A/N: And here's the second half of this ridiculous AU. I'm glad everyone has enjoyed it! There might be more eventually... There is a movie sequel, plus an additional cartoon series, left for me to mangle... We'll see!

From the window, Donatello can just make out the British soldiers lining the walls of the fort. The late day is still dark as night, the desert beyond the walls practically a black void.

"Okay, so the Egyptologist is one of the guys who opened the cursed chest back in Hamunaptra, right? The one the black book was in?" Michelangelo asks the Americans, while Leatherhead patches him up. The expanse of his bare chest is littered with faint, raised scars and burns that look years old; Donatello does his best not to stare at them. "Was there anyone else? What about Beni?"

"Nah, Beni scurried out of there before we opened the damn thing. He was the smart one," one of the two remaining Americans replies. His name is Henderson, Donatello learns, and he's more of a stereotypical Western cowboy than Donatello cares think about. He and Daniels are sticking close to each other, eyeing everything that makes a whisper of a sound or glints oddly in the light with suspicious scrutiny, and Donatello doesn't blame them.

Were he the target of an ancient curse, he would probably be paranoid, too.

"That sounds like Beni," Leatherhead says dryly, and Michelangelo nods, then winces as the larger man finishes wrapping his stomach. "Alright, my friend. That fall you took exacerbated some of the wounds you earned in prison. I would say 'don't overexert yourself,'" Leatherhead adds, "but I know better at this point than to waste my breath."

"That's what I like to hear," Michelangelo says, flashing a grin as he threads his arms back through the long sleeves and tugs the length of the shirt down over the bandages. "So it looks like our next move is to find this scholar of yours before our mummy buddy does. Chamberlain, you said his name was?"

He hops off the table, shrugging on his jacket, but doesn't make it a step before Donatello is standing in his way.

"If you think you're going, you have another think coming," Donatello says sternly. Michelangelo looks stunned by him for a split second, and then his blue eyes are guarded and his face is split by a disingenuous smile.

"And who the hell made you the boss?"

There's something festering between them now, something ugly and wounded and seven years in the making. Michelangelo was hurt more by the hand he was dealt by his family when they left him than Donatello thinks even he knows; and he was hurt again by Donatello's earlier, thoughtless desire to run away. It's all clear in the way Michelangelo stands now—challenging, and scornful, and fiercely afraid of failure.

He went back to the brink of Hell for Donatello, back to a godforsaken temple half-buried in the Sahara where he knew something evil lurked under the sand; all for the sake of sharing an adventure with Donatello, like the ones they promised they would have together when they were young. And now he's marked by an ancient curse, and doomed to death, and his big brother—who should be making it better—is making him feel hateful and cornered and scared.

His big brother is the cause of this mess in the first place.

"You're hurt," Donatello says after a long moment of silence. "And you're a target. You stay here."

"You don't get to decide what I do," Michelangelo bites out. His fists are shaking, and it almost kills Donatello. He's twenty-one, he shouldn't be about to die. "You woulda been done for five times over if it wasn't for me. You—"

"I," Donatello interrupts, stepping into his space and framing his shoulders with both hands, "love you. More than anything else in this world. You are infinitely more precious to me than any treasure I might ever find, and I'm only sorry it's taken me this long to understand that." Michelangelo blinks wide eyes, his barriers broken by the naked sincerity in Donatello's voice. The fight goes clean out of him, and he's suddenly closer to the baby brother Donatello left behind; staring at Donatello like he's seeing him clearly for the first time.

He tips their foreheads together, holding him tight. Hoping to impress upon the gods and the ancient spirits and the universe itself how deserving Michelangelo is of their protection, if only because he is so cherished.

Hoping to impress upon Michelangelo, at least in a small way, just how much he means what he says.

"No matter what I have to do, I am going to earn back your faith in me," he says quietly. "We'll fix this mess we've made, I swear it. So just do this for me, Mikey, please. Stay here."

After a moment that feels like a millennium, the fight goes out of his little brother.

"Fine," Michelangelo says, looking down, then away. "Fine. I'll stay here and keep an eye on Henderson and Daniels in case the creep comes back. But take Jones with you, Donnie. And—" He turns to his friend, beseeching. "Leatherhead, would you—"

"Of course," the giant man rumbles, sliding a second gun into his waistband alongside his favorite revolver. He tousles Michelangelo's hair on his way to the door, hauling a reluctant-looking Casey with him by the shoulder of his coat.

"Lock the doors," Donatello tells Daniels severely before he leaves. "No one comes in, no one goes out. Got it?"

"Got it," the man says easily. Michelangelo lifts his elephant gun off the table, tucking it into the crook of his arm, and offers Donatello a small, sideways smile and a half-hearted salute; clearly, an "I'll be fine". And Donatello sets out into the unnatural night with two companions armed to the teeth, and one burning, driving thought in mind:

I have to make this right.

The door to Chamberlain's office is thrown open, and Beni is tearing drawers out of his desk and upending their contents onto the floor; picture frames, books and papers—the Egyptologist's whole life—lay strewn across the thin carpet like garbage while Beni ransacks the room, and Donatello finds himself hating this cowardly little man.

