Out of My Shell

Chapter 4: Trouble in the Streets

- Chapter 4: Trouble in the Streets

"Senseiiii how much longer do we have to starve?!" Mikey whined as he tipped another can of ham back and let the congealed meat slither and plop into his mouth. He leaned back against the counter in defeat, setting the empty can down beside the can opener.
Leonardo looked him over. "Doesn't seem like you're starving."
"Well I am! I haven't had pizza in like... two days! We're savages down here!"
Leo just quirked a nonexistent brow at him from beneath his blue mask.
"We are not starving," Donnie rolled his eyes, handing him the empty plate to his once ham-based breakfast. "I'll be in my room."
Donnie trudged his way down the hall towards his bedroom. A quiet day like this meant there was only one thing on his mind: trying to find a retro-mutagen. It was his duty. For April, for everyone. All of his spare time was dedicated to this and it still just wasn't enough. The mutagen situation was so much more out of control than he'd ever feared it would be and he couldn't help but feel discouraged. There just wasn't an answer. Could he even find it? He wished there was someone anyone out there who could help him, but that was impossible. There was so much pressure in the knowledge that it all boiled down to him that lately, he wasn't so sure he could do it. But still he marched to his room, opening the door, trying to shake the discouraging thoughts from his mind.
"Now this one's kinda interestin'..."
Donnie raised his eyes to see Raphael. In his room, leaning back in his chair with the book in his hands; the one he had so artfully hidden the night before.
Or so he'd thought.
"So what do the uh... blue tabs mean?" the red clad brother wondered.
"G-GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" Donnie yelled, sprinting across the room and ripping the book out of his hands.
"Hey, I was reading that..."
"OUT!"
"You better not have lost my page..." Raph threatened.
"Consider it lost! Get out and stay out!"
Raph leaned back teasingly. "And how come you get all of the fun, huh?"
"All of the fun?!" Donnie gaped. What kind of sick joke was that? "As much as I support your new-found interest in reading, kindly go do it somewhere else... and away from my books!"
"Come to think of it," Raph said in mock thought, "if I recall correctly the girl on that page was a red head..."
Raphael watched the color visibly drain from Donatello's face. He smirked. "Huh. The blue tabs wouldn't have anything to do with that, would they?"
Any good thoughts Donnie had ever had about his brother were thrown out the window. Raph was evil. Pure, unadulterated evil. He felt like the air had been punched out of his lungs from the inside. This was viscous to a villainous degree! Why, oh, why did he have to have found that book?!
His brother stood tall and smug as Donnie's fragile ability to stand up to him crumbled to pieces.
"So the blue tabs..."
"STOP IT! Stop it okay?! ...Stop it..." Donnie begged. He was only turtle, a teenaged turtle at that. If Raph's objective was to humiliate him, he had won. Donnie turned away ashamed, his hands balled up to fists. "What do you want from me Raph?"
Raph blinked at that. "Huh?!"
Donnie started to shake. "I don't have any money. All the money I have goes to finding a retro-mutagen and I just bought a whole shipment of nonoxynol... though I guess that really isn't your style, is it? You're more of a 'make me your slave for the rest of your life' kind of guy..."
Raph blinked at the unexpected turn of events. He wasn't wrong about him being that kind of guy but maybe he had taken the joke a little too far. Donnie was shaking like a leaf.
"Really, there is no excuse for my behavior... e-even if I am a teenager with hormones that..."
"Donnie Donnie Donnie." He interrupted. Seriously, he didn't need the run down in gross nerd language how puberty worked. "Um..."
Donnie looked up, those big, brown eyes shining sadly behind his purple mask. He looked like a puppy. A stupid, lanky, freshly kicked puppy. It was almost enough for him to cave in, but Raphael had an image to keep. "Ahem..." he cleared his throat, not keeping eye contact for fear of going soft. "I'll think about it and get back to you on that... cuz to be honest, I ain't done torturin' ya yet..."
Was that supposed to make him feel better?
"Hey... I've got to pick on ya, it's how I roll."
Suddenly Mikey burst through the door. "Guys! We have a problem!"
--
"Our top story tonight: Local neighborhoods wake up to find their peaceful cul-de-sacs completely destroyed..." News images lit up the television and the turtles gathered round, staring wide-eyed at the footage. Cars were shredded and torn half. Buildings were sawed open, leaving brick and metal shrapnel in the streets. Even the roads themselves had been ripped apart, as though a giant pizza cutter had gone into the night to tear the city in two.
"What could have done something like that?" Leonardo muttered.
"Do ya think the Kraang are behind it?" Raph suggested.
Leo shook his head. "I doubt it. The Kraang are more into lasers... and they don't cause nearly that much damage."
They continued to watch the images deftly, but there was one thing that was even more unsettling to Donnie. "...Why had no one heard them?"
The others turned to him.
"What? This happened in the middle of the night and nobody heard a thing! Doesn't that strike anyone else as odd?"
Mikey scratched his chin in thought. "Maybe it was the Pizza Cutter Phantom~" he said spookily.
Leonardo shot him a disapproving look. "This is serious Mikey."
"I am being serious! He goes out in the middle of the night in search for his long lost pizza love... the one he lost before his tragic end... haunted, never resting until he finds his one true pizza. OW!"
Raph dealt him a blow to the back of his head, hoping futilely to knock some sense into him. "...There is something seriously wrong with you," he said.
Mikey stuck out his lip in a pout.
"We've got to go topside to find out what's going on," Donnie insisted.
"I agree," Leo nodded, "we head out tonight."
---
The four turtles crouched low and traveled by shadow, doing agile flips over the quiet, sleeping buildings of the metropolis. The scene of the crime was actually a neighborhood they knew all too well. It was only seven blocks away from their lair at best, which made it all the more disturbing just how close to home it was.
Maybe it was a mutant? Some new one they didn't know about? Soon the carnage came into view.
It was even more disturbing in real life.
"Wow, does that look rough," Donnie muttered.
Raph shrugged and leaned in. "Eh, you like it that way," he cracked, leaping away.
Donatello gawked after him for a moment.
Why?!
When the coast was clear the four jumped down into the ruined streets, studying everything, hoping to uncover some kind of clue as to what happened among the rubble.
"Seriously whatever it was," Mikey did a hand spring off of a bungalow overhang, "looks like it tried to cut this place straight up pizza style."
"...Chainsaws?" Donnie posed.
"That would almost be my guess, except they'd have to be enormous." Leonardo stared at the huge trench that ran down the middle of the road and through half of what was once someone's Nissan Altima. "Alright split up," he ordered, "look for anything else you can find."
The four separated among the debris, turning and leaping to avoid the mess of shorn metal and broken glass. A particularly interesting crack caught Donatello's eye that threaded through the gravel for several more yards before it came to an abrupt halt. He followed it to the end and knelt down to study it further. The folds of the concrete pushed out like a flower at the end, as though something had pushed through.
"Guys, I think it came from the ground!" Donnie called. "Right here." They all gathered around, and Leo noticed the nearest manhole cover was only feet away and right in line.
The realization sent an unsettling chill from their scales to their shells.
His eyes hardened. "Whatever it was... it came from the sewer."
What cut through the air then, was nothing short of a blood-curdling scream.
They ran towards the sound, traveling north four streets ahead, perpendicular from the one they had been on before. There they found a business woman shaking, clutching her child to her chest in fright but no one was there. The only evidence that something had been there, was a single gauge that ran all the way through the center of the street, running serpentine, cutting through all it could without any discrimination.
"Who are you?!" The woman screamed out into the empty air. "Why are you doing this?!"
By aid of darkness, the four heroes watched but... what else could they do?