Chapter 6

April sat stunned and watched Shredder. His eyes were fluttering and he was still muttering to himself. Did he just try to kiss her? Or? All of the sudden she realized that he was so out of it he probably had no idea what he was doing. He probably didn't even understand who she was. But he did seem dazed enough to be persuaded somehow...

She gathered her wits and reconsidered. Looking down at the sai in her hand tipped with blood, she realized she was going about this all wrong. She looked at the cut she had made on his shoulder and felt a bit ashamed. April walked across the large, silent room to the well-appointed bath suite and gathered a wetted towel and a dry one. Returning to the bed, she carefully set the sai on the ground well out of his reach. Taking the wet towel, she pressed it carefully to his chest and swabbed up some of the blood. His eyes fluttered open and he moaned softly. After cleaning up the blood, she pressed the dry towel to the small cut on his neck.

His eyes wandered around the room, as if looking for the person who was doing the touching. Then they focused on hers. "Have I met you before...?" He whispered.

April shuddered, but knew the tact she was going to have to take. "Uh-huh," she murmured. His hand rose from the bed and weakly moved up to cover hers which pressed the towel against him. She leaned closer, "I'm a friend, I want to help you..."

He gazed at her with a kind of desperation and she grew nervous, and not a little sad. Here was the turtle's great enemy, reduced to a kind of helplessness. She sensed a way to take advantage of this dreamy state he was in, where all his aggressions seemed drained, replaced by a kind of desire. Where was the terrible Oroku Saki now? Drugged and dazed, unable to distinguish faces and unable to remember his own rage.

Leaning in, she came toward his face, pressing her lips near his ear. "You were building a machine..." she whispered. "Do you remember it...?" She could smell the heat of his skin. She could tell he had been washed, and carefully anointed with oils.

"Yes." he said quietly.

"Did you want to go somewhere...?"

"...mm, yes..." he said. April jumped when she felt him touch her arm, caressing it slightly. This close to him, she could hear his slow breathing, almost drowned out by her own pounding heart.

"Where did you want to go..."

"Some place," he murmured. "A place...where they live forever..."

April tensed. She couldn't believe it. Did he actually know this place? Did he actually mean to come here?! Wherever here may be? That's impossible! He seemed just as shocked by the warrior women who captured them as the turtles. If he knew about the warriors, the priestesses, and their hunt for men, he never would have walked right into their trap...

"Tell me about these immortals..." she murmured, "I'd like to know them..." April pulled back from his ear, and looked him in the eyes, his face just inches from hers.

He gazed steadily into her eyes, seemingly transfixed. "I don't know them...I don't know what they are...I was just told...found out...a dimension of immortals...how they feed...."

April narrowed her eyes. Feed? What was he talking about? At least he seemed more focused. Her touching him seemed to bring him to a kind of rapt attention, seemed to focus his thoughts enough to extract memories, secrets. She studied his face. The dark skin, arched brows, intense eyes...always twisted into rage, now relaxed and filled with a growing desire, he was almost a different person. But not, she thought to herself. Not at all.

"Please tell me more..." she cooed quietly, bring a finger to his lips and tracing their lines.

He shuddered at her touch, "I knew they fed somehow...lived forever...I would learn from them this trick..."

"But the men don't live forever."

"I think I know now," he looked confused for a moment, and for a split second his face fell into an awake pose, and a keen intelligence shone in his eyes, but it faded. He gazed harder at her, and then slowly, the hand on her arm crept up to the back of her neck and pressed her face forward.

April tensed, not knowing what to do. Hell! What was she doing, coming on to a drugged Shredder, trying to woo secrets from him. Everything in her head told her to twist away, that this wouldn't work, that it was horribly wrong, that it was sick, but she didn't want him to come out of the state of submission...she allowed her face to be pressed forward and closing her eyes her lips gently met his. In this alien room in a different dimension it was easy to convince herself that she wasn't April, and that he wasn't Shredder, and that she could just give in, for the sake of...and he kissed her gently and for a moment time suspended itself.

