Chapter 8

Crazyness in Kraang Central

The Hamato teens tried their hardest to fix their mistake by getting the power cell back on their own. They searched all the known Kraang facilities, tried to interrogate some of the brain aliens as they fought them, and searched high and low through the city for the helicopter they had gotten away in. Donnie even made an app on his phone to track it, but it was no use, they just kept losing it.

It was obvious to them all that it was time for them to face the music. They needed to tell Leatherhead what had happened in hopes that he'd know where the Kraang would take it and how they could get it back.

Leatherhead was not happy to hear that they lost the power cell. In fact he went on another one of his temper induced rampages (which included him grabbing Donnie by the face, much to the genius' displeasure) before he managed to snap out of it on his own. He had been getting better at that thanks to many calming techniques taught to him by Tang Shen.

The mutant gator told them that his memories of the Kraang's torture while on Earth were foggy at best, and the only thing he remembered from his time with the Kraang that indicated any form of location was a symbol, which he carved into the stone floor for them to see.

It took Donnie a while to remember where he'd seen the honeycomb like symbol the alligator drew, which was not helped by Mikey insisting it was the Olympics.

With some help from Yoshi, Donnie eventually remembered that the symbol was the logo of TCRI, a company that operated out of New York City, and had a very tall building all to itself. It was also the building Stockman had tried to break into when they first met him in his lame battle armor.

With that discovery, the five of them and April immediately began planning to break in, destroy the Kraang portal, and hopefully find clues to the whereabouts of April's father in the process.

While the others made preparations, Donnie kept himself busy building a bomb he hoped to use to destroy the portal. He looked up when Miwa walked over to him with a sly look on her face that could only mean trouble.

"Hey," she said with a grin. "Since you're working on things that go 'boom' anyway, do you think you could try making a little something for me?"

Donnie quirked an eyebrow at his sister. "Depends on what it is," he said fairly. When Miwa went looking for trouble it could always be counted on to be fun, even if it was usually also very likely to be stupid and dangerous.

Miwa's grin widened. "Well you see, I've had this idea for awhile now," she then leaned over to whisper it in his ear.

Donnie frowned at what he heard, but nodded. "That sounds highly dangerous, but doable. I'll see what I can come up with. If it works, it'll definitely come in handy with what we have to deal with."

Miwa beamed at him. "Awesome, thanks little brother."


An offhand comment from April was Leo's inspiration for his plan to get them into the tower. After finding a giant box, they all packed themselves inside it, and had April wheel them into the building and onto the elevator claiming they were special delivery.

Despite the run-on method in which the Kraang spoke, the aliens weren't stupid, and knew right away something was up. April had to hightail it out of there to avoid capture, leaving the Kraang to turn their attention to the package. They opened the elevator again, and readied their blasters to destroy whatever was within it.

Only for Leatherhead to burst out of the box, and began mercilessly attacking the Kraang. The gator was having the time of his life crushing his hated enemies and listening to them squeal as he pried the brain-like aliens from their robotic bodies.

Meanwhile, the five Hamatos had climbed through the elevator shaft up towards where the portal had to be.

"I kinda feel bad leaving Leatherhead," said Mikey worriedly. He hadn't been completely on board with leaving the mutant to fend for himself while they went farther in.

The others listened to the sound of happy alligator roars and Kraang being twisted into scrap metal.

"I think he'll be fine," said Leo reassuringly. And he believed it too. Leatherhead had proven to be a very strong and resilient fighter in the short time they'd known him. When he was angry there was nothing that could take him down (except for Tang Shen, and sometimes Mikey, who both took a 'kill him with kindness' approach). Personally, Leo was just glad the gator was on their side. They all had Mikey to thank for that.

"How far to the top?" asked Raph, looking up the elevator shaft.

A black tunnel with seemingly no end was all he could see.

"Yikes," he muttered, to which his siblings all agreed. It was going to be a long climb.

But there was not much else they could do about it, so they started climbing, Mikey humming the Olympic theme song as they went.

Thinking they may have climbed far enough, Raph hoisted himself up to a door and forced it open.

He was greeted to the sight of several Kraang bots in the process of putting on their human suits.

Raph slammed the door back shut, and couldn't shake the feeling he had walked in on seeing the Kraang naked, and all the disturbing mental images that followed that line of thought. "I need to wash my eyes," he said with a freaked out expression. Then the alarm began sounding through the building. He winced knowing he was the cause of it. "That's bad."

"Alright!" cheered Mikey.

