Hikari and Leo were on cooking duty today, and Leo had opted to go with the simplest dish they had: instant ramen. Not even a kitchen disaster like him could mess it up. Hikari had decided to add some variety by cooking up some eggs for their noodles. Just as Hikari and Leo finished preparing the last bowl, they joined Mikey and Raph on the island. "Let's go, nee-chan, I'm starving!" Hikari rolled her eyes and handed Mikey his fresh bowl of ramen. He cheered as he snapped the chopsticks in his hand, "Yeah, boy! Ramen."
As the four were snacking down on their noodles, their eyes caught sight of a small cockroach that climbed up the island. Cockroaches were par for the course since they lived in the sewers, but that didn't mean that Hikari liked dealing with them. She picked up her bowl and tried to get rid of it, "Shoo. Go away."
"What are you-" Raph looked at her like she was an idiot, taking his eyes off his food long enough for the roach to climb up and perch on his chopsticks. There was a brief pause when they first lock eyes before a loud scream set everything back into motion.
"AAHH! Roach! Roach!" Raph yelped as he backed away from the creature. After pulling out his sai, Raph went on the offensive and started stabbing at the roach. Raph chased it onto the island with a violent stab right at it. If the roach had been any slower, that sai could have gone straight through his wings.
The poor roach fled off the island and tried to find a safe haven from that bloodthirsty monster. Raph was relentless and following it with his sai barely missing the bug. Hikari was surprised by how aggressive Raph was acting over something so common, normally he would just leave or ignore them. Leo and Mikey were watching on, seemingly more curious as to whether Raph or the roach would win.
Donnie rushed in with his laptop in hand, "Stop! Stop, you'll smash him!"
"That's the idea!" Raph grunted as he tried again. The roach made a sharp turn and skittered towards Donnie.
"You can't smash this roach, ok? He's special." Donnie looked at the roach fondly, "Really speciaaaaal"
"Okay, I'm going to regret this, but why is he special, Donnie?"
"Because I outfitted him with a remote-controlled camera helmet!"
"Well, that explains why you're special."
"How did you get him to listen to you like that?"
"Using the frequency Hikari uses for her pest-repellent devices, I managed to figure out how to give commands and control the roach remotely. We can send him into T.C.R.I and spy on the Kraang. The camera allows us to see whatever the cockroach sees."
Donnie put his laptop down in front of the others and pressed play on the video. The video showed Donnie talking to the cockroach before making its way into the kitchen, until the moment Raph screamed at it. Raph was red in the face while Leo and Hikari smirked in amusement.
Mikey, as usual, had no such reservations. "That is awesome. Big, tough Raph is scared of cockroaches."
"I am not." Raph denied. He reminded her of one of those children stomping their feet on the ground and pouting. She bit her lip to stop any laughter.
"Oh, really? Let's go to the video." Mikey played the clip again, looping the video at that moment. Raph started getting redder with every time he heard his scream from the video. Mikey was just having the time of his life and laughing at him, "This is my favorite part, right here. Donnie, can I get this on a t-shirt?
"Want to see my favorite part?" Raph grabbed Mikey by the shell and threw him onto the ground. The two got into another scuffle, nothing new so the other three ignored it.
"We're going to spy on the Kraang with a cockroach!" Donnie said excitedly.
After they worked on a plan for tonight, they started getting ready after all their training for the day was done. Hikari made sure that her hair was up and out of the way before heading over to knock on Raph's door. "Hey Raph, I need to talk to you." She said.
Raph opened the door and leaned on the frame, "What is it?"
"I just wanted to check in on you after what happened earlier."
Raph tensed at that, "I'm fine. It just caught me off-guard."
"It's OK to be scared." She tried to coax him out of his comfort zone. Raph wasn't one to show weakness after all.
To her surprise, Raph looked around before letting his shoulders drop, "I can deal with it. Donnie just needs to leave me along and keep that thing away from me."
She was expecting far more resistance, but she welcomed the open and honest response. "Don't worry. If it gets too close, I'll just give it a quick shock."
"You'd use your powers on a cockroach?"
"What good is it if I can use it to protect people?" She patted him on the shoulder, "Come on, we better get going."
