Aubrey didn't know which was worse - that she had to ride on the back of an oversized red slider...

Or that she had to do it pantsless.

The leather strap under her butt tightened to a pinch as Michelangelo landed on the next rooftop.

Nope... it's definitely the lack of pants.

The early Autumn chill bit into the skin of her exposed legs, but she wouldn't complain. The piercing cold was the only thing keeping the nausea at bay. Aubrey didn't exactly like heights, and flying through the canopy of the city with nothing but a two-inch strip of leather and a hyperactive ninja between her and the ground was less than ideal.

Why did April have to be so small? Seriously, were those jeans left over from middle school?

Michelangelo hit another roof, sending a jolt through her knees as they collided with his shell. Her shoulder was already aching from trying to cling to the bony ridge, and she thanked the stars that the mutagen had her mostly healed. As it was, she was definitely going to have some bruises tomorrow.

"Sorry, babe," he called back over his shoulder. "We're almost there, though."

When they finally landed on the fire escape outside her window, Aubrey was barely able to stand. Her legs shook and her knees were swollen to the size of softballs. She leaned heavily against the iron railing as Mikey went to pick the lock on her window.

"Uhh... hey Aub?"

"Yeah, Mikey?" She groaned as she stretched her leg out through the heel.

"You sure you didn't leave this unlocked?"

Aubrey frowned as Michelangelo cast a worried glance over his shoulder. "No, I haven't unlocked it since I moved in. I was paranoid that I'd forget and leave it open."

"Uh oh..." With a gentle nudge, he pushed on the glass and the window swung inward on its hinges. The apartment was completely dark beyond.

But I always leave the hall light on... she thought. There was the barest sense of awareness creeping up her spine like a spider up a string. She moved past Mikey and slipped into the dark apartment.

"Whoah, babe! Hold up. You don't know what could be in there."

Aubrey didn't stop. The shadows of her home were all displaced. There was a hulking mound against her door, and the dim glitter of shattered glass dusted the carpet. When she reached the hall, she flipped on the light, but it sputtered and failed. Its orange glow had filled the living room long enough to know that it had been destroyed.

Mikey was suddenly at her side, on his T-phone.

"Aubrey's apartment has been hit. We're going to get what she needs and get out." A pause. "Got it."

He turned and looked at her with an expression more serious than she thought he was capable of. Michelangelo looked almost... dangerous in the dark.

"You have ten minutes. Get what you need, and only what you can carry. We won't be coming back."

Aubrey nodded and turned down the hall, briskly stepping past a fallen painting of mountains. There were long, jagged gashes in the plaster, as if someone had drug a blade down either side. They traced the path to her bedroom door, which was barely hanging on its bottom hinge.

There was a sick feeling welling up in her chest. She could see them in her mind's eye, tearing the picture frames from the walls, ripping the drawers from the chests. The bed had been overturned and the mattress sliced from end-to-end. The delicate arrangement of white poppies on her desk had been smashed to pulp and slivers of blue glass. The brunette snatched a soft-sided satchel from the corner and, after grabbing her overturned laptop from the floor, began shoving clothes into it.

Just a couple shirts, some underwear, ah!

With a wide grin, she shimmied into a pair of jeans and pulled a belt through the loops. She slipped her feet into a pair of Sperry knock-offs that had been tucked under her heavy wooden dresser, and threw a pair of tennis shoes into her bag.

"Five minutes," Mikey called from his position in the hall.

"Got it!" Hazel eyes drifted to the handle of bathroom door. It adjoined the bedroom, so Aubrey often left it standing open. Living alone in a one-bedroom flat, she didn't think anyone was going to see if she left her panties on the floor. It was pulled closed now and, unlike her bedroom door, seemed almost untouched. Her hand closed around the lever handle, tracing her fingers over the gaudy scrollwork. A shock like electricity jolted through her hand. A muted feeling of foreboding filled her brain with hot fog.

As if moving on auto-pilot, she pressed down on the handle and the door swung open. Her stomach churned with noxious heat as she looked around. Her bathroom looked pristine. A baby blue hair dryer lay coiled up on the corner of her counter, against the mirror. A plastic organizer, covered in rainbow-glittered Mod Podge, sat quiet and undisturbed to the left of the sink. Purple towels, stacked high in a brown wicker bin, held their place on the back of the toilet. Everything was exactly as she had left it, except...

