The Crime Fighter Collection

by Matthew J Gilbert (retail)

  “What?” Leo stared at him in disbelief. “We made a deal with Karai. We can’t just go behind her back. This is about that Kraang ship. They want to take us out!”

  “So does Shredder!” Raph replied quickly. “This may be our only chance to take him by surprise. Are we really going to pass that up?”

  As much as Leo hated to admit it, he knew Raph was right. He hated the idea of breaking his promise to Karai and dishonoring the ninja code of truth. But he knew that this truce was only temporary and that his family was forever.

  All eyes were on him.

  Leo nodded. “Let’s take down Shredder.”

  The shipyard docks at night were one of the few places in New York City that didn’t hustle and bustle. A wall of steel crates, stacked on top of one another nearly twenty feet high, made the pier look like an indestructible fortress. At this late hour, the docks were empty, and the only sound was the river lapping back and forth.

  So Karai was careful to move in silence.

  Up ahead, she spied the figure of a tall man, dressed in a Russian military uniform. He appeared to be alone, standing quietly next to an unmarked car. He looked normal, except for one peculiar feature—he had a diamond eye.

  Karai stomped as loudly as she could to distract the ominous soldier.

  Thud!

  The man with the diamond eye turned to look at her, as Shredder and members of the Foot Clan snuck up behind him.

  “Where is the shipment?” Shredder growled.

  At Shredder’s signal, a Foot Soldier came forward with a briefcase. The man with the diamond eye opened it. He smiled when he saw the golden glow coming from inside.

  “I’ll inspect the merchandise,” Karai said.

  The man with the diamond eye looked at Shredder. “Don’t you trust me?” he asked in a thick Russian accent. “We are old friends.”

  “Then you won’t mind keeping me company while she checks,” Shredder replied.

  The man with the diamond eye got comfortable. It was clear he wasn’t going anywhere for a little while.

  While Karai took a closer look at the weapons, the Turtles were gathered on another stack of crates nearby, spying on Shredder and his crew. They were waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike with a perfect weapon: a modified water- balloon launcher.

  And who was better at launching random objects than Mikey?

  “Aim for his armor,” Donnie recommended, holding up a round explosive device. “This electro-grenade will use the metal as a conductor to amplify the shock.”

  Donnie never got a response. Instead, Mikey just stared off into space. “How much of that did I need to understand?” he finally asked.

  “Just aim for his armor,” Donnie translated.

  Mikey smiled. “Got it!”

  “You sure we should trust Mikey with this?” Raph asked, bracing for the worst.

  “When it comes to water-balloon launchers, he’s the best in the business,” Leo replied, holding one end of the launcher.

  Mikey loaded the electro-grenade in place and pulled back to aim. As he set his sights on Shredder, Leo and Raph kept watch on the meeting below.

  They saw Karai snooping around the missile launcher crate as planned. And just as she was about to swipe one, she looked up and saw the Turtles. It took her a few moments to register what was about to happen, but when she did, the surprise on her face was evident. She was being double-crossed.

  “Booyakasha, Shred-head!” Mikey whispered, releasing his grip and launching the electro-grenade.

  Karai raced toward Shredder.

  “Look out!” she screamed, tackling Shredder out of the way.

  The electro-grenade missed them and—ka-blam!—it blasted the man with the diamond eye instead.

  Raph couldn’t believe what she had just done. “Are you kidding me?” he griped.

  Mikey paused, taking a long look at Karai. “I do not understand that woman.”

  A moment later, Karai rose to her feet, furious. How could they do this to me? she thought. She picked up the missile launcher—the very weapon she had planned to steal for them—and aimed at the Turtles. Without hesitation, she squeezed the trigger and a deafening roar came from the weapon.

  “Incoming!” Leo yelled.

  BLAM!

  The Turtles were blown into the air before they plummeted through a cloud of black smoke to the docks below. Pain shot through their bodies.

