Chapter 4

-Recruitment-

Donatello leapt from one rooftop to another and came to a stop across the street from April's apartment, he noticed that the light in her bedroom was still on. Take a moment to think it over he decided to pay her a little visit. After her fight with Leonardo she decided to stay away from them for a while, and apparently to April a while meant two weeks, two days, and seven hours and thirty minutes. Not that Donatello was keeping track.

He jumped down to her balcony and stopped mid-knock when he saw her pacing in her room, a tablet in one hand and an energy drink in the other. In between sips she stopped to look over at a white board in the middle of her room. Donatello leaned in to get a closer looked, it was some sort of crime map with pictures of the missing students and how they were connected to various things.

Donatello also noticed the mountain of books on her bed, each one opened to a specific page but he couldn't read what was on those pages at the angle he was standing. He decided he'd had enough creeping and knocked.

Startled by the sound, April nearly dropped the tablet on the ground but managed to keep it balanced. Then she saw him at the window and waved him in. "It's unlocked." She said.

Donatello opened the window and stepped inside "Hey, what's going on? What's all this?" he asked gesturing to the bed of books.

"Just some homework, it's easier for me to work on everything all at once. Except I'm a little stuck on calculus." She said, "I could use your help on this problem if you have a moment."

"Calculus? Sure, let me see." He said, taking a step closer she turned her tablet toward him. "Wow, this computer is amazing."

"Focus, please." She said, not trying to be rude to the one guy who could save her life right now.

"Oh, right sorry." He looked the problem over, "Okay, there is a simple way to think about this problem. A little trick." He said.

"Really? Thank god, I was going to lose my mind over this." She said. "Could you show it to me?"

"No problem." He said taking a seat on the ground with her.

"April, remember when I used to help you with your homework at the lair?" he asked, he missed having her sit at his desk while he worked on something in his lab.

"Yeah, it was surprisingly relaxing to be with you guys, even with Mikey making a mess all the time." She smiled, and it melted Donatello's heart, it had been so long since he'd seen it.

"I want you to come back…. I mean, you can come back if you want." He said.

"Not until I find the missing students." She said. "They were from my school and it happened right under my nose, I should be helping people not letting them get kidnapped."

"April…" he sighed, he knew he couldn't convince her to come back, she was just so stubborn. So he decided to focus on what he could do. "Okay, show me the problem again." He

"See I can only figure it out up to this point." She pulled up her notes and showed him her twenty failed attempts to solve the problem. "This is the first one and these last three are the same type."

"You are on the right track, here's where the trick comes in." he picked up her notebook and a pencil and drew a few lines before showing it to her.

"Oh." April stifled a yawn. "I get it."

"Yeah, so see if you just carry this whole top portion of the problem to this side of the equation you get…" his instructions came to an abrupt stop when he felts something heavy against his shoulder. He looked down to see that April had fallen asleep against him, he blushed. This was nice. "Okay, April, I guess that's enough." He set the notebook down and carried her to the bed, clearing off some of the books before laying her down.

Donatello knelt down next to the bed and watched her sleep for a moment, she looked so frail and small, and he wanted to keep her safe no matter what. Love was hard sometimes, you want the person to be free but at the same time you want to lock them away so nothing bad will ever happen to them.

"I know you'll probably never love me back or even if there is a place for the sort of couple we would be; that doesn't matter because I will love you until the day I die." He resisted the urge to kiss her and instead turned to something more productive, April's leftover homework.

The next morning April woke to the aroma of caramel and hazelnut. Glancing toward the smell, she saw it, a latte from her favorite café sat carefully on her nightstand. Before she could wonder who it was from she saw the sticky note on the side of the cup.

Good Morning,

Have a great day at school

-D

April smiled and took a long sip of her latte, it was still hot which meant that Donatello had only just left. She wished she could see him and thank him for all his help but she'd just have to visit him after school.

Her tablet blared to life, her alarm going off to signal it was time to start the day. She found the tablet on top of a neatly stacked pile of books. When she lifted it up another note fluttered to the ground, she picked it up and read:

Don't be upset but I finished the rest of your homework. As for calculus I left the formula to my little tick in the notes of your tablet. You can do it. He ended this note with a drawing of his smiling face.

How could she be upset about that? It was really helpful and it wasn't as if the rest of her homework was hard, she knew most of it anyway.

April hurried to the subway with her latte in one hand and her tablet in the other, she had to submit some of the work via the online classroom. A half an hour trip through the city on the subway wasn't long when there was work to finish up and soon she was there, just outside Manhattan, Springhill Academy.

Back at the lab, Donatello hooked the power supply up to his computer, it had taken a week but he finally found a way to connect it. Studying with April helped relax his mind enough for a solution to come to him. He smiled at the thought of April's face when she found the latte and her finished homework.

Donatello was distracted from his thoughts when his computer screen flooded with information. "Fascinating." Donatello said.

Casey, who was in the lab welding together a new addition to his sports weapon arsenal, stopped welding and turned his attention to Donatello. "You figured it out?"

"Yeah, the fascinating thing is that it's putting out a weird magnetic energy." Donatello gave the power supply a little poke and it emitted a signal that Donatello couldn't hear.

"GAH, what is that?" Casey asked covering his ears. "It's the worst sound ever."

Donatello quickly poked the supply again and it stopped. "Sorry Casey, what did you hear?"

"You couldn't hear it?"

"No. Huh, strange." He said, "Maybe it's a sort of dog whistle but for humans."

"I hate alien tech." Casey said, suddenly his mind flooded with thoughts of April. "Something's off with April. I haven't seen her in days, how is she?"