Once the team was all on board, they made their way to T.C.R.I. without any trouble. Raph was rather jittery on the way, but she kept talking to him to try and keep his mind off the spyroach, as Donnie called it, in the Shellraiser.
After finding a spot to park, it was time to deploy the roach. "Come on, roach number one. Make papa proud." Donnie cooed before releasing it into the tower.
The spyroach climbed up the vent and up to one of the labs they had just a few floors down from the top. As it popped out of the vents, the roach started picking up on chit-chat from some sentry kraangdroids. "Kraang has been on a diet known as "gluten-free". Kraang has already lost 13 Kraang units of weight." One of them bragged.
Hikari was puzzled by that. Why would a bunch of brain-shaped aliens care about something superficial like weight of all things? But that was a question for another day. Donnie quickly moved the roach onwards and up a support beam, until they noticed a few of them standing around a giant monitor.
"Wait, what's that on the screen" Hikari pointed it out, "Can you get closer?"
With a few taps on his T-Phone, Donnie got the spyroach to skitter ahead until it was within hearing range. "That which is known as the next phase of the Kraang invasion to the planet known as Earth will soon begin." One of the Kraangdroids reported.
"Next phase? That doesn't sound good." Leo remarked.
"That which is the laser drill will drill a hole in the planet known as Earth. That is a hole that is 30 miles deep in the Earth." The Kraangdroid continued his report, unbeknown to them that their enemies are listening in on their plan.
"Whoa, whoa- They are going to pour a hole into Earth?" Donnie blurted.
Leo saw Donnie's reaction and tensed, "I'm guessing that's bad."
"If I remember correctly, that would cut through to the mantle." Hikari paused when she noticed the blank look on Leo, Raph, and Mikey, so she went straight to the point. "They're going to flood the streets of New York with molten rock and lava."
"Yep, that's bad."
"Goodbye, harsh winters." Raph remarked.
"Lava surfing rules." Mikey laughed. Despite the bad timing, Hikari still admired Mikey's ability to disregard the situation and look at the bright side of things, no matter how faint the glow.
"It definitely doesn't, Mikey." Leo burst Mikey's bubble, "We have to stop this!"
"To execute the plan, Kraang needs to possess that which is known as the diamond lens to make work the drilling of the laser drill."
"What does that mean?" Raph asked.
"They need a diamond lens to make their laser drill work. now shhh!" Donnie shushed, eyes still focused on the screen.
"Kraang is already on the way to that which is called the laboratory that is having the lens that is needed by Kraang." The Kraangdroid pulled up a map of New York on the big screen behind them.
"What?" Raph asked.
"One of them is going to a lab to get it!" Donnie started getting more annoyed by all the interruptions.
"Which lab?"
"Maybe, if we listen, they'll tell us!" Donnie shouted and flailed his arms in anger, which accidentally moved the spyroach forward and sent it down into its doom. The feed went to static and Donnie had enough, "Thanks a lot, Raph. We lost the signal!"
"Wait, rewind the video" Hikari stopped the argument and pointed at the screen. Donnie did so and Hikari smiled when she spotted what she was looking for, "There! I think that's where the laboratory with the lens is."
Donnie magnified the image of the map and squinted his eyes, "It's a bit blurry, but it's all we got right now."
"We don't have much time till the Kraang drill fires. Let's go!" Leo got into the driver's seat and put his seatbelt on before starting the Shellraiser. Hikari went over to help Mikey pinpoint where the lab would be with Donnie's help decoding the map. Once they had a location, the Shellraiser zipped down the streets at full speed.
Suddenly, they felt the Shellraiser jump just before they heard a loud noise from under the Shellraiser. Leo quickly pulled the brakes with his eyes wide in panic. He had never hit something he didn't intend, and now something might be hurt because he wasn't attentive enough to notice.
"Ka-Thump! That's a really bad sound." Donnie remarked nervously.
"It sounded more like a "ba-dump"." Mikey argued.
"I heard a "fwap"." Raph said, much to their confusion.
"Fwap?" They asked in unison, only to be slapped in the face.
"Fwap." Raph said smugly as he joined Hikari and Leo outside the Shellraiser.
Hikari was taken aback the moment she spotted it, "What in the galaxies is that thing?"
