Author's note: Read the previous eighth chapter before read this.
This was originally supposed to be part of the eighth and initially the supposed last chapter of the second part of The Girl and the Turtle saga. Can't believe it myself that it actually was prolonged into the nine-chapter part before I finally finished it. Hopefully I don't need to make as many chapters with the third part of this saga.
= TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2003 =
= THE GIRL AND THE TURTLE PART 2 P9. =
The morning was already beginning to dawn behind the roofs of the city's buildings when Louie and Angel finally made it back to Angel's.
And once they were there, Louie pulled the commandeered buggy over in front of Angel's house, then turned off his beacon device, which made his bike stop right behind the buggy.
Afterwards, the turtle in black and Angel got out/off of their respective vehicles and met each other at the foot of the steps of Angel's.
"Well, here we are, right where our date night started." Louie remarked.
"A quite extraordinary date-night if you ask me, Lover-boy." Angel told him with the smirk and quirked eyebrow.
Both of them chuckled at this... just before they glanced up at the windows of Angel's home, seeing that the rooms were dark inside.
"Ellie probably hasn't woken up yet. But I bet that she might have been worried sick for you last night, Angel." Louie stated, before looking back at Angel. "You better sneak back to your room now while you got a chance, so that she doesn't need to bother the police about your disappearance again."
In response, Angel glanced up in the sky and noticed that it was already dawning and the darkness of the night was fading, thus putting Louie at risk of being seen out here in the open.
"And you better go now before it gets too bright out here. You'll be seen." she pointed out worriedly.
"Yeah, you're right. Maybe I should. I am beat and sore from everywhere anyway." the turtle in black said.
Angel scoffed at his words with the amused smirk, making Louie to smile back and chuckle at his own words as well.
"But hey. I'd say that this was a pretty fun night... and at least we did something good, didn't we?" Louie asked.
"Yeah..." Angel agreed. "But I don't think I'll be that eager to go through all of this again very soon."
Louie nodded his head, understanding full well what she meant, given the fact that they ended up being kidnapped and nearly killed by Dandelion's goons in one night. That, Louie believed, was enough of excitment for a while.
"Me neither, Angel-Cake." he agreed. "But hey, maybe another time, after we've rested this one off and ready for another round." the turtle in black suggested, giving Angel all the time she needed to consider this.
However, before Angel could give him her answer...
"Or how about... never again?" said a rather ominously familiar voice with a sarcastic tone.
Both Louie and Angel jumped in alarm, having never expected there to be anyone else but themselves, which caught them both by surprise and off guard.
The turtle in black and Angel then turned to where the voice had came from, and immediately saw the turtle leaning with his shoulder against the nearby lamppost, giving the two of them a very disapproval frown, close of being a glare targeted mostly at Louie.
Louie's eyes widened upon recognizing him.
It was Domenico.
"Dom?" Louie and Angel gasped in unison, both of them surprised to see him here.
Louie let out annoyed groan. Although he was surprised to see him here, he was not at all pleased to see his incessantly nagging brother here, probably about to nag at him for something like always.
"Dom. What the shell are you doing here?" Louie asked.
The turtle in white then pushed off the lamppost and walked up to Louie and Angel, never taking his gaze from Louie.
"Did you and Angel had a good time last night?" he asked ominously calmly.
"What about the last night?" Louie countered, believing that all that had happened the last night was none of his concern.
"You know what I'm talking about, Lorenzo." Dom said sternly. "You left the Lair yesterday evening and were out here... All. Last. Night... without calling home to tell where you were or answering our calls or not coming home until the wee hours of the morning! You understand we've been worried sick of you, Lorenzo?"
Dom then turned his gaze to Angel.
"And Angel? I bet your grandmother has been worried sick of you as well." the turtle in white chided sternly.
Angel put her hands behind her back and looked sheepishly away, though Louie stepped in between her and his brother.
"Hey, hey, hey! Leave Angel out of this!" Louie demanded. "And my business ain't none of your concern, bro."
"Really?" Dom questioned/challenged with the raised eyebrow. "Mind to tell your old big bro where you and Angel were last night?"
"Absolutely I mind." Louie retorted, unwilling to tell Dom anything about the events of the last night.
However, knowing how annoyingly stubborn Dom can be, when he's almost obsessively determined to get the answers he wants from him, that he won't even hesitate to use harsher methods to get them, Louie reluctantly decided to yield, but only because he wasn't right now in the mood of going through another one of Dom's interrogation games after such of tough night.
"Bah! Alright! I just took Angel to the late-night bike ride and kinda got lost in time. Happy?" Louie answered.
"I see." Dom said, sounding not convinced. "And where did you get that buggy, may I ask?" Dom asked, nodding at the buggy behind them.
Both Louie and Angel turned to look at the buggy for a few minutes, with the turtle in black realizing too late that his "so-called" answer hadn't included that thing at all, thus giving Dom a reason to doubt the truthfulness of his story.
Louie and Angel then turned back to Dom, now feeling a little nervous about their situation.
"And what the shell happened to you, Louie? Where did you got ll those bruises and scratches?" Dom asked again.
Louie looked over himself, seeing all the bruises and cuts he had got all over himself from the fight against the whole Dandelion army, and only now did he pay any attention to them.
"Uhh... I... well... got into a little street fight with the few of the street punks on our way back. No big deal." Louie said making up an excuse.
"Just a few street punks? And yet the number and the severity of those bruises and cuts tells me that there was a quite many than just a few." Dom inquired.
"Meh! That was nothing that serious." Louie scoffed, waving his hand dismissively.
