While Raphael and Mike treated Donatello, Splinter and Leonardo set themselves up as guard. For the better part of an hour it had been quiet as each person had his mind set on the task before him. Even Mark had found a place for his attentions, running bandages and medical supplies for the turtles to use to treat their hurt brother. But there had been only so much running to do and finally he ended up just standing around, looking at each strange face as they tended their duties. The human's mind slid back to the sight of Ron lying stabbed in the deep sewer water; then his thoughts shifted to the person before him.
Mark shook his head and sat down on a wooden chair. When had he begun thinking of these creatures as people? He had only known them for less than a day - somehow that didn't seem to matter, they were watching out for him, protecting him. That was more than many humans he knew would be willing to do. Neal ran away, but Mark couldn't bring himself to blame him for that. In his place he would have probably done the same thing. But not these people - they weren't going to leave him. He watched as Leonardo stepped up to his brothers.
"How's Don?" Leo asked Mike and Raphael as they diligently treated the other turtle's wounds.
"He lost a lot of blood," Raphael replied. "But it seems that the bleeding has slowed itself down."
"Just call me if you need me," Leo said. "I'm going to check the room out one more time."
Leonardo walked around the infirmary, peeking through the door cracks and throwing open cabinets, searching for something that seemed to be able to go anywhere at any time, as it had done even after Donatello had believed it dead. Mark had told them how Rosco frightened him when he woke up, which meant that between the time Leo was discovered in the tunnel until they all went back into the infirmary with Donatello, Neikan had somehow gotten inside. Past observant eyes, with no shadows to slide through - the door to the infirmary in plain sight to the people in the living room at the time...
Leonardo felt a chill travel up his spine.
"You okay?"
Leo spun, drawing his sword, and looked at the surprised expression on Mark's face.
"Uh... sorry," the turtle said, lowering his katana. "Yeah, I'm good... a little jumpy, I guess."
The human put a hand on his chest as if checking to see if his own heart were still beating. "No kidding..."
Leo sat on the concrete floor and motioned for Mark to join him. "Are you frightened?"
Mark nodded, finding himself unable to lie to his new friend. "Yes."
Leonardo handed Mark his sword, which the boy took only after a few seconds of hesitation. It was lighter that it looked, almost graceful in its lines. Mark tightened his hand around the cord-wrapped handle and turned it over, looking at his own reflection in the metal. The katana seemed almost unreal, nearly alive - like an extension of the body. It passed its almost tangible energy into him, as if it were telling him that it would be there in his defense should the creature return. The teen smiled and passed the sword back to the ninja, who returned it to its sheath and grinned with his eyes. It made Mark feel a little less frightened to know that the katana would be in Leonardo's hand should Neikan come to them - that this elegant, simple weapon would be wielded with skill by someone who knew how to use it.
Leo looked up at Don and his tenders then back to the human. "You probably don't believe this," he said. "But I'm frightened, too."
"You are?"
Leonardo leaned forward on his elbows and rested his chin on his folded hands. "I've... I have always been something of a leader. At least I try to be. I'm most like the oldest brother around here, the one that follows closest to Sensei's teachings and instructions. In some ways I think I see myself as almost a father to the guys sometimes."
"That must be weird."
"Not so much weird as stressful, you know? Do you have any younger brothers?"
"I have a sister," Mark looked at his palms. "She's eight."
"Then you might know what I'm saying."
"I think I do. I mean, I look out for her and all that."
"Has anything ever happened to her? That you felt bad about, I mean."
He nodded. "I guess... a few times. One time she got into the silverware drawer when I was babysitting her. She was five or six or something like that. She cut herself on a knife and she needed stitches. I got in trouble for it, too."
"I bet that getting in trouble didn't make you feel half as bad as you felt for letting it happen in the first place."
"It was my fault."
"Maybe, maybe not. That kind of thing happens when parents are around - even moms and dads can't keep kids out of trouble all the time. You couldn't keep your eyes pinned on her every second."
"No, but..."
"But you still felt responsible."
