Casey's body hated breathing underground. The air here was musty, dank, wretched. You didn't have to be a bio-science kind of guy to know that you seriously should not be breathing this stuff. And yet, his lungs could not get enough of it as he sprinted through the shallow muck. His boots went plat-plat-plat as he ran, his mask making the scope of the tunnel even narrower in his field of view.
Why did this happen every single time he and Raph hung out?
He didn't want to risk looking over his shoulder for longer than an instant, but the sight ran his blood cold. Two creatures, one huge and brawny with skin like blue river stones, the other smaller and olive green, kicked up a trail of mud and slime behind them. They galloped after him on all fours, their massive leathery wings tucked close to their bodies as they ran. Their eyes, white as four tiny moons in the distance, glowed an eerie white.
Casey had to make a decision about how to lose these monsters somehow, but they were closing in fast. They were so much faster than he was. So, so much faster. God, he wished he had super powers like the real heroes did. He was really kicking himself for leaving his golf bag in the real van, but it wasn't like he could go back for it now. Sap gloves would have to do.
He was out of options. He planted his boots in the ground, ground his teeth against his mouthguard, and turned around to face them. The two monsters hesitated, exchanging a glance between them.
Casey lifted his head, blue eyes burning, and he charged. "Goongala!"
His cinnabar claws dug into the concrete wall, leaping from the stone to the ceiling, continuing to gallop upside down. He couldn't let him get away, he needed some damn answers. And if this guy was running, he had something to hide.
Faster, faster, he closed in on the mark. His glowing white eyes narrowed. Strange. Why wasn't he running on all fours? Where were his wings? Why would any sane gargoyle ever decide to hide underground, and not in the air?
It didn't matter. If he got away, he'd find no answers.
With a furious snarl, he dropped down from the ceiling, tackling the mutant to the ground. Raphael hit the ground with a grunt. Thinking quickly, Raphael somersaulted, rolling across the ground and planting a heel against the gargoyle's gut. With an animalistic cry of shock, the gargoyle sailed towards the wall. The wings popped open, a heavy whump of air impact braking the gargoyle's trajectory. His claws dug long furrows in the concrete as he braked to a halt.
"You know, if there's one thing that pisses me off," Raphael's sai spun across his palm, whirling menacingly. "It's people fuckin' followin' me!" He stepped into a high, aggressive stance. His sai pointed like the fangs of a snake towards the monster's face.
The creature growled low in its throat, wings raised and head lowered as it prowled about the young mutant. His beak curled back, glowing white eyes leering over his glinting fangs. Raphael postured in kind, shoulders high and teeth bared in his own snarl. His violent green eyes seemed to glow with their own light and fire behind his red mask.
"Tell me what you are." The monster growled.
The mutant laughed, a condescending grin coloring his snarl. "Oh, holy shell, it can talk. Great. Now, I can trash talk you properly."
"I said tell me what you are!" The beast leapt at the turtle with a snarl. Raphael somersaulted aside, attempting to trip the gargoyle with a kick to the ankles. He leapt above the kick, barely managing to land on his talons. "You're not a gargoyle, and you're definitely not a human!"
"Who you callin' a gargoyle?" Raphael spat, spinning around and kicking back up to his feet. "I'm a turtle, you big red bat!"
"Dead is what you'll be if you don't start talking!" The beast drew himself up to his full height, and for a moment Raph's heart caught in his throat. Even without those twelve-foot wings, this thing was big, angry, and those claws definitely weren't just a manicure. What kind of mutant was this? Bat? Dinosaur?
"I've fought uglier mutants than you with both hands tied behind my shell! Bring it!" Raphael roared with a charge, sai gripped in between his fingers.
The gargoyles split left and right as Jones barreled through between them, tails lashing as they readjusted course, nearly sliding into the wall as they tried to sidestep the massive piles of trash and debris.
"Is this human crazy?" The olive one balked.
"Just a bit, yeah." The other agreed. "Look out!"
He picked up his brother and hurled him aside out of danger as Casey Jones came rushing back in with what would have been a knuckleduster to the temple. The larger one instead caught it to the side, and he gasped with surprise. This human hit hard.