"Nothing that serious?" Dom questioned, before he turned dead serious and said something completely unexpected to Louie and Angel. "Nothing like, I don't know, running-afoul-with-William-Dandelion kind of serious?"
Both Louie and Angel stiffened from this revelation.
"I know what you've been doing Louie." Dom said, pointing his finger at his brother somewhat accusingly. "You took Angel with you on the crazy hunt of the hijacked money transport car and got yourself and Angel captured by those mobsters that took you to Dandelion's mansion in the outskirts of the city, where you and Angel got yourselves nearly killed first by Dandelion's death squad and then by his whole army, before you exploded his whole house into the kingdom come! And don't try to deny that none of this ever happened because all of it did happen tonight, didn't it?"
Louie was both taken aback and at the loss of the words after Dom revealed of him knowing his and Angel's tonight's little misadventure, even putting the events he just listed in the correct order, leaving the turtle in black unable to escape this one with the excuses.
"How... How did you know that?" Angel asked, equally baffled as Louie was.
"I've been following you two ever since the highway, and I must say that I definitely didn't like what I saw." the turtle in white explained.
"So says the world's most annoying babysitter." Louie groaned, rolling his eyes.
Brrr! Brrr! Brrr! Brrr!
Everybody's attention then turned to the ringing sound of the Shell Cell... which came right from Dom's Shell Cell!
Dom picked it up and opened it to check who it was, before he turned to glare up at Louie.
"It's Leo. He's calling me." Dom explained. "And I'm guessing it's because he and the others have noticed I'm gone and assumed I left the Lair to find you. And I bet that the guys and Master Splinter are all too happy to hear the news that where you have been all night and what you have been doing."
Louie gulped, Louie gulped dreadfully after hearing this, and felt like he could already hear Master Splinter saying something like this in his head.
"That young man is in a very big trouble when I get my hands on him."
Louie had never been more afraid of anything or anyone... except the wrath of his father, and immediately attempted to more more excuses to escape that.
"Now, now, Domenico, my dear dearest big brother. Let's not be too hasty in here." Louie said, attempting to appeal to Dom. "Can't we just keep this whole ordeal as our own secret? Just you, me and Angel. No one else needs to know."
"No deal, Louie." Dom said immediately. "The family needs to know about this."
"No they don't." Louie protested. "There is no need to bother them with one small thing that has been and gone. So it's no longer important."
This made Dom suddenly snap, as if Louie had said something very offensive.
""Not important?" "Not important?" You think this is just the game you can go over and over again till you lose all the lives?! Do you?!" Dom snapped, enraged of Louie's indifferent attitude towards the situation.
Louie and Angel jumped back a bit in front of Dom's outburst.
"Oh, make the turtle suit out of me! Do you even have a slightest idea of what you have done, Lorenzo?! You almost got killed, and you deliberately brought Angel in the harm's way and nearly got her killed too, and you're behaving like it's all nothing! I knew you were always so reckless, but never this irresponsible! I can't believe it! C'mon, Louie! What's got into you?!" the turtle in white ranted.
"Nothing's got into me, Dom!" Louie snapped back. "Except you breathing in my neck all of time, which is annoying!"
"I'm serious, Lorenzo! Somebody gotta watch after your shell if you don't do it yourself, little brother." Dom spat. "And I need to do it, whether you like it or not... even if I have to use a harsh methods to do it."
Dom then raised his finger up to answer to Leo's call, making Louie stare at it with the wide-eyed dread.
Dropping "Mr. Nice Guy" act, Louie pointed his finger warningly at the turtle in white, daring him to answer to the call.
"Dom! Dom! Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom, Dom! Don't! Don't do it! Don't do anything what you might regret later!" Louie warned.
Dom, however, paid no heed to his brother's warnings. "Sorry, bro, but this is for your own good, as well as for her own good." he said, nodding his head briefly at Angel.
Angel gulped and grew worried as if knowing where this might lead.
Dom then answered to Leo's call and put the Shell Cell on his ear.
Louie stared at Dom in wide-eyed shock, unable to believe that his own brother was doing this to him... claiming it to be for his own good, but Louie thought, partially correctly so, that Dom was doing this out of his own satisfaction, so pestimistic turtle as he was towards anything new or what didn't suit well for him.
Angered over this, Louie's face hardened into a deep frown as he glared at him with his narrowed eyes. Gritting his teeth, he clenched his hand into a fist and shook it a little.
Anger, however, after witnessing the heated argument between the two brothers from the sidelines and not wanting it to take turn for the physical one, quickly put her hand on Louie's shoulder.
Her touch snapped the turtle in black out of his seething anger and made him turn towards her, seeing that Angel was giving her a sweet smile to calm him down and reassure him that everything will be fine.
However, though Louie responded to this by giving her a smile of his own - though a quite small and rather sadness-filled one - and put his hand on Angel's to assure her that he was fine, it didn't offer him much comfort, for Louie knew that they were doomed now that, thanks to Dom, the whole family would know what happened tonight
"Hey, Leo. You got Dom here. (Leo: "Dom! Where the shell are you, bro?") I've been looking for Louie. And guess what, I found him. (Leo: "You did? Where?") From the front door at Angel's place. I'm here with him now. (Leo: "Is Angel with him too? Ellie just paid us a visit. She's asking if she was here with Louie.") Her grandmother's there? How long ago she arrived? (Leo: "Ten minutes ago, and she's a worried sick of her.") Okay. Well, tell her that I found her too. She's been with Louie all night. (Leo: "Okay, good. I will tell her.")."
