The Crime Fighter Collection

by Matthew J Gilbert (retail)

  Splinter heard the crash of the chamber doors slamming shut, followed by the click of a lock. These two ninja masters, who had been at war their entire lives, were now trapped in a concrete cage with no chance of escape.

  Prepared to literally face his fears, Splinter removed his hood, revealing his rodent face to Shredder for the very first time. The Hamato Yoshi that Shredder once knew—a man, a husband, a father—was now a mutant in sewer-soaked rags.

  “A rat? A rat?” Shredder laughed wickedly. “I see you are as hideous as those Turtles that surround you. How fitting. You’re a rat who has been caught in my trap.”

  Splinter could feel his anger rising. He knew the only way to finish this fight was the way of ancient ninjutsu—where fist meets foot, good meets evil, and only one warrior is left standing. Through his teeth, Splinter muttered, “Look closely at this face, Shredder, for it is the last thing you’ll ever see!”

  Back at T.C.R.I., the Turtles were getting nervous. The Micro-fission Omni-disintegrator was taking longer and longer to fully charge. This meant Traag had even more time to re-form each time. Leo knew, when dealing with an enraged rock monster of this size, an extra second could mean the difference between life and death.

  “Come on! Come on!” Leo pleaded, waiting for the weapon’s power bar to refill.

  The last molecule in place, a re-formed Traag angrily thundered toward the Turtles. His gargantuan stony fists were raised high, ready for squashing. Leo’s eyes grew wide. The device was still charging, and Traag was gaining on him with every step. For a moment, it looked like they were about to be crushed into Turtle dust.

  Just then, the Micro-fission Omni-disintegrator let out a small beep. Leo once again squeezed the trigger, and a glowing energy pulse shattered Traag into a million tiny pieces that went flying through the air. Leo let out a tiny sigh of relief. For a swordsman who rarely handled firearms, he was getting pretty good at this. He looked down at the weapon’s ever-dimming battery light. “This thing’s running out of juice!” he called out.

  “And, guys . . . look!” Mikey said suddenly. Beyond the packs of Kraang-droids, the Turtles could see the portal to Dimension X opening up.

  Its array of cosmic lights lit up the force field with an eerie, electric glow.

  “Whatever’s coming through the portal is gonna be here soon!” Leo said, knowing they were running out of time.

  Just behind him at a nearby computer console, Donnie attempted to hack into the Kraang’s complex system. Meanwhile, Raph and Mikey were dodging blaster fire from the Kraang.

  Exhausted, Raph impatiently yelled, “When’s that force field coming down, Donnie?”

  “I’m working on it!” Donnie shouted, his fingers rapidly punching in codes. Deciphering alien computer systems was extremely difficult, but trying to do it under fire, lasers whizzing by constantly, made it nearly impossible.

  Another barrage of energy bolts came raining down on the Turtles as Traag took form again. Leo looked down at the Micro-fission Omni- disintegrator’s battery screen—it was moving so slowly, it didn’t seem to be recharging at all. Leo looked back up just as the rock monster’s eyes reopened and it roared back to life. Traag was furious. With stone fists swinging, he thrashed through the room on a path of destruction. Leo saw one of Traag’s boulder-sized fists about to come down on his head.

  “Not good!” Leo said, rolling away to safety right before—CRASH!—Traag smashed a crater into the floor right where Leo would have been standing.

  Suddenly, the weapon beeped on. Leo popped back up onto his feet and disintegrated Traag with an energy beam at point-blank range. Traag was nothing but particles!

  Donnie found some good news on his computer. “I think I got it!” he shouted.

  The force field dimmed, flickering into nothing. Donnie smiled. With the craziest line of code, and under the harshest battle conditions, he had prevailed! This would go down in hacker history. “Yes!” Donnie celebrated. “All hail me!”

  But they were too late. Something massive had already started to come through the portal.

  “Uh-oh, guys!” Donnie said, seeing the structure take shape as it materialized into their dimension. They had never seen anything quite like it. It was round like a planet, and so big that it cast a wide shadow from deep space over every square inch of T.C.R.I. Even the Kraang-droids stopped their attack to stare in awe at its majesty.

