El Jéfe

"Naow," Shasta chided, pointing a leaf at each of the brawlers in turn. "I'm very disappointed in awl of you!

One of the mob groaned in pain. Raphael sniffed, stemming a bleeding nose by pinching the bridge of his beak. "Sorry, Shasta."

The meeting with Poquito's pack had not gone well. The lanky dog mutant had presented the scavenged goods to the pack's pregnant bitch… apparently a faux pas in canine-mutant etiquette as the Alpha apparent, a scarred, drooling bulldog, seemed to take offense and ordered the other two members of the pack to teach their less-muscled companion a lesson, one involving fists and clawing and biting. The dogs all definitely showed to be fighters, probably part of a dog-fighting ring pre-mutation, evident in the numerous scars on the canines, the docked or shredded ears, the viciousness in which they attacked the low dog on the totem pole. Poquito did not seem to fit with this group, barely putting up any defenses as he was beaten and bitten by his so-called compatriots as he tried to show his belly; hard to accomplish in a humanoid body.

Raph and Casey, who had been spoiling for a fight since that morning, eagerly jumped into the fray to defend their submissive new friend, smacking the attackers with hockey stick and the butts of sais. Seeing the odds turn, the bulldog leader jumped in as well, with only the potted flower mutant and the pregnant female staying out of the fight… though in Shasta's case, from her piercing complaints, not by choice.

The meek bitch stepped over to comfort the clearly agitated daisy, who, through much shrilling and pointing of leaves, managed to convey the need to have her pot carried nearer to the ongoing brawl.

After a few minutes of wafting pollen over the fight, she managed to subdue the crowd of ruffians, and all simply stood there looking stunned, rubbing at forming bruises or licking their wounds, all of them looking worse for wear.

"You awl know bettah! Foighting loike that isn't ganna sawlve anything!" the flower mutant lectured, pot held by the female dog, who let out the occasional nervous whimper, emphasizing Shasta's distress. "Ya gotta tawk yoah prawblems aout oah youah nevah ganna get anywheah!"

Casey, cradling an apparently rattled cranium, did his best to translate for the Spanish-speaking dogs. The pitbull with the lopped ears seemed too stunned to take in what was being said, but the other, a chow, nodded vigorously. "Si, si!" The bulldog Alpha grunted skeptically, ignoring the daisy's advice.

Poquito spoke up, pausing from nursing a nasty series of scratches across his belly. "Lupita necessita comida. Tiene cachorros. Tiene hambre. No comida, no perritos."

The bulldog snarled at him and grabbed Lupita by an arm to drag her away. "Hey, hey, hey! You cut that out right now!" Raph demanded, cracking the bully's knuckles with one of his weapons. The pack leader dropped the female's arm, glowering at the turtle and growling lowly, but not willing to engage further, and motioned to his pack to take their leave. Lupita retreated behind Raphael. The pitt followed unquestioningly, the chow looked more dubious, sizing up both factions, and looking unsure about his choice as he followed the bulldog.

What remained of the fighting dog pack had nearly rounded the corner when a loud cheer carried to them all. A single voice said something, and another cheer went up.

"What wazzat?" Not waiting for speculated answers, he started toward the source of the noise at a fast clip, with the rest of his group following, Shasta being handed off to Poquito, who also took Lupita's hand, towing her along. The fighting dogs, taking a cue from them, also followed.

Only a few blocks away, they ran into the source: a massive crowd of mutants occupying a pair of basketball courts, gathered around a stack of wooden pallets, serving as a dais for a lean orange tabby cat mutant who was speaking fervently to the crowd.

"…Who thinks they hold power over us animals? The humans! But aren't we stronger than them?! Faster runners, stronger fighters, better swimmers, masters of the air!" the speaker said, pointing to examples of each, then looking at a slime bobbing enthusiastically up and down and dissolving part of the makeshift dais as it did. "And… er… burning their way through… stuff! They hold power over us?!"

"NO!" the crowd shouted back, except for the blob, who went blurp! instead.

