A quick word on my conception of the Dimension X soldiers: I can't find an episode on my computer that has them in it, but I seem to remember them as big orange-reddy type things that were made mostly out of rock and wore helmets. So in this story, that's what they are.

And: review! We're approaching the end…

Donatello and Leonardo crept through the Technodrome's air vents slowly, crawling on their bellies. Leonardo had a toolkit tied to his shell, but Donatello had the more important job: he was in charge of the controller. The aliens had been shrunk to small enough to fit in the vents too, and they followed along obediently behind the turtles. When they reached the vent that led down into the control room, where Krang waited with a few Foot guards and the Dimension X portal, Donatello gestured for Leonardo to go first.

"Grab the aliens. Jump in and put them down. I'll control them from here and have them grow. They'll fight Krang's soldiers and you take care of Krang. Keep him busy and don't let him push any emergency buttons."

Leonardo nodded. "I'll tell you when it's clear to come down. You take the toolkit."

On the count of three, Leonardo burst through the vent and leaped into the control room. He dropped the miniature pizza-monsters on the ground and started to engage the Foot soldiers. After a few seconds he heard Donatello shout "GO!" and turned around to check on the monsters. They were huge and Donny was controlling them with no problem. Leonardo decided to leave the Foot soldiers to them, and he headed for Krang, who was thrashing his tentacles in rage and hitting buttons on the control panel.

Once the Foot soldiers were taken care of, Donatello dropped from the ceiling with his tool kit and went to work. It only took him a few minutes to ruin the portal so that no more Dimension X people would be able to get through, but it was work that took concentration.

Meaning he wasn't paying enough attention to the pizza-monsters, and they got away. "Donny? Where did the aliens go?"

Donatello blinked. "No idea. Who cares? Mikey and Splinter are outside already, and Raph's had plenty of time to get away too. Let's just leave the aliens here – the only people they'll endanger are Krang and his soldiers. Hey – where's Krang?"

"Take a look at this safe. Krang barricaded himself in – he hit a button and it slammed shut to protect him. Can you get him out?"

Donatello took a look at the armored case and pronounced it too much trouble. He did screw some plates over the door so that Krang would have a hard time coming out without assistance, but he decided that it wasn't worth trying to breaking it open. "Let's just go – we can deal with Krang some other time. If we're still here and the Dimension X army comes back, we're in trouble. We ought to leave them and the pizza monsters to keep each other company, don't you think?"

Leonardo smiled. "Sounds great. Let's get out of here."

Inside his armored box, Krang smiled wetly. Those turtles weren't going anywhere: he had locked down all the emergency escapes.

Leo and Donny had no trouble creating an exit for themselves by swimming through the plumbing and emerging with the dirty bathwater several sewers away.

For Raphael and Shredder, though, it was another story. When the Technodrome started emitting low beeping alarm sounds and flashing red lights, Shredder knew what had happened. "Lockdown," he whispered.

Raphael swallowed. "We're doomed."

Shredder shook his head. "Nonsense," he said sarcastically. "Doomed would be if we were trapped and had no way of fighting back. In this case, we may be trapped, but all we have to do is kill the entire Dimension X army, kill the aliens, and escape. It shouldn't be too hard."

"Oh, is that all?" Raphael demanded, even more sarcastic. "Well in that case, maybe we should just lie down here and take a nap, since it's going to be so easy. We should just lie down and not even try, is that what you're saying? Just give up?"

Shredder threw up his hands. "If you have an idea, by all means give it to me. But I won't be taken to Dimension X as a slave. I'll kill myself first."

"Okay, now you're just being dramatic," Raphael scolded. "I may not be the brightest guy in the planet, but I know a one-option scenario when I see one. And this time, our one option is to fight. You're right – we'll have to kill everything." He drew his sais and tried not to feel thrilled about the impossible fight that was coming. "We make our stand right here."

Shredder rolled his eyes. "Are you so eager to die? We have no chance here and you know it. Location is half the battle."

"Do you know a better location? How about Hawaii?"

"Yes, I do. There's a training room on this floor. My training room. I think we can make it there before the Dimension X army catches up with us. If we get out of these lasers now." He closed his eyes and tried to remember the pattern he had set for the trap. "Follow me." He started slowly, taking one step left, three forward, pause two three and then a quick duck and hop right…

Raphael followed him, expecting every minute to get cut down by three or four laser beams at once, but to his great surprise they made it safely to the other side. Once they were out of danger, Shredder grabbed him by the wrist and started to run.

Raphael wondered what was so good about a training room, but he was so busy trying to catch up he couldn't ask. "Not fair – your legs…longer…" he grunted, sprinting for all he was worth.

All of a sudden Shredder stopped short and Raphael slammed into him. "Wait," Shredder gasped, "What about the monsters? We need to know where they are. We can't leave them running wild through the Technodrome – starting tomorrow, I live here!"

"Oh, come on," Raphael whined. "Forget the monsters. They might not even be here anymore. Donny and Leo might have taken them home with them."

"Have you and your brothers ever cleaned up after yourselves? Ever?"

"Maybe you're right," Raphael conceded, "But we don't have the remote. We can't control them."