"What?" asked Leo in annoyance, failing to see what was good about this situation.

"Finally someone set off an alarm, and it wasn't me," said Mikey cheerfully.

"Leo was the one who set off the alarm in the World Wide Genome Project last time, genius," said Miwa sarcastically.

Mikey's eyes lit up. "Oh right, that's two alarms I didn't trip," he said happily. "I'm getting better at this. Well that, or everyone else is getting worse."

But before he could celebrate further, an elevator door above them opened and a Kraang aimed its blaster down at them and prepared to fire.

The five teens had to make use of their acrobatic skills as they flipped their way up the elevator to avoid the laser fire.

Mikey managed to use his kusarigama chain to knock the Kraang down the elevator shaft, but it did little good, as the elevator began ascending towards them with more armed Kraang firing up at them once they came into eyeshot.

The teens promptly let go of their handholds, and dropped onto the elevator to begin fighting the aliens. They cleared the ones on top of the elevator, only to find even more were waiting inside to shoot them when Leo opened the hatch.

They cleared out those Kraang too, and decided to ride the elevator the rest of the way up in order to catch their breath before the next battle.

Breath they soon found that they needed, as when they reached the top floor, a wave of green gas flooded into the elevator, choking the teens as they stood.

Miwa watched in horror as her brothers began collapsing to their knees around her, choking on the poisoned air. Her signature green scarf over her nose and mouth had been able to filter the gas a bit so that she was not in as bad a shape as her brothers, but without oxygen she knew that would soon change. She had to do something fast, or they would all suffocate.

And there was no way she was letting her baby brothers die. Not on her watch.

So she squinted her eyes and searched desperately through the soupy fog for someway to protect her little brothers from suffocation.

In the back of her mind, she registered several Kraang had noticed their entrance and were starting coming towards them, speaking to each other of how, "The ones known as 'the kids' have infiltrated the place known as here." But she couldn't focus on that right now.

With her eyes watering from the smog, Miwa could vaguely see a large window across the room from where the elevator opened.

With the last of her breath, she drew out the new toy she had convinced Donnie to make her and got ready to use it.

It looked like a typical shuriken with the Hamato crest. But this one had a switch on the top of it that was well hidden in the engraving.

She flipped the switch making the shuriken light up and start beeping shrilly to signal its activation. Praying that the gas surrounding them wasn't flammable, she let the shuriken fly.

Her aim was perfect, and the star imbedded itself in the glass of the window with a 'thunk'. It began beeping at a rapid pace before exploding, shattering the window and allowing the gas to blow out with the wind, fresh air filtering in its place.

Miwa and her brothers gasped greedily at the clean air as it became available to them. Slowly the room stopped spinning, and they were able to see and think clearly again.

But they didn't have long to enjoy it, as the Kraang on the top floor now had them completely surrounded, and were all aiming their weapons at them ready to fire.

The teens darted out of the elevator just before they were blasted to bits, and continued dodging through the Kraang bodies to get to their objective.

"When did we get exploding throwing stars in our arsenal?" asked Mikey as he dodged the laser fire. His voice was a little weak from the effects of the gas, but he didn't appear otherwise harmed by it.

"She asked me to make them earlier," Donnie called, his voice raspy as well as he took out two Kraang. "She just used my only prototype!"

"Well, I'd say they work," said Miwa as she stabbed her short sword through a Kraang. "So I want more ASAP."

"Me too!" Mikey cheered. He then noticed something shiny on the ground, and reached down and pocketed it without second thought before going back to Kraang bashing.

"Yeah right. Like we're going to trust you with exploding anything," Raph shouted sarcastically at his youngest brother, his voice huskier than usual. Without waiting for a reply he turned back to his fight, and impaled his sai through one of the Kraang's robot heads.

"Go!" yelled Leo as best he could as he pushed his way through the androids, his voice still wheezy from the effects of the gas. "Follow the plan! We need to destroy that portal!"

"That must be it!" said Donnie as he pointed towards the large machine in the middle of the room with a platform and three large cannon like structures surrounding it.

"It's beautiful," Donnie said appreciatively. "Scientifically speaking."

"Does April have competition now?" Miwa teased. "I recall you said something similar the first time you saw her too."

Mikey laughed at the look on Donnie's face at that. "Do you take this portal to be your lawfully wedded-" he started to say, before a Kraang got too close for comfort, and he had to focus more on the fight at hand.

"Well, what are you waiting for, Romeo," yelled Raph as he stabbed a Kraang in the head. "Blow it up already!"

