They landed on the south side of the mountain, near Don’s seismic equipment. They all crawled out of their ships, and retrived their weapons from their storage sompartments.
“Right. Everybody spread out and start looking for the entrance.” Leo said as soon as they were assembeled.
“How are we going to know it?” Raph needled Leo with his characteistic sarcasm. “They going to put a big sign over the door saying ‘Enter here’?”
“Found it!” Mike called. Leo and Raph exchanged glances, then headed to where Mike and Don waited.
Only a few yards from Don’s seismic equipment was a hole drilled into the side of the mountain. Its sides were unnaturally smooth, but cool to the touch. Don looked perplexed.
“It almost looks like this was melted, but then it should be some residual warmpth. It couldn’t have been made but yesterday. This isn’t right.” Don looked, and felt, upset.
Leo was also feeling apperhension. “I don’t like how near they were to your equipment. They couldn’t have not noticed it at this distance. Like it was deliberate that they put it this near.” Leo took a step back from the hole. “I don’t like this at all. This feels very, very wrong.”
They stood for a moment, gazing down into the darkness of the hole. Finally, Raph shook his head and started decending into the darkness.
“What’re you doing, Raph?” Leo said softly.
Raph stopped. He stood with his back turned for a moment. The tension played across his shoulders. Slowly he turned around. “Leo, we have to stop him.” Raph extended his hand and pointed toward Mexico City. “There are about 30 million people about 30 miles that way. If we don’t stop this maniac, they die. And there’s no one else here to do it, Leo. I’m not gonna have their blood on my hands.”
With that, Raph started again down the corridor. Don and Mike followed, and soon after Leo did as well. Raph, despite his speech and bravado, slowed down once inside to wait for them. They traveled down in a tight knot. It soon got dark enough that they had to use their hand lanterns. The air got thicker as they decended, and warmer. Eventually, the air was so heavy and so hot they could feel it throbbing around them. The walls of the tunnel got closer. Their own amplified breath screamed loudly around them. Then, suddenly, the passage widened, and they were faced with a decision. There were two paths.
It took Leo only a moment to come to his decision. It wouldn’t do to have Raph give another pep talk. “Don, you and mike take the left tunnel. Raph and I will take the other.”
Don and Mike nodded. Neither showed the fear that now had set their hearts hammering against their plastrons. The two groups split up and wandered further into the darkness.
This tunnel was even smaller than the last, if that was possible. Mike and Don had to walk single file, stooped over. The air was searing, and heavy with tension. Suddenly, Mike broke into a loud “Doom, doom, doom.” He stooped over even further and did a fair imitation of an orc. “A balrog, a balrog we have. The lower levels are on fire!” Don laughed, despite himself. Only Mike would point out the similarities between their prediciment and that of the Fellowship of the Ring.
“Only instead of a ring we’re looking for a thermo-nuclear device, and something much worse Gollum holds it.”
“Practically Sauron himself, in fact.” Mike said soberly.
“Speak not his name!” They both laughed this time, and went on with lighter hearts.
Soon, however, the pressure returned with a vengance, as if their earlier light-heartedness had mearly served to anger it. A light rumble went through the cave. Mike stopped and looked worriedly back at Don. Don shook his head, “No, that wasn’t it. But this volcano is still active. It could be that . . .” He was cut off by a much loud rumble, growing and intensifing until they had to hold their hands over their ears. Suddenly, a chunk of the corridor in front of them the size of a fist shot out of the wall. It was followed by a burst of pressurized magma. It hit the opposite wall and splashed the corridor. Dona and Mike recoiled from the heat, but not fast enough. Spatters of molten rock hit Mike’s left arm and leg. He screamed with agony as the rock seared through his flesh. Don grabbed him as he slumped, and started dragging him back along the corridor. The lower levels were on fire.
Raph and Leo inched their way cautiously along. Their tunnel was larger than the one Don and Mike had taken, but not large enough for comfort. It was just the right height that if they put their heads down and slumped their shoulders a little they could keep walking upright; however, after only a few minutes their muscles were screaming in protest of the unnacustomed position they were being forced to hold. Don’t think about it, Raph told himself. Think about all those people in Mexico City, who’ll die if you don’t. . . that line of thought didn’t help either. Well. . .
“Hey Leo. How’s Nobuko doing?”
“Nobuko?” Leonardo asked in confusion. Why wasn’t Raph’s mind on the task at hand? Then he realized the Raphael, despite all his posturing, was very nervous. “Um, she’s doing fine. There’s alot of April in her.”
“You mean she’s stubborn to the point of stupidity?” Raph said, grinning.
“Only sometimes,” Leo grinned back. “But she does have an amazing knack for getting into tough situatuons.” They both chuckled. “I guess it’s the reporters’ instinct thing. One other thing,” Leo added, thinking of the girl he almost considered his own granddaughter, “she’s been spending more and more of her free time lately with Bob. Now, I can’t say for certain what’s going on there, but. . .”
“Geez, you have become a giant busybody in your old age.”
Leo started whistling “Matchmaker” from the Fiddler on the Roof. Raphael groaned. Leo’s whistling came to a kind of listless end, then, for they were faced with another divide in the tunnel. They stared at the two tunnels that led away from them. Leo played a light down them, first the right, then the left, but they couldn’t see very far into either.
“Right,” Leo said, “Same drill. You take the left, I’ll take the right.”
“Leo, do you really think that’s a good idea?” Raph was hesitant.
