The ride home was quiet—nothing to be heard but the sturdy hum of the Shellraiser carrying them to a, rather reluctant, safety. There was a difference, and a universal one at that, between strutting home with the inflated pride of a successfully executed mission gleaming on their shells and riding back to the lair in a bumpy silence with the emptiness of a job half-done hanging in the air. This was one of the latter times, and to the leader in blue, a job half-done might as well have been tallied under an epic fail. Rest assured, Leo would not let them brush this one off their shoulders—especially not Raphael.

Michelangelo, who was sitting with his knees together, swaying in his seat with his toes on the floor and his heels against the chair, peeked up at his eldest brother. Leonardo may as well have been a silicon bus driver with cold blue eyes that stared straight ahead unblinkingly, whose one and only purpose was to deliver a load of insufferable children to their home—no emotions attached. This was just a façade, of course, there was so much emotion bottled up in that wannabe hero that Mikey could practically see his head rising with pressure, like the cap on a soda bottle, shaken and ready to pop.

The youngest turtle's round blue eyes flickered to his brother in red. Raph had his arms stuffed over his plastron quite typically, staring at the bleeping monitor in front of him as though he was sitting at home watching a television show he wasn't particularly fond of, except that his bright green eyes were so sharp Mikey was surprised the fragile screen hadn't yet cracked down the middle.

While there were—as there always had been—four of them, there was no denying that the strained atmosphere reaching out to every corner of the spruced-up subway car was emitting from no more than two.

It was very normal for Raphael to nestle himself in a brooding silence, radiating anger and heat like he had been encompassed by flames and was smoldering in his own little corner of the universe, probably convincing himself that no one understood, ready to scald anyone that attempted to reach out to him.

And then there was Leo. While it wasn't necessarily abnormal for the leader to lose his temper, there was a very clear distinction between Leo when he was angry and when Leo was angry. And right now, Mikey's blue-banded older brother was furious. But Leonardo didn't simmer, or flare up, or burst into flames like Raph did. He solidified, froze, turned into an ice cap with sickly sharp edges, seeping a kind of cold that made everyone around him shiver from the inside out.

Fire and ice these two were, bleeding their rage into everyone else's breathing space, turning it thick, sour, and humid. Mikey felt suffocated and didn't know whether to shiver or sweat. He was afraid to exhale, let alone crack a joke like he usual did when the tension between his brothers became overbearing. He wished it wasn't so quiet. He wished someone besides himself would say something. He got tired of being the one to kick the silent door down, usually with a comment that earned him a smack to the head. No, he did not enjoy getting slapped around. It was just that sometimes his brothers needed to be reminded not to be too serious … Otherwise things like this happened, and Leo ended up too pissed to give orders, and Raph resolved to be an even greater ass than before.

Mikey wrung his hands together and sank his teeth into his bottom lip. He really hated this silence, but he wasn't the thoughtless airhead that his brothers often believed him to be. This particular situation was not one to test the boundaries on. He liked to be that one turtle that puffed up the courage to joke about things that would make other people cringe, but Karai was a subject that everyone—with the exception of bold and brash Raphael—had been tiptoeing around for weeks, not just for Leo's sake but for Splinter's as well. And with the events of the passing night, the situation had just escalated from make-a-joke-and-I-probably-won't-laugh to say-a-single-word-about-it-and-you-die.

It was funny, while at the same time completely nauseating, the interdependent connection between Raphael and Leonardo. From the day of their first wordless argument, it was thereby decreed that Raphael—also called Raph or Raphie—would not find contentment where Leonardo—also called Leo—was in utter discontent, and equally, Leonardo would not discover peace where Raphael was there unsettled. Seeing as Raph was so emotionally driven and Leo spent half his time training to conceal his emotions, the two hopeless terrapins were in a constant state of tug-of-war. And in this particular instance, Leonardo was the angriest mutant turtle on the face of the planet; commence the tug that dragged Raphael too into a status of absolute dissatisfaction. For Michelangelo to even consider severing that rope was probably to forfeit his right to utter a one-liner ever again.

It jostled his insides to do so, but he remained quiet.


He didn't necessarily consider it an accomplishment that they arrived back at the lair having successfully articulated not a single word on the trip there.

