Okay, so I lied about there being three chapters left. I realize that the length of the last one was a bit much for a single chapter, and what was going to be this one ended up being even longer, so I divided it up into two chapters. Fret not, though! I'm still going to post the same amount of content I planned, just in two separate chapters. I'll have the next chapter posted before you've even finished reading this one.

Rockwell attempted to gauge how hurt Slash was, trusting everyone else to cover him from the biotroids. It was trust well-placed, too; once the team figured out what they needed to do, the robots fell one by one. Rockwell estimated they'd have taken care of the last biotroid within the minute.

Unfortunately, the biotroids had become a minor worry compared to that of Slash's health. One wrong hit… the words replayed in Rockwell's head as he tried to get a good look at the fresh wound, but his friend was doubled over close to the ground, covering the inflicted area with a hand. Had Slash been hit in his weak spot? Rockwell regretfully knew that if that were so, the organs underneath could be slowly failing.

Slash's coughing spell sent off all kinds of red flags in his mind, and Rockwell found himself praying his friend was okay.

Rockwell watched Slash's mouth for any trace of blood until the coughing subsided, thankfully finding none.

"Slash, I need you to sit up. Where did it hit you?"

Slash straightened up, keeping his hand over his shell all the while, as if afraid his organs might spill out if he didn't.

Rockwell peeled Slash's hand away to see, horrified when it came away stained red.

Crimson splotched the semitransparent patch of his shell, droplets running down where the patch grew thicker.

Rockwell gasped. "I need a cloth! I can't see the cut!"

A man finished off the biotroid he'd been fighting— Splinter, Rockwell reminded himself; wow, his sons must really have some adjusting to do if even Rockwell didn't recognize him at first glance— and knelt beside him, producing a clean white cloth from his robe before gingerly wiping the blood off of Slash's shell.

Rockwell tried not to think too hard about how quickly the clean cloth turned dark. He mustn't let panic overwhelm him.

When Splinter pulled the cloth away, Rockwell could see the gash. It formed a downward semicircle at the bottom-left corner of the weakened area. The biotroid must have hit him almost completely on his strong shell, only a small portion of its blow landing on his weak shell.

Rockwell let out a sigh of relief. Slash's internal organs wouldn't have been too badly affected, then. All they had to do was wait for the open wound to scab over, and make sure Slash was plenty hydrated.

Well, easier said than done, in an enemy lair where the said enemy had no use for water.

Then the best they could do would be to keep Slash safe.

Rockwell shuddered to think what would have happened if the biotroid's punch had landed just slightly up or over…

Apparently the team had slain the last of the biotroids, because they gathered around Slash and asked about his well-being.

"Thank goodness the punch landed where it did," Rockwell said. "Slash will be fine. If," he continued with a pointed glare, "He remains out of battle."

"Out of battle?" Slash growled. "No way! You know I'll fight with you until the end! What kind of leader would I be to have you all go into battle and not be there to look after you?"

"A reasonable one, in your situation," Leo said. "It's a leader's job to make judgement calls, and if you were to look at yourself with a clear head, you'd be able to see that you're in no shape to fight. Your team obviously cares about you, and that means if you get hurt, they'll focus on you instead of the task at hand. I know it's not easy to sit on the sidelines and not interfere when your team is in danger, and believe me, I've been there before. But sometimes, as a leader, you just have to know when to trust them."

Slash growled and stared at the floor. His mouth drew into a thin line.

"Slash, you have helped us to get this far," Leatherhead said, "And you have gotten us here well enough that the rest of us can still take a few hits without being in danger. But that is a luxury that you do not have. We still have the utmost trust in you, but if it were one of us who was risking our lives while injured, would you not give the same order to them?"

Slash's shoulders slumped. "No, you're right. But we're already in the middle of the battle; it's not like I can walk back to safety."

Rockwell hummed. "I suppose that is true." He gazed at the room around him, over the fallen biotroid that littered the floor. "There are two doors from this room we have not yet explored beyond. Maybe one of them can help us?"

"Two?" Donnie repeated. "But the map only showed one!" He approached one of the doors, which sat on a side wall, and tapped into its entry panel. "The map didn't show this one."