"Not good, she's still working hard even without coming to training." He said, "In addition to a crazy amount of homework she's planning on finding the missing students. She already managed to steal a key. She's going to use it to sneak into the headmaster's office to look for clues."

"How do you know that?" Casey asked.

"I saw a whiteboard in April's room. On it was her plan." He said.

"It was?" Casey asked, "Well, what's the plan? If we can get there before she follows through on it and can solve the case. She'll have a reason to take it easy."

"I really don't think she wants help with this. She feels responsible because it happened on her watch." He said.

"Who cares, she's our friend and she doesn't know she's working too hard. This is an intervention."

Donatello thought it over for a moment, it WAS their responsibility as teammates to protect each other, even from themselves. "Okay, fine but we can't tell anyone else, if April finds out, she'll kill us."

This place is creepy." Casey said as the pair slipped through the school grounds undetected. "It's so quiet." Casey came to a stop just outside a classroom, he had to make sure there were even people there.

He looked through a window and was surprised to see students sitting perfectly tall in their seats, their eyes focused on their individual tablets. "Weird"

"How so? It looks like they are all engaged in the lesson." Donatello said.

"Hello, these are high schoolers we're talking about. No one is goofing off, staring at their crushes or using the tablet to text someone else."

Casey's ears perked up, he could hear a faint sound coming through the open window, it was that sound again. Where was it coming from? That's when it hit him. Each student had their headphones plugged into their tablets. "The dog whistle sound, I can hear it, it's being sent through the tablets."

"Why aren't they freaking out like you did?" Donatello asked.

"Beats me, they like studying, they obviously enjoy torture." Casey paused, "Stay here." Casey said and dug the power supply from his hoodie pocket. "I'll get April."

"Is that the power supply?" Donatello asked, "Why did you bring that?"

Casey retreated a hockey stick and pointed it in Donatello's direction. "Don't worry about it."

"Casey, what are you doing?" Donatello reached back for his Bo but before he could grab it Casey threw down a smoke bomb and vanished.

April hurried around a corner and stopped at her destination, she only had a few minutes before the lady who usually sat at the front desk came back. April slipped the key from her back pocket and unlocked the door to the headmaster's office.

As April opened the door a hand came up behind her and covered her mouth, April struggled and twisted her out of her captor's arms. She brought a hand up to slap the offender but paused when she recognized who it was.

"Casey? What are you doing here?" April asked, relief washing over her for not being discovered by the enemy.

"Something seriously messed up is happening here." He said. "So I came to rescue you?"

"Rescue me? I don't need rescuing."

"Come on, April. You and I both know that's not true?" Casey said. "You don't need to fool yourself anymore, the Turtles and I have this under control. Let us worry about saving the world."

April's eyes narrowed, was he serious? "Have you guys been going on missions without me?" April's worst fear had come true, they didn't need her.

"Listen Red, we just want to lessen your load, Donnie suggested that we lay off calling you in for missions so you could focus on getting your power back."

"Donnie did?" April held her fists at her sides, he anger had never been this bad, though lately she felt helpless and edgy. "That jerk."

"Whoa, hey, the guys just want to keep you safe. You don't have to fight when you have them."

"Are you serious? What the heck Casey?"

"Come on, April, you know you can't do this by yourself. Without us you're just a girl."

"Stop!" April could feel her throat constricting, she knew they felt that way but to hear it out loud. It was too much. April took off running down the hall and sought refuge in a teacher's office.

A sinister voice ran through Casey's mind, "Very good, Casey, now that you've planted the seeds of doubt you may go, leave the power fragment and forget what you've seen here."

"April O'Neal, what brings you here, child?" Evixus stood up from their desk and stood in front of her. "You poor lonely child. All of your friends are deserting you."

"How do you know that?" she asked but then she knew. Evixus was the head of the Psychic Program and a powerful psychic himself.

"While that may be true." they said, reading her mind. "But I don't need my power to know that you are just a normal teenage girl, lost, abandoned and hopeless." He said. "What my powers do tell me is that the only thing your friendships were built on were your special abilities." Evixus placed their hands on April's shoulders.

April shuttered as pain ran through her, she was a failure and a fool for believing that her friendships were special to anyone but her. "Stop. That can't be true."

"You don't believe me?" Evixus said. "Perhaps I should show you."

The world around April turned black, she was standing alone in an endless void of darkness, until the turtles appeared around her. "Guys, you're here."

"Look at the weakling, she'll never be strong enough to help anyone." Raphael said.

"It's too bad your power is gone, that was the best thing about you.' Michelangelo said.

"A team is only as strong as its weakest link, we should cut you out before you drag us all down. I could never call someone like you, sister." Leonardo said.

April was on the brink of tears when it was Donatello's turn, she had to believe that he was on her side. She quickly found out that she was wrong when he spoke.

"You were my best test subject, now that your power is gone, there's no reason for me hang around with you." He smirked, "The fact that you think anyone could ever love you might be worth studying though."

"Stop!" April fell to her knees, sobbing, the world returning to normal. Having her suspicions and fears splayed out struck her right in the heart.

"Come now, child, I can return your dormant power, you are strong enough without your so-called friends. You don't have to live like this anymore."

"Y-You can give me my power back?" April looked up wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Yes, but I need something from you in exchange."

"I'll do anything."

"Good." Evixus lifted a hand and placed one finger to April's forehead. April could feel her body warm up, her power prickling back to life. It was amazing and it felt like home.

"What do you need?" she asked.

"Not what but who." Evixus said, "Bring Donatello to me."