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As it turns out, the pizza at World’s Greatest Pizza is still pretty good when you don’t have to risk life and limb to get it.
“Pops hasn’t left the house since we were babies,” Raph says over his stack of meatlover slices. “Suddenly he just leaves a couple bucks on the counter and says not to wait up? It’s fishy, is what it is.”
“I’d say it’s more of an umami flavour, but taste is subjective,” Donnie says, chewing his pizza thoughtfully.
“I think you guys are missing the point,” Leo says, and dramatically slams his hands on the table. “Dad’s gone for the night. This is what teen movie dreams are made of! Think of the wild parties we could throw, the adventures we could have! Think of the shenanigans.”
Mikey and Raph’s eyes go appropriately starry at the thought. Donnie remains unmoved, tough nut to crack that he is. “We could basically do that any night,” he says reasonably. “It’s not like Dad cares, as long as we don’t interrupt his shows.”
“Shenanigans,” Leo whispers again.
“I’m thinkin’ pizza party at the lair, and everyone’s invited,” Raph says, and Mikey cheers. “There’s a whole city down here, and we barely know any of ‘em that aren’t trying to bust us every time we meet. What’s better for makin’ friends than pizza?”
Mikey nods, looking around the restaurant. “Raph, you are so right, and there’s no way this plan could go wrong, but just one thing first… where is everyone?”
Leo blinks and looks around – he’d thought it was a bit quiet, but upon closer inspection, they’re definitely the only ones in the place besides the doorman, who’s leaning against the maze entrance and idly polishing his fingertips.
“Hey! Yo, Señor Bones!” Mikey calls. The guy looks up with a dead (heh) expression. Mikey grins and waves, saying, “Where’s everyone at?”
“You kids don’t know about the Battle Nexus?” he says. Leo gives him a pffhshs.
“Oh yeah, we know all about that,” he says flippantly. “We’re in the know. We’re plugged into the scene. We, uh–”
“Got a finger on the pulse?” Mikey suggests.
“Thank you, Miguel.”
“So you know everyone’s over at the Hotel watching the Battlefest, if they aren’t at the tournament grounds,” Señor Hueso says. Leo practically feels Raph’s jaw drop.
“Battlefest?” he squeaks.
“An all-night fighting extravaganza, held for the first time in ten years!” the doorman says with a flourish. “The most dangerous figures in all the Hidden City, brought together to battle for our amusement! And between you and me,” he adds lowly, “for the ratings. The Battle Nexus has been a bit slow, recently, but this has certainly brought the crowds back in like nothing else! You’d have to be a fool not to be watching!”
“Ha! And we’re nothing if not… not fools!” Raph says through a strained grin. He turns back to his brothers and mutters, “Guys, I don’t wanna be a fool! And especially not a fool who misses out on some sorta mystic Wrestlemania!”
“Seconded, obviously, Raph, but didn’t you hear?” Donnie asks. “It’s at the Hotel. You know, the one we’re blacklisted at for a certain ooze-squito incident?”
“Man, you’d think she’d be over that by now,” Leo complains. “It’s been, what, two weeks? Hello, move on!”
“We could go back in disguise?” Mikey suggests. He whips out a pair of Groucho Marx glasses from his brightly coloured fanny pack and waggles them in Donnie’s face. “They won’t suspect a thing!”
“I can’t help but overhear your predicament,” Señor Hueso interrupts, “seeing as I am still standing mere feet from you. For such loyal customers, perhaps I have a solution.”
He makes that same gesture Raph uses to get them into the pizza place, and a mystic portal opens up in the wall. “I have a small sponsorship role in the Battlefest,” he explains, “and the Grand Nexus Hotel has generously allowed the use of a direct portal to the tournament grounds, to increase traffic for both of our businesses. I’m sure I could turn a blind eye to such a petty thing as a ban from the Hotel, especially as no such ban was placed on the Battle Nexus itself. And there should be no need to mention how you got there, hm?”
“Dude!” Leo exclaims, above the cheers of his brothers. Mikey and Donnie high five as Leo babbles, “Our lips are sealed, except for when they’re eating pizza, and that will only be happening at yours from now on!” Raph is already out of his seat, pulling Leo in his wake, and he waves a quick salute with a final, “You’re the best, Bone Man!” before he falls through the portal.
The tournament grounds feel like a crazy mix of Times Square, a nightclub, and a farmer’s market for assassins. All four of them are craning their necks to take in everything at once - the bright lights hung what feels like miles above, the competing stages blaring music from Yokai performers, the endless rows of stalls selling everything from exotic and alien-looking foods with names like Finn’s Flash-Fried Fugu Fillets, to weapons glowing like their own, to merch for various former Battle Nexus champions.
And that’s just the stuff; the people are overwhelming in their own right. Leo brushes past a crazy tall being with light blue skin who is just covered in glowing tattoos, and when he turns to continue staring, he backs up into something soft. He spins around and is face to face with an actual mutant bunny, giving him an adorably unimpressed look.
“Aww,” he coos, “aren’t you adorable?” The bunny’s nose twitches. He coos again.
Between one second and the next, there’s a sword at his throat, similar to his own. The bunny holding it smirks. “Is my katana adorable too?” he says. Leo tries not to gulp.
“Not the word I'd use,” he replies, voice high-pitched. The bunny’s eyes are red, like Mikey’s, but a lot lighter, almost pink. And maybe it’s not the best idea to stare directly into the eyes of someone holding you at swordpoint, but weirdly, Leo’s having trouble looking away. “Something more along the lines of, ‘wow, is that as sharp as it looks? Let’s not find out!’”
Someone close by calls out, and the bunny looks away, smirk falling into a classic ‘oh shit, The Adult is here’ expression. The sword is withdrawn in a blur of motion and the bunny narrows his eyes. “Lucky break, kappa,” he says, and stalks away.
