"Half Shell Heroes of Hell's Kitchen" - Part Five

 

Part Five

            Tyler couldn’t begin to comprehend what he had literally walked into.

            The flat, rectangular monolith on the roof of his apartment contained a whole bigger space inside of it, accessible with a single touch from Rania’s hand. She gave some sort of technobabble explanation for it, but Tyler was too stunned to even listen. His entire perspective of reality had changed – figuratively and factually – the moment that he entered Rania’s ship…her ‘TARDIS’.

            “Jeez! What a night!” He gasped in a mixture of expressions.

            “You good?” Rania asked.

            Tyler looked at her for the first time since entering her TARDIS. Her features had changed; she looked more detailed than she did before. Initially, he believed that his eyes were playing tricks on him. It messed with his senses, particularly his ocular and olfactive ones. She smelled more fantastic than she did just a moment ago, like a fresh botanic garden in the spring. “Is it just me or do you look a million times hotter?”

            Rania chuckled at first, but she tensed once she realized, “Oh, man! I forgot to readjust the spatial quality for you!”

            “The spatula what-now?!”

            “The spatial quality. It’s how you perceive dimensions outside your own – like watching a 3D movie on overload. Taking it in all at once can drive you insane, so lemme just…” She went to the console at the center of the room.

            Before she could’ve reached for them, however, Tyler gently snatched her hand to stop her. “No, it’s O.K. I kinda like it.” He pulled her close to him, looking into her hazel-brown eyes affectionately.

            She looked back at him the same way. His appearance had changed as well under the spatial quality; he was more overwhelmingly handsome and charming outside of his own dimensional space. “That ‘connection’ you spoke about?”

            “Yeah?” Tyler said.

            “I think I’m feelin’ it now.” She kept herself locked in his gaze for a moment longer, and then she suddenly pulled away, facing one corner of the console room and hugging herself. “What the heck are you doing, Aznavorian?” she muttered.

            Hearing her muttering, Tyler asked, “You good?”

            “Yeah…I guess…maybe?” She groaned, looking back at him. “I just…That’s never been like me to open myself up to anyone… not this version of me, anyway. It’s been too long since I’ve had this kind of…intimacy.”

            “Don’t be so hard on yourself. The way I see it, we must truly love each other.”

            “Love at first sight, eh?” Rania scoffed at the notion. “I’ve always thought such a thing only existed in fairy tales outta Disney…and, believe me, I’ve been to quite a few of them.”

            “Well, our connection is proof of how real it is,” Tyler said.

            The smile on his face warmed both of her hearts. He was so incredibly handsome. She wanted to kiss him, and she was just about to before an urgent (and familiar) voice suddenly came over the comm on the console. “Rania! Rania, are you there?” It was Craig. “If you can hear me, I found the Ninja Turtles!”

            Rania rushed over to the console and responded, “Craig! Sweetheart, are you alright? Where are you?”

            “I’m in the Turtles’ lair with their dad, Splinter,” Craig said.

            “O.K., just stay right there,” Rania directed, working around the hexagonal console. “I’m honing in on your location right now.”

            As she ended the call, Tyler stood in total shock. “The Turtles?! They’re real?!”

            “Of course,” Rania said casually. “Haven’t you seen April O’Neil’s news reports on Channel Six about them?”

            “Yeah, I have, but…I figured they were, you know…for ratings.”

            Rania giggled. “I love you humans.”

            She brought the TARDIS to the lair of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The lair was exactly as Rania knew it from the other TMNT variants she encountered in other realities. The ones of Tyler’s world were just as much into pizza, judging from the empty boxes stacked along one corner and the stale aroma that fumigated every room. There were arcade cabinets – including a rare Enchanted Quest one – and stereos that played non-stop 90s hip-hop.

            At the time Rania and Tyler arrived, the Turtles were training in the dojo area, only stopping once the strange black monolith manifested in their lair. “Whoa!” Michelangelo gasped. “Tubular entrance, amigos!”

            Donatello couldn’t help but to walk up to Rania’s TARDIS, curiously analyzing its sleek marbled structure. “It almost seems…alive!”

            “That’s ‘cause it is,” Rania told him. She then proceeded to ask the Half-Shell Heroes, “Have you boys seen a cute little African-American boy around here?”

            “You mean Craig?” Leonardo identified. “He’s with our father, Master Splinter.”

            Rania saw him gesture with his four-fingers (another rarity for the Turtles in this realm) towards one room of the lair with a tattered purple curtain serving as a door. “Stay with the Turtles,” she instructed Tyler.

            “Wait. I don’t think…” Tyler began to protest, but Rania was already away. He was left to stand uncomfortably among the five-foot mutant turtles, including one with a red eye-mask (Raphael) that appeared to be the meanest of the four. That much was obvious when he threatened Tyler by saying, “Keep starin’, pretty boy, and yer gonna find my foot up yer butt!”

