Author's Note: Yay, the next chapter! Just to let you know, this one takes place BEFORE the first chapter, as stated in the "Earlier..." mark down below. The first chapter was more of a "preview" or "teaser" of sorts, so you'll see those events take place in the later chapters. That being said, I did have to go back and change some of the first chapter (but seriously, like four sentences) so it aligned with this one, 'cause I'm not good at planning and I ended up adding some stuff here. It's nothing big, I just didn't want any inconsistencies and such. Anywho! Enjoy this chapter! I tried to add some humor, you know, before everything gets all sad and full of feels. Have fun! :D

Disclaimer: I don't own TMNT or Nickelodeon. But if I did, season 3 wouldn't suck as much as it does so far. COME ON, NICKELODEON, GET IT TOGETHER!

When the End Begins:

Earlier…

{Leo}

We push forth. Through the crazed streets of the city, now lit with newfound panic and chaos as the humans struggle for a grip on their waning sanity. Through the alleyways, grazing over rooftops, our eyes locked forward and our hearts stammering in our chests. No one says a word. Not even Mikey, whose silence and lack of poorly told jokes is particularly unnerving.

The sound of our breath, our steps, our sweeps and tumbles are the only things that fill the void we've found ourselves in. Well, that and the wailing sirens and frantic screams down below. We keep moving until we reach the vast metal sphere illuminated in strips of blaring iridescent purple. I try not to pay attention to the orbs ejecting from the ship as the Kraang target the civilians down below. My instincts are telling me to save everyone I can, to drop from the rooftops and free the people being taken captive. But I know our mission is the Technodrome. Once that's shut down, the rest will follow.

And so, with the Kraang focused on the streets of scattering humans down below, we scale up the back end of the ship, avoiding the guns protruding from the sphere. We keep pressed against the vessel and wait for another orb to shoot off into the city. Once it does, I give the go-ahead, and we climb into the opening left by the pod.

With the world at stake, the only thing of importance is that you complete your mission. No matter what you have to sacrifice…or who.

Sensei's words are ringing through my mind as we infiltrate the Technodrome, filling the silence that lingers between my brothers and I. They're all afraid, but they keep passing brief glances towards me when they think I'm not looking, as if they're checking to see how composed their leader still is. And it's the hardest thing I've ever done, hiding my fear from them. I've put on a brave face many times, but now, it's difficult to hide the tremor from my hands as I grip my katanas, the quiver in my voice as I give orders, the shakiness of my breath as we move. It's a constant battle inside of me, conflicting with the one on the outside. I'm terrified, but I have to be strong. I must shove down the fear, bite it back, crush it between my teeth and move on with strength and determination. I must lead my brothers.

But it's a struggle. As we reach the innards of the Technodrome, as we stumble through the curved hallways, dodging passing orbs and Kraang bots, my fear only grows, and my resolve begins to waver. We're in the belly of the beast, and it's up to me to get us out safely. And I'm just not sure if I can do that now.

But I don't get another chance to let my thoughts sulk before a scream rips through the air. Donnie pipes up, his voice cracking in his fear.

"That's April!" he gasps. And he takes off running down the hallway. The three of us go after him, glancing at one another and then back to Donnie, who's stopped ahead of us.

"She must be in the interior of the vessel," he spouts, whirling around to the splitting hallways.

"How do you know that?" Raph argues. I can catch the fear in his voice—it sharpens his tone, disguising it as anger. But I know better. "This thing is huge—she could be—"

"Look at the size of these hallways!" Donnie snaps. "The orbital ships are being ejected from all sides of the Technodrome, and each of them is sent down one of these tunnels in order to reach the outside. That, and factoring in all of the lasers and guns on the exterior, it's a safe bet that the only real room in this place is going to be at the center. Plus," he points up, "all the wiring systems along the ceiling are transferring energy in that direction, so the command center or whatever Kraang ships have must be that way."

