For once, things go more or less according to plan.

The turtles have infiltrated Foot HQ before; it's easier this time, even with April and Casey along, because of Karai's directions. They take out the guards on the roof quickly and quietly, make their way in through the ventilation system, and meet Karai at the agreed-upon location, near the dojo, where no one else should be at the hour.

Fishface is with her. Raph bares his teeth, and April braces at the sight; she's heard too many stories about the fish mutant. It's part of the plan, she reminds herself to calm her nerves. Karai was sure they could count on Fishface.

"Truce, no?" he says, baring his fangs in something like a smile. "You have something I want, so you get my cooperation. We leave old grudges behind us."

"Right," says Leo, although Raph is still glaring and Mikey looks uneasy. "Donnie?"

April has seen it enough times by now, but she still stares in fascination as the retro-mutagen transforms the mutant body, thrashing, back into a human. Fishface—Xever— even stays quiet, teeth clamped against the pain. When it's done April hastily looks away as he shoves aside the robotic legs and oxygen tank he used to wear and stretches to his full height, sighing, "Finally!"

"So we're done now," Raph says, with a warning note.

Xever grins at them. "If you like, turtles. If you're going after Bradford, though—"

"We'll take it from here," Leo says.

Next they circle their way down to Stockman's lab to deliver their other promised dose. Stockman, too, is waiting, buzzing to himself. This transformation goes equally smoothly, and Stockman retreats with barely more than a muttered thank-you, to April's ire.

"He's going to cause trouble," Donnie whispers as they make their way back through toward the living quarters. "He knows too much about Kraang tech, and you know what he's like."

"He's gonna build another lab of doom," Mikey says.

"Maybe," Leo says.

Raph snorts. "You know Donnie's right."

"He's out of the way for now, and we made a deal," Karai says, and they fall back into silence.

They encounter a pair of Footbot guards as they make their way through the building, but the bots are quickly dispatched, and they pick up the pace, trying to avoid being caught by the other nighttime guards.

They make it to the door Karai had identified as Tiger Claw's without further incident, but then they all hesitate, nervous about the next step. Finally Karai says, "I'll do it." She holds out her hand, her face hardening into resolve, and Donnie sets the vial in it after only a moment's pause. She glances at Leo. "Cover me?"

Leo nods and gestures the others to spread out in the corridor. Then he sets his shell to the wall beside the door, and Karai knocks, two soft raps.

It only takes a moment for the door to open. April holds her breath as Tiger Claw leans out, making Karai look tiny and fragile, and says, "Who disturbs my rest? Karai? What—"

She throws the retro-mutagen in his face and flings herself backward, drawing her sword.

For a moment April thinks Karai is going to attack him while he's mid-transformation, but she holds back, only readying herself. The rest of them are similarly braced, and April stifles a gasp as it becomes clear that Tiger Claw is changing into a tiger, not a human. "Guys!" Leo calls. April isn't sure what he means, but his brothers seem to know what he wants instinctively. Raph and Mikey wind up and launch themselves into simultaneous flying kicks, forcing the struggling tiger back into its room. Leo reaches in past them to grab the door handle and yank it shut.

They all stare at each other, wide-eyed. "That's not going to hold it forever," Donnie says. Inside its room, the tiger snarls, and the door thuds under its weight.

"Block it with something?" Casey suggests.

"See what you can find," Leo says. "Someone must have heard that, though."

"My room's that way," Karai tells them, pointing toward the next door. Raph and Casey run in that direction, with Mikey and Donnie right behind them. "Only Tiger Claw, Bradford, Xever, and I have rooms in this corridor. And Bradford's out on a mission, that's why we picked tonight. But F- Shredder's quarters aren't far that way." She jerks her head.

There's another roar from inside the room as the boys come back from Karai's room hauling, of all the things, a large, sand-lined tank. April can't stop staring as they shove it in front of the door. She can see a lump of shed snake skin inside it, and realizes it must be the tank Karai was keeping the turtles in.

She clenches her jaw as Donnie says, "It's only going to slow him down."

"It'll have to be good enough," Leo says. "Okay. April, Casey, keep the rest of the Foot out of the way."

"No problem." Casey grins. "Red sets 'em up, and I'll take 'em down."

