"There you are."

Donatello leaned forward, staring at the computer monitor intently. On the screen was a grainy, black-and-white image of a store front plastered with signs announcing sales on soda and aspirin. He clicked around on his spiffy new keyboard and mentally thanked April for finding custom electronics made for sumo wrestlers. Having three giant fingers was tough on the tiny squares that made up the keys of standard electronics. And with technology moving ever-toward more streamlined and compact sizes, the awkwardness of typing only got worse. He didn't know how many times he'd wanted to throw a monitor through the wall when he'd accidentally hit 'Esc' instead of '1' in the middle of a line of code.

In the middle of his musings, the Beekman Street Health Clinic came into focus on the screen. It was a tiny pharmacy and walk-in medical center, set against the backdrop of pubs and parking garages - the kind of mom-and-pop-style business that made New York City famous as the thriving home of opportunity for anyone. It was open 24 hours a day to accommodate patients from every walk of life which, while noble, had made it particularly difficult for Donnie to hot wire the indoor/outdoor surveillance system some months before.

Originally, it had been done because he and his brothers had reason to believe that the clinic was a front for the smuggling of biomedical supplies to the Foot. And while it seemed a popular haunt for known informants to the Foot, as well as some other notable gangsters for the area, nothing particularly suspicious ever happened there. As strung out as they already were, they couldn't afford to waste time and attention on a criminal dead zone. So it was that the Clinic just became another cycling image in a corner screen rotation of Donnie's massive spy system.

That is, until they hired their newest overnight technician in the pharmacy.

Donatello had just finished his sixth cup of coffee for the evening and was getting ready to brew another pot. Before leaving his laboratory, he'd glanced at the monitor as it flipped to the 15-second watch of the clinic. Standing outside the main door was a young woman - probably in her very early 20's - chatting with the gangly store owner. While she was pretty enough in profile with her neat dark shirt and slacks and long, waving hair, it wasn't until she turned her attention toward the camera that he felt the barest wave of nausea come over him.

It was a strange sensation - somewhere between the backlash of Mikey's "Sewer Surprise" and the first time that Master Splinter asked him to demonstrate a back flip. He stared into the dregs of the coffee cup and calculated the toxic dose of caffeine based on his BMI and the fact that he was a reptile, and quickly dismissed that as the cause. Shaking his head, he looked back at the screen and met gray-toned eyes as another wave of nausea came over him.

She had the biggest, most radiant smile he'd ever seen on a person. It was oddly infectious and he had the fleeting thought that if the image were broadcasted on Channel 6, it might become endemic. The girl turned away again and started talking to the store owner, who laughed silently, as if sharing some secret joke. The screen flickered away and the queasiness passed. Don shook his head once, hard enough for the tails of his mask to smack his nose, and turned toward the entry of his lab.

Mikey and Raph were bickering in the kitchen about only-God-knows-what. Donatello caught the barest undertones of a threat as he slid past them, around the open door of the refrigerator, and straight to the coffee pot.

He watched the dark liquid trickle into the carafe, stained brown on the bottom from years of abuse, and let his mind drift to the sound of the percolator. Most of the people that the brothers encountered on the streets were either too focused on their destination to express much emotion, or they were in distress. And while they'd seen plenty of movies with people smiling and laughing, it had always seemed to Donnie that it was a practiced sort of laughter. Nothing of the sort to send a thrill of excitement through the veins.

Even with April, there was a laid-back kind of acceptance that came from their shared history and mutual reliance. To her, they were as brothers and nothing more intimate was expected to come of it. The family of mutants were a singular population among their species, and therefore lacked the opportunities given to other creatures to find companionship. As they grew up, going through the awkwardly hormonal phases of adolescence and into their young adulthood, they'd been bombarded with images of human women on television, in ads and movies, in magazines and on the Internet. Curiosities had been piqued, as they would be with any young, healthy males, and any fantasies they had typically included human women.

And while Donatello had approached the idea of human companionship with the same kind of scientific analysis that he did most aspects of his life, he'd never harbored any real hope that he could find "the one," as Mikey always called it. Yes, anatomically speaking, it could happen physically. But the likelihood of inspiring the emotions necessary to execute those kinds of behaviors were about the same as the probability of Leo being able to use a kitchen appliance without breaking it.

That is, not at all.

