Chapter Text
Hamato Donatello stares at the packet clenched between his fingers. A math test, trigonometry to be specific. He thought he’d had it in the bag, an easy 100%, but his hands tremble as he looks at the number within the bright red circle at the top of his paper.
99%. Circled in red, with a smiley-face and a “great job!” from his teacher scrawled next to it. There was a bonus question at the end of the test, two points. He got it correct, but he still got a 99/100.
Donnie looks around the room, jaw clenching, and frantically flips the packet over so the score isn’t visible. He doesn’t want to know what he got wrong.
Idle chatter fills the room, all revolving around the grade they got. Unfortunately, his table-mate, Casey Jones, the most insufferable hockey player to exist (if that’s even possible), leans over his shoulder and peeks before the paper lays flat on the table.
“Woah, Don, you did pretty good, too!” Casey’s face is way too close to his ear, so he pushes him away on instinct. By the face.
“Shut it, Jones,” Donnie grumbles, still stewing in his own self-loathing (seriously, who has time to study nowadays? Not him!), failing to register Casey’s sentence until he’s finished with his own. “Wait, what do you mean ‘too’?” His head whips around to interrogate the other.
Casey gives him a confused grin and holds up his paper. “Um, I also did pretty good?” Sure enough, a bright red “100” is at the top of Casey’s paper, right next to his name as if trying to prove that, yes, this is, in fact, Casey Jones’ test paper.
“What?!” Donnie snatches it from his hands, as if seeing it up close will disprove the truth. He flips through the pages, and sure enough, it’s all Jones’ work.
“C’mon, it’s not that surprising.”
“You are failing this class!” Donnie clenches the paper and brandishes it like a weapon. “This is a statistical anomaly, Casey, this test is an amalgamation of lucky guesses! There is no possible way that you got higher than–”
He stops himself, breathing heavily. There’s still the faint hum of conversation, thank god, but it’s significantly less than before, and there are more eyes on him than necessary. Casey is glancing at him with an eyebrow raised so high it’s almost reaching the stupid bandana he always wears, and Donnie waves his arms around at him in a silent rage he’s sure only he can understand. It’s punctuated with the test being haphazardly smoothed of all wrinkles and slapped back onto Casey’s desk.
Donnie pulls his computer out and tries to look busy, hunching over it like a lifeline. He can hear Jones, fucking Jones, muffle a laugh and crumple the paper, shoving it in his bag. For some odd reason (definitely not Donnie staying up all night working), his laptop dies as soon as he opens it, and he’s left staring at his own frazzled reflection. Dark hair cut close to his face and down to his shoulders, made messy by his outburst, shoulders hunched close to his ears. He blinks at it, then dives back into his bag, only to realize he forgot the charger.
It’s only first period. This is going to be a long day.
He repeats the mantra in his mind for the rest of class until he’s released from the prison that is being seated next to Casey Jones. April sits next to him in his next class. That ought to be nice.
**
The rest of Donnie’s day goes by relatively fast. Seeing April in physics, studying through free period, and nearly snoozing through history. It’s pretty normal until his last period: AP Language and Composition. His English credit, the one he chose with his guidance counselor, suspecting to be met with the same amount of work and studying as any other AP class. That has not been the case, so far.
For the past semester, this class has been the bane of Donnie’s existence. There is no formula for good writing. It’s something he learned very early on in this class, and he can’t help but despise the notion.
The worst part is that there’s nothing he can do to get better except practice. And practice takes time, valuable time that he could be using to refine his kata with Leo, make bracelets with Mikey, maybe even spar with Raph. Hell, he’d rather be put on patrol duty. Each essay skims an hour off of his precious time, and he doesn’t think his teacher realizes just how important that is to him. So every time his teacher tells the class, “just practice and you’ll be fine,” it’s all he can do to not flip his whole desk over.