"Hello, Beni," Leatherhead says, in a voice like ice, as he enters the room with a few long strides. "Let me guess: spring cleaning?"

His tone gives Donatello pause, and they're on the same side. Beni actually whimpers, and makes a break for the window on the far side of the room. Casey ducks to one side as Leatherhead grabs a wooden chair by the arm and hurls it, catching Beni in the middle of the back and sending him to the floor in an undignified heap.

"Oh, nice shot," Casey says, clearly impressed. Leatherhead pays him no mind, grabbing Beni by the suspenders and hauling him off the ground. He throws the smaller man against the wall, his feet a few inches off the ground, and Donatello thinks the wall actually cracked from the amount of force.

"You came back from the desert with a new friend, didn't you, Beni?" Leatherhead asks, unnatural green eyes glinting. He looks almost like a primeval reptile of some kind, stalking its lesser, unfortunate prey; Beni must be thinking along the same lines, because he's as pale as a ghost, pawing uselessly at Leatherhead's arms where they're planted like trees against his chest.

This is Michelangelo's friend, who has traveled with him for years; who went with him to Belize, and Egypt, and prison, and war. Donatello has seen him carry Michelangelo when he couldn't walk, and cover him with a blanket in the coldest part of a desert night, and Donatello knows in some unspoken, instinctive way, that this cruel side of him is only more proof of his caring. Michelangelo is in danger, and Leatherhead is acting on that fact and that fact alone.

And so Donatello stands by, arms folded, and lets the scene play out. He owes Beni no favors, anyway.

"What friend?" Beni chokes out, with a weak attempt at charm. "You and Angel are my only friends."

Leatherhead's face wrinkles in disgust, and in one sweeping move, he swings Beni away from the wall and down against the desk, so hard it knocks the breath out of him.

"What are you doing with this monster, Beni? What's in it for you? There is always something in it for you."

"It is better to be the right hand of the devil, than in his path," the Hungarian says faintly. "As long as I serve him, I am immune."

"Immune from what?" Donatello asks from over Leatherhead's shoulder, and the pinned man mutters something in his mother tongue Donatello doesn't catch. Whatever it is causes Leatherhead to snarl, and draw his balisong knife from a sleeve on his belt. He flicks it open and presses the blade against Beni's throat.

"What are you looking for here? And do not lie to me," Leatherhead says quietly. Beni looks too frightened to lie.

"The book! The black book they found at Hamunaptra!" he yelps, craning as far back as he can from the blade. "He wants it back! He said to me it would be worth its weight in gold!"

"What does he want the book for?" Casey snaps from where he's keeping watch by the door, gun drawn.

"I—I don't know, something about bringing his dead girlfriend back to life. But that's all! He just wants the book, I swear! Just the book, I swear!" Leatherhead considers this for a long moment before he leans back, sheathing his knife again and dragging Beni to his feet. Upright, Beni glances at Donatello sidelong. "...Along with your brother."

Leatherhead growls at him, and Beni cries out when the grip on his shoulder turns crushing, but a scream from outside draws their attention to the door. Beni, the slimy worm that he is, takes their momentary distraction as a window of opportunity, and flings himself out of Leatherhead's grasp. Donatello scrambles to grab him, but the man jumps the desk and leaps out the window.

"Crazy bastard," Casey says as he crosses the room to them at a run, and Leatherhead leans out the broken window frame with a look of distaste.

"There's our Egyptologist," he says, standing back so Donatello can look out beside him. "And there's our priest, as well."

Chamberlain is a shriveled husk on the street, recognizable only by his familiar wardrobe, and a figure in tattered black robes stands over him. The crowd in the Bazaar is gasping and fearful, drawing away, and as the people move back, Donatello catches sight the black book under Imhotep's arm; watches the monster pry a jeweled canopic jar out of Chamberlain's decomposed hand.

Then the mummy turns, and Donatello's breath catches; Imhotep's face is more human, having consumed what he wanted from poor Chamberlain, and at this point the creature is more flesh than skeleton. He stares at them from the street, so inhuman that Donatello has no idea what to expect—

And then, with a guttural growl, he unhinges his jaw. A buzzing, swarming black cloud of flies streams out of his mouth, straight for them, and with an alarmed yell, Casey slams the window shutters closed.

"This is a living nightmare," he says with feeling, locking the window in a panic. "That's two down, two to go—" He hesitates, and Donatello spins around to face Leatherhead, eyes wide.

"And then he'll be going after Mikey."

Henderson is dead when they race back to their rooms in the fort, strewn across the floor of the foyer, and Daniels is nowhere to be found. Donatello leads the way toward the bedroom at a run, heart in his throat, following the sounds of a desperate struggle.

His brother is pinned to the floor against the wall, his elephant gun clutched sideways in both hands across his chest, as he attempts to heave the mummy off of him.

"Get offa me, you damned maggoty piece of—"

"Mike!" Leatherhead roars, entering the room like a tidal wave. Imhotep looks up, and he has regenerated even more after taking Henderson, only a few touches of rot left in his face. Mikey is struggling to breathe underneath him, wriggling madly, and Donatello crosses the room to him at a run without thinking.

