She Don't Want the World

A With One Headlight Universe Fan Novel

By Madelyn Gale

Disclaimer: The TMNT and all associated characters are property of Mirage Studios, Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Saban Entertainment, Nickelodeon, and all other associated parties. All original characters are creations of Madelyn Gale, who surrenders ownership to all associated parties. All characters, places and events are used fictitiously. This story is written for entertainment only; no money, property, or other compensation has been or will be exchanged for this work. "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster The People is used without permission.

Warnings: Adult Content, Adult Language - I'm rating this "T" but reserve the right to mark it "M" later, if it turns out dark enough to merit it. I don't recommend you let your baby brother or sister read it, let's put it that way.

Chapter One - "He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan"

Sometimes people just had to party. Like buying a new car - that was a great reason to throw a party. Or what about the birth of a new baby? If that wasn't cause for celebration, nothing was. And hey, April was in college now, baby! There were going to be so many graduation parties she wondered if she'd be able to hold her head up come May, or if she'd be so plastered she'd be glued to the toilet for a week.

But this was only March. Grad parties were two months away, and April O'Neil didn't know that many seniors yet, so there was no need to get ahead of herself. Besides, she had a major reason to celebrate right here, right now. This was going to be a private party, of course, so no need to print out a hundred invitations. There were only two guests, and that was plenty, because they were going to see just how high three girls could raise the roof tonight!

Her prey were out in the University quad, setting up camera equipment. Well, Oyuki was setting up the equipment. A journalism major like April, Yu handled her own camera, thank you very much. Her jet-black hair was pulled up in two pigtails that made her look like a live-action Sailor Moon wannabe, but at least this was sensible - it kept the back of her neck from sweating. This time she wasn't setting up for her own class. Irma, theatrically digging through her backpack and spreading papers all over the place, and generally making a mess, had some weird project she wanted video recorded. As April approached, she could hear Irma ranting about something, " - and then he doesn't have the decency to extend the deadline even though it was his fault that none of us had any access to the video stuff before this! I mean, the guy's a friggin' tyrant!" Looking up, Irma saw April skipping over to them. "Yo! Red!" She stood up and waved an arm dramatically. "What happened to you? You actually ace your physics test? You're glowing!"

Oyuki turned around and grinned. "Wow, yeah," she agreed quietly. "I haven't seen you this happy in a long time."

April gave a twirl and a mock-curtsy to her friends. "Ladies, we're going to O'Brian's tonight, and we're going to get fully plastered drinking to the fond memory of Dr. Baxter Stockman!"

Irma's eyes widened behind her glasses. "You killed him?" she asked excitedly. From another person that would be a joke, but Irma had secretly been hoping a tree would fall on Baxter for the last year-and-a-half. Irma had this weird aunt Imogene who claimed to know how to read tea leaves and palms (and who claimed she was a reincarnated platypus). After briefly meeting her during a visit to the campus, the old lady pulled April and Irma aside and assured them that Baxter would succumb to a tree falling on him. Irma interpreted that prophecy as April somehow hacking down a tree and killing him in the process.

"Even better," April promised (but Irma still pouted), "I left his ass and took everything with me!"

Oyuki laughed. "You'll get in trouble, girl! The stuff you bought together is community property. Don't you watch Judge Judy?"

April smirked at her Japanese friend. "We didn't buy stuff together! That's the beauty of it. Everything I bought, I kept the receipts for. Everything! And half the stuff that I had there was stuff I bought already, from years ago! The couch, the tables, my china -"

"Everything?" Yu asked.

"I still have most of the original boxes for the stuff I bought, with the receipts tucked inside! I told you being a pack-rat wasn't always a bad idea!"

Irma crowed and jumped up, punching the sky in victory, a mass of gypsy skirts and tights like a jumping jack in the middle of the quad. "You go girl! It's about friggin' time you dumped his butt! What finally got it through your thick head?"

April's grin faltered only slightly. "You know things were going downhill."

"We've been pretty well aware," Irma agreed. "Sit, sit! I want to hear details about your ass-leaving before we commence with the partying." She flopped in a pile of skirts right into the grass, dragging Oyuki with her per force.

