"What the shell, Destiny?!" Raphael exclaims.

Destiny sheathes her uchigatana as she glances down at the human lying sprawled at her feet. The other turtles and Sarina stare at her in stunned horror, and she looks up at them, face scrunching with defensiveness.

"She saw us. I had to do something," she retorts, ruffling her wings.

"You knocked out a small girl!" Raphael shouts.

"She's probably, like, fifteen. That's not exactly small. Calm down."

"YOU KNOCKED HER OUT!"

"She saw us, I reacted, and now it's done." Her ears pull back. "I wouldn't expect you to care that much..."

"Maybe I don't want to get arrested if she calls about an assault from a bunch of fucking mutants once she wakes up!"

Michelangelo breaks from the group and approaches the girl, his eyes growing impossibly wider. He'd know this face anywhere. When she first poked her head around the tree, he thought it was his imagination, but no. Her blonde hair is the same, her lightly freckled cheeks are the same, and her mouth is the same. It's her.

"Dudes, it's Annalise," he mumbles. Pepper barks at him, and he looks up at her with a childlike glee. "And that's Pepper! Peppy Pep!"

Leonardo gapes as the dog leaps into Michelangelo's arms and starts licking his face, entire body wiggling with glee. "Wait, she's Annalise Hughes?" Leonardo asks. His eyes widen, and he breathes out a disbelieving, "She lives in New York. Of all places..."

"Is no one worried that we just knocked out a moderately famous YouTuber?" Donatello asks.

"I am!" Raphael snaps. "And for the record, we didn't knock her out. Destiny did."

"He's right," Destiny says.

Michelangelo's happiness fades as he tenses up, unresponsive to Pepper's nudging. "Dudes, what if she doesn't wake up? What if she doesn't make any more videos and I never get to see them again?" His eyes widen as Pepper sniffs his bicep and licks at the freckles dotting it. "Oh no...what if we get arrested for kidnapping?!"

"Calm down, Michelangelo," Sarina murmurs, eyes flashing. "We haven't kidnapped her. Someone just made a very rash decision."

She gives Destiny a pointed look, to which she flicks her tail and crosses her arms over her chest. "In my defence, we didn't have a whole lot of time before she went screaming to the authorities," she says.

"You could've thrown a smoke bomb," Leonardo suggests.

"But...I didn't. Zoom into the air, land behind her, hilt of sword meets forehead, done and done."

"Either way," Donatello says, severing the argument before it gets more heated. He moves towards Michelangelo and Annalise, concerned. "We can't leave her here. We'll have to find a way to get her home."

"I'll do it!" Michelangelo volunteers, shooting his hand up so fast that he nearly punches Donatello in the jaw.

"And how will you do that? You don't know where she lives," Raphael says.

Michelangelo frowns, forehead wrinkling in thought. Raphael has a point. After all, Michelangelo didn't even know that Annalise lived in New York until this moment. He looks down at the blonde as a soft groan passes her lips, making Pepper whine. The dog nuzzles Michelangelo again.

His eyes light up. "Pepper can lead me!" he suggests, but his smile falls in a second at the looks of his brothers. "Or...no, that's silly."

"It really doesn't have to be this difficult," Sarina says. "After all, Annalise came here for a walk. Thus, we are undoubtedly in the general area of her home. That narrows it down quite a bit." She smiles. "Also, we can do this."

She kneels next to Annalise, slipping her phone out of her pocket. The cyborg notes the four-number password, each number corresponding to different letters of the alphabet, examining the phone briefly.

"Can you crack the code?" Michelangelo asks.

"Of course, I could," Sarina says. Instead, she reaches for Annalise's hand, pressing her thumb to the home button. The phone clicks open. "Thankfully, this type of phone has a fingerprint sensor."

Michelangelo's eyes sparkle. "Cool! Why don't ours do that, Donnie?"

Donatello frowns. "I suppose I didn't think it was necessary. Case in point, it's easily hackable even if you're not a genius."

Sarina starts searching the phone. "Let's see here...no...no..." She laughs. When the others give her a weird look, she stops. "Sorry, funny meme. Ah! Here we are!"

