Author's Note:

It's time to see whether or not this whole expedition was a good idea…

To Zaplo: Oh yes. Thanks for reviewing! I appreciate it.

To the Guest: One might say that! *grins* Thanks a lot for your review.

Battlefield

Leonardo reacted on instinct when the water engulfed him. From his hours of swimming into the ocean, he knew it was hopeless to fight the flow; therefore he didn't try to. He merely redirected it so it would push him towards the surface.

He knew he didn't have much time. The water was ice cold, and he couldn't stay in it for long or he would freeze to death.

After what seemed like forever, but couldn't have been more than a handful of seconds, his head broke through the water.

Leonardo took a gulp of fresh air, then another, as he took in his surroundings.

He was in a cavern, floating on the water not far away from a shore of rocks. On the opposite side, something blue was glowing in the distance; this was the only reason why he could see, because the others' fireballs had all vanished.

The others.

None of them knew how to swim. They were going to drown if Leonardo didn't rescue them.

In spite of the cold, he dived back into the water. The bluish light was no use here, but now that he was looking for them, Leonardo found out that he could feel his companions. They were struggling against the current and disturbed the natural flow. Leonardo pulled Raphael out of the water first, then Karai, then Angel, then Slash and Spike - and he pushed them towards the shore, where they landed on the rocks with much coughing and swearing. Soon, the familiar light of fireballs allowed him to see clearly enough that he could discern Raphael's frantic expression as he turned his head on all sides, no doubt looking for Leonardo.

I'm here, Leonardo wanted to tell him. But he needed to spare his energy to reach the shore, too - his arms were already moving slower as the numbness gained ground.

He swam in the cavern, all too aware that the lights were painting a shining target on his companions.

But it wasn't like they had to avoid drawing attention on themselves. That was a lost battle at that point.

Leonardo thought bitterly about what had happened. He hadn't felt a thing. One second he was trying to free the warriors from the ice, and the next the ice had turned to water and engulfed them in its current.

There was only one being who could have done that, a being that Leonardo had witnessed waking up in a cavern which looked suspiciously like this one.

Leonardo finally reached the shore. He grazed his knees and palms on the rocks as he struggled to stand down and dry himself and the others. Then he put his arms around his shivering body, his eyes scanning the cavern in search of the one who had been strangely silent until then.

Raphael made his way to him and suddenly two strong arms were embracing him. The warmth radiating from them was almost painful.

"Interesting," said a voice. "I must say this is rather entertaining."

Leonardo's heart raced fast. The person who had talked stood just out of reach of the fireballs' light. Leonardo was blinded by these, and he could only discern a vague shape standing on the water.

He didn't dare to close his eyes to better focus, but he spread his consciousness as far as he could, letting it follow the water until he felt the ice platform on which the Shredder was standing.

An ice platform that was lazily drifting towards them.

I was beginning to think you wouldn't come, the Shredder's voice said in his head.

Leonardo recoiled from that presence, and it retreated from his head.

Alas, not from reality.

"Let them go," Leonardo said, his voice hoarser and less assured than he would have liked. "It's me you want."

Just as he said these words, fireballs went past him and towards the Shredder. The others had obviously decided it was useless talking to the enemy. Raphael had freed an arm so he could launch one too, but his other arm was still around Leonardo's waist.

Leonardo knew they were outmatched, but the way the Shredder didn't move out of the line of fire - the way a wave of water just rose and extinguished the fireballs like they were sparkles - it really drove the point home.

In the brief time span before the firebenders lighted other fireballs, the Shredder's shape danced in a bluish halo. He had moved closer to them, close enough that Leonardo could see his emaciated features, like he was nothing more than a skeleton with skin - more dead than alive.

But there was no mistaking the power that radiated from him.

"It looks like they don't want me to let them go," the Shredder said, his tone cruel.

Leonardo braced himself for an attack that didn't come.

He's toying with us, he realized with horror. He knows we don't stand a chance.

Nonetheless, it was an opportunity that Leonardo couldn't afford to miss. He needed to come up with a new plan, as the previous one - freeing the frozen warriors right under the Shredder's nose - had spectacularly backfired.

Leonardo knew that April, Splinter, Yoshi and Casey were on their way. He needed to buy them time.

Unless they had already arrived, and fought, and been defeated? No. Leonardo wasn't going to allow his thoughts to wander in that direction.

And if could keep the Shredder's focus on him, maybe the others would have the opportunity to find and free the frozen warriors. Leonardo deemed it unlikely that the Shredder had melted their prisons with the rest of the ice. He hadn't felt anyone else than his companions underwater.