Raph rolls his eyes. Leo says, "Whatever you need to do. Lead them away if you have to."

"We've got it," April says. "Go on."

The others glance at each other and exchange nods, drawing weapons. April sees the turtles' eyes flick to white as they turn and start down the corridor away from her.

She doesn't have time to watch them go, though, because she hears the slight clank and buzz of Footbots on their way. She exchanges glances with Casey, and the two of them take up positions on opposite sides of the corridor.

Casey's the muscle, April's precision. He knocks the bots down with broad sweeps of his hockey stick; April dodges among them and strikes at their circuits with the edge of her tessen. Donnie's showed her where the vulnerable spots are, but it's tricky to hit them just right. Sometimes she needs Casey to keep a bot busy while she finds the right gap between metal panels.

In the meantime, she can't tell how the other battle is going, although she can hear it, all right. No matter what they say about ninjas being silent, the turtles are seldom quiet when they get into a fight. She can hear all four of them shouting in turn, along with the crash and thud of their weapons. That's familiar enough, and even reassuring, except that she can also hear the deeper rumble of Shredder's voice. That sends a chill down her spine. She only saw the man once, and not for long, before he handed her over to the Kraang, but she remembers the coldness in his eyes, and his voice. The noises she's hearing aren't giving her enough to ease her fear. After all of this, after they've come so far, what if they lose now?

She and Casey finish off the first group of four Footbots. April looks back toward Shredder's quarters. The door is open now, and she thinks can see a glimpse of motion inside, flashes of green and silver. She takes a step toward it, but Casey calls her name, and she turns back, to face the next round of Footbots. Six this time. April and Casey are both panting when they finish them off in a shower of sparks, though Casey grins at her and twirls his hockey stick in his hand, trying to look casual, like it wasn't any effort. April smirks back at him and then looks toward the the other end of the hall again, hearing a shout. Leo, she thinks. Then there's an almighty crash, like someone knocked over an entire cabinet of weapons. April looks at Casey. "Do you think we should—"

Before she can finish, another Footbot charges around the corner, and they're back in it—eight bots, this time, and by the time they've got them all down, April and Casey have been pushed partway down the hall. There are heaps of robot parts in front of them, some of them smoking.

Behind them, there's silence.

April's heart clenches in panic. She glances at Casey, wide-eyed, before turning and running down the corridor.

"Aw yeah!" Casey calls, keeping pace behind her. "Red and Jones to the rescue!"

"We are not 'Red and Jones'!" April calls back.

She skids to a halt in the doorway the boys went through, and Casey bumps into her from behind as she stares. The room is a shambles. There is a rack of weapons overturned on the floor, a bed flipped up on its side, a finely painted screen with a giant hole torn through one panel and smaller rips through the others. There is other furniture overturned, so much that April can't take all of it in. Besides, her gaze is fixed on the main thing: the fight is over. Oroku Saki lies on the floor; the turtles and Karai stand around him, still poised to fight, weapons in hand.

"Well?" Shredder's deep voice is ragged and hollow now. "Finish it."

Karai says, "I can—"

"No," Leo says. "We agreed."

"We gotta finish this," Raph says.

"Together," Mikey says, still white-eyed, and with a more serious expression than April has ever seen on him before.

Donnie adds, softer, "All of us are responsible."

They exchange glances.

And then the five of them strike together.

April doesn't mean to, but she flinches and looks away until Oroku Saki's groan dies away.

When she looks back, the turtles stand with slumped shoulders, looking tired. All of them are cut or bruised or both, and Leo's favoring one leg. He says, "Let's get out of here."

"Before Tiger Claw breaks out, 'cause fighting a cat is just wrong, dudes," says Mikey, and now he looks like himself again.

Donnie sighs, "He's a tiger, not a house cat, Mikey," as the turtles troop over to join April and Casey at the door. Karai remains behind, standing quiet and straight and unmoving, looking down.

Leo glances back at her. "Karai? Are you coming?"

She turns without a word to join them.

#

Later, Karai takes to the rooftops, a silent shadow. She looks down at the building where she'd lived, trained, led, and been imprisoned over the last year and a half. The building where she'd helped to kill the man who had raised her.

Leonardo finds her there. She's not surprised. There's not much noise, just a slight scrape and a soft tread, but she has an immediate sense of his presence.

