Chapter 11

-Extraction-

Four silvery shuriken sliced through the air, each one hitting its intended mark simultaneously as they smashed the bulbs of the searchlights. Triggered by the loss of light, the Overkill twins scanned the darkness for the cause.

Leonardo smirked, his aim was getting better. The blue turtle used his katana to reflect the moonlight toward a building on the academy's west side, where Casey and the Mutanimals were stationed. It was a signal to Casey to enact his part of the plan: taking out the sentries with his explosive hockey pucks.

Upon hearing a loud explosions, the Overkill twins stalked into the darkness to investigate, giving Leonardo the opening he needed. The elite ninja jumped to the ground beyond the boundary of the main gate, twin katana blades dancing around him as he sliced through the sentries mounted on either side of the gate.

Leonardo crossed the courtyard and pushed through the main entrance, though it was dark, he could see that his path was devoid of enemies. Evixus must have thought that no one would be able to get through his first batch of defenses. Foolish.

He reached the headmaster's office and wasted no time in seeing himself in. He was surprised to find that the secret entrance, Casey had mentioned, was left open. It could only mean one thing: that the room was no longer hiding its secrets.

Still, Leonardo made his way through the secret passage and was greeted by the second door, the one leading to the Hivemind, only to find that, it too, was wide open.

Cautiously, Leonardo crept deeper into the darkened room and frowned, for a room that was supposed to be harboring enough energy to enslave a city, it sure was quiet.

Taking a better look at his surroundings he noticed the chambers, as Casey had described them, only they were missing something crucial. The blue clad turtle crept up to one of the chambers and peered through the window in the center, only to discover that it was empty. He didn't need to check the others to know that they were empty too.

Then his eyes fell upon the chamber with the nameplate, on which the word Amplifire could be read. He rushed over and yanked the empty chamber open, and nothing but a mass of wires greeted him. He grabbed a handful of the wires and noted that they were still warm and… dripping?

It was then that he noticed the coppery smell of blood, he studied the wires closely and watched as a small droplet of blood pooled at the tip of what looked like a phone jack. The droplet broke loose of the wire and splashed silently on the ground near Leonardo's feet. That's when he noticed several more droplets of blood.

Following them he found that they disappeared randomly in the center of the room. Leonardo fell to his knees, something was off about the final droplet; it was cut in half, as if the rest of it simply disappeared.

So, this room wasn't done keeping its secrets after all. Filled with new-found determination, Leonardo stabbed his katana into the grout of the tile where the rest of the droplet seemed to disappear and pried it up, revealing an entrance that lead underground.

Raphael and Michelangelo climbed their way up the east building, it was Leonardo's reasoning that they should infiltrate the academy from all angles. Though, Raphael didn't really understand the point of infiltrating the gym when they knew were Donatello was being kept. It would've been much quicker to head in together, kick some alien butt and take Donatello back.

The pair of turtles reached the top and collected their grappling hooks, winding them carefully before putting them away. The cool weather, the moonlight, the adrenaline, everything about this mission reminded Raphael of the night they'd lost Donatello. That was also the night he'd almost lost Michelangelo.

The memory of that terrible night still haunted him. Though he never voiced any of this to his brothers or father, he'd been having nightmares ever since. In the nightmare he was paralyzed, unable to do anything while his family was murdered right in front of him.

"Come on Raph." Michelangelo said calling Raphael back to the mission at hand.

Turning his attention toward his brother, he noticed the bruises left behind by Overkill. They were so clear against his baby brother's pale green face. The slow burn of rage began sparked within him. He wasn't about to let his nightmare become a reality.

The pair made their way toward a door leading to a stairwell and hurried inside. Determining that the area was safe, Raphael turned to Michelangelo. "You should stay here." He said.

Michelangelo turned a critical eye at his brother "What?" and after a small pause, Michelangelo laughed, his brother was telling a joke, a stupid one, but still. "Ha, Good one."

"I'm not kidding." Raphael said and Michelangelo's face dropped into a rare state of seriousness that made Raphael uncomfortable.