Another flurry of fireballs tried to reach the Shredder, and met the same fate as the previous one.

"Stop," Leonardo whispered to the others. "It's useless."

"What do you suggest we do, then?" Slash hissed. "He's out of reach of our other attacks. And in case you haven't noticed, he's walking on the water and we can't swim!"

"He's not walking on the water, he's walking on ice," Leonardo said. It gave him an idea. "Find the other warriors and free them while I distract him."

"While we distract him," Raphael corrected his sentence.

Leonardo had no time for an argument with his twin, and besides, he wasn't sure what he could have said. Don't, we don't stand a chance in a fight and I don't want you to die when the Shredder becomes tired of talking?

Besides, he would probably not last long without Raphael to keep his body warm. The feeling reminded him of the sun, far above this cavern; it was like he was carrying a part of their home with him.

Except they had spent so much time in the tunnels, it might very well be past sunset. In that case, they were running out of time.

Leonardo took a deep breath and froze some water in front of him. He jumped on the newly created ice platform and managed to keep his balance in spite of it pitching. Raphael followed him, his feet slipping on the frozen surface. He would have fallen if he hadn't clung to Leonardo.

Leonardo pushed the ice platform away from the shore.

"Such a nice sight," the Shredder said, his voice heavy with irony. He was still floating towards Leonardo at a slow pace, like he had all the time in the world. "Nothing like family, right?"

He waved his hand, and a block of ice crashed against the shore Leonardo and Raphael had just left. At first, Leonardo feared that the Shredder had finally decided it was time to attack. Then he realized that there was a shape trapped inside the ice. He couldn't see who it was, but he had a hunch about it.

Karai's desperate yell confirmed it.

"Father!"

"You can't say I didn't keep my word," the Shredder told him.

His smirk turned Leonardo's stomach.

Karai ran towards the block of ice that sheltered her father's body. The impact of the ice against the rock had chipped it, but as far as she could tell her father wasn't hurt.

The wave of relief threatened to send her to her knees, but she couldn't afford to be weak.

Several feet away and moving fast, Leonardo and Raphael stood on an ice platform. Karai wondered if Leonardo had an actual plan - if so, she would have liked to hear it.

But there was no time to worry about that, not when she had a job to do. Keeping an eye on the three figures floating on the water, Karai started melting the ice around her father's body, soon helped by Angel, Spike and Slash.

She wondered where the other warriors were. If they could find them, if they could warm them up, if they weren't dead, they could help in the fight.

But her father came first.

The Shredder was still talking to Leonardo like it was a tea party.

"Your bending is unrefined, but it holds promise," he was saying. "Join me and I'll teach you to use it properly."

Like Leonardo would ever accept that. Karai was wincing just thinking about it.

"You'll never be my teacher," Leonardo said, clearly offended just like Karai had thought.

There was irony in the Shredder's voice when he answered. "I already have been. Or did you think that your dreams were random?"

The horror that painted itself on the others' faces made Karai recoil, especially as she realized it might be mirroring her own. Slash stopped melting the ice, as if mesmerized by the discussion.

"Don't listen to him," she whispered fiercely. "It's exactly what he wants."

"Is that so?" the Shredder was now saying to Leonardo. "Then I guess you won't be useful to me after all."

There was a whistling, then Karai felt a sharp pain in her right arm, and she watched the shard of ice protruding from it in disbelief.

"Karai!" Leonardo yelled, desperate.

"I'm alright," she answered, even though it must be obvious that she wasn't.

She would need to tend to this injury before long, or she wouldn't be able to keep firebending like she had to.

A hail of ice shards came pouring down on her, and she barely had the time to dive behind the half-melted block of ice to avoid them.

Karai. The firebender girl was named Karai.

What an outrage.

The Shredder despised firebending. The man who had stolen his daughter had been a firebender. She had given him a child, a baby that the Shredder had never seen. Karai hadn't let him.

That man had turned her head, and she had tried to steal her father's most prized possession. He had taken it back, of course - but not before he had been too weakened to properly defend himself against the traitors that had turned against him, on the very day when he was supposed to end up the firebenders' resistance once and for all.

Was this Karai one of her descendants? No. He felt no connection to her, nothing at all.

She had no right to bear his daughter's name. He had been well inspired to hit her first; and now, he was going to kill her.

She would be the first to pay for his daughter's crimes.

The mention of Karai's name had seemed to darken the Shredder's mood, but Leonardo hadn't expected him to suddenly target his cousin, and his cousin only.