Suddenly Shredder had an idea. "Oh, yes, we can."

Raphael backed away.

The cuts on the bottoms of his feet actually made it easier for Raphael to run fast, because putting his foot down each step hurt so much that he was quick to jerk it back up again. He was leaving a trail of bloody footprints that would hopefully be enough to lure the pizza-monsters to come after them. Even though the Technodrome's air conditioning system meant it might take the monsters a while to figure out where the smell was coming from, without the controller it was the only method of calling the aliens that they had. (Raphael's suggestion of a doggie whistle did not go over too well).

The downside of leaving footprints, though, was that it gave the Dimension X soldiers something easy to follow. They were much faster on their feet, and so by the time Shredder and Raphael reached his room they could hear loud stone footsteps behind them.

Shredder opened the palm lock and let the door slam behind them. "They're mostly stone, but you can see soft stuff poking out where their joints are," he informed Raphael, heading towards a closet on the far wall. "Don't bother aiming for the head, it's stone, but you can get the neck, armpit, elbows, groin if you must. They're highly allergic to our metals, so almost every hit will be a kill."

He decided on a sword for himself, then beckoned Raphael over to the closet. "Here. But if you hit me, I'll kill you." He dragged out a huge rack of sais.

"Wow." Raphael picked up one of the weapons reverently. "This is really light. I bet I could probably-"

"You could? Well why don't you try now?" Shredder interrupted, keeping his voice under control only with effort. The door to the room had started to shudder under the weight of huge stone arms pounding away at it.

Shredder headed towards the door, hoping to stand next to it and hack the Dimension X soldiers to pieces as they came through.

He didn't get the chance though, because while he was still standing out in the open, three of them burst through the wall itself, and charged.

They were easily twice as tall as Raphael, and he tried to tell himself that that was a good thing. Bigger targets, he thought. He hit the first two fairly easily, while Shredder dealt with the third, and then watched in fascination as they started to bellow and thrash around, sizzling and seeming to melt from within. Shredder kicked their legs out from under them as they staggered, making sure to avoid their flailing stone arms, furious because his sword had already broken off inside one of them.

More came and as he started to engage them, he calmed down immediately. Hand-to-hand combat was so comfortingly familiar that he wondered what on earth had possessed him to pick up a sword in the first place.

Raphael let loose with sai after sai, amazed that all the adrenaline didn't send his accuracy straight to hell. He paid careful attention to what Shredder was doing – that way, he could anticipate moves that would force an enemy to raise an arm or leg, and then target the exposed joint for a sai shot. It was all going well until Raphael forgot himself and landed one straight in a Dimension X soldier's face. Being made of stone, the soldier didn't seem to mind, and it lurched on towards him, the first one of its kind to have realized that the real threat was coming from someplace other than Shredder.

Raphael tried to throw another one but it went wide. The creature yanked the sai out of its forehead. Too busy trying not to get stepped on, Raphael didn't even realize what it was doing until it jammed the weapon into his shoulder.

Shredder looked over to see what was taking Raphael so long. Aha – he had a sai stuck in his shoulder, was bleeding all over the place, and was cowering on the ground before a huge, infuriated Dimension X soldier. That explained it.

Shredder reached down, wrenched a sai out of the body of one of the dead soldiers, and threw. He didn't trust himself to hit a joint on the first try, and there wouldn't be time to try twice, but a shot at the creatures' broad back was basically a sure hit. The Dimension X soldier turned around, enraged that he had been stabbed again, and Raphael took the opportunity to pull the sai out of his own shoulder and slam it home between the enemy's legs.

"That's the grossest thing I've ever done," he murmured.

Shredder was more concerned about all the bleeding. "Plug up that hole – I need that," he reminded his partner. "I can't control the aliens otherwise."

"Gee, and I never knew you cared," Raphael fumed. "Don't go turning into an old mushbucket on me." A Dimension X soldier had come up right behind Shredder, and Raphael took him out with a shot to the neck.

Shredder put his hands on his hips. "That almost hit me," he complained. "Would you watch what you're-"

"Cry me a river, Canh- Hey! Look out!"

Shredder didn't even have time to answer – he was being picked up into the air by an eleven-foot-tall Dimension X soldier. He was slammed down to the ground headfirst, and didn't get back up.

Raphael was concerned despite himself. "Shredder?"

Shredder came to a few seconds later. The Dimension X soldiers were bypassing him in favor of the enemy who was still throwing sais at them and picking them off one by one. The turtle was running out of ammunition, though, and in any case he couldn't fight the last four or five by himself, could he?

You have to get up. Shredder dragged himself to his knees, dizzy and nauseous. Do not vomit into the helmet, he ordered himself. He couldn't put weight on his left arm, and he figured it had probably been broken again when he fell, but he managed to crawl forward and slice a soldier neatly through the ankle. Another looked down at him and he drove his claws into its knee, rolling out of the way to avoid being crushed as it flopped messily to its death. He grayed out for a moment again, and when he woke up again there was no sign of Raphael anywhere.

Shredder lurched to his feet.

TBC soon. Tbreader, I'm sorry! I really did want to have it done for you before you left!