A vehicle rolled up in the street beside them some time later. The clouds had nearly reached the top of it, so the driver opted to drive up a few levels of the next-door parking garage to escape them.

Once it was out of the fog, Donnie recognized the yellow exterior and green roof of the Party Wagon.

"We should meet them where they are," He suggested. "I don't know if Leatherhead or Mondo would be able to get across to us without going down to street level."

He produced his grappling hook and launched it, successfully catching it over the ledge at the top of the parking garage.

Donnie took a step forward, hesitated, and glanced back at the tank full of water. "How are we gonna get Leo across?"

Casey picked the tank up. "I'll go down to the road and carry it across."

Donnie nodded, made sure he had a reliable grip on all his vials in the hand that wasn't holding the grappling hook, then jumped and swung across the street tarzan-style. He slid through the opening above the concrete barrier and landed gracefully on his feet right next to the now parked Party Wagon.

Mikey, Raph, and April were quick to join him. They all pocketed their grappling hooks and approached the Party Wagon.

Splinter appeared beside them, and for the life of them no one could have told anyone how or when he had gotten there, but that was Splinter for you.

Casey rushed up the garage ramp a few moments later.

The Party Wagon's doors opened, and the three Mutanimals climbed out.

"Are you all alright?" Leatherhead asked.

"No more injured than when you last spoke to us," Donnie said, examining his hand again for good measure, "If that counts as alright."

Splinter caught sight of his discolored flesh and came over to look at it, ears pinned back.

Reading his gaze, Donnie tapped his wrist and inclined his head towards April.

Splinter glanced at April's wrist and stiffened.

"We tuned in to the news on the way here," Rockwell said. "The gas is due to spread all the way to the city limits within the hour."

Donatello tilted his head. "How much of that stuff do they have?"

"I haven't the slightest." Rockwell gritted his teeth.

"Do you know how quickly it rises upward?" asked Donnie.

Rockwell shook his head. "The movement of the Party Wagon would have tampered with the airflow too much to get an accurate reading from inside."

"It's rising too fast," April said. "It's gone up at least a foot from the time we left the Shellraiser to the time you arrived now." She looked pointedly around at everyone. "Which means we only have so much time to do something."

"What can we do?" Donnie asked. "Their lasers will only lock onto us anymore, so going back to storage is a big "no," on top of the fact that it's the center of the mutant-eating gas dispersion, meaning it's likely that the gas is thicker there, making it a double "no". Besides, we don't even know if there are any weapons left there."

"But we do know that the weapons were in the vans," April said, "Meaning they had a different purpose than the gas. The Kraang might be trying to spread their fog even wider, with these weapons being the carriers. We need to find the weapons and destroy them before the Kraang carry out their plan."

"How are we supposed to stop anything with all the big cloudy things everywhere?" Mikey asked.

Rockwell hummed. "There's a chance that the gas here would be diluted, being further away from its source."

"Are we going to risk going through it?" Donnie asked. "Is that the best idea?"

Rockwell shook his head. "No, but what other choice do we have?"

Mikey hid his head halfway in his shell. "Who's gonna test the clouds first?"

"I will," Rockwell said.

He approached the ramp, the bottom half of which the red-orange mist could already be seen floating in. He stopped just before the line where mist met the untouched air.

It was kind of beautiful. The mist looked like an otherworldly lake; slightly murky with kicked-up dust. Like you could wade into it and it would slosh at your feet and pool around your ankles.

The prospect of touching the mist was almost like dipping his hand into lakewater－ if lakewater could potentially eat away your flesh at an unknown speed.

Rockwell took a deep breath and stretched his hand out towards the gas.

A cheery tune whistled from his phone, jolting his every nerve. He let out a long exhale and put his phone on speaker.

"Doc!"

"Slash!" everyone said, unevenly echoing each other like raindrops falling in a puddle.

"Slash, where are you?"

"I kept following the van. It took me a few miles east of where we last saw each other."

Doctor Rockwell sucked air in through his teeth. "East. That's… that's the opposite direction we went in to get here."

"Will you be able to get back?" Slash asked.

"That depends," Rockwell said. "We don't know the severity of the gas the Kraang released. If it's slow-acting, we might be able to move freely with a set margin of time so as to not expose ourselves for too long. I was just about to test it, see how fast it could really－"

"NO!"

