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Mikey wakes up flat on his back in an alleyway, which is kinda the first sign that something has gone wrong.He sorts through his memories, trying to piece together why he’d be lying on rough, uncomfortably cold cement. Mikey comes up with the fuzzy last few seconds he can recall, of the lizard mutant they’d interrupted as he was breaking into the pawnshop through its back door, and then he’d pulled out some kind of huge jewel, which blinded them all with light, and now that Mikey thinks about it sort of reminds him of the one that worm guy had a few weeks back…Mikey groans, sitting up slowly. His whole body feels weird, shaky and wrong. His shell feels the weirdest, really sore and itchy for some reason… his head, too, actually, and Mikey raises an absent hand to scratch at whatever is making his scales itch so much.His fingers meet something thick and hairy. Mikey yanks his hand away, startled, and then he sees human legs lying in front of him and he shrieks, scrambling to get away from them. Except they follow him and he’s- they’re- Mikey ends up tumbling into a pile of trash bags, feeling too cold and overly sensitive to the night air and freaking out because oh my god the legs might be his.“Wh- Mikey?” Leo’s voice asks somewhere nearby. “Mikey, are you okay?”Mikey can still feel the hair that’s on his head and shouldn’t be there and feels his too many fingers grasping at filthy plastic and is pretty sure the reason his back feels so weird is because there’s no shell there.“I-” Mikey swallows, trying to shove all the panic into a little box so he’ll stop feeling like he has to scream and probably never stop. “I. Uh. I don’t know?” he squeaks out, cautiously sitting up in the pile of garbage he’s landed in. Mikey looks around for Leo, a little desperate to see a familiar face in the sudden weird that’s happened to him.There’s a figure lurching to his feet near Mikey’s garbage pile. Mikey meets the eyes of a human teenager wearing a blue mask and almost no clothes.Mikey can’t help the scream that comes out of him.The human teenager screams right back, flailing and pointing at Mikey and tripping over his own feet as he panics, kinda like how Leo does when he- oh. Oh.“Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Mikey half-yells, stumbling out of his trash pile and lunging for the human teen. Said human teen flinches away and shoves a hand in Mikey’s face, exclaiming-“Who the flip flying fuck are you?” human Leo says. Then he looks at Mikey a little closer, and gapes. “M- Mikey?!”“Duh,” Mikey says into his brother’s palm.Leo is silent for a beat, then rips away from Mikey and screams a little more.“Why… are we yelling?” a dry as dust voice asks. Mikey and Leo both look over at the rest of their group, who are all…Also human.A lanky, dark skinned teen is lying on the ground with Donnie’s bandana and tech strapped to him. So that’s human Donnie, obviously. And the significantly bigger teen a few feet away has a red bandana and white wrappings, and is as dark as human Donnie is. Raph, then.Mikey risks a glance at his own hands, feeling near another freak out still, and sees he’s also a black human. Same as Leo, who is pacing in a tight circle and mumbling frantically to himself.“Huh,” Mikey says, examining his hand with mild horror. So many fingers. He waggles them and shivers a little. “We look like April.”“You wha?” asks April’s voice. Mikey can’t see her, since Raph is big enough to hide her from sight at this angle. Mikey sees April’s hooded form stumble up and away from Raph, who is waking up as well. Mikey’s oldest brother holds his head, groaning, and April faces away, hunching on herself and swaying a little.“Donnie?” Mikey asks. His other older brother hasn’t moved. “You good, bro?”“I’m pretty sure I know what’s just happened,” Donnie says, eyes staring straight up at the sky and remaining still, “and let me tell you, Michael. If what I think has happened really did happen, I do not want it to be happening.”“Uh… ‘s a lot of ‘happens’, dude.”“I’m panicking. Gimme five.”Mikey stares at his immobile sibling for a moment longer, then glances back at Leo, who is still pacing and muttering. He decides to let the opposite twins work through things on their own and moves over towards Raph and April instead.