The little boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was nine years old. And he never wanted to come in for dinner, he never wanted to take a bath, and when grandma visited he always said bad words. Sometimes his mother wanted to sell him to the zoo!

But at night time, when he was asleep, the mother quietly opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep, she picked up that nine-year-old boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she rocked him she sang:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.

"Hey, Leo, can you help me with somethin'?"

Mikey watched his eldest brother tilt his head to the side as though to acknowledge his presence without actually taking his eyes away from the television.

"Huh?"

"I need your help."

Leo continued to stare, ten-year-old eyes reflecting the flashes of colored, fuzzy pixels. He absently drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, letting slip an audible gasp as something on the television blew up and illuminated his face with flashes of orange light. His eyes became glazed in a way that Michelangelo was very familiar with, and Leo said nothing else to his youngest brother, probably forgetting that quickly that Mikey was still standing over him.

He wrinkled his nose and kicked the bridge of his brother's shell. "Leo!"

"Mikey, what?" Leo said, still incapable of tearing his gaze away. "Space Heroes is on. Why can't you ask Donnie to help you?"

"He fell asleep after training. I think he was up all night taking apart that pinball machine we found yesterday."

"What about Raph?"

"He told me to go away."

Leo groaned, dropping his head back against the ridge of his shell. "RAPH!"

"No way, Leo!" came Raph's voice from the direction of his room. "You're the 'big brother.' You deal with it!"

Leo puffed up his cheeks and exhaled heavily then rolled forward onto his toes and pressed pause on the VCR before taking his time to stand. When he finally took in Mikey's appearance he furrowed his brow.

"What's all over your face?"

Mikey responded with a smile.

He snatched up Leo's hand and dragged him to the kitchen where Leo's blue eyes went wide upon seeing it in its disastrous state. A white powdery substance covered every surface, the ever-increasing scent of burnt algae hung in the air as something sizzled in a pan on the stove, the sink was filled to the brim with dirtied pots and pans, and a soggy, moldy, rectangular lump was sitting open like a book next to the stove.

"Mikey," Leo said. "What are you doing?"

Mikey hopped over to the decomposing book and held it up for Leo to see. One of its soggy pages peeled off the back and plopped back down on the counter. Leo inched forward to squint at the picture of what might've been a stack of pancakes were it not for the giant smudge of that same powdery substance smearing the page, which also streaked Mikey's cheeks.

"I'm making breakfast," Mikey said, setting the book back down. He peeked at his smoking pan on the stove and picked up a wooden spoon to push his concoction of algae and powder around. "I wanted to make pancakes, but we didn't have most of the stuff that's in the cookbook, but it was mostly just flower, water, sugar, and eggs. I figured I could use algae instead of eggs, and we have plenty of water, but I found this in one of the tunnels!"

He heaved up the large paper sack he'd stationed on the floor for easy access, and half of its contents spilled out onto the counter, burying the book in a mound of white.

"It's sugar!" he said. "At least I think it is. What's that say?"

Leo, with a dubious look to his eyes, peered at the word Mikey pointed to. "Powdered," he read, then dusted off the bag to read the word beneath it. "It's powdered sugar."

"Oh great! It kinda looked like the stuff they use on cooking shows. I figured since we don't have any flour I could just use more sugar instead. But um … It's not exactly turning out right." He glanced at the smoke curling up from the stove and pushed around his makeshift pancakes again.

"Mikey," Leo said with a cautionary tone to his voice. This was the same voice he often used whenever Mikey brought home something that crawled, or thought of taste-testing unnamable items, or snickered in Leo's ear about a prank he planned to play on Raph. It was the kind of voice that had an undertone of, "I don't want to spoil your fun, but I don't think you've truly thought about what you're doing."

"What are you doing this for?" he asked.

Mikey blinked at him and then smiled. "It's Mother's Day."

He could feel his older brother's eyes staring at him as he continued to peer into his pan, pushing the algae and sugar around. It looked more like a heap of blue-green mashed potatoes than pancakes. Well, he had to start somewhere.

"Who told you that?" Leo's voice asked after a long moment of silence.

"Oh!"

Mikey ran out of the kitchen to his room. He shuffled his comic books around and dug underneath his bed until he found what he was looking for and then ran it back into the kitchen to show his older brother. It was a calendar he'd stolen from Donnie a couple of days ago after first making sure that it was the right year. He flipped the pages until he got to May and pointed to the square he'd circled with one of the markers he'd also stolen from Donnie.

"See?" he said to Leo. "It says Mother's Day … Right?"

Leo furrowed his brow as he stared down at the little printed words then looked up at Mikey with a strangely pained grimace, but nodded nonetheless.

Mikey smiled and set the calendar to the side. "I was wondering what we could use instead of syrup. Do you think maybe if I just boil some of the sugar in water that would work?"

He glanced back at his brother who continued to stare at him.

"What?"

Leo shook his head. "Nothing. It's just …" His lips slanted as he wrapped his arms around himself. "Why are you doing this, Mikey?"

Mikey blinked. "Leo. Weren't you paying attention? It's Mother's Day!"

"Well, yeah, I heard you, but …" Leo's cheeks flushed, half hidden beneath his mask. "Mikey, we don't have a mother."

The little turtle could feel his cheeks deflating, as though Leo's words were magnetized and intent on pulling the corners of his mouth down. But he knew better, and he fought it. "I know. But that doesn't mean we can't celebrate it right? It's a holiday."

Leo's expression still looked slightly wounded. Mikey hoped he hadn't upset his older brother by dragging him away from his TV show.

"D'you know humans like to put things in their pancakes?" he said, lifting the pan to scoop the mush of algae and sugar onto a plate. "Sometimes they put like nuts and fruits in it, and sometimes they put chocolate chips. I think our mom would've liked hers with chocolate chips, don't you?"

He flashed a beaming smile at his brother—his special smile, because he knew none of his brothers could resist it, not even Raph when the smile was at its most powerful. And sure enough, after a moment of silence, Leonardo gave way to a soft grin and stepped in front of the stove to help Mikey dump the rest of the mixture out on the plate.

"Yeah. I think she would have."