So here I get to show while Scruffles is obviously sad to give up her flowers, she is still willing to do it to help someone in need, I find it refreshing to write a rich kid character who isn't a spoiled brat but instead was raised to try to set a good example for everyone else, did a similar thing with Sam the Earthworm in my Fictionpress stories, it's so common to write rich characters and spoiled and unpleasant I realized here's a novel idea! How about writing a rich person as nice and generous?

So Scruffles was obviously not happy about having to give up her beautiful flowers, but hearing about two teenagers being regressed in age to grade school children sounded serious...But also now she knew how Lovelace got the flowers...It was seriously spooky! Like...Divine intervention...Granting Lovelace's wish to find the most beautiful flower to give as a birthday gift because that rare flower was needed elsewhere!

"Excuse me…" Stripes said "...Can I come along with you? This age regression case is extremely interesting! I'd like to document it for the study of medicine…"

Don turned to the Mutant Tigress sternly "One...You're not exactly in a postion to be asking for special trips after the trouble we had to go through to rescue you, and two, these two people are my friends and this has been an extremely distressing situation for them I'm not going to violate their privacy just to satisfy your curiosity!"

Donatello's words stung like nettles, but Stripes knew everything he said was true.

"All right…" Leo said as he got down on one knee and knelt before the Little Maltese Pup Mutant "...I'm very sorry to have to take your birthday present…"

"It's all right…" Scruffles sighed as she wiped away a tear "...It was enough to just have those beautiful flowers for a little while and see them shine…"

Leo felt his heart break seeing Scruffles trying to be the bigger mutant it was clear it still hurt because she loved those flowers!

"Class is over for today." Leo said Scruffles, let's go get the flowers…"

So with class not even really happening today, Stripes went to her tree apartment, reaching into her giant backpack she still had with her since she left the lab that created her, she brought one of the few things she brought with her that might be seen as a 'frivolous' thing that took up space that could have been filled with more wilderness survival supplies but Stripes couldn't bare to part with it, her steel drum...When she was a little mutant cub and was listening to different kinds of human music, when she listened to calypso and other Caribbean music, her ears twitched listening to the sounds of the steel drum and she asked what kind of instrument made those 'twinkling' sounds and she wanted to make music like that...So her 'Father' the scientist who took primary charge of raising her got her a personal sized steel drum and hired a professional to teach her how to play.

Whenever Stripes would sit in the lab's yard in her favorite tree and play her drum it seemed the nearby brooks outside the boundaries of the fence would sing along with her playing…

Taking her drum over to a small ledge in Forest where she could see the rushing river, Stripes took her drumsticks and began to play the familiar tunes she used to play...And once again it seemed the river gurgled along with her playing, was it really all just in her head? Or with the revelation that Lovelace was able to form a portal in the air by wishing really hard, maybe a lot of mutants have 'little magics' that they can't always control or that come and go

So...Got the idea for Stripes' steel drum from an RPG my sister got me for my birthday called Wanderhome there's lot I don't like about it, I don't like that it's full of modern gender idealogy thus I'm never playing it as a game however at the moment it does have some interesting ideas for stories and characters not related to gender nonsense that in particular can be very handy for fleshing out a newly created character