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"Hurry Saki! We have no time!" Splinter said to the Shredder.
"No!" Leo mentally heard himself saying. He wanted to scream it out…he wanted to warn his teacher…his father…warn him that the man behind him was going to kill him. "No….Sensei he will kill you!"
Leo's pleas fell silently in the elder rats ears as Splinter rushes towards the black hole generator, his long thin fingers about to touch the control panels when he lets out a gasp of pain. The Shredder's blades embed in Splinter's back and erupt from his chest. The stainless steel points coated red and dripping with blood and gore. His brothers' voices echo with his own screams as Shredder pulls back his blades and lets the mutant rat's body fall to the earth. The ticking seconds of the "Heart of Darkness" beating in time with Hamato Yoshi's final breaths.
April screams in pain as she lets out a psychic outburst that sends the Shredder blasting at least fifty feet away. He could feel himself running towards his Sensei's body, but it's too late…Splinter is gone. Leo wishes he could forget the painful sound of Mikey sobbing as he clung to the body of their dead master. The sound of his brothers around him mourning their fallen mentor. He wished this was all a bad dream…that he would wake up and Sensei would be alive and all would be well with the world. Unfortunately, they had little time to grieve for the real nightmare was only just beginning as the "Heart of Darkness" rose into the air…and opened. At first only chunks of debris were sucked into the opening void. The Triceraton's on the ground teleport themselves to their mothership like the cowards they were. The ones that were felled or incapacitated were left to be pulled into the void of the expanding black hole, martyrs for their cause.
"We are doomed!" Bebop squealed in horror as he clung to Rocksteady.
"Hold me close, Comrade!" The Russian Mutant Rino answered as held on to the mutant warthog. But the two were pulled into the expanding void like insects left to the mercy of a vacuum cleaner with Rahzar and Fishface falling victim soon after.
"Shredder! What have you done?!" Tiger Claw roared in anger from where he clung to a young maple tree.
"Hamato Yoshi is finished!" Shredder said in a triumphant tone. "The world can be destroyed for all I care, I have finally won!" There was no sorrow or pity for the Shredder when he was pulled into the void.
"This is it!" Leo said as he moved away from Splinter's body. "Everyone hold on to something and hold tight!" They could feel the wind beginning to pull at them, the threat of the void becoming all the more hazardous. Every one of them clung to the nearest surface they could find. Raph and himself clung to the park benches, Donnie and April to a young tree, Mikey to a lamp post. Leo glanced about at each of his brothers knowing this could be the very last moment he would see them all alive. He forced himself not to make any guesses of who would go into the void first. Just being at this very moment was painful enough…tears threatened to bloom in his eyes at the unfairness of it all. They had fought to save the world…they had done everything they could and in one selfish act their world and everything they loved would be gone. And his family along with it.
"What about Splinter?" Casey asked as he clung to a concrete table.
"He's gone, Casey," April said her voice sounding hollow and numb. The screams of the innocent people of the city began to fill their ears as they black hole began to swallow them. A mother and young child clung to one another seeking a last hope of protection in each other's arms as they were pulled into an unknown oblivion.
Slowly Splinters body rose, as calm and serene in death as he was in life and ascended gracefully into the sky.
"Splinter…." Mikey sobbed as they watched their Sensei disappear.
"Slash!" Raph cried out as he saw his former pet turned mutant also being pulled into the void with the other Mutanimals. Rockwell and Leatherhead reaching out for one another.
"See ya round…brother!" Slash said as he and the Mutanimals began to vanish into the unknown. A spaceship suddenly appeared to them from out of nowhere, blocking the pull of the void as a hatch opened and Professor Honeycutt appeared.
"Hurry, we don't have much time." The robot professor beckoned to them.
"Do we trust him?" Donnie yelled over the wind from the void. Mikey cried out in surprise as he felt himself being pulled upward towards the expanding black hole.
"Do we have a choice?" April shouted back over the wind. Cautiously they all let go of their holds as they made their way to the shelter of the ship. Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Casey all grabbed hold of one another to prevent themselves from being sucked away. Once safely on the Ulixes, Raph threw Mikey his grappling hook so they could pull their youngest brother to safety. They tried to be as quick as possible but were still careful as they could as every wrong move threatened the orange-masked turtle being lost to them forever. Once they were all aboard the hatch was closed and they took off.
"Hang on…beep…we are in for a bumpy ride," Honeycutt said as he took off into the cold airless void of space. They could only watch with horror all of them hardly daring to breathe as fissures formed over the Earth. It was like watching a glass ball breaking in slow motion. The planet itself turned an almost molten orange before it was sucked into the black hole the Triceraton's had created. Once its deadly task was completed it closed and exploded in a blinding supernova leaving a swirling nebula where the Earth had once spent millions of years spinning in the vacuum of space.
"NOOOOO!"