Raph's expression slumps the way it always does when Donnie shows him up with something irrevocably logical and sound. He grunts in response and crosses his arms.

"So," I start, "if we follow those power lines—"

"Conduits," Donnie corrects. I pause to glare at him.

"So if we follow those power conduits," I growl out the word and he nods with a slight grin, "we should find April."

"That's the most likely of theories, yes."

"Then let's go. Keep to the walls, you guys, and move quietly." I glance back at Mikey. "Got that?"

I catch him staring off into space with a grin plastered on his face. He shakes his head when he sees me looking at him and clears his throat.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Totally."

My eyes narrow and Mikey responds with a sheepish grin. "Raph," I start. "When we get to the command center, make sure Mikey doesn't try to press any of the buttons."

"Got it."

Mikey's face slumps. "You're not allowed to use your freaky brother-mind-reading power around us, man. It's not fair."

"I'm not reading your mind, Mikey. I've just had the displeasure of living with you long enough to know when you're thinking something stupid."

He pauses, pursing his bottom lip before shrugging. "That's fair, I guess."

"Good," I mutter. "Now let's move!"

~T~

{Mikey}

Pfft. I wasn't really going to try flying this thing…unless, you know, it looked like something I could operate.

But Leo dashed that dream against the wall in a split second, and now we're back to sneaking through the Technodrome, silent, scared, and wondering if we'll ever get out of this.

No one will say that, of course. But no one needs to. We're all looking to Leo like a bunch of terrified kids who keep glancing at their parents for reassurance in the desperate hope that they're somehow in control of things. And after everything we've been through, I've learned that Leo, one way or another, will always be there to get us out of the mess we've made.

We hide beneath a loose panel in the wall as another Kraang drifts by, followed by another little human-snatching circle ship. I can see Donnie twitching nervously, glancing from side to side, sweating from his forehead. We've only heard April scream one other time since we got here, and I can tell it's getting to him. He's practically off his rocker with the thought that she's in danger.

And it takes two and a half forevers to finally get to the center of the ship. Like everything else, the outer wall is a huge sphere (the Kraang aren't exactly a creative bunch), protecting the inside room. We wait for a moment, trying to listen to what's going on so we know what we're jumping into. But before Leo can give the orders, Donnie starts slinking along the wall, feeling for a weak point.

Leo glares at him warningly. "Donnie, we need to come up with a plan before you just—"

WHAM! Donnie smashes his foot through the wall with a well-placed kick, and Leo scowls in response. But once again, before Leo can say a thing, Donnie goes right through the hole he's made and vanishes from sight.

I can tell Leo's building up a mental list for the lecture he's going to give Donnie after all of this. Every time that little vein above his left eye twitches, I know he's added another bullet point.

And boy, is that vein twitching now.

The three of us go tumbling in after Donnie, completely clueless as to what to expect. But I can definitely say that I was not expecting a giant Kraang face sticking out of the wall. It looks at us in a mixture of surprise and disgust (but come on, has it looked in mirror lately?) and shrieks something in its creepy language. And it probably wasn't something nice, either.

But Raph wastes no time in throwing himself at the freak, nailing it right between the eyes with a brutal kick—and boy, do I know from experience that that thing's in some major pain right now.

It starts screaming. Horrible, awful sounds spew from its gross brain face and echo through the room, ringing in our ears. I wince, covering the sides of my head in an effort to block out the sound. Not that it helps at all.

Donnie screams out something about April, who I've just noticed is strapped down to a table on the ground below us with all sorts of wires and cords sticking out from her. Leo jumps down to help Donnie, and I watch the two of them argue below Raph and I. I can't hear a thing past the Kraang's shrieking, so I assume it's about whether or not pulling the cords will hurt her. But it's not like they have much of a choice in this situation, and sure enough, they start tearing out the tubes. I can see some blood beading to the surface of her pale skin where the tubes used to be, and I have to look away. She doesn't seem to be conscious anymore, and I don't want to think about what she had to go through before she went under.

