Chapter Text
Badump.
Mikey’s heartbeat is pounding in his ears as he stares at the mass of pink surrounding his older brother.
Badump.
The portal is open behind them, and Mikey knows what Leo is going to do. He’s going to seal it away.
Badump.
With himself on the other side.
Badump.
Not on Mikey’s watch.
He barely registers the ache in his battered bones as he slowly raises his arms, holding them out in front of him. His mystic powers are there, right where they always are, woven into the very threads of his existence, Never beyond his reach. Always ready when he needs them the most.
Casey Junior had said something that had stuck in Mikey’s head earlier. That in the future, he was the greatest mystic warrior who had ever lived – capable of creating a portal that could traverse time itself.
A little dimensional hole should be no problem at all, right?
He focuses on the place where Leo is being sucked in, right where the portal is closing, where it’s slamming shut, and Mikey grabs . His fingers spasm as the golden glow starts to emanate from his hands, sending jolts of pain throughout the fibres of his muscles, but he doesn’t stop. He can’t.
The portal is still closing. There’s no time to try and open it again, and if the Kraang escapes the trap, they’ll be done for anyways. He can’t save Leo only to doom him again a minute later.
Mikey can hear his brothers shouting, but their voices sound like they’re shouting underwater, murky and bubbly and unintelligible. The glow is starting to seep into his fingers now, forming lightning lines from the tips and shooting up towards his knuckles. It’s agonising, like he’s dipped his fingers in liquid fire, but he pushes down the pain and tries his best to focus again. Leo needs him.
Save Leo, trap the Kraang. Don’t let the portal close, but don’t let the Kraang get out again.
Time is passing too slowly, seconds stretching into hours as Mikey’s hands burn , but he can feel Leo’s pain through the bond of their ninpo, and it’s so much worse. Not only the physical ache, but the hopeless acceptance that lets Mikey know that Leo doesn’t think he’s getting out of this alive.
Fuck the Kraang. He needs to get Leo out of there, now.
Calling forth the last drops of his power, all that he can muster up without losing his grip on the edges of the portal, Mikey summons his mystic chains and sends them shooting towards Leo, wrapping around his waist and yanking him towards the portal with all of the strength he can muster. Leo is almost out, almost free, almost home , but–
The Kraang won’t let him go so easily. Slimy pink tendrils latch onto the edges of his shell, wrapping around his limbs and pulling him in – or maybe pulling itself out . Mikey swallows down the panic that rises in his throat.
He crouches down and springs up into the air, yanking on his mystic chains again to pull himself forward, towards the Kraang and the portal. Leo is staring at his with unadulterated shock, Donnie and Raph are yelling and he can feel their presences trying to follow, can see the purple and red in the corners of his eyes as they try to do something, though whether they’re trying to stop him or help him, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Mikey knows what he has to do.
Launching himself towards the Kraang with every ounce of strength he possesses, Mikey takes his chains in hand once more and swings, dislodging its grip to send Leo flying out of the portal and towards their brothers–
And in turn, flinging himself in.
His grip on the portal, tenuous at best, can’t take the strain of using his chains in tandem. The portal itself was already too much for him to handle, and he had continued pushing it past even that. His hands are bleeding gold as the glow dies, and right before his eyes, the last things he sees are his brothers’ horrified, worried faces staring at him as the portal snaps shut.
.
.
.
It takes a moment before Mikey is able to clear his head again, the pain in his hands serving as both a hindrance and a help as he does his best to ground himself.
Behind him, the Kraang is still shaking off its confusion, and he takes advantage of its momentary distraction, bringing his hands up to manifest his chains and hopefully grab a piece of debris that he can use as leverage to swing himself around.
The moment he tries to use his mystic arts, however, the agony in his fingers doubles as the golden glow from before flickers up again, and Mikey curls in on himself from the pain as he immediately releases his hold on the mystic energy again. He’s pushed it too far already – he won’t be able to use his mystics right now, and he probably won’t regain the ability for a good long while.
Shit.
The Kraang lets out a groan, and Mikey flinches, knowing that the second it sees him, the second it realises that it still has one turtle left to take its anger out on, he’s screwed. Mikey needs to get out of sight, and fast.
He looks around wildly, searching for anything that could possibly hide him from this monstrosity, but there’s nothing. All of the debris is too far away, and Mikey’s not even touching the ground right now. He’d wanted to learn to float, sure, but not like this.
Maybe he can get some momentum if he can just reach that hunk of ground over there. This place has some gravity, at least – he’s still going downward, if very slowly. Once he gets to the ground, it should be no trouble to stay there, right? He just has to get out of sight and then he can think.
But it’s too late.
The Kraang’s eyes snap open with a low, guttural growl, and Mikey jolts back, tamping down his panic in favour of staring it down with the most devious, smug grin he can possibly muster. The image of Leo’s own grin flashes through his head, and Mikey knows exactly what he’s going to say. “Ha! You just got portal-chopped!”
