My first attempt at putting Ice Cream Kitty in the story…*deep breath* Let's do this!

Mikey skidded into the kitchen, then threw open the refrigerator door. After getting distracted by Ice Cream Kitty for around 15 minutes, he rushed to the oven to start making lunch.

Hearing a meow behind him, he answered, "Yeah, that's right, Kitty. They're telling me to make lunch again just 'cause I blew up Donnie's lab door lock. Unfair, huh?"

He sighed, simultaneously chopping vegetables and turning to face his cat. "Donnie's locked in there, and he's trying to hack into the lock, not that's he's making a lot of progress. Master Splinter went outside to check on the Foot Clan lair, since we've kind of been neglecting it for the past few days… not that we don't have an excuse!" Smiling ruefully, he continued, "Hopefully make it in time to taste my awesome cooking! "

He heard a meow behind him, and he smiled, taking that as a sign of agreement.

"Raph's blowing off steam as usual, he still doesn't trust Leo, even though me and Don do. Don came up with this info that Leo's strings have completely snapped, but he's not crazy yet. Last time, he took a whole week to transform. The good news is that, although this time Leo creepy version is lot stronger, this makes the transforming time longer, and makes it up to a month! Cool, right? I mean, it's only been three days since he went loco the first time, which means we still have more than three weeks to turn him back! We still need to be careful, though, he's still not stable..."

Trying to fill in the silence, the little turtle quickly stuffed the food into the oven. "Oh, snap! I completely forgot about the time! It's 12:30, gotta hurry!"

Mikey rushed around the kitchen, working 3 times his normal cooking speed. Hearing frantic hissing and meowing, he turned around. "What is it, Ice Cream Kitty? I need to hurry…" his words were stolen when his eyes focused on the scene in front of him.

The oven had been left open, and with some bad luck there had been a wooden spoon next to it, lighting that whole section of the kitchen with…

"FIRE!"

Frantically, he grabbed his pet and rushed to the doorway, only to find it in flames. He struggled to think, and his brain slowly fitted the pieces together. The spoon had been lit, which soon followed to the wooden table next to the fallen utensil, which in turn had set the doorway in flames rising around 12 feet high, and covering the whole frame. He was trapped.

Feeling faint from the smoke, he wrapped his hands around Ice Cream Kitty as he curled up on the floor.

"Guys…hurry up…"

Meanwhile, outside, the other two brothers were panicking. Donnie was still behind the doors of his laboratory, trying to find some kind of plan. Raph had been knocked under a section of the wall that had crumbled from the fire, which Donatello's technology upgrades had prevented from progressing from the area near the kitchen. Unfortunately, Raphael had tried to yell to Mikey through the doorway, and obviously had to be near the fire in order to do that.

The red-masked turtle, frustrated, attempted to stand up and fell back down.

"Mikey… I need to get to him!"

His younger brother was trapped inside the fire, and he was powerless to do anything but let it progress. By now, he could tell that Donatello was also starting to give in to fear. He wasn't a genius but even he knew that his little brother didn't have much time left…

Michelangelo blinked hard through the smoke. He had tried every single possible way to get out, but found all of them unsuccessful. In his arms, his ice cream-cat whimpered. "Don't worry, Kitty, it'll be all-"

He was cut off by a long period of coughing and hacking, lungs struggling to find any trace of pure oxygen. This is it. Fifteen years of training and practice, and it all comes to this. I always thought that it would be because of Shredder or the Kraang or some kind of wacko mutant, but in the end, it's all my own fault.

He saw a figure running him, but before he could make sense of anything else, he blacked out.

Michelangelo cracked open his eyes. There were three figures leaning over him. All at once, Donatello, Raphael and Ice Cream Kitty started talking to him, if you could consider cat meows talking.

"Mikey, you okay?"

"How you do you feel?"

"Mrrow!"

Sitting up, the youngest turtle did his best to try and answer.

"I feel okay, but I'm kinda dizzy…" Then a thought struck him. "Who saved me?"

The other two exchanged glances. The genius responded, "Here's a hint Mikey. It wasn't any of us."

Raphael left the lab as his younger brother puzzled over the clue. He walked into the dojo, where his older brother was sitting, meditating. The red-masked turtle winced when he saw the new bandage covering the burn on his arm.

"Hey, Leo."

Leonardo looked up. "Hi."

Raph took a deep breath, this wasn't going to be easy. "Bro, I just want to say…Thanks. And sorry."

His leader took a long time to answer. "I get the 'thanks' but what's with the 'sorry'?"

"I…I judged too quickly when you came back to the lair three days ago, and I didn't even consider the fact that you could be telling the truth. But now, I completely get it. And…uh, I just want you to know that throughout the rest of the time we have to get you back to normal, I won't give up on you. Not after this time. Okay?"

Raph quickly found another corner to look at, waiting for the response, which he was sure wasn't going to be nice.

"Thanks."

Looking up, the fighter of the team slowly smiled, resembling the expression of the leader's.

"Your welcome, Fearless."

He got up, face returning back to its usual scowl. "And just because I'm letting you talk to the others doesn't mean I'm gonna be any nicer then I was almost a year ago."

With that, he pulled out his phone to tell April what had happened.