Several months had passed since the turtles, April and Casey left New York beaten, battered… and defeated; leaving them with empty hearts and heavy memories of hurt in their minds. The fall of their Master Splinter, the destruction of their home, the loss of April's father and the disappearance of Casey's father and sister. The months to them felt like years, but it was in that time that new life came to flourish; Mikey made friends with a frog mutant named Napoleon, Donnie discovered a female Big Foot, and Raphael began forming a closer bond with Leonardo. All in all, through their hardships and lack of guidance from their Master, it was their father's teachings and the brothers strength to go on, that their bond found a way to grow more powerful than ever before.

One night, as the turtles took a day to relax from their rigorous training, Donatello was in the middle of doing research with some of the Krang tech they managed to scavenge before leaving New York. He was running a scan on one of the machines he brought, that had once led his brothers, April, and Casey, into a universe that opened gateways to other universes; from what the diagnostics were showing him…it was still operational!

"Hey Donnie?" Looking up from the edge of his screen, the turtle would find April walking into the garage with a tray of food in her hands, and a cup of what seemed to be water. "I brought you some dinner, luckily I managed to get you the good stuff before Mikey got to it first…" Placing it down, the red headed teenager walked around to Donnie's side and leaned in to see what he was looking at, "Is this what you've been working on all this time?"

Donatello nodded to April and points to one side of the screen, "See here? This is where most of the Krang activity is taking place. From what I've gathered, it must be where they've taken most of the citizens that have been turned into crystallized mutagen. Most likely having built a sort of Storage building to harvest them…"

"That's sick," She muttered in disgust, wondering how these Krangs could ever do such horrendous things. However, she added with a question, "…and what about those that were just… turned to mutants?" April was worried and she had every right to be, after all, her father was turned into a mutant several times.

"I-" Donnie had to stop himself to actually think on what he was going to tell April, after all, this was a delicate topic and more than once… he's screwed up. "-I don't know April. But from what it seemed when we left, the Krang are just letting those that were mutated, roam around the streets like mindless drones."

In some ways, April found relief in hearing this, knowing that her father was somewhat safe. Leaning back to cross her arms, she looked at the device on the table and then back over to Donnie, "And this? Does this have to do with what you're doing?"

Donnie nodded and quickly typed in a few commands on his 'Shell-top' as he brought up a few screens with documents in them, most likely dealings with the Krang… and other big time investors. "It looks like the Shredder wasn't the only one the Krang made contact with. Look at all these bases! I've calculated that there are about four located around the world and that they've been used for mutations." He turns around to face April on the chair, picking up the teleport device and giving a little gesture to it, "With this baby, and a bit of tweaking, I was able to get it up and running."

"Get what up and running?" From the garage door to the house, Leon, Raph and Mikey were standing at the door way with expressions of curiosity and seriousness (well, curiosity and awe for Mikey, always the child at heart.) "What's this about bases around the world?"

"Just as I said Leo," Donnie rose as the other's came close, "I've discovered that the Krang had other bases located around the world. So far, only four of them seem active."

"Dude! That means there might be more of us out there!" Mikey said with a rather excited tone, but gets a bop on the head by Raphael.

"Yeah, and any one of them could be like Tiger Claw, or the Rat King." Raphael crossed his arms and looked over to his slightly taller, but younger sibling, "So lemme guess, you had something in mind?"

"As a matter of fact, I do." Donnie began in defense and moved back to his computer, "I was able to hack most of the base's data and I managed to collect some files." With a few simple commands from his keyboard, up came three files and pictures that came with them.

Mikey gasps and pushes Donnie down to look at one of them, "WHOA! Check that one out! Australia!"

"Yeah… oh, this one is in Japan, like Tiger Claw." Leo spoke with interest.

Raph snickers to the last one, pointing, "Geeze, this one's shorter than short." He turns his head to look over his brothers, asking the most obvious of questions, "And how are we suppose to find all of them? It's not like we can just magically open a door and waltz in there."

All the turtles looked to one another, but Donnie was the only one smiling, as he lifts up the little device in his hand and bounced his brow ridges. Mikey seemed to get it, and Raph looked interested in the idea; but Leo had crossed his arm in disapproval. "I don't know about this Donnie," Leo said worriedly, "I mean, let's say this does work, what guarantee do we have that this will take us to where we want to go?"

"Ah Leo, so full of doubt." Donnie placed his hand on his brother's shoulder, "Why do you think I've been spending my time here in the garage? I've been rewiring the circuits on this baby to open up doorways, based on locations I type in. And! As a fail safe that the portal does close behind us," On the table he lifts up another device of the same kind, "I've made this duplicate in the events that something goes wrong."

"Whoa, so you've like, thought of everything, huh bro?" Mikey looked so amazed at the duplicate portal, wanting to reach out and touch it, but Donnie gave his hand a light shoo away.

Leonardo needed to think hard about this, his arms crossed as he took a moment to step away and plan all of this in his head. His eyes closed; first thing's first… they needed to find a place to lay low if they were to go back to New York. Then find any allies that are still around… or rather, still alive. Boy, could he sure use Splinter's guidance right about now. Or at least to have his presence there. He knew his brother's had their eyes on him, as well as April and Casey (who had finally noticed he was the only one watching TV alone.) Slowly, as he opened his eyes from his heavy meditative thinking, he lowers his arms and turns to face everyone, "Alright guys, we're going back to New York, but first thing's first;" He walks over to one part of the garage where they had located an old map from April's attic, it was a map of New York and it was still in mint condition, "We find a new base of operation. Our lair was trashed so we'll need a new place to set up."

"What about the old subway station?" Donnie asked and points along the map, "When we first met Leatherhead, he was living pretty close to the abandoned station that was built during the 1900's. I'm pretty sure that by now, they've forgotten all about it."

"…do you think we'll find Leatherhead?" Mikey piped up, his head lowering lightly as his eyes met the floor, "In all the craziness before we left, I didn't see him anywhere."

The garage was filled with silence; Michelangelo was right. Was Leatherhead okay? No one had seen him when they went to gather everyone to leave New York. Was he in hiding? Did he get captured? …was he- "I'm sure he's okay Mikey," Raphael began, speaking with a softer tone then he had before, as he rests one hand over his younger brother's shoulder, "Maybe on way to this abandon station, we'll bump into him!" Leo hid a smile to see that Raphael was trying his best to keep Mikey's spirit up, it was always good to keep the faith. Maybe they search for Leatherhead… they could also search for Splinter.

"Well guys, that settles it." With a proud and very strong look in his eyes, he draws his katana and lifts it up over him, "We're going back to New York! And reclaiming our home!"

"YEAH!"

[TBC...]