  Raph was the first to shake it off. He took a look at the flames above them, trying to assess the damage. “Well, this can’t get much worse,” he said.

  He turned, hearing a little beep-beep-beep behind him. It was Donnie’s T-Phone.

  Donnie finally sat up, half conscious, and checked his phone. His eyes widened in terror. “The radar! The Kraang ship is nearby.”

  They looked up into the night sky. It seemed to twist into an unnatural blur. The outline of a mysterious shape began to form. Then, in a flash of light, the Kraang warship appeared.

  Leo rose from the rubble and saw the ship looming over them. “Fall back, guys!” he commanded.

  “No argument here!” Donnie agreed.

  The Turtles broke into a run, unaware that someone was storming after them. They dashed through the shipyard, trying to find a way out. But the tall stacks of shipping crates turned the docks into a maze with walls of steel at every turn. No one wanted to say it, but the more they ran, the more lost they became.

  Leo spotted light nearby and, taking a chance, turned toward it. It was a dead end! They were boxed in by steel crates, with no escape.

  There was a clanging noise behind them. It seemed to be moving and was growing louder and louder by the second. Then everything went eerily quiet.

  They turned to see who was blocking their path—and found themselves face to face with a hulking man with a suit made of razor-sharp spikes.

  Shredder!

  “Tell me where Splinter is, and I’ll let you live long enough to watch him perish,” he snarled.

  Before he could say another word, there was a rumbling from overhead. A massive flying object crested the wall of crates, casting a shadow over them all. It was the Kraang ship. It circled above them, its tentacles probing around the area and scanning for life-forms.

  “That thing again?” Leo said. “Great timing.”

  The Shredder couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He just stared at it, almost hypnotized.

  The Kraang ship unloaded a barrage of zigzagging energy streams at them. Debris flew up in the clouds of dust and cement as each electric pink bolt ricocheted off the steel crates and burned the concrete under their feet. The Turtles managed to flip out of the way to safety.

  The ship unleashed another energy stream—this one slicing toward Shredder. The cunning ninja warlord threw open the doors of a nearby shipping crate and disappeared inside its protective steel. The stream flew right past him.

  Through the chaos, Leo finally saw their opportunity to escape: their exit path was now clear. And better still—Shredder had stuffed himself inside a giant crate. Their ultimate enemy had unknowingly laid his very own trap!

  All Leo had to do was wait for his moment.

  He saw the ship suddenly ascend, swooping around in the distance to begin another attack. That was when he rushed into action, darting out into the line of fire to slam the lock shut on Shredder’s crate.

  “Come on!” Leo urged the other Turtles as he ran to safety.

  Donnie and the others started after him—right as Shredder’s blades ripped through the solid steel wall of his crate. With the screeeeeech of steel on steel, Shredder slashed his way out, carving a hole big enough for him to climb through.

  Once he stepped out into the light, it became clear to the Shredder that the Turtles were completely walled in—steel crates stacked twenty feet high surrounded them on three sides, and he was blocking their only exit path.

  “We’ll catch up to you later!” Donnie cried out to Leo.

  And Donnie, Raph, an
d Mikey cowered as Shredder stood before them.

  Unaware that his brothers were trapped, Leo scrambled through the labyrinth of shipping crates until he found a clearing. Suddenly, an acrobatic figure somersaulted into his path. It was Karai.

  “I thought you were better than this! I thought you were my friend! How could you betray me? You’re just as shortsighted and obsessed as Shredder!” she screamed angrily.

  Leo tried to reason with her. “You said yourself how bad Shredder is! Why are you protecting him? You said he’s driving you crazy!”

  “He drives me crazy … because he’s my father.”

  “Your father? Shredder is your father? You’re Shredder’s daughter?!”

  Leo couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All this time, he’d thought she was just a talented ninja who fell in with the wrong crowd. But it made sense now. He always chose family first … and so did she. They would never be able to join forces.

  A second later, something else came between them—literally! The Kraang ship soared past, firing on anything in its sights.

