Okay then. I came up with this story after reading Nekotsuki's Grandfather Paradox. Thanks for the inspiration and for letting me take this idea in a different direction, Nekotsuki! It's taken me a while to write it, and I'm still not entirely happy with it, but here goes nothing! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Ninja Turtles or the Shredder---though I do have a very nice cheese grater.
What Cannot Be
Darkness. A heavy weight, pinning his robotic arms to his sides, his steel legs to hard pavement. Anger. Boiling, raging, all-consuming fury. How dare they. How dare they? Those freaks.
He shifts. The weight pinning him rumbles with the movement. He feels no pain—his body is metal. Lifeless. Life resides inside. Hidden. Obscured from prying human eyes for centuries. Powerful. Undaunted. Unchallenged.
Until now.
An inhuman growl escapes his metallic throat. He pushes hard now, fighting to get the metal limbs underneath him, to force his way through his prison of water and wood. The planks shudder and crack, the controls against his tentacles strain with the effort, but he is rewarded when light shoots through the darkness and a rush of cold air cools the metal around him.
The metal is the only thing that cools.
His rage reaches new heights as he draws closer to freedom. His thoughts begin to churn, already planning, plotting…a myriad of possibilities all centering around one central motive.
Revenge.
Another crack echoes into the night and he snarls in triumph as his metal claws—sharp, brilliant, bearing down on his enemies, ripping, tearing flesh in a spray of glorious crimson—crash through the last of the wood and he is free, rising to his feet, his loyal Foot bowing low to their master.
Yet his attention is not on them, his rage dimmed and muted by another emotion, equally as powerful.
Shock.
They should have fled. If they were smart, they would have. They had been at his mercy, helpless before his power and skill, all of them but one, that accursed rat…but standing across the empty street, surrounded by several motionless forms in black and gray, is one of the sources of his fiery anger.
Shock is momentary. He feels his emotions shift once again, his anger rising once more but tempered by another feeling. Glee.
A hunt will be grand. And he will have one, for there is only one freak on the street before him. For now, however…one would most certainly do.
Best of all, it is the one freak who will give him the most satisfaction, the creature who dared to defy him, the one who dared to refuse him. The one who was about to find out exactly what it meant to betray the Shredder.
He studies his foe critically. Dark eyes framed by bright blue watch him warily, the long graceful curve of a katana held defensively between them reflecting the muted light of the street lamps.
If metal lips could smile, he would be grinning now, but as it is, inside his metal cocoon, his wide alien maw stretches, curving upward. Soon, those eyes will be filled with fear and despair, before he destroys them utterly and they see no more.
Movement draws his attention for a moment, and for the first time he notices another figure, a red-headed child, cowering behind the blue masked ninja. He ignores the child, choosing instead to keep his attention on his hated adversary.
"Leonardo," he hisses, drawing out the name, relishing in the fear it must bring to his mutant foe. "You should have run while you had the chance."
Leonardo's face is grim, but he is surprised when the terrapin cracks a wry smile. "Right. Guess you're still mad about the whole dropping-a-water-tower-on-your-head-thing, huh?" Even as he speaks, Leonardo begins to move backwards, towards a storefront across the street. He keeps himself between the Shredder and the boy—the alien smirks. Sentimental fool. Does he not realize that he is the one who needs protecting?
His enemy finally reaches the wall and stops, the blade steady between them. A sound strategy—a wall to his back will keep the Foot from surrounding them. Unnecessary. His loyal Foot will not attack.
They know. This battle is his.
He advances. The terrapin is not watching him, he has his head turned towards the boy, as the little brat stutters. Fool. The Shredder closes the distance and strikes quickly, an armored fist tipped by long metal claws slashes towards his enemy's head. His muscles tighten in anticipation, waiting eagerly to feel the tear of soft flesh, to hear the splash of blood. Leonardo is fast, but he is not fast enough, there is no way he can avoid—
Shock.
A second time.
The turtle ninja reacts instantly, dodging the spikes as the boy runs for cover. Leonardo avoids a second punch, spinning on one heel to deliver a solid kick to the stomach that sends the Shredder stumbling back. A kick to the stomach. Right where his true flesh lies concealed.
Rage spikes again and he moves forward, but Leonardo comes to meet him, easily maneuvering around his every offensive. "I really did not miss this," the turtle mutters cryptically at one point, dodging another lightning fast strike.
Frustration begins to eat away at the edges of his anger. Each blow is evaded as if Leonardo knew where he would attack, each retaliation of the turtle aimed at the metal walls surrounding his soft alien flesh. Impossible. There is no possible way that the other ninja could know what he fought, no way he could think of the Shredder as anything other than human.
Yet there is something in his eyes, a calculating look, gone as quickly as it had come, as if the blue clad ninja knew something he didn't.
