The lair was quiet, as the four turtles and the cat sat with their eyes focused on the red carpet, as the rat disappeared behind the doors to his chamber. None of them knew exactly what to say or do. Raph was the first to break the silence by getting up and marching directly towards his room with a steady pace. Slowly, his three brothers started to get up as well, all walking in different directions without even looking at each other. Angel watched them part, heaving a small sigh. Whatever was happening, it had started with her coming into the picture. Hadn't it? This was nothing like when she had first met them. They had been a family, but now they were more or less feeling like they were on their own – or so it seemed. If only she could somehow reach their minds and try to read what was going on. And still… perhaps she wasn't supposed to know, if it was a "guy's thing", but she highly doubted it. Boys couldn't possibly be that complicated. When she was alone in the large room, Angel stood up looking around. It was a little too quiet for her taste. She walked to the TV screens and sat down in the old, worn out couch, crossing her arms over her chest and drawing her legs up along with her tail. A piece of white paper laid next to her in the couch, along with a pen. A furry hand reached down to pick both the paper and the pen, bringing it up for a closer inspection. It wasn't many months ago, that Mikey had tried to teach her how to draw comics. But as Donnie had pointed out the same day, perhaps Mikey was the wrong teacher… His doodles weren't the best. In fact, the sai he had tried to print down on the paper looked more like an oversized fork than a weapon. And then there were her own drawings, pushed in between Mikey's masterpieces. They weren't that bad, really. In the left corner, there was still some space left and it didn't take long for the pen to reach the corner and start drawing on it.

Donatello looked down on one of his old devices in the small lab, he had installed in the lair in the old subway wagon. At this moment, he wasn't really sure what the device had been invented for. Sad, but true. It was something that he really never had found a fitting purpose for. And therefore, it had stayed in the lab for better times. It was about four months ago, that he had started building it, but as he was starting to lose whatever was keeping him going on his science, he had forgot the meaning behind it. He lifted it up. At first, it just resembled a black box, nothing more. A lid was placed on the side of it, making room for some sort of containment – but what? It was put down rather roughly, the sound of metal hitting the wooden table ringing through the part of the lair Don was in. Why couldn't he remember anything? What was happening? He knew that it had a logical explanation, just like everything else. And the fact that his brothers were having trouble of their own should probably trigger something, but no matter how hard the turtle tried, he couldn't think of anything. His eyes went up to see Angel sitting in the other end of the lair, her golden eyes catching his for a second, before they were brought down again. He had probably startled her, when he had slammed the box down into the table. Stupid cat.

'No, it's not her fault,' Don promptly told himself, not sure how he could think this way of the feline. She was his friend. But at the moment, everything just seemed to irritate him. Don closed his eyes, taking a series of deep breaths. He wasn't himself. He hadn't been for too long. Why was it that he hadn't consulted his brothers or his own sensei, when he felt like everything was slipping away from him? Because he was afraid? Or because he deep down didn't have faith in them? He opened his eyes again, and fixed them on the box. He had to try and figure out what it was for?

Darkness suddenly surrounded him, making him flinch. He couldn't see a thing.

"Don!" Raph's voice echoed through the lair, as the light from a candle emerged from behind a corner. That damn electricity had died on them again.

"I thought you had it fixed," Raph stood in the doorway from the dojo, holding the small candle. Splinter had placed them everywhere after the shut downs had grown more rapid.

"Alright, I'm on it," Donatello frowned, catching a flashlight on the table and turned it on. Grabbing a bag of tools on the way out of the lair, Don didn't think about the fact that he was probably the one least capable of handling the problem with electricity at the moment. Fixing these bugs was his job, and his brothers counted on it. The purple masked turtle stepped out of the lair, happy to finally be alone for at least a short while.

He soon reached the cabin of wires, that controlled the electricity flow to the lair and the rest of New York – and as always, he couldn't find any problems. Rubbing his templates, he took one look at it again. These power failures would have been logical, if a rat had gnawed on the wires, but they were all intact. And if they were having problems, at least some of New York should have had these problems too, which they hadn't. April had informed him, that they hadn't had one power failure for the past half year. And surprisingly, Don had lost count on their black outs.

Don rubbed his head again. A headache was starting to build up in his head, slowly growing bigger. It wasn't the first time. They were coming more often as well, growing in intensity each time. He let out a frustrated growl, slamming the cabin door shut before he decided on walking back to the lair. But he stopped right before the entrance, right until he could see light suddenly pop up in the lair again. Just like it always did. He entered, turning off the flashlight as he placed the bag where it belonged.

A small cough made Don turn to look next to him, looking down at the old rat.

"Did you find the source of the power failures, my son?" Splinter asked, his hands placed on his back. Don grimaced a bit.

