Thank you to everyone for your comments so far! I'm not sure how much more of this there will be; I'm madly in love with the new series now (OMG episode 4!), but every so often something makes me go "wait, what happened when...?", and "Falling" seems to be where I satisfy my own curiosity about it. So how much there is will depend largely on what the writers leave to take place offscreen. That said, there's a pretty big "I wonder" between episodes three and four. It may take a while to fill in, because what this prologue (which actually takes place just before episode three) is suggesting to me is that the latest gap I want to bridge is actually way bigger than I thought. Bear with me, guys, I think I may be writing an episode...
The bedsprings creaked a loud protest as April fell back onto the covers, letting her backpack slide to the ground. One arm dangled off the bed, still tangled in the straps of the bag, and the other dropped to rest across her forehead as she stared up at the ceiling and let out a long breath. Sometimes, it was a battle just to stay normal.
Frowning, she pushed that thought aside and sat up, pulling her laptop out of her bag and setting it on her crossed legs. Her brow furrowed as she booted up the computer and logged back on to the site she'd been checking out the night before. She supposed she ought to be doing homework, but sometimes you just had to get your priorities straight.
It had been almost a week since the events that had changed her life forever. A week of living with an aunt who tried very hard to avoid talking about the reason April was living there in the first place. A week of waiting anxiously with no word from her strange new friends. A week of becoming a complete stranger to her old ones.
She hadn't been able to sit around waiting for something to happen anymore. So she had started doing her own research. It had been a moment of inspiration - spurred on by the memory of the weed monster that unwashed creep Snake had become - that had led her to the chemical labs. Then she'd discovered a pattern: labs all over the city were being bought out by the same dummy company that had no hits on any of the search engines she tried. Then, almost three months to the day that they'd been purchased, the labs were put back on the market, cleaned out of anything that had been stored inside. If the pattern continued, it meant that the next lab was getting cleaned out tomorrow night. If her hunch was right, the Kraang were going to be there. And so would she.
Her concentration was suddenly shattered by the annoying pling of her messenger, and she cursed herself for forgetting to turn it off again. Switching over to the social networking site, she winced. She'd been getting anonymous friend requests on and off since she'd joined the network – one of the hazards of being a young, not-unattractive girl on the internet, she supposed – but this same guy had tried her a couple of times over the last few days, and just wasn't taking the hint. This time, he'd added a short message.
Hi. How are you?
April sighed and hit the reply button. Look, I'm sure you're very nice, but I'm not interested. Don't you have something better to do?
She switched back to her research, but the message sound plinged again almost immediately. April rolled her eyes. Just her luck, the guy was probably online. She opened up the message box.
Not really. Alien brains and weed monsters have been pretty scarce. I'd drop in, but I don't have a helicopter handy.
April's fingers froze on the keys. Blood roared in her ears and she caught her breath, her heart pounding. Forcing her muscles to respond through the waves of adrenaline crashing over her, her fingers shaking so hard she could barely type, she hit reply. Donatello?
Her cursor blinked slowly on the screen. The pause as she waited for a response stretched longer than one of her school's interminable pep rallies, but she didn't dare look away. This time, the incoming message sound didn't bother her a bit.
Ha! I knew it was you!
April pressed her face into her hands, still shaking. Wait a second. She looked up sharply and punched reply. You have the internet?
Doesn't everybody?
Shaking her head, she accepted his friend request. Before she could reply, however, another message box popped up.
Actually, our connection *has* been pretty unreliable lately. I think it has something to do with electrical interference and flooding from the storms these last couple days. I'm hacked into your wireless right now. I didn't think you'd mind.
Her eyes widened. All but throwing her laptop aside, she bolted for the window and nearly fell over the sill in her haste to get through it. As she stumbled out the other side, clinging to the rail of the fire escape to regain her balance, she felt her heart sinking.
The fire escape was empty.