Leo stares blankly after him until Mikey reappears and jumps onto his shoulders, making him stagger. “Dude, they have plushees. What'cha lookin’ at?”
“I think I just got threatened by a bunny?” Leo says. “How have we spent our whole lives in the sewer when we could’ve been living it up here?”
“Beats me!” Mikey says brightly. To his right, there’s a crash at one of the stalls as two burly patrons draw oversized swords on each other. Leo spins and walks in the opposite direction, hoping Mikey doesn’t look back. “Hurry up, I can see Raph buying tickets!”
He may or may not make judicious use of his sharp elbows to reach his brothers at the front of the line. Ignoring the yelps and glares he leaves in his wake, Leo pops up under Raph’s arm as he hands some cash to the booth attendant, a sturdy-looking Yokai with ram’s horns and sideways pupils. “Can we sign up to fight here?” he asks, almost jumping onto the counter. “Name’s Neon Leon, that’s L-E-O-N, you can just put me in the next match.”
The Yokai bleats out a laugh. “Good one, kid,” she says. “Sign ups closed hours ago, and besides–” She looks him up and down, unimpressed. “You have to be over sixteen to enter the Battlefest. So try again in four years.”
“Whaaat,” Leo complains over his brother’s snickers. “Come on, I’ll be fifteen in two months! And I’m great with crowds, I bet your ratings would–”
“Okay, hypemaster, hush up,” Raph says, snatching the tickets from the booth attendant. “The next match is starting soon, and for once we might actually get some good seats instead of being stuck in the Jumbotron.”
“Maybe we can buy an overpriced, dangerously room-temperature hot dog from one of those guys with the food carts!” Mikey says, starry-eyed. Donnie puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Michael, don’t be foolish.” He pauses. “We’re gonna buy all the hot dogs from the food cart man!” And he rushes off to the stadium entrance with a cry of, “Salmonella!”
The seats they find aren’t exactly VIP material, but the view is decent, and they get situated right as the roars of the crowd are amping up, a single amplified voice ringing out above it all with what sounds like the contestants names. The whole arena is split into sections like a pizza, eight wedges each, and as names are called, yellow-purple portals appear, spitting out fighters as varied as the crowd Leo had been admiring. In one wedge there’s a huge green thing with tentacles that may as well be an alien facing off with a tiny person in samurai armour, and in another there’s an actual, for real bipedal triceratops. It’s already kind of breaking Leo’s brain to see this many non-humans in one place, so of course that’s when Donnie says, “Sweet Ada Lovelace, is that Dad?”
“Where?! Everyone down!” Raph hits the deck, taking Leo and Mikey with him. Leo wheezes as his lungs are crushed beneath fifty pounds of bicep. “No way are we getting grounded before Raph sees some butt-kicking action!”
“Not in the crowd, guys, down there!” Donnie’s goggles flip over to binocular mode and whir into maximum zoom, pointing straight down at the arena. Raph finally eases up from the ground and Leo gasps, popping up to peek over the shoulders of the people in front of them through streaming eyes.
It takes him a moment, but when he sees it, his jaw drops. “What is he doing?” he squeaks. In the wedge furthest to the left from their seats, Splinter poses for the crowd, wearing a very flashy pair of gold sunglasses with his extremely un-flashy robe. His opponent is a goliath with two sets of arms and two giant flails, the spikes of which seem to glint even at this distance. “That guy’s gonna crush him!”
“First he steals my car, now this? Mikey’s only thirteen, that’s way too young for a father to start giving us psychological problems by way of revealing he's a thrill-seeker with a death wish!”
“Alright, here’s the plan,” Raph says firmly. “When the buzzer goes off, we scatter. I’ll get to Pops and protect him from the front; Leo, Mikey, you go around the back for a surprise attack; Donnie, you be air support. We get the guy on the ground and then snatch Dad away to safety.”
“And to an extremely pointed lecture!” Donnie adds. The announcer overhead starts up a countdown – the brothers nod, all bracing themselves to pounce.
“3, 2, 1..!”
And Leo is about to roll off into the crowd, he really is, but in the split second before he can, Splinter practically disappears, sprinting along the dirt to bounce off the wall of his section of the arena into a crazy flying leap, right onto the head of the goliath, all in no time flat. Leo can feel his brothers frozen in place next to him, but doesn’t take his eyes off their dad, who is dodging every attempt the goliath makes to grab him with a grace Leo can’t even comprehend being in the same room as him, let alone Splinter having.
“Uh… do we still need to save him?” he hears Raph say. As if in response, Splinter gives a one-two strike against the goliath’s neck, right at the base of his skull, and just like that, his eyes roll back in his head and he falls flat on his face. Splinter somersaults backwards off him as he goes, landing neatly in the dirt.
The whole thing only takes six seconds, tops.
“Guessing that’s a no on the ‘saving Dad’ plan, then,” Leo says. In the arena, Splinter dabs.
His opponent shimmers, and then is zapped away by the same yellow-purple light that brought all the contestants into the ring. Another portal opens at the edge of Splinter’s section of the arena, and with one final wink at the crowd, he disappears inside.
“Yeah, new plan,” Raph replies. “We go track wherever that portal just dropped him to, and get some answers.”
“Like where he’s been hiding all those crazy ninja moves!” Mikay says.
“And why he’s never told us about this place when he clearly knows–” Leo pauses mid-sentence. He’d been scanning the rest of the arena idly, only for his eye to catch on the section closest to their seats. Most of the other fights are still going strong, but this one is clearly almost finished. A slim lizard Yokai is being backed into the corner of the wedge by his opponent, a familiar white-furred rabbit dual-wielding katana with relentless speed.
“Uh, Leo? You didn’t finish your sentence, so now I can’t come in with my Rule of Threes punchline,” Donnie says. Leo grabs his forearm and shakes it, not looking away from the fight.
“Yeah, okay, but look,” he says. “I ran into that guy outside!”
“The little lizard dude? Oof,” Raph says. “Hope you didn’t put a bet on him.”