She hands the phone to Michelangelo. There's a map visible with a little flag at the end of a dotted line, a route that will bring him to Annalise's home. He grins and sets the device in his belt.

"Thanks, Sarina!" he chirps.

He carefully lifts Annalise into his arms, knowing that he's probably sweating and shaking like crazy. But, come on, he's holding the girl of his dreams.

"Hurry back. We don't need you getting into trouble," Leonardo says. "Call if you do, though, okay?"

"Will do, Leo, my dude!" Michelangelo says. "I'll see you guys at home!"

Pepper yaps and paws at his legs, so he kneels and motions for her to climb up. She hops onto Annalise's stomach and curls up, oddly content with everything that's happened. Holding both of them protectively, Michelangelo dashes away.

----------

Michelangelo sets Pepper down once they're on the fire escape of Annalise's apartment. He peeks in the window, recognizing the bedroom from her videos. His stomach floods with nerves as his arms tense up. It's like seeing something forbidden. Annalise stirs, her hand brushing his plastron.

He prays that he doesn't faint.

He opens the window and Pepper leaps inside, trotting away through the slightly ajar bedroom door. His agility helps him avoid knocking his or Annalise's head on the window frame as he climbs in.

He looks around the room and wonders if now is when he's going to wake up from this impossible dream. In five seconds, he could find himself back in his bed with one of his brothers shouting for him to get up and come get breakfast.

Nothing happens. More relieved than he'd like to admit, he heads over to Annalise's bed and sets her down. He unties the shoelaces of her Converse and sets them on the ground by her bed, sparing the occasional glance up at her to make sure she's still out. Annalise sleeps soundly.

He lingers at her bedside, entire body buzzing with energy and nerves. Two days ago, she said his screen name, and now he's standing in her room. He reaches over and brushes some loose hair from her eyes, wincing at the reddened lump appearing behind her fluffy golden fringe.

Whenever he hit his head as a turtle tot—and that happened a lot, especially when he was learning to wield his nunchucks—Splinter would kiss his fingers, then touch the sore spot. He told Michelangelo that the kiss acted as a special kind of magic that made the pain go away. When asked why Splinter didn't just kiss it better, the rat explained that he'd rather not directly kiss Michelangelo's sweaty forehead.

With that in mind, Michelangelo presses a kiss to his fingertips and brushes them against her forehead, his heart hammering so loudly that he worries it may wake her up.

Dude, you're being so creepy, he scolds himself.

Her lips twitch into a tiny smile at the touch, and she rolls over, reaching out to grasp his lingering hand. His breath hitches, and he finds himself unable to look away from her, skin prickling at her touch. Somehow, she's even more adorable in person than she is on screen.

He shakes his head, gut twisting. This is absolutely crazy. He needs to leave, now, before she actually wakes up and realizes that giant mutant turtles are real.

"Stupid idiot," he mumbles to himself.

He inches his hand away from her and heads for the window, but another soft groan from Annalise stops him in his tracks. He remembers her phone at the same second, hurrying to pull it out of his belt, the lock screen lighting up.

His breath hitches. Covering the pink Princess Peach wallpaper is something inhuman, a multicoloured metallic face with no nose, soulless black eyes, and a pair of frowning lips. The thing glares at him as strands of blue and yellow hair float around her, as bright as glow-sticks in the dark.

A grin breaks across her face, and her eyes glow red for a second as she emits a spine-chilling chuckle. He yelps, then claps a hand over his mouth as Annalise stirs. The thing starts to fade away, wiggling her fingers at him, and he takes a hasty screenshot.

He tries to open the phone. If he can send it to himself, he can show Donatello and Sarina, and they can help him figure out what's going on. He needs Annalise's thumb to open the phone, but his hands shake so badly that he drops the phone before he can make a move towards her.

As the device lands on a discarded t-shirt, Annalise's eyes open. She looks over at him, blinking slowly as she frowns and squints at the darkness, hand reaching to her head.

"Wha...who're you?" she mumbles as she tries to sit up.

Before he can stop himself, he says, "PizzaNunchucker. You're safe now, dudette."

He leaps out the window and disappears into the night before she can question him further.