Disclaimer: I do not own the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise or any of it's series. This is mainly based off the movies with some details from the 80's cartoons.

AN: So Charlotte turns into a Lion, Antoinette into a Honey Badger, Angel into a Bear and Jasmine into a Burmese Python. Antionette is with Mikey and Jasmine is with Donnie. Angel is in that flirting, dancing around pinning stage with Leo. And Charlotte isn't ready for anything with anyone but she flirts with Raph more than everyone else, though she does it with other people too. Cough cough Angel cough cough.

Charlotte's POV

There was only one mirror in the entire place that wasn't just reflections off the water, it was in the bathroom and it was kind of cloudy from all the dirt, sweat and cheap soap that the boys had smeared on it with their hands. This was my safe space, believe it or not. It looked like a normal bathroom except there was no window, it had a large shower, a large double set of sinks and a toilet like every other bathroom I'd ever been in.

I placed my hand lightly on the cool glass and traced the fingerprints, trying to see how their hands would have found their way there. When I heard someone approaching, I dropped back on my heels and started running the water like I was washing my hands. The hot water helped calm my nerves, it almost made my hands soft as I scrubbed. I snarled at the sink as I remembered that I would never need a sponge again. I shut off the water and shook off my hands, nudged the door open with my head and made my way to...somewhere. Probably Donnie's lab.

"PahLEEEESE! You promised..." Jasmine was laying on my bed with her chin on her hands and her lower lip stuck out as far as possible. "You know I think it's awesome that you understand all of this stuff but sometimes it's hard to follow. I at least mostly understand the bigger stuff in the garage!"

Donnie was about to respond when he noticed me frozen in the doorway. "Hey, I didn't know it was nap time yet." It was meant as a joke but he didn't realize how much it stung, it didn't help that he knew exactly why I slept in here so much. "I promised Jasmine I'd work with her in the shop, are you okay in here alone or do you want to go somewhere else? I just want to make sure none of them bother you."

I shrugged and turned around, trying to hide the strain. I am used to the idea of sharing my boys. I ignore the thought and went to find somewhere else to sleep, my body fighting me already. I morphed as I went without thinking about it, I had grown so that mine was more fluid than the others. I was at least relatively the same size and a similar bone structure, besides the spine which hurt like a bitch. I shivered as I went down on my paws, slowing the internal shifting slightly so I could still think like a human. I needed a place to sleep, where would...? My nose took me there before my brain could stop it, sliding into the cave like space and launching myself upward onto the higher ground, curling up as tightly as possible. Sleep.

"Come on babe, you need to keep up with me." The voice hit me like a freight train but in a good way. It made my breath catch and my heart skip a beat as I whirled around to try and find i, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. "Charlotte? Where are you, silly?" The tone was still fun but there was a tremor to it. "Babe!"

And suddenly my body was connecting with something, something warm that smelled like hot chocolate even though the air around us was hot and humid. A startled scream followed, but then we were both laughing as the warmth recognized me. "I'm sorry! Just because I have longer legs than you doesn't mean I can keep up all the time." I pressed my cheek into their neck and it was like I was drinking their scent, my stomach felt warm and my cheeks became flushed.

"Don't I know it! Now come on, we're going to be late! I know you wanted to see Anastasia but they were all sold out and this one is based in Germany! Some of the songs are in the language too and I know you said you like hearing it cause it reminds you of your grandmother but..." The girl, it was definitely a girl, paused her babbling to grab my hands and face me. "Charlotte, are you okay?"

I kissed her nose and then her cheeks, grinning brightly as she pouted when I stopped. "I'm happy. I'm really, really happy. That's all." I memorized as much of her face as I could, her job was going to take her to New York soon and I was going to miss her with everything I had. "Let's go in, I promise to translate all the swear words I know!"

"Well when you put like that..." She laughed and ran in with me, her fingers tightening around mine like she was scared of losing me.

I knew the face in front of me. I didn't know how though, it was just there. She hadn't noticed that I was hiding yet, her eyes searching slowly as she took in the details of the room. I could wait until she gave up and left, I could wait for the large screeching to start when they found I was gone. But I was bored and I wanted to know why this human made me feel like I just ate too much.

"Charlotte..." Whispers, whispers. All too loud for my ears, something she must know with how familiar my name sounded on her tongue. "You hate when I lie so I'm going to tell you right now I don't know where you are. But the sooner I do the more time we'll have to talk..."

I slumped and stretched out in my hiding spot, my nails barely a breath away from the touching the surface I was relaxing on. It gave me a small rush, knowing I was a flinch away from giving up my position. I always was the better hunter...

