Chapter Text
Despite Mikey’s insistence, Don was firm that it wasn’t a vampire bat.
“Myotis lucifugus,” he mused, too busy hooking the base of Mikey’s climbing harness to the mechanical ascender to give his imaginative brother more than a quick glance, “or Little Brown Bat. An insectivore. They’re all over these sort of caves.”
Mikey looked away with a huff. “It was wayyy too dark for you to get that good a look at the thing. It could’ve totally been a vampire bat!”
“There aren’t any vampire bats in New York City.” The clanking of their metal clips bounced off the cave walls in a clumsy symphony as Donnie finished securing the harness.
“There’s gotta be some secret society of vampire bats living down here ‘cause that thing was definitely one of them.”
Don offered only a sad smile, though held back an eye roll, as he adjusted his headlamp with two shivering hands. The concentrated beam cascaded over the eerie stalactites of the vast, limestone cave. Massive walls curled and bulged as if they were inside the stomach of some giant creature. “It didn’t get close enough to bite you, did it?”
“Swear it, right on the neck. Gonna turn into a bat-man, now.” Mikey mimicked fangs with his fingers. “Like the dude from ‘The Bat People’.”
“Wasn’t he bit by a fruit bat?”
Doing his best to conceal his delight that Don remembered their latest cheesy-horror-movie night, Michelangelo waved his wrist dismissively. “Details, details.”
“Well, just to be safe, I’ll give you a rabies shot when we get the samples back to my lab.”
The samples he was referring to were in thick, burlap bags hooked onto each of their shells, and were the reason they descended into the freezing depths of this cave in the first place. To Mikey, they looked (and certainly weighed as much) as limestone boulders; however, if he was to believe Donatello’s hunch, inside the encasing material could be the last remaining remnants of sun crystals in New York. Despite his family’s apprehension toward any more underground adventures, especially if this adventure was concerning the same crystals that brought them so much trouble in the past, Donnie’s insistence on their usefulness persuaded them. Now knowing what power they possessed, and having passed the latest planet alignment to recharge them, Donatello had a myriad of ideas on how to utilize them.
Mikey had been warned to disturb the minerals inside his sack as least as possible but he wiggled his shell nervously with the word “shot”. The sound of the bags knocking together sent a nasty shiver up Donnie’s shell.
“Like, a shot-shot?” Mikey quivered. “Like, a huge-needle-in-my-arm kinda shot?” Noticing how his brother stared, he turned his head to glance at the sacks on his carapace, as if he forgot they were there, and cracked a nervous smile. “Sorry, Dee. Forgot.”
Don expelled a sigh that formed a smoky trail of condensation in the cold air. “It’s rare to get rabies from a bat, but if it bit you, better safe than sorry. Rabies are no joke.”
“We can’t just, like, have me swallow something and I’m good?”
“Nope.” Don’s lips curled into a cheeky grin. “Gotta stick you with that stuff.”
“Okay, I changed my mind. Maybe I wasn’t bit by the definitely-vampire-bat.”
“That’s the spirit,” Don chuckled, patting him on his shell.
“Are you two boneheads still talking about the fucking bat?”
From the steep slope several dozen feet above them, Raph’s face poked out, wearing a nasty glare. He was soon accompanied by another frustrated, green face, though his expression was more stern than ferocious. They were already packing up their own climbing harnesses used to ascend the cliff and shivering violently enough their teeth made an audible chattering sound.
“My blood’s not getting any warmer up here, Michelangelo,” Leo remarked, rubbing his hands over his shoulders in a futile attempt to warm them. “Forget the bat for now and let’s get the shell outta here.”
“Fine, fine.”
Mikey gripped the rope and hoisted himself up, the strained muscles in his arms bulging as the mechanical ascender caught his position. With every pull upward, he threw all of his strength into the mount. The rather aggressive climbing method had a helicopter effect, with his legs twirling vehemently around him.
Don too began his climb, albeit more graceful, and spouted off between labored grunts, “Your blood should be getting warmer, Leo. At least, I think so. Haven’t really decided if we’re warm-blooded or heterotherms.”