Raphael side-eyed the crowd. "This can't be good. Shasta, you up for doin' a little crowd control?"

"I think I see wheah ya going with this, Raphael, hahney, an' I'm awl foar it!" the daisy said conspiratorially and started preening her petals in preparation.

"Case, you mind?"

"No problem," the teen heaved as he took the heavy pot from Poquito's arms. He grinned back at Raph. "She kinda reminds me of my nana!"

Casey started out, but his turtle friend tapped his arm. "They seem pretty hostile toward humans. Put your mask down. Maybe they'll think you're a monkey or somethin'."

"Monkey?!" Casey scowled, affronted by the remark, but did as told as he was shooed off and Shasta likewise beckoned for him to carry her in a certain direction.

Raph made to push into the crowd when a voice behind him asked, "Y nosotros, jéfe?"

He turned back toward the two anxious dogs. "Erm…" He had no idea what Poquito had just said; he didn't know a word of Spanish. "Stay here," he said, motioning with flat hands toward the ground. "Stay."

"Ste?" the shepherd repeated, cocking his head to one side. Lupita said something to him in a barrage of Spanish Raph had no hope of following, but also pointed to the ground, so he figured the message got through. "O, stee! Si!" he said, and the female likewise gave a nod. With that sorted, Raph began wending his way through the masses as the cat continued.

"The land belonged to animals, but then the humans came, more and more of them, putting down their roads for their cars and big boxes to live in!" Raph cringed a bit at the description; the cat had a point there, though it was way oversimplified. He pushed his way between two mutants to edge closer. "We animals were forced further and further from our homes, our territories! The humans took more and more, until they had taken it all, and then we animals were forced to live among them, on their hard, hot, stinking asphalt, and in their stone boxes, because we had no power! But are we powerless now, my friends?!"

"NO!" shouted the crowd, except the stunned-looking back quarter, which coincidentally contained Casey and Shasta.

"It's too sahnny heah! I'm ganna get sahnbuhnt and droy ap!" Shasta's shrill voice carried. "Take me ovah theah, wheah it's shady!" Raph snorted to himself with a grin. The little daisy's complaints were perfect cover for Casey to keep circulating through the crowd with Shasta's pot. She was a sharp one... He wondered if Splinter might even want to train her as a kunoichi. Well, as long as she had someone to carry her. "It's too cold ovah heah, oy'm ganna freeze moy leaves awf! Take me back ovah theah in the sun!"

"So, friends, we must ask ourselves, if we are more powerful than these mere humans, why are we not their masters? They pretend to be strong, but are we not truly stronger?"

This time, only a small cluster of mutants cheered, and then looked confused, as no one in the surrounding crowd joined. The cat looked miffed at losing his audience's interest, and stepped up his rhetorical game. "And that's why we should attack the humans! Take their buildings and homes and food for ourselves! They are powerless to stop us!"

"YEAH!" the partially reviving crowd roared.

Raph shouldered his way through to the front, always having had a real problem with authority, especially when he could see said authority doing something wrong. As the cheer died off, he shouted at the cat, "NO, no… That's a really bad idea!"

"Wha—Why do you say this, my friend? Together, we have the power to—"

"No, you don't," Raph insisted, stepping up onto the platform to glare the cat in the eye. "Ya know why? Because humans have guns, and guns have bullets, lots and lots of bullets! You charge in there, you might take them by surprise now, you might take some of their homes and offices at first, but they'll be back, with even more weapons to hurt and kill you with, because humans do not just put up with losing their stuff."

"We have superior numbers, and we have better reaction time than them! They are so weak! We will kill them all! There will be no one to take it back!"

Raph snarled, "There's more humans out there than you can imagine. They are not going to let mass murder go unpunished. You think there's a lot of humans here now? If you start killing them, every human in the world is gonna be on your ass, all seven billion of 'em. All of our asses, because they're not gonna check to see if we're good or bad, they'll just wipe us off the face of the map. No place to hide. You may be big, tough mutants, but you ain't nothin' against assault weapons, tanks, air strikes, gas bombs…"

The tabby looked unsure of himself, but refused to concede, even as a …monkey?... carrying a plant mutant in a pot and two mutant dogs joined the terrapin. "You cannot know that! I have been here since the first day! I have been to the edge of the land and back!"

