It was hard for him to not notice her picking at her food. "April? Something wrong?" Kirby asked.

"No," she said miserably in an obvious lie and continued moving peas from one side of her plate to the other.

"Problems at school?"

"No," she repeated.

"No, you wouldn't be so upset about a low mark… " he reasoned. "Boy trouble?"

She ignored him, stabbing at her Salisbury steak, though she sighed distractedly. Kirby didn't press. He knew she'd open up in a moment or two.

"Donnie… broke up with me… He says he can't be around me right now…" she said slowly, holding back tears as best as she could. "And Casey doesn't want to get involved… After I blew Donnie up… they're both scared of me."

"Oh," he managed, trying to keep it as neutral as possible, though he knew the dread she undoubtedly felt. Since the incident, there had been a malaise of guilt floating about her. The best he could do for her was to act normal, calm.

Their world had gotten incredibly complicated over the last year, involving mutants, ninja, aliens, and himself being turned into a bat for a time. Kirby was a cautious man—one had to be in New York City—but he never would have expected the heroic creatures his daughter had befriended, never expected to be mutated simply by stepping outside with her one night, never expected the revelation that she was a mutant herself. That was the one that hit home the most; it was disturbing and shocking to learn sixteen years after their daughter's birth and ten after his wife's disappearance that she'd had prior dealings with the Kraang.

It had come as a shock to all of them when April presented signs of psychic ability and, when dropped into a vat of the mutagenic glop, no mutation affected her. Donatello, upon looking into the matter, discovered her Kraang mutation, and the only explanation—now quite evident to Kirby—was the DNA passed down from her mother.

At the root, Kirby knew his wife's disappearance had been an abduction… it made sense that the Kraang would want one of their experiments back, especially if they wanted Renee as a power source as much as they had wanted April. But there was a part of him that resented her leaving him to raise their daughter alone, never providing so much as a clue about things that could affect April, leaving April with questions that Kirby had no answers for. Leaving her to discover her telepathic abilities with no explanation for their source or extent or how to manage them. Leaving her unprepared for an invasion via addiction and the eventual, albeit thankfully temporary, destruction of her closest friend. At some level, he was absolutely livid with his wife for deserting them and leaving April to figure everything out on her own, and the wounds inflicted upon his daughter and, he was sure, all of her friends.

With a sigh, Kirby rotated his own pile of peas around. "Communication is always best—" he started, only to have April cut him off.

"I tried! Donnie's traumatized over it, and Casey thinks he's a bug."

"He thinks he's a bug?"

"Not literally. Like he doesn't matter to me. He said if I poofed Donnie even though I loved him, where did that put him in the scheme of things?" She moved a bit of meat around on her plate, then set her fork down completely, unable to stomach a meal while her mind remained so distraught. "And they're right. If I hadn't been able to force out Za'noran, I could've killed all of them. Then you, and everyone in New York…" Her breathing increased as a wave of panic overtook her. "If I hadn't been able to put Donnie's atoms back together—!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa now… Stop," he said, grasping her hand. "There's no use feeling guilt over events that didn't happen. And for what did happen… if they're truly your friends, they'll understand and forgive you."

She stared at the floor. "Didn't seem like it." Her father gave her hand a pat.

"Give it time. They both need a while to process things and heal. And, it's possible that neither of them feels that they can do that healing in the same environs that they were wounded in."

"Around me," she understood that to mean, and Kirby nodded in confirmation. She blew out a long huff of frustrated acceptance and pulled her hand from him. "Guess I'm going it solo for a while…"

x-x-x-x-x

To those who have asked, yes, I am continuing this! This chapter just had me at a loss, and I ended up somewhere off in the weeds for a while.

Headcanon: I'm naming April's mom Renee, after Renae Jacobs, voice actor of the original April O'Neil, and the Mom-thing in the 2012 series. ;p I ended up cutting a lot of Renee and Kirby's history from this chapter, which maybe I'll put somewhere else. This fic isn't about her.