Meanwhile, Over in Falling...

Mikey! Shhh! That stuff is supposed to be top secret!!!

...but yeah. It's me. 

Growing up in a ninja family was definitely a lot of fun, but our holidays are a little bit different than the ones that TV and movies tend to focus on. For the most part, celebrations when we were younger were pretty low-key, since we didn't exactly grow up with the kind of resources Master Splinter had back in Japan.

Splinter's spiritual practices are mostly shinto, so Christmas was never really a thing for us. Back home in Japan it was more of a commercial thing, kind of like Valentine's Day; there might have been cake, which is usually this squishy sponge thing covered in cream with strawberries on top, but you don't come across much cake in the sewers of the junkyard, and that was mostly done between couples anyway. Without Tang Shen, he didn't really think about that much over here.

New Year's was really the big one for us. We'd start getting ready around the end of November, scrounging up any nice paper and trimmings that we could find in the tunnels so we could make cards for each other. For Ōmisoka -- the day before New Year's -- we would stay home and make sure the lair was clean, while Splinter would raid Central Park for the things we needed to put together the kadomatsu. When he got home, we'd help him make the mats and the rope and put both of them together. It was really good braiding practice! Sometimes, we'd add a touch or two of our own.

Well we SAW her the other day when we wer pounding Donnies disgusting mutant pet into the pavement, but no. We havent TALKED to her.

The thing is — Aprils TICKED. And you cant blame her for that. She lost her dad again and I mean really LOST — nobody knows where he is. We had the rat king take our sensei for like an HOUR and I was ready to put my fist through a wall. And April loses it like I do. Once in a while she might cry like Leo or Mikey or go all quiet like Donnie but most of the time she just gets MAD. And THAT I get. When you get mad like that you just have to go away and work through it or hit stuff till you stop being mad.

Leos tried to get thru to her tphone once or twice and Donnies been — kinda creepy. But like I keep telling them, we just gotta back off and let April work through her stuff. When your the kind of mad that HURTS and closes your throat and makes you feel like youll explode if you don’t break something RIGHT NOW the last thing you need is to be reminded why your mad in the first place.

Aprils smart. Shes good people. Shell come round eventually. If it were anything else wed just go out and beat the snot out of whatever hurt her until its better, but this time the thing that hurt her is US and we get enough pounding from Splinter as it is. The best thing we can do for her right now is give her the space she needs and be ready to go when she needs us. 

Or wants us.

Donnie? I can’T BELIEVE IT I 9CC9/NNR9R9()r{)()*(){}

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[Edited 9:52 pm]

I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t seeing it, but you really are me from the other side of the Rift, aren’t you? Oh, sorry, it’s you me Donnie typing now. Leo’s not allowed to type at the moment because apparently your message gets him so excited that he hits the shift kxey too hard, which resulted in the upending of an entire can of soda on my good kxeyboard so now I’m stuckx with the one that types an ‘x’ every time you hit ‘kx’ and doesn’t have a functioning backxspace. I thsnnnnnnn… okay, Leo just hit me. 

He’s pokxing me now and askxing me how this is possible…. I can only surmise that when he came backx through the Rift and the bridge closed behind him, his prolonged time on the other side of the Rift left some kxind of pan-dimensional energy tether connecting our two universes, just broad enough to allow these ‘crossed wires,’ so to speakx. It seems to be connected to Leo, which isn’t surprising, given that the Rift generator functions on a genetic kxey. It used our genetic sample to lockx onto our Leo’s particular genetic and dimensional signature, and the echo allowing this communication is following that lockx. So it looks likxe you’ve got a line of communication after all! This could come in handy for coordinating our efforts if you ever need to bring him backx, too, and

Okay, Leo’s hyperventilating now so we’re going to go make him breathe into a takxeout bag for a while. But he’s really happy. And… thankx you guys again for takxing care of him while he was stuckx AAAAGH I HATE THIS KXEYBOARD!

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[Edited 3:12 am]

Donnie again. Look, one last thing before I go… he remembers people. And certain things. But there’s a lot of gaps, particularly where events are concerned. He can’t explain a lot of the scars he came back with, and it hurts him to try. Like, scary intra-cranial pressure bordering on an aneurysm hurting. We just got him back, and I’d rather not have his brain liquefy and run out his ears when he’s just barely gotten his room back the way he likes it, so… Keep it simple, okay? 