Mark looked into Leo's eyes. "So, that's what you feel like with them?"
"More so," Leonardo replied. "Life around here - in this family - it isn't easy. I mean, we have had to deal with things that most people in the topside world don't even know exist. So far we've always made it, always come through. With bumps, bruises, and broken bones... but always alive. We're playing bad odds now, you can only win so many times. I'm the big brother and I have a responsibility to them, even in situations that are beyond my control."
"I don't understand."
Leo hung his head. "I hope you never have to. Some people are afraid to let anything get out of their control."
"I guess you're one of those people."
Leo sighed. "Let's just try to forget that I said that out loud. Just remember this: while you are here you fall under our blanket of protection, we won't let anything happen to you so long as we are alive."
Mark picked up a piece of string and started twisting it between his fingers absentmindedly.
"Why did you just tell me all that stuff? I mean, you don't seem to be the type that talks about that kind of thing."
Leonardo looked the teen in the eye. "I don't know... it just seemed right at the time."
"Hey, Leo!" Mike called from across the room.
Leonardo and Mark stood, walking to where the others gathered around Donatello's bed. The turtle's eyes were open and he was looking at each face that hovered above him.
"Donny," Leo said, biting his lip. "How do you feel?"
"Tore up," Don said weakly, looking at the bandage on his arm. "Raph said that I didn't kill the thing... but I remember doing it. I stabbed it in the throat... it couldn't have survived..."
Leonardo looked at Raphael.
"I had to tell him," Raph said.
"I know," Leo turned back to Donatello. "We have started calling it Neikan, but we still don't know what it is. Yes... it survived."
Don closed his eyes and rolled to his side; he began to cry. "Jesus... " he whispered. "I thought..."
Splinter put a hand on the back of his son's head. "I may have an answer," the rat said. "Although I do not believe it will be easily understood."
Leonardo took a deep breath. "We'll take anything at this point, Master."
Splinter nodded and sat on the floor, crossing his legs and folding his hands. The others, including Mark, joined him - sitting in a circle, silently waiting for him to begin. Donatello opened his eyes and looked at the assemblage from his position on the bed. He wiped away a final tear and nodded at Splinter. Satisfied that they were all ready to listen, the ninja master began to speak.
"At one point in my human youth I made a journey to Tibet," he began. "While there I studied for a time under the instruction of a lama."
"A what?" Mark asked, keeping his voice low. "Isn't that like a sheep or something?"
Raphael rolled his eyes and Mike leaned close to the human, nudging him on the arm. "No... that kind of llama has two L's - a lama is a Buddhist monk," he said.
"Oh..." Mark said, blushing.
Leonardo looked at Splinter. "It wasn't the Charlie Lama, was it, Master?" he asked, recalling the time that he and the others spent in Tibet.
"No," Splinter said. "And out of respect, I shall not tell you the name of who it was."
"Yes, master," Leo said, bowing his head.
The rat cleared his throat and continued. "While I was there I saw from time to time a young trapa - a novice monk. He would follow me or step aside to let me pass and smile as if he were a child. After a time I inquired of my tutor who the young one was. I was shocked to learn that the trapa that I had seen was not, in fact, alive."
"What do you mean?" Mike asked, leaning forward.
"He... or rather, it was what is called a tulpa: a thought creature."
"Didn't I see that on The X-Files once?" Raph asked, unintentionally drawing looks of exasperation from those around him.
"My tutor explained to me how he had secluded himself for months," Splinter continued. "Performing the prescribed concentration of thought that would bring on such a creature. It had begun as a small sphere of ethereal energy that he shaped and formed over the course of his tsams into the form of the trapa. After the success my tutor broke his seclusion and was followed by the tulpa as he went about his daily tasks. At first the creature was visual only, and only to him - however, over time others began seeing it and it seemed to take on a life and a spirit of its own. At times it even made physical contact with people in our camp.