“Not him, the bunny!” In the arena, the bunny in question dodges a wild jab of the lizard’s wooden bo staff and responds by twisting the staff between his two swords, flipping it from the lizard’s hands and drawing him off-balance. Lightning fast, he shoulder checks the lizard down into the dirt and points a katana at his throat, glaring like he’s daring the guy to try and get up again. The crowd goes wild again as the yellow-purple light spirits the lizard away, and Leo shakes Donnie’s arm again.
“That was insane! Did you see how fast he was? I could never fight like that!” he says.
“Of course you could, Leo! Don’t be jealous,” Mikey says, gently prying Leo’s hand off his brother’s arm.
“What? No, I’m not jealous,” Leo says, and he’s not at all, because jealousy doesn’t feel like this, like fizzy, bubbling excitement in his stomach. “I’m just– I’m–”
His brothers look at him. Donnie raises a single, perfectly drawn eyebrow.
“I gotta go talk to him,” Leo finishes, and bolts.
“Woah, hey, Leo!” Raph makes a grab for him, but he’s already scrambling out of his seat, vaulting over the two Yokai in front and jumping off the shoulder of an indignant bright orange creature to land in the aisle, sprinting down the stairs to the edge of the arena.
The bunny is still soaking in the applause, but he’s going to head out at any moment through the portal opening up just below the stands where Leo is currently, and he has to talk to him for just a second, just to – to –
Okay, so he doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but he needs to talk to him.
He almost trips on a stray bucket of what he hopes is popcorn, takes the last few stairs with a handspring that he totally nails, landing at the edge of the ring just in time for the bunny to glance up at him before he walks through the portal. Leo waves frantically. The bunny stops and leans on his katana in the most effortlessly cool way ever.
“Sweet moves!” he says, in what he hopes is a similarly effortlessly cool way and not as suddenly out of breath as he feels. “I’m kind of a sword guy myself, so - kinda know what I’m talking about.” He taps the odachi slung over his shell and folds his arms over the railing, suddenly aware of the sweat gathering there. Has he been sweating this badly the whole time? Why is he just now realising how sweaty he is?
The bunny looks him over from his sword to his arms, then meets his eyes. And then he smirks, and Leo instantly feels about ten times sweatier. “You like what you see?” the bunny says.
“Psh– uh, yeah . I mean, you – and then it was – yeah!” Effortlessly cool, he tells himself.
The bunny’s eyes flick to his sword again, and he asks, “Are you participating in the Battlefest?”
That deflates Leo a bit. He slumps onto his arms over the railing and shakes his head.
From here, there’s only a few feet between him and the bunny, and he feels every inch of it when the bunny straightens up, whipping his katana to the side and sheathing it in one smooth motion before tilting his head, his smirk turning into something a little softer.
“A shame,” he says. “Maybe I would’ve liked what I saw, too.”
And he walks through the portal, disappearing from the arena.
“Wait, what’s your–!” The portal closes with a swirl of yellow-purple light, and Leo collapses onto the railing with a groan.
It’s probably only another few seconds before his brothers catch up to him, but it feels like he’s staring at the empty space where the gate was for hours before Raph grabs him by the arm and slings him into the air. “What was that about?” Raph asks, catching him over one shoulder. “C’mon, we gotta go find Pops before the next match starts.”
“What’s the point?” Leo moans. He lets himself slide bonelessly off Raph’s shoulder and drop to the ground in extreme dramatic fashion. “I didn’t even get his name.”
“Woah, that’s even more extreme drama than usual,” he hears Donnie say right before Mikey’s face pops up right above his.
“What’s wrong, Leo?” he asks. Leo groans.
“I don’t know! I’m like, a billion times sweatier than usual, I must’ve eaten some bad flash-fried fugu fillets with how crazy my stomach is going, I’m pretty sure I’m having a heart attack, and worst of all, I don't think I was cool at all! Tell me I’m dying, Donnie, give it to me straight.”
There’s a couple of beeps as Donnie taps something into his tablet, and then his face also appears above Leo. “Well, your heart rate is through the roof, and it looks like your brain is producing major amounts of oxytocin, adrenaline and dopamine.” The tablet lets out a sad bloop and projects a cartoon image of his face with love hearts for eyes. “I’m afraid it’s a crush. Those are terminal, I hear. My condolences.”
“Aw, Leo!” Mikey coos, the unwitting soundtrack to Leo’s mind being blown. “This is so going in the scrapbook. Say ‘my family is about to embarrass me in front of a cute guy’!”
“Hey! Come on,” Leo says desperately as Mikey flings himself to the ground next to him and starts taking selfies. “I’m sure there’s a totally normal explanation for why I want to impress this really cool guy so bad. And why I keep staring at him. And why I kinda wanna know how soft his fur is, and…” Raph’s head looms into view, wearing his Supportive and Non-Judgemental expression. Leo lets his head thunk back to the ground and sighs. “Okay, maybe I have a crush on the rabbit.”
“It’s okay, bro,” Raph says reassuringly. He reaches down to tug him back to his feet, bringing Mikey with him. “This is way less embarrassing than all those crushes you had on Star Trek characters.”
“True, but irrelevant,” Donnie announces. “Not that I wouldn’t love to be the side character who organises elaborate plots for you to win your teen romance’s heart, but are you forgetting about our dear Papa’s secret martial arts skills? And the need to interrogate him while possibly disregarding all moral stances against excessive violence, I’m still deciding how mad I am–”
“Donnie,” Raph starts to say, but Leo interjects,
“No no, Raph, he’s right. We should go and find Dad, in whatever perhaps communal contestant dressing room he may be in."
Donnie stares at him flatly. "You just want to find that guy–"
"Of course I just want to find that guy, Donnie!"
