The Search for Splinter - Part 1
High above the city streets, under a full moon, Leo was walking along a tightrope from one building to another, his arms spread out to help maintain balance.
"Imagine… the roar of the crowds. The smell of greasepaint. That sensation of the death defying thrill of a highwire. Thing is, we're not in a circus."
Down below, various cars were driving up and down the street.
And following Leo were Alex, Donnie, Raph and Mikey.
"And if you think it's tough for one person to walk on a tightrope, try doing it with four other people at the same time. If we fall, we'll be a fresh coat of paint for the pavement. But if we make it, we'll finally find Master Splinter after he disappeared."
Mikey nearly slipped off, so he flipped onto his hands to gain balance once more and continue onward with his hands.
"But we may also figure out something that has plagued our family from the beginning: how and why my brothers became Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
In the lair, Alex, the Turtles, except for Raph, and April gathered around the coffee table, looking at a map of New York City, the brothers all having their weapons out.
"Okay, we've searched Shredder's building and every other place the Foot have been encountered." She said, drawing circles with a red sharpie on the map. "We've scoured every sewer tunnel, back street and dark alley in the city with only one area left."
"The worst part is we don't even know if Master Splinter is still -" Donnie sighed as he stood and put his bo staff away.
"I - I don't even want to think about that." Mikey replied, spinning his nunchucks.
"We cannot have that kind of thinking, guys!" Alex snarled as he gripped his katana tightly. "He's alive, he must be."
"And that's the case until we learn otherwise." Leo agreed with him as he put his katanas away.
Raph was blowing steam off on his punching bag, as it's now been weeks since Splinter disappeared.
Eventually, he pulled his sais out and sliced the bag open, spilling out sand, before turning to April and his brothers.
"I'm done coming home empty handed! We find Splinter tonight!" He declared.
Mikey drove the Sewer Slider through the sewers, making his way down a tunnel that curved to the left and then stopped when he reached a straight tunnel.
He pulled out a flashlight and shined it out in front of him, only seeing a large hole in the wall in front of him.
Mikey moaned in disappointment, finding no sign of Splinter.
Raph drove on his Shell Cycle, making his way through the streets until he drove down some stairs and then continued down another street, yet to find any sign of their father.
Donnie used a hand glider to hover over the city, eventually making his way past one of the bridges that led to Queens, where he looked through his heat sensor goggles, only seeing a couple of cars driving up and down a street.
Alex walked his way through Central Park, wearing a black leather jacket that had a white oriental dragon on the back and studded shoulders reminiscent of his favourite musical artist, searching through every single bush, rock, really anywhere in the park for Splinter, but he kept sighing as he couldn't find anything.
And April drove the Battle Shell through a junkyard, but wasn't doing a good job as she kept banging into junk.
She looked at the scanner, which was set up over the windshield, and couldn't find a sign of Splinter.
Leo jumped from a rooftop onto an old abandoned and boarded up warehouse, searching through it quickly with a flashlight, finding nothing.
He soon jumped out of a boarded up door and jumped onto a dumpster when his Shell-cell rang.
"Please tell me someone found something." Leo said hopefully, the light of his Shell-cell making him visible.
"Nada from the sewers." Mikey replied through a headset.
"Nothing on the roofs, either." Donnie said sadly through his headset.
"Same for Central Park." Alex replied, now standing in Belvedere Castle. "All I've found are homeless people."
"Or the junkyard." April replied, the scanner picking up on normal rats. "Lots of rats, but none of them ours."
"Man, where is he?" Raph raged as he drove his Shell Cycle by some homes for the homeless.
"Keep it cool, Raph. We'll find him." Leo tried calming him down as Raph drove alongside a high train track.
He then pulled over and looked around until he saw a street punk with blonde hair and purple sunglasses approach a blue car and open the driver's seat.
"Hey! What?" The driver gasped as he was thrown out and the punk got in the car and drove off with it. "Help! That's my car!"
"Buddy, have you picked the wrong night." Raph snarled before revving up his motorcycle and started racing after the punk.
The punk rested his left arm against the driver's seat window when he gasped upon seeing Raph chasing after him in the rear view mirror.
This made him speed up and a chase ensued alongside the high train track until the punk drove under the track with Raph still following him.
