"No…no, no, no…please, wake up!" April shook Leo by the shoulders. "He's out too, Casey! His pulse is really weak!"
"Raph's too," Casey said. "Just like Mikey and Donnie. What are we going to do?"
"I don't know." April moved back over to Mikey and placed a shaky hand over his carotid, silently begging that there would still be a pulse. "Do you think that guy at the store has something to do with this?"
Casey's expression hardened. His slammed a fist into his palm. "I'll go check it out. Keep trying to wake them up." He hurried to grab his gear, then ran out the door.
April was left alone with the turtles and her own pounding heart. Her pulse raced in fear – she wished that her heart could beat for them, and somehow keep them alive. After everything they'd been through together, she couldn't imagine anything worse than losing her friends.
If she could only somehow will them to wake up…
That was when she remembered that she did, in a way, have a way to impose her will on the surroundings. It was how she'd escaped the Kraang, and that horrible mom-thing. She'd just wanted to be safe so badly, and it had happened.
She drew a lip into her mouth. Would that work? Would she end up hurting her friends?
As she counted Donnie's flagging pulse, she knew that she didn't have a choice. Unsure of what to do, she placed her hands on Donnie's head. If everything hadn't been so deadly serious, she would have laughed at how it reminded her of the Valkan mind melds in Space Heroes.
"Okay," she muttered. "Here goes."
Donnie dodged a battery of shuriken. His evil mirror image was following close behind him. It was only a matter of time until he tripped, and the blade of his own naginata would end his life.
"You are nothing," his dream image hissed. "A failure. An idiot. Why are you running? You should be begging me to kill you, you worthless freak! You add nothing of value to this world!"
Donnie tripped and fell onto the hard pavement. "You – you're right…" He didn't even have the will to push himself back up.
"Of course I am. Ask me to kill you. I'll be glad to do it. It will be so much easier than holding on to your useless, pathetic existence."
Useless. Failure. Idiot. Freak.
"Please," Donnie moaned. "Please, just kill me."
The dream image laughed. "As you wish."
As Donnie braced himself for the inevitable strike, a scared, feminine voice broke into his perception.
"Donnie! Donnie, please!"
April. She was in trouble.
He might not add anything of value to the world, but that didn't matter. April was in trouble. As long as he had someone – anyone – who needed to be protected, he still had a reason to live.
He rolled out of the way just in time; his mirror image's naginata blade sparked against the cement.
There was no time for hesitation now. Donnie jumped from the ground and started running. "April, where are you?"
"She is nowhere." His pursuer's voice was filled with anger. "You are all alone."
Frantically, Donnie ducked down an adjoining alleyway. He had no idea how he'd gotten back to New York again, but here he was. There was a dumpster a few yards away from him –
April stood near the dumpster.
Donnie's heart leapt. "April – you're okay! How did you get here?"
"Donnie, you have to wake up!" April cried. Her face was twisted with desperation. "You're asleep, and you're dying! You have to wake up. Please, please, wake up!"
The mirror image ran down the alley and threw the naginata straight at April. There was nothing Donnie could do. She was going to die, and it would be his failure, his uselessness…
But April vanished in a cloud of mist and the naginata struck the dumpster.
"Wait a minute," Donnie said. "April's right. This…this is a dream. This isn't real. It shifts randomly, just like a dream. There's no way that I'm in New York." He turned to his grinning mirror image. "You're not real. You're just a construct of my unconscious mind."
"This is a dream. But I assure you that I am very, very real." Laughing, his mirror image shifted into a 20-foot tall beaver. "It's never as much fun when they realize they're dreaming. It takes so much of the dread out of it. But your little friend is right, though I have no idea how she managed to break through to you. You are dying. I'm feeding on you. And there isn't a thing you can do about it."
"You're – feeding on me?"
"Well, not you physically, but your life force. I always wanted to eat turtle. I suspect that they are oh-so salty and delicious."
"Salty?" Donnie raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "Really? You went with salty? That's such a stereotype – I'm a freshwater turtle!"
"My, you're sarcastic and precocious. I liked you better when you were scared of me. Let's return to that, shall we?" The beaver tripled in size. "This might be a dream, but I can still hurt you."
"Oh, crud," Donnie said, turning on his heels and breaking into a run.
April opened her eyes. Donnie was still asleep. She had to hope that what she had tried would help him snap out of it. "I can't lose you, Donnie," she whispered. "I just can't."