Dear readers,

March 30th, 2014, is the 30th anniversary of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! In honour of this very special occasion, I am writing this fic; since I don't really know what to write for an occasion like this, it's basically a one-shot about a random day. I hope you enjoy it. Technically it's set in the 2012verse, but I may have used some '03 canons in here too.

Love from Marshmallow

Morning dawned above New York; it was spring. Birds chattered from rooftop ledges in waking and all the coffee shops opened, sending the smell of fresh bread and strong espresso out to the early-morning commuters.

The streets were damp from last night's rain. It all ran down into the gratings on the streets. Leo looked up as a drop of water fell down onto his desk. An open notebook lay before him, and he could smell storm clouds above.

The early morning peace sent his mind towards calmer waters, and he looked down at the page.

March 23, 2014

An empty journal waiting to be filled. Leo pondered what to write, tapping the pen against the bridge of his nose. Then he cringed as the early morning silence shattered loudly.

"GOOD MORNING CITIZENS", yelled Mikey through a megaphone. (Where had he even gotten a megaphone?) "IT IS NOW SIX AM. IN THE MORNING. IT IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY AND BLAH BLAH BLAH. IT IS TIME FOR LEO TO STOP WRITING IN HIS DIARY AND GET HIMSELF TO BREAKFAST!"

"For the last time, it's a JOURNAL, not a diary!"

"WHATEVER YOU SAY, BRO."

"Put the megaphone down. I can hear you fine."

Mikey pouted and slunk away. Leo looked reluctantly at the notebook as he exited the room. It would have to wait until later. The entry now read:

March 23, 2014

Bye.

He found an angry looking Raph in the kitchen. It was a mess. Eggs were crushed on the counter, a burning smell filled the air, and the toaster...the poor toaster.

"What happened to that thing?" he pointed at it in alarm.

"Mikey poured PAINT in it", snapped Raph. "I had to fry the toast."

Leo peered at the crumbs in the pan on the stove. "What did you do, crumble it first!?"

"No! It disintegrated!" Raph crossed his arms indignantly.

"I can't believe we ever let you in this kitchen at all." Leo pulled the cereal down from the cabinet.

"What, you aren't gonna eat what I fixed you!? You are so ungrateful!"

"Not ungrateful, Raph. I just have a desire to live." Leo swept the eggshells off the counter into the trash can and scrubbed at the remains with a towel. "Is Donnie up yet?"

"I don't know." Raph viciously poured the toast crumbs onto a plate, covered it with syrup, and grabbed a spoon.

"Are you really going to eat that?"

"Yes. I have more faith in myself than you have, evidently."

"I don't know, Raph. That looks like poison."

"It's not poison! And I'll prove it!" He took a large bite and chewed it exaggeratedly. "MMMMM, it's good! But unfortunately LEO decided to be GRUMPY and so he can't have any!"

Leo glared at him and then decided to let it go. Raph glowered and ate the rest loudly and hurriedly, and then left the table.

Shaking his head, Leo turned to find Mikey dragging a sleeping Donnie into the kitchen. With a grunt, his youngest brother heaved Donnie onto the kitchen table and dusted his hands off dramatically.

"I brought you a present, Leo."

"Why thank you."

"It requires coffee to function, but I can't find the gas tank", Mikey explained.

Raph sullenly stamped back into the kitchen. "I know where the gas tank is." He took the pot of hot coffee and poured the whole thing down the back of Donnie's shell. Donnie shrieked and jumped up from the table, clawing at his back and then turning on Raphael, who ran for the living room.

"DONNIE, NOOO!" yelled Leo. When Don was angry, it was not a good thing. But Mikey grabbed him by the arm and held him back.

"No, bro, just leave him! He'll calm down in a little bit. Remember that time he tased you when you went in his lab?"

So Leo and Mikey took refuge in the kitchen, barricading the entrance with the table.

An hour later found Mikey, Donnie, and Leo eating breakfast at the table, sans Raph. Everybody knew better than to ask what Donnie had done with their red-clad brother. The unspoken question answered itself in the form of Sensei Splinter.

"My sons, why is Raphael tied up with duct tape and toilet paper?"

"He poured coffee down Donnie's shell", Mikey blurted. Splinter immediately turned to Donatello and regarded him silently for a moment. Then he said, "If you managed to tie up your brother, you must have been very angry. You don't normally do this well in training. Perhaps we should scald you with hot liquids more often", he mused, stroking his whiskers.

