We finally get an emotional close view of April's mind in this one, and you Apriltello lovers are going to like it...

Also Casey and Raph shenanigans.

A humongous thank you to our beta readers, theHeroComplex and Queequegg!

Enjoy!

"Hey, Raph! Good fight today."

"Shut up," Raph muttered half-heartedly, not even looking up from his magazine. Karai chuckled and marched towards her room just as Casey appeared at the turnstiles. Raph lifted his eyes at the sound, peering over the pages.

"Wow, heavy metal," Casey said, giving Karai a once-over, and Raph rolled his eyes when she acknowledged the compliment with a little curtsy before taking the steps to the bedrooms.

"Yo, Raph!"

"Yo, Case, where ya b- Whoa, what the heck!" Raph exclaimed at the dark purple covering a good portion of his friend's face. "I thought hockey practice was this afternoon!"

"It is! This is from yesterday."

"But wasn't yesterday your date with April?"

"Dude, shhh!" Casey hissed, shooting a few cautious glances around the room. Mikey was sitting against the dojo panes, but he was reading his 'Samurai Jackrabbit' comic book. He was humming along whatever he was listening to on his headphones, one foot wiggling to the beat. Deeming it safe to speak again, Casey leaned to whisper at Raph, "Yeah, it was, but-"

"But you got a little too excited and she beat you up with a shovel?" Raph said, sarcastic. The more he looked, the more bruises he found on Casey's pale skin.

"Dude, what kinda guy you think I am?" Casey said, pointing an accusing finger at him. Raph didn't flinch and kept his sharp gaze nailed on Casey's. The kid faltered. "Okay, I might've gone for her butt-"

"And then she punched you."

"It wasn't April!"

"Then what the hell happened to you? 'Cause I haven't seen you this jacked up since your little playdate with Hun!"

"Just a few jerks from the street that caught me off guard, we'll get 'em back. But hey, I brought you something!" Casey said quickly, turning around reaching for his backpack.

"Now you're being mysterious?" Raph said sardonically, watching Casey wrestle with the bag, which looked stuffed to near bursting point. The kid yanked hard trying to take whatever was in there out, grunting and puffing, his back to Raph so he couldn't see exactly what it was yet.

"Whatdya got there, a dead body?" Raph asked in an uninterested tone, refusing to let his curiosity show.

A throaty giggle was Casey's sole response and Raph narrowed his eyes in suspicion. When the mysterious object finally came loose, he threw it at Raph's face with a cry of victory.

"For you!"

Raph's quick reflexes took over, and he caught the thing in the air before he even saw what it was. But as soon as he had it in his hands, two beady eyes staring back at him behind the long antennae, Raph gave a shriek loud enough to crack asphalt.

"What is that! Get it off! Get it off!" he screeched, on the edge of hysteria, throwing the thing as far away as possible while Casey burst into thunderous laughter.

The bug soared through the air and landed with a soft 'poof' against Mikey's shell. His ninja speed rescued it from falling into the water below. One look and a little squeal of delight left his mouth.

"Oooooh my gosh! That is the cutest thing!" Mikey cried as he held the plush creature at arm's length, taking in every detail with bright eyes full of wonder. "Is it yours, Raph?"

"No! Not mine! Nobody's! Burn it! Burn it!" Raphael yelled, backing up when he saw Mikey jumping off the ledge and getting closer with the thing in his arms.

"What are you saying, bro! She's like the prettiest, most adorable bug thing I've ever seen! If you don't want her, I'll keep her!"

"Fine! Anything! Do whatever the hell you want with it, just don't get it near me!" Raph panted, a hand clutching his plastron, but now more disgusted than anything.

Casey writhed on the floor, barely breathing, tears running down his bruised face, and Raph spun around to shoot him a murderous glower.

"You asshole! If you think the beating you got last night was something, wait till I get a hold of you!" He snatched at Casey's collar, but the boy performed a swift twirl that left him grabbing air instead. Seething, he chased Casey around the common room, screaming bloody murder and making threats that only made Casey's cackles louder.

