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Originally Posted by Andrew NDB
TMNTA, even as you get to the last issues, doesn't really read like a comic that's lumbering towards an ending. Anything I can imagine still feels kind of forced.
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Yeah this is pretty much spot on, a conclusion of any sorts would be farther down the line...
However, with that being said, after many adventures I picture a final arc entitled "A Deal With the Devil." Whatever story line proceeded this final arc would have a backstory involving Shredder who is still in the future, has aged considerably and knows his time is short and finds a way to return to the present timeline, because there is still an insatiable thirst for revenge against Hamato Yoshi that cannot be filled in the future timeline since Splinter has already passed on. The backstory ends with him getting back to the present timeline with someone waiting for him.
Open of "A Deal with the Devil" arc we find out that it is Null waiting for him in the present timeline and says he has a proposition for Shredder. Shredder is hesitant at first to accept any help from Null but eventually he accepts his help because his age and health are failing and Null restores Shredder to his youthful state and increases his power so long as Shredder agrees to become a member of his new Four Horsemen that were destroyed in TMNTA #39. Nulls thinking is that the last time the Turtles faced the Horsemen, they had the help of the Mutanimals and now without them, they should be now match. Shredder is the new death, Rat King is pestilence, I'm not sure who famine is, but Slash is war(this really messes with the Turtles mind), it is revealed that Null transported Slash from Maligna's hive before crashing into the sun and has kept him imprisoned in the underworld and played mind games with Slash to make him believe that the Turtles used him and were never really his friends and that the Turtles were responsible for the death of his true friends the Mutanimals. Null has filled Slash's mind with images of the Turtles rather than the Gang of 4 slaughtering the Mutanimals.)
The Turtles are no match for their first encounter with the Horsemen and are forced to retreat, beaten battered and bruised, the return to their layer to discover that Splinter has been taken. With no one left to turn to the Turtles call upon the aide of their future counterparts once more, but they are significantly aged, when conferring with the older Turtles they realize they need more help and Cudley appears and spits out a hostile group of young Mutanimals from the past, but before they were a team.
We get the prototypical story of a group falling apart before they come together, with the coming together moment being Null eliminating the future Turtles and this leading to the Turtles revealing the Mutanimals the nature of their future counterparts death which they had hid from them up until this point. The young Mutanimals avenge their deaths by using the Turnstone to take out Null. Slash is freed from his brainwashing and takes on the Rat King and the "Famine(whoever that is) while Shredder flees with Splinter. Cudley appears and informs the Turtles that he must return the Mutanimals back to the past before Maligna's original invasion of the timeline will be altered dramatically and so thus the Turtles are alone as the head to the final battle with Shredder.
Shredder vs the Turtles in the final issue on top of a rooftop because that's the only fitting ending.