Last time, we uncovered the secret of Tyroth's healing ability, and a new enemy made his appearance.
This is one of the longer chapters, as I could not find a good spot to end it on. I hope that you like it.
I don't own TMNT
Chapter 10
Vision And A Visitor From The Past
"So we have to stay here?" asked Sephie after Splinter had explained the current situation.
"It's just temporary, but it's for your own good." Leo clarified.
"We understand Leo, but we had planed to return to Mutopia." said Tyroth "Not that we would mind staying longer. Just have to find a way to contact them and explain our current situation."
"I think I can help you with that." Donnie said "Didn't you have your own computer center? Shouldn't be any trouble to establish some form of communication with them, depending on what kind of protection they use."
"That might work, maybe even as an option for long term communication." said Tyroth.
"I hope that we don't have to stay in the lair all the time or I'll start walking on the walls, eh.. so to speak."
"Don't worry, Sephie. You can go topside as long as at least one of us goes with you." said Leo "Maybe you should get your own shell-cells, just to be on the safe side. Do we have any spare, Donnie?"
"Are you kidding me? Of course we have spares. They don't last very long, especially not in the hands of Mikey or Raph. I'll take care of it, don't you worry, Leo."
Not before long had both Tyroth and Sephie been given a shell-cell each, and spent some time trying to figure them out. Donnie could have showed them, but he was busy with working out a safe way to communicate with Mutopia. He wanted to make sure that no one accidentally found out about the mutants, after brainstorming for a while he got an idea.
If they only communicated by sound, like a telephone, then you could not see who's talking, so it wouldn't be a total disaster if their conversations were discovered as long as they didn't speak about sensitive subjects. Then the only problem was to make sure that they weren't discovered, maybe some sort of firewall and a program to counter attempts at tracing their conversation.
His mind so worked hard to solve the issue, that Donnie wouldn't have gotten any sleep if Leo and Raph hadn't dragged him out of the lab.
Seeing this, Splinter chuckled and said that it probably was a good idea for them all to get some sleep, considering the eventful night. He offered the guest room to Tyroth and Sephie so they wouldn't have to sleep on the couch or floor. They didn't mind that they had to share one bed, they were used to it as they had done since Sephie 'moved in' with Tyroth five years earlier.
The day passed quietly in the lair, aside from Mikey snoring and Donnie mumbling, but as time passed Tyroth had a strange dream. He was no stranger to nightmares, as he have had several about his near death-experience and the painful mutation, but he had dealt with those and this dream was different. Most of it was blurred but he managed to make out a few things.
He saw fire, spreading across a small village, people running and a dragon in the sky. No, not one dragon, more than a dozen dragons.
Now wide awake he looked around in the dark room to get his bearings, the lack of light was no problem as he could see just as clearly in compact darkness as in broad daylight. Slowly and gently, he got out of bed, careful not to wake the beautiful lizard-girl next to him. She may be a light sleeper, yet Tyroth managed to leave the room unnoticed, but not before giving her a kiss on her cheek. He smiled as he saw that she smiled at the touch of his lips, or flexible beak-like mouth if one wish to be picky.
He sat down in one of the chairs by the TV-screens, not bothering to turn on the light, and started thinking about his dream. Unable to understand it, Tyroth tried to find out what might have triggered it instead. After twenty minutes of thinking, the only thing that he couldn't rule out was his deep mind experience, that was still something that had no answer. He had seen a few movies and documentaries where you apparently could find the solution to all sorts of mind related problems with meditation, but wasn't too thrilled to try that again, at least not without supervision, considering that last time he practically ended up in a coma. Though he wasn't sure what help anyone would be as they could not wake him up either way.
"Might as well try." he thought before looking at the clock, 16:17. "Unless something happens, they shouldn't be up within two hours. Now, how did I do it again?"
Some undefined amount of time later, Tyroth found himself in the same dark area that he had found yesterday. The large rainbow colored sphere was on his left side and he could see the glow from the small red one of to his right.
"That didn't take so long. Or did it? Judging time here isn't easy exactly."
Dropping the subject as it wasn't important, he started to examine his surroundings more closely than the last time, first turning his attention to the large sphere.
"If this is my conscious and this dark area around me is my subconscious, what does that make the other sphere?"
He moved through his mind towards the small pulsating sphere and looked upon it with suspicious.
"What are you?" he asked, kind of hoping for it to answer. He stared at it for who knows how long, he sure didn't know. A thought came to him as he pondered what it was.
"What if this dark area isn't my subconscious at all, but my mind as a whole? That would make this sphere my true subconscious, wouldn't it? I knew that I should have taken the course in psychology instead of cooking, or maybe philosophy."
After some time thinking about it, he decided to try to access the content of the small sphere by moving his hand into it.
"I sure wish that I knew what I'm doing." he thought.
As soon as his hand pierced the outer layer of the sphere, he saw the same dream he had earlier. Only this time he wasn't remembering it, he was seeing it again as a vision. Then the images suddenly shifted, the landscape was completely burned down with only a dark figure standing in the middle of it. From the figure echoed an inhumane laughter of pure evil.
Tyroth awoke from his meditation with a gasp.
"Whaaa!" a green blur with streaks of orange fell backwards, away from Tyroth's face.
"What the shell, dude? You almost scared the shell off me." the green one said.
"Mikey? What were you doing?"
"He was trying to wake you up." said an old voice from the side.
Looking around, Tyroth saw that the whole gang was standing around him, aside from Mikey who was half lying on his shell. Splinter was the one who spoke and looked worried at Tyroth.
"How long have you been sitting there?" the old rat asked.