Louie and Angel were taken aback to hear that Ellie wasn't in her house sleeping as they had initially thought, but that she had actually left for the Lair to look for them from there.
"Uh-oh." Angel gulped worriedly.
"Oh, and Leo? (Leo: "Yes?") I have something more to tell you. You're not gonna believe what our shell-for-brains brother and Angel have been up to last night." Dom said, as he turned to scowl scoldingly at the two.
###
A little later, after Dom had told to Leo everything about Louie's and Angel's misadventures last night, the turtles, Splinter and Ellie had gotten into the Battle Shell and driven up to Angel's place.
They parked the Battle Shell to the same alley opposite to the Bridge's home, where the turtles had previously been witnessing Casey bringing Angel back home several weeks back.
And once they got out of the Battle Shell and met there their brothers and Angel waiting for them in there, the storm hit.
Leo, Master Splinter and Ellie immediately confronted Louie and Angel about the events of the last night, while Mary, Raph, Donnie, Mikey and Arcee decided to sit this one out, feeling that they weren't needed here.
The five of them just leaned against the wall of the building and watched how their brother and Angel got scolded by the adults.
"Louie! I can't believe what Dom just told us!" Leo barked angrily, pointing his thumb at Dom who stood beside him, his arms crossed over his chest and scowling reproachfully at Louie. "What the shell was going in your head when you decided to do something so stupid?!"
"Hey! At least me and Angel got away from Dandelion's place alive." Louie defended with the shrug.
"Only because of the sheer luck, nothing more." turtle in blue retorted. "And what if you hadn't made it out alive, with us never even knowing about it because you never even called back home or answered to our calls?"
"You try that when you got your hands full of trying to stay alive!" Louie shot back. "And besides, I can take care of myself just fine, Leo."
"Don't go into Raph-mode with me, bro. I got my hands full with one hot-head already." Leo warned.
"Hey!" Raph shouted from the background.
"Lorenzo." Master Splinter cut in, making the turtle in black to turn from Leo to him.
"I am very disappointed in you." Splinter said sternly as he started circling around his son.
Louie looked away from his father with his head hung down, which didn't sit well with Splinter.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you, young man!" Splinter demanded, whacking Louie on the top of his head with his staff to get his attention.
"OW!" Louie yelped and looked up at Splinter while rubbing his head.
"You should have known better than to bring young Miss Bridge into one of your crazy hunts of the criminals, and thus end up getting yourself and her captured and nearly killed by the same people you ran afoul with earlier!" Splinter lectured.
Seeing that Louie was unfairly blamed for them getting captured by Johannes and company in the end of the faked hijacking of the money transport can, Angel was quick to step in to confront Master Splinter in Louie's defense.
"Master Splinter, wait! It's not Louie's fault." Angel protested as she got in between Louie and splinter. "How was he supposed to know that the whole hijack of the money transport truck was a set up meant to trap us?"
"I will discuss about this with Lorenzo, thank you young Miss Bridge." Splinter said, placing his staff next to Angel, before he gently moved her out of the way. "While you need to explain yourself to Mrs. Bridge."
Indeed, Master Splinter moved Angel towards her grandmother, who stared at her while wearing equally disappointed frown on her face, which matched perfectly to Splinter's own.
"Angel Bridge!" Ellie began sternly. "What were you thinking, young lady?!"
"Grandma. Like I said, neither of us had any idea we were being targeted." Angel tried to explain.
"What did you promise me three weeks ago? May I remind you? You promised me you wouldn't anything to do with this kind of things anymore." Ellie said, reminding her granddaughter about the promise she made to her three weeks back.
"That promise was only about me not being involved with criminal organizations anymore, never about that I wouldn't try to stop them mysefl... with Louie." Angel said.
However, Ellie wasn't pleased with Angel bringing up the loophole in her promise... which she didn't even see as the loophole but another excuse to circumvent that promise, because one way or another, both of them, being part of a criminal organization and going after them to stop them, had exactly the same end result.
"Going after the bad guys is not any means safer than dealing with the bad guys, Angel." Ellie pointed out.
"Besides, Louie is a Ninja. He can fight on his own against them. But you, you could really get youself hurt or worse if you get involved in such of things like this again. I nearly lost you once already, I don't want to lose you the same way again." she added.
"You won't!" Angel argued back. "I can take care of myself out here like I did the last time. And besides, Louie had my back all of times, and he always will."
"That doesn't mean that you have to put your life so recklessly at risk all the time when the eye avoids, young lady." Ellie said sternly.
Angel and Louie's reprimanding took quite a while as both continued explaining themselves and justifying their actions - even if they were just barely listened to.
Until eventually, Ellie turned to Splinter to discuss with him about something very serious thing she had in mind right now.
"Master Splinter?" Ellie said, getting ready to say her next dead seriously considered words. "This is very hard from me to say but... I don't think my granddaughter should be seeing your son like this anymore."
Both Angel and Louie turned to Ellie, eyes wide from the shock. "WHAT?!" they exclaimed in unison.
"Grandma?" Ellie gasped in disbelief.
"Ellie?" Louie said with soft but shocked voice. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I don't want you to hang out with my granddaughter again like this." Ellie said apologetically but firmly with her words.
"But..." Louie tried to say, but Ellie quickly cut in to explain herself.
"Louie dear, I appreciate it that you have kept my Angel safe even at the risk of your own life, and I really mean it, but I don't want her to put herself in unnecessary danger, especially when she's with you. That's why I don't think you two should be hanging out again. I hope that you'll understand... for Angel's sake." Ellie explained.
