Thanks for the reviews and the kind words as usual! And thanks to Machias Banshee and Splinter for the use of "Akio"- a term that they have Splinter call Donatello lot in their RPs. TMNT are the property of Mirage. I wish and I wish and I wish, but you know how that is...

He must have cried for several minutes, and then he managed to get himself back under control.

"I need to solve this problem," he said aloud, more for the sake of hearing a voice than for any other reason.

Once again he studied his situation. He was near the wall of the old tunnel. His left leg was through the floor, up to the knee. When he had gone through, he thought the entire thing would give way, but this hole was just a small weak spot in the floor. The rest of it appeared to be solid and sound.

Under normal circumstances, he should have been able to pull it out again, even though he had fallen hard and twisted the knee so that it throbbed. But debris from the roof had been set loose when he jarred the place with his fall, and for a few minutes the choking dust and dirt and bits of crumbling wall had overwhelmed him- and had managed to help lodge his leg in further.

As he had sat up, sneezing the dust out of his nose and wiping his tearing eyes with one hand, he felt his foot come in contact with some pipes. It felt as if his ankle was wedged between two pipes of some sort, small and rough and probably rusted.

Carefully he tried to pull his leg out of the hole- but a sharp pain in his ankle, coupled with a sharp pain in his knee caused him to cry out as any seven year old would!

He calmed down and tried to think.

The knee must be sprained, he thought, gingerly touching it with both hands, trying to feel it the way Splinter had taught him to during first aid lessons. It felt very tender to the touch, but he didn't think it was broken.

But his ankle! There was no way he could reach through to feel it. Heck, he had tried to see if he could spot it through the hole, shining his flashlight down around his knee- but the hole was just large enough for his leg, and he was unable to really get a look into it.

Twisting the rest of his body around to sit propped with his shell against the wall, drawing his right leg up so that he could lean his head on his knee, he tried to think about what to do.

After a few minutes, he carefully wiggled his toes. Pain was the result; pain in the ankle, but he was able to move them. That was a good sign, he thought.

Then, so very carefully, so very cautiously and slowly, he tried rotating his foot back and forth in small circles.

Again, the pain shot through him, but he could move it somewhat. By doing this he could feel the pipes on both sides of his ankle. His foot had gone in, but he couldn't get it out- the ankle must have swollen rapidly.

He remembered when Leo had sprained his ankle earlier in the year. They'd been playing around, practicing ninja jumps off the top bunk (a no-no, but hey, they were kids!), and Leo had made a careless landing, twisting his foot and falling to the floor, and they had watched in horror as the ankle puffed up before their eyes.

"It's gonna blow!" Mikey had cried out in horror, covering his eyes and running to hide behind the bunk bed before "chunks of Leo coat us all with blood and gore! EEEEEWWWWWWWWW!"

"Shoot! If it wasn't swollen I could get out of here!" he groused, sitting there in the dirt and dust and dark, the flashlight his only source of illumination. "This is all their faults! They were mean to me, and all I wanted to do was surprise them with a video game system! Stupid brothers! Stupid Mikey with his stupid oath of stupid honor! Who needs him? Who needs any of them?

He started crying again, trying not to but failing miserably, as the words came back to torment him...

It's amazing what you can overhear by not meaning to...

Coming out of his "very own top secret him only no one else but Splinter allowed" laboratory for a well-deserved bathroom break, Don had registered the fact that Mikey was trying to convince Leo to play a board game. He heard Mikey complain about Don's not playing with him anymore, and could recognize the hurt in his little brother's voice.

He knew that they were all unhappy with him at the moment, but honestly once they found out what he was working on, they'd be so kissing his shell!

"Because I want to surprise them! I can take it, really!" he had replied.

But it had been hard. Raph had just recently quit talking to him, even refusing to pass stuff at the table to him, always saying that he "didn't hear nothin'" when reprimanded by Splinter for not answering Donatello's requests.

Leo had tried to get him to do stuff- even today he had tried to get Don to stay in the living room: "Don, I'm in charge, and I say you HAVE to stay out with us today!"- but that is how he'd been dealing with Don lately, as a "boss" not a "brother", and Don refused to be bossed into interacting with any of them.

Mikey was the only one who still actively sought him out, who still treated him like a brother, who whined and pleaded and cajoled to no end, calling him his favoritest brother, reminding him of all they'd gone through together- and no matter how many times Don told him "no", Mikey kept on trying and trying.

He hated to keep telling him "no", but this was so important. And Mikey was gonna LOVE this surprise! They ALL were going to love it!

So, just as Don was entering the bathroom, it shook him quite a bit to hear Mikey speak the first phrase that Don over heard; the first of three phrases that had led him to become trapped in an old unused tunnel.

"Come on, Leo! You're acting like Don! Don't be a 'Don'! Be a 'Mikey'! Play with me!"

Don entered the bathroom. Neither of them had noticed that Don had been nearby when Mikey had said what he had said.

Don't be a "Don"? What is wrong with being a "Don"?

He went about his business, wondering why he was feeling so strange.

In the living room, if he listened carefully, he could hear them talking.

