Episode 18: Family Feud – Part 1

Blade hissed against blade, metal against metal ringing in the dojo under the sewers under the shade of a tree. Sparks would fly and cascade down on tatami mats as smiles were exchanged between the two competitors. They spun and swung expertly, their minds determined, their eyes unblinking as they stared at one another. Each worked quickly, twisting as expertly as they could, barely faltering, their focus so real that it could be felt in the air as they worked.

Ethan's eyes traced down to Leo's feet. The turtle was balanced well on the tatami, both of his katana's out, one of them poised in attack position, the other ready to fend off another attack. The tactic was strong – Leo was good. Fighting him with one katana, Ethan had no doubt that he could beat him – but with two – that was a bit harder. Feigning to his right, Ethan leaped forward, balancing himself lightly on one of his paws and thrust his naginata forward.

As predicted, Leo swooped the second katana in defense position up and slammed it out of the way. Ethan let the momentum of his opponents blow help charge his bo staff forward to spin around him, his red fur moving in the quick, sudden breeze. His naginata carried around him and struck again. Leo had moved forward to strike at Ethan in a weak moment and didn't see the end of the pole until it was colliding into his brown, dense turtle shell. He fell out of his poised position, but only for a moment. Ethan missed his chance to strike again as Leo moved quickly back into a new position – kojogiri. A common Hamato Clan stance.

The handle of Leo's attacking katana made contact with Ethan's forearm and he fell backward and quickly righted himself back into one of his favorites: Mamushikamae. "You're good." Leo panted, a grin on his face. He let his position drop which signaled that practice time was over and it was time for a break. Ethan quickly tucked his ears behind his head, lowered his ringed tail and bowed to Leo who bowed back, his blue bandanna catching light from the sewers above as he did so. "I can't tell you how awesome it feels to be practicing again, Ethan." Leo fell to his knees, his brown knee pads sinking to cushion his quick fall to the tatami mats.

Ethan sat down, Indian style and nodded. "I can imagine." he said. "I can't even imagine going into space though – I would be pretty tempted to postpone training for a while if it meant I could zoom around to other planets."

Since returning to the turtles old lair, Ethan, Jess, and Kaela had been extremely entertained to hear where the turtles were this whole time. Traveling to strange, underwater worlds with warrior queens, fighting off the giant, hulking Triceratons in a quest to find the invincible black hole generator that had swallowed the planet. The strange dreams had completely vanished from Ethan's mind. Now, he knew that they were.

When the black hole had first appeared, they had been sucked in – the turtles had failed and the earth was destroyed. But with six months being swung backward by the mysterious robot called the Fugitoid, things had been brought back to normal – only without the turtles and their master. The only residue left from the incident was the strange memories that had existed . . . and yet hadn't. It still made Ethan's head hurt just thinking about it. And of course, among the turtle tales that they got to hear, they also heard about Lord Dregg – the ruler of Planet Sectoid One who, as far as they were concerned was lurking somewhere still in their galaxy. Ethan didn't like the sound of that.

Then of course, Ethan, Jess, and Kaela had some tales of their own to tell. In the dim living room with little light, they told April, Casey, and the turtles all about what had happened in those few months. They spoke about the Technodrome coming back online. They told them about Shredder killing their own Master – Hamato Yuta and father to Hamato Yoshi, and they told them about some the strange incidents they had had with the Shinotomo Clan who the turtles had heard next to nothing about.

By the time all of the stories were told, they were conked out on the living room floor, a big, new, and very peculiar family, united by the Hamato Clan and their absolute hatred towards Shredder and what he had done to them.

This morning had been a bit more lazy. Leo was quick to pick Ethan up off the floor for training. Donnie wanted to clean his lab and Kaela quickly volunteered to assist. April and Casey had gone to Saturday schooling to catch up on all they had missed that morning, much to Casey's dismay. As for Mikey, Jess, and Raph, they were trying to find proper bedding and places to live for the three new siblings.

All of it was surreal.

"Space was pretty cool, but it's nice to be back here again." Leo turned his green face up to the tree leaves above him and looked into the light that filtered from the sewers and made spots of emerald appear on his mask. "Although. . ." Leo went quiet as he looked around the room to the shelf on the other side where a picture stood of Hamato Yoshi as a human, his wife and their little daughter.

