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Overcrowded ER / outnumbered / “it’s all for nothing.”
Mikey and Don looked up at the feed of the whale-like ship's main cabin. It showed the target cruise ship front and center, just as the Garbageman planned.
He wanted the riches, but didn’t care about the worth of the lives on board, and that just wouldn’t do, the brothers couldn’t let it slide.
“We’ve got to turn this thing around, now!” Don hissed under his breath to Mikey.
“Somehow I think that’s going to be a lot harder than it sounds!” Mikey pointed out the guards that had already noticed them.
They were startled by clanking above them, looking up to see the Garbageman on a raised platform behind them. “Get this trash off my bridge!” he shouted, pointing at the pair of turtles as some of the guards began to close in.
There was no time to plan, just to fight, and the brothers broke apart to take on as many foes as they could handle. Despite being unarmed and outnumbered, luck seemed to be on their side for once as they managed to knock all of the incoming guards aside, incapacitating them in some way.
“You freaks!!! ” the Garbageman growled out from his perch. The clunky, spider-like mech he was attached to crawled down from the platform and onto the same level of the turtles as he glared angrily at them. “This time you won’t escape me!”
Both turtles took several steps back as he approached, and one of the metal claws over his shoulder powered up, shooting out to grab Don around the waist. Don shouted, feeling the claw tighten uncomfortably around his shell, like it didn’t fit quite right and was trying to fully close anyways.
He pushed against its grip, kicking his legs as Mikey shouted for him, and he looked over at the younger of the two, spotting the line of oxygen tanks behind him. “Don!”
“Mikey! The oxygen tanks!” he instructed as well as he could with the maniac using the claw to shake him around in the air.
Mikey spared a glance that way, then gave Don a thumbs-up. “Got it!” he ran over, grabbing one and running back toward his brother's captor. “Time to ventilate, crap-boy!”
And he would have made it if not for the one stray guard that had gotten up unnoticed and ran at him, full-force tackling him into the ground with a shout.
“Mikey!” Don tried to get a good grip on the shaft of the claw with his feet, but the angle wasn’t ideal, and they kept slipping off from the grime. “Stop! You’re going to-”
“I know full well what I’m doing!” Garbageman smiled, bringing Don close enough to see his spittle flying, but not close enough to reach him. “I’m putting all those pompous rich-folks six feet under, and making room for the next big thing.”
The other guards started getting up, helping the first to pin Mikey down. He struggled all he could, but they managed to bind his hands behind his shell, and his feet and knees together. “Let us go you dingy trash-maids!”
“Oh come on now.” Garbageman lifted Donny back into the air, away from anything he could use as leverage. “Just sit back and enjoy the show! It will be quite the spectacle !”
The two turtles were able to do nothing but helplessly watch as the tentacles of the trash-built machinery began to tear into the cruise ship.
It was all for nothing
“Stop!” Donny tried again. “What if there are children!”
“Not my problem.” Garbageman growled out. “They would have grown up to be snobby just like their parents, so I say good riddance.”
“But-” the claw tightened around Don’s waist, drawing his rebuttal short with a cry. Mikey squirmed from where he was being held on his knees.
“Hey!” He tried to bite the hands of nearby guards, but they just moved to gripping the top lip of his shell. “Leave him alone!”
“Or what?” Garbageman turned to him. “What can you even do about it?”
“I-” Mikey paused as the mechanical behemoth grew closer. “I can start recycling!” He pulled back a bit, then swung forward hard enough to headbutt Garbageman. “Starting with your trashy self!”
The man reeled back, slapping Mikey in the face. The younger turtle hissed, rubbing his cheek with his shoulder.
“Eeewww, I can feel all the bacteria!”
“Shut him up!” Garbageman ordered, turning and stomping away, Don still in tow, trying to get any wiggle-room possible. He was brought in front of the man again. “As for you-”
The other arm on the suit reached out, grabbing Don over the arms, pinning them to his torso as he squirmed more. “Hey!” he tried to figure out a way to get out, but he couldn’t reach anything, not even the joints on the claws that held him.
“I think I’ll start my mutant turtle research with you.” the Garbageman sneered. “But first, we gotta crack you open!”
“No!” Mikey cried out from behind them, and tried to say something else, but it was muffled as the guards gagged him.
At first, Don half-expected the Garbageman to use the claws, almost like a nutcracker (lovely imagery, brain, would you give me something more pleasant?) considering the way they tightened around him, forcing his breath out of his lungs with a wheeze.
But the man had other plans, and Donny felt himself be moved to the side for a moment as the clanking spider machine walked closer to one of the walls of the bridge.
Without much other warning, Donny was slammed against the wall as hard as the metal claws could move him, and his whole vision briefly cut out, along with most of his other senses. He considered he might be in pain, but it didn’t register for a solid few seconds.
He heard some muffled noises, then a thunk , and squinted open his eyes just slightly.
Everything was sideways. No… wait… he was sideways, lying on the floor.
Why was he lying on the floor? Why did he feel so warm?
No… wait… he was hot. Too hot, it felt like he was on fire. He tried to move (stop, drop and roll) but for some reason, even the slightest twitch seemed to make it worse, covering his field of blurry vision in spots. That wasn’t good.
It was also likely that the red he saw close to his body wasn't good either, and the metallic smell and taste only furthered that thought.
Then he thought about how tired he was. The briefest of intrusions claimed he needed to stay awake, but sleep seemed so inviting, like maybe it would put the fire out.
So he closed his eyes and allowed it.
~~~
Mikey felt frozen in place, the muffled shouts of his brother's name going quiet when Donny seemingly stopped moving, and his eyes closed.
nononoNO!
Mikey panicked, biting down hard on the cloth in his mouth as he revamped his thrashing, harder than before, with a more solid goal.
Make sure Donny is alive.
He has to be alive.
Mikey was no idiot, he knew how bad it would be, especially with how dirty this place was, if they stayed much longer. The cruise ship that was still being torn into seemed like the least of his worries, pushed to the bottom of his priority list.
The monster looming over his brother laughed, poking Don with one of those claws again. “That didn’t take much.”
He turned to look at Mikey with a grin that matched his heart.
Mikey wasn’t a particularly hot-headed guy, but at that moment he got a taste of what Raph felt all the time.
And it was excruciating.
Mikey screamed, the frayed rope holding him creaking with the strain of his relentless thrashing. The guards holding him flinched and took a step back.
Mistake number one.
Mikey rolled back on his shell, tucking his head to his shin as he used the momentum to bring his legs up to kick one of the guards in the jaw. The man stumbled back and Mikey heard the Garbageman roar. He crossed his ankles over each other and sat down, avoiding another guard jumping at his head, and snapping the binds around his legs at the same time.
The Garbageman came barreling over, trying to step on Mikey with one of the sharp spider legs rather than using those claws.
Mistake number two.
Mikey watched the pattern for just a moment, then slipped onto his side, twisting around so one leg ended up between his arms. He yanked, slicing the rope off, and managing to pull the leg out from under the Garbageman at the same time.
He stumbled, turning away to try to watch his machinery so he wouldn’t fall.
Mistake number three.
Mikey picked up the Oxygen tank that had been left on the floor from his capture and swung it as hard as he could at the head of the man that had hurt his brother.
The whole cabin was silenced by the loud, echoing Clang .
The guards still there fell into a frozen, stunned silence as Mikey lowered the bloodied tank and turned to glare at them, ripping the cloth out of his mouth.
“Get out.” he warned them, only once. They were just followers.
They complied, all running to exit the room as fast as possible, and Mikey dropped the tank, scanning the room for any more potential threats before running over to his brother.
“Donny!” he crouched by the other, patting him all over in a panic for a moment before remembering what he was taught, pressing a finger to his throat.
He felt a pulse, and it seemed to ease some of the anger and panic.
“Okay bro, we’ve gotta get out of here.” Mikey looked around again, spotting the monitor once more, the assault on the cruise ship having ceased when the cabin was abandoned. He watched it for a moment, before determining that it would most likely make it back to shore. It seemed the Garbageman's ship had started making holes above sea-level first, and none that were breaching yet.
Good, then it wasn’t his problem to deal with.
He checked Don over again, not liking the way he wasn’t responding to any touch. He knew he was probably in a lot of pain, but he was out like a light.
Mikey carefully picked him up, using some of the spare rope around the cabin to tie him to his shell, then moved swiftly through the rest of the ship. He made it back to the shell-sub, careful to avoid all the passing guards, trying to figure out why the ship had stopped.
He got Don into the sub, settling him down and buckling him in as he followed what Don had done before to start the engines, then he slowly climbed out of the sub, finding the gate control panel.
He reached back into the sub, finding the nearest loose heavy item, some rock that wasn’t supposed to be there, and he threw it at the panel, making it erupt into sparks.
The door began to open, and the water rushed in. Mikey shut the sub off from the onslaught, moving back into the cockpit. He still had a priority to handle.
With that, he started the sub up (with some difficulty) and steered it out of the whale-ship, and all the way back to the lair, seeking help for his hurt brother.
And once everything was said and done, he settled in a chair beside Don’s bed, and fell asleep to the sound of his breathing.