Chapter 2

Raph clutched at his chest, choking! Though the garage was a wide space, the car fumes were quickly filling him up with suffocating pain. Desperately, he tossed his entire weight against the doors, but it was to no avail. His vision was starting to fuzz as his eyes watered and the room was spinning...

He could feel his movements becoming sluggish, everything started to feel heavy. He wasn't even aware when he had stopped his efforts of trying to get out, nor was he aware that his already desperate choking was worse. All he could feel was the pain in his chest as his throat started to constrict, his surroundings were fading. He tried to hold his breath, but his lungs betrayed him every time, greedily sucking in the toxic air... No! He wasn't going out like this. The red clad turtle forced himself up, stumbling his way across the garage and to the party wagon van. But the effort to reach it was more difficult than he anticipated. Before he could reach the door he had to get off what he was sure felt like a mechanical spinning floor.

With a heavy grunt he felt the adrenaline leak out of his system as he slammed himself against the metal door of the Don's vehicle. If he could get inside the van he could protect himself from the fumes flooding the garage space, at least for a little while. Desperately he yanked at the door, but it was locked and breaking the window would completely defeat the object of getting into it in the first place. He couldn't focus. He didn't have time as the white smoke was now burning his eyes. Desperately with one sai still in his hand he thrust the blade into the lock. He had picked a car lock before, but not while he was drunk on car fumes. If... if he could just br-brake... it?

How the hell his brothers couldn't smell the gas was beyond him. Maybe if he set off the car alarm, that would get their attention.

The red clad turtle tightly closed his eyes, resting his head against the glass. The world was drifting further away from him, but his hand defiantly worked on automatic, furiously attacking the lock. "Please... please open." Raph wasn't into pleading, but right now, he would plead with anything that might be listening. He heaved a breath and gagged on it, coughing hard from the smoke that was pouring into his lungs. The imaginary pressure in his brain was starting to push him to the floor, his hands scraped down the window as he slowly sank. In minutes, he was going to be dead. Cold stone dead!

Click!

Raph's eyes snapped open, but he could no longer see clearly. In fact he wasn't sure which way was up or which way was down. His muscles dragged at the simple task of pulling open the door before falling forward, head first, onto the seat. He swallowed and blinked furiously, a shiver ran down his spine as if someone had dropped cold water down the back of his shell. He shuddered against it, frowning at the slow trickle of calm working away at the dregs of his panic. With calm finality he yanked the door closed behind him. Only now that he could breathe again did he become aware of how much his throat burned. His vision still swam and he wanted to be sick, but he would settle for just passing out instead.

…... The red turtle wasn't aware how long he had been out, but as the world started to come back to him he found that he was lying across the van seats at a very awkward angle. He could feel the steering wheel pushing against his leg. With some effort, he pushed himself into a sitting position. His head still throbbed and his throat burned dry as though he had just choked down a ton of sand.

"What the hell?!" The red clad turtle said, amazed that he was still alive. A few more moments and it would have been game over...

What the heck happened? And why had no one heard him? Raph pushed himself up and looked around the outside of the garage. It was only then that he realized the engine was no longer humming and... and both the lab and garage doors were open.

So someone had come in and saved him after all, but then why had they just left him here alone in... in the dark...? Why were all the lights out? Even in the lab? Taking a few more minutes to breathe in some non-toxic air the hot head carefully made his way out of the van. Where was everyone? The calm he had worked so hard to bring back scurried away, back into the dark corners of his panicked mind, as a new wave of ice reached out, stroking his neck.

Sai at the ready Raph made his way into his brother's lab.

As his eyes adjusted, he scanned around for danger or any sign of his siblings, but one look at the room made him gasp. The lab was trashed! No, it wasn't just trashed! Almost everything was obliterated! All Donnie's equipment was turned over, every piece of glass was smashed. Raph couldn't see anything salvageable accept a broken lamp that flickered in the darkness, trying its best to hold onto the last few seconds of power. It all looked like a scene from an aftermath of an earth quake... or an atomic bomb!?

"DONNIE! MIKEY! LEO!" Raph desperately shouted into the devastated pit. Instantly, fear for his family's safety clawed ruthlessly at his heart and panic swallowed him up like a sink hole! Had the street above them collapsed onto their heads? Or had Donnie's experiments caused an explosion again? No, even Don couldn't do this much damage!