It isn’t hard to find the contestant waiting area - just off the main entrance to the stadium, there’s a seething mob of fans clutching plushees and posters waiting to be signed, all clustered around a nondescript door guarded by two intimidatingly large men in suits. As Leo watches, one of them gets his sunglasses slapped off by an overenthusiastic fan, only to reveal a second, smaller pair underneath.
So the front door is a no-go. Leo surveils the area, eyes darting until he finds a small air vent in a side corridor just past the fans. He nudges Mikey and whispers, “Make a distraction!”
“That’s what I do best!” Mikey whispers back, and without hesitating, he rolls into the crowd, popping up in the dead centre and waving a poster of what looks like a tabby cat Yokai with a six pack and long, romance cover blonde hair. “Omigosh, I heard Heartthrob Heathcliffe is gonna come out and sign people’s faces!” he yells, and the fans around him scream, renewing their attempts to break down the door. The two guards are overwhelmed, and Leo uses the moment to cut a portal that works on the second try, right into the air duct.
His familiarity with the ventilation system, courtesy of Big Mama’s machinations, comes in handy - the next vent he comes to shows him an empty dressing room, complete with an untouched complimentary robe and one of those dresser/mirror combos with all the lightbulbs around it, wow, he didn’t even know those were a real thing. He pries the vent open and drops to the floor, pausing only to grab some MnMs from the bowl on the dresser before cutting another portal, this time with the vague but strong directive of ‘wherever Donnie is’.
For a second, he thinks the instructions may have been unclear, since what he sees is one of the door guards getting crowdsurfaced by the shrieking mob of fans, but then Donnie pokes his head into view.
“I feel like we need to work on our communication,” he says, and then falls through the portal, Mikey and Raph in tow.
“What, like as brothers?” Leo asks. The portal zips closed behind them. “I’ve been feeling that way for a while now too! You’re my twin, and we never hang out anymore–”
“As a team, Leo,” Donnie rolls his eyes. “You can’t keep coming up with multi-layered plans and not explaining them because you assume they’re gonna work.” He glances at the empty dressing room around them and continues, “... even if it did in fact work this time. Kudos, I guess.”
“Save it for the debrief, fellas,” Raph says, clapping them both on the shoulders.
“Do we debrief?” Mikey whispers.
“He means the stuff he always says after missions that we never listen to,” Leo whispers back.
Donnie squirms out from under Raph’s hand and slides up to the door of the room, opening it just a crack to survey the scene. “Lot of volunteers in this hallway,” he reports. “I’d say the chances of sneaking out of here unnoticed are about…” He taps something on his tablet. “It’s zero percent, I only put it in my calculator for dramatic effect.”
“Here’s what we do,” Raph says. “If we wanna hide in a group of volunteers, we gotta act like volunteers.”
“You mean, totally hapless and not really sure where we’re supposed to be?” Mikey says.
“Exactly,” Raph replies. “We’re just some random volunteers who’re taking some extra stuff to one of the contestants.” The brothers all nod and grab various items from around the room – Mikey folds the robe in his arms, Donnie unscrews a lightbulb from the mirror, and Raph picks up the bowl of MnMs. Leo steals another two before he grabs a hairbrush from the dresser. “Alright. Walk like we belong, and remember – we’re new and totally unimportant!”
Plan in place, they step into the hall, and immediately are swept up in a stream of people, everyone running back and forth with water bottles and towels, all caught up in their own personal panics. No one blinks an eye at them, and they follow the crowd into a large room filled with costume racks and tables full of mic packs. There’s three other corridors leading off the room, and absolutely none of them are helpfully labelled with which contestants are in what rooms.
“What now, Leo?” he hears Mikey whisper.
“Uh…” Leo glances around at the tables, looking for a clipboard, or a bundle of papers – there’s got to be a list somewhere, right? He accidentally catches the eye of a frantic looking Yokai with tawny striped fur who stands head and shoulders above the crowd, and before he can whistle and slink away, they come bounding over, skidding to a stop in front of him.
“Hey, you guys look new and totally unimportant!” they say quickly. “The old guy in Room 18 is complaining again about the temperature of his miso. I don’t know why he even wants it, they’re going back out in five, but just get in there and calm him down, alright? We’re almost at the semi finals!” They scurry away with one final frantic look around.
“Old guy?” Raph says.
“Complaining?” Donnie adds.
“That’s totally Dad!” Mikey crows. Leo shushes him and says,
“And we got his room number! Come on, they said the match is gonna start soon!”
Room 18 is only a corridor away, and has a single extremely bored-looking guard outside, who barely looks up from his phone as they approach. Which, good to know they get cell signal down here. “Greetings, fellow Battlefest colleague,” Leo says, in his most professional voice. “I also work here, and–”
The guard opens the door and waves them through, eyes glued to his phone. “Okay, cool, not gonna question that,” Leo mutters, and he and his brothers all cram through the door into the dressing room.
It’s… definitely not the room he was given as Primetime. The faded green wallpaper is peeling, the furniture is scuffed, and the complimentary refreshments bowl is completely empty of MnMs. There’s a battered loveseat against one wall and a dresser/mirror combo against the other, at which Splinter is sitting, chin in hands.
“About time,” he grumbles without looking at them. “It better be hot this time!”
“You!” Donnie shouts, scrambling in front of his brothers and tossing his lightbulb over his shoulder. Splinter jumps at the loud noise, the chair wobbling underneath him before giving out with an exaggeratedly loud crash. “You better have a good explanation for all this, young man! And on a school night, too!”
“Purple! Other ones!” Splinter exclaims, rolling to his feet, eyes darting for an exit. “I didn’t - who let you down here? You shouldn’t know about any of this!”
“Uh, yeah, because you never told us, ” Leo says, crossing his arms.
“What’s with the secrets, Pops? This place is awesome, and you never said anything!” Raph adds.