The rest of the group stood behind Donnie to look into the room themselves, and to back him up should an enemy stand on the other side.

With a final tap, the door slid open, and Donnie and Rockwell walked inside.

"It's a surveillance room," Rockwell reported to the others outside.

The surveillance room, as Rockwell put it, was a tiny space lined with monitors showing camera feeds on all the walls, and an alien console stood in the center.

"Do you suppose it could be dangerous?" Splinter asked.

"Nah," Donnie said as he and Rockwell climbed out. "If this is a surveillance room, then the Kraang must have been counting on any of their enemies being stopped before they even reached it. It's only for this floor, and any Kraang guarding it must have been called out to provide backup for everyone else."

"Slash, do you think you could sit tight in here until we come back to get you?" Rockwell asked.

Slash paused for a long time, then let out a dejected sigh and replied, "I suppose so."

"Alright then," Rockwell said as Slash entered the tiny room. "Do you want someone to stay with you?"

"No, you'll need everyone you have to get past the next two rooms— you don't even know what's in them yet."

Rockwell nodded. "Okay. If you run into any trouble, phone us."

Slash returned his nod. "Good luck."

With that, everyone but Slash left for the next room, and with a few quick taps of the door's panel, Donatello admitted them into the second security room.

It was less of a room, Rockwell realized once they'd sprayed the clouds away, so much as a hall. A long, brightly lit, blank hall, entirely unadorned and sterile white. In short, an interior decorator's nightmare.

Donatello entered last, and everyone jumped when the door closed behind him, but other than the ominous slam, the hall appeared entirely… harmless.

"Uhhhh… did they forget to put something in here?" Casey asked, voicing Rockwell's thoughts exactly. Casey took a few cautious steps forward, looking around him as he went. "I mean, I get the first room, but for a security room this is a little… unsecured." He stumbled when he took another step and a square of floor sunk slightly under his foot. He blinked at it, eyebrow raised, and gasped when Splinter grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

Lasers shot from the ceiling, a hundred beams raining down at once upon the square he'd stepped on, and as if nothing had happened at all, the lasers retreated into the ceiling, and the tile of floor rose, and the hall became blank once more.

There remained no scorch marks on the ground, no tiny gap between that trapped tile and the rest of the floor, no hint on the ceiling as to where the lasers or other deadly items might descend. The hall appeared whole and immobile, with no crevasses or cracks to tell them what may set off its defenses next.

Casey let out an uneasy chuckle. "Okay. Trap room. Got it."

Michelangelo pounded at the door for an amount of time distorted by the surge of adrenaline rushing through his brain. It felt to him like hours had passed since he'd caught that last meaningful glance from Raphael before his brother slammed the unbreakable barrier in between them. A glance that was an apology, either to Mikey for leaving him alone, or to himself for refusing help and resigning himself to who-knows-what fate at the hands of the Kraang.

All considered, Mikey was willing to bet on the second option.

The last thing Raph would want to send Mikey's way was an apology. Raph hadn't been the one to screw up so majorly in the first place.

A sensation Mikey had become all too familiar with over the past two weeks seized him, and he recognized it instantly as guilt. Raphael wouldn't want to see him now.

Still, he continued in his fruitless efforts to break the door down, that dark, cold feeling creeping deeper with every hit he threw at the wall, knowing it was selfish for him to want to be reunited with his brother despite Raphael's clear instructions to leave him alone.

An overwhelming need to see his family safe drove all sense of consequence to the back of his mind, and he lashed out at the door again and again though his arms had long since grown tired from upholding the constant motion. His nunchucks battered against the sleek, impeccable walls, leaving not a single scratch in their tauntingly perfect surface.

He saw his own reflection in the metal, and even though the surface reflected much less detail than a mirror, he saw two conflicting yet coexisting feelings reflected in his face, both in their extremes.

The darkness under his eyes and redness within spoke of a long-term exhaustion that begged to be cured with more healing than just rest. Still, the size of his eyes, large whites covering all but the pinpricks of pupils that danced everywhere a hundred miles a minute, said something else.