"When I arrived and my tutor's attentions were shifted to my training, the tulpa became even more lifelike. It seemed to have fixated itself upon me since that is where its creator's own thoughts were focused. Throughout the course of my learning the spectral trapa followed me and seemed to learn as I did. After I left Tibet I remained in contact with my tutor for many years. He told me that the tulpa had become too independent of him and too much of a nuisance so he had finally decided to dissolve the phantom. It took him nine months of effort before it vanished completely."
"Are you saying I was fighting something that wasn't real?" Don said, struggling to sit. "Master... this thing was real... it tried to kill me... I stabbed it, it bled... this thing was real."
Splinter drew in a breath. "After my return to Japan I studied up more on the phenomenon. I learned that the occurrence of mind creatures are not restricted to those created by conscious thought. In some recorded cases they have emerged from the fears of a group of people or from the strong imagination of a single person. Though mind creatures are usually seen and unable to physically touch the living sometimes they are tangible."
"If that is true, Sensei," Leo said. "Then where did Neikan come from?"
"From your minds."
The turtles looked at one another and then back to their master, unwilling to believe what they were hearing.
"I don't understand," Raphael said. "How could we have made this thing?"
"Through the course of your training you have learned to control your animal instincts," the rat said. "I believe that this creature is the physical manifestation of those instincts."
"Master..?" Don slid off the bed and Leonardo helped him to sit in the circle. "When I was fighting this thing... I couldn't touch it. I mean... I couldn't hurt it."
"But you thought you killed it," Raph said.
"I couldn't touch it..." Don continued, "Until I let myself get angry. I... I'm sorry, Sensei, but I acted like an animal, I fought like an animal. It was only then that I was finally able to injure it. It least, I thought I injured it..."
"You did injure it," Splinter said. "But not in the way you believe. In reclaiming your animalism you effectively weakened the creature."
Leonardo flexed his muscles. "So we have to fight Neikan on its own level? We have to act like it to get rid of it?"
"I am afraid so."
"But that isn't what you taught us, Master," Mike said. "I mean... where is the honor in that?"
Splinter slid to the center of the circle, putting one hand on Mike's and one on Don's. "You were born as animals, you are animals."
"We're well aware of that, Sensei," Raphael said. "We're reminded of that every time we look at one another or in a mirror. It isn't like it is a fact we can forget. That still doesn't say how we are supposed to beat this thing."
"You..." Leonardo said, looking at his angered brother, "You've been aware of its presence from the beginning. You knew it was near when the rest of us had no idea."
"Indeed," Splinter said, putting a hand on Raphael's shoulder. "You may have more part in this creature than do the others."
Raphael stood and bounded across the room, looking over at the others with anger visible in his face. "I am not responsible for this damn thing!"
"Calm down, Raph!" Leo yelled, jumping to his feet. "Weren't you listening? Sensei said that it was an accident, a side-effect from our training." He stepped up to his brother and looked him in the eye. "You may be the only one of us that can do anything about it."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better about this?" Raph snapped.
"No, it's supposed to drill it through your head that you have a job to do," he looked over his shoulder at the others. "We all do. And I suggest we get to it."
"Can't we just dissolve it?" Mike asked. "Like Splinter's teacher did?"
"That took months," Leo said. "The way I see it, Neikan can wait forever, but we can't. We have to leave this room eventually, and when we do it will be there waiting for us."
Raphael leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. "Fine. Let's get this son of a bitch."
Mark got up and walked to the far side of the room, sitting in the corner by the medicine chest. He hugged his legs and rested his head against his knees, pressing his hands to his eyes. He had trusted these people and now he knew that it was they who were responsible for the thing that had killed his friend and nearly himself as well. But they had saved his life, protected him... he didn't know what to think, how to feel. A touch landed on the back of his head and he jumped, looking up.
"Hey," Mike said, sitting on the floor with considerable effort. "How are you doing?"
"I can't believe this is happening..."
"I know," Mike said softly. "Me neither. I... I'm sorry. You and your friend never should have gotten mixed up in this."
"We shouldn't have been in the sewer," Mark said, wiping away the tears with the back of his hand. "I shouldn't have wanted so damn bad to be in that club..."
