Mutants and Miracles (Editor's Cut)

by Zarius

The adventure of the Fab Fred Wolf four continue, in these episodic, and interlinked, instalments that carry on where the 2009 movie Turtles Forever left off!

8. The Dreggs of Society

The busy New York streets got even busier with the emergence of several citizens from the local movie theatre.

Having indulged in escapist fantasy for two and a half hours, they were now on their way to visiting families or to indulge in the busy task of shopping or, in the case of younger audiences, going to the park to play and let off some of that pent-up energy, doing everything they could to prolong their Saturday afternoon, the best possible day of the seven spent on this Earth

Also coming out of the theatre were two people locked in a slightly critically-charged back-and-forth about the merits of the movie.

A male and a female belonging to two entirely different species. Both were sporting baseball caps, slack jeans and sports jackets of different colors.

Hers was brown with yellow streaks, his was white with blue lines around the side.

One was a certified geek and a martial arts master; one was a member of the mass media. Both had indulged in the fantastic within the context of reality, and both had a measuring stick for what passes for a good bit of fun.

They were best friends of several years. The geek met her when he was a teenager, now he was old enough to be more than a friend to her. She was someone who fought against her feelings for the longest time, but eventually let her heart dictate her course of action over her head .

They now did everything every loving couple did.

Date.

Desire.

And in this case debate

They were April O'Neil of Channel Six and Michelangelo of the group once known years past as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Oddly enough, despite now being in their twenties, parts of the world still had a strange habit of calling them Teenagers.

"What do you mean there's a flippancy to these movies?" April asked, clutching her boyfriend's hand as they walked through the heavy traffic held up by the lights.

"I'm not saying flippancy is a bad sort of vibe for a film, it's just I've watched these Marvel movies one after the other and outside of small stuff that qualifies as 'heavy', there's nothing consistently dark or brooding in them" Michelangelo replied.

"Oh here we go again with the 'every comic book movie needs to be dark' routine" April replied

"Not dark ALL the time, just a little variety now and then" Michelangelo added, "They've done the same movies five times now to the point this is all becoming formula. I'll be the first person to say I don't go to these movies to think, but it wouldn't be at all a bad thing if they took their world as seriously as we do"

"Why should comics have to reflect the real world?" April asked, "In our line of work, the real world isn't remotely represented in any way at all"

"Reality bites April, it's what causes everyone's tensions to rise, keeps us on the edge of our seats, and it makes us hungry for more. The day I went and saw the Silver Sentry Rises, I came out pining for a blackberry and pork Pizza"

"Can't have any meat to a story without actual meats can you?" April remarked. "You feeling peckish right now?"

"Wow, you really are coming out of this movie knowing what's on my mind" Michelangelo replied. April gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

Suddenly, April's phone went off, she paused to take the call. It was her editor, Burne Thompson, reminding her that it was a slow news day and to try to sniff out a story for the ten o'clock bulletins.

April was slightly annoyed given it wasn't even a working weekend for her, but it was clear Burne was desperate for information in the area.

As she took the call, Michelangelo began to notice something peculiar.

"I think I've stayed green far longer than those traffic lights" he said, as they had not stopped being red for what seemed like five minutes.

Drivers were getting impatient, and began to honk and holler for the lights to change. Two people even got out of their cars.

When they did so, Michelangelo assumed they were just going to check out what was causing the hold-up.

He soon got an altogether different impression when he saw the two approaching the back of a lorry.

One of the shady looking gentlemen took out a crowbar stashed within his jacket and began using it to crank open the doors, they then scampered inside. They came out carrying two boxes.

"Hey" Michelangelo cried out.

The two men looked at him, turned to each other, nodded, and split in two directions.

Michelangelo had to decide which one to follow; he opted to go for the one heading east.

April, seeing what was unfolding, quickly wrapped up her call to Burne.

"Hang in there Mr. Thompson, there may be something about to break" April said, and ran after her boyfriend.

Michelangelo pursued his target through the cluttered streets, the man, slowed down by the weight of the box's contents, desperately sought to elude his pursuer and, in a panic, headed into a nearby alleyway.

Michelangelo, knowing he had cornered his quarry, dug into his pocket and took out the device containing his grappling hook, he aimed it at the fleeing thief's legs and launched it.

The grappling hook neatly wrapped around the thief's legs, and he was immediately felled.

As he collapsed, he dropped the box, which split open and spilled its contents onto the ground.

April caught up with Michelangelo and, taking out a small camera, she took some quick snapshots of the action. Michelangelo walked over to the groggy criminal and looked at his goods, a selection of rectangular patches with small orbs embedded in the middle.

"What about his buddy?" April said, asking about the other thief that had made his getaway

"Yeah, I guess sometimes that's what happens when only one of the lean and green team gets enthusiastic about the movies, otherwise we'd have taken care of both of them" Michelangelo replied.

He picked up one of the patches and inspected it, while April observed the initials on the box, reading the initials E-D-X.

"...No way" she said, "I was sure they'd been banned from distribution...whatever are they doing on the street?"

She spotted what Michelangelo was doing, and quickly panicked

"Honey, be careful, I've heard all sorts of weird stories about them, they leave you with some kind of mental scar"

"A head trip huh? Well I'm no stranger to dreams throwing me a curve-ball, and I really want to know why those guys are after" Michelangelo said

April put her hand in his and clasped it, "You don't have to play a hero Turtle all the time, I'm already impressed, trust me on this ok?" April said.

Michelangelo nodded, "Oh, alright"

"Good" she said, kissing Michelangelo on the forehead and taking the device, "Now, you head back to the lair, I've got to cover the cops apprehending this loser and start working on some leads back at Channel 6, I've got a feeling the resurfacing of EDX is going to create big waves in the underground market, and we've got to make sure the big sale only makes the tiniest drip instead of a massive splash" she continued

Michelangelo kissed her goodbye and wondered off, as he did so, his mind began to drift.

Unbeknownst to April, Michelangelo had already pressed down on the patch, and it was having an effect on him.

"Whoa, I feel like I've been flattened by a kitchen roller, just call me the Pillsbury Dough-turtle" Michelangelo said to himself. He looked at his hands. In physical reality he remained the same, but in his mind, he saw something else.

Human flesh, human fingers, human thumbs.

Michelangelo knew this wasn't real, but his mind insisted he believe it. To believe he was in another place at all times, even when he was browsing through the Bronx, homeward bound.

And somewhere in the back of his psyche, tucked beneath the portions of his mind that welcomed this sensation of a double life experience, something was slowly being born.

Or, in this instance, reborn.

"We could have gone around the four usual corners mister, I tried pointing them out several times, we'd have been here a lot faster" an annoyed Irma Langenstien said as she got out of the cab, a cab that had taken her around three blocks that centered around her apartment complex instead of going the usual route through to it.

"Yeah, but if I did that, I wouldn't have tallied up a reward for this month's daily grind" replied the obese cab driver, his breath reeking of cigarette smoke and the stench of hard liquor. A man clearly unsatisfied with what time and choices had made of his career prospects.

Irma mumbled and fished out the money required to pay the cabbie for his shameless detouring. She didn't feel like putting up a fuss, she already had greater headaches, this was a minor ailment. She paid him what he desired, even if it really wasn't what he really deserved, she grabbed the stacked piles of paperwork from the back seat of the cab, and began power walking to her apartment's main lobby.

Taking the elevator was out of the question due to a fault, so she had to take the stacks up the staircase, and make sure not to drop any of them, otherwise it would take her ninety whole minutes to pick it up, and she'd already spent something close to that time in the cab as it went through its complex abundance of long cuts.

Unfortunately, people were coming down the stairs, some of them were neighbors and were quick to halt her halfway up the stairs to complain bitterly about the assortments of smells coming from her apartment, smells that seemed to come only from an assorted mix of chemicals.

Others wanted to inquire about the small electrical fire that had happened last week, and some wanted to know if she was to blame for the lift being out of commission too.

She could only say "take it up with my boyfriend" and put an end to it.

Some complied, others spoke aloud to one another how she'd been able to keep one far longer than she was used to.

Irma realized, before anyone else took anything up with him, she had to first. When she got to the door, her mind raced with what to ask him about. The bad odor from all the concoctions he worked with in his lab-away-from-lab that he had put up in her kitchen, or the tampering with the electrics.

She felt the weight of the paperwork slowly grinding her every step, pulling her arms lower and lower until they almost touched her shoes. With a final burst of strength, she straightened herself out and approached the door and turned the knob, the door slid open, Irma stepped through.

She was instantly greeted by her dog, which flew between her legs and ran around her in frantic, excited and jubilant circles, dizzying her and causing her to lose a bit of balance.

Aiming for the sofa, she allowed herself to fall forward, and as she fell near the rim of the sofa, she let go of the paperwork, it fell neatly onto the seating.

Irma got up and tried to calm her dog, as she walked through the mess of an apartment, various books on science jargon everywhere, she picked up a peculiar smell and turned to the array of test tubes and Bunsen burners situated near the kitchen table and on the stove, there was a weird yellow substance in one of the dishes, and it was giving off a pungent aroma.

Irma didn't want it stinking up the apartment, but she recognized it was an experiment in progress and had enough respect to leave it where it was.

She heard the running of water coming from the bathroom.

She opened the door, and a part of her felt the urge to vent at the being receiving the jets of water pouring down onto his body, about her stressful afternoon picking up paperwork from the A.P.E facility, to the stress of carrying the load upstairs, to whatever manner of concoction he was brewing in an area of her home regularly used to make something edible.

All of this sprang to her mind.

And as soon as she caught sight of Donatello standing up in a completely full bathtub while simultaneously taking a shower, that urge to vent subsided and was instead replaced by an admiration of his usual brand of eccentricity.

"Oh, hi Irma" Donatello said, waving to her.

"How can I almost never get mad at you?" she said, folding her arms and giving Donatello a warm, compassionate gaze, "What is with the double duty on the water?"

"Oh I'm always two minds on everything, I normally shower when I want to do a lot of thinking, but I wanted to relax right after, that's what the bath is for. I figured I might as well tend to both"

Irma picked up a scrub from the rack of towels and brushes to the left of her.

"Well, I'm back, so you can slip under the currents and read everything I've collected for you while I give your back a hefty scrub"

Donatello complied and turned off the shower before slowly putting himself into the soapy bath. Irma grabbed a stool and placed it next to the bath, she then took the paperwork from the sofa and deposited the pile on to the stool so Donatello could reach out and read from it.

"You know, when we started this whole collaboration with your science buddies, I figured it'd be a glamorous thing, but boy is it messing up my life and my homestead" Irma complained, "Nothing Is exciting about it either, it's like your boys send you a fine catalogue of things detailing all the new toys you're working on, or they tell you to make something up for them to study"

"Well science is almost always 90% about process, about perfectionism, action is the result, but not the desire" Donatello said in his defense.

"Sometimes being Mr. Action far outweighs being Mr. Perfect" Irma replied.

Irma kicked off her shoes, rolled up her sleeves, removed her glasses, took her hair down, and settled down to scrub Donatello's back while he read from the paperwork

"So what are they boring...I mean, 'entertaining' us with this month?" Irma said as she dipped the scrub in the water and rubbed it across Donatello's back.