Donatello Hamato has a B in AP English for the semester. It’s unspoken of. His first ever B. He seethes just thinking about it. But if he spends any more time on “practice essays,” his after school system will collapse in on itself.
These are all things he’s thinking about as his teacher passes out a new assignment.
It’s simple, really. Just write an introductory paragraph with a thesis at the end. The thesis part he can do, there’s a formula to that, but the rest… there’s a reason he always skips out on the intro paragraphs.
Regrettably, it’s every teacher’s dream to sit the dumb kid directly next to the smart kid in hopes they actually learn something, so when Casey Jones leans toward him and mumbles, “hey man, are you doing okay?” he does his best not to scream.
Casey’s paper is already almost half-way full of strangely graceful pencil markings. Great.
“Yes, I am doing okay.” He purses his lips and stares harder at the paper like that’ll help him generate ideas. Everything his brain is presenting to him sounds so stupid he thinks he might explode.
“Are you sure..? Cause, like, it’s kinda been thirty minutes since she passed this out and you still only have the thesis.”
Donnie blinks. Looks at the clock. Sure enough, thirty minutes have passed. He doesn’t even know how that happened. Either way, he keeks at Casey, then back at his own paper like he’s actually going to get anything done. “Mind your own business, Jones.”
Fortunately, he just shrugs and stands up to submit his own paper. The last thing he needs is help, especially not from Casey. No matter how sincere his expression was when he asked, or how it kind of made Donnie feel bad saying no. Donatello solves things on his own.
When the bell rings, he shoves the paper to the bottom of his bag, makes a mental note to throw it out later, and walks up to April. She’s also in this class(he doesn’t know how she gets through it without complaining to anyone after), but the seating chart makes it so that they’re on opposite sides of the room. Teachers and their seating charts. April smiles at him as he walks up. He smiles back.
“Hey April! How’d you do on the assignment?”
“I really liked what I wrote, actually. I’ve always liked doing the beginning better than the rest.” Great. “How’d you do?”
“Oh, I did fine! As per usual, heh,” he wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans as discreetly as possible and shoves them into his pockets. “Are you doing anything tonight?”
“Yeah, actually! I’m hanging out with Irma, I’m super excited.” Great.
“That’s great!” Donnie spots Raph at the end of the hall, looking slightly over his shoulder in a confused manner. Donnie raises an eyebrow at him, but otherwise faces April with the brightest grin he can muster. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yup. Bye Donnie!” She waves after him and walks in the opposite direction. He takes the opportunity to look behind him to see what Raph was looking at. He doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just a bunch of kids trying to get home, and… Casey Jones? He guesses even that guy has places to be, judging by the way he’s speed walking past Donnie and aggressively avoiding eye contact.
Donnie temporarily ignores this shenanigan and walks up to Raph, who’s swinging the keys like some sort of rich asshole. Raph watches Casey walk by.
“Hey, Raph. You’re friends with him, right? What’s up with him?”
Raph scoffs, punches Donnie in the shoulder (affectionately), and pushes the front doors open. “How should I know? C’mon, Mikey and Leo are already in the car.”
“Of course they are. Did Leo call shotgun?”
“You know it, Donnie-boy.”
He runs a hand down his face and groans. Sitting with Mikey in the backseat is the worst.
**
Raph gets put on patrol duty, as usual. He’s the one who doesn’t have a lot of stuff going on after dark. Donnie and Leo have homework, Mikey has… whatever he has, and Raph’s homework is easy enough to do during his classes, so he’s free the majority of the time. He takes the role with a mumbled curse that’s not expanded upon, even when dad asks, which is the norm. Yup. Everything is normal.
Donnie is finishing up his physics homework when it turns abnormal. It’s rare that one of them calls for backup— each of them is more than capable of holding their own against criminals— but Donnie gets a call from Raph and immediately knows something is wrong.
