Little Brother
By Maikafuiniel


Chapter 17
Yes- There is a Book Called Evil Overlord for Beginners

About Fifteen Minutes Earlier
Though Leonardo would never really lose the position of leader among the family of turtles, he knew when to step aside. Donny was in front of him, looking as the technodrome, his hand feeling the metal as though it was going to share a secret with him, carefully guarding his expression.

"Well?" Raph asked, the first to get restless, "Do you see a way in?"

Donny took one last glance at the large machine, and turned to his brother. "I see several," he replied evenly, "But most of them would mean turtle soup- if you look carefully enough you can see dust coming out of the grates, so we know there are fans in there. Not surprising as they would have boiled alive without proper ventilation."

"Anything else?" Leo asked, curious, "Maybe a door their not guarding? A window?"

Donny stared at him, an obvious smile trying to be smothered on his face. "Leo," he said slowly, "This isn't a downtown building. This is the technodrome. It's filled with alternate dimension beings, were hundreds of feet under the earth, surrounded by molten lava. Do you think this is really the kind of place where they just leave an entrance wide open?"

Leo shrugged, completely unembarrassed by his question. "You never know," was his casual response.

Donny turned back to the large machine, and frowned. "No," he replied, "There are a lot of places we could use to get in- but we'd just be walking straight into something so silly there would be no point. Like a giant trash compactor or something. They always have giant trash compactors. Never incinerators, which would of course be superheated at all times. Not of this nonsense about regular intervals of fire going through the grating at predictable intervals- because no," he kept ranting sarcastically, "That would be intelligent. And we wouldn't want that, now would we?"

"Now that we're done our evil overlord lesson for the day," Raphael said shortly with a laugh, "Do we have a way in, or not?"

"It's rule number sixty three!" Donny defended himself, "I got bored one day, and made a list. Then I had to destroy it, because if Shredder ever got his hands on it that would be the end of us."

"Dude," Raph continued, "You know you're crazy- right?"

"Never a thing as a genius without a little bit of crazy combined," Donny quoted, "At any rate, we're not going to be able to sneak in unless we can come up with a way to get through the reinforced walls."

"Alright," Leo said, "We go by the old standby."

"And that would be?"

Raphael lifted his sai with a smile. "We beat some skulls in."

Regular Time Frame
Tobias had stopped the lesson early- apparently he needed to talk to some of the scientists before they could use the computers, and there was really no point in trying to teach him something that the older man felt he shouldn't be trying to learn until he could do so 'properly'.

Mikey was still a little insulted, both for himself, and for his father and brothers… but he really couldn't help but be curious as well. Really, it made a bit of sense. They were turtles learning a human fighting style from a giant rat.

There had to be a few things that had gotten mixed up and turned around in the process- no matter how hard their father had tried to teach them everything properly. Because after all, ninjitsu was about balance- and nothing in their life had been balanced.

Tobias had been walking him back to his room when the alarms started going off, but instead of being abandoned in the hall by the ninja master, he had been picked up so he could get him to his room faster.

They had turned a corner on the way back to his room, and had almost run straight into Rocksteady and Bebop who were heading in the other direction- probably towards the fighting.

"Why youse little-" the Rhino had ground off in anger, picking him right up off the ground by the arm, but before he could do anything Bebop had quickly reached out and taken the small turtle from his friend.

"I'll get him to his room," Bebop said, "Don't worry's about it; 'kay?"

"We gotta' go fight dem!" Rocksteady had replied, shocked at the thought of Bebop going off without him in the midst of a fight.

Bobop slowly put Mikey back on the ground, softly, much to Mikey's surprise, and turned back to his roomie. "We can't let him jus' wander da' halls," Bebop tried to explain, "Shredder will kill us, and youse know it. I jus' wanna' put him somewhere safe, until the fighting is over. Get it?"

The Rhino snorted loudly, and gave the Warthog an angry glare. "Fine," he muttered, "But make it fast."

He leaned against the wall to wait, still giving both Mikey and Bebop long, hard stares as Bebop led him off to another room.

"Why aren't we going back to my room?" Mikey asked, not especially wanting to go back, but not wanting to go anywhere new and terrifying either.

"Were bein' attacked- we have a safe room, see? For the scientists and dem' people who are too important to get demselves killed. Don't know how to fight. Youse 'ill be stayin' dare."

Mikey shrugged, and decided to just go with it. Who knew what kind of freaky monsters Shredder had managed to get angry at him.