"Slash?"

"The clouds are… they're really bad. Don't try to fight through them; you won't last."

Rockwell's brow furrowed. "How do you know that?"

Quiet.

"Slash, are you okay?" Rockwell asked. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm… I'll be fine. You worry about yourselves."

"We'll figure out how to get to you," Rockwell said.

Slash paused. "No. Don't… don't wait up for me. Get yourselves to safety."

"Slash?"

"If you have to, leave me behind. Find a safe place for all of you to stay and reorganize."

"Slash!"

The sound of Kraang laser fire started on the other end. Slash gasped.

"I have to go."

Everyone shouted panicked protests at the phone, every one of them lost amidst the noise of all the rest.

Raphael yanked the phone from Rockwell's grasp. "Slash! Slash?"

The screen stared up at him, black and hollow, the words CALL ENDED bold and unmistakable.

"Spike?"

Raphael stared down at the phone, a million thoughts washing over him at once.

It was cruel, for the call ended screen to have a black background, all the better to see only his own lonely reflection staring back up at him.

"Spike!"

The group whipped around to face a humming sound behind them, to find themselves face-to-face with a group of Kraang, lasers fixed on them and charged, ready to fire.

The first laser shot at Mikey's head.

He ducked half into his shell, peering out at the small army of Kraang. "Aw, sewer apples!"

Slash held his mace at the ready and assumed a fighting stance.

The Kraang marched towards him, blasters firing, patterned as always despite having to separate to avoid the various satellites and vents on the roof.

Of course, he thought, they would wait until he was alone to try to take him down. The cowards.

"Too afraid to face my entire team?" He charged them with a mighty cry, weapon held high over his head.

Upgraded technology or not, hitting them with his mace was like swatting flies.

He put his full body into the swing, hoping to knock one Kraangdroid into another and send them all down bowling-pin style, and instantly regretted it.

His forearm's muscle felt like it had been torn in two by the movement. Warm, sticky blood poured out his still-open wound and flew everywhere with the momentum.

He let go the mace mid-swing, letting it bowl over all the Kraang in its path, and clutched his arm.

Even cupping his hand around the wound for only a split second, it was still soaked red when he pulled it away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Kraangdroid wave exaggeratedly and beep in its alien language to someone behind him.

Slash glanced over his shoulder to find more Kraangdroids patrolling the rooftops across the street. Upon spotting him, they opened fire, lasers as accurate as they would have been from only a few feet away.

Slash ran away from them, knocking over the few Kraang he hadn't taken out yet on his current rooftop.

Crap. They were driving him even farther from the lair.

He leapt across an alleyway, reaching up to be able to latch onto the building's roof ledge as he came close to it.

Slash caught the ledge in his hands and held on tight, ready to pull himself up onto the roof once he reached a stop.

As his momentum halted, his weight settled into his arms and hands.

If his left arm were a rope made of fibres, some of those fibres had already been frayed that night. He could have sworn the rope snapped at that moment.

Slash made a strangled sound in his throat and let go the ledge with his left hand.

His phone slipped out of his belt and fell several stories before disappearing into the gas and landing somewhere out of sight with a crack.

He looked down to the alleyway filled with gas.

His right hand, slick with blood, was slipping.

Slash desperately rested his left hand against the ledge again and again, but each time, it pulled back with the burst of pain sent through his nerves with the light contact.

He dug his right hand into the ledge for dear life. The gritty cement grains scratched his skin. The rough particles peeled lines in his already bloodsoaked hand.

He slipped.

Air roared in his ears. His mask tails whipped his face. His heart pounded against what remained of his shell. He flailed his arms about, seeking something to grasp.

His right arm caught, up past the elbow, in between two metal rails of a fire escape fence.

CRUNCH. POP.

The sloppy wet pop was enough to make him nauseous by itself. Coupled with the white-hot pain that seared through his arm, his stomach started bucking and churning right then and there.

Slash gasped, shallow and ragged. His forehead seemed to suddenly jump up ten degrees.

His feet dangled helplessly only inches above the gas.

Slash did not want to see what had become of his arm, but the gas was rising, and his arm was stuck. He needed to free himself.