"Raph!" Mikey cried out for what may have been the hundredth time. "RAPH!" His voice cut out and in, raw, easily worn, not yet healed from the last time he'd been all alone, shouting his brothers' names while the fog closed in and receiving no response.

Suddenly, he was back on that rooftop, cold and alone and scared as his fate billowed ever closer to him in the form of red-orange clouds. No one responded to him. He'd been left all alone. Again.

His mind flickered back and forth, placing him on the rooftops one moment, and in the Kraang facility the next, as if his brain were in the middle of a nightmare and trying to decide which reality would torment him more.

"Raph!" He cried again, this cry cleaved in two by his voice giving out completely, then a sob erupting from his throat. He gasped, not sure if it was his body's attempt to steady himself or if it was the beginning of launching into hyperventilation.

One of his nunchucks snapped with the next hit, half of the handle giving out and tumbling onto the floor before rolling into the clouds.

Mikey let himself fall against the door and slid down it, giving in to the tears that welled up in his eyes. He tried to listen past the wretched barrier that separated him from Raphael, but the sounds were too muffled to determine what any of them meant.

Clouds closed in, and with his back against the door, the only way out was through.

Mikey tugged his remaining aerosol can from his belt and studied it through eyes blurred with tears.

All alone with no one to hear, he let another sob escape his lips. This was pathetic. His only way out was a spray can, not even a quarter full, judging from its weight.

He looked at the doorway which he had to pass in order to save the rest, but somehow it seemed miles away.

Even though he couldn't see Raphael, it was as if — even though he might not even be there anymore— Mikey was bound with invisible chains that secured him to the spot where they'd last seen each other. The chains which he'd felt the weight of all throughout his stay at the farmhouse, which drained him to constantly pull against every time one of his brothers left his sight. Like he was doomed to never have another restful moment unless they were all there and not pulling his energy this way and that, stretching out his anxieties like some sort of medieval torture no one could see and only he could feel.

Mikey felt himself pulled everywhere at once, not knowing where Leo and Donnie were and wanting to be at all places until he found them. He was spread so thin he was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He could see out of his eyes, hear out of his ears, he could feel the pounding of his heart in his head and the soreness of a throat screamed and cried raw, but still he felt as if he weren't anywhere at all. Like he was watching everything play out around him while he sat in an unknown abyss watching it all happen around him, not really present in the moment. He saw through the character's eyes who he knew was supposed to be him, but all he could truly feel was the imaginary binding on his wrists urging him to stay because Raphael might possibly be on the other side of that wall and if he was, it was the closest Mikey would ever be to anyone again.

So Mikey sat and let the clouds roll closer.

The group spent the next few minutes bouncing ideas back and forth, but every idea had a flaw, and they were left sitting in tense silence with the knowledge that their fruitless minutes spent grappling for a solution that might not even exist may have sealed their fate. The clouds crept ever closer from the end of the hall, and had also undoubtedly reinhabited the room behind them.

Donatello had suggested throwing items to trip off the sensors and reveal the traps, but the only projectiles they had numerous enough to mark their path were shurikens. Upon throwing the shurikens, the group quickly discovered that they would not stick in the floor to mark their landing spot, but instead clattered on the ground and slid ahead, making them unreliable markers in the path.

Casey had been the next to volunteer a plan. He asked the group what would happen if he used his hockey stick to feel out the ground in front of him and guide him away from any traps, but then Leo reminded him that they didn't yet know what exactly all the traps were, and that they might have a large enough range to attack both him and the hockey stick.

So they were left to sit and think in silence, the thinking part of it growing ever more difficult with the knowledge that they had impending doom closing in on them from all sides.

Rockwell's phone rang loud in the empty, cavernous hall, making half of them jump out of their skin.

Rockwell gathered himself from his momentary panic and answered the call on speaker. "Slash! Are you alright?"

"I'm good!" Slash answered. "I can see where you are on the cameras. The trap room?"

"Yes, that's correct," Rockwell confirmed.