April rolled her eyes but sat as well. The momentary elation from making the decision to leave had started to wear off. She didn't feel as confident as she had when she'd danced her way across the quad. Justifying to herself was one thing. Justifying to her friends was another. "I've been trying to keep things good between us, you know," she started. "Baxter's no angel, and neither am I, but I never wanted to just... you know. Leave him."

"So why did you?" Yu asked, coming to the point.

"Well..." April had come high on a sense of adventure. She'd just turned a new page in her life's diary, gotten rid of some excess baggage, felt good, felt pretty, felt alive! It wasn't until she came face-to-face with why she'd split that she started having second thoughts. "He threatened," she said, "to put my head on a monkey's body." Second thoughts became third thoughts. The elation sank down somewhere around her knees. "Maybe I'm just being stupid."

The two of them looked at each other, then at April, expecting clarification. Well, she'd opened the door, telling the two of them she'd left. Time to walk through it. "I invited him to lunch this afternoon..."

Lately, as Baxter became more distant and April struggled to keep them at least afloat, if not in the deep romance they'd known at the start, she'd gotten the idea to visit him at his lab. Yesterday, she'd finally gotten the nerve to show up, bringing a picnic lunch. The other two techs at the lab looked at her like she was some kind of bug under a microscope, but they let her in to see him.

Baxter was busy putting some kind of needles into a monkey's body. The monkey didn't move, except for its head, but it was secured to a table like it was some kind of monster about to make a break for it.

"Stockman," the big guy who showed April in called. "Visitor."

Baxter looked up so fast his glasses almost fell off. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

April looked at the monkey tied down, with its teeth bared, snapping at her boyfriend ineffectually. "Oh... I thought I'd surprise you with lunch. I don't figure you're working on some kind of virus that would wipe out the world or something, so I thought it'd be fun to get together and have a picnic." The monkey glared at her. April stared back. "You aren't doing that, are you?"

Baxter glanced at the monkey thoughtlessly. "No, of course not. We're trying to develop therapies to rehabilitate the spinal column of a quadriplegic patients. This little fellow here had that body this morning." He pointed to a headless monkey of the same species. "Only we're having some difficulty with the experiment. Transplant rejection." He looked back down at his notes, frowning over them. "Today wasn't a good day to come, April. I'm really going to be too busy for lunch. Some other time, all right?"

Some other time. Their whole relationship had devolved to "some other time," despite the fact that they'd been living together for over a year. We'll take that trip to the beach some other time. We'll visit your dad together some other time. We'll talk about getting married some other time.

But they always had time to talk about what he wanted. Wasn't it time she become financially stable? She agreed that they needed to keep separate checking accounts until they got married, but the point of that was to keep their money for themselves, so they could buy things without hurting each other financially. Only Baxter didn't stop at "What's mine is mine." When he started dictating how she was supposed to spend her own hard-earned cash, April got depressed. When he talked about putting her on an allowance, she went from depressed to angry.

When he started coming home late from work, his eyes wild, yelling and ranting about how unfair everything was, how his work wasn't appreciated, and so on and so on, the anger turned to nervousness. He didn't lash out or hit anything, but April started getting the feeling he was on edge about something.

The monkey-head transplant thing didn't help her unsettled feeling. "Your job here gets weirder and weirder," she said.

"Yes," was his only comment.

April wasn't sure what prompted her next comment. Maybe she was feeling threatened and was trying to assert herself, or maybe she was just making a joke. Even later, when she thought about it, April couldn't explain it to herself. She said, "My first project's coming up for my Writing, Reporting, and Ethics class. Maybe I could do a report on your progress here." Her voice upturned at the last syllable, trying to sound light and teasing.

Baxter apparently didn't take it that way. The clipboard that so captured his attention got tucked under his left arm as he advanced on her, until she was backed into the corner of a cold steel wall. He leaned over her, his body weight resting on his right hand, blocking her from the only means of escape. And smiled.

He had a sexy smile, April had to give him that. In his dark face, with his deep eyes, such good looks were hard to resist. That smile first brought her, a Journalism undergrad, under the spell of this reigning Doctor of Biology. But coupled with the way he leaned over her, and the dark tone of his voice, that smile seemed less sexy and more threatening.

