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Splinter noticed footprints in the dim shadows of the tunnels he'd traveled through since even before his mutation. Saki had gone down a few wrong paths and doubled back before arriving at the train station from which one could emerge on the surface and the city. He bypassed these missteps of Saki. He hoped following the single set of footsteps only might lead him to a not yet tragic end.

Saki wanted to rule the world. His new students now stood in Shredder's way. Saki would turn them back into pets! What he would do with them then Splinter didn't want to think about. He ended up hearing Saki's plan anyway.

Raphael's voice came down to him. "Well gang, looks like it's back to the old pet shop for us!" Splinter hurried to the stairs leading to the street above. He climbed up the steps of the train station into the sunlight.

While doing so, his old student's growling sneer echoed in his ears, "Far from it. Tonight I dine on turtle-soup!"

Splinter paused once he came out onto the sidewalk to understand the situation. Saki stood before his four, cringing, shelled students with the anti-mutagen ray. Splinter pulled back his arm, aimed the half of his cane he'd kept, and threw it. Like a spear, it sped through the air and collided with the gun. The weapon exploded in Shredder's hand. His enemy let out a "NO!"

Leonardo saw him behind their foe. He called out with a huge grin, "Master Splinter!"

A robot, with what indeed looked like a brain with a face where a stomach should be, turned away from Saki. Instead of leaving his old student, however, the robot crouched. A warbling, low voice then said, "Climb on my back!"

Hid old student did. Suddenly, the robot's arms became wings. It lifted off the cement, and then glided down into a large hole in the street.

Splinter watched it disappear. Saki would not be fully defeated by him today it seemed. His new students ran up to him.

Leonardo stopped and waved his arms. "Master, that device was your only hope of being human again!"

Splinter met his student's pained gaze and waved his own arms to gesture to them all. "I had to destroy it to save you." Leonardo looked back his expression crumbling as if he would cry. Splinter sighed inside. Leonardo had always wanted justice for him. He wondered which one of them would take this harder.

Michelangelo asked, "What happened to Kraang and the Shred-head?"

Michelangelo was almost like Raphael when it came to insulting their foes. Raphael himself approached the edge of the very large and very "deep" hole in the street their two foes had disappeared into. "How much ya wanna bet they're going to try to open that dimensional portal?"

A rope with a grappling hook at its end hung from the edge of this gaping wound in the city's surface. Raphael grabbed hold of this rope and began to slide downward on it back into the darkness. Donatello spoke up. "Listen, if you can get the Shredder away from that portal, I think I can shut his operation down." As his smart student said all this, first the rest of his students, and then he, followed Raphael down into the great hole.

They were able, once they put their feet on solid earth, to see and sneak into the Technodrome. No one seemed to be guarding it. That frightened him.

Soon they found their foes. Kraang seemed to be giving orders only. His old student was doing the actual manipulation of the portal making machine, pulling levers and pressing buttons. Splinter was surprised. Saki seemed to have submitted his enormous pride to this "Kraang." He must crave greatly even a taste of this being's power.

Two of his turtles attacked. Raphael snuck up behind and grabbed Saki. He threw him to the floor, saying "Not so fast chrome-breath!" Raphael could only stay silent, like a skilled ninja, for a few moments at a time until he had the upper hand.

Michelangelo did a jump kick into the robot-body of the very being no one had believed he'd seen earlier. However, as they did this, a man of stone in a green, army helmet, grey belt, and black boots holding a pistol-like weapon, stepped out of the glowing blue film hanging in the ginormous doorway before them all. His eyes widened in fear. This could only be one of the stone soldiers the teenagers from Dimension X had described. And how would his students do facing them? However, the soldier only stopped a few steps out of the portal, raised his ray gun, and fired a few shots while saying "Stop those turtles!" If he had hoped, the stone warrior was talking to someone already inside the Technodrome that hope was soon stomped out by the boots of many, many other stone soldiers marching through the same portal behind their obvious commander.

Raphael only continued a dancing fight of jab and dodge with Saki. Donatello had already gone to what his smart student must have surmised to be a control panel, or at least a place he could access a part of the machine he could then use to control it. As the army of stone released a barrage of rays upon the rest of them, his brightest student in the ways of machines closed the panel he'd opened turned to them and grinned. "That's it! Let's beat it!" Then he began to run.

A Samurai might have called this cowardly, and might have insisted on staying and fighting till death to make certain everything went right. At the very least, a Samurai teacher and commander of a Samurai student as young as Donatello would have asked the reason for such sudden, unexplained, and disorganized flight. But they were ninja.

Raphael disengaged from his spar with Saki and chased after his bo wielding fellow student. As soon as he saw his students pass him, he also fled after them, and began to understand. He felt his kimono, his fur, his tail being sucked backwards even as he ran on. Raphael asked, "What's going on?" No one stopped to answer him.

They dived out of the Technodrome and it caved in on itself, turning all the way inside out, before disappearing into thin air like water down a drain. Leonardo got up and, with a big, happy grin asked "How did you do that Donatello?"

Donatello answered while getting up with a huge grin on his face too. "I reversed the flow of the portal! It pulled itself into Dimension X."

Michelangelo got up, raised his fist into the air, and celebrated. "Oh, rock dudes! We did it! We won!"

Despite the grin still on his face, his best student turned to him as he rose to his own paws. "Yes, but Master Splinter may never be human now!" At the end of these words, Leonardo's great smile became a deep frown.

He rolled his eyes. In the grand scheme of things, his predicament seemed rather light. An army from another dimension might have poured out over the entire earth starting in the underground of New York City spurred on by one banished from a world at war, for going too far in that war. Saki, being a part of it all that could have only made things worse. As Michelangelo said, they had won. They, mostly his turtles, had prevented all that. If he might never be human again, the likelihood of them ever becoming simple turtles again seemed small as well.

He put his arms around them and turned them toward home. "The important thing is that you are safe and we are together."

The only smart remark Raphael replied with was, "I second that emotion." Thus, he knew his students were happy. And he was happy as well, even as a rat.

. . .

Later, he and his students gathered around the TV and watched April's report on them. Without doubt or embarrassment, she declared them heroes who'd saved the city, but then showed others spoken opinions of them into a microphone, which were, as she said "sharply divided." She also said who they were and where they came from was a "complete mystery," and declared she'd continue to report on the exploits of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

Raphael yelled in happiness and spoke of how they could now "relax" and continue to watch TV. He also declared they could forget about all the weirdness they just went through. Splinter supposed the last several days, few weeks actually, had been quite different than their former life. But he doubted any of the humans they'd just watched onscreen would call any day in the life of his students normal.

He also had serious doubts they would simply slip back into their own normal until his students were even older than he was now. He gave Raphael a somewhat pitying look and raised his index finger to point to their underground ceiling. "For now, but I fear we have not seen the last of the Shredder or Kraang." He had only just been caught up on all the trouble that ally of his enemy had caused his students and the city from his turtles and April's news report.

Donatello said with a serious, but concerned (for him apparently) gaze. "You worry too much Master."

Michelangelo added more loudly and enthusiastically, "Yeah, I bet we never even hear so much as a peep out of them again."

Then the TV declared next it would be showing the movie "The Evil Brain from Dimension X!" His students scowls, angry shouts, and even drawing weapons upon the device told him this might be one, sci-fi thriller his students would not watch tonight at least.

What do you think?

God bless

ScribeofHeroes