Out of My Shell

Chapter 9: House Arrested

--Chapter 9 House Arrested

"Oh no..." Donnie murmured, "no, no no no no. This is bad. This is so bad. Why does this always happen?!"
He heard a clunk echo down one of the halls and he froze again, the familiar drip mocking him back.
And then he heard a yell. It was Leo's yell.
"YAAAAUGGH!"
"Leo!" Donnie ran blindly towards it as fast as he could, rounding first one corner and then another before he came to a huge fork in the sewers. Donatello looked between each of the tunnels, trying to figure out which one to go through. Then, thinking he heard a sound coming from the first tunnel to his right, he decided to take that one.
He pulled out his T-phone out of his belt and began to dial, hoping beyond all hope his brother would answer, still running as fast as he could.
"Come on... come on pick up..." he begged beneath his breath.
But the phone only humored him with a few empty rings before he was faced with Leonardo's voicemail. A sick panic settled in his gut. If Donnie could run faster, he did. The shadows blurred and his lungs started to burn but he didn't care. He rounded another corner and then suddenly crashed hard, having run head-on into someone with a force that knocked them both down.
"OOF!" "Oww!" "...Huh?"
They both shook off the disorientation.
"Raph?"
"Donnie?"
"Where's Leo?!" They spoke wildly in tandem. "I thought he was with you!"
"Why would he be with me?!" Donnie wailed.
A strange, sick sound echoed down a nearby hall and they instantly tensed until they thought they were in the clear and Donnie spoke wildly in panic.
"We've got to find him! Right. NOW! ...Metaldroid got into the mutagen!"
Raph's eyes widened. "What?!"
"He found the last canister in my lab and he DRANK IT! We have to find him!" A low churning sound interrupted him that sent a chill down their shells. "...Preferably BEFORE we are all torn limb from limb!" he finished.
Raphael's eyes strained to see around him, the reality of the dangerous situation they were in now settled into his skin.
And then they heard a grumbling roar.
"This way," Raph tugged Donnie by the wrist and he led them down the opposite hall, their feet clicking against the pavement. They took cover around the second corner.
Donnie gripped his phone tight, his fingers working fast as they could as he continued to run. "Leo isn't answering his phone," he muttered, putting it again to his ear. "He can't handle Metaldroid with his injury! What am I saying? None of us can handle him! Metaldroid's probably mutating by the second... and we literately can't see anything!"
Donnie paused to look at Raph and his blood went cold, catching the flash of a chainsaw right behind him... then another movement of shadow just out of the corner of his eye.
"...I am FREAKING OUT!"
"YEAH AND YOU'RE FREAKIN' ME OUT!" Raph roared back.
Crrrrreeeeeeeaaak
They paused and a gross slithering noise travel across the floor that thoroughly made Raph's scales crawl. Then there was the sound of a stranger's breathing and paranoia burrowed cruelly into their brains. Donnie set his staff to fight, executing empty strikes in the air before one of them accidently struck Raph.
"OW!"
"Yaaaagh!" Donnie wailed, leaping back.
That was the last straw. Raph gritted his teeth and clobbered his brother hard over the shoulder.
"Calm your shell before I slap the green off of ya! I ain't gonna let that thing kill us!" He grabbed Donnie by the shoulders and shook him. "Now use your head!"
"Okay... um..." Donnie paused, scanning his brain hard for a plan. "Uh... the main room. We'll go stealth... and make our way to the main room..."
"....That's your plan?!"
"Do you have any BETTER ONES?!" he challenged.
Clank... clank.clank.clank clank.
"Nope!" Raph yanked Donnie by the hand and led him down what he felt would be the safest hallway, then he threw him against the wall, peeking around the corner to listen.
"Will you let go of my hand?" Donnie hissed.
Raph smushed a large hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, keeping his ears trained for anything that could possibly be Leo or the monster. Once Raph decided the coast was clear, he grabbed Donnie's hand again and they continued; heads low and ready for anything.
Still Donnie glared uncomfortably at their hands. He was not incapable of taking care of himself.
They ducked down another corner and then Raph shoved him into the wall again.
"Oof! Ugh! ...Raph, I can take care of myself!" Donnie scolded.
Raph turned and glared at him harshly. "You think I don't know that?!"