The big one, as burly and wide as a bull, caught the human's hand easily with one claw. Jones gasped as pale blue claws bit deep into his arm guards, the pressure forcing his hand to open. With one swing, he launched Casey far down the tunnel like an old rolled-up newspaper. Head, shoulder, back, hip, and facedown into the slime he rolled. He propped himself up on his elbows, gasping for breath.
Why are they hesitating? Casey wondered.
His answer came as swiftly as the question. The little one shouted, "Don't hurt him! If he gets knocked out, we'll never find our way out of here!"
"Great! You wanna tell him that?"
The small one's only warning was the rapid sounding of footfalls before he saw the tread of Casey's combat boot. White light exploded in his vision and he found himself dazed and flat on his back. Casey ducked under a swing from the big one, but didn't quite see the tail coming. Improvising, he decided to do the only thing that made sense; hang onto it.
It slammed into his torso, and his wrestling grip coiled him around it like a monkey to a tree branch.
"What the–?!"
Casey yowled as the gargoyle spun around, trying to reach around and grab him. But he just wasn't flexible enough, chasing his tail round and round. Casey tried not to let the whirl make him feel sick.
Aw, man. I hate Coney Island!
The big gargoyle, getting an idea, whirled around and slammed Jones into the wall, back first. Casey wheezed, chest barely protected from the impact by the football padding he wore under his coat. A weapon. He needed something, dammit!
"We were gonna be nice! But if you wanna pick a fight?" The little one snarled. "Suits me just fine!"
It leapt at him with a howl like a bobcat, its wings and tail membrane enveloping him like a plastic bag in the wind. He tried to fight off the grapple, arms helplessly pinned to his sides. He couldn't even see the movement, the little one was so fast! Casey felt his world rock as gravity pulled him upside down and flung him into the wall with a whip of a tail.
Short temper. It reminded him of Raph.
Casey rolled over, definitely tasting blood in his mouth. He grabbed a handful of muck and flung it into the creature's enormous eyes with a thick splat! The little one screamed, a sound less human and more animal, and started clawing at its face. "My eyes!"
Casey struggled to his feet, ribs aching, eyes raking the tunnel for something, anything!
Then he saw it, sticking out of a pile of garbage like the Sword in the Stone. His jaw dropped, and he started to laugh. "Ohohoho, yeah! Come to papa!"
He feinted low with a sai-spiked punch towards the creature's gut. Expected to come in from above, Raphael instead swung into a kip-up, grabbing earth with his three-fingered hands, and springing up to kick the surprised gargoyle right in the beak just as he tried to duck. With a yowl like a mountain puma, the monster backpedaled rapidly, trying to put up a defense. But he was too slow, guard as flimsy as paper, as Raphael followed the kick by hooking his left ankle around his neck, yanking him down to the ground into a reverse triangle lock.
The gargoyle' face ground against the slime and pavement, the turtle shifting position to try and grapple his arms behind his head. If he could just–yes! His long tail wrapped around the turtle's up-raised sai before it could strike the back of the gargoyle's head. He yanked it away and flung it into the wall, where it struck the brick with a warbling klaaang! that echoed down the tunnel. Raphael yelped in surprise, allowing the gargoyle to reverse the grapple with a flip of his wing and a twist of his tail.
Raphael choked as he felt the pressure of a wing membrane against his nose and mouth, his opponent dragging his arm up and into a painful position against his shell. It was like wrestling an octopus, with a grip tight enough he could feel his plastron and shoulder bones creak. His arm was starting to go numb. He struggled to suck in breath, but the wing was airtight against his face. He saw black spots in his eyes. A chilling realization seemed to freeze his blood; whatever this thing was, it could crack him like a Cadbury creme egg, if he didn't suffocate first.
"Tell me what you are!" The gargoyle roared. "Or I swear, I will choke you out!"
Raphael struggled on, his vision swimming in his eyes.
"Dammit, I don't want to hurt you!" The gargoyle protested.
