lucetilogs | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who:

thesevencodes
What: Missing Mikey
When: Shortly after Mike disappears
Where: In and around C6
Summary: Mike is gone. Time for the remaining Turtles to close ranks, angst communally, and hate all outsiders.
Rating: PG-13, at least

Don climbs the stairs to the roof slowly. As he expected, Raph is still there, looking over the village as twilight gathers. He's been there all day, watching the horizon like a lonely wife on a widow's-walk. Like Michelangelo will appear out there in the blue, and come back to them.

He won't. Don feels it. Last time Mike was only kidnapped, taken to another part of this damned prison-world, but this time he's gone. Solitary vigil won't do them any good now. They need to be together, to take stock, to figure out how they're going to get through this.

"Raph. Come inside."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Raph retreats into himself again, lost in the same cycle of thoughts as before. He stares at the tiled floor, wringing his bandaged hands with a hollow expression, but pain apparent in his eyes.

It's still not enough. It'll never be enough.

Even Don can't pull them through this time.

"What can you do with this electricity?"

A list too long to speak unscrolls in his head. What can't he do with electricity? His hands itch to be of service. To create, rather than to merely fix what is broken. But while he waits for his marching orders, he dispatches one of them to still Raph's own nervous fingers.

"Name it."

"The barrier is an energy field." For now, Leonardo is in his element, and it takes away some of the pain. "We need to find a way to disrupt it or take it down. If there's electricity inside the village now..."

He stops suddenly, as though realizing something, then takes several measured paces along the bathroom wall. "The Malnosso have to be aware of your abilities, Don. At least to an extent. They wouldn't give us anything that they think could jeopardize their hold on us." He shakes his head, a bite of fury in his words. "Taking away Mikey might have been an insurance move. They wanted to break us enough that we wouldn't fight back."

He takes a minute of silence. "What do you need in order to take it down?"

They wanted to break us enough that we wouldn't fight back.

Like the trigger of a gun, his brother's words snap something inside of him, and for the second time that day, he's burning from the inside out.

He shoves Don away, bolting upright with a terrifying snarl. Red clouds his vision, every inch of him pulsing with raw, agonizing rage.

"I'm gonna kill 'em. I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL THEM ALL!"

Don stands reflexively, when Raph pushes him away.

"I'm gonna kill 'em. I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL THEM ALL!"

"Raph." Leo may have the Leader Voice, but Don has the Voice of Reason. "They're wrong. If they think splitting us up will break us, then they clearly don't know anything about us at all."

He turns to Leo. "And I seriously doubt my abilities are even on their radar. Compared to what other people here can do..." He shakes his head. "But as for disrupting the barrier - if we had access to the power source, then all I would need is my bare hands and five minutes. But since we don't, I'll need to create an energy surge powerful enough to knock out their field. Either a really big generator..." He pauses thoughtfully.

"... Or the equivalent of a lightning rod."

Oh yes. He would definitely enjoy using the Malnosso's own energy source against them.

Leo watches Raph tiredly, unable to render the same rage as his brother effortlessly finds. "Don's right. They're fighting dirty, Raph. Nothing would make them happier than to see us broken."

Then Donatello starts talking again, and Leo's focus redirects. He disagrees with the first statement; there are people in Luceti who can do amazing things, but only a few seem to be exceptionally gifted where intelligence is concerned. In that case, why take Mikey instead of Don? Too many loopholes. Too much conjecture. "A lightning rod?"

Raph can only stand there, blinded by the red haze; teeth grit, fists tight. Every part of him aches for action. No more sitting around. No more talking. He's tired of this bullshit - all these plans without an end or means. They mean nothing. Just air.

Every muscle in his body is stiff as a board. If there was room in the tiny bathroom, he'd be pacing. But instead, he just stands there with his jaw clenched and his heart pounding in his ears.

It's the same old story. Trapped. A prison with no air, no walls, and nothing to fight.

He can feel it slowly crushing his bones.

"A lightning rod?"

"It's an energy field, Leo. It relies on being dispersed. But if I had an attractor, I could draw all the energy to a single point. It would overload the barrier and destroy it... or at least create a hole we could escape through."

The theory explained, he casts a worried glance at Raph. They need to give him an outlet, soon, before his own energy concentrates and explodes on the attractor of his emotions.

