I had been working for 2 days straight without any breaks whatsoever, but there I was, still working as hard as ever. It was exhausting and frustrating, I was starting to hate everything I was doing. If I could work on something I wanted to work on for once, then I might've had some motivation to keep going, but since everything was up to me to solve yet another problem with some random mutant causing chaos, I had no choice but to work on something to damage control while everyone else got to goof off and do nothing but put more pressure on me. If they weren't putting pressure on me, they were making random jokes or pulling pranks on me. If they noticed that I wasn't sleeping, eating, drinking water, or taking breaks, they didn't care. I didn't know which was worse, them not paying enough attention to me to notice or them not caring. Now that I thought about it, I did really need a break. I had a headache, my stomach ached from hunger, my throat was dry, and it felt like I was barely functioning. I hadn't checked on anyone or seen what was going on since my last break, but that was because Leo had gotten mad at me for "slacking off". I didn't know what time it was though, and they hadn't seen me out of my lab since then, so maybe he wasn't going to pressure me into going back to the lab. I stepped out of my lab quietly and made my way to the fridge, snatching a slice of pizza and a cold water bottle out of it, then had my meal right there. I was too hungry to care about things like where I was supposed to eat or getting caught eating right in front of the fridge by someone.
"Hey Donnie!" A familiar voice, April's, spoke to me.
"Oh!" I jumped and looked at her, my mouth full of pizza. It was embarrassing to get caught like that by April of all people, but she just giggled. My heart fluttered when she did that, but then again, any little thing she did could do that to me.
"Sorry, did I scare you?" She asked, tilting her head curiously.
"No, no, you're all good!" I gave her a small, nervous laugh and sat down my food and water. "So, anything you need?"
"Just checking in on you." She leaned against the counter.
"That's so sweet, April!" I smiled, it was very kind of her to check on me even though I basically disappeared without a trace. "I'm all good, thank you!"
"Are you sure?" I hoped she wasn't catching on, but it seemed like she was. "I haven't heard from you in two days, you didn't even answer my calls or texts."
"You called me and texted me?" I asked, surprised that she reached out first to me instead of me calling her, desperate for attention. "I'm sorry, my t-phone was on silent. I've just been working in my lab."
"Ohhhh, and when you weren't doing that, you were sleeping or eating or something, right?" She was too kind.
"Kinda?" I rubbed the back of my neck. "Technically yeah, but I didn't stop."
"At all?" Her brows furrowed together in concern.
"Yeah..." I took a deep breath. "I've just got some stuff I need to finish up is all, I've got a lot of responsibilities."
"Donnie, you know that's not good for you, I know you do." April sighed. "How're you supposed to work when you're not taking care of yourself? Your brain needs food and water and rest to work right, you can't get anything done if you're halfway to death's door and dancing on his front lawn or something." I laughed at that, her jokes were always funny.
"Fair point." I cleared my throat, then drank a bit more water. "I did just stop for a break though, so that's good, right?"
"Yeah." April nodded. "Just... we need you, okay?" She kissed my cheek and it felt like my heart stopped, then soared into the sky.
"Y-yeah, okay, th-thank you." I made a fool out of myself, I was a blushing and stuttering mess after that kiss.
"No problem." She smiled, then walked off. I held my cheek where she'd kissed it and watched as she left me by myself. Was it possible she liked me back? No, that was ridiculous, but at least I could dream. I was satisfied with friendly kisses on the cheek, they made me extremely happy anyways. I finished up my food and right as I was about to go to bed to sleep for a while, Leo walked by me.
"Hey Donnie." He put a hand on my shoulder, making me flinch slightly for some reason. I guessed I was jumpy, so I shrugged it off.
"Hey Leo." I looked at him, there was obviously something on his mind. "What's up?"
"I was just wondering how that project's coming along." Of course that's what he wanted to talk about.
"It's uh... it's going." I laughed nervously, I hadn't made a lot of progress in the past two hours. "I've reached a point where the research's getting dry and leading to dead ends."
"Well, just research differently." Leo sounded irritated. "We need that solution and we need it now."
"But I'm working as hard as I can right now, I'm doing my best." I protested.
"Well then your 'best' isn't good enough!" Leo stopped being friendly with me. "You need to work harder, you need to get this done and you need to do it now! We need to fix this, New York is depending on us!"
"What part of 'as hard as I can' don't you get?" I asked. "I'm putting my all into it, I've been working for two days!" He probably didn't realize that I meant without breaks because he didn't seem to care.
"I've been working on making a plan too, Donnie, do you think I want it to be this way?" He asked impatiently. "We do this because we're the good guys, we're heroes. Master Splinter trained us so we could do something good, not slack around. Since you don't help in combat, we need you to at least do this one thing for us." Did he really just say that?
