Raph woke up, and Don wasn't next to him.

He didn't even need to open his eyes to know this. He could just sense the empty spot in the makeshift bed. But he opened his eyes anyway, against the glare of the lamps, and looked around.

It was a moment before he could pick anything out in the far end of the room, but then he saw it, one shadow blacker than the rest. In the pre-dawn darkness, Don was sitting under the window, his back to the wall, his knees drawn to his chest, his head down.

Raph watched his brother quietly, not letting on that he was awake. Whenever Don had slipped away, he hadn't bothered to get dressed. And, while Raph hated to admit it, seeing his lost sibling with his clothes off was fascinating and unsettling. Don wasn't like the rest of them. His shell was noticeably bigger, even after accounting for his extra height, and his skinny arms and legs stuck out of it in a way that made Raph a little sick to his stomach. Even with all the advantages he'd had in life, he was so thin. He was sick. He always would be. And Raph worried that rather than giving him access to better health care, becoming legally human would only expose him to more nearly-fatal encounters with well-meaning but ignorant people like Lynn.

Something was wrong with the way Don was sitting.

"Hey," Raph murmured.

Don turned his head, slowly, and his eyes didn't catch the light. "Hey."

"You okay?" Raph whispered.

"Yeah," Don said.

Raph didn't believe him. He rose from the sheets and glided across the thin carpet to settle again next to his brother. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," Don said. He hunched away a little, not letting Raph see his face. "I just didn't sleep well."

"Really?" Raph asked, watching his brother closely. "Even with the lamps?"

Don just shrugged noncommittally. "Why?" he returned. "How did you sleep?"

Raph rolled his shoulders. His muscles felt warm and loose and great. "You know how people say they feel like they could sleep for a week?" he said, in a low voice. "I feel like I actually did."

"I'm glad," Don said, but his voice was weirdly hollow. Raph put a hand on his shell, and Don pushed him away. "I had a bad dream," he said. "Just… leave me alone."

"How long you been awake?" Raph asked.

"I don't know," Don said.

Raph reached for the pressure point on the back of Don's neck, the one that was so good for releasing tension. Don didn't let him get near it. "I said leave me alone," he hissed.

"Got nowhere to go," Raph pointed out, and Don only let out a slow breath as Raph shifted to lean against the wall next to him. "What was the dream about?" he asked.

"Nothing," Don said. "You'll wake the guys."

"Mike sleeps like the dead," Raph said carelessly. It was true, after all. "Leo sleeps like it's on his schedule and he's gotta sleep now or everything is ruined."

"You'll wake my mom," Don said.

"Your mom lives in an alternate dimension and can't hear anything I say," Raph replied in a loud stage whisper.

"Wow," Don said. "Sometimes that's how I feel."

Raph put an arm around his brother's shoulders, and gave him a little shake. "Good thing we've got each other."

"Yeah," Don said. He didn't reciprocate Raph's touch, but after a moment he added: "… I'm glad I met you guys."

"What did you dream about?" Raph asked again.

"I dreamed that we were in school together and you were getting better grades at everything," Don said.

Raph snorted. He didn't believe Don's story for a second, but he could see how that situation would be terrifying for both of them.

"… Do you think Lynn knows we dream?" Don asked quietly.

"Who cares?" Raph replied. "What does it matter whether she knows?"

"Dreams, Raph," Don said. "A manifestation of our inner consciousness. If you were Lynn, wouldn't you want to know what mutants dream about?"

"But I ain't Lynn," Raph said. "And I don't want her knowing anything about my inner consciousness."

Don picked at a spot on his ankle. "Sometimes," he said, "I think you don't want anyone to know."

"Sometimes," Raph said, "for a guy who's not real outgoing, you seem pretty desperate for everybody to know everything that's going on in your head."

"I'm dependent on the approval of others," Don said, and he sounded like he was quoting that shrink he apparently talked to all the time. "You're not. I… kind of envy that about you."

Somewhere deep down, it pained Raph to hear that he hid his emotions so well, his own brother didn't realize how much he needed the respect and the love of the people he cared about most. Part of him wanted to tell Don that he was wrong, to set the record straight. But his pride and his fear got the better of him, and he didn't say anything.