Raph's eyes narrow in rage at the sight of April's limp and battered body as Donnie and Leo climb back up to us. I can see the anger in Leo's eyes too, but it's nothing compared to the look on Donnie's face. It's like a storm swirling in his eyes—pain and sadness and anger and fear, all mashed together in one heavy cloud.

Raph stomps his foot and swears loud enough for me to hear past the Kraang's noise-making. And then he suddenly snatches one of his sai from his belt, whirls around, and hurls the blade at the Kraang, stabbing it between the eyes with a sticky thump. The howling gets worse and I flinch under the pressure of it. Gross purple blood stuff starts spurting out from under the blade protruding from its face, and I can tell by the way the hilt is stuck smack against the brain flesh that it's in there pretty deep.

Man, I'm glad I've never made Raph that angry.

But you know, now that I think about it, it seems kind of dumb to just be a face sticking through a hole in the wall. How's it supposed to protect itself—

Thwack, thwack, thwack!

I practically jump into Raph's arms when the whole room starts shaking. The sound of panels snapping off the walls smacks against my ears.

"FOOLS!" it bellows. And we all look on in terror as we realize that it's not just a face, but a whole, giant, robotic body. The arms and legs are spindly, and unbelievably long, and as the Kraang pushes through, that whole side of the wall just about pops off. We have to duck to avoid being decapitated by flying debris, and Leo barks something that I think we all assume means "RUN!"

And we do. Toppling over one another as we scramble to escape through the hole Donnie made with his foot, we push out the other side, sprawling and scattering onto the floor. And then we start running. Fast.

"You just had to stab it in the face!" I snap, glaring in Raph's direction. He snarls at me.

"Yeah, well I should've gone for its eyes, that little—"

The ground shakes beneath us, throwing our balance off. My face hits the floor with a thump and I go tumbling as the wall behind us is torn completely open. The sound of metal being wrenched in half is probably one of the worst things I've ever had to listen to; I can feel it in my bones. My body tenses against the offending sounds and I look to my brothers.

Raph and Leo are both hunched over, covering their ears, their faces mushed in a "Make it stop!" expression. Donnie's scrambling to his feet, holding April close to his chest to keep her from being hit with anything. It'd be cute if we weren't about to die.

"Keep to the walls!" Leo shouts. The floor quivers and begins to be pulled upward from the middle, causing Leo and Donnie to slide back against the opposite wall and effectively separating us. "We have to get back to the escape pods! Donnie—"

CRACK!

Suddenly, the ceiling caves in, busted through where the Kraang thing smashed one of its robotic limbs. Smoke and sparks spew up from the crumbling debris, shoving me against the wall in a frantic attempt to not be crushed to death.

I start coughing as the dust fills my lung. My vision is blurred by the heat and the stinging in my eyes. The fear comes in like a cold, crashing wave, and my heart skips.

"Leo!" I call desperately.

A hand grabs me by the arm and pulls me up.

"Move!" It's Raph. I'm trying to wipe the dusty haze from my eyes, but Raph keeps pushing me along. "Come on, Mikey! We're gonna get crushed—"

Another boom. Another horrible cacophony of cracking boards, screeching metal and crumbling chunks of structural matter. I let out a squeal and high-tail it forward, this time dragging Raph behind me.

"Mikey—Mikey, wait! Geez, you're gonna make me break something—"

"Then you might wanna move a little faster!" I shriek. We jump forth and dive down into a roll just as another part of the ceiling comes raining down. I cough, wiping the grime from my face and spitting out a wad of icky Kraang-dirt.

"Leo!" I scream. "Donnie! Where are you guys?!"

Raph shoves me over. "They're on the other side of the tunnel. We've gotta get past all this junk, 'cause there's no way we're climbing over any of it."