“The shell’s a heterotherm?”
Leo’s question was cut off by Raph’s quick answer. “It’s when you’re both.”
There was a moment of silence, save the heavy panting, where the climbing turtles heard nothing but could certainly imagine the surprised stare Raph was becoming victim to.
“What? I pay attention when Don talks.”
“Raph’s right! It’s actually what a lot of bats are.” Don’s eagerness ramped up the speed at which he explained by the second. “I don’t know about M. lucifugus, but some bats possess traits of warm-blooded, or homeothermic, animals when they’re active, then cold-blooded, or ectothermic, when they’re at rest. Some sea turtles display some heterothermic properties, too; although we’re not sea turtles. Land-dwelling turtles are cold-blooded. That’s just the nature of reptiles; amphibians, too. But there are always new creatures being discovered that don’t necessarily fit either-” Michelangelo’s foot skidded across Don’s harness and he urged, “Mikey, you’re gonna kill us if you keep swinging around like that.”
“I’m not trying to!” About ten feet in the air now, he yanked himself another foot upward, still spinning, and aimed a frustrated shrug at his brother.
“Clearly, we need to revisit climbing in the next training,” Leo chuckled. He had stooped to his knees, ready to offer his hand to his nearing brothers.
“It’s your form,” explained Don gently. “Pull your knees up.” He demonstrated by reaching his knees up to his chest and raising his torso to meet his arms. It was like watching the precarious, yet precise, movements of a mountain goat scaling a near-vertical cliff face. “See?”
“I am pulling my-“
Mikey’s eyes grew to the size of dinner plates.
And a bat smacked into his face.
It couldn’t have been larger than a cherry tomato; in that sense, the impact was akin to a hummingbird running into a window. Even with the soft crash leaving both parties no more than simply startled, it was this little bat’s terrible luck to run into Mikey in particular. In the milliseconds after the shock wore off, he emitted a shrill, Mikey-patented shriek.
“Get it off, get it off!!” he cried, wildly swaying in his harness.
“Mikey, stop freaking out!” Don begged, eyeing the wobbling sack on his back. “It’ll only make it worse!”
Whether he didn’t listen or just didn’t hear his brother, Mikey screamed even louder. In response to this large creature’s unfamiliar and frightening noises, the bat dug small, j-shaped claws into his cheeks– a survival tactic to the bat but a brutal attack to Michelangelo.
“Hold still,” Raph commanded with an eye roll. He was carefully gripping one of his sais by the blade and stooping down to reach it off the edge of the rock face. “I’m gonna get it off ya.”
Using his sai like a makeshift crowbar, Raph attempted to pry the tiny bat off Mikey’s face. The claws hadn’t sunk in deep but their shape, to its credit, left little room for slipping it off. What’s worse was the creature seemed to be frozen, only opening its puggish mouth to emit a rhythmic honking sound, and disinclined to part with its unwilling companion.
“Shell, it’s stuck on there bad.” Though Mikey’s screaming had deteriorated into a frightened whimper, Raph still grumbled, “Cut it out, Mikey, it’s the size of a damn gumball.”
Don fiddled with the staff on his back. “Here, let me try.”
With the end of his bo, Donnie cautiously slipped underneath one delicate wing and thrust upward. It took a couple tries, with each failed thrust eliciting a yelp from his subject, but finally the bat lost its grip. Its paper wings flapped wildly and barely carried it to the edge of the cliff, where it crawled like an amputated spider across the rocky ground. Its mouth dripped tiny pricks of blood along the stone face, seemingly injured in the tussle.
“That’s unusual,” Don mentioned as he took Leo’s outstretched arm. “Mikey, you okay? It didn’t bite you, right?”
“Traumatized,” he cried somewhat theatrically, “but I’m cool. Think it just clawed me, nothing else.”
“Always so dramatic,” gruffed Raph as he aided Mikey up onto the solid ground. “If you’re this excitable from a tiny bat, I can’t imagine how you’ll be when Don has to poke ya.”
