I glance at the address number on the small house as I glide up the porch steps.  I lift my fist and knock on the door, before I shove my hands back into my pockets.  Any bit of flesh exposed to the cold, dry atmosphere is enough to make my skin crawl.  Winter is the worst season.  At least I'm not in the sewers, though.

A short teenager with long, bleach-blonde hair appears in the doorway.  Her gray eyes are brighter than usual, until she realizes who it is.  Skeptical, she smooths her knee-length skirt down and takes a step back.  "Hi, Casey," Lucy greets me in her soft voice.

I know she doesn't like me.  Lucy has always been hesitant when it comes to hanging around me.  She thinks I don't notice, but it's hard not to when she is my best friend's girlfriend.  Or friend...  Or acquaintance.  Whatever she is to him.

I don't know what it is about me that throws Lucy off.  Maybe it's my dark clothes and awesome weapons.  Or perhaps it's my epic, super-cool personality.  Either way, she's missing out on a great dude.

"'Sup, Luce?" I ask with a smirk as I push my way into her house.  I lift my chin and strut passed her.

"Come on in, I suppose," she mumbles after I'm already halfway to the living room.

As I step into the main room, I notice how similar it is to the lair. There is a punching dummy on one side of the room and a small television in the center. The floor is littered in pizza boxes and crushed soda cans. A stack of comics that clearly belong to Michelangelo sit unattended on the sofa.

Michelangelo himself is sat on the couch beside a familiar red-clad turtle and a serpent mutant. Raphael turns his head in shock as he hears me come in, his green eyes wide with confusion. Karai mimics him as her long tongue slithers between her lips.  Michelangelo's sky-blue eyes aren't any less puzzled.

"Casey?" Raphael asks curiously.

"What are you doing here, dude?" Michelangelo questions as well, looking a bit too excited.

"I came to tell you guys about an evil scheme the Foot are up to," I explain as I glance around for the others.  "Where'd the rest of you go?"

"Busy," answers Karai as the serpent flashes her jade-green eyes.

"Then make them un-busy," I demand impatiently.  "There's some serious junk goin' on, and we need to put a stop to it."

As I finish, Leonardo appears beside Lucy in the doorway. His ocean-blue eyes are glazed with curiosity as he scrutinizes my unsettled figure.  "What's the problem?" he asks promptly.

I don't bother beating around the bush.  "I meant to tell you this earlier, but I haven't had time.  Now, though you guys need to know that April and I got attacked by Foot-creeps.  Then-"

"Whoa, hold your hockey pucks," Raphael halts me as he rises to his feet.  "You got attacked by Footbots?  When?"

"Just after we left the haunted house on Halloween," I explain quickly.  "April and I went to that wicked graveyard, and suddenly a whole herd of Footbots mauled us!"

"So Tiger Claw is trying to pick us off when we're separated?" Leonardo questions with a thoughtful expression.  "That seems a bit cowardly for a brute mutant him."

I shake my head.  "No, Tiger Claw wasn't leading the Footbots.  He was down at the docks with his other mutant buddies while they rummaged through a billion boxes."

"Pizza boxes?" Michelangelo asks, his eyes wide with horror.

"No, like giant shipment crates," I clarify.

Michelangelo looks relieved as he sinks back down into the couch cushions.  "Oh, good.  I don't want cooties on my pizzas," he sighs happily.

"Well, why were they looking through the crates?" Raphael presses on impatiently.

I scratch the back of my head a bit bashfully.  "I don't know," I confess.  "I couldn't get close enough to find out before they were gone."

Leonardo looks more puzzled than I've ever seen him.  "You say Footbots, whom had no orders, attacked you out of nowhere?  Then you found Tiger Claw and his henchmen at the docks, but you couldn't even get a glimpse of what they were searching for?" he summarizes with a hint of judgment to his deep voice.

Donatello materializes.  By the frown on his face, I can see that he heard the entire conversation.  "Sounds exactly like what he's getting at," he agrees with Leonardo.

Shame washes over me, but arrogance interrupts the flow.  "You think I'm makin' this up?" I clench my fists and furrow my eyebrows.

Donatello blinks nonchalantly.  "Well, let's see: you exaggerate about every event in your life, whether pleasant or tragic.  You don't have a regard for consequences, so you consistently do whatever you feel like.  Oh, and you're basically delusional.  Need I go on?"

I glare at the tall, gap-toothed turtle.  He always knows how to brush me the wrong way, just because of April.  Why can't he just accept that she likes me instead of him?

"Cut him some slack!" Raphael defends me, which leaves a warm feeling in my stomach.  "He may be half-idiot, but he knows when he spots scum on the streets."

"Look, I'm being serious," I persist.  "It happened, and we gotta find a way to fix it.  If you guys come to the docks with me, then we might be able to track down those loons and figure out their big plan to destroy the city."

Leonardo and Donatello exchange glances.  "Even if all of that did happen, we have a more important mission on our hands," the blue-clad turtle replies.  "Donnie is sending us out on a supply run for chemicals.  He needs them to create a cure for the zombants."

"We've gotta get Lizzy back," Michelangelo states with a tiny gleam of sadness in his eyes.