He ended up crashing into crates and junk, which did little to stop Raph, who chuckled and used a wooden board as a ramp before he continued chasing after the punk.
The punk looked back and groaned at his persistent chaser, making a right turn at a gas station, knocking over a gas pump, making gas and oil shoot up like a geyser before blowing up the gas station in a large explosion.
Raph growled as he raced up towards the fire, doing a wheelie to keep himself safe from the fire as he raced through it before having both wheels on the pavement as the gas station roof fell over.
Both the punk and Raph drove past a lamppost, where a figure spun on the top before landing on the street, revealing himself in the light to be Leo.
"Oh, great." He muttered, knowing why this chase was happening.
The punk soon drove into some garbage that flew towards Raph, who skidded to avoid being hit.
"It would have to be garbage day!" Raph growled.
The punk now started driving past the warehouse Leo checked earlier and Raph raced through a boarded up door and drove up the stairs to the top floor.
The punk looked behind him and chuckled upon seeing that Raph was gone, thinking he'd lost him.
But then Raph burst out of a boarded up window from the top floor and landed on the hood of the car before launching the Shell Cycle off for him to stab his sais into the hood and make the engine malfunction and skid to a stop into some trash bags.
Raph lifted his sais out, making a lot of smoke gush out, making the punk start coughing.
Raph then pulled the punk out of the car with one hand.
"You feel like taking what don't belong to you, punk? Huh?" Raph snarled with venom as he held the punk up, ready to punch him.
"Let him go, Raph!" Leo sternly ordered as he showed up with Alex, Donnie and Mikey, which Raph saw, making him frown as he put the punk down.
"Beat it." He spat and the punk got up and ran away in fear as Raph took his helmet off.
"This isn't helping us find Master Splinter, Raph." Alex frowned as he folded his arms.
"It helps more than you think!" Raph snapped as he threw his helmet at the ground, smashing the visor.
"Gotta admit, the dude knows how to blow off steam." Mikey admitted.
"Maybe, but if we're gonna find Master Splinter, we have to keep a lid on it." Leo pointed out as Alex started thinking, recollecting the night they fought and defeated the Shredder.
"Well, prowling ain't cutting it anymore, Leo. We need something to go on." Raph argued just as Alex realised something.
"The Guardians." He said aloud.
"You're right." Donnie nodded. "Think about it, right after Splinter disappeared, they disappeared."
"Yeah. Hey, they could have taken him easy." Mikey pointed out how that theory holds up.
"Somehow we need to hook up with one of those guys." Raph suggested.
"Raph, looks like we might have something to go on." Leo agreed with him.
"And I think I might know a way to arrange a meeting." Alex smirked deviously.
The Battle Shell then came up behind them, its engine stuttering and smoke coming out of the exhausts.
When it parked next to them, the driver's seat door lifted open and April peeked her head out.
"Sorry. After your patch job on this rig, even my grandma's tractor handles better." She said.
Then sirens were heard nearby.
"Oh. Come on, guys. Cops are combing the neighbourhood." She then said as all five brothers approached the vehicle.
"Maybe I should drive." Donnie told her, thinking she's the reason the Battle Shell's acting up.
"Nah, I think I'm getting the hang of it." April shrugged off.
They all got in and April started speeding down the street, drifting slightly and making Donnie slam into the passenger window.
"I'm starting to think you're the problem, April!" Alex shouted as he hung on so that he didn't fall on his butt.
Later that night, both the blue haired Guardian and the female Guardian with the buzzcut stood on top of a building under the moonlight.
They turned to move on, but stopped upon seeing something that made their hearts sink: the Foot Symbol on what used to be Foot headquarters was lit up.
"This can't be. He was defeated." The female Guardian said.
"This isn't the first time we've been led to believe such a thing." The blue haired man replied as he activated the hologram to speak with the council.
"Guardian, what is so urgent?" The chubby man asked.
"The symbol upon the Shredder's building has been reactivated." He informed them.
"Yet you have reported the Shredder destroyed." The elderly man said.
"He has deceived us before." The blue haired man reminded them.
"Investigate." The chubby man ordered.