Where the shell were his brothers!? Quickly, he started making his way through the rubble. Was the whole lair trashed as bad as the lab, he wondered? It was a good assumption, but a part of him didn't want to go and find out -

A sudden growling from the lair made him flinch and then freeze to the spot. Someone... no, something was in the lair! And by the sounds of it, it wasn't friendly!

…..

"What... what do you mean the... end?" Donnie repeated the word. He knew the concept of the term 'the end,' but either he was misunderstanding April's meaning, or he just didn't want to get it.

"I'm sorry, Donnie. I'm so sorry," She sobbed. "I saw it Donnie. We are all going to die! Everyone... I mean every human! In the worse and most painful way..." The red head cried deeply and long into his neck, unable to look him in the eyes.

"I don't understand. What...? When…? How does this happen?" Donnie wasn't deliberately sounding dim. He understood perfectly what she was saying, but how does one even respond to that? The turtle forced on a bucket of composure, trying to understand whatever explanation he may hear. "Okay, let's just calm down a moment and tell me what you saw, from the beginning." He tried to sound confident and reassuring, despite the huge rock that had just fallen into his stomach. This time April did look up at him, her eyes were big with fear. She tried to draw in the panic from her tone. Was she not being clear?

"I have seen what's coming. The world will stand still... There will be a white light that burns, and then all will be gone. Everything, GONE!" The look in her eyes sent shivers down his spine.

"Okay... c-can you tell me... what caused it?" He asked, struggling hard to flatten the clenching, swirling, sick feeling in his gut.

"Donnie you're not listening to me! Everything is gone! There is NOTHING we can do!" She said a little louder, her frustration growing.

"That's not true... I don't believe that. There is always something we can do. Just tell me what you know-"

"You DON'T want to know what I saw! That's why I came here. Donnie, it's too late!" April yelled. "There is nothing we can do now... The world is going to burn... In the worse way you can imagine..."

Donnie couldn't believe what he was hearing. Not just the prediction of their oncoming death, but the fact that April had already given up. Not to mention the less important but equally interesting fact that premonitions are a sudden new talent added to the psychic and telekinetic list that his friend possessed. Well it wasn't such a stretch of the imagination. How hard could seeing the future really be to someone as amazing as April…. Donnie decided not to answer that.

But why was she so defeated? After everything they had gone through how could she not even want to try? It was scaring him more than the news itself. Don was just about to open his mouth to respond but was cut off. He became frozen in his seat, and every thought he may have had in his head died as he suddenly felt April's lips pressed against his. Though this was probably the most depressing and most terrifying news he had ever been given, for a second it seemed to become over-shadowed by the fact that he was having what may be his last kiss from the girl he loved. His mind couldn't comprehend anything else.

…..

There is an odd kind of sick sensation that everyone experiences at some point in their lives when they're suddenly faced with a situation that is so unbelievable, and also so cripplingly terrifying, that they don't know what to do. In those rare situations Leo could only do what Leo did best, follow his instincts. And right now his instincts were telling him to jump up, pull out a sword, and cut down the large man who had killed his father... again.

The monster had already been brought back from the dead once before as nothing better than a sad walking corpse. How many times was the dark ninja master going to drag himself from the beyond to hunt them!?

Just as the turtle went to strike the large ninja Leo got a perfect snapshot of the dead man. With no cold metal helmet to hide his face Leo could see the lidless sunken eye sockets. Shredder's gaunt, pale, thinned skin made him almost skeletal. In fact the guy's entire body looked that way, simply depleted. However the muscles were still there, sitting tight across his almost paper-thin skin. He looked more fragile than before, which only served to make the deep purple circles under his eyes more ominous and disturbing.

Just as Leo's sword swished through the air to connect with his old rival the large man caught the metal with his hands, effortlessly yanking the hilt out of Leo's fist. Almost mechanically Shredder tossed the blade aside before violently shoving the turtle back onto his shell with ease. The new fragile look to the Shredder wasn't at all a real one. He was just as strong as he ever was.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Leonardo!" Boomed the large, and now much more terrifying, 'man.' The father killer bore down upon the mutant, forcing Leo's arms back till he was completely pinned to the floor.

Leo lashed out with a kick to Shredder's gut, making his enemy recoil and giving Leo the chance to twist his arms free before flipping and rolling backwards away from him. In seconds Leo was back on his feet, ready to attack again. The Shredder, however, had not made a move.