She had to bite her lip as tears stung her eyes. She'd been so sure. But before the tears fell, she heard the softest of sounds above her. It sounded like the "friend accepted" alert. Trembling, she looked up.
The laptop he held looked like it had been cobbled together from several different units, and had more random hardware stuck to it than a villain's ray gun in a bad sci-fi movie. His eyes were wide with surprise as he stared at her from his perch on the edge of the roof, but he quickly closed the laptop and set it next to him.
"Hi," said Donatello.
A wave of emotion coursed through her, an odd mingling of joy, relief, apprehension, and excitement. She stared up at the mutant turtle on her roof, and felt the grin spreading across her face. "What are you doing up there?"
"Enjoying the view," he said, kicking his feet a little.
April folded her arms across her chest. "Seriously? That's the best you can come up with?"
"No, really," he said. "It's pretty great from up here. Uh, the city, I mean."
"I've been to the top of taller buildings than this one, you know," she said. "It's not that special."
He shook his head. "It's not the same." He tilted his head to regard her. Then, with a smile, he leaned forward and extended his hand.
April's breath hitched. They had stood like this once before, his hand outstretched to her, his face open and welcoming, waiting for her to take the first step. She'd hesitated then, and regretted it ever since. She would never know whether it would have saved her father, but it would have saved her a lot of pain and fear that day if she'd just taken it.
She wouldn't make that mistake again. Her heart sped up a little as she climbed to the top of the fire escape ladder, wobbling for a moment as she caught her balance on the very top rung, and reached up to him.
His massive hand engulfed hers. Once again, that strange combination of gentleness and impossible strength held her tightly before her stomach dropped out beneath her, and she let out at tiny squeak as he hauled her easily up to the roof. She blinked, disoriented by the speed at which it had happened. Then she could only stare, her mouth slightly agape, at the foreign landscape of rooftops and twinkling city lights spread out before them. She leaned back on the ledge next to her incredible new friend, and wondered at the fact that he'd managed to show her a side of the world she grew up in that she'd never seen before.
"You were right," she breathed. "It is different up here."
"The company helps," he said.
April glanced at him, startled, but he was looking away from her, suddenly bashful. He'd let go of her hand really quickly, too. She couldn't help smiling. She knew he was incredibly dangerous – she'd seen it firsthand – but despite that fact, she found his shyness around her kind of adorable.
"It's nice to have someone to talk to," she said.
He looked back at her then, more serious. "April, I'm sorry we were away so long. Things have been… weird after all the stuff that went down. It's taken a while to sort things out." He fidgeted with his hands. "After we made the news, our sensei had a bit of a meltdown."
"Sensei?" April asked.
"It's Japanese," Donatello explained. "It means…teacher, I guess." One hand rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "He's also kind of our dad." He looked at her. "It's complicated."
"Wait," said April, "you guys speak Japanese?"
"Sure. It's Master Splinter's first language. We got most of our English from TV." He grinned at her. "Plus, it kind of goes with the whole ninja deal."
April braced her hands against the ledge and shook her head. "And I thought my life was complicated."
"Hey, it's been a crazy week." He tucked one of his feet beneath him and turned to face her. "So. Are you going to tell me what's wrong?"
April stiffened. "Who said anything was wrong?"
"Aside from the stuff you went through when we met?" He gestured at her. "It's obvious you're wound up tighter than a clock. It's way worse than the last time I saw you."
She frowned at him. "Is that some ninja thing, too?"
"Actually, yeah," he said. "You need to be able to read body language to anticipate your opponent's next move."
"So I'm an opponent now?"
His eyes widened in alarm. "What? No! I mean—" He threw up his hands. "I'm sorry. I just wondered if there's anything I can do, that's all." His fingers wrapped around the ankle he'd tucked beneath him. "You seemed sad."
April looked down and locked her fingers together in her lap, finding that it was her turn to be suddenly shy. "I had to start going back to school a couple days ago. I knew it was going to be hard, but the other kids…" She trailed off, struggling to find the words.
