Adult-FanFiction.org : Cartoons

Of Hearts and Shells: 50 Shades of Green	By : prplraven Category: +S through Z > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 2973 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: TMNT and all associated characters are property of their original creators. This fic is for entertainment only, and I receive no monies from this publication.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
By 4:00, the sky was black. By 6:30, the wind was whipping, light rain was already pelting the ground and buildings, and the occasional distant roll of thunder could be heard, and lightning flashed frequently, only partly concealed by the thick, full clouds. It was going to be a hell of a storm.
Batxter sucked digestive juice off the garbage he was eating. He thought it might have been rotting cabbage. It didn’t really matter… if it stank, he wanted to eat it.
What a horrible existence his life had come to. All he had ever wanted was to be recognized in the scientific community for his work in robotics… he thought he might have had a chance once he allied with Shredder… (well, got pulled into an alliance… or servitude…) but then he was showed up in his own field by the Kraang, and that just wasn’t fair. Still, Shredder seemed to believe that one field of science was the same as the next, and kept him on to experiment with mutagen. Sure, his scientific background included biological studies, and the rest, he could bluff. Or… he thought he could. His performance wasn’t to the ninja master’s frankly unrealistic, even insane standards, and as punishment….
And the mocking… all his life, the mocking! Bullies on the playground, teasing him for being a nerd; colleagues at his job, laughing at all he did… and were his mousers that useless when the giant plague of rats swept the city? No! After all, wasn’t that what the demand was for these days? Kill-less traps that would just relocate the rats outside of the city… No, it was never enough for people. You stole a coworker’s findings one time… people just couldn’t get over that. And then he had to deal with those smug bastards Bradford and Xever, and he was back on the playground, facing the bullies all over again, nearly as powerless, and an ugly mutant fly to boot. Even those hideous freak turtles paid him no respect…
His research was just going in circles. He’d lost his entire lab and all his research in the fire, and Shredder was certainly less than pleased about that. Though honestly, if he hadn’t been in such a hurry with his vengeance, his daughter might have come out of it better, poor thing. Now she was just another mutant freak like the rest of them. And if he would risk his own daughter… risked her, and lost her… well, the rest of their lives may as well have been forfeit. Shredder was just a first-class asshole… If Baxter wasn’t afraid of what Shredder would do to him if he left—because he would track him down if he left, he was sure—he’d have been long gone. As it was, the man was Baxter’s only connection to obtaining more mutagen, and he needed that if he was ever going to develop a retro-mutagen. The turtles had done it… so could he, eventually. He was sure of it… He would revert himself, maybe even mutate himself into the bigger, stronger man he dreamed of being. And then he’d grab those turtles and stuff them in a dumpster… like the one he was sitting on. Revenge would be sweet… sweet as this rotting cabbage.
He’d gone out to avoid Bradford’s needling for the night. The storm was coming soon, but he didn’t care… getting wet was better than being insulted or threatened. Last night, Bradford told him he might have to get a giant swatter to get rid of his ugly self once and for all. As if he was likely to win any beauty contests with half his skin peeled off… Nonetheless, he didn’t want to be so soaked that his wings wouldn’t function; he would have to go soon…
And then he caught sight of them, five shapes (five?) leaping over the rooftops. They looked to be heading for the TCRI tower. Good. Either they would get themselves deshelled by the Kraang, or they’d destroy some of the Kraang’s empire. Maybe Shredder would appreciate Baxter’s efforts a little more if the Kraang wasn’t supplying him with a continual supply of high-functioning ninja robots. Shredder would want the news, however it ended, so Baxter took to his wings and followed, keeping to the shadows wherever he could.
The turtles stopped on a building across from the TCRI skyscraper. Baxter flitted to the side of it, unnoticed, and clung to the sheer wall, listening in.
“Why aren’t we using the gliders?” said a rough voice, which Baxter recognized as the voice of the one with the red mask.
“Because I’d rather just the mutagen get struck by lightning and not one of us,” snapped the tall gap-toothed one. “The suction cup grips are our best bet not to get noticed and get up to the top.”
Mutagen! They were trying to pass lightning through mutagen, then… Why didn’t they just use a Van de Graaff generator? Clearly, their intellect was not on the same level his was!
“And we all have to come because…?”
