Leonardo walks silently beside me with his gaze on the ground. I hold his hand, and he quietly suggests to walk me to my room. I smile at him sadly, and agree to it.
I open the door to my room quietly, and look at him before we go in.
"Leonardo?" I ask silently.
He looks at me.
"We'll solve this," I say. "Donnie said he'll try to make a retro mutagen for her. I promise it'll get better."
He smiles sadly. "I hope. It's just..."
I cup his jaw and kiss him softly. Leonardo kisses me back with his hands lightly holding my waist. I know he's feeling upset right now, but it's Leonardo... I don't know if I'll be able to hold back.
I let my arms travel around his neck and I push my body closer to his. He moans dimly (this is the first time I hear him moaning and it's amazing) and without even thinking we're both inside my room now. Leonardo's arms wrap my waist completely and he lifts me off the ground. I wrap my legs around his waist and he keeps kissing me. Before he loses control, he stops, panting, and looks at me.
"I love you..." he says.
"I love you too," I kiss his forehead.
He puts me down and I stand with my hands resting on his plastron, where his chest is. He rests his forehead on mine and takes both of my hands.
"You're everything I need," he says quietly.
I kiss his lips softly. "So are you."
I hug him. "I promise..."
"Thanks," he replies.
****
"Um... Donnie?" I say when I sey Mikey come into the lab and the brains of the team is sorking on his computer. "Mikey's here."
"Hye bro..." Mikey says kind of guilty. "Think you can fix this?"
A big machine, part of Donnie's new project, begins moving and freaks Mikey out.
"GAAAH!" Mikey yells. "MONSTER HAND! MONSTER HAND!!"
"Relax, Mikey," Donnie says, "it's just lart of the Turtle Mech I've been working on."
"Cool, huh?" I put an arm around Mikey and playfully pull him down.
"Looks like it's gonna be big," Mikey concludes.
"Yeah," Donnie frustratedly says. "So big I can't find a power source for it? If I could just get it working!" Donnie angrily slams his fist on the desk sending the Kraang portal device flying out. When it lands, the pink, triangular portal opens up with a lot of mist coming out of it.
Leonardo and Raph run in. "What did Mikey do?"
Mikey hides behind me. "I didn't do it this time!"
Leonardo looks closely at the portal and at the mist coming out from it. "What is that?"
"Kraang atmosphere," Donnie confirms. "Take these: filtration devices. They'll let us breathe easily."
Each of us takes one and puts it on.
"I think this is a portal to Dimension X," Donnie says.
Beside me, the Kraang communication orb starts to act up; I take it into my hands and show it to Donnie.
"Turtles..." A deep rusty voice comes from the orb, and then a hologram shows up above it.
"Leatherhead!" Mikey yells.
"Turtles..." The recording says. "The Kraang have perfected the mutagen. They're about to-"
The recording is interrupted and the hologram disappears.
"Oh, no!" Mikey yells with his hands on his cheeks. "What are we gonna do? They have Leatherhead!
"Mikey, calm down-"
"The orb could tell us where he is!" Mikey takes the orb from Donnie's hands and deliberately starts to bang it.
"Mikey!" The other four of us yell. Leonardo takes the orb from Mikey and sets it down on the desk.
"Alright, we need to think of a plan," Leonardo says.
"Yay!" Mikey says.
"First step is Mikey stays here," Leonardo says bluntly. "You're messing up too much lately."
"But..." Mikey says. "Leatherhead..."
While Leonardo keeps explaining the plan, I notice that Mikey is sitting down looking at the ground sadly. Poor Mikey, he really cares about Leatherhead. And then, Mikey frowns, determined and gets up.
"BOOYAKASHA!" He yells, and fearlessly, jumps into the portal.
"Mikey!" I yell and charge at the portal. "Don't just stand there, we have to get him!"
"But the atmosphere could be-"
"There's no time for that!" Leonardo cuts Donnie off and we jump into the portal.
When we're out of the portal, we're here. Dimension X. It has a light pink sky and atmosphere, and all the structures are floating. I look for Mikey when...
...I feel something. Something different, yet familiar.
"So this is Dimension X?" Leonardo asks.
"I think so..." Donnie says while walking, and then he falls off the edge, or at least, we think he falls. When we look over the edge to see if he's anywhere in sight, Donnie is looking straight at us from below. "What the shell?! Gravity cannot work like this!"
"Apparently here it can," I help Donnie up.
"Yeah," he says. "Different dimension, different laws of physics."