"Oh something about EDX being possibly being redistributed on the black market, I haven't heard of that since the days Lord Dregg spent his daily grind on Earth"

"EDX?" Irma said

"Were you living under a rock the whole time Dregg was on Earth? We never could get in touch with you during that period" Donatello pointed out

"No, just finally took a no expenses paid vacation downtown to check up on some not so distant cousins" Irma said, "I kept tabs on the news, that Dregg guy meant business, all seemingly for the good of Earth's business, but I wasn't fooled by him for an instant because you guys were always opposed to him"

"Well, EDX wasn't exactly high-profile. In fact it was so secret people believed it was entirely made up to suit some kind of story to sell to curious readers of the science tabloids. April only caught onto it because someone working for the corporations that were offered it owed us a favor for saving his life during one of our skirmishes with the Techno was supplied with it by an unknown benefactor and attempted to sell it to some of the higher-ups in the philanthropist chain. April wanted to expose it, but got a direct order from the feds not to divulge it. It was the only thing from Dregg's tenure on Earth not to be ultimately confiscated"

"But what IS it?" Irma asked

"It' stands for "Empathy's Desirable Xcess, it's s a type of energy prism that feeds off a strain of chemicals in the body, it triggers the pleasure centers of the mind and gives you an alternative reality experience while keeping you grounded in the real world, all of your heart's desires and things you never considered, at least consciously, come true in this reality"

"Doesn't sound like something Dregg would invest in" Irma said, "He seemed intent on clouding everyone's reality"

"Precisely why we smelled a rat. He'd planned to mass distribute this thing, but the incident with Doomquest scared him off and he fled Earth before the full on dispersal of EDX could be put into effect, but some of the philanthropists in the charity food chain that he had sold test samples to held on to their stocks and submitted them to A.P.E and other scientific research communities for extensive testing" Donatello continued.

"So did they work out the recipe for it or something? If it's being illegally distributed there must be a lot of it in quantities" Irma replied

"The prisms run on something they've dubbed the arborous strain" Donatello explained, "A series of looped double helix strains that seem to be connected to two impossibilities...coding from strands dating millions of years in the past, and a strain that seems to be highly advanced from the present codes of life we're used to, they've been fused together so they anticipate what humans, or all creation, are in nature, what we used to think, and can anticipate what we're going to think using the advanced strain"

"So you mean...one half of this concoction might be from the future?" Irma asked.

"That could be possible. We Turtles have had experience with time travel on several instances, we even went to the future once"

"Really? Oh, oh how high up in age were you? Do you and the guys age gracefully? Do I age gracefully?" Irma asked.

"The future is a very flexible thing Irma, things that happened in it once may not have occurred anymore, but certain points may be 'fixed', the big debate is, if we find a way to destroy the EDX strain, are we stripping the future of something beneficial to us? Those charity workers desired the EDX prisms to help make-a-wish kids cope better by giving them a second life, but what if they're the ones distributing them to the seedier markets? What if they got bored of the feds and APE studying them and want to see immediate results?"

"In short, all about action, less about perfection...I think I understand where you and your buddies come from a bit more now" Irma said

"I've got to contact the guys and let them know about this" Donatello said, preparing to rise up, Irma, however stopped him, gently grabbing his shoulder and gently forcing him back into the bath, she began delicately and playfully scrubbing the top of his head.

"Just hold your high horse mister, I've had a long and tiring afternoon, I've even got tiny paper cuts, all for tending to your business" she said

"So what's stopping me from attending to more business?" Donatello asked

"A girl's got to hose down too..In this case, all for your pleasure" she said, winking at him, she proceeded to pull off her sweater.

Donatello let out a small "oh" in understanding as much more came slowly off.

"I...I don't know how I got here" a nervous and tense Benson Myers said, scratching the back of his head as he scrambled to think of bigger, better ways to convey to his invisible audience.

"It's not...I'm...it's a dream, I know it is.

I know it's a small doubt made into a great desire. A splash in the pond...but it's a mighty river now. It streams so clearly...I know so many things about life, but I know I haven't lived any of that in my real existence...if I had to feel anything, I just turn to the part of my brain that has tuned my feelings into the world I inhabit now...but...why am I making this video if everything's alright you ask?

Well...it's like how you always have that nagging doubt, just the tiniest, in your head, how there's no such thing as a fantastic ride without a price? I don't know how long I can hold on to that doubt without it becoming the reason to let it all go, to finally enjoy myself. I have to remember the price involved, the heavy price that doubt needs to be addressed, it needs to be..."

A tall woman with an icy demeanor walked past Benson and switched off the camera he was speaking into, interrupting him at the crucial moment.

"Try putting your thoughts on EDX down on paper next time Benson. You're already a star in whatever reality your brain is processing, you don't need to carry it over into this predictable, parasitical reality" she said.

Benson stared out across the row of office cubicles, everything seemed to melt away and he could concentrate on just one thing, singing live in front of millions of invisible people.

People who seemed to matter more than the soulless passers-by in the room.

Even the overly purple- looking Simon Cowell lookalike standing before him had kinder words to say to him about his talents this time around.

And in those moments, he lost all sense of what he was previously thinking, and didn't mind that he had lost such a fragile grasp on perspective.

A man anxiously approached her.

"It's starting" he whispered in her ear.

Above her, another television, tuned in to the main news bulletins, flared into life. The various members of the Fifty-One Fantasies foundation swarmed to the television to watch April O'Neil's report on the leaking of EDX.

"Happy hour news...not one thing on my face beyond a frown" said Rebecca Barber. Some workers were already wrought with panic as April went into detail discussing the leaking of EDX and informing people of what it could do to the human mind.

"Should we cancel the flight?" said Rebecca's aid.

"By the time they reach a decisive course of action over here, millions of the underprivileged will have experienced it in poorer parts of the world" Rebecca said, "Have no worries. This has wings"

"What if our assistant isn't all that keen to spread his wings?" the aid cautioned.

"Get him on the phone. This is usually the time of day he needs reassurance anyway" Rebecca said.

The aide took out his phone, punched in a number, and gave it to Rebecca. She talked through it.

"Hello? This is Barber, can I...oh, it's you" Barber said, and whispered the words "Counselor" to her aide before continuing.

"Yes, yes I understand his sessions are important, but I'd advise he check the news and then get back to me as soon as possible. No matter what happens in the next twenty-four hours, the flight must go ahead without a hitch" she said

"Understood, but I have to be assured, from his lips directly, that he can stand to carry the pressure" the counselor said. Rebecca conveyed her understanding and after a short exchange, the two ended the conversation.

The counselor, a young African American woman wearing small reading glasses and draped in a purple from head to heels, turned to her charge, a lean, medium sized man in a blue collar shirt and blue tie, clutching a small woolly hat in his hands, tightening his grip on it, he was taking heavy breaths.

He stared out of the window, watching the sky, wondering when it would turn to its usual red hue, wondering what the night would bring.

"That was the foundation on the phone Martin" the Counselor said, "They've told me to let you know you needn't be troubled by what's on the news"

"They've found out haven't they?" Martin Frenz said, "I knew they'd see through our lies at customs, I knew they'd double check..."

"She gave me the details before she signed off, they haven't found anything. It's just...the public have caught on. EDX is publicly known again, and the additional supplies were compromised, though they didn't get all of them"

Martin buried his head in his hands, "I can't...I can't take the plane out then, they could still track everything down, tie to me, I could go to...jail, my daughter.."

The Counselor reached out to Martin and put her right hand delicately on his left shoulder.

"Think of the mission and the means. You could be helping so many other daughters, sons, whole families, experience days of joy they'll never hope to achieve where they are or because of who they are in society. You've always said you wanted to take people to places in your flights that went beyond the human concept of exploration. You were selected because you were willing to take a plane into space once...how's that going for you by the way"

"I reached Pluto last week" Martin said, trying to sound optimistic, "I touched down in London at the same time, I navigated better than last time...I proved myself"

"You proved yourself to more than just your peers dictating where you land and who you take. You decided where you took your mighty bird, and now you stand to build a great nest"

"But...there's something...something building up in me, that threatens to disrupt the nest, a doubt...so large, so bloody huge" Martin said, his lips quivering

"Oh not this again Martin...it's a human trait to doubt, it always will be, it's a cliché of our existence, it's made worse by your anxiety levels, but you can control that with medicine, and better yet, through discipline"

"It reaches out to me, says I should be on Mars and not Pluto, Mars is associated with War you know"

"You're not in a war Martin. Not anymore. You're a dove of peace" the counselor said. She looked at the clock, "Come now, your session is over, go home and see your family, process what I've said as you always have, and good luck tonight"

"Thank you...yes, yes I will absorb and analyze everything I've taken in today" Martin said, and gave the Counselor a brief hug and shook her hand a little too much. He walked out of her offices and entered his car. Playing with a small toy was his young daughter

"You feeling alright daddy?" she asked, Martin put his head on the wheel, trying to compose himself

"It's...it's nothing sweetie, it'll pass. I'll drop you off at your aunt's house; you can spend the day there while I take the bird up"

"Are you going to put smiles on people's faces? You should try putting one on your own first" his daughter replied. Martin tried to satisfy her with a forced, unnerved grin etched on his face.

His daughter laughed.

"You're always so bad at that Daddy, but you did it, you put a smile on my face, now do that for everyone in those poor countries" she said, and resumed playing with her toy

As Martin steeled himself for a busy day, he observed the toy his daughter played with.

A small figure of Disney's Pluto.

He took an EDX prism from his pocket, clicked down on it, put on his hat, and started the car.

Next stop, outer space.

THE DISTANT FUTURE

The space-port opened its doors and the massive space freighter Clandestine touched down. The hub of ships containing a blend of extra-terrestrial, average terrestrial and even other-dimensional entities paid it no mind as they disembarked or prepared to embark, all leaving long trips, preparing longer journeys, and arranging meetings.

But none of them were for friends and family.

This was one of the seedier space-ports in the sector, a place for wanderers, ex-communicated politicians, presidents forced out of power, creatures fleeing from conquered and corrupted worlds.

These were souls perpetually stuck in the phase of grief known as 'bargaining', and were willing to trade anything of value, or of value to others that they had managed to 'appropriate', to get them to where they needed to go or to make it through another lonely day of isolation, until the time they come to terms with their grief, and make time to regret their decisions later.

One such being, a former solider of the group known as the Techno-Gangsters, climbed out of the Clandestine and roamed through the corridors of the space port, carrying with him a small tracking device, a tiny blip on the device pointed him to a large holographic roundtable outside of a drinking spa located just north of him.

He made his way over to it where a wizened old creature with a Fu-Manchu moustache dressed in a pink gown sat slurping five straws embedded in a crystal-like fleshling glass. The Techno-Gangster threw a wriggling worm with a silver fork imbedded in it on the table, as well as a small jar, but his hand maintained his grip on both of them.

"You have arrived on time" hissed the creature, reaching for the items, the Techno-Gangster pushed them back.

"Hand it over" the creature hissed.

"Not until I'm paid Mung" said the ex Techno-Gangster, "I claim 5,000 credits"

"A little out of my price range Hi-Tech" Mung replied

"That's what you get for taking my place as Dregg's second in command and exiling me to a distant galaxy for several thousand light years" Hi-Tech uttered, letting his bitterness echo through his voice.

Mung smiled, and reached into his pockets, "At least you have spent the last fifty light years searching for attainable data, and you are quite right, as much as I regret going beyond what I can capably pay, you must receive what you so richly deserve"

He took out a small pendant and placed it in High-Tech's hand.

"Is this valuable?" Hi-Tech replied

"It will get you to where you need to go" Mung said, and pressed down on the pendant. Before Hi-Tech could react, the device wrapped itself around him. Mung swiftly seized the trinkets Hi-Tech had been keeping from him and stood back as a small pod shaped itself around the Techno-Gangster. Engines formed beneath it, which then ignited, sending Hi-Tech careering out of the space-port and into the cold depths of space once again.

"Eighty Billion Light Years this time 'round I believe" Mung said to himself, "The unknown data you find there will be incalculable...of course, it depends strongly on whether history is kinder to you in light of it's inevitable restructuring"

Mung took something else out of his pocket, a small communicator, and talked into it.

"I have the remains you requested...it took some digging, but this is all that is left of him. I also have the streamer worm" Mung revealed.

"Excellent. Do you have the specific instructions?" the voice from the communicator asked.

"Yes, I will do as you instructed and send them back fifteen days from your current time zone, so as you can then learn from them and then give my past self the details required to commence the operation"

"You have done well Mung, especially since you yourself were once ashamed of Dregg's madness" the voice continued.

"That I was, but with the way this wretched universe has blossomed over the years with its messages of tolerance and peace, it could stand to be injected with the method of Dregg's madness yet again" Mung replied, "How have things went on your end?"