"I'm going to make some breakfast," Don said, and the moment was gone. "You should use the hot water today."

Leo thought the same, when he woke up. But Raph only threw the gesture back in Leo's face, with a comment about how hot water was for weaklings. Raph didn't know why he did things like that. Whose ego was he boosting? Not his own, that was for sure.

Emma walked in while Raph was washing up in the already-twice-used stove water. Ignoring the fact that the kitchen was crammed full of four naked Turtles who were deep in their own conversation, she addressed her son.

"You know, David," she began, "NYU said that they would provide a professional security detail for you. But I would really feel better if you had a chaperone. Someone we know."

"That's great," Don replied, "but I don't know why we're talking about this now. So many other things have to happen first."

"What about Terri?" Emma suggested, proving Don's earlier point that his mom didn't listen to him. "Anna will be on her own by then - we hope - and you know your aunt is practically an entire security force by herself."

"What about April?" countered Don, who clearly had zero interest in letting his mom's best friend follow him around at college. "She knows me. She knows NYU. She's currently unemployed. Perfect. Done."

"April is not unemployed," Emma said, demonstrating that at least some of the words that came out of Donatello's mouth were reaching her plane of existence. "She's self-employed. I know you know that those are not the same thing."

"Eh," Mike said. "April's mostly running her shop as a hobby. I'm sure she'd rather work for you again."

"But if April ran her shop more seriously, maybe we could work for her," ventured Leo, who up until now had been very reluctant to talk to anyone about his career plans.

"That would be cool," Mike agreed. "I mean, she should probably pay us for the work we've done for her already."

"Lynn needs to pay us," Leo reminded them all. "We're not going home today without more money."

Raph nodded. He wasn't sure exactly what the plan was, but he could recognize a mission when he heard one.

"And on that note," Don said, "maybe we should be on time today. How did it get so late?"

The good news was that, thanks to Emma's organizational system, they were all able to find their clothes right away. The bad news was that Emma apparently wasn't done with this idea of a chaperone.

"April is too good-looking," Emma said. "She'd be a distraction to the other students."

"Mom, you're killing me," Don said, as he pushed his brothers out the door. "We'll see you later."

On the sidewalk, a couple of people had just settled in for a day of protesting. Raph had to respect their initiative in showing up so early on such a cold morning. The verbal attacks they had prepared were less than inspired, though.

"Muties go home!" shouted one man.

"We live here," Don informed him. "We'll be back in a few hours."

"Go back where you came from!" a woman specified.

Raph tilted his head at her. "Manhattan?"

"Not in my neighborhood!" shouted a person who was barely visible between scarf and hat.

"They're just jealous that we have chauffeur service to our swanky office," Mike said, as they climbed into the waiting van. "Gentrification sucks."

"I don't think that's what they mean when they say we're wrecking the community," Don said.

"It doesn't matter what they mean," Leo said. "They're just a few people." He looked to Don, in the middle row of seats. "Right?"

"Hard to say," Don replied. "I haven't seen a national opinion poll lately." He twisted around to face Leo and Raph in the back. "But seriously, we need to call Uncle Stephen later and find out what's going on. He's supposed to be managing media relations for us."

"Oh, yeah," Mike said. "What ever happened to our PR rep?"

"Exactly what I'm going to ask about," Don said. "In the meantime, we need to continue building the scientific case for ourselves. What are we doing today?" When all he got was a round of shrugs, he repeated the question in Hector's direction.

"I know what happened in the meetings yesterday afternoon," Hector replied, "but I'm not allowed to tell you. Lynn will explain when you get there."

"Dissection," Mike said immediately. "This is the dissection part, guys. Did I call it or what? We're going to walk into the lab, and Lynn is going to say, right in here, gentlemen, to watch the brain movies that prove that Little is basically a mind-clone of the most socially-smart human who ever lived. And then, bam, restraint chairs, dissection, and me saying 'I told you so'."

"You can't say 'I told you so' after you've been dissected," Leo pointed out.

"Which is why I'm telling you now," Mike said. "I'm practically psychic about people's motives and don't say I didn't warn you."

Leo tightened his jaw and declined to pursue that topic of conversation any further.

"I understood 'guys', 'walk', and 'can't say'," Don informed them.