She blew hair out of her face, her eyes going cross eyed as she started getting frustrated. She took a deep breath in, holding it for a second before breathing out. "I bet she's not even in hear and they just wanted to make fun of the new recruit..." Whispers, whispers. "Come on, we aren't five year olds playing hide and seek. Come out, come out, wherever you are..." Snark was clearly her strong suit, but why did it make my chest tighten?

She finally gave up on trying to draw me out, simply punching the wall and the world became pure light for a moment as every light in the room turned on. "Shit that hurt..." She was covering her eyes and rubbing them gently with her fists like a crying child.

If I could have, I would have laughed as I slunk down from my perch and bumped her lightly with my hip as I made my way back to my room. I simply smirked into my paws as I watched my favorite soldier poke his head in with a laugh, shouting, "CALLED IT! She was in her room the whole time!" He locked the door behind himself and walked over, sitting down in front of me. "You just like to mess with us all, don't you?"

I forced a yawn, taking pleasure in the flinch that he couldn't hide. He might be kind but he was still my prison guard and I would not hesitate to eat him if I got hungry enough. Or just bored...I nudged his head with my own and rolled over, telling him I wasn't looking for company.

"Fine, just remember that I haven't ratted you out for leaving yet." He left quickly after that and it took him a week to even walk by my door again.

Waking up was like fast forwarding a VCR, including the sound effects. I was sitting up with my head in my hands before I knew what was happening, my eyes burning holes into the mattress beneath me. I couldn't remember the people but I could remember the feelings and the tastes...I could remember what burnt hot dogs right outside my apartment tasted like because that's where the cheap hole-in-the-wall tavern was and they always gave me free soda. I remembered that slush and sleet and snow could all happen at once and the sounds of it hitting cars and windows that were meant to protect. I could remember what color the moon looked like through sunroofs in 'mom cars'. I hadn't memorized these things, I didn't care about them. But her face...her face was gone.

"What are you doing?" Antoinette raised her eyebrows as she lifted herself up to see what I was doing. "Do you and Raph have a thing going 'cause I thought you were a lesbian with the way you kissed Angel last night..."

"You kissed Angel?" Mikey poked his head up too, grinning cheekily. Suddenly I could see why they fit together, they balanced each other out with half of their personalities but the other half was the same. They both used their hearts instead of their heads and are complete goofballs in a kind of terrifying way if you don't know them.

I shoved them both away, climbing down off the bed and squeezing my way through their questions. I felt like the sahara took up residence in my throat, making its way up to my tongue. I let my feet take me to the kitchen, my fist clenching around the cool glass before I realized I was already there. I pressed the back of my head against the cabinets, dragging my breaths across broken glass. "Don't even think about it." I moved my head so I could see Raph trying to sneak his way around to get something from the fridge. "You know I have good ears, I will hear if you take one of my ginger beers."

Raph rolled his eyes but moved over to where I was so we could talk. "If you wanted to use my bed for a nap, you could have asked." I just raised an eyebrow at him, resulting in that sigh where his muzzle twitches and his eyes pinch. "I went in to get some things and you were there, you aren't the only one with a good sense of smell." He touched my nose lightly before he let his hand fall on my knee.

I reached around him to open the fridge and pressed myself into his side to grab what I wanted on the top shelf. I pulled it back to me and sat back so I could grin at him as I opened what he was here to steal from me. "So cool. So good." I almost giggled from the glare he was giving me but that would mean spitting out the sip I'd taken and that was not happening.

"You're mean, you know that?" As soon as I put it down he snatched it off the counter and started chugging, backing away till I had to jump off the counter to grab at him and by then it was too late. "Aw, so good. So refreshing."

"You little shit! You know that's my favorite!" I ran after her as she squealed and jumped around the furniture, both of us laughing as we fell onto pillows and tripped over the rug. We ended up just crashing on the rug and tickling each other until she surrendered. "I am victorious! Ich gewinne, du verlierst. Blas mir einen..." I froze as she reached over and kissed me, my brain short circuiting. When she went to pull away my hands tangled in her hair and kept her in place so I could respond.

She laughed into it, her confidence giving her a high that made everything better. She tugged on my lip with her teeth before pulling away to look at me. "What were you tell me to suck? Did I get it right, Char?"

"Char? Charlotte." Raph was holding my face in his hands, his thumbs covering most of my cheeks. His eyes were pulled together and his lip was between his teeth as he searched my face for the reason I wasn't responding. When I went to pull away, he kept his grip on me, as light as it was. I wasn't slipping out of this. "What happened?"

