The weather was perfect for a run. Spring was in the air, carrying a slightly earthier scent to it despite the heavy weight of exhaust fumes perpetually hung in the air. The moon was out, waxing graciously towards full, allowing the perfect amount of illumination to see by without being seen. City lights tried their best to fill in the blanks where the moonlight failed to touch, but they didn't reach to the very top of most buildings.

That particular area, above the streets at dizzying heights, the four humanoid terrapins made use of the space. They possessed the means to leap from one building to another with ease, compliments of numerous training runs previous this.

For the moment, they were simply on the move. No words spoken, no ultimate goal in mind. That was, until Leonardo gave pause at the head of the pack. His brothers, sensing his hesitation, likewise pulled to a stop beside him.

"Guys," Leo said lowly. His eyes were focused on something not even there as he strained his hearing and spiritual senses.

"Leo?" Mikey asked nervously. He scanned the cityscape around him, as if he could see what Leo was feeling. Not a single shadow stirred. For the city of New York at the dead of night, it was quiet.

Leo held up a finger to his mouth, his eyes still fixated on what he could not see. "Something's wrong."

"Leo, there's nothin' here," Raph reasoned. He wasn't capable of picking up on the hair-raising feeling Leo had, despite the fact that as reptiles, they had no such thing as hair.

"Not here," Leo agreed, just as quietly as before. "I can't – I can't describe it. We need to go to the docks."

"That's descriptive," Raph muttered.

"Which one?" Mikey asked.

"This way." Leo pushed past his brothers to start off in a new direction, adding a sense of urgency to his pace that the run didn't have before. No on struggled to keep up, but the tailing trio were a little winded when Leo came to another stop. This time, there was no disputing Leo's sixth sense.

Before the four turtles, only a couple buildings half a block away, they watched a swarm of black-clad Foot ninja. At first they stood neatly, as if in wait of orders. They obviously weren't interested in the turtles as their sworn enemies, so something else had to be amiss.

"What do you think they're doing?" Mikey asked, mimicking Leo's low voice from before, as if the Foot ninja could hear him from so far away.

"Whatever it is, it's no good," Raph hissed. His hands already clutched at the sai on his belt, his muscles tensed for action. He felt Leo's hand on his shoulder, holding him back, and he nearly turned on his brother. "What are you waitin' for?" he barked.

"An answer to Mikey's question," Leo replied. "We need a plan of action. They're not actually interested in us."

"For once," Mikey chipped in.

"Yet," Raph snickered.

"There." Just as the ninja surged forward, Leo pointed to the edge of the building. "Whatever that is, it doesn't belong."

"Like something mystical?" Donatello asked, pitching in for the first time since leaving the lair earlier that night.

"I don't think so," Leo replied. "Whatever it is, it's alive. Don, you get whoever it is away from the Foot. Raph, Mikey, and I will handle the ninja."

"Shouldn't I be doing the saving?" Mikey asked. "Ninja in shining armor … just isn't Don's thing."

Leo leveled a glare at him even as he stepped forward to take off across the roofs again. "Don't start with me, Mikey."

In the few seconds it took for the turtles to cross the rooftops, the figure the ninja were after nearly took a plunge off the roof and to the streets below. It appeared as if it was aiming toward the neighboring building across the alley, but it didn't have the strength and training the turtles did. She managed to grab the ledge with her hands, but he body dangled precariously close to death.

Now that Donatello was closer to the one they were saving, he could tell that it was obviously not human. It was small, about the size of their Master Splinter, and similarly furred. Cat ears protruded from a head neither human nor feline, but something in between. Thick fur covered the cheeks, a scratchy fur on the nose's bridge. The body was slender but powerful, albeit not used to the strenuous activity required to get around the city at such an unconventional manner. Its back was curved like a house cat's spine. A bush tail continued down the spine a good length more. Long arms supported the upper half of the body while shorter legs dangled below it. At least, the limbs were long and short in relation to a human. Four stubby fingers and thumb with a hardened paw pad ended the arms while four stubby toes on a cat-like foot completed the leg. No feature gave away the gender of the humanistic feline.