The he turned and strode away.

After breakfast, the three brothers went to the doujo to find a sulky Raphael already there, hiding from Donnie. There were scraps of duct tape remaining on his shell, as well as a red Christmas bow plastered to his skull. Leo silently plucked it off as he passed by.

The four of them knelt along the edge of the rug facing their Sensei, who strode up and down the carpeted floor solemnly. When they were all seated, he turned to face them.

"You will all sit silently and meditate for half an hour. If I come back and find Michelangelo strung from the ceiling again you will all be in big trouble."

Obediently they settled into position and shut their eyes. Through the grey fog of his consciousness Leo could hear his father leaving the room.

All passed in silence for a good ten minutes. Leo felt his thoughts clear until his mind was like the glassy surface of a pond, with not a ripple to be seen.

After half an hour had passed, his father returned to the room and told them to stand up. They obeyed silently as he ordered them into pairs for sparring practise. Leo was paired with Donnie, who looked wasted. Probably tying Raph up earlier had worn him out.

"Hajime!" came the command from the centre of the room. Leo drew his swords from their sheaths with a quick swish; Donnie would be easily beaten in this state.

Donnie pulled his staff and was surprised to find a red Christmas bow plastered to the end of it. Raph must have put it there to get back at him. Leo waited as Donnie took it off, but it stuck to his fingers and then to his foot. Donnie finally growled in irritation and flung his hand through the air hard, sending the bow flying right onto the back of Sensei's neck. Their father did not notice a thing.

Leo chose this moment to attack. He and Donnie tussled back and forth, the Christmas bow forgotten in the fracas. Donnie was harder to beat than Leo had at first expected, but Leo had him down on the mat without too much exertion. He thought he had won, but all of a sudden Donnie swung his staff upwards and a spurt of soapy water hit Leonardo in the face. With a yell he staggered backwards, rubbing at his eyes, and then his legs were swept out from under him. Donnie planted a foot on his chest and was proclaimed the winner.

Leo peeled himself off the mat. "You rigged your staff to shoot BUBBLE MIX!?"

Donnie smiled smugly. "Actually, I used the water left over from Mikey's bath."

"Great. Now I need a bath." Leo was dismissed from the doujo.

When he returned, he found that Donnie had also beaten Raph. Splinter was congratulating Donnie for his good work. "Keep up this level of ingenuity, my son, and you will go far."

For a moment a disturbing image came to his mind of Donnie standing triumphantly atop a pile of bodies that he had evidently slain. Leo shook his head to clear his mind of the image and knelt at the edge of the mats with his brothers.

Training continued with not too many more surprises; perhaps the only other thing that happened that morning was the Christmas bow remaining lodged firmly on the back of their father's neck. Leo kept forgetting to tell him it was there.

Lunchtime rolled around. Leo walked to the kitchen with the rest of his brothers.

Splinter took a bowl of rice and retired to his bedroom, claiming he had a late night last night. Mikey leaned in over the table conspiratorially. "Did you guys notice the bow on the back of his neck?"

"We won't be reusing that one", Raph observed drily.

"I keep forgetting to tell him it's on there", Leo said, rising from his seat, intending to alert his father of the impostor on his neck.

"Wait, Leo, think this through!" Mikey said. "Let's play a game. Let's see how long the Christmas bow stays on there without him noticing! Whoever cracks and tells him first is the loser."

Leo was reluctant, but ended up being dragged into it all the same.

After lunch, Sensei did not reappear from his bedroom, which meant he was feeling unwell and the turtles were allowed to have the afternoon off.

Raph spent the majority of the afternoon being sick in the bathroom; Leo suspected the culprit was whatever syrup/toast/egg thing he had eaten this morning. It just went to show the destructive property of proving your point.

Leo watched TV until 4:00, when April and Casey got out of school. Peering through the door of the lab, he watched Donnie react: first excitement upon hearing April's voice, but when he heard Casey's, he attempted to barricade himself into a closet.

April was wearing a chicken suit.

That was literally the first thing he thought when she walked in: April is wearing a chicken suit.

"Why are you wearing a chicken suit?"

April stood in a very Captain Ryan-esque pose at the centre of the room. "I have a dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without their motived being questioned. So I will cross a road numerous times until people pay attention to me."