After turning off the hologram, the two Guardians made their way to the top of Foot headquarters, which was now in ruins and completely scorched from the flames, hiding behind an old tree before dashing towards the large chamber, stopping and gasping upon seeing what they never hoped to be true.
Standing near the back of the chamber was the outline of the Shredder.
"The Shredder, alive!" The blue haired man growled.
"But that's impossible!" The woman gasped.
The pair then pulled their swords out, lighting them up, before jumping at Shredder over the hole that Stockman left when he barged in with his cyborg body and sliced Shredder across his torso and face, knocking him down.
This didn't seem right. The two shouldn't have taken him down that easily, so they looked down at his body.
"Huh?" They muttered upon seeing that it was actually a dummy, its contents spilling out, revealing to be sand. The helmet was fake and the head was a bowling ball with two red berries on it to resemble the Shredder's eyes.
And there was a note taped onto the dummy, reading 'KICK ME'.
"What?" The man snarled.
"Looks like someone wants our attention." The woman guessed.
"And you're right." Alex's voice said sternly behind them, making the pair turn with their swords pointed at Alex, who frowned at them with his arms folded. "Really? That's how you greet us? We just want to talk."
His turtle brothers all jumped down and surrounded the two Guardians.
"Alex is right, we're not here to fight." Leo swore.
"If you lay a trap for us, then be prepared to fight." The blue haired man snarled.
"That's enough out of you!" The woman snapped at him with a fierce look. "They aren't our enemy, remember?"
"Please, we're just looking for answers, that's all." Donnie insisted.
"Look elsewhere." The blue haired man replied.
While he and the woman were focused on Donnie, Alex pulled out a small tracking device Donnie invented and dropped it onto the sword of the male Guardian.
"Our master's missing. We intend to find him." Raph told the Guardians, who looked at each other, like they had a silent conversation, before turning their swords off and putting them away.
"We cannot help you." The blue haired man said before he and the woman walked away.
"Yes, you can! Because you and your fellow Guardians took him away that night! Don't bother denying it! We want our father back!" Alex growled, his face scrunched up in anger. "At least tell us if he's okay!"
The pair stopped and turned to him and his brothers.
"We can't say, unfortunately." The woman replied before the blue haired man set off a smoke pellet, vanishing as the five brothers looked away.
"Alex?" Leo turned to his human brother.
"Tracker planted and they don't even know about it." Alex said stiffly.
The five started chasing after the two Guardians down a street, with Donnie using a tracker to pinpoint their location and where they're headed.
They then stopped for a moment.
"They're still on foot, passing 4th and D." Donnie told them.
The two Guardians jumped from one rooftop to another, running alongside it until they jumped off of it and landed on a nearby fire escape and then jumped onto the middle of a street and started running.
Alex and the Turtles followed after them on the same rooftops and looked down to see them turning a corner.
"Come on!" Donnie told his brothers before they all jumped down onto the street.
The Guardians made a sharp turn into an alleyway and ran their way down it while Donnie kept looking at his tracker.
"Man, they're fast!" He said as through his panting. "They've already made it to 12th."
He and his brothers stopped by the alleyway the Guardians ran down, yet there was no sign of them.
"This way." Leo said and they all ran into the alleyway, which turned out to be a pretty long one at that.
The two Guardians soon ran across a street and hid in a doorway, peeking out to see a yellow car drive by before dashing their way down the street while Alex and the Turtles reached the other end of the alleyway.
The five of them continued following after the Guardians, who shortly turned left into an alleyway, the five hiding on either side.
Alex, being right next to the alley on the right side, with Leo and Raph, peeked out from behind, shocked to find that the two Guardians seemed to have disappeared.
"How does that even make sense? They're gone." He said, stepping out with his brothers.
"It appears the signal disappeared right across the street." Donnie said.
They made their down the alley, finding themselves facing what looked like an office building on the other side of the street with a circular front part and a rectangular back part, all covered in glass windows.
"It's just an office building." Leo said.
"So was Shredder's, and that place nearly took us out." Raph reminded him.
"This must be their base of operations." Alex concluded as Donnie put his duffel bag down and put his tracker inside it.
"Let's find out for sure." He said, pulling out a small device.
