"She seemed nice," said Medusa, as she and her two brothers took to the rooftops once again racing for home. Unlike their mother, who could take all the time she wished getting from place to place as the sky began to lighten, they were well aware of the fact that their time in the world of sleeping humans was almost over. They had no place in the world of humans when they were awake.

"She did," Arcos agreed, jumping onto the next roof and stopping for a moment. "She was different."

"She was hot," Aries said, not stopping at the end of his jump. He kept on running and then jumped to the next roof.

Medusa hissed slightly, and rolled her eyes. She also passed Arcos, leaping behind Aries.

Arcos smiled, and followed his sister, taking up the rear. "Yeah, she was," he agreed. "But that isn't what I meant."

"She was nice and she was hot, what else does there need to be?" Aries asked playfully.

"You troglodyte," Medusa threw at him, passing him to become the one in the lead.

"Hey," Aries called to her, "I'm just sayin' it like it is."

"There was something different about her," Arcos said again, "but I can't put my finger on what it was."

"Hmmm," Aries raised an eyebrow. "She was sassy."

"You are a troglodyte," Arcos said.

"Just callin' like it is, man," he said again, "just callin' it like it is."

"She was polite!" Medusa stopped on the rooftop just before their own, and turned to her brothers. "That's what it was!"

Aries didn't stop, he leapt passed her and swung down into the garden window. "She was sassy," he said again, tasting the word like it was candy.

"She was polite," Arcos agreed, jumping into the warehouse. "But there was more than that. It was…" he shook his head. "The way she held herself. It was different."

"You're different," Aries told him.

"You're not different," Medusa said. "That's your problem."

He stuck his tongue out at her.

"I know what you mean, Arcos," Medusa ignored her other brother. "There was something different about her."

"I don't get what was so bad about her," Aries said. "I liked her."

"Not bad," Arcos said. "Not bad at all. Just different."

"You have to be more specific than that, bro."

Arcos shook his head, and sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for his mother to come home, wracking his brain to come up with a reason why Eliza VonHertz would strike him so. She was...he wasn't sure what she was. She had been frightened but no more frightened than any other mutant who was meeting them for the first time was. He knew that his mother had given Eliza no warning as to her brood's size, she never did, and Eliza's comment at meeting them proved it. She handled herself beautifully in that respect. She was desirable, she had a pretty coat, she had a body that gave a man something to hang onto, she was sassy, or at least had the potential to be. But that wasn't what was striking him. He'd been struck by desirability plenty of times, it wasn't as if he didn't have a pick of mutants who could hold any and all of those criteria. She was obviously not a dumbbell, her vocabulary and story telling ability alone shown that. She was polite, a kind of polite that was rare in his world, a kind of polite that he saw in himself and his family, when they were trying to be so. She seemed at ease, but then at the same time not at ease. Only, the not-at-ease-ness wasn't a type of lie, it wasn't a power play, like what one of the lower ranking Grey Cats would do. It didn't feel like it to him, anyway. It was, it was the same kind of thing as her vivid storytelling, and then the huff when she turned to leave them. It was as if two things were taking up the same place at the same time.

"She was scared of Medusa," Aries suggested when Arcos didn't answer him.

"Everyone is scared of Medusa," Arcos replied, "that's not it."

"She's a ferret, ferrets hunt snakes," Medusa said.

"Not snakes that can swallow them whole," Aries said chuckling.

"It doesn't matter," Medusa said, slithering toward her bedroom. "I'm going to bed. Tell Mama goodnight."

Aries clapped Arcos on his shoulder. "Me too, man. Let me know when you figure out that she was just hot."

Arcos shrugged his brother's hand off of his shoulder. "Go to bed, wool-for-brains."

Aries laughed, and thunked Arcos on the head. "Don't stay up too late. The sun'll be up soon, and turn into stone."

Not very long after his siblings had retired, he smelled his mother on the wind, her unique combination of soap, herbs, and her now an easy scent for him to pick up. Shortly thereafter he was able to hear her. She she emerged from the window, he chuckled to himself. If he had not been able to smell her, or hear her, he would have been able to feel his mother coming home. Despite her little body, she seemed to take up a great deal of room around her. Stage presence, she had described it to him when they were younger. But her feeling of largesse did not dim when she was not playing actress. He knew the feeling was not charisma, Chategris of the Grey Cats had plenty of that, and he did not give off the same sort of feeling that The Phoenix did. "It is because you love your mother so much," he remembered her telling him once, "that your love plays tricks on you." However, he doubted that was true, and the doubted that his mother believed it either.

She dumped her bags on the table, and smiled at him lovingingly. "Your brother and sister gone to bed?" She rolled her shoulders and plopped herself down in a chair across from him.

He nodded, his jowls and ears jiggling slightly as he did so.

"Why didn't you?" she asked, leaning back.

"I wasn't done thinking yet," he told her.