"Sweetheart," he said - no, purred, "if you try that, I'll transplant your head to a monkey's body. I have enough trouble with PETA and the ethics board as it is. The last thing I need is you harassing me. Do we understand each other?"

"Uh..."

He pushed away from her then, suddenly as back to normal as he ever got. "Besides, I can't publish anything until my research is done. A good scientist has to have solid results that can be replicated in the lab more than once. Since we've had too many problems with tissue rejection, anything I publish now will be a career killer. Oh. Damn." He looked away from her, toward the monkey. "The head died. Well, nothing we can do about that."

He gave her the smile again. At least he wasn't looming over her this time. "You worry about getting your degree and being a big star reporter, and then I'll tell you when you can write publications about me. Okay?"

"Okay," she agreed quietly. "I'll just..."

"Go enjoy your lunch by yourself, sweetheart. We'll make plans for lunch some other time."

He hadn't threatened her. The thing about putting her head on a monkey body, that was a joke. It couldn't be done. He was being distant. He was being cold. She wasn't threatened. Ignored, yes, heaven knew, and treated like a little kid, but he'd never threatened her. Ignored meant you worked harder at your relationship. You didn't run away from ignored. You ran away from a threat.

Irma stood up. "Where's your stuff?" she demanded. "Everything you took."

"Well, one of the guys downstairs is moving in, and he'd rented one of those you-carry-it trailers. I helped him unload it, he helped me load it up, but I left it in front of the apartment - hey, no!" She waved at Oyuki, already starting to put away all the equipment she had worked so hard to unload. "Guys, come on, Baxter's going to be at the lab for hours! Let's just go celebrate!"

"Uh-uh," Yu shook her head. She snapped her camera back into its protective case while Irma chased down the last of her flying paperwork and shoved it into a backpack. "Do you know what you sounded like while you were telling that story?"

"No..."

She put down the case and pointed at April sternly. "You sounded like you were really scared. Know what you sound like now?"

"...what?"

"Like a woman who's scared to admit she's scared. We're going to get that U-Haul, and we're getting your stuff into storage now. And then we're going to take you out to O'Brian's, have a few drinks, and get you into a hotel room. Away from campus."

Protests were cut off before they could be started. Irma shoved her backpack at April. "You know, there's more kinds of abuse than physical abuse, April," she said. "There's emotional, and mental, all kinds. You don't sound like you when you talk about Doctor Baxter Stockman. You sound like some scared little kid who doesn't want to upset the monster in the closet." April was on her feet, being propelled forward by Irma's hands on her shoulders. Irma was short, but pretty strong. "You sounded like that the last time we talked to you, too. I don't want you sounding like that anymore."

"Neither do I," Yu said quietly, following beside them.

"You scare your friends when you start acting like that. Well, we've got news for you. If Dr. Stockman wants you back, he's going to have to earn you back first, and that's that." Irma took the lead now, heading to the University parking lot. "And from the way he sounds, that's not going to happen."

"You guys don't really know him."

"We know you. We don't need to know him to know he's no good for you. So buck up, girlie. We're not your best friends for nothing, you know."

April stopped beside Irma's beat-up Chevy whatever-it-used-to-be and looked between them. Oyuki Mamishi, long hair in pigtails, her eyes serious. The left eye didn't quite track right, a souvenir from a mother who pitched glass bottles at people and threw her only daughter out when she was thirteen. Irma Langinstein, hair tied up with colorful scarves, looking either like a bag lady or a Jewish Cyndi Lauper, who endured taunts and teasing until she finally got to the University, where a thousand people came and went, some stranger than Irma could hope to be, without anyone noticing except to comment that so-and-so was absent today.

April's eyes welled up. "Thanks, guys," she said hoarsely.

"Get in the damn car, Red, before I make you walk home!" Irma yanked open the driver's side door and had the car started before her friends even sat down. "Everything's in the U-haul?"

April fastened her belt as Irma backed out of the parking space. "Well... my clothes, my laptop, I think I left my purse behind -"

"Yeah, yeah. You're lucky you have us, Red. We're grabbing your stuff. All your stuff. And then we're going to celebrate. You deserve it."

