Telling you "this isn't your average OC story" will mean absolutely nothing, so we'll just let you read for yourself. Co-authored by abyssopelagic. Beta'd by Non Sequitur Metus.

Donatello hated thinking in clichés.

Clichés were poetic nonsense. Fluff and tripe that didn't actually mean anything, in the grand scheme of things. Tucking everything away in a tidy cliché made the reality of a situation less obvious. It was begging to be distracted. And yet, he couldn't stop thinking that it was a little too quiet.

He wasn't the only one on edge. Even in the dim light, he could see Michelangelo playing with the chain on one of his nunchaku. Raphael kept fidgeting with the handles of his sai. Leo had gone back the way they had come, scouting out the hallway outside, and the silence he had left in his wake was deafening.

"Think they're gone yet?" Mikey whispered.

Raph shot him a glare. "I dunno, Mikey, why don't you ask a little louder? I'm sure they'll be happy to answer you after you lead them right to us."

"I wasn't even being that loud!" Mikey protested.

"He wasn't," Donnie said. Raph shot him a nasty look, and he shrugged. "What? He wasn't!"

"Guys," Leo hissed. Donnie jumped. He hadn't even noticed Leo come back—a good indicator of how distracted he was. "All of you need to keep it down. I can hear you halfway across the building." Raph and Mikey exchanged glares, but settled into sullen silence under Leo's sharp gaze.

"I think we lost them for now," Leo said, "but that doesn't mean much. We're still on their turf."

"Which means we need to get out of here," Donnie said. "Fast."

Leo nodded. "They're probably guarding the stairs, and every exit. We might be able to get out the windows—"

"From this height?" Donnie interrupted. "No way! The wind would knock us off before we got more than a few feet. And that's ignoring the fact that these walls are basically allwindows."

"Yeah, shuko spikes and glass probably don't mix too well," Mikey said, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Got any other ideas?"

Donatello frowned, knitting his brows. "Not except for fighting our way out. And you saw how far that got us." He sighed, irritation layered in his voice. "Whose dumb idea was this, anyway? Trying to break into a skyscraper full of ninja. Wow, what a great plan!"

"It was your plan," Raphael said dryly. Donnie grimaced.

Leonardo sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Okay, okay. Nobody is blaming anybody for anything right now. Let's just figure out how we're going to get out of here without getting our shells handed to us, alright?"

"Uh, dudes..."

"Mikey, are you about to say something that's going to help us get out of here?"

"No, but—"

"Then shut up."

Michelangelo frowned at his older brothers. They had lowered their voices now, muttering to one another, occasionally making a sharp sound of denial.

Mikey left them to it. He wove his way between the benches and tables that ran down the center of the room. It had to be a laboratory of some kind, if only because it looked like a bigger version of Donnie's work table at home. The far wall held three low, rectangular doors that looked like they were made of thick glass. Pale light filtered out through these doors—the only source of illumination in the room at the moment. Each door had a keypad next to it, with keys that glowed pale green.

Mikey didn't particularly care about the keypads. All he cared about was what he had spotted earlier, the thing that had brought him across the room to begin with. He crouched down in front of one of the doors and pressed his palms and nose against the glass.

"Dudes!"

"Mikey, we're busy!" Donatello snapped.

"Fine," Mikey said in an indifferent voice. "Don't come and see the mutant turtle I found."

He grinned at the stunned silence behind him. Then there was an elbow in his face as Raphael shoved him out of the way. His brothers were right behind him, leaning over his shoulders to get a look through the glass.

If one of them were to stand inside the holding cell, their heads would barely touch the ceiling. The figure curled up on the floor was much smaller than them, however. Its skin and shell were dark iron-grey, nearly black. Yellow stripes ran along its face and arms. Donnie followed them curiously down the length of its forearm, and winced. Each arm was covered in neat, surgical incision scars, from the bicep down to the wrist and back.

"He's like us," Leonardo said softly.

"He's a science experiment." Disgust colored Raphael's voice. "I say we leave him be."

Mikey looked horrified. "No way! That science experiment could've been one of us!"

"Well, it isn't one of us, is it?"

Raphael scowled at the expressions on his brothers' faces. "Look, did you guys forget that we're kind of in a hurry here? If we don't move it, we're going to end up just like him. Better him than us. Besides, he's probably not even alive in there." He banged his fist against the glass. Donatello and Michelangelo both jumped. Leonardo barely flinched. The turtle on the other side didn't react at all. "See? Nothing."

"If he was dead, he'd be preserved somewhere in cold storage. He wouldn't be here." Donatello approached the door again. "There's a ventilation shaft in there. Dead specimens don't need air. They don't need room to move around, either." He leaned closer, pressing his hands against the glass—and started back, letting out a small, choked gasp.

The turtle's eyes had opened.

They were dark and glazed over. Donatello doubted there was much cognition behind them at the moment. The young turtle had the dazed look of the sleep-deprived, or (more likely) the heavily-sedated. But he was looking at them.

"He's alive." Leo's voice was firm. "And we're not leaving him here. Don't even start, Raph!" he snapped, cutting off Raphael's protest. "We wanted to see why the Foot stopped chasing us around. We got what we wanted. And there's no way we're just going to let this keep happening! No sentient being deserves a fate such as this!"

Raph rolled his eyes skyward. "Quoting that stupid show isn't going to automatically make you right, dumbass."

"It's not going to make you any less outnumbered, either." Donnie could feel Raph staring at the back of his head. He ignored it, focusing on the keypad instead. Piece of cake to break into. He just needed a minute.

"I'm with Donnie," Mikey said. "I'd rather get chased around from here to Harlem than leave him stuck here. It's just not right."

Raphael was halfway through thinking up another reason to protest when the glass doors slid open, and then none of them were paying attention to him any more.

Leonardo was the first one to approach. He ducked into the cell and crouched beside the turtle. He made a soft noise and shrank away from Leo's outstretched hands, and for a very long moment Leo had to fight down the anger that threatened to choke him. The limbs poking out from beneath his shell looked skeletal. There was no telling what kinds of awful things they had done to him here.

"It's alright," Leo said. "I'm not going to hurt you. We're going to get you out of here. Okay?"

"I don't think he can hear you," Donnie said. "He has to be sedated. Pretty heavily, if they just let him in and out of plain sliding doors like this."

Leo shook his head. "He's still scared. I have to do something." He pressed the palm of his hand against the young turtle's shoulder, grimacing when he flinched again. "It's okay, little guy. See? We're just like you. We'll take you somewhere safe."

"As much as I hate to break up the touching scene, here," Raphael's voice filtered in over his shoulder, "can we hurry it up? We're about to have company!"

Leo swore internally. Now that he was listening, he could hear the footsteps. They had maybe thirty seconds before the Foot trapped them in here. Even with the bottleneck at the lab doors, that didn't give them many options.

He slid his arms beneath the turtle and lifted him up. The turtle's head lolled to the side, and Leo stifled a momentary burst of panic. Sedated. He was just sluggish. Mikey helped him arrange the turtle's arms so that they wouldn't flop around aimlessly, while Donnie hovered off to the side, trying to get a good look at his eyes and muttering something about opiates and lorazepam, and something that sounded like "potentially highly addictive". Leo pretended he hadn't heard.

They slid out the doors one by one. Raphael took the lead, with Michelangelo right behind him. Leonardo followed, the turtle cradled against his plastron. Donatello took the rear, still murmuring to himself. With Leo out of the fight and Donnie distracted, their best option was to move quickly and hope for the best.

The young turtle let out a faint whimper. Leo's grip around him tightened.

Whoever he was, he was going home.