Renaissance

XIV

Heph's P.O.V

      "Pi, you said you wouldn't hurt them!" Leo's gravelly voice and the hateful grimace shot at the shuffling Hollow sent electricity through my body. Ignoring it, my head snapped over to stare Leo through. His expression faltered as soon as I set my eyes on him, meeting his blue ones and watching them break.

      "Never make deals with the undead. We aren't bound to your earthly rules." The sharp sounding sentence struck my ears from behind me and I could tell it made Leo's skin crawl from the way he fought against the Hollows holding him in place.

     I'm going to take the liberty of setting aside whatever Eterna is doing. For the sake of story-telling combined with the fact that all I had the capacity to focus on was me and Leonardo.

      In that moment, where the blue light shone from the hole in the floor onto both of our faces, I could see just how tired Leo was. I don't mean tired as in he lost a bit of sleep recently. I mean, his eyes were sunken and–the best way I can describe their colour is un-blue–his skin was cemetery grey and looked painful to sit in. My heart broke. I gasped. This was not the Leo I came to know.

      "Leo," I found myself mumbling, and the terrapin looked at me like I had saved his life.

      "Hephaestion." He only mouthed the words, but I heard him clear as day and nodded in acknowledgment. He exhaled shakily, his body trembling as he sat pressed forward by the Hollows with their bony hands gripped tight on his shoulders and arms.

      Meanwhile, I didn't hear a single thing Pi was on about. So, with newfound bravery I interrupted the villain monologuing. Which more people should do so they don't fucking die.

      "I want to know what you did to Leo. I know you're behind this so don't try to twist it."

      "What I did? I did nothing but help him realize his true potential. I did nothing other than help him...out of his shell." He gave a cold, crow-like chuckle that ran another set of shivers down my spine.

      "You're genuinely sick for saying that. I missed the funny." I hissed through clenched teeth, and his eyes somehow got more intense as he surged toward me. I didn't give him the pleasure of knowing him grabbing a handful of my hair hurt, I just stared right into those irksome white eyes and grit my teeth together. I heard Leo say my name in warning.

      "You want to know what I did? I made a deal with our terrapin friend. He wanted to be free of his prison, so I enlightened him. I did what he wanted." A quick look at Leo told me whether it was true. He bowed his head in shame, shaking it slowly.

      "What, exactly." I asked tightly, and Pi swirled around me with an odd amount of grace.

      "Let me make it crystal clear for you, hmm?" The next thing I know, I'm being forced up by my hair. Hissing through my teeth, I wobble to my feet and stumble in front of Leo; the terrapin below me won't even meet my eyes and I feel sick standing over him.

      "Leonardo wanted to die." Leo seems to even wince painfully at the statement, joining my own clenched hands bound together by some sort of heat.

      I forget, Pi has magic. Telepathy and all that. Asshole.

      "So I made a deal with him. I take away his prison, and he serves me." Looking around, I find that the other Hollows are waiting for something. All are standing eerily quiet, staring through me and making my own bones feel cold. I wonder if these other Hollows used to be people too.

       Pi rests his bony hand on my shoulder and by this time I'm fairly used to the sensation of his disgustingly cold hands.
      "My job is to liberate poor souls such as his. I give them a higher purpose, something meaningful for them to dwell on and eventually consume their every thought like my dear friends here." I begin to feel more and more sick as I stare down at Leo's shivering form, trying to keep my breathing under control but to no avail.

      This is too much. I know it is, and yet I have to do something. I have to get Leo and Eterna out of here. My thoughts immediately go to my phone. I think I can feel it in my back pocket! There will be time to celebrate later, and in that moment all I could think about was trying to get Pi to move out from behind me.

      "Show me then." I gulped, quelling the new surplus of fear and anxiety welling in the pit of my stomach. Pi's hands scritched off my shoulder, sending yet more unpleasant shivers down my back. His laugh made my ears ache and I wanted to punch him as he waved the Hollows holding Leo down away.

      His hands stayed in place, held by a red ring of light that I figured was also around my wrists. I can work around that. Leo looked up at me in what I knew as betrayal, grunting as Pi yanked him to his feet in front of me.

      Pi's eyes gained that horrid fluorescence that makes me go absolutely feral, and Leo doubled over in pain; his body contouring before my eyes.

      Though Pi didn't get a chance to finish the transformation. I let out a battle cry, ramming into Pi at full speed and knocking him over and away from Leo.

      Almost simultaneously, the heat around my hands disappeared, letting me get up freely. For good measure, I punched Pi in the face–which I'm pretty sure only hurt my hand.

      "Eterna! Call Donnie, have him track us!"

      "On it!" She screeched this from the dark, and two Hollows set off after her. Knowing Eterna, and her being the number one best champion at hide and go seek, I was positive she would be fine.

      "You're more of a leader than me," Leo sidled up next to me, grabbing two kunai knives from his belt and passed one to me. Pi and his Hollows were surrounding us, the crackle of their bones still deeply unsettling me.

(Not sure why but I'm imagining the Beastars intro over this and it's kinda good. Anyway, resume.)

      "I'm quick on my feet if I ignore the fact I might die." I shrugged softly, looking from each Hollow and wondering how on Gaia's good green earth are we gonna get out of this one. Leo didn't seem to have a plan either from the looks of it.

      "Hey so, can we start over? I wasn't myself when we met or like, for all of it." I noticed we were basically back to back at this point, and I squealed internally at his offer. Nevertheless, I stayed on topic. 

      "Would love to but now is really not the time, Leo!" My voice stretched as a Hollow lunged for my legs, swiping the kunai at them to keep them away.

      "Right! What's the plan?" He asked, barely audible over the violent, hungry snarl of the Hollows.

      "I honestly didn't think I would get this far!" I squealed out as yet another Hollow lunged for me and I swear I felt Leo mentally facepalm at me.

      I think our only hope is to wait for Eterna and the rest of the turtles. So yeah, we're screwed.

——//
I cringed at the shell pun. However, I'm not sorry.