“How ‘bout you, Raph?” Mikey asks, crouching down next to his brother. Raph woozily lifts his head, and Mikey is a little off put by the white sclera of his brother. Donnie’s probably lost his yellowish sclera, too, and that’s such a small thing to be weirded out by, but hell. It’s weird.Raph’s mouth drops open and a strangled sound comes out.“I know, it’s fuckin’ with my head, too,” Mikey comforts. He pushes his fingers through the thick mass of hair he’s sprouted, managing a small smile. “I dunno what I look like, man, but this is so much hair.”“We’re, I’m,” Raph stutters.“Human, yeah.”“How?!”“Uhhhh… magic, I think?”“Oh god,” April says, speaking for the first time since she stood up. “My head, Jesus. An’ my back… I must’a pulled something without noticing, ‘cause something’s definitely locked up back there…”Concerned, Mikey looks towards their friend where she’s bracing herself against the wall. He frowns, seeing the strange bulge to April’s coat. “April?” he asks, starting to stand.“What?” she replies, turning around as she pushes her hood back. Then, she freezes, hand on the top of her scalp. “…Mikey?”“Yeah?” Mikey replies automatically, staring with wide eyes.“Why am I bald?”“Uhhhhhhhh…”“Because,” Donnie says from the ground, “if we’re all suddenly human, then it leads to the conclusion that you would be-”“A turtle?!” Leo shrieks, apparently catching sight of April’s newly scaly face.April slaps her three fingered hands to her face, feeling frantically and dislodging her glasses, which no longer have ears to perch on. She catches them as they slip, in the process scratching herself with an untrimmed claw, swearing as it opens a small cut along her yellow striped cheek. She holds her hands away from herself, staring at them and blinking rapidly with two sets of eyelids.“Well… shit,” April says slowly. “That’s sure a thing.”Raph and Leo make incoherent responses. Donnie puts an arm over his eyes and sighs loudly. Mikey scratches at his bare back, feeling unnerved to have skin there instead of carapace.“...So now what?” he asks.“I knock myself out and put off fixing this another few hours.”“I dunno if that’ll help us much, Dee.”“Aw shit,” April says, pulling black fabric away from herself. Her shirt didn’t escape like her coat did, hanging in tatters against her plastron. “Fuck my bra, I guess.”Raph makes an interesting stifled cry, and then cries, “GIRL! Put that thing away an’ cover up, Jesus!”April snorts, tossing her torn bra to the side of the alley. “Why? You guys run around in just booty shorts all the time, an’ I’m gonna be real with you right now. So much weirder looking when y’all aren’t turtles.”“Be- because-”“Look, man,” April says, patting her cartilage covered chest. She grins with oddly sharp canines. “No boobs!”Donnie cracks up in the background, while Leo makes a noise between a yelp and squeak. Mikey laughs, walking over to poke cautiously at April’s new body.“Dude,” Mikey says appreciatively, looking over April’s dazzling bright yellow stripes all across her scales. “I think you’re a slider of some kind, like Leon.”“Yeah? I can’t see my face.”“It looks cool, no worries. You won the lottery on neat scale markings.”“You don’t look so bad yourself.”“Huh?”“You got vitiligo, dude. On your back and shoulders, an’ a lil on your face.”Mikey feels the indicated parts of his body, like he might be able to detect the markings. “I, uh, can’t see ‘em. What’s vitiligo, again?”April smiles at him. Her smile is the same as it was before, even with smaller lips and a short snout instead of a nose. “Skin condition, hon. Make’s white patches appear on you.”“Oh. Like my spots, then?”“I think it’s your spots translated into humany anatomy, actually. The pattern looks similar.”“Weird.”“I personally,” Leo speaks up, “think what’s weirder is how calm you two are being right now.”Mikey glances over his shoulder at his brothers. Donnie is still stubbornly lying on the ground, while Leo and Raph have come to stand near their brother. Raph is covering his eyes. Leo is resolutely looking at only April’s face.Mikey looks back at April, who looks at him. They shrug at the same time.