"I didn't come to fight you," the, not a ghost but a corpse, said with disturbingly flat clarity.

"Then you shouldn't have come back!" Leo spat, not relaxing his attack stance.

"I don't need to," Shredder said in the same expressionless, flat, and empty tone. The enemy moved back to lean against the wall admiring...no, judging, the Dojo that the two of them stood in. He even tilted his head as he looked over the tree. "So this is where Hamato Yoshi raised and trained his prodigies?" He shook his head, positively confused. "How... unimpressive. It doesn't at all reflect the power he welled," Shredder sneered.

Anger twinged in the mutant's chest and his hands clenched. The Dojo was his place of peace! How dare this murderer insult it while in his father's home! Even in death, this man...no! This thing had actually come back just to insult him? What the shell!? "My father didn't feel the need to imprison everything he was with cold, soulless, metal blades!" Leo snapped back, not breaking his attack stance.

The insult was less than effective, completely going over the Shredder's head. If anything the once human just looked more irritated. "All that time I spent searching for you, and you were just here."

Leo put his hands down. "Is that why you're here? Unfinished business? You just had to know where we lived?" Who was the pathetic one now?

"No, not really. I was just curious. I am dead. I am over it," Shredder looked back at the mutant.

Leo's brow creased. This was NOT what he had been expecting at all... Unless this was a trick! Yes, it had to be. The Shredder had once again found a loop hole, returning to the land of the living with some plan to avenge his relentless twisted existence. And somehow this new big, horrible, overreaching evil plot was going to come crashing down on top of his family. If they didn't get ahead of it and figure out how to stop it right away, more of his family was going to suffer.

So what was it?

Normally the one and only thing Shredder could be counted upon was bragging about how he had once again escaped his well-deserved fate. How brilliantly cunning he was, and how much they were all going to suffer for it. This standing around and talking put him on uneven ground. It was, it was just wrong. Not to mention anti-climatic!

With gritted teeth Leo gripped his other sword still in his shell and swung, again striking out at the man he hated so much. He would make the Shredder talk!

…...

Completely forgetting about running to his brothers Mikey was again back in front of the loud TV, begging for it to talk to him in his father's distorted voice.

"Dad!" He yelled at the terrifying images slaughtering the picture. "Is that you? Talk to me again. Please... please... is that you?" Moments later, the TV finally turned off, blanketing the room in darkness. "What!? No! No, come back! Sensei!" The young teen pleaded, shaking the black solid box.

"Michelangelo!" The desperate, strangled voice was now behind him. In surprise Mikey's body jumped, but what made him scream was the reflection of his late father, complete with walking stick, standing in the blacked-out screen right behind him! Mikey snapped his head around, only to see that he was the only one still sitting in the room. More knocking, this time it was coming from within the room itself, as though someone was knocking a... a wooden stick on the ground. The tapping continued, getting louder. Mikey covered his ears as the noise grinded into him. He didn't understand. Beyond scared now his eyes started stinging, tears were leaking out as the knocking persisted, almost violently. Where were his brothers? Why had they not come running back in here? Unless... something was stopping them from doing so. Something clearly was going on. Was it the same thing making that knocking? What wanted his attention so badly?

'Wait!' Mikey mentally screamed as something metaphorically hit him. He knew that sound!

It was the sound of his father's walking staff! Whenever Splinter was angry or training them he would bang his stick on the ground, just as a warning for them to stop whatever disruption they were causing. It always instantly brought everything to a halt. Once was normally enough, but this sound was like that, only continuous.

Mikey looked up into the dark nothingness of the room and the tapping stopped simultaneously.

"Sensei, is that you?" The little turtle asked weakly, the twisting feeling in his gut tightening. There was no response. Mikey racked his brain. What to do... what to do...? Then he remembered something he had seen on what he liked to call the spooky channel, as it was normally showed things like Ghost Hunters. "Tap once for 'Yes,' and twice for 'No'." He instructed before getting up. "Father, is that you?" He asked again, sounding much braver than he felt.

Tap!

