai approached the alarm and examined it with her flashlight. "Damn it, it's a fingerprint reader, I'm going to need a minute."
Raphael promptly stabbed his sai into it. The beeping stopped, but the alarm being tampered with set off some sort of backup measure, and a small burst of gas sprayed directly into their faces out of a tiny hole in the alarm panel.
Karai reeled back, panicked, waiting for her eyes to start burning, or her limbs to feel heavy with some drug, or even to pass out. She looked at Raphael, wide-eyed, too concerned to scold him. He held her shoulders, knowing that if it was some sort of knock-out gas or poison that she would succumb to it first, fear and regret pouring off of him with whispered apologies.
"Settle down, drama queen," Karai said quietly. "It's fine. We're fine. It didn't do anything."
Except several red lights flared up in the dark towards the back of the room, revealing a group of small robots seemingly coming to life. A few of them opened large, jagged mouths, and screeched.