Mikey spotted it first. That was because he couldn't stay with the group. He was always darting off, running ahead, going in every direction without any plan.
It drove Leonardo crazy.
Sometimes, though, Mikey's unsanctioned scouting forays did result in valuable intel.
"Bat Signal!" Mike shouted, before he remembered to lower his voice. He came skidding back around the corner of the tunnel to rejoin the rest of the family. "They put out the Bat Signal!"
Immediately, Leo set aside the possibility of lecturing Mikey on his impetuousness again, and pulled up his mental list of strategic goals for the next meeting with David and Dr. Lamb.
Well, maybe it wasn't accurate to say he set aside the idea of lecturing Mikey. He was, after all, naturally gifted at holding a lot of options in his mind at the same time.
"Can we go right now?" Mike was asking Splinter. "Can we can we?"
Splinter stroked his beard, and automatically Leonardo thought about what answer he would give, if it were his decision. (Some day - Splinter had been telling him for years now, in a series of weighty sermons - all such decisions would be his.)
They were on their way to search for provisions, but they weren't in dire need of anything. They had deliberately taken a detour to see if David and Dr. Lamb had hung the Bat Signal. Though useful, the communication system they had created was ambiguous - it didn't indicate whether their long-lost brother had a pressing need to see them, or whether he simply desired a social visit.
"We can go now," Splinter said, before Leonardo was done thinking.
("Speed is always, always a risk," Splinter had told him, during one of the sermons. "Delay is also always a risk," he had added, and Leonardo had despaired of ever becoming a competent leader.)
"Or rather," Splinter went on, "we can go as soon as you recover your ability to be stealthy."
Michelangelo immediately silenced his cheering - he did know how to be a ninja, he was talented, if only he could learn some discipline - and in a moment they were heading up through the manhole, up along the fire escape, and in through the window.
Leonardo scanned the room as soon as he entered.
In some ways, it was like his own home. There was a couch and a talking box - a television, he and his brothers now knew perfectly well it was called, but somehow the name talking box had stuck - and a private space for each occupant, and food neatly packed away in cabinets. And in other ways, it was different. It had a soft covering on the floor - which had startled him the first time his feet touched it, and which he still found unsettling - and there was a distinct lack of open space for practicing ninjutsu, or for engaging in any other kind of physical exercise. No wonder David didn't seem to have an ounce of muscle on him anywhere. Aside from the fact that he was desperately ill and very picky about his food.
"Guys guys guys," David said, as soon as they all came in and shut the window behind them. In some ways, he was like Mikey. "You'd better sit down."
Dr. Lamb laughed. Leonardo didn't understand what was funny, but he laughed too as he took a position on the couch, just to be sociable.
David gave him a weird look.
"Are you ready for this?" David said to all of them, and without waiting for a response from any of them, he said, "My team found a cure for us."
Silence.
"A cure for who?" Raphael asked. Troublesome as he could be, he had a knack for protecting Leonardo from all kinds of things the eldest didn't want to deal with.
"For us," David said, spreading his hands to encompass the room. "All of us."
"But we ain't sick," Raph said.
"Of course you are," David replied. "Haven't you looked at yourselves?"
"Oh yeah." Mike smoothed a hand over his bald scalp. "We are goooood-looking. Especially me."
"What -" Raph started, but Leonardo, who was beginning to have an awful feeling about where this was going, talked over him.
"David, a cure for what?"
"A cure for everything," David said, with a strangely rapturous expression on his face. "A cure for endocrine disruptions, but also for hearts and hands and excess bone growth and - guys, we can be normal humans."
"But we're not humans at all," Mike said.
"Yes, we are," David said. "Look." He grabbed a stack of papers from a side table, and started tossing them towards the couch, some in the direction of each brother.
"Otherkin," David said, which was the word printed in big letters at the top of Leo's stapled packet of papers. He had never seen that word before. "People who are convinced that they're animals in human bodies. They say they have the souls of tigers or horses or ravens. Pineapples, even. Weird, but -" He pointed at the sheaf of papers Raph was holding at a wary distance from his body. "Transgender people. Boys who say they're really girls, or vice versa. A male-to-female transgender person, for example, has the anatomy of a man, but feels like - identifies as - a woman. It used to be classified as a mental disorder, but now science is finding that people who say they're the opposite gender, in a very real sense, are. And -" He pointed at the pages Mikey was studying with horrified fascination. "Apotemnophiles." He said it as though it were a common word he'd been using for years. "Physically normal people who want to be amputees. They can use their limb, they know it belongs to them, but they feel that it's not supposed to be there. Usually treated with cognitive therapy, but sufferers who succeed in obtaining an amputation are almost always very satisfied with the outcome."
He looked at them all, emphatically. "We are humans. We identify as humans. We're just in the wrong bodies. And now there's a cure."
Leonardo didn't have to look at Raphael and Michelangelo to know they were all of the same mind. "David," he said slowly. "We don't identify as humans." He hoped he was using the strange phrase correctly. "We identify as Turtles. We are Turtles. And so are you."
"I am not a turtle!" David shouted, in a way that made Leonardo fear he was going to pass out, the way he did when they had first met. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Dr. Lamb was already rising from her seat. "I am a human! I want to be a human!" As he grew more agitated, even the cat pricked her ears in his direction. "I want to be able to go outside! I want to be able to wear clothes that fit! I want to be able to type on a normal keyboard! I want to be able to kiss my girlfriend without feeling like I'm going to swallow her face!"
"You have a girlfriend?" Michelangelo asked.
"Of course I have a girlfriend," David said acidly. "Her name is Anna. She's hot."
"You tricked us," Leonardo said, steering the conversation back to what really mattered. "You said you needed our help to get a cure. We bled for you, David. And you betrayed us."
David quieted, his eyes turning sad. "I never lied to you," he said. "I thought you understood. I thought you'd be happy for me." He took a step backwards. "I thought you'd be happy for yourselves."
"We are happy," Raphael said fiercely, because he always defended most passionately those things that he was most afraid of losing. "We don't gotta change into something we're not." He threw his sheaf of papers on the floor. "I'm embarrassed to call you my brother."
"Then don't," David said, taking another step towards his room. "I didn't betray you, but I don't need you anymore. I'm going in for surgery to start the transition process."
"I have not consented to that," Dr. Lamb said loudly, but David only slammed the door on all of them.
"I am so sorry," Dr. Lamb said into the ensuing silence.
"You're sorry?" Raphael shouted. "He fucking sold us out and you're sorry?"
"Raphael," Splinter said quietly. He inclined his head toward his okaasan, as he had begun calling Dr. Lamb. "We will support David in any way we can. Please let us know how we can be of assistance."
"I'm - I'm afraid for him," Dr. Lamb admitted. "This surgery he's talking about… I don't know if I'm going to let him have it. But -" She reached over to pluck the pages from Michelangelo's hands, and Leonardo saw a flash of a grossly injured leg, mutilated and half-severed. "Look what people do to themselves when they feel this way and can't get treatment."
Leonardo looked at the upside-down photo on the page in Dr. Lamb's lap. He thought about what David had said. And he began to sense a plan forming.