'Yes,' Mikey clarified. The little turtle gulped down the large lump in his throat, forcing the gross feeling back down into his gut. His father was here. He smiled as a small wave of relief rushed over him, he could still remember the feeling of that safe warm furry protective hand on him. But why was he here? Splinter had... moved on... to wherever that place the dead moved on to... And Leo had seen him clearly in a solid ghostly form right before he moved on... What was with all the heeby-jeebys haunted house effects now? Was it because of the shrine? In Japanese culture the spirit would live within the shrine, like a door-way. "Father!" Mikey called into the dark again. "Do you want to talk to me?"

Tap!

"Okay, then talk to me. Why are you here?"

Tap tap...

This time Mikey frowned. "No?" Why couldn't his father talk to him like he had with Leo? "Father, is something wrong?"

Tap!

"Are you here alone?"

Tap tap...

"Is that why you can't talk to me? Is something stopping you?"

Tap!

Mikey felt himself loose a few shades of green. Who else was here? Who could stop his Master from talking to him? The orange clad looked again at the Dojo, and then across to the lab. He could make a break for it. "Father, should I go get the others?"

Tap tap.

He was afraid of that. Just then the TV flicked back on, but only for a second. Still in that second the light flooded the room, and Mikey saw his father standing just beyond the couch. His eyes were wide and completely white, his face twisted in pain. His hand stretched out towards the young turtle, as though he wanted him to run towards him. But just as the TV went dark again, the image vanished in a blanket of darkness. Mikey could feel himself shaking inside his shell, but he started making his way over towards the apparition. "Father!" He shook, reaching for him, but a nasty growling stopped him. That wasn't his father. It sounded more like a wild, starving, possibly rabid animal.

The TV flicked on again, he saw Splinter again, only this time he clearly wasn't alone. A large completely black figure with claws was standing behind the rat, constricting him around his neck. Splinter was gasping, chocking under the clawed creature, reaching out pleadingly for his son to help him. Then they vanished again, just as the light from the TV went off!

"NO! Get off him! Let him go!" Mikey yelled angrily. The thing, that he was sure he had just watch rip apart the woman in the horror movie, was stopping his father from talking to him. Mikey stepped closer to where the transparent figures had been, even though he couldn't see anything he knew they were there... He saw the outline of something turn to face him in the dark. Mikey raised his fist, ready to strike out, but the growling turned into a deafening screech! Instantly the smaller turtle was thrown back.

"GET OUT!" An insidious voice howled.

The young mutant was thrown into a crumpled twitching heap across the room. His shell had even bounced a little upon the impact. For a moment Mikey's mind had gone blank, he hadn't even realized that he had been tossed until he saw the steps of the main exit just next to him. A copper taste filled his mouth before he felt it running down the side of his cheek. He must've bitten his tongue. Ouch! But the worst pain was the sharp ache that spiked down his chest where the thing had pushed him.

"Sewer apples!" Mikey cursed as he spat the blood from his mouth. This thing could hurt him, but he couldn't hurt it. The voice instantly made the teen jump to his feet and run for the exit. He'd come back when the fight was fair, maybe with his brothers to back him up... but just as he got to the metal barriers, he stopped himself.

"NO!" Mikey shouted. The anger slammed against the inside of his chest as strongly as the fear. "My father needs me. I'm not going anywhere!" he declared folding his arms stubbornly.

Even though the room was completely blacked out, Mikey felt the terrifying atmosphere freeze in an unexpected silence. Clearly this thing... whatever it was, had taken him to be a coward and just run away like a scared child. Now it realised he wasn't, Mikey knew that the threat it had posed standing between him and his father would no longer be restrained to just violent warnings. No. Now the fight was on.

For a second when the TV flickered back to life, Mikey was sure he saw his father look up from beneath the creature with an unexpected, even slightly surprised look of hope in his eyes.

…...

For what felt like ages Donnie was frozen to the spot. The girl he had dreamed about wasn't only returning his feelings, but was actually enforcing them.

Whhhhoooaaa! Is this happening? Am I dreaming? Please, I don't want to wake up now...whoa whoa whoa what is happening?

After a moment of his heart pounding, his palm sweating, and his knees shaking the turtle finally kissed her back. He brought up his hands to her shoulders pulling her closer. There was just one thing getting in the way of what he considered a perfect moment. Why?

Was she doing this because she had some vision of their oncoming death? Was she just fulfilling some last request? Or did she actually like him the way he had always liked her?

Oh, who the shell cares!

The giddy acceptance was enough for a moment, but something... something felt different than the last time she had kissed him at the farm house. Something felt... wrong.