"Yeah, guys," April agreed, finding her smile again. "I'm lucky to have both of you."

Robert's got a quick hand.
He'll look around the room, he won't tell you his plan.
He's got a rolled cigarette, hanging out his mouth, he's a cowboy kid.
Yeah, he found a six shooter gun.
In his dad's closet hidden with a box of fun things, and I don't even know what.
But he's coming for you, yeah he's coming for you.

It was a quarter to seven when Dr. Baxter Stockman tried his key in the door to his apartment, only to find it unlocked, the door creaking open with a tiny push. He stepped inside to find his apartment plundered of all but the most basic of furniture. Even one of the couches was gone.

Of course. April had taken everything that belonged to her. He felt a small pang between his eyes, suggesting a migraine starting. Nothing unusual where April was concerned. Maybe he should have gone on that damn picnic with her. If he'd kept her under better control, he wouldn't have to put up with sleeping on a naked bed without sheets. Why hadn't he bothered to supply some of the linens when they moved in together? Not everything was gone, of course. Just everything that April could lay claim to, which amounted to less than half of the -

Wait, everything she owned was gone?

His eyes scanned the desk she'd left behind (original to the apartment, belonging to neither of them). The laptop.

The apartment was cold - it was early enough in March that without the heater on, it could be uncomfortably chilly - but Baxter felt a sheen of sweat on his neck. "No," he muttered. "No, no, no..." It wasn't on the desk. He ran to their room, pulled open drawers of his bureau, searched through the closets, looked under the remaining couch, dug through the trash.

How hard could it be to miss a bright yellow laptop?

It wouldn't be. So the laptop wasn't there.

Damn.

He looked around and found a packet of cigarettes. April had been on him to quit smoking for so long, finding hidden packets was second-nature. He lit up and smoked it down to the filter so quickly he barely remembered exhaling. "All right," he said to nobody in particular.

Drastic measure time.

His "associates" would be very, very annoyed to find out he'd lost the laptop, but they'd be furious if Baxter didn't tell them about it and they found out anyway. He sat down in the leather chair - always his chair; April didn't like the way it smelled - flipped open his cell phone. The number was on auto-dial, number 1. He pressed, held, and heard the phone dial.

There was a click as someone picked up. No words on the other end, though. They didn't work that way. "It's me," Baxter said. "We've got a problem."

A woman's voice now. "I don't like hearing that."

"My girlfriend left. She took the laptop."

"I like that even less."

"We need it back. Tonight. Our clients are expecting their supplies in the morning."

"Okay."

"We need this taken care of. She'll be out... let me think."

"Better think quickly." The woman sounded calm. The calm probably was a lie. She had as big a stake in this as Baxter, or the others.

He blew smoke out his nose. She'd go to a hotel, right? But what hotel? Did April have money for a hotel or did she crash at a motor lodge or... Okay, he was panicking. Forget the hotel. They'd have to catch April out in public. If something were to... happen to her... yes, there'd be some suspicion on Baxter. The husband or boyfriend or whatever was always the first suspect. But his "associates" were professionals. They could take care of her, and Baxter would look like an innocent man. An innocent, bereaved man.

And if something happened to her, something gang-related, let's say, why should they accuse Baxter? Why should they want to look at the laptop? Even if they did check the laptop out, what would they find? Journalism notes, a few of Baxter's notes from the classes he taught, and a secret file of love letters between the two of them.

There was no way anybody could find anything except love letters. No way. No way possible.

Baxter started sweating harder.

Daddy works a long day.
He'll be coming home late, he's coming home late.
And he's bringing me a surprise.
'Cause dinner's in the kitchen and it's packed in ice.
I've waited for a long time.
Yeah the sleight of my hand is now a quick-pull trigger,
I reason with my cigarette,
And say, "Your hair's on fire, you must have lost your wits, yeah."

"Okay. How's this: she visits her dad at the nursing home every weekend. Tomorrow morning she'll be on her way there."

"She doesn't always go on Saturdays. Sometimes she goes Sunday morning. We'd lose a day. And you said our client's are waiting for their stuff, didn't you?"

Baxter took another drag. He didn't know that they knew April's schedule like that. "You've been keeping an eye on her?"

