They were soon seated in a circle near the TV, holding plates of fresh stir-fry while Leatherhead produced a stack of thin paperbacks from a worn cardboard box.

"My comic books!" Mikey cried happily, clutching them to his chest. "They're all right."

"April saved them for you." Leatherhead chuckled. "I taught Yoshi to read out of those."

"Educational comic books?" Raphael chased his food across his plate. Seeing as they were in fact in NYC on planet Earth, it felt strange to be eating anywhere but the Lair or April's apartment. "Isn't that a contradiction in terms?"

"It was either that or Donatello's technical manuals." Leatherhead chuckled again. "Those came later."

"Hey." Mikey stopped his enthusiastic page-flipping to inspect a burnt corner suspiciously. "Who's been using Silver Sentry #53 for tinder?"

"It's one of the hazards of reading by candlelight, I'm afraid." Leatherhead turned his palms up apologetically. "We weren't always as technologically advanced as you see now see us."

Leo, sensing that Leatherhead did not want to talk about April's whereabouts in front of Yoshi, swallowed his questions and ate quietly, trying his best to be patient. Worry had pretty much stolen his appetite, but a ninja never knew when he might need his strength.

From the corner of his eye he saw Donnie playing with his food... he was worried too. In fact, the only one who ate with any relish was Mikey. The orange-masked terrapin had polished off seconds within five minutes and, no longer starving, was free to scope out his surroundings for entertainment.

"Is that my old Xbox I see?" He pounced on a controller without waiting for an answer. "Yahoo! Space Destructors! And the reigning champion and high score holder is... is..." he broke off as the list faded in, a comical look of shock on his face. "... L.H.? Leatherhead plays video games? L.H. beat my high score?"

"And no mean feat it was, I assure you," Leatherhead assured him humorously. "I suffered several blisters as a result."

"Zis is unacceptable! Zis cannot be tolerated!" Mikey lapsed into his Schwarzenegger voice and started a new game. "I, zee Spacinator, shall triumph again!"

"You can try," Yoshi told him, "but I've never beat Big L's high score."

Donnie smiled. "What? The terror of the sewers playing video games?"

"Why, they build concentration and quick reflexes." Leatherhead winked, then looked pointedly at Yoshi. "And they keep little girls from wandering off and getting lost in the junkyard... most of the time, at least."

Yoshi blushed. "Well, ah, I'm sure you guys have lots of catching up to do. I'm going to go work on Hogey."

She gathered up their dishes and escaped into the kitchen.

Immediately, Leatherhead became more serious. Time and worry crept into his face, making him look old and tired.

Still, there was something else in his eyes -- relief, and, more than that, hope.

"I cannot tell you how timely your reappearance is," he said feelingly. "Things are well here, but outside all grows worse. I do not know how much longer we could have stayed hidden."

"Reappearance." Leo let the word fall into his mind, watching the ripples expand ever outward. Donnie, he saw, did not look surprised. "Leatherhead. How long have we been gone?"

"Fifteen years, Leonardo," Leatherhead answered softly. "Fifteen years, my friend."

X X X

"I do not know how many times April attempted to hack into Stockman's network remotely," Leatherhead laced his fingers together, remembering. "She was partly successful, but concluded that much of the information we needed was simply not on the network. Apparently he had sense enough to store it securely, on an isolated internal system."

Donatello nodded. "That's what I would have done in his place. There's no keeping secrets online from someone of April's caliber."

"Precisely," Leatherhead agreed. "Though in the end, his caution may prove his undoing. With Master Splinter's help, Miss O'Neil broke into Shredder's facility, hacked into his intranet, and obtained a hard copy of Stockman's data on the Cronosporter."

"The what?" Mikey, currently battling his way through level fourteen, shot an incredulous look over his shoulder. "English, please, O erudite one."

"The Cronosporter is a time portal device," Leatherhead explained. "It was designed by the Utroms to study possible futures. Somehow, Stockman acquired it. It is the means by which he sent you here."

He smiled suddenly, a display of ivory sure to frighten those who didn't know him well. "I am not certain how April managed to evade the patrolling Foot, but she did." His great head swung to one side. "Understand, this was shortly before Stockman succeeded in assassinating Shredder."

Raphael nearly choked on a slice of bell pepper. "Stockman what?"

Leatherhead nodded. "Yes. Simple food poisoning, it's rumored. Perhaps with you gone, Shredder felt he could relax his vigilance a bit."

