100 Theme Challenge - 63. Do Not Disturb

100 Theme Challenge
63. Do Not Disturb

The grate opened with a creak and Don saw right away that it was a little brighter inside the section of duct work on the floor above them. Putting his screw driver away he scooted closer to the opening but Casey stopped him with a hand on Don’s arm.

“How about I go first this time?” Casey asked. “Seems only fair that we split the danger.”

“I don’t need you to be a hero for me,” Don said. “I’m a ninja, remember?”

Casey took his hand off Don’s arm and grinned at him sheepishly. “I know ya’ got skills, Don. I wasn’t trying to say ya’ don’t just like earlier I wasn’t trying to say that April doesn’t like ya’. Truth is she told me she does. All I was trying to let ya’ know is that despite all this craziness I know I’ve got a thing for ya’ and that it’s real.”

“That’s not how it sounded,” Don said peevishly.

“So I’m not as good with words as you are,” Casey admitted. “Maybe I got a little jealous ‘cause I’m desperate to think ya’ could swing both ways like I do, but ya’ ain’t giving me any hints.”

“For crying out loud,” Don said, “how can you be worried about that at a time like this? That’s what I was trying to explain to you when I told you what April said. All I can think about is getting out of here before the Kraang figure out where we are. Before that I was trying to find a way to stop them from controlling the minds of every human in New York and saving your mom in the process. Alongside of that we’ve got Shredder and the Kraang to deal with and I’m still trying to develop a retro-mutagen that will work on everybody. How do you expect me to have time to think about my sexual orientation?”

“Ya’ know you’re attracted to April even with all that,” Casey pointed out.

“I met her before any of the rest of this stuff started to happen,” Don said. “It’s different.”

“Well I’m attracted to her too,” Casey told him. “It ain’t as strong as what I feel for you though. I know ya’ think I’m too aggressive, but that’s the only way I know how to do things.”

Slightly mollified because Casey had admitted that April had told him she liked Don, the turtle merely huffed and said, “It would be better if you spent that energy on helping us escape from here.”

“Okay I will,” Casey said, his cocky smile returning. “Damn, you’re kinda cute when you’re mad.”

“Casey Jones, you are about to get on my last ner . . . .” Don’s sentence was cut off by a loud clanging sound somewhere nearby.

“What was that?” Casey asked in a low voice as the echo from the noise started to fade.

“That was probably the Kraang figuring out where we’ve gone,” Don said sarcastically, a hint of an ‘I told you so’ in his words.

Casey grabbed onto Don’s waist and half lifted the turtle into the horizontal conduit. “Get your butt up there.”

“Hey, I thought you wanted to go first!” Don exclaimed, surprised at how much strength Casey could muster when he was agitated.

“That was when I thought the danger might be above us,” Casey said, pushing Don’s feet to help the turtle climb faster.

Scrambling up the chute, Don quickly clambered into the vertical duct that gave off of it. Turning so he could look down at Casey who was working his way up, Don whispered, “Hurry.”

“Should I close the grate behind us?” Casey asked, pausing in his climb.

The clanging sounds were growing closer. “Sure, maybe we should take the time to hang a do not disturb sign on it too,” Don answered fretfully. “The Kraang already know where we are Casey, and there isn’t room in here to fight them if they catch up to us.”

Casey hoisted himself into the duct as Don backed up to give him room. “Do not disturb,” he said with a laugh. “See Don, your sarcasm is funny.”

Don ignored the gibe, pointing behind him to say, “I’ve already checked the air current, we need to move in this direction.”

He started to contort his body into a ball in order to turn around but Casey slid up until his face was next to Don’s. “This time I lead the way,” the boy said and proceeded on before Don could protest.

With a grimace, Don got his body turned and followed Casey, his keen hearing monitoring the sounds of the Kraang’s approach. Now Casey was all business and he was moving fast. As they crawled towards an increasingly noticeable breeze, the area ahead of them became brighter as well. After a while the whir of machinery competed with the noise of their pursuers and the pair found themselves crawling closer to the newest sound.

The breeze had turned into a fairly strong wind, blowing Casey’s hair back from his face and sending Don's mask tales fluttering. Following a bend in the duct, Casey suddenly stopped, forcing Don to do so as well.

Don couldn’t see past the turn so he called out over the sound of the wind, “Casey, what’s going on?”

Casey’s feet shifted to indicate he’d flipped onto his back and a second later he was leaning around the bend, hair flying.

“We got a problem,” Casey said. “It’s a dead end.”

“What?” Don said incredulously. Crawling forward, he squeezed his shoulders past Casey’s upper torso and immediately saw what had brought the boy to a halt.

The air duct ran another ten feet and then opened up into a space four times the size of the duct itself. Inside that space was a gigantic fan, its blades spinning faster than the eye could follow as it pulled air into the building from the outside.

“Great,” Don murmured, wondering what he had ever done to deserve the kind of luck he was having.