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Perseverance	By : EvaBrick Category: Comics > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Views: 9920 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Charlie curled up in a little ball in the corner. They were high up on the balcony that ran around the top of the African animals room. the level she was on had birds and shredder didn’t seem particularly interested in them. He leaned on the railing, barking instructions to the foot soldiers who were each taking a place inside one of the elaborate, scenic display cases next to stuffed rhinos, elephants, crocodiles, lions, tigers... Shredder had explained to her that the bear they had mutated Frank with had died in transit, but the mutation had worked anyway. He was positive that the remaining DNA from a taxidermy animal would be just as good. The display dioramas were also perfect for keeping his volunteers isolated with the creatures long enough for the mutagen to have the desired effect... that explained why he didn’t care how badly trained the Foot were... the brute strength they’d get when they joined with these powerful beasts, combined with their basic ninja skills would be more than adequate for his new army.

Charlie didn’t care though. Shredder had passed her over to his new favourite Foot soldier and the jerk and two other thugs had loaded her into the van like cargo. She sat up and looked out the window in time to see the explosion shake the whole building. Frank had radioed from the office that the turtles were dead...

Charlie lay curled up on the museum floor wishing that her heart would just stop beating and that she could just will herself into death. She had nothing now. No family, no store, no turtles, no Donatello. Nothing.

“I miss you, Grandpa,” she whispered, opening her eyes. Was the balcony high up enough to kill her if she jumped?

Donatello pulled a coat hanger out of a garbage can and un-twisted it. He slipped it between the mini-van’s window and door, unlocking it, before yanking the door open and reaching in under the wheel to hotwire it.

“Get in the passenger side,” Mike said, shoving him out of the way. He climbed in the driver’s seat as the others piled in. “If you’re in a hurry, bro, you’ve gotta let a lunatic drive.” He slammed his two-toed foot down on the fuel and the van’s tires screamed for a moment before it took off like a rocket through the ghetto.

Lisa grabbed hold of Leo’s arm as they were slammed into the back of the seat. They hadn’t even had the chance to put their seatbelts on. She was wedged between Raphael and Leonardo in the back. Leo looked at her pale hand clutching his forearm, and he reached out and patted it comfortingly with his bigger one. She relaxed a little and looked out the back window as the flames rose up from the community college. The turtles had been forced to burn it down after the mutagen bomb went off to protect innocent people from the toxic substance. Donatello had said that mutagen was easily destroyed when it was contaminated with anything... sulfur or ash, for instance.

Don was pulling little bits of glass out of his skin up front and tossing them out the window. He looked so stressed that she was sure he was going to puke. He seemed to be extremely concerned for Charlotte.

“How did you meet Charlotte?” she asked him, suddenly as Mike floored it to blast through a yellow light like a psycho. Don sighed, still pulling glass, and quietly told her about the night Mikey had gone missing and how they’d found him at her place. It seemed like so long ago. He lay back and covered his eyes with his hand, deeply distressed. If they’d hurt her...

Raphael leaned forward and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “Keep yer shit together, Donnie,” he said. “We’re goin’ in, grabbin’ Charlie, and we’re gettin’ the fuck out, okay? We need ta get ta Master Splinter and get Leo patched up better. Whatever else Shredder’s got goin’ on don’t matter. Our family comes before anything else. He could have his army ready ta roll and it don’t matter. Charlie matters and Splinter matters - dat’s fuckin’ it fer tonight.”

Donatello nodded and let out the breath he’d been holding. The ninja inside him felt slightly ashamed that he hadn’t been able to keep his emotions in check back at the college. Getting Charlie away from Shredder was going to require a stealthier approach... a ninja approach. He still planned on killing everything that moved, of course, he was just going to be more professional about it.

Lisa was still a little weirded out by the mutants’ appearances, but she found herself warming to them. She’d seen the bodies lying around the school as she’d crawled through the ducts with Leo and it had impressed her, in a strange way, how far they were willing to go to save Charlotte. She was also beginning to see what Charlotte must like about them. They were sincere, thoughtful, and strong. They could be brutal too, but they were not cruel.