Donatello knocked a few of the ninja reaching for her to the side with his staff, sweeping it along their knees for added clearing effect. Quickly kneeling down in front of the struggling creature, tucking his bo staff away, Don reached for the animal's wrists without contemplating the consequences of its reaction. Claws gripping into the rough surface of the stone retracted, and it allowed itself to be pulled up to safety without a struggle.

Michelangelo stayed to Don's back as he pulled the cat to safety, and he could hear the crazed laughter from his brother as his weapon cracked against sword and body alike. They two were safe for now.

"Hi," Don greeted quickly. "I'm Donatello. But we'll have to exchange pleasantries after I get you out of here." Donatello glanced over his shoulder to get a visual on his covering brother. The casualty count was thickening. On the next building over, Raph and Leo were handling their own crowd. Donatello could prove himself a great asset in a tight crowd such as this, but he had his orders: get the cat away from the Foot. "C'mon, follow me."

Don once again grabbed the cat's wrist, lightly this time. Just enough to get it to respond. Its eyes didn't look like they were focusing well, and it was possibly slipping into shock. Understandable, considering it had been jumped by one of the biggest street gangs New York City even knew. It followed him without protest, able to keep up with him without him adjusting his pace. Michelangelo covered him until the fire escape, and then held his ground to allow Don time to escape.

He slowed his pace once he made it to street level and made sure to keep the cat angled so that his body was protecting hers. His goal was the manhole covered in the middle of the alleyway. "Here, you'll be safe down here," he told the creature.

The cat nodded absently, eyeing the dark hole before it. It dropped from her hind legs to all fours, which appeared to be just as natural. Holding on to the edge of the sewer entrance, it wrinkled its nose and found Donatello's eyes with its large, grey ones. "It smells terrible down there." Either Don was imaging it, or the voice sounded very feminine. English, faintly accented.

"I know," Don sighed. He looked back up to his brothers fighting the Foot above him. "But we need to hurry up before the Foot know where you went."

The cat stared down into the dark hole, the tension of hesitation clear on her shoulders. After inhaling a sharp breath of air, she turned herself to creep down the ladder. Donatello stood guard as he waited for her descent. So far, there were no signs of anyone following, including the trio of brothers Don left behind. Giving her a couple more seconds of time, Don joined her in the sewers, replacing the lid behind him. He touched her softly on the shoulder to announce his arrival on the sewer floor, and gently guided her through the labyrinth of underground passages.

"Do you know why the Foot were after you?" Don asked her. He was rather impressed that she was trusting enough to follow him into the dark unknown, especially consider her lack of speech. She spoke English, and it sounded like she spoke it well. It wasn't an issue of mute.

"No," she said simply. Her voice sounded small. Scared.

Don sighed. He figured it would be too much to ask for a straight answer when it regarded the Shredder. "I guess we'll find out soon enough." He continued guiding her deeper into the sewers, toward home. He would be in for quite a lashing if everything topside was an elaborate stage just for the turtles' demise, but he had a feeling about this one. She seemed so innocent.

"In all that commotion, I didn't ask you your name." Small talk. Help him gauge who she was.

"Oh," the cat replied softly. "I'm Lila."

"Well, Lila," Don said. His hands deftly opened the control panel to access the door to their underground home. "Welcome home." The hydraulics of the door hissed softly as it opened, flooding the sewers with bright light. Lila pulled against his light grip on her shoulder in reaction, hiding as best as she could behind Donatello's shell. Don smiled down at her. "Sorry about that. I probably should have warned you." He stepped forward, releasing his hold. "Come on in."

He walked backwards, watching her as she tentatively followed him inside. When the door started closing on its own, she jumped, but didn't run off. Overall, Don thought she was handling everything quite well. Better than April had when the brothers first brought her home.

"My brothers will be back home soon, after they've taken care of the Foot. I had orders to get you out of there." He gestured vaguely to his home around him. "Make yourself comfortable while we wait. Leo will have a lot of questions."

