[Raph isn't wrong, at least; it does stink down here, in a different way than usual. They've gotten pretty used to the relative cleanliness of the abandoned subway, and being back down in the darkest, most rotted, algae-encrusted pits of the sewer system is not helping things at all.
The noise of effort and pain has Donnie back over to his brother's side, metal arms emerging from his battle shell to act as additional poles and stabilizing limbs as he reaches out to brace his brother. The climb up the debris is...slow. Even if it was the most stable pathway, that doesn't mean much when you have a few hundred pounds of injured mutant snapping turtle trying to haul himself up it, ninja-grace notwithstanding, busted ribs in danger of just floating around inside his shell at the first slip and tumble back down the pile.
They make it up somehow, anyway.
Donatello hovers near his big brother, a hand near his shoulder even as he checks his wrist computer obsessively to see if he can connect to his equipment at home. Maybe if he can get a signal through, he can get his spare battle shells to attach to his brothers and home in on him! ...potentially running them into a hundred walls on their way here and killing them gruesomely. Okay. Maybe a different plan.] Auuugh, don't repeat this but I wish Leo was here with us. [Stupid...perfect plan bastard twin.]
[ Safe to say, Raph hates this. The slow-going. The needing Donnie's help to even manage that. The aches and pains that are gonna keep him off his game.
What if something else happens? What if Donnie needs him and he's too slow to react? There's no guarantees what happens out here, only what probably happens once they make it home. Classic turtle's lament, that.
He's starting to get the feeling that neither of them actually have any real idea what to do, which means that he needs to double down on acting like he does have one. Keep being stubborn, keep pushing. Just until he can make a safe responsibility handoff to Leo or Mikey or Pops or-- heck, maybe April, you never know when April's gonna swoop in like a boss. ]
Sure. Long as you don't tell him I agreed. [ Leo's ego and confidence must be tended to with highly specific methods. Like a finnicky plant, or some kinda exotic pet fish. ] Two minute break. Gonna try a ninpo thing.
[ See, he is so responsible. That's like resting but also working. Raph figures there's no shot he can just be like "hey fam here we are exactly come get us," but maybe there's a way to put "so things are not going good" into it? Gotta be an option, right? There's connection. ]
All else fails, maybe Raph, uh. Raph just punches out ceilings until we get sub-surface?
[Donnie will also try a technology thing while Raph tries the Ninpo thing, but he looks up when Raph mentions punching out a ceiling.] No ceiling punching. Multiple floors gave way just by us stepping on them; you punching the ceiling could bring the entire tunnel down on us. We'd be deader than dead.
[ Booooooo, ceiling punches shot down unfairly and unjustly for safety hazard reasons. Oh, wait. Those are fair and just reasons. Fine. ]
Draxum should've mutated us with sonar or somethin'. Supersoldier ninja turtles put on hold by bad floors. [ This is all Barry's fault actually. Every single thing that's ever happened ever. ] Waste of... waste of Raph's whole skill set.
[ NTS. Evolve sonar to detect bad floors and ceilings to punch immediately after this. There's probably a YouTube tutorial for that. ]
I don't think I'm gettin' our location out to anybody.
[ Enough bad vibes to get their ears perked up, maybe? He doesn't wanna say it's a sure thing. Sometimes it's hard to tell with ninpo, weirdly enough. But this sure wasn't a whole mindmeld, Raph can tell that much. ]
[Talk about someone being a waste! Tech genius bro who can make theoretically anything out of thin air provided he knows how to build it can't do shit because there's too much material between him and a data tower to get a signal.
The sonar is a great idea. Too bad neither of them can use it.]
We'll file an official complaint in triplicate the second we get back home. [Ha! Funny joke because if they even get back home, the first thing they're doing is getting Raph an x-ray and Donnie a tranquilizer. THEN complaints. Triplicate.
The sonar gives him an idea, though. He flicks his goggles back down and turns on the thermal vision.] Raph, can you hear any running water?
[ Raph will allow it. The joke. It's worth the chuckle. Triplicate????? What is he, an accountant? Absolutely not.