"I have done my part, but time is still in delicate flux, things will not align properly in your zone until the cycle comes full circle, send me the instructions and remains so I can make the changes to begin with, and then be patient"

"Everyone flee, it's a peace corp raid" cried a voice as the port was suddenly ridden with robed enforcers carrying stun lasers, making arrests and freezing beings in their tracks with one shot of their weapons.

Mung, realizing the game was just about up, pressed the worm gently to his forehead and sent out a telekinetic series of messages, the worm glowed, Mung placed it and the jar on the table beside each other, and watched both vanish before his eyes.

Suddenly, he felt the cold, solid touch of a laser rifle pointed at his temple.

"Move and you're history Mung" said the peace corps member.

"I recognize a voice that can only come from a certain sector of history" Mung said, chuckling slightly, "How fares your future...Carter is it?"

The peace corps member removed his helmet, revealing the features of Carter, a former ally of the Ninja Turtles during their altercations with Lord Dregg, whom Mung had once served.

He was slightly older now, and a small visible scar was evident on his left cheek, symbolic of a battle hardened warrior.

"I see time's been kind to the pair of us Mung, I've lost my urge to mutate, and you've lost the urge to put up a fight, which of course helps everyone else live a lot happier. What's the matter, you get too big for your micro-bots?"

"I have been spending my many ages in this lifetime studying the art of mass temporal transit, particularly the consequential traits of rewritable chronological flux" Mung said.

"Less riddles, more reason" Carter said.

"Oh I don't need to spell it out for you Carter, you need only look around you" Mung said

Sure enough, Carter looked across from him, the peace corp. soldiers that he had been working with for many a year now had suddenly become violently aggressive, their weapons, previously only stun weapons, had become lethal in use, and they were cutting down everyone in the space port.

Carter looked at his own weapon, it too had changed, he threw it down, and looked outside of the space port observation window. Several space battles were commencing before his eyes, peace corp ships were firing on defenseless carrier vessels, Carter could see children file out of the ships as their hulls were punctured by laser fire.

Carter grabbed Mung by the collar of his cloak, "What's happening? What did you do? Answer me or you're history"

"History is no longer on your side Carter, it is in the pocket of Lord Dregg" Mung replied

"Dregg's dead" Carter said, "He died battling the Turtles, consumed by his own obsessions. I wasn't there for it, but I read it in the data archives"

"Indeed, through madness he was lost to us, but his final legacy lives on...concocted in the past, nurtured in the present, and abundant in the future. There's nothing stopping his madness, it has infected the entirety of your race, and the sublime thing is, they're all committing atrocities whilst feeling some semblance of good within their tortured souls"

"How come I haven't been feeling these 'good' and negative vibes then? Why haven't I been affected?"

Carter suddenly thought to himself, and dropped Mung, he reached for a handheld device attached to his outfit and got in touch with another old friend.

"Landor, come in, I need you" Carter said.

Landor's face appeared on the screen, his face was awash with concern and dread.

"Carter, I assume you're calling about the state of the timeline" he said.

"Yeah, something's off, the peace corp. unit I'm assigned to is firing on everything, millions of innocent people are dying"

"I know, almost all of humanity has become consumed by the negative attributes of the Arborous Strain, they are lost to twin realities, all of our race's positive traits are locked in fantasy play, while the other half, the ones embedded in reality, have left their aggressive, selfish and warlike tendencies unchecked, the peace corps have become aspiring conquerors of the stars and planets"

"I remember reading something about that,, it formed part of that weird uplifting strand called EDX, it was one of Dregg's projects, but the data records say the Turtles stopped the attempted distribution in its tracks"

"History is being changed. EDX is now far more potent and deadly than it ever was before, and not even the Turtles were safe from its effects. The data tracks now say they couldn't prevent the mass distribution because they had problems at home, one of their own had succumbed to EDX's effects and their attention was diverted searching for a cure. They were not made aware of the conspiracy to administer the EDX patches across the third world spectrum, where it gained its greatest abundance of users"

"How come we're fine though?" Carter asked.

"We're time travelers, we've been exposed to fixed portions of the time/space vortex, it's like a surgical scar that doesn't entirely go away. Time can be reshaped around us, but we are in the eye of the storm at all times and places, a rock in the ocean of ages, and it is that advantage we must make great use of"

"So we have to go back and help the Turtles?" Carter inquired further.

"Yes, but if my memory of the previously unwritten data tracks is correct, we may be brought into conflict with them in order to yield the desired results" Landor admitted.

Carter was confused, but resilient, as his mind drifted to other concerns.

"What about Merrick? How's the labor coming along? Is the baby ok?"

"Don't worry, she's stable, but I dread what kind of world her baby, your son, will awaken into unless time is put back on its precise course"

"Then we'll do whatever we must to ensure young Wilbur's future is a bright one. No matter what" Carter said, and, commandeering a nearby ship, he left the space port and headed back home.

The sunlight was crisp, but the wind was cool.

An unsettling blend of breeze and burning coursed through the skin of three of the Ninja Turtles on a tense summer evening as they faced down a literal rogues gallery of their much bleaker foes.

Foes they had challenged in these darker nights, and in their darker days, where they had no sight for sun, all to remedy a hostage crisis, as several civilians had been taken captive.

Already defeated were Megavolt, the Globfather, and Medusa, now all that stood between them and the captive citizens was Chronos.

The villains had all been recruited by their principle nemesis Dregg to take them to task, they had been great in number and relentless in their intent of doing away with their amphibian enemies.

In a normal world, these would be insurmountable odds to overcome for the Turtles, but this was a different time, a different realm, and the possibilities were endless.

They had experienced a new set of mutations, ones that had heightened their skills, forced great change on their appearances, and given them incredibly unworldly powers.

They were now using these powers to better the world, and their efforts had convinced the planet they were not here to blight it.

"Give us the heads up Don, can you read their minds?" Raphael joked, humming the familiar chords of a song from the movie Superman.

"He's expecting reinforcements" Donatello said, using his telekinetic abilities to probe Chronos' inner most thoughts, "There's a fleet of Gangsters coming in on jet packs. Dregg's really letting us have it today"

"Perhaps it is the hour to call time on your surrender" Chronos said, taking a step forward.

"Not for one second" Leonardo declared.

"Then be prepared to experience a minute in hell, for that is how long it will take for you to tick slowly away, there will be no turning the clock back, your demise is but a mere flash forward"

"Can we call time on his bad puns?" Raphael said.

"Turtles, let's get made of tougher skin" Leonardo commanded, and used his own unique mutation skills to harden his physical body, making him as solid as a rock and impenetrable to the touch.

"Raph, you and will tackle the Gangsters, Donny, try to keep Chronos at bay"

"It's gonna be a hard sell there, those rocket packs are gonna spread them far and wide across the city sector, they can pick anyone off let alone us and the hostages"

Leonardo looked up again at the rooftops above them, and smiled.

"I don't think so" Leonardo said

"Hey, it's Kirby, life ain't so bittersweet" Raphael said, sounding relieved.

On the rooftop, a fifth Turtle-like creature draped in a purple cape, raised a shining pen high above him and carved it across the red sky, producing tiny silvery dots that brightly lit the area.

Thunder and lightning were quick to follow the drawing, and a giant bright energy pattern encircled the street. Kirby finished off his drawing in lines that connected to the star-like dots.

When he was finished, the sector of the street looked like a honeycomb, a nesting place for a hive of bees.

"The warp pen has sealed them into this sector of the city, like flies in a jar. We can pick them off without them spreading damage elsewhere and distracting us from the core objective" Leonardo explained.

The airborne Techno-Gangsters opened fire on the Turtles, but Leonardo's tight chrome skin deflected the blasts.

Raphael made use of his own mutation and transformed into a raptor-like variation on a snapping Turtle, digging his talons into the buildings, scaling up the walls, and leaping onto the back of one Techno-Gangster as he flew by, leaping off of him, and clawing at one, deeply embedding his fingers into the back of that one and swinging him and the Gangster around, knocking as many that flew in his direction as he could before throwing the captive Gangster down onto some circling below, Raphael then hitched a ride on another and, digging the talons into the oversized yellow eyes of the Gangster, blinded him and commandeered his blaster. The Gangster unknowingly allowed Raphael to 'guide' him through the sky, blasting away at his allies and picking them off easily.

As Raphael approached the rim of the energy shield, he jumped off, allowing the blind Techno-Gangster to crash into it. In an instant, he completely evaporated. Raphael safely landed on the roof of a nearby building.

Back on the ground, Donatello faced down Chronos.

"Take one step near me, and I'll use this concussion generator on the hostages" Chronos said, grabbing one of the helpless civilians, "Prior to your arrival, I encoded one small variation of my device to their compatible DNA, one flick of their very wrists, and the generator will kick in and they will feel a whole different lot of shakin going on, enough to reduce their bones to brittle jelly"

Donatello grinned, "Yeah, good luck with that Chronos". He moved forward, as he did so, a Techno-Gangster flew in and attempted to rush him from behind, Donatello, instinctive as ever, produced a small variation on his Bo Staff, a mesh of black and crimson metal that, with a flick of a switch, extended in size to just the right proportion necessary for Donatello to swing around and knock the Gangster six ways to Sunday.

"Fool, time's up, let's shake things, and people up" Chronos said, and tapped the wrist of his captive, intending to trigger the small concussion generator he had implanted in his skin, but to his surprise, found nothing was happening.

"What's going on?" Chronos said

The hostage grinned, and, before Chronos' startled eyes, mutated into a familiar Turtle sporting an orange bandana.

"Looks like you were a victim of lousy timing Chronos" said Michelangelo, as his human features dissipated, he turned around and nailed Chronos with a well timed punch, knocking him to the ground.

"I can't believe it...twice now your mutations have proven to be of timely intervention" Chronos mused in despair.

"Good work Mike" Leonardo said, he also gave a thumbs-up to Kirby, who smiled back at them.

"He's one real dude ex machina" Michelangelo said.

After Donatello had used his expertise to deactivate the implanted concussion generators and render then harmless, the relieved citizens showered the Turtles with heaps of grand praise.

"Thank you, you saved our lives" said a young girl, hugging Michelangelo.

"Nothing good comes easily, but I won't let you down..." Michelangelo hummed.

"Why are you saying that in high notes?" Raphael said.

"Oh just our song..." Michelangelo said.

"We have a song?" he inquired, "If we did, it'd be something a little more...I don't know, repetitious, something to stroke our egos a bit"

"Well it's something that takes me to another place...why do I feel like I should be there rather than here?" Michelangelo asked.

Raphael shrugged, "Hey, get down with the cheers rather than your doubts, this is the way the world ought to work" he said.

"No...no, this is TOO right, and yet there's something wrong..." Michelangelo said, and gradually began to wander off, as he did so, he caught a glimpse of Kirby watching him from above the rooftops.

Kirby looked at the other Turtles and nodded in approval, then, with a gesture of his hand, Michelangelo's three remaining siblings vanished and the buildings and sky began to blend together.

Michelangelo found himself losing his grip on the ground and was carried off into a whirlwind.

Back in the regular world, in the safety of their warm lair, the Turtles, accompanied by April and observed by a concerned Splinter, were all examining Michelangelo's strange cause of distress as he began hyperventilating, struggling to breath, he called out Kirby's name several times.

"Who's Kirby?" Donatello asked

"A stranger's name...yet Michelangelo almost seems certain of such a person being as familiar as all the faces known to us, there is raw concern in his voice, almost as if he is calling out for family, how strange" Splinter replied.

"Are you sure he didn't inhale anything from our dirty laundry?" Raphael asked, "You never know what sort of substances can cling to you down there"

"Mikey? Mikey?" Leonardo said, snapping his fingers, trying to gain a response

"Let me handle this" April said.

She leaned down on one knee and put one arm around Michelangelo

"Focus on my voice Mike, focus on me, Wherever you are, it isn't home, come home. Come home to me" April said, stroking his sweat-ridden head with her hand. Michelangelo closed and opened his eyes several times, blinking rapidly, he looked at his hands, and then turned to greet April.

"Babe...I didn't know where I was...it felt so...so right, so perfect, I could, we all could, take on the world and win, but..." he trailed off, sensing that not everything had been perfect, "You weren't there...how could anything be alright if you weren't there every step of the way?"