“…Because if we are noticed, I’m gonna need some backup. The last thing I want to have to deal with while I’m rigging up the lightning rod is to have to fight a hundred Kraang robots,” the tall one came back at the one in the yellow mask.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this…” came a female voice. “I don’t have the arm strength you guys do.” He recognized it… the girl! The one he’d tried to merge with in the mutagen! The only one who ever got his name right, incidentally… But she had fallen in and hadn’t mutated… so how had they mutated her into one of them? A super-mutagen might have done it… he thought. After all, the turtles had developed a retro-mutagen, so who knew how else they had managed to manipulate it? And here they were, looking to pass lightning through mutagen… perhaps to produce more super-mutagen, or retro-mutagen… or another sort? No matter… That could be useful… The turtles were doing all the work, and they had no flying equipment with them! All he had to do was lie in wait and swipe it from them when the time was right. Oh, revenge… beautiful, beautiful revenge….
“It’s okay, April… “ That was the one in the blue mask, with the swords. “We can use someone down here to keep an eye out for Kraang activity while we go watch Donnie play Ben Franklin.”
Baxter had heard all he needed to know. He scuttled down the building and flitted to the next, where he concealed himself beneath a balcony to keep out of the rain and wait. It was going to be a good night after all.
As the turtles swung over to TCRI, April looked about, then over the back side of the building, responding to a feeling they were being watched. She thought she pinpointed it to this spot, but no one was there. The sensation mostly left her, but she still felt uneasy.   Patrolling rooftop to rooftop around the TCRI building yielded nothing. She went back to watching the turtles scaling the glass-sided building. “Stay safe, guys…” she whispered to herself. “Something’s up…”
Rain was sheeting down by the time the turtles made it to the peak of the tower, and it was proving to be a hazard for the suction-cup climbers, which tended to slide when placed. Nevertheless, they eventually made it to the tiny roof of the giant TCRI tower. It was so narrow at the top, in fact, that had April chanced coming with them, they would have been shell to shell if they were all standing in a row. There was one roof-access door, which meant only one direction of attack if the Kraang discovered them, but also meant they would be sitting ducks, as there was nowhere to dodge to. Raphael wedged one of his sai under the door as a precaution.
Donnie pulled the satchel off his back and dug into it. “Put these on,” he instructed his brothers, passing noise-canceling headphones back to them.
“Nice! Tunes!” Mikey said as he put his on, then looked dismayed as no music came through them. “How do you turn them on?”
“Those aren’t for music, Mikey… they’re ear protection,” Leo tried to explain.
Michelangelo gave him a confused look, “WHAT, LEO? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” he hollered back. Leo rolled his eyes and made a “Shush!” gesture at him.
“Would this be a good time to point out that turtles don’t have ears?” Raph smirked, putting his set on.
“They’re internal, but we definitely have them, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to hear me at all…”
“You say something, Leo?” Raph said, headphones already on. Leo looked back at him in annoyance and snorted.
Don examined the points of the tower. It did not comfort him that the dual peaks looked like a giant taser. Lightning flashed nearby, and he flinched as the thunder came almost directly afterward. He found the copper rod that stuck up about a foot above the rest of the tower and climbed further up to reach it. He pulled two large containers of mutagen—which looked like five of the regular canisters melded together (because, in fact, they were)—out of his bag and affixed them to the pole with wire. Then he added the repurposed end of the wand from the Van de Graaff generator. He nodded at his work and slid back down to the narrow rooftop. All they could do now was wait…
…and, apparently, hold off the Kraang. Raph had his shell to the door, around the edges of which a pink alarm light flashed. Nothing could ever be easy, could it? The door bucked. Raph’s expression changed to a slightly panicked one. Leo joined him in holding the door fast. Mikey faced the door, readying for the onslaught. Donnie drew his bo, then looked anxiously up at the lightning rod. Come on… come on!
The two turtles holding the door suddenly pulled away from it. Raph mouth shaped the words, “They’re melting the door!” at Donnie and retrieved his sai from under the door, facing the Kraang droids as the door fell apart.
The leading Kraang robot stopped to assess the situation as it stepped through the melted remains of the door. It got so far as to say, “The ones who are in this—“ before Raph hooked it with his sai and threw it over the side of the building. Leonardo stabbed his katanas through the next and did the same.   Mikey ducked and lifted the next one over his shoulders, tossing it off the roof as more bots appeared at the melted doorframe. The turtles dodged and blocked as a volley of pink laserfire came at them. Raphel’s sai took the droid’s head off, then he used its body as a shield, shoving several bots down the stairwell in a heap.
