Hi! Welcome to my new story! I'm still writing Deeper than Blood, Stronger than Fate, but those are just a collective bunch of stories that don't really necessarily fit together. This is a new multichaptered fic that I have been thinking about for a while.

If you are ever curious about updates or where this story is going I might have more information on my tumblr textsfromturtles from time to time, where I will also be posting this story.

Chapter 1: Lost

"Don't worry, April, no matter what happens, I'll find you! I promise!"

That was the last thing Donatello said to her as the purple void swallowed her completely.

April could have never predicted this would happen to her three days ago when the turtles had brought home the strange black box. However, strange unpredictable things seemed to always happen around her, so maybe April should have seen it coming.

The turtles had found the black box in a Kraang ship, and after Donnie received some unexplainable readings from the box, he suggested they take it home so he could study it further. After careful scans -the box would not open and the unstable energy readings told Donatello that prying it open would be nothing but disastrous- Donnie was able to conclude in complete shock that they had in their possession a time travel device.

"Sweet!" Mikey had exclaimed when Donnie explained the nature of the box. "I can go back to this morning and tell myself not to eat the last of the pizza and then go forward in time again and have the pizza all to myself! Past Mikey has always been a real jerk about eating the last of the pizza and not saving any for Future Mikey!"

Raph slapped him up-side the head.

Donnie rolled his eyes. "Time travel doesn't work that way, doofus," he said as if it were obvious. "When it sends a person 'back in time' it sends them to a different time in a different dimension; one almost identical to our own. For example, if you went back in time to tell Mikey from this morning not to eat the last slice of pizza, you're actually going to meet Mikey from this morning in a different dimension. If you were to come back home, you would actually be coming back to our dimension, and if you were to look in the fridge, you would see that there still is no pizza, because you did not change the past in our timeline."

Leo hummed thoughtfully. "I get it! This is just like episode 24 of season 3 of space heroes!"

"Oh yeah, that episode!" Raph said sarcastically. "How could I forget that episode?"

Leo glared at him. "You're just jealous because I get what Donnie's talking about."

"This sounds like lame time travel," Mikey said with a pout.

"It's not lame time travel," Donnie denied, glaring at his brother as if Mikey had insulted him personally. "It's the only theoretical sound way of doing it! And the safest. Think about it, this way you can't mess up your own time stream and create a paradox. You may end up altering the time steam in the dimension you visit, but none of that will affect you once you get back home. And even if you alter another dimension slightly, as long as you don't do any real harm, no one in that dimension will notice. It's time travel without the risk of the grandfather paradox; it's brilliant!"

The three turtles stared at their genius brother.

"You've been thinking way too hard about this and you only just discovered what it does," Raph commented.

Donnie scowled. "It's just basic science fiction. April thinks it's cool, right April?"

April blinked when she realized all eyes were on her. She smiled awkwardly. Truthfully, Donnie's explanation of time travel had taken her mind elsewhere.

"Oh… yeah, it's pretty cool," she agreed. "I was just hoping it could… you know, stop the Kraang from taking my dad in the first place." She shrugged, trying not to look too disappointed. It wasn't the type of time machine she had been hoping it was.

Mikey gasped and grabbed her by the shoulders, rapidly, but still gently, turning her to face him. April blinked in surprise. "But that would mean that you would have never met us! You wouldn't do that, would you?" His eyes were large and desperate as they blinked up at her pleadingly.

April's heart plummeted. That hadn't been what she had meant at all. Yes, she wanted her dad back, but to trade meeting the turtles to do it? She couldn't trade one part of her life for another; that would be like replacing one gaping hole in her heart for another.

Glancing around, she realized Mikey wasn't the only one waiting for her answer. They were all watching her, except for Donatello who avoided her eyes exactly when she chose to look at him. He looked suddenly sad and guilt stabbed at her heart.

"No! No of course not!" April assured them. "I didn't mean that! I would never want to change the fact that we met. I just… keep thinking that if we had a second chance we could do things differently. Or maybe… stop my dad from being mutated. That's all I meant."

Leo smiled at her reassuringly. "We know what you meant, April. Mikey's just being dramatic."

"Am not!"

April shrugged. "But it doesn't matter anyway because that's not how the time machine works, right Donnie?"

"Umm, right," Donnie agreed hesitantly.

"Well, I'm going first!" Mikey decided, reaching out to grab the box.

Donnie slapped his hand away. "No one is using it at all! I still barely know how it works and I don't really know if it would be a one-way trip or not. I'm not sure if the box travels with you or if someone else has to retrieve you."

"Where is your sense of adventure?" Mikey demanded.

"Donnie's right Mikey, it's best if we don't touch it. It won't help us fight the Kraang so we should just leave it alone," Leo said in his leader-voice as April called it.

April hadn't meat to touch the device. Days later, she had just been shifting through Donnie's notes on his desk, with his permission of course, looking for a specific piece of paper. The problem with being best friends with a genius was when he asked you to find a specific piece of paper, not only are his notes incomprehensible to anyone with an IQ bellow 200, but his work space was a complete mess. To April's dismay, she found that over half of the notes were written in Kanji (some papers had both English and Kanji on them. Sometimes in the same sentence! And was that French? Why would he use French?) and were thus unreadable to her.