"Oh honey", April said, holding him close to her chest, "It's alright now, we've got your back, all of us, we'll look after you"

Suddenly, there was a flash of lightning and an emerald yellow ignited the area. A small energy bubble slowly grew from the ribbon of energy and a figure, in turn, grew gradually from it.

As the bubble burst open, a figure stepped out from it, steam rising from the spot he had clung to through the trip.

Temporarily dazzled by the light, Leonardo rubbed his eyes and gained some clarity as he set his sights on the intruder.

Temporary concern soon turned to swift elation.

"Carter? Is that you?" Leonardo said, recognizing the Turtle's old ally.

"It's me Leo"

"What are you doing here? Isn't your future better guaranteed...well...IN the future?" Raphael asked

"Guys, trust me , there's no time like the present"

The airport's food court felt an awful lot busier this time. Teeming with far more people than it had ever been previously.

Martin despaired at this. He wanted a calmer setting for his final few hours of preparation.

This was his big day.

He wanted to settle down and take in the wonderful sights of the vast jumbo jets and silver finned birds touching down or ascending into the heavens, watching far more confident men and women take their burdens up to fresh continents and grand experiences, people who were going to relax.

He tried to envision himself amongst those people being carried away...and then he reminded himself he shouldn't let himself get TOO carried away entertaining that notion, otherwise he'd be taking in the EDX at the most inopportune of times when everyone was depending on him.

He was soon greeted by another man, his co-pilot, and in many instances, his co-conspirator.

A short, stout little man wearing a white shirt, still trying to fix up his tie, a hefty overdose of deodorant coursing from his sweat-ridden armpits.

This was all the hallmarks of a man who had just had a stint of over-exercising at the local gym, burning off calories from a vicious appetite.

"Sorry I'm late Martin, had to take my kids to the dentist, and then I get slapped with a parent/teacher conference as soon as I got them back. Good thing is it's not 'till our little mercy mission is over"

"I thought you were exempt from those kind of conferences Leopold...being married to your kid's teacher and all" Martin replied

"Yeah, well, I refused to give the kids a curfew during a house conference, so she's putting me on the spot with all the other parents just to remind us all who has the power" Leopold replied.

"Everyone's playing about with that these days" Martin remarked.

"So how's the old' tour of confidence, you ready to be a hero and show everyone how it's done?" Leopold said, taking one of Martin's toasty sausages on his plastic tray and taking a bite out of it.

"My moustache is missing" Martin replied. Leopold was slightly confused. Martin had never had a moustache.

"Come again?" Leopold said

"I...took some more EDX on the way here...it took me to a restaurant, a packed place, kind of like what's happening now...I ought to be happy there is such phenomenal synchronicity going on , it's a sign of really good fortune, I felt very confident in there, I had a moustache, people in the restaurant were talking about how well mannered I looked, like a real leader, this reality seemed to be all about...consequence, about aftermaths, I had emerged from my mission a man and my physical appearance was reflecting that...then all of a sudden...HE comes through the door..and...and...I yelled at him"

"Yelled at who Martin?"

"You know...him, the sight unseen, the well-mannered man, the bigger picture, and after I yelled at him, I snapped back to this reality, came here, saw how packed the place was, but my moustache was missing, my confidence was...my confidence IS...waning, and nobody's talking about me. I must have ticked him off badly this time"

"You didn't tick anyone off...you were probably telling yourself off, trying to celebrate far too early as usual, save your euphoria for after we make the fly-by, then you'll feel like yours is the Earth and everything that's in it" Leopold remarked, and took another of Martin's sausages off the plate.

Martin grabbed his hand and gently plucked the sausage from him, putting it into his own mouth.

After chewing down and swallowing his food, Martin continued.

"The restaurant thing is a sign of the kind of commotion this is all going to make when things become very clear to the public. I need to look important, I need to feel important, yelling at the bigger man, the bigger picture, gave me some sort of edge, but...it could also send me over the edge, I need you to be at my constant beck and call up there, to keep me from swaying from side to side, putting everyone at risk just to make myself feel better for what will amount to a minute in hell for some people, are you up for that?"

Leopold smiled and tugged Martin's cheek.

"What are friends for? Come on, we'd best get ourselves prepped. Customs have cleared our shipment, our supervisor's given us the all clear, there's no stopping the flight now"

Leopold got up, finally finished fixing his tie, and put a hand gently on Martin's shoulder and shoo him warmly, Martin gingerly smiled and patted Leopold's hand

As Leopold departed, Martin gently rubbed his face, as he did so, he felt small layers of hair above his lips and beneath his nose.

He remembered that he had forgot to shave.

And given the reality he had just experienced, he wondered whenever or not he ought to.

Looking at the blessings in disguise, putting them into perspective, he found himself blessing the big man, and realized further the bigger picture. With a new sense of enthusiasm, he got up and followed Leopold.

In the homely comfort of the Turtles' lair, Splinter poured another soothing cup of herbal tea, determined to get Carter to drink one slowly, as he had been guzzling them down with a determined ferocity, as if eager to engage more in a topical conversation than to calm his noticeably shot nerves.

He handed the cup to Carter, who began to drink franticly once more.

"Master, trust me, if I had the time to digest this, I would, but everything could reshape and reform around me at any moment, I need to get you guys up to speed so we can make haste" Carter said

"The soul needs soothing Carter, in the hour since you have arrived you have not begun to settle before you start, as a result, your words are scattered, and we cannot immediately anchor them to our minds and absorb their meanings"

"Yeah, tell us all about what you've gotten up to in the future" Raphael suggested, "Judging from your get-up, you seem to be packing the long firearm of the law" he continued, observing the weapon in Carter's pocket

"I'm a peace corps member, and don't worry, the gun isn't lethal, it freezes the motor functions in the body, temporarily of course" Carter revealed.

"It is fitting that while you engage in a life of combat Carter" Splinter continued, "It is to enforce the peace and civility of your world, we all aspire to settle our problems via non-lethal means, hearing that you solve such issues with weapons that immobilize rather than eradicate allows me to sleep peacefully at night knowing the ambitions of all dreamers are given form in the future"

"That depends greatly on us avoiding the current temporal crisis...somehow EDX was allowed to be mass distributed at some point in this period in the timeline and it reshaped the perspectives of the entire planet"

"Donatello informed us about this just today" Leonardo said, "Looks like your hunch about the philanthropists were right, they are hoarding the EDX and are thinking of distributing it publicly"

"Now almost the entirety of Earth's collective humanity has been transformed into war-mongering conquerors, slaves to their darker sides while all their great good and potential are locked away in other dream states, being forever entertained, while the part of them that knows it's not real is allowed to wallow in their pessimism, bitterness and anger, they only know irrational hate and they threaten to control or crush everything around them, including my world, my friends...and my wife"

"Your wife? This just gets sweeter with every sentence, who's the fortunate fair lady?"

"Merrick" Carter replied.

Raphael was flabbergasted.

"Wow, congratulations and all, that's certainly a relationship that can call time anytime it wants on itself. If a wedding day got ruined because of heavy rain, you could always go back and tell your past selves to marry on a brighter continent or fast forward to the warm and toasty summer" he said

"Hey, we manage the old fashioned way and take the slow path like everybody else" Carter said, chuckling.

"As a mutant Turtle, I happen to move like a real cat, I take exception to being called slow" Raphael replied

"So...wait, if none of this has happened yet, why did you say time could restructure itself at any moment?" Leonardo asked

"There's something I haven't told you, but if I did, you might not volunteer to come with me" Carter responded

"Come with you where?" Leonardo asked

"Back in the future, I had a source, an old acquaintance of ours who told me, after some 'bodily malfunctions', everything back in the future. We need to go where the EDX's 'impossible' helix strain was conceived, to the distant past, to the twilight of the dinosaurs and to the genesis of humanity"

"So long as it's not the genesis of McGillicuty" Raphael said, which turned a couple of confounded heads.

"Hey, it's a wrestling joke...oh who am I kidding, who watches wrestling nowadays?" Raphael replied

"I take it you want me to come with you then Carter?" Donatello said,

"You're exactly right Don, we need your scientific knowledge to create some kind of counter strand to the EDX strain, we believe it was somehow placed in the primordial concoction the first basic life forms crawled out of, and over a period of time and evolution, when combined with the supply of prisms in the present day that triggered the dormant helix strand, it allowed this race's worst traits, the savage intent, to rise to the surface when the pacifist areas were driven to more dormant recesses in the mind"

"Which philanthropists or charity workers do you know that had supplies of EDX Don?" Leonardo asked

"I'll contact APE and get a list" Donatello said

"We don't have much time" Carter snapped

"Says the guy with a back and forth approach to travel" Raphael remarked

"Look, all I know is the supply of EDX is being shipped out tonight and in the original timeline, you guys were there to prevent it, now I'm taking Donatello back to undo this but if we don't make it back, it all falls to you guys"

"If time is essential to you Carter, we will respect your wisdom" Splinter replied

Carter, to show his gratitude, began to drink his tea a lot more slowly.

"I'll get in touch with April and see how Mikey is" Leonardo said

"I was just about to ask where she and Mikey had gotten to" Carter said, "They sort of took off as soon as I started sipping down on these cups"

"She wanted to take Mikey to the graphics department of Channel Six" Donatello revealed.

"I just wonder what changed in the timeline to warrant us not intervening" Leonardo pondered, "If we can't deduce that, this whole journey could lead us into more mystery and uncertainty than we bargained for"

"So in this new reality...you solve mysteries now?" April asked enthusiastically as she and Michelangelo, now in a human disguise, entered the lobby of Channel Six, heading to the nearby elevator, as they discussed the latest goings on in Michelangelo's brain, still rattled by his experiences with EDX.

"Just came to me little over fifteen minutes ago. Me and the guys were pursuing a phantom raspberry pie thrower down some kind of pink windmill near a farm, he'd been menacing the local fair there, you'd gone in to investigate him and gotten captured so we're having this crazy back and forth chase with him through a hallway crammed with doors, there's no rooms or anything, they just bleed into another. Like that cartoon with the dog"

"I was there this time?" April said.

"Yeah, I guess whatever reality real estate is building in my head, they're compensating for whatever was missing the last time" Michelangelo added

The pair entered the elevator and travelled to floor five, when they exited, they spotted a big arrow pointing south, the word Graphics Department labeled on the walls.

"So what else happened?" April said as the two entered a bustling room full of energetic and busy artists, scribbling away at concept art for promotional posters and newspaper layouts for the next few editions to come in the week.

"Well, we eventually caught the pie thrower, we used his own weapon against him, he was too busy savoring the tantalizing flavor to notice his legs being lassoed by my grappling hook. We unmasked him to reveal that it was the local chef. He'd been incensed his raspberry truffles and cakes hadn't nabbed him the top prize in a bake-off. Officer Kirby begrudgingly congratulated us and took him away and after making sure you were alright, we went on to enjoy the rest of the fare"

"Officer Kirby?" April said

"Yeah, apparently he's always dismissing our cases and trying to take all the credit, but his hearts in the right place, he just doesn't want us hurt. Every time you're investigating something, he's determined to keep us off your scent even when you've got a hot lead" Michelangelo explained

"Kirby is the name of that Turtle who helped you guys out in the other reality wasn't he? Any chance such a recurring personality has anything more to do with the internal character structure of these realities you're experiencing?" April inquired.

"Maybe, he seemed to be a shoulder to lean on the last time, but here he was a bit more of an obstacle...this is heavy duty babe, I should never have pressed down on that EDX prism"

"It's ok Mike, curiosity simply got the better of you, but I know a way you can give yourself a breather from describing all this to us, simply draw it"

April and Michelangelo entered an office to find someone presenting his editor in chief with a three panel portrait of a baby crying and it's parents making wry commentary on the events of the day.

"That's Murphy, he's our top illustrator for the 'Goodwin' online daily strips" April said

Murphy, however, had his hands full trying to attain final creative approval from his editor-in-chief, Vernon Fenwick.