Mike patted the teen on the back. "It wasn't your fault... I don't even know if it's our fault. Maybe it's nobody's."
"But it still happened..." Mark began to cry again. "Jesus... are we ever going to get the hell out of here?"
Michaelangelo pulled the kid over to him and the boy rested his head on the offered green shoulder. "Hey, don't worry about it," Mike said. "We aren't going to let anything happen to you."
Across the room all of the others were sitting on the floor with their eyes closed. Their legs were folded and their posture impeccable as they sat perfectly still.
"What are they doing?" Mark asked, taking his head off of Mike's shoulder.
"Meditating," the turtle said. "Getting ready."
"Do you guys always do that before you fight something?"
"Not always... but definitely right now."
The human looked at Michaelangelo. "Why aren't you doing it?"
Mike gave him a crooked smile. "I started to but I figured you needed to get ready, too. Thought you might need a friend."
"I don't think I'm ever going to be ready for this," Mark said. "But thanks."
"No problem."
Mike looked at his brothers and Master as they sat silently, preparing for the battle ahead. But what kind of battle would it be? According to Splinter they were supposed to let go of their training, to basically go animal. It was obvious that Raphael would be on the firing line, the first defense against something that was neither real nor unreal. Mike hoped that his brother would be able to face the thing and come out of the encounter alive.
Raphael turned his sai over in his hand and watched the light glint off it. It had always been his weapon of choice, even since his youth - but it hadn't been the first thing that he'd ever used to kill. That came when he had wandered to the city streets, unarmed and simply curious about the way humans lived. What he discovered was that they lived like he and his brothers - from day to day, fighting to stay alive. Some teens, eight years his senior at the time, had come across him while he ducked through the alleys. They were a gang, that much was certain from the way they dressed and acted. They thought that Raph was some kind of freak, a monster. When he spoke they got frightened and came at him with knives.
Back then he was in even less control of his animal side. It wasn't as if turtles were the most vicious creatures in nature, but the survival instinct is as strong among them as it is most other living things - and the instinct whispered into Raphael's mind that he needed to fight. Drawing on what limited training he had at the time, he leapt into their midst and began to defend himself. Defense became ferocity and he let loose, forgetting everything he had learned from Splinter up to that point. All the gang members ran off when they finally saw just how ferocious this freak really was - all but one. Raphael still had his bare hands wrapped around the human's throat - but the human was dead. Raph let go of his neck and felt and heard the bones in the strangers neck as they scraped together - fragments left from where the neck had snapped.
He had killed someone with his bare hands, nothing more - and in his fury he hadn't even known he had done it until it was over. If that was what it was like to be an animal, to fight with no other concern than for that of your own life - he didn't want that. But the years had done little to temper him, to calm him to a logical being in the face of battle. He still fought with a rage, as Michaelangelo had once referred to him, Kamikaze.
"Damn the torpedoes..." he whispered, laying his sai down on the concrete. "Full speed ahead."
"Good quote. I've got another one for you."
Raphael looked up at Mike. "What's that?"
Michaelangelo sat down and picked up his brother's sai. "There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distil it out."
"Who said that?"
"Shakespeare. Henry the Fifth."
Raph sighed and looked over at Donatello who lay on the bed, asleep again. "You really think there's any good in Neikan? After what he did to you guys I don't see how..."
"Maybe evil was the wrong word," Mike broke through. "Like Splinter said... its an animal."
"Yeah... what we were meant to be."
"No, not really," he handed his brother back his weapon. "But I guess it's a part of us and all that."
"And if we... If I kill it, do you think that part of us will go away, too?"
"Geez... I hope not."
Raph looked at his brother. "You're telling me that you want that part of you? The vicious, murdering..."
"...The part that keeps you fighting for life even after your logical mind tells you that there is no way in hell you are going to get out of this one alive..?" Michaelangelo said, half grinning.
Raph cleared his throat. "Yeah... that one."
"I need it. You do, too."