He and his three brothers trooped out of the Shellraiser after the eerily cheerful ding dong parted the doors to release them into their natural habitat. There was the subtlest moment of rising tension as Raph and Leo wordlessly competed to be the first out the door and through the turnstiles, but when Mikey hung his head to deflect the pressure, he heard neither Leo nor Raph make a sound, so he thought it safe to be a part of the return of the battle-worn warriors and let Donnie use his shoulder as a second crutch, while his immediate older brother leaned the rest of his weight on his bō staff, walking with a limp specifically intended to keep his shell from jostling too much.

Since Mikey had taken a good look at it in the alleyway where they had retrieved the bag of mutagen he'd stashed away in a dumpster, he had been particularly careful not to let his eyes drift back to the jagged crack branching out from the rim of Donnie's carapace to the center of his back, revealing red-raw bits of flesh and tissue that should not have been exposed. It made his own shell shudder, as though cringing away from ever meeting the same fate. Donatello had assured him it would eventually heal itself and that he'd be fine so long as the wound stayed clean, but simply from the way Donnie elected to limp, Mikey was sure donning such an injury was no less than excruciating.

He helped his purple-banded brother shuffle past the turnstiles and looked up to see Splinter standing at the bottom of the steps, his collected posture not quite reaching his amber eyes as he watched his battered sons trundle in.

"What happened?" he said. Though his voice was quiet, the urgency in it practically echoed like a scream through the musty sewer atmosphere.

"Ask him," Leo muttered, head angled toward the ground but eyes flashing quite obviously to Raphael who had drifted as far from Leo as possible since squeezing through the Shellraiser doors.

"Right," Raph said, stopping at the top of the stairs. "Go ahead and pin this one on me, Leo. You want me to tell you what happened, Sensei? I did what my courageous leader asked me to only to have him chuck the entire operation and put me, Mikey, Donnie, and himself in danger," he shouted, ticking the names off on his fingers.

"I had it under control," Leo said through his teeth, failing to keep a level tone.

"You were getting shot at!" Raph stomped over to where Mikey and Donnie stood and roughly pinched his youngest brother's cheek, not lifting his glare from Leo for a second. "Mikey, and Donnie, and me had to fight off the Kraang when we were specifically told half an hour beforehand not to 'pick a fight with the Kraang,' while Captain Ryan let loose a monster that would have killed him if I hadn't got in the way!"

Leo was in Raph's face so fast, Mikey was no longer so sure that he had just seen the two brothers standing a good ten feet from each other.

"That monster"—he shoved Raph back a step—"was Karai! What did you want me to do, Raph? Leave her there?"

"Yes! For the love of … Jesus Christ, Leo, yes! There was no reason that we couldn't have gone back for her when we were ready, except that you let your 'feelings' get in the way!"

"I knew what I was doing, Raph," Leo shouted, though his voice wavered with a faulty pitch. "And since when do you plan ahead?"

"Look at your team, Fearless!" Raph said in an unnaturally high pitch, waving an arm toward the other two. "Donnie was snatched up by a fucking horsefly and you didn't even turn around!"

Mikey blinked. "Neither did you."

Raphael snapped a hot green glare at him, but, as always, Mikey brushed it off effortlessly. He wasn't afraid of his brother.

"We didn't say anything about Stockman-fly being there," he pointed out. "I thought you didn't notice."

Mikey kept a solid blue gaze on his red-banded brother, but Raphael didn't utter a word, didn't even look at him anymore. He had turned his eyes up at the ceiling as though in exasperation, like he couldn't believe they were taking the time out of his Leo-bashing to put him under the spotlight. Michelangelo felt a rare bite of anger.

"You knew they were trying to take Donnie and you didn't do anything?"

Raph's jaw fluttered but did not move.

"Raph—" he began to whine.

"Shut up, Mikey!" Raph snapped, finally looking at him again. "You were perfectly capable of handling it yourself."

Michelangelo felt his mouth open but, for once, nothing came out of it. He looked toward his purple-banded brother, searching those warm brown eyes for a clue of how to react to this.

Unfortunately, Donnie had always been the hardest for Michelangelo to read. Not that his older brother was any good at concealing his emotions. On the contrary, he was a pretty open book, almost as much as Mikey himself. And it wasn't that Donnie didn't ever get emotional, didn't ever feel things that revealed themselves in his features. It was just that the most reserved and least confrontational of all his brothers didn't flare up in bright neon colors like Raph or deflect the outside world with a steel shield like Leo. His reactions, compared to those of his siblings, were always muffled.

