April grabbed the tassels of his purple mask and yanked, effectively forcing him back. "I hope you realize that if you ever get beat up like that again... I'll... oh, come here." And she wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder, letting her tears run down his plastron.

"Hate to break up the love fest, but there are like thirty Kraang dopes headed this way," Raph shattered the moment with the message, and Donnie's eyes went white as his turtley extra eyelid slid down in anger. "Plus the psychic dude who managed to beat me. ME!"

"He's right, guys," Leo cut in. "There'll be time for sappy stories later, but first we need to make later a reality."

"This is what I live for." Raphael grinned as he leapt into the onslaught and somehow took down five guards with no weapons whatsoever before hitting the ground. Of course, the red ninja is a resourceful one, and within seconds he'd acquired a gun for each hand, plus one to toss to Mikey as the color returned to his face.

The other four made their way out, April supporting Mikey; in exchange he kept the droids away with some handy lasers. She led the way, and within minutes he could stand. Almost immediately, though, all four turtles fell to the ground, leaving April surrounded by downed enemies... and downed friends as well.

She took a deep breath, although surely he could tell she was panicked inside. Falco. If it wasn't bad enough they had Shredder after the mutants and the Kraang after the sole free O'Neil, there was now a mind-reader out to get them too. None of it was fair.

But, then, April hadn't grown up on fair. She grown up losing her two grandparents at age four on the nine/eleven Twin Tower flight, back when she lived in California (they'd moved to New York shortly after, almost like the city itself were a memorial to Ira and Jerzy). Her own mother had died of tuberculosis when April was twelve, leaving her nobody on that side, as her parents had long been lost when Mrs. Ailish O'Neil immigrated from Ireland as a girl.

And then there was Mr. O'Neil.

It seemed to an outsider that Kirby cared about his daughters more than anything, but from the inside, it was obvious that work took priority. April's sister, Mairenn, whose name even meant rebellious, had hightailed it out of there as soon as she turned eighteen. Granted, that was less than a year before April met her turtles, but she had nobody except a few (let's face it) strangers when her dad was kidnapped.

All of this she realized in a few seconds as she took in the sight of the fallen heroes- how life wasn't fair, but she'd shaken it off before, and she knew she could pull through again.

So she closed her eyes, and challenged Falco to a duel.