"Take a minute and think about what you are asking." Michelangelo challenged, "You want me to stay behind while you and Leo rescue our brother. You realize that's crazy, right?"

"Yeah, you're right." Raphael lamented, then drew a sai from his belt, "I'm not asking." Raphael shoved Michelangelo, hard, against the wall behind them. Bringing down his sai, Raphael trapped Michelangelo's wrist between the tines, effectively pinning him to the wall so he couldn't move.

"Hey!" Michelangelo tried with all his might to yank the sai from the wall but wasn't strong enough. "What are you doing, Raph!"

"I'll come back for you after we save Donnie." He said, then turned on his heel, "You can hate me all you want but you are staying here." He said before hurrying down the stairs. It was worth being one sai short to ensure his brother's safety.

Raphael hurriedly made his way down to the bottom floor and found himself in, what he quickly discovered was not a gym, but an armory. And by the look of things, Evixus had more weapons than a small country. This only cemented the idea that leaving Michelangelo behind was a good one.

Raphael crossed the room and winced when he heard a small click as a result of his foot coming in contact with a pressure sensitive tile. Crap! Raphael looked down at his foot, in disbelief, as if the appendage had betrayed him.

If there was one thing movies taught him it was that lifting his foot or perhaps even adjusting his weight would result in a gruesome death of some sort. Raphael took a moment to think, he couldn't stay there all night and wait for someone to help him. No, he had to take a chance. He mustered all of his strength and courage before throwing his body to the left. Just as he'd suspected, lifting his foot off the tile triggered an explosion.

The power of the blast sent him flying into something hard and metallic, he'd have preferred to land against something softer but it was a small price to pay for his life.

His respite didn't last long because, as he discovered, the hard object he'd crashed into was a massive mechanized robot. The ten-foot-tall beast made Overkill look about as deadly as a sparkler as compared to the A-bomb.

Not only that, but located in the center of its body was the human body of an academy student. She didn't appear, to Raphael, to be one of the ones who had gone missing. The young teen was unconscious, a series of wires running from her forehead to her temple connected her to the robot, and it didn't take Raphael long to learn what this particular robot was run on. Brain energy. Apparently there was a lot more to Evixus' plan than any of them knew.

Giving Raphael, no time to dwell on it, the robot swept its hand across the room in an attempt to hit him. He jumped out of the way, grabbing hold of a suspension chain using his momentum to swing his body around to land on the robot's neck. He brought his sai down on something that looked important but it yielded no results. The robot's other arm came around, grabbed him and threw him across the room, his shell cracked the wall upon contact and he slid to the ground in a heap.

Raphael shook the stars from his eyes and pushed himself up off the ground. The robot jumped and landed right in front of him, giving him a better look at the student inside. Her eyes were open and as black as the night, tears ran down her cheek, she must've been in unimaginable pain.

Raphael made an attempt to rip away the wires, connecting her to the machine, with his sai but was stopped when the girl grabbed his wrist. Her strength was superhuman, she squeezed and the sai fell out of Raphael's hands, hitting the ground with a clang. Her smile seemed to cut her face in half like those creepy girls in horror movies.

The girl grabbed Raphael by the throat with her other hand and squeezed slowly. Raphael clawed at her fingers, trying in vain to free himself. She squeezed harder, his hand falling away as his body began giving out.

Just as Raphael began to black out a sai cut through the darkness, severing the wires along the girl's face. The robot shut down and the girl's body fell limply against him. Raphael wrapped his arms around the girl, rolling away with her just before the robot crashed to the ground. He glanced in the direction from which the sai had come and spotted Michelangelo on top of a stack of crates.

He didn't have time to wonder how Michelangelo had gotten free so quickly because the girl in his arms began to stir. She jumped away from Raphael and ripped the gun wielding arm from the robot's body. Giving Raphael no time to react, she fired. Michelangelo jumped down and sent a wave of shuriken into the bullets, each one exploding into nothingness upon impact.

The girl wasn't finished though, she turned her back and grabbed something from an open crate next to her. It was a small device with a timer attached. A bomb. She activated it and the timer began counting down, in seconds, from ten. The girl stalked toward Raphael like a ragdoll possessed by a demon.