"On both of you." He could hear the woman smile. "We don't trust you."

Baxter didn't blame them. Given the chance, he'd double-cross them. They'd do the same thing to him. It was just the way business worked. "Okay." Had he really gone through three cigarette? He dumped the ash right on the floor. "Right, has to be tonight."

He lit another cigarette and took a long drag on it. Where the hell could she go after this? Wait. Wait a minute. She had those friends, the crazy Jew and that Japanese girl. Neither of them had the room to take in a stray undergrad, so their places were out, but didn't they always go places together? No, not places. There was that stupid bar they dragged him to once. Played a bunch of Irish music. He just couldn't get into it. But the girls loved it. And went whenever they had an excuse.

"I think I know where she'll be. But she's got these two girls who will be with her." He tried to remember what they did on their nights out, but beyond the bar, he couldn't think of anything. And they always went out together, as a group. Three girls... that might be harder. Baxter didn't like the idea of a noose around his neck. The more people involved, the more he could feel one tightening around him.

"Can we do all three girls?"

"Of course."

"And none of it will point back at me?"

"Do you think we're stupid? How long have we been doing this?"

Baxter didn't answer that. He looked at the clock. Seven-twelve. Good, he hadn't been too long worrying over this. There was still time. "They go to this bar. They always go together and they stay until late. I don't know how long ago they went there. The last time I saw April was around noon. They couldn't have taken off before two. They'd need time to get her shit together and find some place to park it."

"So what?"

"So... they probably either just went out or have been out for a bit."

"You're rambling." The woman's tone was warning.

"Okay. Okay, sorry. The bar, it's called O'Brian's. Every time one of them has a sob story or they feel like goofing off, they go there. They might be there now."

"Might be." The woman scoffed. "If they're not there then how the hell do we find them?"

"They're probably there now. If they aren't, they're on their way. They never come home before ten. It's, what... seven-twenty now? If you can't get them on their way in, you can get them coming out."

"And if they don't show? What if they decide they're too tired and go home instead?"

"They'll be there. Trust me. April's pretty predictable. So are her friends. You just have to wait."

"I'd rather it happen when they're coming out," the woman said. "Between the bar and their cars. Make it look like a gang fight gone wrong. Some innocent people got in the middle. It happens."

Baxter had the same thought earlier, but then he remembered the geography, and swore. "Gangs don't hang out around O'Brian's. It's not that kind of a bar."

There was quiet on the phone. He thought he'd been put on hold, that she was talking to the other two. They never seemed to be apart. Then he heard her again. "All right. You're right, that area's no good for that kind of scene. So we're going to take care of it ourselves."

Baxter put the cigarette out on the arm of the chair, sitting forward. "Yourselves? You... won't get caught, right?"

"How long have we been doing this? You need that laptop tonight, right?"

"Yeah. It would be bad if I didn't get the stuff to our clients. We'd lose a lot of money."

"Sugar," the woman said darkly, "it's not the money we're worried about. If anybody finds out what's on that laptop, our 'clients' are as good as dead. Unless they kill us first."

Baxter's throat went dry. "Could they do that? I mean, you're protected by -"

"Our people don't go for that kind of stuff," the woman cut him off. "Even they have standards."

"You three went for it!"

"We like money better than standards."

"So..." The neck of his suit shirt felt too tight against his Adam's apple. "So your people won't protect us?"

"Probably not. They'll avenge our deaths, but that's protocol. They won't do diddily squat for you. You didn't make them any money. So we're going to take care of it tonight. Ourselves. And keep this in mind, Stockman - you are going to owe us. Big time. So you better be ready to jump the minute we say jump. Because we're going out on a limb here, risking getting ourselves caught."

Sweat ran into Baxter's eyes. "Okay," he said. "Whatever you say."

"Good. We'll kill April O'Neil and her little friends, and you get the laptop back. You send out clients their stuff in the morning, and we go on about our happy lives." The woman paused. "Wear the grey suit to the funeral. And you damn well better cry when the police question you. Or we'll make sure you cry."

The phone disconnected.

Baxter sat there, holding the cell phone in his hand, staring at it stupidly, and wondered what the hell he'd just gotten himself into.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run, better run, faster than my bullet.