Donnie ran over and jammed the bomb he'd built into a tight spot where he thought it'd cause the most destruction and the Kraang wouldn't be able to remove it before he activated it.

"Let's go!" Donnie yelled, and they all piled into the elevator and mashed the button to go down.

Once he felt they were a safe distance away, Donnie hit the buttons on his phone that activated the bomb and the five heard the welcome sound of the explosion above their heads.

The five teens spent the rest of the elevator ride cheering at their victory.

When they reached the ground floor, they found it littered with Kraang parts, and Leatherhead standing over the carnage looking very proud of himself.

"Mission accomplished, LH, now let's move!" yelled Raph as the five ninjas rushed past him out of the building. They blew up the portal, but the building was still full of Kraang, and none of them would be happy about what the six of them had done.

The gator let out a victory roar before following after them.

Once they were a safe distance from TCRI, they climbed to the roof of a tall building. Leo pulled out his telescope and focused it on the hole in the window that Miwa had made with her explosive shuriken.

He promptly dropped the telescope in shock at what he saw.

The portal was still standing! And from the look of things it didn't even have a scratch on it.

When he told the others, they all stared at him in disbelief. They didn't want to accept what their leader was saying was true.

Wanting answers, Donnie scooped up the telescope (which fortunately hadn't broken in the fall) and looked through it himself.

"That's Impossible!" he said in horror as he saw what had freaked his brother out. "I packed enough explosives in that bomb to take out the entire room. How is that thing still standing?"

"So you're saying all that was for nothing?" Miwa asked in distress. They had been packed into a box too small for all of them, been shot at, forced to climb an obscenely high elevator shaft, gotten shot at again, nearly choked to death on poisoned gas, and then shot at some more upon recovery. To find out that everything they'd just been through was all for naught was terrible news.

"No fair!" shouted Mikey.

Raph turned and punched a nearby satellite dish clean off the building in rage.

"Let me see," said Leatherhead, reaching out for the telescope. With some difficulty he brought it up to his eye, and peered at hole.

"Oh no," he said, his growling voice showing his distress. "The portal has a force field put around it."

"A force field?" Donnie asked, looking intrigued, despite the situation.

"One of the Kraang's strongest measures of defense," the gator explained, lowering the telescope to look down at them. "Not even the strongest of Earth explosives would have been able to touch it so long as the force field is up. And now that the Kraang have seen us attempt to destroy it once, our window of opportunity has closed. I fear we will no longer be able to destroy it until we gain another."

"Then we failed," said Leo in despair, his head bowed.

The other four ninjas slumped as the truth of the matter sank in. They had failed, and now the Kraang had a working portal to bring who knows how many horrors from their own dimension down on them. And on top it all off, they had not come across a single clue as to where April's father was. As far as they were concerned, this mission could not have gone any worse.


With heavy hearts, they returned to the Renaissance Dojo to inform their parents and April of what had happened.

But when they got to the part in their story where they told about the poison gas, Leatherhead had to interrupt in order to make a correction.

"It is likely they did not release the gas to poison the five of you," he said while nursing a calming cup of tea provided by Tang Shen. "It is more likely the gas was already present on that floor. That is what the atmosphere in Dimension X is like, it is what the Kraang and the other inhabitants there breathe."

Raph scoffed when he heard that. "Well that's stupid. Why would you invade a place where you can't even breathe the air?" he asked in disdain.

Mikey snickered. "Yeah, what are they gonna do? Mutate the whole planet so they can live here, and we can't?" he asked as a joke.

Leatherhead crunched the teacup in his fist to dust on reflex, and everyone else stared at the youngest in utter shock and horror.

"I don't know what's scarier," said Donnie, sounding slightly amazed. "What you just said, or that you said it."

Mikey looked around in confusion. "Wait, wait, what'd I say?"

"Mikey's right," said Donnie looking around at the rest of them, the pieces of the puzzle that was the Kraang's agenda finally falling into place in his mind. "The Kraang are trying to transform the planet into something they can live on."

"And we can't," Leo added, looking horrified as he caught on as well. "We have to stop them."

"Agreed," growled Leatherhead fiercely. Everyone else nodded in agreement. If the Kraang had their way, it would mean the end of all life on Earth, and that was something they could not let happen.

"But how?" asked Raph despairingly, pointing out the obvious question that stood in their way. "You heard LH. Nothing we've got is strong enough to punch through that force field, and now TCRI's security will be tighter than ever. We're not gonna get another shot at it for awhile."

