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tori_angeli) wrote2009-02-28 06:20 pm
Endgame, chapter 6
Michelangelo's would-be rapist had the most stunned, enraged look on his face when his intended victim's unchained foot broke free of his grip and kicked him in the face. Then the other foot was free, and with the dexterity of a monkey, Mike tossed the key to one hand and unlocked his wrists just as the other gangsters were upon him.
It was more out of sheer panic than years of training that he fought. Elbow to one eye, striking paralyzing pressure points, flip, kick, jab, gouge, fight for your life, oh god, oh god, oh god. All he could see was the door, larger than life, as far as the sun and as close as its light. Once he saw a clear shot, he ran for it.
Bursting out the door was like finally being able to breathe again. The room before him was a massive gym with a floating walkway overhead. He could feel himself being followed as he jerked from the oppressive box of the room behind him. Purple Dragons peeled away from their workouts and stared. Mike cut sharply to the right as they jerked to their feet, and he sprinted over the floor and into the only open door he could see. He slammed the door behind him, holding it shut as he breathlessly locked the doorknob.
Whirling around, his eyes focused on where he was. It looked like a storage room of sorts. He didn't pay attention to that so much as the window across the room from him.
A window.
A huge slam came from the other side of the door, knocking Mike forward. He used the motion to propel himself forward. His fingers locked around the bottom edge of the window. It came up. Yes! his mind crowed in triumph as he climbed out into the open air. It was only about four stories down. He could--
Something exploded in the air. He gave a shout and scrambled upward, reaching for the next window as gunfire began beneath him. He was going up, not down, but it was Somewhere Else, somewhere away from the gunfire and marauding Purple Dragons. At least for now. Catching the sill with the fingers of both hands, he briefly wondered how it was possible that he hadn't been shot yet. Unless they're not shooting at me. Not like I'm gonna risk thinking that.
The window came open and he climbed through, gasping in relief to see that the room he had just entered was unoccupied. He slammed the window back down, then brushed his eyes over his surroundings. It was a living room. A doorway leading to a bedroom marked it as a suite. Everything was utilitarian—simple king-sized bed, stainless steel sinks, bright white walls, firm black carpet. No extras. No music playing, but there were shouts coming from the door opposite him. Mike swallowed and dashed for the closet when he heard one voice coming closer.
“Then if you don't find him, it'll be your head that rolls!”
The door opened. Mike ducked into the closet. There wasn't enough time to close the closet door without making a noticeable sound, so it was left cracked open.
Hun walked in. His entire face was bright scarlet as he slammed the door shut, causing violent quakes to ripple through the room. Oh shit. Of all places, I picked Hun's room. Shit, shit, shit. Mike closed his eyes briefly, trying to make his panting as quiet as possible in spite of his laboring heart. After a moment, he held his breath. The edges of his vision went blurry, but his heart began to slow.
The leader of the Purple Dragons sat down hard in front of a stainless steel vanity. From a drawer, he pulled a foot-square three-dimensional grid. Mike’s eyes widened as Hun opened one of the smaller boxes in the grid and dumped its contents into his massive hand.
Pills.
That thing was a pill box.
Mike took a breath, held it for a heartbeat, then forced himself to breathe normally. Hun cupped in his hand what would be a fistful of pills for a normal person. One was the size of a horse pill, while the others varied in size. He downed the biggest one first with a swig from a flask—probably whiskey. The rest he tossed back in one go, then sank back into the chair, resting his head in his hands.
The world froze. Holy crap. Hun's in pain.
The throbbing in Mike's ears became muffled white noise. His mouth slowly opened to form a wide O. He was barely aware of his surroundings as trickles of sympathy chilled his sweating body. Niggling the back of his mind was a special on TV he’d seen with Raph and Don. It had been about the life of Andre the Giant. Threaded throughout the biographical program had been the dark prison of his disease, a rare disorder that had kept him growing throughout his entire life, crippling him in the end, causing him constant, excruciating pain, and ultimately making his heart and kidneys shut down.
Hadn’t Casey been told to steal a kidney for Hun?
Had surgeons and organs been more easily come by while Hun had served the Shredder?
Now Mike understood.
A low, agonized growl rose from Hun’s hunched-over form. One huge hand passed over the veins standing out in his damp, crimson forehead. He blew out his breath in a flood of a hiss and raised his eyes.
They landed directly on Mike.
Shit!
Mike ducked behind the closet door. Stupid, stupid, stupid! his mind screamed at him. Maybe Hun hadn't had time to register what he'd seen.
“You!”
His heart exploded in his ears. There was nowhere to go. Hun came crashing into the closet. Mike ducked into the circle of the gangster's outreaching arms and grasped both meaty shoulders, propelling himself upward. A hand grasped his leg and yanked him downwards. An arm curled around his neck. He twisted, trying to break free, but was crushed back against his captor. The arm around his neck tightened, then lifted him off the floor. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled and grasped at the arm, trying to pull himself upwards and free his windpipe from the pressure as he was carried out of the closet. His legs swung and kicked and kicked and kicked and kicked. A door opened. Suddenly he was on his feet again, able to breathe. Hun’s arm was still around his neck, and his other hand gripped Mike’s upper arm. They were on the mezzanine over the gigantic gym. A few yards from Mike’s feet were the stairs to the lower level, which was swamped with Purple Dragons. They were approaching from both sides on the mezzanine, some faces contorted with anger, some with excitement. It was a sea of leering faces, a roar of meaningless noise.