Too bad, ugly! If the lights were going out, then Raphael would go down swinging. He lurched forward suddenly, forcing his grappler to somersault away from him or break his delicate wingbone. Raphael gulped precious air and coughed. The monster leapt up with a flip of his tail as Raphael dove to grab his sai from the ground. His feet skittered in the muck of the old tunnel, and he–
"Yeeaaow! My toe!" He screamed as his foot caught the hidden rail of the abandoned subway floor, and he could swear he felt something pop and explode when he screeched into the buried bar of steel.
The gargoyle cried out before his face hit the exact same rail with a sickening crack! Light exploded behind his eyes for a moment, and dazed he scrambled to find his talons and tail. His wings fluttered with nervous confusion like a concussed bat.
The mutant staggered to a standing position. His left foot hovered in the air, just above his ankle, as he kept effortless balance. Black spots gnawed his sight into tunnel vision. Escaped submission hold? Plus. Broken foot? Double minus. But still, if this was to the death…
Raphael grit his teeth with a growl. He could kill this monster. In the brief, single-second window that this concussion granted him, even with a broken foot, he could kill him.
Mercy to a disabled enemy. Splinter's voice pierced that fog of war. Raphael's thoughts, sharpened by pain and quickened by adrenaline, raced between choosing one of two pouches on his belt: death, or escape.
As swiftly as the human had dived for the pile of trash, the smaller gargoyle, locked in rage-fueled pursuit, was knocked down by something slim and fast that whistled through the air. Crack! Whoosh, crack! The big one stepped back out of the way, but wasn't fast enough to avoid a wicked-fast blow to his jaw. He stumbled, rubbing his face.
Casey laughed, spinning the hockey stick until it whistled in the air. "The class is Pain 101! Your instructor," He tapped the stick on the ground, eyes flashing behind his cracked goalie mask. "Is Casey Motherfucking Jones!"
Before the big one could regain his footing, he paddled up a small rock, and slammed it square into the big gargoyle's eyes. He roared a roar that shook the ceiling and sent Casey's heart into his throat. The stick slashed through the air, and the big one pulled his wings down like an umbrella. The stick bounced off, like he'd hit a drum. Changing tack, Casey rushed around the other side. He didn't know this tunnel, but Raph had shown him his favorite tricks; like knowing which pipes were steam lines.
The small one leaped at him with a hiss, Casey holding up the stick in defense. His claws slashed through it as neatly as a butcher knife through a carrot stick, and Casey's next thought was what those claws would do to his bones. Swipe, swipe, and–too slow! The little one just missed the human by a hair's breadth and his claws slashed open the steam pipe. "Gaah!" It burned the skin of his hands, a shrieking cloud of water vapor filling the tunnel with heat and humidity. The whistling of the pipe screamed an endless wail, and Casey took the moment to break off and start running.
"I'll stop it!" The big gargoyle stormed forward, claws on the metal of the pipe.
"No, wait, brother!" The small one shrieked, only a little too late. The big one dug his enormous claws into the wall and he heaved. Casey's throat went dry when he heard the crack of the concrete overhead, the screaming wail of the steam valve cut short as the tunnel collapsed around them.
Raphael chose escape.
A smoke bomb bloomed at the gargoyle's feet, washing his senses with a vile and pungent burst of gas that brought tears to his spinning eyes.
"Coward!" The gargoyle howled with a cough. "Come back and fight me, you yellow coward!"
Raphael, already limped halfway through the side tunnel behind the maintenance panel, paused. The enraged howl of the beast rang through the underground. Hovering on one foot, he debated going back. The bait line the gargoyle laid in his heart tugged, his anger flaring again. He snarled.
Raphael was not yellow. He was green. And he was seeing red.
The gargoyle kneaded his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks and snot dribbling out of the end of his beak. He coughed and wheezed, trying to clear his lungs. But each cough just drove the headache deeper into his skull.
"Coward…" He grit his teeth in a pained whimper.
A voice echoed through the tunnel. "Rematch at Brooklyn Bridge, 3 AM!"
The gargoyle perked up, his ears quivering upon hearing the mutant's challenge. "Be there, you slime!" He roared. He sank to a sitting position on the concrete, knuckles pressed deep against his eyesockets, as he mulled over whether this was a defeat or a draw.
The tunnel to Brooklyn and Points South remained silent.