Watching her without making himself seem creepy, Don made sure her nerves settled down before he started attending to things around his lab. He didn't expect his brothers to be very long, so he didn't want to get tied up in anything where he would lose track of time. It was a common habit of his that he could ill afford, especially with their new house guest.

Master Splinter hadn't stirred from his room. Whether he was deep asleep or in deep meditation was unknown to the young student, but either way he wasn't going to wake up his sensei to let him know that he had single handedly brought in a complete stranger to their stronghold.

Don could feel Lila's eyes on him as he moved around the lair. Every time he looked back to check in on her, she had barely moved from her spot where he had left her. When she sat on the ground, she tucked up neatly, her tail wrapped tightly around all four of her legs. After he returned from the kitchen, however, she had disappeared. A momentary bolt of panic sent his heart into a frenzy. Immediately pulled out of his thoughtless wandering state of mind, he did a once-over of the room until he caught sight of the feline.

She had found the couch in front of the televisions. Her body was curled up tight, contorted in ways that the turtles never would be able to move. She appeared to be a rather fluffy mound, especially since she had covered her face with her bushy tail.

Settling down as quickly as he had worked himself up, Donatello strode over and took a seat beside her on the worn down couch. Leaning against the arm, he grabbed the remote and switched on the array of televisions. He turned down the volume to a reasonable level before scanning the news stations for anything strange. Often times the fights between the turtles and the Foot didn't make the news, but sometimes Donatello worried about it anyway. If any more of the humans found out about their existence, they would permanently have to find a new place to live.

Nothing on the television set satisfied the turtle, so he switched it off, gave a quick glance at the door, and then followed Lila's example and relaxed on the couch. He didn't expect sleep to come at all, but after only a couple minutes, he drifted off into a doze, his head leaning back on the back of the couch and his mouth wide open.

Mikey's voice pulling him out of his nap was made only more alarming for the fact that Don knew he was bound to receive an additional tongue lashing from Leonardo himself. Don jerked himself to an upright position, but was unable to rub the sleep from his eyes before Leo's were upon him.

"Dude!" Michelangelo's voice echoed around the once quiet lair. "That's the most Foot I've seen in months!" He was walking backwards into the lair, but Don could still catch the manic grin across his face. Both Leo and Raph looked to be rather pleased with themselves as well, though Leo was doing his best to smother the emotion. "And we kicked their butts! I bet they all went running home to their mamas."

"Mikey, that's enough," Leo warned. He was still doing a miserable job of wiping away his amusement, and it only egged Mikey along further.

"Why? You were there, Leo. I think we're getting better, 'cause it's never been so easy to drop so many ninja before." His three fingered hand bunched up into a fist of excitement, his shoulders hunched together by his grinning face. "Now that's what I call fun!"

Raph sighed and rolled his eyes at Michelangelo's fun, the high of the fight slowly draining at Mikey's chatter.

Abruptly changing the course of the conversation, Leo locked eyes onto the turtle that had awaited their arrival. "Hey, Don. How did things go for you?"

"Without a hiccup," Don said. "And she's fine."

"She?" Leo clarified. He raised a brow in confusion.

Raph grunted. "Great. Brainiac's got a girlfriend."

Don scoffed at Raph's comment. "Yes, she. They were after a little mutant cat, but she's not sure why." Don wanted to explain the events and details he had pulled together after they split up, but as soon as that sentence was out of his mouth, he knew he didn't have much more to add. From the looks on his brothers' faces, he knew that it was hardly enough to satisfy their sense of curiosity and that he would be bombarded with questions. He would have to answer them whether or not he wanted to.

"Where did she come from?" Leo asked first.

"I don't … know," Don answered uncomfortably. He pushed himself to his feet to level himself with Leo, to give himself more of an equal footing for this question and answer. He glanced over to where Lila was taking her cat nap, but didn't find any evidence that she had been there at all. He hadn't asked a lot of questions, because he knew that Leo would anyway, and he was beginning to regret it, especially after bringing her to their home. Now that she was missing, not that the other three were aware yet, he felt a hard lump of fear form in his throat.