“When life gives you limes, dude,” April says. “Just gotta roll with it.” -/- It takes approximately twelve minutes of bartering and cajoling before they can get Donnie off the ground.When he doesn’t want to do something, Donnie really doesn’t want to.And then, after that delay, the walk home through the tunnels is slow for a few reasons. One being that April isn’t used to having unusual tridactyl feet and keeps tripping because she startles herself by flexing her back toe. The other thing is that Mikey and his brothers are all barefoot, which has never been a problem before, except human feet are sensitive as shit.The bottoms of Mikey’s feet hurt, dammnit, and he keeps stepping on things that didn’t bother him as much before, but now drive him up the wall and sends goosebumps across his skin. And he’s not alone in that, either. More than once every single one of his brothers makes a sharply disgusted noise and jumps away from whatever they’ve stepped on.Mikey’s sense of balance is totally shot, too, so he stumbles pretty much every time he jumps off the grossness he steps on, trying to correct weight that isn’t there with muscles that are purely human. And his hair, it gets in his face and tickles his neck and he’s forced eventually to yank his mask off and use it as a tie for a ponytail. Which is better, but not entirely a solution.At least one person in their home keeps a razor around. Mikey will ask their pop if he can borrow it soon as they get home… and explain what’s happened to them.“Donnie,” Leo says as they get to the lair entrance, “please tell me you have at least a theory how to fix this.”“We find the mutant who did this to us, obviously,” Donnie replies. He sighs. “I just have to code a new filter for my goggles, so the crystal will pinpoint one specific type of- ugh, magic that I only got one scan of.”“How long will that take?” Raph asks.“If this was going to be a quick fix, I would be moving a lot faster right now.”Mikey groans along with everyone else. Guess they should all get comfortable as they can like this. Not that basically any aspect of Mikey’s new body could be called comfortable. He’s got hair, and no shell, he’s so exposed, god, and the- the thing, between his legs. It feels beyond just weird. It’s unsettling.Mikey’s never given it much thought before now, but he’s got a bone to pick with evolution for deciding human male genitalia goes outside the body. Totally gross. How do humans deal with being so- so- squishy?Mikey knows his brothers keep grimacing on and off, stopping minutely and shuddering, so he’s definitely not alone in being completely uncomfortable with the abrupt transition to humanity.April, meanwhile, is whistling and clicking to herself, testing out her new vocal range. Mikey is happy at least she’s having fun with all this.Its convenient that Splinter isn’t glued to his programs tonight, instead in the middle of a snack run to the kitchen from his room. He’s unfortunately also drinking milk the moment when he catches sight of them all walking into the lair, and ends up choking.“Hi, pops,” Raph says, sounding sheepish. Its sill a mindfuck to glance over and see a broad human teen rather than his big spiky brother. On a level, its cool, but right now its mostly just disconcerting to hear Raph’s voice come out of a human’s mouth.“I- hhem- am most certainly not your ‘pops’,” Splinter coughs, tail lashing in a way that warns of imminent attack. “How did you get in here? How did you even find my home? Exactly who are you?”“Do the math,” Leo says, putting his arms behind his head and raising a brand new eyebrow. “You have four turtle sons and we have one human friend. Now we’re four humans and one turtle friend.”“I do not follow.”“We’re your kids, dad.”“I know that! Uh, now, at least. But I do not follow how this happened.”“We got cursed,” April says in an almost gleeful voice, because of course she would.Splinter gives them a long look, taking in each of their new selves, and then says slowly, “…You can fix this, correct, purple? Because I am not inclined to move to the surface and begin paying property taxes again.”“God forbid, I would never let that happen,” Donnie says, in the sort of tone where no one can tell if he’s actually serious or not.