"But I don't want it! I've been fighting for years to make it go away, to level myself and keep my life at an even keel. But it never works... I keep coming back to me."
Mikey put a hand on his brother's arm. "And you have pulled us out of more shit than I can remember. If you weren't the short fuse we've all come to know and love, the chances are that none of us would even be here today. You need that part of you. I need that part of me." he motioned to their brothers. "They need it."
"That's easy for you to say. When was the last time you went berserk?"
Mike scratched around the bandage on his arm. "It happens. Maybe not as often as for you... but I guess your button is just easier to find."
"You could be right about that."
"Now... do you think you can handle Neikan?"
"You bet your ass I can," Raphael said in an almost soft tone. He passed his sai back to Mike. "Here... I'm not going to need this."
Michaelangelo slid the weapon into his belt. "I'll keep it here just in case."
"Ready?"
"No."
"Me, neither."
"Let's go."
They both stood, walking to where the others had congregated around Donatello's bed. Leo looked at them and nodded, then turned towards Splinter and kneeled. Raphael looked at Mike and they each lowered to a knee, offering the greatest respect to their sensei. Splinter bowed gently in return, hoping that the emotion behind his sons' actions was not the fear that it would be their last chance to pay him such an honor. They stood and Leo put a hand on Mark's shoulder.
"Take care of Don," he said.
Mark nodded and tried to smile. "Good luck," he said weakly.
The turtles walked together towards the infirmary door and paused for only a second before Leonardo unlatched it and turned the knob, swinging it open. They had half-expected Neikan to be right there, waiting for them to emerge. There was an audible trio of relieved sighs when they discovered that it was not, in fact, ready to pounce - nor anywhere in sight.
"Master," Leo said without looking away from the room ahead. "Don't forget to latch the door."
They stepped full out and the door swung shut behind them. A couple seconds later they heard the latch being fastened and Leonardo looked to Michaelangelo, who stood on his right.
"You sure you can handle this?" he asked. "You've already been through hell..."
"No, Donny went through hell," Mike said. "I was nowhere near it."
Leonardo nodded and drew a single sword, stepping ahead. His brothers followed him, each keeping observant to his own side of the room. At the front door Leo paused again, looking over at Raphael this time. The eldest turtle was no longer so certain about sending his brother into battle alone with Neikan and he suddenly found himself searching his mind for other options. None came to him.
"Raph... I know I said that it was your show, but if you don't think you can do it..." Leonardo said.
"I can do this. You guys just jump in if I start looking dead."
Leo stepped aside and his brother took the point, opening the door to the lair and leading the others into the pitch black tunnel. Their eyes adjusted quickly, trained to do so from years of stepping from the shadows to the light and back again. Still, there was only so far they could see, only so many shapes that could be made out against the shaded walls. Something scurried across the dirt three meters ahead of them and they all looked, watching yet another rat as it ran for cover. The ninjas shared another collective sigh of relief and began to walk forward slowly.
"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate," Mike whispered after a couple minutes of silence.
"What?" Raphael asked.
"Dante..."
Leonardo cleared his throat gently. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," he translated.
"Oh," Raphael tightened his fist as they came to a junction. "I liked it better in French."
"Latin," Michaelangelo corrected him.
"Whatever."
A chill traveled up his spine and he froze, looking at his siblings' faces. They knew what he was feeling, they could see it in his eyes - Neikan was near.
"Against the wall," Raph commanded and he and the others pressed themselves to the concrete. "Okay... let it get a little closer..."
Leo suddenly felt a rush of fear for his brother and reached out, putting a hand on his arm. "I can't let you do this," he whispered. "I know it's what Splinter said had to be done, but it doesn't seem right... like tossing you into the lion's den."
"I don't know much about the bible," Raph whispered back. "But didn't Daniel survive on faith?"
"That was a different kind of faith," Leo said, tightening his grip. "We're talking about you abandoning everything that you've been taught and fighting Neikan on its own terms... like it or not, you are not that much of an animal."
