I don't know anything in this story anyway. Please enjoy and don't sue. I hope the creators would like this story too and not mind me writing and posting it since I don't make any money from it and hope I don't take any from them by doing so.

Usagi didn't wish to tell Leonardo how much he hated the idea of riding in the Battle Shell. It was quite obvious from Donatello's face and voice that this machine was dear to him. Perhaps this machine for transportation was somewhat like Willow Branch and Young Willow were to him to him to this gentle, intelligent kame. That seemed hard to believe, though.

At first scent, this Battle Shell had caused him to revert to his childhood's rudeness. He had stated both the obvious and the impolite. However, he still inwardly agreed with his first impression. This mode of transportation smelled like nothing should smell.

Gennosuke was right. Horses also smelled, but very differently. It was odd how foolish his own nose became, when he and his companion got the chance to ride instead of walk. The pink triangle wrinkled up on his own face in disgust at the scent of mounts that would save his feet as well as those of his companions.' However, even it got used to the scent of a horse in time. The smell of a horse, though, if unpleasant, did not smell like this.

Gunpowder was the closest scent to this new one in how it alerted his senses that he could think of. It seemed unnatural, alarming, and dangerous. He'd much rather walk for peace of mind's sake if nothing else. He'd been somewhere warm a long while and had a very filling meal to keep his insides heated on even a cold journey. Indeed, the meal may have been too filling. Perhaps it was good to get moving for a while after it.

He noticed Donatello looking to Leonardo with tight lips and squinted eyes. "Uh, Leo, you think that's a good idea?"

Raphael replied for his brother. "Ah, let him come along."

The kame in red then jumped on top of the Battle Shell. Gennosuke began walking back to the open doors of the machine, however. "I'll take this strange, new mode of transportation myself." The rhino bounty hunter was grinning.

Usagi looked to and smiled at his friend. Gen was probably thinking if people in this world enjoyed not-walking as much as they did, these modes of transportation should be about as valuable here as horses were there. Usagi "thought" it would take at least one trip for even his clever, devious friend to figure out how to control such a machine. Many mighty warriors were going with him too. Therefore, he hoped he could put off watching Gen closely himself for one trip. Gen often couldn't resist bragging to him either shortly after or just before a sly action especially since they'd grown more accustomed to each other.

He watched Gennosuke enter the Battle Shell with only slight trepidation. With somewhat less, he watched the Daimyo. Donnie looked in after their entrances and said, "I guess we'll see you there April!" Then he too, in a few shorter jumps, got atop his Battle Shell.

Leonardo then looked to him, knelt down, and cupped his hands weaving their fingers together. Usagi smiled, placed his right foot into this basket of green fingers and leapt off them while Leonardo pushed him upward. Usagi went flying, flipped over in the air, and landed on the Battle Shell. His eyes widened. It sounded hollow at his landing, but also felt thick and hard beneath his feet. He could barely begin to imagine all the ore, fire, and fuel it had taken to form this machine. Leonardo landed beside him making less of a sound than he had when he did.

Usagi looked up and realized Raphael was pushing up a hatch in the ceiling of the building above them revealing dark emptiness beyond it. Then Raphael grabbed the rim of the hatch and lifted himself up and out of it. Donatello did the same. Then Leonardo lifted him up and through.

He grabbed the rim like Leonardo's brothers had and pulled himself up and out the rest of the way to crouch in the darkness with them. He was now on a snow-covered, smooth, slanted surface the building's roof. He next looked up and out over his surroundings.

He had seen similar sights through the portal-windows of the Battle Nexus' Daimyo. Still, it was different being present, and cold, "in" this world. Its darkness enveloped him too, yet, it was not nearly as dark as he had thought it would be. There were so many lights, before, behind, and on either hand, but … He looked up.

As Leonardo joined them, he asked his friend in a hushed tone, "Leonardo san, where are the stars?"

Donatello answered. "It's too bright below and too smoggy above to see them clearly in the city."

Raphael added, "You should have seen Donnie in the country. He'd have frozen staring up at those stars our first few nights Leo was awake there if I hadn't dragged him back inside."

Usagi looked to the kame in purple who'd answered him a moment before with another question. "Smoggy? What does that mean Donatello san?"

Raphael slapped a green, three fingered hand over his face. "Here we go"

Leo's mouth twisted, but again Donatello smiled as he replied. "You know how smoke is created when you burn fuel in forges for weapons and tools? Large scale manufacturing and the burning of fuel in machines like the Battle Shell for transportation creates like smoke and smog that rises into the sky and distorts the light of the stars. Skies above busy places like this often obscures the stars."