Flashes of fire broke through the darkness as Angel, Spike and Slash retaliated from the shore, hidden as they were behind the block of ice that was Saki, while Raphael tried different, more close-range attacks - and while his flames were beautiful, they got lost in the waves the Shredder created, never reaching the enemy.

And now the Shredder was throwing shards of ice at them all, faster than Leonardo would have thought possible, faster than he could melt them. On the shore, the block of ice was starting to crack. Was it what the Shredder intended? To use brute force to destroy it, as well as Saki's frozen body, under Karai's very eyes? And then kill them all?

No. Leonardo couldn't let that happen. He couldn't. He couldn't.

As his eyes kept going from the Shredder to his friends and vice versa, one of the fireballs, thrown upwards by someone who was either beginning to panic or unable to aim properly from their hiding place, briefly lighted the ceiling.

It was lower above the shore. Maybe this was the back of the cavern, or maybe it was a result from the fight with the earthbender Stockman. In any case, part of it was ready to collapse, which would isolate that part of the cavern from the rest; Leonardo and Raphael would then find themselves on one side with the Shredder, while the others would be safe behind a wall of rocks that no water could destroy.

There was no time for hesitation. Leonardo sent a tentacle of water upwards, and the liquid infiltrated the ceiling. Then he turned it to ice, making it increase in volume inside the interstices.

It didn't take more to trigger the fall. The ceiling collapsed, and the rocks falling into the water gave birth to waves that threatened to unbalance him and Raphael and sent their ice platform farther away.

The Shredder's fury was obvious.

"Your little trick won't save them," he spat.

And he turned his full attention to Leonardo and Raphael.

Raphael hadn't much real fighting experience, but he didn't need it to know this wasn't going well.

The good news was that Leonardo had somehow managed to collapse part of the ceiling, which meant the others were now out of the Shredder's reach.

The bad news was that the Shredder's wrath was now fully directed on them. The shower of ice shards was so dense they would surely have been pierced by several of them now, if their ice platform wasn't going on an erratic path through the cavern. Half of it was due to the collapse of the ceiling, and the other half seemed to be Leonardo's doing.

And Raphael still couldn't land a blow. The Shredder blocked all of his attacks with crashing waves of water, and sometimes he just disappeared from Raphael's view as their ice platform spun.

It was time to switch tactics. If he couldn't attack, then he would defend.

Raphael thought about all the people he loved, about how the Shredder would just kill them if he was given that chance, and he channeled his rage and worry and love into a shining flame that wrapped itself around Leonardo and him, just far enough that they wouldn't be burned. He had never attempted anything like this before, and it was threatening to escape his control, but Leonardo's presence helped him focus - the last thing Raphael wanted was for his twin to get burned by Raphael's own fire.

Well, one of the last things he wanted. The very last thing was for Leonardo to get killed, obviously.

The ice platform had slowed down. Leonardo was panting, and Raphael wondered how long he could keep it up. Leonardo had been waterbending a lot, maybe fighting for the water's control against the Shredder in ways Raphael couldn't see, and Raphael had no idea how exhausting waterbending was to begin with.

Several of the Shredder's ice shards reached the fire armor, and melted. It was very satisfying to see that Raphael's idea was working, even though he didn't know how long he could keep it up.

Leonardo took a deep breath and straightened up, putting his hand on Raphael's arm. Raphael felt a vine of water coil around it.

He immediately understood what his brother was suggesting.

He opened his fire armor just enough to let it pass, and intertwined a flame of his own with Leonardo's vine.

The improvised spear flew towards the Shredder, who summoned a wave that should have extinguished the flame.

It didn't. Leonardo was somehow protecting it with his own waterbending, and Raphael's flame crossed the wave without losing any of its power.

The Shredder's ice platform moved abruptly out of the way, and the spear missed him by several inches.

But it was progress. They had found a way to get past the Shredder's defenses; it made him less invincible than seconds before.

Raphael smiled grimly. They would need to throw several of those spears, at a higher speed, to have a chance to actually hit the Shredder, but it didn't seem such an impossible task anymore.

"Let's see how well you do without your precious brother," the Shredder spat.

At first, Raphael didn't understand what was happening. Why his limbs weren't answering his orders anymore. Why his arms were moving down and the fire armor was disappearing.

Then his feet jumped out of the ice platform, onto another one that had just come out of nowhere, and Raphael was turning towards his twin, turning against him, as he raised his hands and created a fireball, a fireball that would be deadly at such a close range, and he wanted to yell, but his tongue wasn't obeying him anymore.

It was Leonardo who did, with all the horror and fear that Raphael was feeling.

"No!"