Imhotep bellows something foul-sounding in his dead language, and cranes toward Donatello with evil intent in his stolen eyes; but Casey plugs him in the face with two rounds from his pistol, distracting him just long enough for Leatherhead to use every ounce of his weight and solid muscle to pile-drive the monster away from Michelangelo.

Donatello is beside him not a second later, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and hauling him upright, bracing him while he heaves for air. They both look up in time to watch as Leatherhead is thrown across the room, right into Casey and through the bedroom door, landing in a pile of splintered wood.

And Imhotep's head whips around unnaturally, like a snapping rubber band, pinning the two brothers with his stare. He opens his mouth, jaw distended, and Michelangelo scrambles for his elephant gun—

Only to end up with an armful of cat instead, as Donatello's petal-white pet leaps from the bed to Michelangelo's aid, her ears folded flat against her head and her tongue curled, hissing wrath at the monster.

Like before, the reaction is instantaneous; Imhotep recoils with a shriek, and disappears into a pillar of sand. Donatello ducks his head, curling around Michelangelo and his cat as a roaring wind fills the room, sucking the sand out through the window and into the night. The shutters slam shut in the sand's wake, and the room is abruptly silent.

The four of them lay in place for a long moment, taking stock and catching their breath, and then Donatello has Michelangelo by the chin, turning his face up. "Are you alright?"

"I'm not sure," Casey groans from across the room, shoving Leatherhead's arm off his chest. "Ask me again later."

Rolling his eyes, and smiling a little, Michelangelo tilts his face out of Donatello's grasp. "I'm fine. It all happened all at once, I can't even tell you how fast everything went to hell. Daniels went off to get a drink, because he damn well doesn't listen—and I couldn't fight that mummy creep off of Henderson, I tried—"

"I know you did," Donatello says, because Michelangelo always does. His brother blinks, then nods, almost to himself, and his eyes fall to the ball of purring cat that's cuddled to his chest. Despite the gravity of the situation, a smile works itself onto Michelangelo's face, and he pets the cat behind the ears. "Remind me to buy Socrates a can of sardines for saving your life," Donatello adds, and Michelangelo laughs outright.

"Socrates? Seriously? You poor thing." He kisses her nose. "I'll call you Socks."

The ride to the Museum of Antiquities is a quiet one; Michelangelo is in the front, between Casey and Donatello, and Leatherhead is in the back with Daniels.

(Daniels hasn't said a word since he came back from the bar and found Henderson's body on the floor. Donatello suspects there's a multitude of reasons behind his silence: sorrow for his friends, guilt he was unable to save them, fear of Imhotep consuming him in the way he consumed the others—and a decided fear of Leatherhead, too, who made it abundantly clear how unimpressed he was with Daniels leaving Michelangelo and Henderson to fend against the monster on their own, for the sake of a stiff drink. Daniels is sitting as far from Leatherhead as he can, which isn't far at all, considering they're sharing the back seat.)

Casey parks his convertible haphazardly, and by the time they clamber out of the car, the curator and the Medjai are waiting for them by the door.

Donatello leads the way through the museum at a run, the rest of his group right behind him. "Last month, I found an inscription that mentioned the Book of the Dead. At the time, I dismissed it, because I was unwilling to believe in the idea of bringing the dead back to life—"

"Fairy tales," Michelangelo says, sounding a little smug, and Donatello rolls his eyes. He skids to a stop in front of the display cases and yanks them open.

"I still don't believe in Santa Claus," he says archly, "but I do believe that Imhotep is going to use the black book to resurrect his dead lover."

"And then, together with her, he will bring the apocalypse," the Medjai says darkly. Donatello waves a hand, unimpressed by the desert dweller's theatrics, and run his fingers over the stone tablet as he translates the hieroglyphs under his breath.

"If legend has it right," he mutters, "and the black book can bring people back to life—"

"Then maybe the gold book can kill him," the curator says, crouching next to him. "That's the myth."

"I'm willing to operate on a little faith here," Casey puts in, moving cautiously toward the window. There's commotion outside, and a faraway chanting that's growing louder and louder, and Casey swears when he finally works up the courage to peer out into the museum driveway. "Don, we got company."

"I'm busy, Jones," Donatello snaps, almost losing his place in the reading. He sees Michelangelo move away out of his peripheral vision, probably to join Casey by the window, and tries to focus on his translations. The Bembridge scholars believed the Book of the Living was hidden at the base of Anubis, but that's where Chamberlain found the Book of the Dead. And if the scholars got the two confused, and mixed up where the two books were buried, then wherever this inscription says they should find the Book of the Dead, is actually, instead, where they'll find—

His baby brother yelps in surprise from across the hall. "Holy—! Ardeth, get over here!"

Medjai crosses the room to them in a few quick steps, then curses colorfully in creative Arabic. From Donatello's side, the curator asks, "What is it?"

But Donatello can make out the chanting now, a repeated, monotonous Imhotep—Imhotep—Imhotep, that echos eerily through the polished halls of the museum, and works a shudder through Donatello's frame.