Curious, Mikey poked his head out and stepped out of the Shellraiser with his fingers clenching his nose, "Ugh. Smells like a butt sandwich."
While not the exact words she would have chosen, she could tell that all four of them shared the same sentiment. Now the bigger questions were what was it? and where did it come from?
The only one who wasn't repulsed by it was Donnie. Instead, he was looking at it with awe and fascination. He started pointing at it with a pencil and muttering to himself, "Oh. Oh, dear. Would you look at that? Hideous and beautiful. It's..." Donnie tapped one end of the pencil on his face as he was lost in thought, not noticing it was the end he used to point at the thing until some of it nearly got into his mouth, "blech!"
"So, what is it, Donnie?" Leo asked.
Donnie wiped off whatever was on his face before answering, "It's my spy roach."
"Your what? Your WHAT?!" Raph looked shaken and backed away from it even more. Not that she blamed him, she took a small hesitant step forward to try and shield Raph from something that unnerved him so much.
Donnie didn't notice Raph's discomfort, he was far too enthralled with the now mutated Spyroach, "He must have been exposed to some mutagen. You see how the nab helmet merged with his exoskeleton? We have never seen organic and inorganic matter fused in-in-in such an ama—"
"That's great, Donnie. We can discuss this some more when we're driving away at a thousand miles an hour." Raph tried and failed to keep the panicked tone out of his voice.
"Come on, you big baby." Mikey teased, "What are you worried about? We creamed it with our van. It's not like it's going to get up and come after us!
"Uh, guys?!" They barely turned around before they heard Donnie scream and fly past them, "WAAAHH!
"Or maybe it would" Mikey pulled out his nunchucks, while Leo and Hikari did the same with their weapons.
Hikari started by trying to slice the spyroach's legs with her whip, but it did nothing. She swung again at his head and torso, but the exoskeleton was strong enough to withstand her whip. Leo tried fighting up closer with it, using his blades to slash at its sides and limbs. The roach raised its left arm up to swing down at Leo. He stopped it by crossing his katanas and pushing against the arm. Even the sharped edges pressed directly onto its shell did nothing.
"This thing's tough." Leo grunted as he pushed the arm up enough to dodge out of its range.
"Naturally." Donnie said, whacking the back of its shell with his bo staff to no avail, "Cockroaches are among the most resilient life forms on the planet.
"And the grossest." The words just left Mikey's mouth before the roach picked him up by the neck and threw him into the nearest pile of garbage, "Sensitive roach…"
Seeing that none of their attacks had pierced through its shell, Hikari used her whip to wrap its arm to its side while Donnie and Leo continued the fight. Leo suddenly noticed that they were one turtle short. "Where's Raph?"
Leo heard a sound coming from the Shellraiser and turned around to see Raph in the cannon. "Eat hot manhole cover!" Raph yelled as he fired at the Spyroach. The cover soared towards the roach and slammed into it with such force that it knocked it down. Hikari was relieved that the roach finally went down until Raph fired another one, and another one…
Fear had taken hold of Raph and he, in turn, held that trigger down until every shot they had was fired. Raph blinked before starting up a frenzy, freaking out about it. Hikari saw this and jumped in. However, Raph's instincts were on overdrive. With his ninja reflexes, he pulled out one of his sais and stabbed it down at the arm that was touching him. Hikari barely activated her Athenian guard in time before it could go through her forearm, "Raph, calm down. It's me."
"Yeah, Raph. I think you got him." Leo added, gesturing to the giant roach motionless on the ground.
Seeing the roach like that probably helped ground Raph's anxiety, "Okay. Okay. What do we do with it?"
"Just leave it. We've got to stop the Kraang before they destroy the Earth." Leo reminded his team.
"Leo's right. We've got to go."
"You just want to get away from that thing." Mikey grinned.
"Is that so wrong?" Raph yelled, waving his arm at the roach only to notice that it was no longer there. "Oh, no. It's gone! Come on, guys, we've got to move."
Hikari and Leo shared a look, but they knew the Kraang needed to be dealt with before they could talk to Raph about his phobia. They all got back into the Shellraiser and floored it to the lab. Just as they turned the corner, they spotted a group of Kraangdroids moving a large case into a van. They knew what that case was and that they had no time to waste. "Ram that sucker!" Raph shouted, and Leo slammed his foot down on the gas pedal.
