It was hard to tell if the air was still flashing with spots of light, or if it was just dazzled retinas trying to make sound into light. The ringing in the cavern was almost definitely just eardrums trying to make light into sound. The question on everyone's mind, as spoken by Mikey, hung in the air with all the sound and light and, at first, seemed difficult to answer.

"Are we dead?" Mikey asked, thinking he was sitting up and rubbing his head, though he was actually lying flat on his back just like everyone else and staring at the ceiling, which seemed to have far too many light fixtures for a moodily lit cave.

For a long moment, nobody felt qualified to answer the question. Then two people suddenly sat up.

"Doc!" Eli cried, which Raph echoed with a cry of "Friender!"

The two of them scrambled up and staggered half blinded and almost entirely dizzy over to where they had last seen the slugs they were looking for.

Doc sat up as Eli knelt beside him, then leaned against a pebble with a weary sigh. Friender popped up with a cheerful chirp and hopped into Raph's hand. A third slug moaned and rubbed its head painfully. It was a perfectly ordinary, in no way special, mutated or even slightly evil, Flaringo.

It looked up at Raph. Then it looked at Eli. It crouched low and shivered in terror. It knew what it had done. And it was terrified of what would happen to it now because of what it had done.

There were no obstacles in his way, yet Doc weaved over to the frightened Flaringo anyway and put a reassuring limb on what would have been the Flaringo's shoulder if slugs had had those. Doc cooed in a compassionate sort of way, and looked up at Raph and Eli, as if daring them to punish the slug for what really wasn't its fault. Friender chirped at Raph, hopped down and went over to hug the Flaringo. He looked up at Raph and chirped challengingly.

"I'm insulted that you think I'd hurt him," Raph rebuked Friender.

"Her, actually," Eli corrected.

"Whatever," Raph shrugged indifferently, but he secretly wondered how Eli could tell.

"I don't think we're dead," Leo said, finally having gained enough of his senses to make some sort of determination and answer Mikey's earlier question.

"Is the ground crawling? Or is that just me?" Kord inquired.

"It's the slugs," Trixie volunteered, "Hundreds... thousands of them... millions."

It was true. All of the ghouls the Demon Ghoul had gathered over the last few weeks had converged on this cavern. They were not ghouls anymore, but there were just as many of them. A living carpet of slugs marched around the cavern, trying to make sense of where they were, what had happened, and which way they should go in order to return to their homes.

"I guess we really are living in a cartoon," Don told Leo.

"Uh... Donnie..." Leo said, looking at the Flaringo that Friender and Doc were hugging, "Didn't you say that slug got into mutagen?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Why..." Leo asked very, very slowly, "isn't it a mutant... now?"

"Doc must have cured that too," Eli said, holding out his hand for Doc and the Flaringo to hop into, and tickling the Flaringo under the chin.

"I guess we should count ourselves lucky he didn't 'cure' us too," Leo remarked, testing out his ability to stand and finding it was something he was perfectly capable of doing and wondering that he hadn't even considered the possibility that Doc could 'cure' mutation.

Leo offered Don a hand up.

"Just because you're mutants doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, or that you're sick," Eli said, now petting Doc, "Doc can tell what needs to be fixed and what doesn't. You guys may be mutants, but you're meant to be that way. Doc can tell."

"That actually makes sense... I think," Leo glanced at Don for confirmation, and Don nodded thoughtfully, so Leo went on, "Sometimes mutagen produces results like us. We can think and feel and, like you said, there's not really anything wrong with us. But for some... mutagen destroys their minds, or at least fractures them."

"It wasn't just the Dark Water that made the Demon Ghoul crazy," Trixie realized, "It was also the mutagen. So Doc basically had to cure it twice. No wonder he couldn't do it on his own."

"Friender was happy to help," Raph said, stroking the Fandango, who had climbed up onto his shoulder; Raph then addressed the slug, "I'm sorry I doubted you."

"So we're all here together, we've kept the mutagen out of evil hands, found and fixed the DTD, the Kraang that came with us are gone, we've defeated the Demon Ghoul, and saved Slugterra," Don ticked items off on his fingers, "Does that mean we can go home now?"

"I..." Leo hesitated, looking around uncertainly, "I think... maybe we can."

"But what about our slugs?" Mikey asked, clutching Skip in his hands, somehow having instantly grasped that the slugs wouldn't be going with them, "What'll happen to them?"

"We'll take care of them," Eli said, putting a hand on Mikey's shoulder, "They'll all go to good homes. I promise," he held out his hand, palm up, and Mikey reluctantly let Skip jump onto it, "We'll probably even keep some of them. We could always use more help in the fight against Dr. Black and his ghouls."