"It's a mob," Ardeth replies. "Civilians, covered in lesions and boils. They are slaves to him now."

"So it's begun," the curator says faintly. "The end."

"Not yet, Dr. Bey." Leatherhead's voice is steadfast. "There's still a chance, if we can find—"

"I've got it!" Donatello shouts gleefully, grinning up from his seat on the floor in front of the ancient slab of stone. "The Book of the Living is inside the statue of Horus! Take that, Bembridge scholars—I'd like to see you boys reject my application this time!"

"Celebrate your resume later," Michelangelo says, grabbing Donatello by the arm and hauling him to his feet. "There are about a hundred men outside with clubs and swords, and creepy mummy man is leading them up to the front door, we gotta go."

They don't even make it to the staircase before the doors burst open, and the people of Cairo batter their way inside, disfigured with sores and glazed in the eyes with the strength of the trance they're trapped in.

"Casey, to the car!" Leatherhead roars over the sound of the mob. "Everyone else, behind him!"

The back staircase is narrow, and the polished steps are slick, but the seven of them manage to make it outside and across the yard without incident. Casey has the car started by the time the rest of them pile in, and Casey guns it into drive as the mob begins to spill down the front steps toward them.

"Imhotep!" an unfortunately familiar voice calls. Beni, betraying them to the undead priest, drawing his attention to their convertible as they speed down the driveway. Imhotep's roar follows them down the road, and Donatello's blood runs cold.

"Oh, you're gonna get yours, Beni," Michelangelo mutters dangerously, eyes narrowed and dark. "You're gonna get yours."

The bazaar streets are narrow and complicated, and Imhotep's unwilling servants leap at their car from behind every stall and around every corner. Casey's gritting his teeth as he attempts to maintain their speed without losing control, keeping a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, and Donatello jumps when another man crashed into their windshield.

"This is insane," Daniels says from the backseat. "This is insane."

"Next time you hire an expert to go with you on a dig through a cursed temple," Michelangelo snaps over his shoulder, "maybe listen to him when he tells you to leave certain shit alone!"

"To hell with this," the American says, turning in his seat. "To hell with all of you!"

"Sit down," Dr. Bey snaps, but Daniels yanks his arm out of the curator's grip. "You won't last an hour on your own!"

"Are you kiddin'? Y'all are headed back to the damned City of the Dead—I'll take my chances here."

And with that, he rolls down the back of the convertible and lands with a heavy thud in the street. Donatello twists in his seat to watch as the man ducks down a dark alley and disappears from sight. Casey rounds a corner sharply, and Donatello swallows the bitter pit in his throat.

He hopes Daniels knows what he's doing.

"Shit!" Casey slams on the brakes suddenly, and the car fishtails out of control, slamming into a wall after a few dizzying seconds. Michelangelo's hands are on Donatello's shoulders before his head has a chance to stop spinning, tugging him urgently out of the seat.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon—"

There's a solid wall of crazed, diseased mind-slaves blocking the road, dozens of men advancing slowly with clubs and knives; the reason Casey tried to stop so suddenly was to avoid plowing straight through them. Climbing out of the car, and scrambling to grab anything that closely resembles a weapon, Donatello follows Michelangelo into the street. Leatherhead and Ardeth have taken a few of the men down, but their group is quickly surrounded and backed into a corner.

And then the mob parts, and Imhotep makes his way toward them in a slow stride, Beni shuffling unhappily behind him. The Egyptian priest is fully regenerated at this point, looking perfectly human, and from behind him, Donatello hears Dr. Bey whisper, "He's successfully consummated the curse."

Poor Daniels.

"All he needs to do now is raise Anck-su-namun from the dead," the curator adds quietly, "and the world as we know it will end."

Imhotep only has eyes for Donatello's brother. There's sick satisfaction in his face, at how he's cornered them like rats, and Donatello wants to scream. Why does it have to be Mikey? Is it really only a matter of pride at this point? Imhotep was so willing to take Donatello before, in some twisted, perverse thanks for bringing me back from the dead, but now, because Michelangelo added his two cents to the situation, he was the designated sacrificial lamb.

Michelangelo is tense beside him, almost thrumming with nervous energy, and he's clutching his elephant gun in both fists like a club "Any bright ideas?" he asks Don from the corner of his mouth, eyes never leaving Imhotep's face.

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking," Donatello whispers back, eyes darting around their small corner of the bazaar, trying to come up with a plan, any plan—even a downright terrible plan will do, at this point, doing anything would be better than doing nothing. And with that thought, he understands Michelangelo a little bit better.

"Well, think fast," his baby brother says, shoving his empty rifle at Donatello and squaring his shoulders. "'Cause if he turns me into a mummy, you're the first one I'm coming after."

The words almost don't register at first. Donatello stares at him blankly, uncomprehending, and it's not until Michelangelo takes a few steps forward without him that he understands.

"Oh, no, hell no, get back here this instant!" he hisses, scrambling to grab for him. Dr. Bey and Ardeth both hold him back, and panic slips into every corner of his mind and body like a plague. "Michelangelo, don't you dare!"