"Hikari, get that shield ready!"
She used her powers and generated a shield around the Shellraiser before it smashed into the van, causing it to roll and rumble to its side. The team quickly filed out with weapons in hand and ready to face the Kraang. "Halt, Kraang!" Leo yelled.
"The halting of Kraang is not a thing that the one ones who are turtles will be doing to Kraang." The Kraang answered.
"Wrong. The halting of Kraang is exactly the thing that the ones who are-" Leo sputtered as it started getting ridiculous, "Yeah, just halt!
"Which do we save first? The world or the English language?" Donnie asked in a deadpan tone.
While the others were distracting the Kraang, Raph managed to drag the case over to the Shellraiser, "I've got the lens."
Suddenly, they heard a loud thud right before the sound of a blaster being fired. Hikari quickly activated her guard to block the shot coming at Raph. Turned out that the Spyroach was back and he had figured out how to use Kraang blasters. The Kraang immediately turned their focus to the roach and started firing their blasters at it, but the shell was too tough for them to do anything either. The roach simply fired back and decimated the ones before it.
Leo snapped out of it and started calling out shots, "Hikari, Donnie, you take the roach. Mikey, Raph, you're coming with me. Raph?" Leo looked around, noting that Raph was gone.
Meanwhile, Donnie and Hikari were gearing up to face this goliath of a bug. "Alright Spyroach, your time here is about to be cut short." Hikari said as her uniweapon transformed into a giant scythe.
"Seriously, you need to stop hanging around Leo so much." Donnie said, just before Spyroach grabbed him by the face and tossed him aside.
Hikari quickly spun the scythe and aimed the blade more at its joints, hoping that the momentum would help cut through its exoskeleton. Upward slashes and heavy downward strikes did nothing to cut through the creature, and she was left on the defense with Donnie to keep the thing distracted.
Leo and Mikey, on the other hand, were getting overwhelmed by the reinforcement coming down from the sky. While Leo was pulling the case, the Kraang dropped down after raining blasts down at him. As Leo was forced to duck for cover, the Kraang quickly snagged the lens out of the case and flew off. "Oh, no. The Kraang has the lens again!" Mikey shouted as his nunchucks knocked the head off on one of the Kraangdroids.
Hearing his team yelling for him and watching the Kraang leave with the lens left a bitter taste in his mouth. He wanted to fight with his team if only he could convince his legs to take him out and his arms to give them hell. But he couldn't. He was paralyzed by his fear and mumbled to himself, "Why did it have to be a Cockroach? Why did it have to be a Cockroach?!"
Hikari and Donnie couldn't really do much and were swatted aside while Spyroach went after Raph. Just as it was about to attack Raph, Donnie whacked its head with his bo staff. Hikari was about to restrain it again with her whip when Mikey threw a can at her before he went in for the attack himself, "We're not done with you yet, Spy-Roach!" He pressed down on the nuzzle of a discarded bug spray canister he found right at its face.
"Nice!" Hikari joined him and sprayed it with her own can. The trio took turns dealing blows at it. Mikey giving him an uppercut swing with his nunchucks, Donnie with a jab at its gut, and Hikari with a Warhammer to its knees, each attack following a heavy dose of buy spray in its face.
The three of them finally got this creature wreathing on the ground when both cans ran out of buy spray. They shared a look of horror when the roach started getting back on its feet. But just before it can do anything, a large tanker truck sped by them under the cover of night. It hit the roach and took it along for the ride.
To her horror, the driver jumped out of the truck, likely out of fear, and the truck was crashed into a wall before blowing up with a loud explosion.
"Uh-oh. How does that grill taste, bug?" Mikey cheered out as he watched the wreckage.
"We better get out of here before the cops show up." Hikari said, still in shock of the explosion.
Donnie nodded as the three of them met Leo back at the Shellraiser and noted his empty hand, "Where's the diamond?"
"We lost it." Leo then glared at Raph, "Where were you?"
"I was busy." Raph looked away in shame, unable to meet any of their eyes.