Louie and Angel exchanged the worried glances with each other, realizing that she meant to separate them if it meant keeping Angel safe from the harm's way.
"And maybe it's the best." Splinter said, agreeing solemnly with Ellie.
"Sensei?" Louie gasped in surprise as he turned to his father. "You're in this too?!"
"Lorenzo. While I appreciate it that you have made a good friend from Angel, but I cannot watch through of my fingers of you taking her with you to the dangerous situations." Splinter said with gentlier tone.
"But Angel has been in such of situations before and made it out alive and one piece." Louie protested, to which Angel nodded her head in affirmitation. "And ironically, this same thing applies to both me and the guys as well." he added, referring to himself and the rest of the turtles.
However, this only made Splinter to frown at his son for either failing to see or not wanting to see his and Ellie's point here.
"Don't rely on luck too confidently, because it is like a lighted candle that sooner or later burns out." Splinter advised sternly.
Splinter then took a deep breath to calm himself before he continued lecturing his son.
"Lorenzo. Always remember who you are. You are a Ninja and bound to the path of Ninjutsu, and that path is very hard and very dangerous." the old rat master said.
Splinter was just about to continue, until Louie cut quickly in, casting at his father a rather suspicious look.
"Are you saying this because I must choose the path of the Ninja over Angel, just like you told Mikey to choose that path over his superhero career, or is this solely about me and Angel not being allowed to be together because she's human and I'm, well, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?" the turtle in black questioned.
"No and yes." Splinter answered, which rather drove Louie into confusion.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he questioned.
"That you should't be involving young Miss Bridge in the dangerous situation because of your irresistible drive for the dangerous situations, because one day that would bring a great danger not just to our family but also to hers." Splinter explained. "Which is why you must stop putting her life at risk because of your own desires, for the sake of the sfaety of our respective families."
"Then I won't do that again! I promise! I won't put Angel into any dangerous situations anymore!" Louie said hastily.
Even though he knew it would be difficult if not impossible for him to resist the temptation to jump into dangerous situations, the turtle in black was so desperate to change his master's and hopefully Ellie's mind that he was willing to at least even try to resist that temptation if it meant he could still be With Angel.
Only if they gave him a chance to prove his word.
However, Master Splinter and Ellie, who both looked over Louie's heavily bruised and scratched form, didn't look so convinced about that.
"I really wish I could believe that, my son." Splinter sighed sincerely.
"Me too, dear." Ellie added.
"But we have spoken. And that's that." Splinter declared as he thumped his staff heavily on the ground, which Louie recognized as a sign that his master had made his final decision and that there was no changing it.
Both Louie and Angel lowered their heads down in sadness afterwards, both of them heartbroken of knowing that they were done for.
Mary, Raph, Arcee, Donnie and Mikey looked at their brother with sympathetic looks on their faces, feeling sorry for their brother, while Leo and Dom looked on with solemn expressions on their faces.
"Angel?" Ellie said as she gently grabbed from Angel's right arm and pulled her towards their home. "Come along, dear. We are going home."
Angel looked at Ellie for a moment with the lightly narrowed frown, slightly angry at her for bringing this whole thing up, though she did nothing to pull her arm out of her grandmother's grasp.
Angel then paid a one last sad look at Louie's direction, and both the girl and the turtle looked at each others welling eyes for a long time, before Angel reluctantly pulled her eyes away from the turtle in black she cared so much about and back to Ellie.
Without saying a word, Angel nodded to her grandmother before she began walking slowly towards the door of their home without looking back at Louie.
And with her back turned to everyone so that no one could see, Angel pursed her lips and closed her eyes, letting the fresh tears to ran down her cheeks, before she let out a quiet sob.
Both Ellie and Louie looked at her go along with the rest of them, before Ellie turned towards Louie one more time.
"I'm sorry, Lorenzo dear. I can only hope you'll understand why I did what I did." Ellie said apologetically, before she then followed after Angel, leaving the turtles and Splinter in the street.
"Come. Let us go home." Splinter said to his children, before he, Leo, Mary, Raph, Arcee, Donnie and Mikey headed back to the Battle Shell.
Only Louie stayed behind and stared long after Angel and Ellie as they climbed the stairs to their door, opened it and entered. Angel still didn't look back before she disappeared inside, but Ellie turned to Louie one last time as she slowly closed the door behind her.
Louie let out a sad sigh, before he turned around to follow after the others... only to unexpectedly bump into Dom, who had stayed behind as well.
Surprised, Louie looked up at his brother with the light frown, while Dom stared down on him, still wearing that reproachful look on his face, which made Louie's sadness to turn into anger.
"What? What do you want now?" Louie snapped, not really in the mood to hear what else Dom had to say to him.
"I know this may have been a pretty harsh method to get you to see my point, but I hope you learn your lesson from this." Dom said, pointing his finger at Louie's chest.
Louie swatted his hand away in anger. "Don't rub this in my face, Dom! I'm not in the mood!"
"But yet you need to hear it nonetheless." Dom said. "The important lesson here is that you are and always will be a ninja turtle and you belong to the shadows, which means that you cannot be with Angel, which is the best for both of you!"
"And your point is?!" Louie asked, growing even angrier.
"That now that this has all been dealt with, everything is back to way it was, like none of this ever even existed... and should be kept that way." the turtle in white added casually.
This made Louie finally to snap, as he either realized or thought he realized what that meant, though the former seemed to be a better opnion.