Donnie felt a slight prickling on his skin seconds before the lightning bolt speared down from the clouds behind him. He wasn’t sure if the noise-canceling headphones did anything; he could feel the deafening blast of thunder vibrate all the way through to his bones. With the others keeping the Kraang at bay, he risked climbing back up the tower-peak. “Yes!” he shouted. There was the mutagen, glowing an unearthly pinkish-white. He reached for the first of his modified containers, burning a finger on it as he touched it. He shook his hand and put his burnt finger in his mouth. Of course it’s hot, you idiot… Rain sizzled as it hit the surface; Donnie chided himself for not noticing that first. He pulled his mask off and wrapped it around the rod several times to be able to get a grip on the hot metal. Grip secured, he pulled the mutagen free of the original lightning rod and levered it into his satchel, which he swung up over his shoulder as he climbed back down.
“Got it, let’s go!” he yelled, realizing a moment later that no one had heard him due to the ear protection.
The Kraang were having a hard time of the fight, now attempting to shoot through a wall built of their fallen fellows. Their shots, for the most part were unable to penetrate the mass, held in place by Don’s three brothers. He knocked on Mikey’s shell and motioned over the edge of the building. Mikey gave him a thumbs-up and waved down Leo and Raph.
Donnie looked over the edge, preparing to place his suction grips. A pink bolt missed his face by inches. “Oh, COME ON!” he moaned. His T-phone buzzed. He pulled his headphones off and pulled the phone from his belt. “April?” he answered.
“The Kraang are coming outside and aiming weapons at the top of the building,” she informed him.
“That hadn’t escaped our notice,” he grumbled back wryly. “We’ve got the mutagen and we’re about to head down… can you create a diversion for us?”
“Already on it… one Kraang mind-blast, coming up!”
Donnie knew better than to try to stop her; her mind was made up. So instead of trying to talk her out of joining the fight, he just told her, “Be careful.”
He sniffed, and wrinkled his nose. There was an acrid, burnt smell around the tower, the source of which he couldn’t determine. It wasn’t the most important thing on his mind anyway. Their climb down was going to have to be fast, but too fast, and they’d end up street-pizza… They’d be cutting it close, even with April knocking the Kraang out.
April leapt down from her rooftop vantage point, tucking into a roll on landing. She made a direct run for the TCRI entrance. The Kraang had no time to reassess their target as she reached the center of the lobby. The generic secretary-bot approached her, announcing in a friendly voice, “The TCRI building is now closed,” but before she could threaten or aim an elbow-laser, April concentrated her energies and set off a devastating blast of her power, knocking out all the Kraang in the area and several floors up. Task accomplished, she headed back outside… and picked up that weird feeling again…
Descending the rain-soaked glass tower was treacherous. At times, gravity seemed to want to help a little too much, and one of them would lose their footing or slide partway down.
“Still glad we didn’t bring the gliders, Donnie?” Raph snapped as he skidded several feet.
Another bolt of lightning crashed down at the tower.
“Yep,” he replied simply.
Raph recanted. “Okay, gotta give you that one…”
Something black flitted past them. Leo caught it out of the corner of his eye. “Did you guys see that?
“I’m having a hard enough time seeing what I’m doing in all this frickin’—“
“Shh!” Leo demanded, peering around them.
Despite the rain, Baxter was fast on the wing. He made a beeline-dive for Donatello, seizing the carry strap of the bag. “Mine now!” he cried triumphantly.
Donatello lost one of his suction grips as his shoulder was yanked away from the building. He let out a yelp as he was nearly pulled off the building entirely, followed by an enraged scream as Stockman buzzed away, cackling. “NO, dammit!”
April couldn’t see what was going on through the rain and dark, but pulled out her fan, aimed where her instinct told her to, and threw the little spinning blade. It hit its mark, and April caught it on its return trajectory, again on instinct. Baxter let out a screech and spiraled downward.