Even through the thick darkness Donnie could see the turbulent look in his eyes.
"In case you haven't noticed, Mikey nearly got his shell split open again tonight and Leo's somewhere out there by himself with that hole in his arm! And it's my fault we all got separated! So excuse me if I don't wanna lose you too!"
That set Donnie back into perspective a little. "...I'm sorry Raph, you're right."
He had been selfish. The only thing he had been thinking about was their hands... and how thrown he felt about the two of them. But now was not the time for that, not when their home was under attack. He squeezed Raph's hand back firmly.
"Come on, let's go find Leo."
--
--
His breath was louder than anything else, but he could still hear it. The sounds echoed and bounced off of every one of his senses. Metaldroid was close. He just had to pin point exactly where it was and take it down before it even had a chance to strike.
Leonardo clenched his hands around the hilts of his blades and internally winced. If he fought, he'd probably end up popping all of his stitches or re-opening the wound altogether, but he would just have to deal. No gash in his arm was going to stop him from protecting his family.
He closed his eyes.
.....Sense your opponent.
Leonardo spun around; sweeping his katana low to the ground to trip his enemy, but it was an empty strike.
He was still alone. And so again he listened.
There was something scurrying behind him across the floor.
Leonardo barely had time to process what it was before he was blindsided. A terrible force drove deep into his gut, sending him flying airborne off the floor and crashing into the wall.
Leo blinked and sputtered for air, trying quick gain his bearings. When he did, a mess of tentacles came slithering at him through the dark. He could hear the hum above his heartbeat, each serrated blade more gruesome than the next.
They somehow seemed to laugh at him.
His eyes widened silently from beneath his mask, and it was all the movement they needed.
They struck like serpents. Leonardo moved fluidly to avoid them; leaping, dodging and turning flips, slicing tentacles clean in two.
The creature reared back and screamed in pain, a high pitched, terrible noise, and it staggered forward into the light.
Leo gawked at his enemy. It stood probably twenty feet tall, glowering down at him with blood- speckled red eyes. It dragged its sharp claws across the floor, catching silver in the light. The strange beast hunched over Leonardo, a mutated mess of ooze and gears, sprockets and small parts.
And the look in its eyes spelled hatred.
It raised one of its severed limbs up to Leonardo's face so he could watch as it gurgled and split apart, growing three more horrible blades in its place.
And from the floor, the blade he had cut down before rose up clumsily on spindly legs, just like the small chainsaw spiders that had attacked him before. It squeaked and scurried across the floor, disappearing out into the lair. Leo raised his eyes and his enemy hissed angrily, showing off the dirty cogs and mechanisms that made up the back of its throat.
Leonardo made no sudden movements, very slowly dropping his stance. And he raised his swords up, only to wince at the sharp pain it caused.
The tentacles slithered across the floor like snakes to the hunt, their eyes set on their prey.
Leo knew he was going to need back up. He reached into his belt pocket for his T-phone, only to find it wasn't there.
He must have left it in his bedroom. And there was no time to dwell on it now.
He was surrounded. And so his eyes set to fight.
He would have to hold his own for now.
--
--
Raphael strained his eyes through the frustrating dark, wondering where the heck they were. Donnie had led them in a weird direction but he hadn't exactly clued him in on where they were going or what his plan was. He was pretty sure they were somewhere in the garage, but it was just too dark to tell.
"Is this the garage?" he hissed.
"Yes."
"...Why are we in the garage?"
"Because I might have some tools that will help us," Donnie whispered back. His hands fumbled around blindly over his work bench. He knew he had a flashlight lying around here somewhere...
Finally his efforts were rewarded, feeling the familiar plastic in his hand. He quickly clicked the button, smiling at the welcoming stream of light in his hand and he gave it to Raph.
"Here," he ordered. "Look for the generator. See if you can't switch it back on."
Raph obediently did as he was told, running his thick green fingers over the stale switches, flipping them all forward and back again. The old florescent lights overhead replied, flickering and groaning back to life, and bright light filled the expanse of the room.
"You did it!" Donnie beamed.
No sooner had the words of praised left his mouth, than the lights kicked out, and the two were left in the dark again.
"What...?" Donnie took the flashlight from Raph's hand, looking over the machine to figure out what could have possibly gone wrong.