Raphael turned a stare upon Donnie. "You're going easy on him. That almost made sense to 'me.'"

Usagi was glad it made since to someone. He stared wide-eyed. his mind was trying to grasp so much ... forging, so much burning, in a controlled way, yet having an effect like a wild-fire, obscuring the sky, the stars? That might explain the smells drifting up to him here now too. It smelled only slightly better than the Battle Shell had up close.

Speaking of which a loud noise startled him and turned his attention to a large door opening in the building they were perched on. The Battle Shell roared out like a dragon with lights like lanterns lighting its path. His mouth opened as he watched it. Leonardo's voice sounded cheerful beside him as it mixed with that roaring. "There it goes." They crouched still a moment while the monster with his friend and Leonardo's and his father in its bowls dissapeared by going around a tall building that then hid it from his sight. He blinked.

Leonardo's calm voice broke into his thoughts afterward. "Come on, Mikey's waiting."

Raphael huffed. "Not like he didn't make us wait tonight!"

Instead of answering, Leonardo just turned to his angry brother and said "Why don't you go first Raph? Show us how it's done?"

The kame in red smiled. Then he turned, ran over a tilted surface covered in snow, got to its edge and jumped on before turning over in the air above a gap in buildings and landing on the roof of the next one. Donatello turned to Usagi after his brother landed. "Be careful of the ice. It's hidden under this recent snowfall and in pretty smooth sheets on these concrete roofs and metal shingles and railings here." Then he turned and ran off doing a less flourishing and powerful run and leap like his brother. Usagi watched him eyes slightly narrowed in annoyance.

Leonardo looked down at him once Donatello landed. "You should go next, Usagi."

The ronin turned wide eyes on him. All of them doubted his abilities, except perhaps Raphael. He turned his eyes toward the other kame waiting for them, got into a crouch that shifted his weight forward, and ran. He soon realized what they were talking about. He stopped and slid a ways toward the edge of the roof, before spinning, leaning back the way he'd come and setting his hands down. He dug his fingers into the snow, but continued to slip. His eyes widened. Then he felt a hand grip the back and top of his kimono just behind and below his head. He looked up into Leonardo's face, which was smiling without the expression reaching his gentle eyes. "You okay?"

He lifted an embarrassed gaze up into Leonardo's concerned one. Then he gave a smug grin. "Perhaps if you lend me your hands again, Leonardo san?"

Leonardo's grin grew. He carefully let go and Usagi dug his toed and fingertips more into their now established holds. Then the kame interlaced his fingers in front of him. Usagi grinned while stepping into them. Leonardo sent him flying like a released arrow through the open space above the alleyway separating the lair of the Battle Shell from the building Leonardo san's brothers sat atop, probably filled with people who did not know they were doing all this above their homes! Amazing. Leonardo's brothers knew, though, as he flew over their heads. Raphael raised his voice "Hey, no fair!"

Usagi landed in a crouch and took off again as Leonardo and the others followed. This time he was careful to dig the claws on his feet into the surface of the ice. He was soon ahead of all the kame. He had always had powerful legs. However, he did allow Leonardo to stay just beside and behind him keeping him in view to take direction from his movements on where to go next.

Then they came to a building much taller than the one they ran on. Usagi stopped wondering what they would do next. Leonardo stopped beside him, but Raphael went on and leapt at something mostly hidden by snow. It was an iron structure of a fenced-in-walkway running along the side of the building one of many.

Raphael landed on it, making surprisingly little noise, and then began to climb it like a ladder a ladder with large gaps between rungs very large gaps ... Donatello leapt by them and did the same. Usagi's shoulders fell. He could make that jump without Leonardo's help, but not that climb. A mountainside might be easier for him.

Leonardo turned to him. "Do what I do." Then he turned his face back to the side of this building with these iron-bar walkways joined together by stairs and leapt onto the walkway itself before using the stairs to travel up the floors on ninja silent feet. Usagi shrugged and did the same. They'd lose their lead in the roof top run, but he wasn't tall enough to reach from walk-way fence to the floor of the next one up like Leonardo and his brothers. His friend was going slower than them with him. His pride was a bit stung, but it wasn't a stab like it used to be at such things. He had grown wiser.

He and Leonardo caught up to and passed Leonardo's brothers again, before the blue-clad kame stopped and crouched at the edge of one rooftop. He peered over it. Usagi came up beside him, looked down and saw the Battle Shell this time resting silent and still on a street beside a building across from the one they were on. Leonardo spoke beside him as his brothers caught up and crouched on either side of them. "There it is. We're here."

What do you think?

God bless

ScribeofHeroes