Donnie’s heart leapt as the fly-man fell out of the sky, along with their hard-fought, glass-encased prize. He took a chance and let his remaining grips slide down the wet building at a breakneck speed in a bid to catch the thief. All of them paused breathlessly as Baxter plummeted, splashing down into a fountain. The water hissed as the hot metal hit it, throwing up a cloud of steam. April was running for him, eyes glinting in the dark. He clambered over the rim, soaked, and hauled the stolen mutagen out after him, and was on the run before she even caught sight of him. She made it to the fountain in short order, throwing her hands up at finding nothing there. Donnie skidded up to her moments later, followed shortly by the others. “Where did he go?! Is the mutagen okay?!”
“He got away… looked like the containers made it intact, though.” She kicked a puddle.
Donatello took April in his arms. “It’s all right… we’ll get it back, or we’ll make more.”
“Ohhh no,” Raph declared loudly. “We are NOT gong back up on that thing again!”
The rain began to let up to a mere sprinkle at last.
April leaned into Donnie for comfort, then gasped. “You’re hurt!”
Donnie looked confused. “No, I’m not… Just burned my finger a bit… It was stupid…”
“Your shell! There’s a big burn mark on it!”
“What?!” He struggled to turn far enough to see what was on his shell, but couldn’t.
“Damn, Don, she’s right… you got branded!” Raph confirmed, poking at his brother’s burnt shell.
Mikey turned him for a look as well.   “Oh, man… that is not just gonna buff out with a little Turtle Wax…”
“You know, it almost looks like the crest of the Hamato clan…” Leo offered. “Five circles in a ring around another circle…”
Donnie snapped his fingers. “The containers! They were hot! They must’ve burnt right through the canvas! It’s ironic, but if Baxter hadn’t have snatched the bag from me, they might’ve fallen out.”
April tapped on the burnt spot again. “You really didn’t feel this at all?”
“No,” he smiled at her. “Turtles’ shells are made of keratin, like your hair or fingernails. There’s no nerves in them. In fact, over time, this will just slough off.”
“I want one!” Mikey beamed. “I’d get, like, a dragon, or an awesome tribal design…”
“I could just draw one on you with a magic marker,” Raph volunteered.
Mikey glowered at him. “Ohhh, no you don’t. Fool me once, shame on you… Fool me four times, shame on me. It took me forever to scrub ‘Moronangelo’ off from last time…”
Leo walked around the fountain pensively. He bent to examine something on the ground. “April, when you threw your fan back there, did you hit Dexter?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes, I think so!”
“Then I think I’ve got a trail here. Quick, before it washes away!”
The five of them fanned out, following the traces of yellow liquid. “What is this stuff?” Mikey asked. “Is he leaking antifreeze or something?”
“It’s ichor,” Don informed him. “It’s essentially what bugs have in place of blood.” Mikey jumped away from the bit he was about to touch with a grossed-out look.
Luckily for them, the fly-mutant hadn’t taken to the sky as he fled, and April’s tessen had struck deep… Baxter had lost ichor halfway across the city. The last of the trail led to the back door of a dilapidated, though still majestic, old opera house, done up in art-deco high style. It boasted a now-defunct neon sign, reading, “Orpheum”, and another on a surrounding chain-link fence: SLATED FOR DEMOLITION 12/2013. Part of the fence had fallen in on itself or had been knocked down… apparently even the demolition crew had given up on the building.
“Is this where old Metal-face is holing up now?” Raph queried.
“It does suit his taste for grandeur,” Donnie noted. “Now that I think about it, Shredder is quite the prima donna…”
April slapped her hands on her face as she started giggling at the thought of Shredder in a tutu. Leonardo motioned for silence and opened the door a crack. The deep, booming laugh of Rahzar issued through it, followed by the angered rumble of Tiger Claw: “You would cheat me at cards, fish?!”
Leo eased the door closed again. “Let’s go …”
Donatello looked a bit miffed. “We’re not going in after him now?”
“We’ll come back tomorrow. We’re too worn down from the climbing, and the fight, and running after Baxter. If we have to face Shredder’s Foot robots and the rest of his zoo, and him, possibly, I’d rather do it on a full tank. I’m willing to sacrifice some of the element of surprise for that.”
Donnie gave him a hard stare, but acquiesced. He just wondered how much of their mutagen Baxter would waste or ruin over the course of a day.
- 5
- 6
- 7
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Of Hearts and Shells: 50 Shades of Green