She knew Donnie wouldn't purposely make her look for notes written in anything other than English, but as brilliant as Donnie was and as flawless as his eidetic memory usually was, when he was flustered or thinking of too many things at once, he often made obvious mistakes like that most people wouldn't make.

"I can't find it, Donnie," she called to him loud enough for him to hear from the other room.

"That' okay. Let me just finish up these calculations and I'll be right there."

Knowing that would take a while, April decided she could kill some time by cleaning up the mess of papers. Usually she wouldn't move his stuff around, because when Donnie was in the middle of a project April knew that the scattered papers often represented the interworking's of Donnie's mind. After all, he always knew where everything was as if everything was in its logical spot, even if his notes seemed scattered to her.

However, Mikey had been in Donnie's lab recently and accidently shuffled all the papers around, thinking that they were already a mess. Mikey had been looking for an old toy, a metal turtle with a glass shell that lit up bright orange. He had found it and showed the little toy to April. Like most things in lair, the toy looked like it had been built from junk found in the sewer. However, it must have been built really well, because although it was old, the orange light for the shell still worked. April had wanted to ask about the toy, but she never got the chance. She ended up having to prevent Donnie from having a meltdown over the fact that the lab contents had been shifted around by his baby brother.

Donnie was calm and collected in battle, like some kind of flawless machine, but when someone messed with his lab he has a complete panic attack.

So, to calm the genius down April insisted that Donnie work outside his lab and if he needed any notes April would get them for him. However, she found this task harder than she thought it would be, and since Donnie really needed this specific sheet of notes to finish his work, he would unfortunately have brave the mess and find it himself. However, maybe if April could organize a little first, he wouldn't be quite so stressed out at the state of his lab.

While organizing the papers written in English, she came across something that didn't have any notes scrawled on it, and in the sea of dark, messy handwriting, this paper stood out. It was a picture, and April instantly recognized the face in the sketch. There was no doubt about who it was; the sketch was absolutely flawless, and if it hadn't been made with a pencil, April would have thought it was a black and white photo of herself taken with a camera.

In the sketch, April was looking at something to her right, smiling affectionately with an amused gleam in her eyes.

April's breath caught in her throat. She looked absolutely gorgeous in this picture, but not because Donnie had altered any of her features. On the contrary, he had kept everything down to the very last freckle. It was the pure love and adoration captured on her face that seemed to make her shine off the page.

This picture was too perfect; she doubted he had created it from his imagination. He must have been drawing her when she wasn't looking, but with the amount of care that went into this sketch (she could hardly call it a sketch) it must have taken him quite a while, and April was sure she would have noticed if he sat there sketching her for over an hour. No, she realized in amazement, he must have taken this image from his memory.

April blushed lightly at the beautiful girl in the picture. Did he really see her this way? April wondered who she had been looking at in the picture with such admiration and love.

Although she heard no footsteps, April heard Donatello sigh just outside the lab door. April quickly shoved the drawing under a few papers she hoped Donatello wouldn't search through. April was aware of Donnie's crush on her and she didn't want to make things more awkward for him if he found her with that picture.

However, as she shoved the drawing in the middle of a stack of papers, April's hand accidently bumped into something hard. To her confusion, the thing that she bumped suddenly started whine loudly as if a large amount of power was building up. April removed the papers covering it only to stare in horror at the black box.

No, this didn't make any sense. Donnie had touched the time machine multiple times and it hadn't activated. Why was it suddenly activating when she touched it?

The box clicked and fell open, revealing wiring she had seen in other Kraang devices, expect this was even more complicated and she couldn't tell where one wire began and another stopped. In the center of the box was what looked like a round, purple crystal. Energy swirled inside the stone and April jumped back as little fractals of purple lighting shot out of the box. They were small at first, but then they started to grow more powerful.

There was a loud snapping sound, and as if the space around her was an egg, purple cracks in the air began to appear, but unlike the purple lighting, they did not fade. In fact, they only seemed to grow wider as the lighting increased.

In the back of her mind, April knew why the box has reacted to her. It was obvious even if she didn't like to think about it. She was part Kraang, the box was Kraang tech, and it was reacting to the Kraang-like DNA that made her who she was.

April tried to bolt for the door, but the cracks in the air had grown as large as her and it was now pulling her towards it; it wasn't sucking her out like an open door in an airplane would. There was no wind and Donatello's papers did not flutter around her. It pulled at her like she was the other half of a magnet, strong and constant.

Donnie appeared in the door, his eyes wide and confused. Terror twisted across his face when he saw her about to fall away before him. He ran forward and reached out to grab her, but when his hand touched her outstretched hand it fell through her like she was a ghost.

"No!" he shouted. "April!"

April stared in horror. It was too late. He couldn't reach her.

"Donnie!" she shouted back, but the purple void took her words away and she knew they didn't reach him.

"Don't worry, April, no matter what happens, I'll find you! I promise!"

And then she was pulled away. A terrified sob escaping her lips that no one, not even she could hear in the emptiness of the void.

Then she was lost.

Hope you liked the beginning! A lot more will happen next chapter! Please review and let me know what you thought!