"So, that's your reason why you ratted me and Angel out?! You disapproved us being together so you needed to put an end to it so that you'd feel SATISFIED of things being the way YOU ALONE LIKE THEM!" Louie roared angrily at the turtle in white's face, angered by the truth behind his actions.
Louie wasn't entirely surprised by this, however, knowing how pessimistic and disapproving Dom was of anything new that didn't sit well with him anyway.
"You think I kind of enjoy this?!" Dom shot back, but Louie was having none of it.
"It doesn't matter to me! You already got what you wanted, and that's it!" Louie roared.
The turtle in black then got so close of Dom's face that the turtle in white needed to lean back.
"And I really hope you enjoy it, because that's why you and I are not gonna be in any speaking terms to each other for a very long, long time!" Louie growled through his gritted teeth.
Louie then roughly pushed Dom out of his way, not casing if he'd push him over to the ground, before angrily storming past him to the Battle Shell.
Dom, however, casually brushed off this rude manner and followed after his brother.
"You'll be thanking me for this later, Louie." the turtle in white said, confident that while Louie might be angry with him now, he'll come to eventually realize that this was all just for his own good and will thank him for it later.
"Hmph! We'll see about that." Louie muttered under his breath, low enough that Dom wouldn't hear it.
The two then climbed on the Battle Shell before driving off and back to the Lair.
5 Days later.
That night, Angel was sitting on the bed in her room, alone, hugging her knees, hanging her head down in misery, while staring up at the picture standing on her table next to window.
The picture showed her and Louie - with the latter being in his disguise he wore at the concert - standing side by side together, with Louie having put her right arm over her shoulder and Angel holding her right hand over Louie's plastron while they both smiled at the camera.
They had taken that picture of themselves together that night right before they had left for L.J. Alcatraz's concert at Madison Square Garden, which Louie had at some point eventually put in the standing frame and given it to Angel.
Staring at Louie in it made Angel sigh in sadness and in disappointment in how the things had went for them.
For the past five days, after her grandmother and Master Splinter had forbidden her and Louie to hang out again after the Dandelion incident, Angel hadn't been her happy self. Every morning after waking up and every night after coming home from school, Angel had been very depressed, quite quiet as she hadn't said much of anything unless she had to, and very distant from other people, even towards Ellie, and she had also become withdrawn into her own solitude, where she could mop in her misery in peace.
She really did miss Louie and their time together, and wanted so badly to call to him to simply ask him how was he, if only Ellie hadn't confiscated her Shell Cell Louie had given to her to keep them from interracting with each other.
She herd the creak behind her and looked over her shoulder, seeing that her bedroom's door was opening, before Ellie stepped in slowly, holding an open pizza box.
For five days, Ellie has been worried about Angel and her depressed state and rather cold and distant attitude towards her, which had made Ellie question whether she even made the right choice in forbidding her and Louie from hanging out anymore even though she had only thought of Angel's best.
She wanted to talk with her, someway, somehow, which is why she had come into her room now.
"Angel? Can I come in?" she asked.
Angel didn't look at her but kept sulking in silence.
Ellie took that as a "yes" and slowly walked in the room, closing the door behind her. Then she took the chair from Angel's table and moved it next to Angel's bed, before sitting on it herself.
"Honey? I brought you a pizza, if you're hungry." Ellie said, offering her the pizza to eat.
All Angel did was just to briefly glance up at the pizza offered to her, which smelled delicious though, before she turned away from it and lowered her gaze down
"I'm not hungry." she said solemnly.
Ellie let out a sigh, before she put the box on her bed, right in front of Angel to wait if she'd change her mind.
Then she sat back down on the the chair and looked at Angel solemnly.
"Angel Honey. I'm sorry." she started sincerily. "I'm so sorry I did what I did and I know you must be hating me because of that."
"Was it really even necessary?" Angel asked softly, without looking at her though.
"All I was thinking was what I thought was best for you." Ellie reasoned. "But I guess I wasn't thinking clearly than what I thought I was because I was afraid for you, honey."
"Like I was more afraid for Louie than what I was afraid for myself. He mattered way more than what I did." Angel told her.
Ellie looked at her granddaughter, confused by her words, unable to understand why she could say such a thing when her own life was in danger at the time.
"What are you trying to tell me, honey?" Ellie said, as she got up from the chair and sat on the bed in front of her granddaughter, moving the pizza box away. "Of course you matter. I want nothing more than to keep you safe. And we were both in there. I was in there. And we saw Louie fighting those people off. He can take care of himself."
"Maybe when he is alone, but not when he had to protect me." Angel said, finally turning to look at her grandma. "Why do you think that I managed to escape from there intact and Louie didn't?"
Ellie really couldn't find any reasonable answer to that, so Angel continued explaining.
"When we were captured, Louie put all his concentration into keeping me safe. And he took all the beating and punishment upon himself so that I would not be harmed. And he also took on an entire army of bad guys just to keep them from killing me, and he almost got himself killed so many times over, before my own eyes, because of me."
Ellie was left astonished to hear that Louie had dedicatedly gone through such of lengths, even close of death, just to keep her granddaughter safe and completely unharmed... and all she had thought was that he had purposely taken Angel along with him into the dangerous situations.
"He did?" Ellie asked, to which Angel nodded, before she began to break down in tears after recalling all those near-death experiences Louie went through becaue of her.
"And if Louie had died there because of me, in front of me, I don't know if I could've ever lived with myself with such of guilt." Angel said, letting out the light sobs as she burried her face in her knees.
Ellie then moved to sit next to Angel and wrapped her arms around of her, pulling her close to comfort her, which Angel didn't resist but hugged her grandmother back.
