The Other Side of the City--Chapter 153

Medusa slithered out of her cage, her jaw, now distinct from her body, already open.  Black eyes, animalistic and filled with rage, looked about, and fell upon Bebop.  With a scream that sounded nothing like her, she darted toward the warthog.  Bebop stopped where he was in engaged with Raph and let out a high pitched scream before he started running in the opposite direction.

“Huh?” Raph turned around to see Medusa coming at him. He pressed himself against the wall to let her go by, “That was Medusa?  What happened to her?”

Bebop let out another scream as he scrambled for the stairs.  He didn’t make it before the boa constrictor caught up with him, wrapping her body around him and opening her mouth to display the full length of the two giant fangs on either side of it.  Bebop screamed a third time when arcs of lightning began to spark between each of her two only dentia.

“She was mutated,” Leatherhead said, now out of his confines, he headed toward Bradford and Mikey.

“Aww, ‘Duse,” Aries bahhed, stopping his charge as Rocksteady made a u-turn toward Bebop.

“I coming, comrade!” Rocksteady called.

“She’s gonna turn me into bacon!” Bebop cried. “And eat me extra crispy!”

The Shredder rolled his shoulders, his eye on Splinter.  “The raccoon was right,” he said.

“So I’ve been told,” Splinter replied.

“I will be sure to make you watch, then,” Shredder said, bringing his arms to ichimonji, “as I cut her into tiny pieces and feed her to the piranha.”

As he was finishing his words, Splinter felt the familiar engagement of Shredder’s energy with his own, signifying the start of the fight.

Splinter and Shredder leapt at each other, the world around them seeming to slow down to accommodate them.  The rat brought his hand up to Shredder’s neck, the leader of the Foot Clan blocked it.  Splinter immediately followed with another, then another, both blocked the same ease that they were given.  Shredder dropped his arm, aiming a punch at Splinter’s ribcage.  The rat used his tail to strike it away, only glancing at the gauntlet that held the Shredder’s metal blades within them.  Shredder took a step back, like dancing, and twirled with a round house kick.  Splinter ducked, brought his arm up to block the return kick, redirecting Shredder’s leg to the ground.  The two separated from each other, eyes never moving from his opponent’s.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Yoshi,” Shredder said.  “I will destroy you, and your turtles, just like I destroyed you before.”

A coal of anger began to smolder in Splinter’s breast.  Mentally, he tried to fan it out.  “You cannot destroy us,” he countered.  “Even in your destruction, you were thwarted.”  Each time, the Universe had showed its hand, and even in their darkest times, it turned out in Splinter’s favor.

“By her,” Shredder replied.  “But not this time.”

Donnie turned from the mesmerizing moves of his sensei, to see Stockman still laying to the side, out like a light, and The Phoenix lay near Splinter and Shredder in a swaying lump.  Using his bo staff as a vaulting pole, he jumped up to a higher level, joining Leo and Raph.  “I don’t see Karai,” he noted as he looked around wildly at the terrarium room filled with mutants of various kinds.  Several of the crustacean Shredders headed toward them.

“She’s no longer in here,” Rockwell swung down from the level below.  “They took her to a different room after she changed back into a human.”

“She’s human again?” Leo’s face broke out in a huge smile.  It disappeared almost immediately as a shrimp sailed in the air, thrown by a lobster mutant, toward his head.  Donnie took his bo staff and batted it like a baseball, where it went sailing across the ledge, into the fan below.

“Ouch,” Raph muttered.

“She was the last time we saw her,” Rockwell replied. 

“Where is she?” Leo demanded.  “We have to help her!”

“We have to get out of here,” Slash ran up to them.  “We can’t hold back all these mutants, and Medusa has the others distracted.”

Rocksteady and Fishface were at the huge boa constrictor, fighting to keep her occupied so she didn’t eat Bebop.  She has rehanged her jaw, though her two fangs still arched with electric blue jolts, her head darting at whatever came too close to her.  Tiger Claw crawled from the lower level, growling loudly.  The snake turned her head toward him, but did not let the warthog go.

Again, Splinter and Shredder came for each other, meeting half way as if their fight were choreographed.  Splinter twirled in the air, his tail coming down on Shredder’s shoulder like a heavy rope.  Shredder dropped to the ground in a crouch, the weight of the tail forcing him down.  He grabbed the segmented appendage with his opposite hand, pulling hard, bringing Splinter to the floor on his back with a thud.  He jumped up, a fist aimed for the rat’s muzzle, but Splinter rolled away, getting back to his feet.

“She can barely help herself,” Shredder pointed to the healer, who was trying, unsuccessfully to stand up.  “There is no way she can help you, or anyone else, again.”

“I’ll help you meet your maker!” she cried.  With a swiftness that surprised Splinter, she threw something in Shredder’s direction.  It was a lever off of the control panel, and she tossed it as one would a throwing knife. 

Shredder batted it away as if it were nothing, but in doing so, he turned his body ever so slightly.  Splinter, seeing his opening, rushed in, striking his ribcage with three quick, successive blows of his fists.  Shredder doubled over, bringing his arm up as he did, blocking a fourth strike.

Mikey bounced about the terrarium room like a jumping bean, Rahzar hot on his heels.  He wove through freed mutants, sentient and not, but the ninja dog kept gaining on him.   The orange masked turtle caught sight of Leatherhead in his periphery, and changed direction to bound toward him. 

Leatherhead held his arms out, as if to receive Mikey in a hug, despite the fact that Rahzar was about to grab him.  As soon as the turtle was in his arms, he twirled, his mighty tail flailing like a thousand pound whip.  It caught Rahzar in the gut, sending him flying across the level, so that he landed near Medusa.