Raph and Casey turned the direction of the cat's pointing, clearly inland, rather than toward the Atlantic. "Does… Does he mean the Hudson?"

Casey guffawed. "Oh, man! He thinks Manhattan is the whole world!"

The tabby raised his voice in a desperate bid to hold onto his authority. "As eldest, I claim right as leader of this clan!"

"What kind of leader is that? The kind that's about to send a ton of new mutants on a suicide run?! Then you just end up with no one to lead! It's stupid! Worst. Plan. Ever."

"I am eldest!" the cat screeched, the fur on its back standing up and his back arching, making him look hunchbacked rather than intimidating. "I was mutated on the first day! I have been a mutant the whole of three weeks! I have the most experience of anyone in this clan!"

Casey coughed, hiding a laugh. "Erghhem…Weak…"

Raph made no attempt to hide his laugher. "Three weeks?! Ha ha, oh, man…And you think you know how to deal with humans?! Well, that's a cat for ya!"

The cat, bearing its fangs, demanded haughtily, "Well—How many weeks have you?!"

"Weeks?! Dude, I've been a mutant for sixteen years!"

He received an odd look from the feline. "What is that in weeks?"

Casey guffawed. "He doesn't even know what a year is!"

Raphael's laughter ebbed enough to take the question seriously. "Well, there's fifty-two weeks in a year… times ten is five hundred twenty…"

"Six toymes two is twelve, and then ten toymes two is twenty…"

"… and then half of that is two hundred and fifty, two hundred and sixty…"

"…So that'd make it seven hundred and eighty… Plus one."

"It's not plus one, it's plus another fifty-two for the year in weeks…"

"…carry the one, and—would you boys keep it down?! Oy can't add awl this ap in moy head with awl yoah yelling! I'm ganna hafta stawt awl ovah!"

"… and then two hundred sixty plus seven hundred and eighty… wait, is that right?"

"…that gives us… Nine hundred forty-five!"

"…Seven hundred eighty-one!"

"…Eight handred noyntey foah!"

Raphael blinked at their differing totals, sighed, and turned back to the tabby, pushing away the annoyance of math. "A-anyway, a lot. So I sure as shell know a few more things than you about living in this city."

The charismatic cat, left speechless, bowed his head and backed away with a growl of disgrace.

Poquito stepped forward, seizing Raph's hand and held it aloft in victory, pulling Raph up to the very tips of his toes due to their height difference. "El jéfe!" he shouted, and to Raph's surprise, the other members of the dog pack echoed the words with vigor, as did several other mutants in the crowd.

Suspicion rose in the ninja's gullet. As Poquito set him back on his feet, he looked to his human friend. "Case… What is 'el jéfe'?" It occurred to him that their shepherd companion had called him those words since they'd come to his aid… He'd never bothered to question it.

Someone in the crowd figured it out before Casey could answer. "Leader!" a voice piped.

"Leader! Leader!" other voices around her began repeating as the blood drained from Raph's face. Before long, the whole crowd was chanting, "Leader! Leader!"

Anyone who knew the turtle well, and a giant mutant mushroom, probably thought they knew his greatest fear, and they would tell you that it was cockroaches. It was true, he had a very visceral phobia of bugs, and roaches in particular. But they weren't the thing he was most afraid of.

His mind flashed to an earlier time…

"Raph! What do we do?"

"Go…go for the head!"

"Oh, no…. No, no, no, no, no, no…"

In panic, he backpedaled off the dais and into Casey, who caught him by the rim of his shell. "Raph… C'mon, man… Everybody's waiting for you!" he said as the chants of 'Leader!' became more demanding.

The turtle shook his head desperately. "Case… I can't lead them! I'm a terrible leader!"

"No you're not…" the vigilante replied, shoving him back toward the stage. "Go on, get up there!"