"Mike," Leatherhead says, but that's all he says, because Michelangelo shakes his head sharply.

"Hey, ugly," Michelangelo calls across the street, staring down the high priest and the mob and looming apocalypse without at trace of fear. "I'll make a deal with you. I go along, nice and easy, and you leave my friends here alone." Imhotep stares at him, nothing in his expression to give away what he's thinking, and Michelangelo spreads his hands. "Look, otherwise, I am gonna put up the biggest fight of your life. You have never seen anyone as disagreeable as I can be, trust me on that. Hey, Beni, translate for me, would you? Tell him how downright difficult I am."

Beni flinches when Michelangelo addresses him, as though he's hoping to just remain out of sight and out of mind; but he shuffles forward reluctantly, and says a few words to his undead master in halting Hebrew. And the former mummy seems to consider it; after a long moment, he inclines his head in a nod, and puts out his hand. Michelangelo's lip curls a bit, but he crosses the last few feet between them to take it.

"You have a deal," Beni says, and Michelangelo's face goes white with pain as Imhotep all but crushes his hand.

Donatello strains against the arms holding him back. "Mikey!"

Ardeth's grip on his shoulder tightens. "Imhotep still has to take him to Hamunaptra to perform the ritual," the Medjai says quietly. "There will be time to save him. We must live today and fight tomorrow."

Casey snarls when Beni searches his pockets for the puzzle box, but with Michelangelo driven almost to his knees from the force of Imhotep's hold on his arm, which is beginning to color a mottled blue, none of them are willing to do anything that might cause him more pain. The Hungarian slips away with their key, and Donatello's heart is almost broken by desperate fear.

"I will be seeing you again," Leatherhead promises Imhotep in a voice like a knife,eyes flashing with honest hatred. "And I will make you sorry for this."

Imhotep finally cracks a smile at that, like oil slicking across dark waters, and commands in his dead language, "Kill them."

And the surrounding mob rushes forward at once, while Imhotep turns and moves the opposite direction into the crowd, with Beni and Michelangelo in tow. They disappear almost immediately, swallowed up by the sea of Imhotep's unwilling servants, and Donatello hits the nearest crazed man in the face with the butt of Michelangelo's rifle, without so much as flinching at the sickening crack.

"Here," Casey shouts suddenly, kicking sidestreet garbage out of the way and crouching above a cistern. He digs his fingers into the grooves and hauls it open, sliding the cover free and then looking up and around at his companions. "Get down here!"

Ardeth drops through the hole, with Casey right behind him, and Donatello lingers another moment, searching the darkness and the chaos vainly for one more glimpse of his brother.

"We'll get him back," Leatherhead says, from where he beats the men away while his friends make their escape. Donatello tightens his grip on Michelangelo's favorite rifle, and hesitates for one more moment that really isn't his to spare; then he turns sharply and rushes to join his companions, climbing into the dark underground before he can think better of it.

The curator doesn't make it. Leatherhead is the last one down, moving the manhole cover back into place behind him, and he only shakes his head with sorrow in his eyes.

Well, Donatello thinks in a detached way, mostly numbed by the weight of these losses, it looks like I'm out of a job.

They drive up to the Erfoud Dunes with dawn peaking over the Sahara. Casey's convertible sputters as they pass a sign that says "Royal Air Force – Giza," and Donatello takes a moment to wonder about this friend Leatherhead is taking them to meet.

The airfield is little more than a single abandoned hanger and one yellow biplane. Leatherhead directs Casey to the edge of the yard, where the tarmac turns to sand, and once the convertible is parked, Michelangelo's friend leads the way up the dune, towards a man reclining in the shade of an umbrella.

A phonograph is pouring Spanish music over his little corner of the desert, and he eyes them over a proper English tea as Leatherhead greets him by name, and then explains their situation and just why, exactly, they need use of his plane.

"And what does your little problem have to do with His Majesty's Royal Air Corp?" the squat pilot asks a little pompously, and where Donatello bristles, and Casey mouths an incredulous 'little problem?' Leatherhead only shakes his head.

"Not a damn thing."

Donatello gapes at him—that certainly doesn't sound like the most persuasive start—but somehow, the veteran seems persuaded. He puts his cup aside with a clink of bone china and leans forward.

"Is it dangerous?"

"You probably won't live through it," Leatherhead confirms, and the other man looks hopelessly intrigued.

"By jove, you really think so?"

"Well, everyone else we've bumped into so far has died," Casey says, cottoning on to what Leatherhead's game is. Which, frankly, makes one of them; Donatello isn't sure what to make of this conversation. "Why not you?"

The pilot stands, facing them with a steely glint in his eye. "What's the challenge, then?" At this point, Leatherhead is smiling crookedly, and knows just how to sell it:

"Rescue our friend, kill the bad guy, and save the world."

Sure enough, the aged man booms a delighted laugh and offers a sharp salute. "Winston Havelock, at your service, sir."

Donatello finds out later that Captain Winston Havelock flew in World War I, and that the rest of his men died in the air. He frequents the casbah back on the British base and tells the same handful of stories over and over again, and does his best to drink himself away.