Inside the building, a security guard sat behind a desk, looking at four monitors that showed the security camera footage of the roof.
On the wall behind him was a sign that read 'TCRI: Techno-Cosmic Research Institute'.
Suddenly, there was tapping on the front door, which the guard heard.
He walked up to it and opened it, only to find no one there.
While he stood there in confusion, the device Donnie pulled out crawled into the building behind him.
After one last look around, the guard closed the door and walked back to the desk and sat back down to resume his duties, unaware of the device behind him.
It lifted itself up with legs before it had an antenna pop out of its back as a tube with a camera lens popped out from the front, looking around.
Back in the alley across the building, the Battle Shell was parked and Alex, the Turtles and April were inside, watching a screen that showed what the device was seeing, Donnie using some controls to move said device around. He sat in the passenger seat while April was in the driver's seat.
"Now, let's see what's behind door number one." Donnie said as he moved the device, seeing double doors ahead of him.
But as it started moving for the doors, the guard stood up and moved his chair back, knocking into the device, making it spin around, which didn't sit well with Mikey as he watched the screen.
"Whoa. I'm getting car sick." He moaned, cupping his face.
Donnie started fiddling with the controls until the device stopped spinning, looking up at the sign when it did.
"Uh, guys, here's a new wrinkle." Donnie said, making everyone look at the screen and see the sign.
"I don't get it." Raph said, not seeing what's so significant about the sign.
"Techno-Cosmic Research Institute?" Donnie said with a tone that made what he's suggesting obvious.
"So?" Leo said, still not getting it.
"Yeah?" Raph added.
"Huh?" Mikey added.
But Alex frowned before his eyes widened with realisation and shock.
"TCRI." He said, which made his brothers, except Donnie, look at him and realisation dawned on them as well.
"TCRI? That's the - the - " Raph stuttered, struggling to say what they all knew.
"The - the -" Even Mikey struggled.
"The what? Tell me!" April said impatiently, not understanding what the big deal is.
"TCRI was printed on the canister of ooze that mutated us four into what we are." Leo explained to her, gesturing to himself and his turtle brothers.
"The secret to our origin could very well lie within the walls of that building." Donnie realised.
"Not to mention Master Splinter and those two mutants that showed up with the Guardians." Alex reminded him.
After taking a moment to soak in this huge revelation of the office building, Donnie moved the device around, now looking down a hallway.
"Okay, let's snoop around." He said before moving the device down the hallway.
When he started feeling cramped, he looked to see that everyone had leaned in.
"You guys are sucking the oxygen right out of my personal space here." He told them all off.
"Sorry." They all said one after another and backed off.
But when Donnie started controlling the device, they all just leaned back in again.
Donnie moved the device down the hallway, he noticed a door next to him on his left, so he turned and looked up, seeing a sign that read 'SECURITY'.
"Jackpot! The security control room. The brains to their security system." Donnie said, now getting interested.
"Do you think you can look under the door and see what we're dealing with?" Alex asked him.
"I believe so." Donnie replied.
The device's camera lens then stretched out and peeked through the gap underneath the door. But on the screen, everyone saw a pair of boots walking right towards the door.
"Uh-oh." Donnie gulped.
The door opened and the device spun out of control, moving all over the hallway, firstly into a wall and then stopping in the middle of the hallway.
But before Donnie could make it move, a pair of large wheels ran over it, crushing it into pieces with a pair of boots walking over its remains, courtesy of a worker wearing a green lab coat, pushing a trolley full of tanks.
This caused the screen to go static and Donnie gritted his teeth in annoyance.
"Well, now what?" April asked.
"Master Splinter has to be in there." Alex said as he clenched his fist.
"Not to mention answers we've been looking for our whole lives. So that means we're going in there." Leo replied.
They all went back to the lair, where they started forming a plan to infiltrate TCRI.
Alex and Leo stood next to the TVs, all showing different angles of the TCRI building while Raph and Donnie sat on the couch and April sat on a fold up chair with a laptop.
"April, what have you learned about TCRI?" Alex asked.
"Okay. TCRI is a highly successful new technologies company that's been around for the past twenty five years and whose head corporate liaison is a Mr. Mortu." April replied, bringing up a newspaper article about this Mortu, its headline reading 'MERCILESS MORTU' with a picture of the man next to it in black and white.