Before he could question this any further April pulled away. She still looked sad, but at the same time calmer and more hopeful. Donnie just blinked his wide eyes at her, completely stunned by her actions. He wanted to be smooth. He wanted to kiss her again. He wanted to do anything other than sit here looking like a rabbit in headlights, but there was just something holding him back from reveling in the moment he had so often dreamed about.

Why, oh why do I have to overthink everything?!

April slowly turned her frown into a soft smile. "We can't waste any more time, Donnie. Let's just enjoy the time we have left. We can be together... That's what you want isn't it?"

"W...w-what? What y-ou …. mean? …. You mean together like... like a boyfriend?!" Donnie gulped.

Then his head exploded.

"Ok... yes...YES I would love to be your boyfriend. Should warn you I don't know much about being a boyfriend though. But don't worry, I am sure there is a leaflet I can read – wait... do they have manuals on being a boyfriend!? - wait - What am I saying?" End of the world... slightly more pressing issue... isn't it? Slightly... maybe.

April chuckled. Donnie was so cute when he was nervous. She went to kiss him again, but this time the mutant begrudgingly stopped her, leaning away.

"No... no wait this isn't right... Something's not right here." Donnie shook his head. Talk about a roller-coaster of emotions! And like all roller-coasters, it was over way too fast! "I don't want to do this!" He couldn't believe what he was saying, but still found himself saying it. "Not if you don't want me! ME! Not because of some vision that made you think that we are all going to die -"

"YOU are going to die Don... Me. Casey. My dad. My friends at school. That family who lives next door to us. That old woman who owns the paper shop. That kid who washes the windows to my apartment block. The pizza guy. Even my dentist isn't going to make it! Everyone, gone! ... I saw your path Donnie. We have no future... There is nothing we can do so we might as well just be happy here and now... Nothing else matters, not any more." She looked sad again. April was going to die? 'No!' Donnie thought frantically. This couldn't happen. He wasn't about to argue, but he couldn't believe that there was just nothing they could do. If April was having visions, it had to be for a reason.

In a sense she was saying that everything they had sacrificed and done to save this world had all been for nothing. How could she just expect him to accept that?!

As though reading his mind April's face morphed into an angry glare, "NO DONNIE!" She shouted, jumping at her chance before he could say anything. She had to get this through to him before it was too late. "There is NOTHING we can do. Not now, not ever!" She looked him over like she was about to cry again. So lost and so scared for him. This did nothing to stop the cold chill that ran down Donnie's neck. Somehow he knew deep down that she was telling the truth and that she was right. He had been living on borrowed time. Could it be that his time was up? He wanted to protect her and his family... Wait! His family! April had said he and everyone. But she hadn't actually said his brothers! Were they just included as everyone? That didn't sound right.

"What about my brothers?" He asked slowly, but he suddenly felt a buildup of tears pushing to get out of his eyes. An internal panic deep down when you knew the end was coming.

April looked away. "You can't help them. Not this time... Donnie, you have to let them go," she pleaded.

"But...but will they survive? Can I save them?" He looked up hopefully, but instead of reassurance she grabbed his hands, her eyes wild with anger.

"Why would you want to do that?! Save them and let them stay here in this Hell!? I thought you loved them!" she almost yelled. Donnie blinked. "You think this world is bad now!? You don't know what Hell is, Donatello. But you will soon." Her grip on his hand was tight. "This is your only chance to let go and come with me instead. We can leave this place together and go find Heaven again like you did before. You can find peace and we can be together like you wanted."

At that Donnie's breath caught tight in his throat. His blood ran cold, but she hadn't finished. "If we go now, it won't hurt." Her grip was painful and the look in her eyes was more desperate than ever. "If you really want to help your brothers then let's take them with us. You can end their pain before it starts. They will never know what Hell is like, and when they wake up again we will all be in the next life, safe and happy together. You can be with Master Splinter again... That's what you want, isn't it Donatello?"

At that, Donnie closed down his shocked expression. Instead, he took a deep breath, forcing his hands out of her grip. Without taking his eyes off her he stood and walked around to the other side of the table, putting some distance between them. April looked confused and even a little hurt by the cold look on his face.

"Who are you?" Donatello asked in the strongest and most dangerous tone he had had to put together in his life because he KNEW, with every fiber of his being, that it was NOT April O'Neil sitting here right now.

…...