“This place is dangerous, ” Splinter says firmly, ushering them inside and slamming the door behind them. “And you’re still too young to get involved in any of this! The Battle Nexus is barred to anyone under sixteen–”
“Is the whole Hidden City barred, too?” Leo interrupts. “Why do we live in a sewer when we could’ve been in what’s basically mutant paradise this whole time? We could’ve had friends! I could’ve…” maybe met that guy sooner, he doesn’t finish, just bites his tongue and watches his father’s whole posture droop.
“No, my sons, we could not have,” he says gently. He takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “It is not just the Battle Nexus that is dangerous, in this city. There are dangerous, powerful people - people who became my enemies, when I was young and foolish.”
“Woah, lore,” Donnie murmurs.
“I was a Battle Nexus fighter, in my youth,” Splinter continues. “I had fame, and fortune - but I refused to bow to what many powerful figures wanted of me, and for that reason I fled. But when I found out the Battlefest was being held again for the first time in a decade…” He sighs. “I just wanted to relive that old glory. I never meant to put you in danger, too.”
“Why would we be in danger?” Raph asks. “I mean, you basically just told some rich guys to shove it before we were born - they’re over it by now, right?”
“Not before you were born,” Splinter says grimly, “but after. One of those powerful figures was the one I rescued you boys from.”
Leo’s brain absolutely cannot handle any more bombs dropped today. He picks his gaping jaw off the floor and says, shaking his head, “Wait, wait - you stole us from Baron Draxum?!”
Splinter’s eyes snap to his. “How do you know that name?” he demands, only to be interrupted by a crackly chime from the PA system.
“All Battlefest contestants, the next match will begin in one minute,” a cool voice announces. “Please prepare to face your opponents.” As the announcement fades, a swirl of yellow-purple magic lights up the mirror at the dresser, and when it clears, a familiar face is left behind, frozen in a static image. Leo gasps, sprinting to the dresser and nearly pressing his face to the glass.
“No way,” he says, “no way! He’s your next opponent?”
“Lemme see, lemme see!” Mikey elbows Leo away and oohs in excitement. “Omigosh!”
“Dad, you have to let me go out instead of you,” Leo begs, falling to his knees with Even More extreme drama. “I’ll forget this whole thing. All parents lie to their kids, right? And who needs a super cool city full of people just like us, I love sewers! Please please please!”
“What, who is it?” Splinter asks. “The Zillo Beast of Zenthi VII? Nandorim the Relentless? Chad?”
“Even better!” Mikey says brightly, spinning the mirror to face Splinter. “It’s Leo’s crush!” And then he slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide, and everyone freezes.
It’s not - it’s not like Leo’s worried, or anything. For all his father’s emotional distance, he and his brothers know deep in their bones that they’re loved. It’s in how they were raised - every one of Raph’s protective instincts, all of Mikey’s tender care, is taken from their dad. And he’s never heard Splinter say a word about - stuff, even when Mikey had found that orange skirt in a charity bin and worn it around for weeks, or when Leo had maybe gone a bit overboard talking about Captain Kirk’s dreamy blue eyes one too many times.
But - Splinter’s never said a word, is the thing, good or bad, so - maybe Leo is a little worried. Just the tiniest bit.
And maybe he lets out a relieved sigh when Splinter says, “A crush, hm? Well. I’ll put in a good word for you, Blue.”
And there goes the relief. “Oh God, anything but that,” he moans. Splinter is tapping his chin thoughtfully.
“I’ll have to mention your curfew hours,” he says. “And that I want some grandchildren. I’m not waiting around forever, you know.”
“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Leo says, sliding facedown into the carpet. “Someone knock me out and wake me when it’s over, please.”
“Finally!” he hears Donnie shout, and then a scuffle. “No, Raph - he asked me too–!”
“Pops, come on,” Raph says over Donnie’s continued protests. “He really likes this guy.”
Leo peeks up from the carpet to see Splinter shaking his head. “It’s too dangerous,” he says firmly. He puts a hand on Leo’s head, and says almost gently, “When you’re older, Blue.”
“But he might not be here next time!” Leo says, scrambling to his knees again. “Dad, please - I know you want to have the glory of being a Battlefest winner again, but I–” he hesitates, and drops his eyes to his hands, bundled in his lap. “I’ve never had this before. I’ve never liked someone like this. Please, just let me go out and see him, and – I promise we’ll never come back here again.”
He hears Splinter sigh, but keeps his eyes fixed downwards until a clawed finger nudges his chin up. His dad gives him a searching look before pulling a gently glowing badge from his robes and clipping it to Leo’s belt.
“You teenagers and your extreme drama,” he chides, but it’s the fond kind of annoyed, so Leo is fully justified in pulling him into a hug.
“Thank you, thank you,” he babbles, “I would’ve never spoken to you ever again if you’d said the thing about grandkids, wow, hey you guys aren’t gonna shout really embarrassing stuff from the stands are you–?”
“Your match begins in 5, 4, 3…” The cool voice announces from the PA. And then the yellow-purple light swallows him whole.
The portal spits him out into a wide dirt arena surrounded by metal walls, and the roar of the crowd is instantly deafening. He takes a second to soak it in, hoists his sword onto his shoulder and preens a little, before a voice calls out behind him, “It’s you!”
Here goes. He plants the odachi in the dirt and attempts the effortlessly cool lean, and – okay, slight wobble – success! He looks over his shoulder with a confident smirk. There, in dusty blue robes and clutching swords in both hands, is the bunny. His eyes are wide, and Leo resists the urge to preen.
“Oh, hey,” he says, super casually. He picks the sword up and twirls it around, turning to face his opponent. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“I thought I would be facing a… little rat man,” the bunny says. Leo pshaws.
“What, scared because now it’s gonna be a real fight?” he asks.
“Didn’t you say you weren’t competing?” the bunny shoots back.
“I’m kind of a wildcard,” Leo says, and the bunny’s eyes widen even more, and wow, they’re kind of really nice to look at, now that Leo’s used to the colour, and he kind of just wants to keep looking–
“Well… we’ll see about that,” the bunny says after a moment, and sinks into a ready pose only a second before the airhorns go off.
