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"Mikey?" Donnie's voice emerged as a disbelieving croak when he could finally form words. "Mikey!" He spoke louder this time, and his brother heard him. Any worry he had been carrying for the last few weeks melted like mist in the morning sun when Mike smiled, and ran over to embrace his brother.
April felt a surge of relief when Mikey landed safely, but found herself watching his new friend as much as she watched the fight. The one Mike had helped, the one Dog-Pound claimed was insane... the one the Foot had called Fushicho. She hadn't helped Michelangelo. She'd stood by, and let him win the victory himself. More than that, She had believed that he could; April had seen it in her eyes, and when he had stood triumphant, she could have sworn she'd heard her whisper 'That's a true hero...'
She turned to her, and extended a hand. "Nice to meet you" Her tone suggested the contrary. "I'm April."
The other girl's violet eyes met her green ones through her mask as she peeled off her left glove and shook the out-stretched hand.
"I'm Phoenix." She replied. "Nice to finally meet you in person. Mike's told me alot about you." She turned to walk over to Don and Mikey, but April cut in front of her.
"Well, I'm afraid we haven't heard as much about you." April shrugged, "But then, we haven't really seen Mikey... AT ALL... in the last few weeks." She avoided eye contact and noticed the fresh scar on the back of her left hand as Phoenix shoved the glove back on. "Look, I don't know what your game is, but I'm warning you," She held up her index finger at eye level, "If you hurt him, there will be no place you can hide from us."
"If he had wanted anyone to see him, he would have let them." Phoenix replied coolly. "You consider him your brother, so I'm not offended that you worry about him." She reached up and pulled Aprils' hand out of her face. "I am offended that you think I would hurt him. Hear this, April O'Neil:" She felt that odd emotion pushing upward through her again, "Don't ever fool yourself into thinking that you are the only person that cares for him. I would lay down my life before I would let him come to harm."
"You didn't help him during the fight!" April countered in a harsh whisper. "How do you explain that?!"
"He didn't NEED any help." Phoenix emphasized. "He took down Dog-Pound without anyone else. I knew he could do it. And, more importantly..." She kept her gaze steady, "Now HE knows he could do it."
She released April's arm, and walked past her towards the two brothers.
Donnie reached up and grabbed Michelangelo's shoulders. "What where you thinking?!" He demanded. "You could have been..." He couldn't bring himself to complete the sentence.
"Well, I wasn't." Mikey shook his head. "Don... I'm sorry if you where worried about me, but..."
"WORRIED?!" Donatello threw his arms out. "No, I WORRY about an experiment! What I, and everyone else has gone through in the last three weeks go's beyond WORRY!" He glared. "Sensei doesn't sleep, Leo has nightmares, and Raph has been out picking fights with the Purple Dragons so he won't fight with us!"
Mikey drew in a slow breath, and spoke slowly. "Don... did you not just see what I did?" He gestured towards Dog-Pound.
"Of course I saw it. What dose that have to do with anything?" Donnie replied dismissively.
"EVERYTHING." Mike emphasized. "Last month, do you think I could have done that?" He shook his head, "No, the real question is 'Would I have even been given the chance to do that?' NO." His blue eyes held Donatello's brown one's. "That was ME. Not you, or Leo, or Raph, but ME! The family screw-up!" A grin broke his face. "I'm learning... I'm figuring out stuff about me that never would have occurred to me if I was at home. I can't explain." He touched Don's arm lightly, "But I am sorry if you've all been afraid for me. I didn't mean for that to happen."
For a moment, Don stood shell-shocked, his mind racing, his emotions in an uproar. The journal entry leapt to the for-front of his memories.
"Every time I say something intelligent, I make a joke so it sounds like an accident... They all think I'm too dumb to think for myself, even Master Splinter... Sometimes I agree with them... Maybe I should stop fighting it."
When he found his voice again, he asked the question that had hovered at the back of his mind since the night Mikey had disappeared.
"Are you coming home?" Don asked softly.
"Of cores I am..." Michelangelo replied, "Just not yet." He held up his hands as Donnie started to sputter. "I don't care what Bradford said, she's not dangerous." He turned to Phoenix, and waved her over. "Phoenix, this is Donatello, Don, this is Phoenix."
"We've met." At her response, April's head snapped up and she listened intently. "I just didn't recognize you standing on the ground rather than falling off a building." She joked with a smile, and shook his hand. "Shoulder troubling you?"
"No... Um, that is, it was dislocated, but it was easy enough to fix." He explained as if there where nothing unusual about the situation. "But may I suggest a less... exposed venue to continue this conversation?"
Kari opened her eyes to an all but empty ally. She pushed herself into a sitting position as the memory of what had just happened returned. Fury filled her, but it was dwarfed by the metallic taste of fear that filled her mouth. She hadn't thought the situation could have gotten worse, but with their failure, it had. 'If Father has his way, and she returns to the Foot... If he should learn of this night...' She thought, her mind rioting with images of what could happen.
Even she was not completely exempt of his temper, she knew. Kari stood, walked over to Dog-Pound, and nudged him with the side of her foot. He didn't move, but he was obviously still breathing. Good, losing him would have been very tricky to explain. She glanced around, and found the remains of a bottle of soda in the trash scattered about the ally. She opened it, and dumped the contains on his face.
With a hacking roar, Bradford sat up and wiped the sticky, artificially-flavored orange liquid from his eyes.
"What the... Kari." He shook his head. "The two of us covered in garbage... how the mighty have fallen." He pushed himself to his feet, and shook his head, as if to clear it.