A couple of the TVs now showed blueprint schematics of TCRI.
"These are the blueprints submitted to the City Planner's office when the building was constructed." Leo said, pointing at said blueprints, showing a fairly standard office building.
Mikey then lowered himself between Raph and Donnie on a harness with wires, hanging upside down, as the pair were busy packing some things.
"Looks as boring on the inside as it does on the out." He remarked.
"Meaning they're doing a good job of hiding whatever it is they're actually doing." Alex pointed out.
"Here's some of what our Cam Shell recorded before it became roadkill." April said as she displayed a still on one of the TVs, the desk with the security cameras on the roof. "Surveillance cameras cover the perimeter and the roof, all laced with alarm sensors."
"So what we need is someone smart, capable, and techno savvy enough to get in, find the alarm cutoff and cut it off." Leo concluded.
"Me!" Mikey said as he lowered himself between Alex and Leo.
"No, you'd fail in every way. Plus, Leo was talking about April." Alex shot him down.
"Me?" April said with surprise.
"You'll sneak in past the guard, enter the security control room, and deactivate the cameras and alarms." Leo explained as Mikey pulled himself up.
"Okay." April said slowly, sounding unsure.
"Here's a schematic of some basic security panels you're likely to find inside." Donnie said, handing her a small device that showed the schematic he was talking about.
"Once you shut the alarms off, contact us via Shell-cell and we'll gain access through the roof ventilation system." Alex explained.
"Makes total sense." She said, seeing how that can work.
"After we're in, you'll reset the alarm and surveillance cameras, then sneak back outside unnoticed." Donnie then told her.
Mikey then dropped down beside her, still upside down.
"It all rests on your shoulders, girl. No pressure." He shrugged.
"Uh-huh. That's all good." April replied with a mock cheeriness. "There's just a teeny tiny detail of that plan missing."
"Yes?" Alex asked, raising an eyebrow.
"There's a guard sitting right there!" She pointed out.
"Yeah? Well, we're gonna use one of the oldest tricks in a ninja's arsenal." Alex grinned with his arms folded.
"That being the art of distraction." Leo added, pointing over at the door for the elevator.
It opened up to reveal Casey Jones, all geared up and with his hockey mask lifted off his face.
"Somebody call for a distraction?" He asked eagerly as he patted a baseball bat.
April groaned as she covered her face.
"Oh, my life is in the hands of a lunatic." She muttered.
Mikey yelped, drawing everyone's attention to see that he was spinning uncontrollably on the harness before being tangled up as he stopped.
"Somebody wanna help me out here?" He begged.
"I don't see why we should, since you brought that upon yourself?" Alex teased.
"PLEASE!" Mikey whined.
After setting everything up for their plan, April, now dressed in a business suit and skirt, walked up to the TCRI building, pushing the front door open to enter.
"You can definitely do it, April." Donnie reassured her through an earpiece as she approached the security desk.
"May I help you?" The guard asked her.
"Yes. I am Dr. Van der Pepper of TMNT University. I'm here to see Mr. Mortu." April replied, pretending to be someone else.
"Uh, Mr. Mortu doesn't take appointments." The guard replied.
"Listen, I've come a long way for this meeting at his request, so either get him on the phone or I'm gone!" April snapped at him dramatically, making him pick up the phone to call Mortu.
"Seriously? Van der Pepper? What kind of a name is that?" Alex questioned through her earpiece.
A moment later, Casey entered, wearing a trench coat and holding a toaster.
"I wanna see the boss man right now!" He demanded angrily, drawing attention from April and the guard, who put the phone down.
"Remember, Casey, just distract him long enough for April to slip in and slip out." Leo reminded him through his earpiece as he walked up to the desk.
"Yeah, don't screw this up, bonehead." Raph added.
"If anyone's gonna screw this up, it'll be you, freak face!" Casey snapped at Raph, instantly cringing at his mistake as April did.
"Way to go, bonehead." Alex groaned.
"Yes?" The guard asked coolly.
"I got a complaint about one of your products!" Casey said as he slammed the toaster onto the desk.
"TCRI doesn't manufacture toasters, sir." The guard told him calmly as April started backing away towards the hallway.
