Bootyyyshaker9000: He did WHAT?

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: I couldn't believe it either, Don. He said that he'd never met someone with my kind of talent.

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: He called me a once-in-a-century genius. What was I supposed to say? 'No thanks, I'm happy here with a dad that throws broken glass at me for walking too loudly'?

Don squeezed his eyes shut. He spun on the kitchen bar stool slowly, trying to puzzle out what was going on here.

Bootyyyshaker9000: And… he made you sign an NDA?

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: Yep. Can't say shit about seeing him, meeting him, or the details of the contract. I just wanted to tell you the gist of it because I'm really excited.

'The gist of it' being that some wealthy businessman, out of nowhere, descended upon Baxter's doorstep and promised him everything he'd ever wanted; wealth, fame, glory, respect, and a chance to get out from under his father's heel. But what bothered Donatello the most was how quickly and how seriously this 'angel investor' had set plans in motion.

Bootyyyshaker9000: Minor emancipation is really kinda… extreme, doncha think?

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: You know what else is extreme? Threatening to nail my door shut if I'm caught 'talking to boys.'

Bootyyyshaker9000: Yeesh. And I thought my dad handed out some doozies for punishments.

A thought crossed Donatello's mind.

Bootyyyshaker9000: Does your Dad know about this?

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: No. I've only told you. I trust you, nobody knows we know each other, except April. I promised you I'd keep our thing a secret, and I have.

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: I don't break promises. But I'm not gonna lie, Donald. I'm feeling kinda hurt that you and I have known each other for almost four years, and I've still never seen you in person.

Donatello pursed his beak, rubbing his eyes. They were starting to feel dry and watery when he blinked. They'd finished their homework long ago. Now, they were just BS'ing.

Don had always felt guilty about leading Baxter on. At first, when April had mentioned a kid at her school who was a lot like him, it was just about his hunger for knowledge. His sensei was an amazing man, and he adored his father. But he wasn't equipped for the hard math and science Donatello craved. He desperately needed a tutor, and so April introduced them through the internet. Four years later, they were rivals and co-conspirators. Constantly one-upping each other with new wild mathematical proofs and experimental setups.

It was fun. It was fun in a way his brothers and April could never understand. But something bothered him deeply.

Bootyyyshaker9000: Don't you think it's just a little bit suspicious? That this angel in a three-piece suit drops out of the heavens and says he'll come and take you away from all of your problems?

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: Donald

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: Are you jealous?

Caught like a rat. He knew it was selfish. A very large part of him felt instantly suspicious and protective. But in his heart, it felt uncomfortably possessive. His feelings snarled together in a roiling knot in his chest, making it hard to tell where one feeling ended and the other began. His brothers liked to rib him for having an 'invisible friend'. Invisible or not, Baxter was very real. And so were Don's trepidations.

Don groaned, putting his fingers to the keyboard again.

Bootyyyshaker9000: Yeah, maybe a little. It's wicked cool and all. But I'm just saying, it seems a little too perfect. Just… keep your wits about you, will you?

There was a long pause. For a moment, Don worried that he'd upset him.

Cyb0rgSt0ckB0y: Dad's coming. Ttyl.

Well, that was that. Don closed Yahoo! Messenger and leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling of the kitchen. Something about this wasn't right. But for the life of him, he couldn't tell if he felt envy for Baxter's human life in a human world with human opportunities, or a premonition of something more dangerous.

He was too tired to unravel this. A few clicks, and he was reading the New York Times.

He felt queasy as he read the news. There was something about the anthrax attack on a prominent journalist for the Sun. The US had officially invaded Afghanistan. Microsoft was set to release their new operating system, Windows XP, on the 25th.

It looked like the Patriot Act was going to pass. That, in particular, made him feel very afraid.

He thought about the kind of surveillance the new law would enable the government to play. The idea that the shadows that hid his family were being drawn back by questing, relentless electronic hands made him want to cling to those shadows more. The same thing that shielded the bad guys was the same thing that kept them protected too. It was hard to think about sacrificing secrecy without thinking of sacrificing themselves.