"No, no that won't do at all, I want him kicking the baby, he's been crying now for over a week, please put him in his place already" Vernon said

"Oh leave him be Vernon" April said, visibly ticked, "Just because you want to add a little kick to things doesn't mean everyone is keen to solve problems in such a volatile way"

"April? Whatever are you doing in our little bullpen?" Vernon asked, soon unable to resist the urge to be snarky "Of course, I've always expected you to end up in the funny pages sooner or later, given most of your reporting leaves me in stitches compared to my refined skills in the field"

"I've got someone I'd like you to give a try-out to" April said, pushing Michelangelo in front of Vernon. Vernon raised an eyebrow and examined the plastic facade the Turtle was hiding behind

"You know...these things are a dime a dozen at the local stores, and the best customers for them happen to be very colorful characters indeed" a curious and cagey Vernon said.

"Not exactly the best kept secret in town anymore is it?" Michelangelo said, pulling the mask off in defeat.

"You let one of those filthy green gargoyles in here?" Vernon said, balking at the revelation.

"Hey, I know what real Gargoyles look like and they'd give you such bad vibes you'd be turned to stone with petrified fright" Michelangelo snapped.

"Just give him a shot at some of your supplies in here Vernon, he's not here to cause trouble, he's been having a tough time lately"

"And what would he draw exactly? Endless portraits of pizza?"

"How about my bro Raph punching out that WWII German dude? Would that suffice?" Michelangelo angrily replied. April's jaw dropped in astonishment.

"Just came to me in the other place" Michelangelo said

Vernon's eyes widened, his mouth drooled as he salivated at the idea

"Ok Turtle, let your...erm, what passes for your 'wild imagination' loose and I'll tuck whatever you come up with under our 'Keen Minds' aspiring artist feature, but it'd better move me and everyone in this room and out in the public, otherwise I won't hesitate to tell Mr. Thompson you've been contaminating this department"

Michelangelo nodded, understanding what to do.

"And as for you...don't think for a second I haven't heard the rumors about you and...that thing...if they're proven well founded, your days at the top will lead one way...straight down" Vernon said to April, before sternly walking out of the room

April approached Michelangelo, "Where did THAT come from?" she said

"Believe me, it's the most uplifting thing I've experienced so far in the last three minutes, I think the realities in my head have changed again..."

"Then you better focus on the last image you had from the previous one" April said, "I don't think impressing Vernon is such a radical notion to entertain"

Michelangelo smiled, but inside, he felt his heart splinter.

He knew what the last image of the previous reality was. And he didn't know what it would do to April if she were to discover it.

As Donatello put together a series of chemical mixtures, going off a list of specifics handed to him by Carter, his turtle-com went off, he promptly answered it. His face lit up as Irma's features, masked by some emerald green facial cream and a large towel over her head, graced the screen

"Hi Irma, what's up?" he asked

"Your magazines. You left them in the bed again" Irma said, holding up a stack of half-torn publications, "How many times exactly have I told you on your little night shifts over here to place them out before you put yourself out? I'm surprised I haven't been wiping whole essays off of your face the last few times you've been down here"

"Was it really worth interrupting delicate work just to make sure my complexion is easy to read?" Donatello joked

"It's the little nagging details you've got to get used to with me sweetie" Irma replied, blowing a kiss to Donatello before slapping on two pieces of melon on her face.

"There, should you turn all black and white from pressing down on those papers in your sleep, I'll be green all over" she said.

Donatello chuckled, "You're so funny" he replied

"What are you cooking up anyway?" Irma asked

"Some virus that Carter says will shatter the double helix encoding that the EDX prisms tap into, without the helix, they'd be rendered useless, but it's a very complicated set of instructions to follow, the minds in the future must be of a highly educated caliber, just look at this shopping list" he said, pointing out the devilish detail in the sheet of paper given to him.

Irma lifted up one of the melons on her face and examined the paper closely.

"That looks like your handwriting"

Donatello checked it, sure enough, she was on the money.

"Wow, I must really devote myself to working out what makes up what in the DNA chain" Donatello remarked.

"Does that mean I'll have to tick off our dinner dates in the future?"

"Oh I think we could squeeze in a few conversations about it over a fine bowl of meatball and lasagna" Donatello remarked with a touching expression on his face

"Hmm, lasagna with someone who actually likes Mondays...Garfield would have plenty to moan about if we owned him" Irma replied

"I'd better get back to work, otherwise we'll simply be living out that fantasy and not relishing in our sound reality" Donatello said

Irma smiled, "Just remember to be a sound sleeper next time" she said, and with that, the screen went blank

Donatello resumed his work. The conversation with his girlfriend had proven a fruitful and reinvigorating session, and he was able to process the list of his future self's own design with much more precision. Soon, he was finished.

Carter watched him reveal his progress to his fellow Turtles, and elected to converse with Landor through a pocket I-Pad device of his own, making sure to beam a message off a distant star as always, only this time technology had advanced to such a state he didn't need a big old p.c to do it.

"How goes the days of their lives Carter?" Landor said

"Donatello's completed work on the formula per the instructions given to him by...well...him" Carter revealed, "It's a good thing this experience has already happened in one version of reality to justify him even coming up with that list, otherwise we'd really be lost"

"Time's very unstable where we are, I estimate we have only a few hours left before a complete purging of our established reality and the new paradigm will take over completely" Landor explained.

"One question I have Landor...if Donatello's future self was able to conjure up that list for his past self, that means there's no conflict to be had with the Turtles right? I won't have to step up against them will I?"

"Carter, time travel is a very delicate process," Landor revealed, "Just because a result is put in place does not assure us the journey will be seamless. It will be up to you to straighten the path when you come across a few bends in it"

"Understood" Carter said, "We'll cross that temporal bridge when we come to it"

Donatello and the remaining Turtles approached Carter, who cut off his communication with Landor quickly.

"Ready to go Carter?" Donatello asked

"Ready and willing", Carter replied, "This will be a dangerous escapade though, and my mutation disease is bound to flare up, but given where we're going, it ought to come in handy"

"Hey, the day of the dinos are long past where you and Brainiac are going, what's to fear besides a bunch of sabre-tooths and Snuffaluffagus?" Raphael replied

"We're going a little further back than that Raph, besides, there's a...detail you guys left behind..Something that went unresolved, I'm surprised you didn't' think twice about it actually" Carter said

"I'll have you know we're actually quite thorough" Raphael said.

"Yeah, well if you're thorough procedures mess up my family-to-be in my preferred time and place, all you'll ever be doing is dreaming of 'what might have been your face had it not been rearranged by yours truly" Carter angrily snapped.

"Guys, guys, this isn't constructive, let's just solve this past problem and establish a clear path for everyone to follow" Leonardo said, cutting in between the two hot-headed individuals

"What kind of detail did we forget about is what I'm wondering" Donatello said, thinking back to previous adventures, previous escapades involving warriors of time.

A realization dawned on him. He wasn't one hundred percent sure, but a pang of guilt came over him as he begun to contemplate the consequences if he was right,.

Before he could reveal his findings, an aggravated Carter, upset after the argument with Raphael, grabbed Donatello's wrist and hastily pressed a switch on his time travel device.

A whirling bubble of white energy encapsulated them and, surrounded by miniature electrical currents, they vanished from the lair and melted into the mudded wisps of an increasingly uncertain time storm.

Michelangelo worked at a feverish pace putting together the final image from the reality he had experienced earlier to paper. Watching the Turtle work away was Murphy, who was falling quite behind on his own material while he watched.

"That's a lot of crayons you're using" he said, looking at the empty packets that once contained the drawing tools scattered across the floor, "I reckon some of mine's been put to use too"

"Sending rapid fire regrets your way dude, sorry, I just need to get the color right on this. I want my babe's banana raincoat looking brighter than the sun"

"You're drawing April?" Murphy asked

"Who else is needed to complete the picture? Always me and her. We're a team...to the bitter end in this case" Michelangelo replied

"What Vernon said...about those rumors...they're not true are they?" asked Murphy, scratching his head as a very taboo concept entered his thoughts

"Hey, if it were up to April, she wouldn't let it be rumor at all, heck I think she'd even love to cover our story" Michelangelo replied, putting down the pens and examining the work

"So you're the reason why she won't say anything...fair enough" Murphy said, "I draw much weirder stuff for my online store, if it's starting to filter into real life, it just means more interest in my work later down the line"

April walked back into the cubicle with two mugs of coffee, she sat one next to Michelangelo's desk.

"There, it's done" Michelangelo said.

April looked upon it, a still image of Michelangelo and April at an airport, April had several bags packed, Michelangelo was standing still, a pressed daffodil in his hand, which was outstretched, reaching out and offering it to her.

"What's the significance?" she asked

"Of what?" Michelangelo said.

"The airport" April elaborated.

Michelangelo stared blankly into the distance; he looked out the window at the bright and brooding red sky lighting up the evening air.

He felt himself tighten up ever so slightly, April rubbed his tense shoulders gently

"You're stiffening up, tell me what's wrong, tell me what's with the airport in the picture?" April asked

"You're leaving" Michelangelo replied

"Me? Why?" April replied

"You're going away on foreign assignment, to work for a big news corporation in Paris. Five year contract. This is us saying goodbye"

"And?"

"And what? We're parting ways, isn't it obvious? It's a sign" Michelangelo replied, a small tinge of desperation in his voice, feeling the end of the road was approaching for him in reality at this very moment.

"Mikey, you don't think these realities you're experiencing are suggesting how you'll act, how we'll act, in your legit life are you?

"It's like those dreams I had that told me the future, if the worst case scenarios in them came true, this vision's bound to as well" Michelangelo spoke, visibly beginning to shake.

April held both of the Turtle's hands, caring little that Murphy could see what she was doing, not that it mattered, because he knew anyway, but this was a sign clear as any the decision to keep their relationship quiet had been down to Michelangelo and not her.

"Let me tell you about a dream I had over the weekend, when you were staying over at the apartment.

I was watching you sleep next to the television, your mouth was hanging open and some tiny morsels of half-chewed pizza were sticking out. It was the cutest thing, you looked so innocent, and then I started reflecting more on how much more innocent you were back when I met you.

Back when you, the guys, and I were so full of vitality, youth, and promise. That night in bed, I started imagining being the age you were, what my life would be like hanging out with you guys at the tender age of 16, 17 years old, not a care in the world.

I romanticized it all, you came swooping in to save my family, battling invading aliens, a leaner, meaner Shredder, you may not have been the most...mature of creatures, you could be fairly obnoxious at the best of times, but you were very consistent in your bravery, you were this kind of pesky little...nick in the side of evil...y'know? There were times you got on my nerves with your childishness, but I always understood and was able to look past that, and I was always proud..."

"Then what?" Michelangelo asked

"...You guys made a mistake, you spilled mutagen all over the city, and my father paid the price for it and was mutated into a bat, I blamed myself initially, because I just stood still while it cascaded down and he had to push me out of the way and take it himself, then you guys took responsibility for causing the spill, my father flew off into the night in a rage, and I...I..said I never wanted to see you again.

That's when I knew the dream had turned sour, that's when I knew it wasn't real, because the one time I turned against you guys in this life, our life, it was out of fear of the future, fear of my feelings, and in that dream it was as if I was caving into my feelings a tad too much rather than take all of ours into consideration.

As justified as my anger was, I should have rose above it and understood you'd do everything in your power to put things right, I should have done the mature thing"

"No one's mature at that age April, especially girls" Michelangelo insisted, taking his own mug and hastily drank from it, then realized it was quite hot and gagged as he felt it singe his tongue.

April took the time to enjoy a brief little laugh at her boyfriend's plight before continuing.

"But it's not in character for me is it? And that's what the real deal with this reality of yours is...it's not in character for me to abandon my friends, friends who have risked their all for me and my loved ones, for personal desires. I'm your friend to the end, that'll always be me. Nothing, not dreams, not a splinter in the mind, not a tear in reality, can detach me, or us, from the journey we've been on together all our lives. Whatever you're facing, you're going to have me here to help you deal with it"

"Darling, you sure are a daisy" Michelangelo said, pointing to the flower the illustration had in his hand

"Let's not confine that to the funny pages" April said and kissed him gently on the lips. Murphy, sighed in awe, emotionally stirred.