"Busy cowering in terror. We have got to find the drill before the Kraang cracks open Manhattan like an egg!" Leo said. Everyone then piled back into the Shellraiser to try and find their base of operation. While they were doing to pinpoint some potential locations, Hikari noticed that Raph wasn't in his seat. Instead, he was up front with Leo and moping.
Leo looked down at him and sighed, "You blew it, Raph. You've got to get your head together."
"I know. This stupid phobia is going to end up getting the whole team killed." Raph went silent before mumbling, "Listen, I'm I'm sorry, Leo."
It broke her heart to see him Raph so helpless. He was always the tough guy, and he was always someone she could count on. Seeing him give in and then beating himself over his own inner fears just made her want to help him through this more. She planned on talking to him once they got back to the lair and hoped that he was more willing to open up about it then.
Donnie asked for Leo to pull over and for everyone to gather around him, "Okay, here's a map of known Kraang facilities, and here's the map of the fault lines in New York City. Now, if the Kraang are going to drill into the Earth's crust then this is where they do it." He pointed to the intersecting point on the map.
"All right then, guys. We've got a little more time left before the Kraang start drilling." Leo got back to his seat and started driving. However, they heard something loud and screeching coming from the Shellraiser.
"What's that sound?" Raph paled.
Suddenly, the Shellraiser started swerving out of control. Leo spun the wheel, frantic for some control, "Something cut the steering!"
Donnie checked his cameras outside the vehicle, "Uh-oh. He's back."
"Not for long." Hikari hopped onto her station and surged up the shield again with more energy, shocking the Spyroach off the Shellraiser.
Leo quickly slammed the brakes and parked it, "How does he keep finding us?"
"Well, he could be using the homing signal I set up so SpyRoach could find his way back to the van." Donnie casually mentioned.
Both Leo and Hikari bulked in disbelief, "There's a homing signal?!"
"Dude, even I would have turned that off." Mikey remarked.
"Excuse me, Mikey. I've been a little distracted." Donnie responded drily, "Maybe I can use the signal to tap into his camera to see what he's seeing."
"None of this makes sense. Why is he so mad at us?" Raph muttered. He couldn't understand why the Spyroach was so fixated on coming after them…until Donnie managed to pull up some footage on its hard drive and it showed the scene on him stabbing at it with his sai, again and again. "Oh, crud."
"I don't think he's mad at us, I think he's mad at you." Donnie looked at Raph, who was far more sympathetic about the situation than Mikey was.
"Wow, that stinks for someone who's afraid of roaches!" Mikey laughed.
"I already got it, thanks." Raph growled, barely holding himself back from giving Mikey a beatdown.
Hikari sensed something big pouncing at her shield and knew what it was, "Guys, he's back. And he's got a saw!" She winced as she felt the saw blade hacking at her shield.
"The roach has a saw?!" Raph freaked out. But Leo took control of the situation before Raph could spiral again, "Can you make the shield any bigger?"
"No. If I force any more energy into it, I could fry the Shellraiser again."
Leo nodded and turned to his brothers, "Alright then, here's the plan. Once Hikari drops the shield, the three of us will keep the roach busy-"
"We will?" Raph cut Leo off in his hysteria.
"Yes!" Leo glared at him, daring Raph to defy him at a time like this. "Donnie, you and Hikari have got to fix the Shellraiser fast. Like, yesterday fast."
Leo, Mikey, and a very panicked Raph were standing by the door when Leo gave her a look and a nod. Hikari took the cue and dropped the shield. Leo pulled Raph out and yelled out, "Hey, SpyRoach, Raph's out here! Come and get him."
"Really? You're using me as bait?" She could hear Raph shout from inside.
"Yep." After Leo's response, they all led the Spyroach away from the Shellraiser.
"Leo is either really mad at Raph, or really desperate." Hikari was still stunned by Leo's idea to use Raph despite knowing how scared Raph was.
"Giving the deadline before the city gets flooded with magma, I'd say it's the latter." Donnie got out of his seat, "Now let's fix this before Kraang makes it through the Earth's crust."
The two of them went outside with all the tools they needed to get to work. Donnie was checking the engine and the wires there for any damage, while Hikari slid under the ride and did some quick patchwork on any major cuts.
