Chapter Twelve:

Project X

{Donnie}

"Mmph…"

Gears whir to life, stirred by the dull hum vibrating through my bones. Eyes open, sticky and covered in green goop. The back of my hands lift to my face and smear the fluid across my eyelids and down my cheeks. It takes a minute or two to completely clear my vision, and a minute more to gather my bearings.

Where am I? And why…why am I covered in…

My lungs ache and my diaphragm suddenly throws itself into a reflexive fit. I cough, doubling over in the muck and hacking up strings of green, bubbly saliva. Spitting a mouthful on the floor, I grimace, looking up and remembering what just happened. Shock jolts my heart into backflips and I scramble back on my rear, my coughs turning into gasps.

The bathroom, mutagen, pipes, tubes, spray, fire—it burned so bad, so bad—

"Leo." I wipe my mouth and spit again. The taste is like burnt rubber, something stale and sharp and not natural. "Leo?"

My eyes land on the sticky heap of fluid in front of me, pushed up against the far shower wall, where the drain is.

"Leo?"

I crawl over to him, careful not to slip on the substance coating the shower floor. My hand reaches out to clear away the slime…and that's when I notice something.

Fingers. Five of them. Pale, slender, attached to an equally pale palm that dips down into the wrist and forearm and…and…

I look down, incredulous to see thighs, a stomach, a bare chest. Arms, legs, feet. My hands shoot up for my face and the breath catches in my irritated lungs. Fingers press into the bone structure—cheeks, nose, lips, chin—it's all there. It's…we're…

"Leo!" I lurch forth, frantically clawing at the goop surrounding him. Skin becomes visible beneath the mutagen remnants. Light skin, like cream, strapped tight over lean cords of muscle. I reach for his shoulder and shake him as I smear the green fluid away with my other hand.

"Leo? Can you hear me?"

He doesn't respond, and fear wraps around my heart in icy tendrils. Frantic now, I roll him over on his back and wipe the goop from his face. His eyes are closed, relaxed, slanted and wide-set as slimy strands of dark hair stick to his rounded features.

He's not moving, I don't think he's even breathing—oh my gosh, I killed him. I dragged him into my stupid scheme and got my brother killed—

But then he coughs. His chest shakes, body convulsing as he hacks up wads of mutagen from his throat and lungs. Bright blue eyes flutter open, vibrant and deep. His limbs flail for some sort of solid ground and I grab him by the torso, hauling him up against me until he can situate himself.

His coughing fit continues for a moment more before dwindling down into cautious, uneven gasps.

"Just breathe," I say slowly, holding him up in a sitting position. "Get the rest of it out of your lungs."

A few more mouthfuls come up before he's calmed down.

"Are you hurting anywhere?" I ask carefully. "Is anything burning? Do you feel okay?"

He groans in response and weakly pushes my arms away.

"Next time you try to talk me into something stupid," he grumbles, "the answer's no."

Relief comes out in a blend of a sigh and a chuckle. He's alive. I'm alive. We're both okay, more or less, and even better, we're both...

Human.

"It worked, Leo," I breathe. Saying it sounds even more ridiculous than just thinking it. "We did it."

His face contorts, expressions melting from one to the other while his brain adjusts. He grimaces, a small hiss seeping through clenched teeth while he sits up on his own strength. Then his eyes drift over himself, over the pale flesh, bare, no longer green and speckled. His hands follow his gaze as if to prove the other sensory organs wrong, but the realization hits him in a sweeping wave, and those blue orbs widen.

He looks to me, drinking in my own human appearance, like he can't believe what he's seeing.

Hands, five fingers; feet, five toes; slim ankles, built calves, pelvic bones poking slightly past the muscled abdomen, rib cage and spine no longer covered in a hard shelled exterior. Perfect human form, and no trace of reptilian DNA left.

He smiles, thin at first, but then his lips stretch over his teeth into a beaming grin, like a child. He's staring at his hands in disbelief, and then he bursts into a boyish laughter.

"It worked—oh my gosh, it worked!"

I smile with him in contagious excitement. "I told you it would!"

We both laugh for who knows how long, lost in a delirious high with our futures suddenly burning bright around us. The impossible has now been made possible, the boundaries tested, broken, shattered to reveal an outlook I've only ever dreamed of. This is it. We've crossed the chasm that threatened our existence with shame, fear, and the sense of being an outcast. We're free.

"I…I don't believe it," he says dumbly. "I mean, I'm looking at us and I still can't… This is incredible, Donnie."

"I know." A smirk grips my features. "I'm pretty awesome."

He grins, running fingers through his wet, sloppy hair. "I'll admit, I didn't think you could figure something like this out."