  Leo looked back to Karai. “We’ve gotta stop that thing!”

  “Our deal’s off!” she cried. “You want a feud? You’ve got one!”

  Donnie, Raph, and Mikey tried to hold their own against Shredder. He seemed to know all of their kata combos, dispatching them without even breaking a sweat. Even with three-on-one attacks, the devious leader of the Foot Clan was showing no signs of slowing down.

  They flung throwing stars at him, but Shredder was simply too fast for their attack. He dodged the sharp spinners expertly, the little projectiles whistling past him and clanking off the crates behind him.

  Frustrated, the Turtles charged forward again.

  Raph stepped up, swinging his sais in anger. He was tired of running from the Shredder. He landed a few strikes—and then old Shred-head surprised him with a power punch to the stomach. Raph was wrecked!

  Now it was Mikey’s turn. He flung the rest of this throwing stars and then executed a series of nunchuck speed attacks. Shredder quickly countered them all and then booted him backward.

  Donnie thought out his next move carefully. Clearly, a head-on assault wasn’t going to work—so he went airborne! He jumped from crate to crate, using the steel stacks to propel him into a power arc. He sprang at Shredder. His bo staff ready for smacking. But the martial arts master sent him flying with a single blow.

  Knowing that he had the Turtles on the run, Shredder menacingly moved forward. His arm blades extended, ready to slice and dice. As he got closer, his voice seemed to boom from behind his mask.

  “Prepare to learn why they call me the Shredder,” the masked villain hissed as he moved forward, his cold shadow falling across the Turtles.

  Donnie, Raph, and Mikey weren’t the only ones staring down a blade. Elsewhere on the docks, Karai’s ninja sword was slicing just inches away from Leo’s face.

  Karai wasn’t playing around this time. Leo could tell she was really trying to wound him. He wondered if his bros had gotten free, but he really had no way of knowing. All he could do was press on, parrying Karai’s attacks as best he could.

  She got him with a stunner: a knee to the chin. The world went blurry for Leo, and when his vision finally normalized, he saw her disarm him, knocking one of his katanas away. She had him up against the wall. Then the familiar hum of the Kraang ship caught her attention.

  It swooped in, blaster blazing! Karai backflipped out of the line of fire, ducking behind another crate for cover.

  When the blaster smoke lifted, she peeked her head out to check if the coast was clear.

  The ship was gone—and so was Leo.

  She watched as his silhouette disappeared among the crates. And she felt the anger rising up in the back of her throat.

  He had survived her sword … this time.

  Donnie, Raph, and Mikey picked themselves up, preparing to battle Shredder again. They were tired and hurt, but ready for another chance to put a dent in the evil one’s armor.

  Suddenly, the Kraang ship screamed low, nearly taking them all out. In its wake, the Turtles were whipped back to the ground, as was Shredder. When they looked up, they saw the ship bank, heading back for more target practice.

  During their close encounter, no one had noticed a figure standing atop the crates, pointing something large at the sky.

  It was Leo! And he was holding one of the missile launchers he had freshly swiped from one of the weapon crates. He looked through the weapon’s scope, putting the Kraang ship right in its crosshairs. Squeezing the trigger as hard as he could, Leo fired the missile that was about to put an end to this whole mess.

  Ka-blam! The rocket flew out, arcing upward toward the ship. Inside the cockpit, radar screens screamed with warning signals. The missile was fast approaching.

  Inside, one of the Kraang brain-things had enough time to say: “This is definitely that which is known as not good—”

  As the rocket exploded, it blew a massive hole in the side of the ship. The craft plummeted toward the docks on a crash course, smoke spiraling out behind it. On its way down, it narrowly missed mowing everyone over—

  Except for Shredder. The runaway ship hit him head-on, then pulled him under its hull and rolled him over the edge of the docks into the depths of the river.

  “Father!” Karai yelled. She sheathed her sword and dove into the icy waves to save him.