The look Donatello now gazed at Raphael with was unreadable. Michelangelo, however, was straight up hurt.

"I can't believe you guys," he finally said, though it came out whinier than he had anticipated. "You're even bigger epic jerks than I said you were earlier."

"You guys?" Leo stressed. "What did I do? I didn't know they had Donnie."

"Leo," Raph said. "Stop trying to act like you're this perfect replica of Sensei! You fucked up okay? There's nothing else to it."

"Raphael," Splinter muttered warningly, though his tone suggested he wasn't quite eager yet to force the argument to an end. Mikey didn't understand when his sensei played these kinds of cards. It was like he wanted Leo and Raph to duke it out amongst themselves, but there was no way they'd ever find level ground on their own.

Raphael did an excellent job of brushing off Splinter's cautioning tone like he hadn't heard it. "Sensei, if I'm going to go out on missions, I'd like to know that I'm not going to be blindsided by a 'leader' who thinks the whole world revolves around him and his stupid crush."

Leo was fuming, green cheeks burning red as he struggled, for once, to parry Raph's stab.

Surprisingly, it was Donatello that spoke on Leo's behalf. "Raph," he started calmly, his voice slightly hoarse. "Leo put us in danger and you're mad about that; we get it. But you have to understand where he's coming from—"

"Donnie ... For the hundredth freaking time tonight, no one asked you! When I want your smartass opinion I'll ask for it. Nobody needs your help right now. We're not a pile of robots that you can just fix, so shove off!"

"Why are you picking on Donnie, Raph?" Leo cut in.

"Why are you babying him, Leo?" Raph shot back. "Maybe he needs to toughen up."

"That's harsh dude," Mikey said. "You're just mad because—"

"Mikey, I will throttle you!"

"Raphael," Splinter said, firmer this time. "Do not threaten your brothers with violence. I have told you this time and again and do not wish to repeat myself any further. Apologize to your brothers."

"For what, Sensei?" Raph argued. "For risking my shell to save theirs? For having their backs when they stab their swords in mine? Oh yeah, I saved Leo's ass twice tonight, but I'm so sorry, Mikey, for being mean!"

"What about Donnie?" Mikey said, not quite satisfied with his supposed apology. "What about ditching me and him to fight off the Kraang, what about ignoring the fact that he was almost turtle-napped?"

"Mikey, look at him! He's standing on his own two feet. I think he can freaking take care of himself. I am only one turtle, Mike. I'm not Superman—not like Donatello," he added coldly.

Donnie shifted uncomfortably. "Raph—"

"Don't deny it, Donnie," Raphael interrupted yet again. "You can quit the whole modesty act. Everybody knows we'd be a pile of shit on the sidewalk without you—wouldn't we?"

"I'm not—"

"Yes you are, Donatello. Yes. You. Are … A Saint. Leo tries to be perfect; you don't even have to lift a goddamned finger. You were turtle-napped by a giant fly, and yet …" He threw his arms out in Donnie's direction in pseudo presentation. "Here you stand, peachy keen and ready to make a batch of retro-mutagen appear with the flick of a wand."

Donnie's brow furrowed. "Are you—mocking me?"

Raph clapped his hands loud and slow. "What a display of intelligence the world will never see. You deserve a plaque for figuring that one out, bro. No a gold metal—no, a statue dedicated to your unparalleled brain. It'll say: Hamato Donatello, ninth wonder of the world, the farthest thing from a human boy genius since the T-Rex. Geekosaurus, green-skinned, six-fingered, teenage mutant ninja turtle, who's not even a real ninja and will never be anything more than—guess what—a freak!"

"Yame!" Splinter shouted, stabbing the floor with his staff.

However, it didn't really grab anyone's attention. All eyes were on Donnie as though anxiously awaiting the moment that he'd finally tell Raph off, scream in his face, shout back. He did no such thing. In fact, he just stood there staring at the red-banded turtle in a long, drawn-out silence, almost as though Raphael's words hadn't registered. It was only the distant glaze in his eyes that suggested he knew he'd just been challenged, and though it took a pressurized pause, during which no one moved, Donnie did indeed finally open his mouth.

"Eighth," he mumbled quietly, dropping his gaze.

Raph's cheek twitched. "What?"

"Eighth," Donnie repeated, staring now at the ground. "You said ninth. There are seven wonders of the world. I would be the eighth."

Mikey's eyes widened, and when he switched his gaze to Raphael he saw exactly what he feared.