Enough. It is time to end this.
He rocks back on his heels and Leonardo pulls back slightly, watching him warily. His red eyes glow hungrily. "There is something different about you, Leonardo. Interesting. But I will destroy you all the same."
The calculating look returns to his enemy's eyes. The katana rises up and Leonardo tenses, muscles going taut in anticipation of attack. The Shredder smirks. Let him come. It will only hasten the inevitable.
But the terrapin does not attack. Leonardo relaxes, his expression turning into a slight, rueful smile. The sword rises again, and the turtle slides into a defensive stance, waiting.
Confusion replaces anger for a second, but only a second, and then the Shredder charges forward, longing to sink his claws into green flesh. Leonardo evades him once again, but the fight is interrupted as a…hole…appears in the air next to them. Leonardo glances at it once, shouts something...
"Go, Cody, GO!"
...and darts away from him, aiming for the mysterious hole in the sky. The Shredder snarls, leaping forward—there is no way he will be denied his revenge, not this time—but his metallic fist hits only empty air. His enemy is gone.
Minutes tick by. Each second sounds louder than the first, as his anger cools and rationality returns. The impossible has seemingly happened, but the Shredder has lived long enough to know that nothing is impossible.
For the first time, he lets his mind relax, sinking into a slight meditative state as he searches for answers. He notices, now that his mind is clear, that not only did Leonardo seem different…he looked different.
Taller.
Stronger.
Faster.
Dressed in some kind of strange armor, his katana blades longer, sharper, more lethal, glowing with some kind of strange energy. Even his movements, his eyes…brimming with a confidence that was not there just hours before. Somehow, in the moments that he had spent freeing himself, Leonardo had grown stronger.
And it all had something to do with that strange hole in the sky. It was some kind of technology—the alien is sure of it. Something to do with time…with space…and if it had the capability to bring such assurance to his enemy, then there is only one thing to do.
He must possess it.
Time is a fickle thing, the Shredder knows. And where there was one hole…there is certain to be another. He calls his ninja to him, and a second later is rewarded when another rift gapes before him. Without hesitation, he and his army of loyal Foot jump through.
They land in a strange place, but the Shredder barely spares it a thought for his enemies stand right before him, shock plastered on their faces. He orders his ninja forward, commands them to take the field, to bring him victory. There is nothing that can stop him from achieving his goal, and certainly not a bunch of freaks and that same, red-headed child. He leaps forward with them, expecting, as always, for victory to be swift and vengeance satisfied—
Shock.
A final time.
His foes meet his army without fear. The Shredder discovers to his dismay that Leonardo's brothers are every bit as changed as he is. His Foot ninja begin to fall to them, and quickly. Even more shocking still, strange allies come to their aid, as some kind of massive creature lays into his forces and sends half of them reeling back into the rift from whence they came.
Even if all this had not happened, even if his Foot soldiers were leading him to victory, what happens next shakes the very foundation of his world and changes his plans forever.
Leonardo meets him in battle once again. This time, however, the terrapin is completely on the offensive, and the Shredder realizes that his enemy had been holding back. He is driven inexorably backward, his body and mind reeling, unable to process how—vulnerable, how weak!—he had suddenly been rendered. He gasps, his anger being replaced by sudden fear. "Impossible! You are not this powerful!"
It is Raphael's voice, coming suddenly from behind him, that makes all the pieces fall into place. "Dude, we put the kabosh on you a long time ago! You're history!"
To punctuate his words, Raphael kicks him in the back, just as Leonardo delivers a blow from the front, and the Shredder finds himself tumbling helplessly, falling back through the rift to land in an undignified heap on his back in the empty street where he had met his first defeat.
It is hours that tick by this time, rather than minutes. He and his Foot ninja have long dispersed—no sense in revealing their presence to the police which surely must come to investigate the downed water tower—and he now sits on his throne, the events of the day spinning into his mind. Over and over, Raphael's final words ring through his head:
"We put the kabosh on you a long time ago! You're history!"
He had been right then. Time travel. He had faced his foes from the future. And they had defeated him. A bunch of unnatural mutants. Creatures created by accident, creatures that should never have been made.
But the bitterest truth that he sees is that not only had they defeated him in the future, but by the turtle's words, they had somehow defeated him in the past. How? And more importantly, how soon? What did this peek into the future mean? Was his fate inevitable?
No. It couldn't be. He was shown this future—and now he intends to make the most use of it. It is then that the Shredder makes a decision. No longer will he hunt them for sport, no longer are his plans about mere vengeance. He must destroy them now. Utterly. No time for games, and no mercy. It is survival now—and he means to be the only survivor.
Several days later, he sends his Foot into the sewers, and Leonardo makes his fateful run out on the rooftops of the city.
The battle for the future begins.
So there you have it. Constructive criticism is always appreciated :D