"When I found her, she was panicking, so I thought ribbing her for answers wasn't a good idea."

"So where is she now, smart one?" Raph shot at Don. His eyes narrowed. Don figured he'd meet Leo's contempt, not Raph's, too. Don offered a small shrug. "Ya think snoozin's a good idea when you lost the fu- " Don cringed outwardly at Raph's explosion, partially because he didn't think anyone had caught the sleep in his eye.

Leonardo jumped to Don's rescue as soon as he noticed the prickly brother bristling. Raising his voice over top Raph's angry one, he gave Don a stare of his own. "Raph has a point!" he shouted. In a much quieter tone, he added, "Don, we need to find this mutant cat you rescued, both for our sake and hers."

"Her name's Lila," Don offered, as if her name would put the entire situation back into balance. He didn't know much about her, he did know her name.

"Right. We need to find Lila. Help us look for her. Do you think she could have found her way out of the lair?"

"Hey guys!" Mikey called. The three brothers swung their attention to him. In the abuse against Donatello, all three of them had forgotten about Michelangelo. "I think I found her."

Don shifted to the side so that he could see around Leo to where Mikey squatted on the ground. Throwing a quick look at Leo, hiding a smirk that threatened to grace his face, he said, "Nope, I don't think she could have."

"Smart ass," Raph muttered. Curiosity getting the better of him, he joined Mikey to find their guest. "That's what we were fightin' hundreds of ninja for?" His tone suggested he wasn't too keen on the idea, despite it being well after the fact.

Don cast him a disapproving look and nudged Mikey aside. "Mikey, you're crowding her. She's shy." Why else would she be so quiet while following a giant mutated turtle through the rank sewers?

"Hey!" Mikey shouted. He cried out more from the startle, but also from being told no. One look at Lila, however, and he knew that Donatello was right. "I mean … sorry." He shot a soft smile in Lila's direction, even though all he could see was a furry, light gray mass with blue-grey eyes staring at him. She blinked slowly at his apology, but otherwise didn't move. Don wasn't sure if that was from fear or something else.

Raph was the first to tear his eyes away from the newcomer, his characteristic scowl gracing his face. "Now what are we gonna do with her?" he asked. He took a few steps away from the group and stood with his arms crossed firmly over his chest. "We're not jus' gonna keep her, are we?"

Leo turned so that his side was exposed to the cat, but so that she was still within his peripheral. "I'm not sure, Raph. Don bringing her here limits our choices, but we'll figure something out. We always do."

Don lowered his face quickly out of shame, even though Leo's comment was spoken in a tone far from pointed.

For a while, no one else spoke. Mikey eventually broke the silence. "Couldn't we … I don't know … be friends?"

"What?" Raph barked. He was temporarily unable to comprehend what Michelangelo meant by such a thing. Don lifted his eyes again to look at his naïve and innocent brother, but kept his mouth shut to avoid further embarrassment.

"I think what Mikey's trying to say," Leo tested slowly, "is that we should think of Lila as an equal and assume she's friendly."

"Like innocent until proven guilty!" Mikey exclaimed. He instantly warmed up to Leo backing him up. "But it's friend until proven enemy."

"Any enemy of our enemy is our friend," Don added. While Mikey wasn't usually the horse to back in a race of reasoning, Don felt like he had a good point. Appealing to Leo's goodness with Mikey on his side might pull him out of the hole he dug for himself earlier.

Leo sighed, as if Michelangelo and Donatello had him caught. He turned to Raph, as if he needed the last brother to sign in on the deal. "We saved her, Don brought her home, now it's our job to make sure she's safe and out of the Foot's hands. That's that." Michelangelo added an enthusiastic nod to affirm Leo's statement.

Raph grunted, turning away completely. "I never said I wanted to throw her out." As if his piece was done, or perhaps feeling the heavy weight of his brothers' resolve against his, Raph turned his back on the group and made a beeline for his room. The four mutants left behind were silent as they watched his retreating figure until they heard the distinct sound of his door being slammed shut. He was closed off from their little world, including their not-so-little problem.