  It was a mechanical monument. A destroyer of worlds. An airship sent from Dimension X. It was the Technodrome!

  Mikey stared wide-eyed at the airship coming through the portal. “Holy giant floating shippy-ship!” he screamed. “Leo! Do the zippy-zappy thing! Now!”

  Quickly, Leo lifted the Micro-fission Omni-disintegrator and put the portal generator right in its cross hairs. The weird-looking weapon had served him well tonight. Hopefully it had enough juice to finish the job!

  “Say good night, Kraang!” Leo said confidently.

  Thinking he was about to end the Kraang invasion with one shot, Leo happily squeezed the trigger. But nothing happened! Only a sputter of sparks came out before the battery died for good. The weapon was toast.

  “What the heck happened?” Donnie asked.

  “I think the battery died!” Leo answered.

  “And we’ll be joining it unless someone thinks of something,” Raph added.

  “What’s Plan C, Leo?” Donnie asked in a panicked voice.

  With a crazy look in his eye, Leo asked, “Donnie, what would happen if we ruptured the power cell?”

  “The whole place would go up, with you in it!” Donnie warned. He looked at his brother’s serious face. “Whoa, Leo. You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking!”

  But he was. And there was no way anyone was going to talk him out of it. “Everybody get out of here!” Leo said sternly.

  “He’s thinking it!” Donnie said, backing away.

  Donnie, Raph, and Mikey took off toward the roof, heading for safety. They all knew what was about to happen.

  Leo drew his trusty katana blades and visualized his route to the power cell. He could see the crowds of Kraang-droids in his way, but he wasn’t going to let them stop him. He summoned his courage. It was now or never. So he flew into action!

  Leo evaded the first wave of Kraang-droids with a series of flips and somersaults. As he broke through untouched, a second wave of armed droids stormed him, and Leo unleashed a fury of katana strikes.

  He sliced and diced his way through the Kraang, leaving a mass of blown circuits and broken robot parts behind him. He sprinted toward the power cell. He was getting closer.

  But so was the Technodrome.

  Just as the mechanical monstrosity was about to fully materialize through the portal, Leo went airborne. With one final push, he front-flipped, plunging his katanas into the power cell with a fierce downward thrust! A nest of sparks ignited. A devastating energy wave was about to blow this building, and everything in it, sky-high.

  Leo spun around. He needed to get out of there. He ran for the roof, when—KABOOOOM!—the power cell erupted in an off-the-charts explosion. In an instant, glowing flames consumed everything in a white-hot cloud. The shock wave blew Leo off the side of the T.C.R.I. building before it burst into smithereens.

  Leo was in midair and falling fast.

  As every floor of T.C.R.I. exploded into rubble behind him, Leo flailed through the air. The busy streets of the city grew closer and closer. There was nothing to break his fall, no chance of surviving a drop like this.

  But then a small aircraft streaked across the sky and caught him. It was Raphael, piloting his homemade hang glider!

  “Gotcha!” he said. Once Leo was safely secured, Raph shouted, “Woo-hoo! In your face, gravity!”

  A look of relief came over Leo. There, hang gliding alongside them, were Donnie and Mikey. All of the Turtles had survived and succeeded! T.C.R.I. was history. The portal was no more. Earth was safe. Mission accomplished!

  “Thanks, Rap
h!” Leo said finally.

  “Anytime, buddy!” Raph said.

  As the smoke from the explosion cleared, streaks of pink-orange light illuminated the sky. None of the Turtles could believe what he was seeing. After a life of living underground in the darkest sewers, and patrolling the city at night only, they were about to experience their very first sunrise.

  Not as freaks, not as strangers, but as heroes!

  The Turtles looked at one another, beaming over their victory.

  “I can’t believe it! We saved the world!” Donnie said enthusiastically.

  “Yeah.” Mikey smiled. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  But as he spoke, an ominous shadow covered his face. Sensing something was very wrong, he looked at his brothers in midair, and then to the streets below. Darkness was covering everything. They all looked to the sky in horror. Something colossal was eclipsing the sun.