Donnie wandered back into the lab and, sliding into the rickety desk chair, wondered absently if they made furniture specifically for sumo wrestlers as well. Not that he didn't appreciate Raph's craftsmanship and exceptional salvage-work. But there was only so much that could be done with a desk chair that was missing a wheel and had a back made of pizza boxes. He started clicking away where he'd left off on his newest line of code - part of a program that was sure to break down the firewalls of an organization that they suspected to be funding the training for new members of the Purple Dragons. He hadn't gotten very far, though, when the interior camera for the Beekman Street Health Clinic clicked into view in the corner of his vision.

It was the camera behind the front register. The same girl was standing on the opposite side of the desk, leaned over what looked like a pile of paperwork. She had an intense look of concentration, as if analyzing the fine print of the documents before her was critical to her livelihood.

Given that it appears to be hiring paperwork, it may well be, he contemplated absently.

Donnie couldn't help but admire that there seemed to be an intrinsic sense of intelligence about her. The young clerk, a boy that he knew came to work after his GED classes, said something that caused the corner of her mouth to quirk. She looked up and responded with a raised eyebrow and a mute query. The clerk only shrugged, shoulders shaking with laughter. The girl stood straight, flipped her hair over her shoulder in an almost defiant manner, and stuck her tongue out at the camera. It clicked back to the outdoor camera and the moment was gone.

Despite himself, Donnie had a hard time returning to his work. What were they talking about? What was so funny that made both the clerk and the owner laugh? Why on Earth would she blow a raspberry at a security camera that, for all they knew, was hooked up to closed-circuit television and would never be seen by another human soul? What was the point? He'd readily admit that they were rather unimportant questions. Random girl in a random building doing random things.

Why does it matter?

He waited. It took eight minutes and 45 seconds, but when it clicked back around, he wasn't disappointed. In fifteen-second snippets, he watched her walk around the store with the owner, disappear into the back pharmacy, and come forward again. She had the oddest mannerisms - bending down, picking things up, and smiling as if discovering the world for the first time. She just never stopped smiling. And in the back of his mind, Mikey's voice began to chime in.

"...and man, when your eyes meet, you'll get all tingly from your bald head to the tips of your turtle toes. And that's how you know, man. It'll be love at first sight. Just watch..."

He chuckled at the turn of his thoughts. He didn't have a single tingle, just a vague sense of queasiness that likely came from too much coffee on an empty stomach. It wasn't even close to what he'd read about the feelings of love. There was no weakness or excitement, no desire to be close to her, or to know every little detail of her life and dreams, no lingering fantasy of perfection.

But there was curiosity.

And when she stood at the door of the pharmacy and looked again at the security camera, he suddenly began to wonder. April was a singular case, with emotional bias towards acceptance of the turtles. She couldn't really be considered a reliable subject on which to base the reaction of a standard human female upon encountering their group. Proper scientific process required an analysis of different variables; a study of behavior prior to meeting as well as afterwards. There needed to be a baseline for comparison. The subject of study had to be random. And most importantly, to draw any kind of conclusion, there had to be repetition.

As the young woman hitched the corners of her mouth up a little higher, an odd, muted fuzz invaded Donnie's brain. It felt as if she was smiling directly at him. He thought, Perhaps...

Perhaps she could be an interesting subject of study. She was unknown, had no history with the Turtles, and she could be observed from afar to set a standard of behavior. She was located in an area with a high potential for Foot traffic, and was therefore a good candidate for future meetings.

Perhaps...

Then Mikey barged into his lab, demanding that he fix the microwave and jarring him from the moment. He jumped, Mikey laughed, and when Donnie looked back at the screen, the 15 seconds had passed again, and the screen was filled with an image of a broken-down warehouse by the docks.

"Dude, get your head out of the tech! We need pizza and like ASAP!"

Donnie just looked at him and nodded dumbly. His orange-masked brother suddenly gave him a quizzical look.

"You okay, bro?"

Realizing that he must look like a complete headcase, he snapped his mouth shut and shook his head.

"Yeah. Yeah, Mikey, I'm fine. I'll be out in just a sec to fix the toaster."

"Microwave."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

Michelangelo just shrugged and without further ado, turned on his heel, disappearing through the porthole just as loudly as he'd come.

That was when Donatello made one of his very rare impulsive decisions.