"I could do with putting a little of that in my comics" he said, "Not sure what the sort say about interspecies romance though, there's bound to be a 'dear writers' fanfic made about me if I were to indulge in it" he said

"Now...do you feel you can overcome this niggle in your noggin?" April asked her boyfriend

Michelangelo scratched his head a bit, then felt a slight pang

"Something's stirring, the reality I'm experiencing...it's..."

"It's changing again? What was it before this? What came after the airport?" April asked, "What is it doing to you? What is it trying to say about me? I know whatever's affecting you sees me as a threat, first I didn't exist, then I'm abandoning you, it wants you to feel isolated Mike, you've got to fight it. What's it doing now?"

"...It's trying to...I don't know how to describe it best, but it's a bigger world than I've ever experienced, like a construction site, I'm working on it for this deadbeat boss, he's...his name is Kirby, what's the connection with that? He's went from being protective, to being an obstacle, to ordering me about, almost enslaving me. The site I'm working on is humongous, it's expanding day by day, and it feels like it's INSIDE of me, don't ask me how, but I think I've got a tumor coming along...we've got to get back to the lair, tell the guys..."

April's turtle-com went off, she answered

"Hi April, how's Mikey holding up?" asked Leonardo as his face appeared on the Turtle-com screen

"Whatever's causing him virtual insanity is getting a little more real, we're heading home so Donatello can examine him"

"I'm sorry April, Donny's gone" Leonardo replied

"We hope he'll be back in time, but that saying could kind of go two ways at the moment" Raphael added.

"Great, well we're heading back anyway, you're going to need a lot of aspirin to deal with this latest headache, April out" April said, and cut off communication to tend to Michelangelo, small pulsating veins began appearing across his head, symbolic of pressure, stress, and strain

"You and me Mike, no matter what, I'm the kind of person who'll never give up on you guys. Ever" April vowed

At the Fifty-One Fantasies Foundation Headquarters, Rebecca Barber was not in the most generous of moods as she was called away from her urgent business to attend to a crisis in the making.

"Why did you take me out of my conference call?" she said

"It's Perkins Ma'am, he's experiencing some kind of head trauma, we believe the EDX is to blame" said her assistant.

Rebecca was escorted to one of the office blocks, where Tim Perkins of the foundation's I.T department was lying face down on the floor, his hands behind his back, several co-workers were tending to him.

He was mumbling incoherent sentences.

"Timothy, follow the sound of my voice, listen to it, concentrate, and abandon your paradigm" said one female worker, and she slowly turned him over

"...Can't" Perkins pleaded, grabbing the woman's waistcoat and pulling her closer to his face, awash with perspiration.

"The Emperor Bee says time won't grow back if I abandon Honeycomb Three. It's...it's so BIG now, it feels like it's twice the size of my head...help me" Perkins insisted.

"What's he babbling about?" Rebecca asked.

"He's experiencing a reality where he can grow things outside of time and space via these honeycomb like structures" her assistant answered, "Consider this, history as nectar, sweet, tantalizing...and at the heart of it, a sting to come if one of the worker drones is disturbed, causing conflicts, creating killers, injecting time with all the worst traits that have plagued humanity.

He's been trying to keep that side of himself dormant of course...

"The nagging doubt Benson was rambling on about earlier, it's becoming quite persistent is it not?"

Rebecca kneeled down and clasped her palm across Perkin's forehead, the heat of his sweat imprinting itself on her own flesh, she removed it and wiped it on her leg.

"Are you further worried about who you've placed in charge of the shipment tonight then?" her assistant asked.

"No, no what I need is to consult the benefactor" Rebecca replied, and power walked to her main office.

Entering the office, she closed the door behind her and shut the blinds, she knelt down on her chair and took out a small pyramid from her desk, she placed it on the table and tapped three times on the coiled snake embedded in the centre.

Several roots slowly poured out of the pyramid shape and intersected with each other, forming a screen.

Mysterious, mystical energies formed across the shape and an image came into clear view, it was that of a tall overbearing creature sitting atop a throne with a light purple and blue color scheme across his head, green roots protracting on the outskirts of his cerebrum, his eyes a striking orange and black.

"One of my employees is experiencing...negative aspects. You never said this would happen"

"It wasn't meant to happen this early, he is insisting upon himself" the creature replied

"He sir?"

"Time is in delicate flux, it is growing, soon it will be the day of uprooting, but that is a long way from when you were born" the creature continued

"You talk in riddles sir" Rebecca spoke, confused, yet intrigued.

"It is of no concern, only to the conjurors, and they are beyond your grasp. You must ensure the delivery is on time"

"But if this is the end result, what good will it do?" Rebecca pressed, "And what will happen to us if it's traced back?"

"You will be protected" the creature promised, "Your foundation will have a reach beyond the needs of this planet, you will influence many children"

"And of the negative aspects? Will they pass?"

"There will be early pains, but if you allow it to grow, all EDX touches will stand so tall, their minds will be truly monstrous following this grand expansion, the world will no longer be something you misinterpret, nature and man will join in glorious symbiosis, as was intended at the dawn of your creation"

"Then I pray this night is swift with success" Rebecca said, "...Thank you as always for your insight...Saw Boss"

Rebecca tapped the pyramid again and the image of the creature vanished from view, the roots slowly retracted back into the device. Rebecca picked herself up from her chair, straightened her dress, breathed a sigh of relief, and walked out of the office.

Travelling through the time/space vortex wasn't an eye-opening experience as Donatello was discovering.

The senses-shattering effect of temporal ripples and topsy-turvy passages through currents of tunnels in this fifth dimensional landscape were enough to keep his eyes firmly shut throughout the whole ride

He let himself be open, however, to the echoes all around him, echoes of history, of passionate, though bile-ridden speeches by deluded dictators and architects of great wars, then, as he composed himself, the echoes became gentler, settling on one speech of a King with a dream.

He liked that one a lot.

Finally, he could feel things begin to simmer, the echoes faded, the flux he could feel around his body subsided and stabilized.

"We're here Don" said Carter as they materialized around a lush green patch in a clearing overlooking a vast mountain

"What a peculiar way to travel, or as Mikey would say, very tubular" Donatello said aloud, "I've been thrown in time before but that was a little different"

"The vortex is always going through changes of its own, it's part of its temporal grafting , it alternates whenever there is an intent to change the future or the past..."

"Or to fix it" added Donatello.

Carter nodded.

As they made their way over to a large rock pool, Donatello decided to probe further into Carter's love life.

"So you and Merrick? How'd that come about?" Donatello asked

"It just clicked for us, I stayed with them while I was training to be an enforcer of the peace corps at the academy. We would go on long treks through the crimson mountain forests, artificially crafted illuminated trees all sparking with bright emerald energy"

"Sounds breathtaking" Donatello replied.

"Oh it does take away your breath, it's somewhere in the highest altitudes, but you're left with this heartfelt glow, perfect to snuggle up to...and it kept us cozy on those long winter nights"

"Yeah, I wasn't prepared to inquire about that much" Donatello said.

"Ha, you're one to talk, aren't you shacked up with that woman who resembles a chipmunk?" joked Carter.

"We've tried to keep that a secret, how'd you find out?" Donatello asked

"Can't tell, I know a plucky stubborn lady once said the temporal prime directive is much easier when you just ignore it, but there's some things that are public in my time that need to remain private in yours"

"Well we got together on a cold winter night, there's definitely heat, but there's been little fire...easy to see why, interspecies relationships are something most people confine to their literary fantasies"

"You should talk it out with your brother, he's got some advance knowledge, or at least will"

"Great, I strike it rich with my science buddies and Mikey strikes it lucky" Donatello remarked

Carter stopped Donatello in his tracks.

"We're here, this is it...but, these readings can't be right..."

"Fascinating" Donatello said, looking at the primitively murky slop in the rock pool,.

"These must be the building blocks of what will ultimately become human life on this planet, I'm looking at the early faces of humanity...no wonder they're so addictive to cosmetic mud-packs"

"These readings should be ripe with activity from an intrusive substance...unless...we've arrived too early..." Carter added

"Or just in time" Donatello said, as the pair were confronted by a ravenous and wild tyrannosaurus emerging from the forest entranceway.

"This is impossible, dinosaurs and the early primordial human soup can't exist in the same period, the dinosaurs died out long before then" Donatello spoke.

"The past is quite easy to preserve when you think as far ahead as I do" came a voice from a figure riding atop the tyrannosaurus. Donatello looked up and focused his gaze, his jaw dropped.

"And there right there is that detail you left behind" Carter said. Donatello nodded, finally understanding what Carter meant earlier.

They had met this creature before, in a time where havoc reigned.

Or rather H.A.V.O.C

"Titanus" Donatello replied

"I swore I'd get even with you Turtles, now my efforts to finish you will be executed to a precise T…courtesy of a T-Rex that is"

The Turtles were all assembled before their brother, now feeling the intense and sharpening pain of a full on brain tumor pressing down on him.

They did not have Donatello amongst them, and were thus unable to come up with a swifter diagnosis.

Splinter offered Michelangelo some soothing tea as everyone scrambled to come up with solutions.

"Can you help him out?" April asked

"The past few hours have seen time take a neutral side April" Splinter replied, "Neither we nor whatever stands against us has taken direct hold, we should not dwell on the troubles that cloud our judgments at present, Michelangelo has had many an experience with visions of great obstacle before, and he has always pieced together a picture, this opportunity is his to gain greater clarity, even in the wake of such forceful pain"

April leaned over to Michelangelo, who was nested snugly on the couch, hanging upside down with his feet draped over the top, both hands pressing down on his temple. April took one of his hands and clasped her hand in it, stroking it tenderly.

"Come on Mike, remember where you are, remember what I said to you, you and me, together...'till it all becomes dust" April said.

Somewhere buried within the ever expanding consciousness of Michelangelo, the tubular Turtle could hear other requests, other orders, and he felt that even if he did become dust, he'd just be scooped up and blown in the direction of the building he was working on, to linger around it seemingly forever, committed to the preservation of the project.

The weight of the cement bag he was carrying was pinning him down, he felt like his bones could easily break from the load handed to him.

In his ear came crass commands from his boss Kirby, a slender rugged man who was following him, shouting at him through a loudspeaker.

"Put some shell back into it" he said. Michelangelo sighed and did as instructed, ultimately succeeding in placing the cement bag on a stack of other bags next to the cement mixer at the very top of the structure he was working on.

He looked outward at the breathtaking view of the city, and smiled.

"Sit down" he said to his boss, "Take in this view, maybe you'll get back what bated breath you have, and you can even breath the fire in your ire down my neck better if you just chill" Michelangelo said, and dropped down, he took a slice of pizza out of a nearby lunch box.

Kirby, a little touched by the sentimentality, did as instructed. "Might as well, you've put in a good amount of work today Mike. The right kind of mentality to have whenever I'm about"

"How's things with the wife?" Michelangelo said, offering Kirby some pizza

"I thought you were concerned more about your own problem, your Mrs. took off abroad didn't she? Kirby said

"My teacher always told me to keep an interest in other people's concerns, it totally helps to let reality take a bite out of you so you can remedy the wound it leaves. Open up, it really doesn't hurt"

"The Mrs. took the kids last September, wasn't a pretty day, came home with the fish and fries all neatly tucked away in a bag...realized I couldn't eat something that fattening, even if it is good for the brain, helps it to grow you know"

"Believe me, I'm not as empty as my stomach normally is on these shifts" Michelangelo replied

"You know what I love about this dance in life though...through time, through the ages, I know the outcome...you see it don't you? The sense, the smell...the guarantee, it makes me sleep so soundly Mike, and it lets me roar at the exact same instant"

"What guarantee is that?" Michelangelo said.

"The assurance that my children will grow. That's what keeps me going...they'll await a silver bird, and it'll give them the seeds, they'll take the seeds, and they'll grow so tall, learn all these wonderful things, and they'll stay wrapped in that bubble forever..."