“Ah, good.” Their father nods at them, whiskers shaking droplets of milk. “I need to go pour another glass of milk for myself. Let me know if you cannot fix this and I will start… house hunting.” He shudders.“Sure thing, dad,” Donnie says, as Splinter walks back out of the atrium. Mikey glances at Donnie just in time to see his brother shove his unruly coils out of his face and roll his eyes.“I like House Hunters, though,” Raph says after a beat.“Yeah, same,” Leo agrees. “Wouldn’t actual house hunting be fun?”“That’s what I’m thinking!”April snorts. “You guys know literally nothin’ about all the financial crap that it takes to get even a shitty apartment. Its only fun if you’re rich, and even then.”Leo and Raph hum disbelievingly. Mikey rubs his arms, hugging himself and feeling increasingly uncomfortable by the second. “Hey, uh, I’m gonna go find somethin’ to wear? I’m, you know. Not diggin’ this whole human thing right now.” Maybe if he saw less of his bare skin, it’d stop feeling so intensely alien.“Ditto,” Leo says, fidgeting with his belt across his chest. “My sword feels like it weighs like, a hundred pounds or something. It’s chafing, ugh.”“I doubt its spontaneously gotten heavier, Leon,” Donnie comments, fidgeting with his own gear. His battle shell has been slipping out of place all the way home, and its clearly starting to drive Donnie crazy. “We’ve lost a significant portion of our strength and mass. Of course our gear is going to feel uncomfortable.”“Raph feels fine,” Raph says, shrugging.“You have tonfa and a waistline belt.”“Yeah, and?”“It’s not quite the same as what me an’ Leo are dealing with here…”Mikey chooses to walk away from the conversation at that point, ducking into one of the tunnels and climbing his way through the floors to his room. He’s positive he has some human clothes lying around, some from childhood games and some just because he liked to wear them around home sometimes. It takes a bit of digging, sorting through the accumulative junk he owns, but eventually he does locate a few pieces he might fit.Most of the shirts aren’t usable, sized to accommodate his shell. They hang off his shoulders and make it feel like he’s wearing a small tent. He does however find a basketball jersey from when he was like, eight or nine, and it fits relatively well. But, it also hangs down past his shorts, and makes it look like he’s not wearing any pants.Wary of taking them off, in case things fix themselves on their own and Mikey suddenly outgrows whichever human clothes he has on, he fishes out a knee length skirt, too. He doesn’t wear it often, but he keeps it because the pleated fabric of the dark orange skirt is nice. Homemade skort and jersey in place, Mikey puts a hand to his still bothersome hair.It’s longer than April’s is, as a human girl, and thick with coils. They’re frayed and messy from how much he’s been fussing with them, and glancing at his room’s full length mirror, Mikey glowers at the unmanageable feeling hair.Time to find that razor, lest he resort to scissors.He pauses before he leaves, however. Looking at the vitiligo April told him he has, touching the corners of his face where pale spots appear. It affects the hair, too, upon further inspection; patches of his dark brown coils turned a light cream, nearly white. On a whim, Mikey lifts his shirt and turns, craning his neck to see his back.“Huh,” he mumbles, seeing the patterns there. April was right about them, too; they do resemble his shell markings. Its comforting to have at least one thing be the same, an assurance of his real identity.Mikey is slightly less freaked out now than he had been earlier, but its still a lot. Though, he is tempted by the fleeting thought of him and his brothers going to the surface, walking around in public without disguises and getting to do normal people things…But they’d have to do it without April, because now she’s in the situation they were. Mikey doesn’t want to go exploring the human world without their best friend- especially since it would delay them fixing this, and keep April from her family and human life.Sighing, Mikey drops his shirt back down, and heads off in search of the razor. -/- Someone’s beat him to the razor, when Mikey gets back.“Aw, Donnie,” April is protesting. “It would look so nice, though.”