"Yes I am," he replied, looking past Leo at Mike, recalling their earlier conversation. "And so are the two of you. Trust me, Leo... I think I understand now."
"Understand what?"
He smiled and looked at Mike again. "Shakespeare."
Leo released his brother's arm. "If it gets too hairy I'm in it."
"Me, too," Michaelangelo said.
"You'd better be..."
"We've got your back," Leo told him, gripping tightly to his sword.
Raph looked at the weapon tucked into his brother's belt. "Y'know... on second thought, give me that sai."
Mike drew the blade and spun it, pressing the handle into Raphael's palm. "Change of heart?"
"I just remembered something Splinter said while you were out of it," the turtle said, enjoying the feel of the leather in his grip. "About animals using tools."
Raphael stepped away from the wall and looked down the tunnel. Two large white eyes stared at him from the darkness. They shifted and then started moving ahead slowly. Neikan had been waiting for him to come into sight - to step into the open. It wasn't hunting him, it was challenging him. Like a wolf vying for territory, a test to see who was most worthy to hold this place - a test that Raphael was determined to win. He spun his sai and positioned the trio of blades so they jutted out from between his folded fingers, like claws drawn for the attack. He crouched and put a hand on the ground, waiting for the creature to get near enough.
"Neikan..." he said, hissing the word.
"...Animal people..." it replied in a deep, gurgling voice.
Raphael launched himself forward, his sai aimed for the point between the creature's white eyes. It jumped back, a move that Raphael had anticipated and prepared for. He landed flat on his feet and sprung up, flipping behind the creature and pulling into a kick, which contacted with Neikan's back. It turned around and reached out for the turtle with its talons, swiping the air just centimeters above his head. He took the opportunity provided by the miss and jumped ahead, grabbing for the thing's throat. Raph gripped it with one hand and drew back with his sai in the other, but the blood still flowing from the lifeless creature's wounded gullet made his hold slip and his aim faltered.
Neikan grabbed Raphael by the arm and tossed him aside, roaring in anger. The turtle landed upright and wasted not a single second in launching himself back at the thing. It was getting easier, the animal instincts - Raph had almost managed to let go of all his logic and strategy for a moment, and in that moment he had nearly been able to run the thing through. He screamed out and spun his sai, driving it into his enemy's arm. He fell forward, still holding onto the sai. Scrambling, he looked around at the creature. He hadn't touched it, he and his weapon had gone clear through it as if it weren't there. Raphael growled - this wasn't going to be quite so easy, after all.
In the shadows the other two turtles watched and waited, honoring Raphael's request that they not step in until it looked like there were no way for him to win. So far he had been holding his own, fighting the creature on its own terms and seemingly leaving neither combatant one-up upon the other. Leo held his sword to his plastron and gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to jump in. He wasn't accustomed to watching one of his brothers go up against such a threat alone - and he was there and completely able to help. He took a step forward but stopped, feeling Mike's touch on his arm.
"Let him try," Mike said, resisting his own urge to barge in on the fight. "Give him a chance... if we go in on this now we could blow it."
Leonardo let out a breath and stepped back, setting his eyes again upon the fight within the shadows. Raph and Neikan were both jumping back and forth, once in a while coming together for a short hand-to-hand bout that always ended in one or the other getting thrown against a wall or to the ground. Now it was even hard to tell which was turtle and which was tulpa - but they knew that Raphael was still in the fight, which meant there was still hope.
Raph wiped the blood from his lip and stood, clenching his fists. He no longer held his sai, having lost it one of the times that he had been thrown against the wall. But he didn't need his weapon, his body and his mind - and his instincts - those were the only weapons he had, the only ones that he felt he now needed. The turtle looked off to the side and saw his brothers still standing against the wall, their desire to help him visible even in the near darkness. He grinned and then looked back to Neilkan, who stood a body's length away, breathing heavily its unreal breaths. He looked into its eyes and stepped back, a rush of cold moving from his feet to the top of his head.
Something's wrong, he thought, taking a deep breath.