What happened? What happened? What happened to you, Charlotte? What happened? What happened? "I don't know, I guess I just spaced out a little." I felt like someone was slowly tightening a belt around my chest, pushing on my sternum. Cold leeched onto my fingertips and slowly made its way to my palms, heat boiled in my throat as all the mostiture made its way to my tear ducts.

The problem with living with ninjas? They don't miss anything. "Charlotte, you're lying. I've been trying to get you to snap out of it for five minutes, Donnie was even in here. What happened?"

I jerked out of his grip, the pressure on my head turning into something too much like a migraine. "I'll be fine." Liar, liar, liar...You know she always hated when you lied, so why do you keep doing it? What if she could see you? "Yeah, I'll be fine." I just needed a break.

"Come on Charlotte, I know somethings wrong and you aren't leaving until you give me something." I was already taking deep breaths and trying to focus on anything else but our conversation. And then he blocked the doorway and crossed his arms.

"Come on Raph, I didn't know you could deal with feelings." I was so tired, so done and all I wanted to do was go up to the surface to get some space. And he was in my way. "Move. You don't want me to make you." Like you can make him do anything...My fists tightened until my muscles in my shoulders spazzed under the tension, my jaw almost breaking my top teeth.

Raph didn't flinch. He didn't flinch when I talked, he didn't even flinch when I shoved him. He only stumbled out of the kitchen and tripped over a chair, so clumsy for a ninja. "What the fuck Char? I just wanted to help."

There was blood on my hand when I removed it from my mouth, my lip must have split from my canine's elongating. Are they still a canine's when they're a cat's? "You didn't want to help. You wanted to push and prod and force an answer out of me." My voice was quiet but I could see his eyes droop from the weight of my words. "If you wanted to help, you would have let me go. You would have let me calm down because do you know what happens when you push people too hard?" I couldn't see the floor anymore, I was standing over him as he watched my face. "They trip and fall." I don't know when my body decided it was time to leave, but my eyes only saw the gray of the concrete now, the cracks that look like they could have been glass if they weren't so rough around the edges.

"Charlotte!" No, no. I needed a breath of fresh air and this sewer was all poisonous gas. Not even Angel was going to get me to stop running now. My memories were already a plastic bag over my head, Raph just tied it's string to the ceiling and dropped me.

Raph's POV

"You saw the way she was acting before she left, she was like a caged animal. We don't know what set her off but we know something did and now she's out there on her own." Donnie dragged his hand across his face, pausing to pinch the bridge of his muzzle where his glasses rest. "Do y'all have any idea where she would go?"

Angel's paws padded along the floor as she circled the perimeter of the lair, her body shifting as her muscles tensed and released. It wasn't really smart to "order" her back when she went searching for Charlotte, she barely listened if not for Antionette chasing after her and literally throwing a hissy fit.

"She was the closest to her and very clearly she's not in a sharing mood right now." Antoinette snapped as her fist came to her eye, tracing where her dark marks were to rub the sleep out of her eyes. "I'm sorry but Charlotte's always been the calm and collected leader type. She knew what to do and she did it. So if she disappeared..."

"Either she's given up and she's not coming back, something's about to go down and she's scared out of her mind..." The girls looked at each other, asking silent questions about whether they should continue the thought or leave it there.

"Or she's finally cracked and is trying to pick up the pieces left behind to glue it all back together. She's always been shit with puzzles..." The last part drifted off affectionately as Angel finally walked into the conversation with her head held high, eyes glaring at me like I held the answers to what happened to Charlotte. "Charlotte wouldn't run without us, she loves us too much for that. But that doesn't mean..."

The alarm started blaring as an image of a group of ninjas getting lost in the maze of tunnels showed up on the screens, more popping up by the second. They knew they couldn't find our lair so they sent everyone so we would have to split up to attack them all incase one of them by some miracle got past everything. "I hate them so much." They were smart and were wearing outfits that made them invisible to a heat sensor, were sneaking around as to avoid cameras and almost anything else that we could use to find them. But Donnie was smart, he had painted something on all the tunnel walls that once they touched it would make them trackable. As soon as they got past a certain point they stood out like the sun just coming out from behind a cloud.

"Let's go. Charlotte might come back." Leo sent us off in groups, Donnie and Antoinette, Mikey and Jasmine, then the three of us. He wasn't so subtle when he wanted something, both with how he paired me with Angel so we could figure it out and stop being angry but also with his affection for her. He looked at her like she was a movie star, or just a regular star. "Please don't kill each other."