“YOU HAVE RUINED EVERYTHING! ” The Kraang howls, and before he knows it, Mikey is being knocked out of the air and flung towards the chunk of ground below. The pain hits a second later, an ache ringing through his body on impact as he slams into the earth with so much force it cracks beneath him. Mikey chokes on his breath, feeling the strain on his shell and in his bones, but the Kraang is in front of him before he can even move, pink tendrils shooting out to force him further into the crater he’d made. “YOU INSOLENT FOOL! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DONE!”
Oh, Mikey knows.
He’s going to die here, isn’t he? Alone at the hands of an alien monstrosity, with no brothers to help him. And yet he’s almost glad, in a way, that they aren’t here to die alongside him.
It already got to the others. Raph got infected and nearly turned into a Kraang himself, Donnie got gooped by that ship’s bio-system, and Leo… well. Leo had been too close to sealing himself away to die for Mikey to want him anywhere near this situation.
Mikey doesn’t want to die.
He just wants to see his brothers again. He can’t do that if he dies.
No. He won’t die. Not today.
He’s Michelangelo Hamato-Jitsu. He’s the greatest mystic warrior to ever live – or he will be, anyways, which is close enough. He’s the youngest of the Hamato Clan, he’s a ninja trained by Master Splinter, he’s a super-soldier created by Baron Draxum, he’s fought against countless enemies countless times and come out on top no matter the odds, and he will not die here.
Mikey grits his teeth, and he knows it’s dangerous, knows it’s going to hurt like hell, but he’s going to do it anyway, because at this point it’s the only option he’s got.
So Mikey reaches down within himself and summons his mystic power once more, ignoring the agony that shoots through his hands as he forces his chains to manifest with every ounce of stubbornness he possesses. And as the youngest of four… that’s a lot of stubbornness.
The chains appear in a flash of gold, following his ministrations and wrapping around the Kraang, tangling up in its tendrils and dragging it back. The Kraang lets out a low growl, baring its teeth as he tries to lunge forward, but Mikey’s not letting go that easily. The second its tendrils loosen their grip on him, he’s scrambling back, breath coming in short, sharp gasps as he tries to stand.
But he’s still breathing. He’s still moving, and that’s enough for now.
Mikey gives the monstrosity a shit-eating grin as his chains multiply, and it’s draining his energy, he can feel the gold dripping from his fingers with each passing moment as the overuse eats away at him, but he’s succeeding . “What, didja think I was go-gonna go down that easy?”
His voice hitches right in the middle as his breath catches in his throat. Mikey is acutely aware of just how injured he is, beaten to hell and back after the events of the stupid interdimensional war this thing had started, but he can’t afford to fall now. There’s no time for rest, no time to recuperate, not when the battle isn’t over just yet.
The Kraang strains against the golden chains, glaring at him with the rage of a thousand suns, but Mikey refuses to let up. “You… little… pest! ”
“Yeah, yeah. Heard it all before.” Mikey inches back, and the Kraang doesn’t seem to notice the way he’s bracing his legs. He just has to get away – or get this thing away from him – and he can find some place to hide out and recover his energy while he makes a plan. “At least come up with somethin’ new, dude. Kinda lame of you, really.”
(Mikey might be a little bit delirious, actually. Right now, though, he doesn’t think he could care less.)
He tightens the grip of his chains around the Kraang, earning himself another spitting threat that he ignores. Bracing himself against the cold, dead grey of the hard ground beneath him, Mikey grabs the ends of his chains and forces himself to ignore the dripping gold and the agony in his hands as he twists around and yanks , putting every ounce of his strength behind the gesture and sending the Kraang hurtling across the dead space of the Prison Dimension. At the peak of the throw, right when he’s got the most momentum built up, Mikey releases his chains, and the Kraang flies off with one last yell of fury. With the altered gravity here, Mikey can only hope that it’s far enough away to give him time to get the shell out of here.
It’ll be back. He’s not stupid enough to think that could keep it down for long, but he doesn’t need to. Mikey just needs it occupied for long enough to give him time to escape – to find somewhere to hide while he regains his energy and makes his plans.
His legs are shaking, and his hands even more so, but Mikey ignores the tremors. One foot in front of the other, in the opposite direction of where he’d chucked the Kraang. He can’t rest yet.
Find a place to hide. Regain his strength. Escape.
Mikey lets out a choked laugh. It sounds like a to-do list, almost – three little boxes, ready to be checked off. Just like a chore list back home, the kind they would all divide up so it would go faster. The sooner the list was done, the sooner they could all kick back on the couch and watch a Lou Jitsu movie, maybe with April at the end of the couch and some pizza on the side table if it was a particularly good day.
But there are no brothers here to help him with this list. It’s just Mikey alone, Mikey versus the world with not a single person to back him up.
But better me than Leo.