He's on that shonen jump shit. ]
Uhhhhh. [ Great question. Thing about growing up in the sewers is, you get really used to tuning out that sort of background noise. If you're not talking deadly whirlpool or lazy river gone horribly, horribly wrong, it's not usually a huge issue.
Where's Donnie going with this? Who knows. Raph's gonna try to trust the process and get his listen on. ] Yeah. From down that way, I think?
[ He helpfully nods even though Donnie might not be looking at him specifically in the moment. ]
[Raph hearing still superior hearing; Donnie turns and stalks over closer to the wall as if he had been looking when Raph gestured (leftover from that mind meld? he is not aware and would have no idea anyhow). Touches wall. Runs hands over wall like a weirdo.]
...yeah. It's colder. [As if that's going to make any sense. Donnie looks up like he's following the flight path of a mosquito, pacing across the small tunnel, around Raph and the rubble and only barely managing not to stub a toe on a chunk of old, moldy brick.] Running water's going to be colder than ambient temperatures. And running water has to be running from somewhere. We can use temperature gauging to both avoid being drowned, and to follow it 'upstream,' so to speak. Link back up with the main tunnels.
[ Hmmm. Sounds like a lot of smart guy stuff that's way above Raph's understanding pay grade. But in a good way. Sensible way.
Temperature gauging. Go off, king, absolutely. ]
If I had to fall through the floor and get stuck down here with somebody, Donnie, I'm glad it's you. [ Big brain. Brain and brawn alliance right here. ] 'cause Raph wouldn't have thought about the water stuff if you gave him about a billion years.
[ And probably no one else would have. Well. Maybe before the billion years, one of the others would've thought about it. But Raph? Nah. He'd have gone ahead and punched his way through, and poetically also wound up getting a rib punched through a lung or something. ]
[Busy sciencing and calculating and cannot properly string together appreciative sentences, but still wants big brother to know his praise is heard and coveted and beloved, so takes a quick detour in examining the walls to grab his brother's face in his hands and give those big jowls some squeezes and scale scratches. You are adored. Donnie is working and will be back later to do this more once he's done bye]
[ GOOD GRADE IN PRAISING BROTHER ACHIEVED. Raph will proudly accept his scritches for the gift that they are. ]
Yeah, yeah, shuttin' up for a minute, Doctor Science.
[ This counts as a free breather, anyway. Probably good to take those where they can. Getting home might be a long haul and they'll probably be annoying each other before then. ]
[Donnie ends up pacing quite a ways away from his big brother, and though the darkness mostly swallows him, the purple glow of his wrist computer never completely disappears from Raphael's view.
After a few moments Donatello returns, the eerie red-blue glow of his goggles lenses preceding his arrival.] I've made a rough map of where I think the water is flowing to and from, [is how he announces himself, crouching next to Raphael and looking over him with undisguised concern. He's in work mode, but worried-about-brother mode has not yet been disabled. Which is difficult, considering he's going to have to ask him to some hard things.] Now it's just a matter of us getting up and over. Through who knows how many feet of concrete and brick.
[ The staying in range is something that can be so important, for Raph specifically. It's most reassuring just having Donnie back in range, of course, but beggars and choosers and stuff. ]
Whatever it is, we'll get there. We got a starting point and a direction and that's two more things we didn't have before. [ We are so confident. Big WE. Making it happen. ] Maybe now instead of bein' cooked, we're just toasted.
[ Sounds fake, there's definitely an enormous distinction. Which Raph will never explain because it's one that he feels and cannot give words. ]
Yeah? [ PERKING UP. Raph smash? And it will be a helpful solution? ] Consider Raph's optimism even higher.
[ LET'S LOCK IN. Please do not ask about his ribs until he's locked back out. And he in turn will respectfully wait to ask about your health until then. ]
[DONNIE ISN'T HAPPY ABOUT IT. He is really terrified that Raph will puncture a lung somehow and that he'll have to figure out how to conduct emergency thoracic surgery to reinflate a lung through several inches of plastron in the middle of the least sterile environment in New York.]