The call is brief. Raph encountered something big and aggressive being chased, and doesn’t know where to go from there. Donnie spends no time getting his gear on and alerting his brothers. He eavesdrops on Leo telling dad, waiting approval and wasting no time once getting it. They disperse across the city, crawling out of Raph and Mikey’s shared room window and onto the fire escape, making sure they’re hidden.
They’ve been going on patrol for a few years now. At first, the idea was practically swatted out of the air by Dad, but something happened with Leo that made him change his mind quick. Leo refuses to tell what he did to convince him, but Donnie’s not complaining. He likes the practical application, especially after a lifetime of training.
Donnie tracks Raph’s location from his phone and directs the other two to follow him, running over rooftops. He spots Raph in a random alley(exactly where his tracker said) and jumps back down via fire escape. He scans him for injuries, but other than a frantic look in his eyes, looks unharmed. He takes the opportunity to narrow his eyes and snark, “Didn’t we agree to meet on roofs? I don’t exactly remember musky alleys being the gameplan.”
“Shut it.”
“What happened?” Leo swings down next to Donnie right on time, shortly followed by Mikey.
Raph looks between Donnie and his brothers. “Did you really have to bring everyone?”
“We agreed that for emergency calls, everyone should go.” Leo steps up. Raph grumbles and rolls his shoulders.
“There was some big thing runnin’. I didn’t get a good look at it cause I thought it was chasing me at first, but then I ducked into a dumpster and it just kept going. Didn’t even try to look for me.” He scratches the back of his head. “I think I heard some people chasing it, but I’m not sure.”
“A dumpster?”
“Mikey!”
“Guys, stop. What do you think it was, Raph? It wasn’t an animal?”
“I heard it yelling. Definitely not an animal, and if it is, that’s one fucked up call.”
“Language.”
“Whoaaa… sounds spooky. Maybe it’s some sort of human-animal mutant, like in my comics.”
“That’s highly improbable, Mikey.”
“Did you see where it went?” Leo gets the group on track, yet again.
“Uh, yeah, over there, but…” the second oldest jerks a thumb vaguely behind him, but before he can say anything else, the faint sound of heavy footsteps start getting gradually louder. He tenses and clicks his jaw shut, following his brothers in looking to where the noise is coming from.
Something enormous, green, and scaly falls from the roof behind Raph, slamming into the floor with a resonating boom. Raph dodges and lands beside Leo.
Donnie’s brain short circuits.
An unconscious giant crocodile with humanoid proportions. Splayed onto the concrete in front of him. He can tell from the way its chin rests against the broken ground how sharp and likely diseased its teeth are. One of its enormous hands twitches and he shudders involuntarily.
“What the hell is that?!”
“Hey, I was right!”
“Guys be quiet, I hear–”
The group freezes as a group of men enter the alleyway from the street. It’s a bit hard to see in the darkness (Donnie’s been trying to make improved night vision goggles for years, and still no dice), but even so, all of the men look… kind of the same. Perfectly slicked back hair, pressed black suits. Even the same jawline, if Donnie stares hard enough. They walk with rigid and practiced accuracy towards the scaled monster.
Donnie catches Leo’s eye just before the men reach them, and he nods.
They all hightail it the hell out of there.
**
A wise man once said that lying stagnant in bed without sleeping is better than not resting at all. Donnie says that, despite the little tidbit maybe being right, that’s stupid. There are too many thoughts rolling around his head, and it’d be a waste to not do anything about it in favor of sleep. There’s no time.
Because what they all saw that night is something none of them were meant to see, and god does that mean they’re fucked. They shouldn’t have been recognizable, and a little while ago Donnie would say they’d be impossible to track, but that same Donnie would have also said a humongous, living, anthropomorphic, talking if what Raph claims is true, crocodile would also be impossible. So, you know.
They have knowledge of the unthinkable (excluding Mikey, that kid’s imagination is insane) and they are most likely being tracked. Donnie spends the night at his desk trying to think of the scientific ramifications. His conclusions are all very, very bad.