It wasn't difficult to see what it was. One last tiny spark zapped its way from a strange gauge that Donnie noted had strategically sliced all the way through the power core.
By a chainsaw.
"It's... intelligent... " he muttered. Donnie moved the beam of light over the cabinets across the room, briskly moving and handing the flashlight back over to Raph so his hands were free.
"I can try creating a solution to maybe make it rust but I have no idea what kind of metal we're dealing with! It definitely wasn't copper, but it still could be anything from iron to steel, to... something else entirely! Iron is easy to take down but stainless steel is damn near impossible," he rubbed his eyes sleepily.
Raph blinked. That was the first time he'd ever really heard Donnie curse. He almost wondered if he had heard right.
"Did you just swear?"
"Yes, I just swore!" he snapped. "I'm at my wits end! I haven't slept in nights!"
Raph winced a little at the pang of guilt that surged through his chest, knowing full well it was his fault and Donnie noticed the change in his demeanor.
"I... haven't slept for a number of reasons..." he amended quickly and he continued to dig around. "Ah ha!" he picked up a bottle and brought it up to the light, squinting hard over the fine print on the label.
"I've got a just a little bit left... ummmm... You know what, we'll wing it." He gathered several more items from the shelf and tossed them carelessly into a small bucket, now rifling through another table and he was delighted with what he found.
"I can't believe I left these in here!" He turned around to show Raph the bulkiest and strangest head contraption he had ever seen. Before he even explained what it was, Donnie had run back over to him and was already strapping it around Raph's head.
"Hey! What the heck are these?!" he demanded.
"They double as both night and thermal vision goggles," he answered proudly. "It'll make navigating through the lair much easier. You'll be able to see in the dark and locate anything in the lair with a pulse."
"...It feels bulky and nerdy."
"Yeah well deal with it," Donnie replied, and he picked up the mutagen detector, turning it on and adjusting the screen. "I've got to find Muta-droid."
Both of them stopped and turned, eyes widened at one another.
"Please don't tell Mikey I named it," he begged. There was no way he could live down a second Mikey offense.
And then the two heard a strange sound swelling up from down the hall. It was almost like a chattering.
ChickaChickaChickaChickaChicka
Then it grew closer, eerily close and the two quick ducked down behind the table to hide. Raphael adjusted the goggles to see as a small chainsaw on spindly legs skittered its way into the room. It looked right, then left, as though trying to detect them. Raph and Donnie both held their breath, staying breathlessly still until the creature lost interest and finally crawled away.
The two let out their breath in a rush.
"What are those?" Donnie wondered.
"They're the tiny chainsaw bug things that attacked Leo earlier. They came from Metaldroid," Raph whispered back but his answer was only half heard by Donnie, drowned out about by the terrible chattering swelling even higher down the halls.
Louder and louder. It echoed off of everything, screeching against their ears like a million tiny angry bats and they clasped their ears tight against the terrible sound.
And from beyond the garage door, they came. A blurring sea of the tiny chainsaws swept up through the hall like an angry plague of locusts.
Raph and Donnie watched in numb awe until another one stopped in the doorway curiously, seeming to stare right at them, and then it skittered into the garage, leading others to follow suit.
"Sewer spit," Raph cursed and he leapt to his feet, his sai clasped tight in his fists.
"The backdoor," Donnie said, "... RUN!"
And they two bolted for the back door, running as fast as they possibly could, Donnie with his bucket right tow. And the chainbugs followed them.
They turned the corner, backs to the wall until they came to the door, only barely beating another mass of the steel-bearing insects to the punch.
They only had a narrow window of escape and Donnie seized it. "This way!" he ordered and he bolted down the corridor, finding the familiar stretch to their living room beneath his feet and they continued to run, their tiny enemies chattered relentlessly at their heels.
Donnie looked at the mutagen detector. "At this rate we should be..."
Donnie's words died instantly on his tongue and Raph's eyes widened on the scene.
Their living room—their home—was in shambles.
Chainsaws scampered, ripped and shred everything they had, crawling up from the walls and crannies in the ceiling... They tore through their game systems and belongings, took their food... eating everything like termites, still chattering to each other in that deafening noise.
"...Holy mackerel," Donnie murmured.