"What?! I fight just as much as you guys! I have to fight and do the science thing at the same time!" I was angry that Leo was accusing me of not helping. "Sure, I'm not the best at everything, but I've got a wooden stick for a weapon that constantly breaks! Of course I'm not going to be as efficient as you in battle all the time, I get left without anything to fight with because my weapon breaks all the time!"
"You handled it just fine when our weapons were taken away." Leo folded his arms. "Just find something else around the place."
"Yes, because the empty spaces we usually fight in that have literally nothing are going to hide perfect weapons for me to fight with!" I rolled my eyes, I hated that Leo was still arguing with me.
"Donnie, I didn't ask for excuses or attitude, all I said is that you need to work harder on solving this thing." Leo glared at me. "Now go to your lab, do your science thing, then come back to us when you've got the solution."
"Whatever." I grit my teeth and went back to my lab, trying to pretend like it didn't bother me. Right as I went into my lab, I saw Mikey touching an extremely dangerous chemical. "Mikey!" I snatched it from him, startling him.
"What? I didn't do anything!" He whined.
"You were touching something very dangerous!" I sat it back in its place. "If I didn't take that from you, you could've gotten hurt!"
"Oh c'mon, it's not that bad." He pouted.
"This is easily combustible, corrosive, and contains multiple neurotoxins!" I looked at him. "This could give you fatal injuries!"
"In english, bro." Mikey blinked.
"It can explode, catch on fire, melt things and give chemical burns, and mess up your nerves." I facepalmed. "And it can kill you."
"Oh." He backed away from the chemicals. "Then why do you keep that stuff?!"
"I don't know, maybe because it's necessary for my experiments and research?" I spoke sarcastically.
"Alright, I'll goooooo." Mikey left the lab, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my work. I sat down at my desk and started working on some equations, trying to solve one that would help me with a chemical compound that might work against the mutant. I could barely see the numbers and letters in the equation, which was irritating to me because if I couldn't read, I couldn't get anything done. There was a knock on my door after a while.
"Who is it?" I called out.
"It's April, I heard you went back in here." April called into the room.
"Oh, come in." I perked up at her voice and she soon walked in.
"Didn't I tell you to take a break and take care of yourself?" She sat beside me.
"Yeah." I nodded. "But Leo says that I need to get this done and he won't get off my shell about it, so I came back anyways. Sorry, April."
"Donnie..." She groaned. "If I tell you that you need to rest, does it matter that Leo's telling you to work more?"
"Well, he's the leader and if I don't listen to him, I'm basically not listening to Sensei." I explained. "So I just have to go with it, he's in charge of me whether I like it or not."
"I'll handle that, you go to sleep." April facepalmed, she was getting irritated with me.
"But April-"
"Donnie! Listen to me and go to bed!" She shouted at me. I nodded and sped off to my room, almost getting in when Raph pulled me to the side.
"Ooooooh, Donnie got in trouble with his giiiiiiiirlfriiiiiieeeeeeend." He teased, still holding onto me by one arm.
"Very funny, Raph." My eye twitched, he was the most frustrating out of them all. "Can you let me go so I can go to sleep?"
"What, already need a nap?" He laughed at me and punched my arm playfully, not realizing how hard he hit me. "Dang, that's sad."
"Ah, just like your relationship with your family." I rolled my eyes.
"What's gotten into you?" His attitude shifted, he noticed that I didn't pull any punches with that. "You're not acting like yourself."
"I need to go to sleep." I took a deep breath. "And you're keeping me from that. I have to deal with Mikey almost melting himself and exploding my lab, Leo constantly on my shell about fixing things, and April going directly against what Leo's saying to me, I don't want to have to deal with anything else." Raph took a moment to think about that.
"Dude, Mikey almost melted himself?!" Of course that was his question.
"If I hadn't taken a dangerous chemical from him, he could've." I answered truthfully. "No one's supposed to go in my lab and touch my stuff anyways though, so it's not my fault."
"Why don't you lock it away somewhere he can't get it?" Raph folded his arms.
"Hmm, I don't know, maybe because my lab isn't supposed to be intruded upon in the first place?!" I shoved him away since he still hadn't let go of me. "Now I'm going to bed."
"Dude, what's your problem?! You wanna go?!" Rap cracked his knuckles. "Cuz I've been waiting way too long for a good fight since you haven't finished whatever stupid thing you've been working on!"
"If you want to fight so bad, just fight yourself." I went into my room and shut the door, locking it behind me and flopping onto my bed face first. Raph yelled incoherently at my door for a while before storming off, leaving me alone again. I hoped what April said was true and that she was going to handle the situation with Leo because I really needed to go to bed. I closed my eyes and went to sleep, hoping that no one would interrupt me while I tried to get a healthy amount of rest.