"Can we just hurry up and find Mikey?!" Raph yells angrily.
"But where do we start?" I say. "There's like a million floating planets here!"
"That's as good a place as any," Leonardo points at a mini planet with a spheric structure resting on it.
"Then let's go," Raphael jumps. Because of the difference in gravity here, Raphael's jump can take him all the way to a different platform, at least 500 meters away from here.
"Whatever, let's go!" I say and jump after him, with Donnie and Leonardo following after me. We jump like this from planet to planet, kind of like long-range switching of rooftops in New York.
Finally, the four of us are on one same planet and we stand on a large antenna.
"Why aren't there any Kraang here?" I ask.
"I don't know," Donnie says. Then he points at two flying things over the planet in front of us. "Those things seem pretty Kraangy though."
"Aww," Raph says. "Look at those little things, they're so cute!"
Right after he says that, the two things start flying towards us as if it were on queue. As they fly, they become bigger and bigger, revealing that they're sort of like a floating circuit of spheres.
"Are you sure about that, Raph?!" I yell when they place themselves in front of us, indeed very big. Then their bodies begin to light up and they create an electric current that can be repetitively shot at us.
"Run!" Leonardo yells.
We jump down from the antenna getting as much distance as we possibly can from the new Kraang things. Leonardo and Raph take advantage of the different gravity and jump up in an attempt to attack those things, but their electric current ends up messing up their plan. Both of them get heavily shocked.
"Leonardo!" I jump up too along with Donnie and we hit the Kraangs away, only to then have them chasing after us. Donnie and I fight them, until both Leonardo and Raph take us up into a crystal tree and we manage to hide. When those things can't see us anymore, they give up and leave.
"What were those things?" Leonardo says.
"If Mikey were here he'd already have a name for them," Raph says. His expression softens into a sad one. "I'm sure he's Kraang bait by now..."
I smile at him sympathetically. "I'm sure Mikey's fine."
"Hey, guys?" Donnie says and tugs at the tree. "I think this is the same material as the power cell."
"Donnie, I don't think you should-"
Donnie yanks out a piece of the tree, and the whole thing begins to light up in a purplish color.
"What's happening?" I ask.
"JUMP!" Donnie yells out, when we all manage to jump and the tree explodes sending us further away from it. We land at a different planet, groaning in pain.
"New rule," Leonardo says trying to get up. "No one touch anything."
Raph weakly gives a thumbs up too.
Leonardo helps me up.
"Should we keep moving?" I ask him.
"Yeah, let's move," he says. "Our target is right ahead."
Again, we jump as if we were weightless from planet to planet, but we end up getting tired too.
"I kinda don't blame the Kraang for invading us," Donnie says when we land. "Their dimension stinks!"
From the corner of our eyes, Leonardo and I notice something bobbing on top of a rock.
"I dunno," Leonardo says. "That thing's kinda cute." He walks toward it determined to contact it.
"Leo!" Raph says. "If there's anything we know about this dimension, it's not to mess with anything cute!"
The creature makes a high "MMAH!" sound repetitively.
"Mmah, mmah!" Leonardo immitates.
Oh, damn.
"MMAH! MMAH!" the creature says.
"Mmah, mmah!" Leonardo immitates the creature again.
THIS. IS. TOO. CUTE!!! I run up to Leonardo and hug him, kissing his cheek several times. "How the shell can you be so freaking cute?!?!"
He chuckles, and reaches out to tickle it.
"Aww!" He says. "It's so small and cute! Sara, tickle it!"
I'm just about to touch the bobby-creature, when beneath it the ground starts to shake and rise, alarming us all. The rocky ground reveals to be one whole monster, with big green eyes and four legs and a very long tail. It starts to chase after us, forcing us to run away from it. There's nothing we can do against it, all we can do is jump from floating planet to floating planet in an attempt to save our own lives.
When one of the rocky monster's legs hits the ground, it makes me float up to the ground and fall back down with a loud thud. Just when I think I'm done for, someone grabs me and gets me out of there swiftly, doing the same with the other three turtles. Then, that someone stands in front of us.
"Mikey?!" We all yell.
He looks different. He has like a strange alien skull and is wearing it as a helmet, and his facial expression is... dominant. Like if he had outsmarted us. He faces the rocky monster and screams in a specific pattern weakening it and then he throws some of the explosive crystals, the ones that make up the power cells and throws them at the monster, causing it to fall into nothingness.