Hair. Five fingers. Real flesh and warm blood and no scales. Human, human, human—all the way through. Inside and out.

"So…what now?" His voice jars me back. I look up, befuddled.

"What?"

His eyebrows knit together and he squints, wiping away several strands of goop stringing down from his hair. "What do we do now?"

A frown creeps over my features, reluctant. "Um…"

"Do we wash this stuff off? 'Cause it's kind of grossing me out." He shakes his hands, flicking mutagen that sticks to the shower walls and oozes down the tile. "And we'll probably need clothes."

My eyes widen because I only just realized that we're both completely naked. And covered in slimy alien fluid. In the shower. I look down and the heat rushes to my cheeks. I didn't realize how…exposed certain male organs were in humans. Rubbing my temples, I clench my jaw in frustration because I didn't actually think this far ahead. It's not that I didn't expect it to work—well, I was prepared for it not to work—but I was so caught up in the process and everything else it came with that I completely blanked on what we'd do after we mutated.

Stupid, I scold. Stupid, stupid, stupid—

"Donnie? Are you listening to me?"

Nostrils flare with breath. "Yeah." Think, Donnie. What now? "I'll have to switch the water back on and redirect the flow, but my machine needs to be disconnected from the plumbing system first."

"Okay." He watches me, but I keep my eyes elsewhere—not just because I made a huge mistake in not preparing for this moment, but because now I can't get the fact that we're both naked out of my head.

"…And the clothes?"

Clearing my throat, I spit the words out quickly, as if that will do anything to lessen the awkwardness. "I didn't bring any."

I don't have to be looking at him to see his face. It's that familiar expression, laced with a frown and tied up in a nice big bow of silence.

"Right," he mutters. "Of course you didn't."

~T~

{Raph}

The only reason I'm up at this ungodly hour is because I really have to pee. I roll out of the springy mattress, hushing the whiney protests in my brain with the promise of returning to bed right after, and my feet shuffle for the door. Pushing it open, I drag myself through the hallway, stifling a yawn that just about rips my jaw from the rest of my skull. That early morning, not-enough-sleep-yet crust is stuck around the rims of my eyes, and I rub it into pieces with the back of my hands, yawning again. I'm in front of the bathroom before I know it, but something stops me. A faint light comes from under the door—probably the nightlight Splinter put in for Mikey because he always thinks some crazy killer cow demon is hiding behind the shower curtains. But as my fingers wrap around the cold metal of the door handle, I stop. My senses prickle to life, stirring my brain awake despite the grumpy things throwing wads of complaints at the inner walls of my head.

I hear something behind the door—voices. Sharp whispers. Frowning, I lean my head against the wood and try to listen. I've seen Mikey up this early before because he's a weirdo, and sometimes Leo takes showers after training before his actual training because he's a weirdo too, but it sounds like more than one person in there.

My frown deepens, carving out my infamous scowl, and I press harder, straining my ears to pick up on the conversation.

"Seriously, Donnie—you're an idiot."

Wait…that's Leo's voice.

"Well, sorry I wasn't thinking too clearly! I was a little occupied, thank you."

And Donnie, too? What the heck are they doing in the bathroom, together, at almost four in the morning?

I practically flatten the side of my head into the door, dangerously concerned.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Leo again, using his little pissy voice that really grates on my ears. "The whole shower is a mess now, and this stuff's getting really sticky and not to mention gross."

My heart skips. I hear a few thuds and Leo swears.

"It's all over the floor, Donnie," he hisses. "If you were gonna make a mess, couldn't you at least make it a contained mess? I thought that was what the shower was for."

My stomach flips and my heart works its way into my throat. No, they are not. They are not doing what I think they're doing—

"I didn't anticipate—hey, Leo! Get back in here—you're dripping everywhere—"

"It's already everywhere," he bites. "Tch. This is the last time I'm ever letting you drag me out of bed at three in the morning."

I think my skin's paled a few hundred thousand shades, but as every awkward situation in my life, it only gets worse.

"Donnie! Dude, it's all over my gear! And my belt! How am I supposed to get that out now?"

"Well maybe you shouldn't have left them on the floor," Donnie quips, sounding equally frustrated.

"I didn't leave them on the floor!" Leo hisses back. Man, these two have made an art out of whisper-shouting. "You did, when you dragged me in here and ripped them off!"

Yeah, okay, no. My brain snaps like a twig and before I know what I'm doing, my foot smashes into the door and kicks the whole thing wide open, breaking the lock and everything.

"What are you two doing?"

~T~

{Leo}

So Raph comes bursting in here like a crazy person and just about gives me a heart attack. Donnie practically tears off the shower curtain in an attempt to cover himself, but I'm left standing right smack in the middle of the bathroom with nothing.

