"So let me get this straight." Raph pointed one sai handle at his youngest brother. "April's a smart girl, Leo. You telling me that she's scareder of some goon than of feeding Mikey?"
"Hey," Mikey objected.
"Keep it down, you two," Leo cautioned. The alley looked deserted, but it also carried sound quite well. "We don't want to let him know we're coming."
"I don't get it." Mikey scratched his head. "Why would anyone want April's old junk?"
"Yeah." Raph grinned at Mikey wickedly. "It's not like any of it is edible."
Mikey made a resentful-sounding noise. "Come on, Raph. It's a valid question!"
"Who knows?" Leo joked, pausing to straight his fedora. It was annoying, the way it kept slipping down over his eyes, but traipsing around without their get-ups wasn't a real option in broad daylight. At least the hats cut out some of the summer sun's glare. "Maybe he's after the pizza."
Mikey looked alarmed.
"There's always the cash register, guys," Donatello reminded them placatingly.
"Better that than April." Leo peered around the corner, then motioned them all to follow him to the back of April's shop.
"Or the pizza!" Mikey appended.
Leo sighed and reached for the door.
It opened a crack at his knock, and he could tell from the sliver of visible April that she was smiling.
"I'm sorry, sir; we don't admit door-to-door salesman," she said seriously, pretending not to recognize them.
Leo pushed his hood back, smiling back at the woman who'd become their sister in all but blood. "Not even those offering ninjitsu security services?"
"Oh! In that case, there's cobbler upstairs." She unchained the door and stepped aside to let them through. Some of her unease dissipated at the sight of the four strong brothers filing through her doorway. It was nice to have more than a flimsy lock between her and the weirdo out front. "Peach, and it's hot from the oven."
Mikey was headed for the kitchen before she finished talking, but Raph caught him by his mask tails. "Whoa there, you bottomless pit -- let's shoo Mr. Loiterer off before we dig in. Shouldn't take but a minute."
Donnie nodded. "April, why don't you go ahead and reopen the shop?"
"It'll give us a chance to see how the guy reacts," Leo explained, and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll be right behind you."
He looked around appreciatively as they followed her through the building, various knick-knacks and baubles winking as if in greeting from their corners and shadows. He wondered sometimes if April missed her career in high technology, but if she did, she'd never breathed a word of it to them. Nor about missing her normal life as someone who'd never heard of mutant turtles.
It was the jungle girl in her, he supposed; the feisty little valkyrie hidden beneath her deceptively mild appearance which seemed to delight in popping out when things went crazy. Like her antique shop, she harbored many unexpected surprises. He threw a glance at the stairs, remembering the time she'd refused to leave him and run for her life.
"Leo, lean on me," she'd told him, surprising him with her strength. "We're all family now..."
They hung back from the windows as she flipped the sign to "Open" and unlocked the door, scanning the street over her shoulder.
"There he is," she whispered. "The guy with the anchor tattoo."
Leo spotted him instantly; an anomaly in the flow of sidewalk traffic across the street, eddying to and fro within a couple sidewalk sections while other pedestrians bumped and brushed along past him.
The man straightened when April unlocked the door, threw his cigarette away and made a beeline towards the shop, smirking unpleasantly. Leo felt his anger rise. He'd seen expressions like that before.
Controlling himself, he stepped outside and into the man's line of sight, deliberately eclipsing April. He felt more than saw his brothers following, gathering around him in a semi-circle.
"Can we help you?"
The man broke stride momentarily. Sure, Stockman had said to watch for the turtles, but he'd neglected to mention how intimidating they looked in a group. Besides that, he'd been having so much fun spooking the redhead that he'd almost forgotten what this assignment was all about.
"I wants to buy something from the broad," he drawled.
Raph's eyes narrowed dangerously. "The lady is a friend of ours... and she doesn't do business with losers."
Raphael stepped closer and Leo let him, for there was no one like his third brother for dishing out sheer intimidation. "You've been hanging around all day. It's time to move on."
"Sure it's time," the man grinned, pulling something from his pocket and flicking it on. "Time to go bye-bye!"
Leo had a brief impression of organic, alien curves and otherworldly colors before the thing fluoresced, bathing the four of them in bluish luminosity.
He had the strangest sensation of standing still, so very still, while the world around them fragmented and blew away; of April calling their names... and being unable to answer.
X X X
"Too easy, man," the man complained. "Come on, Baxter. I thought you promised me a challenge."
"Don't," came the icy reply, "call me Baxter."
"Whatever, 'man. Still a letdown. Where's my dough?"
"Awaiting your arrival. And make it quick; I have important things to do."
"Nya, nya, whatever," he muttered, but not before flicking the walkie-talkie off. Some fun with the redhead wouldn't take long. Then he'd pop by to pick up the moola, and --
"What have you done to them?"
He turned to find himself face to face with a coldly furious April O'Neil. He backed a step involuntarily, surprised by the force of her presence. If she'd been scared before, she wasn't now.
"Hey, take it easy, lady." He raised his hands placatingly. "This has nothing to do with you. Well -- hardly anything. Just back off and take it easy, and no one gets hurt."
April retorted with the visceral assertion she'd heard from Raph and the others -- an attitude so engrained in her that it was now instinct. "You mess with my brothers, you mess with me!"
He almost didn't see the pole in time. It was a piece of antique pine bedframe, and she broke it over his upflung arm with enough force to make him yelp and drop both his walkie-talkie and the still-luminous device. The walkie-talkie shattered on the sidewalk, while the device arced into a nearby wastebasket, landing atop a discarded copy of the New York Times.
Another jab with the sharp broken end sent the crook running for the hills. He was a scavenger looking for easy prey, not a warrior expecting resistance.
"Lousy thug," April muttered, worry flooding over the protective rage of a moment before as she watched the guy scramble for distance. She called for the turtles again, but it was no good; she'd seen them disappear with her own eyes. He'd done it with... with that.
She fished the thing out of the wastebasket, cradling it carefully with both hands. Weird curves and markings suggested an alien origin, and she wondered with a jolt if it had been made by the Utroms. Inspect it as she might, she could see only one control, and something warned her not to touch it.
"Who could have done this?" she whispered, clutching it to her chest. Forget the thug; penny-ante criminals didn't happen on alien technology, then bait her friends out to use it on them just for the heck of it. He'd been sent by someone. But who?
Stockman, she thought, remembering his transmission, the fragment of a sentence she'd heard as she'd run outside to help the others. Baxter Stockman.
She tucked the device carefully under one arm and walked inside, resolution solidifying within. First she needed to see Master Splinter and Leatherhead.
Then she had some hacking to do.