To Crack a Shell - ROTTMNT

1 - Mystic Hands

Leo's throat burns as his windpipe is cinched shut by his brother's merciless grip. "If this is it," he stutters, "I just want you to know that I finally understand..." his full weight presses on his jaw as he holds his hands out, "a-and I'm sorry."

His pulse pounds like a shark against a cage. Muscles quiver as if electrified, held back by a hair's breadth of faith that his words got through to his assailant.

Raph's grip doesn't shift. His uncovered eye cuts through Leo's. The hand at his side, coiled like a serpent ready to strike, never turns its spikes away from Leo's heart.

Through the fog building in his eyes, Leo glances once more at his captured brothers. He looks away for only an instant.

Raph's free hand whistles as it strikes.

Alien flesh meets bone, muscle, blood, and tissue.

The sounds writhe through Leo's ears. He isn't sure which sound is worse, the sai piercing his lung or his little brother's shriek.

His body seizes. His hands move as if controlled by a child with a fishing rod. He grasps at the tendril around his throat, then the fist pressed flush against his plastron. Warmth trickles down his chest and seeps behind his ribs, filling his breaths with boiling cinders.

Mikey's throat rattles with his screams. Beside him, Krang nearly lurches off its throne, its body clattering with raucous cackles. The turtle keeps screaming; it better fills his ears and drowns out the laughter.

Donnie is silent.

Every tendon under Raph's skin has rusted through. The things in his head are very pleased. Very pleased. The blood on his fingers, the stuttering pulse and rattling breath under his tendril... such as shame he twitched and made them miss the heart.

He has to let go. This is his brother.

He has to let go. There's still time.

Raph lowers Leo to the floor. Leo's legs respond like soggy bread while Raph pushes him down. His carapace presses into the ground and Leo finds himself in a hauntingly familiar position: helpless on the ground, his brother above him.

But this time it's different.

This time his brother didn't save him.

Instead of a protective embrace it's a life-threatening grip.

His vision tries to invert itself. Blood abandons his hands and feet. Scalding splinters turn end over end through his chest. Salt water soaks his mask.

For once Donnie can't believe what he's seeing. He can't believe Raph is on top of Leo, choking the life out of him. Leo's heels are slipping on the floor and his hands are still reaching for Raph. The smaller's tongue keeps pushing above his teeth as he tries to breathe.

He can't believe Raph extracts his sai out of Leo's right pectoral with no blood on the weapon. He can't believe Leo's hands fall limp or that his eyes roll back and close.

He can't believe Mikey could scream that loud.

Heat erupts through Mikey's body. His fingers wrap around his nunchucks so hard the wood creaks. The sound he lets through his throat rips itself from his heart into his teeth.

That thing on the throne is still laughing. He wants it to stop.

His skin glows with a fire he doesn't want to control. His hand breaks free of its bondage and hurls itself toward the laughing thing.

It stops laughing. The fire cleaves metal from metal. A red eye clatters into the abyss below, but it is not the true target. The true target, the thing that was laughing, staggers its fake body away from his fire.

He burns his body free. The thing that laughed tries to attack.

He moves. Fire strikes. Its left shoulder is now gone. It tries to move.

He moves faster. Fire takes its legs. Its remaining hand keeps it upright.

The thing that laughed is yelling now. It is trying to smother the fire again. It is afraid of the fire.

Rightly so. He will show why. He demonstrates the qualities of metal when given to fire.

The thing that laughed has no choice. It escapes its metal shell. It then turns on him. It says something. He doesn't care. It took two of his brothers.

The fire rages. He lets it burn. It tries to catch him by surprise and knocks one of his weapons away. It tries again with the other, but loses the limb. Its wound is burnt black.

He unfurls his remaining chain and strikes to ensure it cannot move.

He needs another chain. The fire agrees. Links forge in the bones of his arm and temper in the blood beneath his palm. He throws the fire's hand and pulls its chain taught around the thing that laughed.

His hands cross one over the other like open scissor blades, securing the thing that laughed. It looks him in the eye. It is afraid.

He pulls his hands apart until they are horizontal with the back of his carapace.

The thing that laughed took two brothers.

The chains rend it into two pieces.

He lifts his hands then throws them down, hurling a tidal wave through the chains. The chains sing and erupt across the twitching flesh it snared.

He starts screaming again. It is the fire of rage; hot, bright, and fatal.

The stink of ash remains in his echo. One of his brothers is still stuck in the twisted tree. Another is dead on the floor. A third stands silent on the bridge, watching him.

The chains itch. The fire flares. He feels them forge between his bones and gathers them to strike. They curl outward like the tail of a scorpion and lash toward his eldest brother, wrapping around the disgusting tendril arm. He pulls, hauling the brother within arm's reach of his weapon.

He is careful with his weapon as he scores its end into the mutated eye. Tears well in the uncovered one, reminding him to temper his fire.

This time he does not scream. He closes his eyes and reaches inward and outward. It is the fire of grief; wild, painful, and persistent.

He stops when a firm hand grasps his arm and a voice he knows calls his name.

"Mikey, that's enough!"

His eyes meet his brother's. "R-Raph?"

Raph manages a wavering smile, his face a bit singed but clean of alien infection.

Mikey lets go and remembers to cut down Donnie. Donnie barely braces himself and flops to the ground, then hurriedly shuffles to his feet. "Leo's still..." he mutters, his eyes never leaving the body on the bridge.

Raph moves to follow but is halted by a sudden pain in his skull. The infection is gone, yes, but it was never gentle on his body.

The remaining nunchuck in Mikey's hand slips out of his grip and clatters to the ground. Whatever power he summoned was gone for now. Like a fire, it left him charred. He collapses to his knees and curls down, saving his head from the floor with his elbows. His throat tenses and his body shakes with coughs.

"Now that..." wheezes Leo, held up by a smug but concerned Donnie, "That was some mystic hands."