Raph...seriously, do not hurt yourself. You collapsing a lung is a death sentence down here, alright? If you can't do it then we'll figure out something else. [Donnie can't turn on the big baby cow eyes on cue like Mikey and Leo can, but when he's got them full of sincerity they're just as good.]
Raph is weak to many things at the end of the day. Maybe nothing more so than a little brother just... very very sincerely and worriedly asking something of him. It's not fair. He's honor-bound to take it seriously.
Even if he thinks the whole point of having two lungs is so he can collapse one and use the other. What's biology, sounds like nonsense to him. ]
'ey. The last thing I wanna do is make you have to drag me the rest of the way home, you got that? [ In some way or another. Raph thinks that that might actually be worse than not being able to do anything. ] But we're talkin' high-risk, high-need right now. Everything gets a shot.
I can make explosives with my ninpo if we need it, but I can't make a new big brother. [Yet.
Donnie still holds onto one of Raph's big hands with both of his own for a moment longer, squeezing nervously, before he releases him and gestures over to a nearby wall.] ...that one. Please. About six inches thick, but it's old. It shouldn't need much.
[ He's just a little guy, is all. A baby boy. Who could ever risk disappointing that face? That unironic use of "please"?
And they say Raph's the worrywart in these parts. Pah. ]
Sounds like easy pickins. Call it a, uh. [ ??? ] Test case. Yeah? We're startin' small.
[ Ish. Small for Raph. He can do more with ninpo than just on his own. Still, he gives the wall a little knock with his regular knuckles first-- not too bad, crumbly-sounding-- before using a ninpo to break through it properly.
It's even more like a shove than a punch. Very obliging.
The feel? Not great. But he remains confident in his intact lungs. ]
[The wall is down and Raph isn't coughing up blood, so it's a success. Donnie still jogs over as the dust settles to check on his big brother, satisfied when it doesn't look like he's struggling too much.
Now, onto the more immediate issue; the wall is down and the sound of rushing water is more obvious without the crumbling brick in the way. Goggles down, Donnie fumbles his way over the collapsed brick and mortar, locating the pipe belching graywater in the pitch blackness. The pipe disappears behind more stone but the temperature difference is there; cold spots where the materials had worn through and the sewage bleeds through the brick. Everything this far down is old, very old.] Okay. We can take that passage. [He points before remembering that he's the only one with nightvision goggles. Raph is basically blind in here.
That's fine. ...that's fine. He can hold Raph's hand and make his markings glow brighter to conserve his energy.] Come along, big brother. [Having Raph's big hand in his definitely is not for any other purpose but to keep him from tripping. He's not doing this because he's still shaken up by seeing Raph buried in rubble.]
[ Raph could consider that he has an idea where Donnie is pointing before he gets his hand held and a free ninpo nightlight. But he doesn't really consider it. It's some back of his mind register, practically his own thought.
It's not like he's about to complain over keeping his brother extra close anyway. Close and easy to see. Basically easier to see than anything else down here, on account of the glowing. ]
I'm comin'. [ What other choice is there, really. Ride or die. That's how they gotta do it. ] Pretty glad we missed this tour when we were lair-shoppin'. Raph's not a fan.
You and me both, brother! [Persnickety voice: engage. Please keep holding his hand like two toddlers waking up at 3am for a snack.] You can't even see all microbes we're inhaling right now. I've never been more glad I have us all on a steady vaccination schedule.
Which reminds me, we need to knock over a CVS again after this.
[ This is good and fine. Raph loves holding hands like two toddlers even if it's theoretically only out of necessity.
But let's be real. Anytime Raph holds hands he considers it a necessity.
He doesn't know what the heck microbes are so he assumes "idk germs" and trusts that Donnie is right. It's great to not have to see those little guys. ]
All our medical stuff is pretty cleaned out right now... [ What with everyone almost dying. And yeah yeah vaccines too. Nobody needs to be looking at Turtle Tetanus right now. ] Did they ever rebuild that last one we accidentally blew up, or are we still shoppin' around?