Mike swerved hard around a corned, tires screaming, and Lisa was slammed into Raphael, then into Leonardo. She felt small between them. She looked down at their bulging legs - they were in incredible shape and it made her feel safer. Her confidence was totally fried - she’d been very independent and self-confident before she’d been kidnapped and nearly raped, but now she felt weak and helpless. She didn’t like it.

She still hadn’t taken her hand off Leo’s arm, and she squeezed it shyly, looking for comfort. He looked down at her and patted her hand again. “How are you holding up?” he asked, his voice gentle.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I’m freezing, but I’m probably doing better off than you are.” She was still in her bra and goose bumps were standing out on her arms. Her nipples were poking against her bra, too. Normally the turtles would have been interested in that, but they were all too tired and stressed to care.

“Aw, this isn’t serious,” he said. “It’ll take a while, but the hole will close itself over. Our shells are kind of like bones - they heal.” He paused. “Um, what I really meant was, how are you doing psychologically? We’ve run into Shredder lots before,”

“And everything dat goes with him,” Raph grumbled.

“Yeah,” Leo continued as Mike went through a red light. “So if you’re feeling like you’re going to freak out... we understand.”

“I think I’m too shocked to freak out,” she said, honestly. “I’ll freak out tomorrow though, I think.” Tomorrow. She had a tomorrow now, because of him. A couple of hours ago, she was sure she was going to die. She opened her mouth to thank him.

“Hang on!” Mike said, whipping the van into an alley down the block from the museum. It scraped loudly against a brick wall and screeched to a halt. They were across the road from Central Park. “That’ll be nineteen-twenty-six,” he said, like a cabbie.

“Right,” Leo said. “Raph, Don, you two go around the back, climb up the wall and go in through the office windows on the top floor.” He wanted Raphael and Don together because Don was minutes away from having an aneurysm and Raphael was just ballsy enough to keep the purple turtle calm. “Mike, you come with me through the basement and we’ll work our way up. Lisa, take the van and go to a busy parking lot and hit redial on my shell cell,” he said, pulling the device from his belt. “The guy’s name is Casey Jones. He’s a friend of ours. Tell him what happened and that you need him to come and get you. Do not go back to your apartment alone. He’ll bring you a shirt, if you mention it. You can trust him.”

Lisa nodded and held the phone carefully in two hands. She trusted Leonardo. The turtles jumped out and disappeared into the dark. Lisa moved up to the front of the van and moved the driver seat forward quickly - Mike had long legs. She backed out onto the street and the engine started to choke and die. She looked at the fuel guage - it was empty.

She couldn’t believe it. Here she was, a stone’s throw away from Central Park in the middle of the night, in her bra. This was, quite literally, the worst day of her life. She jumped out of the van, leaving it in the road and darted back into the alley, opening the shell cell as she went.

Lisa hid behind a dumpster and listened while the phone rang. “Yo, Leo!” he answered on the second ring.

“Um,” she said, “I’m not Leonardo... my name’s Lisa. He gave me his phone and told me that you’d come and help me.”

“What?” Casey said, “What’s going on? Is Leo okay?”

“More or less, I guess. That Shredder guy kidnapped me and my friend Charlotte. The turtles are trying to get her back, but I’m hiding behind a dumpster in an alley with no shirt on.”

“Son of a...” Casey swore. He’d saw that they’d called earlier, but he’d been out getting cigarettes and he he’d missed it. Why hadn’t he called back? Fuck! “Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m across from Central Park about a half-block passed the museum. The turtles think that Shredder’s going to try to mutate those Foot soldier guys with the taxidermy displays.” Lisa held the phone away from her ear as Casey let out a string of swear words so bad that they made the hair on the back of her neck twitch.

“Gimmie twenty minutes,” he said. “Don’t move an inch.

Donatello carefully cut the alarm wire that ran along the glass before leaning out of the way so Raphael could jimmy the window open with his sais. Shredder had probably already disarmed the alarms, but Don didn’t want to take a chance when Charlie’s life was at stake. They rolled neatly in, barely shaking the vine leaves that grew up the trellis they were standing on.

