April sulked in the steel folding chair in that small, tiny, boring room. She honestly expected cops to not adhere to TV stereotypes. This time? Honestly, she didn't know if she was disappointed, nervous, angry, or just bewildered. She didn't have handcuffs on–there wasn't a point, with a cop outside the only door–but the room was decidedly cold and small and miserable enough to feel like a jail cell.

She made up her mind. She hated this.

The door opened. It was Detective Maza, again. April pulled back in the chair a bit as the woman glided into the chair on the opposite end of the small table, as easily and comfortably as a cat on its favorite couch. She folded her fingers under her chin, her eyes relaxed and nonchalant.

It was silent for several minutes. A moth circled the flickering fluorescent light over their heads. There was only the tiny tick, tick, tick of its little head ramming into the light as it guttered and buzzed like a broken lightsaber.

After a while, April spoke first. "No good cop, bad cop?"

"No, but believe me when I say I'm one of the good cops."

"You detained me for texting my friend for a ride home."

"Your friend?" Maza asked.

April's face paled. Right to remain silent, you idiot. She mentally slapped herself. Maza raised her eyebrows, the smile on her lips subtle and assured. First point of this match to the detective.

"My grandma-friend." April tried to correct herself. "She's an old friend. And, well, by that I mean she's really old and a really good friend, so I call her my grandma when she's actually my friend."

"So you call your young male friend, who did a terrible impression of an old woman from Boston, before you call your parents?"

"What's wrong with having grandma-friends?" She parried the question.

"You seemed awfully well-prepared for someone who came to the station to try and report a stolen car. I saw that codebook and scanner radio in your bag, when it ripped. You've been listening to police chatter, and you know the law well. Hell, most adults don't know the difference between 'arrest' and 'detention'."

April puffed out her cheeks. "I want a lawyer."

"That means calling your parents for one."

"I want a phone call."

"If you're okay with me listening in."

"I want to know what my charge is."

"So far? Being a nosy brat isn't quite a misdemeanor, but you're working on getting there."

April crossed her arms, and glared down at the bare concrete floor. Elisa could tell that the kid wanted to say something. That there was some word, some accusation just barely bitten back. She had a feeling that if she could peel back the mask for even a tiny peek, she would see a young girl with a lot on her mind. But Maza couldn't prise anything out of her. She'd slipped because she hadn't closed her guard before, but now the young woman wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

Meanwhile, April fumed. What she would have given to have even an ounce of her friends' skills in ninjutsu so she could get out of this place. This cop was hard-willed, slick, and impossible to fend off forever. In April's head, this moment felt just as dangerous and serious as two fencers, circling one another in a duel, looking for an opening in the other's defenses, unable to see behind each others' masks.

For several more minutes, Elisa and April traded barbed questions, slippery evasions, subtle threats, and neither of them got any further. April refused to yield any more information, leading Maza in frustrated circles. April fought hard to phrase her words carefully, filtering them and sterilizing them before they left her mouth to avoid giving Maza any more ammunition.

"Well, unless you plan on staying the night here, you may wanna weigh your options." Maza shrugged. "Tell me the story behind what's in your backpack, call your folks, and tell them you broke curfew. Or, we start looking at real charges. That last one isn't going to look so good for your job at the school paper. As far as I know, most high schools in New York have a pretty strict out-of-class conduct policy for student staff."

April's heart stopped beating for a moment. She felt the prickle of cold sweat and raised hairs on the back of her neck. She leveled her gaze at the woman across the room, letting one single breath of ice lace her question. "Is that a threat to a minor, officer?"

The voice was cold. The eyes were terrified. Her mask cracked, a hairline fracture. Point to the detective.

Maza hesitated. She struck a nerve. The squirmy, angsty teenager waving around her constitutional rights disappeared for a moment in her eyes. And for the faintest instant, she felt like she was looking in a mirror at a smaller, younger version of herself. Right down to the tangled frizz and fiery defiance. A kid forced into a very adult world much too early, trying her damndest to understand it so she could defend herself against it with the only weapon she had; her wits.

This wasn't worth it. Tony Drakon, Don Vicioso, the Purple Dragons, not to mention the positively enormous pile of missing persons filings to go through. She had real work to do, and she was wasting the night on a kid who was already at least as stressed and exhausted as Maza herself was.

She finally spoke. "No. It's a warning. I'm letting you off the hook." Detective Maza stood up and tucked in her chair. "Do you need a ride? For real this time. I'm going to let you go, but only if you go straight home."

April blinked, confused by the surrender. "What?"

"I'm a busy detective, I've got real crooks to chase. It's pretty clear that you're a bright kid, and I mean really bright. But if you keep this up, your luck might just run out. I want you to learn that lesson and be more careful." Maza leaned on the table, palm flat on its surface. "If you go out there like this, you acknowledge the risk that one of those crooks might hurt you, or one of the good guys might get the wrong idea about you. And I can tell, you want to be one of the good guys."

April O'Neil shrugged on her backpack, that ragged hole leaving a ribbon of yellow ripstop fluttering past her belt. She held her books of codes and spycraft loosely in the crook of her elbow. "Detective Maza? We are the good guys."

Right there. There it was again. That tone, that look in her eyes, the set of her shoulders. Elisa knew that look well. She'd seen it reflected in her father's eyes, in the eyes of the older cops, but never the rookies. It was something she saw in the mirror every morning.

This was a girl who had seen Death, and made it blink first.

Kid, you're not going to like this, Elisa reluctantly thought to herself. But you just got yourself a new guardian angel.

"You ever ride shotgun in a police cruiser?"

"Is that allowed?"