Mikey watched them for a bit and shrugged, not too impressed by the same fight he had seen dozens of times before. And it was pretty great to see that someone else was the subject of his brother's fury for once. He turned his gaze back down at the soft, pink, crustacean with the bow that seemed to look back up at him like a love-hungry puppy, and he felt his heart melt.

"Aww. I think I'll call you Beatrice!" he said tenderly, and hugged the plush creature to his chest.

The entrance lock went click and April heaved a sigh of relief in the sudden quiet. She shrugged off her backpack, sore muscles screaming a complaint, and lazily swung it towards the umbrella stand. The next thing she saw was her father in a flowery apron, coming out to the hallway to greet her, one hand holding a greasy spatula.

"Hey, April!"

"Hi, Dad!" she said, snuggling into Kirby's one armed hug. "Missed you."

"Missed you too, honey," Kirby said, kissing her head.

The smell of food reached her nose and she made a pleased sound. "Mmm, what's cooking? I'm starving!"

"Today, something special; spaghetti and meatballs."

"For lunch?"

"It's the Italian way!" he said with a wink, and she chuckled.

"Well, yum! Lemme just take a quick shower, I stink!" she said, and detoured towards the bathroom.

After freshening up, hot water soothing some of the discomfort on her abused joints, she went back to the kitchen to help set the table as Kirby started serving the pasta. Once seated, hair still wet, April noticed Kirby's eyes fixing on her forearms. With a rush of panic, she tried to cover the bruises, but it was too late. Her father motioned towards them with his fork.

"Hey, what happened?"

April bent her arms, giving up on her attempt at hiding them. She hadn't realized just how bruised her arms looked. It hadn't occurred to her to wear long-sleeves and now Kirby's brow was furrowed with concern.

"This? It's just from training," she said dismissively, trying to sound as unfazed as possible. The last thing she needed was for her dad to worry about her training with the turtles.

"Oh. You been with the guys?" he said with a cheerfulness that felt just a tad forced.

"Yep," she replied simply, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

"Great!"

There was a short pause of barely a few seconds, but it felt to April like an entire period of Trigonometry. Lately she had been avoiding talking too much about the turtles because the topic only seemed to trigger something in him, especially after their little argument. It had been a couple of weeks ago already, but they were both still dealing with the aftershocks -snatched glances and the occasional awkward, guilt-ridden, silence.

"How are they?" Kirby said suddenly, his unusually upbeat tone bringing April back to reality.

"Oh, uh, good. You know, the usual." She shrugged, and as an afterthought to assuage any potential qualms, she added, "Things are pretty quiet lately."

"Mm-hm," Kirby said, nodding his head as he chewed and April listened for any kind of inflection that could give him away. He was disconcertingly chill. Maybe the trip did help...

"Got any plans for the weekend?" he asked, taking a sip of his water.

"I'll have to do a lot of studying, if that counts."

"Okay, but don't overwork yourself. You really have to get out more."

April stopped herself short of shooting him a look.

She actually got out a lot. She was out with the turtles all the time. But she had a feeling that wasn't what her father had meant. It wasn't anything new; he had been reluctant to let her go after dark back once they rescued him from the Kraang, during the short time between one mutation and the next.

What a great couple of years.

But ever since he got back from Dimension X, he had been increasingly persistent that April hung out more. With kids. From school, maybe. Preferably not mutants…

She had felt so betrayed, the day he finally said it. She could not believe it, after all the turtles had done for them; knowing what she was.

Later he had tried to make amends. But the cards had been laid on the table, face up under a spotlight. April had found out what was really on his mind, and it was eating her inside, because she worried. She always worried about her dad's mental health these days, and the idea that her being with the turtles was the source of his anxiety was just too painful to accept. It had been shocking enough for him to learn she was a half-Kraang hybrid.

"Hey, why don't you invite one of your classmates over for a study date?"

April hesitated.

"Actually, Donnie already offered to help, so…"

"Oh, ok," Kirby said rather unassumingly before going back to his meatballs, and April cringed a little.

"Casey and I are both going," she added quickly as a counteractive. He replied with a single nod of affirmation, and she suppressed a sigh, admonished by her father's deceptive calm.