It doesn't seem odd, anymore, that he would leap at the chance to fly straight into the jaws of Hell.

And when he dies at the edge of Hamunaptra, after an enchanted sandstorm and a brutal crash landing and a patch of dry quicksand that swallows his rugged biplane whole, Donatello is certain his final blaze of glory was one that would have made his comrades proud.

Casey looks ready to cry at the sight of the treasure room; filled wall-to-wall with shining goldand precious artifacts. Leatherhead leads the way down the stairs cautiously, Michelangelo's rifle in hand. Ardeth walks beside him, matching him step for careful step, armed with the Lewis machine gun formerly mounted on Havelock's biplane.

"Can you see—" Casey says faintly. Donatello doesn't spare him a glance.

"Yeah."

"Can you believe—"

"Yeah."

"Can we just—"

"No."

Wealth of Egypt aside, Michelangelo is in this temple somewhere, in danger, and Donatello isn't willing to waste a single second in getting to him, saving him, and then sending Imhotep to the afterlife once and for all—whatever it takes.

There's a soft sound, like a murmur, from behind them; as they spin around and search for the source, a hand punches through the floor, reaching and rotting. Donatello stumbles back into Leatherhead as a decayed corpse pulls itself out of the newly-made hole and towards him.

"What is—the Bembridge scholars never wrote about this—"

The first body is joined by more, and more, groaning and staggering towards them; Leatherhead levels the elephant gun, asking Ardeth, "Who are they?"

"Priests. Imhotep's priests, I'm sure."

Which is all the reason Leatherhead needs to blast the first one in the chest, pump the gun, and blow off the next one's head.

Casey's firing from a pistol in each hand, and calls over the din of Ardeth's machine gun, "I think Leatherhead might be holding a grudge."

"That makes two of us," Donatello mutters bitterly. More and more mummies are digging themselves up out of the ground, and soon enough the four of them fall back, running through the maze of treasures and into a passageway behind a row of golden statues.

The whole temple is coming alive, it seems, as they run into reanimated corpses with nearly every turn they take through the labyrinth. Ardeth's machine gun is empty by the time they burst into a small chamber, and Donatello goes weak with relief at the sight of Horus, the giant, falcon-headed statue in the back of the room.

Leatherhead shrugs the gunnysack off his shoulder and lights a match on the side of his boot. When he stands, it's with a stick of dynamite in hand, its fuse lit and shrinking fast. Ardeth drags Donatello and Casey around to relative safety on the other side of the statue's stone base as Leatherhead blows up the doorway they just came through and half a dozen mummies with it, causing a cave-in that seems to shake the whole world.

When the stones are done falling, the way through is effectively blocked, buying them time enough away from the undead hoard to search the Horus statue for the Book of the Living. Casey and Donatello waste no time getting started, digging at the stone with their fingers.

The seam of the secret compartment finally starts to give under their hands, and Casey lets out a choked little "hah!" as they begin working it free, and that's when Ardeth moves swiftly to his feet. He snatches Michelangelo's elephant gun off of the ground, and takes a handful of cartridges from the gunny sack for good measure.

Donatello pauses long enough to follow his line of sight, and sees another impossible number of the mummies headed for them, from another dark passageway.

"They just don't quit," Casey bites out, and Donatello rubs the hair out of his eyes with one dirty hand and gives another mighty tug on the chest they've managed to uncover. Leatherhead and the Medjai are keeping the ghouls at bay, and when the wooden box finally comes free, Donatello yanks the lid off the top, and tears through a woven cloth, and—

There it is.

The Book of Amun-Ra, a book of pure gold, decorated with ornate Scarab beetles, the Eye of Horus, and an eight-pointed lock. Donatello is holding his childhood dream in both hands, and it glitters in the faint torchlight; it's validation and fulfillment and—

And Donatello doesn't give himself a moment to enjoy it.

"We've got it!" he says without preamble, tucking the fabled, precious thing under his arm like a bundle of dirty laundry as he scrambles to his feet. "We've got the book, let's go!"

"You go," Ardeth says, fighting to keep the hoard of mummies back. "Rescue your brother, and find a way to kill the creature! Go, now!"

Michelangelo is chained to an altar when they find him, alive and all in one piece; Donatello could cry with relief when he catches sight of his stubborn brother fighting against his bindings for all he's worth. The necropolis is overrun with mummies, all of them gathered around Michelangelo and bowing on their knees as Imhotep reads softly from the black book.

"I will distract him," Leatherhead says, with hungry vengeance in his eyes. "You will save Mike."

"Got it," Casey whispers, and Leatherhead moves like a wraith down the last staircase, as silent as a shadow. Donatello's heart is in his throat when Imhotep raises an ornate dagger over his head, fingers curling into Casey's arm hard enough to leave bruises—

And then Imhotep is flying aside, caught unawares by the sledgehammer Leatherhead swung at the side of his head. Leatherhead scooped up the tool on their dash through the temple, one they had left behind after their first visit and certainly found use for again now.

"I told you I would see you again," Leatherhead says coldly.

