It had been a little while since leaving Omairi, but Leo and his cohorts did not slow down as they made their way across the barren lands of the Nexus. Their destination was Temizu, home to the Scale Tail Clan, but on their way, they found themselves passing through the field in which they fought Imperius Reptilicus and his soldiers about a day before. Leo thought to return to the crater where he found the girl, hoping he could find any extra clues to her identity and what exactly was going. He was beginning to notice his stomach feeling funny though, as if it were itching and slightly aching. It actually made him feel…hungry. In fact, after a little while, the feeling caused him to feel slightly sluggish in his limbs and the rest of the muscles in his body.

Making his way back to the edge of the crater, he looked into it to find no light. It was now just an empty hole in the ground. Finding nothing of value, he decided to ask his compatriots. Ignoring the weakening sensation under his plastron, he approached Karai.

"Find anything?" Leo asked her.

Karai shook her head. "I haven't found any clues. But something happened here, and I want to know what that was." Leo saw that he had nothing to learn from his comrade, so he turned away from Karai and went to examine the rest of the site. While he was surveying the landscapes and the surrounding environments, he overheard a few of his comrades muttering to themselves about the matter.

One clan member whispered, "That light spread throughout the Nexus. Was it one of the Scale Tail Clan's new weapons?"

Raph was muttering to himself, "Why was that girl here?" He lifted his arm to look at his brand that remained etched on his skin. "Is she related to this marking?"

Leo remained alert, scanning for any clues potentially left behind after the incident, but again, he found nothing, at least of value. As he looked around, he made a note that he and his fellow clan members were the only ones on the site looking for answers. He thought it was strange, since the Scale Tail Clan was the only other clan that was present and affected. He wondered why they were not here at the site examining just like his group. It was something almost uncharacteristic of any person living in the Nexus to choose not to take action. It only served to prove that things have gotten more and more illogical since the lights came. Leo came to conclude that the Scale Tail Clan must have gone into hiding. Seeing that no more could be found at the site, he signaled to his group and they headed out to continue their journey to Temizu.

The group crossed over a small slope and looked overhead to see the walls comprising the border of Temizu, the territory of the Scale Tail Clan. They finally made it to their destination.

"There it is," Leo quietly announced to everyone in the group. He turned back to look at the front gate. "We'll need to move quickly and quietly," he said, repeating what had been recommended to him by Donnie. He pointed to three of his team members, "You three take the east side of the border and scan the watchtowers." He then pointed to another two, "You two will deal with the guards at the door." He then turned to Raph and Karai standing at either side of him, "You'll stay with me and infiltrate through their diversion." His two teammates nodded, and they waited for the other five members of their group to get to where they were told to go. After a little while, the three sent to the watchtowers gave a signal that it was all clear. Shortly after, the two sent to the front gate did the same. Leo went out first with Raph and Karai following closely behind him. They flitted and darted around the rocks that jutted out of the smooth surface. After a short while, they made it to a section of the wall which had a sparse pattern of nooks and notches in the brickwork. The three climbed their way up and over the wall using those etches. Silently, they wasted no time getting to the other side and landing onto Temizu grounds. Zipping stealthily to hide behind a nearby pile of supply crates, all three peeked around the boxes to scan for security.

The settlement of Temizu was more impressive to look at than Omairi, having the dignity of being above ground for starters. Every building was tall and roomy enough to allow for more uses beyond living space and frugal supply room. The design of the buildings was more distinct as well, taking on an industrial feel that was not entirely different from a factory from the Industrial Revolution, especially with its smokestacks. There was even room for decorations, which was not limited to painted trims around the rooftops that resembled reptilian eyes and predatory teeth.

Leo kept his eyes around the front door of the main building where Imperius Reptilicus was, while Raph and Karai looked everywhere else down Temizu's main streets. Karai gradually began to look surprised while Raph's face slowly developed one of discomfort as they noticed how empty and devoid of life the streets were, along with no one standing near the door of Imperius Reptilicus's base. After some time of staking out the area, all three concluded that there were no guards to watch out for, so they came out of their hiding place.

After stopping to rest herself on a short stack of tires, Karai thought she would speak first. "Something's wrong," she told her terrapin comrades and looked back to scan the nearby watchtowers surrounding the residence, "There are no guards in sight at all. They're entirely vulnerable this way."

Raph, after hearing this, began marching towards the building's entrance without hesitation. "Works for me. Let's go."