“QUIET!” bellowed Hun.
Michelangelo was known to freeze when in a state of panic.
“YOU LAZY CUNTS!”
Contrary to what some assumed, Mikey’s mind didn’t exactly go blank whenever he froze in panic. Instead, all the thoughts in his head, all the possibilities for action, became too loud for him to hear any of them. It was a dull roar of chaos, a canon of rising and falling voices, all speaking a language he was too preoccupied to listen to. As he tried to push his own solo voice through the thick, unyielding bog of thought without sense, the world sped up around him. There was no time, just the universe fast-forwarding through the movie of his last moments and the horrible knowledge that he was powerless to stop it all.
This was the point where someone always saved him.
But no one was here now, dashing through the sea of leering faces. He couldn’t feel his own body except for the violent vibrations wracking through it, but was dimly aware of Hun’s crushing grip and the arm locked around his neck. He could hear the rush of his own panicked breathing and nothing else.
I don’t want to die. But I can’t stop it. Raph couldn’t stop it.
“LOOK AT WHAT I FOUND IN MY QUARTERS, YOU LAZY FUCKERS!”
Fire and ice. Fire and ice. Fire in his chest, ice in his skin. Hun’s hold on his neck tightened, and Mikey’s breath was cut off. The lump of ice in his chest ached. Hun’s beefy arm was so huge, wedged between his collarbone and his chin, that his head was tilted back too far. His neck craned, and he saw the blank, shadowed ceiling.
Oh god, please don’t make this be the last thing I see. In a way, leering faces might be preferable to the ceiling cutting him off from the sky and escape. Walled in. Trapped. Limited. Helpless.
“YOU LET HIM GO,” Hun continued, a gargantuan voice pummeling the sides of Mike's head. “YOU LOST THE RIGHT TO KILL HIM.”
Mikey’s mouth opened as his lungs yanked at the air. Hun’s arm around his throat blocked him from gasping in a breath, and pain shot through his chest like many branches of lightning. Cold steel slid against his carotid artery, in the razor-thin space between Hun’s arm and Mike’s chin. Cold and edged. A blade.
“MACCOOL!” screamed a voice from below.
The barked order was not from a voice he recognized, but soon after, MacCool’s familiar voice rang out with a chirped, “Ha!”
Something clattered to the floor near Mike’s feet.
“Holy shit,” hissed Hun.
Suddenly Mike was plummeting to the floor, thrown down, the wind knocked out of him. Something punched him in the plastron as he landed, hitting right against the ice rock in his chest. His hands slapped against the smooth, cold concrete of the floor, but he barely felt the sting. The fact that he could suddenly breathe again overruled everything else. Something in the back of his brain screamed that whatever he had landed on, he had to get off it. Whatever it was, Hun had thrown him on top of it just as he was about to—
It was a grenade.
It was a grenade, and he knew he should move. But the cacophony in his head had the control. It locked his limbs and froze his mind. One voice stood out from the others—Raph’s voice in his head, screaming, Mikey, move! MOVE! It was pressure, it was panic, it only made things worse. He already knew he had to move. He had to move, and he couldn’t.
“MOVE!”
Something hard slammed into his side. Arms wrapped around him and another body rolled off the grenade with him. Sudden impact with one stair, two, three, and they were rolling down the stairs and the brief explosion of the grenade shot over their heads. They stopped, and the quivering arms enfolding Michelangelo tightened, the familiar body blocking him until the room began to move again.
“Raph,” breathed Mike.
The strong arms jerked him to his feet. His knees nearly gave way. Raph’s face was uncharacteristically pale, but familiarly grim. “Stay low,” he said hoarsely.
Still gasping, Mike planted his feet apart and tightened his fists. No way he was going to let Raph take on the entire population of the Purple Dragons by himself, especially when he saw the bloodied sleeve around Raph’s arm. Suddenly he knew who those guards had been shooting at when he'd been hanging from the window outside, and a spike of fear ran through him.
“You’re hurt.”
Raph’s sais were out, and he had turned his back to Mike. “Never mind. Stay low. If you get yourself killed, I came here for nothin’.”
Mike didn’t need to point out that Raph was much more likely to get killed. Raph probably knew it already. All that blood. He turned his back against Raph’s. At least two dozen gangsters were descending the stairs. Behind him were at least four dozen. He changed his mind—he had as good a chance as Raph, no better. Not while this sea of enemies swirled around two weakened warriors.
This time, there was no panic, just a cold fear washing over his burning skin.
They were light years from being out of this, but they were together.
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A small amount of relief... though they still have to get out. XD
Wonderful!!!! Can't wait for the next chapter!
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1 thing tho, the paragraph that starts with "His heart exploded in his ears. There..." seems to be too long, there's too much that happens in one paragraph for that. Maybe you should break it in two?
Also, I enjoy Mikey's inner thoughts. You characterize him well without making him stupid. Thank you for that.
I look forward to more! :D