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CHAPTER EIGHT
BATTLEGROUND : EARTH

“Wake up, Raph, you gotta see this!"

For the second time in as many days, Raphael found himself being rudely awakened. This time it was not his brothers looming over him that he saw, but Casey, sticking his face in Raph’s as he prodded him with a finger. "I’m up, I’m up!" Raph exclaimed.

Getting to his feet, he saw Leo, Don, and Mike were already at the television set. Each stared attentively at the TV.

An attractive female reporter the Turtles had occasionally caught on the four o’clock news was standing on the sidewalk of a traffic-less street. Police squad cars consumed much of the view, but men in uniform could be seen going about their business. "—ce again, this is Nancy Newman reporting live from Madison Avenue, where four bodies have been discovered—the truly horrifying evidence of a massacre that forensics indicate transpired sometime late last night." The reporter walked over to one of the bodies in question. Though bodybagged, the effect of the visual was chilling. "The bodies found were killed by apparent explosives that were placed within their chest, then burst outward. If that is true, we are looking at a possible serial kil..." The reporter turned away as a policeman bent over to whisper something in her ear. She faced the camera again, looking even more lively. "This just in, two new bodies have been discovered. Sanitation workers went to work this afternoon to find two of their fellow workers slain in a fashion identical to the last four in a manhole to the immediate north. Apparently the killer or killers murdered the four victims discovered this morning, then fled to the sewers, where two more unsuspecting victims fell pr—"

Leonardo raised the remote and clicked the TV off.

"It’s them."

Leo’s words were met by grim silence from the others.

They had waited until nightfall before moving out, giving them only enough time to replenish their weapons and mentally prepare for the evening they had steeled themselves for. With Casey pulling up the rear and Donatello on point, his shoulder-mounted light providing the illumination, the Turtles had made their way into the sewer accessway in the lower level of April and Casey’s apartment complex. After only a half hour of going about the central tunnels, they had stumbled upon a body.

The man was lying face-down in the sewer, red streaks of his blood streaming out in the flow of the drainage. Carefully, Casey nudged the body over on its back with the tip of his double-barreled, sawed off shotgun.

He turned back, his nose wrinkling under his American flag-like hockey mask as he noticed a blood-stained pin on the body’s breast. "It’s a cop," Casey sneered. "Don’t tell me the 5-0 is down here..."

Below the shocked expression of the policeman, locked on his face in death, was the telltale sign of the Aliens’ reproductive cycle: a fist-sized hole on the corpse’s sternum, ribs protruding outward from which a newborn Alien had burst.

There could be no doubt anymore.

"Shit, it’s the Aliens all right," Raph said, looking the chestbursted body over. The Turtles made their way down the sewer ladder behind him, jogging to catch up with him through the darkness of the tunnel ahead. "But if they’re reproducing, doesn’t that mean we’re dealing with another queen?"

"It would have to be," Donatello agreed. "Even if Blanque was right about drones metamorphosizing into queens, a drone wouldn’t have had nearly enough time. Strange that there aren’t any eggs or dead facehuggers around, though."

Raph harrumphed. "What are you, Donny, some kinda know-all alien expert now?"

Don gave a grumble. "I just know what I heard, that’s all."

Continuing into the tunnel, which seemed to be getting wider the deeper they went, Raph continued to prod Donatello, "Well, huh. How do you s’pose they got here?"

"Who knows, really?" piped Donatello with an emphatic shrug. "Blanque might have Transmatted over a batch as a farewell present to Earth, or..." something seemed to come over him that he hadn’t considered, "... or maybe one of them hitched a ride with us on the Sojourner. Question is, just how many Aliens are we deal—"

"It is not important how they got here," Leonardo cut his brother off. "What is important is that they are here, and we must destroy them. Let us proceed."

The Turtles moved on, following the dispersed trail of chestbursted bodies cast about down the sewer—every one of them marking the birth of another Alien on Earth. Body by body, they came closer to their destination, whatever it may be.