“You were the one who pointed out the dire necessity here. So we split.” Leo pointed down the left tunnel. Raph stared at him a moment, then started down.
Leo didn’t start down his own tunnel until he could no longer see the light coming from Raph’s lamp. When he finally took his first steps, it was with heavy feet. Why? he thought to himself. This battle will be no different that thousands of others that I’ve fought. So why. . .
He knew why. This was different. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something very, very different about this time. As he plodded along, he started to notice a dull red glow before him. Soon, the redness was bright enough that he no longer needed his lantern. But he could not see the end of the tunnel. He went on, and he noticed the heat increasing steadily. He went on, and the air became even thicker and more difficult to breathe. He went on, until thought his lungs must be blackened inside him from the scorching heat. Then, suddenly the tunnel turned and dissappeared. He stood inside a redly lit chamber. About twenty feet in front of him the floor dropped away, into a pool of molten rock. Suspended above the pool was an enormous concrete box. Standing between him and the box was a shape . . . man-like, yet horribly deformed and twisted. It turned towards him and he gasped with sudden recognition.
“Null!” he croaked.
“In the flesh,” Null cackled, in a voice that was as much a parody of his former self as his body was. “Nice to see you again, Leonardo. It’s been so long.” He stood up to his full height and clasped his arms behind his back. Null still moved with the easy grace that always chacterized him. “So long . . . in fact, I think the last time I saw you was right after we managed to kill the Mutanimals. Such a pity they didn’t stay dead. . . well, we got them in the end. So what do you think?” Null spread his leathery wings so they almost covered Leonardo’s entire field of vision. He retracted them again when Leo didn’t comment. “Ah, well. Now, what could you be doing here?”
“We’re here to stop you.”
“We? Are there more of you around?”Null looked over Leonardo’s shoulder, as if he expected to see someone there. “I don’t see any more.”
“We split up so we could find you in time.”
“Oh, I see. The others didn’t want to risk meeting me, eh?”
“Actually, it was my idea.”
“Ah. I see. Well, if you want the bomb, there it is,” Null gestured to the cement block. “But you’ll have to get it out of the block. Not that I doubt your ability,” Null glanced at Leonardo, “but you do only have ten minutes.”
Leonardo looked at the block. “I have to try,” he said, half to himself.
“Of course you do, of course you do. But, there is something you might want want to see first. . .”
Leonardo favored the demon with a withering glance. “And what’s that?”
“This,” Null whispered, and looked into the depths of Leonardo’s eyes.
They stood for a moment, eyes locked. Then Leonardo’s eyes rolled back in his head and he let out a shriek as he fell headlong onto the floor.
“SPLINTER!!!”
Stupid old tunnel, thought Raph. He kicked at some loose stones on the ground. The tunnel had ended abruptly right after a sharp turn that cut him off from Leo’s view. He trudged back, wondering if Mike and Don were having more success then Leo and he were.
His thoughts were cut off by Leo’s scream. It came disembodied from the tunnel ahead, but the word came through clearly. “Splinter. . .”
He began to run, and he noticed the red light. The air was getting hotter, too. What’s at the end of the tunnel, he thought to himself, a pool of lava?
He emerged into the room just as Leo had, and saw the hanging box and Null.
“I was wondering when another of you was going to show up,” Null stated, smiling.
“Where’s Leo, hell spawn?” Raph said, drawing his sai. “If you’ve done ANYTHING to him I swear you’ll pay in whatever runs through those inhuman veins of yours.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Don’t you even want to know about the bomb? It’s right there,” Null indicated the cube. Raphael just stared at him. Null sighed. “I can see I can’t distract you. Very well. Your brother is right here.”
Null moved aside. Behind him was something that looked like a giant blue bonfire. In its center was a shape Raphael could not make out clearly, at first. Then it resolved itself into the form of his brother.
“LEO!” Raphael bellowed. Leonardo slowly raised his eyes to Raph’s. The look that was in them was pure hatered. Raphael sank to his knees.
Null smiled. “Now, Leonardo, we have some business to take care of. Please do the honors.”
Leonardo stood, and in one smooth movement lept, drew his sword, cut the cable holding the block, and landed again, a few feet from Raphael. He never took his eyes off Raph the whole time. The block splashed into the magma and sunk slowly. Raphael watched it sink, numb with horror. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and heard Null’s voice whisper in his ear: “It doesn’t really matter, you know. You’d be too late anyway.” Raphael knelt, paralyzed. The voice continued, “Let me show you something.”
Raph jerked his shoulder away, and scrabbled towards the enterance. He looked at Null, then at his brother, shaking his head. Finally he got up and ran.
Leonardo made a move to follow them, but Null stopped him with a gesture. “No, Leonardo. There will be another time for that. We have other matters to deal with now.”
Then they were gone.
Raphael came out of the tunnel, running hard. He saw Don strapping Mike into one of the ships, and ran up to them. “Gotta go,” he puffed.
“Where’s Leo?” Don asked. Raph shook his head. Then he noticed the smell of burnt flesh. Mike’s arm and leg. . . but no time for that now.
“We gotta go,” Raph croaked again. “Gonna blow. Gonna blow.”
He and Don strapped in quickly. They took off, Mike and Leo’s ships slaved to Don’s. When they were several thousand feet up, Don called Raph. “I’m in contact with officals in Mexico City. When is it goning to go off?”
“I don’t know. I just hope we’re not too. . .”
There was a flash under them, then a roar louder than the world.
“. . .late.”