"Weren't you meditating?" Don retorted without thinking, suddenly hearing his own words slip out. That hadn't been what he meant. It sounded so rude to let it out that way.

Splinter blinked a bit. He had only been in his room for meditation for perhaps fifteen minutes. That had to be a record for his fastest meditation ever.

"To be honest, Donatello, I have found it quite hard to meditate lately." Don turned around, studying his master. How could he find it hard to meditate? It was what he did almost every day. Well, this was different. But if Splinter had felt something was wrong just like the rest of them, why hadn't he said anything?

"Perhaps," Splinter continued, "We should find ourselves a more neutral place. It seems to me our home is starting to hold a scent of disruption." Don wasn't quite sure how his father's words were meant to be understood, but the rat was right somehow. There was a tense feeling in the lair, and the feeling was filling the space of the small sewer lair. But a neutral place? Were they supposed to move out?

Splinter could see the questions in Donatello's eyes, and he really wanted to tell him that he had already planned what they were supposed to do. But to simply go out and find a new training ground isn't easy, when you're a mutant. The right place needed to be picked carefully, as it could be their home for perhaps a long time, until things were turning back to normal. If Don hadn't been so under the weather, maybe he had had a good place in mind, but he didn't. And that only made him more frustrated.

"I guess you're right, sensei," Don simply replied. He somehow didn't care that much. He just wanted things to be normal again. His eyes shut up, as he saw Leo come into the living room and sat down in the couch next to Angel, who was still trying to push a drawing or two into the few areas of the paper that was still white. Leo had turned on the TV's, watching the news. A blond woman was talking about how the weather was starting to get worse after a pretty warm summer. The meteorologists expected it to rain a lot this fall. Without anything better to do, Don found his way to the chair standing next to the couch and sat down, letting his eyes fall over his brother and the winged cat. Angel's wings were pressed against the back of the couch, though the higher parts of her wings were free from the pressure of the furniture. So they were clearly all bored, something that a game of chess could have cured easily at least for the two of them. But both he and Leo had avoided any contact with the chess board lately. It reminded them too much of the fact, that both their concentration and their logical thinking were nothing like what it had been. And in the meantime, Angel had gotten the upper hand. Don hadn't really helped her that much with that dream catcher. It was only a few months ago, when Angel had demanded an explanation for the weird thing, that Don had told her the basics. And suddenly, Don's mind raced. Angel hadn't gotten unfocused – it was the exact opposite. She was pulling in more information in such a short time than he had expected her to. But she had changed a bit, though he couldn't pinpoint exactly how – but she definitely had. She still seemed rather insecure to him, perhaps a bit afraid of doing things the wrong way.

"Leo, could you turn down the sound a bit." Donatello was dragged out of his thoughts at the sound of Angel's voice. Leo's eyes went from the TV to the feline, looking her in the eyes.

"It's not very loud," he protested, not even motioning for pressing the button on the remote.

"Well, I think it is," the feline tried again, but it didn't seem like she was making a clear enough point. Leo's finger still laid motionless on the remote in his hand, as his eyes were still fixed on her. Their eyes seemed to fight for the winning position, as none of them looked away or blinked.

Well, it wasn't loud. The sound was pretty moderate to Don, perhaps even a nudge lower than it usually was. The ninja blinked, seeing that the psychological war was still raging between them. Weird, since they had seemed like something close to best friends after Angel had followed them home.

"Geez Leo, just turn down the volume," Don sighed, making both the cat and the turtle look at him with weird looks on their faces. They hadn't expected his interference. And still, Leo didn't bend. The volume stayed exactly at the same point, making the feline frown and stand up. Her eyes shot a glare at Leo, before she trotted off in defeat. Leo, on the other hand, simply turned his attention back to the screen, not a single mine showing either victory or anything. But he could soon feel the pair of eyes holding their gaze on him, and he turned to look back at Don.

"What?"

Don didn't want to argue with his brother. It was probably the right thing to ask why he acted like he did, but Don didn't have the strength to carry on an argument for the time it could take to come to a solution. He simply shook his head and let his attention go to the TV instead.

Angel's feet hit the ground hard, as she walked hastily towards her room. She frowned to herself, angered that Leo behaved like he did. As she swept past Raph, her wing accidentally hit him.

"Hey, watch it," Raph growled. He had been on the way to his own room from the dojo, finding that he had gotten too tired from killing the punching bag.

"Bite me," the reply shot back, the feline not even caring to slow down or look back. Raph furrowed his browns, not letting Angel go so easily. He demanded an apology. With a quick step, he shot forward and grabbed the cat's arm to turn her around. But her response wasn't exactly what he had expected…