Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Fan Fiction ❯ Bad Places ❯ 12 ( Chapter 12 )

Part 12

A light touch to his shoulder woke Raphael up, and he blinked as he raised his head. Leonardo knelt beside him, swords ready. "Wake up," he whispered. "Time to go."

"Hmm?" Raph nudged Mike even as he asked, "what about watch?"

"Didn't need you." Leo stood up and listened at the door for a moment.

Against the wall, Chanta turned her back to Felix and gathered her hair together. "Do me a favor, lop this off."

A slice, and several inches of hair landed heavy on the ground. Then another closer to the back of her neck, and the tangled mess landed on top of that. She tucked the stray ends behind her ears and stood, stretching muscles that had forgotten how to be sore. When Leo nodded all clear, they followed him back into the hallways.

Raph hauled Mike to his feet. His younger brother swayed slightly, then steadied himself.

"Must be getting used to this place," Mike whispered. "I think I can see a little better now."

Raph winced. That meant his chances of survival went up, but he didn't want his brother getting too used to this game. It had changed Leonardo so much already. But then...he frowned. Had it really? Biologically maybe, making him faster but weaker, sensitive to light, more ready to kill. But when he arrived home, he seemed wounded but not psychotic, lost but not insane. And now here, he protected both of them as usual, kept them safe out of the reach of these things' claws.

As they walked or ran, the killing came so often that it became a background noise, with only an occasional shriek penetrating his mind as he killed anything that got past the other three, allowing him to think about his brother. Leo hadn't been able to meet his eyes when he wrapped the burn on his arm. Either he didn't care at all or he couldn't bring himself to look.

He let us sleep the whole time, Raph thought. So he can't look me in the eye. He can knock all of us around, even Splinter, but he won't face me. He knows we can't fight on this level but he's protecting us. He has to. I'd be frustrated as hell if I was the one--

He paused to stab his sai through a feeder's head, wrenching his sai back and bashing the creature to the ground with the hilt. No, not frustrated. Shamed, he thought. He knows he has to protect us, and he hates it, and he hates that he hates it.

Guilt on top of guilt, and Leo would still break away. No matter how much he loved them, he would leave. He had to. He couldn't be that selfless to live forever for them alone. Raph held Mike's wrist a little tighter. Splinter was right about sacrifice, only Leo hadn't sacrificed his time. They'd sacrificed his life. How long would Leo, any of them, last in the world on his own? The way Leo was going, he'd be dead before long. Can't dodge every bullet.

The killing stopped for a moment. From the sound of things, there weren't many monsters left to kill, so they were probably closer to the staircase Leo had mentioned. Which meant more monsters to kill. He wanted to put down his sai. Holding it for so long made his arm ache, but when an attack could come out of the darkness, there'd be no time to draw it again.

Light, a star in front of them, blazed through the halls, and Chanta got off a shot before she had to look down. Mike took a step towards it, finally able to see. Around him, Leo and the humans turned away, shielding their eyes. Even Raphael had to hold one hand against it. Mike put his hands under the star and felt something drop in. The weight and feel were familiar, but only when the saw the communicator in his hand did he let himself believe it. The light snapped off, the afterimage burning red in their eyes.

"What the hell was that?" Felix said.

Mike flipped the top open and gasped when Donatello's face appeared with April looking over his shoulder. "Whoa..."

"Donnie?" Raph said, staring at the screen.

"Great, it works," Don said. "You have no idea how many times we calibrated the wavelengths--"

"Are you okay?" April cut him off. "We waited until there weren't any more of those things around you before we tried sending this through."

"You've really outdone yourself," Raph said. Something dripped on his hand and he looked up at Leo, mask freshly wet.

"He can see them?" Leo asked. "How?"

Donatello heard him but gave the answer to Mike. "Stockman had a constant signal from here to there. You're in a pocket dimension but I can see exactly where you are and where everything else is."

"The stairs," Leo said. "Can you see the stairs?"

"Better than that," Don said, "there's a shaft that connects all the floors. There are some black dots, but no more than the rest of the levels. If you take that, you can just go up and avoid everything else."

Raphael frowned and looked at Leo and the others, who were now gathering close and staring at the screen. In its glow, Felix seemed impressed but Chanta looked amazed, staring openmouthed at the turtle on the screen and then the turtles around her. Felix glanced at her and grinned.

"An' you thought this place was weird."

"Shaft?" Raphael asked. "Did you know about this?"

