Jazz lightly smoothed wispy bronze curls off her sixteen-month-old's forehead and spent several seconds gazing at the little girl. Alexis had settled down for her afternoon nap more quickly than normal. Not that I'm surprised. Her night was interrupted too. The young woman backed away from the playpen, and left the door to little Tim's room ajar so that she would be able to hear the girl when she stirred later.
She went down the steps slowly, and her eyes automatically shifted toward the Lab. As much as she wanted to see the turtles, the woman was trying to stay scarce for the time being. They're not all awake, and the guys haven't had a real chance to breathe. The docs said we were free to come and go, but if everyone does that, they'll never get any peace to work. Better to let their girls have access to them first.
Jazz looked around the sitting area where Greg, Kouhei and Shunshi were lingering. The television was replaying some basketball highlights, but none of them were paying attention to it. Both boys appeared to be hanging on the sandy-haired man's words.
"…so the panic button was sounding, but Donny managed to shut the thing down. The next thing we know, he's getting some nasty call over the radio, demanding whose authority allowed him to turn the siren off. He just kinda sat there for a minute with this panicked expression, and had to make up some bull crap excuse about technical difficulties and a false alarm."
"Was he able to stall them?" Kouhei asked.
Greg chuckled. "Not with conversation. Everything went to hell in a hand basket pretty quickly. Raph, Mikey and Brandon were trying to get Leo upstairs, and now a team of Akiudo sentries was on their way to investigate us in the security office."
Shunshi grinned smugly. "But Donny-san still had ideas."
Jazz smiled with recognition of the story and cleared her throat in the background. "Excuse me, boys. Have any of you seen my husband?"
Greg turned his head. "Yeah – he caught some of the game with us, and then he headed to the dojo. That was about an hour ago."
"Thanks. Carry on." She waved to them and trotted across the room to the connecting hallway.
Jazz knocked on the door of the dojo and waited for a response. It wasn't unusual for the turtles or Brandon to get caught up in a workout, and she wouldn't always bother with them if they didn't readily answer a hail.
"Come in!"
She turned the knob and pushed the door open, but then hesitated from going in. "Hey."
Brandon was standing over the punching bag, but lowered his fists when he saw her and reached for a towel off the nearby bench. "Hey, Jazz. What's up?"
She shook her head. "Nothing…that is…I'm not doing anything. Alexis just went down for her nap."
He wiped sweat from his face and allowed the towel to rest over his bare shoulders. "She looked pretty tired at lunch."
"She looked like the rest of us feel," Jazz returned. "Except for you apparently. We're all relaxing, and you're in here working your butt off. Not that I'm complaining." She squeezed one of his biceps appreciatively.
Brandon chuckled. "I was bored. I had to occupy myself with something, or I'd be left alone with nothing but my thoughts."
Jazz easily discerned what he hadn't told her. "You still worried?"
"Some…not like last night. I think we'll all feel better when the guys are up to their old tricks."
"Could be a while on a couple of them," she said ruefully. "You may be stuck sparring with Raph's old standby." Jazz gave the punching bag a playful bat, and was surprised when it hurt her hand. "Good night. Are you guys making this thing heavier, or I am getting weaker?"
The man made a scoffing sound. "You're not weak. C'mere."
Jazz stepped over to him and allowed Brandon to gather her against his chest. She was so used to the slight dampness of his recently exercised skin that it didn't even faze her. "Maybe we could be bored together," she murmured halfheartedly into his ear.
The man raised her chin with the palm of his hand. "Are you all right?"
"I think I'm still processing. When I was talking to Donny on the radio last night, I had this wretched day-dream about life without all of them. Bran, what would we have done?"
He pursed his lips as he shook his head. "Heck if I know, Jazz. Nobody wants to think about that."
"I didn't want to either, but I did. When I finally started to fall asleep early this morning, I heard one of them screaming in my head. After a couple of seconds I knew it wasn't real, but it took me another hour to close my eyes again." She hid her face against his shoulder with the admission, and he rested his head on top of hers.
"It's over, Jazz," he said quietly. "We might be reliving this for months to come, but they all came through it."
"I don't know if I like this city anymore," Jazz told him honestly. "Every time we turn around, it's something else."
"Trouble isn't limited to Manhattan, this we know. Even when we find time to escape, it seems to chase us down." He tried baiting her with a smile, but Jazz wasn't biting. Not yet.
"I just think it'd be nice for everyone to have a chance to grow old together. Do you think that's only a pipe dream?"
"No," he said firmly. "It's a good goal."
She snorted. "The question is, how many of us will make it there?"
He grinned again. "If Kelley keeps cooperating with us, who knows?"
Jazz swatted his shoulder, and had the impression of an insect ricocheting off a Buick. "I'm being serious."
"So'm I. This team needs all the high-powered members it can get."
"You're impossible."
"Well, that makes two of us."
"What'd I do?"
His lop-sided smiled was almost irresistible. "It's not about what you do – it's who you are."
"That makes as much sense as an umbrella in a hail storm." Jazz was surprised when the man suddenly covered her mouth with his, but surrendered to it without hesitation.