“It’s in my way,” Donnie says with a frustrated tone, running the electric razor across his scalp again. Big clumps of hair fall to the lab floor, and Donnie is more than halfway near bald.“Can I use it next?” Mikey asks, coming to stand next to April, his friend sitting backwards on a swivel chair.“Mikey, not you, too,” April bemoans, giving him a disappointed look. A look which is made mildly funny by the fact that she’s taped her glasses to the sides of her head, so they’ll stay on right. “You guys have really nice hair, and you’re chopping it all off?”“You’re welcome to have it after,” Donnie mutters, shaving his head further.“I’ll pass.”“It’s itchy,” Mikey explains, scratching the back of his neck where his ponytail brushes his skin. “And like, much as I love helpin’ you with your hair, girl, I don’t got the patience to take a care’a my own.” “What a shame,” April sighs, leaning on her palm. Then she grimaces, sitting up again and shrugging off her tight coat. “Ugh, now I get why you guys never wear jackets- it keeps pulling and its drivin’ me crazy. Here, keep it ‘til I can wear it without stretching it out.”“Sure,” Mikey says, taking the offered coat. He shrugs it on, smiling to himself. It fits almost perfectly, and its nice to borrow his big sister’s clothes like this.“By the way, nice skirt,” April compliments.“Why thank you,” Mikey replies, swaying his hips a little so the ends lift. “It’s technically a skort, though, ‘cause I got my shorts on still.”“Rad.”“Extremely, I know.”“How ‘bout you, Donnie? You gonna get some clothes on?”“Busy,” Donnie says shortly, putting the razor down and heading for his computer rig in the corner. He’s ditched the battle shell, unwillingly likely speaking, and Mikey has to giggle a little at his brother’s bare back. April is right. The booty shorts thing is way weirder looking on a human.“We gotta get that boy into some clothes,” April says in a whisper to Mikey. “He’s definitely gonna catch something walking around like that.”“What about you?” Mikey questions, looking over April. She’s not only ditched her coat, but also her sneakers and what was left of her long yellow shirt. What remains are her leggings and black choker.April shrugs. “I’m good, actually. This feels pretty comfy as is. Well, except for these.” She flutters her long claws at Mikey. “I keep stabbing myself accidentally.”“We can fix that, but, uh.” He puts a gentle hand on April’s waggling fingers. “Maybe don’t flutter ‘em at anyone? Its what Leo does before he tries to kick your ass and it’s kinda sending me mixed signals right now.”“Oh shit, right. Whoops, haha,” April says, smiling sheepishly. “I’m still getting a hang of the turtle thing.”“Well I don’t know about you guys,” Leo announces loudly as he enters the lab, “but I am totally getting the hang of the human thing.”Mikey and April both look his way; Donnie keeping his eyes on his computer screens. Leo saunters into the room, wearing slim tights with green streaks down the side and an outrageously colored Hawaiian shirt over a plain black undershirt. The Hawaiian shirt is open at the top, two buttons undone and showing Leo’s collarbone, and the bottom is tied tightly around his waist, making the top half flair out.“Well?” Leo says, twirling and striking a pose. His hair in its long ponytail bounces as he shoots them a grin. “Am I not incredible? Stunning? Don’t worry if you’re speechless, I’ll understand.”Mikey claps appreciatively, while April laughs and does the same.“Aren’t those my tights?” April accuses with a grin.“They may or may not be.”“Leon, you thieving cad.”“Don’t worry, they were put towards a very important cause.” He strikes a new pose. “Me.”“Ha!”“How ‘bout my look, Leo?” Mikey asks, giving his own twirl for his brother as he approaches. “Good?”“Highly unique and highly you, Miguel,” Leo compliments, gesturing grandly at Mikey’s outfit. “You look almost as good as I do.”Mikey laughs and shoves Leo, who shoves him back, turning the whole thing into a shove-off until they’re basically just holding each other and leaning heavily against one another. Raph wanders in around then, dressed in one of the huge t-shirts that manage to fit him as a turtle and some baggy shorts. The shirt reads World Class Bingo Champ with bingo stuff all around the words, and has a couple dozen little tears down the back, where Raph periodically caught it on his shell. He’s also shifted his bandana to hold his hair out of his face, keeping the veritable mane of it in order.Mikey sees his big brother glance at April, and then look up at the ceiling very quickly.