Ethan knew the feeling that he had. He had felt it himself when he watched Shredder kill his own master. He tried not to think about it too much. "I know." Ethan said quietly. "Nothing is really quite the same without him." he turned away, not wanting to make the situation any more awkward than talking to a giant turtle already was – although he wasn't one to talk as he was a giant talking red panda. "Bishop will give us news soon, I'm sure."

Leo shook his head and smiled at Ethan as he slowly got back to his feet. "Wanna practice seyonage?" he asked. Knowing that Leo was trying to distract himself from thoughts about Splinter, Ethan jumped to his feet and nodded, trying to be a good sport even though his body was desperate for more rest. "You are not nearly as poor a sport as Raph." Leo finished, getting into a fighting stance.

Ethan copied. "I probably don't lose as much either." He said coyly, glad that Raph wasn't there to hear him say it.

Jess picked up an old poster of a metal band on the floor and dusted it off. She twitched her tail curiously as she gazed over it. Flaming red burst from silver tubes behind the main singer and two guitar players that all looked like they belonged in a horror movie. They would have been the serial killers. The fiery colors matched the turtle's mask that stood behind her, sifting through a closet. He was larger than his three brothers, his red mask tattered near the ends. He grumbled as he rummaged through his stuff, shoving away his little brother when necessary.

Mikey was spending a lot more time putting stuff back onto the ground than actually doing what they were in Raph's room to do; namely, find pillows and futons for Jess, Kaela, and Ethan so they could sleep in the lair more comfortably.

"I don't see them." Mikey complained loudly in a sing-songy voice as he looked under Raph's bed. Jess raised an eyebrow and twitched her nose. Mikey didn't seem to have noticed as he made his way to a shelf of action figures and began chucking them out onto the floor.

Jess walked over to the fallen toys and picked one up that looked remarkably like Chris Bradford, the martial artist. "Mikey, do you really think that the futons would fit in a shelf that small?" Jess asked with a degree of sarcasm. She then looked down at the plastic action figure in her hands. The little toy had enough scratches and dents in it to make it nowhere near vintage. "And, why do you have a Chris Bradford action figure?"

"Hey!" Raph nearly fell out of his closet and he raced across the room and snatched the toy from Jess' hands, his cheeks going red as he looked away from her, not making eye contact. "That's mine." He said sheepishly.

Mikey burst into a fit of laughter and jumped on Raph's bed for good measure, completely distracted from his task again as he fell backward, his shell sinking into the mattress. "You don't have to be shy Raph! You have an awesome action figure collection! But not as awesome as my vintage Action Kick Unicorn Man!"

Jess chuckled and folded her arms across her chest as Raph hid his face behind the closet door. "I think it's funny." she said, trying to lighten the mood. Making Raph blush was likely to become a favorite past time for her.

"Let's just keep looking for the futons!" he growled from the closet, throwing out a set of blankets. Jess quickly made her way over to them and lifted them from the ground. They smelled clean to her, so she opened Raph's door and brought them out to the living room. She stepped down into the landing where the TV sat, still playing an episode of Chris Bradford and His Too Rough Crew that Mikey had been watching earlier.

As she leaned down to turn it off, Raph emerged from his room, Mikey close on his tail, a dorky smile spread across his face. In Raph's hands were two dusty looking futons. He let them drop at Jess' feet. "Here's two that I found, but we still need to find one more." he stretched his arm, rolling his shoulder back and glaring at Mikey who jumped from behind him.

"Are you turning off Chris Bradford?" Mikey asked, horror on his face. "Nooo!" He leaped past Jess who had to step out of the way to avoid being stampeded by the orange masked younger brother of the turtles.

"Mikey!" Raph snapped as he poked his brother particularly hard in the face. "I told you not to be stupid, you moron."

"Never get between me and my TV." Mikey hissed back, both of his arms around the television set. A crashing sound interrupted them and both Jess and Raph turned to look in the direction of the sound – the dojo. "They've been in there all day!" Raph said motioning towards the closed dojo doors. "You'd think they'd come out and help a little more." He scooted the futons over towards the couch with his foot.