"Leatherhead!" Mikey sounds elated. "Buddy, am I glad to see you!"

"As am I, my friend," is Leatherhead's fond reply, before he moves ahead to draw Imhotep as far away from the altar as possible. "Donatello, now!"

Donatello is already crossing the room at this point, unable to wait for his cue with his brother chained to a table next to a very rotten, very decomposed body. He dumps the gold book to the ground and leans over Michelangelo desperately, framing his face and searching him for any signs of hurt. His arm is mottled, and bent at an ugly angle, and his face has collected a few new bruises, but other than that...

"Thank god we made it in time," Donatello says in a clumsy rush, smoothing back Michelangelo's tangled hair. "You'll be just fine now, don't you worry. Casey, hurry up."

"Yeah, let me just finish killing these dozen mummies real quick first, okay?"

"You're here," Michelangelo says slowly, something surprised and delighted and achingly grateful blooming in his honest eyes. He blinks, then lets himself smile—a silly, crooked thing—and says glibly, "Heh, I wasn't worried."

"Well, you had me fooled," Casey grumbles, shoving a borrowed scimitar into his waistband and turning to get started picking the locks on the manacles. That's when he notices Michelangelo's arm, and he swears colorfully under his breath. "Good lord, Mikey, is that from when that creep grabbed you in the bazaar?"

"Yeah, it's—pretty broken. Can you—ow—be careful plea—ow!" The first chain falls away, and Donatello doesn't waste a second dragging him up by the shoulders and into a hard embrace.

"If you ever pull a stupid stunt like that again I will make you live to regret it, do you hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah. Loud and clear." His tone is disingenuous but he hugs back tightly for a brief moment; and then Casey has him free, and he's swinging his legs over the side of the table and jumping down. "C'mon, Leatherhead can't hold him for long. Casey, you go help him—I'll just get in the way with one arm."

Casey rolls his eyes so hard Donatello is distantly afraid he might sprain something, and yanks the scimitar out of his belt again, muttering something about bossiness being hereditary as he jumps the shallow pool and rushes around the corner in the direction Leatherhead and Imhotep had gone.

"Mikey, we need the key," Donatello says, as he helps his brother over to the steps of a nearby mausoleum. Michelangelo sits heavily, injured arm cradled as carefully as he can, and digs in his pocket with his good hand.

"Yeah, I figured. I stole the puzzle box out of his robes when he was manhandling me earlier." He flashes a grin as Donatello sits beside him, and adds, "So let's get this sucker op—en... Oh." His eyes are huge in the gloom as Donatello pulls the golden book into their laps. "Oh, wow, Donnie."

"I know."

"I can't believe—Donnie, we're holding it—"

"I know."

He leans against his brother's arm to fit the open puzzle box into the lock, and twists until the mechanism releases.

They don't need to see Imhotep for the spell to do its work; somewhere in the vast, sprawling cemetery, Leatherhead and Casey are keeping the undead priest at bay, and Donatello reads the inscription out loud carefully, tracing each hieroglyph with his finger as he goes, Michelangelo's head pillowed on his shoulder to watch.

He's halfway through the incantation when the howling winds start. Something shrieks, and something else moans, a tumult of sudden noise and chaos. Imhotep is screaming from some distant corner of the necropolis, and Donatello doesn't shout to be heard; this old magic will work, he trusts that.

Operating on faith, as Casey said. Believing in what he can't see or feel, as Michelangelo always has.

He continues calmly, his brother a warm weight at his side, and doesn't finish reading the dead language aloud until the screaming and hard winds have ceased, and their friends come around the corner to join them.

"Is he gone?" Michelangelo asks, reaching for Leatherhead with his good arm. His large friend sits on the step beside him, no worse for wear, as Casey slumps next to Donatello.

"He's gone. The spell you used turned him mortal."

"And then Leatherhead broke his skull."

"Nice," Donatello mutters in distaste, but that only makes the rest of them laugh.

"Hey, Donnie?" Mikey pipes up suddenly. He's smiling when Donatello glances over, soft and sincere. "Thanks for coming back for me this time."

And after all these years desperately seeking validation, it's only in this moment that Donatello finds it.

Of course one more thing had to go terribly wrong, and the four of them tear madly back up through the temple as the whole place shudders and groans. All the doorways are sinking, stone walls descending over exits and passageways in some kind of end-all chain reaction. They run, and run, and run, and Casey only hesitates for a split second as they spring through the treasure room—he only gets a split second, before three hands are hauling him forward again by the front of his shirt.

The last doorway is already coming down, and Donatello shoves Michelangelo towards the gap first, then Casey is pushing him through in turn. Casey is the next out, crouching in the four-foot gap, and Leatherhead brings up the rear, sliding through with barely an inch to spare.

They take the stone ramp at a dead sprint, followed by a few stray camels, and only stop running once they're in the relative safety of the sand dunes. Then, they turn, and watch the ancient ruins collapse in on themselves, sending up massive, mile-high pillars of sand over and over until the temple finally disappears under the Sahara for good.

They just stand there in the desert sun, chests heaving, for what feels like an hour.