Slowly, he turned his head towards his injury.

His arm was palm-up on the fire escape floor, as natural as if it were resting on a table. The elbow was what was very much not natural.

He had no doubt the joint had dislocated. The end of the forearm sagged over the bone under his weight. His forearm faced up, the rest of him faced down. The flesh that used to cover the elbow was warped by the edge of the fire escape's metal. He could see the shape of his bone bulging under his skin.

Despite his attempts to keep them at bay, tears welled in his eyes. His vision blurred. The world warped and shifted around him.

Slash shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

He focused on the bars of the fire escape beside his pinned arm, and slowly reached his left arm towards them.

Blood ran down his upper arm and over his shoulder, cold now, sticky and altogether unpleasant. His muscle strained with the slight movement. The fire escape was not far away, but it felt like he'd already stretched his arm past its limit, and inching forward as he did would snap it at any second.

What felt like ages later, his hand felt the cool fire escape. He gripped the bar, though his hand was weak, as if its grip would hold no stronger than tissue paper.

Slash brought his knees up to the escape and planted his feet on its side, then raised his hand to the rail and pulled himself up, sliding his dislocated arm up along the two bars it was trapped between.

He tried to turn it so the palm was parallel with the bars.

A flash of hot pain jarred his entire being, speckling his vision with moving white dots. His hold on the rail weakened.

Slash tightened his hold on the rail, although it somehow didn't feel any more secure.

He dipped his shoulder and tilted himself downward to rotate his arm even while the elbow joint was still. He then straightened his knees to pull himself away, removing his arm from between the two bars.

A sigh of relief would have been appropriate, had he not been on the verge of hyperventilation.

Slash swung his legs over the rail, stepped onto the fire escape, and promptly collapsed.

It was as if he'd suddenly come down with a fever in the past five minutes. He was hot and cold all at once, dizzy and nauseated, and his heart was pounding in his head and in both of his arms.

He remembered a time when he was still Raphael's pet, and the hotheaded turtle had gotten injured and been benched from patrol. Raphael had ranted to him about feeling useless in that moment, about being thrown into a position where he couldn't do anything. Slash had thought that he'd understood Raphael then, that he'd known what Raph was talking about.

He hadn't known.

Sitting here now, sick and hurt and alone, Slash felt horrible. He was miserable.

But above all, he was embarrassed.

This person sitting all alone, doing nothing despite being on the brink of an alien invasion, not helping his friends and allies, letting the poison slowly creep up towards him? This wasn't him. This wasn't who he wanted－ who he'd trained himself to be.

He never wanted to sit on the sidelines. He never wanted to be like the inconsequential pet he'd once been. He'd grown tired of lying around even before having the sentience of a mutant; had somehow understood that the mutagen was the key to his usefulness that day he had become so much more than he was. He had vowed that day that he'd never pass up the chance to be in the action doing what he could. Maybe he'd even made that vow in the days before he was mutated. Who knows? Those transitioning days were so clear, yet so foggy in his memory. When exactly he had made that promise was a mystery to him, and it was a mystery to him if he'd even consciously made it. All he knew was, it was the rule he lived by, the rule he'd engrained in himself through the knowledge of what it was like to spend so many years having no influence on the path of history.

And here he was, with that knowledge in his conscious, sentient mind, yet he was back to square one. Doing nothing. Being nothing.

Catching his breath while the enemy's toxin caught up to him.

He closed his eyes. He hated the little white spots that danced on his eyelids. Hated every single one of them from the depths of his being. He let a growl escape his throat.

Useless. Useless. Useless.

He'd been through a good few minor injuries in his time as a crime-fighter, sure, but none as immobilizing－ as humiliating － as these. He'd underestimated the absolute misery that came with such an affliction.

He suddenly understood every ounce of frustration Raphael had ever shown against being sidelined.

Approaching mechanical footsteps snapped him back to reality. The Kraang must have found him.

Slash dashed up the rest of the flights of fire escape steps, bitterly noting that even his mere footsteps pulsed through his already throbbing arms.

He ran over rooftop after rooftop, getting farther away from his friends with each one.

Trapping himself on the sideline.

Have a great day, y'all!