And the look on his face is priceless.

His green eyes are little pin pricks in a sea of white. He looks like he's about to faint or throw up or punch somebody—or maybe all three.

"Wha…" His voice creeps into a frantic shout. "What the shell?!"

"Shh!" I wave my hands in front of him, eyes wide, afraid someone else might hear and come running in.

This wasn't how I thought this would go. I thought Donnie would have a plan, something, anything, for what we should do after we've rearranged our entire DNA sequencing.

But no. Donnie the genius didn't think about the mess it'd make or the fact that we'd be naked—and now we're both in an extremely awkward situation.

"What did you two idiots do?" Raph continues incredulously. His hands snap to the sides of his head as if to keep his brain from bursting through the seams of his skull. "I don't—I mean how—What the—"

"Raph, please," I implore, desperate to shut him up before he wakes the entire city. "Just—just be quiet and let us explain!"

"Let you explain what?" he snaps. "What the shell happened to you two?"

"We, uh…"

Come on, think Leo.

Let's see, not only have I just rewritten my genetics to the point of physical transformation against the knowledge of everyone else in my family, but I'm also stuck in the bathroom with my equally human brother and covered in slimy alien goop. Oh, and I'm naked.

Yeah, I've got nothing. I point to the shower where Donnie is hiding and throw him under the bus. "It was Donnie's idea."

"Hey!" Donnie squeaks in protest. "…Well, maybe a little—but Leo was in on it too!"

I can't tell which color Raph is turning. Is it red? More green? Or is he just blanking out completely and on the verge of passing out on the bathroom floor?

"We, uh, mutated ourselves." I smile sheepishly and chuckle, despite none of this being funny. "You know…again."

His chest is heaving as if his lungs are going to pop, and he opens his mouth to say something—most likely to yell at us—but all that leaves is a slurred jumble of nonsense.

My lips purse in a concerned frown and I glance back to Donnie, who's watching with practically the same expression.

"Look, I know we're probably freaking you out right now, but you can't tell Splinter yet. Not until we figure something out and… Raph?" My eyes flit over to Donnie, but he just shrugs. "Um…are you okay?"

But he doesn't answer me. Instead, he makes a sloppy turn on his heels and stumbles out of the bathroom, barely getting past the doorframe without smacking his head. We both watch him stagger down the hall like a drunk, and then I lean over and quietly shut the bathroom door.

A moment of silence settles over us, and I cross my arms and frown. "I think we broke his brain."

~T~

{Raph}

No. No, no, no, no, NO—

I'm asleep. Totally dreaming. Totally having wacked-out nightmares because I tried Mikey's stupid pizza noodle soup.

This is not happening. It's. Not. Happening.

But some horrible part of me knows I'm awake, and I hate my brain for snapping the images I just saw like a camera in my head, and I hate that the whole thing's stuck on repeat and I can't stop thinking about it and oh my gosh—

What did they do? What did those two idiots do?!

I fumble through the dark, tripping over my feet because I can't think or breathe of function. Before I know it, I'm slamming through the door of Mikey's room and babbling like a madman.

"Mikey! Dude, Mikey—this is crazy, it's so crazy, you've gotta wake up right now and slap me or something before my head implodes and—"

He groans and smacks his hand over my mouth. "Too early, man."

Scowling, I swat his arm away and huff out a breath. "Are you not listening? Dude! Leo and Donnie just mutated themselves!"

He rolls over, giving me an odd look with drowsy eyes. "What?"

I grab his head with both of my hands and stare him dead in the eye. "They. Mutated. Themselves."

Confusion crosses his expression, swimming in those orbs. A small frown pulls at either sides of his lips. "But…we're already mutants."

"Oh, for the love of—just come on!" I snatch his arm and yank him out from the tangle of sheets. He yelps and stumbles after me, whining the whole way. And when I lead him to the bathroom our idiot brothers are hiding in, he promptly jerks his arm from my grasp and crosses them over his chest and explains he doesn't have to go pee.

"I didn't bring you here to pee, you nitwit," I growl. Turning from my little brother, I pound my fist on the bathroom door, forgetting that I busted the lock until it just swings open. Both my hands move then, covering Mikey's eyes as well as my own just in case those two dunces are still butt naked.

"Geez, Raph!" Leo hisses. "Would it kill you to knock?"

"Are you guys decent?" I ask hastily, shielding my eyes. "'Cause I am not going through that again."

I hear my older brother sigh in irritation. "Yes, Raph. We're decent… Sort of."

I hesitate before slowly peeling my hand off my face, and a breath of relief pushes past my lungs to see Leo's lower half wrapped in one of the towels. Donnie, however, is now wearing the shower curtain.