"Donnie says hi, by the way," April said.

She was watching her father intently now, so the quick flick of his eyes at her was easy to catch, before he lowered them back to the plate to continue eating.

"He's a good boy," he said with the faintest of smiles, his expression otherwise unreadable. "Say hi back when you see him. And tell him thanks for the lessons, from me too."

"I will."

As April learned to harness her mutant abilities, it became easier for her to be aware of people's feelings, and trying to hide them from her didn't do much good. She could feel her father's emotions rolling from him like radio broadcasts. They didn't translate into anything precise. But she could tell when he was upset, as if his body language wasn't telling enough. He wasn't lying, she didn't think. Not exactly. But his stinging thoughts had her wondering if he really meant that, or he was just trying to make up for the other day.

April poked the rubbery meatball around a few times before successfully sticking her fork in it. Dad had never been the best cook.

"You know, you should come over more often," she said after swallowing the lump of meat. "You could hang out with Master Splinter. You two have a lot in common."

"Really?" Kirby said with an unconvinced lift of his eyebrow.

April raised her hand and started counting the ways with her fingers. "You were both mutated, you both experienced loss, you're both single fathers…"

She realized that might have been a bit blunt. The recap of Kirby's stumbles in life never did sit well with him, but he hadn't gone through months of therapy for nothing, and it needed to be said. She sensed his discomfort, but a fleeting crease in his brow was his only reaction.

"Yes, I suppose that's true. But aside from that, we're nothing alike."

"My point is, it could be good for you. Maybe he could help you, you know, teach you meditation and stuff," she said, though it was a long shot. Her father may have been a hardcore hippy in his days, but he was still more a man of science in some aspects than even Donatello, and his skepticism towards anything else had only been reinforced over the years. He had a hard time accepting certain things, and Splinter's ancestral form of medicine was a long way from any academic standards. So April was not at all surprised by the non-answer that followed her proposal.

"Okay, I'll think about it!" he said with false enthusiasm. "Besides all that, how are things at school? Meet someone interesting?"

April knew where he was going with that and she wanted none of it right now.

"I'm not going to meet anybody new a month from finals week, dad."

"Guess you're right. Have you thought about what you want to study in college?"

Ah, yes. College. It was only like number twenty-four on the long list of things that worried her right now.

"I haven't made up my mind yet," she said drily, certainly not looking forward to a discussion on the matter.

"Don't you think it's time? Senior year is right around the corner. Next thing you know we have to start sending out applications."

April bit back a groan.

"Yeah, I know," she said with the closest to a normal voice she could manage, grasping for an excuse to change the subject. "But how about you? How was your trip? Did you meet someone interesting?"

Kirby didn't take kindly to her attempt at evasion, judging from his look, but thankfully didn't insist.

"The other two monitors were nice, I guess, but that's about it. Did you dye your hair?" he exclaimed suddenly.

"Oh!" April said, sheepishly tucking the loose strand of wet hair behind her ear. "Yeah, just a streak. I went with Karai to this hairdresser and she ended up convincing me."

"Wow, I hadn't noticed! Look at you all alternative," he laughed, and April felt relief at the sound.

"It's just a streak," she chuckled.

"Groovy! What else did I miss in the day and a half that I've been gone?"

It had been a harmless, rhetorical question. But she hesitated. And in that split second, he had noticed. Her answer caught in her throat when she saw her father's look of suspicion, his fork held halfway to his lips. A couple of noodles slipped out of the coil and landed on the plate with a slick sound.

"April? Did something happen?"

When she avoided his gaze, helping down the food with a gulp of water, he set the fork down with a quiet clink and interlaced his fingers, one of his psychologist mannerisms that meant "please, go on". It always made her feel like she was being put on the couch. She shrugged noncommittally.

"Not really. I mean, nothing important."

"Whatever it is, I promise you can tell me, April," he said reassuringly, though that little notch in his brow read somewhat differently. It was obvious he was worried about the answer, and April knew why.