Coming to the decision that there was no time to save her and get away, Raphael grabbed his brother's wrist pulling toward the nearest exit.

Slash and the others found themselves in a prefabricated warehouse, located just behind the main building. They watched from the suspended walkway as several armed robots stood guard around three box trucks. Compared to the Overkill twins, they'd just defeated, these guys would be a piece of cake. Slash turned toward his team "We need to see what is in those trucks. Leatherhead, you take the one on the left, Rockwell, you take the center truck and Casey and I will take the one on the right."

"No problem." Leatherhead said, "Let's put an end to this guy, once and for all."

"I concur." Rockwell said and the pair made their way across the walkway in silence.

Just as Slash and Casey where about to make their move, a loud explosion rang out from somewhere in the distance. Light flooded the warehouse bringing the attention of the robots upon them. "So much for stealth." Slash said before jumping down, landing on a robot, taking it out with his mace.

Casey shrugged, heck, maybe kicking some robot butt would cheer him up. "Goongala!" Casey jumped down hooking a robot just under its chin with the foot of his hockey stick. Giving one swift yank he was able to rip the robot's head clean off is shoulders. Casey's hands stung but he ignored the pain, it was a small price to pay to avenge April and Donatello.

Another robot fired a laser at him, hitting the side of the truck where it melted the thin metal away. "You missed, Tin Face, that's gonna cost ya." Casey pulled down his hockey mask and rush toward the robot, ramming the end of his hockey stick through the robot's metal stomach.

The Robot's body remained on the end of his hockey stick, proof of Casey's strength when he was tested. He kicked the body off and turned his attention to the hole in the truck. "Thanks for the window, pal."

Casey stood up on one of the tires and peered through the "window", careful not to touch the sides as it was still red with heat around the edges. Across from him, strapped along the inner wall were the missing students, the psychics of the Hivemind. They were all unresponsive but as far as he could tell they were all still alive.

Then he saw them. Strapped to medical tables, which were bolted to the floor of the truck, were Donatello and April. Despite the holes in their foreheads, Casey could see the steady rise and fall of their chests. Alive, as well. Good.

Before Casey could act, the truck pitched forward and he lost his footing. He fell toward the ground just as Leonardo emerged from the underground passage. Falling on top of Leonardo wasn't exactly the softest of landings but it beat the alternative: hard concrete. He climbed to his feet, watching as the truck exited the warehouse.

"Where the heck did you come from?" Casey asked. "No, not important. We gotta stop that truck, Donnie and April are inside." At that, Leonardo hurried after the truck.

Outside, an enormous magnetic disk lowered from the belly of a helicopter and lifted the truck off the ground. The hovering machine swayed at the added weight for a moment but adjusted quickly. Realizing he only had a few seconds, Leonardo tossed his grappling hook as hard as he could, it wrapped around the rear bumper.

Seconds later he found himself swinging from the end of a rope as the helicopter surged into the sky. This did nothing to phase the turtle and true to his nickname he fearlessly began climbing. The cold air blasted his face and he could feel his fingers grow numb at their tips but nothing would stop him from saving his brother.

A laser blast flew passed his head, disappearing into the night after missing him by mere inches. Looking toward the front of the truck he saw a robot hanging out of the driver's side door, laser gun in hand.

Nothing.

Leonardo, spurred on by the fact that he didn't want to get shot, climbed faster, expanding his reach as far as he could. A few more feet and he would be able to pull himself up and onto the truck.

The robot, fired again, this time grazing the rope above the defenseless turtle's head. Leonardo felt the rope jerk, giving way, as it began to unravel. And, just as his frozen fingertips grazed the underside of the bumper, the rope snapped.

Leonardo's decent seemed to be in slow motion as he was forced to watch the helicopter disappear into the night with its precious cargo, his precious cargo.

AN: Thanks for all your support on the last chapter, it really means a lot to me, that you guys have responded so well to this story. I grew up watching 1987 TMNT then lost myself in anime, so I'm still catching up on the 2003 and 2012 versions. Because of that I felt like I had no business writing for this fandom.