He loved his anonymity on the internet. Being who and what he was IRL was stressful. In Cyberspace, no one could hear your frustrated screams. But a world where the government spied on your every move? It was a ninja turtle's worst nightmare.

"Only a matter of time." He grumbled.

He reluctantly pondered the solution. He'd been meaning to learn how to do this for some time, after all. May as well get started. Maybe it'd even be fun.

He cracked his knuckles, ran a few short commands, refreshed his VPN, and started hunting through his usual online haunts. Quietly lurking in his favorite programming forums, he downloaded a few things that his cohorts had published to the community. He always preferred free and open-source projects over supporting piracy, but beggars could rarely be choosers.

He created a new folder and opened up his favorite code-writing application. The cursor blinked in the name field, and he thought hard about what he wanted to name this new project.

He tapped a finger on his cheek thoughtfully, squinting at the screen with his dry eyes. He smiled.

"I'm gonna call you Sheldon."

Elisa cradled the stacks of microwave popcorn against her arms. She scuffed her boot against the ground, waiting somewhat impatiently.

The hallway outside of Derek's apartment was plain and drab. It wasn't the fanciest place in Brooklyn, but it was nice enough. The long rods of fluorescent light that flickered down the ceiling painted the space in ethereal, jerky shadows that were too pale to feel real. The peeling cream paint and holey carpet smelled like dust and cigarettes.

She knocked again, hoping that this time he'd hear her.

Just as she gave up and turned to leave, she heard the squeak of the door and the jingle of a chain.

"Elisa?"

She turned. "Hey, sleeping beauty. You didn't get stabbed by your spinning wheel, did you?"

"Ha ha." Derek said flatly. He peered around the door chain. "That popcorn?" He mumbled.

"And 'Angels With Dirty Faces'." She held up a VHS tape with a gleam of hope in her eye. "I figured we haven't had a movie night in a while, and I wanted to ask if you were free."

Derek sighed. It was a long, tired sound. Like he carried something so heavy that it pressed the air right out of him. "No. Not tonight."

Elisa's face didn't change. But her eyes darkened. She pressed, more earnest. "Well, at the very least, you wanna take this popcorn off my hands?"

There was a soft meow behind the door. A tiny gray face appeared behind Derek's shin, and put a fluffy paw through the doorway. Derek moved to put his foot in the way. "Dammit, Cagney, no. You can't go out."

The cat whined, clearly upset. Elisa smiled. "See? I told you he likes me. He misses me, how can you say no to that little face?"

Derek closed the door, and she could hear the chain sliding back. He pulled the door open more fully, his rebellious cat firmly tucked against his chest. He looked seriously displeased. But, regardless, he stood to one side and let Elisa in.

Derek's apartment was a little studio in Bushwick, with one window that looked out East towards Queens and Long Island. The walls were blue, the carpets gray, and the counters white.

He stood next to the glass coffee table in his bare brown feet, wearing striped pajamas and a hoodie with holes in it. He was taller than her by almost an entire head. Even though she was older, he always joked that she was his 'little sister' because of her height compared to his. It was just one of those silly things they did to antagonize each other, but they never meant anything by it.

She held out the movie to him. But he hardly looked at it.

"Elisa, why are you here?"

"To watch a movie with my little brother, what else?"

Cagney squirmed out of his arms, landing on the carpet with a thump. Insulted and disgusted at the thought of being held prisoner, he slunk off towards Derek's room, tail straight out as he ran low to the ground.

Derek sank into the peeling pleather couch, taking up all the room on the seat with his legs. He crossed his arms at his sister. "You're here because I quit the force."

Elisa's eyes closed. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."

"I don't see what the big deal is, Elisa. It's my life, I want to live it my way. You can't make me be a cop any more than Dad could."