I nod hastily and glance back for a second. I can't see the Kraang, but I can hear it screaming at us and smashing things. Dust and pieces of the ceiling keep dropping above us, loosened by the Kraang's rampaging. I think he's mad that he can't find us. Maybe he should've thought about that before he brought the roof down.

"Come on," Raph hisses, jabbing his finger forward. "Let's keep going—quiet this time. We'll meet up with Leo and Donnie at the end of this hallway."

I swallow fearfully and nod. "Yeah…yeah, okay."

And so I follow him. We creep along the edges of the wall, and he has to plaster a hand over my mouth to keep me from shrieking every time something shakes or falls. We move over the debris, stepping carefully past the exposed wires and crackling electrical systems. I swat his hand away for a second.

"Is April gonna be okay?" I whisper as we scale the ceiling that's all over the floor.

Raph makes a noise in the back of his throat. "She better be, or I'm going to rip every Kraang I find in half and shove them in a meat grinder."

I pause to let the description sink in. "That'd be some nasty shredded beef." I glance back behind us and refrain from making a sound when the ground shakes again. "I think Donnie might beat you to it, though."

We move for another minute or so—I can't really tell at this point—when the Kraang starts screaming and thrashing around again, shouting something in Kraang-speak that's incredibly loud and sounds really insulting. You know, if I spoke Kraang.

"That's close," Raph hisses. "But I think it's on the other side—that thing must've found Leo and Donnie—"

But he doesn't get a chance to finish his sentence before an enormous WHOMP breaks my eardrums. A wave of force shoots from wherever the giant Kraang is, throwing debris and ripping more panels and beams from the walls. The air is filled with flying rubble and the bleeding alien shrieks that only those stupid brains can make. My heart leaps, kick-starting my body, and I go running across the wreckage, desperate to get as far as I can from the car-sized chunks of metal crashing down behind me. Raph's right behind me, swearing under his breath as we both stumble over the mess. Another crash emits from behind, and Raph cries out before throwing himself at me. His body hits mine, and he pulls me into him, forcing the two of us into a roll just as a huge piece of the wall above us comes down.

My ears are ringing, and every part of me hurts. But Raph pushes me up and urges me to keep running, shouting indistinctively from behind.

I'm huffing for breath, my heart punching my rib cage, my head ringing with the constant screech and crumple of metal and ship parts. I can see the end of the hallway now, and my heart does a little happy flip when I see that the split in the floor tapers off just ahead.

"There!" I shout to Raph, though I doubt he can hear me. We keep running, scrambling, tripping over displaced beams every two seconds, but we're almost there—

And again, the thumping. Again, the booms, like thunder ripping through the air. The floor quakes beneath us and the whole ships turns slightly to the side. I cry out as I lose my balance, and my foot suddenly catches in a pile of rubble. I fall over, jaw clenching against the sudden sharp pain searing through my ankle. I desperately try to pull my foot out from between the wreckage, but it's stuck.

Come on, come on! Let me go, you stupid floor!

Oh, man, I'm gonna die here—

Raph reaches me, panting and covered in a slick layer of sweat and grime. His eyes scour the rubble my foot's caught in, and he glances behind me, his gaze wide in fear.

"You okay, Mikey?" he gasps.

I swallow hard and give a short nod. "It hurts—"

He goes right for the debris and starts trying to pull it off of me. He grunts and curses as he struggles to move the fragments, but they must be too heavy, because he can't even get them to budge. He sits back for a moment, gasping for breath. His hands are shaking, and I can see blood smearing from his fingers where the skin was peeled off from all his pulling.

"Is it broken?" he breathes.

I shrug. "I-I don't know—but I can't get it out—it hurts too bad—"

His facial expression shifts for a moment. His jaw clenches, and he swallows.

"We don't have time; I'll just have to pull you out."

My heart skips. "But—"

"I know it's gonna hurt, Mikey—I'm sorry, but it's the only thing I can do."

