Why did it me take a bajillion months to post this? Reasons :) Sorry. Thanks for caring enough to take a look, my lovely readers, new or returning!

Chapter 13 – Investigations, part 1

"You really think Mikey and Donnie wouldn't understand-" (pauses to think) "You really think Donnie wouldn't understand?"
Raphael: Karai's Vendetta

.

"Booyakasha dude
I skateboard all four seasons
Pizza. More Pizza."

Zen-like, Mikey slowly opened his baby blues and smiled at his older, taller brainiac brother. "Owned it! See? Not so hard. Your turn."

Donatello sighed into the long, hot sewer tunnel they were walking through. He worked algorithms, not poems. "Mikey…", he started, wiggling out of the challenge.

"No, no, no", Michelangelo systematically interjected, "If Raph can make up a haiku, then you have no excuses."

Wait, Raph made up a what? Aw, shell. A mutant-turtle-sized glove was thrown down. Don could not refuse.

Another of Donnie's sighs echoed down the hazy sewer tunnel, this time in defeat. He tried to let the words flow and tap his creative juices. Walking alongside his brother, he squared his shoulders and focused his mind:

"Just like Gravity,
Evolution is a Law
Of Life on Earth"

Donnie stared very hard down the tunnel. Mike looked sidelong at his brother. Lightly, he asked: "Dude, say 'Earth' again?"

"Urth"

"That's what I thought. Short one syllable. You need a fifth syllable."

First, anger. "Mikey, why do you even care about this stuff?" Then, dejection. "I'll add it to my long list of things I'm crap at." Another sigh.

Donnie trudge on, trying to ignore the heat and stink of the sewer. They'd taken off their stolen trench coats long ago, the pleasure of pissing off Raph outweighed by the sweaty stick of the heavy clothing. Both coats now sat at the bottom of Donnie's satchel. At least they were close: the Foot's high-tech chop shop was sure to be air conditioned, if only to keep the hot parts cool. With all the smart phones the Purple Dragons boosted for resale profit, Don was sure to find what he needed to repair his cracked T-phone.

He didn't feel bad taking tech from the Foot. The best stuff, the stuff Don wanted, the Foot made themselves, for Clan phones, and to evade the NYC police geek squad. And, now and again, they had pieces of Kraang tech in their clean room. There was no good reason that Donnie could think of to not steal those alien components from his enemy.

Mikey broke Don's reverie. "Aw, don't be like that. You know I love playing word games with you, Donnie. Would your sighnami have anything to do with April?"

Donnie held his tongue while he thought. Reluctantly he confessed, "Yeah, Mikey, it does."

"Well, I for one think that it's totally awesome that you guys finally went out for pizza together."

Donnie did a double take."Whaa..?"

"Aw, don't be coy, D. April 'fessed up that you guys enjoyed some pizza together, by yourselves. That's gotta be worth bein' happy about, right?"

"Mikey, sometimes - no, wait - all the time, you're just the weirdest thing."

Michelangelo puffed with pride. "I try, bro. I try." Then, more gently, he prodded. "But, honestly, D., you seem so dejected and freaked out about this. I'd expect you to be over the moon! It's April! - What's up?"

Donatello didn't have a clue how to explain how he felt to Mikey because he couldn't even crystalize for himself what was going on. He decided to roll with Mikey's accidental metaphor.

"Well, OK. So we went for pizza together. And that IS awesome! More than awesome!" Quietly, Don reiterated to himself, 'More than awesome'. Then, speaking to Mikey again:

"It's like, the BEST pizza that you could ever imagine, and then, even better than that. Life altering pizza."

Solemnly, Mikey nodded in full understanding.

"And then, it's like you wonder – how long can this pizza last? Will I be able to keep making this pizza? Or, what if I can, but the people sharing the pizza discover that they have different views about pizza and what pizza means to them?

What if April gets tired of this particular pizza, and wants to try something new? Maybe she realizes that pizza's just the start of culinary adventures into the greater world into which the pizza cannot enter or participate. And…well..."

Donnie swallowed.

Staring straight ahead, he finished his thoughts. "…What if it's all too much? What if eating pizza alone is just – simpler. Less likely to end with people you love getting bored or upset or disappointed in you?"

In disbelief, Mikey stopped walking, put his hands on Don's shoulders and locked eyes with his brother.

"D., Pizza is NEVER boring. There are just too many possibilities!

But, look, you totally get it. Pizza is NEVER just pizza. Even when it's just pizza. It represents how you feel, reflects who you are, and who you want to be."

Mikey's throat tightened and his voice rose in pitch.

"I never thought I'd see the day when anyone else fully appreciated the momentous deep-dish depth of 'za."

Gone verklempt, Mikey leaned in and enveloped his brother in a bear hug.

Donnie leaned into the hug. A large amount of the tension that he had been carrying ebbed into the floor, and seemed to be carried away in the trickling stream of sewer water.

Unbidden, Don let out a tiny, choked sob. Neither brother could tell if it was from crying or laughter.

Suddenly, Mikey asked, "Donnie, what if you could build a time machine, but it took the same amount of time to travel as the time you traveled to?"

Donnie was pretty sure that his confusion was terrible to behold.

"OK, I can see that my thought process is going over your head. Let me break it down for you. Let's say you wanted to travel five minutes into the future. And it takes your time machine five minutes to travel there. Would you still be in the future?"

"Oh my day, Mikey."

"I thought so." Michelangelo smiled, satisfied that he'd refined the laws of physics.

Donnie shook his head. "Mikey, I think that your time machine would put a fine point on the soundbite, 'The future is now.'"

"Donnie, if you could go back in time and change anything in the past 24 hours, would you?"

Without skipping a heartbeat, Donnie replied, "Not a chance."

"Good, because I texted Leatherhead to come join us."

"Leo! LEO!" Raph hollered as he strode across the Lair looking for his brother. Where the (*$% was Leonardo? April had phoned him in some sort of a crisis, Raph needed to leave the Lair stat, and it was still daylight out. He wanted his trench coat, dammit!

"Fearless, you better not have borrowed my stuff again!" Crickets. Not a peep from his brother.

"ARRRRG!" Where was he!? Fine. Whatever. He didn't need a stupid coat for camouflage. Or Leonardo. He'd go find April on his own.

Walking through the Lair's living area, Splinter sighed at his boys' detritus. Pausing beside a bean bag chair, he bent down to pick up a balled up piece of notepad. Curious, Splinter straightened out the crumped paper and stared at the printing:

Trench coat hides me well.
Even better than my shell.
In New York City.

Smiling to himself, he tucked Raphael's haiku into his robe, a rare keepsake, of a gruff son.

Thank you for reading! Hopefully, I'll update before 2017. Ha ha. Ah-herm.