“Oh my god, Raph,” April says, having seen as well. “There’s nothing there, okay? This isn’t any different than you guys walkin’ around without shirts.”“I know, I know…” Raph says, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s just. Habit, you know?”“Kick it for however long this takes to fix. I’m not puttin’ on a shirt any time soon- keeps getting bunched up in weird places.”“Alright…” He finally looks again, and raises one eyebrow. “No mask?” he says to April.“Uh, should I have one?” she asks.“Hell yeah you should. We gotta do this swap the whole way.”“We were gonna do her claws anyway,” Mikey adds, grinning as he sidesteps Leo and lets his brother stumble with the sudden lack of pushback. “We can do a full makeover!”“Why not?” April says, smiling. “I’m down for it.”“Hell yeah!” Raph repeats. “I’ll go get my sewing basket and some fabric. Hold on.”“We’ll file her nails!” Mikey cheers, dodging Leo’s shove and wrapping an arm around his big brother’s shoulders. Leo seems tempted to try for revenge again, then sighing and letting it go.“Maybe we can paint them, too, if we have time,” Leo suggests.“Lots more nail to work with,” April says, flashing her long claws.“I’m so glad,” Donnie snips from his corner, “that you’re all being so helpful with fixing this right now. Really, I am.”Leo and Mikey exchange looks.“He’s hangry,” Mikey deduces.“Very,” Leo agrees.“You get the nail stuff.”“You get the food.”They fist bump and scurrying off to retrieve their necessary supplies. -/- While Donnie wolfs down the couple sandwiches Mikey brought him, the rest of them kill time by giving April her makeover.“Your favorite color is yellow… but you’ve already got the stripes,” Raph says, holding a strip of yellow cloth next to April’s cheek. “They’d just drown each other out.”“And I’m green now, so my second favorite won’t work either,” April says.“How about black?” Leo suggests, filing the claws of April’s left hand. “Classy and goes with everything.”“I could rock the goth look,” April says, considering.“I think you’d look badass,” Mikey says. He angles April’s foot so he can clip the claw of her back toe, readying it for when Leo gets to filing her feet. They’ve got a whole collection of pet nail clippers, since human nail clippers won’t work right for their claws.“Black it is,” Raph says, dipping into his cute little sewing basket. Its got cats playing with yarn on the sides, and Raph treats the thing with utter delicacy in his big hands. He struggles for a moment, though, as he tries to figure out how to coordinate five fingers rather than three as he holds scissors.Mikey can relate. He nearly clipped himself twice buzzing his hair down to a manageable length. Now it’s a pleasant little cloud on his head, short and soft, his mask tied there like a headband. Leo and Raph meanwhile seem content to keep their long hair, keeping it back with their own masks still.Mikey pauses for a moment, looking around at them all. Possibly speaking, this could’ve been them in another life. Human. Mikey doesn’t know how the logistics would work, but his gut hunch says how they look right now isn’t due only to swapping species with April. Its them, purely and simply.Mikey wonders what it would have been like, to be on the opposite side of their friendship with April. To be the little human kid who bumped into a little turtle kid one day, and decided to be friends.He’s curious if they’d all be different people, or if they would have turned out the same as they are.“Mikey?” April asks, glancing down at him. “You good, dude?”“Oh, yeah, yeah I’m fine,” Mikey says, shaking his head. “Just spaced out a moment, sorry.”He returns to the easy flow of conversation they’re all keeping up, finishing clipping April’s claws. When she ties her new black mask around her face and re-tapes her glasses to her head, beaming as she does, they all congratulate her on it and drag Donnie away from his desk for a group selfie. -/- Donnie finishes coding his new filter thingy, and then announces that he would be saving them the leg work of running all over the city searching for the would-be thief they’d interrupted.