That caught the snake’s attention enough, that she unwound from Bebop and darted toward the dog.  He yipped and jumped out of the way, causing Medusa to land on the control platform.

Splinter smelled her before he heard her splat, like a rope being dropped in a loop.  The hair on back, from the base of his spine to the tip of his tail stood straight up as the sound of the hiss that emanated from the young woman.  Shredder struck him in the shoulder, but he was able to block a strike to the face, before they parted enough that both of them looked at the feral mutant now in their midst. 

She’d fallen on the other side of Phoenix, so the three of them were boxed in by the railing that kept the operator of the control panel from falling into the huge cooling fan.  The little woman took a step back, stumbling, as she brought her hands to her mouth.  “Oh Curly Que,” she moaned, her voice filled love.  “My poor baby.”  Then she turned to Shredder and Splinter, her dark green eyes blazing on the rat.  “You!” she screeched, pointing at him with a thin finger.  “You stole my daughter from me!  Because of you, she’s a serpent!  My beautiful Karai!”

“What?” Splinter asked, confusion clouding his features. 

“Hhn?” Shredder asked at the same.  Then, with a smile in his voice, he said, “You see?  She isn’t helping anyone.”

Dreadful understanding stroked Splinter’s brow and his heart sank, landing the coals of burning rage that he’d tried to suffocate.

Phoenix flew at him, screaming like a banshee, but in her physical state, she didn’t get far.

Medusa, on the other hand, traversed the landing in one jump, landing just behind her mother.  Both Splinter and Shredder turned to avoid her, but the snake looped, scooping all three of them in her coils, before she began to squeeze.

Phoenix was still screaming, wordless and crazed.  It didn’t seem to be a scream of pain, or a scream of anguish, but just her voice using itself because it could.  Splinter felt his breath slowly being clasped out of him, his arms trapped against his sides, as were Shredder’s beside him.  Shredder strained his head, trying to free his arms, when he was unable to do so, Splinter heard the scrape of metal on metal as he gauntlet blades slid out.

Phoenix’s scream became one that was plainly from physical agony.  She threw her head back, her long strawberry blond hair falling behind her, the tendons in her neck so clear that the skin that covered them barely hid them from sight.

Medusa, too, screamed, only the sound was so high pitched, Splinter wasn’t sure the humans trapped with him heard it.  He pressed his ears to his head, his eyes squinting of their own accord, as the snake uncoiled, releasing them.

“Sensei,” Leo yelled.  “We have to go now!”

Splinter looked up at him.   The Mutanimals, Arocs, Aries, and the rest of his sons had all gathered in a group, preparing to battle a large crowd of crustacean Shredder mutants that approached them.  When her still screaming, he scooped the little healer who lay in a heap on the floor, and leapt up from the landing toward the exit.

With only Shredder left, Medusa finally stopped her wail, and turned her black eyes on him.  Opening her mouth, electricity arced between her teeth.  Shredder steadied his feet to defend himself as she struck.

The turtles and their allies made it to the exit unmolested, Medusa continuing her unconscious distraction as Shredder’s minions all clamored down to the control panel to try to help him.  Once outside, they took the roof tops, leaping and jumping until they were far enough away that they felt they could rest.

Holding Phoenix to his chest, he felt liquid seep through his fur on his arm.  Looking down, in the dim light of the night, he could see she was bleeding.

“We shouldn’t have left her,” Aries said, collapsing on the rooftop.  “We should have taken her, too.”

“Medusa saved our lives,” Leatherhead said.  “We couldn’t have held everyone back without her.”

“We’ll get her back,” Michelangelo said softly, putting a hand on the ram’s shoulder.  “We’ll figure out how to fix her, and help you get her back.”

Splinter’s breast filled with pride at his youngest son.  A man who had been an enemy only a week or two before, now was not only an ally, but friend enough that Michelangelo would promise something so important.  And he knew that his son meant every word of it, even if he had no idea at the moment how to implement them.

“Who’s bleeding so heavily?” Arcos asked, his muzzle in the air, sniffing.

Splinter looked down and realized the smell was coming from him.  Only he wasn’t the one bleeding. 

“Shredder must have speared her,” Leo said, coming toward his sensei.

Donnie approached with an outstretched hand, placing it on Phoenix’s forehead.  “She’s so cold, Sensei.”

“We need to keep moving,” Slash interrupted.   “They’ll come after us soon.  We need to split up, regroup.”

“We need to get her back to the lair,” Donnie said.  “She shouldn’t be this cold, Sensei.”

“You’re not taking her anywhere,” Aries said, standing up.  “She’s coming home with us.”

“So she can what?” Leo asked, standing next to Splinter.  “Bleed to death?”

“She isn’t bleeding to death,” Arcos replied, his voice low.

“I don’t think she can bleed to death,” Aries added.

“You wanna test that out?” Raph asked, stretch his fingers in front of him. 

“She’s safe with them,” Leatherhead said.  “They will take excellent care of her.”

“They don’t need to take good care of her!” Aries’ voice was high, his eyes wide.  He took a step toward Splinter.

All four turtles stood in front of him, and almost reflexively, he held the bleeding human woman closer to his chest.

“You come with us,” Mikey said, the only one not looking as if he was about to immediately draw his weapon.  “We’re not kidnapping her.”

“You’re inviting them home with us?” Raph turned to the orange-masked turtle in disbelief.  “Seriously?”

“We need to move,” Leo ordered, looking to Slash, who nodded.

Mikey broke ranks, flying into Leatherhead’s arms.  The huge mutant lowered his head to fully embrace the turtle before letting him go, and following the rest of the Mutanimals into the night.

“Come,” Splinter said, turning toward the direction of the Lair.  “We’ll heal her wounds,” he said.  “And we will heal yours, too.”