  Leo wanted to wait there as long as it took, watching to see if Karai surfaced safely. But his brothers were urging him to leave the shipyard while they still had the chance. Their work was done here. They had saved the city from the Kraang and gotten the better of Shredder.

  But at what cost? Leo thought. Yes, the battle was over … but so was any hope of a friendship with Karai.

  After a few more moments, he left the docks, hearing nothing but the waves lapping behind him.

  Later, miles away from the docks, the Turtles found a secluded rooftop where they could regroup and catch their breath. Leo broke away from the pack and stepped up to the edge, looking out over the city. Before him were people out and about, enjoying their lives, going to dinner, laughing on the street. They were all safe now because of him.

  But for a hero who had just KO’d the Kraang on behalf of New York, he felt pretty glum.

  Donnie made his way past the other Turtles and tried to comfort him. “Leo, it’s not that bad. You blew up the Kraang ship!”

  “But I also blew our chance to get Karai on our side,” Leo replied solemnly.

  “Look, she’s Shredder’s daughter!” Raph reminded him. “She’s his blood! She was never going to be on our side.”

  Leo just stared into space pensively. “Maybe you’re right.” And then, with Master Splinter’s teachings echoing in his head, he realized, “Maybe I was just believing what I wanted to.”

  Mikey cautiously approached the group. He wasn’t one for serious talks, but he wanted to comfort his big bro any way he could, which meant he had to dig deep for his most stirring and emotional memory. “I’ve been there, dude,” he said. “For me, it was leprechauns.”

  Leo turned to Mikey. “Are you seriously comparing what I’m going through to the time you found out leprechauns aren’t real?!”

  Mikey looked stunned.

  Leo noticed Donnie and Raph in the background, frantically waving their hands around.

  But it was too late. “Leprechauns aren’t real?” Mikey moaned.

  Leo groaned. This was going to be a long night.

  Meanwhile, back at the docks, Karai finally emerged from the icy waters, gasping for air. She could barely move her arms and legs, but using the little strength she had left, she hauled Shredder safely ashore.

  “Well done, Karai,” he said, breathing hard. Shredder had never been prouder of his daughter, or more grateful for her actions. So he decided to reward her bravery with a gift.

  “I found something for you,” he coughed, pulling out a squirming Kraang brain-thing he
’d pulled from the depths of the sunken warship. He held it upside down by its slimy tentacles.

  It squealed.

  Karai took one look and recoiled in horror. She had never seen anything so hideous.

  But the Shredder saw things a little differently.

  He smiled wickedly behind his metal mask, forming a new evil plan. He turned to Karai and said, “You always wanted a pet.”

  The Shredder wanted answers. But the disembodied Kraang could only make high-pitched shrieking noises.

  “Why were you hunting the Turtles?” Shredder demanded.

  But all he got in return was a hisssss!

  If the slimy little alien knew how to speak English, it never let on. All it did was writhe in Shredder’s grip and try to squirm away.

  Karai stood by her father’s side, amused. “They don’t talk much outside their little houses,” she explained, tapping on the junked parts of a nearby damaged Kraang-droid exoskeleton.

  Shredder studied the mess of robotics before him. The droid had clearly suffered a nasty spill—severed metal limbs, exposed wiring, a decaying face, and an empty slot where a “stomach” would normally be.

  Shredder decided to start there. He jammed the alien blob inside the exoskeleton. Lights began to glow all over the droid’s body. With beeps and whirs, the system rebooted and the brainlike Kraang calmed itself and closed its eyes contentedly.

  Then, through a malfunctioning voice chip, it finally spoke.

  “Kraang is lacking the knowledge to answer the questions that the one known as Shredder is asking of Kraang.”

  Shredder looked over at Karai, dumbfounded.

  “Do they all speak like this?” he asked her.

  “Even if Kraang is possessing the knowledge,” the droid continued, “the one known as Shredder will never be getting that knowledge from Kraang.”