[Casey]

"Mikey!" I follow him to the edge of the roof, gripping my bat with one hand and reaching out to his shoulder with the other. "What is it? The Foot Clan?"

"Shh!" He swats my hand away, his eyes focused on the street below. "Look!"

I follow his pointed finger and see a familiar face peeking out from the sewer grate. She climbs to the surface and glances around her, careful and slow, before sprinting silently down the alleyway.

"Is that Karai?" I lean in against Mikey, straining my neck to see. "What was she doing down there?"

He shoulder-checks me. "Dude, shut up!"

I roll my eyes and start to make a comment about how he's acting like Raph when we spot another figure emerge from the sewer. It's dark out, but the way he scans the street and slides the manhole cover in place before moving in the same direction as Karai is pretty telling.

"Do you think that's why Raph ran off?" I tap the handle of my bat rhythmically. "Maybe he saw Karai snooping around—"

"Come on," Mikey hops over the edge of the roof and starts scaling down the fire escape. I shove my bat back into my pack and climb down after him.

"Wait, what're we doing?"

He rolls his eyes at me before leaping off an entire flight of stairs and landing light as a feather on the asphalt below.

"What's it look like we're doing?" He grins mischievously. "We're gonna follow them."

I don't land nearly as graceful and I don't try to hide my distaste in his proposal. "That…sounds like a horrible idea."

"Or," he winks, "a really great idea. Now shut up and come on."

He moves down the alleyway without a sound. I follow close behind, and as we reach the end of the street, we press our backs against the wall and glance around the corner.

"You know," I whisper, "just saying it's a great idea doesn't automatically make it a great idea."

He shushes me again, intently watching Leo vanish down another back alley after Karai. I chew on the inside of my cheek. The night's getting colder…and it's pretty late. I can only imagine what Leo and Karai would be up to…especially now that he's human.

I stay on Mikey's heels as we ninja stealth our way after Leo at a safe distance.

"What do you think they're doing?" I ask quietly. "I mean, what if they're like…hooking up or something?"

Mikey snorts. "Please, Casey. Leo doesn't know romance from a sandwich."

I frown and glare at him. "That makes no sense."

"Does too—you're just dumb." He strains his neck as we come to another corner, blue eyes reflecting the moon. "But if Leo magically gained any skill with his mutation and they are hooking up, it'll be super awkward for sure."

My brow knits. My body continues to follow Mikey on autopilot, but my brain starts to drift to April. I wonder what she's doing now… I wonder how she feels now that Donnie is Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome. Those two have always had some kind of chemistry—an energy I can't seem to match. But April has spent a lot of time with me as well…and she's opened up to me a lot more than I ever expected she would. There have been times where I thought we had a moment, but I've never been sure, and life has grown so crazy that we don't really have the time or mental energy to spend on something as mundane as relationships, especially romantic ones. It's never been something I've wanted to push. I figure, if it's meant to happen, it'll happen…but Donnie turning human was never part of the equation. That came so out of left-field, my head is still spinning. And now we're tailing Leo, who's also human, as he follows his crazy crush to God knows where. It shouldn't be this big of a concern in my mind, but now all I can think of is April—

"Hey, Puck-head," Mikey hisses, snapping in my face. I blink and shake my head with the realization that we've stopped. "They went down there."

I glance around, noting the rundown neighborhood we've crossed into. The windows in most of the buildings are either shattered, barred, or poorly boarded up with scraps of wood. The streets are littered with trash and oil spills, and only one streetlight flickers across the road. And the smell—I must've been really lost in thought to not notice the stench in the air. It just smells like waste: chemicals, urine, rotting food and possibly dead bodies, but I would like to continue to pretend that the few people I see lying on the concrete next to the empty storefronts are just sleeping junkies.

Mikey doesn't seem to care—I guess he's used to living in a sewer—but this place is making me more uneasy by the second. What the hell are they doing here? What the hell are we doing here?

"Mikey…we should leave."

He waves me off. "We're fine, don't chicken out on me now."

"Okay, well we're definitely not following them into that alley," I hiss. "Let's just climb up this roof and wait for them to come out or something."

His face draws into a tight pout. "But I want to see what they're doing—"

"Whatever it is," I grab him by the shoulder and redirect him to the rusty old fire escape on the building next to us, "I promise it's not worth getting shanked in an alleyway for."

~T~

[Donnie]

The lab is quiet, save for the hum of the freezer. Everyone's out, doing something, somewhere. And I'm sitting here, at my desk, drilling myself over unsolved equations and looking at a sample of my new skin cells under the microscope, cut off from the world above. I guess being human doesn't change everything.

I sigh and rub my tired eyes. Leaning back in my chair, I avert my gaze to the dim light overhead and tell myself for the five hundredth-and-twelfth time that everything is okay. My skin cells look normal, like any other human skin cells would. I'm not mutating back or melting or anything. It's just…even after days of being like this, I still find it hard to wrap my head around.

I'm human.

But, nonetheless, here I am working on mutagen to change us back to the way we were as Splinter instructed. In case, as he so firmly puts it, things don't work out as we planned. In other words, if Leo and I stray too far from the family and the values Splinter taught us, we'll face the consequences of losing our new forms.

I can't say I'm not bitter about this arrangement, but a small part of me understands it. We're not old enough yet to call the shots like this without disrespecting him. And we didn't exactly do this with the best intentions…and we also lied…a lot. I guess it's enough that Splinter is even letting us stay like this for now.

I sit up and go back to tapping my pencil against the edge of my desk. I'll make the mutagen over the next few weeks and just hope that it doesn't come to changing back. Leo and I will have to train our butts off and be on our best behavior, but maybe…maybe I'll never have to use this mutagen again.

That's the best we can hope for, at least.

I'm just about to check the microscope for the five-hundredth-and-thirteenth time when my T-phone suddenly rings and I nearly fall out of my chair. Scrambling for composure, I snatch the device and flip it open to see that it's April who's calling me.

My heart slaps against my ribcage and I answer as fast as possible.

"April!" I say, way too loud, way too fast. I try to dial it back and clear my throat. "I, um, what's going on?"

"Hey, Donnie." Her voice sounds quiet and tired…and sad. My gut sinks as the worry floods my mind. My tone drops to one of concern and I hold the phone closer to my ear, as if that would somehow make the distance between us shrink.

"April, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." She sniffles a bit, exhausted. "It's just…it's just my dad, you know? I mean, things have been hard, but he's really having a rough time tonight."

Empathy swells in my chest. We've known it's been difficult for April since we rescued her dad from the Kraang prison. Whatever trauma he suffered there, he's carried back with him. She just hasn't mentioned it in so long, I guess we all kind of put it out of our minds. I put it out of my mind.

I curse myself silently, relentlessly, for being so oblivious to her pain.

"What can I do?" I ask earnestly. "Can I help at all?"

I hear a heavy sigh on her end. "Can you…can you come over? I think he would like to see you, and it'd be good for him to be able to talk to someone other than me. If you're not busy, that is."

"No," I answer too fast. "No, I'm not busy at all. I'll be right there."

A/N: Hey everyone! I hope you enjoyed this little update that is actually longer than 300 words lol. Donnie and April are FINALLY getting some spotlight in this story. I'm excited to start writing some actual kinda-sorta romance! I bet we all forgot about her dad and his PTSD issues because that was LITERALLY mentioned in a chapter posted over a year ago, but let's face it, we forgot about her dad in the 2k12 show too! Or at least, the writers did. Let me know your thoughts on this chapter, and as always, thank you for your patience and wonderful support!