"Raphael is correct," said Master Yoshi. "But remember, my children. The nin in ninja means patience. Another opportunity will arise to strike at our enemy and their weapons, and when it does, we will be ready for it."

His face turned grave, and he looked at each of those assembled in turn. "We have to be," he said, making sure the point got across.

Tang Shen listened to the proceedings and wondered not for the first time how her family had gotten wrapped up in all of this. The grudge that the Shredder had pursued after all these years and all the way from Japan to New York, that she could understand. It made some form of sense, and as terrible as it was it was within the realm of human nature. A twisted and malevolent nature, but human none the less.

But this was far beyond human nature. In fact there was almost nothing human about it. Here she was giving tea to a giant, mutant, bad-tempered alligator sitting in her living room for Kami's sake.

But he was an alligator who had quickly become a dear friend to both her and all of her family. One that often sought her out in order to talk through his anger issues, much like her own Raphael would do. And one who was fiercely loyal in protecting those he deemed his friends, likely to the bitter end if need be.

These events had also brought April into their family's trust, and Tang Shen could not deny that she was a delightful girl as well. The fact she was the current focus of Donatello's affections only seemed to make her more endearing as Tang Shen watched his affections for her grow, and to see April to grow closer to him as well.

Tang Shen knew she could not begrudge the good things that had come of this crazy adventure, despite all that was bad.

But even with the good, somehow Tang Shen's family had inexplicably become the Earth's last line of defense against an alien threat that sought the genocide of her entire race. And the ones to fight most of the battles were only children. Her children, and they had taken on the weight of the entire world.

Her darling Miwa, a rebellious spitfire whose only real goal had been to have fun and enjoy her life, was taking on the responsibility of saving an entire planet on top of her responsibility as the eldest of her siblings. Pushing her up against everything she had ever feared, and everything she could ever fear.

Her beloved Leonardo, so idealistic and still naive in many ways of the world, was leading all of his siblings down a path that would test his ideals, his integrity as a leader, and everything else that made her son who he was to the very limits of their potential for either good or ill.

Her brave Raphael, who was so passionate and even kind to those closest to him, no matter how often that fact was hidden behind the sheer ferocity of his temper, was now tasked to protect those he loved most from dangers beyond imagination, as well as beyond what his strength alone could fight.

Her clever Donatello, so gifted and intelligent, and only just feeling the beginning fruits of his first love, was taking part in situations that would test every ounce of his vast knowledge, skill, and strength, and then some, all the while trying to keep a promise to the girl he likes.

And her sweet Michelangelo, the radiant light of all their lives, whose laughter and joy they could always count on to brighten their day, was now on a path that would bring him face to face with the darkest that the universe could throw at him, and may even snuff out that light if he was not careful.

If she could, she would keep her children home and safe, locked away from all the dangers their enemies presented to them. She and Yoshi would be the ones fighting these numerous enemies instead. Allowing her babies to remain home and unscathed from the toils of battle.

In a better world, this would be true. But that was not the case.

Not for the first time Tang Shen cursed the fact she could no longer fight with the strength she used to have. To be able to protect them like she felt she should.

But the cuts Saki had placed upon her back, and the emergency cauterization of the wounds had done more than simply mar her skin with ugly scars. No those scars also spoke of the loss of strength and much recurring pain.

The marks the Shredder made on her, while they had not been fatal, had greatly damaged many of the nerves on her shoulder and spine. She still had her mobility, and was considered by many doctors to be lucky to even have such. But the strength she once had had greatly decreased, and at times her back would flare with a crippling pain that would not recede till hours later. Medication helped somewhat, but nothing could ever fully repair the damage that had been done, and nothing would bring back the abilities she'd once had as a kunoichi.

So as much as she wished it was otherwise, Tang Shen found she had no choice but to stand aside, and let her precious babies fight this impossible battle on their own, while she was left in the role of moral support and comfort when they returned home.

But despite the overwhelmingness of it all, she knew none of them could back away from this battle now. They were involved, and they could no more turn their backs on it than they could stop breathing. This was their fight now, and she knew she had to do her part. Even if that part was only to be the mother her children (as well as April and sometimes even Leatherhead) needed to love them and banish their troubles away for a short time at least.

Speaking of her children, she came out of her thoughts to notice that Michelangelo was absentmindedly fiddling with a shiny piece of metal in his hands. "What do you have there, my son?" she asked curiously.

Mikey brightened from the revelation of the Kraang's plans, and held up the piece of metal for her to see. "I found it on the floor by the portal," he said cheerfully.