"Mikey!" I yell.
"We were worried about you!" Leonardo says.
"Well, what took you so long?" Mikey asks. "I've been here for months! Or hours... I don't have a watch with me."
"What?" Raph questions. "But we jumped in like fifteen seconds after you did!"
"There's a temporal differential too," Donnie realizes.
"I love tempura!" Mikey yells out. "Better reload on my crystal ammo!"
"Wait, Mikey, those things are-"
Before Donnie can finish warning his brother, Mikey approaches the tree and whistles. Then, the crystals break on their own and fall into Mikey's hand, without exploding.
"How did you do that?" I ask him.
"A lot of the things here respond to sound," he says. "Now!" Mikey grabs a worm from the ground and squeezes it, making a vine come out of it. That vine hooks on to another planet, the one we were aiming for. "We must go! We have to rescue leatherhead!"
"Mikey just said 'must'?" Raph says.
"You know," I tease, "smart Mikey's pretty hot."
Leonardo looks at me, partly jealous. "He's only smart here, now let's go!"
Before Leonardo leaves, I stop him and kiss his cheek, and mouth the words I love you to him. We do what Mikey does and grab the worms (eeww) and squeeze them making the little vine come out.
"How did you know these things work?" Raph asks.
"It just seemed obvious," Mikey replies with his arms crossed.
"You're like a genius here!"
"In crazy backwards land," Mikey says proudly, "crazy backwards dude is king!"
"Alright guys," Leonardo says. "I'm guessing the facility where Leatherhead is is right there."
"You are correct," Mikey replies.
"Then let's head there!"
We stealthily approach the facility, which is surrounded by crystal trees allowing us to hide, when I start to feel that presence again.
I lean on a tree when we're right in front, still hiding. Mikey hangs upside down from the grapple-worm, like Spider Man.
"I got good news and bad news," Mikey says.
"What's the good news?" Leonardo asks.
"There's thousands of Kraang droids in there."
We stare at him blankly, and then to huge doors in the facility open, revealing the huge molten rock and lava alien we fought back at TCRI, and one similar to it only made of ice.
"That's the bad news," Mikey says.
The ice monster spits frost at us. Fortunately we manage to dodge. I'm about to fight alongside the turtles when the presence starts getting bigger. I feel weak, woozy, and I lose my balance. I place one hand on a tree to keep from falling, and the other one on my temple. I grunt, when things clear up.
Sara...
The voice.
Daughter...
My father's here.
"I have to get in there!" I yell.
"To get Leatherhead?" Raph asks.
"No!" I yell. "Just cover me!"
"Sara, wait!" Leonardo yells, but I don't stop.
Mikey does his thing by using sound to his advantage and makes the ground beneath the big aliens break, making them fall off.
"Let's move!" Mikey says.
"Tch," Leonardo scoffs. "I say that!"
They catch up to me, and Mikey leads the way so that we can go in through the roof. When we're inside, I look around and follow the presence in my head.
"This way!" I yell.
"Sara, wait!" Leonardo takes my hand. "What's going on?"
"My dad's here!"
Leonardo gasps. "Alright, we'll look for him, just make sure we're not seen."
"But how can I-"
"Sara," he calms me down. "I promise, this time we're leaving with your dad."
I smile at him. We start moving quietly through the corridors, and Mikey uses the worms to take the Kraang out of their droids. We stop outside a cell, where there's an Earth tree inside. The Kraang start to spray mutagen on it, but something else catches my attention. On the screens behind the tree, Kraang Prime's hideous face stands out. I start to feel light-headed and step away from the door, leaning on the wall with both hands on my head.
"Sara!" Leonardo whisper-yells and catches me in his arms.
"It's Kraang Prime," I say. "It's too strong!"
After a few seconds of Leonardo comforting me as much as he can, Mikey stands in front of me.
"Screens are off," he says.
Instantly, I feel better. I no longer feel Kraang Prime's presence. Leonardo gently helps me up, and we go see the now mutated tree. It's exactly like the ones outside.
"So that's what they meant when they said 'perfecting the mutagen'," Donnie says.
"Kraang Prime plans on doing that to Earth," I say. "I felt that."
The turtles look at me.
"And," I continue, "they'll do it soon."
"Alright," Leonardo says, "we find Dante and Leatherhead and stop their plans!"
"Move it!" I yell and run out. The first thing I think of is the cells. When we get there, I don't exactly feel my dad's presence, but I do sense someone else we're looking for.