"Then you got all the important parts," Raph replied, which caused both Don and Mike to look at him with a put-out expression. "I envy the thing where you don't have to listen to Mikey's nonsense in two languages," he said, and then he leaned back in his seat and tuned them all out.

They walked into the lab, and what Lynn actually said was, "Look what I found this morning." She was holding up a newspaper, and Raph had no idea what her problem was.

"'Mutants sighted in local shopping center,'" Don read, which enlightened Raph only slightly. "Wow. We go out for some groceries, and somebody alerts the media. I don't know whether to be flattered or disgusted."

"That explains how the protestors found us this morning," Leo said, crossing his arms.

"Guys, how did this happen?" Lynn asked.

"We needed groceries," Don said. "You had told us to go to the supermarket down the street. So we did."

Lynn dropped the newspaper on a nearby table and ran a hand through her hair. "After everything we've done to hide you, you just walked into a supermarket?"

"We didn't ask you to hide us," Don reminded her. "If Stockman is telling you to -"

"Stockman is protecting his research product," Lynn said sharply.

"We are not," Don interrupted, "Stockman's research product." He waited a moment to be sure Lynn wasn't going to talk over him again, and then he went on. "You are well aware that we could have vanished as soon as you left us alone at the apartment. We are very good at not being seen. But we continue to come to the lab because we choose to be here. We walked into the supermarket because we choose to not live in hiding anymore."

"You're making things complicated for all of us," Lynn said.

"Life in a zoo is easy," Don replied steadily. "But there are good reasons to think that animals would rather be free."

"You've made your point," Lynn told him. "I just want to make sure you understand that you're making a lot of extra work for me."

"Nobody ever said that being second author on a groundbreaking research paper would be a walk in the park," Don said.

"Nobody ever says anything about being second author," Lynn pointed out.

"We would rather have worked just with you," Don said. "Ron would have let you take the lead on the project. Goodness knows he has enough other data about me that he could have put his own name on. But your career choices are not our problem."

"I see," Lynn said. "But since we're all here, shall we resume our work together?"

"We need to talk first," Leo said. "We spent almost all our money last night. We need more."

"We can discuss that later," Lynn replied.

Leo's eyes narrowed a fraction. "We can discuss it now."

"Leonardo," Lynn said, "this is a simple matter, and I will not waste valuable research time on it. Rather than repeat yesterday's cafeteria debacle, you will eat lunch with me today. We can discuss it then."

Raph did not like how this conversation was going. Maybe it was his imagination, primed by Mikey's wild paranoia, but Lynn seemed distinctly colder towards them than she had been before. Possibly she was just crabby from living in Stockman's lab - Raph certainly couldn't blame her for that - but possibly she was emotionally disengaging as she prepared to kill them. Maybe the whole friendly-scientist thing had been an act to begin with.

Leo was silent for a long moment, weighing all of the experiences they had had with Lynn up to that point. "As a show of good will for the inconvenience we've caused," he said finally, "we will work for you this morning. At lunchtime, we want some answers about our test scores, and we want more money. If that doesn't happen, we're leaving. And we're not coming back."

"Thank you for agreeing to exactly what I just said," Lynn replied. "By the way, do you know anything about my two colleagues who were suddenly fired yesterday afternoon?"

Raph forced himself to not look at his brothers. "Not a clue," he said. "But probably they deserved it."

"In my opinion," Lynn said, and she held Raphael's gaze as she said it, "there are a lot of people here who deserve to get fired. Would you come with me?"

Raph still didn't look at his brothers as he followed Lynn to a room he hadn't been in before. There was a space with some weird equipment, and then a glass partition, and then a small chamber that seemed to contain nothing but a chair. "What is this?" he asked suspiciously.

"That is a soundproof booth," Lynn replied, gesturing to the cell-like space on the other side of the partition. "Would you mind going in?"

"Why?" Raph demanded.

"I'd like to test your hearing," Lynn explained.

"Ain't nothing wrong with my hearing," Raph growled.

"I didn't say there was," Lynn replied. Raph didn't have Mike's gift for reading people, but he sensed that Lynn thought that he was less friendly than he had been in the preceding days, and she was searching for an explanation. Maybe that meant she didn't know what she had done to piss the Hamatos off. "Scientists have long known that different species have different hearing," Lynn continued. "Maybe you're aware that dogs can hear very quiet sounds, and bats can hear very high-pitched sounds. I'm curious what you can hear."