A loud cry broke Leo from his thoughts. He opened his eyes and found himself in the room Honeycutt had placed them all for the night. All of them had tried to get what sleep they could, but slumber didn't come easily to the six teenagers. April and Casey looked up in concern from where they sat curled against a wall. Raph was crouched next to Mikey rubbing his hand over his little brother's shell. Mikey, on the other hand, was kneeling on the ground crying and screaming in remorse as the full impact of the trauma they had all experienced struck him like a ton of bricks.
"Nooo…they're gone! Everyone's gone!" Mikey sobbed.
"Hey, we're still here little dude," Casey said trying to be comforting. April got up from where she sat and wrapped her arms around Mikey in a motherly hug.
"Splinter…LeatherHead…Ice Cream Kitty, Mondo Gecko... Dr. Cluckingsworth…." Mikey sobbed as he listed the names of those who he had loved as friends and lovingly named as a way of helping them assimilate into their mutant identities. "They're gone….they're all gone."
"I know Mikey…" April said as tears fell from her eyes. "My dad is also gone…Casey's family too. We're all that we have now..."
"Well, at least he's not whining about not being able to have pizza ever again." Raph bitterly remarked. "Man when I get my hands on Captain Mozar, I'm going to beat the horns off his head….I'm going to smash them all so hard they would be wishing they were back in the stone age." Leo didn't blame his brother's anger, in fact, he agreed with it.
The Triceraton's wanted to destroy the Kraang…that was understandable. But destroying a planet full of innocent people who had nothing to do with any of the issues the Triceraton's had with the Kraang… just to destroy the Kraang cells that were hidden on Earth. If only Mozar and his fleet had listened…perhaps they could have worked together with them and found a way to defeat the Kraang once and for all without sacrificing the Earth in the process.
Now the only thing Leo wanted was blood. He wanted the life of every Triceraton involved in this, vengeance for their master, vengeance for their friends. He wanted to avenge every innocent person who entered that black hole even if he had to cleave through every Triceraton man, woman, and child to do it.
"But..." Mikey sniffled. "But Renet told us that we saved the world loads of times. She said that our adventures were recorded in history books."
"You can't save what isn't there anymore," Raph said humorlessly.
"Mikey, the future is hypothetical," Donnie said as he stepped away from the wall he had been leaning against the entire exchange. There was little emotion in his voice. Just a bitter sounding tone that was rarely heard from the taller-turtle. "She said she was from the future, but that doesn't mean that our time stream is connected to hers. If there are other dimensions where we exist, then there very well could be other futures. The time she is from could be some parallel universe where we did stop the Triceraton's from destroying the Earth, or maybe the Triceratons never attacked Earth at all."
Raph growled to himself. "If I hadn't been insistent that Zog was our ally...we would have only needed to deal with the Kraang."
"Don't blame yourself, Raph," Leo said. "If we hadn't encountered Zog we would never have learned the Kraang had even returned." Donnie sighed through his nose before walking to the door.
"Hey, where are you going?" Raph demanded.
"Somewhere, where I can be alone!" Donnie said with an unusually hostile tone in his voice.
"Donnie, this isn't the time where any of us should be alone!" Leo protested, but Donnie only responded by stepping outside the door sliding shut behind him.
"Geeze, what's eatin' him?" Casey asked somewhat concerned.
"He's upset Casey..." April answered. "We all are! A lot has happened...and this time we can't place our hopes on what ifs. We're all that's left."
"Shouldn't someone go talk to him?" Raph demanded "You said yourself, Leo, this isn't the time when any of us should be alone. And we all know when the genius is distressed he has a tendency to go stupid."
"You're not saying he'll…?" April demanded "D, isn't like that.'
"What about nearly exhausting himself at the Farmhouse?" Casey muttered.
"Or stalking April when she wasn't talking to us," Raph added.
"He could be headed for the nearest airlock right now." Casey pointed out.
"Don't say that!" Mikey growled, tears still glistening in his eyes. "Let him have his space if he wants it."
"I'll let him have fifteen minutes, then I'll go check on him," Leo said as he settled with his immediate younger and youngest brothers. "You guys are right, he can make rash decisions when he's upset. But pushing him right now would only do more harm than good."
Leo calmly stepped out of the room he looked over large hallway of the spaceship as he tried to figure out where his second brother went. Donatello did have a curious nature and was possibly taking a walk or was exploring the ship. He was not foolishly curious like Mikey was at times. With Donnie, his curiosity was more out of a desire to know and to understand. Though he doubted the purple-masked turtle was actually exploring the ship for the fun of it. Sometimes...sometimes after rather serious situations Donnie would just shut down or to be more exact he'd emotionally put himself on autopilot. While he appeared to be perfectly fine to everyone else, in reality, he was just going through the motions of normalcy.
Leo remembered hearing horror stories of such a time occurring during the first week or so at the farmhouse from Mikey and Casey. And that was what Leo was worried about now. He wanted to believe his second brother was alright, but there was still much to be concerned about.
