Next update! Yay! I have returned from my Spanish escapades older and wiser. Haha, or at least a little smarter. (I speak Spanish now!) I shall try to update every day when possible. As it's summer time, I don't have a whole lot else to do, so there you go. I would like to thank my reviewers (you know who you are) for taking the time to encourage me and give me some feedback. Most of you guys reviewed my first story, so I kind of feel like I'm returning to old friends. :D Anywho, on to the action!

Disclaimer: En honor a mis estudios en Espana, yo voy a escribir el descargo de responsabilidad en espanol: yo no soy dueno de nada.

Sidelined was not a word any agent wanted to hear. It usually meant months of inaction, hidden away in a remote location. Hidden, hiding, forced out of commission, it all adds up to the fact that we couldn't do anything. We couldn't do our jobs, we couldn't live in our home, and most importantly we couldn't complete our last mission.

I tried to concentrate on the work in front of me, but just couldn't work up the interest. I set it down with a tired sigh and leaned back in my chair. I folded my hands over my stomach and tilted my head back, staring at the ceiling. The thatched, palm frond roof was kind of endearing, in a quaint, island bungalow kind of way, but I was getting tired of staring at it. My brothers were too.

Two months. We'd been on this island for two months. Two months after the explosion in that strange lab. Two months after we'd discovered our parents. What we thought might be our parents… Two months was a long time. A long time to sit and stare at a ceiling. A long time to be held here, held here for our own protection, but held nonetheless.

Until TMNT could figure out what was going on, who was bombing locations our team had been dispatched to, they couldn't let us go on any more missions. Instead, they shipped us south, all the way from New York to a tiny island off the Florida Keys. They told us to consider it a vacation, our own Caribbean getaway. That went over well. We were all chafing at the restraints after a scant two weeks.

You just couldn't tell four teenage boys to lie low when their whole world had just been turned on its head. We wanted to be out there. We wanted to be the ones hunting down the bombers. We wanted to be the ones searching for the truth about our parents. We wanted to be doing anything other than sitting on the sidelines.

I scrubbed a hand through my hair and rolled up onto my feet. I briefly contemplated trying to finish what I'd been working on, but decided against it. Maybe I'd go find one of the guys and…

The sudden pop of gunfire had me launching myself to the floor. I threw myself down and shielded my head with my arms. I remained motionless for several long seconds, straining my ears for more sounds, some indication of where the shot had come from. When nothing else happened, I army crawled to the door and cautiously poked my head around. After surveying the scene, I could only think, this is so not good.

Black clad figures armed with heavy weaponry were swarming up the island from the south beach. Overhead, I could hear the whir of incoming choppers. As if there weren't enough enemy troops on the ground already, those choppers could only be bringing reinforcements.

I slipped back around the doorjamb and lay still for a moment, weighing my options. I cringed as I heard another shot. What were they shooting at? Or more importantly, what were they firing? It wasn't bullets; the sound was wrong. I knew I had heard that strange "whumpf" sound before, but couldn't place it… Gas canisters! That's what it was. This revelation gave me some small amount of comfort. If they were gassing the place, that meant they weren't out to kill us, capture us, but not kill us.

This was both good and bad. On the one hand, if they weren't trying to kill us, it would make escaping the island easier because we wouldn't have to evade barrages of bullets; on the other hand, if we were to get captured, they would want us alive for something. Be it information, as hostages, or something else entirely, it couldn't possibly be good.

I chewed my lip, uncertainty gnawing at me. My brothers were on the other side of the island, up at North Beach. To get to them, I'd have to get through the wave of commandos, and that didn't seem like a real possibility. If I could slip out the back of this bungalow, I could probably scale the rocks down to the shore and escape on my own. From there, I would just have to trust that my brothers could make their own escape.

Decided on my course of action, I crawled around to the back of the bungalow, careful to keep below the windows. I eased the door open and rolled out—straight into the arms of a group of commandos.

Anyone care to guess who this is? I'll give you a hint: it's not the same guy from the last chapter. :D Drop me a review!