Gargoyles X TMNT: Shadows of New York

Grudge Match

The wind was howling over the bay. The air had gone from cold to colder, and Raphael shivered in it. Sitting on top of the Manhattan Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, he huddled under his trench coat. He wrapped his hands around a plastic bladder filled with a semi-solid, semi-liquid sort of white crystalline stuff that Donnie had made. It radiated warmth like a small space heater, and it lasted a lot longer than the plastic-sealed baggies full of iron sand that he had in his belt pouch.

He was going to have to be warm enough to finish out this fight. He might be a ninja, he might be tough, but he was still a reptile. The cold would slow him down just as surely as it would slow down any other turtle on a cold October night.

He thought about the van.

They'd parked in an old garage in Chelsea, cars passing by and illuminating the empty front seats as the hands on the tiny clock on the dash silently drifted closer to 1:45. The lights were out, but Don's small–yet incredibly bright–MagLite flashlight illuminated the van enough for their eyes.

Shell, they were a mess.

Don sat, eyes watering with pain as April tried to gently tease the melted jacket from his shell. Smears of flesh-toned foundation streaked down his cheeks, leaving tracks of dappled olive green.

"Just rip it off like a bandaid."

"You sure, Don? It looks pretty bad."

"Yeah," He winced, preparing to flinch. "Just do it fast."

April did as he asked.

"YEEEOOOWWW!!!" Don yelled! "I said do it fast!"

"I did!" She held up a large piece of the destroyed purple Utah Jazz merch. "It's off, we can get the rest of it off your shell with the dish brush."

Donnie involuntarily whimpered at the idea of tough plastic bristles scrubbing down on his tender, burnt plastron under his armpit. The tough yellow plates had turned white and bubbled, blistering where the keratin had burned. "Maybe you could just soak me in Dawn instead?"

"Like a ducky?" Mikey chuckled. "We could do dish commercials."

"Focus," Leo snapped his fingers. "Alright, how are we doing, team?"

They looked each other up and down, and all collectively moaned about their various injuries. Raphael's broken toe and deeply scuffed shell were at about a 5/10 on the pain scale. Mikey had dislocated his shoulder when the monster backhanded him and he had a bad cut on his scalp. April was still coming down from shock, had bitten through her lip, and didn't realize until much later that at some point she had twisted her ankle. Don cleaned and bandaged his laser wound and muttered something about 'feeling like burnt turtle soup'.

Leo said nothing about how he'd pulled his bad knee during the sprint. His brace hugged against the swollen, inflamed joint while he let it stick out away from his body at a somewhat uncomfortable angle. He opened a tin lunch pail with chipped green paint, fishing out their family's favorite cure-all; Advil.

With his jacket off, it was easy to see the tight array of blue craft wire that held his shell together. Another car passed, and its headlights shed just enough light to see the damage beneath the implanted brace. Below his belt was a web of cracks that crisscrossed the entire lower-left quarter of his shell. Tiny carpentry screws, drilled in by hand, sat like little towers on each broken 'island' of his shell. The craft wire wrapped around each screw pulled it all together, in a shape that vaguely resembled a crooked 't' and a backwards 'y'. It was difficult to see in the low light, but there was a painted blue marking on his left shoulder, directly above the wire brace.