Leo wasted no time catching up to Raph, walking alongside him to maintain the pace. As they neared the door, Leo thought to assess the situation further. He looked to Raph, "Between us and the Scale Tail Clan, we're the only ones investigating this, and even after we came to their territory, they're still not active." He looked Raph in the eye, causing Raph to do the same. "You think something happened to us that's different from them? It might mean they knew we were coming…"

Raph looked back at Leo, but his stern expression didn't change one bit. He told Leo, "I don't know what's behind this, but I can only guess they're scared of us."

"Scared?" Leo blinked, not registering Raph's answer.

"Just look around, Leo," Raph turned and gestured his arms to imply the group's surroundings. "Whatever you think you know about this, if you can't explain it, well neither can I."

Leo still could not come up with a good answer to this mystery, so he chose to go along with Raph's assumption, "Well then, why would they be scared of us?"

Raph didn't need to think of an answer, "We'll find out soon enough."

"Reptilicus better not have set a trap for us with the way we're going about this," Karai remarked, not feeling particularly impressed with Raph's bluntness at the moment.

Making their way inside, the three found themselves in a tall supply room filled with stacked crates covered with tarps and a few more interspersed stacks of tires. Looking around to take the next course of action, Leo detected another door to the right and directed his two comrades to follow him through it. Finding themselves in another spacious store room, the three could spot almost the entirety of the room being occupied by an elevated metal-plated platform connected by a short set of stairs. More supply crates lined the bottom of the platform, with some surrounding the metal leg-like supports below it. More of them populated the top of the platform. Getting to the other end of the room, they passed through another door to get into a new room. This one was different, not used for supplies. It was taller and more equilaterally square-shaped than the previous, having space for a proper promenade on the second level above decorated with railings and columns. Leo saw in front of him a raised wall with more carnivorous lizard motifs decorated on its face. Seeing that there was no way forward, Leo decided that the group should spread out and start investigating for clues to progress.

Looking over some small boxes, Karai looked to Raph for some leads while Raph looked stumped himself. "Hey Raph," she called to him, "have you found out anything about the girl on our way here?"

Raph paused to think about her question for a moment, but then sighed with a mild exasperation. "No," he told her curtly, "all I know is that she's familiar to me somehow…and now I can't stop thinking about her." He slowly stopped what he was doing as he looked around the room to distract himself. "Her face just appears in my mind, and I feel like I'm remembering things I'm not even sure I've gone through."

Karai put her hand on his shoulder. "You don't need to push yourself. I, for one, don't even understand what happened to me on the battlefield."

Leo walked over to Karai, prompting her to look at her leader. "You're not the only one who's questioning it, Karai," he told her. "When I was touched by the light, I felt something…different in me, causing me to change."

"What did it feel like?" Raph asked, feeling curiosity surge in him even more.

"It felt like my chest was set on fire," said Karai, looking neither Raph nor Leo in the eye, "Then I felt something causing my arms and legs being able to…reach further than before."

The two turtles were silent. Then Raph joined in, "I felt like my head split in two, and then felt my hands as though they got fused with my Sai," he said this while taking out his twin Sai weapons. "Maybe they did…" Raph trailed off. He turned his attention to Leo. "What was it like for you?"

Leo, thinking for a moment, turned away to give his response more thought. "What did it feel like?" he thought to himself. He strained his mind to think back to the first few moments after the mysterious light penetrated his body. "It was…an urge. It grew…I had extra katanas growing from my arms. I felt myself becoming blinded, but at the same time, I saw…more clearly…and then, my head was just screaming at me to eat…eat the others…" and then he remembered that final thought: Eat them all. He did not understand why the transformation was connected with…eating, but before he could tell his partners his answer, his attention was caught by Karai standing in front of a prominent metallic pillar a little further away.

Karai signaled to her cohorts with a pointed finger towards what appeared to be a lever pointing up while attached to the pillar. She pulled the lever down and the decorated raised wall lowered itself into the floor, revealing another door. The group proceeded through the door to enter another supply room, though this one was more elongated and rectangular and had a raised platform far to the left. There was another door up ahead on the other side, but when the group approached it, they could make out faint sounds from the other side. Wasting no time, they went through the door to investigate.

Once they made it through, they were greeted by a short barricade of sandbags, barrels, and crates that was set up to go from almost one end of the room to the other. Crouched on the other side of the barricade were a few lizard soldiers from the Scale Tail Clan, and in the middle of the group was Imperius Reptilicus himself. He and the rest of his kin present were holding crossbows at the ready, pointed right at the three.