"What do I gotta do?" Raph asked. He thought the question was stupid, and he couldn't see how even Donnie would spin this little experiment as contributing something of value to their cause. But Leo had given him an order to cooperate until lunchtime, and so long as he didn't have any real reason to believe that Mike had been right after all, cooperating was what he was going to do.

"Sit in the chair," Lynn said. "Put on the headphones. Tell me what you can hear."

Raph wasn't happy about it, but he climbed the one shallow stair into the booth, sat down, and located the headphones hanging from a hook in the wall. He put them on. He could see Lynn putting on another pair of headphones as she sat in front of one of the machines in the other part of the room, and then he heard her voice.

"In a moment," she said, "I'm going to start playing a tone at an extremely low volume. I'll gradually turn it up. I want you to tell me when you can just barely hear it. Do you understand?"

"Got it," Raph grumbled.

While he watched, Lynn pressed a few buttons, and then began turning a dial. After a moment, he could hear a faint hum coming through the headphones. "There," he said.

The tone cut out. "Now I'm going to continue turning up the volume," Lynn said. "Tell me when it reaches the level at which you would listen to music."

This part took a while. The volume inched up and up and up, while the furrow in Lynn's brow grew deeper and deeper. "Yeah," Raph said finally. "That."

The noise stopped abruptly. "Let's try that again," Lynn said. "This time, tell me when it reaches the level at which your father thinks you should listen to music."

That test didn't take as long. When Lynn turned off the tone and compared that volume level to Raphael's previous response, she shook her head. "You're fifteen, right?" she said.

"Yeah," Raph replied.

Lynn turned and looked at him directly through the glass. It was weird to be making eye contact with her like that while hearing the faint distortion of her voice through the headphones. "What is your lifespan?"

"Don't know," Raph said honestly. "Ask me when I'm dead."

"… Where is your father?" Lynn asked.

Raph wouldn't have answered that even if he did know. He was kind of shocked it had taken until now for anyone to ask about Splinter. It occurred to him that Lynn hadn't yet bothered to investigate what family meant to a mutant.

"All right," Lynn said, when it became clear that Raph wasn't going to respond to her other inquiry. "Now I'm going to play tones at different pitches. Whenever you hear something, raise your hand."

She ran that test until she had learned what she wanted to know about Raphael's hearing range. Then she asked him to raise either his right or left hand, to indicate where he heard a sound coming from. Then she asked him to recall sequences of high and low tones. Then she asked him to step out of the booth.

Raph was only too happy to comply with that last instruction - and he had to give the scientist lady some credit when he realized that the heavy glass door had never been locked. He sat in the chair Lynn indicated to him, and watched her spread out little colored cards on the table. "Repainting something?" he asked. "You should talk to Mikey about that stuff."

"I'm not asking you to help me redecorate," Lynn said, and Raph couldn't tell whether she was amused by his joke - whether she even recognized it as a joke - or whether she was irritated by his flippant comments. "I'm asking you to identify these colors."

"Red, blue, yellow, green," Raph said, naming the major hues. "I don't do all these other ones." Indeed, there were dozens of cards on the table. If there even were that many words for colors, Raph certainly didn't know them.

"Would you separate the colors that are different," Lynn said, when she was finished laying out all the cards, "and stack up the ones that are the same? And I mean the same. If you think they are even a little different, please put them in separate piles."

Raph didn't make a move. "This is even dumber than the last thing," he said.

"If you want society to accommodate mutant Turtles," Lynn said calmly, "then it's important for society to know what colors mutant Turtles can discriminate. Otherwise, people might, for example, make important signs that are difficult for you to read."

Lynn hadn't shared their test scores with them yet, but she had to know that it wasn't colors that made signs difficult for Raphael to read. He didn't appreciate this little charade. He glared at her and didn't touch the cards.

"I've already verified that you can differentiate red and blue," Lynn said, "and I suspect that your color perception is quite good. But if you won't do this task, then as a scientist, I'll have to report that the evidence shows your color vision is very poor."

"See if I care," Raph replied.