"Oh no," she whispered, the fear pulsing through her with every heartbeat. The glass door on the medicine cabinet had been cracked, a deep green line running across the lower right corner. If it hadn't been for the glue backing, the glass likely would have separated and shattered on the floor. Cautiously, she reached forward and pulled it open.

It was empty.

Gone. Gone... It's gone! she thought, mind racing.

Her heartbeat thrummed in her throat like the beating of a hummingbird's wing. A small square of paper was taped to the inside of the cabinet door. Snatching it down, she read it under her breath.

"You will come to us, or we will find you.

Either way, you know what happens next, Miss LaRille."

"It can't be," she whispered, nearly dropping the note in her quaking fingers.

"Aubrey, we're out of..." Mikey appeared behind her, laying a three-fingered hand on her shoulder. He stopped mid-sentence when he felt her body shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. "Hey, babe, what's wrong? I mean, besides the fact that your apartment got trashed."

She jerked away from Michelangelo like she'd been burned, crouching down to wrench the door from the cabinets beneath the sink. Aubrey went through them almost manically, flipping over baskets and gutting their contents onto the floor. Finally, she pulled a slim amber bottle from the back and stood, holding it to her chest like her life depended on it.

"What's that?" Michelangelo pointed to the little vial in her hands. It was unmarked and through the clear plastic, he could see two round tablets.

Aubrey jumped when he spoke, her nerves firing like gunshots under her skin. "It's m-my medicine," she answered. Her hazel eyes were wild when she looked at him. "They took the rest. This was my emergency stash, in case I ran out unexpectedly."

Mikey only gave her a sidelong look. Needless to say, having grown up in a mostly holistic household, he was a little suspicious of modern medicine. It didn't help that his first encounter with an anti-parasitic as a teenager had nearly killed him.

"Alright, ya got everything then, babe? We need to bounce, and like two minutes ago." He gestured over the bony ridge of his shoulder with one broad thumb.

The brunette merely shook her head in the affirmative. Within a matter of seconds, they were gone from the apartment. Aubrey glanced back over her shoulder only once. The dimly lit windows of her flat, surrounded as they were by the dark metal fire escape, looked like the glowing eyes of an animal pressed against its cage. Another shiver of fear coursed across her skin, and she was glad to turn away from the sight.

But the feeling of being watched never left her.

"And no one followed you home?" Leonardo's voice filtered through the thin sheet that served as her bedroom door. A few wayward beams of light pierced the veil where moths had eaten through. They made no attempts to hide their conversation.

She and Mikey waited until the early hours of the morning, when Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello returned from the night's patrol. Apparently, they'd made a pit-stop by her address and found the high-rise in the same condition that they'd left it in. The brothers were standing in the living room. Her new bedroom, a revamped storage closet that smelled slightly of machine oil and old fabric, lay in the crevice of a wall between the den and the kitchen.

"Positive, bro. Even with the extra load, you think I'd let myself get caught?" Mikey's voice was all playful disbelief, and Aubrey wondered where the stone-faced mutant from her apartment had disappeared to.

"We just want to make sure, Mikey." If 'disgruntled' had a sound, she was sure it was Leonardo's voice.

They ought to make a dictionary of sounds, she thought idly. He could take up the spaces for 'disgruntled,' 'frazzled,' and 'peevish' all at once. Aubrey's mouth twitched in a smile.

The eldest brother was speaking again. "Was there anything unusual about the apartment?"

"Besides the fact that it was totaled?" Sarcasm dripped from every word, but he paused to think. "Well... She did panic when she found out they had taken her medicine. But it's okay, she had some hidden under the sink. Other than that, she was just staring down at some paper when I walked in."

"Medicine? Like a prescription?" Donnie piped up curiously. "Who would trash an apartment and take medicine?" She could practically hear the gears turning in his head, though it seemed obvious to her.

"Probably just some low-life cretin," Leo responded dismissively. "This doesn't seem like anything more than a common burglary."