[Brothers get special hand holding privileges, that is a universal understanding. And Donnie, despite his typical aversion to touch (prolonged touch especially), needs to have his bruised and battered and potentially broken older brother in his clammy, brilliant little grasp to make sure he is Alive. There's no other choice.]
Ugh...they rebuilt the building but leased the space to another Japanese-Korean-Chinese-Indian-Greek-Cambodian fusion place. [How many Japanese-Korean-Chinese-Indian-Greek-Cambodian fusion places does one New York City need, really?] We might have to debase ourselves and raid a... eugh. A Walgreens.
[ Stop fusing! Stop it!!! Big Restaurant keeps taking away their retail pharmacy chains, and for what. Not even for Italian. Raph shakes his head even though no one can see him do it, because he needs to express his disappointment. In the restaurant. In the Walgreens.
Perhaps in humanity. ]
The things we gotta do for family safety, Donnie. The lows we gotta scrape.
[ Does Raph honestly have that strong of an opinion on these stores? Well yeah, he has strong opinions about everything. He might be playing it up a little right now for the sake of them being able to talk about something dumb in the middle of This Whole Situation, though. ]
The indignities we suffer for those ingrates! [Very happy to rant and rave like it's specifically Leo and Mikey's faults that he and Raph are down here.] "Go check out the tunnels and we'll go through the rubble," they said. "You guys are better at navigating the sewers," they said. They owe us two months of chores for this!
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2025-04-29 02:21 am (UTC)The noise of effort and pain has Donnie back over to his brother's side, metal arms emerging from his battle shell to act as additional poles and stabilizing limbs as he reaches out to brace his brother. The climb up the debris is...slow. Even if it was the most stable pathway, that doesn't mean much when you have a few hundred pounds of injured mutant snapping turtle trying to haul himself up it, ninja-grace notwithstanding, busted ribs in danger of just floating around inside his shell at the first slip and tumble back down the pile.
They make it up somehow, anyway.
Donatello hovers near his big brother, a hand near his shoulder even as he checks his wrist computer obsessively to see if he can connect to his equipment at home. Maybe if he can get a signal through, he can get his spare battle shells to attach to his brothers and home in on him! ...potentially running them into a hundred walls on their way here and killing them gruesomely. Okay. Maybe a different plan.] Auuugh, don't repeat this but I wish Leo was here with us. [Stupid...perfect plan bastard twin.]
no subject
Date: 2025-05-05 08:26 pm (UTC)What if something else happens? What if Donnie needs him and he's too slow to react? There's no guarantees what happens out here, only what probably happens once they make it home. Classic turtle's lament, that.
He's starting to get the feeling that neither of them actually have any real idea what to do, which means that he needs to double down on acting like he does have one. Keep being stubborn, keep pushing. Just until he can make a safe responsibility handoff to Leo or Mikey or Pops or-- heck, maybe April, you never know when April's gonna swoop in like a boss. ]
Sure. Long as you don't tell him I agreed. [ Leo's ego and confidence must be tended to with highly specific methods. Like a finnicky plant, or some kinda exotic pet fish. ] Two minute break. Gonna try a ninpo thing.
[ See, he is so responsible. That's like resting but also working. Raph figures there's no shot he can just be like "hey fam here we are exactly come get us," but maybe there's a way to put "so things are not going good" into it? Gotta be an option, right? There's connection. ]
All else fails, maybe Raph, uh. Raph just punches out ceilings until we get sub-surface?
[ One floor at a time... Surely that will work. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-06-20 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-29 03:25 pm (UTC)Draxum should've mutated us with sonar or somethin'. Supersoldier ninja turtles put on hold by bad floors. [ This is all Barry's fault actually. Every single thing that's ever happened ever. ] Waste of... waste of Raph's whole skill set.
[ NTS. Evolve sonar to detect bad floors and ceilings to punch immediately after this. There's probably a YouTube tutorial for that. ]
I don't think I'm gettin' our location out to anybody.