To their surprise, no Alien drones ambushed them along the way. The Turtles jumped at every darkened corner, every hidden pipe, and every shadow they came across, but this fact remained true.

When they reached a spacious adjoining chamber with a moss-ridden sign unceremoniously labeled "To Sewage Treatment & Processing," the Turtles pressed on. The heavy methane stench and heat rose in intensity as they continued.

Two gunshots and a gut-wrenching scream just ahead made the Turtles’ jog increase to a run.

Through the shadows, they saw the terrible scene unfold.

After withdrawing its bloodied second jaw from the skull of a dead policeman, a huge Alien then wrestled another policeman—this one alive—pressing the flailing woman to its chest under its powerful arms. Bringing its head back, pincers snapped forth and locked the woman’s head in place. Then, opening both jaws, a supple pink tube shot forth into the woman’s mouth and throat. After a pause, the tube was drawn back into the Alien’s second jaw.

Then it noticed the fast approaching Turtles. As the Alien turned its head to face them, they realized that this was an Alien they knew.

It was the Alien King. The progeny of Michaelangelo.

"Father," the mighty Alien thundered, retracting its pincers from the now-unconscious woman and letting her fall to the floor. It spoke once again in its wet, unnatural voice. This time, however, there was something more refined to it. "You have come back to me."

"Yikes!" yelped Casey, taken aback. "You didn’t tell me these bugs could talk!"

"Th-this can’t be..." Mike rasped. "Leo, Don... you killed it on D’hoonib."

But there it was, standing now at its full twenty feet height. In some places along its body the exoskeletal skin had fallen off, pulpy orange flesh showing through that almost seemed to be slowly regenerating itself while they watched. Likely it was the damage caused by Don’s artillery onslaught in Peblak.

Mike’s gaze traveled from the scar on his shell to the giant the five of them now faced. "As screwed up as it might sound, that thing... it’s my son."

"We have to destroy it!" Leonardo spat, nearly out of anger. "You saw what happened on D’hoonib! Millions of lives were snuffed out just to rid the planet of them—millions of lives, Michaelangelo!"

Mike raised a hand as if to protest. "Bu—"

"And what about people like Blanque? He was trying to breed those things for military prowess. Peblak was a sacrifice he was willing to make to gain it. He and his kind are a dime a dozen on Earth." Leo’s gaze went frigid. "I’m sure our friends in DARPA would love to get their hands on the Aliens."

With that remark, Mike lowered his head in defeat.

"For once, bro," Raphael said to Leo, "I couldn’t agree with you more."

Casey cocked his shotgun and moved beside Leo, psyched. "Now you’re talking, boys. It’s clobberin’ time!"

"Father..." the Alien spoke again to Mike, "... I have spread the Family here, to your homeworld. It will thrive, as it did on D’hoonib and a hundred other worlds. My seed has already birthed enough to begin a hive. I will make you proud of me."

Don’s non-mechanical eye widened. "Then there is no queen! You can impregnate hosts yourself—no eggs or facehuggers!" He looked back down at the unconscious woman, realizing the full gravity of what the King had just done to her.

"That is correct. I am the future of the Family."

Mike took a nervous step forward. He winced at the towering creature, confused. "You’re not like the others of your kind, you’re intelligent—sentient, now. Why are you doing this?"

The King tipped its misshapen head in a curious way, as if expressing an unfamiliar emotion. For all intents and purposes he was just a newborn, but his accelerated growth as an Alien coupled with the accelerated evolution wrought from Mike’s mutagen was forcing him to cope with his reality faster than he could adequately process what was going on around him.

It coiled back on its haunches, paused a moment, then spoke hoarsely, "It is because, Father... you have forsaken me!"

Mike had scarcely enough time to ready his nunchuks before the Alien King pounced upon him.