Tyroth looked at the clock on the wall, 19:23. "About three hours."
"Why?"
"I had a strange nightmare and couldn't sleep." Tyroth started, as he explained his dream and vision.
"Most unsettling." said Splinter. "I do not know with certainty what this means, but I have a guess. What you described, this dark figure, might be your dragon-instincts."
"That sounds plausible, master." said Donnie "If so, there's not much any of us can do."
"I can continue with his training, and maybe we will banish these nightmares when he gains control over his instincts." continued Splinter.
"Either way, some breakfast would be nice at the moment." Tyroth said as he stood up.
After breakfast, the mutants headed over to the dojo for the daily training. They were paired up the same way as before. Leo vs Mikey, Donnie vs Raph and Mona vs Sephie, while Splinter and Tyroth stood beside and watched.
"Do not loose focus, Michelangelo." the old rat corrected the youngest turtle.
"I am so focused, sensei, that nothing can disturb me."
An idea formed in Tyroth's mind that he whispered to Splinter, who smiled at the idea.
"Watch out for the pizza, Mikey." called Tyroth.
"Pizza?! Where?" Mikey exclaimed just before Leo kicked him of his feet.
"So nothing can disturb you, my son?" Splinter chuckled.
"That was a dirty trick." Mikey said as he got back up.
"Let that be a reminder that the enemy does not always fight fair, my son." said Splinter. "And do not get cocky. Now all of you, back to your exercises."
The time was about 21:05 when the seven mutants headed out on patrol. Leo assured them that it would be safe if they kept a low profile. Once topside they divided into three groups so they wouldn't be so easy to spot, as a group of seven humanoid reptiles is kind of hard to miss, even if five of them are trained in ninjustu. Leo, Mikey and Sephie were in one group, while Donnie and Mona were in the second, leaving Raph and Tyroth in the third. They all agreed to call the others by shell-cell should anything happen, Donnie showed the new emergency button he had added, that would signal the other shell-cells and activate a locater-beacon so that it could be traced, just in case.
The night was calm, if a bit on the chilly side as the sky was clear, not many people out this night. As Raph and Tyroth stopped on one of the rooftops, the red-masked turtle pointed down the northern street.
"Remember that place?"
Tyroth looked at where the turtle was pointing and saw an alley that looked very familiar. He smiled.
"Yeah, that's the place where we first met. Not the best first impression you gave us, though I bet you left a good one on the dumpster, courtesy of my girlfriend."
"Hey, I wasn't prepared!"
"Keep telling yourself that."
Their bickering could have gone on for quite a while if they hadn't been interrupted by someone shouting.
"Stop! Come back here, you thief!"
A middle-aged woman was trying to catch up to a purse-snatcher, running up the street. The thief easily lost the pursuer by running through the alleys. The two mutants however, did not lose the trail as they moved over the roofs. Eventually, the thief stopped to rest against the wall, unknowing that Raph was ready to attack from above.
"We should call the others first." Tyroth said, placing a hand on Raph's shoulder, preventing him from jumping down.
"Why? It's only one purse-snatcher. How hard can that be?"
"Do I really need to remind you about when you thought that about two 'purse-snatchers'?"
"Oh, fine! I'll call them." Raph snorted, picking up his shell-cell.
"Leo, it's Raph. We got a lone purse-snatcher here and... Yes, I actually remember what you said about calling if anything happened... And yes, I am calling before I've done anything. Why do you sound so surprised? Just get your shell over here, if you're so worried." hangs up. "Let's go before our friend down there decides to move."
Using the fire-escape, Raph makes his way down while Tyroth slowly soars down with his wings. They land on either side of the thief, who is very shocked to see two humanoid reptiles and tries to run past Raphael, out to the street. Raph grabs the guy in the collar of the black hoodie and presses him against the wall, at which point the hood falls back revealing that the guy was actually a girl. She appeared to be just under twenty and had blond shoulder-long hair and dark-brown eyes, filled with shock and fear.
"A girl? I don't normally hit girls, but you've made a bad choice, so you'll have to take the consequences. For what it's worth, I'm sorry for this." Raph said as he reared his left hand.
Before he could hit the girl, he felt a strong hand grabbing his wrist.
"Wait. I'll deal with her. Alone." Raph turned his head and looked at Tyroth and was about to argue against him, when he saw Tyroth's eyes. They had a very determined and serious look to them, signaling that he wouldn't accept 'no' for an answer.
"Hmph. Okay, but I'll keep me eyes on you two from above." Raph said, releasing his grip. He quickly made his way up to the roof by the fire-escape. Right after he had gotten up, he saw the others coming his way.
"What's happening Raph?"
"Shell if I know, Leo. I was just about to punch out the lights on that purse-snatching girl down there, when Tyroth stopped me and said that he would deal with her alone."
"You were going to hit a girl?" Mona asked her mate in disbelief.
"Well, I did say that I was sorry for it, babe."
"If she chose to steal, she must take the consequences for it, Mona. We can't treat girls any different," Leo said.
"Eh, guys." Mikey said as he looked down in the alley "Why is Tyroth talking to this chick like he knows her? You think she's an old ex or something?"
Sephie walked over to Mikey and looked at the girl in question. Her eyes widened when she saw the girl's face.
"What is she doing here?!" she said.
"You know her?" Donnie asked. "Who is she?"
"Her name is Jennifer." she started, taking a deep breath before continuing "She is... Tyroth's sister."
Cliffhanger. Mean aren't they?
Next time we'll see what happens between Tyroth and his sister, as things in his past are revealed.
Thanks for reading.