“This’ll do the bulk of the work for us,” he says proudly, patting the top of his monitor. On it are dozens of video feeds, changing at random constantly. “I’ve set up a program that hops through the city’s camera network. Security, traffic- you name the it, I’ve hacked it. With the filter going over the images, exposing the magical signature of our culprit, it’ll alert us when we get a hit.”“Which will be when?” Leo asks.“There’s millions of people living in NYC, Leo, not to mention who knows how many mutants. It could be in five minutes, it could be in five hours. I suggest we get comfortable.”Which is what led to Mikey hanging out on the game room couch with April, while Leo disappeared into the bathroom to play with his hair and Donnie and Raph stayed in the lab, talking about mysterious eldest sibling things.Mikey s pretty sure he knows what they’re discussing. The possibility of this not being reversible. The idea makes his stomach feel queasy, unsure and conflicting feelings twisting around.On the one hand they’d be… normal. They could go to school and shop in malls and eat in fancy restaurants. They could make dozens of human friends, own a house and get jobs, pursue passions to the full extent they couldn’t as mutants…But then April would be all alone as a mutant, and their dad was still a rat, too. And Mikey can only vaguely picture what his human life would be like. Whoever that person is, the him who grew up as a human… that’s not Mikey. Not really.He sighs, a little overwhelmed. April nudges him as he does, putting down her phone and saying softly, “Hey, dude. You sure you’re okay? You keep staring into space and sighing a bunch.”“I’m fine, it’s just…” Mikey gestures vaguely. “This is a lot. It’s cool to think about bein’ human, but it’s actually kinda… really uncomfortable, to be honest? Human guy bodies are… not somethin’ I’m enjoying.”“Same hat,” April admits, dark eyes kind. “I’ve thought about what it’d be like to be a mutant, too, but it’s not as fun as I thought. Like, it’s fun, but I also got a small house on my back and can’t go home to my dad and Mayhem.”“You’d get used to the shell, I promise,” Mikey says.“And you’d get used to having human guy bits,” April replies. She tilts her head, grinning cheekily. “But we don’t wanna get used to it.”“Nope,” Mikey agrees. He raises a hand and pats April’s shell. “No offense, bruh, but I’m lookin’ forwards to being me again.”“Same here, dude,” April says, and then she blinks rapidly, shivering a little as Mikey’s nails scratch along the back of her neck. “Ohh- oh Jesus, Mike, what the hell- okay, hh, I see why you guys ask me to do this so much please don’t stop.”Mikey laughs, scratching April’s scales. He adds his other hand, getting both sides of her head and neck, and April bends forwards with a long sigh. Mikey leans onto her shell, grinning as he half hugs his sister-friend and keeps scratching all the places he likes to get scratched. April was right; its so cute when someone does this to him or his brothers.Mikey feels April’s purring before he hears it, starting as a gentle vibration and growing. She’s like a quiet engine, happy as can be. Something in Mikey tugs wrong, right in his center. Something that’s missing and should be there. He’s happy, too, and wants to answer April’s purr, but human bodies… can’t do that.He stops scratching, just leaning against April’s dark carapace and closing his eyes. The sensation of the purr echoes in his bones, but not the way it would if he were a turtle again. He feels sad and a little upset by that.“Mikey?” April asks, purring dying down as she notices his mood change.“…Can I have a hug?” Mikey asks quietly.“Oh, ‘course, bud. C’mere.”She sits up as Mikey leans away, opening her arms and drawing him in for a cuddle. Mikey lets out a soft breath, some of the tension in him draining away. Their bodies might have changed, but April’s hugs still feel the same.By the time Raph shows up to tell them Donnie’s program got pinged, Mikey and April have spread out along the couch and gotten tangled up as they catnapped. Waking up from it, laughing as April ruffles his hair, Mikey feels just about all better. -/- “Change us back.”