"Don't panic. Don't panic. Don't. Panic." She said to herself as the car continued to sink. The river wasn't as deep as the other more popular ones in the city, but it was still over thirty feet straight down. The water was pooling around her ankles as it leaked into the vehicle. It felt like thousands of needles were being stabbed into her toes and heals. Saying that the water was freezing would've been a huge under-statement. Madi didn't want to even think about how cold it was out there. But she knew that she needed to act quickly if she was going to get out of this one alive.

She'd need to wait until the car was completely filled with water before the doors would open, which meant she was trapped for the moment. 

"Stay calm. Stay calm." Madi told herself. "You've gotten yourself out of worse situations. It's just a short swim to the top. Just a short swim. Nothing to it."

* * * * * * * * * *

"NO!" 

Leo and Mikey quickly grabbed Raph's arms before he could leap off of the roof and into the ice-cold river. The red-masked turtle's eyes were wide with shock as he tried to fully comprehend what they had just witnessed. Madi was on the bridge in the white car. The bridge went down. The car was on the bridge. The car was gone. Madi was gone. He ripped his arms from their grasp and made another attempt for the edge to jump in after her, but Donnie grabbed him by the back of his belt.

"Raph, it's no use!" He yelled over the sound of Raph's frantic breathing as he struggled to keep moving. He had to jump. He had to get to her. "Stop! Raph!" With a swift kick backwards, the heal of Raphael's foot smashed against Donnie's plastron and sent him flying backwards, crashing into his two other brothers.

With a swift jump from the brick railing of the roof, Raph leapt over the edge and plunged into the waters over five stories below, hitting the water outstretched-arms first. The sudden cold pushed the air from his lungs in a quick gasp of shock at just how freezing the river truly was. It felt like hundreds of pins and needles were being stabbed into his skin all at once. But he couldn't focus on that. He had more important things to worry about.

Ignoring the fact that his lungs were constricting with pain from the cold, he willed himself to swim through the river, fighting against the current as he searched through the debris of the fallen bridge. The sight of the ruins of the bridge was frightening, especially seeing all the different vehicles pinned beneath its massive chunks of cement and concrete. That didn't help his current attitude on the situation when he saw a vehicle similar to the one Madi had been in completely flattened by one of the bridge's support beams. 

He hadn't been under more than two minutes when his body began to grow tense from the freezing waters. His lungs ached for air, but by this point he was over twenty feet from the surface. He was running out of strength and enegry too quickly to even have a chance of making it to fresh air in time. The stress of fighting the current of the river was too much for him. His arms and legs stopped moving.

And that was when the real panic began to set in.

What had he been thinking, jumping into a river in the middle of October when he was a cold-blooded reptile? He was insane, he was absolutely crazy, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Raph used what little strength he had left to push his arms up towards the surface of the water, a useless attempt to propel himself upward. His vision began to get fuzzy and that was when he knew this was the end. With none of his brothers in sight coming to his rescue, he knew this was it. He was going to die, to freeze to death because of a girl who didn't know when to obey the rules that kept her safe. 

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he felt something link itself under his arms and haul him upwards. Maybe one of his brothers had actually been brave enough to jump in after him after all. Within seconds, they had breached the surface and air flooded back into Raphael's mouth with an enormous gasp. He could feel his teeth chattering rapidly from the cold as he let who ever had rescued him drag him across the water to the riverbed and pull him out of the cold. 

"W-wait-" Raph stuttered through his clicking teeth to his rescuer. "W-we n-need to go b-back for M-Madi." Raph sat up on the bank and hugged himself tightly, shivering and shaking so fast that his movements were just a blur. He felt his rescuer's hand on his shoulder.

Her five-fingered hand.

"You shouldn't have followed me, Raph." She told him as she sat down beside him, wrapping him in a big hug to help him warm up faster. She was missing her vampire-costume cape, her curly hair was now completely flat, the make-up she had put on before she left the lair was washed off. "And you definitely shouldn't have jumped in after me, you big green idiot." Raph couldn't help but crack a relieved smile. She was okay. Madi had gotten out alright. And she was hugging him. 

"Really? I'm the idiot?" He asked quickly, trying to sound angrier than he truly felt. "I'm not the one who left the lair to go to some stupid costume party."

"Hey, I made a promise to my friends...who most likely think I'm dead right now." Madi stated with a disappointed huff. Raph scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"That's really the most important thing you can think of right now?" He asked her. "Not the fact that Shredder nearly killed you with his little ambush?"

"Correction: He nearly killed you with his little ambush." Madi said to him. "And he still just might if we don't get you someplace warm." Madi unwrapped her arms from around his shell and stood up, dusting the sand from the shore off of her pants, then extended a warm hand down to him. "Come on, Hot-head. We gotta call your brothers." He took her hand, let her help him up, and allowed the girl to provide some support for himself as they began to walk along the riverbed.

"Why do you need to call my brothers?" Raph asked.

"Because, since I just saved your shell and they didn't, I was thinking that maybe we could make a little deal. I won't say anything about them being too wimpy to jump into the river after you if you guys don't say anything to my mom or Splinter about me going to the dance."

"Too late, they already know. They knew before we left to come after you."