#splinter week 2026

Splinter wasn’t sure where Leonardo’s fascination with space had come from. Well, yes, he knew it originated with that silly Heroes show but why Leonardo had latched onto that so specifically, he couldn’t say.

It was a delight to see him aglow with such awe and passion, a sorrow in that Splinter couldn’t foster it very well here—not just down to earth but far underneath it. Donatello was satisfied with bits and pieces of scrap metal. Michelangelo was (ironically) over the moon to receive paper and paint. Raphael’s energy could be taken out on his mixed selection of action figures; it never mattered what franchise they were from.

But of course Leonardo strove higher, yearned farther in all areas of his life. Try as he might, he couldn’t settle. He would sit by for whatever show the family had picked but they could guess what he’d prefer to watch. He would go along with his brothers’ games of pretend but they could tell he would rather be playing astronauts. He wasn’t ungrateful for the toys his father found but what he wanted more than anything was a model of the Dauntless. He would never ask outright, self-aware enough to understand it was too exclusive for Splinter to scrounge up, but his desire was still plain enough to see.

He tugged abruptly, uncharacteristically against Splinter’s paw on their walk home from collecting algae for a late dinner. When Splinter glanced back, he found him staring intently through the sewer grate—no doubt trying to squint past the city’s light pollution toward the stars.

“Humans made it all the way to space,” he blurted as if they had been discussing it the whole trip, desperately wistful and stubbornly optimistic at once. “Maybe mutants could too!”

Splinter doubted it. He ached to watch him hope for something so obviously out of his reach…but a crushed hope would hurt infinitely more than a distant one. Let a sweet boy keep a sweet dream.

@tmnt-splinterweek

Day 1!

Sorry my humor is kinda broken right now, this was funnier in my head

“…Cause if I had known about the glass ceiling in this industry, I would have brought my skyscraper,” Raphael concluded, snickering. “Not to mention a turtleneck!”

Idling at the stovetop, waiting on his kettle, Splinter had only been partially listening to the routine but he wasn’t the intended recipient anyway; at Raphael’s eager insistence his fellow turtles had gathered on the couch to serve as his test audience.

Thanks to his absorption in his task, Splinter had a feeling he had missed some of the buildup. Sensing that was meant to be the big punchline, however, his ear instinctively quirked in anticipation. But he heard no laughter.

“Is that it?” Donatello wondered.

The responding silence was deafening.

Oh, dear. Heart sinking, Splinter peeked over to find Raphael frozen on the spot, obviously flabbergasted that the joke hadn’t landed and unsure how to proceed.

“Uh. Yeah. That’s all, folks,” he managed weakly.

When Michelangelo offered a stilted, awkward clap or two, it was the opposite of encouraging. Raphael shrank, turning hurriedly away to snag his nearby notes. The paper’s painful crunch mostly drowned out his mortified muttering (something about a swing and a miss, inflections off, poor structure, wrong order, sorry for wasting their time, stupid, stupid) but the color flooding his cheeks spoke much louder.

Days on end Splinter had seen him poring over those notes, over every detail, painstaking, passionate as he was about little else—only for it to end like this? What he’d caught from the kitchen hadn’t seemed half bad!

So he laughed. He may not have been the target audience but the sound stopped Raphael’s hasty retreat halfway to his alcove.

“…Sensei?”

“I understand now. Not a skyscraper as one would think of a building but something with which to scrape the glass ceiling, like a squeegee! And a turtleneck for the weather up there,” he exclaimed, still chuckling. “Forgive me for piecing it together so belatedly; I was distracted by my tea. What clever wordplay, my student!”

Raphael’s hunched shoulders softened ever so slightly, shyly.

“What is that?!”

“Some kind of gremlin freak! Is it rabid?!”

“Kill it!”

“I’m not getting near that thing!”

“Scare it off with your wrench then! You, monster, whatever you are, back off! Get away!”

Getting away would have been Splinter’s highest priority if only these maintenance workers hadn’t strayed into this tunnel. He couldn’t leave without his turtles. His ears flattened at their cries from the nest secreted in the nearest blocked drain—confusion, fear, calls for him to drive off the disturbance, hide us, save us! To his horror the human closest to the wall heard it too, brandishing his drill.

“What’s that noise?”