And before I can protest, he wraps his arms around my torso and yanks upwards. My foot is freed—but not before something cracks. My vision goes white for a second, and it hurts so badly that I can't even get a real scream out. It's more of like being punched in the gut, where all you can do is gasp for air because it feels like you can't breathe. I'm still in shock when he hauls me out from the debris and shifts my weight onto his back. He starts running for the edge of the hallway again, slower this time because I'm not exactly light. My eyes are blurred with stinging tears and I have to keep my jaw clenched so I don't start crying. Oh, it hurts—it hurts so bad—

The pain is like a throbbing beat of sickening warmth. My whole ankle is pulsing with it now, all the way up my leg and down my foot. It's gotta be twisted, or broken or completely obliterated—

Oh, Donnie's gonna have to cut my foot off—

I'm gonna be a stumpy-foot turtle for the rest of my life—

"There they are!" Raph shouts. I cling to his back and stretch my neck to see Donnie and Leo stumbling out from the smoky passage with April—safely, by the looks of it. Another jarring pulse of pain moves through me, and I swallow hard and bite down to help stem the waves of agony emitting from my ankle—

"Hey!" Raph snaps, glancing back at me. "Get your teeth off my shell!"

"It hurts!" I cry angrily, frustrated and in pain. Obviously, I didn't know I was using the shell behind his neck as a pain-reliever, but he's the one who busted my foot, so I should be allowed to do what I want at this point.

"That doesn't mean you can sink your teeth into my—"

"Mikey, Raph!" Leo shouts, waving us down. Raph picks up the pace, hurdling a pile of scraps and reaching our brothers.

Leo's eyes widen. "What's wrong with Mikey?" he asks, panicked.

"His foot got caught in some of the rubble," Raph explains, panting as he shifts my body enough for Leo to see my ankle. His eyes narrow.

"It's swelling pretty bad," he mutters. "You okay, Mikey?"

It takes everything I am to keep from bawling like a baby. "No!" I whine, my face bunching up in an effort to stifle the awful throbbing. "My foot just got snapped in half, dude!"

"It's your ankle," Leo corrects in a tone that downplays my flustered state. "And you'll be fine. We just have to get it bandaged, which we'll do as soon as we get home."

"Where's the nut-job?" Raph snarls, whirling around to glare behind us.

"The idiot got tangled up in the mess he made of the ceiling," Leo bites. "He just started smashing everything—practically killed us eight different times—but now he's just stuck back there 'cause he can't move around all the rubble."

Raph scoffs. "Well at least the Kraang are too stupid to be an actual threat."

"Yeah," Leo growls. "Tell that to April when she regains consciousness. And to half the city."

Raph's eyes soften and he looks to Donnie, who hasn't said a word. "She okay, Donnie?"

Donnie barely glances up at us. "I don't know," he says quietly. "I mean, she's breathing, but I have no idea what they were doing to her… All those tubes…" He wipes away some of the bloody spots on her arms where they had to rip the cords out. "We'll just have to wait for her to wake up."

Another crash sounds from the war zone of a hallway. Leo sighs.

"We can do that after we escape the freaky alien ship," he mutters. "Come on, the corridor we came in through is that way." He looks at me for a moment. "Mikey, can you walk at all?"

I frown. "What part of 'broken foot' do you not understand?"

"It's your ankle and it was just a question!" he snaps. "Raph's gonna pass out if he has to run all over this thing with you on his back—"

"I'm fine, Leo," Raph snarls defensively. "I can do this."

Leo holds his gaze for an intensely awkward moment before grunting.

"Fine, fine—but we've gotta move fast. Who knows when that thing could get loose?"

And just to answer his question—because as we've learned, every bad guy ever will try to answer those kinds of questions as soon as we ask them—the floor vibrates with movement and another scream splits the air. And my head.

"Guess that answers that!" Leo growls. "Let's go!"

A/N: Whoo! Action scenes, yeah! I hope you guys like it so far, and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments! Thanks, and see you soon with the next update! :D