And then the turtles's faces swam up in front of her and was filled with disgust. She sprang back. It was easy enough, and he weakly reached for her. She backed away from him. "Tell me...tell me..." she growled. Anger swept over her accompanied by nausea. She knelt and scooped up the sai, coming at him again. She thrust her hand into his hair and pulled his head back, exposing the neck. She pressed the tip to his throat again, indenting the skin. "You will tell me how to go back, how to open the portal..."

His eyes widened, but he didn't struggle. He looked up at her. "I do think I know you..." he murmured.

"Ugh!" she spat, disgusted. Almost without knowing what she was doing, she took up the sai and swung the handle at him hard, hitting him savagely across the face. He crumpled to the bed, his hand holding his face.

April was stunned. His mouth bled onto the sheets, and he lay on his side panting. She looked down at the sai, frozen by her own violence. She flung the sai across the room so it clattered on the cold marble. She sat down on the edge of the bed, letting her head fall into her hands. "Geesh," she said. "I just don't have the stomach for this. I can't even beat up Shredder when I have the chance to do it..."

Saki lifted himself up slightly, looking at the blood on his hand. She watched him out of the corner of her eye.

Suddenly he sprang up, grasped her hard and tossed her to the bed throwing himself on top of her.

"What are you doing..." she cried, struggling and looked up into his face, then gasped.

The face she saw was calculating, intelligent, angry and fully awake. With a knot of dread in her throat she realized that the blow to his face had sobered him completely. The face she saw was the angry one she recognized, the Shredder!

He glared at her. "Miss O'Neil!" He looked around the room wildly, taking it all in with a glance. He examined the gold chains and with a growl pinned both of her hands above her head and used his other hand to grasp her face hard. "What is the meaning of this! Where am I?" Then, as if becoming aware of things, he glanced down at himself, and finding himself nude, she was almost amused to see him slightly blush. With some dexterity, he quickly gathered up some sheets around himself, then turned his angry gaze back down to her. "Those blasted turtles will pay for this! You will tell me now where I am!" His face bore down on hers and he trembled with rage.

Thinking quickly, she decided to try something she knew she'd end up regretting. "What do you mean, baby?" she cooed, writhing a little in his grip, in what she hoped was a seductive manner. "I thought we were just getting somewhere..."

Saki's eyes widened. "Wench! What do you mean..." he hissed. Instead of replying, she squirmed some more in his grasp, turning her face to the side and rubbing her cheek against his arm.

Saki looked down at her aghast. "Have you gone mad, Miss O'Neil?" he whispered. He started to speak again but stopped when she moaned and arched her back toward him. Even for a trained Ninja master, this was too much. His face melted to confusion and he loosed his grip on her hands. She slipped one free and brought it to his face, caressing it. April was surprised to find that while before she had been weak, now she felt totally in control of things. Shredder looked down at her with a mix of emotions, anger, disbelief, and a growing desire that she could tell he was fighting with all his being. His discipline was draining away.

Slowly, against all better judgment, and against his instinct for survival, he lowered his face to hers and pressed their lips together. This was no weak, drugged kiss. He parted her lips with a kind of abandon and kissed her deeply, releasing her other hand. She brought her hands around his back, trailing her fingers along the tense muscles, and he lowered his body to hers, wrapping his arms around her. His mouth moved to her neck, kissing it roughly but expertly. "This is madness," he murmured, in a voice choking with passion. April let his hands roam over her, biding her time. "I'm dreaming..." he muttered, his mouth moving lower on her chest.

This made April tense, "You've dreamed of this...?" she whispered throatily.

"Yes," he murmured with a kind of pain, "oh, yes..."

April lay for a moment, thinking thoughts that she would never admit to, already putting the pleasure she was feeling away into a part of her mind that no one would ever find. She gave him another moment at his leisure, just another, and then, with almost regret she cried, "Ancha! Help!"

