Michelangelo opened his eyes not without a difficulty. And for a moment he was not sure he opened them at all. Impenetrable darkness. He couldn't see a thing. Blinking excessively, he tried to make out his surroundings and figure out what kind of a nasty place this hollow, pitch dark dumpy-dump was, cold and smelly like a cave or a deserted mine. Just like in horror movies. He was only missing a monster hiding behind a corner somewhere, maybe a vampire, or a creepy clown popping out of some cellar. Brrr…

A monotone clamor in his ears. "Hello?" - he managed to squeeze out, and heard his voice as if it was someone else talking. It came out gruff and squeaky.

He coughed and swallowed dryly. Sudden, uncontrollable thirst hit him like a sand storm. His tongue felt like sand paper. In fact, it seemed like he was waking from some sort of tranquilizer. When was he drugged..?

"A sip of water would be pretty sweet right about now… or a soda! ..or icecream, mmm that sounds good! And then maybe some pancakes too…" Mike mumbled under his nose, attempting to move, and grunted involuntarily, as he realized it was very hard to lift his head, a massive headache splitting the entirety of his cerebrum into two separate halves. That was probably what snapped him right out of his 'beauty sleep' on this freezing, wet, disgusting ground.

He imagined his scull slowly cracking open, and a pinkish, smiling brain making a run for it, flopping from puddle to puddle.. squelch, squelch, squelch… He smiled to himself through increasing pain, because in spite of the situation, even in a questionable, undetermined predicament such as the one he found himself in, he somehow managed to be ridiculously inappropriate and childish. Always the kidder, forever the silly little brother…

Suddenly he wondered what his brothers were doing now. And his transient confusion began to clear up. "Rooftops.. Donnie.. " - petulant memory images restoring what had happened, temporal fuzziness quickly frisking away, pushing through the thickness of slowly throbbing pain and cloudy consciousness. "I was totes flying…" – he grinned, remembering his brainy-bro's astounded, deeply horrified expression as a result of his enthusiastic acrobatics in the night air of NY City, when they were moving through the rooftops, on their way to… "The Mission!" - it dawned on him. "Leo! Leo was in trouble... I'm here cuz I came to... to help… OH!" Michelangelo's mind caught up at last, "Nasty FEETS got me!"

He immediately tried to get up, or at least sit to an upright position, but found that he couldn't move a muscle. Everything was filled with pain. Of course, as a professional ninja, Michelangelo was certainly accustomed to pain, different amounts of it, different shapes: sharp, nagging, persistent, mental … but those were all local. Strained ankles and wrists, bruises, bloody wounds, broken bones, cracks in the shell, name it, Mike's got them all. But this… this was something else. This pain he experienced was not muscles or shell, nor mental. This was something from inside of him. Like all his inner organs decided to go on a strike and rebel against his entire body. A huge lump, stuck in his throat, threatened to come loose sooner or later.

"What did you get yourself into this time, Mikey?" - he wondered, swallowing and trying to quell the nausea.

And Leonardo's voice in his head instantly answered:

"Little brother, you're so reckless… and inconsiderate! Why don't you ever listen to what you're told?! I distinctly asked you not to show your shell at the docks! Why did you have to do the exact opposite? Just think of how your stupid trick will worry poor Master Splinter…"

Michelangelo tried to remember what was the very last thing he said to his father before they all left for the mission. His head hurt so much he couldn't remember. Would that thing, whatever it was, become the very last thing he'd ever say to his dad.. ever?!

Splinter's face appeared before him in his mind, tired and gray, with withered whiskers and fallen ears. Was he crying? How many times did Mike make him worry like this? How many times did he let his father down… Will he ever see him again? He couldn't hold it in any longer and threw up. It was painful, it burned.

The poor turtle shivered on the wet floor, and rocked his shell a little, to take a slightly more comfortable position. If the way he was positioned could even be called comfortable at all… His throat was getting more and more sore and, with whatever-sedatives wearing off, he could feel his jaw slowly swelling up. Obviously, even though he surrendered himself, for Leo's sake, he couldn't as much as let filthy Foot-jerks tie him up without at least a little fight...

Wanting to touch his face to check out that formidable scar he was about to get in place of the bleeding bruise above his left cheek, he discovered another inconvenience: his hands were tied to a surface of a block of concrete, his feet tied together.

"Ugh, rotten pizza stuffing!"

Fecklessly sighing and grunting, Michelangelo managed to lift himself up enough to be able to attach his burning forehead to the cold surface of a rocky wall nearby. Then he breathed in the nasty smells of his 'new home', and continued thinking about his family.

"Donnie would've surely come up with something to get me out of these ropes…"

Brainiac-shaped silhouette showed up right in front of his eyes in the dark: "Mikey, where are you?"

But his brother, his best friend, did not appear as his usual self. This Donnie's face was unrecognizably distorted. His mouth open, unmoving, silent lips stuck in a mute grimace of a scream. His hands, trying to grab him, pull him away, save him… Bitter tears rolling down olive-green cheeks, as the outstretched fingers vanished, like a gust of smoke, in front of Mike's face.

"Shell!" Tears appeared in Michelangelo's eyes, as he realized what he had done. "I didn't mean to… I never wanted to hurt you!" - he sniffled, "..any of you…" - rolling his aching head from side to side on the surface of a freezing solid wall, he silently cried.

"Stop'it! Enough a'ready! Quit whining like a lil' kid!"

"Raphie!?" - he shuddered, "He's probably SO MAD"

Raphael would do anything to get his precious little brother to safety. He would smash these walls and wreck this whole place to the ground to get to him! With fire in his emerald eyes, he would curse and spit: "Mikey, ya' idiot! What've ya' done?! How am I s'pposed to get'cha out, if ya' don' even know where the shell ya' at?!"