"I guess takin' 'em back with us is outta the question," Raph said, a little slower (or maybe just less willing) to catch on than Mikey.

Eli turned to Raph, who still had Friender on his shoulder. Eli didn't say anything. He didn't have to. Raph glanced at Friender, who gazed at him steadily. Raph sighed wearily and let Eli take Friender too.

"They belong to Slugterra," Eli said, even though he didn't have to, "Whether your world is the one over our heads or a completely different universe... the slugs wouldn't belong there any more than you guys belong here. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yeah," Raph nodded, then lapsed into a moody silence.

"Well, Cappy..." Leo said, looking at his Tazerling, "...it's been... actually kinda fun. Give your new slinger a jolt for me when you meet him. Make sure he knows not to take you for granted."

Cappy chittered, gave Leo a parting electric shock and then hopped onto Eli's shoulder.

"You heard him, guys," Don said to the slugs milling around his feet, "You gotta stay here," he knelt down to address Leader specifically, "Take care of them, okay?"

Leader smiled confidently. He'd look after the others. He was a good slug like that.

"Do we need to go back to the place where we started?" Leo asked Don.

"Which one?" Don inquired with an amused look.

"Good point. Forget I asked. Fire it up. Or whatever."

"Okay," Don said, setting the DTD down on the ground, "Anybody who doesn't want to visit New York, stand back at least thirty feet."

Once slugs and people had scrambled out of the way, Don pressed a button and stood up. A few seconds later, the turtles looked at one another, and Mikey asked the obvious.

"Uh... shouldn't something be-" A bright flash of light enveloped them...

...and he found himself standing alone on a rooftop in New York city, "-happening... oh."

Mikey looked around. It looked like the New York he'd left. All the buildings he knew were where they belonged. They were the right size, shape and color too. He decided that it was time to see if his home was where he'd left it, and also the right size, shape and color.

Down in the sewers, he found Raph, who had been transported to somewhere else in the system, but still in New York at least. In the lair, they found Leo, who had landed in a back alley directly on top of a manhole cover. It took awhile for Don to get back, because he had ended up on top of a bus in Staten Island. But he did, eventually, manage to find his way home, just in time for Splinter to wake up in the morning and discover the four turtles congratulating themselves on getting there.

"Where have you boys been?" Splinter demanded, not sure whether he should be angry or relieved and so deciding that he would be both until an explanation tumbled out.

"We went to a place where people shoot slugs out of blasters!" Mikey said.

"A Kraang device transported us to an alternate dimension," Don said.

"We got lost in a network of caverns. It took weeks to find each other," Leo said.

"We fought a monster, kicked butt, and now we're back," Raph said.

"Ah," Splinter said, taking in all of these statements at once, "Well, that's alright then."

He stalked back to his room to meditate and try to make sense of what he'd just heard. He figured only one of the statements could possibly be true, but it was unlike the brothers to have such wildly differing stories unless at least one was accurate. Their lies were usually rehearsed beforehand. You could almost guarantee they weren't telling the truth if they all said the same thing. Conflicting stories, Splinter could believe. It was the ones that matched which made him suspicious.

"So, what are you gonna do with that?" Leo asked Don, gesturing to the DTD in his hands.

"Put it on a shelf and let it gather dust," Don replied, "and hope we never have a reason to go back."

"But we already have a reason, D," Mikey told him, "There's a cavern down there where they serve chocolate root beer. Chocolate. Root beer. It's ah-mazing. We have to go back."

"Mikey," Leo said, "We are not going back for root beer."

"Aww..."

Don laughed suddenly, for no readily apparent reason.

"What?" Leo asked.

"I just thought of something."

"I noticed," Leo replied neutrally, "Want to clue us in?"

"I just thought..." Don laughed again, "What do you suppose would have happened if the Shane Gang had wound up in New York, instead of us going to Slugterra?"

"That... would probably have been a lot less interesting," Leo said, "Remember, Eli's from the surface. He could probably have kept them out of trouble."

"Oh yeah..." Don frowned, "Still, I'd like to see him get a cave troll on a subway."

"Hey, where'd Raph go?" Mikey asked suddenly, looking around.

They found Raph sitting at the table in the kitchen area, feeding a leaf to Spike, his pet turtle. He didn't seem to be really into it, like his mind wasn't seeing the leaf or Spike at all. Leo came and put a hand on Raph's shoulder. Raph looked up, at first like he was going to be angry, but then he didn't seem to have the energy for it. It wouldn't have been worthwhile anyway, because Leo wasn't about to make fun of him. All he said was this:

"We'll miss 'em too, Raph. We'll miss 'em too."

A/N: Thank you all so much for reading, hope you enjoyed it and see you next time. Goodnight everybody.