"No way." Mikey tries to shove past me, straining to get a look. "No freaking way!" His blue eyes widen in excitement as he finally pushes his way into the bathroom. "Dudes! You're human!"

"I told you!" Fists clench at my sides. "They mutated themselves!"

Mikey shuffles up to Leo curiously and stretches up on his tippy toes to measure their heights, but he's still shorter. I hear him mutter something in disappointment before shifting his attention to other things, like poking Leo in the arm.

"Hah," he giggles. "You're all squishy now." Mikey prods his finger into his shoulder and then his stomach before Leo's eyes narrow in annoyance.

"Knock it off, will you?" he hisses, swatting Mikey's arm away. Our little brother laughs again and backpedals, pivoting to face Donnie by the shower, who backs up and gives him a glare.

"Don't touch me," he growls firmly in his 'you-better-listen-to-me-or-I'll-smack-you-upside-the-head' voice. Mikey pulls his hand back with a huff, his gaze flickering between the two of them.

"Wait." His nose scrunches as he eyes the material they both have wrapped around their waists. "Are you two naked?"

"Yes," I answer, face buried in my palm. I will never be able to un-see that.

"First off," Leo starts. "We're kind of always naked. So when Donnie made the retromutagen and used it on us, we—"

"Oh!" Mikey suddenly shouts, making me flinch. "So when I try to mutate myself, everyone's all like, 'Mikey, you're so stupid!' But when you two wanna mutate, nobody cares!" He crosses his arms and puffs in irritation, lips pursing into a pout. "What the heck, guys?"

I slap my hand upside Mikey's head and he yelps. "Dude! They're freaking humans now! You're last concern should be about unequal access to dangerous alien chemical slime!"

"Plus that was a reject batch," Donnie adds from his hiding spot by the shower. "Not the same thing, Mikey."

Mikey's nostrils flare as he rubs the side of his head, glaring at me in accusation. "Yeah, whatever. So do we get to mutate now too, or were we not invited to your little 'Let's Get Naked and Covered in Goo' fest here?"

My eyes snap wide and I whip my head to the freckle-faced idiot. "Why would you want to mutate?! Just—just look at them! They're both…"

Pale, bare, no shell, no scales, no green, human, human, human—

I swallow hard as it all hits me like a wave. This isn't happening. It can't be happening. My brothers wouldn't…they couldn't…

I stumble back against the door frame, feeling dizzy again. Leo's giving me that familiar, questionable expression that he so often wears when he thinks I'm overreacting about something, but it isn't his face anymore—not the same one, not the one I grew up knowing and reading, despising all those annoying little looks, the way his eyes would narrow and his ridges would pull up and his lips would thin out like they're doing now—

He's not Leo—

But he is.

Those blue eyes are there, shining against creamy skin. I can see his face in the way his features round slightly, in the way his nose dips, in the space between the blue. He's there, carved out into something new but familiar, something foreign and so…so different.

And then there's Donnie, watching us sheepishly while he holds the curtain tight around his lanky frame—I can see him, too. His longer face, his sharper features, his high cheekbones and thin lips that are pulled into that same anxious look he's worn so many times before. Those red-brown eyes gleam with a mixture of worry and wonder, familiar and yet dark against his new flesh and bone.

It's them. It's really them, beyond the green goop stuck in their dark hair and strung over they're torsos; beyond the humanity that's suddenly sprung forth and envelopes the bodies I've grown with. My brothers are there.

I watch Mikey interact with them—I watch their expressions, hear their voices, see them moving and breathing in their new bodies as if it's nothing. And it seems so surreal and unnatural that I really don't know what to do. I'm so lost in this nightmarish combination of wonder and betrayal that I don't notice who's coming up behind me until I hear the booming voice.

"What is going on in here?"

We all practically jump out of our skin. Both Mikey and I scramble to block the door from Splinter, desperate as Leo and Donnie are to keep all of this hidden. If I can hardly handle it, how will our Sensei?

"Nothing, Master Splinter!" I shout frantically. I shove the door shut in an attempt to block him out, but his hand catches it in a firm grip and pries it open with ease, forcing me to slide backwards on the slippery tile.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" he demands, flustered and angry. "Why on earth are you all up and making so much noise at this hour—"

His heated words tumble to a halt as his gaze lands on Leo and Donnie, who've both scrambled back in hopes to find cover in the shower. But there's nowhere to hide now, and the evidence of their actions is splayed all over the floor, the walls, and woven into the flesh of their new bodies. Their human bodies.

Something flashes across Sensei's eyes as he stands there, motionless, and his hand goes limp on the door handle. His expression falls with his words, and it's then that I know we're all in serious trouble.

"What have you boys done?"