Lynn leaned forward. "Raphael," she said carefully. "It's obvious that you and your brothers are each unique individuals, with your own strengths and weaknesses. Leonardo showed me that he can see red and blue. But… can you? Are you colorblind?"

"I ain't colorblind," Raph snapped, and in a couple of moments he had sorted the cards. It didn't take long in part because he thought very few of the colors were identical to each other.

"Are you finished?" Lynn asked. "Are you certain about your answer?"

Raph shifted the stacked-up cards, checking that the colored swatches on them were the same. Then he skimmed quickly over the remaining cards, making sure he hadn't missed any matches. "Yeah," he said. "I'm done."

"All right," Lynn said, and she made some notes in her folder. Then she put the papers down and folded her hands on an empty sliver of tabletop. "Raphael," she said, "I'll go over your test results in more detail a little bit later. But I have to tell you, they are extraordinary. Your intelligence, your sensory range, your social acumen, your physical attributes… I'm beginning to worry that people will be afraid of you and your brothers not because of what you look like, but because of what you can do. Because the scientific evidence suggests that you are not just equal to, but superior to the average human in every way." She watched him closely, making sure he was following. "Do you have any weaknesses that you would like me to document? And when I say weaknesses, I mean true vulnerabilities. Is there anything I can do to help people see that you're not… superhuman?"

Raph knew the answer to that. He knew that he and his brothers couldn't cope with temperatures that humans considered pretty normal. Beyond a certain narrow range, their mental function and physical strength began to fail. Too much beyond that, and they suffered unconsciousness, followed by death.

He also knew that they got sick as fuck if they ate food that was even a little bit spoiled. He knew that they had to be very careful about how much dairy they ate. He knew that, in addition to eating and drinking and sleeping and all that normal stuff, they had to sit still in sunlight for at least a few hours a week, or their health would go to hell pretty fast. He knew that there was a long list of ordinary household chemicals that seriously messed them up.

He knew there was absolutely no way he was going to tell Lynn any of that.

"No," he said.

"… All right," Lynn said again. "Would you like to break for an early lunch? I can send Hector down to the cafeteria to bring something back for us, and we can get started going over the test scores."

Raph nodded.

"Let's go to my office," Lynn said, and she swept up the papers, tucking them under her arm as she led Raph out of the testing room. As usual, Hector was standing in the hallway, watching everything that was going on. "Hector," Lynn said, "would you find out what soups the cafeteria is serving today, and then bring Raphael's brothers to my office?"

"No problem," Hector said, and he immediately headed off to complete those errands.

"Where is your office, anyway?" Raph asked, as he followed Lynn through the corridors. "How come we ain't seen it yet?"

"You're living in my apartment," Lynn replied. "What's so interesting about my office?"

"I mean," Raph said, "I figure you wouldn't bring the scalpels and everything home with you."

Lynn raised a brow. "Raphael," she said, "I'm a cognitive scientist. I'm not licensed to perform any type of surgery."

"Oh yeah," Raph said. "Cuz that's what people are thinking when they see us. 'Am I licensed to dissect these freaks?'" He shook his head. "Everybody I ever met started with 'What are you?' and then went straight to trying to take me apart."

Lynn pressed a small button, marked with a triangle, that was embedded in the wall. "Would you like to talk more about that?"

Raph looked away. "No." A soft ding brought his attention back, and he saw part of the wall open to reveal a small chamber beyond. "What the hell's that?"

"It's an elevator," Lynn said, and she stepped inside. "Are you coming?"

Raph followed her, taking up a position against the wall. "Always thought elevators were -" he started, and then he dropped reflexively into a defensive stance as the elevator juddered into movement. "Holy shit."

"I had meant to bring this up," Lynn said.

Raph shot her a caustic look. "Elevators?"

"More broadly, everyday life skills," Lynn said. The elevator wobbled back into stillness, the doors dinged open, and she started walking down another hallway. Raph hurried to keep up.

"We survived for fifteen years without anybody's help," Raph said. "I don't think we have any problem with life skills."

"Your ability to provide for yourselves is remarkable," Lynn said agreeably. "But once you enter human society, you'll need to handle housing, food, health care, and so on in a more socially acceptable way. To succeed at that, you'll need to master a whole host of skills that are different from those you've used in the past."