Besides, who else would look for her?

He comes up beside her and hesitates when she doesn't move. "I heard what Shredder said to you," he says.

Karai presses her lips together. He had been lying on the floor where he'd fallen, felled by their combined strikes, and he'd laughed, deep and hollow, and he'd spoken.

I should have expected this. Treacherous, ruthless, and efficient—you are my daughter after all, Karai.

"It's not true," Leo says. "I just wanted to say that. He was wrong. You're not that. You don't have to be."

Karai lets out a breath and raises her eyes to the horizon, to the clutter of buildings, tall and angular, that fill the sky. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. Hamato Yoshi might have been her blood, but Oroku Saki was the one who raised her. That much is for certain.

Distantly, she wonders whether anything he told her about her mother was true. "Well, it's over now," she says.

"Yeah." Leonardo shifts his weight beside her.

"No more vengeance," she adds. That was part of the point of doing it together. They all had a hand in Oroku Saki's death. They can't blame each other, later on. No regrets, no recriminations. Karai should feel free, she supposes, but she's not sure what she does feel. Not cold, exactly; not angry, not precisely sorrowful, and not quite empty, either. Whatever it is, it's uncertain, and she doesn't like it much. She frowns and rolls out her shoulders. "What happens now?"

He exhales, not quite a sigh. "There's always something. The Kraang are still out there, and they're still after April. We still need to find a way to stop them."

"Right." She'd almost forgotten the alien menace. She shouldn't have; the mutagen was their fault in the first place. If nothing else, they're a target. "Maybe I can help you with that."

"Would you?" Leo sounds surprised, like he hadn't expected anything from her. He adds hastily, "I mean, I didn't come out here to ask you for a favor—"

Karai cuts him off. "Didn't think you did." She looks toward him, at last, and flashes a smile. "I kind of like this planet the way it is, though. More or less, anyway. The Foot's a mess right now, but maybe there are resources that could help against the aliens."

"Yeah, that would be great, if you—" he stops himself and there's a long pause while he stares at her. "You're going back to the Foot?"

She smiles again, thinking ahead. "You're forgetting, Leo. The Foot is mine now, if I want it. And I don't think I want to just let Bradford have it." Although Shredder left people in Japan who should also be considered. She lets her smile fall and inhales slowly. "Besides, there is an alien invasion to stop. That's going to be easier with more than just you four."

"True," he says slowly. "I mean... I think we all made a pretty good team."

"We did," she agrees. They had all worked bizarrely well together, really. As much as the turtles bicker and squabble, they come together when it counts. April and Jones and April's geek friend, too, even if mostly they only tolerate Karai.

"It's strange at home without Sensei," Leonardo says after a short silence, almost like he didn't mean to say anything.

Karai hesitates. She should offer condolences, or something, but she's not really any better at that than she is at apologies or thank-yous. And what happened was her fault, in part, but she saved their lives and offered them the chance for vengeance, too, so that probably clears all debts. She lost her father, too, she reminds herself—either of them, both of them, but— She doesn't know what to say, so she settles for asking, "Are you going to be okay down there, without—"

"I don't know." Leo's voice is quiet now, and his shoulders draw together. "I guess we just have to keep on as best we can. Do our best to- to keep going, keep training. We still have a lot to learn if we ever want to be at Sensei's level."

She hesitates a moment more, and then stretches out a hand to touch his arm, just a quick squeeze. "I'm not exactly done training, either," she says. "I might have some contacts in Japan who can help."

"Thanks," he says.

Before she can stop herself, or regret it, she says, "I— I wish I'd had the chance to know him. Your— Splinter." She takes her hand back and crosses her arms, feeling cold.

"Me too," says Leo, and reaches out to touch her arm, this time. "Hey. Do you want to come down to the lair for a while? There's pizza."

Most of them don't like her much, she reminds herself. And if she wants to take the Foot, there will be things to do; she'll have to stake her claim.

But for now, it's over, and maybe things will be different since they've all fought side by side.

Leonardo is offering her a hopeful smile, so she smiles back. "Okay. For a little while."

And there it is-I have some ideas for a potential sequel, but that wraps up this particular plot arc, at least. Thanks for reading, everyone!