Under Pressure

Frustration

"This isn't going anywhere." She sighed and left. 

"Yep." I nodded. "Great job, Donnie, you're definitely doing things right with all of this." Raph walked into the room.

"Second time in a row she's gotten mad at you, you're really a ladies man, huh?" He teased.

"Go away." I sighed.

"No, let me stay." He laughed and pulled me over to him, holding me too tightly. "I mean, my nerdy little brother needs some company so he doesn't become a weird little hermit man, right?"

"I'd rather be a weird little hermit man at this point." I grumbled quietly. 

"C'mon loser, I'm not letting you keep yourself hostage in here all the time." Raph picked me up and dragged me out of my lab.

"Raph, let me go!" I didn't want to be held or touched at that point, especially by someone who was just going to make fun of me. 

"You don't want to be boring forever, do you? April doesn't want boring, you already know that." Raph sat me down and shoved me a little.

"Let me get back to my work, Raph, I just want to get that done so I can go back to sleep." I sounded pathetic.

"It's always work with you!" He laughed. "If you really wanna do all that work so much, I'll just tell April that you don't want to see her anymore because your work's too important to you."

"No!" I was desperate to preserve what little bit of my relationship with her I had left. "I don't care about my work more than people, I just need to get it done so I can see people again." As soon as Raph sat me down for whatever reason, I moved out of his reach and went back to my lab, picking up a device that I needed to work on for it since I couldn't see my equations anyways. Raph ran into my lab.

"That's so lame!" He took my device.

"Give it back!" I tried to take it from him, but he kept it out of my reach by moving it and pushing me away from it. 

"If you want it so bad, then come and take it!" He laughed. I tried to take it quite a few times, then grit my teeth.

"Raph, give it back to my right now or-"

"Or what?" Raph grinned, then squeezed my invention too tightly and broke it. "Oops!" He dropped it and laughed, kicking it. 

"Seriously?!" I picked it up. "It took me so long to make this and now it's ruined! It took forever to find the parts for this, now I need to find new ones! I'm never going to get this stupid work done now!" 

"You never call your inventions stupid." Raph was confused by what I was saying. 

"Yeah, well I don't usually say that I hate my work because I don't want anyone to think I don't like science in general." I facepalmed. "If I could work on what I want to, then everything would be fine, and if I could work at my own pace, I wouldn't mind as much, but since it's constant pressure from everyone, I hate it."

"Oh." He processed what I said. "I didn't even know you felt that way."

"Of course you didn't, I don't talk about it." I sat down at my desk and put my head down again. "I hate it here." I said that part too quietly for him to hear.

"What'd you say?" He asked me.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing." I muttered. "Just get out. You broke my stuff, it took me way too long to make that and now my progress is ruined and I'm going to have to go out and look for new parts yet again." He left and I decided that once I went out to look for parts, I wasn't going to come back until I found them. I didn't want to go back anyways, so it didn't matter. No one understood what I was going through and no one cared that I was struggling, so I wasn't going to waste my time going back just to get ignored and told that I was supposed to be working and searching for the stupid parts. I went over and made a list of everything I needed, making sure to recheck it 6 entire times since I was tired. I wasn't going to risk forgetting anything and then needing to go back out after I'd already spent so much time and energy out. I'd have to tell Master Splinter about leaving first though, the last thing I needed was a worried Sensei on my shell about anything as well. I walked to him as soon as I had my list.

"Ah, Donatello, hello." He smiled to me and I sat down in front of him.

"Hi sensei." I waved to him. "I'm going out to look for parts because one of my inventions that are really important broke. It's gonna take a while, they're pretty hard to find where I usually look."

"Alright, my son, be careful." Splinter put a hand on my shoulder. "And please rest soon, I can see you haven't been taking care of yourself." Of course he could tell, he knew everything, even when I didn't know it.

"Hai, sensei." I nodded and got up, then went to Leo. "I'm going out to look for parts, something broke. It's gonna take a while."

"Okay." Leo nodded, then walked away. He was avoiding me after my outburst, I decided that he didn't want to see me after my outburst. It was fair, so I shrugged and went to Mikey. 

"Mikey, I'm going to look for parts." I told him. "It's gonna take a while, but stay out of my lab anyways. If I go in there and anything's out of place, I'm throwing you."

"Geez, okay." Mikey put his hands up in mock surrender. Satisfied with his response, I went to April.

"Hey April." I waved, feeling a bit better now that I was around her. "I'm going to look for parts since something of mine broke, it might take a while. I'm taking my t-phone off of silent though, so you'll be able to call and text me when you need."

"Sure, Donnie." April shook her head in disappointment and walked away. That wasn't the response I'd hoped for, but I wasn't about to bring it up. I took my t-phone and put it off of silent, then went to the nearest scrapyard and started searching it. I looked through as much as I could, taking hours upon hours of time to look, but I turned up empty handed. I picked up something else, starting to give up hope, when I found a single part I needed. 

"Finally!" I cheered and pulled it out. As I reached my hand into the pile of torn metal, I got cut by a rusty piece of metal. "Tetanus shot for me then, if I can even make one on my own." I decided I'd steal one if necessary, there wasn't any way I was going to let myself get tetanus. It would slow my progress, not to mention kill me, if I were to get it. For now, I'd just take care of the cut and clean it up, then keep searching. Now that I had a single cut from rusty materials, I wasn't going to be afraid to get more, so I wasn't as cautious while working. I found a few more parts and put them in a bag I found in the scrapyard for some reason, then put the bag over my shoulder. That scrapyard wasn't going to give me any more results as far as I could tell, so I started walking to get to a different one. As I walked, I accidentally passed a group of 3 humans. 

"Oh my god!" One screamed. "It's a hideous monster!" They started running.

"Get away from us, you freak!" Another one called. 

"I never thought I'd see something so disgusting!" The comments continued as they ran away. That wasn't the best thing to hear while I was just trying to get what I needed, but I decided I wasn't going to bring it up with anyone when I got home. I got into the scrapyard and started searching again, trying not to let their words get to me. I sat down after a while in an empty car and put my head in my hands, holding back tears. 

"I just needed one day, one day off." I started talking to myself. "Is that too much to ask? Just one day without being reminded how much different I am from everyone else." As soon as I let my guard down, I felt the car move up, shaking me around a bit. "What?!" I looked around, a magnet had pulled the car up. I realized, to my horror, that it was going to be crushed, so I jumped out of it, tucking and rolling to minimize the damage. It hurt and I hit a rock, but at least I wasn't crushed. I picked up the rock and threw it. "Ya jerk!" I was just frustrated, I wasn't even mad at the rock since it wasn't sentient. I guess I could be called a mad scientist at that point, since I was furious.