            Tyler’s hands instinctively covered his backside as he backed away and broke eye contact from Raphael. “Y-Yes, s-sir,” he stammered.

            Meanwhile, in Splinter’s room, Rania found her 10-year-old companion sitting on the carpeted floor across from the Turtles’ sensei and father. The area had a calm ambience with Japanese artifacts – from ancient drawings to miniature statues – decked out among the candles and incense.

            “It is important to know how much she values you as much as you value her,” Rania overheard Splinter tell Craig. He ceased their discussion once he noticed her in his room. “Ah! There she is.” He stood to his full diminutive height, looking on Rania with wise old eyes and a warm furry smile.

            “I’m sorry…I didn’t know how to come in…I just…” Her words were stunted by her overwhelming urge to hug Craig.

            She approached him for one but was stopped when Craig held his hands up in front of him. “There’s no time for that,” he sounded very direct, almost cold. He filled Rania in on what had happened since they last saw each other near Anton’s.

            “If April and Daredevil are still alive, Shredder must’ve taken them to the Technodrome,” Rania deduced.

            “Technodrome?” Craig frowned. “What’s that?”

            “The Foot’s underground fortress – there’s one in just about every dimension with the TMNT,” Rania said. “I can use the TARDIS to pinpoint its current location by scanning for heavy energy signatures within New York’s subterranean levels.”

            “My sons and I shall join you on your mission,” Splinter offered.

            Getting to the Technodrome was as easy as Rania made it sound. With Splinter and the Turtles in tow, they materialized inside a secluded room in the underground fortress in the heartbeat of a second. Its interior looked as alien and advanced as Rania’s own TARDIS – looked just as big, too.

            Once there, Rania told Craig, “Stay put in the ship, O.K.?”

            “What about him?” Craig pointed to Tyler.

            “You’ve seen Tyler handle himself in a fight,” Rania said. “But I won’t put your life in any more danger than it’s already been in this world. So, stay…put!”

            As upset as he was by this, Craig obeyed her command. “Alright, Rania,” he said after taking a calming breath. “I’ll stay.”

            His compliance surprised Rania.

            As she stepped out of the ship with Splinter and the others, she told the rat sensei, “Craig certainly changed his tone there at the end. You wouldn’t have happened to say anything to him before I showed up, did you?” Splinter merely smiled at her in response, further piquing her interest.

            With so many capable fighters on their rescue team, their infiltration of the Technodrome had gone as efficiently as they hoped, encountering just a handful of Foot Soldiers on their way to the holding cells.

            “Over here!” They heard a woman cry out, as they rounded a corner.

            They discovered April being contained inside of one holding cell, along with a battered Daredevil, who was slumped down against one of the walls of their cell. They were kept at bay by deadly red energy beams that functioned as prison bars.

            “April!” Leonardo cried. “Are you O.K.?”

            “Yeah, but Daredevil is pretty banged up,” April indicated the wounded vigilante.

            “I’m fine,” DD groaned, forcing himself to stand. “Now that the calvary’s arrived, I’ve got my second wind.”

            “Good,” Rania said as she used her sonic screwdriver to shut off the energy barrier of their cell. “Because we need to get you two back to my ship, so we can blow this fortress straight to—!” A plethora of heavy rapid footsteps cut her off. Before she and the team realized it, they were surrounded by a platoon of Foot Soldiers.

-----------------------------

            Craig may have managed to calm himself in front of Rania, but he was still very peeved. It wasn’t being left to stay in the TARDIS that bothered him; he understood it was for his own safety. It was the fact that Tyler – someone who Rania had only just met – was allowed to tag along.

            “Stupid Tyler with his stupid pretty face and his stupid cool clothes and his stupid awesome hair…” Craig grumbled while angrily pacing around the console room.

            He imagined how childish he looked right now – not that it mattered, since he was a child. Still, all that angry pacing started to wear his little body out. He figured it was a good time to try that meditation technique Splinter taught him earlier, when the Turtles brought him to the lair. He was so energized from meeting the superhero mutants, after narrowly escaping Shredder and the Foot.

            He sat lotus-style down on the console room floor, closing his eyes and taking slow, deep breaths.

            “CRAIG!!!”

            Craig jolted in attention at the shriek of Rania’s voice over the console comm. “Rania! What’s wrong?”

            “Craig! We need your help right away! Please!”

            She sounded very afraid – more afraid than Craig had ever known her to be.

            “I’m on my way,” he told her, flipping the switch that he remembered on the console to open the main door to the Type-Z. Immediately, he rushed out, not sure exactly where Rania and the others were inside the massive alien fortress.

            However, he stopped dead in his tracks when he came face-to-face with an unspeakable creature whose anatomy he couldn’t begin to figure out:

            A living brain encased inside a robot body!

            “You are coming with me, child!” It gurgled viciously.