The Spyroach did more damage than either of them thought. Hikari did some quick welding to fix the track rods on the wheels while Donnie had to use some duct tape to patch up the pipes for the engine's cooling system and replenish the coolant. Anything that wasn't immediately vital or unfixable right now was called out and marked down so they could take care of it back in the lair.
"How much time do we have, Donnie?"
Donnie checked the status of the drill on his T-Phone, "Oh no. The Kraang already started on the drill!"
"That'll have to do then." Hikari came out from under the Shellraiser, just as the other three came running with Raph sprinting like he was trying to outrun a supernova, "Start the engine! Start the engine!"
"Did you get this thing working?" Leo asked as he got back into the driver seat.
"We've got bigger problems. You've got to stop that drill!"
Just as the Shellraiser took off, Hikari noticed a revolting white glob of a monster fading away behind them on the screen. "Holy nova! What in the galaxies is that thing?!" She shrieked.
"Spyroach molted and now it can fly." Leo quickly summarized for the two out of the loop.
Meanwhile, Raph was sitting next to her, already kicking himself, "I had my chance, and I couldn't face it. I just couldn't do it!"
"No one's expecting you to conquer your fear in one night, Raph." Hikari tried to console him.
"Look at the bright side. In 15 minutes, we could all melt in a fountain of lava." Mikey tried as well, but blinked sheepishly when he realized what he had said, "Ok, that sounded brighter in my head."
"The laser drill is just past the front gate. Kraangdroids everywhere." Donnie gave a quick briefing, "Hope you've got a good plan."
"I'm going to ram through the gate and we'll go from there." Leo answered.
"Uh-oh We've got company…again." Donnie gulped and held onto his seat when the Shellraiser started shaking. The top hatch of the Shellraiser was yanked open, revealing the Spyroach. It let out a loud screech before reaching its arm in.
Hikari saw that it was reaching for Mikey and pushed him out of the way, "Mikey, move!"
Unfortunately, it grabbed her arm instead and it dragged her out of the vehicle. "It's got Hikari!" Donnie cried out.
Watching Hikari dangling in the sky by some mutated roach had Leo fretting over what to do. They didn't have enough time as it was. That was when Raph stepped up, "I'll stop it."
"You don't have to do this just to prove you're not afraid." Leo said, worried for both his girlfriend and his brother.
"I am afraid and that's why I have to do this." Raph responded as he climbed into the chamber holding his Stealthbike, "No six-foot tall cockroach is going to eat my sister!"
Meanwhile, Hikari was trying to figure out how she was going to get out of this without taking a 10-foot drop. At this point, she really wished she had her wings by now. Just then she heard the familiar rumbling of the Stealthbike and looked down.
"Hey! You, up there. Looking for me?" Raph called out at it. The SpyRoach noticed and threw Hikari at him. With a swift maneuver, she landed in Raph's grasp. "Gotcha!"
"Thanks for coming for me." She shifted herself behind him so that Raph could still see and control the bike.
"Save it till we make it." Raph quickly skirted around the corner and activated stealth mode. The black exterior of the bike branching out to cover them and hide them from Spyroach's eyes. It was working until a pizza delivery guy was coming the opposite way and honked his horn out of fear.
The Spyroach heard the horn and swiftly flew above them and started chucking some kind of explosive goo at them. It was only because of Raph's skills that they dodged every one of them.
"Hikari, look." Raph gestured to the trash lid with some unexploded goo on it ahead and she caught on right away. As Raph drove by it, she picked it up and flung it at the roach once Raph dropped the covers on the bike. It blew up in its face and sent it crashing into a nearby building.
"Yes!" She cheered.
"Now let's meet up with the others." Raph turned the Stealthbike and headed starting for the drill.
Just then, they heard Leo's distress call on the console of the Stealthbike, "Raph, we're stuck! It's up to you two. Get the Kraang!"
"We're on it!" Raph answered. Hikari noticed the Spyroach flying pass them and called it out, "Incoming!"
The roach landed so heavily that it cracked the road in front of them and tried to block their path, which gave Raph an idea, "Hang on, this is either going to be really cool or really painful."
