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01.
Prelude / 8:07 AM |
06.
8:39 AM |
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01.
Prelude / 8:07 AM |
06.
8:39 AM |
11:17 AM
By the time Leonardo, Raphael, and Michaelangelo arrived at the scene both the South and North towers, as well as the WTC building at Vesey Street, had completely collapsed on themselves, blanketing much of the entirety of New York City in an impenetrable veil of white smoke. Potentially thousands of innocent people were inside the towers when they went down, potentially hundreds of firemen and police alike.
Best not to think about all that now, Leonardo thought. He felt sure of that much in his heart.
Their nostrils burned with the acrid, almost chemical smoke the air was so rife with. It was hard to breathe, hard to see, hard to move through the rubble, but the Turtles persevered.
For hours the three Turtles, under the cover of the smoke, worked beside firemen and relief workers in sifting through the rubble for survivors. For these hours they worked tirelessly, even after their muscles turned to jelly and their hands became bruised, scratched, and bleeding.
It was all they could do.
"I don’t know what the hell kind of creature you are, what planet you’re from," a mustached fireman spoke to Raphael at one point after he had helped a woman with a broken leg and a likely concussion to safety, "but I want to thank you."
Raph, every inch of his entire body white from the soot aside from his now-red eyes he, like his brothers, measured the man’s gaze and returned it. This fireman was the first human to notice him at Ground Zero save from the survivors he had been pulling from the rubble, most of which delirious or suffering from severe shock to begin with.
At this point, with everything
that had happened today, Raph found he really couldn’t care less if anyone around him saw that he was anything other than human. On this day, New York’s darkest, it just didn’t matter. Art of invisibility be damned. "The planet I’m from is yours," he offered the man, "and I’m the kind of creature that loves New York. That’s all."
"Fair enough, friend," the fireman spoke, nodding his head respectfully as he repeated, "Fair enough." The man switched his shovel to his left hand, extending his right, gloved hand to Raphael.
Raphael paused a moment, wincing at the gesture but still holding the man’s gaze firmly. The fireman’s eyes didn’t falter, not for an instant. Seemingly satisfied, Raph extended his own hand hesitatingly.
"The name’s Johnston. Good to meet you."
Raphael regarded the fireman with a strong, heartfelt handshake. The man returned to his work without missing a beat.
It wasn’t until the smoke began to dissipate to a degree high enough that the Turtles could no longer reliably hide themselves amidst its cover that they seriously had to start thinking about giving up their efforts. When teams from the Center of Disease Control started arriving in great numbers to secure the area, they simply had no choice but to retreat to a nearby alley.
As Michaelangelo and Raphael huddled together in the darkness near a trio of homeless men and women behind a dumpster, Leonardo kept watch in the front, resting on his knees. His eyes burned yet he dare not close them.
Giving only a short glance back at his two brothers, Leonardo knew it without even saying a word. They had all arrived at the same conclusion.
If Donatello had truly been in the South Tower at the time he had called there was almost no chance he could have survived.
The three Turtles had lost a brother and their sensei a pupil... or a son. The sooner they would accept that hard fact, Leonardo knew, the easier it would be on all of them to move on and grow from it.
I will never dishonor your memory, Donatello, Leonardo thought to himself, your sacrifice...
In one fluid motion the still-kneeling Leonardo slipped one of his katana swords from its sheath, whipped it around and up, and then finally drove it angrily down into the concrete at his knees with enough force to drive it straight through cleanly. Letting it rest in the concrete that had rippled and cracked around it, he cupped the base of it with both hands and then rested his forehead on it.
Time passed as Leonardo kept to his silent reverie, his brothers watching him from time to time as if to see what he would do next.
"M-my brothers..."
All three Turtles heard the voice and raised their heads slowly, recognizing the voice well but not so easily willing to get their hopes up on a whim.
"Donny!"
It was Donatello indeed, moving with great difficulty through what was left of the smoke cover toward his brothers. Bruises covered his already-soot white and blackened skin, dried blood was caked over his face and body, and he walked with a limp. In his arms he carried, with some great effort, what appeared to be a body. As he grew near, one by one the Turtles recognized who it was.
Don carried with him the bloodied, lifeless body of Chang Lao.
"I-I tried..." Don sputtered, his voice cracking as he fell to his knees, "my brothers... god help me, I tried..."
As his brothers rushed to embrace him, a deluge of tears streaked down both of Donatello’s cheeks as he began to cry and wail openly, as if he had been holding everything in for some time then.
Though the Turtles had regained a brother only to lose a friend, they knew with grim certainty that the thousands of victims and their families there in the city would not even be that lucky on this day.
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