Ummmm…. yeah. It fit. I mean, we got me into it. April did say her dad was carrying a little extra weight when they wore those costumes, and I guess it doesn’t matter much if it’s a belly at the front or a shell at the back that the clothes are stretching to fit.

Except…. bellies are squishy and shells… well, they really aren’t. So I got into the Ryan costume just fine, but I may have… um…. stretched it out just a bit.

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[Edit: 9:23 pm] 

And by “a bit,” he means a wohhooolle lot!!! That thing was so fluppy by the time April got it off him again and his heakd kinda got stukc and maaaaan it was so funny! You are many things, Leo my man, but swelte ain’t one of them. And I know what that word means now! I looked it up1

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[Edit: 9:55 pm]

I’m not going to lie and say that things are great right now. Nobody’s happy about what happened, and we’re all pretty much dealing with it in our own way.

We should have listened to Splinter. We let ourselves get cocky and we should have learned that lesson already. But the last time, it was against the Shredder. We learned that if we stop taking things seriously, we could get hurt. This time, it was worse. We knew we were fine. We can take on Kraang — even Kraang bio-droids — in our sleep. But we didn’t stop to think about the fact that if we get cocky, innocent people could get hurt. That was the difference this time. Innocent people did get hurt. People we care about. And I’m mad at myself for that; it was an accident, but maybe if we’d been more serious… more careful….

But Sensei’s right. There’s not time to sit around blaming myself and writing sad poetry… not that I’d ever do that. Because innocent people are still at risk, so until we account for all the missing mutagen, we have to be on task. Beating ourselves up can wait until the people our actions put at risk are out of danger.

And as for April….I’m sorriest of all that she and her Dad were the ones to come out of this the worst. If I were here, I wouldn’t be speaking to us, either. I’ve known for a while that getting her dad back was going to change things, but I never expected this. Never wanted it, either.

So the best thing we can do is give her space, carry on, and work toward fixing things as best we can. April’s stubborn, and she has a temper, and sometimes she reminds me so much of Raph, it’s scary. So if Raph says to back off and give her time to work stuff out, I’m going to listen to him.

…April was working on a response to this before… everything, and I found it in the drafts. I guess there’s no sense in keeping it around, now. So here’s what she had. ~Leo

***

Great question! I was raised an only child too, and I was perfectly happy with that. Just me and Dad meant that I got all the attention I wanted (when I could tear him away from experiments or writing articles for journals), and I always felt really sorry for the kids in my school who had to share their parents with other siblings. But then, I met the guys.

So suddenly inheriting four teenage brothers (who are also ninjas) is a handful, and it did take a while for them to learn certain boundaries. Like, in a ninja house, a locked door is basically considered a challenge. When you factor in that the guys all run around in the buff all the time and never really learned the whole “privacy” thing, it can get awkward sometimes. Especially when the locked door is the bathroom. I’ve more or less trained them to knock before barging in to whatever room I happen to be staying in now, though. And it only took a few blunt objects to the head to get it through to them that when the bathroom door is locked, it stays that way.

Don’t get me started on the bathroom. Four teenage boys with questionable nutrition plus bathroom in a sewer? Consider yourself lucky, anon. Leo just happened to be the first one I ran across when I finally snapped, and Raph thought it was hilarious. He sent me this photo.

And sometimes they’re so crazy loud, it’s scary. Especially when I’m trying to study. Which is another thing they don’t quite understand. Sensei is pretty strict and all, but he doesn’t set assignments with deadlines like they do in school, so it was pretty tough explaining that no, I can’t do it later, because later is too late, no matter how interesting the monster movie of the week happens to be.

Brothers. Oy.

But… sometimes it’s pretty awesome, too. Mikey drew me some stuff when I had to stay over to make me a little more at home and make my walls seem a little less… sewer-y. Take a look. 

I won’t bore you with detailed explanations of each picture, but this is pretty much what life with these four brothers is like. No matter what mood I’m in, I know there’s someone around who’ll be exactly what I need right then and there. If there’s one thing I haven’t been since acquiring all these brothers, it’s lonely. They’re pretty amazing, really. And despite the noise, and the treating me like a rag doll sometimes, and the bathroom thing, I wouldn’t trade them for the

***

People started asking for this blog just under a year ago, and I wasn't really ready to run a second blog then. But things have changed, and I've been sitting on this URL for about 8 months, ever since I realized I wanted Leo to start a blog when he got back to Falling. It's taken me longer than anticipated -- leaderinblue was only supposed to last about a week -- but the timing of it, coinciding with the first anniversary of Falling, just seemed to work.