“What if don’t wanna?”Raph shakes the small horned lizard mutant, holding him by the feet in the air. “Then I’ll let my little brother take you apart piece by piece in his lab so he can figure out how to change us back.”“I do have a dissection kit I’ve been wanting to test out,” Donnie says, grinning evilly at the captured mutant. Mikey snickers at the frightened expression the lizard gives his brother.“Okay, okay! Now let’s not be hasty here…” His hands shake as Leo returns the seized jewel.“An’ don’t think about any funny business,” Raph growls threateningly. His bared teeth aren’t as intimidating as usual, but they’re still decently sharp. Its enough to scare a frantic nod out of the lizard. The jewel in his hands starts to glow.Mikey shuts his eyes, and then feels the same overwhelming sensation as the first time this happened. His world swirls and he feels himself falling and then feels nothing at all for a short while.When he opens his eyes again, he’s once more flat on his back. This time, however, they’re on a roof instead of in an alley, and when he feels for his awareness of his body, everything feels like what its supposed to.“Oh thank god,” Mikey breathes, sitting up slowly and smiling at his green legs. He wiggles his three toes, clenching them and unclenching them. He looks at his hands, which are normal again, and then feels for his plastron.He touches fabric instead, and remember that oh yeah, he’d been wearing clothes when they transformed back. Whoops. At least he’d had April’s coat tied around his waist, so it, like his skirt and shorts, is just fine. His jersey on the other hand is ruined, ripped up the sides by his shell. Mikey tugs the ruined shirt off himself, tossing it away, and then he hears April shriek nearby and jerks his head up.“Could someone gimme some cover here?!” April asks loudly, facing away from them with her arms wrapped around herself. Donnie starts laughing, same as last time, and Leo and Raph quickly rush to offer April some clothing for her torso.She ends up in Leo’s Hawaiian shirt, politely declining Raph’s much too big shirt. Mikey offers her back her green coat, smiling at April’s lingering embarrassment.“Heck of a night, huh?” Mikey remarks as she shrugs on her coat.“No kidding,” April replies. She sighs as she zips up her coat, pushing her loose hair out of her face. Her pigtails did not return with the transformation, much to her clear dismay. “Aight, can we head back to your place? I already told my dad I was staying over, an’ I got school tomorrow. I need at least some shuteye before I rejoin society.”“Raph’s kinda tired, too,” Raph says, stretching with a yawn. Mikey smiles to himself, looking around at all his brothers and properly recognizing them once more. Four turtles, one human. As it ought to be.“So, we’re just gonna let that guy go…?” Leo asks, gesturing at the empty roof. While they were knocked out, the lizard mutant got away.“Do you feel like going through all that again?” Donnie asks.Leo considers for a moment.“No.”“I didn’t think so. Homeward bound, gentlemen and lady.”April unties her mask as they all head off the roof, sliding her glasses back on in its place after she’s pulled the tape out of her hair. “I think I’ll keep this guy,” she tells Mikey as they walk to the fire escape, waving the mask. She gives him a wink. “You know, just in case.”“Maybe next time we can take turns!” Mikey says optimistically. “We all go human together an’ you can take us a bunch of places, and then you can go turtle and we take you a bunch of cool mutant places.”“I’d like that,” April says. She reaches over and noogies his bare skull, laughing as she makes Mikey giggle and shove her away, telling her off for the teasing. They all wind their way down the staircase, trying and somewhat failing to be quiet, and eventually just leaping into open air as a set of curtains are yanked open and someone cusses them out for making so much noise at three in the morning.They all duck underground, snickering and bantering as they go, and Mikey sticks close to April’s side. Happy to feel so sensitive to her human body temperature again, and purring contently for the side hug she gives him.