"And what'll happen when they have to think outside the bubble? And stay out of their comfort zone? Or is that reserved for someone else?" Michelangelo asked

"How are you feeling?" Kirby said, trying to change the subject.

"You don't feel anything in here...you can only think..." Michelangelo said.

"Then how do you think?"

"I believe it was Donatello that said it best once...what your starship once was as pockets of the sun flickered and danced around it...I think...

"Yeah?"

"I think you're stardust...Dregg"

Kirby backed off, "How did you..."?

"Kirby was an imaginary brother I had when we had just crawled out of that mutagen...I didn't know how to react well to the other dudes so I temporarily retreated into myself to cope. I envisioned so many things about him...he'd look after me, he'd tease me, he'd help me, he'd hinder me, he'd lecture me, all the things my brothers and my teacher did in real life, only I applied it to a fantasy, until I grew out of it...and I thought I'd grown out of him, until you dragged him out of mothballs"

Michelangelo grabbed 'Kirby' by the neck. As he did, Kirby's gentle features transmogrified into an all too insidious face, purple, glowing blank eyes, sharp teeth, and a monstrously over-sized head with a pulsating brain. The features of Lord Dregg.

Michelangelo had a nickname for him, 'Scourge of the red skies'

He seriously needed to lay off the comic books.

"Ah Turtle, it has been a challenge has it not? But you won't win this war, I am part of you, in many ways I have always been with you, with all of mutant kind and humanity alike, you shed my whole from the sight of the world, but a monstrous mind like myself cannot be forever denied. I was cast to the back of time and over the millennia and generations it has taken me until now to present myself, in the form of legions, to the universe again. I will become the defining aspect of all creation, and there is little to prevent the disengagement of our present reality, and the embracing of my own"

"You're forgetting one simple thing Dregg...you didn't force this latest task on me, I let you into the building" Michelangelo said, and fidgeted through his pockets, producing a small remote device. Dregg looked around the structure to find small grey devices attached to the columns.

"Those weren't there before" Dregg said, "I thought...I was in command, I always am, that's how it works with EDX...I call the shots, you live the dream, I become the reality"

"When it comes to tangling with a Turtle, reality doesn't just bite, it blows" Michelangelo said, and pressed the button, the devices went off, causing a series of small explosions that began to level the building.

As the structure buckled and began to collapse, Dregg grabbed Michelangelo and placed a tight grip on his throat, "Fool" he said, "Burying me beneath your subconscious won't deafen my voice, my reality will graft itself onto you, you should embrace your dreams, for they will be your only home"

"My home is with HER" Michelangelo said, and head-butted Dregg before sending him careering off of the collapsing structure with a well-timed roundhouse kick, before making a leap over to another nearby building.

"So long as we have something in the world, no other realm is radical enough" Michelangelo said, watching as Dregg hit the ground and was promptly buried under all of the rubble

"You tried to make me everything Dregg...you thought me a Zero, but I've always been one thing, sometimes we forget, probably 'cause it sounds hopelessly corny and nowhere near as edgy, but at the end of the day, all of us are, in our own little world as well as in the actual one, heroes in a half-shell"

Michelangelo's eyes burst open and he rose from the sofa, surprising the other Turtles.

"Mike, what happened? We could overhear you having this one-sided conversation" Leonardo said

"Yeah, didn't you say you were letting Dregg into the building? That's grounds for a major eviction" An alarmed Raphael said.

"Dregg was trying to overwrite me, but I was joined with his mind too, this EDX thing, somehow it triggers dormant traces of Dregg inside all of us, he said it himself, all of humanity and mutant kind...dating all the way to the back of time"

"Donatello's going to have to work this one out on his end" Leonardo said, "Meantime, we've got to find a way to stop all of this on ours. If Dregg is somehow trying to resurrect himself through the EDX experience, we need to somehow get our hands on all those patches"

"I think I can stop it all. From here. Something Dregg said to me...and since I've won our mindscape mud-sling and he's at my mercy presently, I can tap into what he's thinking...and if he's the same cat across all the cerebellums affected by EDX, I can tap into whoever else he's infected. All without us having to break out the sweat beads tracking anything down. With the chance I've got, I can dance among the raindrops" Michelangelo said

April smiled, "So...your home is with her?" she said, knowing exactly what Michelangelo meant.

Michelangelo smiled and blushed, "Yeah well, you do tend to bring home the bacon...and I need that for my bacon roll pizza" he replied, and kissed her on the cheek.

"Oh you're on a right roll right now mister" April replied, "Just make sure letting Dregg into the building doesn't leave you with too costly a bill"

Donatello and Carter stood in awe as the ravenous Tyrannosaurus Rex, with Titanus on board, leaned down and began to try to take a bite out of the pair.

The two leapt away in separate directions. Donatello clubbed the creature on the head with his Bo staff, whilst Carter took out his blaster and fired a few shots. The beams hit the T-Rex, phasing it and knocking it back a bit.

"I hit him with my best high-range level energy blast that would fell a mountain" Carter replied

"Oh this rex is quite reinforced young man, courtesy of this small device developed by my scientists in HA.V.O.C that I kept on my person should great and grievous bodily harm came to my person...a life preserver. I've survived many the clacking beak of a pterodactyl, the trampling of a Triceratops, and the appetite of my little friend here"

"Doesn't explain how a dinosaur can still be around in this specific part of the timeline, this is AFTER the meteor strike that took out the first kings of the Earth" Carter revealed.

"I needed the company, so when the great droughts and fall out from the merciless meteor hit, I expanded the energy output of the preserver to protect my friend here"

Titanus sloped down the T-Rex's head and gently landed on the ground. He reached into his pocket and produced the jar of Dregg's remains, and the silver-tipped streamer worm

"The building blocks of life are about to have a whole new coat of cement added to the layers" Titanus gloated, holding the silver-tipped streamer worm in his hand alongside a small golden pocket watch, and the jar of Dregg's remains in the other.

He opened the jar and dipped the worm into it. Some, but not all, of the remains were absorbed by the worm into its body, it doubled in size temporarily, and just as quickly shrank weight as it digests its 'food' .

It slithered out of the jar and crawled across Titanus' fingers. Carefully, he inserted it into the pool.

"No, what are you doing?" Donatello said

"When you wretched Turtles sent me to this prehistoric pit stop I was left with nothing, I wasn't prepared mentally or physically for the primitive powers of this land. I was prepared to die, and then, I found purpose again. I received this small device, a temporal two-way communication device sent from the future, courtesy of someone called Mung, an underling of the alien Lord Dregg.

He told me of Dregg and how his own encounters with you had driven him to madness and then death. I relayed my own tale of woe to him, and we quickly bonded. We discussed the consequences of rewritable temporal flux, how to create whole new timeline paradigms, and he gave me specific instructions on how to achieve it.

He told me to send him the device back with a message. The message was to give him specific details on how to best rewrite temporal flux and travel back across the timelines to send the com device to my specific space/time coordinates, so my past self would learn what I had and thus be complied to close the loop. Fifteen days later, my time, I received the remains of Dregg from the future after Mung had slavishly searched and scraped for them over the years, and he also supplied to me this, a streamer worm, a creature from the Galaxian quadrants of the universe developed by the Monster Minds using the research and experiments of the great plant and marine geneticist Audric.

As you have clearly seen, it absorbs the DNA material of any living or dead organism and can give it new sentience within a fresh genetic backdrop. By applying it to the soup that gives birth to the eventual human race, Dregg can be reborn and lay dormant within them, influencing, even perhaps being responsible for creating all their negative attributes, and slowly infiltrating all corners of their developing cerebellums, waiting for the eventual opportunity to become them in mind, body, and soul"

"Oh my god..." Donatello said, "All those conspiracy theories...the ones that claim the corrupted corners of the human race are controlled and influenced by an otherworldly reptilian hybrid alien force...they're true"

"And the power of the EDX arborous strain gives it all the room it needs to overtake and suppress the positive traits of humanity"

I learned of the EDX project Dregg had been strongly invested in, and Mung included portions of the arborous strain in the package sent to me, I added traces of it to the remains it has absorbed, and now

Titanus took the streamer worm out of the soup and laughed wickedly.

"I'll hold onto this, after all, there are so many things left to walk the Earth besides just humans...all creatures great and small will be infected with the strain, Dregg shall inherit the Earth from the very beginning, and when EDX is successfully distributed in several thousand years time, it will lead to the emergence of a new reality, one that HA.V.O.C will embrace and work with the newly created Dreggs of Society to maintain as we conquer and claim what is rightfully ours...I may not be able to make it back, because I'm needed here to prevent undoing all our hard work and paving the way for a paradox, but I will live out the rest of my days knowing my time, the age of the mutant aggressor, will be born from the breath of battle"

All this seemed too much for Carter to handle, a shimmering glow enveloped him

"What's happening?" Titanus said in alarm.

"Carter?" Donatello asked

"My mutation disease...it's kicking in" Carter said, "I've been able to control it in the future using specific medication and the discipline taught to me by Splinter, but we're far from my time, my supply is low, and I'm feeling the stress"

"If you will now excuse me, I must put in an urgent call to tomorrow, and let Mung know that you are yesterday's news"

Carter clutched his chest, the tension was insurmountable, and he could hold himself together no longer.

With a howl, he mutated into a fearsome yellow skinned creature with striking red lines and blades piercing out of his shoulders. In a confused and enraged state of mind, he attacked the tyrannosaurs, taking it by the head as it lunged towards him, clutching it and snapping it's neck with sheer ferocity

Titanus ran into the forest, dropping the worm, the remains and his communication device whilst flaying his arms about in a state of absolute panic, with Carter and Donatello in pursuit. It didn't take long for them to reach an apparent clearing, a muddy landscape awaiting them.

Titanus, in a panicked state, ran straight into the concoction, and promptly began to sink

"Quick sand" he said, panicking.

Donatello arrived at the scene and bore witness to Titanus' plight, he extended his staff.

"Grab on Titanus, I'll pull you to safety" Donatello said, but Titanus grabbed onto it and attempted to pull the Turtle in. Carter arrived, and, in a much-needed showcase of self restraint and control, pulled Donatello back, his grip on the staff loosened, and it was sent careering into the quicksand. Titanus scrambled for the clearing, but was slowly sucked underneath. He could spare himself only a slight clench and shaking of a fist in vengeful frustration as he sank to his total doom.

"Carter, are you ok?" Donatello asked as Carter finally reverted to human form.

"Yeah, I got it together when I saw you were in trouble" Carter replied, "Sorry for coming in like a wrecking ball"

"The only people that need to apologize for something like that are over-the-hill pop princesses who think that stuff makes them hip and edgy" Donatello remarked.

Carter got up and dusted himself off, "I wiped out the last of the dinosaurs, and somehow I don't feel like there's time to mourn that...we've got work to do, that formula you created, did you follow the instructions to the letter?"

"Yeah, I did, it's just about ready. I put it in a special miniature blender, it's in the back of my shell"

Donatello reached to the back of the shell and produced the blender, it had successfully mixed up the chemicals that had been required to create the formula that would provide a key to eroding the effects of EDX. He then produced the streamer worm.

"Titanus dropped this when he was fleeing the scene, I scooped it up" he said.

"Great, then all you need do is have the worm absorb the formula, we deposit it in the soup and that'll cure us of what ills us"

"I...can't. I don't have the right" Donatello said

"Why not? You have to" Carter replied

"Think about it" Donatello countered, "If I play god and erase Dregg's influence, doesn't that erase all the adversity humanity needs to evolve and understand the concepts of good and evil? I could be enabling them, they may not be able to think the same, act the same, they may be child-like in mentality and action forever, becoming more and more simplistic and reclusive, they may not display any strength, or find interest in hip and cool things and fall in love with the notions of innovation and invention..."

"There's no way to know that for certain" Carter said, "Look, don't make me force you into this choice Don...I was warned we could come into conflict over this, I know you better than this, you'll do the right thing, I know I won't have to fight you on this"

There was an awkward pause between the two. Donatello scratched the back of his head.

"I can't...I need...I need to...eat. I'm starving"

Donatello took out a slice of cool, cold pizza from the back of his shell

"Don...what is that?"