"No, really, Case, I can't do this!" Raph argued, struggling against his friend's encouraging shoves. "I'm not a leader! I can't!"

"Oh, really?" Jones teased, flipping his mask up. "'Cause the way I remember it, you were doing a pretty good job of bossing everyone around at the farmhouse when Leo was out of commission."

Raph's mind fought for a rebuttal. "That…that was just for training!"

"You been leadin' awlla us around the whole day, Raphael, hahney," Shasta added as Lupita set her pot on the pallets. "Listen to yoah Auntie Shasta… I know yoah skeahd roight naow, but yoah nevah ganna know how good ya can be at samthin' if ya don't troy!" the flower said sweetly, petting his hand with a leaf. "It dasn't have ta be farevah. But these people need you naow… they don't have anybaddy else!"

"But…why me?" he bent down to all but whisper to her, barely over the crowd.

She patted his cheek. "Becawse you spoke up, sweethawt. Becawse you keahed enaff nawt ta let awl these folks get themselves in a lawt ah trahble!"

"Andale, jéfe!" Poquito encouraged, waving him up to the stage.

"Go, Raph, ya freakin' idiot!" Casey insisted, giving his shell a kick that forced him to either get back up on the stage or trip over it. The crowd cheered, then gave a disappointed "AWW!" as he turned and stepped back toward his friends.

"What if I can't do it, though?! What if somethin' goes wrong?"

"We're right here to back you up," Casey assured.

"Be brave," said the little flower, and Raph was so insulted at the insinuation that he wasn't brave already that he all but charged back onto the dais. The crowd roared once more. Raph threw out his arms, calling for silence, and they stilled.

"Listen… I am not always the greatest person. I've got a heck of a temper I'm not always great at keeping control of, and I'll admit I'm not great at always thinking things through. But I think right now I have a lot more knowledge about how this world works than all of you mutanimals who were mutated three weeks ago and don't even know how much of a world there is."

"Ahem," Shasta put in, leaves on her stem where her hips would have been.

"…And mu-plants," Raph amended.

"Machines too!" rasped a motorcycle in the midst of the crowd, popping a wheelie to be seen.

"…And… mu…chanicals, I guess?" he struggled to mash the words together. "Point is, I may not be great at this, but I'll do my best to keep you all safe and teach you how to function here." He motioned toward the orange tabby, still skulking about the edge of the stage in hopes of taking it back. "Maybe your friend here will even help me out… What's your name?"

"Name?" the cat said, cocking his head.

"What's a name?" a blue jay near the front row asked.

Raph blinked. "None of you have names?" Getting only a murmured response, he went on. "A name is your identity, it's what you're called, so others know how to address you."

"A mean lady called me a food-stealing scab… is that my name?" a female voice near the back called.

"No. There's a difference between someone calling you something and what you want to call yourself. F'r instance… my name is Raphael, Hamato Raphael in full. I'm named after my father's family name and a famous painter. This is my friend Casey Jones, and Shasta—"

"—Feldstein," the daisy supplied.

"Shasta Feldstein. And that's Poquito, and Lupita." Raph's brow furrowed. "Wait…How did you two get names?"

After relaying the question in Spanish, Casey translated, "Before the mutagen, he was always the littlest, so they called him 'very little'. Lupita, they said, ran like a 'little wolf."

"Right. So how about you, cat-man? You got something in mind?" he said, turning back to the tabby.

"Um…Cat?"

"Come on, you can do better than that! You call yourself 'cat', and someone yells, 'Hey, Cat!', every cat mutant here is gonna answer. "Right, cats?"

"YO!" replied two dozen Brooklynite cats in unison.

"The point of a name is that it's something that sets you apart from everybody else. Sometimes people have the same first name, and we tell them apart from their family name or surname."

The tabby held up a finger. "But, how do I know what to call myself?"

"Well… try to find something that suits you… something that describes you or something you're good at. Like… you're orange and white… You could be something like… Marmalade?"

"Uch, no."