Angel raised her eyebrows at him and sighed. "Only for you, babe. And because I don't want to fight with Charlotte when she comes back..." She smirked at me before her face suddenly broke open to a dark muzzle and light fur. She grunted as she moved ahead of us, her entire body a shadow. She barely fit in the space, her fur licking at the sides of the tunnel.

I tightened my fists around my weapons before releasing the tension with a breath. "That girl pisses me off, I don't know what you see in her dude." His face went weird and it took everything I had not to laugh, he wasn't the best about hiding his emotions but he thought he could at least avoid it enough that we wouldn't notice. "I'm your younger brother and I had to share a room with you for a while. I know every girl you've ever had a crush on and I know that look."

Leo punched my arm and glared. "You know she can hear you right? She's got bear ears..." Whatever he was going to say was cut off by us entering one of the larger parts of the sewer, Angel next to where we came from in a defensive stance. We both tensed as the smell hit us. I couldn't describe it even if I was the best writer in the universe. It was Shredder's lair, the chemicals they used to clean not only themselves but also their armor, the blood...the fear. No matter how much experience they had or how brave they thought they were, every human stunk of fear.

There was no speaking when they attacked, no warning or noise. "Hello boys, you look a little lost. Don't worry, we'll get you to the hospital." If I didn't know any better, I'd say Angel was laughing.

You never really notice when the fighting starts, there's no slow-mo charge or war cry that signifies it. Suddenly you're just in the middle of a ring blocking and stabbing and flipping and kicking. You are in a bubble with nothing else around you distracting you because that could mean your life. They weren't stupid, they didn't let one person hit first. They came out all at once. My favorite kind of fighting.

For some reason they thought hitting my shell was a good idea, maybe it was all the duct tape. None of them were built for enough strength to even make me notice their blows. "Angel!" I watched as the last of my guys dropped and one of her's came down from the ceiling, ready to kill.

If the room was a foot smaller Angel would have died. She stood with surprising speed for someone of her size and swatted the poor ninja to the floor with enough force to probably break a couple important bones. She changed back to human, swaying on her feet. "A bomb. Get back quick." She collapsed quickly, luckily her head landed on one of the bodies around her so she didn't crack her skull. It was the last thing we needed.

"You grab Angel, I'll try and contact the others. Let's hope the others caught the stragglers that didn't show up to help." Leo was already halfway into the tunnel while he talked, frantically trying to get Donnie or Mikey on the phone.

I scooped Angel up with surprising ease, for a bear she was tiny. I didn't realize notice until she was close up and not threatening my life, but basically everything about her features was petite. Weird. "I know she's passed out and not going to care, but why couldn't you carry your "babe"? I mean, she doesn't even like me."

"Maybe that's because you guys are very similar. Polar repels polar." Leo was about to say more when we heard the popping noise from where we just came from. Ours eyes met in a moment's hesitation that might have saved our lives, as we started running immediately afterwards. We were almost to the lair when we saw the fire coming at us, the heat lapping at our arms and faces, almost laughing. If we hadn't hesitated, we would have been turning the corner when it went off. As it was, the next time his eyes opened was on the medical bed in the lair.

"Thank you, thank..." Jasmine was wiping away phantom tears, her breath coming out in hiccups. "She's okay because of you and I can't tell you how grateful we are for that. She's with Leo in the living room, Mikey and Antionette are filling him in."

It took a minute for her words to process in my head, it was pounding like hell from the fall or at least I assumed that's what it was. "What are you talking about? I didn't..." The memory flashed across my eyes as I tried to sit up and the pain hit me like the wall that had collapsed on us. The explosion had destroyed a few important supports for that tunnel and the entire thing caved in on top of them. He had instinctively shielded Angel with his body, trying to take the brunt of the weight. "Oh."

The door was shoved open as April stormed over to him, checking over his injuries and completely ignoring Jasmine's existence. "You boys never catch a break, do you? Do you really have to protect everyone?"

I don't, what's going on with you? was all I wanted to ask but Jasmine was right there and April would kill me if I embarrassed her. Why did I care about that again? "April, what are you doing here? How did you even know what was going on?" I sat up slowly, flinching from the pain. I nodded at Jasmine to thank her when she injected some painkillers into my arms as my teeth were currently glued together from pain.

"I'll get Donnie but as far as I can tell it's just muscle bruising and soreness." She paused as she was exiting, not even glancing back as she spoke. "We're going to find her you know. She's just scared, scared cats tend to hide. Kind of like when turtles retreat into their shells, and no. I don't mean the thing attached to your spine."

If his pain was bad enough, now his entire body felt like it was on fire. He was just glad he couldn't blush visibly.

An: More on how April is dealing with the girls being in the lair in the next chapter. So, what did y'all think?