"Oh it's just some chunk of pizza Mike was...eating..." Donatello began, before trailing off and becoming lost in the wake of an idea. An idea that made him grin from cheek to cheek.

"Of course" he whispered

"What?" Carter asked, picking up what the Turtle said.

"The pizza...it's got traces of his DNA on it, if I add it to the mixture, and apply the recalibrated formula to the streamer worm...call it a hunch, but it may just counteract and balance out the negative qualities that Dregg's DNA will apply to the future generations on this planet"

"So all of humanity will be of two mindsets...good and evil" Carter realized, "All down to reptilian influence, just as the conspiracy theorists have managed to figure out"

"Precisely" Donatello said, "And better yet, if Mikey's DNA is present in the genetic template of humanity, that means when the time comes and we're born out of the mixing of mutagen and the regular reptilian genetics, the strain, which will be inherited by the bloodlines that will eventually produce the likes of Hamato Yoshi, our sensei, will be passed down to us. Our master lent us some of his blood in our early years of training to better unify us as family.

That means the strain will find the perfect host in Michelangelo as he's the complete genetic realization of the pathogen we're creating. He'll be able to develop a sixth sense of sorts and detect the presence of the Dregg pathogen during the triggering of an EDX prism and successfully counter-balance it...how I don't know, that'll be up to him to experience and figure out for himself"

"The altered data tracks were saying you guys couldn't prevent the distribution of EDX in its vast quantities because you had problems at home...but history's no doubt been put on the proper path"

"First of all, we'd best ensure that happens" Donatello said, and opened the container of the blender and stored the worm inside and added the crumbs of Pizza to the mixture. The worm absorbed the contents. Donatello and Carter raced back to the primordial pool and gently placed the worm back into the soup.

"Now we'd better get back to our timeline, and witness the results of your work first hand" Carter said.

"What about Titanus' two-way device?" Donatello asked, noticing it on the ground

"We'll give it a one-way ticket straight to the world's first crusher" Carter said and walked up to it, with one firm step, he stood on it with his boot.

Activating the temporal device, the two travelled back across the ages, and back to the future.

Rebecca Barber's evening had been marred with a series of ill-timed phone calls that took her away from keeping tabs on the situation regarding the delivery. Several aspiring apprentices looking to join the Fifty-One Fantasies foundation had called in asking what kind of suit they needed to wear or, more radically, they could come in with just street wear to give the foundation's procedures a bit of an edgier upheaval.

Rebecca figured recruiting people from the same tight university outfit was a bad fit, but she had let her partners talk to her at length about it and she figured it wouldn't lead to anything too different

In an ever changing climate, it was crucial that procedure be upheld in some form to best maintain structure.

She would not take in any ideas that hindered that.

After telling the apprentices one after another that their idea was foolhardy and a potentially embarrassing stunt, she walked back into her complex's media hub to find panic in abundance.

"Ma'am, we're in dire straits" said her assistant as all monitors on the television were tuning into a breaking news story on Channel Six as its lead reporter April O'Neil had arrived at a familiar airport, standing on a line of runway with two pilots.

"What in heaven is he doing?" Rebecca said as she recognized Martin, who was accompanied by his co-pilot friend Leopold, who looked flummoxed.

"This is April O'Neil for Channel 6 with a remarkable story. Just over an hour ago, federal officers were informed via phone of a massive hidden shipment of EDX that was to have been deposited over the third-world populace during a fly-by on a routine passenger flight. Police were informed by an airline pilot who had been part of the conspiracy, but had a sudden change of heart just minutes before the flight occurred...here with me now is the man in question with his co-pilot. Police are currently inspecting the plane's hold and we've been granted very rare interview time with the suspects...sirs, can you elaborate on just what went down before take-off?"

Leopold was quick to rattle off, increasingly irritated by the collapse of the plan.

"He just plain lost his nerve in the cockpit, I tried giving him a pep talk, I'd given him several before and in preparation for the flight, but he just bottled up and locked himself in a trance for about five minutes when we started the plane up. Then, when he snapped out of it, he just...made the call to the authorities, I asked him what the hell he was doing and..."

"No, I can handle this Lee...really, I can" Martin meekly said as he cut Leopold off, opting to stick up for himself

"Something came to me Ms. O'Neil, something with a lot of attitude, with more positive vibes in it than anything I'd endured from the big men I'd seen in my visions"

"Visions?" April asked.

"Yes, visions, the kind of weird duel reality thing you get whenever you use one of these" Martin said, producing an EDX prism from his pocket and handing it to April.

"It's...a bit complicated to explain, then again, a lot of things in life are. You think you can be a hero just for giving someone a choice, an option to...to go elsewhere, take a break, have a holiday, a permanent one too if I'd gone through with this, that's what the voice said...that it wouldn't be 'cool', that it would just...hurt everyone, and he projected it all in my head with this weird imagery, and I could somehow feel it wasn't an illusion, it was as if the other voices in my head had been holding back all this truth from me and now it was being evenly spread. An angel and a devil peering over my shoulder and the angel finally got some say in things.

I don't know what'll happen to me now, my daughter, those who gave me my orders, I've let them down and their dreams, but my own dreams and desires...they somehow feel like they're mine again, I feel I can make the best out of that, that I can stand up for what's right and make everyone more proud of me this way, even if the road proves a little more difficult.

Yes, that's...oh what's the word the voice used, oh yeah, 'gnarly'".

April giggled, Martin looked at her with a curious expression, it was as if she had some inside knowledge of something he was still attempting to understand himself.

Who gave you your orders?" April said.

"Fifty-One Fantasies Ms. O'Neil" Martin replied

"He's betrayed us, he let the cat out of the bag...why? He was at his most confident" Rebecca said, rattled at Martin's confessions.

"I think whatever crept into his head gave him the wrong kind of courage where we're concerned" her assistant said

"Police are converging on the building Ms. Barber" said another of her employees.

Rebecca headed to the window and peered outside.

There stood five police cars and one ominous tall wagon, armed officers were steadily approaching the entrance to the building.

"Put us in lockdown. Immediately" Rebecca ordered.

Upon hearing the command, the assistants hit several switches at the side of the monitors.

Outside the building, sheaths of steel blocks came sliding down, isolating the complex from the approaching officers

Rebecca retreated to her office and tapped into her communication device, establishing contact again with the creature she had been conferring with for several months

"We are betrayed Saw Boss, the entire operation has been for nothing" Rebecca spoke

"It would appear we have been greatly reduced" Saw Boss replied "The timeline is no longer in editable flux and is no longer an optional ally...you all stand infected, diseased with total duality, incapable of making rational decisions, absurd pleasures will now forever be free to counter the cold calculations required for maximum conquest"

"I don't follow you...please, at this crucial hour, make sense to me, to all of us who have faithfully served you...and if you can, spare us the humility of being charged and arrested"

"As I promised, your protection is assured. Your organization and ambition has potential to grow, and there are other flights to embark on besides the ones confined to the very air you breathe...you shall be spared for another project, in another time, another place, and another portion of our ever expansive space. Connect one of your communication roots to an EDX prism, we will channel power through that"

Rebecca obeyed, taking a prism from a box on top of her desk and placing it on the pyramid

"I never thought to use this myself", Rebecca said with a defeatist tone, "Given what's happening now I could do with losing myself in the moment..."

"No...your infection must remain dormant" Saw Boss said

"And what of the others...the ones who have tested it out?"

"We will carefully study them, they carry the enemy within them" Saw Boss replied sternly.

"Studying...it sounds more like abduction than rescue" Rebecca said

As the police began making threats over the loudspeakers, she carefully tied one of the roots on her large alien screen around the prism.

"I'm ready" Rebecca said, walking over to the window and staring intently and with longing to the regular red-tinted evening sky, somehow knowing she would never see it's like again.

"Power of the black light, remove them from this place" cried out Saw Boss

Outside, the police officers stood firmly back as a black shroud coated the entirety of the complex, then, piece by piece, the shroud split into segments, reducing the building to nothingness.

"How could it just vanish like that?" said one officer, "It's...impossible"

"Pal, welcome to a regular Saturday morning" said his partner.

ONE WEEK LATER

Michelangelo stirred from his meditation with a rosy smile etched across his cheeks and the sensation of a rousing aroma dancing across his nostrils. The smell of herbal tea. He wrapped his arms across his own shoulders and tensely hugged himself.

It had been a week wrought with hard work within and beyond his own mental framework. He had successfully persuaded Martin to give up on his attempt to deposit EDX to a third world country and helped expose a corrupt charity chain, but that was only the tip of the iceberg as he sought to purge all of the 'Dreggs' in society that had tapped into the dangerous mentally challenging prisms and exposed themselves to the monstrous minds' influence.

"Are you rich in confidence today Michelangelo?" Splinter said as he walked in on the Turtle carrying the source of the powerful scent the elated Michelangelo had picked up on

"The richest Sensei. Oh I feel like the bed bugs have been taking a bite out of a fresh bit of mint-scented pizza dough and breathed it all over me"

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"Oh this whole dream thing was such a bad vibe for me when they started back when we were combating a fit and healthy Dregg back in the day...the dreams became reality and I couldn't stop it at the time, I didn't have the insight I do now, but when the EDX thing came calling, when Dregg started taking hold in my head, I was more prepared for it because I had that experience many years back. Then Donny and Carter came back from their blast in the past and told me how everything fit together from their end"

"Carter's future is stable again" Splinter spoke, "The events within that timeframe that led him back to us have not transpired, but he will retain the memory due to being in the eye of the temporal schism, last we heard he and Merrick are raising their healthy and happy child"

"Yeah well it's not quite over yet...we don't know what happened to that funky little foundation that was trying to distribute the EDX, and the portions of Dregg's psyche that were dormant until triggered by EDX have been manifesting through combinations of EDX and regular street drugs.

I had to intervene to save a young dude, who was, get this, also called Mike, from one of Dregg's avatars who was insisting that drugs don't mess you up, they just made you feel good.

I sort of let Mike's kid sister get to me, he was stealing from her to pay for his right petty drug habit, and she loves all the Saturday morning cartoons I do so I conjured them all up to help me teach Mike a valuable lesson.

It worked and he kicked the habit, but messed up manifestations of Dregg are always sort of gonna be kicking about for sometime...at least the future seems to clean and sober, so I guess I'll just keep at it. I just have to be careful about it. I'm plugged into a mondo mind map, but I know I have to tread carefully and not seek too many skeletons in people's closets.

I sort of tripped up taking a peek into Mikey's sister's mind and finding out how she feels and such"

"Such wise self-awareness in one's self can make the most radical of you great leads in the dance to come" Splinter said, complimenting him

"Alright, you called me a radical Master, excellent"

Splinter gave him an assuring smile, "It pleases me to provide a rule to your school of cool"

"Hey guys, am I interrupting anything?" April said as she peered around the corner of the entranceway to the lair.

"Not at all babe, come in" Michelangelo replied, getting up to greet her

"I've got a surprise for you" she said, and handed Michelangelo a black belt with small illustrations spread across it of her and Michelangelo piloting the turtle-blimp across a crisp blue sky.

"Murphy drew it for us, what do you think?"

"I don't know what to say babe" Michelangelo said, small tears forming in his eyes at the picture.

All too raw reminders of a turbulent period in his life, and who had been there to hold his hand throughout.

A woman who was, despite everything Dregg had thrown at him to try and convince him otherwise, still going to be there for him. Possibly for as long as she lived.

"Now's not the time to say anything Mike. The day is young, and so are we. I've got a story to cover in two hours, I want to make this last as long"

"Make what last as long?"

April laughed and placed the belt buckle around Michelangelo's eyes.

"Hide and seek of course" April said. "No peeking now" she added, putting her finger delicately on Michelangelo's face and kissing him on the forehead before tailing off.

"Well Michelangelo, are you prepared to take the lead in THIS dance?" Splinter said, chuckling

"Once I saw, but now I'm blind...something tells me that's not the way it goes, but then, in this world, anything can" Michelangelo replied, before wandering into a nearby wall.