| abstract | - Leo's brother Michelangelo guides him up the stairs to the rooftop of April's building. But much to Leo's annoyance, Mike keeps guiding Leo's direction and opens doors for him. Leo reminds Mike he's perfectly capable of getting around—he's only blind. Despite being unable to see, the the building top is still a pleasant place to relax. But Leo feels that he is forgetting the appearance of everyday sights, even as he knows they're still there. Mike reassures Leo that their brother Donatello will find an antidote to the poison that has blinded Leo, but Leo knows it has been going well, having sensed doubt and fear from the tone of Don's voice. Leo asks Mike if he thinks about their purpose in life, and what would happen if they were to throw away their weapons—if they really are anything without their weapons, and if they exist only to be weapons themselves. Leo's deep philosophical questions concern Mike, who offers to go get Splinter. Leo insists these are worthy questions, but Mike offers to take Leo back downstairs for a beer. Leo tells Mike to go ahead and let him catch up. Left alone on the building rooftop, Leo decides to climb the building's radio antenna. He climbs a good distance, then primally roars at the cityscape sky he can't see in front of him. But the metal strut he's standing on snaps and collapses under his weight, and Leo and his swords plummet. Leo violently impacts against the cornice of the rooftop, then continues falling down to the sidewalk below, one of his swords falling below him. The end of his katana's hilt embeds itself into the concrete sidewalk blade upwards, and Leo himself falls on his front side directly on top of it, violently running him through from carapace to plastron as he shatters the concrete slab below him. Human pedestrians are alarmed by what has just happened—the mangled impaled corpse of a man-sized bipedal turtle is in plain sight of everybody. Soon the N.Y.P.D. are on the scene, and both the rooftop and the sidewalk are examined. From the broken tower strut, they believe that his fall was an accident. The two katana appear to belong to him. The body is taken away in an ambulance. At the morgue, medical examiner Dr. Lansing and zoocryptologist Josie March examine the body together, and quickly determine that he was once a turtle, but that he has certain anatomical features more like that of a human. The body's carapace had fingerprints similar in shape to his own, but not matching any of his own prints, suggesting there is more than one being like him. The body's gear and weapons strongly suggest he was intelligent. March wonders if the body was an alien, but Lansing believes it may actually be a mutation. The dirt on the bottom of the feet has been forensically analyzed, and is found to contain a specific kind of schist exposed in only a few places of Manhattan's bedrock, mostly in the island's sewer, and the lab is hopeful they can pinpoint its exact origin. A SWAT team investigates an area of sewer, and quickly discovers and disables a tripwire someone has installed. The team finds a partially open brick door and crawls underneath, finding themselves in an underground dwelling with furniture and appliances. They quickly spot a bipedal rat wearing a kimono and three other bipedal turtles, and immediately order them to freeze at gunpoint. The rat and two of the turtles submit as ordered, but one of the turtles pounces on the SWAT team wielding two sai, kicking one of the officers in the face. But another officer takes this opportunity to pump the turtle's body with bullets, and he falls against a wall, rapidly bleeding to death. The surviving beings are handcuffed and their dwelling contained. The dying turtle weakly speaks. Back on the radio tower, Leonardo is still alive and well, albeit still blind—this entire sequence of events never happened, having unfolded entirely in his own imagination. But Leo makes an immediate decision to throw away his swords, dropping both of them onto the rooftop below.
|