Raph gave Hikari his helmet before revving his bike. They sped forward without hesitation. Using one of the large slanted piece of asolvolt as a ramp, the bike went up the ramp and flew off the roach's face. Hikari was in a state of euphoria and disbelief that they had just pulled that off. It only lasted a moment as the bike started going back down and knocked her back into their current predicament. The bike bounced on impact and it threw both her and Raph off the bike. Raph, sensing this, wrapped himself around her so that he and his shell would take most of the impact.
"Ok, it was both." Raph grunted while standing up. He pulled her up as she took the helmet off. "You OK?" He asked.
Even with the helmet and Raph helping to take the blow, she was still left with some cuts and aches. "I'll check with Donnie later. Let's go." The two of them ran over to the drill, alerting some of the Kraang who were nearby.
Unlike the others, Raph cared less about Hikari's methods of taking out the Kraang, especially in the heat of battle. Once the two of them took care of the four standing by the drill, Hikari hopped onto the controls just as the computer announced, "The laser drill is at 400 meters from the Earth core."
"Not for long!" Hikari said as she looked over the keys and the commands. Suddenly, the roach dropped down from the sky like the relentless hunter it was and swatted the two away from the commands. At this point, Raph was completely fed up with Spyroach, "Agh! You've gotta be kidding me."
"Raph, what should we do?" She looked to Raph.
"Go take care of the drill. I'll handle this." She nodded and ran back towards the computer. Raph on the other hand, stood strong despite the nervous ticks of his heartbeats, "All right, insect. You think I'm scared of you? I aced your butt twice already. You want to go for number three, huh? Do you? Come and get me!"
"Come on, come on." Hikari started sweating as she looked at the indecipherable control panels, she didn't even know she could sweat. She tried remembering how Donnie handled these things and started looking for some kind of shutdown command.
While she was racking her brain, the Kraang had regrouped and started their counterattack. She didn't have any time to react when a Kraangdroid grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the sky while a few of them took back control of the drill.
"The laser drill is at 300 meters." The machine announced. They were running out of time. She was never going to reach the control panel in time now. If she couldn't stop it, she could at least stop them from doing any more damage.
She gritted her teeth and braced herself, this was gonna hurt. Her free arm was the one with her Athenian guard and she activated her energy blade straight through the squishy brain in the middle of the robot. The green fluid dripped onto her face as the robot started to drop. She quickly grabbed onto the wrist of the metal arm and spun herself around. She then timed it and launched the pile of metal straight at the console, destroying it so the Kraang couldn't speed up the drill.
Time for Plan B.
Raph had his own battle to deal with. Despite the roach's size, they were locked in a stalemate. Raph had his training and fighting techniques, while the roach fought with brute strength and reckless abandonment. Raph even bit the nasty creature in the leg and nearly threw up.
The roach took the chance to kick him in the gut. But just as Raph got back up on his feet, he heard a cry from above.
"Hey, SpyRoach!" Hikari somehow was up in the air and dropping down towards them. The energy blade on her arm marked the trail of her descent. In a split second, her blade met the flesh of the roach. It let out an agonizing cry before its head dropped to its side. "Should've quit while you're ahead." She smirked as the blade disappeared.
"You're so much like Leo, it actually hurts." Raph said it in such a way that Hikari felt like she should be offended.
"First Donnie, and now you?"
The ground shook and the two stumbled a little from that. Raph looked back at the giant metal ball with the laser drill still going strong, "You didn't stop the drill?!"
"The Kraang were going to accelerate it. I had to destroy the controls." She explained quickly as the two ran towards the drill itself. Suddenly, something slammed into Hikari from behind and knocked her face-first into the ground. She recognized the cold pale limbs holding down her wrists. "Seriously?!" She was ready to throw every cockroach she could find into the closest black hole, this thing just wouldn't stay down.
Raph stopped once he saw her trapped, then looked at the drill. "Keep that thing busy, I got an idea!" He shouted as he continued running.
He quickly got into the top of the drill before jumping down with his sais in hand. He stabbed them straight into the sphere, using the momentum of his drop to turn the laser drill. He got back up onto the top just as the laser was pointing upwards into the sky. He pulled the drill head out with his sais and pointed the laser right at the beheaded roach body. "Drill this!" He yelled, watching the body inflate like a morbid balloon before bursting outwards. Once the roach was dead, he used the laser to slice the metal legs on the machine then jamming it downwards into its socket.