Leo and Raph looked at each other, remembering. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Yeah, but the guy always pops back up. Like a nutty jack-in-the-box," Raphael muttered.

"That's not all." Leatherhead leaned forward, his hands on his knees. "Almost by chance, April also stumbled on Stockman's plans for restructuring the city, hidden deep within Shredder's intranet."

"The mouser codes," Donnie murmured, connecting the dots rapidly.

"Yes." Leatherhead looked grimly satisfied. "With those codes, April was able to give herself administration access to the drone control system -- in essence, voice control of the mousers. She knew that, should the restructuring plans be implemented, she would need some way to bypass them in order to help you."

The crocodile's tail flicked, a telltale motion of unease, then stilled as he continued with an effort.

"Shortly after that, Shredder was killed and the city restructured. Miss O'Neil and Master Splinter entrusted young Yoshi to my care and left to find Mr. Jones and his young friend Angel, who were in Mafia-controlled territory." He bowed his head. "They did not return. The penalties for breaking curfew are... draconian... but it is impossible to know for certain what happened to them."

There was silence as the enormity of their losses sank in.

"Poor Angel." Raphael's voice was soft. Casey and his unofficial young ward had always been his especial buddies.

"And Yoshi?" Leonardo asked finally. "Where does she come in?"

"Have you not guessed, Leonardo?" Leatherhead glanced towards the kitchen, but Yoshi was nowhere in sight. A rattle of tools suggested that she was busy in the workshop.

"I believe that April rescued her from a Foot tech genetics lab," he finished quietly.

"Well," Mikey said matter-of-factly, when no one else spoke for a minute. "Now we know how April would look if she'd been raised in a sewer..."

X X X

"Here's an idea -- clones of me! Reeeally ugly ones!"

Mikey's quip echoed through Donnie's memory as the pieces fell in place. The voice; the features; the movements like deja vu come alive.

"A clone." It was the only logical conclusion. "That's why the mousers accept her voice."

"But why?" Mikey asked in befuddlement. "There are easier ways to get lab assistants than cloning them, for crying out loud."

"Revenge," Raphael said flatly.

Donnie's mind was still whirling. Employee drug tests, blood samples, DNA, Foot Tech labs and the Shredder --

"If it's true," Leo pointed out, "-- and we can't know for sure -- it may have been Shredder's project, not Stockman's, even if he did get the DNA sample from Baxter." He looked at Donnie; saw his thoughts reflected there. "Shredder had a thing for making copies of people. Remember the Splinterbot? The President? He was probably planning to use Yoshi against... against us."

Donnie nodded fractionally. "Nothing would have hurt April more."

"I suspect that you are right," Leatherhead rumbled. "Thanks to April, however, both Shredder and Stockman's plans have been turned on their heads. Yoshi's ability to slip through the mouser network made it possible for both of us to stay here and watch until you returned, as we knew you would eventually."

"And you knew this because of what April learned from Stockman's data?" Leo asked.

"Yes." Leatherhead straightened, and the hope in his eyes grew stronger. "But now you have arrived. Now we can begin to undo what has been done."

Leo had more questions, but Donnie listened with only half an ear. The noises from the workshop area had ceased. Had Yoshi overheard? Poor kid. He hoped not.

He got up and made his way through the kitchen. Dinner dishes piled in the sink; fresh daffodils in a tin can by the stove...

He ducked under a set of thrice-patched curtain partitions to be greeted by a haphazard assortment of tools, projects, and scrap metal. Standing in the middle of it all was Yoshi, looking even smaller without her parka, staring at the pliers in her hand as though they were the most incomprehensible thing in the universe.

"Are you okay?"

She looked up, startled, and for an instant he thought he'd been wrong all along and she really was April O'Neil, not a living copy traced in flesh from stolen DNA. Then light reflected off her goggle, and he saw anew her youth, her stunted physique, the features that were so April and yet their own.

"I can't remember what I came here for," she said blankly.

"You said you were going to work on Hogey?" Donnie recalled.

Her face lit up."That's it! Thank you." She rummaged around under the workbench and, to his surprise, dragged out a half-assembled mouser. "Plants and biology are more up my alley, really. Big L does most of the technical stuff, but Hogey's my learning project. I'm sure I'll get the wiring down... someday..."

She trailed off as she heaved Hogey onto the bench and dug into his innards. Donatello could no more leave the scene of a mechanical operation than he could let a cross-threaded bolt alone. He slung his duffel bag out of the way and sat down on an adjacent workbench to watch.