Then Casey breaks the silence with a wild scream, spinning away from the hand that landed on his shoulder from behind, and Donatello has a second to think what now as they whirl around—

"Ardeth!" Michelangelo greets cheerfully, at the same time Leatherhead rumbles a relieved, "I'm glad you made it out, my friend," and Casey cusses creatively under his breath.

The Medjai is smiling faintly at them from where he sits atop one of the camels, and reaches behind him for Michelangelo's elephant gun. The boy lights up when he sees it, and takes it happily with his good hand, and the desert dweller says, "You have earned the respect, and gratitude, of me and my people. May Allah smile upon you, always."

"Oh, sure, it was nothing. All in a day's work, you know," Casey grumbles as Ardeth takes his leave, looking distinctly wronged by the world and annoyed. "I can't believe we have to go home empty-handed again."

"I wouldn't say that," Leatherhead says wisely, calling over one of the stray camels with a few soft clicks of his tongue. Its saddle-bag is packed to bursting, and jingling with each of the camel's long strides, and Casey's eyes go comically wide as Leatherhead pulls the bag open.

Gold.

"Oh, wow," Michelangelo says, and he only sounds mildly impressed, where Casey looks like he's having some sort of religious experience. "Hey—isn't that Beni's bag?"

"It looks like it. He must have tried to make away with some of the treasure. I can only assume he decided to go back in for more."

"Then he's probably the reason the doors all came down like that," Donatello realizes. "The idiot booby-trapped himself inside. He's long gone, now."

"Who cares?" Casey whoops, dancing a jig around the camel, and slipping twice in the loose sand. He's deliriously happy, and punches Leatherhead on the arm a few times. "Do you see this haul? Once we get all this back to the Museum of Antiquities, there's no one who could doubt we found the City of the Dead! I've helped make an honest-to-god discovery!"

For a part-time thief and a sometimes-scoundrel, Casey can be astonishingly ethic at times. And it doesn't shock Donatello that Casey wasn't ever in this adventure for the money, but it's a pleasant surprise all the same.

"Uh, Donnie?" Michelangelo says slowly, drawing back his brother's attention. "There's this, too." Donatello watches him clumsily sling the elephant gun over his good shoulder, then fumble with his jacket for a moment. His wounded arm is cradled awkwardly against his chest, and in a manner of seconds, Donatello immediately understands why.

"The Book of Amun-Ra?" He's flabbergasted as he takes the weighted tome, running reverent fingers over the precious cover. In all the chaos of before, he'd counted it lost for good. He never expected he'd get to hold it again. "I can't believe you managed to hold onto this while we were running for our lives out of a sinking temple!"

"I've been in way tighter spots than that before," Michelangelo says with a shrug, and a smile that makes it hard to tell whether he's joking or not. "But honestly, I—didn't want our only adventure together to end up a total failure." He rubs the back of his head, not quite meeting Donatello's eyes anymore. "Y'know, bringing back the Biblical plagues, accidentally cursing a bunch of people, almost ending the world... That's pretty bad, even for me. So at least now, you have the Book of the Living, and—"

The book hits the sand, falling like its weight in garbage, and Donatello pulls his brother forward against his chest; tucking Michelangelo's head under his cheek and holding him close.

"You undeniable fool," he says fondly, so full of love for this boy it almost hurts. "You think I'm going to let the first adventure I take with you be the last? Absolutely not."

Michelangelo is stiff with surprise in his arms, and their friends are silent. Donatello feels the weight of the last few days in his bones, and he knows that once the adrenaline wears off he's going to be a mess, and there's a lot more to do before this relationship with his brother is back to where it should be—

But Donatello has been given, of all impossible things, a chance. A chance to make discoveries, and have adventure, and see the world, and do all of it the way he always dreamed, with his brother by his side.

"Besides, you promised me a cavern in Belize," he says with a smile, and Michelangelo leans back enough to stare at him.

"You mean it?" He looks hopeful and ecstatic in equal measure, and hops on the spot, like it's too much to contain standing still. "Oh, it'll be so much fun, Donnie, you won't regret it! It usually isn't as messy as all this, honest, it usually goes a lot smoother—"

"It is never smooth, and it is always messy," Leatherhead says dryly, smiling at the two of them affectionately. "But it's generally—usually—fairly worthwhile."

"We can go to the lost city of Atlantis next, I don't care," Casey says emphatically. "But we're stopping in Cairo first. Our names are going on a plaque on the wall in that godforsaken museum if I have to put one there myself."

"Of course we are," Donatello agrees. "And we're going back to my place first. I have to pack my books, my tools, my clothes—"

"Good lord, Don. You can't be serious."

"—and my cat."

"We're definitely going back to Donnie's place first."

And who knows? Maybe one day they'll stumble upon their older brothers, too, in this big, wide world. Maybe one day they'll mend those broken bridges, and their family will be closer to whole again, and Michelangelo will forget what being alone felt like.

Maybe.

But for now, one thing is certain:

Whatever we do, wherever we go, Donatello thinks with a smile, shading his eyes against the blistering sun while his friends argue and laugh, at least we'll be in good company.