Beside her, Donatello stiffened. "What happened?" he demanded. April glanced up at him to find his face set, and an edge in his voice that she'd only ever heard once before. "Do I need to hit somebody?"
That startled a laugh out of her. "No. Put the ninja stick away."
"Bo staff," he corrected.
April shook her head. "It's nothing like that. It's just… they know that something happened to my dad, but not what really happened, which I can't tell anybody. And nobody knows what to say. So nobody says anything. I'm stuck there in the middle of a thousand other kids, but it feels like there's this empty bubble around me, and nobody can get through it. Nobody even tries." She looked out over the bustling city and sighed. "It's silly, feeling like you're alone when you're surrounded by people."
"No it isn't," he said quietly.
The moon and the ambient lights of the city were enough to show her that his expression was earnest. There was no condescension in him, and none of the slightly patronizing sympathy she'd come to expect from her aunt, who was concerned about her and the "fantasy" she'd made up about her father. April couldn't believe how comforting it was to have someone who actually took her seriously.
Her eyes widened and she gasped, bringing her hand to her head. Donatello straightened, one hand lifting slightly as if he were about to go for his staff. "I can't believe I forgot!" She laid her hand on the leather guard at his wrist and he stared at it, his face as flushed as a green-skinned turtle's can get. "I think I figured out where the Kraang are going to hit!"
That brought his attention instantly back to her. "What?"
"I've been doing research, and I think they've been buying up chem labs, doing something in them, and then cleaning them out like clockwork. If I'm right, they're hitting the next one tomorrow." Her eyes narrowed and she punched her fist into her palm. "And I'm gonna be there to find out what they did with my dad."
"No. You're not."
There was iron and steel in his voice. She'd forgotten he could do that. Hurt lanced through her for a moment before anger shouldered it aside. "You can't tell me what to-"
Strong hands grasped her shoulders, and her protest fell away, forgotten. He wasn't hurting her, but she knew that she wasn't going anywhere until he decided to let her go. "April, listen to me." He stared into her face, his brown eyes wide with worry. "I know you're scared, and you want your dad back, but you can't go up against them. We've been training to be ninjas for fifteen years, and we pretty much got our shells handed to us by those guys. You may be the most capable human I know—"
"I'm the only human you know," she muttered.
He tilted his head, considering. "True." He looked at her again. "But if you try to take on the Kraang, you're going to get hurt." He let go of her and brought his knee up to his chest, resting an arm across it as he looked out over the city. "I don't want that to happen."
"Donatello…" she bit her lip, trying to find the right words as she followed his gaze across the rooftops. Far in the distance, lightning flickered at the edges of the city as a new mass of cloud rolled in. It looked like they were in for another storm tonight. "I can't just let this chance go."
"Who said we're going to?"
With a sudden heave, he pushed himself from the ledge, landing easily on the fire escape below. Turning back to face her, one hand hitched in his belt, he grinned up at her. "We'll go take on the Kraang. We can get in there, get some answers, and as soon as we find out anything, I promise we'll let you know."
April leaned forward, her feet dangling over empty space. He was right. She knew he was. She had been so used to the idea that she was in this alone, she had never even considered the idea that she might have someone else she could depend on to help her. "So you're saying I have my own personal ninja hit squad?"
His grin widened and he bowed, one fist pressed against the other open palm. "At your service." Still smiling, he held his hands up to her.
She couldn't help laughing as she looked fondly down at him. How was it that the weirder her life got, the more comforted she actually felt? She hated the fact that her father was missing, and she still had nightmares about glowing vans and cold metal hands dragging her into the darkness. But as she looked at the turtle waiting below her, a small part of her couldn't regret what had happened. She never would have met them otherwise.
Planting her hands firmly on the concrete, April pushed herself over the edge of the roof. There was no fear as she dropped. As she was quickly coming to learn, if there was one thing she could count on in the upside-down mess that had become of her life, it was that Donatello wasn't about to let her fall.