She let out a long breath as she smiled at him fondly, and cocked her head to the side. Of all of her children, Arcos was the one who did the most thinking. If he wasn't careful, the thinking would turn into brooding. If the brooding continued, it turned into a downright bad mood. And unlike his brother, Aries, it was not so easy to coax him out of it once he was in it. His serious nature made him a slow mover emotionally, once his mind had been made, making it move in another direction was nigh impossible. "What about?"

"Eliza VonHertz," he answered honestly.

She raised her eyebrows, her own thoughts not far from that subject. Her race with the sunrise home still gave her mind plenty of time to ruminate on the unique meeting she'd had with the ferret mutant that evening. Phoenix could not get over the feeling of the strange mix of perceptions she received from her. She was at the same time put together, and falling apart. At the same time she gave Phoenix the indication that she was an able bodied person, who would survive the psychological rigors of the mutation process with flying colors, and then in complete denial that the mutation had even happened. She indicated that she had a type of support system in place, whether it was brought to her by luck or not, but then acted as if the support was more of a hinderance than anything else. It seemed she was telling a series of falsehoods, but they did not have the feeling of lies. Rather, it was if they were all true, despite the immediate contradictions that Phoenix was presented with.

What she felt the most, when analyzing the ferret mutant, was that she displayed many traits that pointed straight to a psychological strength rare in people in general, but then would say something like, "Agency does not excuse us from consequences." While Phoenix did not have clear idea of what the phrase meant, it was obviously a cautionary statement, the kind given to naughty children who must now lie in the bed they have made. She could tell from the way Eliza said it, and under the context it was used, that it was a statement of giving up, a statement of choice having no power in the situation.

Despite the fact that she seemed a wave in how she presented herself, Phoenix liked Eliza. She was pleasing to be around, she seemed sensible. She was a fellow woman, a mother, Phoenix had not felt the kind of connection she felt with Eliza in a long time. It was not the connection of friendship, per se, but a connection of having met someone with enough in her past, in her life, like herself, that she could make a connection. She was a woman, she was caring for her child, and perhaps growing a new one in her womb.

Perhaps. And perhaps not. You have to remember the perhaps not, she told herself.

"What about Eliza VonHertz?" his mother canted forward, and leaned on her forearms.

Arcos shook his head in the same way he did with his siblings. "Just that she was different."

Phoenix raised her eyebrows in a question. The movement slightly irked Arcos, it was pretentious, and he had waited up for his mother, not to be met with pretentiousness, but to speak with her. It must have shown on his face, because his mother pursed her lips and furrowed her brows. "What do you mean?" she asked.

He took a deep breath, his annoyance not fading. "I am surprised you encouraged her to talk about her daughter," he said, more in retaliation for his perceived slight than anything else. "You usually don't encourage people to remember their lives as humans."

Phoenix raised her eyebrows again, "Her daughter is still with her," she said. "Eliza is a widow. I think she said her husband died two years ago."

This information knocked the annoyance out of Arcos, "She has a daughter with her? Where was she?"

Phoenix leaned back again in her seat, and brought her foot up to her knee, and began to massage her calf. "I don't know. With her host, I guess."

"Who is her host?" he said the word 'host' with snidely.

"She didn't say," Phoenix told him. She kept her observation that Eliza seemed to be slightly frightened of her host to herself. "Only that he was in the sewer, and thought it was dangerous for her to go out and about above ground."

"It is dangerous," Arcos agreed.

"That is what I told her," his mother said. She slipped off her sneaker, and began to rotate her ankle.

Arcos gasped gently and smiled. It hit him what was different about Eliza.

His mother turned to him, "What is it Teddy Bear?"

Arcos shook his head, "Nothing," he said. "I just thought of something."

"Something funny?" she asked him, pulling off her other sneaker.

"No," he said. "Just something."

She gave him a sidelong look, and smiled back at him. "Alright," she said. She passed him, and kissed his head as she did so. "Good night, Arcos."

"Good night, Mama," he replied, getting up and going to his own room.

Eliza VonHertz had a presence to her that was larger than herself, when she was telling her story. But unlike his mother, whose presence was an everpresent push, Eliza's had grown during her performance, and then diminished again when she turned to leave. Besides his mother, he'd never experienced that in another person before.

She was filled and hollow as her foot stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder onto the dirty floor. The scent of herbs that clung to Phoenix still filled her nostrils and she committed it to memory. Wrapping the entire night around the hints of sage, grease, honey, mint and a mirad of other dried plants. The fear, comfort, joy, sadness and excitement, all became inseparable from the fragrant essence of the healer.

The implications of tonight's meeting was not lost on her. She had meet someone who was well acquainted with mutants, for many years and apparently in numbers that Eliza was unaware even existed. In her time with the Hamatos they had always made it seem that the presence of other mutants was a rarity that had only recently changed. She was unsure how she felt about her newly acquired knowledge and their lack of it.