"Aw, great. Just great." She extracted a component from the wide-open jaws, groaning.

"What's the matter?" Donnie leaned closer for a look.

"The governor's fried." She showed him the complicated square of circuitry. "Guess I shouldn't have taken a taser to his head, huh?"

"Is that how you brought it down."

"Mm-hmm. Administrative access only goes so far before their self-preservation programming kicks in," she said wryly. "Well, so much for that."

Donnie opened his bag. "How about a freshly killed supply of replacement parts?"

"Ooo! Really?" She was torn between eagerness and hesitation. "You'd give me that one's governor?"

"Sure. Just give me a minute." He found a screwdriver and began disassembling his mouser's cranial unit. "Are they that valuable?"

"Oh, yeah." She nodded vigorously. "That's probably what the Dragons were up to, until they saw me. Mouser parts are hot stuff on the black market. It's dangerous, but some people raid into Stockman's territory just to bag a few drones." She shuddered. "Generally, it's a pretty short-lived career."

"Unless you've got secret weapon Yoshi along."

She grinned.

He freed the governor from its web of connective wiring and laid it in her outstretched palm. "Here you go."

"Thank you."

"No problem, Apr--" He caught himself. "I mean, Yoshi."

She smiled. "You can call be April if you like. Leatherhead thought very highly of her. And genetically speaking, at least, she's the closest thing I have to a mother. Say, can I borrow that?"

So she did know.

"No, your name is Yoshi." He handed her the screwdriver, retracing her features once more. "I just... you look like her."

And smile like her. And sound like her. And move like her.

"Better her than Hun," she joked. "Wouldn't that be awful? I'd have to turn sideways to get through the door." She pulled a mass of fine wires from Hogey's cranium and began running them carefully into the new governor's protective casing, her fingers moving with all the delicacy of a hummingbird sipping nectar. "If I could fit at all. She was a good friend, wasn't she?"

"Friend?" The sudden shift in topic caught Donnie off guard. April? She'd been their first friend, their best friend; the fifth turtle, if anyone could claim that title at all. Protector, liaison, and occasional rescue practice.

"Closer to a sister, really," he said finally, watching her attach the last wire. "I think you've got the three last connections switched up."

"Gah. You're right." She pulled the offending wires back out, then rubbed at her eyes. "Ah... do you mind if I take my goggles off?"

Did he mind? Oh, the scar -- she wanted to know if it would bother him. He cocked an eyebrow at her. "I'm a green-skinned humanoid who shares living space and a fridge with Mikey. I don't think a few scars will weird me out."

"That's a relief. It's starting to itch." She pulled the goggles off, rubbed her eyes again, and went back to work with no apparent self-consciousness.

The injury must have sliced right through her eye, temple to cheekbone. The otherwise delicate eyebrow and lid were marred by scar tissue, and much of the green iris was gone, replaced by white.

It was a little eerie-looking at first, but then she glanced up at him and smiled, showing the scar for what it was -- a superficial mark that had in no way damaged the warm personality beneath.

Though he did wonder if her short-term memory lapses might be directly due to that injury.

"Can you see?" he asked without thinking, then kicked himself mentally. But the question did not seem to bother her.

"With my bad eye?" She finished correcting the wires and slid the governor back into its cranial cubby. "A little. It's pretty fuzzy, but after being on the wrong end of a jack handle whiplash, I'm lucky to still have the eyeball." She rubbed the scar wryly. "Never stand too close to an auto dismantling project, by the way. L.H. fixed me up a night vision lens--" she tapped the goggles -- "so I can see infrared radiation, even at night. It tends to be blurry stuff, anyways, you know? Even so, it's saved my bacon more than once." She flashed him another smile. "So it's not a complete minus. How does this look?"

He checked her work, doing a much more thorough job of it than the briefness of his glance might have suggested. The connections were neat and precise. "Aces, Yoshi. That should work fine."

"Great!" She let the inert mouser sag in her lap, resting her arms. "But before I turn this bad boy on, I need to do something about his, eh, primal instincts."

Something in her voice made Donnie look up warily. She was eyeing him speculatively in much the same way that Mikey did when gauging Donnie's receptivity to outrageous requests. Like, oh, ice cream that didn't melt, or a little old souped-up Battle Shell.

"What?" he said reflexively, before remembering that she most likely was not going to ask him for a supersonic hoverboard or an M1 tank "just to play with."

She grinned knowingly at his tone. "Do you know anything about programming?"