Chapter Text
It strikes before anyone even realizes it can strike. How could anyone have guessed that someone booby-trapped the doorway to an abandoned mystic pizza place? Certainly not Donnie or Mikey.
They find themselves hanging upside down by their ankles, each caught in a snare looped several times around one leg and held in place with rings of barbed wire. Mikey groans and his hands cradle around his head, and Donnie is sure his little brother smacked his skull against the concrete ground when they were pulled off their feet. Donnie isn’t doing much better. His battleshell protected him from hurting himself when they were caught, but now the top strap of his battleshell is loose and causing the whole thing to pull against his delicate shell underneath. The wire in the snare tugs at his skin and makes blood welt out, dripping down- er, up his legs. He is decidedly… uncomfortable.
A drop of blood hits Donnie’s cheek, and it snaps him out of his head. They’re a few meters in the air; a fall distance that's bound to hurt them if they cut their snares. Both of their legs are likely injured, Donnie notes, which takes any manoeuvres out of the question. Letting go of the idea of falling and hoping he lands like a cat, Donnie releases the other latch of his battleshell and listens to it clang against the concrete. The relief to his softshell is immediate. Blood drips onto his cheek again, and he lifts a hand to wipe it off before it gets in his eyes.
“You good, Don?” Mikey gets his attention. “My head feels like… cotton?”
“That’s because you hit it.”
“Huh. Yeah I guess.”
“Angelo, you are not the most critical of thinkers.” Donnie blinks and rubs his eyes to clear the fog from his head. He taps at the screen on his arm and sends out a distress signal. “I’ve let the others know we’re in trouble.”
“Hm. So now we just have to - wait for it,” Mikey snickers, “ Hang tight? ”
Donnie shoots Mikey a side eyed glare and scoffs. “Please don’t turn into Leo, the last thing I need is another one of him running around.”
Mikey grins wide and the smile is contagious. They hang out, as Mikey jokingly put it, for a few minutes and talk about anything there is to talk about. The subject dances around the snares caught around their legs slowly drawing out whatever blood hasn’t yet rushed to their heads. They both have headaches and sore necks and painfully swelling ankles. Mikey seems to be doing alright with his head injury, and Donnie safely rules out a concussion.
“Hey Don?”
“Hm?”
“What’s so special about a pizza place that needs booby-traps?”
Donnie lifts his head from it’s slack, dangling position. Mikey's right, God. Why didn’t Donnie think of that beforehand? Who set these traps?
It’s almost like someone was waiting for him to think it, because the moment he does, two blades fly out from around the side of a nearby building and slice the snares free from their ankles. It catches both Donnie and Mikey off guard, and neither of them prepare for the upcoming fall. Mikey lands flat on his shell, rolling off the damage like it’s nothing. He lands on his knees and avoids putting any sort of pressure on his injured ankle that still has the barbed wire embedded in the skin.
In an unlucky move, Donnie doesn’t land on his entire shell. The top ridge of his carapace hits the ground first, squishing to conform to the concrete. His neck and shoulders bend like a rag doll, causing him to roll back onto his neck and flip sideways onto his left shoulder, scraping along concrete the whole way. He rolls, almost bounces, off that shoulder and lands square on his plastron. His neck whips forward and back too quickly, and lands un-moving on the ground.
“Donnie!” Mikey crawls over and freezes when he grabs his brother by both shoulders. His second oldest brothers eyes are closed in a not-so-peaceful way. The grimace on his face is an indication of his pain, and Mikey can’t seem to look away. He lifts his brother off the ground by the shoulders, intending to move him to safety, but stops abruptly when his brother groans loud and low. He’s beyond pain, agony even, and Mikey can’t blame him for the reaction because he sees the way his neck moves. It’s difficult to describe, Mikey thinks, but it’s distinctly wrong. Very very wrong. It’s hard to tell if it’s too floppy or too stiff, but it’s wrong.
He’s frozen once more, leaning over his brother in shock, and doesn’t notice the large figure darting from around the side of the beat-down warehouse next to them. He doesn’t notice until whips wrap around his midsection and yank him off the other turtle, taking his breath out of his throat and smashing him against a wall at the end of the alleyway.
This time it’s Mikey's turn to be in agony when he slams into the brick with enough force to send his left hip jutting into his shell at an angle its not supposed to. Retracting into his shell is an odd sensation to describe to someone who doesn’t have a shell, but it feels like clicking. Clicking together like Lego bricks, or one of those springy toys with the buttons that make them pop. But this feels like a paper jam. Forcing two magnets together, stretching a rubber band too far, pushing an upside down USB into a computer. This time, it’s Mikey who looks wrong.
He blacks out before he hits the ground.