[b]New York City
1989[/b]

The energy swirled around the strange machine as if the Milky Way itself had been pulled from the heavens in a great spiral around them. Colors Leonardo had never seen flashed before his eyes in a maelstrom of light and energy. At its center was the strange, spherical contraption that Oroku Saki, the Shredder, had used his vast resources with the Foot to create. It looked like a set of magician’s rings that spun around one another at incredible speeds. Donatello said it was some sort of matter transporter. Leo didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he knew it couldn’t be good. Nothing Shredder did was good news, and this was his obsession, which meant it had to be worse than the rest.

Standing in front of the machine, with blade-adorned arms raised to the sky in a show of victory was the Shredder himself. Oroku Saki’s armor was gleaming as brightly as the air around him, the sharp angles of the blades shining like deadly moon beams. He looked at his creation without breaking line of sight. He was close. He didn’t think the Turtles and Splinter could stop him now. 

But he would be wrong. Leo would make sure of that fact. If there was one thing the eldest turtle could never do, it was give up.

They had tracked the Foot’s secret project to this warehouse, and the four turtles and their father Splinter had launched a well planned assault, and had taken down countless of Shredder’s goons. But the machine had already been started when they reached the roof, and Saki had fought the five of them to a draw while it powered up. Now it was seemingly operational, as a great beam of light began to reach up from it to the sky.

Leonardo looked to his brother, Raphael, and made a twirl sign with his hand. Raph smiled, knowing exactly what Leo was calling for. The turtle in blue then made his way over to Donatello, and called out over the deafening sound of the machine, “Whatta think’ll happen if I jam that thing up!?”

“It’s hard to say!” Donnie looked worried. “Could result in a release of energy that could cause every atom in our body to explode at a subatomic level!”

“And the good outcome!?” Leo winced.

“That is the good outcome!” Don replied with a shrug. “But I don’t know if we have a choice!”

“My son!” Splinter placed his hand on Leo’s shoulder, “We must stop Saki! Whatever he has planned, it will mean the end of New York!”

Leo placed his hand on his father’s and nodded. It was time. It didn’t matter whether they lived or died, as long as they stopped Shredder for good.

He motioned for Raphael to execute the maneuver, and the largest and strongest of the turtles picked up the smallest, Michelangelo, who was standing next to him. The brash turtle yelled out, “Here comes the heat!”

Mikey ducked into his shell and Raphael spun and threw him at Shredder like the biggest frisbee in the world. The turtle flew through the air with surprising velocity, crashing into the Shredder and sending the ninja master sprawling to the ground, one of his gauntlets clanging to the rooftop in the process. Donnie, Raph, and Splinter ran to assist Mikey with their enemy, while Leo ran to the machine.

He drew his swords, ready to jam them into the mechanisms of the spinning contraption, but was amazed when he felt them being repelled by some unknown force. He tried his hardest to swing them down into the rings, but found himself unable to. He pressed against the force, but all he accomplished was having his swords ripped from his hands and flung back into the roof. 

“Leo! Look out!” he heard Raph cry over the din of machinery.

He turned in time to dodge out of the way of Shredder’s blades, but still received a dizzying kick to his temple. The shot send stars cascading over his vision, and he fell back to the roof.

“Do you not see?” Saki motioned above, where the beam of light was becoming bigger. Leo could see odd shapes on the other side, like that of spaceships from Star Trek or Star Wars, stories he had come to love. “I have waited so long. But finally I can leave this world...but not before I make it suffer.”

The Shredder laughed as he loomed menacingly over Leo. This was the end, Leo knew. He would die here, a failure, at the hands of his greatest enemy. But that was when he noticed the metal gauntlet of the Shredder lying motionless near the machine, much closer than his swords had gotten. It was a curious thing, but he didn’t have time to consider why it was. It was an opportunity, and the only one they had.

He back away on his hands, feigning fear of the Shredder, “Please, Saki. Spare me. Clearly you’ve won. You’re the better ninja.”

“Of course I am,” Shredder gloated with a laugh as Leo snuck closer and closer to the gauntlet. “I am the most superior being on this world. None can compare to me, especially not freaks like you.”

Leo was close now. Only a few more feet, “That’s right. We’re nothing but mutants. Scum.”

“You are by products of our greatness,” Shredder laughed, raising his bladed fist for a killing blow. “And I should have never allowed for the accident that created you.”

That almost froze Leonardo in his tracks, but he felt himself bump into the gauntlet. With a quick twist, he rolled out of the way of Shredder’s blow and flicked the gauntlet into the base of the machine. 

Everything that happened next felt like an eternity and an instant all in one. He heard the pained scream of the Shredder. He heard the calls of his family. The world in front of him exploded in a blinding white light. His limbs felt like they were being both stretched and compressed to their limits simultaneously. His body, though he was sure he was not moving, felt as if it was being thrown at a speed unknown to man.

And then, all faded to black.

[center]**********[/center]

“Leo! Leo wake up!” he felt a strong hand shaking his shoulder. His eyes opened to Raphael standing over him, looking worried. “Phew, thought we had lost you there for a second.”

His eyes were adjusting to the light, probably still slightly damaged from the energy released by Shredder’s machine moments ago. He groggily asked, “What...what happened? Is New York okay? Did we stop the machine?”

A pregnant moment of silence hung in the air before Raphael sighed, “Well, do you want the good news, or the bad news?”

“Ugh,” Leo grunted. “The good news.”

“Well the good news is we definitely collapsed the Einstein-Rosen bridge that Shredder had...somehow created,” Donatello added in nervously. “How New York is doing? Well...that’s the bad news.”

“Oh no, what happened?” Leo asked as his vision began to rematerialize.

“Well that’s the thing, bro,” Mikey said as Leo’s vision returned completely and he gasped in amazement. The vista in front of him was completely alien. Orange sand dunes rolled out as far as he could see, like some sort of candy coated desert. Odd, white and maroon shrubs dotted the landscape, while dark blue grasses clung to some dunes. The sky was a hazy shade of pink, and the only thing that seemed normal was the singular sun in the sky and the wisps of white clouds. “Like, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/n11lVPL.jpg?1[/img][/center]