For the past couple of weeks, April had been thinking back to what could've given her away. She was always talking about the turtles, but mostly she was always talking about Donnie. She thought her father would be happy to hear all the cool stuff she did in his lab with Donnie all the time. She had practically been his trainee since the very first day that she'd been invited to their lair, as Donnie had always been so keen to teach her.

Being his assistant was an illuminating experience. She enjoyed it. They worked really well together. And she told her dad about every little gadget she'd helped Donnie make, every new project she had contributed to.

And it had likely been all that talk that had lead her dad to jump to certain conclusions, leading him to the day he popped the question.

"Is there something between you and Donatello?" he had asked her, and there had been a hint of dread in his voice that she hadn't anticipated.

Of course, she had denied all of it. The very thought appeared to have quadrupled her father's blood pressure levels in mere seconds. But also because it was the truth.

There was nothing going on between her and Donnie. Beyond the usual, that is... Sure, there was always the matter of his hopeless crush on her, but he hadn't acted on it in a long time. They were friends. Just friends, with some peculiar luggage behind them.

But despite all her explanations -or perhaps as a result of them- she had been hard put to convince her dad. It was always hard, April knew, to convince someone of something you don't believe yourself.

She couldn't quite say when she'd started feeling this way about him. It must have been a gradual thing. It was a given now, but back then Donatello was still a humanoid mutant turtle with nerdish tendencies who had a gigantic, blatant crush on her. And she never knew quite what to do with that.

Then their relationship became something different, and it was much more than friendship, so much more than a teenage crush. It was trust. Comfort. Love. And recently it had also been… something else.

Back in the dojo… What was that? Donnie had never made her feel that way before. Hell, nobody had made her feel that way.

I guess that means I'm finally coming of age...

And apparently she hadn't made a great job of concealing it.

So when her dad asked if something had happened, she could make a pretty good guess as to what he was expecting her to answer. But her answer today would be something different. She had made sure of that.

"Um, well… I went out with someone. Once. It's nothing serious yet."

"Oh! Someone from school?" he said, and April could hear the latent "hopefully" in his words.

"Yeah, he's from school."

Kirby let out an audible gasp, clearly more excited after that last part."Why didn't you tell me? Well, what's he like?"

She decided not to hedge, and went right to the point."Uh.. it's Casey."

To April's chagrin, her father's smile drooped."Casey? Casey Jones?"

"Yeah, we went to the movies..." she said, trying hard to ignore her own disappointment. "Just… to see how it went. I kinda had a thing for him..."

Kirby let out a humorless laugh."Well, that's not exactly what I meant when I said you should start seeing normal people..."

"But… I thought you'd be glad!"

"Why? That kid skips more school than he attends!"

"But at least he's human, right?" she snapped.

The words had tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop herself, catching her father, and herself, off guard. Now he was giving her a measured look, the food on their plates forgotten.

"April," he started slowly, collectedly. "I'd hate to be one of those parents that constantly nag their daughters about who they can or can't date. I-I'm sorry I got so upset the other day, it's just… And it's not that I don't appreciate the turtles, I do! Especially Donatello-"

The hurt in her father's eyes made April's innards constrict. She averted her eyes when her face started growing hot at the mention of Donatello's name.

"Dad, there's nothing going on between me and Donatello. I already told you."

She was making it true, for him, but Kirby was still visibly skeptical.

"Alright, well, I don't have anything against Casey either. I just… I'd just like you to meet someone you can hang out with without the need for sword fights, or alien monsters or giant mutant snakes... things that won't require you putting your life on the line every time you go out."

"They're not putting my life on the line, dad!" she protested, not quite yelling, but already way past a normal conversational tone. There was only so much she could do to pretend like she was fine, that this didn't affect her.

"I didn't mean it like that!"

"If anything, I'm safer with them!"

Her father let out another dry chuckle. "I highly doubt that, April. I know they would never do it on purpose, but you can't deny that they are trouble magnets."

She set her jaw. "What do you want? You want me to just stop seeing them?"

"No. I'm not saying that..."

But you wish, April thought bitterly.

"...just that maybe you should... start thinking about your future, get a career, build a family. You know, lead a normal life. It's all we ever wanted."