"Tequila Sunrise?"

"What? No."

"Tangerine? Um, what else is orange? Orangutans… Creamsicles…"

"That! I like that one!"

"You want to be Creamsicle?" Raph asked, and the cat nodded in confirmation. "You sure? Once you make your choice, you're stuck with it."

"That's nawt true, Raphael, hahney," Shasta put in. "Folks change theah names awl the tyme! When they get married, oah divoased, oah if they don't loike theah name, oah if theah trans and theah old name dasn't match who they awh naow…"

Raph had to concede her points. "Alright, yes… you can change your name… But try to pick one you want to keep the first time, and don't go changing it all the time, or you'll just get people confused." He turned to the cat again. "You gonna stick with Creamsicle?"

"Yes. I shall be Creamsicle henceforth."

"All right," the turtle smiled with approval, and held his hand out to shake with the cat. "Nice to meet you, Creamsicle! You see?" he said to the amassed mutants. "It's that easy. If you need help, you can ask me or Casey or Shasta. In fact, once you've chosen a name, run it by one of us to make sure it's appropriate."

The crowd broke into three clusters, around Raphael in the front, Shasta to the right of the stage where she's been put, and Casey and Poquito, who moved to the left side to eliminate the congestion, all suddenly swarmed by mutants wanting names.

"Okay, who's first?" Casey announced, cracking his knuckles.

Poquito pointed to a petite frog mutant at the front of the cluster. "La rana."

"I like it!" the frog girl chirped perkily.

Casey looked confused. "Oh, no, he was just saying that you, 'the frog', was first."

"But I like it!" she replied disappointedly.

"Okay, okay… that's fine," the boy backpedaled. "You can be Larana if you wanna… heh, 'Larana if you wanna'," he elbowed Poquito, for confirmation of his cleverness. The dog gave a compliant grin, not getting the jokey rhyme. "Ya know, though, if you put a u in there, it'd make it Laurana, like a girl's name."

The frog beamed. "I like that too!"

"All right! Laurana it is! Who's next?"

Shasta had her own technique going. "You look like a Sheena ta me. Yoah defanately a Fred, hahney; you look jast loike moy cahsin! Well… if he was a raccoon. He awlways had dawk suhcles arownd the oyes, too. Now, you… oh, you've gawt to be a Mawnica."

Raph put a hand to his eyes, trying not to mimic Leo's tendency to rub the bridge of his beak when something gave him a headache. "No, you cannot name yourself Rumphumper…" He shifted to announcement-voice again out of necessity. "NO naming yourself after your genitals or sexual exploits! Keep it classy! You," he said to the rabbit in front of him, "go consider something more appropriate!" He rolled his eyes. "Next!"

Even though Raph had seen the motorcycle when it announced itself in the middle of the crowd earlier, he was still perplexed when it rolled up riderless and started talking with a gravelly Wolfman Jack voice. "I'm thinkin' my name ought to be—" The chopper produced a series of loud vrooms, brake screeches and a backfire. "Whaddya think?"

"That was freakin'metal!" Casey volunteered from across the stage.

"Yeah, it was!" Raph agreed, poking a finger in his earhole to help clear the ringing. "Also really freakin' loud, though. And none of us humanoids is gonna be able to say it. Think ya can take it down a notch?"

The bike turned its front wheel slightly as if it was thinking. Rapahel wasn't sure where to look at it. Was its headlight an eye? Its mouth seemed to be somewhere below that when it asked, "Well, how about just—" and it bucked its front wheel in the air, letting out a smaller vrrrmm!

The turtle mentally filed his questions about physical logistics of animated motorcycles in the 'Who Cares?' folder to instead address the bike. "How about 'Rev?'"

The chopper kicked its back tire in the air to let out a loud motor rev and squealed it back tire on the pavement, causing the mutants around it, including Raph, to back off in apprehension, unable to interpret this action until the mu-chanical declared, "Yeah! I likes that!" It rasped out a few grating laughs. "Think it'll get me a date with that cute li'l Kawasaki 'cross the street?"

