"Hey Donnie!" Destiny calls.
Donatello stops in his tracks. Destiny sits in the living room with the other turtles. The TV is playing a clip of some ducklings waddling along after a cat.
"Yeah?" Donatello asks, wandering back to them.
"We just realized something," Destiny says, gesturing to the other three mutants. "You've got yourself a duckling."
He blinks a few times. "Huh?"
Leonardo shifts and folds his hands over his stomach. "There's this thing called imprinting," he says. He gestures to the TV. "This video is about a cat who lost all her kittens. Some orphaned ducklings hatched on her farm and they started following her around."
"To make it weirder, the cat started treating the ducklings like her kittens," Raphael adds.
"Are you picking up what we're putting down, Donnie?" Michelangelo asks.
The four teenagers grin at Donatello and he suddenly feels very intimidated. He swallows, then opens his mouth, but a squeak comes out instead. Destiny's tail wags as she glances back at the TV, one finger drifting to her lip.
"A grieving cat comes across a helpless little duckling," she muses. "Familiar, eh?"
"Donnie's got a duckling..." his brothers chant, stifling laughter.
"Sarina is not a duckling!" Donatello blurts, his face turning red. "She hasn't imprinted on me either. Those ducklings are babies and they've mistaken the cat for their mother. I am not Sarina's mother, she is not a helpless baby, and I—"
"Donatello," Sarina's voice sounds from the lab. She pokes her head out of the room and her eyes flash when they land on him. "Oh, good, you simply got distracted. I was worried that something had happened while you were fixing the sandwiches."
Donatello purses his lips as the burning, teasing smiles of his family bore into him yet again. There's a chorus of thoughtful humming that makes him cringe.
"Making her food?" Raphael asks, faking a gasp. "That's so sweet of you, Donnie!"
"Adorable!" Michelangelo coos.
"So thoughtful," Leonardo praises.
Destiny starts to applaud. Donatello's eyes bulge and his teeth grit as his shoulders seize up, hands clenched into fists.
"It's just because she can't cook and food confuses her!" he snaps. There's more snickers and he gets even redder. "All of you are impossible!"
He tromps off to the kitchen, laughter trailing behind him. Sarina wanders out of the lab like a mouse that's unsure of whether it should leave its hole, pupils darting between his retreating shell and the other teenagers. Destiny becomes very quiet and starts fiddling with her nails.
"What happened? He seems very annoyed," Sarina comments.
"Just some friendly teasing," Raphael says, waving his hand in a dismissive motion. "Don't worry about it."
"Oh...alright." She fidgets, shifting from foot to foot. After another second, she clears her throat. "I think I will go check on him anyways. Goodbye."
She scurries off to the kitchen. As soon as she's gone, Leonardo glances between his family to find that they're already exchanging the same looks. The blue-masked turtle leans back and lets out a long whistle.
"She's smitten," he says.
"She doesn't even realize it," Michelangelo says, nodding his head in agreement.
YOU ARE READING
Emotionless Mutation (Book Three)
Fanfiction"However, you say I am human in a sense, that my body is simply fused with the robot that I have been raised to believe I am. Could you teach me...emotion?" The Kraang tried to take over the city of New York twice, and only once did they succeed. Th...
