April's bag drags at her shoulder, full of homework that somehow must be done in the six hours left before bed tonight. As well as dinner, say half an hour. And looking for Kraang activity, make that two hours, if they get lucky. Which left three and a half hours for trigonometry, biology, history and that awful current events essay. And Casey had texted her about another study session, but there is no way she can fit that in.
These days she always seems to be counting, shuffling numbers around to make her life work.
She pushes through the turnstiles and into the lair, is welcomed by variations on "Hey, April!" Their greetings are always cheerful, open, and for a moment she forgets about her impossible schedule. She feels safe, here in their home, more than anywhere else. Has lived with them for a time, though those days are shadowed by the loss of her father, her fear of abduction.
They are watching cartoons as usual, sprawled across the benches in the pit. Donnie gives her a wave, the little self-effacing gesture so very him. She smiles back and they head for the relative quiet of his lab. She abandons her schoolbag with relief.
Today they are working through the mass of information coming in to her message board, sorting through the conspiracy rubbish to find the good stuff. They are behind, her because of schoolwork, him because of too many nights spent patrolling.
Working together on a problem is when they are at their best. Two minds on the same track, riding the same rails, aiming for the same destination.
Her hand, resting on the benchtop, is two inches from his. Three, no, four strands of hair have escaped her ponytail to rest against her cheek. In the still air of his lab they move gently as if alive. It takes him a moment to realise it is his own breath that moves them, and he is lost in their motion.
And then he panics that she will feel that breath on her cheek and realise he is looking at her and so he yanks his gaze back to the screen, his heart going just a tiny bit faster.
He can't help it if his mind can tell him exactly how far away she is, in both X and Y dimensions. He can't help it if he knows the approximate range of her core body temperature, exactly how many freckles dance across her nose. That he knows her apartment is nine blocks away, her window ten metres from street level. That her lights go off anywhere between ten and midnight.
That she has twenty-four plastic horses under her bed, nine Barbie dolls and three pairs of cowgirl boots. The Barbie dolls surprised him a lot more than the horses.
He doesn't go out at night and watch her window anymore. Well, not every night. It wasn't his brothers' teasing that put a stop to it. It was the look on Leo's face, the slight eye twitch that told him this behaviour isn't normal.
The world might consider him a freak, but he can't bear his brothers thinking the same.
"There," says April, jabbing a finger at the screen, jerking him out of his thoughts. They play the video again, watch the violent flash of light so peculiar to Kraang portals. He downloads the video, files it under confirmed Kraang activity and they move on to the next message.
What was normal, anyway? He was a half-turtle, half-human hybrid accidentally created by an alien mutagen, raised in the sewers by a human/rat hybrid who was also a Grandmaster of Ninjutsu. That was his normality, and he was comfortable in it. Right up until the point he ran into the rest of the world's version of normal, and realised how unbelievably odd they were.
"What about this one?" April asks. The picture is blurry, a couple posing in low light in front of an indistinguishable building. The original poster has circled a misshapen blob in the background. "Could be a Kraang droid."
He squints at it. "Could be a wax model of Godzilla, too."
She swats him on the arm. "It's blue."
"It's kind of grey."
"It's blue-grey."
"That's not even a colour. It's either blue, or grey."
She rolls her eyes. "Fine. But it could be a Kraang droid."
He doesn't argue any more, just files it in a new folder. When he labels it humoring April she swats him again, with an outraged growl. He puts up his hands in mock surrender, grinning. He could duck away, but if he's honest with himself, her touch is welcome in any form. She pokes her tongue at him.
Now she's back to the message board, but he's still floundering through their last encounter, completely focused on her movements, her scent, her skin. He's always had an obsessive personality. His ability to focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else is incredibly useful when it comes to his projects.
Not so much when it comes to love.
"Dude, it's creepy." Mikey can screw up his face into an expression of weird like no one else he knows. Being called creepy by Michelangelo cools his obsession more than anything else. Or cools the outward expression of it, anyway. What happens inside is harder to control.
He can't help but count the number of times they touch, accidentally, as they work.
She draws in a sharp breath, the hiss of it like an angry cat. He drags his attention back to the message board. There's a picture of Kraang droids in their corporate goon disguises, unloading a van with boxes that are, quite clearly, glowing. The poster has included an address, and a date. Last night.
"We have a winner," she says. Her hands on the bench are clenched into fists.
He files the picture away, uploads the location to his T-phone while she runs out to tell his brothers.
He tallies the numbers up in his head. Nineteen times tonight. A new record.
She can't count how many times their work in the lab has led to another Kraang plot, another night where the boys go into battle for her, for their world. She can count the number of times they have allowed her to join them in battle. More and more now, after that first time.
Tonight they argue but she is determined. I'll hang back. I swear. The need to be there, to see, to know, beats down their defenses and they allow her to tag along.
But the numbers don't match. It's not five of them going into battle. It's four and one.
It's not that they don't want her there. It's just that she still doesn't fit. They still work around her, still track her position to make sure she's okay. She can't keep up. It will be years before she can. Maybe never. They have a fifteen year head start. But she's going, and that's all that matters. Four and one.
She glances at Donnie, head down over his keyboard, lost in concentration. She thinks one of them, at least, would like it to be three and two.
She could stay in the lair and do her homework. She should stay in the lair and do her homework. But on days like this, when she has the Kraang clearly in her sights, homework seems so completely unimportant in the face of fighting to save the world.
She glances at the clock, adds up the hours, falls short. She'll be up past midnight yet again.