He moves to the door.

"Do we really need to discuss this in a bathroom? Let's go somewhere where we can do something."

It makes sense. Leonardo won't pretend that he understands every detail - hell if he does - but the basic mechanics aren't out of his grasp. More importantly, Don thinks he can do it. It's the most hope they've had so far.

He shares the concern towards Raphael; the bathroom is suddenly too choking, too small and smelling like faint traces of their blood. He gives a slight nod of approval as soon as Donatello makes the decision.

He moves to follow, but gives a soft brush of his hand against Raphael's arm on the way out. Restless electricity sparks against his skin. He passes, wordless, gentle, and using enough of the reassurance he's pooled that Leonardo isn't sure how much left there is for himself.

Raph's eyes connect with his brother's at the touch, then dart dangerously around the room again. Even in the wider living room, he moves with the air of a caged animal, pacing along the breadth of it the moment he reaches a larger enclosure.

For three months he's been a puppet, a lab rat, a toy. But his spirit is too big, to fierce, to volatile to be dampened. It only builds and expands, pressuring the foundation.

As his brothers talk, he'll continue to pace, his mind full of the sound of breaking bones.

They'll regret the day they messed with his family.

Don walks to the far end of the living room, and opens a window. The weather is getting warm, and it will be good to have some air in the apartment.

"What do you want to do?" he asks again. "I'm sure you have more of a plan than 'walk up the barrier and try to disrupt it'."

Leonardo closes his eyes and tries to think.

"There's no telling what's on the other side." They've been over this, if briefly. "We're talking about a society advanced enough to create a prison where they can monitor almost every aspect of our lives. Even if we were to break through...

"No." Leo shakes his head firmly. "We don't have enough information to even imagine getting home yet. We need to take things one step at a time."

He turns his head from one brother to the next. "Right now, our only priority is the barrier. If we can disrupt it, that's one victory. We note it and we use it to move on to the next."

Raph continues pacing, back and fourth, and tries not to think about suffocation. He has no ideas, no plans, no thoughts besides the faceless screams of the people who dared to challenge them.

Don and Leo can make the plans, and when it's time, he'll be there to draw the blood.

"That's not going to work, Leo." He moves away from the window, hoping Raph's pacing might carry him to the now-empty place there. "We don't get a practice run for this. It'll be hard enough to do it once - and like you said, the Malnosso are watching. There's no way they'll let us do this twice."

He moves to the front door, laces his fingers behind his head, turns back to the room. "We need our whole plan laid out from the beginning. It has to go perfectly, because we only get one chance." He looks at Leo. Looks at Raph, even if Raph won't look back at him. "It's home or bust, guys."

Leo turns his head away. Donatello makes excellent points: if they screw this up, they don't get a second chance. They don't get to pull back and regroup. A part of him knows that Don is right.

But Don is also overestimating him. Leonardo can't trust himself to pull them through with no idea of who the Malnosso are, what's on the other side, what to do once they've crossed over. There are far too many things that they don't even begin to comprehend.

"That's impossible." It's harder to admit out loud. "We can't make any sort of plan without knowing everything - we know nothing. This isn't information that we're capable of going out and gathering ourselves without taking risks."

Leo paces aimlessly, realizes that he's going in the direction of Mikey's room, and veers sharply to the unoccupied window. Two palms rest on either side as he stares through the glass. "But you're right. We need to find a way to keep this beneath their radar."

"Impossible." That's the only thing he hears, and he knows it's true. They're flying blinder than they ever have. This is nothing like the Shredder. This is nothing like the Tricereton prison.

Another wave of hopelessness washes over him, moving through his spine. But it instantly translates to anger, burning a fire in his gut.

He finds his fist buried in the wall again.

"There's nothin'! Nothin' we can do but call those cowards out and tear their fuckin' heads off!"

"It's circular." Don paces in Raph's wake. "We can't make plans without getting information, and we can't get information without jeopardizing our plans."

Then Raph explodes, and he's pulling back from the spray of plaster.

"There's nothin'! Nothin' we can do but call those cowards out and tear their fuckin' heads off!"

Don sighs. For now, what he can do is pull Raph's fist from the wall, inspect the bandages, make sure he didn't split his knuckles again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only