Disclaimer: Don't own em, never will.

Key:
-action- denotes a literal action
Remember, a. member of the family is having a conversation with you, the audience.

The Brain's Of This Outfit

"Sure Don's got it down; the techie, the doc, pretty much the whole kit and caboodle. But you're missing the point if you don't understand what I'm about to say. What do we do when Don gets sick? Or busts an arm? Or Hell, just puts his foot down and refuses to do the job? I mean, it's not like we ever gave him much choice in the matter, is it?

-chuckles-

Yea, that's where I come in. I haven't got a head for numbers but I dunno, I guess I've got a good Monkey-See/Monkey-Do mentality. One thing I do know; I'm way better than Leo. Finally, something I can do that he really, really can't. It's such a satisfying feeling.

It took some time for me to get it down, but you know, I've gotta to do something when we got quiet time. And even I get sick of looking for trouble. I mean … why bother putting in all that hard work when you can just go down the tunnel and fix up some kick ass turbo frazzling doobie. Okay … so I'm never going to be the inventor in this lil kabang, but blame Casey. He was the one that spotted the talent; so to speak.

I wanted to customise my bike you see. Make it look as big and as bad as me. Really kick ass; y'know, give it a total 'BACK THE FUNK OFF' message. Welding; Case has a bit of a flair for that … and he was helping me out. I was mounting on some bits and pieces minus Don … and I'll tell you something for nothing. That boy is damn nosy … he was worried we were messing with one of his thing-mi-jiggies. Yea right .. like I got a death wish!

I'll never forget the look on Donnie's face when he saw me holdin' that blow torch. Not a scald or scorch mark in the wrong place, not a piece of metal outta place. It looked like someone had come along and dropped a jack in his jaw, then hit release. I swear, if the floor hadn't been there his jaw woulda crashed clean through.

-laughs -

Won't forget his words either, "Raph; you did this? On your own?!" he musta spent about twenty minutes checking the joins, putting his weight on them and everything. I think part of him wanted it to bust so he could have something to fix. But it held good, and he went from confused, to joke-mad to giving me a giant hug. Kept mutterin' something about 'Finally … I'm free!"

He set me onto soldering next, and I got that down pretty fast too, he would joke that it was the pain and bright lights that had attracted me to it.. I guess I can see his points, when it comes to breaking things there aint no one like me or Case to smack it down, but when it comes to fixin'em back up, there aint no one like me or Casey! Weird I know, soldering and electronics, didn't get the techie speil, but it's really not as hard as Don makes it sound. It's easy as that damn funny bones song, only sub the joints for the parts on a mother board, or so'ethin'.

After soldering I got onto the van, and bikes; Case filled in the gaps there, and got himself some mad new skills to. Took us about six months of tinkering to get that down before Don would back off and leave us to it. It was great, Mike could patch up the bodies on Don's day off and I got the machines. The three of us were like this mad lil Frat House, with secret codes and techie in-jokes about fixin' or breakin' sh!t.

-leans back, sighs-

Guess I should get back to work, breaks over. I aint ever gonna be no inventor type, I think I'll leave Don to that. But Mr Fix-It. I can live with that.

-smiles-

After all, it's about time I got me somethin' better to do with my time. Can't exactly break bones for ever y'know?"

-disappears back into the workshop-

Complete

-immitating Ralf Harris- So, can you tell what it is yet? This was originally posted on Stealthy Stories in September 2005. For some reason I never transferred it over here. Written in response to a fiction challenge.