She could hear the straps of Mikey's mask hit the side of his head as he gestured a hard negative. "I dunno, guys. She had a T.V. in there, and she brought a laptop back with her. What kinda robber would leave the stuff that's easy to turn over and take a bottle of pills?"

Aubrey peered through a break in the curtain and watched as Leo tapped his foot in thought. Donnie was the next to speak.

"Do you have any idea what the medicine was?"

"Uh-uh. The bottle didn't even have a label on it, bro."

Raph's growl was low and dissatisfied. "So what're you tryin' ta say, she's some kinda junkie, or somethin'?"

Apparently Leonardo concurred. "I don't know anyone else who would keep their prescriptions in an unmarked container. She does work at a pharmacy, so it wouldn't exactly be difficult for her to -"

"Hold on, guys!" Michelangelo stepped into her line of vision. "Aubrey said it was an emergency bottle, in case she lost 'em or ran out or something. We can't just go assuming the worst about someone we don't even know."

"That's the point, genius," Raph snapped. "We don't know her at all."

Aubrey felt sick. The longer she listened, the worse she became in their eyes. If things kept on at this pace, she'd be a wanted drug-dealer before the end of the next sentence. She turned her back to the wall, laying her head against the cool stone.

Leonardo sighed and rubbed his blue-masked face wearily. "So who do you think broke in, Mike?"

"Well, duh!" She imagined Michelangelo waving his hands about like a drunken air traffic controller. "It's obviously the Foot! I mean, they're the ones who shot her -"

Raphael cut across his words like a knife. "There's no proof, Shell-for-Brains. Me an' Don were there. They were attackin' alotta people."

Mikey made a tsking sound between his teeth. "Yeah, but if they know we brought her here, then they might want her to spill about the lair."

Donatello gathered his voice. "I can't believe I'm saying this but..." He sucked in a deep breath, as if his next words pained him. "I'm going to have to agree with Mikey on this one."

A full five seconds of complete silence passed before anyone spoke. Aubrey could almost feel the smug aura around Michelangelo, seeping through the curtain.

"You can't be serious." The incredulity in the voice of the blue-masked brother was palpable. There was a shuffle of feet against stone and the creak of worn leather.

"Well, y-yes, he has a point." Aubrey didn't envy the hard stare that Donnie was suffering if the tremor in his voice was any indication. He sighed. "Look, Raph and I were obviously seen with Aubrey, and possibly even tending to her. She disappeared from the scene immediately afterward, so it's a safe assumption that she may be under our protection - which she is."

There was a moment of silence, and Leonardo's next words lodged a cold shard of dread into her stomach.

"Then she's a liability we have to deal with."

Deal with... how? They're not gonna - She resisted the urge to scoot back to the corner of her cot, as far away from the threatening humanoid reptile as possible.

Leo continued. "I mean, can we even trust her? For all we know, if we take our eyes off her for a second, she'd lead the press straight back down here."

"Look, Sensei already instructed us to keep an eye on her. I'm sure if we explain the situation to her -" Don was cut off again.

"Wha' you think she's gonna be any cheerier 'bout being trapped in the sewers with a buncha mutant freaks?" Raph's voice was harsh, demanding. "You seen da way she looks at us already. All sketched out, like we're gonna bite her head off or somethin'."

Despite herself, Aubrey felt the cold pit in her stomach turn hot faster than greased lightning. She ripped aside the curtain and came into the room like a tornado, startling all four brothers where they stood in their semicircle. The wild-eyed brunette strode up to Raphael and, before any of them could stop her, jabbed her finger into the indentation of his plastron.

"Don't you dare try to pass off your insecurities on me - that dog won't hunt, my friend," Raph's irritation suddenly changed to a look of confusion as he met the eyes of his flabbergasted brothers. "I haven't given you so much as a wink that I think poorly of you, and here you are acting like I'd run from here to Memphis shoutin' your secrets."

Mikey's jaw hung slack as he watched the smaller woman unleash her rage on his hot-headed brother. But she suddenly whipped her eyes around at Leo and it was miracle he didn't stumble back with the force of her glare.

"And you!"

Leo leaned forward into the tempest, mouth set in a hard line, eyes glinting like polished steel. "What about me," he challenged.