"Shh, shh, shh. There, there, honey." Ellie said soothingly, holding her granddaughter in her arms for a some time.
There was a moment of silence between of the two as they remained there in each others' arms.
Ellie then broke the silence. "I see that you really liked him, didn't you?"
"I do." Angel said, pulling out of her hug and looks at her in the eyes.
"You see, Grandma, you and him are quite similar because he cares about my safety as much as you do. And deep in my heart I know that Louie would never have taken me to something so dangerous situation like we had with Dandelion and his goons if he had known something like that would've happened." Angel said.
Ellie thought about those words for a moment, and finally realized that they were both really much alike for their shared common interest in Angel being both safe and well, and that they both were ready to do anything to keep it that way.
This realization made her feel terrible about herself and guilty for even suggesting out of erroneous conclusions that her granddaughter should no longer hang out with Louie.
And so, Ellie sought to make things right somehow, in order to make her dear grandchild to feel happy again.
"You must be missing him, if that is what this is all about, isn't it?" Ellie questioned.
Angel nodded her head sadly. "Every day, especially now that I'm not allowed to hang out with him anymore and not even call him because you took my Shell Cell."
Ellie's head jerked up a little when Angel mentioned her Shell Cell.
"Wait here, honey. I'll be back." Ellie said as she got up and excited from Angel's room, with Angel looking her grandmother go with perplexed look on her face.
Ellie headed to her own room, and once there she set her eyes on the closet nearby. With the key she wore around her neck, she opened one of the closet's boxes and pulled it out, revealing from inside Angel's Shell Cell resting there, as this is where she had put it in safe after confiscating it.
Taking it out from there, Ellie began to make her way back towards Angel's room to hand it back to her... or at least allow her to make a call with Louie if hearing about him would make her happy again.
But before she could, she heard knocking at the door.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Hearing that, Ellie turned away from Angel's room's door to the front door and put the Shell Cell into her pocket... right at the time when Angel popped her head out of her room.
"What was that?" Angel questioned. "You were expecting any guests tonight?"
"No, I wasn't." Ellie replied, confusedly. "Maybe it's your brother making a surprise visit." she added and headed towards the door.
Angel blinked her eyes as she stepped out of her room. "That's odd. Ryan never pays a surprise visits. He always calls beforehand."
The two headed to the front door together, where Ellie then cautiously opened the door to see who was outside.
Both of them surprised, especially Angel, when she realized that who it was.
"Alcatraz?"
Indeed, it was L.J. Alcatraz standing outside of the Bridges' place's door.
"Good evening, Miss Bridges." Alcatraz greeted both women with nice and polite manner. "I apologize for bothering you both at this hour of the day."
"What are you doing here, sir?" Angel questioned, finding a bit odd to see her idol standing right behind of her and her grandma's door, though one of the reasons could be that he was the one who offered her and Louie a ride back home after the concert and she had guided him here.
Angel then looked over Algatraz's shoulder, and noticed that her stage dancer girls, "Turquoise," "Red," "Blue," "Green," "Pink" and "Purple" were standing right behind him in the jumpsuits matching their hair dyed colors.
"Well, I think that young Miss Bridge told me the last time we met that her idol, which is me, should sometimes pay a visit as her honored guest." Alcatraz said smoothly, eyes fixed directly at Angel with the knowing look.
"I did?" Angel questioned with the raised eyebrow, not really recalling having said anything like that the last time they had interracted in his personal limo.
"Indeed." Alcatraz added. "You even told me that it would be a surprise honor to see your idol standing right behind your door, like the Father Christmas at Christmas eve."
Hearing enough, Ellie turned to look at Angel. "You invited your idol here to visit in our house, without even consulting with me first?"
"Yes." Alcatraz confirmed. "Unless... young Miss Bridge has forgotten all about of that." he added disappointedly.
Angel began to seriously wonder if she had really at some point invited her idol to visit her in her place that night they have last met, even though she didn't have a clear memory of the whole thing even though it happened only last week.
However, she guessed that she might have forgotten all about it after all, and no wonder if she did, because the days between of their last met and this surprise visit have indeed been full of fast paced and pretty wild activity that pulled her focus away from everything else.
With that in mind, Angel shrugged her shoulders in "whatever" manner.
"Yeah, I guess I have. These last few days have been a quite action-paced that it has slipped from my mind. My apologies, sir." Angel apologized, before she turned to her grandma. "And I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner about this, grandma."
Ellie, however, nodded her head to say that it was okay. "Well, everybody are bent to make a mistakes sometimes."
Ellie then opened her door fully open, letting Alcatraz and the stage dancers in, though only Alcatraz entered inside the Bridges' house, while his stage dancers remained to stand just outside of the door.
"My humble apologies that we have nothing to offer you in your surprise visit, sir, or would you like to have a cup of coffee?" Ellie offered kindly.
"No thank you, Ma'am. This is just quick visit, and then we'll be on our way again." Alcatraz replied as he walked past Ellie and Angel, with the latter eyeing her idol with somewhat of a suspicious look on her face.
Both Ellie and Angel then noticed that none of Alcatraz's stage dancers hadn't entered inside, but lingered just at the porch.
"Well, what are you waiting for? Come in." Ellie said, gesturing them to come in.
However, inspecting them with the closer look, Angel noticed that "Turquoise," "Green," "Pink" and "Purple"were looking at them smugly, while "Red" and "Blue" exchanged the sly glances with one another, as if they knew something what neither she, Ellie and maybe not even Alcatraz did.