[ Enough bad vibes to get their ears perked up, maybe? He doesn't wanna say it's a sure thing. Sometimes it's hard to tell with ninpo, weirdly enough. But this sure wasn't a whole mindmeld, Raph can tell that much. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-06-30 04:14 pm (UTC)The sonar is a great idea. Too bad neither of them can use it.]
We'll file an official complaint in triplicate the second we get back home. [Ha! Funny joke because if they even get back home, the first thing they're doing is getting Raph an x-ray and Donnie a tranquilizer. THEN complaints. Triplicate.
The sonar gives him an idea, though. He flicks his goggles back down and turns on the thermal vision.] Raph, can you hear any running water?
no subject
Date: 2025-07-09 12:40 am (UTC)He's on that shonen jump shit. ]
Uhhhhh. [ Great question. Thing about growing up in the sewers is, you get really used to tuning out that sort of background noise. If you're not talking deadly whirlpool or lazy river gone horribly, horribly wrong, it's not usually a huge issue.
Where's Donnie going with this? Who knows. Raph's gonna try to trust the process and get his listen on. ] Yeah. From down that way, I think?
[ He helpfully nods even though Donnie might not be looking at him specifically in the moment. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-07-16 03:47 am (UTC)...yeah. It's colder. [As if that's going to make any sense. Donnie looks up like he's following the flight path of a mosquito, pacing across the small tunnel, around Raph and the rubble and only barely managing not to stub a toe on a chunk of old, moldy brick.] Running water's going to be colder than ambient temperatures. And running water has to be running from somewhere. We can use temperature gauging to both avoid being drowned, and to follow it 'upstream,' so to speak. Link back up with the main tunnels.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-20 04:58 pm (UTC)Temperature gauging. Go off, king, absolutely. ]
If I had to fall through the floor and get stuck down here with somebody, Donnie, I'm glad it's you. [ Big brain. Brain and brawn alliance right here. ] 'cause Raph wouldn't have thought about the water stuff if you gave him about a billion years.
[ And probably no one else would have. Well. Maybe before the billion years, one of the others would've thought about it. But Raph? Nah. He'd have gone ahead and punched his way through, and poetically also wound up getting a rib punched through a lung or something. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 04:49 pm (UTC)Yeah, yeah, shuttin' up for a minute, Doctor Science.
[ This counts as a free breather, anyway. Probably good to take those where they can. Getting home might be a long haul and they'll probably be annoying each other before then. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-07-28 05:11 am (UTC)After a few moments Donatello returns, the eerie red-blue glow of his goggles lenses preceding his arrival.] I've made a rough map of where I think the water is flowing to and from, [is how he announces himself, crouching next to Raphael and looking over him with undisguised concern. He's in work mode, but worried-about-brother mode has not yet been disabled. Which is difficult, considering he's going to have to ask him to some hard things.] Now it's just a matter of us getting up and over. Through who knows how many feet of concrete and brick.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-02 04:13 pm (UTC)Whatever it is, we'll get there. We got a starting point and a direction and that's two more things we didn't have before. [ We are so confident. Big WE. Making it happen. ] Maybe now instead of bein' cooked, we're just toasted.
[ Love not being totally cooked. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-08-05 03:22 am (UTC)Anyway.] Okay. Love the optimism. ...we're going to need you to smash some walls down, then.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-05 10:53 pm (UTC)Yeah? [ PERKING UP. Raph smash? And it will be a helpful solution? ] Consider Raph's optimism even higher.
[ LET'S LOCK IN. Please do not ask about his ribs until he's locked back out. And he in turn will respectfully wait to ask about your health until then. ]
why does ur baby boy look like he has a mortgage and 4.5 kids in that icon up there
Date: 2025-08-06 03:45 am (UTC)Raph...seriously, do not hurt yourself. You collapsing a lung is a death sentence down here, alright? If you can't do it then we'll figure out something else. [Donnie can't turn on the big baby cow eyes on cue like Mikey and Leo can, but when he's got them full of sincerity they're just as good.]
bc he does next question
Date: 2025-08-07 01:37 am (UTC)Raph is weak to many things at the end of the day. Maybe nothing more so than a little brother just... very very sincerely and worriedly asking something of him. It's not fair. He's honor-bound to take it seriously.