He pulled up the coding index for the city's surveillance system and transferred the cameras for the Beekman Street Health Clinic from the corner rotation to a permanent side screen. Then he turned from his chair and left the lab before he could think critically about the sudden feeling that he'd just done something incredibly stupid.

He watched her with the kind of interest that he would give to studying a newly salvaged motherboard or the ever-changing street maps of topside New York. Donnie wanted to learn about her, to understand her, and to move on to the next project. What he found, however, is that she was completely unpredictable.

Her first day in, she'd had the night pharmacist, Phil, a man characterized by a jaw so fat that it wobbled every time he frowned - which seemed to be all the time - crying with laughter. This made the technophile both incredibly amused - as it turns out, every part of Phil wobbled when he laughed - and unequivocally agitated that he hadn't thought to install a microphone when he'd rewired the security system.

The first week in, she'd gotten to know many of the regulars, and seemed to have a teasingly sassy attitude that had even the grumpiest old curmudgeons cracking a smile. When she got really involved in telling a story, she had a tendency to knock over plastic bins and pill bottles. The alarmed, and then abashed look she'd get on her face would always set Donnie to chuckling. Eventually, he just got into the habit of flipping on a side monitor on the nights that she worked and setting to work on whatever project had his attention, with her as an entertaining background.

It was on one of these nights that he flipped on the monitor just in time to catch her strolling up the street. Bundled up against the early-autumn chill, she looked up at the camera and poked her tongue out before entering, just as she did every night.

He quirked a smile and mumbled to himself, "There you are."

She tossed her loosely braided hair over her shoulder as she shrugged off her coat, hanging it on the drip rack by the door. Donnie wondered idly whether her hair was black or brown. Watching her was much like watching an old black-and-white film. No color, no sound. Shell, he didn't even know what the girl's name was and he'd been watching her like a total voyeur for weeks.

He didn't tell his brothers about his observations. Leo would just tell him it was a waste of resources for something as silly as a girl that he would never speak to in-person. Raph would find every opportunity to make him feel like a complete creep and Mikey would probably tease him mercilessly about liking her or something equally ridiculous. It wasn't like any of them would care that his interest was purely academic. He didn't even want to imagine how Master Splinter's might perceive his actions.

Donatello grimaced and turned his attention back to the master cylinder he was trying to repair for the Shellraiser. Raph had been bugging him for days about trying to fix the brake system in the mostly scavenged vehicle. And when Donnie didn't finish a project quick enough for Raph's liking, the bigger terrapin had a tendency to take out any impatience on him in the dojo.

It wasn't until about 1 am that Donnie finally had the part back in working order. Raph was out on patrol, so he'd have to wait a few hours yet to know if it would be good enough to keep the Shellraiser running. At least until they could salvage a newer one. Finding himself without anything pressing to do, he decided to peruse the surveillance screens for signs of trouble in the city. What he saw made his stomach drop to his feet.

A squadron of Foot were moving up Beekman Street, tucked into the shadows like knives into a sheath. He sat rapt, silently begging them to pass by the little alcove where the clinic sat quiet and undisturbed. They lingered for a moment in an alley between the clinic and the neighboring parking garage, but then their leader turned his golden mask toward the camera and cocked his head before burying a shuriken into the lens.

Donatello flipped screens to the interior camera, and watched as a soldier put the teenage cashier at gunpoint. He was on his Shellphone in an instant.

Raph's face blinked onto the tiny screen.

"Yo."

"Raph, I need you to get down to the Beekman Street Health Clinic. There's a squad of Foot. Looks like about six. They just entered the building and are taking hostages." He tried to keep the edge of panic out of his voice as the squad leader systematically decimated the security cameras. The last image he saw was of the unnamed girl as she stepped away from her pharmacy computer, alarmed and angry. Her mouth had barely formed the words 'who are you' before the screen blinked into static.

Raph was talking.

"-on my way. I'm like five minutes out."

Five minutes might be too long, but he didn't have much choice and they didn't have any backup. Leo and Splinter had gone scavenging deep into the tunnels, where the phones never got reception. And Mikey was on the complete other side of the city, running his half of the patrol. It would take him the better part of half an hour to get there.

Donnie made a decision. "I'll meet you there."

He was out the door before the call was even disconnected.