Raph didn't say anything. What did this lady know about his past?

"You're not the first to face this challenge," Lynn went on, as she rounded a corner in the sprawling lab complex. "Setting aside cases of feral children, there are situations involving refugees who arrive in industrialized countries having never encountered cars, stoves, telephones, and so on. There are services who train these immigrants on how to function in modern life. Since I now have no doubt about your cognitive capacity to learn these skills, I've started looking into whether these services can help you and your family."

Raph didn't answer.

"I hope you'll consider it," Lynn said, as she finally stopped in front of a door. "In even the best-case scenario, you and your brothers are facing years of difficulties as you transition to your new lives. It would be to your benefit to swallow your pride and take whatever help is offered to you."

This woman was too damn perceptive. But before Raph could dwell on that thought, Lynn opened the door, and led Raphael into her office.

The office was not large, but it had a window that let in dazzling mid-winter sunlight. The sky was clear today, and the unfiltered light gave the room an ambiance that Raph had never experienced before. He had the strangest sense that he had just found some new colors. Surely Lynn would be interested in what he was perceiving right now. It was obvious from the way she was watching him. But Raph only tore his eyes away from the window and assessed the space.

There was a desk facing out of one corner, with a computer on it. There was a total of three chairs. There was a whiteboard covered in numbers that clearly had something to do with the Turtles, but Raph couldn't understand the labeling. There was a coat hung on the back of the door. There was a pile of what looked like bedding in one of the corners, next to a plastic bag overflowing with clothes. There was a jumble of toiletries on a shelf of the bookcase.

"You're really living here," Raph said.

"It could be worse," Lynn replied. "I do love my job."

Raph wasn't sure how to interpret that, but he lost his train of thought again when Don walked in, went straight to the window, and nearly fell over backwards.

"Wow," Don said, as he reeled forward again to look at the ground far below. "So this is what the fifth floor is like."

Lynn caught Raphael's gaze. "As I said," she told him. "Consider the help."

If Leo or Mike had heard that, they were too busy watching Don to respond. The egghead had pried himself away from the window to make a beeline for the whiteboard, where he began tracing a finger over the numbers while moving his lips soundlessly. Down one column, then another. When he reached the third, he seemed to slow, his brow furrowing deeply.

This seemed worth following up on, but just then Hector, who had arrived right behind Don and Leo and Mike, announced, "The soups today are chicken and vegetarian chili. Who wants what?"

"I'll… take the chili," Don said, as he traced down the third column again.

"Same for me," Lynn said.

Raph, Leo, and Mike all quickly voted for the chicken soup, and then Raph didn't have a chance to signal to Leo what he thought was the most important thing at that moment, because Leo was busy pursuing his own plans.

"Lynn," he said. "The money."

"I know," Lynn said. "Did you really spend the first stipend already?"

Leo crossed his arms. "If there were any rules about how, or how fast, we were allowed to spend the money, they were never communicated to us."

"That's true," Lynn said. "But for scientific purposes, I would like an accounting of what you spent it on."

"Food and clean clothes," Leo replied, holding Lynn's gaze steadily.

"And heat lamps," Mike added. "Don't forget the heat lamps."

Raph reached around behind Leo to cuff Mikey in the head.

"Oww," Mike whined. "Whaaaaat?"

"She doesn't gotta know about the heat lamps," Raph growled.

"I had already surmised about the heat lamps," Lynn said, even though Raph's comment hadn't been directed at her. "I mean, you're obviously exothermic."

"How did you know that?" Leo asked. He shot a look at Raph and Mike in turn. He tried to shoot one at Don too, but Don was busy multi-tasking, making small marks in a corner of the whiteboard while half-listening to the conversation. Raph shot back a look conveying that he hadn't told her. Not even when she'd asked him a direct question.

"For one," Lynn said, "the police report about the rice bags."

"Oh yeah," Mike whispered loudly. "Stockman got the police records and everything."