As if coordinated by the Alien King’s attack, a horde of Alien drones poured into the room. From above, from beyond, from behind—they seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Leo drew the sword the Predator chief had bestowed him and held it high. At the top of his lungs he shouted the battle cry, "For Splinter!"

"Zunga, zunga, motherfucker!" Casey yelled, unloading both barrels of his shotgun’s payload into the gaping mouth of a leaping Alien drone to a fierce, almost shoulder-snapping recoil. Chambering and cocking it again he brought it to bear on a second Alien, grinning feverishly as he fired away once more.

Raphael rebounded himself off the sewer wall and spin-kicked another Alien across the jaw, raking one sai across the creature’s smooth head while plunging the other as far as he could into its neck. A swipe from the drone’s outstretched arm tagged him on the forearm. He weaved to the side, blocking the pain out as best he could. Both sai now melting and useless, Raph hastily drew a concealed tanto dagger from his side and buried it deep into his enemy’s elongated cranium.

Taking a whip from a drone’s tail, Leonardo rolled with the impact to stay in control. Feigning to one side, he came back around and brought his sword down in perfect alignment over the Alien’s head. Sliced clean through the center to the waist, the creature split down the middle and collapsed in a hissing rush of acid blood.

Donatello poured chaingun firepower into the Alien horde with his arm cannon, mowing down the beasts two at a time. Of all the Turtles, he had it the easiest.

It was all Mike could do to bat at the Alien King with his nunchuks, pummeling it in desperation. He gave little fight as the King drew Mike to him, the Alien’s pincers locking over his head. The King’s mouth opened then, its second jaw ready to shoot out like a piston.

Leonardo pulled his sword from another Alien he had struck down and made a run at the King, leaping and diving gracefully forward. He came down sword-first, slashing off both the giant’s right pincer and right arm from the elbow-down before landing. The creature immediately released Mike, backing away shortly afterward.

Leo went back to a proper battle stance, gripping his sword intently with both hands. The weapon was serving its purpose nicely, he noticed. The Predator alloy was resistant to the acid of the Aliens’ blood.

"I will not be beaten!" the Alien King boomed throughout the vast chamber. It clutched its arm stump as it continued to back toward the primary collection vat of the sewage treatment center. "I will not be destroyed! The Family must go on! I will spread it!"

Leo flashed his sword once, twice, and a third time. The Alien King weaved to and fro, looking down to observe the gushing gashes that now crisscrossed his massive body.

A blast from Casey’s shotgun blew off the side of the King’s jaw and the other mandible pincer, forcing the creature back even further.

"No! The... Family must... go on..." The creature’s inhuman voice was a gurgle now. Blood seeping from nearly every region of its body now, the King looked as if it were ready to collapse right there and then.

"Time to take out the shit." As Mike started to make a move to stop him, Raph drop-kicked the King over the rim. His limbs flailing as he went, the King plummeted unceremoniously into the fecal-reeking cesspool of the sewage treatment vat below.

The King splashed as it fought violently against the overwhelming vacuum current of the vat. It cried out with an outstretched hand, pleading to Mike, "I came from you... Father... please..."

The King’s last reserve of strength going, his grip on the girders gave way and he slipped beyond into the whirling blades of the veritable sewage cyclotron. Passed through a series of blades and screening devices meant for the breaking down, filtering, and purifying of raw sewage the King disappeared from sight under the murky water. A moment later, clouds of yellow-green blood and chunks of black Alien flesh bubbled to the surface only to be sucked back down.

The final brakka-brakka of Donatello’s cybernetic arm cannon signaled the end of the Alien horde. The five regrouped and stood shell-to-shell before the steaming corpses of their fallen opponents, waiting, ready to deal with any other threats. None came.

"Honor... is satisfied," Leonardo spoke tersely, not facing the others. "The circle is complete."

Mutants; ninja; brothers.

The Turtles were all of those and more, but the "Aliens" and "Predators" had brought them together in a way that few beside Oroku Saki himself had in their earlier youth. They had been brought together as warriors.

Now it was time to go home.

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