"I've learned that it doesn't always pay to fight a genius with logic."
Her eyebrows rose. "Who taught you that?"
"Mikey."
Jazz rolled her eyes. "Figures."
Waking up to being incredibly sore wasn't an unusual experience for the orange-masked turtle. It'd happened enough times in the past couple of decades that he wasn't even shocked by it. He had a groggy feeling that he was in the Lab before he'd finished opening his eyes, but he wasn't prepared to find someone staring back at him.
"Well, hello, Sunshine."
Mike peered at Marcus for nearly a minute before recalling how to talk. "Hi, Marc." The words grated across his throat, and didn't encourage him to say anything else.
"I bet you're pretty thirsty."
He nodded slowly and the doctor smiled at him.
"Hang in there for a minute, and I'll help you sit up." Marcus picked up a remote to raise the back of his bed a few more inches. "Your brothers want to see you better too."
"Brothers?" he said dully.
"Yeah, the better looking, older ones," Raphael inserted. His attitude was spot-on, though he didn't achieve much volume.
The orange-masked turtle glanced to his left and laid eyes on his older brother in the bed next to him. "In your dreams, Raphy," he whispered meaningfully. As long as he didn't exert much force behind his voice, he found he could manage an entire sentence.
"I bet you two could pick up this argument later," Marc suggested, and held out a sport bottle to Michelangelo.
He took a couple of sips, grimacing at the pain that accompanied swallowing. The sensation was familiar, but it didn't make it less troubling. Mike gave the dark-haired man a mock-stern look. "What'd you guys do to me this time?"
"Oh, not much. Just saved your shell again," the man said casually.
"To put it mildly." The addition of the oldest turtle's voice made Mike look around his red-masked brother to see Leonardo.
"You too, Fearless?" Mike's brow creased while he turned back to Marcus. "Was there some group check-up scheduled that you didn't tell me about? But then Donny would have to be here."
"I am here," Donatello called in return. His voice sounded rough, but it was stronger than his other brothers.
"Holy cow," Michelangelo muttered.
"Those are appropriate sentiments," Marcus told him. "You mind waiting here for a second? Luke wanted me to wake him if you chose to join us."
Mike glanced to the left and right. "Do I have somewhere else to be?"
The man shook his head regretfully. "Not for a few days, I bet."
The instant Marcus exited through the curtain that separated them from the rest of the Lab, Mike turned his head toward Raphael. Since he was the closest, he would be the easiest to question. "Raph, what the shell?"
"You 'member anything from the Gym, Mikey?"
Michelangelo was completely still for a few moments. Gym. The Gym. When was that? I thought I was gonna be taking pictures with Raph. His first attempt to recall the building was coming up empty, so he glanced at his brother again. "When we were going?"
"Last night," Raph said wearily. "You can't remember any of it?"
Mike silently considered it again, and this time the memory of a brilliant flash scorched his mind. "It was…a trap."
"Yeah, Bro, it was." The red-masked turtle sounded relieved that he'd recalled something.
"Is everyone okay?"
Raphael raised his hand a couple of inches and shook it from side-to-side. "Sorta. We're better than we were, and so are you. Took your own dang time coming around, as usual."
Mike felt a small grin emerge, but he was too concerned about the brothers he couldn't see well to relax. "The guys in one piece?"
"Not completely, but the docs are good at puttin' us back together."
"Raph…how'd we get out?"
His brother shook his head. "You gotta talk to Donny about that."
Mike frowned. From what he could recollect, his purple-masked brother had been injured early on. "What do you mean?"
"Genius called for help."
"I didn't have a choice!" Donatello squeaked. "We were stuck!"
"You weren't, Donny," the older turtle negated.
"Do you still think I should have up and left the rest of you?" Don demanded.
The swoosh of a curtain prevented the conversation from continuing.
"I know I'm not already hearing arguing," Luke proclaimed. "I figured dealing with all four of you at once would be an interesting experience."
"We're not fighting," Don said softer.
"Good. Keep it up," the blond doctor said firmly, and came to lean against Mike's side rail. "Hi, Mike. It's nice to see you."
"You too, Doc." He tried to shift to see the man better, and was assaulted with a wave of agony through his midsection that left him gasping. He felt a strong hand on his shoulder, but couldn't even turn his head.
"I'm so sorry, Mikey." Luke's voice was soothing, but it didn't do much to help him. "I'll kick in the stronger painkiller."
The orange-masked turtle took several shallow breaths. "O—kay."
"You're gonna be all right, Mike," Raphael added swiftly. "Don't try doing nothing else, Chucklehead."
"…Won't…"
Michelangelo heard Luke doing something in the background, but didn't try to watch him. He was content not to move at all if it meant he wouldn't have to feel that again. When fingers explored his wrist, his eyes locked on the blond doctor's face.
"It won't take long for the dose to have an effect," Luke assured him.
"Good to know," he replied tiredly.
"There's also a significant chance you'll sleep like a log, but that's preferable to the alternative."
"Okay, Doc. One question?"
"What, Mikey?"
"How does a log sleep?"
"You can tell me when you find out."