These thoughts drifted around her head but made no movement towards a firm conclusion. Unfortunately as her thoughts drifted so did her attention. After an unknown number of wrong turns she came back to herself and realized that she was utterly lost. It took a solid hour of backtracking before she was able to re-orientate herself and then continue her journey back to the lair.

She heard the raised voices while still on the platform outside the turnstiles.

"… check the south tunnels. Raph and I will head north." It was easy to recognize Leonardo and the tone he affected when giving his brothers orders.

"I'm coming too!" Eliza smiled at the defiant and determined ring to her daughter's voice.

"No. You will stay here with April." The mother in her bristled at the harsh clipped tone Splinter used to address Gwynevere. "It will do us no good if we have to track you as well."

It was clear that the time for intervention was now. Without preamble she came around the corner, the clicks of the entryways mechanism silencing the room as everyone turned to look in her direction. "Who are we tracking now?" She smiled as she prepared for the whirlwind that was her daughter to descend upon her.

"Mom!" Eliza scooped the child up briefly in a tight embrace before setting her back down on her feet. "Where were you?!"

She nuzzled her daughter's face, exaggerating the movement of her whiskers to elicit an undignified giggle and caused her to try and worm away from the embrace while her ferret-mom held her close. "Guess I got lonely without you." She relaxed her grip and Gwyn danced away, only to return to her side almost immediately. "I couldn't sleep so decided to go for a stroll. Did you miss me?" She smiled softly at Gwyn though her voice was teasing. Eliza purposely ignored the rest of the group, and she felt them start to drift off after her explanation, there was no longer any crisis to address.

There was a cough at she turned her long neck to see Donatello waiting patiently, he had something in his hand. "I found your phone in the couch cushions when we were trying to call you this morning." He smiled, showing off his gap, as he offered it to her. "You know my offer still stands if you want a t-phone."

Eliza smiled her thanks even as she shook her head to decline the offer. She noted several missed calls and texts on the homescreen before passing the device to Gwyn. "Go put this on the charger for me." She shooed her daughter off before addressing the tall teen. "Thanks, but no need to go to the effort. I'd just end up giving it back pretty soon, anyway, once we're ready to leave." She felt bad instantly for the poorly chosen words.

Donnie's face fell and he muttered something non-committal underneath his breath. He slowly turned away to head in the direction of his lab. Halfway there his posture changed and he looked back at her, as if he had remembered something. "I had a few ideas I'd like to test and we found another canister last night." He swallowed and gave her a slightly guilty look but pressed onward. "I could use a sample or two to see if it I'm progressing in the right direction.

Eliza nodded, knowing what he was asking for but not particularly feeling up to a donation. Especially not after what Phoenix had told her about iron deficiency. "Maybe tomorrow? I'm not feeling up to it right now. Kay?" She smiled to lessen the blow of her refusal.

He frowned slightly before nodding and then continued to make his way back to the lab at a more normal pace. Donatello's departure left her alone in the main room, except for the undeniable presence of the Master of the house. Taking a deep breath and letting it out before facing the only other adult in the lair, though at the moment she was feeling very much like a child herself.

They just sized each other up for a moment. Nether willing to launch the opening volley. Splinter then began to worry his beard and look up towards the ceiling, a tactic she'd seen him use on his sons when about to catch them in a lie. Mentally she fumed at his silent condemnation, though she gave no outward indication of her inner indignation, her face and body language carefully schooled.

"Did I ever tell you of my family's garden back in Japan?" The ferret-woman recognized it as a rhetorical question and said nothing. "It had the most magnificent cherry tree right in it's center. It thrived in the sunshine and produced the most fragrant flowers. You could never grow one underground, such as we have in the dojo." He dropped his muzzle and looked down his impressive nose at her. "I imagine that it would just be coming into bloom around this time of year." He dropped his hand to tuck behind his back and bent slightly so that they were eye to eye. "I must say, Mrs. VonHertz, you smell as lovely as a cherry blossom this morning."

She smiled as large as she could, the display almost threatening, and squinted her eyes in feigned happiness to cover her actual reaction to his subtle accusation. She bet that he could still hear her pounding heart with his large ears. She would not rise to the bait. "Why thank you Splinter. What a nice compliment." Eliza gave him a tiny polite bow, little more than a dipping of her shoulders. "Now if you'll excuse me. I'm suddenly feeling very peckish. I think I'll go find something to eat." She lifted her lip slightly to expose one fang even more before turning away and walking towards the kitchen.

A/N: Illusionna and Lydja-chan would like to thank you for your support in reading this opening installment of our joint effort. A special thankyou to BubblyShell for your lovely reviews and kind words. If you have enjoyed this story look forward to the sequel "Who Deceives You" where the friendship between the Phoenix and Eliza grows as the two learn more about each other. Thanks for reading!