"We spent the money on food, clean clothes, and heat lamps," said Leonardo, who knew when he was outmaneuvered. "Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

"Of course," Lynn replied, as she moved around behind her desk. "But not on this specific topic." She opened a drawer and pulled out a piece of paper, which she set on the top of the desk. Fishing out a pen from underneath the computer's keyboard, she scribbled something on the form. "I don't have access to any of the financial accounts here," she explained. "But I'm authorized to use purchase request forms to have cash disbursed to you. At the end of the day, we'll go to the bookkeeper's office, and he'll give you money in exchange for this form."

"Why should we believe that?" asked Leo, who clearly had barely even understood the explanation.

"Well," said Lynn, as she scrawled her signature at the bottom of the page, "until you educate yourself about financial matters, you'll have to take my word for it." And leaning over the desk, she held out the paper to Leo.

After a moment, he took it. He glanced at it only briefly, then passed it over his shoulder to Don. At least, he tried to pass it over his shoulder to Don. The smooth handoff was ruined when he had to turn around and swat Don on the shell a few times to get his attention. "Lost, what are you doing?" he murmured.

"Nothing," Don said. He dropped the whiteboard marker back in the little tray, took the purchase request form, and skimmed it over. "This looks legitimate to me."

Lynn raised a brow. "You know how to read bureaucratic forms?"

"I've been doing most of the paperwork for my mom's vet clinic since I was ten," Don replied, and without taking his eyes off of Lynn he folded up the paper and put it in his shirt pocket. The guy was damn good at redirecting focus - his own and everybody else's. "But let's talk about the test scores."

Lynn squeezed out from behind the desk, and gestured to the three chairs. Don sat in one of the small ones. Leo commandeered the big one. Raph sat backwards in the other small chair, while Mike perched on the desk. Lynn took up a position against the window.

"I'll begin by saying that you should all feel extremely validated," Lynn said. "Your test scores bear out everything you claimed about yourselves on national television. You're highly intelligent, you have social awareness that is similar to what would be expected from a human, and you are, in fact, superior athletes. Everything I've seen from you demonstrates that, allowing for your unique situation, you have the mental and emotional experiences of ordinary teenage boys.

"I've told each of you your IQ scores already," Lynn went on. "As for the factual test, Donatello's performance was… uneven, to say the least, but his overall score worked out to be above average. He especially excelled on the math and science segments." She looked at Leo. "Leonardo, your scores were objectively not very good. But on the post-test, you showed clear improvement on the topics you had studied, while showing no change in your ability on the topics you did not study. That is exactly what we would expect to see from an individual who is intelligent but who has had limited exposure to education.

"Raphael and Michelangelo," Lynn continued, "you know that you did not complete the exam. We estimated your scores based on the questions that you did complete. Again allowing for your lack of formal instruction in the subject areas, your scores were passable."

She paused, then moved to her next topic. "You all demonstrated an advanced ability to identify and explain the emotional states of others. You showed a capacity to infer what other people do or do not know. You all have better-than-average memories for words, images, and sounds, although not for human faces. When confronted with scenarios involving incomplete information, you consistently succeeded in filling in the blanks. While not always factually accurate, your explanations always exhibited an age-appropriate form of logic.

"Michelangelo's MRIs were especially fascinating," Lynn continued. She leveled her gaze at Mikey. "You have an enlarged cerebellum relative to the size of your cortex, which fits with your theory that you are part turtle. Anatomically, your brain is otherwise comparable to a human's, and functionally, you showed heightened activity in exactly the areas where we would expect to see activation of a human brain in the course of completing similar tasks. I could show you the videos, but I can hardly interpret them without the help of an expert colleague, and I doubt they would mean anything to you." She glanced at Donatello.

"We don't do MRIs in the clinic," Don admitted.

Lynn nodded. "Physically," she said, "those of you who are not suffering from a chronic illness demonstrated strength, stamina, and agility comparable to elite athletes. Potentially more importantly, you left no doubt that you are able to plan and coordinate your movements. And, most interestingly of all, you were able to speak about the place of physical activity in your lives, and about how you conceive of yourselves as… ninjas." She said the last word uncertainly, as if she expected a horde of scientists to break down the door just then and apprehend her for saying something so unscientific. But all that happened was that Hector opened the door and delivered five little Styrofoam containers of soup.

"Aw yeah," Mike said, as he grabbed a spoon and popped the plastic lid off his lunch. "That's us."