"Oh yeah? Says it right here!" Casey retorted, showing the bottom of the toaster, showing a downright flawless drawing of the TCRI logo, done by Alex, knowing Mikey would've messed it up if he did it.
"Huh." The guard muttered in confusion, seeing the logo and being fooled by it.
"Now I wanna see the head geek or I'm gonna tear this place apart!" Casey snapped before pulling out a baseball bat and smashed the toaster.
This made the guard press a red button, which had a female guard run out of the door next to April towards Casey.
"Give me a toaster or give me death!" Casey roared before jumping onto the desk and tackled the two guards to the floor. He then looked up to April and winked at her, reminding her of the plan and she ran through the door the female guard came out of.
She ran her way down a hallway towards the security room, entering and closing the door behind her.
"Whoa." She gasped in amazement, seeing all sorts of really advanced technology with a tube in the centre of the room. "Impressive."
She then pulled out the device Donnie gave her and looked at the schematics.
"Okay, I'm looking for the splitter from the main junction box, which should look like…" She said before looking around, seeing that nothing was familiar at all. "...absolutely nothing here."
Outside, Leo fired an arrow at the TCRI building with a rope attached, hitting right at the edge of the roof, scaring away some pigeons.
Then all five brothers made their way across the tightrope, making it to the roof of TCRI.
"Guys, this isn't gonna work!" April informed them in distress.
"What's the problem, April?" Donnie asked through his headset.
"I don't recognise the technology. Nothing makes sense in here. I can't turn off the roof alarms or the cameras." April explained.
"Please tell me we have a plan B." Alex asked hopefully, leaving everyone silent for a moment, which allowed Donnie to come up with a plan B.
"April, we'll handle the cameras, just get the alarm turned off any way you can." He told April.
Inside the security room, April sighed as she walked past the tube in the centre of the room.
"Whatever. Don't come whining to me if we all get captured and tortured and stuff." April replied in annoyance.
"Just find a way, will you? Whining isn't gonna help." Alex retorted.
"Yes, sir." April replied sarcastically before putting the device away and looked at the tube, approaching it. "A floor plan would be nice."
She ended up touching the tube, causing a holographic monitor to form with strange symbols on it, making her step back in surprise.
Then what looked like tendrils of electricity formed and rose to the top of the tube, making a projector activate a hologram behind April that displayed the exterior of the building.
"Cool!" She said, even more impressed before walking up to it. She noticed that the roof didn't resemble what it actually looked like, which she guessed were the sensors on the roof.
"Now, how do I turn off the roof sensors?" She asked aloud, unsure of what to do.
As though doing as requested, the roof now looked like the real deal.
"Roof sensors off." A computer voice then said.
"Hmm. Guys, you're good to go." April said proudly.
Back in the lobby, Casey started swinging his baseball bat at the male guard, who kept dodging it, while the female grabbed the chair and threw it at Casey.
He saw it and swung his bat at it, smashing it into pieces and laughed. But then the male guard tried to stop him by grabbing his bat.
As the two started fighting over it, the female guard looked down at the monitors and was confused.
"What?" She said, seeing a pigeon flapping directly in front of one of the cameras on the roof.
But it wasn't really a pigeon. It was really a puppet that Donnie used to block the camera's view.
"Hurry with that picture." Donnie urged Alex, who stood right behind the camera, holding a Polaroid camera to take a picture of the camera's view.
He flashed the camera, making a picture come out, which Alex held and shook, making the picture clear up.
He then stuck a pole through the top and attached some tape on the other end, placing it on top of the camera, making the picture go behind the puppet.
"Done." Alex said and Donnie moved the pupped away, the female guard being fooled, at least for the moment.
"I don't know what bothers me more, that this thing actually works, or that Don carries around a pigeon puppet." Mikey said as they all walked towards the ventilation system and after Donnie put away the puppet and camera in his duffel bag.
"I'd go with the latter." Alex said before looking over at Donnie. "Why would you even need a pigeon puppet, anyway?"
Donnie just shrugged.
Back in the lobby, Casey was able to push the male guard against the desk as the female guard backed away.