Raph looked the direction the bike turned its handlebar, seeing the cycle in question leaning against the side of a building. "Uh, Rev? I don't think that bike is a mutant. It's not alive…"

Rev popped an enthusiastic wheelie. "That means she can't say no!" it coughed out more laugher, rolling off through the crowd, leaving the turtle in a greasy cloud of exhaust and with a greasier feeling about the inability of an inanimate object to consent. He coughed, shook his head, ughed, and got back to naming the rest of his charges. "Next!"

Casey was snickering at Raph's predicament when he turned back to his own line and nearly fell on his ass, trying to keep from waving his arms forward at a cloud of hovering wasps, instead waving them everywhere else. "Oh, jeez!" He'd seen some weird stuff in the city, and all sorts of mutants, so he'd built up a tolerance for the bizarrity, but the memory of poking at a hornet hive with his hockey stick and the painful event that followed shoved itself to the forefront of is mind.

"We would like names," the swarm buzzed, sounding like many synchronized voices.

Recovering himself, the boy took a breath. "So, like… one for each of you? 'Cause that's gonna take all night…"

The wasps buzzed amongst themselves for a moment. "A singular name for the swarm will suffice."

He snapped his fingers. "That one's easy, then. Hive Mind!"

After a moment of deliberation and potentially even a vote, the swarm said, "We find Hive Mind acceptable." The crowd widened around them as they buzzed off. Casey relaxed muscles he didn't realize had clenched so much in the wasps' presence.

With the naming process still ongoing, Raph announced, "Once you have a name, introduce yourself to the mutants around you. Start making friends, 'cause those are the people who're gonna be there for you in the coming weeks. We're gonna have to rely on one another, look after one another, help each other out, or we're not gonna make it. Right, Case?"

"Yeah, man." Casey grinned and held up a fist to bump Raph's, their moment interrupted by a loud growl from the teen's stomach. He shot Raph a chagrined grimace. "Guess it's gettin' toward dinnertime, ain't it?"

"An' that's a lawt 'a mouths ta feed…" Shasta added.

Raph nodded. "Alright, everybody follow me, I'm gonna show you where you can get a hot meal," he said and started weaving his way through the crowd to the street beyond.

x-x-x-x

The balding red-haired man's eyes bugged a bit as mutants poured around the corner and into the outdoor soup counter line he was working, but only a little. He'd had plenty of encounters with mutant-kind by this point, and most were easy enough to get along with, but you never knew. The ones in the forming line seemed cautious, none of them familiar with the process, leery of the humans serving. But a familiar sharp voice carried over the bustle of the crowd, and that alone put him more at ease.

"You can keep milling around in a group here, but once you get up to the counter, stay in line and wait your turn. No cutting in front of one another. And say thank you. These people are volunteering their time and supplies to help you, and giving you food for free." The mutant turtle with the red bandana broke off from the group and came behind the line to give him a clap on the shoulder. "How's it going, Kirby?"

"Raphael! Good to see you. You, um, brought a few friends, I see?"

Raph gave a shrug. "Bunch 'a animal mutants. I'm helpin' 'em learn the ropes. Got a head count of about a hundred twenty… you gonna have enough?"

"Lorraine?" Kirby called to the woman placing rolls on each tray as the varied mutants passed.

"We may run outta bread, but we'll have enough for a meal for everyone, if you go a little lean on the soup! I'ma go put on another pot to warm!" she announced and scuttled off into the building behind them. A man took her place from where he was rolling plasticware in paper napkins.

The next person in line clattered up with a shopping cart, which wasn't out of the ordinary, given their usual homeless clientele, but the basket contained only a loudly complaining flower mutant in a pot, and the teenage human pushing it waved, giving Kirby a signature gap-mouthed grin. "Hey, Mr. O'Neil!"

"Casey," the man greeted gladly, handing across a tray with a half-bowl of soup. The boy reached for it immediately, only to have Raphael slap a hand over the bowl. Casey returned an annoyed look.