"Oh."
Looking up he saw Professor Honeycutt, the robots large light up eyes were saucer-wide as though he hadn't expected to run into Leo at that moment.
"If you are looking for your friend, he's on the bridge," Honeycutt answered as though reading Leo's mind. "He seemed to be understandably distraught."
"Thank you," Leo said to Honeycutt before he rushed down the hall to the bridge of the ship.
The door slid open with a hiss as he entered the main control room. Leo's deep blue eyes scanned the room until they landed on a familiar green shell. Donnie was leaning with one arm and his forehead pressed against the window, his eyes closed.
"D?" Leo asked with concern. Donnie's eyes opened, but he didn't turn to look at his eldest brother. The listless and lost look his only dark-eyed brother reflected back made Leo give small intake of breath in silent alarm. The reddish-brown eyes on normal circumstances would endlessly swirl with ideas, concepts, and calculations. Were now blank and dulled with despair and confusion.
Donnie was the one who was always there to fix things that were broken, assisted Splinter in healing away injuries, repaired any sort of damage that had been caused. But now they were in a situation where he could do nothing. Splinter was gone, their world destroyed, their family torn to its very core. There was no telling how much this was hurting the brainy turtle or any of his brothers for that matter.
Cautiously Leo approached his purple-masked brother…until he was right beside him. For a moment the two of them stood in silence watching various stars and planets pass them as they journeyed to an unknown destination.
It felt like irony being here drifting through the blackness of space. Ever since he watched Space Heroes for the first time, he had avidly enjoyed the journeys of Captain Ryan and his crew. And now here he was in Space, living out his own Space Heroes adventure with his family as his loyal crew. He was living the dream that most Spacenicks back on Earth would only live out in Fanfictions. He should be the happiest Mutant Turtle in all of existence, but he wasn't. And he didn't know if any of them ever would be again.
"I…" Donnie said in hardly more than a whisper. "I had always wanted to see the worlds beyond our planet...study space, but I never thought it would happen like this."
"I know…" Leo answered. "It's the same with me and Space Heroes?"
"Oh…would you get off that stupid show!" Donnie snarled a tinge of anger his voice and what sounded like the beginning of a sob. "This isn't Space Heroes, this is real! What happened didn't happen to Captain Ryan…it happened to us! So don't start comparing our situation to Space Heroes or Captain Ryan or whatever…not after what we've been through!"
Leo was taken aback by Donnie's outburst, to be fair Leo had only said it to indicate he understood where his brother was coming from. Their reasoning and desires were different, but they still experiencing something they always wanted...in the least desirable circumstances. In the pit of his stomach, Leo knew the purple-masked turtle was right, comparing their situation to Space Heroes would not do any justice to what they've been through. Captain Ryan didn't hold his teacher's dead body in his arms. Captain Ryan didn't watch in horror as his home planet was swallowed by a black hole. More often than not, Captain Ryan would have chosen to blow up a planet of innocent people, just to kill one evil overlord. And then proclaim the sacrifice of those innocent people had been for the greater good.
Donnie fell to his knees as he emotionally deflated…his chest heaving in and out as he started to hyperventilate. His eyes screwed tight as he fought against the tears that threatened to fall.
"Why…" Donnie whimpered. "Why do we need to lose Splinter again? It was hard enough for all of us to see him being flushed down that drain before...but now..." Instinctively Leo knelt beside his distraught second brother, his arms wrapping around Donnie's shoulders.
"Shhh just calm down, Donnie." He whispered. "I don't know what will happen now, but everything's going to be alright." Donnie went rigged at that statement and pushed himself away from his older brother.
"How can you say that?!" Donnie said angrily as a tear squeezed its way free and traveled down his cheek. "How can you say everything's going to be alright? We have nothing, Leo! We didn't only lose Splinter this time! We lost everything…our home…our friends…our world. There is nothing left and you dare to say it's all going to be okay!"
"Don't misunderstand…" Leo said as tears formed in his eyes as well. "I wish I knew why we were saved when we were, and I wish Splinter was here with us to offer his guidance. But we haven't lost everything….the six of us still have each other. And while Splinter and everyone else may be gone physically, they still exist here." Leo placed a hand over his heart. "They still exist in our hearts and in our memories. They wouldn't want us to mourn their loss forever. Splinter, the Mutanimals, maybe even Mr. O'Neal and Karai would be relieved that all of us even made it off the planet at all. They'd want us to be glad that they even lived…that they were a part of our lives. While their absence will hurt for a time and possibly always will. It's only when we let their deaths consume us that their lives would truly be lost in vain. "
Donnie brought a hand to his eyes trying to block the tears. His shoulders shaking as he tried fight them. When Leo's arms wrapped around him once more, he welcomed his brother's comfort as he broke down.
"Everything will be okay, D…" Leo said as he also allowed himself to grieve. "As long as we are together…the six of us…we will be okay."