"It took a while of searching— I can't read this Kraang nonsense to save my life— but I think I found something in their database. It's a map of the room you're in, and it has a highlighted path from one side to the other. It must be the safe way through. I tried to send a picture, but it's a holographic screen and this stupid phone camera won't pick it up in good lighting. I might be able to talk you through it, but it's really complex and you don't want to misstep, so it'll take a while."

"Any progress at all is better than standing still," Rockwell said. "Thank you, Slash." He waved a hand in the air. "Can you see me through the cameras?"

A pause.

"Yeah. Yeah, I can see you."

"Lead the way," Rockwell said.

"Alright. I need you to take two steps to the right. A bit more. There! Stop! Good. Now forward about three steps."

Once Rockwell had space enough to move, Donatello followed, watching Rockwell's steps and recreating them with as much precision as he could muster. Once Donnie was well onto the path, Leo started, then Splinter, then April, until everyone slowly snaked their way around the room, going forward and turning and back and turning and shifting at odd angles and making near-loops that didn't quite meet part of the path they'd taken before.

Donatello held his arms out to their full span as if on a tightrope, and in a way, he guessed he was. An invisible tightrope that twisted and turned and curved this way and that and promised a fall of an unknown magnitude should he step out of line. He didn't know how thin the rope was or how far he would fall or how bad he would crash if he lost his balance. All he could do was keep walking and pray.

His pulse drummed in his ears, threatening to throw off his sense of balance. His forehead grew uncomfortably warm, and he tried to swallow with a dry throat.

Donnie found himself wishing this were a real tightrope. He could deal with heights.

When he ran over rooftops and used his bo to launch him into the air or his grappling hook to swing him from building to building, he could calculate. Not just the distance and how much velocity he would have to gather in order to safely propel himself to his target landing, but what to do if he failed.

On a real tightrope, he would be able to locate things in his surroundings that could help him if he fell; places where he could wedge his bo staff to catch himself before he fell too far, corners upon which he could catch his grappling hook and swing himself back to safety.

He didn't know what fate awaited him if he misstepped or how he could stop it. He didn't know what the trap would be or where it would attack him from.

He could only press forward, hoping and praying that the rope he walked was a thick, sturdy one.

"From where you are on is highlighted," Slash finally said through Rockwell's phone. "The end of the hallway is all safe."

Rockwell stepped aside to let Donatello claim his spot in the much-welcome safe spot in the hall.

Slowly but surely, the line of allies inched forward and made it to the other side of the hallway, and they collectively let go the tension that had seized all of their nerves since they'd first found out the nature of the room.

"Slash," Rockwell said into the phone. "We couldn't have gotten here without you. Thank you."

Slash hesitated a moment before responding, "Hey, what's a leader for?" He allowed them a minute more of relative calm before reminding, "There's just one more security room left. Are you ready?"

A few seconds ticked by in which no one seemed eager to volunteer an affirmative answer.

Obviously trying to reassure himself and everyone else, Casey piped up, "We got this. We've already gotten through the first two, no sweat. How hard could the last one be?"

"Casey," Donnie growled through gritted teeth. "I thought you would have learned by now that when faced with a life-or-death situation you do not challenge the force trying to kill you."

Casey scoffed and waved a hand. "Yeah, like my saying so's gonna change whatever's inside."

Leo rolled his eyes and tapped the button to open the third door.

Those who had any spray left cleared an entrance into the room and branched out to create a comfortably roomy safe pocket for all of them to walk about in and orient themselves with the space.

"See?" Casey said. "Ain't nothing here."

A thundering BOOM reverberated throughout the space, shaking them all to their cores. More followed, even in pace and weight.

Footsteps, Donnie realized.

A humanoid silhouette came into view, the true form of its creature obscured by fog.

Though it may have hidden the thing's features, there was one noticeable thing that the silhouette could not conceal.

It was big.

Not the regular mutant-of-the-week-the-turtles-always-ended-up-fighting big.

The silhouette's size made Donnie question exactly how many of the ten underground stories this particular room extended upward.

That kind of big.

Donnie whipped around to face his friend. "CASEY!"

"Oh, right! Blame me!"

Next chapter is already up! Read on, if you like!