Immediately Leo is on the defensive, and not just because it’s two swords against one – the guy is a whirlwind, striking out again and again, faster than Leo can parry. It’s been mere seconds and Leo’s already giving ground, backing up just to try and get the space he needs to think, to analyse his style and see what he can take advantage of. He makes a wide swing to block the overhead and side cut coming at him simultaneously, and blinks as the blue light of his portals splutters into existence for just a moment before it zaps out. It throws the bunny off, too, making him freeze in place for just a second, enough time for Leo to try again. Same result - either he’s backsliding in his abilities, or mystic stuff is a no-go in the arena.
“Nice trick,” the bunny says once it’s clear nothing more will happen, and then he’s pressing forward once more.
There’s something about his style which is nagging at Leo’s brain, but it’s a tiny notification that barely registers above, well, the screaming about how this is it for ol’ Neon Leon. The bunny is relentless, coming at him again and again like some sort of robot hellbent on his destruction, like in Jupiter Jim IV: Robots of Relentless Rage From Rigel VII, where the galactic overlords programmed a bunch of former factory worker bots to rise up and–
That’s it! Leo narrows his eyes and jumps over a low sweep, letting himself tumble back to his feet off to the left, watches the bunny reposition his feet just so before continuing the attack, overhead cut, side cut, parry and back up, right diagonal and then a direct stab, eyes focused and intent the whole time but never quite meeting his.
He's doing katas. Excellently formed katas, but katas nevertheless, done at such a fast pace that all Leo could hope to do was block and dodge, never strike back to break the pattern. If he could just get the sequence, start anticipating his moves ahead of time…
The bunny strikes out for that same overhead and side cut manoeuvre. Instead of the same wide parry defence as before, Leo drops to his knees into a backbend, letting the katanas sweep cleanly over him, and while the unexpected momentum makes the bunny stumble forward, he springs off his left hand into a side twist, kicking out at the same time and grinning in satisfaction as he feels it connect with a quiet oof. He pops up from the ground in time to see the bunny rub his chest and glare.
“If you wanna forfeit now, I totally get it,” he calls out.
“It’s cute that you consider it a possibility,” the bunny replies, and runs at him.
But Leo’s got his number now, and he knocks the overhead swing aside before it even has time to gather momentum, pushing himself into the bunny’s space, chest to chest.
“You think I’m cute?” he asks, only a tiny bit joking, then ducks away as the bunny goes for a pommel strike to the temple, which, yikes. That could either mean yes, and I’m annoyed about it, or no, not in a million years. Leo’s gonna be optimistic and lean towards option one.
He keeps to the tactic of breaking up the bunny’s sequences, ducking and rolling whenever he senses where the next move is coming from rather than parrying with his sword. Just having the one odachi works for him in this sense – he can have one hand free to deal unarmed blows to the bunny’s ribs, knees and shoulders, knocking him off stance and forcing him to take the precious extra second to reset. He even takes a leaf out of Splinter's book, taking a run at the arena wall and rebounding upwards – he's pretty sure he'd break something if he tried to land on the bunny's shoulders, but he manages to latch onto his left wrist instead, bringing him down backwards into an awkward enough position that he drops a sword. That earns him what has to be the deadliest glare ever given by any rabbit in history once they’ve both scrambled to their feet again, and leaves him on frantic defence as the bunny renews his strikes with even more fervour.
And it is frantic, even now that they’re matched to one blade each. Leo’s eyes are darting all over, trying to track which moves are coming and how to break the pattern again, but somehow it’s like the bunny has even more energy now than when they started, which can’t possibly be right, because Leo’s exhausted. He mistimes his parry, and in the next second the odachi is knocked from his hands, skittering away to who knows where – he doesn’t have even a moment to glance for it, because the bunny is still coming at him, not pulling his blows even when Leo’s been disarmed. He ducks aside to dodge the katana, but rather than continue the retreat, he somersaults forward, wincing at the glancing blow of a blade off his shell but not hesitating to uncurl just in time to sweep the bunny’s legs from underneath him. The bunny manages to leap out of it with a one-handed handspring, but Leo sees him shake his wrist out afterwards - it couldn’t have been a good landing. He takes note of the weakness, and takes advantage of the sudden distance between them to scout for his odachi - there, about five feet to the left, slightly closer to him than his opponent. But the bunny clocks this too, and with narrowed eyes, runs at him again, katana low for an upward sweep.
Leo feints like he’s going for a side roll again, then dodges right when the bunny compensates, just outside the range of the strike and just behind the bunny when his momentum takes him a step forward. Which puts him in the perfect spot to open palm strike the bunny’s shoulder and then, lightning fast, seize his injured left wrist in a vice grip twist it behind the bunny’s back.
The bunny shouts, almost dropping his katana but scrambling to regain his grip at the last second, glaring over his shoulder at Leo with wild pink eyes. Leo winks, and the bunny’s eyes go a little wider, and it’s almost distracting enough that Leo doesn’t notice when he pulls off, frankly, a really cool flip of the sword in his right hand and reverse grips it into a backwards stab towards Leo’s side.
But he does notice, and shoves the bunny forward to create the space he needs. It’s only two seconds to grab his odachi at full sprint, and he slides into a skid in the dirt, hoping to grab it and pop up in a ready stance–
His tips of his fingers brush the handle right as he gets tackled sideways, rolling over once, twice, and then sliding to a stop with the bunny crouched over him, hands pinning his biceps and knees digging into his thighs. His katana has been dropped somewhere along the way, but even without it, Leo knows he’s been beat – the wide grin of victory on the bunny’s face says it all.
“Do you yield?” he asks, between panting breaths.
Leo is barely aware of his own heaving chest right now, brain too busy caught between I lost, I lost, my one chance to impress him, and the somewhat louder this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, oh my GOD! “Uh,” he says eloquently. “Yeah, I – just one thing, though.”