"Raph! What the hell, man?! I'm starving!"

The turtle glared back. "You've got food at home. We gotta make sure all the mutants get fed here.

The boy tossed his hands in the air. "Fine! Shasta, you want some soup in your roots?"

"Acchally, I'm nawt awl that hahngry!" the flower stated, surprised at her own revelation.

"You're a plant, remember?" Raph told her. "You've been doing that photosynthe-thingy all day."

The flower somehow managed to snap her leaf. "Yoah right, I hadn't thawt 'a that."

Casey huffed. "You mighta mentioned that before we stood in line twenty minutes…"

"Oy'm sahrry, sweethawt. Didn't occuhr ta me."

He passed his tray to the next mutant in line. "Thank you!" Laurana chirped brightly. Casey grinned back, giving her a pat on the head as she bounced to the bread station.

"Raphael," Kirby asked as Casey hauled Shasta's cart out of the way and next to the serving line, "do you have anywhere for all these mutants to sleep?"

Raph winced. "We're just gonna have to hunker down in the park until I can find someplace for 'em all."

"That won't do for a permanent solution," Kirby said. "Fall will be on us before too long, and it's going to get cold."

"I know. I'm tryin' ta figure somethin' out for 'em. There's just so many!"

The man at the end of the counter held a hand up. "There's the shelter down on Handel. They won't have enough beds for all of these, but it'll house a good number of 'em."

"I can vawlunteah moy apawhtment, and Estelle's, if she dasn't show ahp. She won't moynd."

"Thanks, Shasta. We'll keep that in mind for a last-ditch solution." His thoughts were interrupted by a ladle clanging on the ground, with Kirby backing apprehensively away from a large cloud of wasps hovering in front of the counter.

"The human releases fear pheromone. Why does it do so? We do not wish to sting," the swarm hummed.

Casey jumped in to intervene. "Whoa, whoa, whoa… it's okay, Kirby; they're with us. Sorry, Hive Mind. People tend to be spooked by bugs, especially ones with pointy bits. It's a human instinct to get away from a swarm of buzzy, stabby things."

Kirby edged into the doorway. "I'll just… fetch a clean ladle…" he stammered and dashed inside, nearly colliding with Lorraine as she brought out another huge pot of soup.

"We…understand," the wasps buzzed back. "Perhaps a change of form would be more calming."

"A what now?"

Hive Mind didn't answer, but the insects rearranged themselves into a rough silhouette of all but the lower legs of a woman of Lorraine's rounded build, including her dreadlocks.

The woman chuckled. "Now that is a fine-lookin' bunch of bugs, if you ask me! I always wanted a wasp waist, but this wasn't quite what I was thinkin'."

"Shall we alter our form again?" the swarm asked.

She smiled back. "Honey, you are perfect just the way you are, or any way you want to be. Honey, bee. Get it?"

"We… are wasps…" the hive said with an air of confusion.

"That's all right, sweetie. We gonna work on that sense of humor, though. You want bread with your soup?"

"No. We present our thanks."

"You're welcome, baby."

The silhouette reached down to "grasp" the tray with the bowl of soup. Casey called out in warning, "Hive Mind, be careful with the—!" but the wasps rearranged themselves, a greater number gathering around then hands of the figure, simultaneously pushing the tray up from the bottom and lifting from the top, carrying it along without problem. Casey breathed in relief. "Never mind, they've got it."

Raph clapped him on the shoulder. "Go on home, get some chow and a good night's rest. I'm gonna need your help again first thing in the morning tomorrow."

"Figured you would. See you tomorrow!" The boy popped his skates on and zoomed off past the line of mutants.

He wasn't gone for a minute before Poquito came dashing up, a distraught look on his face. "Jéfe! Jéfe!" He pointed urgently. The turtle hurried after him, to where the group had cleared a circle, dinner trays still in hand, around two bird mutants who were pecking and pummeling each other with their wings.