  It was the Technodrome!

  The Kraang airship from Dimension X had somehow made it through the portal before the blast.

  In that moment, the truth of the situation dawned on the Turtles. They hadn’t stopped the invasion at all. In fact, the planet was in more danger now than it had been at the start of their mission.

  Mikey immediately regretted his earlier comment. He was stunned, disappointed, and afraid. “I gotta stop saying stuff like that,” he mumbled.

  All across the streets of New York City, millions of people came to a standstill. Traffic cops stood with their mouths open. Street cleaners froze midsweep. Buses and cabs paused in gridlock, their drivers unaware that the traffic light had turned green. Life as they knew it had suddenly stopped. People everywhere stood staring at the Technodrome as it loomed over them.

  High above the sea of frightened faces, the Turtles found themselves hang gliding directly into the airship’s line of fire.

  “I think I speak for all of us when I say . . . AAAAH!” Mikey shouted.

  “What the heck is that thing?” Raph asked.

  “It’s the end of the world!” Leo answered.

  “Actually, it’s just the end of humanity’s reign as the planet’s dominant life form, ” Donnie said. “Like when the dinosaurs—”

  “Now? Really?!” Leo yelled, cutting Donnie’s lecture off. “You’re gonna do this now?”

  “Well, excuse me, but it’s how I deal with stress!” Donnie yelled back.

  “Well, maybe it doesn’t have weapons!” Raph said uncertainly. “Does it look like it has weapons?”

  Just as the Turtles started to study the Technodrome, a huge three-pronged laser cannon emerged from the ship’s main weapons hatch. It made a mechanical whirring noise and then blasted an energy bolt directly at them!

  “I think it has weapons!” Leo screamed. “Evasive maneuvers!”

  “Right!” Mikey agreed.

  Using a strong gust to push forward, the Turtles soared through the air, banking their gliders on a diagonal away from the Technodrome. They acrobatically rolled through the crosswinds, flying over the vulnerable city.

  Seeing Shredder up close was like staring at fear itself. But Splinter knew that after months of being tormented by nightmares about this very moment, he had the courage to look his archenemy in the eye. After all, he reminded himself, under the armor and beneath the razor-sharp mask, Shredder was just a man.

  A man he had known many years ago by another name.

  “Oroku Saki,” Splinter said, naming Shredder aloud. “You were once my friend. I thought of you as my brother.”

  The memories of Splinter’s former life as Hamato Yoshi came flooding back to him: his village in Japan, the sliding wood-and-paper doors of his modest house, and the people living there who made it a home.

  “Fifteen years ago, I was a different man,” Splinter said. “I had everything I could want. A loving wife—”

  He remembered the face of a beautiful woman. Those soft, welcoming eyes he would wake up to each morning. That smile that could warm his heart and make him fall in love each time he saw her. Her name was Tang Shen.

  “—and a beautiful daughter,” he went on, remembering the newborn girl he had once held proudly in his arms. Let’s name her . . . Miwa, he could hear himself telling his wife.

  Then Splinter’s memories took a dark turn. “And you, my loyal friend. Jealousy consumed you,” he recalled, seeing the silhouette of an unwanted visitor in his mind. From behind the paper panels of the sliding doors, the shadowy figure watched his unsuspecting family. The menacing shape suddenly morphed into the outline of Shredder!

  “You sought that which was mine,” Splinter said angrily, snapping back into reality. It was time to make Shredder pay for what he’d done. “You took everything I loved. Everything! And still you hunt me down!”

  As Splinter charged at Shredder, that fateful night flashed before his eyes: the sight of his attacker, the face of his baby girl, the sound of his wife screaming through the darkness, the flames . . .

  By the time he’d heard Tang Shen’s shriek echo across the village, it was already too late. Their house was ablaze and she was trapped inside. He finally fought off Oroku Saki, but did he have enough time to save her? With just steps left to go, he watched his house crumble, then burn up into black smoke. That was the instant he lost everything. Overcome with grief, Hamato Yoshi didn’t see Oroku Saki sneak off into the shadows carrying a mysterious object. He only saw the flames before him rise higher. He saw the smoldering embers dissolve into nothing. He saw life as he knew it vanish. He fell to his knees, screaming out into the night—

  The scream jarred Splinter back to the moment. He knew this fight was his destiny. And he knew the only way to fulfill it would be to take Shredder down.