Michelangelo heard himself huskily laughing in frustration, a questionable maneuver, which soon turned into a wet cough. A rusty taste appeared in his mouth, and he spit out some blood… he was now fully aware of all the damages his body suffered, feeling every single nerve in his system pulsating with agony. The effect of whatever sedatives he was on before worn completely off.

He closed his eyes, barely successful at remaining conscious, the pain was too much to bear, and tried to think about something not devastating. His friends and family! They were alright. They must have been! They were all safe! Leo was safe…

"Don't worry about good ol' Mikster…" Everything was PAIN. "I'm 'flying'… "

Obscure numbness enclosed all consciousness once again.

Low baritone, humming a simple tune, foreign and strange, but at the same time somehow familiar, warm and loving…

It was dark, aside from a single candle on the floor and a small reading-lamp, cracked at its side, standing on top of a pyramid of wooden boxes, serving as a cupboard. The rat, sitting in a cushioned pedestal from a variety of old pillows and blankets, was leisurely flipping through yellowed-with-age pages of a big book: |"Fairytales from Around the World". This book had many, many stories accompanied by colorful pictures, illustrating numerous cultures, a variety of supernatural beings and different folk beliefs.

At rat's feet, in a large wicker basket, being slowly cradled by his long tail, fast asleep, lay two little brothers, cuddled together in a knot of green skin and rough shell; the bigger one overlapping his sniffling, thumb-sucking smaller sibling; it wasn't clear, though, whether protectively, or in a desperate need for closeness and warmth.

Another tiny turtle was clinging to rat's right leg, unsuccessfully trying to keep his tiny eyes open. From time to time he would give a big yawn, his head would drop, and his grip would loosen, as it would seem that he fell deeply asleep. But as soon as his father's humming would stop, or change and turn into a new melody, the tiny turtle straightened up again, blinking into the darkness as if saying: I am not asleep. I am here to protect you from the monsters of the night, daddy.

Inside the folds of rat's old kimono, sinking into rich, brown, warm fur on his parent's chest, there was a fourth brother; his eyes wide, his mouth open in full attention, three tiny green freckles on his left cheek, two on his right. He was staring at the beautiful pictures, excitedly pointing at the book on his father's lap. Not a hint of sleepiness on his cute, chubby, little face. He simply couldn't imagine how anyone could fall asleep looking at all those wonderful things.

"Look, daddy!" Gazing at all these beautiful illustrations, Michelangelo could hardly keep his excitement down, persistently pointing at one, "He can fly!"

Albeit he was distinctly told, it would be ok to look at the pictures only as long as he would keep quiet and let his brothers rest. But this one picture was more important than the shallow promise he gave his father. Michelangelo wanted to know more about that magical flying boy and he couldn't keep his excitement steady.

"Green…" Michelangelo's face came so close to the picture, he almost fell out of the kimono's folds, but Splinter's quick hands were there right on time, to grab his little overenthusiastic son, and safely put him back inside the warmness and familiar smell of his chest "…like me… and Leo, and Raphie and Donnie!" Michelangelo patted the brown fur that was surrounding him like a fluffy blanket, and added: "But… not like you…"

Splinter smiled with his eyes, as he gazed at his youngest, but he didn't cease his humming, he didn't, of course, want to wake the little 'sleepless' protector at his feet again. Plus, he was still hoping to get this one, the overexcited one in his lap, to sleep.

Michelangelo smiled and touched Peter Pan's chest, with green, drawn leaves floating on the page, and his own plump, light-green, three fingered palm came in sight in front of his eyes. He blinked and leaned back into the inviting warmness inside the kimono again.

"What is 'human', daddy? Donnie said… we are not! He said we are different. Why is that..?"

"No! ..no, no! What did I tell you, idiots?! DO NOT HARM HIM!" - Unnerved voice penetrated Michelangelo's cognition, terminating his ineligible hibernation mode, and causing the amazing flying boy to vanish into nothingness again.

The grim reality of the smelly, filthy dungeon came to be the inevitable reality of his existence once again. And as he was about to open his eyes, a sharp beam of blinding light hit his shut eyelids, so that the beat-up turtle hid his face inside his shell.

"Ugh!" went the same voice again, "Are you kidding me? Look at this poor thing! What have you done to him? Really… was this absolutely necessary?" A cold hand gently touched Mikey's bound feet, "We're in a secured location! Underground! In a highly equipped chamber, made of concrete stone, for god's sake! What? Did you think all of this wasn't enough, so you tied up his feet?! You morons! Immediately cut him loose of his… rubbish! GENTLY!"

Working fast as a lightning, two pairs of hands let Michelangelo free, dropping the ropes to the floor in mere seconds, in a manner definitely opposite to being gentle.

Foot ninja - rushed through his mind.

"Now get out! OUT! I'll talk to your supervisor.. eh, Master, about this… this violation of a direct order!"

"With all due respect, Kuma-san, we don't take orders from you!" – a hushed voice calmly replied.

"Ah! Whatever! Just leave! Go…" – frustrated exhalation and a sound of a door being shut with a heavy thud.

"Shimatta! Baka no ashigaru!" Then in a softer, more cheerful tone:"Ima wa.. let's see what we can do to make it a little bit better, ne?"

Rubbing his sore ankles and wrists, Mike listened, distinctly recognizing the familiar Japanese expressions. And when he more or less adjusted to the light, he looked into the face of his captor. And couldn't believe his very eyes. It was her! The girl from his recurring dreams. Or was it nightmares? The very same! The one who turned into a bear…