Raph barely got away before the contraption blew up in a fiery explosion. The drill was destroyed and the two got back onto the Stealthbike. Raph drove into an army of Kraangdroids firing at the Shellraiser while Hikari leaped off the bike to the computer at the gates. She pushed the button and the gate opened, releasing the Shellraiser from its grasp. Raph quickly made a turn to pick Hikari up before the Stealthbike made it back into the Shellraiser. The team made it out of the base in one place, now heading back to the lair to celebrate their success. "That was incredible, you guys!" Donnie exclaimed before he noticed the state Hikari was in, "What happened to you?"
Hikari was covered in bug guts and Kraang blood, her clothes were scratched and torn with cuts to match. She looked at Donnie and the others and said, "I don't care what you guys say. I get to use the shower first."
Donnie had a lot of choice words about how recklessly she had been as Hikari and Raph told their side of the mission, "Seriously, you two crashed into an active battlefield on a bike. I'm surprised you didn't end up with fractured bones!"
"My body would likely heal it up before I even made it back to the Shellraiser. You barely had to pull out your medical kit" She responded, "But April and I will have to get new clothes to replace the ones I ruined."
Leo nodded and looked over to his brother proudly, "Well, Raph you faced your fear and saved the city. Not bad for a Wednesday."
"Faced my fear? I conquered my fear!" He declared, "I looked my fear in the eye and I zapped it to a blimp."
Mikey placed his arm over Raph's shoulder with an impish grin, "Wooow uh! So you're not afraid of cockroaches anymore, huh?"
"Nope."
"Good, good." Mikey nods before leaning in with the smile of a trickster, "Then you won't mind the one I just slipped into your shell."
Raph, understandably, freaks out at that and starts flailing before he tripped over his own feet. The others laughed at his misfortune while Mikey ran away with his laughter echoing the walls of the sewers.
Once everyone went back to their usual routines, Hikari went to Raph's room after finishing her dance and stretching exercises. Raph was in his room, hanging out with Spike while the tortoise was munching on his daily leaf.
"What's up?" He asked.
Hikari took a small dome-like object that fitted in the palm of her hand out of her back pocket and passed it to him, "This is what I use to keep insects away from my clothes. The frequency it emits has quite a limited range, but it should help you sleep easy until I can make something better."
"I don't have trouble sleeping. My room isn't a mess like Mikey's." He looked at the device before continuing, "But it'll be good for Spike. So, thanks."
"Of course." She smiled knowingly, "I may not always say the right things, but I like to believe I have more tact than your brothers."
The two laughed at that before she finished, "I'll be ready to listen if you ever want to talk. Just like we used to when we snuck out."
"Did Leo ever forgive you for that?"
Her silver eyes turned soft as she remembered the night they apologized and confessed to each other. The memory of them cuddling with her favorite movie playing still made her squirm and her skin glow. She must've looked pretty lovesick because Raph started making gagging noises that snapped her out of it.
"Never mind. I can tell just from that." He was completely unamused, "Please never make that face again whenever we talk about Leo."
"I make no such promises." She said with a dismissive wave as she left the room.
A/N: I'm starting to get back into the swing of things again. Life is pretty chaotic right now, but I will update as frequently as I can. I am glad to see that some of you guys are still around. That warms my heart to no end.
Raph and Hikari have a very close sibling relationship because of how similar they can be. They both have very strong and rash personalities that can cloud their judgments. The others don't always understand their need for action as it is their way to maintain some form of control. They both also hide their own problems and fears until it comes spilling out and breaks them down. Hikari understands Raph and shows her support by letting him reach out to her whenever he needs it.
Next chapter is another of my personal favorites, purely because of the chaos and the message of the episode.
Special thanks to Stegz. You have been one of my first readers and seeing your reviews always puts a smile on my face. I am not going to reveal anything about later seasons but I will say that Hikari's knowledge of space and political climate outside of Milky Way will be something I look forward to writing.
Please feel free to leave some comments to share some love. Feedback and reviews give me life and motivation.
Thank you all for your support c: