It felt like there was electricity running through Raphael's veins. He had never thought he would be out and about in the city on patrol with his brothers. He always assumed that all he would do is train and train until he became old like Splinter. But it turned out his father was right. There was a threat out there. One that they had to stop.
And it made Raphael feel alive.
He was so thrilled to be on the surface that he didn't even mind that Leo had fallen directly into his insufferable leader act. Maybe it was the fact that he finally had some direction behind him, but Leo laying out orders and directing them almost felt normal. Usually that thought would send shivers down Raph's spine, but tonight he didn't mind. He might actually get to fight someone tonight, and that's all that mattered.
"So does everyone have their comm pieces inside their masks?" Leo asked, pointing to the sides of his blue face covering.
"I want to make sure we stay in constant communication if we somehow get split up.""Reading you loud and clear, big bro," Mikey confirmed as he climbed up through the manhole. Turtles don't have ears. Well, ears like humans do. Their mutation had given them hearing as good as any normal person, but it took Don's inventive genius to come up with a way for them to talk remotely. Embedding little speakers in their headbands did wonders.
"So what's the plan, anyway?" Rapahel asked anxiously.
"We just gonna run around New York and hope we run into a few ninja?"Leo chuckled,
"Not quite.""No, we're going to divine the location of the immortal ninja using a seance," Don grumbled as he came to the surface. If Raph was Leo, he woulda hit him. Don was being a real pain about all this. Him and Leo argued often, but this was different. Might have been because of Father talking about magic and all that. Raph didn't know. All he knew was he woulda hit Don.
Leo, of course, didn't,
"No, Donatello. We're not going to divine anything. Al told me where she saw the Foot Clan before. We're just going to go to that building, find anything we can, and then see where we're at.""Real genius plan there," Raph slapped his brother on his shoulder.
"I can see why Splinter put you in charge.""Thanks, Raph," Leo looked at him sideways, rolling his eyes slightly.
"You have a better one?"The second turtle raised his hands in defense,
"Hey! I was serious. You need your joke programming fixed. Don, you can do that, right?""I can take a look at it," Donatello winked.
Leo grumbled as Raph nudged him playfully. He liked to annoy Leo. It was what he was best at. But he also knew when to pull back and let the eldest Turtle do what he needed to do. Donnie tended to not accept that he could ever be wrong, so he would often fight with Leo until his face was about as purple as the mask he now wore.
"Can we get on with it?" Leo asked impatiently.
"Yea, bros," Mikey jumped into the middle of them.
"I've got some Foot Clan butt to kick!"Raph chuckled at the youngest of the brothers. He may have been an...unorthodox fighter, but that often played into Mickey's hands during training session. He had an incredible ability to improvise and throw the more disciplined brothers off their game.
"Look," he motioned behind him,
"I even marked the occasion."By "marked", Mikey was being literal. He had tagged the wall with some green spray paint, depicting four facsimiles of turtles, all wearing the right colored masks. He was good. Probably another trait stemming from that creative streak.
"I like it," Leo looked at his brother's work approvingly.
"Let's get to work."**********
April followed close behind the Mouser as it moved out of the TCRI building and towards the streets of New York. The diagnostic pad she had in her hands made no sense. According to it, this Mouser and all its brothers had been activated inside the building. But that was impossible. The pilot program wasn't meant to start until next weekend, and otherwise the Mousers weren't authorized to be out and about.
Something was certainly up.
She slunk behind the robot, sure she was all but invisible to it. They were only meant to hunt their prey. Other lifeforms were nothing more than obstacles to be avoided.
It turned down an alleyway before finding itself by a manhole cover. Using its metal jaws, it lifted the cover off and went down below the city, freezing April in her tracks.
"Okay, this is not how I saw my night going," she grumbled and followed the machine downward.
**********
The rumble started low, like thunder in the distance. Alopex was the only one in the compound who could hear it. Sometimes having the hearing of a dog in the middle of the city paid off. Usually it was damn near deafening with the car horns and the sirens. But it was one hell of an early warning system, that's for sure.
She got out of bed and wandered to the front door. Next to it, Herman was asleep, probably dreaming of some battle he had never taken part in, but would regale her with stories about later. She was happy the militant was on her side, even if she found his grip on reality somewhat dubious at times.
Outside, Pete was probably sleeping as well. The pigeon tended to tucker himself out pretty quickly. How he was mutated Hob wasn't sure, but something clearly went wrong. He was the only mutant they knew of who wasn't all there upstairs. Still, he was sweet, and helped out a ton around their home.
The rumbling started to gain speed and volume, and before long even Herman started to stir, and he was a heavier sleeper than Mikey was.
"Whas that, private?" he grumbled to Alopex.
"Not sure," she shrugged.
"Sounds like a stampede."That's when the front wall of their makeshift home exploded in a shower of broken metal and splinters. Once she was able to look, she saw the massive wave of snapping metal jaws heading her way. She barely had time to react when Herman jumped to his feet and flipped the sides of his dumpster down, revealing a pair of machine guns that fired into the crowd of robots.
"Red alert! We are under attack!" he yelled out as he gunned down robot after robot.
Alopex did her part as well, darting towards robots that managed to get through the hail of gunfire. She used her speed to break the jaws of the robots before they could clamp down on her.
But there were dozens, possibly hundreds, more robots coming. She saw them climbing over the piles of junk in the yard, hungry for the mutants.
Suddenly, an explosion broke their lines, and Alopex turned to find Old Hob tossing another grenade into them,
"We have to move. They found us, and it's not gonna be safe here anymore."
Simple Unicycle,
Izurich,
Morden Man