As she hoped, the ever-vigilant Shredder was completely off guard. Saki tensed looking up at her. Behind him she heard the door bang open, and then there was the sound of a bow string slapping. Saki jerked, his eyes gazing into hers with shock, and then they dimmed, and he collapsed on her. Ancha ran to the side of the bed, "April! Are you ok?"

April lay panting under Shredder's unconscious weight. "Yes, Ancha. I'm fine. He just got, er, a little too frisky."

Ancha looked down at the scene of the large man sleeping atop April and blushed. "Oh...well, it's knocked out now." She reached over and removed a dart from the back of his neck. "He'll sleep well through the morning."

"Fine," April said. "Um, could you just leave us then." She tried to smile. Ancha bowed and back out of the room, eyeing them all the way.

April lay still for a moment, numb. She slowly pushed Saki's dead weight off of her and wormed her way out from under him. His face was relaxed again, softened again with the drugs. Some blood still smeared his lip. She could taste his blood in her mouth. She sighed, lying on her side gazing at him.

"I've failed," she murmured. And then with a pain of guilt she began to sob. "I more than failed. I, I, liked that too much..."

She weakly reached over and pulled the sheets over Saki, who slept evenly. Rolling as far away as she could from him on the bed, she decided to trust Ancha's potion and give in to the sleep of exhaustion and confusion that haunted her. The two humans slept a troubled sleep until the first light of morning.

April awoke as an early beam of light slanted down the wall and across her face. She awoke gazing across the sheets to Oroku Saki, who slept on his side facing her. Memories of the night before flooded back in a rush.

For a moment the guilt loomed large, but with the cold morning, most of the unspoken passion had faded. April found it easy to convince herself that she had simply played an arrogant Saki smartly against his own lurid lusts. In fact, she began to think how clever it was to play on his weaknesses. Certainly he cared nothing for her, he hated her, but the prospect of a warm, female body showed old-Shred head that even he wasn't above base impulses. The kisses she remembered from the night before became savage and without feeling. She had almost convinced herself that he had given into her as some sort of revenge against the turtles when she heard someone burst into the room.

Ancha appeared at the side of the bed and knelt, her eyes wide. "You must take your Paelo and flee from the castle immediately!"

April sat up, blinking. "What?"

"The Priestess...I have never trusted her...she has taken your friends prisoner with a legion of her imperial guard...she approaches here to capture you...you must hurry!"

"The turtles!" April cried. She stood, looking vaguely at the sai lying across the room. How could she rescue them?

"No!" Ancha begged. She scurried over to Shredder and shook him. She had brought his old outfit, the black pants and gi shirt, and began to clumsily dress him. "You must go with your Paelo. You must flee! It is the only thing that will save you! The Paelo is what the Priestess must have, with it you can bargain, save your friends. Without it, you are all lost. Flee into the woods, take your Paelo hostage."

April rapidly internalized all this. "But Ancha, why are you helping us...."

Ancha finished yanking a shirt over a sleepy and blinking Saki, and paused for a moment looking sorrowfully at his face. "So beautiful...something I will never truly share." Her hand trailed across his chest. Shredder gazed at her with a kind of bemused acceptance. "The Priestess...I begin to suspect foul things...horrible things...that the legends are a lie, the religion is false, that union with the Paelo might be the last thing on their tricky minds, that they were biding their time to discover how they could utilize your friends..." she touched Saki's face tenderly. "But he is infinitely more precious. Infinitely so!"

Just then, there a was sound of marching in the hall, a bang at the door. Ancha sprang up, took a few steps back and drew her bow, holding it on them. She winked. "You must go! Quickly! Out the back passage. There is a temple in the woods to the North West. Abandoned. It will offer water and a place to hide. You must go!"

April scooped up the sai and was trying to get her thoughts together when the door burst open, and an angry, powerful Priestess marched into the room followed by three score armed and helmeted troops.

To Be Continued!