Leo was beginning to regret having tried so hard to take an interest in Don's hobbies.

About a week after they got home, Don sat him down in front of the computer and showed him how to log in to that game he had spent so much time on before the whole thing with the Technodrome happened.

"Are you sure you want to play Strangeness now?" Leo asked uncertainly. He didn't want to deny Don a little bit of fun when he had been working so hard and struggling so much, but with Shredder missing, Karai still at large, and Hob and his crew up to who-knew-what, it hardly seemed like the time for games.

"I don't want to play," Don replied. "I want to talk to Harold."

But first he had Leo open something that didn't look like a legitimate part of the game world. Leo followed his brother's directions as best he could, typing and clicking with painful slowness.

"And now click the microphone," Don instructed him.

Leo did so, and Harold's voice came unexpectedly - for him, at least - out of the computer.

"Donatello! It's good to see you online again. Everything is going well, I trust?"

"As well as can be expected," Don replied. "Listen, Harold, I need a diagram of Metalhead's wiring."

"A what?"

"A diagram of Metalhead's wiring," Don repeated slowly. "Surely you have one."

"No, I don't," Harold said. He sounded distracted. "I don't have time to document my genius."

"Really?" Don replied. "You've been logged on to this server until 3 AM for the past five nights."

"How could you possibly know that? You haven't been on -" Harold broke off, then started again. "Did you hack the ISP logs? I could have you banned from the game for that."

"That's productive, Harold. Get off the computer and draw me some schematics."

"I'm in the middle of a very important campaign!"

"I'm in a robot. The specs. Right now."

"Oh, fine," Harold grumbled. "But if my Level 60 -"

"Click the X," Don murmured to Leo, and Leo was only too happy to comply.

Two days later, Don had another task for Leo.

"Would you go over to the lab and get those drawings?" he asked.

"Are they done?" Leo replied.

"If they're not," Don said, "you can encourage Harold to finish them in any way that you like."

"Then I guess I'll be home either right away or tomorrow morning," Leo said, and he departed.

The trip didn't take long. "Harold?" he called out, as he walked into the lab. "It's Leonardo."

The scientist appeared from around a corner, already shoving a sheaf of papers at Leo. He looked haggard, exhausted. "Come for your brother's diagrams, I suppose. Here they are."

Leo glanced at the drawings - chicken scratch to him, but he hoped they were what Don was looking for - then carefully folded them and stowed them in his belt.

"You're still here," Harold observed. "What do you want?"

Leo laced his fingers uneasily. "Can I... see him?"

Harold made an inscrutable expression, then beckoned for Leo to follow.

The corridors were silent as they walked along - not towards the cooling unit, Leo noticed. The lab seemed to be deserted aside from the two of them. "Where is everyone?" he asked.

"Angel went home," Harold replied, "Alopex vanished to wherever you mutants go when you're not bothering me, and Honeycutt went back to Burnow Island. He said that some things still need to be settled with the Technodrome, and he's the only one who can go there, now that the place has been terraformed."

Leo thought about this for a moment. "Don could go." Then he was distracted from this idea as Harold showed him into a small room.

Don's body was lying in a hospital-style bed - Leo chose not to ask where it had come from - pale and limp. The consciousness-transferring helmet was gone, replaced by an awkwardly-situated oxygen mask, IV poles, and softly-beeping machines.

"We managed to stabilize him a bit," Harold said. "He's progressed from suspended animation to a persistent coma."

"In English?"

Harold sighed heavily. "He still needs to be on life support, and he won't wake up, but at least we were able to move him out of the freezer."

"Can we take him home?"

"I wouldn't recommend it."

Leo looked at Don's unnaturally still body. "Is there any chance of further progress?" he asked quietly. "Will he ever be able to go back?"

"I don't know," Harold replied, "but if he can't, he owes me a new robot."

Leo looked at the scientist incredulously. "Honestly, you can't build your own new robot?"

"Mm." Harold glanced at Don's body, and a look Leo didn't entirely like passed over his face. "Yes, maybe I should." For a moment he seemed to fade into the same distracted state that so often came over Donatello, and then his gaze snapped back to the present. "You're still here. Go on, shoo. Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Sorry for taking up your time," Leo murmured, and then he headed home.

"Here you go," Leo said, and he held the rumpled papers patiently until Don was able to grasp them. Then he waited while his brother read the diagrams.

"I have to say," Don commented, "Harold may be an infuriating lab partner, but he does very elegant work. I would have just…"

"Just what?" Leo prompted, when Don never finished the sentence, but his brilliant brother was already walking away, distracted by some new idea.

Leo had the nagging sensation that he had meant to say something else before that inevitably happened, but he couldn't think what it was.