Raph’s pep talk in the van had helped him. He was touched that his brothers thought of Charlie as family. He knew it would make her happy, too. Raph opened the door of the office a crack and they peered out into the hallway - no one was there, so they crept down the hall to the stair well and moved down to the dinosaur wing.

Mike and Leo slipped in through a basement window and found themselves in a security room. All of the recording machines and CCTV screens had been smashed beyond repair. Leo tapped Mike’s arm and silently pointed to some damage on the plastic edge of a tv. The slash marks were clear - Shredder had done this himself with the spikes on his armour.

Shredder kneeled down at Charlie’s side. “Now you understand my pain,” he said. “I, too, have lost my family and my clan.

“No!” Charlie snapped, sitting up and leaning back against the seagull display case. “You may understand loss and defeat, but you don’t understand love. Your brother broke Hamato Yoshi’s heart and ruined his life and you‘ve been hell-bent on doing the same to the turtles! Your family has destroyed two generations of the Hamato clan! You’ve killed the only person who loved me and my heart is broken! You’ve ruined my life and you have no remorse, no pity. You have no understanding!”

“Little fool!” Shredder yelled, reaching her in a second. He grabbed her hair in his fist and twisted her head around painfully. He backhanded her across the face, sending a spray of blood from her mouth as her lip split.

Charlie tasted the copper flowing over her tongue and felt a rage growing in her stomach that she had never felt before. Her father hit her for the first time when she was eleven. The swats and shoves turned to punches, and then beatings. Every boyfriend she’d ever had had treated her like shit. Then there was the Foot Soldier’s attack the night she met Mikey. And now Shredder was hitting her like she was some kind of cheap whore. The pattern of her life emerged in her head and Charlie realised that she was sick of being a victim. She was sick of people hurting her. Most of all though, she was sick of being afraid.

“Fuck you, asshole” she said, looking Shredder straight in the eyes as the shiny blood squished out between her teeth. Shredder punched her square in the face and she felt her nose break. Blood spilled down her chest and she felt dizzy.

“Charlie!” Don screamed. Shredder whipped around and looked down to the lower floor where Donatello and Raphael stood. Charlie’s head flopped to the side and Shredder let her drop to the floor. Donatello’s heart was tearing in two.

Shredder was not happy to see them - they were supposed to be dead. “What, only two of you?” he snarled in Japanese. Raphael pulled two tiny turtles out from behind his back and laid them carefully on the floor. They were stuffed, of course, but Shredder didn’t need to know that.

“You killed our brothers!” Raphael shouted, also in Japanese “And we are here to challenge ya in the name of the Hamato clan!”

It had been Don’s idea to trick Shredder like this, and Raphael had to admit, it was one of the best plans they had ever had. this was the one thing that Master Splinter had never been willing to do, and Donatello had a hunch that it would throw Shredder way off guard.

“Answer me, Oroku Saki!” Raph bellowed. “Ya have no honour and yer a coward!” Raphael drew his weapons to show that he meant business. Don followed suit - it was killing him that he couldn’t get to Charlie to help her.

But Charlie didn’t need help; if there was one thing she had learned from her father, it was how to take a punch. It was a bit hard to breathe with all the wet blood around her mouth and nose, but her brain was still racing. She opened her eyes and tried to focus her vision. Everything was tinted pink and she realised that there was a third cut in her forehead, leaking down into her eyes.

Shredder laughed. “I think I’ve already won this blood-feud,” he said. “As your master refused my brother’s challenge as well as my own, I refuse yours.”

Donatello snorted inwardly, that was about what he’d figured would happen. Pussy.

“You are not leaders,” Shredder said. “You are nothing more than two science experiments gone wrong. You should be stuffed and put on display in one of these cases!”

Suddenly a green light started to glow in the jackal display. Something moved behind the fake bushes. Another case started to glow with the same eerie light... then another... and another. Raphael and Donatello turned so they faced in opposite directions, so they could protect each other’s backs. They had gotten to the museum too late - Shredder’s mutant ninja army was rising.
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Perseverance