Once he was gone, Leo turned back to Lila, kneeling down to her level. Holding out a hand, though not close enough to her so that she could claw or bite it, he offered her a friendly smile. "I'm Leonardo," he told her quietly, "a friend."

This got a reaction out of the oversized cat. She shifted her position, unwrapping her tail from around herself so that she resembled something more humanoid. Although she didn't take Leonardo's hand, as she was unfamiliar with such a gesture, she did give hi her full attention by looking him in the face. "I was listening," she said softly. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Leonardo blinked out of embarrassment. He should have realized that she had human-level intelligence by the way Donatello spoke of her, but he couldn't have fathomed it until he actually spoke with her. She wasn't like the other mutants that he was used to communicating with: his brothers, his Master Splinter, and Leatherhead. Unlike them, she was more like the animal she resembled than like a human. Combined with her silence, he took her as a dim-witted animal rather than a mutant. "I – I'm sorry about –"

"And I'm not a … mutant," she interrupted. Her voice gained a little strength with the interruption. "I'm a Homo silvestris."

Michelangelo, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, piqued up: "A what?"

"It's a taxonomy classification," Donatello explained without a moment's hesitation. "Humans are Homo sapiens, I'm not really sure what we are, and Lila calls herself Homo silvestris."

"Uh … thanks," Mikey replied. His voice suggested that Don's explanation didn't help him in the least bit. "You know, I think I'm gonna go … do … I dunno." With the same uncertainty coating his tone, Michelangelo pointed off to his room before turning around and heading in that direction. Once he was a good distance away from Donatello, Leonardo, and Lila, he picked up his pace before quietly retreating out of their view.

As soon as he was gone, Donatello turned back to Lila. Leonardo had never taken his eyes off of her. "Lila, where did you come from?" He expected that it couldn't have been too far from New York City, and for many reasons. She spoke perfect English without a heavy accent, although an American accent was included. And although she claimed that she was not a mutant, Donatello was unaware of any mutant-like cat-humans running around anywhere.

"I don't know," she said. Her voice went back to the weak tone she began with. Although it appeared that she wanted to tear her eyes away from the pair of turtles left, she kept her face held high, continuing the eye contact that was established. "We never had a name for it, but I know that it's far from here."

Donatello silently contemplated that information, skimming over the fact that she said 'we' instead of 'I.' He could have been wrong with his initial inference.

"Lila, can we trust you?" Leo asked. It seemed such a silly question, since anyone could have said yes and never meant it, but Leo had his reasons for asking. Because she was such an uneasy creature, she wouldn't have been able to hide much. In fact, her reaction was as readable as an open book.

She hunched her shoulders and cast her eyes downward out of shame. Although Leonardo didn't know what was going on in her head, he kept silent until he got a verbal answer. After a moment, Lila raised her eyes again and gave him a small nod. "I don't want to cause your family pain."

Leo and Don exchanged a quick glance before Leo returned his gaze to her. "Then you're going to have to trust us." Again, he offered his hand, but it was ignored once again. "Lila, take my hand and follow me to some place comfortable." Even with the open invitation, she continued to stare at his hand, still hunched up in the small form she assumed in the corner. Another small look at his brother, and Leo was able to get Don to coax her out of the corner.

"Come to my room," Don offered. He gently led her forward to the place in question. Leo stood where had been crouching to talk to Lila, watching the pair walk off to Donatello's room before he looked around and retreated to his own. He wasn't sure about how this would all work out, but he was confident that the turtles wouldn't suffer too many damages.

Donatello offered Lila his bed without telling her that it was his once they closed the door behind them, but she quietly declined it. He didn't even have to press for an explanation, as she gave it: she was much more used to the floor instead of a fluffy cloud-like surface. He suspiciously let it slide, as she had taken a catnap on their couch, and allowed her to take one of his pillows and take residence among the many papers by his desk. He wasn't sure about the length of her stay, but if she was going to stay long at all, he'd have to do some serious convincing so she could be more comfortable around the lair.