Elisa Maza smirked, "It is, as long as you're wearing your seatbelt and we make no detours." She pushed open the interrogation room door with her hip, and tugged the radio attached to her shoulder. "16123. I'm 10-6 with a juvenile needing a 10-59. I'll be 10-8 in about 2-0 minutes, over." She let go of the call button and jerked her head in the direction of the front door.

"I'm the one who's great at naming things! I'm telling you, we're either calling it The Battle Shell or the Shellraiser!" Mikey hung onto the back of the front passenger headrest, gently swaying as their decidedly not-yet-cool old Volkswagen minibus turned onto the highway interchange. "Turtle Van is so lame."

Mikey wore an orange hunter's safety coat, his abominably obvious fake beard hanging from his neck by a string like a very hairy necklace. He wore a camo trapper's hat that said, in obnoxious neon orange lettering, 'Women want me, Fish fear me'.

Leonardo flipped on the blinker of the van as he merged into traffic. He wore a blue puffer coat with a white fur-lined hood. A pair of sunglasses, a white beanie, and a red scarf obscured his face from the other drivers on the road, and a pair of cheap children's mittens protected his hands from human eyes. "Well, you can call it whatever you like when you're driving. While I'm the one driving, it's the Turtle Van."

"Laaame!" Mikey moaned loudly.

"Not lame. Accurate." Donatello held up a finger. "We've never 'raised shell'. Honestly, I think we've done a decent job of keeping it down to some tepid mischief, in the grand scheme of things. We're ninjas. Why would we want to stand out?"

This he said, wearing a black and purple puffer coat of his own, very candidly supporting the Utah Jazz. A purple neck gaiter covered his neck and chin, and the long indigo tail of the stocking cap on his head danced whenever he turned his head. Mittens off, he dabbed another dollop of liquid foundation on his cheeks, spreading it around in an attempt to look like he was any shade other than a warm, olive green.

"But how cool would it be if we had, like–" Michelangelo gestures to the barren, empty wall of the van. "–a big old panel of super cool secret buttons here, and like, a rocket launcher here–" He began pointing at every nook and cranny of the van.

"Mikey." Leonardo raised his voice.

"–and a motorcycle that we can just push–"

"Mike."

"–out the back for chasing bad guys in traffic! Yeah! Or–"

"Michael."

"–we could put the rocket launcher on the roof instead! So we can take down choppers!"

"Michelangelo, sit down and buckle your shell into that seat before I wax it." Leonardo scolded, reaching around the driver's seat and yanking his brother's arm by the coat sleeve into the bucket seat before turning back around to focus on the road. "Don't make me turn this bus around."

Mikey sat slightly stunned for a silent moment. He grumbled, doing as he was told. "Sheesh, who died and made you sensei?"

"Just get your disguise on." Donatello held out the bottle of liquid foundation to his brother.

Michelangelo looked at the bottle of liquid flesh, reluctant and repulsed. "What's the point?" He pushed it away. "It's late at night, no one's gonna see us. The streets have been empty since the Eleventh. And besides…" He looked up at his brother, his eyes wearing age and worry far beyond 15. "Do you think they actually even care if we're green or not?"

Leonardo grunted in the front seat, contributing nothing to the answer. Donatello took a deep breath. His amber eyes softened. Mike wasn't used to seeing his brother like this, maskless and wearing human clothes. It felt wrong. All kinds of wrong.

It reminded him of how much he despised seeing his family hiding, like hunted animals.

"Mikey." Donnie said gently, voice full of a sad sort of resignation. "You know the answer to that." Don held the bottle out to him again. After a moment's consideration, Mikey resignedly accepted it. It was an old argument, and one he didn't want to bring up. Not tonight.

There was a buzz in Michelangelo's pocket. Reflexively, his hand went to his hip and accidentally flung the bottle of makeup all across the wall of the van, painting the interior wall, ceiling, and part of the floor with a stripe of flesh-toned cosmetic.

"...Whoops."

Donatello groaned. "You gonna paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel inside the van, Michelangelo?"

"Your name-dad wishes he could make art like mine. Even my accidents have flair." Mikey retorted with a smirk as he flipped open his phone, eyes scanning the scant lines of text. His eyes lit up. "Guys, it's from Raph! He said that he's on his way to the Brooklyn Bridge."

"What? When in the world did he leave the stadium? I thought we told Casey to bring him back to the van!" Leo angrily wrapped his mittens tighter around the steering wheel. "Donnie, can you get the map, see if we can find an exit to take?"

"On it, Leo." Don affirmed, unfolding the map in the passenger's seat and studying the streets with a pen-light.

"Mikey, text Raph and tell him that we're halfway from Meadowlands to Weehawken, we'll meet him there in…" He looked over at Donatello. "What do you figure our ETA is?"

"Counting the post-game toll booth line at the Lincoln Tunnel? If we drive like maniacs, about 40 minutes."

"Right." Leo acknowledged. "We cut through downtown, cross the Brooklyn Bridge, pick up the two knuckleheads, and then we'll go straight home."

"I'm almost out of minutes," Mikey scowled, tugging the scratchy fake beard away from his face. "I have, like, maybe a five minute call or a couple texts left before I'm out. But then again, that's if he'll even check his phone."

"Kuso-ttare yarō." Leonardo cursed Raphael under his breath, exhausted and angry. "Let him know, tell him to keep it short. Borrow mine if you have to. Don, any word from April and Casey?"

"Nothing from Casey." He shook his head. "But April's safe and has a ride home. She said she was fine with changing plans and having us meet her back in Manhattan."

Leo nodded. "Great. We can all rendezvous at April's apartment and finally go home."

There was a solid minute of silence. Leo fumed behind the wheel. Don studied the roadmap. Mikey looked between his brothers, the itch for chaos ticking the back of his throat. "Bet you a pizza supreme that it's all gonna go to shell before midnight."

"MIKEY!" They both scolded.