"You have been skulkin' around givin' me the stink eye since I got here. I didn't ask to get shot. I didn't ask to be brought underground." Leonardo opened his mouth to retort, but she broke in before he could get the first word out. "I get that ya'll've been runnin' all over Hell's half acre for me in the last twenty-four hours, and I am much obliged to you for your kindness. But if you think I'm about to go runnin' back to the surface when someone just tore my home to pieces, you don't know shit from sunshine."

"This isn't kindness," he snapped, stepping forward so they were chin-to-chest. "This is duty. We are honor-bound to help those who need us, whether or not it endangers our way of life."

"If I'm such a danger, then send me back home!"

If he'd been human, Leonardo's face would have been flushed with ill-contained fury. "That is not an option. You'd be an even greater threat to us on the surface, where you can run off -"

Donatello tried to step in. "Hey, guys there's no reason for this to escalate like this." Both parties ignored him. Too focused were they on tearing each other down.

"Run off, where, Leonardo?" Her words were like acid, seeping into his skin. "To the press? They'd lock me up faster than a greased pig on Fair Day. Or maybe you meant to the Foot? Because apparently you think I have a death wish!"

They stared each other down. There was nearly a foot's difference in their height, so Leo towered over the woman. She didn't back down, but when she spoke again, it was in hard, even tones.

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm at your mercy down here. Looks like I got the short end of the stick, though, since you ain't got much mercy to give."

The fury had gone out of her, but her gaze was penetrating.

"Mercy's got nothing to do with it . If we're going to trust you, we need to know if there's a reason people might be attacking you." Leonardo folded his arms across his chest, nearly brushing her chin against rough scales.

She gave him a sardonic smile. "Pray tell - what do you think I'm hiding from you?"

They were all surprised when Leo looked away first. "Let's start with the medication."

Aubrey clenched her jaw, resisting the urge to hit the overgrown terrapin across his smug face. She spun on her heel and with a swish, disappeared behind the curtain. The rattle and clatter of things being overturned followed shortly after.

Michelangelo turned to his brother in astonishment.

"Dude, what was that all about?"

Leo's tone was even as he stared at the repurposed blanket as if it might burst into flame. "There's something she's not telling us, and we need to find out what it is."

Donatello was skeptical to say the least. Sure he'd only been watching her for a few weeks, but Aubrey didn't seem the type to be keeping some world-shattering secret. But he wasn't about to admit to his voyeurism when it might send his brother straight over the edge. Instead, he opted for the safer route. "Don't you think you're going a little overboard, though?"

Before he could answer, Aubrey returned from her room, pill bottle tight in one fist. She chucked it at Leo, who caught it without blinking.

"Don't ask me what it's called. It's got some name with thirteen or fourteen syllables, and it's completely experimental. I've only been taking it for about two months."

The scientifically-minded brother strode forward, taking the bottle from Leo's hand. The older turtle was compliant, but his eyes never left the woman before him.

"Who is it made by," Donnie probed. He popped the white cap off of the container and tipped the pills out into his broad palm. They were no bigger than a few millimeters across, printed with an elegantly scripted 'P' on one side, and the numbers '250' on the other.

"Panacea Labs."

"Never heard of 'em," Raph's words were gruff, but not accusing.

Aubrey could feel her heart rate slowing as she watched Donnie tip the pills gently back into their amber vial and hand them back to her. She took them with a grateful nod.

She heaved a sigh and turned toward the red-banded brother. "They're a fairly new company - only been around for about five years or so, I reckon."

"What is it used for?" Leo was unyielding, and earned an ascerbic stare from the hazel-eyed spitfire for his attitude.

She avoided answering his question directly, just to irk him. "It's supposed to be related to topiramate."

Let him stew on that one, she thought sourly.

Donnie turned to her, eyes round and wide behind his thick lenses. "Seizure medication?"

She was only a little miffed that Donatello apparently knew everything under the sun, but she nodded before answering briskly. "Complex partial seizures, refractory and non-responsive to traditional therapies. Since I was four."

Leonardo felt his anger settle like a stone in his stomach.

"So," Mikey's voice was hesitant. "Are you gonna like, pass out and start shaking?" Aubrey raised an eyebrow. "I mean, what if you swallow your tongue, or something?"