"I know that, Derek." Elisa laced her hands behind her back. "But I'm still your big sister, and I still feel like I need to protect you. I'm worried that you're making a bad decision, and–"

"I'm not a kid anymore, Lisa." Derek snapped. "You don't need to protect me from bullies. You don't need to tighten my training wheels. You don't need to mother me when I already got a mom and she ain't you!"

"I'm not talking about Mom!" Elisa fired back. "I'm talking about you!"

"No." Derek shook his finger. "No, you're talking about Dad. You're talking about Dad and how I should live up to his legacy. Well, news flash for you. Dad is dead. And I'm still alive, and I need to make decisions that will keep me alive."

"I'm talking about Dad?" Elisa put her thumb to her chest. "I haven't mentioned him once in this entire conversation, Derek. If he mattered that much to you, then why are you running from his ghost like this?"

"That ain't fair, and you know it!" Derek rolled his legs off of the couch, standing up. "I was never meant to be a cop, so why should you care what I do now that he's gone?"

"He loved you, Derek." Elisa pleaded. "Just like he loved me and Beth and Mom. You joined the force because you idolized our Dad, wanted to be just like him!"

"Now look who's makin' a Freudian slip." Derek pointed at her. "I wasn't the one who followed him around the house begging him for stories about work. I wasn't the one who made her first badge out of cardboard. He was never home, Elisa! You wanted to be like him because he was never around for us, so you had some fantasy picture of him painted in your head, and you still do!"

"We need you, Derek." She persisted. "There aren't enough cops like you."

"Oh for the love of God, Elisa. Open your eyes! You seen who wears the uniform? You think that's a legacy I wanna live up to? Something I can be proud of? How Dad stomached it for 20 years, I have no idea. Because I wanted to die every time I looked in a brother's eyes when he begged me to take off the cuffs. How doesn't that upset you like it upsets me?"

The accusation hung in the air. Elisa was silent for several minutes.

"You were one of his fucking pallbearers."

"Because he's my dad." Derek crossed his arms and scowled. "Not because I'm–I was a cop. Stop trying to make this about my job, Elisa. Admit it. You think I'm letting him down by leaving. He let us down by never being a Dad when it mattered, just like the system let us all down."

Elisa turned away, walking into the kitchen to put the stacks of microwave popcorn in the cupboard. She held the door open, biting her lip, her back turned to him so he couldn't see her cry.

"At least Dad died for something, Derek." She hissed.

"Good for him." Derek growled. "Because he lived for nothing."

Elisa's fingers clutched the last cellophane-wrapped bag of popcorn. Cans of beans and corn stared down at her from the cupboard. She heard a soft 'Mrrrowr?' and felt Cagney pushing his head and tracing his tail around her shins and ankles. She reached down, burying her fingers in his long, soft gray fluff. She picked him up, and unlike he had with Derek, he didn't protest. He pushed his nose up under her chin, and licked the salty tears off of her cheek, purring.

She gave the cat one more squeeze, setting him down on the counter. She laid the VHS to rest next to the jar of pickled jalapeno peppers. James Cagney's face looked up at her through pen-scribbled glasses and smiled through a blue-ink goatee. The paper jacket was torn and taped in places, and in Sharpie along its spine was a clumsily drawn doodle of a girl with a triangle skirt and a boy with a squiggly marker grin.

It was their movie. It had always been their movie.

She turned to leave, hand on the doorknob. Derek didn't move. She turned her head over her shoulder.

"I love you, little brother." She said quietly.

She waited for the reply. 'I love you too, little sister'. But it never came.

She left.

Derek watched her go, locking the door behind her. He grit his teeth, and unfolded his arms. The shaking he'd been trying to hide made his fingers tremble as he picked up the VHS tape his sister had left behind. He turned it over, eyes tracing over every familiar rip and scribble.

His doodles, done by clumsy fingers. His handwriting, in wobbly letters across the back of the VHS. 'poprety of Derek + Lisa'.

He set the tape down, put his head down on the countertop, and tried to hide his tears from the world.

"I'm sorry." He whispered. "I'm sorry, Lisa."