Jess looked at the doors curiously. She could see the shadow of Ethan and Leo as they practiced their forms inside, under the shade of the tree. She felt like she barely knew Leo, and yet, already she could see that her own brother and him were very much alike – and they had gone through very similar things. She felt more akin to Raphael herself. Although he tried to hide it, she could tell that sometimes, the whole leader thing really bothered him, as it had her. She quickly reminded herself that she had decided to be over that. It didn't shove the negative feelings away as forcefully as she would have liked.

"I'm sure their just bonding over their mutual love of being boring, dude." Mikey said, toppling back onto his shell, legs in the air and his usual smile on his face. He then gasped and got up onto his hands and knees. "We need to make sure Ice Cream Kitty is safe!" He burst from the room and into the kitchen, practically leaving a trail of dust behind him.

Jess and Raph exchanged looks. Jess would have never gone into the kitchen after Mikey to look at the monster from the freezer, but Raph shrugged and then walked into the kitchen and Jess couldn't help but feel that seeing Ice Cream Kitty with Raph wouldn't be so bad.

"Thanks for helping me clean up around her, Kaela." Donnie said as he organized his shelf, righting a Kraang droid head so it was balanced perfectly next to the strange book that he had sitting next to it. If Kaela remembered right, it had some sort of Latin title. "April usually is the one to do all of that – so, it's nice to have someone picking up the job for her."

She smiled up at Donnie as she continued to sweep around his desk with a broom she had found in the lair earlier. "Anytime." She said. It was quiet for a few awkward moments as Donnie sat back down into his desk with a sigh and clicked his mouse to make the screen wake up from it's long sleep without him. "So," Kaela said, trying to busy herself with more sweeping. She looked down at the bristles, even though the floor looked perfectly clean. "You hang out with April a lot, huh?"

Donnie was busy now typing away at his keyboard. "Yeah, she tends to be around us a lot." He said mindlessly. "That's funny, I thought I had locked this computer."

Kaela cleared her throat nervously.

"Why do you ask?" Donnie looked up over the edge of his computer, purple bandanna eyes staring at her curiously.

Kaela stammered, "Uh, well y'know, I've known April for a while and it's j-just crazy that she was always disappearing to be with you guys and we didn't even know! Small world, right?"

"Yeah, no kidding!" Donnie agreed, looking back down at his computer, his three green fingers typing madly across the keyboard. Kaela wouldn't be surprised if his words per minute was better than her own, Ethan, and Jess' combined, even with their five fingers.

"Wow." Donnie commented, looking up at his screen with a smile. "You three have been in a lot of fights here." Kaela quickly picked up the broom and jogged over to the computer and leaned down behind Donatello to see that he was looking at old surveillance video feed. He clicked through Tigerclaw and Bloodmaw's fight in the sewer. "Not bad, not bad!" he said as if talking about a recent movie in the theater. "That was awesome, Kaela!"

"Thanks!" Kaela said smiling and keeping down blush – or so she hoped.

Donnie clicked away to the next video and his mouth dropped open, showing the gap in his teeth. Kaela squinted at the screen and then her face went bright red. "Oh." She said. It was Ethan kissing Karai as she morphed back into a human and puked up a brain worm. "Yeah, that."

Clicking the delete button, Donnie looked up at Kaela, "Well, let's make sure that Leo never heard about that." he said quickly as he nervously laughed.

"Deal." Kaela said with a sharp nod. "So . . ." Kaela could feel her mind rushing back to her conversation from earlier. It was hard to think about much else. "Do you like April?"

Donnie blushed immediately and turned to look at her, "Uh w-what do you mean?" he asked.

Kaela pointed to the picture near his computer of Donnie pushing April on a swing, the frame decorated in hearts. "Oh. That." Donnie quickly snatched the frame from his table and slammed it down so hard that Kaela was surprised that the glass hadn't' shattered. "We-well, I uh . . ." Before Donnie could get any more out, the alarm sounded from his computer, the red light flashing in their eyes. "Oh thank goodness." Donnie said it under his breath, but Kaela still heard it.

Typing madly on his keyboard, the video feed appeared. Kaela and Donnie leaned in close to the screen together to try and figure out what it was they were seeing just as the doors to the lab opened and Mikey, Raph, and Jess appeared in the doorway. "What's going on?" Raph asked, arms folded across his chest.

Donnie looked up from his computer. "Get Ethan and Leo." he said. "They'll want to see this."