Once he was comfortable in his bed, Donatello was having a hard time falling asleep. He gave himself a good half hour before he conceded that sleep wasn't coming. He rolled over, resting his cheek on his hand. The light from his alarm clock and the light creeping in from under the door allowed Don's trained eyes to scan the floor of his bedroom until he found the dark shape of Lila curled up.

Thinking that she was asleep, he continued to watch the very slight rise and fall of her sides, as he was unable to drift off to dreamland himself. Still lying on his side, he shifted slightly so that his arm wouldn't become numb after being shoved under his shell for so long, but after that he was still. His mind kept going through reasons as to why the Foot would want the cat. As far as he knew, the Shredder wasn't about to go around and pull together a mutant army. Granted, he wanted the turtles dead, but that was because they had meddled into his business far too much for his liking. What were teenagers for, after all?

At the thought of age, he blinked, his focus once again on Lila's form. He had been given her name, and he was aware that she didn't know the name of the place where she hailed from, but other basic information was currently denied him. For the moment, it was because she was in no state to talk, with her unconscious and all, but he wondered if she would ever give away her personal information anyway. She had the private air around her, although Don was getting the feeling that she was more likely to tell him over his brothers.

He shrugged that train of thought off the rails. His brain relatively unoccupied again, he found himself stifling a large yawn. Shifting again to cover his mouth with his hand, he blinked hard to clear his fuzzy vision.

Lila's ear flicked in his direction at the noisy yawn. Staying still so that he would no longer disturb her, he waited for her ear to relax again, but it did not. Quietly so as not to wake her, he whispered, "Lila?"

"Yes?" Her reply was immediate without a trace of drowsiness. Perhaps he had been incorrect in thinking her asleep.

"You're awake," he observed stupidly. This statement caused her to lift her head up and twisted it in his direction so that her big eyes were fixed on him.

"Yes," she confirmed anyway.

"Are you uncomfortable?" He couldn't help but be concerned, even after their hushed argument before he had flicked the lights off.

"No."

"Am I bothering you?"

"No."

"Then why are you awake?" Sleepiness wasn't becoming of the supposed genius. While he couldn't shut off his brain, it still wasn't working at full capacity.

"Because long periods of sleep aren't typical of my kind."

Before, when she had mentioned herself in the plural form, suggesting that there were more creatures such as herself, Donatello had ignored it. Now that the two of them were alone and calm, the face couldn't be as easily skimmed over. "You mean that you're not unique?"

"Everyone is unique," she rebutted. "But I said that I am a Homo silvestris, and while our species is small, it is not as miniscule as one."

Her vocabulary was quite impressive from what Donatello was gathering but that alone didn't help him. All of her explanations, while short, were begging more questions than answering them.

"How many of your species are there?" Don inquired. He couldn't keep the pure curiosity showing through his voice. The sleepiness had been effectively forgotten after the conversation had become less one-sided.

"There are … four others of my kind," she replied, an obvious hesitation before stating the number. Don briefly wondered why, but he didn't press for an answer behind it. Instead, he simply hinted about his curiosity.

"Four? Are you sure?"

A pained sigh broke from her lips, and Don instantly regretting asking such a thing. "I had three great friends and a sister growing up, but a few years ago my sister fell ill and passed away. It took a while for me to get over it, but … T – my friends helped me overcome the pain. Eventually the tom I was closest to fathered my kits." She hesitated even more here, the panic obvious in her eyes even in the nearly nonexistent light. "A-another one of the toms, he … he didn't like me having his kits and he … we … he's gone now, too."

Don tried his best to keep the suspicion from his own eyes at such a choppy history. He should have been happy that he was being told this information in the first place. As she continued, her voice pitch became higher, and her vocabulary had taken a turn for the worse. Pulling his mind away from the pessimistic thinking, he got to wondering how old she could be again, especially at the mention of having children.

"I don't mean to be rude," he began. He paused, but a blink of her eyes encouraged him. "May I ask how old you are?" She acted like she had been around for her fair share of years, but she had an almost child-like air about her when mentioning her past.

