Mikey had never expected to be special, in any sense of the word. His older brothers had already depleted the genetic register of "extraordinary", leaving Mikey to be just ordinary. Regular. Average. Sometimes, during late nights when his brothers had gone to bed but Mikey was up, unable to wrap his head around homework and consequently had to turn it in incomplete the next day, he felt even less than average.

So being able to see a horned, blue-feathered creature emerging from the magic circle Chris Bradford and his dumb friends had drawn on the classroom floor was a bit of a surprise. Even more so when Mikey realized no one else could see it.

"That was dumb," Bradford announced after a pause, staring at the circle drawn with expo marker on the tile. "Nothing happened."

"Still looks cool, though," Xever pointed out. "Adds to the Halloweeny-ness."

So does THAT thing, dude! Mikey thought frantically, staring at the ten-foot tall demon that loomed over them. It blinked its dark, circular, owl eyes at the classroom, taking it all in.

Mikey swallowed, lowering his pencil from his mouth (Leo always got on him about chewing his pencils, but it was a nervous habit Mikey hadn't figured out how to break) and looked around. Everyone else in homeroom seemed fine, totally unaffected as they worked on various things. Some girls in the back were gossiping and giggling over their phones. Some kids were doing homework, and some others were putting up Halloween decorations on the windows. The teacher, Ms. O'Neil, was typing something up on her laptop, her fingers at lightning-fast speed.

"You boys better clean my floor after you're done playing," she said, her eyes never leaving her laptop screen.

"We're not playing," Fong said, sounding salty. "I found this old drawing of a magic circle in my grandmother's attic. She said her great-grandparents used to be really into studying the supernatural. This thing is practically a relic."

"Well, nothing happened, so maybe your great-great-whatevers were fakes, bro," Xever said.

"Shut up," Fong said, sighing down into the circle. "I really wanted to see something sick nasty."

Mikey stared at them. They really couldn't see the demon. It was completely coated in blue feathers, and it was completely impossible to miss.

"Maybe we did it wrong," Bradford was saying. "Maybe we need, to like, do it in blood or something."

"Absolutely not," retorted their teacher, looking up from her keyboard. "No blood in my classroom."

Mikey blinked and refocused on the demon. Chills traveled down his spine. Maybe he wasn't special. Maybe he was just insane-was it possible for healthy, 14-year-olds to start hallucinating? He hadn't been getting the best sleep lately, but this was ridiculous, right?

The demon finally turned its head to Mikey, and upon seeing his shocked stare, its eyes grew three times in size. Mikey dropped his pencil.

"Dude," he whispered to no one in particular. What the heck?

His heart jumped into his throat as the thing took a single stride towards him, its long legs crossing half the room. When it reached out its long arm to touch him, Mikey let out a shriek and bolted out of his chair. The thing froze, arm extended.

"Michelangelo?" Ms. O'Neil asked, looking in his direction.

"Uh," Mikey clambered up from the floor, earning some giggles from the girls in the back. "Yes?"

Ms. O'Neil had a wrinkle of concern across her forehead. Mikey often had to see that wrinkle, especially when Ms. O'Neil was talking to him. He suspected it was because she was confused at how starkly different he was from Donnie, who she'd had only a few years ago. Donnie had been a straight-A student. Mikey could barely make Bs and Cs.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

Mikey let out a shaky laugh.

"Um, no," he said, trying not to scream. "I mean, not really. I mean, uh, may I be excused?"

Before Ms. O'Neil could answer, Mikey picked up his backpack and bolted out of the room, hearing a belated whine of "How come he gets to leave?" from someone in the classroom.

Out in the hallway, Mikey set his backpack on the floor and sank to the tile floor, rubbing his eyes ferociously. He was obviously sleep-deprived. Maybe he was getting a cold. It was autumn, after all. He stood to his feet and sluggishly started for the main office, but stopped cold in his tracks when he felt a presence behind him.

A blue feather dropped on his shoulder.

Mikey felt a little piece of his soul fly to heaven. Whipping around, he slammed his right leg into the demon's knee. It was a smooth kick, ingrained into him from years of training with his father and brothers in the dojo.

The creature moaned sadly, but didn't budge. Mikey jumped away from it and turned to run. Engaging in combat with one of his hallucinations was totally not on his to-do list today.

"This is so weird, this is so weird!" Mikey yelled as the creature bounded after him on his long limbs. "Leave me alone, dude!"

Reaching the end of the hall with no exit, Mikey spun around and held his fists up. At the same time, his eyes darted the hallway for an escape. The creature broke into a run at him, and then all Mikey could see were blue feathers.

He couldn't breathe as the creature strangle-hugged him, loose wing-like limbs engulfing him completely. Mikey struggled to get away, but the blue feathers clamped around his body with undeniable strength, pulling him in. Mikey let out a scream. This was how he was going to die. Not by eating too much pizza, as his brothers had predicted once, but by being engulfed through a phagocytosis-like process by a demon his classmates had unwittingly summoned.

Raph won't let me hear the end of it, Mikey thought morosely as he fell through the feathers. Also, I can't believe I actually remembered 'phagocytosis'. Take that, biology.

Then he was falling, the feathers having sucked him into the demon. He let out a scream as he hurled through a starry night sky, towards gem-studded rocks amid a glowing blue ocean.

It was certainly not an average thing to happen to a teenager on a Wednesday.