"Oh good, now you're picking up alien trash," said Raph sarcastically with a roll of his eyes.

Donnie, however, came over and peered closely at the piece of metal. "Do you realize what this is?" he asked in wonderment, plucking it from his little brother's hands.

"Shiny!" said Mikey with a pleased grin.

"It is a Kraang data storage device," said Leatherhead once he saw what they were talking about. "It shares many similarities with what you call a flashdrive."

"Exactly!" said Donnie, suddenly looking happier than he'd been since the start of this mission. "If I can decode it, maybe I can find a way to stop them."

The genius ninja quickly sequestered himself down into his lab to do just that. Leatherhead followed after him to lend his own knowledge of Kraang technology to help with the decoding process.

The rest of them sat in the living room and waited, watching one of Leo's Space Heroes cartoons to pass the time.

On the screen, Captain Ryan was trying and failing to sink an enemy ship on a water covered planet before the villains could freeze the whole place over, but for once Leo wasn't paying all that much attention to his favorite show. None of them were, but pretending to do so meant they didn't have to find something else, and could be left to their thoughts in relative peace.

April, however, felt the need to voice a question that had been bothering her since she'd heard the Kraang's plan.

"This just doesn't make sense," she said to the others. "If the Kraang are trying to terraform the Earth, what do they need my dad for?"

"Well, he is a scientist," Leo pointed out.

"Maybe they think he could bring something new to their mutagen problem. That's why they wanted all the others," added Miwa with a shrug.

After their first meeting with Falco and what they learned of mutagen afterwards from their attempt to rescue Kirby O'Neil, they knew that the reason the Kraang had been abducting or employing scientists to help them develop the mutagen so that it would do what they wanted.

"Yeah, but he's a psychologist," said April, pointing out how it couldn't work. "He studies rats running through mazes. My dad wouldn't know anything about what they're trying to do."

Raph, who had been lounging nearby, glanced over looking confused. "But if they didn't need your dad, why were they after him in the first place?" he asked.

Just then Donnie emerged from his lab looking grave. "I don't think they were," Donnie said, before gesturing them to follow him back to the lab.

Leatherhead was waiting down there with as grim an expression as could be shown on his scaly face as he mentally went over the information he had just received. When he saw them arrive, he quickly moved to hover protectively by April, causing the redhead to stare up at him questioningly.

The reason for the gator's sudden protectiveness quickly became clear as Donnie sat himself in front of his desktop computer and pulled up the files he had found.

"With Leatherhead's help, I used the Kraang processor inside Metalhead to access that storage device," he explained as his fingers flew over the keyboard. "A lot of the files are damaged, but… I think I found what they're after."

With a final keystroke, Donnie pulled up several lines of Kraang text, as well as multiple headshots and photographs of April, all clearly taken without her knowledge.

April gasped in horror at the sight. "They're after me?" she asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Donnie looked like he wanted to comfort her, but didn't know how. Instead he nodded his head gravely.

Leatherhead placed a hand on the redhead's shoulder protectively. "My ability to read the Kraang's language is limited," he said, "but from what I can understand of this, there is something about you that they desperately want. Something that seems to be the key to their entire invasion plot. And they intend to get it from you, dead or alive."

At the sight of April's terrified face, the gator hastily added. "Though alive is highly preferable to the latter. The dead part is just if it is caused by an accident or an outside party."

Somehow, that did nothing to make April feel any better.

Donnie took April's hand in his and looked her straight in the eye. "Well they are never gonna get you," he said with determination. "Not if I have anything to say about it. I'll-we'll protect you April, I promise."

The other members of the Hamato clan added their own assurances to Donnie's promise. April was considered a member of their clan now, and they would protect her with all they had.

Slowly a small smile snuck onto April's face, and she squeezed Donnie's hand in thanks.

Things may be looking grim, but it was a battle they could still fight.


A/N A big thanks to majishan, for helping to plan this chapter. As you can see, I saved Leatherhead from going into Dimension X. Because of this things are going to start diverging from the show, for better or worse. You can already see some changes, such as telling them about the force field before they storm the building again, and using his Kraang experience to aid Donnie. We also get a peek inside Tang Shen's head. With Tale of the Yokai coming out soon (hopefully) we'll (also hopefully) finally get to see Tang Shen as a person, rather than just someone from the past who is talked about. I can only cross my fingers that my metal portrayal of her isn't too far off. If it is, I'll come back and change what I missed both here and in Turtle Loops. Fingers crossed that I've been getting her at least somewhat right.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.