It only took a second - a painfully tense and excruciating second that was probably nothing compared to what Donnie felt when Raph stepped forward and slapped his brother across the face so hard that Mikey cringed and even Leo let out an audible gasp.

Splinter didn't hesitate to reach out and pinch Raph's neck. He seized up, drawing his shoulder to his ear, and then it seemed his muscles became nothing more than soggy noodles and he sank to the ground, weakly rolling over and propping himself up on his elbows as he choked and groaned.

No one minded him. They all—including Splinter—looked toward Donnie whose chin remained over his right shoulder exactly where it had been forced around when Raph had hit him. He seemed to just be staring off into the distance as though there was something interesting to be seen over in the farthest, darkest corner of the lair. Only the pace of his breathing hinted that there was anything wrong.

"Donatello," Splinter spoke, not necessarily as questioning as he was gently demanding confirmation that his son was not too damaged.

"I'm fine," Donnie whispered without turning his head. There was a very unmistakable waver to his voice that wasn't all that convincing and, as a matter of fact, gave the impression that under-the-radar Donnie was close to tears.

Mikey reached up and placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Don—"

"I said I'm fine!" he shouted, yanking himself away from Mikey's touch and finally snapping his head around to shoot a very glossy-eyed glare at his younger brother.

He didn't continue to stand around after that, didn't even look at anyone else. He turned his back on them and started across the common room, head bowed, shoulders hunched. Mikey distinctly caught a glimpse of him tenderly brushing the back of his hand across his cheek.

It was sad really. He couldn't even walk straight let alone quickly. And Mikey knew if he'd just been slapped around and humiliated by Raph like that, he'd want to get away as fast as possible, which was interesting, because he did actually almost know exactly what that was like.

A three-way shouting match began directly next to him as Leo and Splinter both scolded Raphael, and Raph—who was still catching his breath on the floor—weakly argued back just because he was pissed and he could do that kind of thing … because he was Raph.

Mikey ignored it. He still couldn't really process what had just taken place. Raph was aggressive yes, and it wasn't unlike him to knock his brothers around every now and then—more often with Mike than the other two really—but it was never out of that full-fledged anger that he had just blatantly lashed out with on Donnie. And the look in his eyes this time had been an entirely different kind of rage than Mikey was used to seeing in him. It was a kind that made his eyes even greener than normal, a dark green, a poisonous green, one that maybe would've had Michelangelo feeling some sort of sympathy for Raph if it wasn't for that fact that he'd just slapped the mess out of Donatello. Had it been Leo or Mikey himself, it might've been okay, but it wasn't, because Raphael had just attacked the gentlest, most vulnerable person in their family. That wasn't okay at all.

And so Mikey watched with a stomach full of grief as his brother with the purple mask limped away toward the only place that had ever graced him with the silence and space he needed to be who he was—that closed-in metal box full of computers, tools, and science-y things that was Donnie's sanctuary, and made Mikey's gut drop.

"Donnie, wait!"

He only had enough time to throw out a protesting hand before Donatello threw open his lab door and was immediately drenched in a gallon of pure, rotten sewage that attacked the entire lair with a stench too vial to name.

The shouting ceased, and Michelangelo's heart became a chunk of ice that lodged itself in his throat. He bit his lip, slapped a hand over his nose, and tried to shrink. Everyone watched in silence as Donatello, for a moment, didn't move. His shoulders heaved soundlessly up and down as his hand gripped the edge of the door in the exact position he'd opened it.

Slowly, he lifted that hand and raked it across the top of his head and down the tails of his mask, smearing the sewage away and splaying his palm out in front of him as though it would explain what had just happened.

He looked over his shoulder, meeting Michelangelo with sad, impenetrable brown eyes. And then he simply turned away and shut himself in his lab.

The force that he used to close the door was so soft it made Mikey cringe even worse than if he would've slammed it.

Michelangelo, though he knew what he would face when he did, slowly turned to find Leo, Raph, and Splinter all gazing at him with bewildered—and, in some cases, blank-faced—expressions. A fair heat ripened on his cheeks. He stiffened his arms against his sides and bowed to his father.

"Moushiwake gozaimasen," he mumbled, then added, "I'll go get a mop."

Splinter nodded once. "Yes, you will. And do not apologize to me, Michelangelo."

Mikey tilted his head curtly. "Hai, Sensei."