No answer. No answer. No answer.
Do not panic. For there were many reasons, surely, to explain how Donatello had missed his father’s call: he may have fled. He may be hidden. He may be fighting.
The Kraang, however, had not missed it; the pounding of their iron feet, their otherworldly scent, their monotonous voices — all had begun to grow terribly close, blood-curdlingly clear. No choice. No choice but to fight.
Splinter had already coiled his every fiber; his hair bristled, his hand twitched beside the handle of his staff, and his jaw had become tightly clenched as he braced himself for the noise, for the pain.
Once more, he let himself peer about the corner.
He was met by the nose of a gun.
He had only just begun to bank away when the alien — one that had already prepared to fire — fell in a shower of metal and sparks.
Splinter had seen the silver flash that had caused it; small, sharp, and most certainly far from accidental.
He had seen what direction it had come from.
In seconds the rat was running as quickly as he possibly could, launching himself over the packages, skidding about the barrels, soaring over and under the bursts of heat and light that scorched the very ends of his fur, seared the tip of his tail. He barely registered the dull pain of driving his fist into the exposed flesh of a Kraang, splicing the sight of a weapon with a blade, driving his staff into a metallic skull, for he thought of little more than his search for a hint of green, a slip of purple.
But the next thing he saw was neither.
What he did see was black. Large. He recognized it; it was what had struck the match of his curiosity, what had sent them barreling into this mess in the first place. With a skidding halt that nearly tore the padding of his feet, he paused before it (ducking underneath the next flurry of enemy fire) and, with his ears twitching curiously against his head, he peered about its structure. Could he gleam something, perhaps, from the shape? The size? A label?
More gun-fire. Splinter needed no thought nor plan to lunge swiftly out of harm’s way; only when he had time to blink did he realize that he had pressed his back to his great, metal mystery. The hot pang of anger tore over his brain (or, was it a lazer?); he was wasting time.
'Find Donatello. Find him, and leave.’
More lights. The sound of marching. On instinct Splinter bared his teeth, and his grip, vise-like in his frustration, might have crushed the handle of his kunai as he drew it from his sash…
All at once, Splinter’s body seized. His ears turned.
It had come from the black box; immediately, his gaze fell upon it.
A shining, red screen. A monitor.
The panic had stolen his every thought; now he was bounding away upon every limb he had, and if he had been hit at all as he did — if he bled, staggered or bruised — he could not know.
Far too late did his son, crouched behind the iron bins, finally come into view. It was there he dashed and, in one final, desperate leap, he tried to reach him, to cast his body over him, to protect him somehow — !
The blast was infinitely louder than his voice.