“We’re still doing that?!” Mikey had begun the arduous task of unclipping his climbing harness but paused to cower. “I thought you said I didn’t have to, Dee!”
“Well, that was before I actually saw the bat.” He had an amused but resolute grin on his face as he sidestepped the grounded bat to aid Michelangelo. “I don’t think turtles can get rabies, but everyone’s gonna need one, just to be safe.”
Mikey opened his mouth to profusely protest but held his tongue when Leo held up a finger. “Donnie’s right, rabies kills. We’re not taking a chance just because someone’s a little afraid of needles.”
The martyr had spoken; further complaint would only yield another stern frown from his leader, so Mikey obliged, albeit begrudgingly. His frustration yielded, though, when Leo shot him an encouraging smile.
“C’mon, you’ll be all right. You know Don’s a wizard, it’ll be one poke and it’s over.”
“I don’t know if wizard’s the right word,” Don chuckled, placing a hand on Mikey’s shoulder, “but he’s right. We joke about it, Mikey, but you know I wouldn’t make you if it wasn’t important.”
No, he wouldn’t, Mike supposed, for his own sake. He’d be the first to acknowledge he wasn’t the easiest patient when it came to needles; Don would want to avoid that debacle just as much as he did.
So, he only sighed and nodded glumly. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, bros. Didn’t mean to freak out. Something about being in a cave again, after all that crap with New Y’Lyntius or whatever, it’s freaking me out.”
“Raph’s afraid of bugs and we don’t get on his case,” Leo joked.
Raphael waved a hand. “Talk to me about not bein’ afraid of bugs when you have a million spiders crawling up ya.”
Leonardo chuckled. “I don’t think that’ll happen anytime- hey, ow!”
Too absorbed in their intense discussion, not one of the brothers had thought to keep an eye on the floored bat, who had rapidly crawled across the floor and sank its tiny teeth into Leo’s exposed ankle.
The response from each turtle was drastically different. Don immediately fretted, gathering around his foot and spouting off statistics about the likelihood of death due to rabies, which was apparently very high. Mikey was back in panic mode, biting his lip to keep himself from screaming bloody murder.
And Raph kicked the bat off the cliff.
It was so sudden they had no real time to react. He wound back his foot like a goalie and sent the tiny creature flinging into the darkness below the cliff face. There was a brief period of silence where they all turned to stare at Raph, some horrified and others, mostly Mikey, wildly amused.
Upon seeing their shocked faces, Raph folded his arm and shrugged. “You’ll thank me later.”
“Raph, that was a living creature!” Don cried as he rigorously rubbed Leo’s tiny prick marks with small wound wipes from his mini first aid kit. “You can’t j-just kick an animal off a cliff!”
“An undead animal,” Mikey corrected with a giddy grin. “Leo’s for sure gonna turn into a vampire now.”
“It wasn’t a vampire bat!”
“I don’t really care what it was, it’s gone now,” Raph shrugged. “Leo, ya good?”
“I barely felt it. Just caught me off guard.” He glanced down at Donnie who was still desperately cleaning the barely-visible wound. “Don, I’m all right.”
“Crawling on the floor, running into objects, biting people— that’s all rabies behavior.” He pinched the edge of the cloth between two fingers and anxiously sealed it in a plastic bag. “You said it yourself, Leo, rabies kills.”
“Look, it’ll be alright. We’ll take a round of shots and…” Leo’s words plugged up his throat and his confident step forward stumbled. He caught himself on the edge of Mikey’s shell, wearing a deceitfully indifferent expression. “Whoa. Okay, that felt weird.”
If Don was fussing before, it was nothing compared to now. Alarm painted his wide face and his hands were all over his brother, checking for a temperature and prattling on about dizziness and hyperactivity and something called furious rabies. Unable and unwilling to protest, Leo awkwardly retrieved their sacks and led the way home, the occasional stumble the only indication that something was terribly, terribly wrong.