[They're dealing with a tyrant. From the moment she publicly threatened to execute civilians, her own people, Leonardo has felt disgust twisting his stomach every time the Emperor's image comes to mind. The warnings of Tu Vishan's damaged shell was like dangling a carrot in front of their faces - she had to have known they'd all rise to the bait.]
[So Leonardo and Raphael are being careful. Chasing the bait is better than starving, so long as you're good enough to get in and out before the hunter closes in.]
[They slink down into the sewers, and as the shadows swallow them whole, Leonardo's senses opens up to the world around him. The soft, cool mud and roughened patches of hard floor beneath his feet; dripping water trickling down the tunnel walls. Echoes of the guards shuffling through the passageways drift in the air, folding around them and sounding vaguely of clanking pipes in the walls.]
[It's not home, a voice quietly chides him. He knows. The hard patches of earth are too jagged, the smells are too organic. Even the darkness is wrong - it seems to wrap them in gentle shadows like a blanket, where the ones of New York are hungry and deeper than the greatest canyon.]
[It's so simple, to lose yourself in the darkness. But here, the wordless comfort feels like protection and love where ravenous greed should be. It's nice. It's wrong.]
[It's not home.]
[Leo stops, running his hand along the walls. There are breaks in the shell here, places where bone has fragmented into cracks that fan out like a spider's web. He narrows his eyes in the darkness.]
no subject
[So Leonardo and Raphael are being careful. Chasing the bait is better than starving, so long as you're good enough to get in and out before the hunter closes in.]
[They slink down into the sewers, and as the shadows swallow them whole, Leonardo's senses opens up to the world around him. The soft, cool mud and roughened patches of hard floor beneath his feet; dripping water trickling down the tunnel walls. Echoes of the guards shuffling through the passageways drift in the air, folding around them and sounding vaguely of clanking pipes in the walls.]
[It's not home, a voice quietly chides him. He knows. The hard patches of earth are too jagged, the smells are too organic. Even the darkness is wrong - it seems to wrap them in gentle shadows like a blanket, where the ones of New York are hungry and deeper than the greatest canyon.]
[It's so simple, to lose yourself in the darkness. But here, the wordless comfort feels like protection and love where ravenous greed should be. It's nice. It's wrong.]
[It's not home.]
[Leo stops, running his hand along the walls. There are breaks in the shell here, places where bone has fragmented into cracks that fan out like a spider's web. He narrows his eyes in the darkness.]
Don would flip his shell if he saw all this.