"And Lilac," Lucy adds more solemnly, her misty eyes fixed on her feet.

I curl my lip, but I can't think of a rebuttal.  How can I stop them from trying to find a cure?  They've been at this for weeks now, so it's only fair that they finish it up.  Besides, I miss Elizabetta as well.

Still, I can't disguise my broken pride.  I expected to win the turtles over immediately, to easily convince them that Tiger Claw needs to be stopped now.  Unfortunately, it seems I overestimated them.

What makes it worse is that they think I'm lying.  Sure, I've played pranks on them before about the Purple Dragons dumping toxic chemicals into the water supply.  But this time is way different!

"Fine." I spin around and push through Leonardo and Donatello.  "Call me when you're ready to save lives."

"Don't be like that, Jones," Raphael calls after me, but I ignore him.

I march out of the house without another word.

At home, I find myself lying wide awake in my bed. I stare at the ceiling as shadows pass over it. I can see all of my thoughts laid out before me. They mostly consist of Tiger Claw and his companions down at the pier. I can still picture the menacing outline of the giant mutant, his yellow eyes piercing the darkness around him. I want to smack that smug look he always carries right off his face.

What makes it more nerve-wracking is that he had Shredder's henchmen with him. I assume they decided to work for him because they can't function without a leader. They probably believe Tiger Claw will be able to take over New York just like Shredder did. And the problem is that they're probably right.

But I promise myself that I will do whatever it takes to end their plans. I won't stand by and watch my city get taken over, not this time. I am going to stop it from ever happening, even if it kills me.  They took away my dad and sister, so I'm going to take away everything they love.

The thought of seeing the mutants on Halloween night makes my mind flicker back to that mysterious party girl. Once again, I find heart skipping beats and my mind racing. My face flushes as I think of some of the things I said to her. At the time, I had been proud of them. But the more I think about them, the more they just become embarrassing.

The only bad part about letting her roam my mind is that I have to remind myself she's gone. That I might not ever see her again. For some reason, that thought gives me the worst heartache I have felt in a long, long time.

I wish I had some way to contact her. I should have asked her for her phone number or something. But deep down, I know I was too afraid of rejection to do that. How does a guy ever find the guts to ask out a girl that is so close to perfect?

After a few minutes of daydreaming about her, a thought pops into my mind: I wonder what her name means. It's silly; but since I hardly know anything about her, at least that information will tell me something.

Climbing out of bed, I wander to my desk half-blind in the darkness. I pull out my chair and flip my computer on. I search her name on the Internet and impatiently wait for results to pop up. Immediately, I find that it means "highly sensitive", "much energy", and "blessed with good discerning qualities of people."

I spend hours that night scrolling through endless answers.

~*~*~*~

"... And then I found out that her name also means 'courage and intelligence'..."

I spent all of lunch period explaining to April what I found last night. I can't stop bubbling over about it, because I am certain that they're accurate. It makes me feel like I actually learned something about the mysterious party girl. Needless to say, I have been in a great mood all day because of it.

April, however, seems annoyed at my knowledge of her. "You know the Internet lies, right?" she tells me with a shake of her head. "The meanings of names are just guesses. They aren't set in stone."

"But they had to get the ideas from somewhere!" I insist, my stomach fluttering at the thought of the girl again.

"They can just make it up, Casey. They don't have to get permission from anyone," April points out, her patience with me wearing thin.

I smirk. "Oh, I see. You're jealous that a different girl is getting some attention from Casey Jones," I reply smoothly.

April blinks in astonishment. "No. Trust me, it's nothing to do with that," she denies quickly.

My smirk engraves further into my face. "Whatever you say, Red."

April sighs and fixes her blue eyes on a point across the room. Following her gaze, I realize she is looking at my anatomy tutor, Evelyn. I quickly avert my face and pretend I didn't notice, but April is already curious.

"I take it that you didn't like your first tutor session with her," the redhead comments with her eyebrows raised.

I shuffle my feet under the table we're sitting at. "It was worse than a flood of rats in my bedroom," I complain. "She's so boring. There's no way I'm gonna learn anatomy with that lousy tutor."

April rolls her eyes. "If you don't want to learn it, then it won't be fun no matter what she does. You've got to give her a chance," she attempts to persuade me.

"No way, I'm done," I say stubbornly. "I'm gonna get do something to get rid of her. I wanna pass anatomy and that's not gonna happen with her."

"You've hardly tried."

  The bell rang and I stand up to go to my next class. "I gave her one chance and she failed, so today isn't gonna be any better. Mark my words."

April purses her lips. "You need to make up your mind, Jones," she warns me. "You go from wanting a tutor to not wanting one in the snap of a finger. You need to decide if you want a high school education or not. You can't keep messing with people like this. You're being reckless."

Her words actually manage to make me feel guilty. I open my mouth to reply, but she won't hear it. She simply marches away, dumps her unfinished food into a trash can, and heads to class.

I watch her go. Somehow, I feel like I've failed her. I'm good at letting people down, but this time is different. It's as if I have let myself down as well.

Maybe I really should try harder.