No time to consider anything else but ducking the frantic swing of a wrench, then a crowbar, diving onto all fours to knock the man off balance and then scurrying toward the drain, scooping the squirming, squealing turtles up to cradle close to his chest.

Their hideaway was a blessing and a curse, sealed off with the promise he and the turtles wouldn’t be washed away in the case of flooding but in the same breath, sealed with the warning that it was a dead end. Now his back was to the wall. The workers crowded with their tools, blocking out light, hope and escape.

He couldn’t risk addressing them aloud, not even to deescalate, negotiate or beg; speaking as the humans did was still so new to him, he might say all the wrong things. All he could do was rely on age-old animal tactics, fur bristling, gnashing his teeth in warning. He had dealt such damage to Oroku Saki’s face before to protect those he loved; he would not hesitate to do it again.

One of the humans hesitated, however, upon noticing the little ones clinging and cooing, burying themselves in Splinter’s fur. He did his best to cover them entirely with his paws so as to not let on exactly what they were.

“It’s got babies,” the man observed—the only classification of them that mattered.

“It’s an infestation! We gotta call pest control!”

“No, wait! It’s…I dunno, it may not be a gremlin or whatever; it could be a weird possum or the biggest, mangiest cat you’ve ever seen tryin’ to protect its…litter?” At the others’ incredulous looks he fidgeted; Splinter couldn’t help but flinch at the loose handling of the drill. “I mean…look. It’s not attacking, s’just freaking out cause we got it cornered. Maybe it was just trying to get back in there to the babies.”

Curling even tighter around them, Splinter let out a lower, more cautious hiss. Someone with common sense against all odds? Dare he hope the others would agree?

“Maybe if we just…back up, leave it alone, it won’t even do anything.”

“Are you serious? We can’t just leave it here to keep breeding!”

“Hey, how many strays are there in New York already? Too many for us to do anything about it. And y’think any sane pest control guy is gonna come running if you call to report gremlins?”

They stood silent for so long, considering their options, that Splinter’s head swam from anticipatorily holding his breath. It wasn’t until he heard the scuff of boots gingerly shuffling back that he could shakily exhale. As could the humans, who eventually seemed to realize he wouldn’t be lunging out at them anytime soon.

“…Okay. Good. Uh…you and yours just go about your business, kitty, and we’ll mind ours. C’mon, guys, give ’em a little room. Not bothering you now, okay?” The man waved his free hand awkwardly. “We were almost done in here anyway.”

There was something to be said for desperate times fostering creativity. Splinter could catch his sons with ease when they were playing chase or hide-and-seek but as soon as it came to evading more serious, responsible matters like bedtime, chores or in today’s instance medicine, suddenly they had a dozen new escape routes and twice the speed.

“It is for your own good, Michelangelo!” he half pleaded, half scolded, mindful of how he held the syringe as he stretched to reach the boy crouched on top of the refrigerator. Most impolite of him to kneel on the kitchen counters but he would do what was necessary to ensure this tetanus shot went where it was intended. He already went above and beyond breaking into the pharmacy!

“No, no, no!” Michelangelo screeched, vaulting toward the opposite counter and scattering their collection of already bruised, scavenged fruit onto the floor. Splinter winced. He’d hoped to posit one of those juicy oranges as a reward if he settled down.

“You have spent more time and energy panicking over this than it will even take to give it to you,” he protested, narrowly avoiding a slip over a fallen apple. “Raphael has pinched you worse than this will, I’m sure!”

“It’s still gonna hurt, I don’t wanna hurt!” he lamented, diving to army crawl under the dining chairs. Setting the syringe down on a placemat, Splinter caught ahold of his ankle and hoisted him into the air, then against his chest to muffle his world-ending wail.

“It is a small hurt, my son, to keep you safe from much bigger hurts later,” he explained, wishing he could sound more reassuring than tired.

In time Michelangelo tired himself out too, wails dwindling to whimpers. Splinter rubbed his shell all the while.

“I just want to take good care of you.”

 “…You do, Papa,” he admitted eventually in a shuddery sigh of defeat, however reluctantly, rubbing his cheek against his shoulder for a long, silent minute before peeking uncertainly up at him. “You’ll…You’ll kiss it better as soon as it’s done?”

A little father-son doodle from a while ago <3 Might as well post it for Splinter Week Day 4: Break Day!