April's neck hair stood on end. The last time she had heard that line, she was face to face with the Kraang monster that had impersonated her mother and almost eaten her alive.

"The only problem is that I'm not normal, dad," she said, the images that plagued her mind making her statement all the more true. "I'm never going to be normal. So why bother? I feel at home with the guys. I'm one of them. And I can take care of myself, I know what I'm doing. Why don't you just trust me?"

"April, it's not that I don't trust- It's… You spend so much time with them. These boys are constantly getting themselves into deadly situation after deadly situation, and... Everytime you go on those so-called missions with them, I'm at home, completely unable to do anything and worrying that you won't come back! Don't you get it, April? I don't want to go through any of that again, and if anything happens to you, I… You're all I have left, and if you... !"

His breathing came quick and shallow. April had seen this enough times to know what would happen if he kept down that path, and the last thing either of them needed was another panic attack.

She reached out to take his hands in hers, to stop his spasmodic onslaught of words before it escalated further.

"Okay, dad, okay! I'm sorry. I know," she said soothingly, once again cramming all the things she would've liked to say back into the already cramped broom closet of her head, just so her father could have peace of mind -even if it meant swallowing her frustration. "I'm sorry. Calm down. It's okay."

They went through a few breathing exercises, together. Slowly, his breathing started to even out.

"Dad, I get it," she said when he'd calmed down a little. "I know how you feel. But I can't just..." the words died in her mouth. She couldn't bear even the idea of committing to such a thing. She would do anything for her dad, but not this. She couldn't just stop seeing the turtles, she couldn't stop being a kunoichi. She needed it; it was who she was now. Taking away that part of her life would be like yanking off a limb and leaving her to bleed out.

"I… I can't stop seeing them, dad… They're family."

"I know, I'm not a- I can't ask you to! I'm not!" he protested. "Really. I just… I worry. It's okay," he said through a doleful sigh and an attempt at a smile, and straightened up on his chair. "We'll talk about this later, I'm getting a headache. Come on, the meatballs are getting cold..."

April watched her dad pick up the fork and try to work his way through the rest of the dish. She wanted to believe he was telling the truth, that he really wasn't asking her to cut ties with the turtles. But the emotional whirlpool in his head hadn't abated, and it washed pieces of rotting debris onto the shore of her consciousness.

"Okay, dad…" she said, voice thin from a sore windpipe, as if someone had punched her in the throat.

She picked up the fork and forced a cold meatball into her mouth, keeping vigil on her dad through the corner of her eyes. That made three people in two days that she'd hurt in some way. Must be a new record.

Master Splinter was right. She needed to get her shit together. Or something better sounding anyway…

After clearing up the lunch table, April headed to her room with the excuse that she really needed to study for this test, which wasn't a lie, but she already feared it would be impossible to concentrate on algebraic formulas after that argument. After thirty minutes of kneeling on the floor with her elbows on her bedspread, trying in vain to infuse some knowledge into her head, she ended up just staring blankly at the pages of her Trigonometry book.

She made one final effort to take in something, anything, before giving up altogether, and concentrated hard on one of the formulas. She recognized it immediately as the formula Donatello had helped her memorize a few weeks ago. All she had to do was conjure up Donnie's voice reciting it out loud and there it was.

She chuckled through her nose at the cosy, prickling sensation the simple memory of his voice elicited her. Suddenly she felt the near-irresistible urge to call him on his T-Phone, and listen to his kind, comforting voice.

Then she remembered it would more likely be rough and scratchy now, thanks to her. But she had promised to call to ask how he was feeling after all. Better yet, she could invite him over for that study date he had promised.

Hah. Wouldn't dad love that?

A smile snuck onto her lips, but it was gone before she even realized it was there.

Maybe her father was right, and maybe it was time she thought about her future.

All this time she had harbored these feelings, feared them, but only now was she really facing them head on. They had rioted out of their confinement the same moment she had been forced to deny them, and now… Now she had to find the way to lure them back into their cages.

As always, remember to review if you like it! It means a whole lot when you do. TvT