Disclaimer: I still do not own them, even a little bit, none of them.

Thanks for the reviews! I decided to tack in Don's perspective on the evening. I'll try and write a story with more of a plot soon, and more Raph stuff. :-)

Speech continues to be in italics, but I added quotation marks for clarification.


Ch. 2 – Donnie

The perpetual blue light emanating over my desk haloed my fingers as I ran another sequence of numbers, and I wondered vaguely if carpel-tunnel could affect ninjitsu, or turtles for that matter, hmm, probably. Maybe it was about time to take a break, if I was not more careful, hand cramps could get inconvenient. I had been working on this problem set for nearly 16 hours already… Well, after I finished this problem, after all, I was on a roll.

Another hour must have passed when an actual sensory experience finally broke my concentration from my work and returned me to the physical world. The odor was like a tether pulling me back down from space, and reminding me that not only was I corporeal, I was also starving. I dove out of my room in search of the source of the cheesy smell – and what was that – garlic maybe… I was not sure, but it smelled good – and leaped the couch as I headed for it.

"Donnie! Dude… where ya been all day?" Mikey tossed a box at me with a grin.

Margarita pizza! That's what that captivating olfactory experience was! "Working…" I managed to get out as I crammed a whole piece into my mouth. "Mmmffph…" I tried to articulate my gratitude through a mouthful of pizza.

"Ha ha… No prob man!" Mikey said laughing heartily and getting the idea despite my lack of lucid speech, and then called out to Leo that food had arrived. I nodded vaguely to Leo as he entered the room, and was just beginning to tear my attention from the enthralling food toward my brothers when he turned to me as he grabbed a couple of slices from the half open box on the table, sporting a red imprint of Tony's grinning face. "So Don, what is this you've been working on all day?"

"I'm assisting in a study on the background microwave radiation levels in space for the course I'm taking on Practical Application of Theoretical Cosmology …" I glanced up as I was about to expound on the details of the study and stopped dead as I was met with silence and twin looks of total befuddlement. "Uh, you know, the course I'm taking…" I launched into my explanation and was only a little way through the second chapter of the research paper when we heard "Dun dun DE dun…"as the television insistently interrupted with the familiar theme denoting the beginning of the news, and we all prepared to transfer to the couch.

"Sweet!" Mikey exclaimed and grabbed his stuffed bear, settling in for the program, while Leo looked around absently, saying something under his breath that sounded like "you'd think he'd be home for the news once in a while…" Before I could respond, the anchorperson had already started listing the news stories from behind the new bad hair-cut of the week and the unchanging faux mahogany desk. No sooner had I remembered what I was going to say, than I was already distracted by teasers for April's report, and thought vanished.

I let myself remain distracted from my work for the program. I always told myself that I would get more work done after dinner, but without fail I would end up in a long discussion with my brothers about politics or science, or the anchorman's hair. I guess it was all right, after all Splinter always says, family time is important, too.

There was a particularly interesting story about a missing NYU student tonight that we would have to check into tomorrow, maybe we could help. After the news we all headed for bed. It was getting late, and I just had one more problem that I wanted to work through. As I sat back at my desk, I heard Mikey come up behind me.

"You goin' to bed Donnie? You can finish that tomorrow you know." He declared looking mildly concerned that I would allow my easily distracted nature to place work before my health again.

"Soon, I just have one more problem that I want to get done." I replied as I resumed typing figures into the advanced calculator program, which I had programmed into my computer ages ago. "I want to get this turned in early so that I can get to work on fixing April's TV. She said it still has that snowy line on the higher channels."

"Mmm… hmm…I'm sure she'll understand if you take one more day. Besides didn't you say this wasn't due until next month? That gives you…" he glanced at the calendar blinking in turn with the clock in the corner of the computer screen. "27 days… I think you'll make your dead-line. Com' on Don…get some sleep! You work too hard!" He said with a grin and a pat on my shoulder.

"I will, after this problem." I insisted with a smile, and he laughed, finally conceding, and headed for the door.

The problem turned out to have subsets of problems based on it, and as I continued to work, and time passed, the unvarying blue glow of the iridescent computer screen began to play tricks on my increasingly drooping eyes, and weave patterns of intricate battle scenes in shadows across the room. As I guided sigma and theta in their quest against 234.7x on my screen, tiny ninjas followed the make-shift baseboard we had put up along the bottom of our rooms to keep out spiders, that summer back when Mikey was little and still having nightmares.

"Jeeze Raph… could it…" Leo's voice drifting into my room from outside, breaking through the fog in my head, was my first indication that I had fallen asleep at my desk. The insistent and increasing pain focusing in the crick in my neck was the second. Little armies of n's crossed my screen where I had fallen asleep on the keyboard, and I idly wondered if I had the impression of the key imprinted on my forehead. Better move to the bed and get a few more hours of sleep while I could. I would need to get up pretty early – and relatively soon really – in the morning if I planned to get over to April's to work on that TV. She always wanted me to come to help in the mornings before she went of to work – said she was a morning person, and friends started the day off right – and I just couldn't turn her down, even though I was pretty sure the problem was in the TV signal not in the cables. Ah well, any excuse to talk to her was a good excuse I guess. I crawled into my unkempt bed and tried to push that last thought from my head as drifted back off.