Angel narrowed her eyes into the frown as she kept eyeing the dancers suspiciously. "Why are you...?"
CLICK! CLICK!
The sound of the pair of the guns' safeties being switched off behind their backs caused the dreadful shivers ran down of Angel and Ellie's spines.
"Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee! No. No, you didn't forget anything, young Miss Bridge, because you never even invited me to visit here in your dump house. And I can't believe you actually fell for that old trick!" Alcatraz's voice sneered mockingly.
They slowly turned around, and gasped upon what they saw.
Alcatraz was aiming at both of them with the pair of Desert Eagle Mark XIX pistols!
"Oh my god!" Ellie gasped in alarm upon seeing the guns that were aimed at them.
Angel and Ellie, staring at Alcatraz who was holding them both at the gunpoint in shock, backed slowly towards the door to get out of the house... only to halt when they felt the five handgun barrels pressed against their backs, held by Alcatraz's vily snickering stage dancers.
They were trapped!
Holding their hands up in surrender, they both turned back to Alcatraz, who was most likely the mastermind of this whole trap.
"Alcatraz? What are you doing?!" Angel asked in shock.
"Where is he?" Alcatraz asked sternly, dropping all kinds of nice-guy-act and instantly turning harsh and cold.
"What?! Wha...?! What are you talking about?!" Angel said, still confused about all of this and trying to figure out what's going on.
"You know what I'm talking about, young Miss Bridge! WHERE IS HE?!" Alcatraz demanded even harsher and louder voice.
"Who?" Angel questioned.
Alcatraz frowned irritably at Angel's "lack of cooperation" before he nodded his head at the stage dangers behind them.
One of his dancers, likely "Red," then raised her own gun up and put it in the back of Angel's head. Ellie gasped in horror upon seeing this, just before "Pink," put her own gun in the back of her head, making the old woman whimper in terror.
"NO!" Angel gasped upon seeing her grandma being threatened. "No! No, don't! Don't! I don't... I don't... I don't even know what or whom you're even talking about?!" Angel said, her voice shaking from panicked fear for her Grandma.
"You know who I am talking about." Alcatraz said smugly as he walked up towards the two. "I am talking about... one called... Louie."
Angel blinked her eyes after this revelation. "Louie?" she questioned.
"Yes." Alcatraz nodded. "The guy with that name who was with you back at my concert... where that insolent youth beat me at my own game, something what L.J. Alcatraz will never, ever, watch through of his fingers." he added, voice full of venomous contempt towards the turtle in black.
Angel groaned and shook her head in annoyance. "If Louie destroying your ego by beating you in that rap battle of yours was your sole reason in invading our home like this in search of him, then you're even more vain than I thought!" she spat in contempt towards the rapper she had previously idolized for a long time.
Alcatraz, however, shook his head. "That'll be my own personal reason why I'm after him, and I'm dying to make him pay for his insolence against me!"
The rapper then took a deep breath to calm himself down before continuing. "But the little turtle-boy happens to have more than just one guy who wishes to settle their scores with him than just me."
Angel and Ellie gasped in shock after Alcatraz revealed that he knows Louie's big secret, although he had been using his disguise all along to hide his identity in Alcatraz's presence.
"How... how did... how did you know that?" Angel stammered in shock.
"Peep-peep-peep." Alcatraz said tauntingly, imitating a bird. "A little bird told me."
Both Alcatraz and his stage dancers chuckled at his own joke.
"And that turtle has lot to answer to a certain one for everything he has done against him!" Alcatraz said. "Like making a fool out of him, dishonoring his family's motto, ruining his dandelion fields, blowing up his house to the kingdom come..."
Angel's shock just increased when she heard Alcatraz listing off all those things which she recalled having happened five days ago at Dandelion's mansion.
"Wait! Wait! Wait! How do you even know anything about that? You weren't even there, so how did you...?"
However, Angel cut herself off when everything dawned to her, especially the realization of whom Alcatraz had been talking about.
"Wait a minute! Are you saying that... that... you're with WILLIAM DANDELION?!" she gasped.
"Well... duh!" Alcatraz mocked, as if it was obvious.
"And if the boss hadn't ordered to capture the two of you, especially him, alive and bring you before him in his mansion, I would have just shot him with the deadly poison dart instead of the tranquilizer dart." Dandelion said, revealing his role in their capture at the Manhattan bridge
This revelation not only shocked Angel even more, but also increased her boiling hatred and contempt towards this man for what he did to Louie before her eyes.
"That was you who shot him?!" Angel spat venomously.
"Yes, but enough of this nonsense!" Alcatraz barked, before he lifted his gun up and held it at Angel's forehead, ignoring the purple-haired girl's venomous glare.
"You're gonna tell me where the turtle is, or..." Alcatraz said, before he raised his other gun at Ellie's head. "I'll shoot your grandmother right in the head at point blank."
"NO!" Ellie whimpered.
"Leave my grandmother be, you cockroach! It's me you want!" Angel spat at him angrily.
"So true, young Miss Bridge." Alcatraz agreed, before pressing the gun even harder into Angel's forehead. "So tell me. Where is that turtle?"
"Why do you think I would tell you anything?" Angel spat.
Even though her and Ellie's lives were hanging in the balance here, Angel firmly refused to betray Louie, the turtles and Master Splinter's location in the hands of someone like Dandelion or anyone of his goons.
"Because if you don't, your grandmother will pay the price for your lack of cooperation." Alcatraz threatened, making Ellie's eyes wide from fear.
"Oh, yeah? Well, if you kill her, then I will never tell you anything!" Angel countered.