"Don't come any closer," Imperius Reptilicus barked to the three Kikyōmon, his voice sounding calm and suppressed, though the calm part sounded slightly debatable.

None of the three thought to stay completely still. With even a slight shuffle of their feet on the ground, the lizard leader's grip on his crossbow began to shake. "No…stay back…" his voice grew slightly in volume, "Don't eat me. Please…" The three observed that his entire body was now shaking, and so were the rest of his soldiers in the room.

Karai's eyebrows furrowed, her look becoming one of outright confusion. "Reptilicus…" she spoke hesitantly, "what are you saying?"

Suddenly, Imperius Reptilicus's eyes flashed with an intense aura, an aura so fierce that it startled the trio, even Raph. "You murdered them and ate them all!" he suddenly shouted, dropping his calm tone entirely. "You all…turned into monsters…and then…you devoured all of my men!" His shaking grew more intense. "That light…that weird light shot right through us…and then everyone…" He grew louder than before, "everyone started freaking the heck out!" He immediately aimed his crossbow at the trio and readied himself to fire.

"Don't!" Leo exclaimed, holding his hand forward to tell the lizard to stop. But in that same split-second, he could see that Imperius Reptilicus was on his way to pull the trigger, so he dove behind a stack of crates, prompting Karai and Raph to take cover as well. Soon, the arrows went flying, embedding their sharp heads into the cover Leo and his crew hid behind, with Imperius Reptilicus hollering in hysterics all the while.

"Everyone started attacking each other," the lizard continued to ramble, "you ripped them apart with your bare hands!" As Leo, Raph, and Karai hid, they began to feel a sharp pain, in which they looked and traced it coming from their tattoo-like insignias on their skin that began to glow – Leo felt the marking on his left cheek beginning to glow; Raph felt the marking on his right forearm beginning to glow; Karai felt the marking on her chest beginning to glow – all the while, the arrows still flew, and Imperius Reptilicus, the marking on his left hand now taking on a hot glow, continued raving, "and then…and then…"

"Stop, that's enough!" Raph suddenly called out from behind his hiding place.

"God, help me!" Imperius Reptilicus cried out, dropping his crossbow and clenching his glowing left hand with his other hand in trembling pain. Glowing veins began spreading across his scaly skin from that same glowing hand.

"SHUT UP!" Raph screamed, jumping out of his hiding spot. He thrusted a hand into his handheld pouch and in one second, yanked and whipped out a few ninja stars into the air, sending them flying into the faces of a couple Scale Tail Clan lizards. Next to Raph, Karai was observing glowing veins spreading out from her marking, an expression faintly resembling a cross between wonder and confusion on her face. After a brief moment, the scuffle was over, leaving two lizards lying down dead behind their barricade. Imperius Reptilicus only felt himself getting worse. Clutching his head in painful stress, he lingered for a few seconds to look at the trio and then his two dead men. As he looked on, the two dead lizards rapidly began to convulse and darken, purple-glowing veins spreading across their bodies. The lizard leader jumped back in horrified shock, causing the marking on his left hand to stop glowing. However, seeing that he was in a corner, he immediately swung around and dashed through the door behind him, crying out in hysterics while he was at it.

Raph was briefly in a quiet stupor. "I…couldn't have…" he whispered, "no…not me…I didn't…do that." He clutched his head with one hand, squeezing his eyes shut stressfully, not caring to notice the glow on his arm getting stronger. "I didn't…eat those guys," his voice got louder, "I couldn't have!" He then snapped his eyes open to reveal his outrage within, exclaiming, "It wasn't me!"

Out from the barricade on the other side, the two newly transformed lizards crawled out, looking as though they were blackened husks or emaciated corpses that dug their way out of the dark cold earth. Karai suddenly felt her mark give out a brief but bright and sharp flash, causing her to flinch in momentary pain. The same happened to Raph and Leo, whose face was held rigidly in an expression of a painful flinch as the glowing veins spread across his face and the rest of his body. Leo keeled over, feeling overwhelmed with the marking's power. His body became engulfed in light and all of its features began contorting.

Raph found himself the first to transform. After the light engulfing his body died down, he violently emerged as some larger and more muscular being with two sets of jaws that may have well been two mouths in one head. His claws had three pointed Sai-like blades protruding from the knuckles.

[HARAI TAMAE KIYOME TAMAE] – K.Ō.J.I.N

Karai, clenching her chest with both hands, emerged as a serpentine creature, losing her legs in exchange for having a strong tail, a snake-like head with sharp teeth, and two arms that almost resembled individual snakes of their own. Her torso became armored.