She blessed him with a sincere smile. "Honey, that's just a myth. Partial seizures are more sensory than anything else."

"Oh," he looked relieved. "That's good, I think."

Donnie chimed in. "Yes, partial seizures tend to disinclude the loss of consciousness and shaking seen in typical epilepsy. More often than not, those who experience partial seizures will hear, feel, smell or see things that aren't actually there. If the seizures are complex, the afflicted may experience any combination of those, depending on the part of the brain affected."

Aubrey stared at him, slightly open-mouthed. "You're just a walkin', talkin' textbook ain't ya? Is there anything you don't know?"

"Yeah," Raphael huffed, "When to shut up."

Donatello colored.

"Why didn't you tell us that you have a medical condition?" Leo's voice no longer held the harsh edge from before. He watched as her shoulders sank and for the first time since she'd woken up, he could really see the lines of exhaustion marring her face.

"I said that what I needed from home was of a personal nature." She looked down now, tugging at the loose tendrils of hair like a nervous child. "Shouldn't I be the one to decide whether or not to disclose my medical history?"

His mouth drew into a wide, thin line. "Have you forgotten that you have mutagen swirling around in your system? There's no telling how you might react to these chemicals now."

She heaved a lofty sigh before looking at him again. There was no acid in her expression. Just a weariness that seemed to seep through to her bones. The knot of regret grew tighter in Leo's stomach.

"You're probably right. My skin's already stitched itself back together unnaturally fast. Who's to say takin' a pill wouldn't send me into a tailspin?" She raised her shoulders and her palms to the ceiling. It was a surprisingly helpless gesture for someone who had, not twenty minutes prior, had been more wildcat than girl.

"But what am I supposed to do? I'm not supposed to just stop taking it, but I don't know how it's going to react." Her fist tightened around the bottle until her knuckles turned white. "Not like it matters anyway. I've only got two left, and I'm already a day behind. I can't exactly go down to the Clinic to get more since I'm on house arrest." Her voice had turned bitter, and she kept her eyes trained on the ground.

A long moment passed before Leo exhaled noisily. He laid a hand on the young woman's shoulder, causing her to look up in surprise. He forced a small smile.

"What if we go get it for you?"

She stared at him, slack-jawed an uncomprehending. Aubrey didn't feel too bad about her response, however, when she caught the shocked expressions on the other turtles' faces from her periphery.

"Why would you do that?" The wide-eyed brunette didn't think he could blame her for her misgivings, though. Indeed, his face contorted into a twisted version of a smile.

"Consider it an apology," he dropped his hands to his sides. "For being a overly suspicious."

Aubrey resisted the startled laugh that buzzed in her chest. It barely escaped as a very unladylike snort. "I'm sure it's justified. Lord only know what ya'll have been through."

"You don't know the half of it, sistah," Raph interjected.

"But," and she paused to meet their gazes individually, "regardless of what ya'll've dealt with over the years, I'm no hard-hearted Yankee. And I'm certainly no delicate Southern belle. I'm willin' to do what it takes to make this work for as long as it needs to, and I'll not tolerate being treated like some snake-in-the-grass without good reason."

She turned fully to Leonardo, then, and extended her hand. He was slightly taken aback by her forwardness. He met her eyes, icy blue to deep green, and the corners of his mouth barely tugged up in a smirk.

"Truce?" he asked.

Her grin was cheeky. "Where I come from, we call it 'mendin' fences.'"

"Either way." He grasped her hand firmly, and they shook twice. Suddenly, the moment was broken as Mikey whooped and began dashing around the room, hands in the air.

"Yeaaaah! We're gonna be friends!"

Author's Note:

Alright, guys! Another week, another chapter! I'm going to start trying to get these in on a regular basis, now. I have a personal goal set to have this story completed before school starts up again, and to have the second installation of the series done before the end of the year. So keep an eye out for an update every Sunday! This chapter may have seemed a little less action-y, but keep it in mind! You've been given quite a bit of foreshadowing, whether or not you know it. *insert evil laughter here* I might have to re-categorize this story as suspense or drama and romance, rather than action. But it's about to get good. :3