Casey swung the bat down on the guard, who moved away and backed up towards a piece of art made of glass and circled around it before he moved away as Casey swung his bag again, destroying the piece of art in the process.
Raph stood next to the ventilation shaft as his brothers gathered around.
He then kicked it off and was shocked to find that it was fake.
"Hey, it's a fake. It doesn't go nowhere. What kind of people would put a fake vent on the roof?" Raph asked Donnie as he stood opposite him.
"The kind who want this place to look normal." Donnie replied.
"Therefore, people who want to keep themselves a secret from everyone." Alex concluded.
"So now what?" Mikey asked as Donnie and Raph jumped off and joined their brothers.
"We cut through a window." Leo replied.
All five brothers crawled down the side of the building via suction cups and stopped at a window on the seventh floor.
Donnie pulled out a high tech glass cutter from his duffel bag and placed it on the window, activating it, making a blade pop out to cut the glass, but it did nothing to the window.
"Okay, you made that with diamond edged blades and yet they can't cut through. Where do these people get their stuff?" Alex asked in bewilderment as Donnie turned the glass cutter off and put it back in his duffel bag.
"We better think of something, 'cause who knows how long that bat happy idiot in the lobby can keep it up." Raph said as they all started climbing their way back to the roof.
In the lobby, Casey now stood on top of the desk, smashing his bat against it, shattering the monitors and controls.
"What kind of customer service is this, huh?" He yelled before he continued smashing his bat on the desk and then swung at the guards as they tried approaching him. "I simply refuse to be treated this way! Attica! Attica!"
The two guards stood next to each other and turned to face one another, their irises now glowing green for a moment.
They turned to Casey and the male guard pulled out a device, which he pressed, causing metal sliding doors to close down on all the doors in the lobby.
"Whoa!" Casey gasped, as he didn't expect this.
The female guard then walked up to him and grabbed the bat before kicking the desk away, making Casey fall onto his chest. He then looked up and watched the female guard snap his bat in two with ease as the male guard joined her side as they looked down at him.
"Uh, fellas, I got a newsflash for you. Things are not what they seem in here." Casey informed Alex and the Turtles through his earpiece.
"Just keep 'em busy, Casey." Raph hissed while Casey had a look of concern on his face. "How tough can a couple of guards be?"
The two guards then pulled out retractable poles from their suits, each end lighting up with electricity.
"I think I'm about to find out." Casey replied with a gulp.
Back in the security room, April was pacing around the hologram showing the exterior of the building.
"April, the roof and windows are a no go!" Donnie informed her.
"You want another way in? No problem. This thing's a piece of cake." She replied confidently, rubbing her hands before walking around the hologram. "Okay, find me an entrance point."
She stopped when a ninth floor window on the west side of the oval part of the building flashed in yellow.
"Exhaust cover currently active." The computer voice said.
"Here we go. There's some kind of exhaust opening on the west side, ninth floor." April told Alex and the Turtles.
"We'll check it out. Thanks." Leo replied.
The five climbed their way to where April told them with their suction cups with Donnie below the window, Mikey above, Raph on the right and both Alex and Leo on the left.
"There's nothing here." Raph said.
"Quiet. I just heard something." Alex shushed and everyone kept quiet. They all heard a very faint sound from the window. "It's air." Alex then held his hand out, feeling the air brush his hand.
"Must be some kind of hologram." He said.
"Amazing." Donnie admitted as he held his hand out, feeling the air as well.
"Yeah, finally! A way in!" Mikey grinned as he reached for the hologram.
His brothers all cried out to stop and wait, but he didn't listen as peeked the top half of his body through the hologram, finding himself looking down a hallway.
"Whoa!" He said in shock before four beams of energy formed and came together and came towards him, making him scream.
"Uh-oh." He gulped, pulling himself out before the energy shot out of the opening, causing him to lose balance.
"Mikey!" Donnie cried out before Mikey fell on top of him and the two fell towards the street, yelling as they did so, while their brothers watched on with horror.
Things are gonna get interesting to say the least.
And that leather jacket Alex wore? It's very much inspired by Michael Jackson's Beat It jacket, more so the version he wore during the Dangerous World Tour with some bits from what he would've worn for Black Or White for the This Is It Tour with the studding.