Angel tried to think hard to come up with something to counter Alcatraz's own moves in this game, anything to keep both herself and Ellie alive without giving in Louie's location.
The lack of cooperation was starting to get under Alcatraz's skin, and his patience with Angel was starting to run thin.
"Then you can share your fate with each other." Alcatraz decided, and he prepared to shoot them both right away.
Just as both Angel and Ellie were about to die from the headshot, Angel quickly came up with the one last ditch effort to buy them more time, even if it meant taking the extreme measure.
"Wait! You can't kill us! Not yet! We still hold a great value for you and Dandelion." Angel said.
This successfully caught Alcatraz's attention long enough to convince him not to execute them just yet... at least not until he'd heard what kind of value she and Ellie possessed to them.
"What kind of value? Speak up!" Alcatraz demanded impatiently.
"Well, Louie has gone hiding. He's been hiding for days already, and I don't think he will come out in the open for anytime soon." Angel began.
Ellie stared at her granddaughter with baffled look on her face, unable to believe that she was actually gambling with their lives with these criminals.
"Angel? What are you doing, honey?" she whispered out loud.
Angel, however, paid no mind to her right now as she kept talking to Alcatraz, who was nowhere near convinced by Angel's words.
"If so, then I don't see any value in either of you at all." he snarled impatiently, and would've proceeded to shoot them if Angel hadn't spoken up again.
"However! However! However!" Angel shouted, pleading Alcatraz to wait.
"But if Louie... somehow when he finally comes out... I don't know exactly where or when... finds out that me and grandma are gone... he will most likely set out to find us." Angel calculated. "You understand what I'm talking about, Alcatraz? Louie's coming for us after he finds out that you guys kidnapped us."
However, even though she had let Alcatraz to know that Louie will come for her and Ellie, she deliberately failed to tell them about the Shell Cell in her grandma's possession, even though she didn't know hers was right in Ellie's pocket, knowing that that item alone was far more valuable to these villains than she and Ellie ever did.
One piece of information about it and soon it will be in their hands, giving them an advantage against Louie by calling him to inform him about her and Ellie's situation and likely to falsely promising to free them if he comes to the agreed meeting point to turn himself in in exchange for their freedom, only for them to execute them right in the spot so that they could use whatever methods they got to apprehend him and then kill him.
Angel couldn't let that happen. Not on her watch.
Besides, secretly Angel knew that Louie was too much of a rebel in his family to stay put or respect the restrictions and rules, just like she was in her own sometimes, and knew that sooner or later he would appear at their place to have a secret meeting with her, only to find them gone, which could give him a clue that something was off the place.
She also knew that as a ninja, and with their lives at stake, Louie would know better to think the strategy instead of rushing head-in into action to save them. At least, that's how she recalled him having acting like that back at Dandelion's house during of their escape.
It worked, because Alcatraz was giving it some serious though.
This was followed by quite a long and nerving tense silence between the two parties, especially since Angel and Ellie's lives now depended on Alcatraz's decision.
While Angel looked at Alcatraz with no fear in her eyes, while Ellie was breathing heavily while trembling in fear.
And eventually...
"You know what? You're right." Alcatraz said and removed her pistols from their foreheads, which appeared to be a good sign, at least for now.
"Alright, young Miss Bridge! You got lucky. You managed to talk me over." Alcatraz told them, as he put his guns away. "If what you say is true, then you two will live, only as baits for that little green brat to come for you and come to us."
"Knew you would come to your senses." Angel commented slyly, knowing that her little trick had worked to buy them more time.
However, Alcatraz gave Angel a sly smirk, as if to tell her that there was an itty bitty thing that she must have overlooked in her daring gambling with their lives.
"But we're not making it as hard for the turtle boy to track us down as you made it sound." Alcatraz sneered. "For we already have two kinds of plans to outwit him, two kinds of goods to lure him out, two kinds of planned meeting spots where to ambush him, one of which he likely knows himself already, which means we're two steps ahead when he gets the wind of all of this."
Angel blinked her eyes in confusion. "What do you mean with "two kinds of goods to lure him out?""
"You shall see..." Alcatraz replied. "For you two are one of those "goods."
Angel and Ellie exchanged the glances with each other, with Ellie wondering that what Angel had got them into, and Angel wondering where she did go wrong.
"Ladies?" Alcatraz said, addressing his stage dancers. "Will you be so kind and tie them up, blindfold them and escort them to my limo?"
Without the question or wasting the time, "Turquoise," "Red" and "Blue" grabbed on Angel while "Green," "Pink" and "Purple" grabbed on Ellie, They pulled roughly their hands behind their backs and tied them up. When they were tied up, "Pink" held the bag over Ellie's head while "Red" held another bag over Angel's head.
"Ugh! Not again with the bag-over-head stuff!" Angel groaned in annoyance.
"Angel? What have you done?" Ellie asked, just before "Pink" put the bag over her head.
Angel couldn't answer, because even she didn't know, and she hadn't even time to explain herself when the bag was pulled over her head as well.
"Turquoise," "Red," "Blue," "Green," "Pink" and "Purple" then began escort tied up and blindfolded Angel and Ellie down the stairs and forced them inside Alcatraz's limo, while Alcatraz did one more quick little thing in Angel and Ellie's house before leaving and closing the door but did not lock it.
"All is set." Alcatraz said, wiping his hands.
Alcatraz then descended down the stairs and stepped in his limo, before it drove off into the night to the parts of unknown, with Angel and Ellie as his prisoners.
THE END