"I didn't see what happened." Kari looked at him with curiosity. "What... they teamed up and handed your furry ass to you?"
"Something like that." He replied vaguely.
"We have to go." Kari glanced around. "Tonight never happened, understand?" She whirled around and grabbed his vest. "If I go down, I take you with me. Is that clear?"
Dog-Pound was silent for a moment, then nodded. "Transparently."
April wasn't sure when the situation had gotten beyond her control. She now had two mutant turtles and one female... something in the living room of her little apartment. And here she was, passing around sodas and making small talk, as if nothing had happened in the last month. Phoenix's mood towards her had changed drastically after their conversation in the ally, as if they where friends that had just had a minor argument.
Part of her had been afraid that Mikey had changed into a stranger, but from the minute Donnie had sat down and hit a whoopee cushion, she had dismissed those fears.
Don watched his brother's friend carefully. She didn't remove her gloves when April offered her a coke, but had accepted it and opened it. He heaved a secret sigh of relief when she took a deep drink from the can. After another 10 minutes, he stood.
"Well I have to get going, the guys'll be wondering what happened to me!" Don smiled and hugged Mikey again.
"Don... can you give this Zuli and Sid?" Mike handed him a sealed envelope.
"Sure Mikey." He looked at the honest and trusting face, and hated himself for his deception. "You two be careful. Call us if you need anything, ok?"
Mikey nodded, and Don disappeared out the window. He climbed onto the roof and hid in the shadows cast by the water tower. He watched as Mike and Phoenix went from the fire escape to the nearby building and took off. Don silently dropped back down and went back inside. April looked up with a start. "I thought you'd gone." She glanced around. "Did you forget something?"
"Yeah." He nodded, and walked over to an empty soda sitting on the coffee table. He pulled a plastic bag out of one of the pouches on his belt and put the can inside, careful not to touch it with his skin.
"Donnie... what are you doing?" She stared at him as though he'd done something crazy.
"There should be enough DNA on this to get a working profile." He explained. "I need to know who and WHAT we're dealing with. All I know is that she's not entirely human." Don tucked the bag away. "I don't care what Mikey says, I don't trust her, and I need the truth." He flipped open his T-phone and smiled. "And she has NO idea that I'm tracking her..." he hit a button, and a dot on the screen started to blink, "Even as we speak."
Phoenix couldn't shake the feeling of un-ease in the pit of her stomach. Her mind argued with what she'd learned about Don from his brother. He hadn't asked the questions a scientist would ask; He'd made small talk about training styles. She FELT his impatience, his curiosity... and guilt. She'd expected the fist two, but the guilt threw her a little. Guilty about what? Something he'd done, felt? Or... WAS doing? She frowned as another thought occurred to her: Tonight she'd seen Michelangelo with other people that cared about him was she... dear God, was she Jealous?
Mikey came to a screeching halt a mile from her apartment, and glanced around.
"Mike? What is it?" She asked in a hushed voice.
"Did anything that happened back there seem... well, weird?" Mikey shook his head. "I know Don. He wasn't acting like himself." He gave her a troubled look. "Was it just me?"
"No, I felt it to, but I thought..." She shook her head, "Nothing, I just didn't want to give you trouble about your brother the first time you'd seen him in weeks."
"That's just it!" Mike paced the roof. "I know Donnie. Heck, I know him better than he dose! And the way he was acting? He only dose that when he's up to something."
"But up to what?" Phoenix asked. "He was relieved when I accepted a soda. Relieved. " She waved her hand. "That I get. He wanted my DNA, and it's ok with me." At Michelangelo's look of incomprehension, she continued. "I'm smart, but even I've never been able to run my genetic code by myself. If Donatello can, I might be able to finally get some answers about myself."
"So you're ok with him stealing your building-blocks?" He looked at her.
"He's not about to send it to the government if it looks weird." She replied. "That would worry me more."
Mike froze, and stared at her. "Don't move."
"Mikey?" She remained motionless as her crept towards her, and pulled what looked like a tiny plastic disk off her shoulder. "What is it?" She leaned over and looked at it. "What do you think it is? It's not Foot-tech, at least nothing I'm familiar with."
"No...It's one of Donnie's self-camouflaging tracking devices." Michelangelo's voice went cold. "I may not always pay attention, but I DO listen."
"I can't believe he would do that!" In a rare display of temper, Mikey let his fist fly into the concrete chimney at his back. "I thought... I thought maybe..." He closed his eyes, and shook his head in frustration.
Phoenix layed a gentle hand on his arm. "He want's to protect you... Having never had anyone feel that about me I don't have much room to talk, but it seems kind of... nice." Her eyes found his. "Don't be upset with him, Mike. He was only doing what he thought was right. As for this," She picked up the disk with the tip of one finger, "I'm not keen on Anyone knowing where I live. Anonymity is one of the few things I have to keep me... or rather US for being detected by the Foot. I guess the real question is what do we do with it?" Phoenix said, "I mean, we could just crush it, but then your brother would know we found it." She frowned.
"Hmm..." A mischievous gleam lit Mikey's eyes, "How about we send them on a wild goose chase?"
"Wild Goose?" She asked is surprise, "I don't understand the meaning."
"It just means we send them off in the wrong direction on purpose." He grinned, "Only in this case it's a 'Wild Pigeon chase' instead!" He snuck across the roof, and caught a cubby pigeon as it moved to fly. "Gotcha!" Mike quickly attached the tracking device to the upper leg of the bird, and released it into the air. "Let's see Donnie track that!"