Mikey looked as if he'd just heard the most offensive thing in the world. "You're protesting the oldest joke in the book!? How could you, April!"

"It has to be done", April said solemnly. "You want to be funny, then ask people why the shark crossed the road."

"Why?"

"He didn't, sharks can't walk." April dissolved into a pile of laughing feathers on the floor while the rest of them stared at her in confusion.

"She has a weird sense of humour", Casey remarked. "Come on, Chicken April, let's go find a road for you to cross. We'll see you guys later."

"Wait!" April jumped up. "I forgot. I came by to drop this off for you all. I got it at a garage sale and I forgot why."

It was a candle. Leo thanked her, and read the label after she and Casey left.

"Would you look at that. It's Toast and Syrup scented", he told Mikey, showing him the label. "What a coincidence."

"I have an idea! Let's burn it in Raph's room!"

"I am not letting you have fire until you're 86", yelled Sensei from his bedroom. Leo confiscated the candle from Mikey.

Another hour passed uneventfully. And then the phone rang.

"April broke her leg", Casey said right away.

"What do you mean, she broke her leg!?"

"She was crossing the road dressed as a chicken and then she got run over."

"By a CAR!?"

"Actually, it was a bicycle, but evidently chickens have very fragile legs." Leo could hear April in the background yelling at Casey to stop messing around.

"I'm going to bring her to you guys. Maybe Donnie can do something about it", said Casey. He and April got there in ten minutes.

Donnie, for lack of anything better to splint it with, broke one of Casey's hockey sticks in half. Casey protested mercilessly, but Donnie pointed out that it was foot-shaped, which cleared things up right away.

Leo thought that this day couldn't get any crazier, but then he found the distinctly Raph-shaped hole in the wall of the living room.

"Where is Raph?" he asked Mikey.

"Probably in China by now", Mikey quipped.

"Why is there a Raph-shaped hole in the wall?"

"His little friend made him mad", said Mikey, stroking something in his lap. Leo saw that it was a jar full of cockroaches, with a label that read PRESENT FOR RAPH.

So Leo went to get Raph and found him at the bottom of a well with also a broken leg. He hauled him up with a watering hose he had found and brought him home.

"Why are you tying up my leg with a hockey stick?"

"It's foot-shaped", Casey told him.

And all of a sudden a rat ran into the lab. Casey screamed and jumped on top of Mikey, who toppled backwards into Donnie, who fell into the closet. Normally this would have been all right, except that he had tried to barricade it early and there were about 60 nails lying on the floor. Leo saw now that it was not a barricade, but a trap for Casey, complete with a large anvil. It fell down when the nails were triggered and there was a collective snapping of shin bones.

Half an hour and three hockey sticks later, Sensei came into the room and demanded to know why everyone had managed to break their legs at the same time. Unfortunately he tripped over Mikey and ended up on the ground.

Now Casey was out of hockey sticks.

Leo, the only one with both legs intact, ordered several pizzas and spread them out on the floor in comfortable reach of everyone who might need them. Then he lit the candle in the centre of the room. The smell of that unfortunate breakfast filled the air. Casey squinted at the label on the candle.

"Hey, April, where did you get this, the Candles-Made-Of-Trash store? And why did Raph just faint?"

Leo looked over and Raph was, indeed, lying on the floor.

"I mean, you might as well buy a Shredded Armchair and Lampshade scented candle", Casey went on, "Or Burned Cat and Piece of Wood. Or Dead Mouse and Large Hairy Potato. Or - "

"Okay, Casey, your jokes aren't funny", April cut him off.

"Oh yeah, Shark-Crossing-the-Road?"

Leo fixed his eyes on the bow still stuck to his father's fur. It had accumulated several pieces of string and a leaf. Quietly he peeled it off and examined the back, then tossed it into the candle flame. Because the things on the back of his father's neck are good for nothing but to be burnt.

Everybody congregated into a little circle around the last box of pizza as Casey and April threw painfully bad puns back and forth. At last, as everyone went to bed, Leo had time to finish his journal entry.

March 23, 2014

My name is Leonardo. I have a crazy family; my brothers are turtles, and my father is a rat. Our friends are an alien hybrid and a boy with a rat phobia. You could not call us normal.

But no matter how weird the days get, and no matter how hectic things get, and no matter how many shin bones we break in one day, we always manage to get back to the dinner table at the end of the day because for us, family is the most important thing.

The End