The creature turned from him, looking towards his brothers. Raph gritted his teeth. He decided not to give Neikan the opportunity to get to them and folded himself forward into a roll, springing himself up at the end of it and spinning a kick at its head. It caught him by the foot and twisted - Raphael's ankle bone snapped. He fought back a cry of pain and spun up with the other foot, impacting the creature squarely in the face.
It dropped him and he slid back, away from its immediate reach. But its reach was longer than he had anticipated and it came down upon him, pulling him up by the throat. Raphael opened his mouth to call out for his brothers to join in the fight but could not make a sound as Neikan squeezed tighter. The turtle's attention shifted to the thing's other hand, which was pulled back, its claws extended. He saw the hand begin to swing towards him and closed his eyes, waiting for contact.
Leonardo jumped back as a spattering of warm, thick fluid hit his face. He reached up and wiped it away, looking at the dark red that coated his palm. His eyes widened and pressed one of his blood-covered fingers to his tongue - it tasted metallic. Donatello had told them that Neikan's blood tasted plainer than water, that it was unreal - this blood was not Neikan's.
Without looking to see if Michaelangelo was following, Leonardo pushed away from the wall, holding his sword high. Before him was stillness, silence - the creature's white eyes did not stare out from the darkness, the battle was ended. He lowered his blade and looked to his side where Mike stood with his nunchaku at the ready.
Michaelangelo let his arm swing down and looked into Leo's eyes. "Where the hell are they?"
Leonardo looked into the darkest shadows ahead of them and took a step forward. His feet froze themselves into place and he glared intently at the shadow's terminator, where it joined on the dirt with the relative lightness of the area where they stood. Just barely within view lay Raphael. Without regard as to whether Neikan was waiting for them there, Leo and Mike sprung into the shade, grabbing hold of Raphael's arms and pulled him into the light. Leo's eyes closed and he dropped his sword, turning his face.
"Jesus Christ!" Mike yelled out, falling down beside his brother.
Raphael's plastron had been punched through, shattered at the center. Blood pooled in the wound and ran down what was left of his chest plate, soaking into the dirt below him. His eyes were open, his mouth quivering as he tried to speak. Leonardo kneeled and put a hand on the center of the wound, pressing down as he tried to stop the bleeding.
"...It... didn't work..." Raphael forced out.
Mike's eyes were flowing with tears and he put a finger on Raph's throat, feeling his pulse.
"Don't worry..." he sobbed. "C'mon, we'll get you fixed up..."
Leonardo stood and swung, punching the concrete wall. "Neikan, you son of a bitch!" he screamed down the tunnel. He bent over and picked up his katana, sliding it into its sheath, and turned back to his brothers. "We can't carry him like this," he said to Mike. "Go back to the den... get the stretcher!"
Mike stood and stepped back, keeping his eyes on Raphael.
"Now!" Leo yelled. "Hurry!"
The turtle spun and ran down the tunnel, towards the den, and Leonardo kneeled down once again by Raphael's side.
"..Leo..." Raph coughed and the blood flowed out faster for a moment.
"Don't talk," Leonardo said, putting a hand on his brother's chest. "Just... just hang on... we'll get you back to the den and..."
"... It didn't work... not... not with me," Raph said. He reached up and put a slick hand on Leonardo's face.
"Just hang on..." Leo said, trying to sound strong though tears were falling down his cheeks.
"...There wasn't enough of me..." he said, blinking hard.
Leonardo looked into his brother's eyes. "Jesus, Raph... what the hell are we supposed to do?"
"...You're... as tame as ... they come..."
Leo pulled his brother near and pressed a hand harder against to his plastron. The blood wasn't flowing quite so fast now. Raphael's head rolled to the side and his eyes closed; Leonardo shook him gently.
"Raph..? Raph, come on..." he said softly. He shook him harder and yelled, "Don't do this to me!"
Leonardo drew his brother up into his arms and rocked him back and forth. He let out a shaky breath and wiped the blood off of the other turtle's cheek with the clean back side of his hand then patted it gently with his palm.
"Raph..."