"Seventeen years?" she replied. The rise of her voice at the end caused Don to believe that she wasn't so sure about that. Even so, if that was close to her age, she had been around for nearly the same amount of time as him and his brothers. They weren't so sure about their exact age, either, so he couldn't give her any grief about her uncertainty.

"You act more maturely than that," Don complimented.

Her shoulders shrugged. "I had my reasons to grow up quickly. And I have always been interested in language, though where I come from, new words are hard to come by."

"Are you sure that you don't remember where that place is?"

"If I ever see it again, I'll recognize it, but to my knowledge it does not have an official name."

"Sorry for my nagging."

"It's no problem," Lila assured him. A silence stretched out between them, but Lila never relinquished eye contact. Another yawn erupted from Don's mouth as their conversation settled down, and he was about to drift off to sleep, but her soft voice jerked him back to complete awareness. "The others … like you, do you have a name?"

"What do you mean?
"I am Homo – "

"Ah yes. We call ourselves the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." He offered her a friendly smile at this, hoping it'd satisfy her question. He'd never bothered to assign a species name to them simply because they were mutated turtles. It was a genetic anomaly and there weren't a whole lot of them.

"The 'teenage' part won't last forever."

"Well, no …"

He thought he saw a small flash of her teeth at this, as if he had been awarded a smile.

"Does this stone jungle have a name?"

It took Don a moment to figure out what she meant by stone jungle. Eventually it hit him that she was talking about the city. "New York," he replied, "sometimes called the Big Apple or the City that Never Sleeps."

She mouthed the names of the city after him, resting her head back on her front paws.

"That turtle wearing blue … he was cold and calculating at first, but once he talked to me, he changed completely."

"That's Leonardo."

"I don't think he likes me."

Don was taken aback at this comment. He never thought that Leo would have animosity toward any of their invited guests. "I don't think it's that, Lila. Leo's … protective of the family. He keeps a close eye on all of us. Having to worry about your wellbeing as well might seem a little daunting to him right now, that's all."

Lila lifted her head again, though not quite as high as before. "We'll see," she said calmly.

"I won't let him, or Raph for that matter, kick you out on the streets to fend for yourself against the Foot." Don was making a friend out of Lila, and the turtles didn't leave their friends to fend for themselves.

"Who's Raph?"

"The one that was yelling most of the time."

"Oh, him." Lila's eyes narrowed into comfortable slits. "I don't like him."

A smile tugged at the corner of Don's mouth. "It's hard to image why. He may not seem like the friendliest of turtles, but after you get to know him, you'll get to see through his hard-won mask."

"How long does that take?" Lila idly asked. She lowered her head again, one ear still centered on Don.

"Depends on the person, I think. Michelangelo – the friendly, kind of clingy turtle – still is having a hard time finding the soft side of Raph." Don meant it as a joke, but he was sure it went right over Lila's head.

Lila was silent again, and Don was beginning to feel too tired to break it. No amount of conversation was picking him back up again. "You have an interesting family," she finally commented. "It's almost reassuring."

"How so?" It was probably one of the last questions Don was going to ask before he let things slide.

"It reminds me of home," Lila replied quietly. When Don didn't reply, her ear swiveled back to a more comfortable position, but he couldn't tell if she was asleep or not, just like before.

He wasn't sure if his family reminding her of home was a good thing, since she didn't seem to want to talk about it, but he took comfort in knowing that his family wasn't the craziest thing in the world. Sometimes some normality was nice.

The room was silent again save for their hushed breaths. Neither of them moved any longer as sleep sunk its silent claws into Donatello and pulled him to sleep. Even though he had taken a nap after getting Lila to safety, it apparently wasn't enough. An odd sleep schedule wasn't anything new to Donatello. He was known to spend absurd hours in his lab, fighting sleep with everything he had so that he could get a project finished. Whatever the case, he still welcomed sleep when it called to him. Within minutes, his breathing had become more regular and deep, and would stay that way until he was ready to wake.