"I can't believe I'm about to utter these words," Lynn said, as she stirred her chili, "but just to make sure I don't misrepresent you in the literature, since you're obviously self-aware enough to care about such things: You are ninja turtle-mutant teenagers?"

"Precisely," Don said. "Though I feel like there must be a more elegant way of saying it."

Lynn only shrugged. "And finally," she said, "I see that along with an excessive number of napkins, Hector has delivered me a note from one of my colleagues, stating that this morning Donatello proved beyond a doubt that he can hold his breath for upwards of twenty minutes, which I have to admit is one of the claims I had most doubted."

Raph shot Don a sharp glare. "Why did you do that?" he demanded.

"Why not?" Don asked. Ignoring the spoon, he slurped some of his chili straight from the disposable bowl. "It's awesome."

"Yeah, but everybody doesn't gotta know," Raph said. He was still on edge from what Lynn had asked him earlier. He didn't want everybody to know their weaknesses. But he didn't want everybody to know all their advantages either.

"Guys, don't fight," Mike said. "We're all winning together. We're all smarter than the average human. We should be celebrating."

"I didn't say you were all smarter than the average human," Lynn put in. "Of course there were some confounding factors. But looking at the data as it stands, that isn't what the IQ tests showed."

"But that's what Donnie said the other night," Mike said. He turned to Don with a puzzled expression. "Cuz we all scored above a hundred."

Don bit his lip, and didn't meet Mike's gaze.

"That isn't correct," Lynn said. She looked almost as confused as Mikey. "None of you scored below what's considered the normal range, but only three of you scored above a hundred."

"What?" Leo snapped immediately. He turned a penetrating look at Mike and Raph - but, conspicuously, not at Don, who was above suspicion on this point. "Which of you lied about your score?"

"It wasn't me!" Mike squeaked.

"Don't you fucking call me a liar!" Raph roared.

"It was Leo," Don said, so quietly Raph almost didn't hear him. "It… was Leo," he repeated, when his first pronouncement was followed by a stunned silence. He looked up slowly, seeking his eldest brother's eyes. "Those are your raw scores on the board," he said, tilting his head ever so slightly towards the numbers Raph hadn't been able to decipher earlier. "I added them up. You didn't score above a hundred. You… knew, didn't you?"

For a moment, Leo watched Don defiantly, while everyone else watched him. Then, unable to overcome the certainty in Don's wide-eyed gaze, he looked away.

"Yes," he said softly. "I only scored a 91." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Guys, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for lying and I'm sorry for letting you down."

"Leo, it's okay." Don hurriedly pushed his bowl of soup onto the desk, and laid a hand on Leo's shoulder. "91 is still normal. And you'll do better the next time. Everything is fine."

Nobody else seemed to know quite what to say.

"Well," Lynn ventured finally. "That was -"

She didn't get to say what it was, because the door banged open so abruptly that Raph reached for the sai he hadn't been carrying in days. Mike jumped off the desk, spilling both his soup and Don's, and even Lynn looked totally shocked by the sudden arrival of her colleague.

"Dr. Peggiora," the man gasped. "Turtles. You have to come see what's on TV."

Raph had no idea what could possibly be on television that was so urgent, but Leo was moving almost before the man finished his sentence. Maybe he knew, or had intuited, something Raph didn't. Maybe he was just desperate to get off the subject of his below-average IQ score. But he was running down the hallway, and Raph was following.

They didn't know where they were going; they had outpaced the scientist almost instantly, and they had no idea how to find a television on their own. But it was hard to miss the roomful of researchers gaping at a big flat-panel display, and they skidded to a halt, trying to see over everyone's heads.

"Get out of our way!" Don shouted at the stupefied scientists, but this time nobody moved for them. Don was tall enough to see anyway, and Raph made Leo give him a boost.

"We are on First Avenue," a reporter was saying, "just outside the United Nations headquarters, where - well, see for yourselves."

The feed cut to an overhead shot, probably from a helicopter, and Raph tried to focus as the image jerked around. It was a bunch of people marching in the street. Hundreds, maybe. They were coming over the rise, and down the broad avenue towards one of the most important buildings in the world.

Then the zoom leaped forward, and Raph could see that they weren't people.

They were mutants.

And they were led by a very familiar rat.

"What… the… hell," was all Raphael could say.