The door flung open again and more Kraang soldiers poured onto the roof.
Donatello could barely stop himself from throwing his bo on the ground in frustration. "Ugh, I'm so sick of these guys! Do they ever stop? How many are there?"
"By now, they've probably called reinforcements from Dimension X," Leatherhead replied.
"Oh yeah," Donnie muttered under his breath. "That's just what we need right now." He saw Prime powering another blast up at Michelangelo and pushed him behind a roof vent.
Donnie realized Prime must have seen Mikey was the only one she could move with her powers and started to target him.
Actually, Donatello was only safe because he could use his bo for balance. If he tried to use it to fight, he supposed she could knock him off the roof, too.
Slash slumped a little when he saw the robots. "We can't take these guys for much longer."
"What do we do?" Mikey asked, pleading Donnie with big, tearful eyes.
"I don't know," he said. "I wasn't expecting to have to deal with any more Kraang. We thought we'd have freed them from her control by now, but-" His gaze drifted to the shattered vial on the ground, the spilled retromutagen that was their last hope sinking between the tiny textured ridges of the concrete. He furrowed his brow. "We'd only have to get her to touch the retromutagen for it to work. I'd mop it up with a cloth and throw it, but then maybe not enough would hit her to completely undo the mutation. What's on the ground is the entire dose."
He tapped his chin, then raised his voice to address Slash and Leatherhead. "Do you think we could all push her to the puddle?"
Slash looked up from where he and Leatherhead were trying to force the staircase door shut before more droids escaped onto the roof, then glanced at Prime. "Even at our full strength, it'd be a stretch." He used the butt of his handle to swat a robotic arm out from the door's opening, slammed it, and barred his mace across the handle.
Metal-against-metal pounding clanged through the air as the trapped soldiers attempted to get through, but the door held.
Donnie drummed his fingertips together, then clutched his bo at the ready as droids approached the vent behind which he and Mikey were hiding. "Um… she doesn't lift herself off the ground when she walks, just kind of… skitters. If we could get her to walk into the retromutagen herself? I don't know how we'd get her to move, but she didn't seem to notice the retromutagen much; I think she thought it was just a projectile, like a shuriken or something. I don't think she'd put much effort into avoiding it, if only we could-"
"I'm on it!" Mikey said. He jumped into the open, out of the safety of the vent. "Hey, Kraang!"
Prime scowled down at him like an insect inconveniencing her. "Destroy him!"
The few soldiers who had managed to get onto the roof shot at him.
Donnie, Slash, Leatherhead, and Pete directed their attention to themselves, allowing Mikey the time he needed.
"You are no more than an irritation to Kraang," Prime yelled. "Your attempts are futile."
"Maybe mine are, but if we don't stop you, Utrom will," Mikey declared.
Kraang gritted her horrible, giant, daggerlike teeth with an unearthly, almost sawing noise. "Utrom are below Kraang, just like lowly humans!"
"Oh really? Is that why you had to recruit all those humans to fight for you? Because humans are inferior and you don't need anyone to help you defend yourself against the Utrom?"
Kraang roared and sent a series of psychic rings from her forehead.
Michelangelo knelt and clawed the ground as the burst shoved him back. By the time the attack had passed, he was on the edge of the roof again. Even from afar, Donnie saw bright red scrapes on his palms.
Donatello mentally screamed for Michelangelo to step forward, to ready himself for the next attack, but he just stood there, grinning.
"It doesn't matter how many people or Utrom you control. You aren't more powerful than them, and you never will be. All those soldiers you control? They might make your numbers strong, but they don't have something humans or mutants or Utrom have- their own minds." He looked at Donnie. "A team is so much stronger with people who think differently, with people who have their own skills and ideas and personalities. They make each other stronger." He smiled at Kraang. "Surround yourself with as many drones as you want. You're all alone."
Prime shot a blast at him.
Donatello sheathed his bo and ran. His mind raced, calculating exactly how many inches Michelangelo was from the edge, how long the blast would take to reach him, how many seconds he could fall before his grappling hook could no longer reach the roof.
Before the blast could even reach him, Michelangelo took a step back and jumped off.
Donatello skidded to a halt, a strangled sound erupting from his throat. His heart skipped several beats.
Then he noticed green hands latched onto the edge, and his brother's face rose up.
Michelangelo pulled himself halfway up and folded his arms on the edge of the roof, clasping his hands together as if he were having a pleasant conversation over a table or resting at the side of a pool, not dangling off a six hundred foot drop.
"Kraang does not need to listen to you!" She shot another burst of rings at Michelangelo, who grabbed the side and ducked out of sight until she was done again, at which point he pulled himself partially up.
"Can't get me!" He stuck his tongue out at her.
"Kraang is fine alone! Kraang is superior to all life forms!"
Michelangelo arched a brow. "Huh. And yet you haven't been able to defeat humans in the years and years you've been trying." He ducked out of the way as Kraang sent yet another attack at him.
"Stay still so Kraang can get you!"
Michelangelo blew a raspberry. "Come and get me!"
Prime roared and charged across the roof. She scuttled forward with squidlike limbs, opening her mouth to show off her monstrous teeth.
Then she stopped. Her giant eyes bulged. She looked at her limbs, then around at all her enemies.
Donnie let out an airy, almost unbelieving laugh.
She sat in the middle of the roof, right over the smashed vial of retromutagen.
"What?" She cried. "What is this?"
"That," Michelangelo said, pulling himself fully onto the roof, "Is retromutagen." He walked over to where Donatello stood. "One of Donnie's greatest accomplishments, making the top five of the list right under his speed pizza slicer."
Kraang shrieked and squirmed. Her cries pierced Donnie's eardrums with a sound worse than fingernails on a chalkboard.
He groaned and clapped his hands to his ears, trying to ease the chills running down his spine.
Prime began to shrink. The plates on her forehead disappeared, replaced with more brainy wrinkles.
Kraang screeched at them. They couldn't understand her. It was nothing more than the cries the aliens used when out of their robot bodies.
The robots the Mutanimals had been fighting slumped, then one by one, rebooted. They looked around, confused. Some dropped the lasers they had been holding upon realizing what they were.
Prime watched as the power she had worked centuries to maintain crumbled before her. Donatello thought he even saw a flicker of fear in her eyes.
Boy, did it feel good to wipe that smug grin off her face!
Donatello felt a tap on his shoulder and turned. He jumped and prepared to punch the Utrom standing behind him in the face, but quelled his instincts at the last moment.
The Utrom regarded him suspiciously for a moment, then tapped their robotic forefingers together. "Um… excuse me, I um…" The Utrom surveyed the scene around them and rubbed their neck. "Do you know… what just happened?"
Next Chapter Wednesday. Have a great day, y'all!