Hamato Leonardo slammed himself up against the downed tree. Crawling in between the branches, he cautiously peeked out, looking for any sign of the enemy. Seeing no signs of movement, Leo slid down to the ground and with shaking fingers worked to reload his gun.

Leo tried to focus on the bulky, awkward weapon rather than on the red dripping down his leg. He tried to convince himself that it didn't hurt, but the reality was that it did. Nowhere near as much as watching one of his younger brothers fall to a barrage of shots, but it did hurt. He wondered if he should take the time to try and tend to the wound, but he knew that could be deadly.

He was on his own and being ruthlessly hunted. Leo had known from the beginning that he was outclassed. The enemy had taken out both of his comrades. There was some small satisfaction in knowing that Raph had taken out one of the enemy, April, before he had himself been taken out by Don. Leo regretted his brother's sacrifice even as he rejoiced in the minor triumph over one of the bad guys. If he had been faster, he could have saved the younger turtle.

But saving Raph had not happened. Saving Mikey had not happened. Casey had been shot a long while ago, but Leo had no idea where the other enemy was. He knew that it would take nothing short of a miracle if he were to survive any longer than ten more minutes.

Sighing, he cautiously stood up. His breath caught in his throat. There, not ten feet away, stood the enemy. The turtle had his back turned and was scanning the surrounding undergrowth. Leo carefully lifted his gun and sighted. The shot came with just a poof of air, but that was enough sound to cause the enemy to dive frantically to the ground, struggling to bring his own weapon to bear.

"Oh no you don't!" Leo cried as he leapt to his feet and following his target, firing his weapon until the chamber was empty. Finally the turtle stopped moving. Leo stood panting in shock. He had actually done it. He'd won!

Grinning hugely, he walked over to his downed adversary and reached down a hand. "You okay, Don?"

Accepting the help up, Don grunted. "Yeah, I'm fine. Say, are those paintballs supposed to sting like that? They hit with a wallop, don't they?"

"I'm glad you said that. I thought maybe it was just me. I swear I'll have a bruise on my leg where April caught me."

Don looked down at himself. "What a mess."

Today was the brothers Mutation Day and they wanted to celebrate in style. So, April suggested they head all the way out to the Northampton forests to play war. There, they hopefully wouldn't run into anyone and could spend the day undisturbed. With a nice picnic lunch and an array of paintball arsenal, it had shaped up to be a good day and it had been.

So, the exercise had pitted Don, April and Casey against Leo, Raph and Mikey. Don wouldn't let teaming pit him against April and his brothers knew he just wanted to be on her side to protect her. And nobody wanted Mikey, but Leo lost the coin toss.

Don dragged his hand across his chest, trying to scrape off as much of the paint as possible. "Did you have to empty your gun into me?"

"Sorry, Don. I guess I was just so surprised at catching you off guard that I forgot to stop shooting." Leo felt his stomach start to rumble. "Come on, let's head back. I'm getting hungry."

"Fine by me. Oh by the way - was that your idea to send Mikey out in the open? It would have worked if April, Casey and I had been where you thought we were."

"No, it wasn't me. It was probably Raph. I was cut off from them when Mikey made that move. I thought it was pretty dumb myself."

"Well, yeah, but if we had been in those rocks at the left of the field, Mikey could have held our attention while you and Raph snuck around. Mikey was out of range of the guns, so he would have been safe. It's just too bad we were in the trees, not by the rocks."

"Yeah, too bad…" Leo's note of sarcasm drew a chuckle from his paint-covered friend. Soon, they came through the last screen of bushes out onto the patio and found their friend and brothers a few yards away. They were seated at the portable camping table munching away at several varieties of pizza, some chocolate brownies and burgers.

As Leo and Don headed to the table, April looked up and, taking in their appearance, exclaimed, "I don't believe it!"

Mikey turned and seeing Don covered in blue, let out a victorious whoop. "You won? You won! Booyakasha!"

Raph grinned and surreptitiously snatched a brownie from Mikey's plate. "Congratulations, fearless leader."

"Yeah," Casey snorted in laughter at the sight of a paint-stained Donatello. "Not bad, Leo."

Leo couldn't help strutting up to the table, smugly. "It was all skill, children. All skill."

Leo looked at April with one neat splatter of blue paint directly over her heart and Raph with red paint on his shoulder and just above his colour-coordinated mask. Leo winced. A headshot… That must have hurt.

But when he examined Mikey, he couldn't help but laugh out loud. Mikey was covered head to toe in red paint. In a couple of places, there were tell-all splotches of blue paint. Pointing at one of them, Leo asked, "What's this?"

Raph looked up from his sandwich and said dryly, "Mercy killing. He was suffering so I put an end to it."

Laughing, Leo pulled a box of pizza toward himself and Don and sat down. "Where's Sensei?"

"I'm right here, my son."

Leo swung around and felt his jaw drop. There before his, dressed head-to-toe in camouflage, looking like something straight out of a warzone, was Master Splinter. On his face were quite intimidating war-paints and in his hands was a gun that reminded Leo of an old-time bazooka. Strapped to his back was a machine gun similar to the one everyone else was carrying, and on his leg was a holstered pistol. Master Splinter racked the gun and, with an evil grin, said, "Did I mention the winner gets to go one-on-one with me?"

Leo gulped hard and blinked. He had never seen a predatory gleam like that in all his time as a Ninja. It was a thing of pure malice. He took a moment to play the mouse to Splinter's cat then, with an evil grin of his own, racked his own gun and said, "Brothers, prepare to become orphans!"