Even if he thinks the whole point of having two lungs is so he can collapse one and use the other. What's biology, sounds like nonsense to him. ]
'ey. The last thing I wanna do is make you have to drag me the rest of the way home, you got that? [ In some way or another. Raph thinks that that might actually be worse than not being able to do anything. ] But we're talkin' high-risk, high-need right now. Everything gets a shot.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-20 01:12 am (UTC)Donnie still holds onto one of Raph's big hands with both of his own for a moment longer, squeezing nervously, before he releases him and gestures over to a nearby wall.] ...that one. Please. About six inches thick, but it's old. It shouldn't need much.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-04 04:10 pm (UTC)And they say Raph's the worrywart in these parts. Pah. ]
Sounds like easy pickins. Call it a, uh. [ ??? ] Test case. Yeah? We're startin' small.
[ Ish. Small for Raph. He can do more with ninpo than just on his own. Still, he gives the wall a little knock with his regular knuckles first-- not too bad, crumbly-sounding-- before using a ninpo to break through it properly.
It's even more like a shove than a punch. Very obliging.
The feel? Not great. But he remains confident in his intact lungs. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-09-09 10:40 pm (UTC)Now, onto the more immediate issue; the wall is down and the sound of rushing water is more obvious without the crumbling brick in the way. Goggles down, Donnie fumbles his way over the collapsed brick and mortar, locating the pipe belching graywater in the pitch blackness. The pipe disappears behind more stone but the temperature difference is there; cold spots where the materials had worn through and the sewage bleeds through the brick. Everything this far down is old, very old.] Okay. We can take that passage. [He points before remembering that he's the only one with nightvision goggles. Raph is basically blind in here.
That's fine. ...that's fine. He can hold Raph's hand and make his markings glow brighter to conserve his energy.] Come along, big brother. [Having Raph's big hand in his definitely is not for any other purpose but to keep him from tripping. He's not doing this because he's still shaken up by seeing Raph buried in rubble.]
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 10:23 pm (UTC)It's not like he's about to complain over keeping his brother extra close anyway. Close and easy to see. Basically easier to see than anything else down here, on account of the glowing. ]
I'm comin'. [ What other choice is there, really. Ride or die. That's how they gotta do it. ] Pretty glad we missed this tour when we were lair-shoppin'. Raph's not a fan.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-25 01:54 pm (UTC)Which reminds me, we need to knock over a CVS again after this.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-17 09:52 pm (UTC)But let's be real. Anytime Raph holds hands he considers it a necessity.
He doesn't know what the heck microbes are so he assumes "idk germs" and trusts that Donnie is right. It's great to not have to see those little guys. ]
All our medical stuff is pretty cleaned out right now... [ What with everyone almost dying. And yeah yeah vaccines too. Nobody needs to be looking at Turtle Tetanus right now. ] Did they ever rebuild that last one we accidentally blew up, or are we still shoppin' around?
[ He liked that one. It was so convenient. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-11-21 12:42 am (UTC)Ugh...they rebuilt the building but leased the space to another Japanese-Korean-Chinese-Indian-Greek-Cambodian fusion place. [How many Japanese-Korean-Chinese-Indian-Greek-Cambodian fusion places does one New York City need, really?] We might have to debase ourselves and raid a... eugh. A Walgreens.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-30 07:33 pm (UTC)[ Stop fusing! Stop it!!! Big Restaurant keeps taking away their retail pharmacy chains, and for what. Not even for Italian. Raph shakes his head even though no one can see him do it, because he needs to express his disappointment. In the restaurant. In the Walgreens.
Perhaps in humanity. ]
The things we gotta do for family safety, Donnie. The lows we gotta scrape.
[ Does Raph honestly have that strong of an opinion on these stores? Well yeah, he has strong opinions about everything. He might be playing it up a little right now for the sake of them being able to talk about something dumb in the middle of This Whole Situation, though. ]
no subject
Date: 2025-12-03 01:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
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