If he listened carefully, that is.

It was a strain. He could hear noises that indicated that Mikey was doing some of his "lucky throw" routines, but little else. He did hear when Raph entered the room. And he heard enough to know they were discussing his secret project and hadn't any of them found it out just yet.

There was much discussion, and the sound of the TV and shouting about being grounded off the TV... and then Mikey's guess that Don was planning an adventure...

... and the second hurtful phrase was uttered, this time by Raph:

"Don's almost worse than Leo for stayin' outta trouble! He wouldn't know adventure if it bit him on the ass!"

I would SO know adventure if it bit me on the ass, which it wouldn't but that's not the point! I do SO know "adventure"!

Though it was true; he did tend to stay out of trouble, like Leo. It was only at those rare times when he'd give in to Mikey or Raphy- or on those really RARE occasions Leo (when Leo was trying to prove that he, too, could get into trouble), that Don would end up with a grounding or a spanking. He did tend to stay out of it on his own...

Now he realized that Leo was expounding on a theory that Don was really an adult- and he nearly gave himself away with laughter. Fortunately, Raph's laugh shook the entire lair, and nicely covered up his own mirthful response.

But then, the final hateful phrase was spoken, and Don felt his heart freeze up in his chest and then shatter into a million billion billion pieces:

Mikey: "I swear, on my oath of honor, that only Raph and Leo are my bestest brothers in the world and the onlyest favorite brothers I have period! I will swear a keppan!"

Somehow, Don got from the bathroom to Splinter's room without being detected. Leo was too distracted by his efforts to keep Raph from killing Mikey for first tackling and then sitting on him to notice the bathroom door open or the slam of Splinter's door shortly afterwards.

Don crawled up into Sensei's rocking chair and hugged his knees to him, wishing that his father was home right now.

"Why do you not just tell them, my son?" he could hear it again, as if Splinter were there at that moment.

Which, I guess, I am, but still...

After a bit, he reluctantly returned to work, more determined than ever to succeed with this project, and imagining the kind, worshiping things his brothers would be saying for many many days...

The system was still on- part of his test was to pause the game while he went to the bathroom. He had only meant for it to be paused for a few minutes, but circumstances had kept him away longer than planned. To his great joy, it not only unpaused with no trouble, but allowed him to continue the game!

YES! Victory! SWEET SWEET Victory! This was going to be-

In his joy he jumped up and down- and landed on the second set of controllers that just happened to by lying there...

NOOOOOOOO!

HOW he kept from shouting out and alerting his brothers he didn't know! But he did; oh, it was a painful struggle, but he did!

He quickly examined the damage- his feet were unhurt, but the controllers were smashed beyond repair- and it broke his heart! He had been so lucky to find a system with FOUR controllers- now he was left with two.

He almost gave himself up to complete and utter misery, and then he took a deep breath, calming down as Splinter had taught him to in the early days when he could feel his frustration level rising.

"Calm down, Donnie... this is nothing bad. This is just a setback. We can go to the dump and get some more- there are plenty of working controllers- humans are so wasteful- calm down-"

Then he remembered; Splinter was not going to the dump again for a whole week. He had already made several unscheduled trips there solely for the benefit of Donatello, and the last time they had been nearly spotted. It had taken the immeasurable and fantastic skills of his Sensei to keep the junkyard dog from following them to their entrance, from catching Donatello and turning him into Turtle-flavored Kibble!

AND he had said that next time, Donatello would not be going- not until Splinter could be sure that the dog would not cause any more trouble.

"He won't know what to look for," Donnie said aloud. "Splinter won't worry about the controllers, and I know where to look. He'll be busy getting the necessary stuff, and he can't carry extra stuff..."

As he gathered the pieces up to dispose of them, Raph's words suddenly echoed in his ears:

"He wouldn't know adventure if it bit him on the ass."

The idea was born from the situation and those eleven painful, hateful words... born full-blown and ready for action, like that Greek goddess he read about in that mythology book, who sprang from the king of the gods' head, fully grown and dressed in armor, ready for battle...

He knew the way perfectly. He even believed that he knew a short cut- he remembered seeing the tunnel on one of their many trips, and once at the dump, he believed he had found the entrance to the other end... he was certain that it would cut many minutes off of their usual time if they could use it...

He'd been studying the maps that Splinter had made of the system, and he was almost certain that the disused tunnel was indeed a short cut. But he had refrained from mentioning it- he had wanted to surprise Splinter with his discovery...

Don shivered in the dark tunnel, clutching the flashlight as if it were his father.

There was something rather... oh... BAD... about wanting to surprise others, he thought forlornly. It seemed to cause nothing but trouble.

"FATHER!" he suddenly shouted, long and loud and accompanied by many tears. "FATHER! Please help me!"

He sobbed, hugging himself as best as he could, trying to ignore the scary echoes that played on his imagination, the scrabbling sounds of what might be rats or might be monsters- they stayed out of the glow of his flashlight, held in shaky hands.

"Please find me," he whispered, eyes squeezed shut, imagining and imagining Splinter looking everywhere for him- searching and searching- until he found his Akio- until he found his "bright boy"...