  “So I fight you now,” Splinter announced to Shredder, stealthily moving into striking distance. “To end this.”

  The Turtles continued to hang glide through the clouds over the tallest skyscrapers in the city. But even at top speed, the airship was closing in fast.

  Mikey decided to try an evasive move all his own. He scraped past Donnie’s glider and banked abruptly.

  “Whoops!” Mikey yelled out, but it was too late. His glider collided with Donnie’s, and both Turtles started falling!

  Leo, who was still hitching a ride with Raph on his glider, tried to steer after them.

  “Donnie! Mikey!”

  They crashed to the street.

  Leo looked down. After what seemed like an eternity, he saw movement. Donnie and Mikey were A-okay! Leo breathed a sigh of relief. But that feeling was very short-lived.

  The Technodrome unloaded energy blast after energy blast at them.

  “What now?” asked Raph as he steered the glider from side to side.

  Leo knew there was only one answer: if they wanted to survive the Technodrome’s terrible firepower, they’d have to spin their glider around and fly underneath it. But the moment their glider turned—

  BLAM! The Technodrome blew them out of the sky!

  They rocketed toward the cement. Leo had already avoided one giant fall this mission, but he wasn’t going to avoid this one.

  Leo and Raph hit the pavement hard.

  Donnie and Mikey ran to the hang glider wreckage.

  “Are you guys all right?” Donnie asked.

  Leo opened his eyes and nodded at Donnie and Mikey. Then he looked over at Raph.

  Wincing, Raph managed to sit up. “I’ve been better,” he answered. He noticed that his brothers were staring into the distance. As Raph followed their gaze, he found himself looking at a scene that could have come straight from a disaster movie: the Technodrome was wreaking havoc across the city. With nothing standing in its way, citizens scrambled in horror, looking for any kind of shelter from the extra-dimensional war machine. It was mass hysteria!

  “What do we do?” Donnie wondered out loud.

  “We need to talk to Splinter,” Leo told them. “Come on.”

  The Turtles lifted a manhole cover and began their long trek back
down to the lair, far from the Technodrome’s all-seeing eye.

  When the Turtles arrived back at their lair, they expected to see April and get some guidance from Master Splinter. But their home was empty. Their living room was ransacked. Something was very wrong.

  “Hello? Sensei?” Leo called out. But no one answered.

  “April?” Donnie called. There was nothing but silence.

  Then Raph pushed ahead of everyone in a full-blown state of alarm. There was only one name on his mind. “Spike!” He yelled out.

  Just then, across the room, a tiny reptilian head popped up. It was Raph’s pet turtle, Spike, and he was perfectly safe under a toppled table.

  “Thank goodness,” Raph said as he rushed over to hug his pint-sized pal. “Don’t scare me like that, buddy.”

  Mikey wandered into the dojo behind everyone else. “Anyone in here?” he asked, just before—WHOOSH!—someone tried to take him out with a swing of a hanbo staff. It was April’s dad, Kirby!

  “Whoa, dude, chill!” Mikey shouted before pulling off a swift back handspring to dodge another hanbo strike.

  The other Turtles quickly wrestled Kirby to the ground.

  “What the heck is going on?” Raph asked.

  Something caught Donnie’s eye, and he stared at Kirby. At the base of his skull was the glint of a micro-sized square implanted beneath his skin.

  “Guys, check this out,” Donnie said, pointing out the curious device.

  They all noticed the tiny chip, then looked at each other, confused.

  It didn’t take long for Donnie to extract the computer chip from Kirby’s head. He showed off the weird piece of nanotechnology to the other Turtles.

  Totally stumped, Leo asked, “So . . . what is it?”

  “I think it’s a mind-control device,” Donnie explained.

  That got Raph excited. “Really?” he interjected, swiping the chip and chasing Mikey around with it.