Leo nodded once. "He means the ladders."

Felix shook his head. "It's impossible. There's screamers all through that shaft, and we'd have to climb four stories up. There's no way we'd make it alive."

"There's more," Don said, winning the communicator back from April. "There's a list of every supply room Stockman made. From his notes, it looks like he originally only wanted a place to dump his hazardous and biological waste."

"Great," Chanta mumbled. "What the hell's in those pills I've been taking?"

"Plain aspirin," Don said absently. "But the supply room on your floor nearest the shaft has several barrels full of alkaline cleaners and battery acids. Combine them and you get one hell of an explosion. It should channel up and take out a good portion of those things."

"How the hell we gonna do that?" Felix said. "I'd rather go up like before. It's longer but I know we can do it."

"Leo," Raph said, "your flash bombs. You got anymore?"

"You mean the detonators inside?" Leo nodded. "I've got three more, but I don't think any of us know how to rig something like that. And we'd be too close to the blast."

"...I could shoot it," Chanta offered. "That sets off explosives in the movies, right?"

"It'll work," Don said. "And I can tell you how to rig them. You'll need all three, so don't use them. Oh, wait. You've got another pack coming."

Leo, Felix and Chanta all turned to face either end of the hall, but they didn't hear anything. Raph looked down both ways even though he knew he wouldn't be able to see anything, and Mike tightened his grip on the communicator, his only light. "Which way?" he asked.

"Um, two of you are standing together," Don said, "they're coming from that way."

Chanta turned and stepped beside Felix, bringing her gun up and sighting the darkness. The silence turned into a faint scratching that grew louder until the pack came around the corner, feeders on the ground and most of the screamers on the ceiling and walls. The ones in front flew backwards in a burst of blood as Chanta fired, distracting some of the feeders, but the majority of them leaped over the fallen and landed running, claws out. The familiar killing began.

"The supply room's that way, too," Don said.

Raphael caught a screamer hurling itself through the air, stabbing it and flinging it backwards. "Little busy here," he said, catching another on the tip of his sai.

Blood splashed the screen, and Donatello winced while Mike wiped it away. "Yeah, I see that."

Suddenly Chanta screamed and stumbled backwards, firing too fast to aim. She fell on her side with one of the small ones attached to her arm, claws digging into her shoulder while the teeth sank into her forearm. Leo and Felix never turned towards her, overwhelmed by the pack now that she couldn't help.

Raphael let go of Mike's wrist and fell beside her, stabbing his sais into its body over and over. Blood flew into his face. Somewhere between hits it let go of her and tried to crawl away. Chanta pushed the barrel right against it and pulled the trigger, slamming it into the wall. With it dead, she lay still, breathing hard. Another screamer leaped at them, followed close by a feeder, and Raphael had to turn his back on her to fight. Her ragged breaths sounded like screams.

Holding the communicator in one hand, Mike knelt beside her and held the screen to her arm, using the light to see the bite marks. In another dimension, Donatello and April saw the punctures up close before they could look away, gasping. Mike whipped off his bandana and tied it at her bicep, and the bleeding slowed.

"We've got to move," Felix yelled, "before they work around us."

Not bothering to ask them to wait, Mike put his arm under her and helped her sit up, then put her injured arm over his shoulder and brought her to her feet, keeping his arm around her waist. With him supporting her weight, she managed to raise her arm and fire. Her aim trembled with shock, but if a bullet took out half of a head instead of piercing right between where eyes should have been, it mattered little. Raphael glanced back at them, seeing the screen move more clearly than he saw them. Figuring she could guide his little brother, he followed after Leo and picked off the stragglers.

"I can't see here," Mike said.

"I can," she whispered. "Walk straight. A little more to the right, you're veering. There, that's it."

"Guess I'm not useless after all."

Shock made her legs weak and she slipped through the puddles, and after a few seconds Mike simply hefted her higher. Her feet barely touched the ground. Hardly dignified or even comfortable, it still let her shoot. A clip slid out of the stock and clattered on the floor. She stuck the barrel in her pants and dug out another clip, shoving it in one-handed. "You're veering left."

He corrected his angle. Blood dripped slowly from her arm and from the ceiling but he ignored it, imagined it was rain. Cold, thick rain. Back in the real world, April sat down next to Donatello and leaned on his shoulder, watching blood streak the screen until the tint went from green to red.

"Good thing we water sealed it," she whispered.

"Yeah. Good thing."

TBC...