"Hey, hey, hey, HEY! Stop it! What is this?!" Raphael demanded, sliding between the two songbirds and popping up between them, shoving them back with a palm to their chests. This turned out to be too much power against such lightweight, hollow-boned opponents, who were hurled backward into the surrounding crowd, wings flailing. Soup cups and trays were overturned, their owners hollering in dismay, though both birds managed to right themselves without too much damage. Raph grimaced. "Sorry. You guys, go get you some more soup," he instructed the mutants who had theirs knocked over, then hauled one bird and then the next together. "What's going on? What's this about?"

"She stole my name!"

"I didn't! He stole mine!"

Both of them went for each other again, even with Raph between them. He held them apart at arm's length, but kept being batted with wings. Tired of feeling like he was inside an angry feather duster, he called sharply for a stop.

"Look, you can't be fighting over something as petty as a name! Which is…?" he asked the female.

"Robin!" she stated huffily.

Raph rolled his eyes at the obviousness. "Of course it is. And you're also…?" he queried from the male.

"Robin!" he stated. "I got it from the flower."

"And I got mine from the human!"

"I got mine first!"

"Did not!"

"Did so!"

"Stop it!" Raph snarled, cutting off the pair of Robins from starting their scuffle again. "Look… it's okay for you to both be called Robin, all right? This isn't Highlander… never mind. There's millions of people in this world. You think they didn't reuse names a few hundred-thousand times? Hell, the place would be in shambles if every Bob Smith decided he was gonna be the only one!" The robins kept glaring at one another, though the fight had gone out of them. "If you have to," Raph told them, "differentiate yourself more. Choose a nickname. You could be Rob or Robbie or Bobbie…"

"Fine. I'll be Rob," the male said.

"I'll be Bobbie," the female decided.

"If I let you go, you gonna behave yourselves?" Raph asked them, and they nodded and went to their separate sides of the circle, leaving their leader in the middle.

Raph raised his voice to the whole crowd. "We can't afford to be fighting each other! We are one whole; we don't have time to be putting out fires over petty squabbles! We've got to help each other, support each other, all right?! If you've got a problem, you come to me or Casey or Shasta! When you're done with dinner, let's head back to the park and bed down. We've got a lot of work to do tomorrow. We're gonna look for places to stay, and start finding out what skills you have, to start looking for jobs, so you can support yourselves. Get some sleep."

Announcement made, Raph went back to monitor the line until it dwindled to nothing, then claimed the last dribble of soup from a recovered Kirby, and a cup of lemonade. He downed both, barely taking the edge off his own hunger, but he and his brothers and father had seen much leaner times, and sometimes, you just needed to shut up and put up.

As he steered Shasta's cart back toward the park, she said, "I'm very proud ah you, hahney. Yoah doing such a good joahb foah everybahdy."

A feeling of accomplishment settled on him, and he smiled to himself, though the comfort was brief. "What am I doing, Shasta? I can't take care of a hundred and twenty mutants! What do I do if something goes wrong? Aren't leaders just supposed to know that kind of thing?"

The daisy laughed. "That's the big secret about loyf, sweethawt… You can plan and plan, but we're awl just makin' it up as we go."

Raph's thoughts went to his older brother, and how Leonardo spent so much time studying books on strategizing and meditating and all of his meticulous planning. When the moment came, Leo could come up with a strategy off the top of his head, Raph realized, because his brother could analyze the situation and come up with something on the fly due to all of his background knowledge acting as scaffolding. Maybe when he got a minute, he'd head back to the Lair and swipe Leo's copy of The Art of War. On the other hand, he didn't think Sun Tzu had much to say about logistics of finding lodgings for mutants who barely knew how buildings worked…

"That's really insightful, Shasta. Where'd you learn that?" he asked.

"As a heahdressah, sweetie, ya leahwn awl koinds a' things fron awl soats a' people…"

x-x-x-x-x

a/n: I've left this story languishing for far too long. Sorry for those of you who've been waiting! Had to rewrite the beginning of this chapter twice, and it left me rather demotivated. It's my current plan to finish a chapter of an old fic before starting one of a new fic, so this one should progress even if I start some new works!