The bunny’s eyes narrow. “If this is a trick,” he warns, but Leo interrupts,
“What’s your name?”
The look of suspicion vanishes. The bunny eases back a little, weight shifting onto his heels, which, thank goodness, because his knees are really pointy, and his ears flick almost straight up. “Oh,” he says, almost sheepishly. “Uh, Usagi. Miyamoto Usagi.” And then he bites his lip with his large front teeth and smiles, and yep, there goes Leo’s brain, officially melted down into pink mushy goo over how cute the whole thing is.
“Cool,” he mumbles, hoping there aren’t literal cartoon hearts in his eyes, because that would definitely go against the effortlessly cool directive. “I yield.”
The yellow-purple light starts to swirl around him, and Usagi looks almost startled. “Wait, you didn’t–” he says, but the rest is lost as Leo is shuttled away to the medical bay.
He’s only alone at the tender mercies of the aggressively attentive medic for a few minutes before his family bust through the door, making the cheetah-like Yokai jump, all his fur standing on end.
“That was awesome, Leo! You were like a real ninja out there, I didn’t even know you had some of those moves!” Raph says, crowding onto the lounge Leo’s slumped into while Mikey perches on the arm. Donnie nods, tapping on his tablet and showing him the video that starts playing.
“I recorded the whole thing,” he says, oblivious to Leo’s scowl. “That guy was better than half the bad guys we fight, if we study this I bet we can come up with some really great team strategies. And get some crazy numbers on my Insta story.”
“You didn’t even need your portals, bro,” Mikey chatters, “And as the king of flips and bounces, let me just say, your acrobatics were on point.”
At this, Leo slouches even further and grimaces. “Guys, none of that even matters,” he groans. “I lost. I just wanted to do something impressive one time, and I failed.” He curls into himself, bringing his knees to his chest. Not in an extreme drama way - at this point he’s probably used up his extreme drama quota for the month, and Donnie definitely keeps track of that.
“Woah, Leo, you got fugu fillets in your ears or something? We’re all way impressed!” Raph says, slinging an arm around his shoulder and bumping their heads together. “For real, none of us could’ve gotten even close to hanging in there that long!”
“You two were fighting for way longer than the rest of the match ups,” Mikey agrees.
“And do you seriously think I’d put you on my Instagram if it would bring down my follower engagement?” Donnie says. “If you don’t trust me, trust the algorithm, brother.”
He doesn’t usually get that much emotional support from his twin, and that more than anything pushes him to straighten up from his slump and lean fully into Raph’s side-hug.
Splinter, meanwhile, eyes him warily. “If I give you positive reinforcement for this, are you going to want to sneak back in to compete next year?” he says.
“... No?” Leo says, trying and failing to keep his voice from rising at the end. Splinter hmphs.
“Well then,” he says, and pats Leo on the shin. “You impressed me today, Leonardo. Well done.”
And with that, the last of his disappointment evaporates like mist at sunrise. “Thanks, guys,” he says. It had been a fun fight, even when he’d lost, and if it had impressed his family then maybe it really had impressed– “Oh! Hey, I finally got his name! How cool is this? Miyamoto Usagi,” he says with a grand gesture.
“Yes?”
The voice comes from the door to the room, and the poor Yokai medic, who had previously been awkwardly loitering by the bandage station, jumps again, fur now twice as puffed. In the doorway, Usagi gives the medic an apologetic bow. “Sorry,” he mouths, and then turns to Leo and his family and gives another, deeper bow. “I hoped you’d still be here.”
Oh, excellent, the sweat awareness was back. “Haha, yep!” Leo says, frantically struggling out from beneath Raph and Mikey’s affectionate arms. “Here I am, just, uh, being totally cool, with some turtles who don’t know me or any embarrassing thing about me.”
For a second he thinks they aren’t going to take the hint, but then, clearly reluctantly, they all slide off to the side of the room and start whistling obnoxiously. He glares at Splinter, but his dad just hops up onto the arm of the lounge that Mikey vacated with an innocent expression.
Usagi watches this happen with a raised eyebrow. He opens his mouth like he’s going to ask, then shuts it with a shake of his head, and says, “I wanted to see if you were alright.”
Leo deflates a little. Sure, it’s not like he thought the guy would come running to sweep him off his feet, but he didn’t think the illusion would come down that quickly. “I’m fine,” he says, rubbing a hand over the mark on his shell where Usagi’s katana had chipped one or two scutes loose. “I guess you kinda kicked my butt, huh?”
Usagi shrugs. “You may have gotten a few kicks in yourself,” he says, rubbing his chest, and very casually walks over to sit beside Leo. The whistling from his brothers get louder as they unsurreptitiously creep closer. “It was a good fight. You must have been in training for a long time, yes?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Leo lies, doing his best to ignore Splinter’s looming presence at his side.
“I can tell,” Usagi says, oblivious to Leo’s dishonesty stink. “I’ve been training a long time, too. Maybe we could…” He breaks off, rubbing his neck, and for the first time today he looks… less than cool. Nervous, maybe? But what’s Leo done to make him nervous? “You never said your name,” he says, and Leo slaps his forehead.
“Oh! Doy,” he says. Usagi squints.
“Doy?” he repeats.
“No! It’s Leo,” he rushes. “Leonardoy. Leonardo! It’s Leonardo.”
Usagi stares. Leo sweats. “Leonardo,” he says after a moment, and then does that insanely cute lip-biting smile. “Maybe we could train together some–?”
“Usagi!” a voice bellows from the doorway. Usagi jumps, Splinter falls off his perch, and the Yokai medic lets out a shriek like his tail has been stepped on, fur now puffed up like a dandelion. He throws a bandage at the newcomer and storms off, muttering and scowling. The newcomer, a towering rhino Yokai, doesn’t even seem to notice as it bounces off the side of his face. He just folds his arms and says in an intimidatingly low voice, “You really thought I wouldn’t find out?”