[HARAI TAMAE KIYOME TAMAE] – U.G.A.J.I.N

Leo, in an instant, morphed into a raptor-like creature with fins on his head covering the top half of his face, fins on his shoulders, and two long and slender blades attached to his forearms that almost resembled his twin katanas. Flipping them back into his arms, he hissed as he eyed the two corpse-like lizards coming forward to attack.

[HARAI TAMAE KIYOME TAMAE] – R.Y.Ū.J.I.N

As the two lizard monstrosities came forward, Ryūjin crouched slightly to ready himself for a fight, Kōjin bounced as he anticipated the unavoidable battle, and Ugajin coiled her tail to prepare to defend herself.

One of the husk-like lizards pranced towards Ryūjin to get a swipe, but the finned demon jumped away only to flip out one of his arm blades and take a slash at the creature. The swing of the blade knocked the lizard demon back. The other lizard demon tried to attack Ryūjin from the side and managed to land a claw on his back. Ryūjin was startled by the pain, but he was unfazed. He knocked his enemy away with another swing of his arm-blades, which in turn led to Kōjin leaping in and taking a swing of his own at the lizard with his tri-pointed knuckled claws. The impact from the momentum of Kōjin's strike killed the lizard instantly. Ugajin concentrated on the remaining lizard and sensed the true nature of its form: the lizard demon was called a Ghoul, which meant its now-dead partner was also a Ghoul. But in the few seconds it took for Ugajin to find out, the remaining Ghoul jumped out at her. With quick reflexes, Ugajin swung out her serpentine arms which had snake heads on the end of each one and knocked the Ghoul into the air away from her. As the Ghoul began to fall back down, Ugajin spun around and whipped her bottom tail into the Ghoul's torso, sending it flying into a wall. The Ghoul slid down the wall, stunned momentarily, but began to shamble its way back onto its feet. Ryūjin looked over, seeing that the Ghoul was still alive. Keeping his attention on the blackened thing, he thought of slashing it like he did with the other one. However, he instead paused for a moment, crossed his arms together, and swung them open to send a blast of cold air towards the Ghoul. The Ghoul was suddenly encased in a chunk of ice, and the ice shattered as soon as it formed, injuring the Ghoul greatly. Collapsing to the floor, the Ghoul could no longer move, but could only watch as Ryūjin walked right up to it, raised one of his blades, and brought it down on the poor demon without hesitation – the Ghoul was now dead.

Sensing that the battle was over, Ryūjin folded his blades back into his arms and once he willed the light in him to encompass his body again, he shrunk back down and reverted back to being Leo. Kōjin followed after and reverted back to Raph, along with Ugajin reverting back to Karai. Looking upon the aftermath, Leo and Karai looked composed, though Raph looked more discomforted.

"What's happening to us," Raph quietly asked, faintly feeling his arms shaking. "No, I…" he leaned forward and wretched, attempting to contain himself. "I can't eat them," he grunted.

Karai only kept her eyes on the two Ghouls' corpses with nary an expression on her face. "Why are you hesitating? Circumstances are different now," she stated bluntly, her tone unchanging. She then turned to Raph, telling him, "If you refuse to eat, you'll die just like them."

Raph only turned his head away from Karai. He warily raised his eyes to Leo, hoping he would get a second opinion from his leader in blue. Leo looked at Raph, then Karai, and then to the two corpses lying on the floor. He remembered when he first transformed: his first and most overwhelming thought was to eat. Again, he wasn't sure why it was so, but whatever reason it was, he knew deep down that it wasn't any good – and he had the feeling that it wasn't going away any time soon either. He didn't know for sure if eating was an unpleasant experience or not, but as a leader, he had to put the best interests of his team above his own, and that meant sacrificing whatever preferences he had for the sake of preventing undue hindrance to his team – whether he liked it or not. He returned his gaze to Raph, who still looked at him with earnestness, and sighed.

"I'm sorry, Raph," Leo said, and he turned to approach the dead Ghouls with Karai shortly following after him. As they both knelt down, they willed themselves to transform again, and Raph immediately turned his back towards them, clenching his hands over his eyes as his comrades began to eat.

Note:

Ryūjin ~ the "dragon god"; the Japanese god and ruler of the sea who symbolizes the power of the ocean; he is literally a dragon

Kōjin ~ the Japanese god of fire, the hearth, and the kitchen; represents violent forces that are redirected towards the betterment of humankind

Ugajin ~ the Japanese deity of harvest and fertility; represented as either male or female, but has the head of a human and the body of a snake