"Leatherhead!" Mikey yells out and opens the cell door, and he himself takes out the Kraang droids guarding Leatherhead.
"My friends..." Leatherhead says. "I feared you would never come."
"Did you quit moisturizing?" Mikey says. "You look... a ton older."
"It's the temporal differential," Donnie says.
"Yes," Leatherhead says. "But that is unimportant at the moment. The Kraang are about to begin their invasion, and they must be stopped."
"Yeah!" Mikey yells. "Come on!"
Leatherhead leads us down to a big room, I'm assuming it's the very center of the facility. In the middle, there's a big computer, possibly what's controlling everything. Several big doors open, revealing a pretty big army of Kraang droids. But possibly the worst part is that there are a lot of portals around the room.
"What now?!" Donnie asks.
"We attack them," Leatherhead replies. "They must be stopped. I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees."
"I wouldn't!" Donnie says. "I have knee pads! I say we retreat!"
"No!" Mikey yells. "Donnie, move towards the computers, Raph, Leo, Sara, you three attack. Leatherhead!"
"Crush Kraang?"
"A lot!" Mikey orders. "Now let's move!"
We dive towards the ground level of the facility and start attacking every Kraang droid there is. I'm fighting alongside Leonardo, when a figure on the platform we were standing in calls my attention.
It's two Kraang droids, guarding a hand-cuffed man, who would have been experimented on with mutagen. That man is my father.
I stop, cold. "Dad..."
"Sara?" Leonardo calls.
"That's my dad..." I say. "That's my dad! COVER ME!"
Paying no attention to any orders, I start running. Every Kraang droid that dares to step in my way is swiftly sliced into two by my katana. Thanks to the help of the turtles and Leatherhead, I use a grapple-worm to make my way upwards again.
"Sara!" My father, Dante, yells.
I take out the two Kraang droids guarding him and undo the cuffs.
"Dad!" I look at him. He stands up, and he has proper breathing attire with him. Like Leatherhead, he looks years older.
My father stares at me, and the two of us fall on our knees at the same time.
"You look older..." I say.
"You..." he says. "Are a total badass."
I stare at him, not believing what I'm seeing. Then, I chuckle, and instantly I burst into tears. I throw my arms around my father, who I had not seen over a year.
"Dad!" I yell/sob.
He hugs me back strongly. "I can't believe you're here! My daughter... how did you find me?"
"We came here by accident!" I say. "But when I got here I felt differently and then I started to sense your presence and-"
"Hold on, hold on," he says. "You sensed me?"
I point at my head. "Telepathy."
He pulls down my mask. He leans his forehead on mine and a tear comes out of his eyes. "You're really here... Sara, I'm afraid there's something I have to tell you. The Kraang... They've-"
"They've been a pain in the ass since before I was born," I say. "I know what happened."
"Even about you mother and-"
"Dad that doesn't matter right now!" I yell and hug him. "We're together again. We're going home."
He smiles at me, when I hear Leonardo screaming.
"Sara!" He yells. "We have to get out now!"
I grab my dad and get up. "Come on!"
I jump with him and Leonardo signals at the portal, which we enter and get back to Earth with.
****
It's daytime here on Earth. Mikey takes off his helmet and goes back to normal. I look at Dante, who emotionally looks back at me. I run up to him, drop my katana, and hug him tightly.
"I'm so glad you're here!" I say.
He hugs me back. "Me too, Sara."
We hug there, for at least half a minute.
"Um," he says. "Aren't you gonna introduce me to your friends?"
I break the hug and clear my throat. "Dad, these are Michelangelo (Mikey waves), Donatello, Raphael, and Leonardo."
Donnie and Raph greet my dad politely. Leonardo does too, but I can tell he's nervous.
"Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Blackburn," Leonardo says. He holds out his hand, and my dad shakes it.
"Same, Leonardo," my dad replies. "Thank you for taking care of my daughter."
"Well," Mikey says. "Most of the time, she took care of us."
"Yeah," Leonardo says and smiles at me. "She's really great."
I smile back at Leonardo, when my dad clears his throat. "I guess I have some catching up to do."
I chuckle. "I'll tell you everything later. For now, what happened with the Kraang?"
"Their invasion will be set back for months," Donnie says. "But with the time differential, that's a matter of hours. A day, maybe."
"Guys, a storm is coming," Leonardo says. "Are we ready to fight?"
"AW, YEAH!" Mikey yells. "BOOYAKASHAAA!"