“Gennosuke,” Usagi whines, slumping onto the couch in the same way Leo had done minutes ago – that is to say, not effortlessly cool in the slightest. “What are you doing here? Get out!”
“Brat! I should get you locked up just to teach you a lesson.” Gennosuke storms over and grabs Usagi by the arm, pulling him out of his seat and shaking him just a little. Leo almost goes to draw his weapon on the guy, but Usagi doesn’t look scared – in fact, he has an expression that Leo is intimately familiar with, and that’s one of familial mortification. “I told you a hundred times, there’s a reason the Battle Nexus is barred for anyone under sixteen!”
“Wait,” Leo blurts out, “you’re not sixteen?”
“Gennosuke!” Usagi hisses, twisting in his grasp, “I will be in two months!”
Splinter laughs. “That’s what I said to Blue!” he says, “But teenagers never listen, hm?”
“Dad!” Leo snaps.
“No, they don’t,” Gennosuke says, but at least he has some humour in his low voice now. He releases Usagi’s arm and claps a hand on his shoulder instead, ignoring the enormous scowl Usagi gives him. “They just want to show off and impress people whenever they can. Well, you can impress me by cleaning up the dinner rush back at the restaurant!”
Usagi snaps something back in Japanese, and then winces as Gennosuke gives him a mild slap over the head. It's something Splinter's done to them a hundred times, and Leo is caught in a moment of dissonance between the effortlessly cool Usagi he’s been running after all day, and… this.
“Woah,” he says aloud, “you’re…” A regular, dweeby teenager, just like me. “...kinda uncool, aren’t you?”
Usagi wilts . And okay, that was a crazy rude thing to say to someone, but before Leo can follow it up with an explanation, Usagi says miserably, “I’m sorry, I just - I wanted you to think I was cool! I’ve been training for almost two years now, but I never get to do anything! I’m always working at the restaurant, or stuck inside when dangerous things are happening, and all my friends know I’m dasao. Winning the Battlefest would’ve impressed everyone! And you kept talking to me like I was already a champion, like…” He tugs on one of his ears, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry.”
For a second, Leo just gapes in silence. “I wanted you to think I was cool!” he exclaims, and Usagi’s eyes snap to his. “I begged Dad to let me go out and fight you because I wanted to impress you so bad!”
“Really?” Usagi asks. Leo nods frantically, and the corner of Usagi’s mouth turns up into a tiny smile. “So… if we were both just acting cool to impress the other… then we were actually…”
“Being gigantic dorks?” Leo suggests. Usagi’s nose twitches once, twice, and then he lets out a high-pitched laugh. He tries to cover it with his hands, but it just makes him snort, and then he’s laughing harder, and those cartoon hearts must be popping out of Leo’s eyes right now because wow it’s even cuter than the lip-biting smile from earlier.
“I’m sorry,” Usagi says through the laughter, “that wasn’t cool.” His hands still cover most of his face, but his eyes are crinkled up.
“Yeah, but I liked it a lot,” Leo says breathlessly. The laughter has drawn Splinter and Gennosuke’s attention back to them, so he speaks quickly before they can be interrupted again, “Can we hang out sometime? We could train together, or I could come to your restaurant – wait, no, I think Dad’s gonna ground me from the Hidden City until I’m thirty for all this, but – phone number?”
Usagi reaches for his pocket immediately. “Phone number,” he agrees, and pulls out what has to be the single oldest phone Leo’s ever seen outside daytime television, and he regularly scraps through junk piles of tech for Donnie. He’d thought Nokia bricks were an urban legend, but the thing Usagi is holding out to him looks like it could be used as a Battlefest weapon. “Here, put your number in,” Usagi says, still smiling.
“Uh…” The thing has real, physical buttons. “How about you read your number out, and I’ll send you a text? If that thing gets texts...”
He taps Usagi’s number in and saves the contact. “So, I guess no Snapchat then, huh?” he asks, just as he gets coathangered by Mikey yanking him into a hug.
“You did it, bro!” he hollers, absolutely vibrating with all the peanut gallery comments he must have been repressing during this conversation. He grabs Usagi and yanks him closer, then holds his phone up and says, “Everyone say ‘cutest first date ever’!”
“Mikey–!” At least Usagi just looks confused, and not like he’s already regretting handing over his number.
“It’s going in the scrapbook,” Mikey whispers happily, then slides away once more.
“Alright, playdate’s over,” Gennosuke rumbles, and starts to usher Usagi away with a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to tell the managers you’re underage and get disqualified, and if you do it well enough, maybe I won’t think about taking your phone away for a week.”
“Can’t you just give me more training?” Usagi complains.
“No, because you like training. I have to take away something you like – like talking to that kappa boy.”
“Shut up! Why are you so embarrassing?!” Usagi rolls his eyes over his shoulder at Leo and gives him a hesitant little wave, and then they both disappear out the door.
For a brief moment, Leo gets to stand in silent contemplation of the fizzy, bubbling happiness inside him. And then,
“Gettin' numbers like a boss!" Raph whoops, lifting him into a choking hug.
“Are you cool with telling April? Because spoiler alert, I already told April,” Donnie says, and shoves his phone with the text thread in his face. There are way too many emojis to comprehend. “She wants to meet him immediately. I think she might be on her way down here, actually.”
“You gotta go to his restaurant, Leo!” Mikey adds. “And bring flowers! And chocolate! And the rest of us in trenchcoats and sunglasses so we can spy on the whole thing!”
“You will not be going to this restaurant,” Splinter says sharply. The brothers all droop, only for Splinter to continue, “Not unless I am chaperoning! And that goes for at least the first five – no, ten dates!”
“I hate you all so much,” Leo groans, and only means it a little bit. He may have lost the match and failed to be at all cool, but with the way his family is celebrating and with Usagi’s number in his phone, he kind of feels like he won anyway.